One thing Vic had managed to do over the past forty-eight hours was follow Malachi Medvedev to his little Coochie roost, which was on the corner of Second Avenue and East Fifty-eighth Street. According to the doorman, Malachi stopped by there several evenings a week to visit Miss Ochoa. Had his own key. Vic couldn’t get any more details out of the doorman. Maybe Malachi had shmeared the guy plenty not to give out anything more. Maybe there was nothing more. Maybe Malachi Medvedev slept over with his Coochie-coo like he’d said. Maybe he didn’t.
“Malachi stopped by this morning at 8:35 with the newspapers and pastry,” Vic reported to me through the Rover’s open window. “He stayed one hour. Otherwise, all’s quiet.”
“It’s all over, Vic,” I announced to him in a low voice.
“What’s all over, Hoag?”
“I’ve given Lieutenant Very a letter that will verify within the next couple of hours that Tuttle Cash is the answer man.”
Vic’s eyes widened a bit, but not much. Clearly, he had suspected what my interest in Tuttle was all about. But he hadn’t said anything. And he didn’t say anything now. Just sat there, grim-faced.
“I want to thank you for your help, Vic. I suppose I just needed time to accept this.”
“Sure thing,” he said gently. “You needed some time.”
“But if I shield him any longer, I might cost another woman her life. And I couldn’t live with that.”
“Of course not, Hoag,” he agreed. “Want me to stay here with you until you get the word?”
“That won’t be necessary. You go ahead and catch a cab home.”
Vic climbed out of the Rover slowly, groaning from the stiffness in his heavy limbs. Lulu hopped right in, anxious to claim dibs on his nice, preheated seat. I claimed it for myself. I’m the boss, and don’t you let anyone tell you otherwise.
Vic lingered there by the open window. “Something, uh, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about, Hoag. Unless now isn’t a good time …”
“No, no. Now’s fine, Vic. What is it?”
“I, uh …” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “I wondered if you’d be my best man. At the wedding, I mean.”
“Why, Vic. You’re getting married?”
“I am,” he admitted, ducking his big, meaty head.
Lulu started thumping her tail. She loves weddings, although she has been known to sob uncontrollably at them. I had to carry her out of the Baldwin-Basinger nuptials because she was stealing the show.
“When is the happy occasion?” I asked.
“As soon as possible.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “You mean …?”
“Shoot, no. It’s nothing like that, Hoag. We’re just anxious, that’s all.” He kicked at the pavement with his brogan. “We were thinking maybe over Christmas, if that’s okay.”
“Do I know the lucky girl?”
“Yes, you do.”
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense, Vic. Who is she?”
“Pam,” he replied. A blissful smile softened his plain features. “And she’s not the lucky one—I am.”
“Pam who?”
“Pam, Hoag.”
“Wait … our Pam?”
“We’re in love.”
Lulu started whooping now. I think she sensed flower girl honors.
“Since when, Vic?”
“The passion has been overtaking us for some time,” he said dully.
“Vic, how can I put this delicately—Pam’s old enough to be your grandmother.”
“That’s not so at all,” he responded, flaring. “She’s barely seventy.”
“And you’re barely forty.”
“And she’s intelligent and warm and we get along great. I’ve waited all my life to meet a woman like her.”
“That shouldn’t have been so hard. The nursing homes are full of them.”
I felt a withering glare from the seat next to me.
Vic was glaring at me, too. “I’m really disappointed by your reaction, Hoag. I didn’t expect you to be so close-minded. You of all people.”
“You’re absolutely right, Vic. I was totally out of line. I apologize.”
“Merilee was delighted when Pam told her. Delighted.”
“I said I was sorry, didn’t I?” I stuck my hand out to him through the window. “Congratulations. I’m happy for both of you. And I’ll be honored to be your best man.”
We shook on it, then he went lumbering off to catch a cab home, beaming happily. Me, I sat there drumming the steering wheel with my fingers, thinking once again about just how little I knew about people.
