Exceptional Clearance

by William Caunitz

  “Please show me where you were standing.”

  She got up and led him into the bedroom. The large window looked out over the river and the park. He studied the scene below. A mass of shrubbery had concealed the killer as he went about his grisly task, Vinda concluded, as he walked back into the living room with his witness. He questioned her closely for another ten minutes, thanked her for her cooperation, and left with the others.

  They rode the elevator in silence down to the first floor, and stepped out into a black marble lobby adorned with large Chinese vases filled with fresh-cut flowers. The uniformed woman officer strode outside into the cold; the detectives formed a circle inside the warm lobby. Vinda said to Moose Ryan, “I want you and Tony to see that there is no mention of the towel in any of the reports.”

  A shadow fell across Marsella’s face. “Do you think maybe this looney-tune believes he’s Dracula?”

  “You’ve been around long enough to know blood’s an emetic,” Vinda replied, looking directly at Marsella, “and I don’t recall any vomit at any of the scenes.”

  Bowden rejoined, “Seven, eight years ago, a cuckoo bird named Kinahan Goodman thought he was a vampire and used a straight razor to slice Bowery bums’ throats.”

  “I remember that case,” Vinda said. “The jury didn’t believe he was crazy, and he was convicted of murder two. He’s sitting on a quarter to life in Green Haven.”

  “I’ll check, make sure he’s still inside,” Marsella said, making a note.

  A far-off look came over Vinda as his thoughts drifted away. Finally he muttered, “I’m going to see a friend.”

  “And if we need you in a hurry?” Moose asked.

  “I’ll be in Corregidor.”

  Manhattan’s midday parade sloshed along as Vinda parked the unmarked department auto in the No Standing zone on the east side of Broadway, parallel to City Hall Park. A dusting of snow swept the streets. Rippling his fingers on the steering wheel, Vinda watched hunched-over people scurrying for the warmth of comfortable office buildings. A ragged group of them crossing Broadway dodged ahead of a bus. Vinda thought of Jean, and his hands tightened around the wheel as he lowered his forehead on top of it and closed his eyes. He remembered how she used to call him in the office and use buzzwords to tell him how much she loved him. She’d feign a drawl and say, “Why, Colonel, sir, you give me the vapors.” But all that was over from the day her illness was diagnosed.

  He wished that it were possible for him to run home, grab Jean, and hold her in his arms forever. Even as she was dying, they would watch videos of old movies until two or three in the morning, holding on to each other the way they did when they were first married. How wonderful it could have been.

  Vinda lifted his head up off the wheel and saw an RMP, a radio motor patrol car, cruise past. The cruelty of his reality overwhelmed him: his Jean was dead, and he was a lonely cop trying to stop a killer from murdering again. In an attempt to revitalize his tired body, he sat up tall, gripping the wheel and stretching his arms so that his back pressed into the seat. He breathed in deeply several times, tossed the vehicle identification plate on the dashboard, and got out of the car.

  Standing on the curb waiting for the light to change, he looked across Broadway at the intricate architectural details of Manhattan’s Cathedral of Commerce, the Woolworth Building.

  Pushing his way through the gilded revolving doors, Vinda entered the Woolworth lobby and cast an appreciative eye up at the sparkling mosaics of the vaulted ceiling. He walked past the building’s directory and glanced over the list of police line organizations that had offices in it: CEA, Captains Endowment Association; LBA, Lieutenants Benevolent Association; SBA, Sergeants Benevolent Association; SOC, Superior Officers Council. He checked the time; Corregidor’s tunnels would be filling up.

  Walking behind the majestic marble staircase, he reached the down staircase that emptied into a subterranean tunnel leading to Harry’s Restaurant. On both sides of the rathskeller’s double doors were lithographs of Lower Broadway and Bowling Green dated 1826.

  Vinda pushed through the doors and entered the restaurant, the favorite watering hole of the Palace Guard. Entirely underground, Harry’s had long ago been called Corregidor because it evoked, for some cops who could remember, the fortress made up of tunnels carved out of the rock of that Philippine island. He moved across the wide entrance foyer to the U-shaped mahogany bar. Familiar faces abounded: the assistant director of the FBI’s field office was deep in conversation with Jimmy Tower, the LBA president; the Queens PBA trustee was huddled with the boss of DEA’s undercovers.

