Seven Ways to Die

by William Diehl

  “I went to Barney’s and bought you something,” she said mischievously. “But, it really is for me.”

  She took his hand and he stood up. She led him down the hall to the bedroom. She slid open the door to his closet, took out a white suit bag, laid it on the bed, zipped it open, and turned to face him.

  “I want you to do me a favor tonight.”

  “I won’t be here tonight.”

  “I know that, silly. I’m talking about at the banquet. I want you to be—distingue for a change.”

  “What! You think I’m going to butter up that sanctimonious coven of jealous…”

  “Listen to me…”

  “It’s almost insulting, giving me the Clue Award now when I haven’t written a book in four years.”

  “It’s for your body of work, darling.”

  “They hardly had a choice. Thanks to that bitch, they’d given it to everyone else. It’s a snide put down.”

  “All the better to do what I’m asking.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Be nice. Accept the loving cup. Enjoy your little poker game after the dinner. Maybe even lose a few shekels.”

  “A two-bit ante game,” he snapped. “I can clean that bunch out blind-folded in an hour.”

  “Listen you, I went to La Perla and bought the most expensive, most erotic, most seductive peignoir in the house and I’ll be wearing it when you get home tomorrow. But you have to be a good boy tonight.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “Let’s call it e-mail—as in erotomail.”

  She turned, took a classic black single-breasted tux from the bag and held it up in front of him.

  “Perfect,” she said.

  “You have to be kidding. I’m wearing…”

  “You’re wearing this,” she said quietly but firmly. “You’ll euthanize them with charm. There’ll be some press there and they won’t pass up the chance for a picture of Peck’s Bad Boy playing by the rules for a change. I’ve already talked to Sophie about it. You’ll be all over page six tomorrow. ”

  He looked down at her and his rancor evaporated.

  “Don’t miss a trick, do you?”

  “I’ve been playing games with columnists since I was sixteen, honey. They’ll be expecting the customary sardonic Hamilton, instead you’ll show a bit of humility. They’re expecting the churlish Hamilton, be whimsical. They’re expecting you to be haughty, be grateful for the honor. Be brief and sit down. Knock ‘em all on their pompous asses.”

  She stood on her toes and swept her tongue across his lower lip.

  “After that, what the hell,” she said with a shrug, “at the poker game, if it suits you, you can be the sweet, supercilious son of a bitch I’ve grown to adore.”

  16

  No dog is born bad.

  Wow was remembering that line as he and Ryan stood on the corner of West 10th and Bleecker Streets. Five-seven, built like a tank, dark-skinned and balding, Wow DeMarco was dressed in freshly pressed jeans, a white sweat shirt and a black leather jacket, his cautious black eyes surveying the block in front of them. Butch Ryan, six-one and muscular, with thick, neatly trimmed black hair cut below his ears, his gray eyes aloof and detached, was wearing his customary dark blue suit with a light tan, crew neck sweater. Wow’s arms hung loosely at his side, fingers drumming his thighs. Butch’s hands were tucked in his pants pocket, his attitude bordering on the debonair.

  An unlikely pair at best.

  They had a seminal connection: A passionate public defender named Mark Windham who had saved both of them from doing hard time by convincing a calcified juvenile judge that the two teen gang bangers, one an Hispanic Crip from Spanish Harlem, the other an Irish Westie from Hell’s Kitchen, were proof that “no dog is born bad,” that their youthful hauteur had been tamed; in Butch’s case, by a dedicated older brother who was a decorated firefighter; in Wow’s case, by an Hispanic ex-con known as Big Luis who ran a store front hiring agency which was really a front for a harsh, kick-ass, tough love regimen designed by Luis who, with a kind of ethnic animal instinct, picked gang kids he thought worth saving. In the back room, there was a warning scrawled on the wall reminding them succinctly: “Work or die.”

