Good Day to Die (12 page)

Over the last few years, I’d invested (with Marie Koocek’s assistance) in half a dozen abstract glass sculptures. Set on black lacquered platforms and lit from beneath, their sharp, primary hues provided the only genuine color in the room.

With two exceptions, the walls themselves were empty. The first, my gun collection, hung just behind the couch. I won’t bore you with a piece-by-piece recitation, but the collection was fairly extensive and mostly modern with as many handguns as long guns. At its center was a .45-caliber Thompson Model 27 A-1 fitted with every accurizing option available and finished off with an LS55 Lasersight. Fully automatic or not, I’d long ago voted it the weapon I’d most like to carry into a fortified crack house.

The second exception came about accidentally. A few years ago, I became interested in locks and how to open them. It didn’t take more than a week to master the basic theories, but the application was something else again. Picking locks or taking impressions requires endless practice; it’s a great deal more difficult than, for instance, learning to shoot accurately.

What I’d done was nail together strips of one-by-four, then attached various locks and mounted the completed frame low on the wall nearest the gym. On one level, the construction was undoubtedly an insomniac’s response to the empty hours; still, I’d given it enough time and effort to be very good on the easier locks (the Yales, Arrows, etc.) even by professional standards. My ambition was to master the electronic stuff, but I hadn’t gotten there yet.

“Captain?” I said when her few minutes were up. “You wanna take another step so I can shut the door?”

She turned to look at me. “Nice apartment.”

It was more a question than a statement. Her eyes were calling me a crook, assuming the loft and everything in it had been purchased with dirty money. My answer was a conspiratorial smile. I was willing to let her believe I was on the take; if the headhunters ever decided to come after me, I
wanted
them to start with the money. I wanted them to think I was
motivated
by money.

“Thanks. I’ve spent a lot of time on it.”

“It’s very clean. Not exactly what I expected from a bachelor cop.

My apartment was clean for two reasons. First, and most important, was an obsession with
not
being the typical unmarried cop who blows his pay in cop bars, then comes home to collapse between filthy sheets. The second reason was Olga Pizarro, who did the actual work.

“Living up to movie cop standards is not one of my ambitions,” I replied as neutrally as I could.

She seemed to notice me for the first time, notice the sweat drying on my body, the soaked gym shorts.

“I was working out,” I explained. “Being as you weren’t expected for another two hours, I figured I had plenty of time.”

Her mouth widened into a totally unexpected grin. “We have a problem, Means. You work all night and sleep during the day. I work during the day and I hate soap operas. Noon was the best compromise I could manage without going crazy.” She held out a paper bag. “I brought some bagels. I’ll toast them while you’re in the shower.”

Great. We were starting out on the big adventure and she couldn’t wait to get going. It was all a game to her. Which I found strange, being as her career was on the line.

Still, I took her advice and headed for the shower. I wanted a little time to compose the presentation she was certain to demand. My sojourn among the sisters (and brothers) of New York City’s night had been discouraging to say the least. King Thong
was
a hot topic of conversation among the ladies on the stroll. As were his victims. The names John-John Kennedy and Rosario Rosa were instantly recognized, but nobody, male or female, believed the killer was anything more than an especially deranged trick. Each time I suggested another motive, I was met with a blank stare.

John-John, they told me, was a baby, an innocent. And far too new to the life to pull off a crime as tricky as blackmail. Rosario, on the other hand, though born guilty, was too unstable to handle anything more long-term than a mugging.

My cocaine, however, did buy me an intriguing rumor. John-John Kennedy, they insisted, was being harassed by a pimp at the time of his death. The only thing was that nobody would admit knowing the pimp’s name.

The rumor put me in an interesting position. On the one hand, it was an obvious place to begin. On the other hand, I wasn’t supposed to operate on my own. I was tempted to throw my night’s adventure into Vanessa Bouton’s face. To see how she’d react, if for no other reason, but a little voice kept whispering, “It’s a piece of shit, Means. A piece of shit.”

I turned off the shower and grabbed a towel. Thinking, the hell with it; don’t tell her a goddamned thing. Just give her a few theories and let her try to run with it.

