Chill of Night (24 page)

But Gina was more than disgruntled, and she knew that indiscriminate blasting away left too much to chance. Besides, she didn't plan on being apprehended or to kill innocent people.

There would be no direct and easy way to kill Dudman, not even one involving wholesale slaughter. Dudman was no fool. He must know he was in danger and was being careful. She'd have to bide her time.

A tall, hefty fellow, with a buzz cut only a little longer and gray in front, and wearing a tight blue suit, was right behind Dudman, looking this way and that. He strode with a step surprisingly light for such a big man. He reminded Gina of nothing so much as a bull getting a feel for the ring and a matador. A dangerous looking guy.

Gina took a bite of knish and smiled as she watched the giant usher Dudman through the orange scaffolding in front of the building, then into a waiting limo. As he moved, he let his gaze slide up and down the block, over her like cool water. Satisfied but obviously still wary, he lowered himself into the car after Dudman.

It wasn't surprising that a rich businessman like Dudman would have a security system, including bodyguards. That meant extra planning for Gina, and extra work and time.

Gina didn't mind putting in the hours, and she did have some advantages. A bodyguard with the Justice Killer on his mind wouldn't be suspicious of a pretty young woman with a smile just for him. Or a college student applying for an internship. Or a naive young girl new to the city and lost and needing directions.

The possibilities were almost endless, and one or more of them would work. The trick was in the choosing. Then in the execution.

Someone clever, patient, and determined, could breach any security system.

Gina truly believed that a genuinely determined person could do just about anything.

“You home, Beam?” Nell asked him on his cell phone.

Beam glanced at the luminous dial of his watch. Ten fifteen.

“Yeah, I'm home.”

He tried to hide the thickness in his voice. He'd been sitting in the darkness of his den, sipping Glenlivet eighteen-year-old scotch to relax, letting his mind roam over the landscape of the investigation. He liked to do that, give his unconscious free reign from time to time. It had worked before, and he was willing to try anything to nail the Justice Killer.

Trouble was, he kept finding himself thinking about Nola. Nola cocking her head to the side the way she did when she listened to him. Nola standing behind the antique shop counter as if in judgment of him, her lingering look and the graceful line of her back and shoulder as she turned away from him in calm dismissal.

“Beam? You near a TV?”

“Not one that's on.”

“Better turn it on to the Matt Black Show.”

Beam knew who Black was, a young guy with a late-night local talk show on cable. He had tightly curly hair, wore snappy double-breasted suits, and had a space between his front teeth like Letterman. But there the resemblance ended. Black was lots of things, but funny wasn't one of them.

“Beam, you there?”

“Here and moving toward the television.”
Feeling my way in the dark. Ouch! Stubbed toe. Teach me to sit around in my stocking feet.

“You okay?”

“Okay, Nell.”

“You won't be in a minute. Black's guest is Adelaide Starr.”

Beam groaned as he found the remote and switched on the small-screen TV in the bookcase.

“I'm hanging up,” Nell said. “I don't want to miss a cute word.”

In the soft light from the TV, Beam carried the remote back to his desk, sat down, and sipped more scotch as he turned up the volume.

Adelaide Starr had on a lacy black and white low-cut dress and was wearing her blond hair in pigtails. She looked like Little Bo Peep, minus the sheep but with great bazooms.

“But we're
celebrities
,” Black was saying through his gaping grin. “We
deserve
special treatment.”

Studio laughter.

Adelaide was smiling innocently while leaning forward to display cleavage, pretending to be listening hard to her host. “If I really thought that,” she said, “I'd move to France.”

“You wouldn't have to do jury duty there,” Black said. “They just
whoosh!
—off with your head.”

“I'm being serious,” Adelaide said. “I don't want to do jury duty.”

“You've made that clear.”

“But I don't want special treatment just because I'm an actress. And nobody I know in show business wants to be safe from this killer at someone else's expense.”

Studio applause.

“Let me get this straight, Adelaide. You raised four kinds of hell because they were going to make you do jury duty. Now you're complaining because they're excusing you?”

“No! Well, no, yes! It's like a trick on their part. A gamwit.”

Confusion on Black's face. “Gambit, you mean?”

“Gam something.”

Black ogled her legs. “Gams! Yeah, sweetheart!”

“You know what I mean. Don't make fun of me, please!”

“I'm not, I'm not. So you think the authorities are simply trying to sidestep trouble by showing preference?”

“Of course I do! Don't you?”

