by John Lutz
“Take-out food?” he asked Beam.
Beam nodded. “Chinese. Neighborhood restaurant. Delivery guy’s over there.” He motioned with his head toward the patient and stricken Raymond, still seated on the bench. “He made his usual delivery to Knee High, only difference was, when he got here the door was open and Knee High was the way you see him.”
“He the one raised the alarm?”
“Yeah. Name’s Raymond Carerra. He went down in the elevator and alerted a uniform. Alfonse, over there.”
“Good man, Alfonse,” da Vinci said. Ignoring Nell and Looper, he looked piercingly at Beam. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, not unless there were two bodies—Knee High’s, and the Justice Killer’s.”
Beam didn’t have an answer, or offer one.
“There’s a god-awful smell in here,” Looper said. “Anybody mind if I smoke a cigarette?”
“Everybody in this city minds,” da Vinci said. “From the mayor on down.”
Nell gave Looper a cautioning look, tempered by a slight smile.
“How do you figure all this?” da Vinci asked Beam, making a swinging motion with his arm to take in the entire crime scene.
“The killer somehow found out Knee High was going to get take-out delivery,” Beam said, “and either beat the delivery here or was already in the building. He knew Knee High was expecting dinner and would open the door because of the call-up on the intercom—then pop. Killer got here to knock on Knee High’s door before the deliveryman. Must’ve used a silencer. Nobody else on this floor, or above or below, heard a gunshot.”
“Looks like he used a thirty-two,” da Vinci said, glancing over at Knee High.
“Could be,” Beam agreed. “Once he shot Knee High, the killer must have moved fast to get away before word of the shooting spread. Probably he was going down on one elevator while the deliveryman was coming up on the other. He’d have no more than a few minutes to get clear of the building.”
“Or get back inside an apartment on this floor, or maybe even one of the other floors.”
“We’re covering that,” Beam said. “I have uniforms making inquiries. I think it’s more likely the killer’s miles away from here by now. That’s been the pattern.”
“You’re probably right,” da Vinci said. He looked at Nell and Looper, who’d been standing quietly by, respecting rank. “Let’s hear what Frick an’ Frack have to say.”
Beam hoped one or the other would have something. So far, Knee High’s death was simply another clean job by the Justice Killer. That he’d managed to outsmart and elude so much security, what amounted to a police trap, would make the bastard that much more of a hero. Odd how the public rooted for the underdog, even if it was a jackal.
“The doorman was one of ours, undercover,” Nell said. “He’d seen Raymond the deliveryman here before, had checked him out, and knew he was genuine, so he told him to use the intercom and go on up with the take-out order.”
“At this point the killer must’ve already been in the building,” da Vinci said. “On his way to do Knee High.”
“Question is,” Beam said, “how did he know Knee High had a delivery coming?”
“Maybe found out at the restaurant,” da Vinci said. “He knew Knee High got take-out from there, so he hung around the place till he heard a delivery was on the way. Got himself in gear and left the restaurant before Raymond.”
“Except that no one entered the building for ten minutes or so before Raymond got here with the food,” Looper said.
“Doorman tell you that?”
“Yeah. Our guy and the other one.”
“Other one?” Beam asked.
“Working at the building across the street. Name’s, believe it or not, Dorchester. He saw Raymond enter the building. Then he saw a uniformed cop leaving the building just after the time Knee High got shot.”
Beam felt a twinge of uneasiness.
A homicide investigation goes where it goes.
“This Dorchester’s a sharp guy,” Looper continued. “He said he’d gotten used to seeing all the cops on the block the last several days and nights. He wouldn’t have thought much of this cop, except at the time he was leaving, most of the other cops he saw were entering the building. Dorchester said cops were flooding in.”
“That would’ve been right after Raymond raised the alarm,” da Vinci said.
Beam looked at Looper. “You mean this cop stuck in Dorchester’s mind just because he was leaving while other cops were going in?”
