Ladykiller

by Lawrence Light

  “Do you know how many of these people have a sheet at headquarters?” Dave said.

  “We aren’t concerned with their criminal history,” Nita said. “We’re concerned with their future.”

  “I’m interested in the future, too. The future that five people already won’t have.”

  “We can’t exactly press for ID,” Megan said, trying to be conciliatory. “If we press too hard for information, they just stop showing up. Then, we can’t help them at all.”

  “Although that’s not always possible,” Nita said. “Some people simply can’t be helped.”

  “I’d say that, when someone has killed five times, he probably fits into that category,” Dave said nastily.Two could play this game.

  “I wasn’t particularly thinking about the killer,” Nita replied.

  Dave opened another folder.

  Nita said without glancing up. “Say, here’s one. White male. Age 29. Occupation: wino. Hobbies: Serial killing.”

  Dave kept reading and making notations, ignoring her. Megan glanced nervously at Dave, then at Nita, fascinated by the strange dynamics. She had the weird sense that they were fighting over her. She shook her head to clear it of the bizarre notion.

  Nita selected another file and opened it. “Listen to this one. Schizophrenic. Age 25.Talks to angels and shoots people in the head.”

  Megan leaned over her shoulder and pretended to read. “Oops. No. Read the addendum. Kills only small children. For food.”

  Both women laughed. Megan’s laugh failed to thrill Dave this time.

  Dave didn’t look up, but he stopped writing and spoke calmly. “I suppose you think I’m going to tell you this is not a game. That you haven’t had to see them, lying on the ground, outlined in chalk, half their heads blown off.” He put the folder down. “That there’s a killer on the loose who won’t stop until we stop him. And that until we do, nobody’s safe.”

  The women had stopped laughing. Nita patted Megan’s arm and glared at Dave.

  “Tell me, detective,” Nita said, her voice cold. “Aren’t you afraid that this so-called Ladykiller is too smart for you?”

  “A pattern exists, Ms. Bergstrom. We’ll find it. Serial killers eventually get caught.They make mistakes.We outsmart them.”

  “Do you now? This city is a crucible of the unexpected.”

  “Is that what your studies have taught you, Ms. Bergstrom?”

  “My studies have taught me that limited thinking cannot deal with this city and its problems, detective.”

  There was a silence and Megan winced inwardly at the level of dislike that sparked between the social worker and the detective.

  “Let’s get back to work, why don’t we,” Dave said.

  They slogged through the files in silence. When they finished, Nita stood up and left without a word. Megan sat for a few seconds, then followed her.

  Dave riffled through the notes. The two women had done a thorough job listing several who fit the profile. As he scanned the lists, though, none seemed quite right. The violence in their pasts — bar fights, wife beating, child molesting — was almost always an unpremeditated eruption of rage, provoked by another’s behavior. An insult here, a petty jealousy there. Not one had been arrested for an offense worse than assault and battery. The element of planning was missing. The smooth-clicking intellect of a master killer. And none showed any experience with firearms.

  Then Dave got to the end of Nita’s list.

  The last name was Thomas Cronen. He once had been arrested in the armed robbery of a New Jersey convenience store. And he came from a dysfunctional family. His mother was a hooker, and he’d had a history of mental disturbance. Dave eagerly rooted through the pile in front of Nita’s seat for the Cronen file.

  Could this be “Ace” Cronen? The neatly typed reports suggested it was the same street punk whom Dave knew and loathed. They described a boyhood punctuated with capturing neighborhood dogs and cats, and torturing them to death.And although his partner in the robbery got convicted for carrying the gun, Ace boasted he actually had been the gunman and had planted it on the other guy. The reports were written by Reuben Silver.

  Dave called the task force and got Jamie.

  “Hey, Dave. How’s your day been?” she asked cheerfully.

  “Jamie, you know Ace Cronen. Real first name is Thomas. See what we have on him.”

  Dave closed the folder. “And I wonder if you could do some digging for me,” he added casually. “I’m sure Blake will okay it.”

  “Be glad to.What?”