“Well…yes. You're too much for them, sweetheart.” Black grinned conspiratorially into the camera, then turned again toward Adelaide. Serious time. “So what, seriously, do you suggest?”

“A mora…whatchamacallit. Where somebody stops something?”

Black looked puzzled. Then he brightened. “A moratorium?”

“Exactly. Don't give celebrities special treatment. Give everyone equal treatment under the law. Let everyone be
safe!”

“I like what you do with your lips when you say that, dear.
Saaafe!
And of course, you're
absolutely
right. On a serious note, you
are
right.”

“We're supposed to be a country with equal opportunity and equal responsibilities, no matter what color we are or where we came from or any of that stuff. The city's giving show business people a free pass when it comes to jury duty. Until the Justice Killer is caught, they should give everyone a free pass. Everyone in New York who's legible for jury duty is an American!”

“If they leave out people whose handwriting you can't read, that'd include a lot of us.”

Adelaide appeared puzzled and upset. “You know what I mean. We're all in the same boat, with the same rights as oars, and we can't sink together, and it's an American boat!” She rose to her full meager height and thrust out her breasts. “Maybe you're not supposed to stand up in a row boat, but I am! For myself and everyone else out there! In or
out
of show business!”

The applause was loud enough to make Beam ease back on the volume. The camera played over a standing ovation before returning to the set.

Black was on his feet, hands clapping. “Take it to 'em, dear!”

“We demand a moratorium!” Adelaide said. She bent over to smooth her skirt, flashing more cleavage, then began pumping her tiny right fist in the air as she had outside City Hall. “Moratorium! Moratorium!” The studio audience, still on its feet, joined in. Volume built. Larger fists pumped the air in unison, faster and faster.

Matt Black slumped down in his chair with an exaggerated look of wonder and helplessness. Never had he seen anything like this.

After letting the place cool down only slightly, Black pumped his own fist in the air. “Commercial! Commercial!” He grinned. “We'll be right back. Don't go away. Why
would
you go away?” Then, as the camera zoomed in for a close up, an aside to the TV audience: “Somehow I don't think she'll be moving to France.”

Suddenly a sincere man in a leather jacket was trying to sell Beam a wristwatch that was an exact replica of the one worn by B-17 bomber crews in World War Two, only this one kept time with a battery and a chunk of quartz.

Beam's phone rang, the land line this time. He sat forward in his desk chair and lifted the receiver.

“Nell again, Beam,” came the voice from across town. “Did you see it?”

“Saw it.”

“Whaddya think?”

“Two things. I think she's way ahead of da Vinci. And I think I'm going to pour myself another two fingers of scotch.”

“I just poured some bourbon in a glass.”

“Raise your glass.”

“'Kay.”

“Up?”

“Yeah.”

“Mine, too. A toast. To Adelaide.”

“Adelaide,” Nell said on the phone. “And France.”

 

This morning Jack Selig was wearing gray flannel slacks, a navy blazer with big shiny brass buttons, and a white shirt open at the neck to reveal a red ascot. Nell thought he looked exactly like what he was—a rich guy who owned a yacht.

They were having breakfast in the grill of the Marimont Hotel in Midtown. The place was all red carpeting, red drapes, white tablecloths with folded red napkins, polished oak paneling, and subtle touches of gleaming brass. The china looked as if it might be rimmed with real gold. Nell was impressed, as she was sure Selig wanted her to be. The softening up period. Nell had seen and heard it all before and knew how it worked. But, damn, this guy was handsome despite his burden of years. And there was that yacht.

And there was Terry.

“Rough night?” Selig asked.

Mind reader.
“Why?” Nell asked. “Do I look it?”

Selig smiled. “Instead of stunningly beautiful, you look stunningly beautiful and tired.”

“It's this case.”

“The investigation into the Justice Killer murders?”

“Yeah. The pressure to find this creep never lets up. I know when we're finished here”—she glanced at her watch—“which better be within an hour, I've gotta go join the battle again. And it's a hard one.”

“It doesn't have to be your battle, Nell. You never have to go in to work again if you don't want to.”

“Yes,” Nell said, “I do. You need to understand that I do.”

He looked puzzled behind his quiche. “But, why?”

“I suppose because we all have our roles to play in life. The ones we chose. I'm a cop. You're a…”

“What?”

“Wildly rich and successful.”

“I wasn't always, and you weren't always a cop. Fate doesn't have to rule our lives. We choose, and we can unchoose. We can change roles when we get the opportunity, when we have the courage.”

“That wasn't fair, Jack.”

