Fear City

by F. Paul Wilson

  “I will help you.”

  “And after I find them I want to take a long time killing them.”

  “That I will leave to you.”

  8

  Jack sat alone at his table in Julio’s and sipped a Rock.

  Lou and Barney had offered to buy him a beer when he walked in but he’d taken a rain check. If Julio’s were The Muppet Show, those two would be Statler and Waldorf, and he wasn’t in the mood for them. Or anyone, for that matter.

  Julio had never met Cristin and so Jack hadn’t told him that she was the Ditmars Dahlia. The news hadn’t broken yet. Most likely the cops were verifying the tip and bringing in the Otts to take a look at the remains. Poor people. Bad enough to lose a daughter, but to lose her like that, to know what she suffered before she died …

  “Mind if I join you?”

  Jack looked up. Bertel. Just the man he didn’t need right now. But he sat down before Jack could answer.

  “This isn’t a good time, Dane.”

  “Not a good time for me, either.”

  Jack wanted to punch him. The guy had no idea.

  Bertel slapped the table. “Damn Mohammedans. They’re up to no good. I know it just as sure as I know you’re sitting there across from me. They’re up to something and I can’t keep a close enough eye on them to find out and still run my business. Sometimes I have to be down south to oversee things.”

  “And you want me to spell you. We’ve been through this.”

  Last time Bertel was here he’d tried to enlist Jack by saying the guy who’d driven the decoy truck with Reggie was involved.

  “Yeah, we have, and I know you don’t want to get involved, Jack. I know you don’t want to risk exposure. But this is your home, and a man defends his home.”

  “I just rent here.”

  “You live here, dammit. That makes it your home. There’s an old movie called Ride the High Country that’s—”

  “Peckinpah.”

  “You know it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, it’s got a line in it about entering your house justified.”

  “Joel McCrea—‘All I want to do is enter my house justified.’”

  “Jesus, how many times have you seen that goddamn movie?”

  “A few.”

  Truth was Jack had lost count.

  “You understand what that means—the ‘justified’ part?”

  “I can guess.”

  “It means acting with honor, doing the right thing. It means spending your day in such a way that at the end of it you can go home—enter your house—with your head high, without guilt or regret. Well, this city is your house, and if you can’t find it in yourself to defend it when it’s threatened, then you can’t enter your house justified—you can’t walk these streets justified.”

  Jack stared at him a moment, then, “Speech over?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” Bertel leaned back. He looked tired and old, but not defeated. More like disgusted—with Jack, with the whole world.

  “What’d they do, freeze you a couple hundred years ago and then thaw you out?”

  “You’re saying I’m old-fashioned?”

  “Old-fashioned? Old-fashioned barely touches it. You’re Paleolithic, you’re Triassic, completely out of sync with the modern world. A walking, talking anachronism.”

  “Well, then, so be it. I am what I am. Fuck you all.”

  Arrows … Cristin … Reggie … Arabs … sex slaves …

  Shit.

  The silence lengthened between them until Jack shrugged. “Okay.”

  “Okay? Okay, what?”

  “Okay, where is this place and when do we start?”

  9

  Tommy Ten Thumbs Totaro hung up his phone and leaned back. It had been a short conversation with Aldo. So short that his pre-call hit still burned his nostrils and the back of his throat a bit.

  Something had been bugging him. Not just how a bunch of rampaging moulies had fucked up his detailing gig, but the timing of it. Everything goes to hell and practically the next day Tony’s got him on the carpet for slacking on the loans. That had a bad smell to it.

  What Tony didn’t know was that Tommy hadn’t been slacking on loans—just Tony’s loans. Tommy had been investing his profits in his own shylock game. Tommy had been scared that was what the meeting was about.

  But this other thing … he’d called around and found that at least a dozen lots had been hit in Brooklyn and Queens that night. A bunch of kids couldn’t get around like that unless they had cars, or unless someone was driving them.

  So maybe some Harlem type was trying to move in, but so far Tommy hadn’t heard a thing about it. And that got him to thinking: What if someone was trying to get him out of the detailing business so he’d pay more attention to someone else’s loan business?

  Only two guys Tony would go to: Vinny and Aldo. Tommy couldn’t talk to Vinny about it, but Aldo …

  Aldo had said he didn’t know nothin’ about it, and hadn’t heard anything about it except what Tommy had told him.

  He didn’t know if Aldo was involved or not, but he knew he was lying about how much he knew.

  This whole thing stank to hell of Vinny Donuts. He had connections with the dealers in Bed-Stuy, especially after he’d delivered that bunch of Air Jordans back in December.

  Time to get out on the streets and do a little research. He couldn’t let this slide. If Vinny and Tony were behind this, it required a response—a big response.

  10

  Jack located Rebecca Olesen’s Lexus SUV in the Pleasantville train station parking lot, then found a spot for his Corvair with a clear view of it, and waited. Not many cars in the lot on a Saturday night, so he had plenty of parking choices.

  As he watched and waited, he thought about Cristin, and about Bertel too. The guy had been confused but delighted by Jack’s agreeing to join The Great Mohammedan Watch. Jack didn’t tell him why.

