With Mulvaney, Mooney always looked for the rosy flush of apoplexy. This usually informed him that things were okay, basically normal. That morning when they were brought in to see him, he was ashen. His skin was the color of parchment and he sat slumped over his desk, so limp that if you happened to nudge him he might just topple over.
“Look a bit peaked, Clare,” Mooney said with the breeziest insouciance he could muster under the circumstances. “Looks like you et something.”
Mulvaney looked up at them, his jaw slack, his eyes bleary, as though he’d peered too long into a blast furnace. “Sit down.”
There was no starch in his voice, no snarl, no four-letter words,’ all of which would have been customary and welcome and put them at their ease. Instead, there was an ominous quiet, and for the first time since Mooney had known him, Mulvaney looked defeated.
“I’ve been in with the commissioner this morning,” he said. “I don’t have to go into details about what it was like. Suffice it to say, he’s unhappy about the way things are going.”
“I know. You told me all this in April.”
“Well, now it’s August and I’m telling you again.”
He paused to let the solemnity of the event seep in.
“Now, listen, Clare —”
“No, you listen. Let me finish. Then we’ll hear your side.”
He looked at Pickering, then at Mooney, then back and forth for a while. “No doubt, you heard the CBS editorial on the six o’clock news last night. I’m sure you heard they were out beating the drum for the old man’s resignation.”
“That old devil blowtorch again, eh?” Mooney quipped.
“Right. And you know where it’s pointed now, don’t you?”
“I noticed you were sitting kind of funny there, Clare — like up on one cheek.”
“Spare me the funny stuff, will you, Frank.”
“Sorry,” Mooney replied, trying not to look too worried.
“Let me finish, please.”
There was something so weary and beaten in his voice, Mooney grew genuinely alarmed.
“I’m sure what I have to say is not going to displease you.” He poured a glass of water from a carafe on his desk and drank slowly. Mooney watched him while he regained his train of thought. “No one is going to shove a blowtorch under your ass, Frank. Given the fact that you’re a little more than a year from retirement, you’re perfectly safe. As of this moment, you have ninety days to wind up this investigation on the so-called Shadow Dancer case. That puts you somewheres in the middle of November. If there’s nothing tangible by then —”
“Tangible?”
“A suspect, or suspects, fully identified …” Mulvaney’s eyes narrowed. “Barring that, then Eddie Sylvestri of the Nineteenth will at that time take full charge of the investigation.”
Concluding the announcement with a small flick of his upraised wrist, Mulvaney popped several Maalox into his mouth and chewed gloomily. “Oughta make you very happy, Frank. You’re back chasing pickpockets and three-card-monte dealers. All roller-coaster, no-sweat duty from here on in.”
Mooney sat there, staring at him, feeling as though he’d been kicked in the stomach.
“Why?” he asked, when he’d caught his second breath. “Why dump me just when we’re starting to make some real progress?”
“Not real enough, my friend. And not nearly fast enough.” Mulvaney shuffled through a stack of night reports on his desk. “The commissioner is not about to sit around and take heat from City Hall and the media without any real progress to show. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed it yet, Frank, but this city has a way of getting very jumpy in emergencies, and ten million people jumping all at once tend to have a seismic effect. Like something of the order of ten megatons.”
“But why Sylvestri? Why him?”
A bitter smile flickered at the corners of Mulvaney’s lips. “Because everybody knows your great regard for him.”
“He’s a jerk. He’s a mouthbreather. There’s ten pounds of suet between his ears where his brain oughta be.”
“You’ve got ninety days, Frank. You just might beat him out yet. But for now I’d say he’s the odds-on favorite.” He was smiling again, but it was a tired smile. There was no great cheer in it. Then, rather grimly, he added: “The commissioner authorized him to form a new fifty-man special task force.”
That was the breaking straw. “So what you’re saying is the decision’s already made. Sylvestri will take over in ninety days whether I’ve got something tangible or not.” Mulvaney sat at his desk staring down at the night reports and doing his best to ignore him. “I’m sorry, Frank. This wasn’t my decision. I warned you about this, didn’t I? You’re out. Sylvestri’s in.” He glanced at Pickering as if surprised to see him still there. “Rollo, you, of, course, will be reassigned to Sylvestri’s group for the duration of the investigation.”
