Gladyss of the Hunt (11 page)

“They got me paired up with Lenny Lobotomy,” he said as we walked south together. I didn't mention that I had seen them on patrol earlier.

“Are you getting along with him?”

“Oh yeah, he's great. He's offered to set me up on a date with his neighbor.”

“You're kidding.”

“No, but I am kind of seeing someone.”

“Really? Who?”

“A girl.” He obviously didn't want to be more specific. “But it's all still up in the air. Anyway what's up with your case?”

“Well,” I said trying not to sound distressed, “We're setting some traps.”

“That's right, you're blond pross bait,” he said. “Nervous?”

“Not really.” Then remembering my homework that night as we approached my building, I figured I might have another shot with O'Ryan. “Actually I have to find something sexy to wear for the stakeout.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Wanna help?” I asked trying to sound seductive.

“How?”

I simply pointed into my apartment and opening the door, he followed me inside. As we headed up the stairs, I was shaking my ass in front of him, but instead of trying anything, he was busy recounting Bernard Kerik's meteoric rise to police commissioner.

“In 1994, he totally lucked out by getting posted to Giuliani's protective detail . . .” On and on he went. Little could O'Ryan guess at the time that in just a few short years, Kerik's stunning career would end with him being sentenced to four years in federal prison.

When we reached my landing, Maggie's door abruptly flew open. I could see her eyes widen instantly at the dimwitted hulk following me.

“Eddie, this is Maggie,” I introduced them.

He nodded coolly. Maggie batted her long lashes and continued downstairs, probably to meet her non-boyfriend/bartender Rick. In a moment we were alone inside my place. I grabbed some clothes and dashed into the bathroom.

“So your neighbor's a little hottie,” he said from the bedroom as I slipped into a corduroy miniskirt and skimpy halter top I'd bought but never had the nerve to wear.

“How does this look?” I asked, standing before him, revealing far more than I ever recalled doing before.

“Where are you going to hide your wire?”

“Thanks Eddie, you're a real confidence builder.” The man was one frozen fish stick.

“Sorry,” he said, then looked awkwardly to the floor. “I think you're beautiful. But my head's still on the job.”

“Was your head on the job on New Year's Eve, 'cause you made me feel like crap then too.”

“That was different,” he said.

“Not to me.”

“Can I make a confession?” he asked. “It might sound strange . . .”

As he usually was so guarded, I nervously nodded yes.

“That night something weird happened to me.”

“What night?”

“You know. . . New Year's Eve.”

“What happened?”

“Well . . . this is really embarrassing, so I don't want you to freak out or nothing.”

“I won't freak.”

“After you mentioned your . . . circumstances”—he was awkwardly referring to my virginity—“I was trying to go slow, and then your brother called.”

“I remember.”

“And I thought it was odd that you chose the call over me.”

“I'm sorry, he hasn't been doing well lately . . .”

“No, that's okay. It when you showed me that photo of you and him, your twin . . .”

“Carl?”

“Yeah, it just kind of took the wind out of my sails, if you get my meaning.”

“What took the wind out of your sails?”

“Seeing that photo of the two of you side by side . . .”

“What about it?”

“Well, first telling me you were a virgin sort of knocked me out, but then afterwards, when he called and you showed me that photo. How can I explain, it was like seeing you as a . . . as a man.”

“What?”

“I'm sorry.”

“What, are you . . .”—I wasn't even sure what to call
it—“twinophobic?”

“No . . . I mean, if you had a twin sister it'd be hot.”

“So you're homotwinphobic?”

“I don't think so. I have gay friends. I just didn't expect it. It kind of hit me out of left field.”

“But I already told you I was a twin.”

“I know you did. It was a spontaneous, visceral reaction and I'm truly sorry.”

What could I say?

“The important thing is, I do really like you. I think you're hot and I want another shot.”

“We'll see,” I replied. What was I suppose to say—let's jump in the sack? Without asking for another date, he gave me a peck on the cheek and left, just like that.

I finally decided on my old high school shirt and skirt uniform, which I was now barely able to squeeze into, and packed it for work.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Steady breathing, steady pose,” the Renunciate muttered to me when he saw me wobble in class as I recalled O'Ryan's twinly repugnance. Thanks to my teacher's constant guidance, I was gaining greater strength and flexibility than I'd ever had before. But during final relaxation, as hard as I tried to achieve that divine vacancy of thought—I found I was unable do so. And it wasn't the usual petty distractions that prevented me from emptying my mind. It started out as a kind of shimmering light. Slowly, though, a vision emerged. It was a figure—a tall svelte female, no Lady of Guadalupe, posing proudly. She seemed to be naked. Her arms were stretched out majestically, but her hands seemed to be clenched. Then I realized she wasn't making fists, she was holding something. From the position of her right elbow, it had to be a bow and arrow. but why would such an image enter my head? Instinctively, to get a better look at her, I opened my eyes, and poof! She was gone. When I closed them again I couldn't get her back. A moment later the Renunciate had us all doing final chants and it was over.

As the class was leaving I lagged behind. He spotted me and said he thought I was really coming along.

“Has anyone ever had visions in class?” I asked.

“All the time,” he said calmly.

Before I could be more specific, another student came up and asked him about ashrams, so I waved goodbye and left. I reached my front door just as Maggie arrived.

“Where's that gorgeous hunk you were with earlier?” she asked as we went upstairs together.

“Eddie had to run,” I said, without adding that he had lost interest because I had a twin brother who looked freakishly like a male
version of me.