  “I’d like you to go into the backgrounds of all the social workers here at the crisis center. I doubt they’ll have any criminal files, but I want you to find out about everything you can on them.”

  Jamie answered affirmatively but her heart sank. She knew instinctively that he only wanted information on one social worker, and she knew that his interest wasn’t professional.

  • • •

  Nita stood stonily beside the fish tank and sprinkled food on the glowing water.

  “It’s getting dark out,” Megan ventured.

  Nita said nothing. The fish swooped on the descending flakes of food.

  Megan gave a small cry. “Oh, God.You scared me.”

  A large cop had shambled into the room. His slack face resembled a doltish cartoon dog’s. His waistline threatened to spill over the confining band of his gunbelt, which was on its last notch.

  “Uh, sorry. Officer Sweeney. Detective Dillon assigned me here nights.”

  “Sweeney, is it?” Nita said with suspicious heartiness. “Wonderful to have you here, Officer Sweeney.Why don’t you treat yourself to a cup of coffee? Over there.” She pointed to the far end of the room.

  Megan sat tentatively on the edge of Nita’s desk. Nita leaned back in the chair and regarded Megan for a few long moments. Megan examined the floor. Finally, Nita smiled at her.

  “So,” Nita said, “how was it today, playing Nancy Drew with Son of Sam Spade?”

  Relieved, Megan beamed back. “Great. It was great.”

  “Got any interesting leads on our Ladykiller?” Nita continued.

  “We got nowhere,” Megan said. “We grabbed a quick lunch from the deli and headed back here. He’s kind of interesting.”

  “Our tax dollars at work.” After a few seconds, Nita laughed. Megan joined in, only a little strained.

  “Well,” Megan asked tentatively, “what do you think of him?”

  Nita considered for a minute, still smiling. “I think,” she began slowly, “that policemen are to social workers what garbage men are to the great French chefs.”

  Megan’s smile froze.

  “I think,” Nita went on, “that our job is to shape society.Theirs is to clean up after it.”

  “But you said we’d —”

  “Oh, we’ll help him with his investigation. But that’s not what’s important here. He only cares about catching killers. Putting them in jail. That’s as far as he goes. What’s interesting to us is what these crimes mean in context.What they’re saying.”

  “The pattern?” Megan said.

  “The pattern. The police are too stupid to see it. Society is reshaping itself, and this killer, whom your detective is so preoccupied with, is simply the means.”

  Megan listened raptly.

  Nita was getting uncharacteristically passionate. “Don’t you see? We’re the ones who can interpret these events. By watching these movements in the social fabric, and judiciously helping them along, we’re sculptors. Artists.We’re the ones who can mold the world.”

  Megan nodded, excited.

  “We can create it,” Nita said. “Polish it. Make it shine.The detective? He’s a janitor. He’ll sweep up the mess we leave.” And in the dusk-shrouded streets outside the crisis center, the city’s dark heart beat on.

  Ace had tried everything to get the money he needed to buy Tony Topnut’s damn .45. He loped along the Deuce, asking all the people he knew.

 
“You shittin’ me?” Finesse replied with a snort. “Motherfucker goes around dissin’ me and he wants me to hand him two hundred big ones.You dumb? Or is you stupid?”

  “This is a big deal, Finesse. I’ll make it up to you. Look, I’m putting in a hundred of my own.”

  “What you need all this foldin’ green for, my man?”

  “Well —”

  “You ain’t into the white powder? Just say no, jack.” Finesse chortled wickedly.

  “It’s, um, for a woman.”

  “Pussy? Listen to me and listen to me good. Ain’t no pussy worth no motherfuckin’ three hundred dollars. Understand what I’m sayin’?”

  Finesse brushed the lapels of his electric-green suit. “Tell you what. Give your little Johnson a good handshake and save yourself the money, my man.”

  Billy Ray Battle, who had managed to pony up the ten thousand bucks for bail to get free pending trial, was no help, either. “You got shit for brains, boy,” he said, as he sucked on a beer outside the grimy windowed off-track betting parlor. He wore a gauze pad over the eye that Dave Dillon had hit. “Why would I give money to a peckerwood like you?”

