by John Lutz
“You of all people know this sicko is willing to vary his method.”
“I know it more than the chief or commissioner.”
Da Vinci, with his usual mental alacrity, understood Beam’s generosity but gave no sign of knowledge or gratitude. “It surely can’t be ruled out,” he admitted.
“You read the lab report?” da Vinci asked.
Beam nodded.
“There’s nothing other than the bloody J to put the Justice Killer in that car when Flitt went out,” da Vinci said. “No prints, hairs, smudges, footprints, DNA—how does this bastard come away so clean?”
“He’s smart. He knows his craft. That’s how he looks at it by now, a craft. An art. Each murder neater than the last.”
Da Vinci swiped a hand down his face hard enough to hurt his nose and make his eyes water. “How are we ever gonna nail him?”
“We know our craft,” Beam said calmly.
“To the chief and, I can tell you, the commissioner, you’re still a cop even if you’re not technically NYPD permanent ranks. The machine won’t hesitate to make you the goat in this, Beam, screw you over.”
“Or you.”
“Goes without saying.” Da Vinci’s right hand went out as if of its own volition and caressed the polished brass motorcycle sculpture on his desk corner, reminiscent of his early days as a cop. “Much as I enjoyed it, Beam, I don’t want to go back to riding a cycle. Just like you don’t wanna go back to doing foot patrol.” He patted the cycle sculpture as if it were a pet, then sat back in his chair “You understand what I’m saying?”
“Understood it when I walked in here,” Beam said. “If it’s gonna be me or you, you’re gonna make it me.”
“That’s true. I wouldn’t bullshit you. I’m sorry, Beam, it just works that way, dog eat dog eat dog. We’ve gotta leave it at that.”
Beam stood up to leave the office. “I won’t miss that part of it.”
“Someday neither will I,” da Vinci said.
“Now you’re talking bullshit.”
Da Vinci tried to keep his features stiff but he had to grin.
“Yeah, I am. Both of us are talking bullshit. In some ways, Beam, we’re the same kind of animal.”
“In some ways.”
“Nell and Looper, I notice they’re getting testy.”
“We’re all getting testy. Especially the killer.”
“You really believe that?”
“Sure. That’s how the game goes. Ask Helen Iman.”
“Maybe I will.”
Beam’s presence was so dominant that when he left the office he seemed to take a lot of the oxygen with him. Da Vinci sat in the vacuum, beginning to perspire, and absently brushed the back of his right hand gently over the motorcycle sculpture again. His mind was turning over and over like a real cycle’s roughly idling engine.
He felt unexpectedly sorry for his friend Beam. Honorable and tough old-school Beam, intrepid and smart in the bargain. Da Vinci thought he’d never known a better man or a finer cop.
The cruel tricks life played on people, the sadistic mazes that circumstances constructed, it was amazing.
27
Adelaide Starr sat in the back of the cab and watched First Avenue glide past on either side. She felt strong. She felt limber. She felt beautiful.
She felt ready.
Adelaide was all those things. Only five-foot one, she had a compact, muscular body, with legs and neck disproportionately long so that she appeared much taller when there was no one near her for comparison. She had a tumble of ginger colored hair, green eyes, a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and a carved, determined chin. Up close or from the last row in the theater, she was eye candy. Not to mention she could sing. Not the way she could dance, with a winning combination of pertness and elegance, but when it came to a show tune she could sing it and sell it and that’s what was important.
So it was a cinch that sooner or later she was bound to make it out of the chorus line and into a larger, more demanding role that required voice as well as dance. Why not today? This morning? She was twenty-nine, talented and beautiful, so why not this morning?
“I’ve sure as hell paid my dues,” she said out loud.
“Pardon, ma’am?” the cab driver asked, meeting her gaze in the rearview mirror and almost running up the back of the cab ahead. He was a swarthy man wearing a skillfully wound blue turban but had no discernible accent.
