“It’s just a couple more blocks,” she said.
“Is the Bureau putting you up in one of their safe houses?” he asked.
She laughed. “You read too many spy books.”
“Spy movies. I own all the 007 films. I’m a James Bond freak.”
“But which James Bond?”
He stopped walking and looked at her with mock shock. “There is only one James Bond, my dear—”
“Sean Connery!” they said simultaneously. They shared a laugh and high-fived. But Lassiter was laughing only on the outside.
He was conflicted. Should he do her now, or should he wait until he could get her to his house—whenever that would be? He had come prepared, like a man who brings a condom on the first date, just in case. A fresh spinal needle with a three-foot plastic tube was coiled around his left ankle, the needle capped and taped to his skin. All he needed was a place.
“So where are you staying?” he asked. “I don’t know of any hotels in this neighborhood.”
“Cindy’s letting me stay in one of her co-ops. It’s on the market, but she’s letting me use it.”
592 West 94th, he thought. He knew Cindy McCleery’s portfolio very well.
“It must be a nice place,” he said. “Cindy has wonderful taste.”
“Actually it’s pretty modest. A small one-bedroom. She bought it for sentimental reasons.”
“Oh?”
“My parents had lived there in the sixties before we were born. Their hippie days.”
“Really.” The fire in his veins flared. “Your parents must have been together a long time.”
“Yeah, they were. Dad had a rep for being a wild man, but I really don’t think he ever cheated on her. Not seriously. People just assumed he slept with a different groupie every night because they were always hanging around, but Mom always went on tour with him. They took Cindy with them until I was born. I guess two kids on the road were a little too much.”
Lassiter had stopped listening. He was imagining the apartment. Natalie had lived there. Trisha said it was a small one-bedroom so Natalie had to have slept in that bedroom. His world suddenly shifted. He had gone to the trouble of recreating Natalie’s upstate New York bedroom in his townhouse, but this apartment might be just as good. Why not? It had been Natalie’s home once upon a time.
He imagined how it would happen. Trisha would invite him in. When they were in the apartment, she’d put her bag down somewhere, which would separate her from her gun. He hadn’t seen the gun, but he knew she carried one from the way she held her bag tucked tightly under her arm. He was reasonably confident that she had only one on her. A backup gun is usually carried in an ankle holster, and her jeans were too tight to conceal a bulge.
He’d subdue her—a blow to the head to stun her, maybe even knock her out. She was trained to fight, but she was very small. He must outweigh her by 60 or 70 pounds, he guessed. And she wasn’t a street agent. She didn’t arrest hardcore criminals every day of the week. Taking her wouldn’t be that difficult.
He hadn’t brought scarves, but she must have something at the apartment he could use. Worse came to worst, he could rip a sheet into strips. He’d done that before. In Chicago. A woman named Heidi, the one with the parakeets.
He’d have to gag her, and he didn’t like that idea. He’d gagged his other bleeders, but he hadn’t gagged her mother. But he’d have no choice. It was an apartment building, and other people could hear.
He went through the steps in his mind.
Gag her, prop her up on pillows, tie her to the bed, rip open her blouse.
Remove the tape from his ankle and get the spinal needle. Uncoil the tube and stretch it to straighten it.
Feel her skin where the chest meets the abdomen and locate the bottom edge of the breastbone. Using his finger as a guide, he’d pierce the flesh and point the needle up toward her heart. He’d keep pushing, nice and steady. Done right, it will go in like a hot knife through butter, no resistance from bones. He’d penetrate the pericardium to get to the heart itself. Minimal bleeding at this point, just a trickle from the initial prick.
He didn’t think Trisha would be one to scream or cry. She was tougher than that. Maybe she’d be silent. Natalie had been pretty quiet. He wanted Trisha to behave as much like her mother as possible.
Once the needle was in her heart, he’d wrap an edge of sheet around the end of the tube while he sucked on it. Not to drink it, no. To get the flow started otherwise the bleeding would be internal and he wouldn’t get to see it. He’d read up on surgical procedures online. He might have to wiggle the needle a bit to get an unobstructed flow. Some women flowed better than others. After sucking on the tube, he’d watch the blood crawl down, reluctant at first. Sometimes he really had to suck hard to get it started. When the blood was a couple of inches from the end of the tube, he’d bend it to stop the flow so he could wipe the part that had been on his lips. He was always careful not to leave a DNA calling card.
He’d then position the tube between Trisha’s legs and maybe stick more pillows or a bunched-up blanket behind her back so that her heart was higher than the end of the tube. That way her blood would trickle out and soak the bed. And he would watch as it seeped out—
“Gene? Gene? Are you okay?”
He snapped out of it, realizing he’d been lost in his own thoughts.
“Sorry,” he said, rubbing his temples. “I just got this terrible headache. I think it was being out in the sun at the Cloisters, then drinking red wine.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Her sympathetic expression was pure Natalie. His head throbbed for real with anticipation.