He smiled and dabbed at his lips with his napkin. “You're right, it wasn't. I apologize. Lord knows, I wouldn't question your courage.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Nell could see outside a window, a double-decker bus full of tourists slowly driving past in the bright sunlight. New York pretending to be London.

“The point is, this killer doesn't have to be your personal responsibility,” Selig said.

“He does, Jack. He is.”

“What about your boss? Detective Beam? Seems to me the investigation is his responsibility.”

“Not his alone. We're a team.”

“Almost everyone's on some kind of team.”

“Not where people are dying.”

Selig forked in a bite of quiche, chewed, swallowed. “I wasn't thinking of it that way. You're right, of course.”

“Not of course, but I'm right.”

He smiled. “You getting your dander up, Nell?”

She made herself calm down. “No. Dander down.”

But it wasn't. Not entirely.

Selig was looking at her as if she were something infinitely precious and available that was rapidly slipping away. “Is there someone else, Nell?”

Bastard!
“Yes. No. Jesus! Yes, there is!”

He looked so injured she had to fight the instinct to reach across the table and squeeze his hands and apologize. He looked suddenly older. Helpless.

What have I done?

“Another, younger, man…” He said it as if he'd expected it to happen all along. Maybe he had. “Are you sure about him?”

“Oh, God, I'm not sure of anything, Jack! Honestly!”

“That's your problem, Nell, you can't be anything but honest.”

Jack, if you only knew.

“Don't make a final decision until you're absolutely sure. That's all I ask of you. Okay?”

“Okay, Jack.” She had to sip coffee and look away, afraid she'd goddamn start to cry!

She felt his cool fingers touch the back of her left hand then softly massage her ring finger. “You all right, Nell?”

She nodded, biting her lip. “Yeah, fine.” She sat up straighter. “Let's have some more coffee, then I've gotta get to work.”

Right now the red carpet, the red drapes, the red napkins, reminded her of blood.

 

Melanie stood on the sidewalk outside the entrance to Richard Simms's apartment building. The doorman wouldn't even let her stand in the lobby, where it was cool.

As he had all day yesterday and earlier today, he'd informed her that Simms wasn't home. This time she refused to believe him, and she'd raised enough hell that if she promised to wait outside, he'd call upstairs to make sure. Apparently others had suffered her fate, but for different reasons, because there was a litter of cigarette butts around where she stood.

The afternoon was heating up in earnest, and the hairdo she'd gotten yesterday and was nursing along was a tangled mess in the humidity. A bead of perspiration broke from her hairline and trickled along the side of her forehead. As she raised a wrist to look at her watch, she felt the tug of her clothes sticking to her and got the faintest whiff of her deodorant.

When Melanie was almost to the point of giving up hope and going back into the lobby to give the doorman one more blast of insults before storming away, the tinted glass door swung open wide, held by the doorman. He gazed blankly at her, unassailable in his position and uniform, as an African American man the size of a locomotive pushed past him and outside and looked down at Melanie. His straightened hair was gelled and combed sleekly back, and his eyes were tilted down at the outside corners to give him a permanent pained expression. He had on a flowered shirt and muted plaid pants held up by broad red suspenders, an obvious color and design mismatch to attract attention. Combined with his size, it worked. People hurrying past on the sidewalk couldn't resist glancing his way, and the somewhat startled looks they gave him lingered and suggested trepidation.

“I'm Lenny,” he said to Melanie in a surprisingly high voice. “I work for Mr. Simms.”

Melanie struggled to find her voice. “I'm—”

“I know who you are,” Lenny interrupted. “Seen you in court.”

Melanie tried again. Her throat seemed to be blocked. “I—”

“You wanna see Mr. Simms. That's unfortunate, 'cause Mr. Simms, he ain't seein' nobody today.”

“What about yesterday and tomorrow?” Melanie asked, feeling less intimidated and more angry.

“You'd have to ask Mr. Simms 'bout that.”

“But I can't get in to see Mr. Simms.”

Lenny shrugged massive shoulders. “Way the world works.”

Melanie fought to remain calm, but her hands were trembling. She knew her lower lip was, too. She tried to choose her words carefully, but they were slippery and kept whirling around in her mind and were difficult to grasp and match with her intent. “I want you to take—I want you to deliver a message.”

“I can do that.”

“You tell Cold Cat—Mr. Simms—that there's a madman in this city killing people for doing what I did for Mr. Simms. What I did was save Mr. Simms's life. The least he could do is see me, talk to me. He doesn't answer my phone calls and he doesn't invite me up when I come here personally. That isn't right.”