And then Malachi Medvedev came hurrying up the street in a trenchcoat with a worried look on his face. When he got to Tuttle’s building he stopped on the sidewalk out front, squinting up at the big second-floor study windows, craning his neck for a better look inside. He waddled across the street and climbed the stoop to the brownstone opposite Tuttle’s so as to get an even better look. Then, clucking to himself, he crossed back to Tuttle’s building and went inside. Me, I waited all of three seconds before I got out of the Rover with Lulu and went in after him.
The apartment door was open, the keys still in the lock. Malachi stood there in the living room with his hands on his hips and his lower lip stuck out.
“What’s up, Mal?” I asked him from the doorway.
“Man didn’t show for work today, that’s what’s up,” Malachi replied distractedly, running his hand over his face. “Ain’t answering his phone neither. Help me look around, will you?”
We both helped him. Lulu checked out the bathrooms. Malachi took the bedroom. I checked out the study. There was no sign of Tuttle in there. Just an empty bottle of Courvoisier and a dirty glass on the desk. A wrinkled necktie was slung over the desk lamp.
Moving swiftly, I tore open the old leather suitcase, dug out that horrid X-rated photo album and tucked it inside my coat under my arm. If the police were going to get involved, I did not want them to find it, to paw through it, to smack their big fat lips over it and maybe, just maybe, pocket the odd picture and sell it to the likes of Cassandra. This much I could do for Tansy. It was the right thing to do. I knew this. But I still felt like some sleazy little man who cleaned up after people, some bagman, some fixer. I didn’t feel like me. Or the me I liked to believe I was.
“Man ain’t here,” Malachi reported gravely when we met up at the top of the stairs. “He’s flown the coop.”
Lulu concurred, based on her own exhaustive search. She had even looked under the bed. I knew this because she had a dust bunny on her nose.
“Not possible, Mal. He couldn’t have left.”
“Why not? Wait, don’t tell me.” Malachi shook a stubby finger at me. “You been watching over him, am I right? You had this place staked out.”
I nodded.
“Thought so. I seen the same guy parked out front every morning. Seen him in the bar every night. Big guy. At first, I figured he was a private detective somebody’s husband hired—you know how The King is, always messing with married women—until I seen you out there talking to him the other morning. That’s when I put two and two together.” He smiled at me warmly. “Awful decent of you, Hoagy.”
“Decency has little or nothing to do with it.”
“Man was real down on himself last night,” Malachi went on. “Saying how nobody gives a shit about him, nobody loves him. I says to him, you are so full of it. You wanna know how much your friend Hoagy cares about you?”
“Wait, you told him?”
“Well, yeah.” Mal frowned at me. “Why not?”
I grabbed him by his soft shoulders, lifting the little man practically up off the ground. “You idiot, don’t you realize what you’ve done?”
Malachi squirmed in my grasp, frightened. He didn’t know what he’d done. How could he? He hadn’t done a thing. I was the one who had. I was the one who’d fucked up.
“How, Mal? How did he slip out?”
Malachi swallowed. “There’s a
b-back way. Over the garden wall, through the service entrance of the building around the corner on Sixty-sixth.”
I released him and stormed out of the apartment with Lulu on my heel. Jumped back in the Land Rover. Slid the photo album under the seat. Pondered my next move. Hours. Tuttle could have been gone for hours. Should I call Very? Call him right now? I couldn’t think clearly. One thought kept crowding its way to the front of my mind—If he kills again, I will never forgive myself.
If he kills again, I will never forgive myself.
My car phone beeped.
I answered it. I heard heavy breathing from the other end, someone gasping for air. Then I heard a faint whisper: “Help me, cookie. Help me … It’s raining. R-raining …” A muffled thud. And then silence.
I had barely heard it at all. But I knew that voice. I’d know it anywhere. It was Cassandra Dee. And she was dying.
