Ladykiller

by Lawrence Light

  In the back, among the mops and ladders, Tony Topnut crossed his arms across his bulk. “What, Dillon?”

  “I got it on good authority that you sold a piece to Ace.”

  “Your authority is smoking the wacky weed, Dillon. I don’t sell no guns. Not to nobody. You trying to haul me into the Ladykiller case, selling unlicensed weapons to murderers? No chance.”

  “Listen, you don’t like me, and I don’t like you. But you know I’ll be straight with you and I’m telling you that I’m not aiming to charge you or anyone else with a weapons beef. I don’t care if you sold Ace a warehouse full of crack.Your dealings with him stay in here.”

  “What’s your question, Dillon?”

  “Did you sell him a .45 day before yesterday?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  Dave caught Tony Topnut by his fleshy throat and slammed him against the wall. “Because if you don’t, I will kill you.”

  “I did, I did, I did,”Tony Topnut croaked. Dave released him, and he rubbed his throat. “Brand-new .45. Got it off this Bolivian dude. No way Ace could’ve used that gun for any of his killings. Television said the gun he used was forty years old.”

  `”We haven’t found a brand-new .45 in Ace’s room,” Dave said. “How do you explain that?”

  “How the fuck should I know, Dillon? Jesus.”

  The West Side Crisis Center was bathed in the crimson light of the hamburger-pink sunset. There was an eerie, after-the-battle calm about the place. Dave used his key to let himself in. When he topped the stairs, Nita stood waiting for him. File folders lay in piles atop a creaky old table.

  “Here are Reuben’s files, detective,” Nita said. “As you requested. I truly hope that this will be the end of it. You have your murderer. We’d like to get back to business as usual, if you don’t mind.”

  “Where’s Megan?”

  “I have no idea.We’ve been busy here, thanks to you people. She must be tired.”

  “If you see her, please tell her I’ll call her later.”

  Nita said nothing. She settled down at her desk to do her own paperwork, but Dave felt her watching him.

  Dave couldn’t find any files that remotely resembled the victims. No housewives with handicapped children, no cheerleaders with teen problems, no stockbrokers, no hookers with AIDS.

  “No luck,” Dave said to Nita. “I’d better examine the other files to see if they got mixed up with the other social workers’. Or maybe Ace was mistaken or lying about whose clients the victims were.”

  “You’ll have to arrange that with Dr. Solomon, detective. This is outside my purview. I am sorry.”

  “The funny thing is,” Dave said, “that I can’t find Ace’s file. It was here when we were going through the files together.”

  “I don’t know about that, detective,” Nita said. “You were the last one to touch it. We entrusted the files to you, and I do hope you haven’t lost one.”

  “The file would have been helpful in Ace’s prosecution, Nita,” Dave said, ignoring her accusatory tone.

  “That’s not my concern.”

  “Ace murdered your colleague and, supposedly, four of your crisis center’s clients — and this is not your concern?”

  “Today has been a long day, detective. Please don’t make it any more trying. I’ll deal with my grief in my own way.” Nita resumed reading.

  “Something else is odd,” Dave said.

  She lowered the paper in front of her. “What is that?”

  “Reuben’s file on Ace was neatly typed. His other files here are a mess. Some are even handwritten. Why should Ace’s file have been any different?”

  “If you hadn’t lost it, maybe we could find an answer,” Nita said shortly. “Now, if you don’t mind, would you please leave and let me get on with my work?”

  “Your work isn’t the only important work, Nita.”

  “Is that a fact?” Nita lay down the report she had been reading. “Your work is done, detective. Time for you to go out and get drunk with all your pals, slapping butts or whatever you do in your spare moments.You’ve caught your killer.”

  “Have we, Nita? Have we really?”

  “You’re the policeman.You tell me.”

  “I’m fascinated by serial killers,” Dave said. “And this building has something to do with the Ladykiller that we still don’t comprehend. It’s interesting how it starts.”

  “How what starts?” Nita sat back in her chair in an attempt to be calm.

