Mirror Maze j-4

by William Bayer

  "Of course you did. You had to."

  "it looked good, so maybe it was good. And if it was fake, I didn't give a shit. I liked what I saw so I bought it. Like buying something pretty in a store."

  "Pretty?"

  "Attractive. You know what I mean."

  "When you see something that appealing you never ask yourself why?"

  "That's you, Frank. Not me. I buy what I like. I don't torment myself."

  Could be true, Janek thought. Timmy never doubted his hunches. But as for torment, Janek couldn't agree. Timmy was clearly tormented. The crazy look in his eyes, his crummy grooming, stained clothes, poor housekeeping all spoke of a person in distress. M@l, be his problem is he's tormented and doesn't know it. But still, he thought, there had to be more. "The real heart of the thing." What had Timmy meant?

  "Your instincts were good," Janek said. Timmy tipped an imaginary hat.

  "I mean it. You were right about Mendoza. He did have Edith killed.

  And you were right about Metaxas-he was too good to be true."

  "So, who was the hit man?"

  "Now you're curious, Couple minutes ago, when I told you Komfeld IDed someone else, you didn't even ask me who."

  "You've aroused my curiosity."

  "Gotta be one of the players, right?" "Guess so." Timmy paused. "Who?

  The maid?"

  "Not the maid." Janek stood, looked at his watch. ' 11 gotta go.

  Nice to see you."

  "The, fuck!"

  Janek turned to him from the door. "What's the matter, partner?"

  "Who're you kidding, Frank? If you know who the hit man was, tell me, for God's sake.

  "maybe I will… when you tell me why Dakin hated you. Bye, Timmy."

  Janek slipped out the door.

  A minute later, leaving the building, he imagined Timmy standing at his window, watching him walk away. He was about to turn to see if Timmy was really there, but then decided not to. Better if he doesn't think I care. That'll torment him even more.

  They had tasty morsels for him at Special Squad:

  Sue and Ray went first. There'd been two Cubans at Green Haven, since released, who'd fraternized with Jake Mendoza: a car thief named Cabrera, living in Albany, where he reported regularly to his parole officer; and a drug dealer named Villavicencio, believed to be a member of a major importing ring, who'd managed to transfer his parole obligation to Miami so that he could take care of his aging mother.

  "Things can get fairly lax in South Florida," Ray added.

  As for a Texas connection, Sue and Ray believed they'd struck gold. A suspected mafia strong-arm named Tony Collizzi had been Jake Mendoza's cellmate. Collizzi, residing in Houston, had been released, after serving fifteen years for homicide, just one month before the copycat killing in El Paso.

  "I may have a match on that," Aaron said. "Just before Collizzi's release, there was a fifty-thousand-dollar disbursement, and shortly after the copycat job, another fifty thousand was paid out. The transfers were made by Mendoza's lawyer, Royce Andrews, to an account Mendoza maintains in the Cayman Islands Bank. Impossible to trace money going in and out of there, but if we could find Collizzi's name on flight manifests around those dates, Texas cops might want to haul him in."

  "What about payments to Cubans?"

  "Three months ago there was a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar transfer to a numbered account in Panama. The day after you got back from Cuba, there was, get this, a million dollars transferred to the same account."

  "Fonseca's account?" -Probably, but we'll have a hell of a time proving it," Aaron said.

  "There were also a couple of smaller transfers of twenty-five thousand dollars to the Caymans."

  "Could've been a finder's fee paid to Villavicencio."

  "What'd you want us to do now?" Ray asked.

  "You and Aaron check the flight manifests to the Caymans, direct and indirect routes. Look for people who went in and out the same day.

  When you get matches, run them down." Janek paused. "You know what I like about this? If we can connect Mendoza to El Paso, he'll have to go to Texas for trial. Murder-for-hire is a capital crime down there.

  They use lethal injection."

  They all exchanged looks.

  "What about me?" Sue asked.

  "You're going on a special mission."

  "Nice place, I hope?"

