Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense: The Rosary Girls, the Skin Gods, Merciless, Badlands

by Richard Montanari

  “And I’m Brad Pitt,” Kilbane said.

  Due to his partial lip, Brad came out Mrad.

  Byrne ignored the attitude. For the moment. “The reason we’re here is that, in the course of an investigation we’re working on, we ran across something in one of your establishments we’d like to talk to you about,” he said. “You are the owner of The Reel Deal on Aramingo?”

  Kilbane said nothing. He sipped his coffee. Stared straight ahead.

  “Mr. Kilbane?” Jessica said.

  Kilbane turned his gaze to her. “I’m sorry, what did you say your name was again, honey?”

  “Detective Balzano,” she said.

  Kilbane leaned a little closer, running his eyes up and down her body. Jessica was glad she wore jeans and not a skirt today. Still, she felt like she needed a shower.

  “I mean your first name,” Kilbane said.

  “Detective.”

  Kilbane smirked. “Cute.”

  “Are you the owner of The Reel Deal?” Byrne asked.

  “Never heard of it,” Kilbane said.

  Byrne kept his cool. Barely. “I’m going to ask you one more time. But you should be aware that three is my limit. After three, we move the party to the Roundhouse. And my partner and I like to party well into the evening. In fact, some of our preferred guests have been known to stay in that cozy little room overnight. We like to call it Hotel Homicide.”

  Kilbane took a deep breath. There was always a moment with tough guys when they had to weigh the posture against the outcome. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s one of my businesses.”

  “We believe that one of the tapes available at that store might contain evidence of a rather serious crime. We believe that someone may have taken the tape off the shelf within the past week or so and recorded over it.”

  Kilbane did not visibly react to this at all. “Yeah? And?”

  “Can you think of anyone who might have done something like that?” Byrne asked.

  “Who, me? I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “Well, we’d appreciate it if you’d give this matter some thought.”

  “Is that right?” Kilbane asked. “What could possibly be in it for me?”

  Byrne took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. Jessica could see the muscle working on the side of his jaw. “You would have the gratitude of the Philadelphia Police Department,” he said.

  “Not good enough. Have a nice day.” Kilbane leaned back, stretched. When he did so, he exposed the two-finger handle of what was probably a game zipper in a sheath on his belt. A game zipper was a razor-sharp knife used for field-dressing game. Seeing as they were nowhere near a hunting preserve, Kilbane was most likely carrying it for other reasons.

  Byrne very deliberately looked down, staring at the weapon. As a two-time loser, Kilbane understood. Mere possession of this item would bust him back on a parole violation.

  “Did you say The Reel Deal?” Kilbane asked. Penitent now. Respectful.

  “That would be correct,” Byrne replied.

  Kilbane nodded, looked at the ceiling, feigning profound thought. As if that were possible. “Let me ask around. See if anyone saw anything suspicious,” he said. “I have a varied clientele at that location.”

  Byrne put both hands up, palms heavenward. “And they say community policing doesn’t work.” He dropped a card on the bar. “I’ll expect a call, one way or another.”

  Kilbane didn’t touch the card, didn’t even look at it.

  The two detectives glanced around the bar. No one was blocking their exit, but they were definitely in everyone’s periphery.

  “Today,” Byrne added. He stepped to the side, motioned for Jessica to leave ahead of him.

  As Jessica turned to walk away, Kilbane slipped his hand around her waist and roughly pulled her toward him. “Ever been in the movies, baby?”

  Jessica had her Glock holstered on her right hip. Kilbane’s hand was now just inches away from her weapon.

  “With a body like yours I could make you a fucking star,” he continued, holding her even more tightly, his hand moving ever closer to her weapon.

  Jessica spun out of his grasp, planted her feet, and threw a perfectly aimed, perfectly leveraged left hook to Kilbane’s midsection. The punch caught him just in front of his right kidney, landing with a loud splat that seemed to echo throughout the bar. Jessica stepped back, fists up, more out of instinct than any battle plan. But this little skirmish was over. When you train at Frazier’s Gym, you know how to go to the body. The one punch took Kilbane’s legs.

