Don't Look Now (31 page)

Paris took another step, his weapon at his side. ‘Cyndy.’

‘So, what do you think, Jack? We’re both pretty good shots, right? Which do you think will happen first? Me hitting the gas tank just right or you hitting a vital organ?’

‘It’s over.’ Paris moved another step forward. He was five feet away now. ‘You know there’s no way out of this. EMS is already on the way. You’ve got to let me get you to a hospital.’

Paris attempted another small step, but the blast from Cyndy’s weapon – the muzzle flash startling him more than the loud pop – shoved him back on his heels, his hands instinctively to his chest. Cyndy had aimed, without taking her eyes off him, and blown out the side light on the rear fender of the Buick.

Paris then heard Diana’s muffled screams coming from inside the BMW’s trunk.

‘Four bullets now.’ Cyndy struggled to sit upright. Paris could see the foamy pink saliva coming from the corners of her mouth. She put the gun back up to the gas tank. ‘Let’s deal.’

‘Okay. Talk to me.’

‘Let me ask you something first,’ she began. ‘Why do you think women become cops?’

‘Jesus, Cyndy. Is this what—’

‘Answer … the fucking …
question
.’

Her tone was flat, commanding. In deference to Diana, Paris pushed the anger back for the moment. ‘I don’t know. Same reason as men, I suppose.’

‘Only partially, Jack. With women, it’s not just about control, you see, it’s about control over
men
. The ability and the authority to tell men what to do, when to sit, where to stand. To handcuff them whenever we want. Fuck them up when we want. It’s not just a job, Jack. It’s an adventure.’

Paris tried to stop himself, but failed. ‘Why the women, Cyndy? Why the innocent women?’

Another red smile. ‘Don’t be so quick to assume they were innocent.
Nobody’s
innocent.’

It was a judgment call, but Paris decided to push it a little, to keep her talking. ‘Why’d you kill Tommy?’

‘Well, I was kind of hoping that that would be the end of things,’ she said. ‘See, I don’t
have
to do what I do. It’s not a drug, not really. And believe it or not, I didn’t really have any plans to do it again. No Son of Saila conversations with my cat, I’m afraid.’

‘Was Tommy Pharaoh?’

‘What do
you
think? You’re the detective.’

Paris took a deep breath and let it out slowly, knowing that the longer she kept talking, the more energy she would spend.

‘I couldn’t let you get to the Quality Inn, Jack,’ Cyndy continued. ‘Elliott would’ve surely reopened the case. You know that. The “Saila does Quality” photo you found was a mistake.’

‘Please, Cyndy. Let’s end this.’

‘You’ve got nothing to tie me to Pharaoh.
Nothing
…’

‘You’re right,’ Paris said. ‘You’re absolutely right. So let me have the gun, okay?’

It was then that Cyndy heard the first wail of a police siren in the distance. Black-and-whites were rolling. She closed her eyes and let the .25 semi-automatic pistol ring her finger. She dropped the gun to the ground. ‘Just don’t let that bitch in the trunk prosecute the case.’

Paris stepped forward and picked up Cyndy’s gun.

‘Three to five, max,’ Cyndy said, drifting off. ‘You’ll see. Three to five.’

Paris thought about how easy it would be at that moment to just lean over and step on Cyndy’s chest. To put all of his weight on her widening wound, grinding in the filth of a thousand infections. Or to simply wind up and stomp her heart right out through the carnage that was her back. Send her to hell in a red fucking dress.

But no, Paris thought. He had other plans. ‘I don’t think so, Cyndy,’ he said.

Paris switched hands with his weapon and reached into his pocket. He held up the slender silver machine, the digital recorder Melissa had given him for his birthday.

‘Listen to this,’ Paris said. ‘
Kitty-cat
.’

He stuck the recorder near Cyndy’s ear and pressed play.

‘…
kill Tommy
?’ Paris’s voice asked from the tiny speaker.

He raised the volume.

Then came Cyndy’s soft, eerie alto: ‘
Well, I was kind of hoping that that would be the end of things, Jack. See, I don’t have to do what I do. It’s not a drug, not really. And believe it or not, I didn’t really have any plans to do it again. No Son of Saila conversations with my cat, I’m afraid
…’

She looked at Paris with one hazel eye and one eye, unnervingly, the color of chlorinated water. Cyndy had lost a lens. ‘Well played.’ She closed her eyes.