  "Sarasota. You're going to check out an honored member of our tribe, the widow of a killed-in-action cop."

  The following morning he received a call from Netti:

  "Mixed news. First the good stuff. Your ex was badly shook when she heard about our dossier. She's willing to give up alimony. We're negotiating a one-year phase-out." Janek smiled. "Great!"

  "Bad news is that Carlson doesn't want to make a private settlement with Gelsey."

  Shit! "What'd you offer him?"

  "Restitution, damages, a written apology. He didn't want any of it. He wants to see her in jail." "Have you told her yet?"

  "She's taking it fairly well. I don't know, Frank. It's a weird situation. Carlson says she tried to kill him. He's talking about upgrading the charge to attempted murder."

  "Maybe if he saw her, face-to-face, he'd melt a little bit.

  "Can't take a chance. If she shows up for a meeting, he could call a cop. He might even call you."

  "Want me to talk to him?"

  "If you take her side, you could make a lot of trouble for yourself."

  "What're you going to do?"

  "Keep upping my offer. But the way I read him, he won't be interested.

  Basically, he wants her head."

  Ray found Collizzi's name on flights in and out of the Caymans, both before and after the El Paso copycat job: "Can't believe it, Frank. He used his own name, flew direct via Miami."

  "He got a hundred thousand," Janek said. "There ought to be some sign of it. Fly out to Houston, check out his life-style, then go down to El Paso and talk to the cops handling the case."

  "The pieces are starting to fit, aren't they?"

  Janek nodded. Later he marveled at how quickly the case was coming together-as if Mendoza were a puzzle left incomplete nine years before, each hole still receptive to the dust-covered pieces still lying beside it on the floor.

  Sue called from Sarasota. She liked the city, liked the people, liked her motel, which was on the beach. She'd even found a lesbian bar.

  "Actually, it's a gay bar," she explained. "They tolerate women."

  "Glad to hear you're having fun," Janek said. "What about Janet Clury?"

  She lives in a nice one-story house, three-hundred-thousand-dollar job on a finger. That's what they call a man-made spit of land." Sue paused.

  "Frankly, I find it a little phallic."

  "Is she living with someone?"

  "Not now, though she's been known to have a boyfriend or two. She's comfortably set up. Besides the house she's got a BMW and a good job as a hospital administrator. She's nice-looking, expensive blond dye-job, not too flashy, cut at a good salon. Every afternoon after work she goes to a local mall, works out at a health club, shops at a health food store, then goes home. So far no visitors. Last two nights she's stayed in watching TV. I've seen the screen flickering from the street."

  "Watch her a couple more days," Janek said. "If nothing happens, we'll try and stir things up."

  Timmy called. He was drunk. He woke Janek up.

  "It's your old partner," he announced. "Who set me up? I gotta know."

  "Forget it, Timmy. I'm going back to sleep."

  "You don't fuckin' care, do you, Frank?"

  "Sure, I care."

  "Not about me."

  "Go to AA. Get off the sauce. Then maybe we can have decent conversation."

  "That's all you gotta say?"

  "You know the deal: You tell me why Dakin wanted to your ass, I'll tell you who set up Metaxas."

  Janek hung up. The phone rang again. He unplugged it for the night.

  It took
him hours to get back to sleep. He kept having visions of Timmy staggering toward him down a corridor of mirrors.

  He rented a car, drove out to Newark. Gelsey greeted him from the top of the exterior stairs.

  "Looks like it's going to rain," she said.

  "I heard it on the news. That's why I came out."

  When they were inside and he realized he'd interrupted her painting, he urged her to go back to work. She picked up her brushes, turned to her canvas, while he brought her up to date on Dietz. Diana was still in jail, he told her. Thatcher hadn't been able to get her bail.

  "What we want to do is soften her up, then let her plead to something less than extortion and attempted murder in return for testimony against Kane. So far she's holding out, but I know she'll break. A woman like that can't take jail."

  "I almost feel sorry for her," Gelsey said. "She really did love Kim."

