“Ballistics says it was the .45 that did the murders?” “On a preliminary basis.They’re studying the rifling on the barrel now, to make absolutely sure, but it looks like this is it. Congratulations, Dave.”
Jamie grinned at him, as happy as Christmas morning. “Blake says it’s your collar. Said he’d make sure Mancuso was informed.”
“For what that’s worth,” Dave said skeptically.
The questioning came over the squawk box.Wise showed Ace an arrest dossier. “This your picture?”
Ace examined the arrest photo from his younger days in New Jersey. “Hey, that’s cool. I’m looking pretty good there. They nailed me for armed robbery.”
“You, a big-time armed robbery hard-ass?” Safir said. “Turns out, according to this, that all you ever did was stand lookout for the kid who was holding the iron.”
“My mama was banging the top cop in town, so they did me a favor.What can I say? He got lucky and so did I.”
Wise displayed another photo to Ace. “Who’s she?”
“Evelyn Hernandez. She liked me.Thought I looked pretty good too.”
“What did you do to her, Ace?” Safir asked.
“I broke her heart, then I blew her head off.”
“So you killed Evelyn Hernandez?”Wise asked.
“Put one right through her right eye. Blam.”
“These chicks were all over-the-top stupid to trust you,” Safir said. “I mean, to come to these deserted locations with nobody around. I call that fucking stupid.”
“You said it, my man. Stupid as whale shit. But they saw me around the crisis center and they liked my style.”
“What were you doing going to the crisis center, Ace?” Safir asked. “You having a crisis?”
Ace had to ponder that. “Fuck, not me. I ain’t no loonie. I went there to meet chicks. Chicks love me.”
Dave read the preliminary ballistics report before he entered the interrogation room.
“Why, it’s the great Detective Dillon,” Ace said. “What an honor. You gonna hit me tonight, Dillon?”
“Where’d you get the .45, Ace?” Dave asked.
“Shit, I don’t remember. It was years ago. Man needs to defend himself.”
“All those arrests you racked up on the Deuce, each time you weren’t armed. How do you explain that, Ace?” Dave stood over him, dangling the ballistics report.
“I ain’t stupid, Dillon. If I’m lifting some poor fool’s billfold, I ain’t gonna be packing. In case you pricks collar my ass. Makes the sentence lighter, you understand.” Ace smirked at Dave.
“This .45 is at least forty years old.Yet it has been very well maintained. How come we didn’t find any gun-cleaning materials in your room?”
Ace pondered once more. “Guess I must’ve run out. I been busy, see?”
“But I hear you said earlier in the interrogation that you killed Reuben Silver because you confessed to him over the phone, then when he came out to meet you, you changed your mind,” Dave said. He hunched down to eye level with Ace.
“Yeah, well, what’s your point, Dillon?” Ace sneered.
“Why would a clever guy elude the police this successfully, and suddenly decide to confess to his social worker?”
“Beats the shit out of me, Dillon. Why don’t you ask Reuben Silver?”
“I’m asking you, Ace.”
“Maybe I had a momentary lapse, Dillon. Didn’t you ever have a momentary lapse?” Ace jeered meaningfully.
Dave’s hands curled into fists. He seemed ready to bite Ace’s laughing face in two.
“Don’t, Dave,” Safir said.
“Not worth it,”Wise said.
“Now that you dumb fucks finally got me,” Ace said, “I might as well tell you what happened.”
Dave stalked back into the adjoining room. Blake was there.
“Good news, Dave,” the lieutenant said. “Ballistics has a positive match on the weapon. It definitely killed all four women and Mr. Silver.” He smiled like a pennant winner. “Press conference in the morning, right before the arraignment.”
“Something’s wrong,” Dave said.
Blake’s smile dropped a kilowatt. “Dave, for Pete’s sake. He has a thorough knowledge of the killings. Mentioned shooting through the right eye. And he was holding the murder weapon. It’s U.S. Armyissue, during the Korean War.”
“Long before Ace was born,” Dave said.
Blake shrugged in exasperation and turned to Jamie as if for help.