“No, something else. He said this cop wasn’t dressed quite like the others. He couldn’t put his finger on it at first, then he figured it out. It’s a hot night, and the cop he saw was the only one wearing a jacket with his uniform, a kind of baggy blue or black jacket.”
“One large enough to conceal a gun with a silencer,” da Vinci said.
“Something else Dorchester said was the cop’s uniform cap was a little different. He couldn’t say why—like it didn’t quite fit him right, maybe, was all I could get out of him.”
“But he saw a uniformed cop?” da Vinci asked.
“Definitely,” Looper said. “No doubt in Dorchester’s mind about that.”
“He mention this cop’s description beyond the uniform?”
“Yes, sir. Average size, average weight.”
Da Vinci snorted in disappointment, as if most killers were giants or midgets and they’d caught a bad break.
“That’s it?” Beam asked.
“’Fraid so, sir.”
“Sounds like the cop’s uniform was a costume,” Nell said.
“I sure as hell hope so,” da Vinci said. He looked at Knee High’s body, Knee High with a neat .32 caliber-size hole in his head, and shook his own head in frustration. “This psycho’s so smooth at what he does, we never seem to get any kind of traction.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Beam told him. “We know how the Justice Killer managed to sidestep security to get to Knee High, and how he might have blended in to make his getaway. And maybe he also dressed as a cop to get to Cold Cat or some of the others.”
“It’s possible,” da Vinci said. “But we’ve got just one eyeball account from across the street. We’re not even sure he dressed as a cop at all.”
“It’s something, though,” Beam said. “We’ll canvass costume and used clothing stores in the city, find out who sold or rented a cop uniform during the last several months.”
“What if he’s a real cop?” Nell asked.
“We’ll run through the costume and rental shops before going down that road,” Beam said.
“She’s right, though,” da Vinci said. “It’s a friggin’ appalling possibility, but the Justice Killer might actually be a cop. We have to admit it makes a certain kind of sense. There’s plenty of resentment in the department about the revolving-door nature of the city’s judicial system.”
“Ask Helen if she can think of a serial killer who was also a cop,” Beam suggested.
“Point taken,” da Vinci said.
Nell thought, Ask Helen if there’s ever a first time for everything.
63
“He wants more than ever to be caught,” Helen said.
She was standing near the photo of a discredited former police commissioner who’d displayed no such compulsion. But then, he hadn’t been a mass murderer. Something of a hero, in fact. Justice did have a way of catching up with the most wily.
They were in da Vinci’s office. It was too warm, and there was an unpleasant hint of stale sweat and desperation in the air, the kind of atmosphere Beam usually associated with interrogation rooms. Da Vinci was seated behind his desk. Beam and Nell were in the padded chairs angled toward the desk, Looper was standing near Helen, playing with the button on his shirt pocket that might have held a pack of cigarettes.
“You told us last week he was coming unraveled,” da Vinci said to Helen, “yet he managed to outsmart us and get to Knee High.”
“God rest his little soul,” Nell
said sarcastically.
Da Vinci glared at her. “Not friggin’ funny, Nell.”
Nell nodded. Da Vinci was right, even though he was the boss.
“He’ll have to kill again soon,” Helen said. “He’s hooked on it. He’ll need it more and more often.”
Da Vinci wiped his face with an invisible rag and looked pained. “Coming undone, hooked on killing, feeling the pressure. You’ve been pretty much right all the way down the line, Helen, but that’s not the picture I’m getting of this guy. He kills only those he considers to be the bad guys, who for one reason or another beat the system, or helped someone beat it.”
“There’s an endless supply of those,” Beam pointed out.
“He can kill as often or seldom as he chooses,” Helen said. “And he no longer feels he’s simply meting out justice. Whether he knows it consciously or not, he kills to avenge imagined wrongs, but he also kills for pleasure.”
“Sexual pleasure,” Looper said. “Like all the rest of his kind.”