  Cody frequently paired them because they both knew the streets, kept up with its volatile argot, and played a dazzling good guy, bad guy act. Wow was the bad guy with the cunning eyes and mercurial temper; Butch the good guy whose insouciant eyes and muscular frame served to comfort a capricious suspect or witness. Little did their quarry realize that Butch could turn from hare to tiger in a flashbulb-instant and Wow, deceptively alarmed by his partner’s seemingly choleric behavior, could become the rabbit. The quick change act was enough to make a snake sweat.

  But standing here on a corner in the West Village, where Jonée Ansa, who was Running Recon, had dropped them off, Wow was getting antsy staring at the enclave of restaurants, coffee shops, jazz clubs, tattoo parlors, t-shirt joints and apartments occupied by an intermixture of every possible profession from dock workers and bus drivers to actors, writers, and college professors.

  And we ain’t got a clue, DeMarco thought. Not a suspect. Not a witness. Nada.

  “Jeez Christ, man, we spend two hours talking with every sex cop in town and what do we know? Zilch, zero.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Butch answered lazily, “we picked up a lot from the guys. We know these sex clubs are mostly private. We know the cops don’t screw with them unless they get too public and upset the citizenry. We know they’re pretty small. Fifteen, twenty, maybe thirty people, very well-heeled and hetero.”

  “That really narrows it down.”

  “C’mon, we know more than that.”

  They knew that the people who frequented the sex clubs to which Handley most likely was attracted had a lot of money. Men set the rules, as one informant told them. Solo women were not allowed although, curiously, a man with two attractive females was. Many of the participants were married couples or couples who lived together or men with their mistresses or, perhaps in Handley’s case, men who brought attractive women with them. There were some daytime clubs for guys who liked matinees but most were nightclubs. They could pop up behind a club or restaurant. Or in a basement. Or in somebody’s apartment or condo. Just about anywhere where comfort and discretion would permit. The rules seemed to vary somewhat with one exception: gay men were out. That was a different clique. They had their own turf.

  Because of the time element, DeMarco and Ryan had pretty much narrowed down the location to a square block bordered on the south and north by 10th and Charles and on the west and east by Hudson and Bleecker.

  They headed down 10th toward Hudson. Ryan stopped about halfway down the block. He looked around, turned up his jacket collar, studying the street. DeMarco walked a little farther down toward Hudson, checking the landscape. Ryan cupped his hands over his mouth, breathed on them, and then rubbed them together.

  “It got cold all of a sudden.”

  “Hell, it’s almost November. You should know better.”

  “You sound like my Aunt Mabel.” He leaned forward, squinting up and down 10th Street. He was visualizing the big board back at the Loft and the satellite shot of the area. They were on the north side of 10th. The limo had dropped Handley off near the corner of 10th and Hudson, which was to his right. And Handley had caught a cab on Bleecker, which was a half block to his left and around the corner to the south.

  “I dunno, kid. You know what Cody always says, if you can’t think it, talk it out.”

  “Uh huh. Then he goes off and has a chat with a friggin’ squirrel.”

  “Whatever works for him. There isn’t an alley on the other side of the street.”

  “I noticed that.”

  “So he gets dropped off near the corner a half a block down there on Hudson and gets picked up a half a block that way on Bleecker. And he’s all dolled up and stands out like a kid with a black eye at First Communion.”

  “And he’s g
onna get where he’s going without dancing in the street like Gene Kelly.”

  “My thought exactly.”

  “Straight and narrow.”

  “We gotta start somewhere, Wow. I say we make some maybes into positives to start with. Like he comes down here to meet a dame. A classy dame. Not a pimp. He isn’t into hookers, that’s why he goes to these clubs.”

  “Somebody he’s met before, man. Maybe to set up that gig in his apartment.”

  “Yeah. This somebody, this chick, is gonna meet him and he’s coming in from Cincy so the setup has to cover for a late arrival. A classy dame isn’t gonna sit around some club or restaurant alone.”

  “But one of these sex clubs, that works, right? She’ll be comfortable if he’s a little late. And she checks on the flight, see if it’s late.”

  “Good thinking. Know what, Wow? I don’t think it’s in an apartment. Too many people going in and out. A doorman, too, probably. That’s too risky for Handley.”