  The truth was that he had no leads on who killed Cristin, and he had a feeling the police didn’t either—besides the DAMATO scratched into her skin. He couldn’t very well hunt down and brace a U.S. senator. He’d leave that to the cops. For Jack, the arrow wounds pointed to Reggie only because he was the only one Jack knew who was into archery. With the gazillion people owning bows and arrows, the chance that it was Reggie was less than slim. But Jack had no place else to go.

  Except to Rebecca Olesen.

  Which was why he’d turned down Bertel’s offer to treat him to a steak at Ben Benson’s and taken the gamble to come here instead. If Celebrations was an escort service, then he assumed Saturday night would be busy, keeping Rebecca in the office until late. And what do you know, the Lexus sat here waiting for her.

  All right, how to play this? Jump in and carjack her? No. Too many ways that could go wrong. Best to follow her home, learn where she lived, and ad-lib from there.

  A train pulled in from the south, stopped, then moved on. Rebecca Olesen and three males entered the parking lot and fanned out, each to a different car. Jack watched her approach her Lexus, looking like a typical middle-aged, middle-class hausfrau. No way would anyone guess she ran a call girl service. Meet the new Mayflower Madame.

  He followed her on a twisty-turny path into a Leave It to Beaver middle-class neighborhood where she pulled into the driveway of a white, two-story colonial. The garage door was sliding up as Jack cruised past.

  He parked Ralph near a hedgerow between two houses a couple of lots down. A black van was parked across the street, so he guessed they didn’t have an ordinance against street parking. He pulled his Glock from the holster under the front seat and stuck it in his jacket pocket. He had no intention of pulling the trigger but it might come in handy for intimidation. He hopped out, eased the Corvair’s door shut, and trotted back to her yard. Good thing the weather was staying cold. Not likely anyone was going to be out for a stroll.

  He made directly for the side of the house, ready to turn and bolt if any motion-sensit
ive floodlights came on. But the yard remained dark. Praying she had no dog, he began peeking in the lit windows, looking for kids, a husband, a live-in maid.

  The first window looked in on a dark room. Light from the hall limned a desk, a computer, a printer—some kind of home office. He pushed up on the window but it wouldn’t budge. Locked.

  The next were paired and looked in on a large kitchen where he spotted her opening a bottle of white wine. That was encouraging. If a husband or boyfriend was about, wouldn’t he be doing that for her? He saw the keypad for an alarm system on the door to the garage. The indicator light glowed green. Looked like she’d turned it off upon coming in but hadn’t turned it back on.

  Keeping to the deep shadows at the very rear of the backyard, he moved around to the garage side of the house, then crept to the shrubbery in front. A peek revealed the living room, lit but empty.

  He returned to the side of the garage to decide his next move. He needed a way in, but how? Knock on the door? She’d know him from their meeting yesterday. No way she’d open for him. Probably go straight to the phone to call the cops. Had to be sneaky about this.

  Not expecting any results, he pushed up on the garage window. It moved. No way. He pushed harder and it slid up. Talk about luck. But he supposed if any window was going to be left unlocked, it would be in the garage. Who checked their garage windows?

  He levered himself up and slid inside. He closed it behind him and crouched beside the Lexus where he listened to the ticking of its cooling engine for a few seconds while he eyed the glowing edges of the door into the house. His palms were sweating despite the cold. This was a big step. An armed home invasion was nothing to take lightly. If things went south he could be sent away for a long, long time.

  But he had to know about Cristin, and that required a one-on-one with the lady of this house.

  He pulled the Glock and checked the doorknob. It turned. He took a deep breath and charged through a dark utility room into the kitchen where he waved the pistol in Rebecca Olesen’s face and shouted at the top of his lungs.

  “DO NOT MOVE, DO NOT SCREAM, DO NOT DO ANYTHING UNLESS I TELL YOU TO!”

  She screamed and dropped her wineglass. It shattered on the floor.

  “I said QUIET!” He lowered his voice. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here for answers. But I will hurt you if you try holding back on me.”

  “Y-you were at the office yesterday, with that fake delivery.”

  “Right.”

  “You were looking for someone I’d never heard of.”

  “You’ve never heard of Cristin Ott?”

  “No! I swear!”

  Jack wished he’d brought the Ruger. Then he could make that nice ratcheting sound as he cocked the hammer. Since that wasn’t an option with a Glock, he lowered the barrel and put a slug into the floor. She jumped and screamed.

  “Okay! I know her, I know her, I know her!”

  “That’s better. She worked for you, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Did you kill her?”

  Her eyes bulged. “What? Nobody killed Cristin, especially me! Why would I do that? I love Cristin. Everybody loves Cristin!”

  Jack noted her use of the present tense.

  “Somebody didn’t.”

  “Wh-what do you mean?”

  Might as well lay it on her.

  “You’ve heard of the Ditmars Dahlia?”

  “What? Of course—” Her jaw dropped. “Oh, no. Oh, NO!”

  And then her eyes rolled up and she crumbled. Jack wasn’t able to catch her in time. Lucky for her—and Jack as well—she didn’t land on the broken wineglass when she hit the floor. The last thing he needed was to have to call in the EMTs.