Jamie put a hand on Dave’s shoulder. “Listen, it’s post-victory letdown or something. Why don’t we get out of here and do a little celebrating?”
“Sorry, Jamie, I’ve got work to do.”
“We don’t need you for the interrogation, Dave,” Blake said. “Why don’t you two go tip a few wet ones?”
Dave scowled. “I’m not done yet.”
Dave spent hours spooling through Ace’s videotaped confession.Then he studied the ballistics report. He went over the notes from the crisis center files. He went out and walked the gaudy Deuce, back and forth in front of the Foxy Lady, where Ace had been collared.
Finally, he went home to his cat’s complaining meows and opened up a tin of cat food.
“That’s what you get for marrying a cop,” he told the cat as he set its food dish on the floor.The cat sniffed at the food and peered up at Dave in indignation. “Oh, all right.” He sprinkled some cat crunchies over the wet food in the bowl, and watched the cat attack the meal.
Dave stood in front of the victims’ bloody pictures. He tried to see Ace in their eyes. If Ace pulled a gun on them, would they show that same surprise? What bothered Dave was that the victims had to have trusted their killer. Could anyone trust Ace? Ace said they were summoned to the traps under false pretenses.
Maybe the housewife and the hooker were dumb enough to go to a deserted place. And maybe the cheerleader was naïve enough. But the stockbroker? Kimberly Worth was a savvy, high-powered woman. Wall Street didn’t teach trust. Why would she venture into a lonely park after dark with a lowlife like Ace?
Dave stood before Reuben’s photo and tried to climb into his mind. Reuben knew Ace the best. The pain of death seemed almost eclipsed by the shock on what was left of his rubbery face.Would the transformation of big-talking Ace into an actual gunman bring on such an expression?
Near dawn, with the cat cradled in his arm, Dave fell into an exhausted sleep. Right before the alarm rang, he was dreaming not of gunmen and murder but of Megan and her bewitching smile.
He arrived at work just in time to join the Ladykiller task force gathered around the TV. Mancuso was holding a live press conference. All the chief of detective’s toadies stood behind him proudly.The only person there who was part of the Ladykiller investigation, Blake, was off to the side, barely in camera range. He wasn’t smiling.
But Mancuso was. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrested a suspect in the Ladykiller case,” Mancuso announced solemnly. He went on to describe Ace’s past, saying he had been arrested for armed robbery as a teenager. “This man is a vicious criminal. He has a long arrest record.”
“Of course most of that record is for picking pockets,”Wise said.
“Viciously picking pockets,” Safir said.
Dave recognized Jimmy Conlon’s voice asking how Ace had been apprehended. “My team assembled a personality profile of the perpetrator,” Mancuso said, his distaste for the media overshadowed by his jubilation. “We distributed it to all uniformed patrols.Two alert officers on 42nd Street stopped Cronen for questioning and found a .45 on him. The weapon turned out to be the ballistics match of the murder weapon, and he confessed to everything.”
A murmur of outrage from the Ladykiller task force swelled as Mancuso answered more questions.
After the press conference, the others stormed off. Dave sat and watched Ace being led into the courthouse for his arraignment on the murder charges. Although surrounded by big, thick-bodied officers, Ace could clearly be se
en by the camera. His skinny frame and nervously grinning face gave him the appearance of a hyperactive child.
Someone managed to thrust a microphone through the phalanx of cops. “Why did you kill them?”
“They were stupid.”
A cop shoved the correspondent’s arm and mike out of their protective circle, and they moved on.
“He loves this,” Dave murmured to himself.
Dave returned to his desk and phoned Dr. Solomon to make arrangements to examine Reuben’s files. “I realize they may have used other names and worn disguises, but we’d like to try to establish that the victims were Reuben’s clients.”
“Oh, of course. If you need to,” Dr. Solomon said distractedly. “We’re overrun with the media. Thank goodness Nita is handling them. It’s all most perplexing.”
Dave phoned Jimmy from a phone booth outside, hoping he would be back in the newsroom. He was.
“Chip is ragging me for not getting this story ahead of the press conference,” Jimmy said. “Told me one of his little Ivy League, squash-playing buddies could do a better job. I wanted to ask Mancuso about your contribution, but I figured that would just make trouble for you.”