“Means, you drown in there?” The voice of authority. Booming through doors and walls.

I dressed quickly: black, double-breasted Karl Lagerfeld jacket; gray, slightly wrinkled linen trousers from Basco; lemon yellow Armani silk shirt. I buttoned the shirt all the way up, then slipped on my gold shield. Most detectives carry their shields in a leather billfold as old and worn as the suits they wear. Mine, mounted on a thin sheet of onyx, dangled at the end of a gold chain. Reversed, with the shield against my back and covered by my jacket, the chain slid under my narrow collar, effectively replacing a tie.

The end result was as far from Columbo as I could get. A fact Vanessa Bouton was quick to appreciate when I stepped out of the bedroom.

“Damn,” she said, then repeated herself. “Damn.” Another pause. “I feel like Cinderella.
Before
the ball.” She was wearing a dark blue pants suit and a white silk blouse topped with a gold pin, a sunburst.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s just me. I want people to know I’m coming. And to remember me after I’m gone.”

“Why, Means? Tell me why?”

I looked at her closely. Wondering if she’d grown up on the mean streets, if she was trying to forget.

“Because crime goes on forever. Because law enforcement is a play without a final act. Because it’s just no fun if it isn’t personal.”

She turned to the stove and began to arrange hot bagels on a plate. “You know something, Means? Your ass is screwed on so tight I’m surprised you don’t shit through your nose.”

I thought about it for a minute, then decided it was
my
line.

“That’s
my
line,” I said.

It sounded lame, even to me, but Captain Bouton had the grace to ignore the comment. “Why don’t we get down to business,” she said, spreading a thick layer of cream cheese and chives on a bagel.

I ignored my own bagel and sipped at a cup of coffee. “I went through the material last night, and while I can’t really say the evidence supports your theory, the investigation did center on this idiot profile the FBI developed.”

I laid it out slowly, mentioning the physical types, the problem with control of the victims, the lack of a drug pattern, and my blindfold theory. Then I hit her with my conclusion that Thong’s intended target must have been victim number four or victim number five.

“Besides,” I finished, “we have no practical way to investigate seven homicides. Not the two of us. We
have
to zero in.”

She chewed her bagel thoughtfully. Her teeth were small, even, and very white. I watched her for a minute, then restated my theory.

“Homicide treated the first three murders as unrelated. They did a textbook investigation; they found nothing. The profile only came into it later, after the media put Thong on the front page. If the perp wanted to use the serial killer bit to deflect the investigation, he’d
have
to wait until somebody was talking about a serial killer. Don’t forget, before it hit the papers, the perp had no idea how or where the investigation was going. But once we were committed, the perp would have had to act quickly. He couldn’t take a chance on being made before he got the job done.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “You’re talking about Kennedy and Rosa, then.”

“Right. See, my idea is to start with those two, and if we come up empty, work backwards and forwards. Victim number three and victim number six, victims two and seven. Like that. We have to narrow the scope, or we’ll be overwhelmed with information.”

“Just like the task force.”

I smiled. “There’s only the two of us, Captain. The task force doesn’t have an excuse. By the way, can I assume you’re thinking blackmail?”

“It doesn’t have to be, but it’s the logical place to start.”

I picked up a bagel, looked at it for a moment, then set it down. What I wanted to do was get started.

“The problem is I don’t believe anything in the files,” I said. “The interviews were half-assed; the cops were just going through the motions. Which means we’re gonna have to begin at the beginning, run down all the friends and enemies, shake out the bullshit and see if there’s anything left. Kennedy spent time at The House of Refuge, and it happens the director, Barry Millstein, is a friend of mine. I think we should start there.”

The House of Refuge was a shelter for young runaways, male and female, many of them former (and soon to be again) prostitutes. Street whores usually come with pimps who consider their ladies to be property. More than one girl had been beaten or slashed when she left the shelter on an errand. The pimps used to congregate in an alley across the street, waiting like cats for the mice to come out of their holes.

Barry had complained about it one day when I’d come to his office on an unrelated matter. Asking me why the police (meaning me) didn’t do something about it.

“Beats me,” I’d said. “You have any names?”

