Cuts Through Bone

by Alaric Hunt

  “That’s what you want,” she said. “Or maybe what Papì wants. I been doing that my whole life—what somebody else wants. Maybe I don’t know for sure what I want, but I know I want to figure it out for myself. You want a desk job? You’re smart enough. Do it.”

  “Chica, you’re smart, but you’re blind. Look at you. Nobody’s ever gonna tell you ‘no.’ One look at you and they’re trying to figure out how to say ‘yes.’ Me? I ain’t gonna make it through like that.”

  Vasquez frowned. “You think I’m gonna get somewhere on my looks? Guthrie don’t give a shit about that. I don’t know yet what he started with. That’s different. That’s a place to start.”

  Miguel smiled. “When that old man came to the door with that job, you know what I thought? At least this blanco gets her off the Lower East.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “See, you can’t see it, because you are who you are. Me and Indio figured it out a long time ago. You don’t get the looks we get. Doors swing open for you instead of slamming shut. That’s how the world works. We’re morenos, nobody wants us. You’re la blanquita. Maybe in the city you’re just another Puerto Rican girl, but if you stopped with the hat on the side of your head, you could be one of them.”

  “That’s what you want? You want me to go away?” Tears slipped from her eyes, even though crying wasn’t a thing she usually did.

  “No, you don’t understand. I want you to have something. You just ain’t gonna ever have anything here.”

  “But I got something already,” she said softly, even though she understood what he meant. The same complaint had floated around her for years, from anyone who didn’t think they had a fair chance. He couldn’t see it from her angle, though. She had looked through some of the doors that closed in his face, to see the same world on the other side, only with different people. Listening to Miguel let her see it again. Roberto was unhappy because he was tricked into thinking a difference existed between the two worlds. All his life was filled with promises of how good everything would be, and then everything was the same after all. Discovering the truth without being able to go back made Roberto sick.

  “What you got?” Miguel demanded. “Some bullshit job in the city gonna get you killed? That ain’t good enough.”

  “I got a fucking family—a fucked-up family—but a family,” she said. “I got a job that could go somewhere. You can’t see that because you’re not there. Right now that’s good enough.”

  “That ain’t good enough. We ain’t done all this so you can stay in the city and be stuck in the same mess everybody else is in. You gotta go free.”

  “You done what?” Vasquez demanded. “Run around banging? That was for me? Beat up every boy ever looked at me? That was to make me happy? I did good in school because I didn’t have anything else to do. You and Indio are loco. Now you don’t want me doing this? I should be doing girl things? You took that away from me!”

  “That fucking trash ain’t good enough for you!” Miguel snarled. “Some piece of shit in this neighborhood, not wanting no job, lining up another baby-momma just as soon as you show blue—we’ll kill all of them!”

  Vasquez sat quietly for a minute, swallowing her anger. She made another cup of coffee for herself. When she sat back down, she said, “You’re saying you ain’t good enough for me, Miguel. You bang. That’s stupid. But you been doing that forever. When did you get the idea to do that?”

  He scowled. “You’re stupid. I don’t handle chicas that way. Papì would kill me. What you don’t know is when you were little, you were white. You didn’t even get that dark until we went back to the island a few times. People thought Mamì was sitting you for somebody else. You never saw how people treated you.”

  “How the fuck old were you? Or was it Indio? He did this?”

  Miguel shrugged. “You can’t blame Indio. I hit him first, then Indio kicked him.” He laughed. “That was easier than falling down. We never even talked about it, until the first time we had to lay for one of them. That was when you started middle school.”

  “You did that thinking it would make me happy?”

  Miguel frowned. “I never thought about it,” he said. “I didn’t think I needed to. This’s the Lower East. I mean, we make jokes about how fucked up this is. Now I’m wrong to want you out of this. But I see what you’re saying.

  “You don’t want to leave if you gotta leave us behind. I know that, too. I would never leave Mamì and Papì here alone. So this is the first time in my life it’s true: I’m stupid.”

  “Shut up, Miguel,” Vasquez said. “Stupid people should be quiet people. Only reason I gotta keep telling you that is because you’re stupid.”