  And, it appeared, his breakfast.

  As he doubled over, a rope of foamy yellow bile spurted from beneath his destroyed upper lip, just missing Jessica. Thank God.

  After the blow, the two thugs sitting at the bar went on high alert, all puff and chest and bluster, fingers twitchy. Byrne held up a hand that fairly shouted two things. One, Don’t fucking move. Two, Don’t fucking move an inch.

  The room went jungle-nervous as Eugene Kilbane tried to find his wind. He took a knee on the filthy floor instead. Dropped by a 130-pound girl. For a guy like Kilbane, it probably didn’t get much worse than that. Body shot, no less.

  Jessica and Byrne edged toward the door, slowly, fingers on the snaps of their holsters. Byrne speared a cautionary forefinger at the miscreants around the pool table.

  “I warned him, right?” Jessica asked Byrne, still backing up, talking out of the side of her mouth.

  “Yes, you did, Detective.”

  “It felt like he was going for my weapon.”

  “Clearly, a very bad idea.”

  “I had to hit him, right?

  “No question about that.”

  “He’s probably not going to call us now, is he?”

  “Well, no,” Byrne said. “I don’t think he is.”

  OUT ON THE street, they stood by the car for a minute or so, just to make sure that none of Kilbane’s crew were going to take this thing any farther. As expected, they did not. Jessica and Byrne had both encountered a thousand men like Eugene Kilbane in their time on the job—small-time hustlers with little fiefdoms, staffed with men who feed off the carrion left by real players.

  Jessica’s hand throbbed. She hoped she hadn’t injured it. Uncle Vittorio would kill her if he found out she was punching people for free.

  As they got in the car and headed back to Center City, Byrne’s cell phone rang. He answered, listened, closed it, said: “Audio Visual has something for us.”

  11

  THE AUDIO VISUAL Unit of the Philadelphia Police Department was located in the basement of the Roundhouse. When the crime lab had moved to its bright new facilities on Eighth and Poplar, the AV Unit was one of the few sections that remained behind. The unit’s main function was to provide audiovisual support services to all the other agencies in the city—supplying cameras, TVs, VCRs, photographic equipment. They also provided news composites, which meant they monitored and taped the news 24/7; if the commissioner or chief or any of the brass needed something, they had instant access.

  Most of the unit’s work in support of the detective divisions was in the area of analyzing surveillance video, although the occasional audiotape of a threatening phone call came along to spice things up. Video surveillance tapes were, as a rule, recorded with a time-lapse technology that allowed twenty-four hours or more of imagery to fit on a single T-120 VHS cassette. When these tapes were played back on a normal VCR, the movements were so fast that they could not be analyzed. Hence, a time-lapse VCR was needed to view the tape in what would be real time.

  The unit was busy enough to keep six officers and one sergeant hopping every day. And the king of surveillance video analysis was Officer Mateo Fuentes. Mateo was in his early thirties—slender, fashion-conscious, impeccably groomed—a nine-year veteran of the force who lived, ate, and breathed video. You asked him about his personal life at your peril.

  They assembled in the small editing bay near the control room. Above the monitors
was a yellowing printout.

  YOU VIDEOTAPE IT, YOU EDIT IT.

  “Welcome to Cinema Macabre, detectives,” Mateo said.

  “What’s playing?” Byrne asked.

  Mateo held up a digital photograph of the Psycho videotape housing. Specifically, the side that held a short strip of silver-colored tape.

  “Well, first off, this is old security tape,” Mateo said.

  “Okay. What does this breakthrough substantiation impart to us?” Byrne asked with a wink and a smile. Mateo Fuentes was well known for his prim and business-like manner, along with his Jack Webb delivery. It masked a frisky side, but you had to get to know him.

  “I’m glad you proffered this interrogative,” Mateo said, playing along. He pointed to the silver band on the side of the tape. “This is an old-school loss-prevention tag. Maybe early-nineties vintage. The newer versions are a lot more sensitive, a lot more effective.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know the first thing about this,” Byrne said.