  “Serial killings.With Henry Lee Lucas,Ted Bundy, practically all the infamous serial killers, the series started in the same manner. See, the first incident was an accident.Then they went through a panicked phase, fearful they would be caught. When nothing happened, they got cocky. They started to plan the murders. No accidents anymore. Method. Calculation. They began to think of themselves as God. No one could touch them. They were smarter than the police, than the victims. They didn’t grasp the awful penalty of their actions, even if they never got caught.”

  “Penalty, detective?”

  “They had lost their humanity. They’d descended into madness. They were lost to the world. They were lost to themselves and to whatever nobility they once aspired to.”

  “I’m not an expert on this subject, detective,” Nita said, after a pause.

  “I don’t believe Ace Cronen is the Ladykiller,” Dave said evenly. “I don’t believe he has what it takes to kill another human being.”

  Nita stared at him. “How can you be sure, detective?” Dave tapped his forehead. “Cop’s intuition.”

  Clumping down the stairs, he met Megan. Dave brightened and reached to embrace her. But she shrank away from him.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Not here.” She pushed past him on the stairs.

  He caught her arm. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’ve been busy with the arrest and had to visit my mom. Please don’t be mad. Maybe we could get a bite to eat.”

  “I can’t. Not now. Nita is waiting for me.”

  “What’s going on, Megan? I thought we —”

  “Not now, Dave. Not here.” She ran up the stairs.

  “Megan,” he called after her. She disappeared into Nita’s territory at the top of the stairs. Dave slowly walked downstairs and out the door.

  Nita took Megan out for dinner to a tiny French restaurant, where the waiters fussed over them and the food blessed the palate. She listened as Megan talked confusedly about men in general and Dave in particular.

  “God, I wanted him,” Megan said over coffee. “I wanted him so bad.”

  “Megan, please,” Nita said with a small smile. “Hormonal urges are awfully trivial, aren’t they? Your work is far more important than some man, no matter how sexy he seems.”

  “I know,” admitted Megan, miserably.

  The restaurant’s owner brought over brandy and insisted they join him in a small drink. Nita thanked him and told him no.

  “Let’s go back to my apartment for a night cap.”

  At Nita’s, they both threw down their bags and kicked off their shoes. Megan collapsed into a chair. Nita poured them cognacs. Then she noticed Megan staring past her. She turned around and saw that her bag was open and the butt of her new .45 was sticking out. How had she been this careless?

  “Oh, my God,” Megan exclaimed. Her eyes were as wide as headlights.

  Megan charged out of her chair. But she sailed right past Nita’s open bag to stand beside the fish tank, bent over in wonder. “Is that bright blue one new? I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

  “Do you like it?” Nita asked. She casually strolled over to the tank, making certain to close her bag on the way.

  “I love it.” Standing close together, they toasted the bright blue fish.

  Once Megan had left, Nita sat in her window and gazed at the apartments across the street, imagining them to be Skinner boxes, compartments for rats in psychology experiments. One couple was arguing, their unheard invec
tive fairly reddening the air. Another couple was reading, him a newspaper, her a paperback. And a lonely young woman was absorbed in television, mentally chewing her cud. The lonely young woman bore a resemblance to Megan.

  She thought about what Dave Dillon had said about serial killers. Obviously, the man had read some foolish FBI pamphlet. She had been interested and had failed to take offense. Because the serial-killer genre did not apply to her. Nita also possessed some rudimentary knowledge about the breed. She had done some preliminary research to doctor Ace’s file, to which she forged Reuben’s signature. She had thrown in the part about Ace’s violent youth and cruelty to animals to hook Dillon — and the ploy certainly had worked. She was actually pleased that Dillon was sharp enough to spot the difference between the cleanly typed, doctored file on Ace and Reuben’s other files. But Nita remained convinced that, in the end, she had Dillon and the police fooled.

  Still, she kept returning in her mind to his description of the first killing in a series. An accident? Well, Evelyn Hernandez was an accident, truth to tell. Nita remembered her frustration with the woman, who insisted on staying with her abusive husband, insisted on bringing handicapped children into the world — and was pregnant again.

  “I don’t care if my husband, he beats me,” Evelyn said. “My babies, they love me.”