It was spoken with the kind of finality intended to signal the end of an unsatisfactory interview.
Mooney stood up. “You think that’s it?”
“Frank.” Mulvaney’s voice was tired. “You’ve already had one coronary.”
“I’m still on this job,” Mooney shouted.
“You are. For three more months.”
“Sylvestri can head it. But I’m still on it.”
“Sylvestri doesn’t want you on it,” Mulvaney said wearily. He could barely look the detective in the eye. “Take my word for it, Frank.” His voice was still quiet but this time it had an edge of threat to it. “If after ninety days you continue to mess around in this thing against my authority, the commissioner, who still retains his fondness for you, will find that fondness wearing thin.”
“Meaning?” Mooney hovered over his desk glaring down at him. The chief of detectives didn’t bat an eye.
“Meaning, butt out — or you’re gonna find yourself out on the street thirteen months still shy of that full pension.”
“You say he’s been up here before?”
“That’s right.”
“How often?”
“I don’t know. But you know how things sometimes come back to you. All of a sudden, like that. Things you think are gone forever.”
“Sure. Like something happening today causing a lot of things that happened long ago to become suddenly all related. Like a chain of events. Something like that?”
“Yeah. Exactly. That’s right. How nice you put it.” The old man laughed lightly. A look of gratitude shone from his rheumy eyes. “That’s exactly it. What you described. Excuse me. Good evening, Mr. Wexler.” Mr. Carlucci doffed his cap to a portly gentleman in bold plaids just turning into the revolving doors. He smiled and resumed his conversation with the young man who said his name was Hoskins and that he was a reporter for a large newspaper in Houston.
“And 1 tell you something else, Mr. Hopkins —”
“Hoskins.”
“Oh, that’s right. Hoskins. I beg your pardon.” Mr. Carlucci spoke with a lilting Neopolitan accent. In his green doorman’s livery with its gold frogging and epaulets, he looked like a cross between a Stromboli fisherman and a Gilbert and Sullivan vice admiral. “I seen this guy before.”
“Well, sure. That’s what you’ve been telling me. You saw him standing out there across the street a couple of times. Right.”
“Sure. More than a couple of times. That’s right. But I don’t mean just that. I mean, long before. I had a good look at this fellow across the way down there on the corner. I know him from somewhere. Don’t ask me where. I just can’t place it.” Mr. Carlucci slapped his head hard, nearly dislodging his doorman’s cap. It was his way of jarring loose his impacted memory.
A look of mounting curiosity bloomed in the young man’s features. “How long ago?”
“Oh, way back. Way back, Mr. Hoskins.”
“How long you been working as doorman here?”
“Forty years.” A look of almost childlike pride suffused the old gentleman’s face. “I come here forty
years ago, last Sunday. They give me a big party, Mr. Rothstein.”
“Mr. Rothstein?”
“Mr. Rothstein and his partners. The landlords here. They own the building. They own lotsa buildings in the area. Your finest addresses. All carriage trade. Eight sixty Fifth. Nine seventy-two Madison. Six sixty Park. I mean the best. Your top of the line. Fine gentleman, Mr. Rothstein. They give me a big party here. Champagne. Hors d’oeuvres.”
“Forty years is a long time on one job,” the young man remarked.
Mr. Carlucci glowed with satisfaction. “How old you think I am?”
“Fifty. Maybe, tops, fifty-five.”
“I’m gonna be seventy in another two weeks.”
“Seventy?” The young man stood back and reexamined the doorman in the bright warm lights from the lobby. “You don’t look any seventy to me.”
The doorman flung his chest out and pounded it, attesting to his general soundness. In the next moment he grew suddenly downcast. “Gonna have to retire now. Law says you gotta retire at seventy.”
“Did you tell any of this to the police?” the reporter asked, sensing that Mr. Carlucci was on the verge of one of those dizzying flights of circumlocution.