“You don’t happen to have any aspirin on you?” he asked.
Please don’t, he thought. Please don’t have any.
“I’m afraid not,” she said. “But I have some back at the apartment. We’re almost there.”
Hallelujah!
“Oh, no, that’s okay. I don’t want to impose. I’ll just find a bodega on Broadway and buy some there.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re in pain.”
“But I shouldn’t—”
“Hey, listen.” She stopped walking and looked him in the eye. “We had a very nice day together. I enjoyed myself. But this isn’t like I’m inviting you up for coffee and whatever comes after. Come up, I’ll give you a couple of aspirin and a glass of water, and then I’m throwing you out.” She gave him a sly grin. “This is the first date. Not the third.”
He worked up a weary nice-guy smile. “Understood.”
“Come on. It’s on the next block.”
Yes! he thought.
The sun had set, and the early evening sky was a dusky blue. A tiny silver three-quarter moon hung over the river like a voyeur’s peephole.
Chapter 13
Lassiter sat on the toilet, lid down, his pant leg rolled up, staring at the needle and tube wound around his ankle. His eyes were half-opened, his vision going in and out of focus as he tried to concentrate.
Do it now? Or do it later? He was having second thoughts.
Trisha was here now. Strike while the iron is hot. A bird in hand…
But he had so wanted to do it in “Natalie’s room” at his house. He had dreamed about doing it there. It was the setting of all his fantasies. Maybe he should wait.
But maybe he shouldn’t. He might not get this close again.
He picked at the edge of the tape with his fingernail.
My joy has no address, he thought. It lives in my head.
He picked and picked, peeling a corner off his skin.
Trisha stood in the cream-colored foyer just outside the bathroom door and made a face. Should she knock? Should she leave him be? Gene had been in there for at least fifteen minutes. He’d taken aspirin she’d given him, said th
ank you, and asked to use the bathroom before he left, but now she was worried. Maybe he was really sick. Maybe it was more than just a headache. Maybe it was food poisoning.
She opened her mouth to ask if he was okay, then stopped herself. This was awkward. She didn’t want him to think she was eager for him to get out. And if he was busy on the toilet, she should just leave him alone. But what if he needed help? She didn’t know what to do. But she figured she should stop hovering around the door. He could probably sense that she was there.
She went to the bedroom, sat on the double bed, and looked out the window at the rooftops next door. This building was taller than the next three, and she could see the silhouettes of their stout wooden water tanks in the murky light. Most older buildings in Manhattan had roof tanks to insure adequate water pressure. Her father had written his signature ballad, “Water in the Sky,” in this room. In 1969, when he was still a struggling unknown musician, her parents had spent a whole weekend in bed in support of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s second “bed in.” The outspoken Beatle and his wife had stayed in bed in a Montreal hotel for a week to promote world peace and invited reporters and film crews to document the event. Like Lennon, Michael had brought a guitar to bed and often said it was the most productive three days of songwriting in his life. He completed eleven songs, three of which went on to become monster hits. One night when Trisha and Cindy were giggly pre-teens, they figured out that Cindy had probably been conceived in this room on that weekend.
Trisha tried to imagine what this place had looked like back then. The walls were now a bland almond color. Knowing her parents, the walls had probably been pretty colorful and full of posters, paintings, drawings, and photographs. Her mom had been an excellent photographer back in the day, and her work had appeared in several major counter-culture magazines, including Ramparts and Crawdaddy .
A wave of sadness washed over Trisha. There had been so much creativity in these rooms, and now it was just a fading memory. Her mother was dead, her father hadn’t written a new song in at least ten years, and she’d abandoned music altogether. She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye, then suddenly jumped when she noticed Gene standing in the doorway.
“You startled me,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay.”
But he didn’t look okay. His face was flushed, and his eyes looked weird. The thousand-mile stare.
“You sure you’re okay?” She stood up. “You want to lie down for a while?”
“Trisha… I want…” His words trailed off as if he’d forgotten what he wanted to say. He stepped into the room and started again. “I want—”
The doorbell buzzed, interrupting him. Trisha knew from the sound that it was the buzzer just outside the door, not the one down in the lobby. Whoever it was buzzed again, then started knocking.
“Hang on,” she called out and put her finger to her lips, signaling for Gene to be quiet.
Who the hell was this? she wondered. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She remembered the text message she’d received, “WD REALLY LIKE TO KNOW U BETTER,” and her heart started to pound.
She whipped open the night-table drawer and pulled out a black 9mm Glock in a belt-clip holster. She dropped the holster on the bed and squeezed past him into the hallway, gripping the gun in both hands and pointing it toward the ceiling.
Gene looked surprised when he saw the gun.
Whoever it was knocked again.
She motioned with her head, wanting him to move out of the line of fire, but he just stood there, staring at her.
The intruder buzzed and knocked once more.
She put her shoulder to the wall next to the door. Her heart was beating double time.