  “Well, I’m no expert, either, but I’ll tell you what I know,” Mateo said. “The system, as a whole, is called EAS, or Electronic Article Surveillance. There are two main types: the hard tag and the soft tag. The hard tags are those bulky, plastic tags they put on leather jackets, Armani sweaters, Zegna dress shirts, et cetera. All the good stuff. That kind of tag has to be taken off with a device once you pay for the item. Soft tags, on the other hand, have to be desensitized by swiping them over a pad or with a handheld scanner that tells the tag, essentially, it’s okay to leave the store.”

  “What about videotapes?” Byrne asked.

  “Videotapes and DVDs, too.”

  “Which is why they hand them to you on the other side of those—”

  “Pedestals,” Mateo said. “Right. Exactly. Both types of tags work on an RF frequency. If the tag hasn’t been removed, or if it hasn’t been desensitized, and you walk past the pedestals, the beepers go off. Then they tackle you.”

  “And there’s no way around that?” Jessica asked.

  “There’s always a way around everything.”

  “Like how?” Jessica asked.

  Mateo lifted a solitary brow. “Plan on doing a little shoplifting, Detective?”

  “I’ve got my eye on a sweet pair of black linen Blahniks.”

  Mateo laughed. “Good luck. Stuff like that is protected better than Fort Knox.”

  Jessica snapped her fingers.

  “But with these dinosaur systems, if you wrap the whole item in aluminum foil, it could possibly fool the old security sensors. You could even put the item against a magnet.”

  “Coming and going?”

  “Yes.”

  “So someone who wrapped a videotape in aluminum foil, or put it up against a magnet, could get it out of the store, keep it for a while, then rewrap it and sneak it back in?” Jessica asked.

  “It’s possible.”

  “All without being detected?”

  “I believe so,” Mateo said.

  “Great,” Jessica said. They had been concentrating on people who had rented the tape. Now the possibilities opened up to just about everyone in Philadelphia with access to Reynolds Wrap. “What about a tape from one store going into a different store. Say, a Blockbuster tape being sneaked into a West Coast Video?”

  “The industry isn’t standardized yet. It’s pushing for what they call tower-centric systems as opposed to tag-centric setups so that detectors can read multiple tag technologies. On the other hand, if people knew that these detectors only catch about sixty percent of the thefts, they might get a little bolder.”

  “What about taping over a prerecorded tape?” Jessica asked. “Is that difficult?”

  “Not in the least,” Mateo said. He pointed to a small indentation on the back of the videocassette. “All you have to do is put something over this.”

  “So if a person took the tape out of the store wrapped in foil, they could take it home and record over it—and if no one tried to rent it for a few days, no one would know it was gone,” Byrne said. “Then all they would have to do is rewrap it in foil and sneak it back in.”

  “That’s probably true.”

  Jessica and Byrne looked at each other. They weren’t just back to square one. They weren’t even on the board yet.

  “Thanks for making our day,” Byrne said.

  Mateo smiled. “Hey, do you think I would call you down here if I didn’t have something good to show you, capitán, mi capitán?”

  “Let’s see it,” Byrne said.

  “Check this out.”

  Mateo spun in his chair and hit a few buttons on the dTective digital console behind him. The dTective system converted standard video to digital, and allowed technicians to manipulate the image directly from the hard drive. Instantly, Psycho began to roll on the monitor. On the monitor, the bathroom door opened and the old woman entered. Mateo rewound it until the room was empty again, then hit PAUSE, freezing the image. He pointed to the upper left-hand corner of the frame. There, on the top of the shower rod, was a gray splotch.

  “Cool,” Byrne said. “A smudge. Let’s put out an APB.”

  Mateo shook his head. “Usted de poca fe.” He began to enlarge the image, which was fuzzy to the point of near obscurity. “Let me sharpen this a little.”

  He hit a sequence of keys, his fingers blazing over the keyboard. The picture became slightly sharper. The small smudge on the shower rod was now a little more recognizable. It appeared to be a rectangular white label with black ink on it. Mateo hit a few more keys. The image became larger by about 25 percent. It began to look like something.

  “What is it, a boat?” Byrne asked, squinting at the image.