“Talking to myself.” Adelaide smiled at the man in the mirror and watched the change in his dark eyes, a kind of melting. Yeah, she was feeling confident. She’d been told in confidence by another dancer already in the show that she had the inside track for the second lead in the developing Off-Broadway musical comedy Peel the Onion.
She’d just sat back in the seat and was looking out again at the sun-drenched morning when she felt rather than heard the vibration of her phone in her purse snugged up against her right hip. Careful not to break a nail, she adroitly plucked the phone from her purse, flipped it open and said hello.
“It’s Barry, Ad.”
Her manager, Barry Baxter. She knew by his tone that this wasn’t going to be good. Shouldn’t have answered the phone. “Shoot, Barry.” She didn’t like the tone of her own voice. The cabbie caught something in it, too. His eyes were wary in the mirror.
“It’s not that serious, Ad. They don’t use real bullets.”
“Sometimes they do, Barry.”
“You sitting down?”
“I better be. I’m in a cab, on the way to the theater for the audition.”
“I’m afraid you can save the fare. I just got a call from Gerald. The role’s been filled.”
“How the hell did that happen?” She saw the cabby’s eyes narrow.
“Some friend of the producer, actress out of Chicago name of Tiffany Taft. She’s in some Off-Off-Broadway thing now that’s about to fold. She blew them away, Gerald said, and she’d already played the part in local repertory theater. She did ten minutes onstage and that was that. Everybody wanted her.”
“Screw Chicago, Barry. And screw Tiffany whatever.”
“Yeah. Well.” When she didn’t say anything, he said, “I’m sorry, Ad. It looked like gold. They lie to you sometimes in this business, you ever notice?”
Adelaide took a deep breath. “I’ve noticed. Everybody’s a shit but you, love. I’ll get over it, Barry.” If I don’t get fat, or pull a hamstring, or my skin doesn’t go all pale and crinkly, like what happened to Erin McCain, another redhead who was now out of the business. God, I’m twenty-nine!
“I know you will, Ad. Faster than me, probably. This is a lousy deal. I thought you had a real shot at it.”
“So’d I.”
“It’s not that good a play.”
“It’s great, Barry.”
“It would have been with you in it. Now I’m not so sure. I seriously doubt this Tiffany bitch can do cute like you can, and that’s what the part calls for—cute with a big voice and a big kick. That’s you, Ad.”
Adelaide smiled. Seemed to cheer up the cabbie. “A few minutes ago I felt cute enough to gag,” she said. “Now I’m semi-suicidal. Damned business can give you whiplash.” At twenty-nine, how much longer can I do cute? “I think I’m gonna drown my sorrows in a latte.”
“Too early for anything else.”
“Signing off. If I do weaken and shoot myself, I’ll leave you all my stuff.” She snapped the phone closed and slid it back in her purse. “Pull over there,” she said to the eyes in the mirror. “By that Starbucks.” She pointed across the street.
The cab veered to the curb near the intersection. “Whatever you want, ma’am.”
I wish. As she withdrew her hand from her purse, her knuckles brushed paper, the morning’s meager mail she’d hurriedly grabbed from her box in the lobby when she left the building. She’d stuffed it unexamined into her purse and stepped outside in time to hail an unoccupied cab immediately, thinking it must be her lucky day.
Instead of withdrawing the mail, she reached back into her purse for her wallet to pay cab fare.
Adelaide hadn’t been serious about drinking a latte, but when she climbed out of the cab, it seemed like a good idea. It wasn’t as if she had anyplace else to go. With her purse slung by its strap over her shoulder, carrying her duffel bag with her dance equipment on the same side of her body, she strode with a graceful leftward list across the street toward Starbucks. The light flashed the signal not to walk, but the way Adelaide walked, traffic turning off Fifty-fourth Street onto First Avenue stopped for her.
The morning breakfast crowd had mostly cleared out of the place. She ordered a large latte and carried it to a booth, picking up a crookedly folded Daily News on the way. Sometimes when she was low she could lose herself in the news, in accounts of other people’s misfortunes. What Adelaide absolutely and without exception refused to do was to feel sorry for herself. She’d always taken pride in her ability to get back on her feet after a knockdown, ready to fight on. Take the right attitude, be in your own private play, and good things tended to happen. Reality could conform. Besides, Barry might be right about Onion being a box office bomb.
