No Pain, No Gaine

by Edwina Franklin

  He arrived about five minutes later, as Sandy was making the pot of tea.

  “All right, let’s see what Bert left us,” he said, making directly for the stack of paper on the table.

  The computer had printed out the subfiles in alphabetical order by filename, which meant that lists, police reports and interviews were all interspersed.

  Gaine scanned the first few files impatiently. “Did you print the directory, too?” he asked.

  She handed him a separate, much thinner printout.

  “That’s better. Let’s start separating and sorting all these.”

  Twenty minutes later, their tea looked more like coffee, but they had all the .lst subfiles paperclipped together, and all the others separated into piles according to category. They were ready to begin studying Bert’s file.

  “Let’s see what the shrinks have to say about our man,” said Gaine, reaching for the stack of files ending with .psy. “We may not have a lot of time, so you take Dr. Philip Hooper, and I’ll take Dr. Glendon Prewitt. Read it, summarize verbally, I’ll do the same, and we’ll see how they compare.”

  “You’ve got this down to a science, haven’t you?” Sandy remarked as she took the five-page-long printout from his hand.

  “It goes with the territory, m’dear,” he said, in a fair imitation of W.C. Fields. But she noticed he wasn’t smiling.

  “Okay, Dr. Hooper is a psychologist with the New York Correctional Services Bureau. He says Mr. Vanish sounds like a sociopath with schizophrenic tendencies—totally remorseless and fading in and out of reality, perhaps hearing voices, like Son of Sam, or else deluded into thinking he has a divine mission to rid the world of evil, wherever and however he perceives it.”

  His face concealed by the printout in his hand, Gaine asked, “What does he think the killer does between hits? Prewitt thinks he’s an actor, or a circus clown.”

  “Because of the disguises, of course,” said Sandy. “Somebody who has ready access to wigs and makeup and knows how to use them to conceal his appearance. I wonder if anyone has ever seen Mr. Vanish’s real face,” she added thoughtfully, “or if he only appears in disguise.”

  “Dr. Prewitt says Mr. Vanish is arrogant and has a superiority complex, which is reinforced when he dupes people with his false faces. What does Hooper have to say on that point?”

  Sandy scanned the second page of the interview she was holding. “Expediency and survival. He wears the disguises to enable him to make his kills more effectively and to prevent identification, which could lead to capture.”

  “He’s pragmatic and a little stodgy, your Dr. Hooper,” remarked Gaine. “Prewitt is more imaginative. He says Mr. Vanish is a performer who lets performing get out of hand. As long as the murder is committed by somebody who doesn’t look like him, he can hold himself blameless. In that case, he’d probably pass a lie detector test.”

  “How about background? Hooper says Mr. Vanish was brought up without values, was probably an only child in a well-to-do or wealthy family in which the parents were too selfish and busy to spend any quality time with him, had a brilliant mind which went unchallenged and therefore turned to evil. May have killed both parents to inherit so he wouldn’t have to work. Stodgy, you say?”

  “Okay, I apologize. Prewitt guesses that Mr. Vanish came from a broken lower-class home, was probably abused as a child and sought relief in fantasy, then, when older, sought employment in the world of fantasy. I’ve had enough of this guy,” declared Gaine. “You?”

  “Let’s try the next two. Maybe they’ll agree on something,” sighed Sandy, not holding out much hope. After all, how could these professionals claim to understand a person they’d never met?

  Bert had collected six reports from six different psychiatrists and psychologists all over North America, and one reprint of a magazine article by a seventh. The six reports all painted different portraits of the elusive murderer, although they did have several things in common.

  “Let’s write these down,” said Gaine, reaching past her for a sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen. “They all agree he has a brilliant mind, which was probably not stimulated or challenged enough while he was growing up. And he enjoys wearing his disguises and probably takes great pride in making them as realistic as possible. He’s meticulous about details, probably a compulsive planner. And he’s had theatrical training of some sort and may still be actively involved in stage work or films.”

  “Or a clown in a circus,” sighed Sandy, picking up the reprint and beginning to scan it.