“That’s for sure,” Dave said. “Listen, with any luck, I’ll have a big news break for you by day’s end. I’ll try to make it before your deadline. I just can’t say anything yet.”
“Give me a hint.”
“Can’t. But, Jimmy —”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t go anywhere.”
Like ancient evil, the tawdry filth of late morning hung about the Deuce: the neon glow of the nudie reviews was dim and ghastly in the full light, the people sallow and sunken instead of fluid and mysterious, the sun itself a broken yolk mess. Dave looked into each face he met until he found the right one.
Finesse nodded Dave into the dark, urine-soaked recess of a shuttered store’s doorway. “Do you believe that shit?” Finesse said. “Our own little Ace is the Ladykiller himself. My, my, my, how the donkey does fly.”
Dave leafed through a wad of bills. “Where did he get the gun?” “Funny you should ask me that little thing,” Finesse said, ogling
the money as Dave’s cat did its food dish. “Day before yesterday, I’d say, Ace was wanting to borrow some two hundred large. I wouldn’t piss my hard-earned money away, but somebody did. Heard Ace used it to buy hisself a piece from Tony Topnut.”
“The day before yesterday?”
“Sure as shit.”
“Pleasure doing business with you, my man,”
Finesse gleefully pocketed the dollars. “But I ain’t one to gossip,
so you ain’t heard it from me.”
As the afternoon eased into its yellow home stretch, the reporters, photographers, and TV camera crews left, and the West Side Crisis Center began to return to normal. Clients, scared off by the commotion, came out of hiding. They needed heavy reassurance that, even though Ace had been a regular, they had been safe.
“I loved him like a son,” the old man howled in the corner. “Do you know what it’s like for a man to lose his son?”
“He wasn’t your son,” Nita told him firmly. “Now, we’ve arranged a small snack for you.Why don’t you join the others?”
The clients soothed, Nita collapsed at her desk chair in exhaustion.
Dr. Solomon came dithering up to her and said, “Marvelous job today, Nita. Really first-rate. Do you know where I left my glasses? Sometimes I —”
“By your seat in the conference room.”
Sweeney ambled into the room, adjusting his zipper. He gave Nita a big, friendly, reassuring smile. “So, they nailed that sucker, huh?”
“Sweeney, what are you doing here?” Nita asked, sitting up.
“I know I’m a little early, but I could use the overtime. The day guy’s kid took sick and his wife had to work.”
“I mean, we don’t need protection anymore.They’ve arrested the killer.”
“I do what I’m told, and nobody has told me not to come here to stand duty. It beats walking the beat.”
Megan, nervous, floated into the room. She poured some coffee and approached Nita’s desk. “What a day. No peace. I . . . I came by to see how you were.”
Nita glanced at Sweeney, who was watching them both with interest. “You know, Sweeney, I could go for a sandwich about now.”
Sweeney hitched up his belt. “Hey, there’s an idea. Guess you two want to talk girl talk, huh?” After Nita gave him a sharp look, he continued, “Uh, women talk. People talk.” He laughed.
“Corned beef on rye?” Nita said.
“You got it,” Sweeney said. He looked questioningly at Megan, who was clenching and unclenching her hands.
“She’ll share mine,” Nita said.
Sweeney nodded and left.
Nita arched an eyebrow at Megan. “And they say one is never around when you need him. So.Your little investigation is concluded, it appears.”
Megan sighed. “It appears.”
“And how was your date with Inspector Clouseau?”
“He had to leave early.When they arrested that guy, Dave had to, well . . . leave.”
“Too bad.”
“I just don’t know what to do,” Megan said. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing’s wrong with you.You’re doing fine.”
“I was doing fine, and now my life doesn’t make any sense, somehow,” Megan said.
“Maybe you simply need more time,” Nita said. “That detective seems to be taking a lot of your time. Please don’t tell me you’re upset because he hasn’t called.”
Megan’s eyes filled with tears. She dabbed at them. “You’re right. He hasn’t called.”
Nita leaned across the desk and spoke firmly to the younger woman: “Megan, you’ve got to get your concentration back. You’re falling apart.”