Within half an hour she’d finished the paper—what parts she wanted to read, anyway—and was in a somewhat more tolerable mood. She sat for a while watching people hurry past outside the window. It seemed everyone had someplace they had to be. Everyone but Adelaide.
God! Stop it! Like there won’t be other plays Off-Broadway. Off-Off-Broadway.
On goddamned Broadway!
Damned straight! There’s always a demand for cute. Irrepressibly cute. And I can be a tsunami of cute.
She decided to read some more about the Justice Killer. That would cheer her up.
Then she remembered the mail in her purse. She got it out and spread it on the table like a hand of cards. Three envelopes. The first was an obvious advertisement for life insurance. The second was a chain letter from a college friend she hadn’t talked to in six years, urging her to send copies of the letter to five people she knew and she could avoid contracting an infectious disease and in fact enjoy a run of good luck. Others who’d ignored the instruction to keep the chain growing had met terrible fates. A few had died. Adelaide read the enclosed letter. It explained how you could be healthier, happier, and live longer if you had sex in the presence of certain aromatic candles that were for sale. Not that you had to purchase any of the candles; sending along the letter to five friends was all that was really required of you. Yeah, sure.
Adelaide set the chain letter aside with the insurance ad to be dropped in the trash receptacle on the way out. Then she opened the third envelope, using a plastic knife, as she’d painfully bent back a fuchsia fingernail while opening the chain letter.
Holy bejibbers!
A jury summons.
28
Looper had taken the unmarked home and dropped Nell across town where she could get a subway. Trouble was, it had been a long day, the subway train had been stifling, and it was a long, hot walk from the stop to her apartment.
Nell’s feet hurt enough that when she opened the door she limped over and slumped down on the sofa, even though she saw the red light blinking on her answering machine, signaling with urgency that she had messages. She used her feet to work off her sensible black shoes, stretched her legs almost straight out, and wriggled her toes.
I’ve got cop’s feet, maybe getting flat. I’m getting to be a goddamned cliché.
She realized suddenly that something was wrong. The back of her neck was damp with perspiration. The air conditioner in the apartment’s living room window was malfunctioning again. It had been doing that more and more lately. Where was this Terry Adams who’d done work for other cops and was supposed to give her a deal? She’d call someone else, except she needed a deal, and every air conditioner repairman would be running behind in this heat anyway and would put her off. She needed for Adams to show up, or at least call her back and lie about it being a heat wave so everybody’s air conditioner was breaking down and he’d been hard at work since six this morning and she was the very next on his list. That was what Nell expected, anyway. She’d been told the guy was an actor doing home repair work between parts, so she was curious about how convincingly he’d lie.
It was still too early for the evening to be cooling off, so she decided she’d go out and get some supper at a nice, air-conditioned diner over on Seventh Avenue, then she’d come home and, if it was still too warm in the living room, switch on the window unit in the bedroom and read in bed.
As she was pushing herself up from the sofa, she noticed again the flashing red light on her answering machine. So maybe the air conditioner guy had left a recorded lie. Before going to the bedroom to get more comfortable shoes, she might as well listen to her messages.
One message, actually, from Jack Selig. Iris Selig’s husband. The late Iris Selig.
According to the machine, Selig had phoned just twenty minutes ago. Nell lifted the receiver and punched out the number he’d left at the end of his message before she forgot it.
Selig picked up on the second ring.
“I was hoping it was you,” he said, after Nell had identified herself.
“Have you thought of something?” Nell asked.
“Thought of…? Oh, no. Well, yes.” He sounded oddly ill at ease. “I’ve thought quite a bit about you, Miss Corey, so I decided I’d give you a call.”
“About the investigation?”
“About us.”
It took a few seconds for what was happening to sink in. This guy was coming on to her! Nell was speechless.
