Chill of Night

by John Lutz

  “You’ve made that clear.”

  “But I don’t want special treatment just because I’m an actress. And nobody I know in show business wants to be safe from this killer at someone else’s expense.”

  Studio applause.

  “Let me get this straight, Adelaide. You raised four kinds of hell because they were going to make you do jury duty. Now you’re complaining because they’re excusing you?”

  “No! Well, no, yes! It’s like a trick on their part. A gamwit.”

  Confusion on Black’s face. “Gambit, you mean?”

  “Gam something.”

  Black ogled her legs. “Gams! Yeah, sweetheart!”

  “You know what I mean. Don’t make fun of me, please!”

  “I’m not, I’m not. So you think the authorities are simply trying to sidestep trouble by showing preference?”

  “Of course I do! Don’t you?”

  “Well…yes. You’re too much for them, sweetheart.” Black grinned conspiratorially into the camera, then turned again toward Adelaide. Serious time. “So what, seriously, do you suggest?”

  “A mora…whatchamacallit. Where somebody stops something?”

  Black looked puzzled. Then he brightened. “A moratorium?”

  “Exactly. Don’t give celebrities special treatment. Give everyone equal treatment under the law. Let everyone be safe!”

  “I like what you do with your lips when you say that, dear. Saaafe! And of course, you’re absolutely right. On a serious note, you are right.”

  “We’re supposed to be a country with equal opportunity and equal responsibilities, no matter what color we are or where we came from or any of that stuff. The city’s giving show business people a free pass when it comes to jury duty. Until the Justice Killer is caught, they should give everyone a free pass. Everyone in New York who’s legible for jury duty is an American!”

  “If they leave out people whose handwriting you can’t read, that’d include a lot of us.”

  Adelaide appeared puzzled and upset. “You know what I mean. We’re all in the same boat, with the same rights as oars, and we can’t sink together, and it’s an American boat!” She rose to her full meager height and thrust out her breasts. “Maybe you’re not supposed to stand up in a row boat, but I am! For myself and everyone else out there! In or out of show business!”

  The applause was loud enough to make Beam ease back on the volume. The camera played over a standing ovation before returning to the set.

  Black was on his feet, hands clapping. “Take it to ’em, dear!”

  “We demand a moratorium!” Adelaide said. She bent over to smooth her skirt, flashing more cleavage, then began pumping her tiny right fist in the air as she had outside City Hall. “Moratorium! Moratorium!” The studio audience, still on its feet, joined in. Volume built. Larger fists pumped the air in unison, faster and faster.

  Matt Black slumped down in his chair with an exaggerated look of wonder and helplessness. Never had he seen anything like this.

  After letting the place cool down only slightly, Black pumped his own fist in the air. “Commercial! Commercial!” He grinned. “We’ll be right back. Don’t go away. Why would you go away?” Then, as the camera zoomed in for a close up, an aside to the TV audience: “Somehow I don’t think she’ll be moving to France.”

  Suddenly a sincere man in a leather jacket was trying to sell Beam a wristwatch that was an exact replica of the one worn by B-17 bomber crews in World War Two, only this one kept time with a battery and a chunk of quartz.

  Beam’s phone rang, the land line this time. He sat forward in his desk chair and lifted the receiver.

  “Nell again, Beam,” came the voice from across town. “Did you see it?”

  “Saw it.”

  “Whaddya think?”

  “Two things. I think she’s way ahead of da Vinci. And I think I’m going to pour myself another two fingers of scotch.”

  “I just poured some bourbon in a glass.”

  “Raise your glass.”

  “’Kay.”

  “Up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mine, too. A toast. To Adelaide.”

  “Adelaide,” Nell said on the phone. “And France.”

  This morning Jack Selig was wearing gray flannel slacks, a navy blazer with big shiny brass buttons, and a white shirt open at the neck to reveal a red ascot. Nell thought he looked exactly like what he was—a rich guy who owned a yacht.