  “That’s good, Butch, that’s real good. So she goes to this club, wherever the hell it is, about the time he’ll get there.”

  “Right. And he isn’t going anyplace and hang out waiting for her. I mean, this guy’s all class. He’s gonna be noticed at that time of night with his three thousand dollar coat and killer briefcase. So he’s gonna go straight to the club, too.”

  “And it’s more likely to be in an alley than on a main street.”

  17

  “Jesus!” Stinelli said. “What the hell kind of wacko are you dealing with?”

  Hue and Cody had just run the entire Handley briefing for him, but the commander’s eyes were fixed on the photograph of the death scene. Stinelli and Cody stood at the back of the operations room as he stared at the main board. Simon and Hue were at their posts, Kate Winters was sitting at her desk and Charley was asleep on the cot in Cody’s office. The rest of the crew was in the field.

  “Si, can you elaborate a little bit for the commander,” Cody said.

  “A conundrum,” the little man said.

  “That’s obvious. A little more than that.”

  “I’m still working on a couple of things,” Simon said. “I have a lot of blanks to fill in.”

  “Just give him the general profile for now, Si.”

  “Well, we’re not dealing with a wacko in the sense I think you mean, Chief. Not like, say, Richard Trenton who believed he had to drink his victim’s blood to stay alive. He was a true psychotic. Our killer is a psychopath. The murder has all the indicators of a serial killer—who are mostly white, male, psychopaths between the ages of twenty-five to forty-three. Average age thirty-four. Only five percent are psychotic and, of the entire lot, only about one percent are women. So for the sake of this discussion let’s just say this killer is a white male who appears to be normal, probably follows a routine—a civil servant or blue collar person although he could be a doctor, lawyer, or college professor. He shows minimal bizarre behavior in everyday life but harbors a secret need to dominate and control others, has a constant need for sexual stimulation and gratification, has no conscience, knows good from evil but feels no guilt or remorse. He’s a hedonist. No worse, a sybarite. Cynical, often impulsive. And a contact killer because he enjoys inflicting pain and killing. It’s an addictive obsession. Normally he would have left a trophy or some kind of signature because he’s proud of his accomplishment. So far we haven’t found one.”

  “But, maybe he didn’t need to. The slaying itself is unique,” Cody added.

  Si paused for a moment and said: “The scariest thing about these killers is they usually take a cooling off period after a kill. Weeks, months, sometimes years. Until something prods their appetite.”

  “So how can you be sure this is the work of a serial killer?” Stinelli asked.

  Nobody answered for a minute or two.

  “Look at the picture, Chief,” Cody said. “This is a sadist at work. He controlled Handley and tortured him. He dominated the scene. The whole set up was manufactured. This killing was brilliant. No clues, no prints or DNA that we can determine. It was not impulsive, the killer had it planned and timed perfectly and had the prerequisite biological knowledge to pull it off.”

  “The simple answer is because there’s too much joy in this kill,” Si said.

  “Joy?”

  “He obviously enjoyed every minute of it.”

  “We call the killer Androg because it could be a male or female,” Cody added. “Either way, this killer’s addicted.”

  “And brilliant,” Si said. “Most serial killers commit their acts in the same way. John Wayne Gacy is typical. His trademark was that he stuffed his victim’s underwear down their throat so they’d gag and die in their own vomit.”

  “This one?” Cody said. “This one’s all over the map.” “He’s the guy next door, Commander,” said Winters. “Hiding in plain sight. And waiting to kill again.”

  “I hope to hell he’s not living next door to me,” Stinelli growled. “How about a motive?”

  “The motive is Androg’s compulsion,” Simon said.

  “And you’re expecting more,” Stinelli said flatly.

  “That’s Wolf’s appraisal and we all agree. Frank and his team are working the neighborhood. Bergman is checking the company where Handley worked. I’ve got my three best street cops working the West Village hoping to find out where Handley spent the missing thirty minutes on his way home.”

  Almost on cue, the phone rang. Hue fielded the call and nodded to Cody. “It’s Butch.”