  “But you’re bringing burdens into this world,” Nita argued. “Say what you want about your husband, the man can’t cope financially. The children are often in pain. They contribute nothing to society. This makes no sense.”

  “My babies love me,” Evelyn insisted, drawing the scarf around her head and looking about anxiously, as if someone she knew would recognize her.

  And so it had gone. Over and over on continuous play. Nita tried every manuever she knew to shake the woman awake. To no avail. Finally, she arranged to meet Evelyn out of the crisis center. Nita figured a trip to the SPCA would work; she would let Evelyn listen to the cries of the doomed animals and make the point that her babies weren’t much better off.

  The lesson, though, didn’t take. “My babies love me,” Evelyn said over the dogs’ barking.

  “These animals are going to be put to sleep, you idiot,” Nita shouted at her. “Can’t you get that through your thick skull?”

  “My babies love me,” Evelyn repeated maddeningly.

  Nita pulled out the .45, which she had always carried for protection. She pointed it at Evelyn’s right eye, the one that fronted for the irrational, the emotional, the intuitive half of the brain — the half of the brain that should be brought under control in a well-functioning society.

  She pointed the .45 at the startled Evelyn’s right eye and said, “They put these troublesome animals to sleep.”

  Perhaps if Evelyn hadn’t stubbornly repeated, “My babies love me,” Nita would not have pulled the trigger. But she did, and half of Evelyn’s head exploded. Nita stood over the woman’s fallen body, not in shock, rather with a strange sense of triumph.

  And just as Dillon had said, she went through a period of intense fright that she would be discovered. And when that didn’t occur, she set about dispatching her other hopeless cases, cleansing the world of them. The cheerleader, the stockbroker, and the hooker — each brought more harm than good to society.

  Descent into madness? No, Detective Dillon, that hadn’t happened to Nita Bergstrom. If anything, she had descended into sanity. What could that testosterone-dosed monkey with a badge understand? And with Ace taking the rap for her first set of removals, she could begin again in a different way, in peace until she had completed her work.

  Nita smiled serenely at the Skinner boxes across the street, at the poor people ensnared in their anger, their alienation, their loneliness. Oh, what gorgeous alchemy she would perform.

  Ace sauntered up to Dave as jauntily as if he were trolling the Deuce. Neat for once, garbed in jailhouse blues, he slid into a chair and burped. “Not bad eats you got in this place, Dillon. I like it here.”

  “None of the inmates given you an injection of hot beef yet, huh, Ace?”

  Ace laughed. “Man, I’m a world-class prisoner. I don’t mix with the other inmates.You assholes want to make sure your Ladykiller is fit to stand trial. I’m a fucking king.”

  “You’re a fucking asshole, is what you are,” Dave said. “I dropped by the crisis center to pull the files on your victims. They all were missing. I wonder why?”

  Ace shrugged. “The place is a mess. Rueben couldn’t find his ass with both hands. You accusing me of taking the files? Ooooo. That could draw me some serious prison time. I’m scared.” He laughed again, enjoying himself.

  “Tony Topnut told me he sold you a brand-new .45 a couple of days ago.That would be after you committed the murders.”

  “Tony said that?” Ace shrugged again. “So what? I wanted another .45 in case my old one broke down.”

  “Okay, smart ass, where is it?”

  “I had it in my room. Maybe one of your thieving cop pals lifted it during their search. You bastards think you own the city.” Ace belched once more.

  Dave reached inside his jacket and produced a .45. He extended it to Ace, butt first. “You’re right. Here it is. Take it. Go on. It’s not loaded.”

  Ace was startled but said nothing. He reluctantly accepted the weapon. He held it with two fingers as though it were a bomb instead of a gun.

  “I want you to show me how you field-strip the gun to clean it, Ace. That old .45, the murder weapon, was in mint condition. You really knew how to maintain it.You didn’t want any jams when you cornered your victims. Go on. Show me.”

  Ace tried to hand the gun back to Dave. “I don’t feel like playing your game, Dillon. Get the fuck out of my face.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about this weapon, do you, Ace? Do you now?”