  “I wish we had more consensus on why he wears the disguises,” muttered the sergeant, still scribbling.

  Sandy shrugged. “Maybe he does it because his own face is too recognizable. Maybe he’s a rock star or something and would be mobbed by fans wanting autographs if he appeared in public undisguised.”

  Gaine stopped writing and leaned back thoughtfully in his chair. “That’s an interesting notion. He wouldn’t have to be a celebrity, either—just a known public figure.”

  “Dio!” she breathed, as the words she was reading finally registered. “Listen to this, Sergeant: He was an unloved child, not abused but neglected, and filled with unresolved anger… Unable to form normal relationships, he became a user of people, in private a loner with perhaps one or two companions to whom he could feel superior, in public a charming and popular pretender… Disdainful of those who conformed to the rules of a society that to him didn’t deserve obedience or respect, he felt the end justified the means… Unquestionably he had extremely high intelligence, but he could not feel remorse for any wrong action, even when confronted with the sometimes tragic results of that action… This isn’t generalization or gobbledygook, Sergeant. It sounds as though she knew him.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Dr. Michaela Liszt. The reprint is almost twenty years old—Case History of a Child Psychopath.”

  He frowned. Repeating the name to himself under his breath, Gaine snatched up the sheaf of lists and began searching. “Here it is, under case reports,” he said at last, and dropping the lists back onto the table, he began sifting through the stack of .pol subfiles. “Got it. Liszt. She died under suspicious circumstances sixteen years ago. The case was never solved.”

  Sandy inhaled sharply. “And maybe Bert suspected Mr. Vanish?”

  Gaine nodded. “If Vanish was the subject of that article, then you’ve just found the first piece of the puzzle. Congratulations, Alessandra. Now let’s see if we can make some sense out of these police reports.”

  Dinnertime came and went. Sandy fixed sandwiches for them to eat while they continued reading, and another pot of tea, this one deliberately strong. Eventually, however, they were fated to run out of steam.

  They were halfway through the eighth .pol subfile when Gaine pushed his chair back, shaking his head. “I’m getting stale,” he said. “I think that’s going to be all for me tonight. Do you have a safe place to hide all this?”

  “Of course,” she replied, seeing him to the door.

  He paused on the threshold and turned, as though wanting to say something. Taut with anticipation, Sandy watched his expression change three times before he finally sighed and murmured simply, “Good night, Alessandra.”

  She waited for the sound of the front door closing behind him. Then she quietly locked up and returned to the kitchen table.

  Sandy still resented the way he’d forced her into this partnership, but she had to admit, as she surveyed the copious hand-scrawled notes littering the table, that they appeared to be off to a good start. They were getting a handle on Mr. Vanish, at least, beginning to understand him a little.

  About to clear Gaine’s empty mug and sandwich plate off the table, Sandy changed her mind and sat down in his chair instead. It was nearly eleven o’clock, but her eyes were still focusing, and there was a manageable-looking pile of miscellaneous subfile
s that might yield something of interest.

  Just then, the telephone rang.

  The shrill sound instantly set her nerves on edge, but Sandy was determined not to answer it. She let it ring. And ring. And with each ring, her fingers clenched more and more tightly around her pen and the edges of the printout.

  Finally, she couldn’t stand it anymore. Hurrying into the living room, she picked up the receiver on the sixth ring. “Hel—” she got out, before the caller hung up. “Hell,” she muttered, dropping the receiver back into its cradle.

  That made eight times today, including the call that had rudely awakened her early this morning. There was nothing wrong with the telephone—she and her downstairs neighbor had tested the line before Sandy left for Uncle Hugo’s that morning. And there hadn’t been any calls the whole time Ted Gaine had been with her, she suddenly realized. Somebody was waiting until she was alone and then deliberately harassing her.

  To a woman living alone that was frightening enough, but Sandy’s apartment had been broken into and searched last night, and her telephone number was visible on the fronts of both her phones. What if this crank was the intruder, letting her know he intended to try again?