  They were having breakfast in the grill of the Marimont Hotel in Midtown. The place was all red carpeting, red drapes, white tablecloths with folded red napkins, polished oak paneling, and subtle touches of gleaming brass. The china looked as if it might be rimmed with real gold. Nell was impressed, as she was sure Selig wanted her to be. The softening up period. Nell had seen and heard it all before and knew how it worked. But, damn, this guy was handsome despite his burden of years. And there was that yacht.

  And there was Terry.

  “Rough night?” Selig asked.

  Mind reader. “Why?” Nell asked. “Do I look it?”

  Selig smiled. “Instead of stunningly beautiful, you look stunningly beautiful and tired.”

  “It’s this case.”

  “The investigation into the Justice Killer murders?”

  “Yeah. The pressure to find this creep never lets up. I know when we’re finished here”—she glanced at her watch—“which better be within an hour, I’ve gotta go join the battle again. And it’s a hard one.”

  “It doesn’t have to be your battle, Nell. You never have to go in to work again if you don’t want to.”

  “Yes,” Nell said, “I do. You need to understand that I do.”

  He looked puzzled behind his quiche. “But, why?”

  “I suppose because we all have our roles to play in life. The ones we chose. I’m a cop. You’re a…”

  “What?”

  “Wildly rich and successful.”

  “I wasn’t always, and you weren’t always a cop. Fate doesn’t have to rule our lives. We choose, and we can unchoose. We can change roles when we get the opportunity, when we have the courage.”

  “That wasn’t fair, Jack.”

  He smiled and dabbed at his lips with his napkin. “You’re right, it wasn’t. I apologize. Lord knows, I wouldn’t question your courage.”

  They ate in silence for a few minutes. Nell could see outside a window, a double-decker bus full of tourists slowly driving past in the bright sunlight. New York pretending to be London.

  “The point is, this killer doesn’t have to be your personal responsibility,” Selig said.

  “He does, Jack. He is.”

  “What about your boss? Detective Beam? Seems to me the investigation is his responsibility.”

  “Not his alone. We’re a team.”

  “Almost everyone’s on some kind of team.”

  “Not where people are dying.”

  Selig forked in a bite of quiche, chewed, swallowed. “I wasn’t thinking of it that way. You’re right, of course.”

  “Not of course, but I’m right.”

  He smiled. “You getting your dander up, Nell?”

  She made herself calm down. “No. Dander down.”

  But it wasn’t. Not entirely.

  Selig was looking at her as if she were something infinitely precious and available that was rapidly slipping away. “Is there someone else, Nell?”

  Bastard! “Yes. No. Jesus! Yes, there is!”

  He looked so injured she had to fight the instinct to reach across the table and squeeze his hands and apologize. He looked suddenly older. Helpless.

  What have I done?

  “Another, younger, man…” He said it as if he’d expected it to happen all along. Maybe he had. “Are you sure about him?”

  “Oh, God, I’m not sure of anything, Jack! Honestly!”

  “That’s your problem, Nell, you can’t be anything but honest.”

  Jack, if you only knew.

  “Don
’t make a final decision until you’re absolutely sure. That’s all I ask of you. Okay?”

  “Okay, Jack.” She had to sip coffee and look away, afraid she’d goddamn start to cry!

  She felt his cool fingers touch the back of her left hand then softly massage her ring finger. “You all right, Nell?”

  She nodded, biting her lip. “Yeah, fine.” She sat up straighter. “Let’s have some more coffee, then I’ve gotta get to work.”

  Right now the red carpet, the red drapes, the red napkins, reminded her of blood.

  Melanie stood on the sidewalk outside the entrance to Richard Simms’s apartment building. The doorman wouldn’t even let her stand in the lobby, where it was cool.

  As he had all day yesterday and earlier today, he’d informed her that Simms wasn’t home. This time she refused to believe him, and she’d raised enough hell that if she promised to wait outside, he’d call upstairs to make sure. Apparently others had suffered her fate, but for different reasons, because there was a litter of cigarette butts around where she stood.