Mr. Carlucci appeared puzzled. “What?”
“That this guy who was here the other night had been around here before, and that you think you recognize him from maybe someplace else? You didn’t say that to the police?”
The old man shook his head vehemently. “No — that’s just it. Like I told you. None of this ever hit me till maybe two, three days after the police come up here to question me. They questioned me maybe two, three hours.”
“And you never called them back to tell them?”
“No. Should I?” Mr. Carlucci was suddenly alarmed as if told he’d violated the law. “I mean, it all come back to me in a kind of flash days later. But I never thought to call the police ‘cause I still can’t even place the guy. You don’t think they could give me trouble?”
“No.” Mr. Hoskins waved the possibility aside, banishing all of the old man’s anxieties in a trice. “Forget it.” But even as he spoke, something shrewd and a bit calculating hardened the young man’s dark pleasant features. “As a matter of fact, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t mention any of this to anyone. Like, I mean, other reporters … By the way, any other reporters come up here to interview you?”
“Sure. Sure.” Mr. Carlucci’s eyes widened. “Day after the incident I had four fellas up here, all standing in line just waiting to talk to me. Poor Miss Bender.” His eyes suddenly glistened. “I can still hardly believe it. What a lovely young lady. Always smiling. Always laughing. Always give me a hundred dollars at Christmas. Fifty bucks when I go on vacation … Didn’t you read none of them articles?”
“Course I read them. That’s how I got your name and address.” The reporter seemed irritated by even the mere suggestion that he hadn’t. “But you’re certain you never told these reporters or the police anything about recognizing this guy or anything?”
“Nothing. Like I told you, I didn’t remember it then. Just like I told my missus the other night — this guy’s face keeps flashing through my head. I know him from somewhere.”
Mr. Hoskins put his arm around the old man’s shoulders and looked around to make certain they were not being overheard. “This could be a big opportunity for me.” The reporter’s eyes opened wide to emphasize the point. “Very big.”
“Sure. Sure.” Mr. Carlucci lowered his voice to demonstrate that he grasped the importance of the point.
“You understand?”
“Sure, I understand.”
“I mean, what you told me here tonight. This could be a big break. Like a scoop for me over all the other papers.”
Mr. Carlucci’s excited laugh conveyed an air of conspiracy. He winked. “Sure. This could be your big break. I like to see a young fellow like you get ahead.”
“I’ve got an idea.”
“Sure, sure.”
“If you say this guy comes back here from time to time …”
“That’s right.” Mr. Carlucci’s head nodded with each affirmation.
“How often would you say he comes back?”
“Oh, jeez.” The old man drew back, somewhat astonished by the question. “I couldn’t say.”
Catching the disappointment in the reporter’s eye, he grew apologetic. “Nothing regular, see? Just from time to time, is all. He’ll just come and stand out there across the street, or sit on the bench, is all.”
“You’re sure it’s the same guy?”
“Oh, sure. Like I tell you, I know the face from somewhere. That drawing the police artist made in the papers: that don’t look nothing like him. The artist come up here to talk to me.” Mr. Carlucci’s chest was swelling again. “I give him the whole description. Perfect.” He threw his hands up in a gesture of Italian futility. “It don’t look nothing like him, what he drew. How could they go so wrong?”
The reporter’s youthful geniality appeared to slip and now he bore down. “This guy … does he always come at night, or does he sometimes come in the day?”
“Always dusk,” Mr. Carlucci fired back without hesitation. Smiling, he held both hands up to the sky as if to indicate the precise conditions of light. “And he’ll sit over there on that bench, third from the corner. Or else he’ll stand right out at the curb and stare up at the building. Reason I notice him is ‘cause Mr. Rothstein always tells us to be on the watch for people like that — strangers who look like they don’t belong here, like they’re casing the joint.”
“Look,” said Mr. Hoskins. “If I were to come up here a couple of nights a week for the next month or so, and just sort of sit out there myself…”
“Yeah?”
“Like I was taking the air.”