  Gaine’s card hadn’t budged from its spot beside the phone. Sandy stared at it for a moment, gnawing her lower lip uncertainly. How long would it take him to get home? She didn’t even know where he lived.

  Suddenly the telephone rang again. Frozen in place, Sandy watched it ring, twice, three times, four times… Finally, her nerves threatening to unravel permanently if she heard that noise even one more time, she reached out and snatched up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “This is Dooley. You Tom’s sister?”

  Even if he hadn’t identified himself, the sound of an answering voice would have startled her. But this particular voice, like a steam valve right next to a gravel chute, lifted the hair at the nape of Sandy’s neck.

  “Y-yes,” she replied uncertainly.

  “Listen, I’m gonna hafta make this short. I tried to call you a few times before, but somebody came around the corner every time and I had to hang up.”

  For a moment, anxiety gave way to a rush of anger. “You called me at 6:20 this morning?”

  “You crazy? I was asleep at 6:20,” he told her indignantly. “Now listen to me, lady, ’cause when he finds out I’m the one who saw him, I’m dead meat, y’unnerstand?”

  “When who finds out?”

  “The guy who iced Lou Parmentier.” Dooley hissed in a breath. “I saw the hit go down,” he confided. “It was done by a guy named Mr. Vanish.”

  Sandy inhaled sharply and began searching the drawer of the telephone table for pen and paper. “Are you sure?” she demanded. The last thing she’d expected to have drop into her lap was an eyewitness to the Parmentier murder who could identify Mr. Vanish as the perpetrator. It was almost too good to be true.

  “Sure, I’m sure. I was hangin’ out at Sunnyside last August fourteenth, and from behind a bush I see this late-model Dodge pull up and park on Howard Road. A guy gets out of the driver’s side, looks around to make sure he’s alone, opens the back door, pumps three shots into the back seat. Then he puts away his piece, locks all the doors and walks away real casual, like someone goin’ for a late stroll in the park, right?”

  Scribbling madly, Sandy prompted him, “And then what did you do?”

  “I stayed hidden till he was out of sight, then I snuck over to the car—sure enough, there’s a stiff in the back seat who’s, like, the twin of the guy who iced him. That’s when I figured out the hit was done by Mr. Vanish.”

  Sandy was puzzled. “Because they were twins?”

  Dooley paused, and she could practically hear him shaking his head in disgust. “Listen up, lady. Nobody has ever seen this dude’s actual face—he wears disguises so he always looks like someone else. That night he looked like the stiff. Okay? Anyway, I kept quiet about what I seen. Somebody with lots of juice musta wanted this guy Parmentier out of the way. Mr. Vanish don’t work for just anyone, y’know? When he didn’t come after me right away, I figured I was safe. But the word on the street is that Vanish is back to take care of a ‘loose end’. Ya don’t hafta be a genius to figure out who’s the loose end, right?”

  Sandy gripped the receiver tightly with both hands as a sudden hollow in her stomach began eating away everything else inside her. Her darting eyes came to rest on the business card beside her telephone. “Look,” she said in a choked voice, “if you’ve witnessed a murder and the killer may be after you, then you should be talking to the police.”

  “That ain’t the kinda help I need, lady,” rasped Dooley. “I’m not Honest Joe Public bein’ a good citizen here. I’m a street hood with a record longer than your arm, and I happen to know I’m wanted by the uniforms at Dundas Station for…somethin’ else that went down not long ago, okay? They’re not gonna listen to me. They’ll prob’ly lock me up and forget about me. And then this Vanish guy will just come and get me, like shopping at a supermarket. They say this dude can walk through walls.”

  “You could phone in an anonymous tip,” she suggested.

  “With this voice? You gotta be kidding! Every cop in the city recognizes this voice. My old man gave it to me for a birthday present—punched me in the throat when I was ten and wrecked my voice box.”

  “Then get Vito to do it for you.”

  “No. Listen, don’t get me wrong—Vito’s my buddy, but he don’t keep secrets too well. He likes to talk, y’know? I want you to do it.”