  The afternoon was heating up in earnest, and the hairdo she’d gotten yesterday and was nursing along was a tangled mess in the humidity. A bead of perspiration broke from her hairline and trickled along the side of her forehead. As she raised a wrist to look at her watch, she felt the tug of her clothes sticking to her and got the faintest whiff of her deodorant.

  When Melanie was almost to the point of giving up hope and going back into the lobby to give the doorman one more blast of insults before storming away, the tinted glass door swung open wide, held by the doorman. He gazed blankly at her, unassailable in his position and uniform, as an African American man the size of a locomotive pushed past him and outside and looked down at Melanie. His straightened hair was gelled and combed sleekly back, and his eyes were tilted down at the outside corners to give him a permanent pained expression. He had on a flowered shirt and muted plaid pants held up by broad red suspenders, an obvious color and design mismatch to attract attention. Combined with his size, it worked. People hurrying past on the sidewalk couldn’t resist glancing his way, and the somewhat startled looks they gave him lingered and suggested trepidation.

  “I’m Lenny,” he said to Melanie in a surprisingly high voice. “I work for Mr. Simms.”

  Melanie struggled to find her voice. “I’m—”

  “I know who you are,” Lenny interrupted. “Seen you in court.”

  Melanie tried again. Her throat seemed to be blocked. “I—”

  “You wanna see Mr. Simms. That’s unfortunate, ’cause Mr. Simms, he ain’t seein’ nobody today.”

  “What about yesterday and tomorrow?” Melanie asked, feeling less intimidated and more angry.

  “You’d have to ask Mr. Simms ’bout that.”

  “But I can’t get in to see Mr. Simms.”

  Lenny shrugged massive shoulders. “Way the world works.”

  Melanie fought to remain calm, but her hands were trembling. She knew her lower lip was, too. She tried to choose her words carefully, but they were slippery and kept whirling around in her mind and were difficult to grasp and match with her intent. “I want you to take—I want you to deliver a message.”

  “I can do that.”

  “You tell Cold Cat—Mr. Simms—that there’s a madman in this city killing people for doing what I did for Mr. Simms. What I did was save Mr. Simms’s life. The least he could do is see me, talk to me. He doesn’t answer my phone calls and he doesn’t invite me up when I come here personally. That isn’t right.”

  “Maybe his lawyers have advised him not to talk to you,” Lenny said. Was he smiling? Ever so slightly?

  Despite herself, Melanie felt her heart leap with hope. “Is that true? Have they told him that?”

  Now Lenny was most definitely smiling, and there was cruelty in those dark, angled eyes. “You’d have to ask Mr. Simms.”

  That goddamned smile!

  “The Mr. Simms I can’t get in to see so I can ask him?”

  “Uh-huh. Same Mr. Simms.”

  “You tell Mr. Simms I feel used!” Melanie was aware she was out of control but couldn’t help herself. Her rage, her shame, were in charge. Spittle flew as she spoke, catching the sunlight and adding to her humiliation. “You tell him I risked my shitting life for him, and I feel used!”

  The big man gazed calmly down at her with disinterest. The smile only a shadow now. “That it?”

  Melanie glared fiercely at him. “That is goddamned it!”

  Lenny simply turned his huge bulk away from her and opened the tinted glass door to enter the lobby. He was part of Cold Cat’s security, probably his personal bodyguard, or one of them. His business with Melanie was finished.

  “Woman got a mouth on her,” she heard him remark to the doorman as the door swung closed.

  Melanie thought of making further trouble for the doorman but decided against it. She’d made enough of a fool of herself for one day—enough for the rest of her life.

  She stalked along the crowded sidewalk, gripping her purse tightly and swinging it almost as a weapon to clear a path for herself. She knew one thing—she would never again play the fool for any man. She hated all men, every single one of them. They were the enemy.

  And one in particular terrified her.

  Beam set aside his coffee cup after finishing a lunch of angel hair pasta in an Italian restaurant on Second Avenue. He glanced again at the forensics report on Judge Parker. The bullet wound to the head was the only injury to the judge and had proved instantly fatal. The bullet, still intact after penetrating the skull, was indeed a thirty-two caliber, and it matched the others that had been used in the Justice Killer murders. There wasn’t the slightest doubt that it was fired from the same gun.