  Miguel turned away, smiling about the worn-out old joke. Outside the kitchen window, the night was dark. The apartment was quiet. They waited, and eventually Vasquez went to bed. The Russians didn’t come, even though Miguel waited all night. Vasquez slept like the dead. In the morning when she woke up, she had a black eye from one of her brother’s punches.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Guthrie drove to the office in the morning after picking up Vasquez. Before then, while the muggy night cooled, he spent a few hours in the Garment District trying to find nonexistent Russians. The little detective admitted to some paranoia. After years spent watching people in the city, a feeling sometimes crept onto him that the city watched in return. That morning, he and Vasquez cleaned the office, scrubbing away bloodstains and aligning the furniture. Guthrie replaced Vasquez’s dead desktop monitor, but his own was still functional. They finished up by ordering pizza. Trahn brought a mouthful of conversation with two pizzas. On his last trip, he’d sold the pizzas to the police, but they wouldn’t let him see the office.

  The little Vietnamese’s curiosity matched him up with Tommy Johnson. Guthrie called Tommy, reaching for an update on NYPD’s efforts to fit Olsen for the Barbiedoll murders. Tommy invited himself to lunch. The tall young man wore mirrored sunglasses and his NYPD jogging suit; he walked a lap around the office, craning like a tourist, as soon as he came through the door.

  “We scrubbed the blood up this morning,” Guthrie said.

  “C’mon, Guth, you could’ve let me get a look first.” He peeled the mirrored sunglasses from his face and reached into the pizza box, coming out with a narrow slice.

  “It ain’t as entertaining as you think.”

  The young man laughed. “It’s got ’em talking in the big building.” He noticed Vasquez’s black eye. “Oh shit!”

  She scowled. She started to rough up his ears, but Guthrie stopped her. He asked her to walk Tommy through the shooting and take the shine from the story. The young man was learning his job as he went. Comparing the scene she described to the photos would help him. The little detective listened while Vasquez pointed out where the Russians had fallen, how they had rushed between the desks and couches, and mimicked the blonde’s disordered cursing. After two run-throughs of crawling and barrages of shots, Tommy was watching her instead of staring at the office, a slice of pizza dangling from his hand.

  Guthrie watched Tommy Johnson stumble for a minute, then said, “They didn’t come here to kill us. They came here to ask a question. What was it?”

  Vasquez snorted. “They wanted to know if we had a good lead.” She rescued a piece of pizza from the box and sat down at her desk.

  “Sure, but that would be a lot of talking for muscle. Maybe they had a specific question.”

  Tommy sprawled on the brown fur couch. “I don’t know about that,” he said, “but this shooting caused a scene downtown. The Barbiedoll murders are hush-hush, but this splattered. They argued in the halls.”

  “I would’ve liked to hear that,” Guthrie said.

  “I think they’re done with ‘GI Ken,’” Tommy said. “The gossip says he’s ruled out on time and place, ’cause of a receipt or something—”

  “When were we gonna hear that?” Vasquez demanded.

  “After they didn’t need it
for leverage,” Guthrie said, and frowned at her. He waved Tommy Johnson to go on.

  “And Bowman’s a separate homicide, no connectivity beyond the resemblance. The other vics got no motives or whatever on them—missing, turned up dead, no suspects.”

  “They had a take on the Russian shooters?”

  Tommy downed a bite of pizza hurriedly. “Freelance. There’s a lot of money around the Bowman case, no offense.”

  “Major Case is squat. Somebody’s cleaning up loose ends and they’re not suspicious?” Guthrie darted a glance at the young Puerto Rican, then continued, “Let me get quiet. That’s not worth talking about yet.”

  “They got Olsen,” Tommy said, and shrugged.

  The little detective nodded. “That helps,” he said. “All we have to clear is the Bowman murder. Fill in the blanks for me, though. Tell me what you know about the Barbie dolls.”

  “I only know a few details on one vic—Cara Woodson. She was blond, two shots, no rape, found in Essex County at the edge of a scenic stop. She didn’t have a vehicle. They couldn’t find witnesses to place her anywhere, but the missing person report suggested shopping or the local honky-tonk.”

  “She was the May seventeenth victim,” Guthrie said. “Essex? That’s way upstate.”