Twelve
I CALLED 911 WHILE I floored it down to West Tenth Street, which is not an easy thing to do in midtown Manhattan while you’re running red lights and trying to dodge cabs and messengers on bicycles and potholes the approximate breadth and depth of Ubehebe Crater. Lulu hugged her seat and howled when I took the corner of Thirty-fourth and Fifth Avenue on two wheels, nearly flipping the old Land Rover over onto its back like a turtle. But the stubby old beast righted itself and went bouncing and raiding on down the avenue.
I also left word for Very, who could not be reached.
Cassandra Dee lived a half-block west of Fifth in one of the nicest rows of houses to be found anywhere in the city, if not the whole world. I beat the ambulance there. Not a surprise. Double-parked and jumped out, dashed up the front stoop. There was no answer when I rang the bell. Not a surprise either.
The front door was of solid oak with an iron pry guard around the lock and no sign that anyone had messed with it. There were decorative iron bars over the basement and ground-floor windows. Not so the elegant second-floor parlor windows, which were level with the front door. These were wired to a silent alarm by an armed security service. Fine, let them come—them and their arms both. A pair of big terra-cotta pots flanked the front door, each with some form of small, dead-looking tree in it. I picked up one of the pots and walked it over to the edge of the stoop, groaning, and hurled it through the window closest to me. Then I climbed out on the ledge, kicked in the rest of the window with my ankle boot and jumped inside, broken glass crunching underfoot.
Cassandra was sprawled out next to the phone on her plush white living room rug. She had that same startled expression on her face that she always wore. Only, she generally favored red lipstick, not orange, and she certainly never used to wear it on her forehead in the form of five question marks. Plus those protuberant eyes used to blink sometimes. And she was never, ever silent. How had that plea of hers gone? Call me, fax me, E-mail me, I’m yours.
Well, she wanted him and she got him.
There was no sign of a struggle in the room. No sign of a weapon. There would be no fingerprints. I knew this. I knew all of this by now.
The decor was cool and pale, with lots of low-slung suede things to lounge on, all of it as homey and inviting as a Paramus furniture showroom. Her living room walls were a full-fledged shrine, every square inch of them covered with framed photographs of her—on the cover of People, TV Guide, Esquire, Vanity Fair. On the set of 60 Minutes with Mike Wallace. At Planet Hollywood with Arnold. Backstage with the rock star formerly known as Prince. With Stallone, with Cruise, with Cindy Crawford, with Jim Carrey. All of these photos were autographed. Many of the celebs had added personal messages as well. Sinatra had written, “You’re my kind of chick.” Andre Agassi: “You can serve me anytime.”
Me, I had written: “You keep me on my toes, girlfriend.” It’s true, there was even a picture of her standing with me at some big Hollywood movers-and-shakers bash a while back. I looked bored. Fabulous but bored. I had signed the picture as well as inscribed it. Except I hadn’t done either of those things. It wasn’t my handwriting. It wasn’t even close. I stood there a moment, staring at this little forgery of hers. I looked around at the other signatures, wondering if they were all fakes, too. I wondered why she had done this. Was it to fool people? Which people? Her parents from Bensonhurst? Herself? I wondered how many people she had invited in to see this shrine, and who those people were. I thought about how sad this was. How very, very sad.
I shook myself and went to the front door to let Lulu in. First, she circled the entire downstairs of the house, briskly, nose to the floor. Then, slowly and warily, she approached Cassandra’s body. She stopped cold in her tracks about a foot away from her. And then Lulu did something that was most unusual for her.
She raised up her head and started howling. Not just any howl either. This was a lonely, haunting howl. The kind of howl you hear in the mountains in the night when you’re stuffed inside your sleeping bag out underneath the stars. It was a heartbreaking howl. And it was an unfamiliar howl. I’d certainly never heard such a sound come out of her and I’ve known Lulu since she was eight weeks old. I hadn’t realized before just how much she cared about Cassandra. I guess there weren’t very many people around who were afraid of Lulu. Just Cassandra.