  He doesn’t care if they match. He wants them to match. Likes to taunt. Helen the profiler is so right about that one.

  Beam’s mobile phone buzzed. He set aside the lab report and dug the phone from his pocket. Probably Nell or Loop; he’d assigned them to interview people close to the late Judge Parker. Drone work that would probably lead nowhere, but it had to be done. Every side road along the way had to be explored, because any one of them just might lead to a six-lane highway.

  But it was neither Nell nor Looper on the phone.

  At first Beam didn’t recognize the voice. Nola.

  “Beam, I need for you to come to the shop as soon as possible.” Her voice, always so level and without emotion, had a slight quaver in it.

  Fear?

  “You alone, Nola?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “No. As soon as possible.”

  “I can get a radio car to you within minutes.”

  “No, I want you.”

  “I’m on my way.” Beam signaled for the waiter.

  “The closed sign will be up,” Nola said, “but the door’s unlocked.”

  She broke the connection.

  On the wild drive to Things Past, Beam worked the phone’s keypad with one hand and called to talk to her again. He got only her machine with its recorded message. Nola but not Nola.

  44

  They were moving rapidly through the lobby. Carl Dudman couldn’t have felt better. He could see that it was a wonderful afternoon outside, with sunlight brightening his side of the street. He’d been on the phone most of the morning, and now it seemed as if his efforts were going to pay off and the agency would represent sales of a projected new West Side condominium tower.

  What real estate bubble?

  Dudman patted Mark the doorman on the shoulder as he passed. The considerable bulk of Chris Talbotson, his bodyguard, was in front of him. As soon as he’d cleared the door Mark was holding open, Chris’s head began to swivel. Dudman followed him outside into the clear, sun-washed air. The orange scaffolding was still up in front of the building, but new sidewalk had been poured and the fresh concrete looked pale and unspoiled.

  Chris had impressed upon Dudman that timi
ng was important. Chris would precede Dudman, open the waiting limo’s right rear door, and without hesitation Dudman would follow and duck as he approached the big car, then remain low and lean forward as he entered. Chris would quickly follow. All within seconds. All carefully choreographed.

  Gripping his black leather attaché case, Dudman lowered his head and made for the inviting dark sanctuary of the limo beyond its open door. He edged past Chris, placed one foot off the curb in the street, and began to duck into the limo. The traffic signal had changed up the street; he was vaguely aware of a string of cars rushing past, the smell of exhaust fumes that would dissipate as soon as he was inside the limo.

  It was the exact time that his foot touched the street and he was beginning his forward lean that he felt the sharp pain high on the right side of his chest.

  What?

  He was sitting awkwardly, one leg in the street extended beneath the limo, the other bent beneath his body. His attaché case had come open and papers were scattered all over the sidewalk.

  Did I fall? Slip off the curb?

  He knew Chris was trying to help him up, looming over and gripping him, but he couldn’t feel anything from the neck down.

  My suit…Ruined…

  Chris was talking, his face contorted, but Dudman heard nothing.

  “Chris, my papers…”

  No one reacted. He hadn’t made a sound.

  Then the pain in his chest was back, blossoming, exploding!

  And suddenly it wasn’t afternoon. It was dusk. Dark. Nighttime.

  The pain faded with the light.

  As it turned out, the shot had actually been a simple one. The street Dudman’s agency was on ran one way, so the limo had been on Justice’s left, the driver’s side of the car. The angle and opportunity were brief, but there, for just a few seconds, diagonally above the trunk of the limo, a shooting line straight to the target. Dudman. Deadman.

  Justice had time to lead Dudman crossing the wide sidewalk. The target paused as the limo door was opened. Dudman actually seemed to pose as he ducked his head preparing to enter the vehicle.

  Almost simultaneous to the shot, Justice managed to take his left hand from the wheel long enough to drop the plastic vial out the window into the street near the limo.