  He put the Glock away—he didn’t think he’d need it—and squatted beside her, wondering what to do. She wasn’t faking this. She was really out.

  Fortunately she didn’t stay out long. Her eyes fluttered open and she tried to get up.

  “Please tell me you’re lying,” she whispered as Jack helped her to her feet.

  “I wish I were.”

  He guided her to the living room, where she collapsed in a sobbing heap on the couch, moaning an endless stream of, “No-no-no…”

  Jack sat in a chair across from her and watched. She wasn’t acting. She hadn’t known, hadn’t even suspected. Finally she pulled herself together and looked at him with teary eyes.

  “If you’d told me this yesterday we could have avoided all this drama.”

  “I didn’t know yesterday. Only found out today.”

  He’d found out so much today.

  “How?”

  “I got a look at her body.”

  “But—?”

  “I know a guy who knows a guy. Look, I’m asking the questions—”

  “I’ll tell you everything I know, but I need to understand some things first. How do you know her?”

  Christ, she wouldn’t stop.

  “From high school.”

  “It’s more than that. You wouldn’t sneak into the morgue and then burst in here with a gun just because you happened to know her in high school. Were you her lover?”

  Jeez.

  “For a while, yes.”

  A faint smile. “Only on Sundays, right?”

  That jolted him.

  “How did you—?”

  “Because she refused to work Sundays. Not for religious reasons but because of that old movie.”

  “Oh, hell. Never on Sunday.”

  He’d heard of it but had never seen it. Another clue he’d missed.

  “Right. You are a very lucky man to be chosen by her.”

  Yeah, he was. Or had been. But …

  “I just wish she’d told me…”

  “About her profession? How would that have sat with you?”

  Jack didn’t want to get into any of that.

  “Never mind me. Who would do that to Cristin?”

  The tears welled up again. “I don’t know … I can’t imagine.”

  “Had to be one of her johns.”

  “We call them ‘clients’ and we screen them and—”

  “Is Senator D’Amato one of your ‘clients’?”

  He saw a reflexive retreat in her expression, as if she was ready to say that was confidential, but after an instant’s hesitation she shook her head.

  “No. Never. Why do you ask?”

  If the police were pursuing that sub rosa, he didn’t want to queer it.

  “I can’t say. Anybody famous on her list?”

  “Some. No one you’d see in People, but their names pop up in the papers now and again.”

  “I want to see that list.”

  Again that instant of retreat, then a curt nod. “I’ll print it out.”

  She rose and Jack followed her across the living room to the little office he’d peeked in on earlier.

  “I’d figured you’d fight me on this.”

  She whirled, her face snarling with fury, and jabbed a finger at him as she spoke through her teeth.

  “I want this animal found. And if you find him I want you to bring him to me. I want you to leave him with me. Loss of his hands and acid in his face will be the least of his worries!”

  You don’t know about the arrows, he thought. You don’t want to know.

  “You can have what’s left of him after I’m through.”

  She grinned then. A scary grimace, utterly devoid of humor. “Good.”

  She sat down before the computer and lit up the screen.

  “You keep it on computer? What happened to the little black book?”

  “I have one of those too.”

  She typed a string of asterisks into a password box, did some typing, and soon the name Danaë appeared at the top of the page over a list of names in alphabetical order.

  “Danaë? We’re looking for Cristin.”

  “Danaë was her working name.”

  She hit a couple more keys and the printer began to whir. Less than a minu
te later she handed him three typed sheets. The first name was Edward Burkes. The second was Roman Trejador. Jack noticed a fair number of lines with both a male and a female name.

  “Couples?”

  “Danaë was our couples specialist. She was bi, you know.”

  He nodded. “She told me.”

  She’d told him that during college she’d even made it with Jack’s old high school girlfriend.

  “Some of the more open married couples like to invite in a third to spice up their relationship. Danaë was happy to oblige—for an extra fee, of course.”

  “Oh, Christ. Couples … I never guessed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I spotted her one day and, on a lark, I followed her around. I saw her get into a limo with a middle-aged couple and figured, there she goes, planning another event.”

  “It’s a great cover. Danaë built up quite a couples following.”

  “Let’s call her Cristin.”

  “We try to stick to working names at the office, so it’s automatic. But yes, sure.”

  He wanted to punch himself.

  “Never on Sunday … only on Sunday … never available weeknights … event planning … why didn’t I see it?”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself. Looking from the outside, it might seem obvious. But from the inside, this was a girl you knew from high school. Escort simply wasn’t on your radar.”

  “You’ve got that right. Any Arabs on this list?”

  “No. We have a few Arab clients but they’re not Cristin’s.”

  “Who was the last guy to…?” Words failed for a second. “Employ her?”

  She didn’t have to look at the list. “Wednesday night. Roman Trejador, one of her regulars.”

  Number two on the list.

  “Could he—?”

  She shook her head. “No. He’s been her client for years. Calls for her almost weekly. She likes him. Good tipper. Besides, she called me when she got home to let me know she was in.”

  “Really? Do they all do that?”

  “Many of my girls do. They know I care and that I worry.”