  Sandy’s heart began a slow spiraling descent into her toes. A new crack in the Parmentier case? An eyewitness suddenly coming forward? If ever a lead was too hot to handle, it was this one.

  “I can’t—”

  “Look, lady, please, Tom says you write police stuff, so that means you talk to cops all the time, right? They’ll believe you.”

  No, only one cop would believe her, thought Sandy unhappily—Sergeant Gaine. And he would probably arrest her on the spot for getting involved in the Parmentier case.

  “Tell them there’ll be another stiff on the street if they don’t grab this Mr. Vanish guy, like right now,” Dooley urged her. “He’s after me. Will ya please tell them!”

  On the other hand, she suddenly realized, whether or not Dooley was the intended victim, he was genuinely in fear for his life. Maybe there was an opportunity here to free her little brother from the influence of the Knights.

  Sandy closed her eyes and heard the metaphorical crash of a conscience being thrown out the window. “Okay, I’ll tell them,” she said at last, “but only if you’ll do something in return.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Starting right now, you and Vito have to keep away from my brother. Kick him out of the Knights. Tell him he’s too young or too stupid or too anything to hang out with you, I don’t care. Just make sure you leave him alone from now on.”

  There was a brief pause, then, “Okay, but now I want somethin’ else. I hear that you writers ain’t allowed to tell the name of a source. Is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I want you to treat me like a source. I don’t want them connecting me up with the Parmentier hit, y’unnerstand? I wasn’t there and I didn’t see nothin’.”

  Sandy swallowed hard, remembering the legend about the young Spartan soldier who concealed a wild fox under his tunic and then stood silently at attention as the panicky creature clawed him to death. She had already taken one street rat under her protection this week—Charlie. Was there room inside her tunic for a second one?

  There would have to be, for Tommy’s sake. She took a steadying breath. “Okay. But I’m warning you, if you and Vito don’t stay away from my brother, I’m giving your name to the Homicide Squad.”

  “You’re tough, ain’tcha?” said Dooley after a beat. “Okay, deal.”

&
nbsp; When Sandy hung up the phone a moment later, her heart was pounding and her conscience was screaming. She had just struck a bargain with a confessed criminal, protecting him from the most persistent investigator on the Homicide Squad while simultaneously passing on a message guaranteed to put her back on an adversarial basis with that same investigator. At this rate, she thought dispiritedly, she and Ted Gaine would probably be at loggerheads for the next ten years.

  Sandy returned with a sigh to Bert’s file, noticing that the first printout on the miscellaneous pile had to do with the mythology of masks. Evidently the hows and whys of Mr. Vanish’s disguises had bothered Bert just as much as they did Gaine and herself. And then, suddenly, a tickle at the back of her mind became an itch. Something was not quite right about Dooley’s account of the Parmentier murder.

  With growing suspicion, she leafed through the police reports to Bert’s notes on the Parmentier case and discovered two things: first, they were virtually identical to the material Charlie had sold her back in May—no wonder he’d been so willing to give her a “bargoon”; and second, they did not jibe with what Dooley had told her just now over the phone.

  Victim: Lou Parmentier, born July 12, 1939, in Montreal, died August 14 last year of multiple gunshot wounds. Found August 15, lying on back seat of rented Dodge sedan, abandoned at foot of Howard Road, near Sunnyside Beach. No witnesses to car being parked. Victim’s Occupation: professional entrepreneur. For last six years, partner with Nicholas Vermeyer in clothing business, wholesale and retail: Duds ’n’ Dudes, Unity Sportswear. Both companies showed profit every year of operation. Partners were not cross-insured, never argued about business…

  There was more. Sandy skimmed past the car rental details and election results to the pathologist’s report, which gave the time of death as somewhere between 9:00 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. Here she paused, frowning at the discrepancy: according to Dooley, there had still been enough daylight to make out the killer’s face from a distance when the murder took place; but according to Charlie’s notes, and the witnesses she’d contacted to corroborate them, the victim had been seen alive around midnight, at an election victory party at the Vermeyer home.