  For the first time, Vinda noticed how virtually everyone spoke in low tones, even whispers. Corregidor: it certainly suggested the Job’s siege mentality, but did the name also mean they were losing the war?

  A tunnel led from the foyer into the main dining room, where more tunnels branched off into other dining areas, all of them with barrel-vaulted ceilings. The bar was to the right of the dining room. Vinda headed straight for it.

  The bartender came over; Vinda ordered an orange juice. The lunchtime crowd trickled into the restaurant; a host and hostess greeted the patrons.

  Jerry Goldstein, the Whip of Safe and Loft, walked in with a brunette clinging to his arm. Spotting Vinda at the bar, he disengaged himself from the woman and came over. Placing his back against the bar, facing the wall, Goldstein grinned wickedly and said quietly, “Hear you’ve been rehabilitated.”

  “Word travels fast.” Vinda realized he was almost whispering too.

  “Big building, small job.”

  Vinda looked at the waiting woman. “Who’s your friend?”

  “A horny detective from Pickpocket and Confidence. What a great job this is. See ya ’round.” Goldstein went back to his friend.

  Vinda watched the hostess greet a group of newcomers. He made eye contact with the man he’d come to see. He quickly moved into an alcove near the bar and sat at one of the two tables inside. Rows of wine bottles filled the wall behind him.

  Special Agent Gus White, the man Vinda needed to see, had been the FBI’s liaison with the NYPD for twenty years. That long in that job meant that White had done very well indeed; he had earned the trust of the NYPD brass, who had little love otherwise for the Bureau. Completely bald, with sky blue eyes and a Texas twang, he had an affinity for boldly striped shirts and Gibsons.

  White passed under the alcove’s arched entranceway and pushed out a chair. Lowering himself next to Vinda, he quietly asked, “What’s up?” He betrayed no surprise at seeing Vinda rescued from obscurity.

  “I’m looking for a guy who gets off on killing women by ripping out their throats with some kind of slicing tool.”

  “Did you check with NCIC?”

  “They have nothing that matches up with the MO.”

  “John, if the guy you’re looking for is not in the files of the National Crime Information Center, how can the Bureau get hold of it for you?” White whispered, his eyes roaming the bar crowd.

  “Gus? Don’t pull my chain, okay? Your people have a line into every department in the country,” Vinda said, taking in the gathering of police elite, and thinking, We’re meshuga, the system has turned us into a bunch of whispering schizoids.

  “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the Sutton Place homicide, would it?”

  Vinda’s eyes flashed to the FBI man. White grinned and explained, “It went down last night and you’re wearing that scraggly late-tour complexion.”

  “What you don’t know is that Adelaide Webster was his third victim.”

  The restaurant door opened and a tall, distinguished-looking man wearing a black overcoat came in, surrounded by laughing mid-level PD brass.

  “Your brand-new deputy commissioner of community relations just made his grand entrance,” White said. “I’ve not yet had the pleasure, what’s the word on him?”

  Vinda pondered the question a second or two, and answered, “He ain’t gonna win the jackpot on
‘Jeopardy.’”

  White scoffed, “Another political deadhead.” His eyes came back to Vinda. “You want us to check out every damn department in the U.S.?”

  “As we say in the trade, you got it.”

  White dropped his hands on the table and made a move to get up and leave. Vinda pushed his shoulder down, and said, “One good turn deserves another,” and added softly, “Your photo blind across from the Iranian Mission has been blown.”

  “Oh?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Vinda steepled fingers in front of his mouth to explain. “Last week an RMP responded to a ten-fifty-two noise complaint in the building where you have your surveillance equipment set up. The cops discovered the apartment door unlocked, so they picked their way inside only to discover one male and one female agent screwing each other on a Bureau-issued sofa.”

  “Assholes,” White hissed, then got up and angrily stalked into the dining room.