“Who is it?” she called out, her finger tightening on the trigger. “What do you want?”
“It’s me,” a male voice responded. “Barry. I need to talk to you.”
She rolled her eyes and exhaled. I need Barry Krieger like a freaking hole in the head.
She lowered her gun and unlocked the door. As soon as she started to open it, Barry barged in. His suit was wrinkled, and his tie was unknotted.
“You ever think of calling ahead?” she said, making no attempt to hide her sarcasm.
“I was going to, but then I saw that crappy lock on the front door. All you need is a credit card to get in.”
“And so you couldn’t resist.”
“I wanted to show you how bad it is. You should call the super and have that replaced.”
She whispered in his face. “Do you practice being obnoxious, or does this just come natural?”
He threw up his hands in surrender. “Sorry, sorry, I should have called, but I’m stressed. We need to talk. This is important—” He stopped short when he noticed Gene standing in the bedroom doorway. Barry stood up to his full height, instantly oozing testosterone at the sight of another male.
“This is Gene Lassiter,” she said. “Gene, Barry Krieger.”
Gene held out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Barry hesitated before shaking hands. “Yeah, you too.” He titled his head back and narrowed his eyes, as suspicious as a Sicilian don.
She was happy that Gene was there and that Barry was making assumptions. Maybe he would stop bugging her about going out on a date.
Screams soared through Lassiter’s head. Who the hell is this guy? Why is he here? Lassiter became very aware of the tube and needle sticking out of his back pocket, covered by the tail of his polo shirt. He had a splitting headache for real. He had to get out of there.
“I should get going,” Gene said. “Thanks for the aspirin.” He moved toward the door, and Barry stepped aside to let him by. He glanced back at Trisha. “See ya.”
“Do you have to go so soon?” she said. She really didn’t want to be alone with Barry.
“Yeah, I’m afraid so. I’ve got an early morning tomorrow. Bye.” He headed for the elevators
She felt deflated. After having such a great day together, she expected a more enthusiastic goodbye. Not a kiss, not with Barry there, but at least the promise of another date. An “I’ll call you” would have been nice.
Thanks a lot, Barry. You scared him off.
Barry waited until he heard the elevator doors closing. “Boy, that was awkward.” He closed the apartment door. “Who was that?”
“A friend,” she said and left it at that. Let him wonder, damn it. “So what’s so urgent?”
“Listen, you have to get that profile together ASAP. My butt is on the line here.”
“Barry, I promised Colleen Franco I’d have it done by next Friday and I will. End of story.”
He waved his hands frantically. “Forget about Franco. This is bigger than her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is serious, Trisha. This is Bank Squad in Bismarck serious.”
Bank Squad in Bismarck, North Dakota, was FBI code for career hell, a dead-end post that led nowhere.
“Explain,” she said.
“Those freaking women at the Orchid Club. They’re all well connected, and one of them knows the Director personally. She called him and complained that we could be doing a lot more to catch Drac.”
“And don’t tell me—you got a call from the Director’s office to put a fire under your butt.” She’d heard this before. It was boring and predictable. On every serial killer investigation she’d ever worked, there was always at least one influential local who would call headquarters and try to use his or her pull to make magic happen. “Don’t get so excited,” she said. “It always plays out this way. You—”
“No, there’s more. Another one of these women is friends with the First Lady. Mrs. Houghton. Big campaign contributor.”
“Oh.” Trisha could guess the rest.
“That’s r
ight. It got to the President—the freaking President!—and he called the Director, wanting to know what the hell was going on. Do you understand what this means? A President hasn’t gotten directly involved in a Bureau investigation since… since Herbert Hoover complained about Al Capone. That was, like, eighty years ago!”
“Calm down. You’re spinning out of control.”
“How can I be calm? This could be the end of my career. Yours too. Don’t you realize that?”
“Barry, I will have a profile ready by next week. We will get this bastard. Trust me. We will.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Trust me.”
But her confidence was a false front. She was worried. The Indian stripes on Ginger Wexler’s cheek had been bothering her. The evidence was slim but undeniable. Drac could be the person who had killed her mother, and this might be her only chance to solve that murder. She couldn’t afford to mess up.
Lassiter stood on the sidewalk across the street and stared up at Trisha’s apartment. Her friend Barry was still up there no doubt. He took the coiled tube out of his back pocket and slipped it into his pants at the small of his back. He was disappointed but also relieved. He wanted to bleed her in Natalie’s room at his place, nowhere else.
He started walking toward West End Avenue to find a taxi. He glanced back at the lights in her windows.
Back to Plan A, he thought.
Chapter 14
Lassiter was a man on fire as he walked up to Adele Cardinalli’s apartment building. He needed a bleeder. Badly. The doorman held the door open. Linebacker large, shaved head, dark complexion, small gold hoops in his ears, blue blazer, black turtleneck. More like a bouncer than a doorman. Lassiter walked in and went to his podium.
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