  “I kind of figured that, since you had so much money to spend on bail, there’d be more where that came from. Shit, I’ll pay you right back, Billy Ray.Trust me.”

  “Trust you? Fucked, if that don’t beat ass all.” The big man took another swig of beer. “The reason I got me the money for the bail is that I don’t throw it away on every peckerwood what says he’ll pay me right back.”

  “I figured you were my friend.”

  “I got me three friends in this life, boy. Me, myself, and I.” Billy Ray took another gulp of beer and belched.

  Ace ruled out begging.That earned only a quarter here, a quarter there. He settled upon a scam that had worked before: pretend to have been robbed a few minutes before and ask for nine-fifty for bus fare back home to New Jersey. A figure like that was more convincing than a round ten bucks.

  But as he was going through his spiel for his first set of pigeons, a fat pair of tourists from the Midwest with Mongoloid-looking eyes, he attracted more interest than he bargained for.

  Martino and her kid sidekick, Blitzer, sidled up. “What’s this about you got robbed, Ace?” Martino asked.

  Ace said nothing, and the tourist couple chimed in with how glad they were to see police officers and how awful that this poor young man had been robbed.

  “Only thing he’s missing is his brains,” muttered Martino ominously.

  “My mistake,” Ace mumbled, and he shambled off.

  Then he spotted Jackie Why chain-smoking his way up the street, greeting everybody with an upraised palm.

  “Two hundred semolians, huh?” Jackie Why said, the cigarette bobbing in his lips as he spoke.

  “Pay you back real quick. No shit. I’m good for it.”

  Jackie Why removed his billfold and counted out a wad of cash. He pulled it back as Ace grabbed for it.

  “One little business proviso, Ace-hole,” Jackie Why said. “You give me back this double by Saturday.That’s four hundred, if you can’t count.We got ourselves an understanding?”

  “Anything you say. Hey, four hundred, no problem.”

  “I don’t get that back in my hot hand by Saturday, Mr. Mouth, and you’re dead meat. Hope I make my meaning clear.”

  Ace ran to the Foxy Lady.Tony Topnut made a strange face when he counted the money.

  He disappeared in the back and emerged with a paper bag. Inside was a heavy object. “Point this in the right direction before you fire, dickhead,” he said.

  The night was warm, and Ace popped a good sweat running to the West Side Crisis Center.

  The street outside lay silent. In Ace’s sweaty grip, the receiver of the public phone felt slippery.

  “Crisis center, can I help you?” came Nita’s voice over the line, like a song from the starry sky.

  He hung up without saying a word. She was there tonight. He would wait for her.

  NINE

  Officer Sweeney was snoring, a deep-lunged cycle of phlegmy breathing and snorting, zoned-out to the world. Nita knew the call would come about now, in the pit of the night when the bovine Sweeneys of this world nodded off.

  “Crisis center,” she said into the receiver. “Can I help you?”

  “I’ve got to talk to you,” came the jumpy voice on the line. He sounded as if he’d been hot-wired. “About what happened.”

  “You’re outside, aren’t you, Ace? You’re nearby, waiting for me.” She crooned to him, her voice at once sexy, maternal, soothing.

  “How did you know?”

  “I know you, Ace. I’ve known you for a while now. I know all your secrets, don’t I, Ace?”

  There was a silence and she heard his sharp intake of breath.

  “I’ve been waiting for you. Your shift’s supposed to be over. Where are you? I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “I’m working a double shift,Ace. Everyone is too upset to work.”

  “I’ve got to see you.” Nita glanced at Sweeney, who had stirred and mumbled in his sleep. Breathe, snort.

  “Please,” Ace’s voice was pleading.

  She spoke even more quietly, her voice suggestive. “What are you going to do when you see me, Ace? Tell me.”

  “You’re the one, aren’t you?” he blurted out. “You did it.You did them all.”

  Nita checked out the sleeping policeman once more, a cunning smile creeping over her face, wicked and wise. “Always playing, aren’t you?” she murmured into the phone. “Teasing.You see, I know that you did it.”