Paris heard the EMS unit shriek to a halt at the other end of the alley and knew it was time to get down to business. He got very close.

‘Where’s the razor?’

Cyndy’s head lolled on her shoulders. Her skin had taken on the color and texture of well-worn putty. ‘
Drazer
.’

‘The
razor
, Cyndy.’

She opened her eyes briefly, then closed them again, the whites giving way to the green mucus gathering at her lower lids. She was beginning her death throes.

‘
Where’s the fucking razor?
’

Paris could hear the rattle of the aluminum gurney starting down the alley, a fifty feet away. The blue lights swirling on the dirty brick walls around him also told him that at least one black-and-white cruiser had already arrived at the scene. The call had gone out ‘shots fired’. They would be coming down the alley with their weapons drawn.

‘The recording for the razor, Cyndy. Where is it?’

Paris shook Cyndy Taggart once, violently, drawing thick bubbles of blood from her mouth and nose.

‘Okay,’ she said, fading now, near the extreme edge of consciousness.

‘
Where is it?
’

Cyndy closed her eyes.

Paris began to rummage through her purse – Kleenex, Life Savers, Nivea, Tampax, Rolaids – but the razor was nowhere to be found. He was just about to search Cyndy’s pockets when his hand closed around a plastic sandwich bag with a weighty, flat metal object inside. The feel of the scrolled tip and the small, smooth rivet told Paris it was the straight razor. He could also feel that the inside of the bag was still moist.

‘
Police!
’

The shout came from the other side of the green Buick to his left. Ten feet away. Paris could hear the adrenaline streaking through that voice. The cop was young and pumped: inner-city call, shots fired, clear night, dark alley.

Paris worked open the zipped top of the plastic bag with one hand. He upended it, dumped the straight razor into the blackness of Cyndy’s purse and began to move it furiously around with the back of his hand, the side of his hand, up against a leather glove, up against something that felt like an eelskin wallet, up against—

‘
Drop it
!’ came the voice from directly behind him.

Had he been seen with his hand in the purse?

‘
Now, motherfucker!
’

Had he obscured his fingerprints?

Paris didn’t know.

He dropped his weapon and held his hands high.

THE NURSE’S AID
couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, but Paris managed to charm her into it.

‘Okay, but you’re not going to sneak him any food or liquor, are you?’ she asked. ‘He’s been driving us nuts with that stuff.’

‘Would a three-foot Genoa salami and a quart of fried peppers be considered food?’

The young woman smiled and wagged a finger at him. ‘Don’t be long. It’s way after hours and I don’t care if you
are
a cop.’

‘Thanks …’

‘Brenda,’ she said, and turned on her squeaky white shoes.

‘Brenda,’ he echoed, and looked for 303.

He actually looked better than he had before he got shot. More robust, for some strange reason.

Because, although Paris learned a half-hour after the shooting that Nick had been knocked out cold in that alcove, and that it was not he, in fact, who fired the bullet that dropped Cyndy Taggart, he also found out that Nick Raposo had taken the bullet meant for Melissa. It had hit him in the upper left thigh and exited through his left buttock as he lay unconscious on the cement. Nick had missed everything that took place in the parking-lot, but Paris filled him in.

The identity of the person who fired the bullet that hit Cyndy was still unknown.

Nick had been in Cleveland Clinic for six days and he – like the staff, faculty, volunteers and support personnel around him – was more than ready for Nicholas Carmine Raposo to be discharged.

‘What happened to the world when I wasn’t looking?’ Nick asked. ‘A woman? A
woman
, Jack?’

Paris had no response. He remained silent.

Nick leaned forward, getting down to business. ‘So, still no idea who bopped me? Or who shot Cyndy?’

‘No,’ Paris said. ‘We have the slug but it’s pretty common. Standard nine-millimeter.’

‘Unbelievable,’ Nick said. ‘I mean, I’m standing there, I got a perfect view of the BMW, the next thing I know, I’m kissing the cement.
Man
, did that hurt. I haven’t been hit that hard since I got jumped behind Leo’s Casino when I was twenty-two years old.’

‘And you didn’t see anything.’

‘Stars,’ Nick answered. ‘A whole shitload of stars.’

‘And you think that—’

‘And cologne. I remember that whoever sapped me was wearing cologne.’