  Vinda remained seated, watching the horse-trading going on around him. More police business was conducted in Corregidor than in the Big Building, he thought. A waiter came into the alcove and placed a tub of cheese and crackers on the table. Reaching for the knife sticking out of the tub, he spotted David Pollack standing by the entrance, and Vinda’s eyes widened. The people around the bar also spotted the reporter, and a hostile silence fell over the bar. Several people called for the tab.

  Coming over to the table, Pollack tossed his Stetson on one of the empty chairs and said, “Hello, John.” He sat.

  Vinda gave him a welcoming smile. “Ever notice how a bar empties when you enter?”

  “That’s because they’re insecure. You’re not like that,” Pollack said, breaking a cracker in half and tossing it into his mouth. “I saw you engaged in some heavy-duty conversation with Mr. FBI. Got anything to do with Adelaide Webster?”

  Vinda looked expressionlessly at the reporter. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “I gave up the firewater. Got tired of sitting on the bathroom floor night after night, hugging the porcelain altar. Anyway, I spotted you at the crime scene and figured you’d end up here, passing out some markers. The scenario I come up with is Sam Leventhal brought you back from the land of the flopped to work on the serial killer who is just starting up in our city. Since some people think you’re the best we’ve got, Sam Staypress hopes you’ll be able to clear the case before it turns into another Green River caper.”

  “The homicides in Seattle?”

  “The same. Almost four dozen women in five years, and the police haven’t a clue as to who the guy is. A nightmare for a police administrator.”

  “I have no personal knowledge of any serial killings in New York,” Vinda said, taking the knife and digging out a chunk of cheese.

  “May I remind you that I was the only game in town to stand behind you when the Big Building’s bureaucracy of self-preservation whined, ‘It’s not our fault Vinda and his assassins killed so many feral youths.’”

  “I remember.”

  “After I spotted you and your guys this morning, I nosed around and discovered that an ME from Kings County had been assigned to do the Webster post. Knowing that Brooklyn MEs do not do Manhattan autopsies, I inquired further and found out that Dr. Marcal had recently done the posts on two black women who were the subjects of homicides with similar MOs, to wit: the perp tore out their mother-lovin’ throats.”

  Vinda gazed out at what remained of law enforcement’s ruling class. Timothy W. Eberhart, the chief of patrol, whose wild temper tantrums and unkempt red hair had earned him the nickname within the Job of Agent Orange, was holding court at the other end. As he talked to Gillis of Secret Service, Agent Orange’s eyes slowly inventoried the crowd; when they fell on Vinda and his guest, they turned cold.

  Vinda had long ago been painted with Sam Staypress’s brush, and the C-of-D and the C-of-P hated each other. Thus Vinda was also the C-of-P’s enemy. Vinda returned the hostile stare. Agent Orange nervously shifted around, presenting his back to Vinda. Reinstated, but not yet permitted to walk among the living, Vinda thought.

  “John, I’ve been in this business over thirty years and I make a lousy forty-two K while those capped-teeth humps on television make millions. And with few exceptions, none of them could find an elephant in a snowstorm. Hell, most of them can’t read English. I need this case, John. If it is as big as I think it is, if I get ahead of the pack, I got the biggest story of my life here.”

  “You’d have made a good detective, David.”

  “Hell, I am a good detective.”

  EIGHT

  Linda Camatro nodded her thanks to the doorman in the brown and gold pillbox hat and walked inside Rue St. Jacques, a momentarily fashionable and ferociously expensive fashion mecca on East Fifty-seventh Street. Unaccustomed to shopping there, she was relieved to find a sign that told her the swimsuit collection was on the mezzanine floor. As she walked toward the stairs, she paused to admire the silk scarves and the jewelry display.

  Linda was a twenty-one-year-old legal secretary with Abatch & Williams, a firm specializing in real-estate law. A tall, attractive woman with penetrating black eyes, Linda had been saving for, and looking forward an entire year to, a winter vacation in Mexico, fantasizing daily about how she and her boyfriend were going to spend ten carefree days strolling crescent beaches, swimming in the Pacific Ocean, and sipping margaritas under thatch-roofed palapas.