  Ace gasped, then laughed crazily. “Bullshit. I was there. And so were you. And so was that big, dumb bastard that got killed, Reuben.”

  “And when I last saw you, the two of you were both alive. I don’t care, though. It just makes you more interesting.This was just the sort of thing you always said you would do, isn’t it?”

  Sweeney snorted himself awake, then yawned and stretched, looking over at Nita curiously.

  Waiting, Nita could almost feel the flattering suggestion seep into Ace and swell his ego.

  “Well, I could have —” Ace said.

  Nita met Sweeney’s porcine eyes. She sat up straight and her tone changed from insinuating to distantly professional. “If you think you or your friend saw a crime being committed, I’d advise you to go to the police.”

  Ace lacked the wit to pick up on Nita’s predicament. “The police? Fuck the police.You think I’m nuts?”

  “If you’re worried about your sanity,” Nita said, “I can give you the number of a very good doctor who —”

  “Just meet me outside. Talk to me. I’ve got something to show you. Something important.”

  Sweeney lumbered over to Nita’s desk.

  “I’d love to,” Nita said into the phone. “Well, if you decide to talk to someone, let us know. Any staff member here can help you. Good night.” She hung up.The policeman loomed over her. Nita smiled up at him. “A kleptomaniac. His conscience is bothering him.”

  “I just wanted to know —” Sweeney said.

  Nita’s eyes narrowed. She reached for her purse and pulled it toward her.

  “— if you wanted something,” Sweeney continued. “I could go for a sandwich about now. I wouldn’t mind going out to the all-night carry-out.”

  Nita smiled, relieved. “Great idea. I’d love a Greek salad.” She put her hand in her bag. “Let me give you some money.”

  “My pleasure,” he said with a grin, waving her away.

  “How sweet,” Nita said. Her fingers briefly touched the butt of her gun, where it lay hidden beneath an eighth-of-an-inch of leather, three feet from the law. She withdrew her hand into the light and favored Sweeney with her dazzling smile.

  The cop nodded and turned away. He had a thought and turned back to her. “You don’t mind if I go, do you? You’ll be okay for a couple of minutes?”

  “Go right ahead. I can take care of myself, you know.
”

  The policeman grinned again. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Sweeney left. Nita waited for a few moments, then turned on the answering machine and grabbed her coat off the rack. The fish swam serenely in the glow of the glass tank. The street outside the crisis center had an even greater stillness.

  The moment she stepped outside, she could sense the shadow that Ace was hidden in. He slinked out into the gray light, head jerking around in agitation, checking for cops, for ghosts, for demons.

  Nita touched his scrawny arm, and his nerves jolted his face into a grimace, then subsided. “Let’s take a walk,” she said.

  She steered him in the opposite direction from the one Sweeney had taken.

  The feel of her hand upon him worked on Ace with the potency of a fine wine. “God,” he babbled. “God, how I love you. I’d do anything for you.”

  “Anything, Ace?”

  “I bought a gun. Just like the one you have. Let me show you.”

  He wanted to stop, to turn her to him, but she kept him marching, her neat shoes in rhythm with his boots on the gray concrete. “You know all about it, don’t you?” she said. “You know all about the victims, their names, how they were killed, when they were killed. You met them at the crisis center.You know everything.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I saw the papers. I knew them all. Fucking Wall Street bitch looked at me like I was a piece of shit.” He shook off the unwelcome memory.

  And they walked and she told him, under the pure and lucent stars, what to say and how to act and why it mattered.And she showed him the gun from her handbag. And he showed her his. And she exchanged guns with him. And when she had finished, she told him, “I love you, too.”

  After locking the crisis center door behind her, Nita called out Sweeney’s name. No answer. Good. She had beaten him back. She climbed the stairs.

  A man was silhouetted at the top. She started.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Dave Dillon said.

  “I don’t scare easily, detective.” She brushed past him. “How did

  you get inside here?”

  “Dr. Solomon gave me a key.Where were you?”

  No light was blinking on the answering machine. “I needed a

  breath of fresh air.We get a lot of calls between midnight and three.”