Paris filed this morsel of information in its proper mental drawer. He’d add it to his final report.

Nick lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘What’s up with the case?’

‘The prosecutor’s office says that there’s a good chance that the recording I made in the alley won’t be admissible in court,’ Paris said. ‘Seems that because Cyndy didn’t know I was taping—’

‘Yeah, but
you
did. I thought the law was that only one party has to know.’

‘That will probably be the argument.’

‘Do you need the recording to nail her?’

‘I’m afraid it’s all there is to link her to the Pharaoh killings. Otherwise, she skates on those charges. The arson team hasn’t come up with a damn thing from the house on Tarleton Street. Not a fiber, not a hair, not an unburned piece of paper. The place was sixty years old and the wood was dry as hell. It went up like kindling.’

Nick shook his head.

‘The good news is that the coroner has ruled that Andrea Heller was already dead when her body was placed in the attic.’

Nick met Paris’s eyes, knowing what a relief it must have been for Paris to find out that he hadn’t help set the house on fire while the woman was still alive.

Nick looked out the window for a moment, then back. ‘And to think Cyndy’s in
this
building, right at this minute.’

‘One floor up,’ Paris said.

Nick poured himself some water, regarded Paris. ‘How is your daughter? How’s she taking all this?’

‘My daughter,’ Paris began, ‘is amazing. I think she’s going to be okay, Nick. She’s seen a counsellor twice.’

Nick just nodded.

‘But I don’t think her mother is ever going to speak to me again.’

Nick smiled in understanding. ‘And Rita?’

‘She’s okay, I think. She’s tougher than all of us put together,’ Paris said. ‘The investigating team cleared her yesterday and she’s going to visit her sister in Erie, Pennsylvania. I’m going to take her to the Greyhound station in a little while.’ Paris looked at his watch. ‘Actually, I’m due at her place in fifteen minutes.’

‘I’m telling you, Jack. If I was thirty years younger.’

‘Maybe that doesn’t matter,’ Paris said. ‘I know for a fact that Rita likes older men.’

‘Nobody’s this old, though.’

Paris grabbed his coat from the hook near the door. ‘Yeah, you’re so old that you saved my sorry ass in a dark alley.’

‘True,’ Nick said. ‘And what about that Diana? When am I gonna meet her?’

‘Next time I see you. Hand to God.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Nick said, pointing a finger at him. ‘When you bring the prosciutto.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Paris replied with a smile. ‘I promise.’

Paris pulled up to the curb in front of the Greyhound bus terminal on Chester. A light drizzle began to fall as he put the car in park.

‘Well, I have to tell you, you’re a hell of a date, Jack Paris,’ Rita said, opening the passenger door. ‘What else could a girl ask for? Dressing-up, barhopping, assault and battery, handcuffs.’

‘I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you did.’

‘I’ll let you make it up to me someday. Just get your VISA card paid up. You’re not getting off cheap.’ She leaned over and kissed Paris on the cheek, her face looking impossibly young and unlined in the gray light of the overcast day. ‘Thanks for the ride.’

‘Need help with the suitcase?’

Rita just glared at him. She stepped out of the car, grabbed her bag and shut the door.

‘Sorry,’ Paris said, hoping he hadn’t trodden on any feminist doctrine.

Rita smiled and looked back in the half-open window. ‘See you on the dance-floor, detective.’

‘Sure thing.’

He watched her walk toward the tattered art deco building, a bright, capable young woman, and wondered if Melissa would one day be as resourceful and independent as Rita Weisinger.

He had a feeling she would.

SHE WAS STILL
dressed for work. And she had cut her hair. Although Paris preferred long tresses on a woman, she actually looked better. Sexier, if that was possible, although he didn’t see how.

‘I can’t say it’s the way I wanted to get ahead in this town,’ Diana said, pouring the last of the chardonnay into their glasses. They were in front of the fireplace at Diana’s condominium in South Euclid. The flat was small, decorated in shades of peach, white and gray. ‘I mean, the BMW-accessory jokes are already up and down the Justice Center.’

‘Price of fame, I guess,’ Paris said, stroking the back of Diana’s newly cropped hair.

‘Well, I would have preferred fame for some other reasons,’ Diana said. ‘Putting
away
people like Cyndy Taggart. I mean, I’m a lawyer, Jack, and a damn good one. I want to be known for something other than my ability to be victim of the week.’