“I haven’t felt like this about anyone for a long time.”
“And look what happened the time before.You want my advice, Megan?”
Megan said, “Yes,” softly, her expression pleading.
Nita’s face was as hard as New York pavement. “Dump him, Megan. I have a bad feeling about him.”
Megan looked searchingly at her friend.
“You’ve got your career,” Nita went on. “You’ve got your goals. He’ll get in your way.”
“Oh, no. He’d never —”
“Yes, he would. And let me tell you something else. He would never let you interfere with his work. He’ll leave you at a moment’s notice, day or night, since his work is more important than yours ever could be. If you’re convenient for him, fine. If not, he’ll forget you until he needs you again.”
Megan blushed at the possibility.
“Listen,” Nita said, “remember the Faust myth? He’s tempting you with empty promises. He wants your soul.”
As Megan listened, she began to cry. “It’s awful. I don’t know what to do.”
In a rage, Nita exploded out of her chair and flew up to her young protégé. Megan cowered and shrunk before her. Nita pushed her into a seat, and she stood over the younger woman, powerful and dangerous.
“Stop this,” she shouted at Megan. “Stop whining. If you want to throw yourself away on this cop, do it. If you want to fuck him, then fuck him. But stop whining. Christ, how I hate victims.”
Megan stifled a sob. “You don’t know him. He’s a wonderful man. A kind man. A strong man. Nita —”
“I know him perfectly. And I know you.” Nita put her hands on Megan’s shoulders.
Megan lifted her water-streaked face up to Nita. “What?” she asked beseechingly, almost fearfully.
With her fingertips, Nita gently traced the line of Megan’s cheek. Megan trembled slightly at her touch and her lips parted. Nita leaned closer and looked deep into her eyes. Megan thought, for an instant, that Nita was going to kiss her, but she did not.The startlingly intimate moment left both women breathless.
Dave waited across the street f
rom the Foxy Lady until Tony Topnut sauntered through the front door. He came in every day in the late afternoon, ready for a night of peddling watery drinks and slippery sin.
Dave had just gotten back from seeing his mother in Queens. As ever, it had been a trying experience. Mrs. Corrigan had hovered around the bedside, complaining about hospitals and the sad state of the world. His mother lay in bed in a frilly, oddly girlish nightgown, bony and filled with weariness.
“I have one son, and he can’t find himself a decent woman to give me a grandson,” she told Mrs. Corrigan, as if Dave were invisible.
“Well, to tell the truth, Ma, I’m starting to see someone now,” Dave said. “She’s very nice.”
“Not another hooker, I hope,” Mrs. Corrigan said acidly.
Dave exhaled loudly. “She’s a very nice girl, Ma. I’d like to bring her by when you’re up to it. I’m sure you’d like her. Her name’s Megan. Megan Morrison. She’s part Irish.”
“Part Irish,” his mother said. “That woman of your father’s was part Irish.When I die, don’t you let her come to my funeral.”
Dave crossed 42nd Street at the light. The traffic strained at the crosswalk, eager to lunge at every pedestrian and splatter him across their hoods. It would be a wild night on the Deuce, and the animals would howl.
Tony Topnut, his Hawaian shirt featuring bare-breasted hula girls, presided at the bar, where the lost souls clustered for their seamy communion. A woman in pasties and a G-string gyrated on stage, her sagging belly keeping time to the thumping music. Dave gave Tony Topnut a mock salute. Tony Topnut stopped his chore, wiping dirty glasses with a dirty rag.
“What do you want, Dillon?” Tony Topnut was smug and mean today, capable of facing down every cop in the city or every demon from hell.
“In the back,” Dave said, and jerked his thumb.
“What the fuck for?”Tony growled.
“Because it’s good for your health.”
Tony Topnut threw his rag down on the bar in disgust and walked toward the back.
En route, Dave passed Billy Ray Battle, who sat at the bar over a beer. He glared at Dave, his eyepatch in place.
Dave stopped. “I heard you made bail.”
Billy Ray muttered something obscene and inaudible. He turned away. Dave kept going.
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