  “Yeah. A long way from the city. They wanted it to stick together. The sex angle pushed them, too, but now the gossip is going the other way. Maybe there is no Barbiedoll killer.”

  “Tell that to the newspaper,” Guthrie muttered.

  “The differences were little things,” Tommy Johnson said. “Not all of the vics were blond. One vic was missing her underwear, and her blouse was open, but still no sexual assault.”

  “You’re safe to talk about that?” Guthrie asked.

  “It’s gossip,” Tommy said, and shrugged. He slid forward to reach for another slice of pizza, and glanced at his watch. “Oh shit! Lunch is over. See ya, Guth.” The office door closed on his heels with a rattling slam.

  Once he was gone, Vasquez frowned and said, “I don’t get it, viejo. We’re off the hook for the other murders, but—”

  “I don’t like that they changed their minds,” Guthrie said. “All of a sudden, they don’t figure it as a serial killer? Why?”

  “I got you,” Vasquez said with a smile. “Because I thought of something. Inglewood’s pictures showed the legs bunched up. At that bodega on Turnbull yesterday, when the cashier showed how the old woman was killed—I think she would’ve dropped the same way.”

  Guthrie frowned. “So you think the victims were kneeling? We can get pictures from the robbery and take a look.” He looked toward the window. “You think we should do that?”

  “Don’t play with me, viejo. We’d better do that.”

  The little detective smiled. “This doesn’t change anything, you know. The case is about Olsen—because of the gun. We have to concentrate on Olsen. I’ll give it to you that the switch-up looks funny. I’ll even go so far as to put it back on the table. Today we’re gonna reach out to find what’s connecting Olsen and Linney. I’ll try the FBI along with that to see if we come up with something connecting them.”

  * * *

  The little detective used the telephone to do the dirty work that afternoon. The office became his war room, and the telephones his subordinates. He used four simultaneously, juggling them to see if he remained on hold in Arlington, Virginia, or Washington, D.C. The local calls went quickly, but on the long-distance ones, he managed a multipartner bureaucratic courtship, complete with layers of flattery and devoted listening.

  During pauses, he explained to Vasquez that using people would sometimes be part of the job—a task that could be as filthy as a garbage can. Informants could get hurt or killed. Ghost Eddy was another name that Guthrie had to add to the list of people he had screwed badly, without mentioning lost jobs, broken relationships, and money down the drain. Contacts sometimes ran a risk to answer a question, like Tommy Johnson. Detective work wasn’t the shiniest job in the world, even when you had the excuse of pulling a man from jail when you were sure he was innocent.

  Guthrie shrugged, making a call downtown to Police Plaza. The detectives didn’t want to talk, but other people worked in the big building. Monica e-mailed the crime-scene photos of the bodega robbery. Guthrie stored the pictures in his palmtop behind Fat-Fat’s kill switch, which operated like a puzzle box. Whenever the computer came on, or woke from a nap, a sequence of keystrokes was required to access the hidden part of its memory. Snapping it shut put the palmtop to sleep. Althea Linney’s knees were bent, but not bunched, in the NYPD photographs.

  After studying the pictures, Vasquez said, “Tommy said all of the Barbie dolls weren’t identical.”

  “He also said there might not be any Barbie dolls,” Guthrie said.

  Long-distance calls consumed most of the afternoon, and the little detective showed the pressure as the end of the business day crept closer. Administrative assistants in a dozen offices heard corny “aw, shucks” jokes and thick layers of backwoods “Yes, ma’am” or “Yes, sir” as a veil over insistent questions and requests. Guthrie shifted positions behind his desk—propped up his feet, spun his chair, bent over an important doodle, and waved like a semaphore signaler for fresh coffee—and then wandered around the office. Even bathroom breaks didn’t stop his chatter. His targets were in the Pentagon and FBI headquarters, but he also called people to help him apply pressure: bankers and lawyers on the southern tip of Manhattan, some hillbillies in West Virginia who made him show off his hog calling before they agreed to help, and a smooth-voiced woman in the nation’s capital who sounded like she managed a chorus of dancers. Vasquez watched and listened, moving through her own evolutions of boredom, fascination, and amusement. The little detective was determined. More than that, he had style. By late afternoon, his efforts secured a pair of appointments. The detectives would have to fly to Virginia, because neither man would say anything on the phone.