“Let me ask you a hypothetical,” she asked. “If I ever saw you with Noel Holden, would you introduce us?”

“Geez, I've only met the man once myself,” I replied, somewhat pissed.

She giggled in embarrassment and dashed inside her apartment like a chipmunk.

On Monday morning, Bernie reported for work late. He was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses as he limped into his office. When Annie followed him in, I heard a gasp.

As I stepped inside too, Bernie released a cascade of wet, non-productive coughs, then explained, “I was at a bar over on Twenty-sixth Street, had a few drinks, so I went back to my car to sleep it off. When I wake up—boom.” He removed his cap to reveal a walnut-sized purple lump.

“Looks like it could use a few stitches,” I observed, looking at the jagged gash along its swollen center.

“What happened?” Alex said, coming in late.

“Some cocksucker walloped me over the head and took my cash.”

“Holy shit! You didn't get a look?”

“I was passed out. I just woke up the next morning with a hell of a headache and blood all over my freakin dashboard. The thing is, I got this awful feeling it was a Maglite I was hit with.”

“He didn't get your gun, though?” Alex asked.

“No, I learned long ago to stash my gun if I'm going drinking.” He smiled and said, “Fuck! Two hundred bucks—gone.”

“But he left the wallet?”

“He musta seen my shield,” Bernie said. “That would've been a disaster. I'd have had to tell the captain.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Yeah. Well, I'm staking out my car for the next few nights in case the fucker comes back. I'm thinking he followed me from the bar, so maybe I'll go back there and act like I'm loaded.”

“Bern, be careful. Go to Robbery. If you think he's still working the area, let them do the stakeout.”

“I just can't fucking believe I got hit. I thought the city was
supposed to be safe now.”

We convinced Bernie to go to the hospital, but before he left he ordered the three of us to spend the entire morning on the computer working on the Blonde Hooker case, breaking down the various components of the crimes. We typed them into the NYSPIN system, trying to put together a broad list of possible suspects.

Between the solicitation and murders of Mary Lynn MacArthur, Denise Giantonni, and Nelly Linquist, our killer could've had priors for anything from credit card fraud, robbery, and possession of narcotics to abduction, assaulting prostitutes, and post-mortem mutilation. Bernie told us to focus broadly on those who had been convicted or even faced accusations of attacking women. The fact that our killer hadn't sexually violated any of his victims made it difficult for sex crimes to place him.

Soon after Bernie returned with a big bandage on his head, he got a call from an old informant at Riker's who gave him the name of someone he'd heard had recently killed a hooker. He sent Alex to check it out, but he returned an hour later, saying it was all bogus.

By early afternoon we had a list of forty ex-cons whose priors somehow related to our killer. Bernie took it to the captain, to show him we needed some help, and he assigned three other pairs of detectives to our case for the week. Bernie split the list between the five teams.

The next six days were a gradual process of elimination: Pairs of investigators systematically went out and interviewed the forty suspects, checking their alibis, then crossing them off the list.

By Friday not a single escort house we'd notified had called in any of their johns—and no new victims had turned up either. In case there was a connection, Bernie had me work with Robbery and check out a guy who, a day before the last murder, had brazenly robbed two pharmacies around Penn Station, grabbing handfuls of prescription sleeping pills. It turned out the criminal was just a run-of-the-mill speed freak on his way back to Long Island.

Bernie and I teamed up the next day and he led me out into the freezing cold without giving any idea of where we were going. And when he finally started talking I couldn't understand what he was saying. I heard the phrase, “thousands of delicate bones”; it seemed like he was talking about a fish skeleton. I had to move in close to
catch mumbled terms like “fractured metatarsals,” “torn ligaments,” “irreparable nerve damage.”

It took me a while to realize he was talking about his own foot. I smelled whiskey on his breath, and wondered if he had mixed it with pills. He rambled on while we soldiered through the dirty snow. His right foot had gone under the knife repeatedly, he said, but the operations had led to neither a reduction in pain nor increased mobility.

“Where exactly are we going?” I finally interrupted him. He said we were hunting some “ex-cockroaches” who were on the suspect list. When we finally located one of them, Edgar Martinez, in a public housing project in the East Village, I saw how Bernie was able to put his suffering to good use. When Martinez grew reticent under his interrogation, Bernie shoved the guy against a wall and terrified him into talking. Later, another, more cooperative suspect who worked in the food stamp office on Fourteenth Street made the mistake of shrugging at one of Bernie's questions. Bernie pulled him out of his chair and tossed him against the wall of his office in front of his co-workers. When he found a third suspect sitting in a McDonalds on Sixth Avenue, Bernie ordered him to freeze. The fella, a swarthy middle-aged ex-con, fell to the floor of the fast-food dive where he held a perfect downward facing dog.

“I didn't say hit the deck!” Bernie barked. “Back up here!”

“What kind of yoga do you practice?” I asked the man as Bernie patted him down.

“Prison yoga,” he answered politely. “It drains off all the tweaks and twitches.”

Bernie gave me a nasty look. You weren't supposed to fraternize with the enemy.

That afternoon, we walked into a rundown SRO and tracked down one geriatric suspect who genuinely did belong in a small cage. According to his record, he had viciously murdered three different women over a period of sixty odd years; each time he'd gone to prison only to serve his sentence and then be given another chance. Somehow he had been paroled a third time. At eighty-five the ex-con was barely able to cough out a “fuck off,” but Bernie was just as tough on him, waving his hand in his face as he questioned him, inches from hitting the old bird. The entire time the wrinkled prick just scowled at me.