“Uh-huh,” Helen said. “It’s a turn on for him, and he’s reached the point where he has to admit it to himself.”
“What we need from you,” Beam told her, “is a good guess at who might be the next victim.”
Helen looked thoughtful, crossing her arms beneath her tiny, tall-woman’s breasts and staring at the floor. “The more unraveled our guy becomes, the more difficult it is to predict his next intended victim. Self-revelation can be an agonizing, ongoing event. He’s in the stage where his own perverted logic is seriously breaking down as he’s developing a different, undeniable concept of himself. One he doesn’t like. That’s why he might make a mistake.”
“Do you figure him to go after a high-profile victim?” Looper asked.
“Could be,” Helen said. “He thinks he has an adoring public to play to.”
“He does,” da Vinci said. “Read the editorial page in this morning’s Times. Fifty-six percent of their readers view the Justice Killer as a hero. Seventy percent want Adelaide Starr released.”
“Do they want more courts, better staffed, and with more judges?” Beam asked.
“Wasn’t in the poll.”
“What did they think of the NYPD?”
“Don’t ask.”
“It’s a thankless job,” Looper said.
Everyone stared at him.
“I wish I had a cigarette,” he said.
“Another thing that’s coming up empty,” da Vinci said, “is trying to trace that cop costume.”
“It’s only been four days,” Beam said. “We’ve covered most of the costume rental shops. Now we’re checking S&M suppliers.”
“Huh?”
“Sado-masochism,” Looper explained, still playing with his pocket.
“Cop uniforms are sometimes used in…sexual psychodramas,” Nell said.
Da Vinci stared at her. “How would you know this shit, Nell?”
“I read.”
“We all read,” Looper said.
Nell shot him a look. Thanks.
“The other possibility,” Helen said, “is that the uniform’s genuine, and the Justice Killer is a cop.”
“Just what every cop on the force dreads,” Beam said. He turned to Helen. “A bent cop? Does it fit your theory?”
“It could. Lots of frustration goes with the job.”
“Tell me about it,” Looper said.
“The revolving door of crime and courtroom,” da Vinci said. “Sometimes it makes me wanna kill somebody myself, but I can’t see a real cop doing this.”
“It isn’t likely,” Beam said, “but eventually we might have to focus on the possibility.”
“Hell to pay in the department,” da Vinci said.
“Other things might turn up in that kind of internal investigation, derail a lot of promising careers.”
“We’ve both seen it happen,” da Vinci said. He sat forward in his chair. “But we’re not to that stage yet, and we’re gonna nail this Justice Killer prick before we start pointing fingers at each other. When that kinda thing starts happening, nobody wins.”
“Adelaide Starr does,” Helen said.
Da Vinci clutched his throat as if he might be having trouble breathing. “Stay on the costume thing,” he said to Beam in a choked voice. “Make it a goddamned costume and not a real police uniform.”
“We’ve still got plenty of places to check,” Looper said.
Da Vinci nodded. “Yeah, I know. S&M suppliers.”
Nell said. “There’s another possibility.” She found herself actually feeling sorry for da Vinci, who’d staked his career on this investigation. He was looking at her like a dog that had just been whipped and then offered a treat.
“There is?”
“Theatrical suppliers,” Nell said.
Da Vinci had been expecting more. He slumped back in his chair, uncheered by Nell’s note of hope.
“That it?” Beam asked da Vinci, wanting to get to work.
“It,” da Vinci said. Under his breath, he muttered, “Theatrical suppliers…”
As they were filing out of his office, he added, “Break a leg.”
“Those the only cop costumes?” Nell asked.
The man behind the counter in Ruff Play, in the East Village, said, “The ones for women come with high-heeled boots.”
“Sure,” Nell said. “I used to wear six-inch heels when I was in uniform.”
“Now there’s something to contemplate.” He smiled at her. He’d said his name was “Erbal,” like in the garden.
“Spelled with an aitch?” Nell had asked.
“Exactly, but pronounced the old-fashioned way.”