“Sure.” Mr. Carlucci winked as he caught the drift of the young man’s plan.
“What I need from you …”
“Yeah?”
“Is that you just pay no attention to me. Ignore me. Right?”
“Right,” said the old man with great enthusiasm, but it was clear that he was slightly puzzled.
“Unless he shows up.”
The light went on in the old gentleman’s eyes. “Okay. Sure. Now I get you.”
“If I’m just sitting there and he shows up, just step off the curb, and wave your hand and whistle sort of like you’re hailing a cab for someone. Like that.” The reporter did it several times just to show him.
“Sure.” Mr. Carlucci giggled gleefully. “Sure.”
“Are we in business? Do we have a deal?”
“Sure. You bet, young fella. I wanna get this creep bad as you. Poor Miss Bender. Lovely young lady. Give me a hundred dollars every Christmas.” His voice trailed off in a little whine, but Hoskins headed him off before the lamentations could begin anew.
“And not a word to any reporters or the police.”
“Not a word.”
“This is our little secret.” Hoskins pumped the old man’s rough, red paw. “I’ll be back up here tomorrow around dusk.”
“That’s right, Mr. Hopkins. You bet. Around dusk.”
“Now I want to take a walk through the park along the same path that young woman walked that evening. See if I can learn something. We’re gonna nail this guy, Mr. Carlucci. You and me …”
“Oh, I wanna get that son of a bitch, you’ll pardon the expression.”
“I understand what you’re saying. Believe me, I feel that way too. I’ve got to go now,” the young man said and pointed across the brightly lit, heavily trafficked avenue. “You say she walked the dog right through that entrance there?”
“That’s right. Right through those two stone columns and started north.”
“Okay.” Hoskins patted the old man’s arm. “Here I go.”
The young man started off into the crowded, dazzling night.
“Carlucci,” the old man shouted after him. “You remember how to spell it?”
/>
Long after the reporter had left, Mr. Carlucci wondered about him. Something about the young man troubled him — troubled him to the point of distraction. He wondered why in heaven’s name a nice-looking young fellow like that, a reporter and all that for a big-time city newspaper, couldn’t spend some money and get his teeth fixed.
Warren Mars moved into the darkness of the park where a few joggers and dog walkers straggled home through the quickening shadows. Still smoldering at the impertinence of this person who had the temerity to imitate him, he now felt a sudden elation at what he’d learned from the doorman. His feet trod north up the winding bench-lined walk, along the same fateful course taken by Caroline Bender nearly a week before.
Several days earlier when the TV people and all the press had proclaimed that the infamous Dancer had struck again in Central Park, Warren had flown into a rage. Oddly enough, he was not half as troubled by the fact that he’d been wrongly accused of crimes he hadn’t committed as he was by the idea that someone out there was imitating him. That infuriated him. He felt personally violated as if someone, some perfect stranger out there, was attempting to steal his identity.
News of the murder of the Bender girl in Central Park, found naked and crammed down a sewer and attributed to him, caused in him something akin to self-righteous indignation. Someone had copied his method in an attempt to cash in on all of the celebrity he’d achieved over the past year or so. Why the police couldn’t see how vastly different these crimes were in both style and execution was a mystery to him. An infuriating mystery at that.
He, Warren, had never sexually abused anyone for mere fleshly gratification. The “sexy” stuff for him was secondary. Strictly kid stuff. For him it was the lucre, the potential for sizable financial gain that drew him to the hunt. When he’d done the Bailey girl, he’d taken jewelry and cash. He was a professional. He could never be deflected by kid’s play. This stranger, this impostor, never took anything from his victims. He was in it just for kicks. There was no art to what he did, no premeditation prior to execution. All of his actions had a spur-of-the-moment quality about them, sheer impulse. They were artless, whereas he, Warren, gave a good deal of attention and planning to the task at hand. Everything was worked out in advance to the last detail. That’s why he’d succeeded so stunningly. He liked to be called the Shadow Dancer. That was poetic and a bit creepy. But this poseur, this cheap impostor, grieved him greatly.
Shadow Dancers Page 14