  "Whenever you start feeling that way," Janek said, "just remember what she did to Kirstin."

  Gelsey dabbed at her canvas. Then she stopped and shook her head.

  "Netti can't seem to work things out with Carlson." "I heard," he said.

  "Give it time."

  She turned to him. "I'm going to have to go to jail, too, aren't I?"

  "I don't know. But soon you're going to have to turn yourself in. You have a good lawyer. You helped us solve a major case. Nine judges out of ten'll suspend your sentence. I'm pretty sure you'll get off."

  "I might not."

  "There's always a ' not,' Gelsey. You can't think about that."

  "Jail would kill me."

  "It won't. You're a strong person." But he didn't like thinking about her serving hard time.

  Later, after it started to rain, she asked if she could sit beside him on the couch. Then, when she rested her head against his shoulder, he gently drew her closer with his arm.

  She turned to him: "You have an idea about the Minotaur.

  "Did I say that?" The rain was falling steadily, streaking the windows, washing the skylight.

  "I just have a feeling."

  "I'm not a shrink," he said.

  "I know. You're a detective."

  "If it was in your head, the way Dr. Zimmerman-"

  "He was wrong. It wasn't just in my head." She paused.

  I think you know that, too."

  The rain began to fall hard, exploding like thousands of little firecrackers against the metal roof. Gelsey started to shake. He held her tighter. Was the sound getting to her, or was it memories of loneliness? He imagined how she must have felt when it rained, alone in her strange house, the water beating on the tin, the maze with its mysteries and terrors beckoning from below.

  "Why don't we go down and take a look?" he said finally. "Maybe we'll find something. It's worth a shot."

  " I'm scared. "

  "Of the maze?" "Not the maze," she said. "The Minotaur. I'm afraid of what he might turn out to be."

  When they were on the catwalks and the lights were on, he walked with her above the places where the ceilings were opaque.

  "What's down there?" he asked as they stood above a blocked-off portion.

  "Storage area." "What about there?" he asked, pointing to another.

  She looked down. "That's just some dead space between three mirrors."

  "Are you sure?" She thought a moment. "Yes, that's where the corridor turns back on itself."

  After asking her to identify three more such areas, and finding her more tentative, he asked her what was wrong.

  "It's easier when I'm down on the floor," she said. "I know the maze better there. I'm not used to analyzing it from above." He suggested she go down while he remained on the catwalks. Then he could walk above the places where the ceilings were opaque and call down his questions.

  She agreed, shinned down the rope, then together they worked their way methodically through the maze, verbally mapping its invisible areas. She opened mirrors that were also doors, confirming the existence of each storage and backstage section. It was only when they reached the Great Hall that she became confused.

  "No," she said when he asked her about a small area with an opaque ceiling off the Great Hall. "No, there's nothing there." "I'm standing right above it, Gelsey," Janek said. "There's a covered space, maybe five feet by five."

  "Impossible." Her voice was agitated. "I knew this part very well."

  They continued. When there were no other hard ceilinged areas she could not identify, he guided her back to the one off the Great Hall.

  Again she insisted there could be nothing there.

  "Maybe just more dead space," he offered.

  "Maybe… " She didn't sound convinced.

  His original notion was that the person Gelsey had seen, whom her father had dubbed "the Minotaur," had been standing on the catwalks. Then this person's image, caught somehow by one of the mirrors, had shown up reflected in the Great Hall. But now he wondered if there might not be a hidden room below, a place where a voyeur might have been concealed.

  Gelsey had explained every covered space except for one.

  He guided her around the space, urging her to search for a mirror that would open like a door. When she called to him that she could find nothing, it occurred to him that if he had been her father, and had wanted to create a secret chamber, he would not have placed the opening mechanism in its usual position five feet off the floor. He'd have put it where she wouldn't expect it, Janek thought, perhaps in an opposite position, very low.

  He asked her to meet him at the bottom of the ladder. Then he climbed down to the floor.

  When she greeted him she seemed disturbed.

  "What's the matter?"

  "I'm getting tired, that's all," she said.