  Cody answered it. “Yeah. Where? Okay stay on top of it, call me when you get something.” He signed off and turned to Stinelli. “Ryan says they may have nailed down a spot. They’re scoping it out now.”

  “A sex club?”

  Cody nodded.

  “Amazing,” Kate said.

  “It’s what they do,” Cody said. “Nothing sets off their adrenalin like the old needle in a haystack.”

  Stinelli shook his head. “Christ, how are you going to keep this one under wraps, Micah? Victor Stembler? Hell, Handley might as well be the mayor’s son-in-law.”

  “Victor Stembler doesn’t want the details to leak out.”

  “He almost fainted when he came over and made the official ID,” Kate said.

  “So far he’s the only one who knows exactly what happened. We treat it as a break-in that went sour. A case in progress. Everybody stays mum as usual.”

  “How about the autopsy?”

  “Nothing on paper yet.”

  “And McKeown? It’s his precinct.”

  “He’s working with us. Some of his people are doing the door-to-doors with Frank. He’ll file a normal report with the generic stuff. Name, address, occupation, blah, blah…”

  “How about cause of death?”

  “Possible homicide during a break-in. He’ll just drop it in the box. No press conference or any of that. He’ll treat it as a normal homicide.”

  “A normal homicide. There’s an oxymoron. And you also got that guy Hamilton dogging you about the Cramer murder.”

  “Out of town. I’ll worry about that Monday.”

  “Sometimes you make me nervous, Micah.”

  “Ah, come on, boss. Keeps us on our toes.”

  Stinelli shook his head and looked back at the board.

  18

  “Y’know what? I’m not even sure what the hell we’re lookin' for,” DeMarco said as the three cops stood under one of the larger trees in the area behind the theater.

  It was a pleasant spot but cramped, hardly wider than a city street, its trees and buildings blocking the sounds of the city.

  “What were you expecting, a marquee?” Ryan said.

  In this quiet island midst the bustling streets, someone had hung a child’s swing from a branch of the tree which struck Ryan as odd considering the licentious nature of the club they were seeking. Huddled in Ansa’s Yankees jacket, which was draped over his shoulders, he sat down on the swing and looked around.r />
  “A marquee would be a help,” said Ansa, staring at the backs of apartments, stores, and the theater.

  “Yeah,” DeMarco said with a sweep of his hand. “A big red neon arrow, blinkin’ on and off: ‘Get laid here.’”

  Several of the buildings had staircases leading down to rear entrances and there was a deck behind the theater with stairs leading down to their level. The back door opened and a tiny, dark-haired girl who appeared to be in her early twenties came out. She was dressed in a white gossamer dress with wings attached to it. She huddled against the wall and lit a cigarette.

  “I got an idea,” Ryan said.

  “Aw hell, here we go again,” DeMarco shook his head.

  “Just bear with me.”

  Ryan climbed the stairs to the deck and gave the young woman his fifty-dollar smile.

  “Hi,” he said, looking over the costume. “Halloween party?”

  She rolled her eyes. “This is a theater. We’re like doing Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

  “Shakespeare, huh. Who are you playing?”

  “Just a walk-on.” Her eyes narrowed a hair as she looked past him at his partners. “I’m one of the fairies.”

  “No kidding,” he said. “What’re you gonna do, wave your wand and change me into a warthog?”

  “Now there’s a clever pick-up line,” she answered, still squinting over his shoulder at DeMarco and Ansa checking doorways. She looked back at Ryan who was still grinning.

  “What are you three up to?” she asked cautiously. “Looks y’know like you’re casing the place or something?”

  “In a manner of speaking. We’re looking for a club. Private place. We heard it was back here.”

  She sighed and took a drag on her cigarette, turning her head when she exhaled.

  “You don’t look the type,” she said with a pinch of arsenic in her tone.

  “What type would that be?”

  “C’mon.” She looked him over. “Anyway, from what I hear you’ll fail the dress code. The Yank’s jacket alone’ll do you in.”