He was in his thirties, about six feet tall but terribly thin. Even features, sharply defined cheekbones, dark chin stubble trying to be a goatee. Maybe good looking, if he filled out.
Nell pointed to the NYPD-like uniforms displayed on wooden hangers. “The swastika, that on all the shirts and caps?”
“We deal in fantasy here, Detective.”
“I can see that.” Nell let her gaze roam over the leather goods, vibrators, and shrink-wrapped dildos arranged on a pegboard behind the counter.
“If it means anything,” Herbal said, “you don’t look like a fascist to me.”
“Nevertheless,” Nell said, “I’m going to need the names of people who bought or rented cop costumes in the past few months.”
“You can understand, a place like this, we don’t like giving out our clientele’s names.”
“You can understand, a place like this, we can close it down in a wink.”
“My, you can be dominating.”
“Even arresting.”
“We don’t rent here, only sell. And to tell you the truth, Bad Cop has kind of gone out of style. Though you could certainly bring it off, if you’re interested in buying a uniform. I’d alter it so it was skin tight.”
“Thanks, but I see enough rough stuff in my work.”
“It can be more a mental thing.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
Herbal excused himself and went behind a curtain that led to a space behind the pegboard. Nell tried to stop looking at some kind of electrified dildo that featured attached but independently movable rubber protrusions. The thing was seventy-five dollars. It must do something.
Herbal was back with a slip of paper, and a yellow stub of pencil that he tucked behind his ear as if he were playing a newspaperman in an old movie.
“Two sales of Bad Cop in the last three months,” he said. “Two customers, a man and a woman. Here are their names and addresses. As you can see, they live in the neighborhood.”
“Do you know them?”
“Not personally. I’ve seen the woman around. And the man comes in here now and then and buys something.”
“What kind of something?”
“Magazines, usually. Sometimes a book.” Herbal pointed to a rack of magazines and paperbacks.
“What’s the subject, usually?”
“Bondage and discipline, S&M, that sort of thing.”
“Male on female?”
“Yeah.”
“And the woman?”
“I don’t know her orientation. She bought the uniform, and that’s the only time I’ve seen her in here. Other’n that, just passed her on the street.” Herbal bit his lower lip. “Detective…”
Nell waited.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell them where you got their names, or how you found out they bought the uniforms.”
“I can try to keep that confidential, Herbal, depending on where the investigation leads.”
He grinned, greatly relieved. “If there’s anything you might need…” He made an encompassing gesture with his right arm.
“Maybe that electric dildo,” Nell said. “The foot-long one that looks like it’s grown warts. Is it waterproof?”
“Detective!”
Nell laughed, thanked Herbal for his cooperation, and headed for the door.
“Remember,” said Herbal’s voice behind her, “confidential.”
“If I have to name my source,” Nell said, “I’ll tell them I tortured it out of you.”
“Detective!”
Nell thought it was fun sometimes, being a cop in New York.
64
Looper figured he’d make one more call before lunch. Proper Woman was listed as a company that specialized in theatrical props and other supplies, and it was located in Tribeca, near a Greek restaurant that served great baklava, which to Looper was almost as satisfying as a cigarette after a meal.
The entrance to Proper Woman wasn’t impressive. Nor was the building itself, an old brick and stone five-story structure a block off Broadway. The inside of the building was warmer than outside. In fact, the damned thing was a kiln. Looper wiped sweat from his face with a wadded handkerchief.
He had to trudge up a narrow flight of stairs to a converted freight elevator, which he rode to the top floor.
What he saw when he stepped out of the elevator was a vast, sunlit array of…everything. And it was cooler here. There was a system of shafts and vents suspended from the ceiling. Looper gazed out over sets of furniture, a suit of armor, long rows of ornate chandeliers, cases of paste jewelry, racks of firearms, medieval weapons, a rowboat, an antique car, staircases leading nowhere, a section of white picket fence, and racks of clothing. Including various uniforms.