  “A riverboat,” Mateo said. He brought the picture to a slightly higher degree of clarity. It was still very blurred, but it became apparent that there was a word beneath the graphic. A logo of some sort.

  Jessica took out her glasses, slipped them on. She leaned closer to the monitor. “It says … Natchez?”

  “Yes,” Mateo said.

  “What is Natchez?”

  Mateo spun around to a computer, one hooked up to the Internet. He typed in a few words, hit ENTER. In an instant, the monitor showed a website displaying a much clearer version of the graphic on the other screen: a highly stylized riverboat.

  “Natchez, Inc., manufactures plumbing and bathroom fixtures,” Mateo said. “I believe this is one of their shower rods.”

  Jessica and Byrne exchanged a glance. After a morning of chasing shadows, this was a lead. Small, but a lead nonetheless.

  “So do all the shower rods they make have that logo there?” Jessica asked.

  Mateo shook his head. “No,” he said. “Look.”

  He clicked over to the catalog page for shower rods. The rods themselves had no logos or markings on them of any kind. “My guess is that what we’re looking at is some kind of tag that identifies the item to the installer. Something they’re supposed to peel off when they’re done putting it up.”

  “So what you’re saying is that this shower rod was recently installed,” Jessica said.

  “That would be my deduction,” Mateo said in his strange, precise manner. “If it had been in there awhile, you’d think the steam from the shower might have made it slip off. Let me get you a printout.” Mateo hit a few more keys, starting the laser printer.

  While they were waiting, Mateo poured a cup of soup from his thermos. He opened a Tupperware container in which he had two neatly stacked columns of saltines. Jessica wondered if he ever actually went home.

  “I hear you’re working with the suits on this,” Mateo said.

  Jessica and Byrne exchanged another glance, this one suffixed with a grimace. “Where did you hear that?” Jessica asked.

  “From the suit himself,” Mateo said. “He was down here about an hour ago.”

  “Special Agent Cahill?” Jessica asked.

  “That would be the suit.”

  “What did he want?”


  “Only everything. He asked a lot of questions. He wanted deep background on this.”

  “Did you give it to him?”

  Mateo looked mortified. “I’m not that easy of a lay, Detective. I told him I was working on it.”

  Jessica had to smile. PPD über alles. Sometimes she loved this place and everyone in it. Still, she made a mental note to rip Agent Opie a new asshole the first chance she got.

  Mateo reached over, retrieved the photo printout of the shower rod. He handed it to Jessica. “I know it isn’t much, but it’s a start, sí?”

  Jessica kissed Mateo on the top of the head. “You rock, Mateo.”

  “Tell the world, hermana.”

  THE LARGEST PLUMBING supply company in Philadelphia was Standard Plumbing and Heating on Germantown Avenue, a fifty-thousand-square-foot warehouse of toilets, sinks, bathtubs, shower stalls, and just about every other conceivable fixture. They carried high-end lines such as Porcher, Bertocci, and Cesana. They also carried less expensive fixtures like those manufactured by Natchez, Inc., a company based, not surprisingly, in Mississippi. Standard Plumbing and Heating was the only distributor in Philadelphia to carry the product.

  The sales manager’s name was Hal Hudak.

  “That’s the NF-5506-L. A one-inch OD aluminum L-style,” Hudak said. He was looking at a printout photograph taken from the videotape. It was now cropped to show only the top of the shower rod.

  “And it’s made by Natchez?” Jessica asked.

  “That’s correct. But it’s a fairly low-end fixture. Nothing too fancy.” Hudak was in his late fifties, balding, puckish, as if everything had the potential to amuse. He smelled like Cinnamon Altoids. They were in his paper-besieged office overlooking the chaotic warehouse floor. “We sell a lot of Natchez fixtures to the federal government for its FHA housing.”

  “What about hotels, motels?” Byrne asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “But you won’t find this in any of the expensive or midrange hotels. Not even in the Motel 6 variety, either.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Mainly because the fixtures in those popular economy motels get a lot of use. It doesn’t make good business sense to use budget fixtures. They’d be replacing them twice a year.”