“I know it’s out of the ordinary, but I thought, so what? It’s been two years since…my wife died. I don’t want you to think I’m callous, and I’ll certainly understand if you say no. You are investigating a series of murders, one of which was that of my wife. But it was two years ago, and I thought it might not interfere in any way with the investigation if we saw each other socially. I don’t know what the police department’s regulations are in such matters—”
“Say no to what?” Nell interrupted.
“Dinner. Nothing more. I thought possibly you wanted to talk about something other than the investigation.”
Nell conjured up a mental image of Selig, distinguished, handsome, obscenely wealthy. Old enough to be her…Well, old enough. Too old. She imagined him on the other end of the line, waiting like a nervous schoolboy for her reaction. It must have taken some guts, calling her.
“Mr. Selig—”
“Only dinner and talk,” he assured her. “I know how old I must seem to you.”
“I’m thirty-nine, Mr. Selig. Nobody seems old to me.”
He laughed, surprising her. “Oh, you’ll find out differently.”
This wasn’t a good idea, but something about his offer kept her from saying no. Was it his wealth? Maybe that was part of it. His looks? He was almost movie star handsome in a mature way, but Nell had never imagined herself with someone mature.
Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. He said only dinner and conversation.
Hah!
“Can I think this over, Mr. Selig?”
“Of course. If you prefer, you might consider it part of your investigation. I don’t mind the third degree, if that’s what it takes to spend time with you.”
She had to smile. “I wouldn’t see dinner with you as part of an investigation.”
“Then why not tonight, Miss Corey? You can check with your superior officer tomorrow and find out if you did something against the rules.”
“You’re a bit of a devil, aren’t you, Mr. Selig.” And a charming one.
“Only a bit, Miss Corey.”
Part of Nell cautioned her against this. Another part thought of dinner in a cool restaurant with wine and actual tablecloths, unlike the moderately priced places where she usually ate. A restaurant without a counter might make for a nice change.
“What about Tavern on
the Green?” Selig asked.
He somehow knew what I was thinking.
Nell had been to Tavern on the Green exactly once, ten years ago. She’d dumped bread pudding in her lap. This guy Selig probably ate at Tavern on the Green once or twice a week. Even more often, if he liked the bread pudding. All she had to do was say yes and—
“I got your address from the phone book. Give me an answer and I can pick you up within the hour. Are you there, Miss Corey? I have a long list of women to call if you refuse.”
Nell laughed. It wasn’t as if Selig was a suspect, not after two years. As far as Nell knew, he’d never served on a jury and wasn’t part of the Justice Killer case at all. And what would it hurt if she had dinner with him? She could casually mention it to Beam afterward, keep everything above board. “This would be a date?”
“Make no mistake about it, Miss Corey, this would be a date.”
“We seem to have moved away from just dinner and conversation.”
“We move nowhere you don’t want to go, Miss Corey. But keep in mind my advanced age.”
She did feel it wouldn’t be a good idea to give in easily. Her mother had long ago told her it was better to be gold than silver. Also, she didn’t like the idea of Selig simply calling her on what might have been a whim. This was probably a multimillionaire, and certainly a wily negotiator, so it wasn’t a good idea to give in and agree to anything easily. Nell didn’t like being maneuvered and wanted to preserve her self respect.
“How about tomorrow night?” she said.
“Wonderful!”
There. She’d forced a compromise.
“Pick you up sevenish?”
Sevenish!
“That would be fine.”
After hanging up, Nell wondered if she’d lost her mind. On the other hand, what the hell? Dinner and talk. She had to have a life outside the NYPD. Beam would understand. If she told him.
She thought about how she felt actually dating a man in his sixties who called her “Miss.”
Pretty good, she decided.
Adelaide had dinner with three other dancers near the studio in the Village where they all trained. All through the meal and over coffee or additional wine, everyone sympathized with her for the way her good luck had suddenly turned bad, but all agreed it was part and parcel of the business they were in and that they all loved.