I think it’s called symbiosis. We fed off each other right up until the start of my exile. In fact, the pimp I’d killed had been one of his.

“The director,” Bouton said, “Millstein, he’s the one who’s homosexual, right?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with it. The guy gets checked out every time Cardinal O’Connor preaches a sermon on the evils of the homosexual lifestyle. He’s clean.”

Millstein, like every other sane homosexual in New York, was terrified of AIDS. Both he and his longtime lover (an ex-football player who would, incidentally, have broken Barry into a hundred pieces if he’d caught him screwing around) had tested negative for the virus. The last thing Barry needed to do was sleep with street kids, male or female.

Bouton shook her head, smiling softly. “You’re obsessed, Means. And like most obsessed people, you think you’re charging into something when you’re really running away. What you need to do is loosen up.”

“And what do you need, Captain?”

“What I need is to get you obsessed with King Thong. And I’ll thank you not to interrupt me when I’m pontificating.”

I didn’t bother to respond. Eating shit, as I’ve already said, is an important part of the police experience.

I
LEFT VANESSA BOUTON
sitting at the table and went back into the bedroom. My .38 was lying on the night table where I’d left it. The department requires its officers to carry a .38, and not wanting to offend the powers that be, I stuck mine where it belonged, in an ankle holster. The weapon I intended to use for defense went down inside my belt. An ultra-compact Detonics .45 ACP, it’d been customized by a master gunsmith named Jim Stroh. There wasn’t much besides the match trigger and slightly extended Eagle magazine to be seen from the outside. On the inside, however, most of the working parts had been replaced with custom hardware designed to accomplish three objectives: reduce recoil and muzzle flip, increase accuracy, and prevent jamming.

Loaded with 185-grain Remington Plus P’s, the Detonics was the kind of weapon cops need to carry in a world of Uzis and Tech 9’s. I loved it the way I’d loved my first gun, the ancient breech-loading Stevens .22 given to me by an “uncle.” Technically, I suppose, the Detonics was just a backup piece, but the truth was that, except to qualify, I hadn’t fired my .38 in years. Even though I went to the range at least twice a month.

I buttoned my jacket and left the bedroom. Bouton was standing in front of my lock collection; she turned to me when I closed the bedroom door.

“Christ, Means,” she said, “I’m afraid to ask what you do with these.”

“It’s just a hobby, Captain.” I was lying, of course. There are times in a cop’s working life when he has to get in and out of a locked room without leaving a trace. When he doesn’t have a search warrant and can’t get one. Somehow I didn’t think Bouton was ready for the facts of life. Despite her newfound camaraderie.

That buddy-buddy thing was bothering me. And it didn’t matter which Vanessa Bouton, the tight-assed bureaucrat or the teasing partner, was the genuine Vanessa Bouton. What mattered was that she liked to play games.

“Can you open them?”

“Eventually.”

“Care to demonstrate?” She smiled when she asked me, her voice high and teasing.

“I’d rather not.”

That stopped her. The smile disappeared, replaced by the disapproving frown I’d come to know and love.

“Try to figure it out, Means. We’re in this together. If we don’t trust each other …”

“Trust? Yesterday you put me on a leash. Today you talk about trust.” I wanted to go on, but I didn’t. Instead, I shrugged and looked down at my watch. “We have to see a man about a pimp. It’s time to jump in.”

We drove most of the way to The House of Refuge in silence. That is, I drove. A captain cannot drive a mere detective to that detective’s own funeral. The protocol is so deeply ingrained in the minds of ranking officers like Vanessa Bouton that she got into the passenger’s seat without raising the question.

From outside, The House of Refuge, a twenty-unit brick apartment building on West Fifty-fifth Street near Eleventh Avenue, looked as sooty and decrepit as any of its neighbors. Inside, it was a different story. Barry insisted that his charges become involved with their environment, that they love and protect it. The place was immaculate.

We were stopped just inside the entrance by two kids doing security duty. Bouton flashed her badge, and they passed us through. Millstein’s office was on the fourth floor. I’d been there enough times not to hope for an elevator, but noted the look of disappointment on Bouton’s face when I started up the stairs.