  She had decided some time ago to leave shopping for a new swimsuit until the last possible moment. That time had now arrived; they were leaving Friday, four days away. Knowing how depressed she got whenever she had to go through the dreadful ordeal of trying on swimwear, she had taken today off from work to go to Rue St. Jacques, reasoning that if there was a really knockout suit anywhere in New York, it would be there.

  The mezzanine projected out over the ground floor. It was aglow in a rainbow of bright colors: yellows and oranges and shiny blacks; greens, whites, and cinnabar; copper and peach and pebble. Artfully arranged displays of the latest swim fashions lined the floor.

  Browsing and trying to summon her nerve to start looking in earnest, she suddenly plucked a one-piece black suit with large yellow circles off the rack and held it up in front of her. Definitely one-piece, she thought, maybe one with horizontal stripes to hide my tummy. She selected a black one with white horizontals, and held it up in front of her. Twenty minutes later, with six suits over her arms, she went over to a saleswoman and asked her where the dressing rooms were. “They’re upstairs,” the saleswoman said, lifting her chin at the white spiral steps set into the middle of the far wall.

  The staircase led up half a flight to the second floor, where intimidatingly well dressed women walked down the carpeted aisles, stopping to look at and handle spring dresses of lace and floral prints, dresses Linda knew would cost more than she made in months. Off of it ran a corridor lined with dressing rooms. Wide archways at both ends of the corridor led back into the dress department on the second floor.

  Entering the corridor, Linda became aware of the unnatural quiet surrounding her. There were no people; there was no hum of conversation. She walked over to the archway, looked inside, and saw the reason. Jessica Merrill, the actress, was holding a designer dress up in front of her while two saleswomen waited nearby. The other people scattered about the department were all silently gravitating toward the movie star, all of them trying their best to act nonchalant.

  Jessica Merrill was one of Linda’s favorite movie actresses; the legal secretary from Morningside Heights could not resist the temptation to get a closer look at her.

  Coming near, she saw that the actress was taller in person than she seemed on the screen, and that her flowing blond hair reached below her shoulders. When she heard the star’s throaty voice discussing the dress, Linda felt a strong urge to ask for her autograph. Suddenly a man thrust himself in front of the actress, waving a pen and paper in Merrill’s face. Linda watched Jessi
ca Merrill’s initial annoyance turn into a patient smile as she took the pen and paper and gave the man her autograph. Linda chided herself for even thinking of invading the star’s privacy; she turned and left.

  Walking back into the corridor, Linda opened a dressing-room door and stepped inside. A large window with a sheer white curtain looked out over the jagged Manhattan skyline. A beige carpet covered the floor, and a white glass table stretched the length of the right wall; opposite, on the other wall, was a large mirror with winged movable side panels. A Queen Anne–style chair stood in the corner.

  Linda put the swimsuits on the table and undressed down to her underpants. She hung her coat on one of the hooks, and neatly folded her clothes on the chair.

  She put on the black suit with the horizontal stripes, and sucked in her stomach, and cried inwardly as she looked in the mirror, I can’t hide my tummy, and I can’t fill out the top. She looked down at the other suits and decided to try on the one with the yellow circles. She stepped out of the one she had on, and picked up the new one. She was balancing herself on one leg, trying to thrust the other one through the leg opening, when the door flew open and, before she could regain her balance, a hand was locked over her mouth, silencing the terrified screams gathering in her throat. Propelled forward, her head rammed one of the mirror’s side panels, spiderwebbing the glass. Pinned by powerful arms, she fought against her attacker, kicking him. She bit the hand over her mouth, but it wasn’t human skin, it was some kind of monster skin. She struggled to see its face, and when she did, her eyes grew enormous with terror. “How lovely you are,” he whispered, and jerked her head to one side, exposing her throat.

  Carrying two dresses into the fitting-room area, Jessica Merrill paused, deciding which room to use. She noticed a thick ribbon of liquid suddenly seep under one of the doors. Puzzled by it, she looked questioningly at the growing red stain and knocked on the door. There was no answer. She knocked again; there was no reply. Her first thought was to call for a salesperson, but instead she pushed the door open. Her hands flew up to her face, blocking out the gruesome sight. A dry retching sound came from her throat and grew in intensity until a scream exploded from her famous mouth. The two dresses lay forgotten on the floor.