I knelt beside my partner and stroked her, wondering if she would howl like this for me when I was dead, and wishing, wishing I were.
IS IT THE SAME typewriter, Lieutenant?”
“It’s the same typewriter, dude.”
We were seated out on Cassandra’s front stoop waiting for the Human Hemorrhoid to show. The technicians were inside working the scene, not happy with me for tramping broken glass around in there and touching the doorknob and letting Lulu in. Like I cared. Very didn’t seem at all angry, just subdued and down. Lulu had squeezed herself in between my feet, quiet now, but still looking sadder than I’d ever seen her.
“Same typist?”
“They can’t tell about that.” Very’s eyes were on the row of houses across from us. Lucky people lived in those houses. Lucky, alive people. “Different qualities of paper. Plus the answer man’s using a fresh ribbon. Ribbon on your letter was all worn out. He had to strike the keys a whole lot harder.” He got a piece of gum out of his coat pocket, unwrapped it and stuck it in his mouth. “Tell it to me again, dude. What Cassandra said.”
“She said, ‘It’s raining.’”
He looked up at the sky. The sky was gray, streaked here and there with blue. There was no rain. None. “I don’t track it.”
“I don’t either.”
“Must be she was delirious. People say the darnedest things when they’re starting to go.”
“Yes, I believe Art Linkletter did a book on that subject once.”
He glanced at me curiously. “You cool, dude?”
“I think I can safely report that I am not cool, Lieutenant.”
“He must not have realized she was still alive,” Very said, thinking out loud. “When he split, I mean. Maybe she faked she was dead. Bought herself enough time to call you before she went for good.”
“Maybe.”
“Yo, she called you on your car phone. What’s up with that?”
“I was in my car, that’s what.”
“But how’d she know that?”
“She always seemed to know where I was. She was a good reporter. A damned good reporter.”
He sat there, jaw working his gum. “You dug her, am I right?”
“I was fond of her. She was smart. And honest, in her own way. So few people are either of those things anymore.”
“I wanted to get to know her better,” he confessed. “I was thinking maybe we’d freak it, her and me.”
We fell silent. Behind us, the front door was open. I could hear the technicians in there yapping away at each other.
“Dude?”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“This isn’t going to go down so good with the inspector. That I was running a test on your letter while Cassandra was getting herself done.
That you wouldn’t tell me who wrote it. That I let you have it your way. This isn’t going to go down so good.”
“I know that.”
“You’ll have to give it all up now.”
“I know that, too. You have my full cooperation.”
A dark blue sedan pulled up now with a screech. Out hopped Inspector Dante Feldman, shooting his cuffs and smoothing his white pompadour. Also sneaking worried looks over his shoulder. The press corps—they were a scant half-block behind him, van after van filled with reporters and cameramen and trouble racing down the block toward us. Feldman hurried up the steps and went inside without so much as looking at either of us. Very told me to stay put and went inside after him. I stayed put. I watched the rampage. It was free. It was some rampage.
Within seconds they had taken over the street. Shut it right down. The down-jacketed video guerrillas with their manic urgency and their box-out moves. The frozen-faced, frozen-haired TV reporters with their earnest topcoats and their empty notepads. The news radio boys with their battered black tape recorders and their problem dandruff. The print reporters with their small-time talents and their big-time egos. The photographers with their cameras and lenses hanging from them like so many water canteens. All of them crowding the sidewalk, surging toward Cassandra’s stoop, jostling each other for position, shouting questions at me, at anyone. Three burly cops held them back. It was not easy. There were so many of them. And they were in such a dither. Because nothing, but nothing, gets the press more riled than losing one of their own in the line of so-called duty. Partly this arises out of a genuine sense of grief and loss. Mostly this arises out of a sense that here is a chance to make one of their own into a martyr—and thereby draw more attention to themselves, which is what the press is really and truly all about, in case nobody ever told you. I have been on both sides. I know this.
The Man Who Loved Women to Death Page 23