  "Want to do this some other time?"

  "No. Let's see it through."

  As she led him rapidly through the maze, he was again awed by its complexity. There was no possible way to know where he was in relation to the configurations of mirrors he had seen just minutes before from the catwalks. The reflections defeated any attempt to define real as opposed to illusionary space. Occasionally she led him through doors, shortcutting her way to the Great Hall. When, finally, she stopped before a series of sharply angled mirrors, he could only guess that they had arrived.

  Gelsey was sweating.

  "You all right?"

  "I get like this when it rains."

  "Is it still raining?" She shrugged. He looked around. "Are we near… where the bad stuff happened?"

  She nodded, pointed across the Hall, then lowered her eyes.

  "Were you always facing the same direction?"

  "I don't remember. Anyway, it wouldn't make any difference. No matter which way you face down here, you see everything… reflected to infinity."

  He detected weariness in her voice, almost, he thought, despair. He felt it would be wrong to push her further.

  "Let's go back up."

  She shook her head. "You're on to something." He didn't answer. "I feel you are."

  He studied her. She looked stronger.

  "Okay," he said, "I want you to press on these mirrors. Apply the usual pressure but not in the usual place. See if you can spring one open."

  "You really think there's something behind?" "Let's find out," he said.

  She shook her hands to loosen her fingers, like a safe cracker preparing to break into a vault. Then she began to explore the surface of the first mirror panel. When nothing happened, she moved to the second.

  Janek observed that she was sweating again, that the stress was building up. Suddenly she stopped. She was crouched on the floor. She glanced up at him, eyes catching fire from the silvered glass.

  "I feel something."

  "A spring?"

  "I think so." "All right," he said. "Remember, I'm here beside you.

  Whenever you're ready… open it up."

  She stared at him, then turned back to the mirror. But he felt she wasn't looking at herself, rather at something beyond its s
urface. Then she placed her fingers on the glass and pressed. The panel swung open. A small room was revealed.

  At first they both recoiled. The room was dusty and the air that escaped was stale. Then, as Janek craned forward, he saw the props: a small stool, with a cloak folded neatly on top, and, on the floor beside the stool, a rubber mask. He reached for it, picked it up, unfolded it, stared at the image. It was a trashy fun-house monster mask with horns, the kind sold in novelty shops around Times Square.

  Is this the Minotaur?" he asked, holding it up. Some of the face had rotted away. There was a hole in one of the cheeks and, because the rubber had lost resiliency, the horns hung soft.

  "Yes!" There were tears in her eyes.

  He handed it to her. She didn't want to take it.

  "Don't be afraid of it," he told her. "It's just an old piece of rubber."

  Even as he spoke he knew that the mask was a lot more than that-that it was all the terrors of her childhood, the source of her art and of her pain.

  When they returned upstairs, Gelsey placed the mask on her coffee table, then stared at it. The rain, Janek saw, had tapered off.

  " Dr. Z had a collection of masks," she said. "They were firm and beautiful, not like this. I'd look at them during sessions. They spoke of marvelous places-ancient African kingdoms, South Sea islands… "

  "I think you should just throw it away," he said.

  She shook her head. "I'll cut it up and use the pieces in my paintings.

  Glue them to the canvas, then paint them over."

  He liked that: destroy a personal demon by incorporating it into a work of art. It struck him as a healthy version of the use she'd made of the trophies she'd taken off marks, perhaps a civilized variation on the tribal practice of ingesting an enemy one had slain.

  "Who wore it?" she asked suddenly.

  He'd been dreading the question.

  "Who do you think?"

  "One of his buddies, I guess." She looked at Janek. "No?"

  "I have another idea." He shrugged. "Of course I have no proof.

  She looked around the room, at her many versions of Leering Man.

  "My mother, wasn't it?" Janek didn't reply. "Yeah, it figures." He was surprised at how easily she seemed to accept the notion. "She let him do those things to me. Maybe even suggested them because she didn't want him to do them to her. Maybe she even got off on it."