  “Of course I do,” Ace said. “I just don’t want to let you jerk me around.”

  “Show me, Ace.Then I’ll go. Break it down. Killer.”

  Ace fumbled with the L-shaped gun, moving the slide clumsily back and forth. But he couldn’t get it to come apart. “The fucker’s busted, Dillon. Jesus fucking Christ.”

  “You might try pressing the little button on the side.”

  “I did that, Dillon,” Ace lied. “It’s stuck. How do you expect me to —”

  Dave grabbed the gun and removed the slide. He handed it back to Ace. “Try it now.”

  “Dillon, what are you —“ Ace fiddled with the innards of the pistol, and it flew into pieces, the spring hitting the far wall. The rest fell on the floor.

  “Very deft, Ace.” Dave said. “Why don’t you tackle putting the weapon back together again?”

  “Why don’t you fuck yourself, Dillon?” Ace jumped to his feet and pounded on the door for the guard to fetch him.

  “You’re not the Ladykiller, Ace,” Dave said. “But I suspect you know who is.The night Reuben died, we have a witness who saw two people with him. I bet you were tagging along somehow. You aren’t much for weapons, but you can tag along pretty well. Isn’t that right, Ace?”

  “Kiss my ass, Dillon.”

  “Oh, your ass is going to be out on the street, pal. Where it belongs.”

  Ace howled in panic.

  “You don’t have what it takes to be a killer,” Dave told him as he left the room. “Sorry.”

  Ace pounded the wall. “No,” he screamed. “No, no, no, no, no.”

  Dave made straight for an outside phone booth and called Jimmy Conlon. “Am I too late for deadline?”

  ELEVEN

  When Mancuso opened his late-edition morning paper, the sound from his office was like a soul cast into a fiery hell. He immediately summoned Blake.

  The chief of detectives, his underlings fanned out behind his desk like centurions, waved the newspaper at the lieutenant.

  “Where in God’s name did this come from?” he demanded.

  “Can’t say, sir.”

  “Well I do know. Dillon filed a report sayin
g Cronen is unfamiliar with the operation of a .45. No departmental decision was made about this yet. And I read it in the paper.”

  Blake said evenly, “Chief, it’s very clear now that Cronen is not our killer. Unless we want to charge him with something else, we’ll have to release him.”

  Mancuso threw the paper on his immaculate desk. “You are one terrific genius, Blake. My God, I’m going to look like a clown to the commissioner and the mayor.”

  “Cronen is not our man, chief. But he may know the real killer. Dillon proposes that we let Cronen go and put a tail on him. He’ll lead us to our man and we’ll all be heroes.”

  Mancuso’s eyes narrowed in thought. Blake could almost see the wheels turning.

  “Blake, I ought to bounce your ass off this case with a very bad black mark on your record. And I have a good mind to toss Dillon clear off the force. He doesn’t belong in the NYPD. He’s an accident waiting to happen.”

  “What about the plan, chief? It makes sense.”

  “Christ. All right. But one more fuck-up, one more nasty surprise, and you pukes are out the door.”

  Ace, his head hung so low his nose practically scraped the sidewalk, returned to the Deuce. He stopped in an electronics store and watched the TV news report on how a low-life scagball, Thomas Cronen, had been released.Turns out the no-good slug wasn’t a killer after all.

  The small Korean guy who ran the shop came to shoo Ace out. Then he recognized him. “You the big, bad Ladykiller.” And he laughed, a deep belly laugh. The other customers joined in. Ace ran out of the store.

  Maybe he should go back to his room, pack, and head for New Jersey. But he didn’t belong there anymore either.They would laugh at him, too. His mother had vanished long ago. Even she would laugh at him now.

  Up ahead on the street, Falstaff and his junkie pal were sprawled out against some steps. Ace slid up to them, preening. “You hear what the man called me? He called me the Ladykiller. The man, right?” Noticing his audience was inattentive, Ace sat down beside the old wino, who moved to make room.Very slowly,Ace leaned closer to the oblivious, daydreaming Falstaff.

  “A killer,” Ace screamed in his ear. “Me, man. I’m a killer.”