  While Guthrie and Vasquez were arguing about which flight to take to Virginia, someone knocked on the office door. A big shadow loomed beyond the frosted glass. Guthrie frowned, drew a revolver, and held it below his desktop. The door opened, and Detective Inglewood from Major Case limped through.

  “Jeez, Mike, you scared the shit out of me,” Guthrie said. “Call next time, will you?” He slid his revolver back into the shoulder holster.

  Inglewood laughed and straightened his glasses on his nose. “Ain’t no Russians woulda knocked on a second visit,” he said. “Woulda been rat-a-tat-tat, and maybe boom!”

  “That’s real funny. Something bring you to midtown besides the smell of cold pizza? Couple of slices left there.” He nodded at the box on the coffee table in front of his desk.

  Inglewood settled his bulk down on the oxblood couch and looked the pizza over disdainfully. “I been driving, but I ain’t that hungry. Stopped here on my way back downtown.”

  “This ain’t starting out good,” Guthrie said.

  “I feel I gotta save you some shoe leather. A wit in the Olsen case surfaced upstate—Sandra Whitten. She’s dead.” The ginger-haired detective wagged a finger. “Before you even get started, it’s unrelated. That comes from the experts. No motive, see? So don’t try to roll it up with Bowman.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  Inglewood sighed, and paused like he was counting to himself. “Different MO. Some kind of blade, with a deep stab wound to the chest. Then, what’s missing? Her panties. Okay, different MO?”

  “Maybe she walked around with the package unwrapped. She’s a wit on another homocide, with another connected body, and almost a few more—”

  “Pure coincidence.”

  “Ain’t a cop on this planet believes in coincidence!”

  Inglewood pointed at himself. “Do you see me here? You know me? I’m on the job, right? Bowman’s in our jurisdiction. That’s closed. Whitten? Okay, she lived in the Bronx, fine. She went upstate for some fun that went bad. Not in our juri
sdiction. I went and took a look, professional courtesy. Different MO. Not in our jurisdiction. The Bowman case is unrelated, and it’s closed. Okay?” He pulled a folded piece of paper from inside his suit coat, then opened and smoothed it on his thigh. His face was so red with blood that his hair seemed ashy blond.

  “Come on,” Inglewood said, glancing at Vasquez. “You get one look.” He stood and walked around the coffee table to Guthrie’s desk and waited for her to come over. Then he laid a color photocopy of a picture on the desktop, keeping two fingers pressed heavily on one corner.

  Sand Whitten was only recognizable because of her stainless-steel jewelry and skate-short black hair. Otherwise, her face was a mass of welts, with bright blue irises glowing in bloodred eyes. A precise slash on her throat revealed her spine from the front of the body, but her blouse sported only a few drops of blood, beyond a narrow stab wound between her small breasts. Her blood was spread on the ground like an abandoned apron beyond her legs—one bunched beneath her, the other bent. Her naked thighs glowed sharply white, and a short black skirt clung to her hips without exposing her. Waffle-soled hiking boots seemed out of place, blooming from her slender ankles.

  Inglewood pulled the picture from the desk and struck a lighter. He held the flame to a corner of the picture. Several long seconds passed as it caught fire and was consumed.

  “I ain’t been here,” the ginger-haired detective said. “I ain’t talked to you. I ain’t showed you no picture. What picture? I was on a piss break.” He glanced down at the coffee table as he turned to go. “I ain’t ate no pizza.” He took a slice and then limped from the office. The door clattered behind him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Guthrie booked a late flight to Arlington, Virginia. That left the evening free, and he called Philip Linney. The veteran was off work, killing time in his Westchester flop, and he was available for a supper with a side of conversation. He chose the destination: Albert’s Café on East 177th Street, about where it crossed Powell in Westchester. The nighttime crowd was local—a mix of drivers, stockers, and mop jockeys, sprinkled with hopeful students and a few secretaries. The dining room was a square, set off from the bar by a porch with a walk-up order window for street traffic. They ate at a small round table, encircled by the other customers. Guthrie took a long look around after they sat, and perched his fedora on the edge of the table.