If I Should Die Before I Die (32 page)

“You dirty bastard,” Powell said in that chirping voice.

“Maybe so,” I answered. “But I don't kill women for kicks.”

He came halfway out of his chair at that, his face beet red.

Bobby Derr stood up at the same time.

“Come on, Booger,” he said, his fists ready.

I got up with him, lifting my chair off the ground.

At this point, though, Wilson “Booger” Powell simply caved in. He slumped back, all two hundred-plus pounds of blond Ivy League masculinity. Like the air had gone out of the balloon.

“Speaking of good ole Hal,” I pressed on, “where is he?”

“Wouldn't you like to know?” he answered tightly.

“What does that mean?”

“It means he's where you bastards can't get him, not unless you've got wings.”

“But you said he'd be back!”

“Yeah, but I didn't say when.”

At that he started to laugh, and I saw his square sweating face laughing up at me, his shoulders shaking with it, and the sight of it, plus what he said next, drove me past the edge.

I don't remember the order of events. At some point, there was a crashing of furniture. At some point I had Powell by the throat, the top of his sweatshirt bunched in my fist, and slammed against the window. His eyes bulged above me and his tongue came out, and we slipped in the mess and went down on the deck in a crash of glass and wood. At some point Bobby Derr was trying to pull me off him—“Jesus Christ, Phil!” I remember him shouting—and the two girls were clawing at me and the phone was ringing. Then I remember being off him, standing over him, heaving and panting, and him cowering on the floor, arms above his head, against the shattered glass of the picture window.

And lest you think I went stark and raving for no reason, let me tell you what he said:

He said Halloran had gone to the city. Halloran and Stark.

And he said it was Nora Saroff's turn for In Memoriam.

The brown-haired girl was shouting at me. It was Mr. Camelot on the phone. He said it was urgent.

“Watch him, Bobby!” I called out to Derr. “If he so much as moves, kick his head in!”

I got on with the Counselor.

“I thought I'd better call, Phil,” he started, “because …”

“I've been trying to reach you,” I interrupted. “Where's Nora?”

“She's in the city,” he said. “That's …”

“She's
where
?”

“In the city. What's wrong, Phil? That's …”

“God Almighty!”

“Phil! Phil!” His voice boomed, drowning mine. “For Christ's sake, calm down. Listen! I'm in the city too. We're both still here. That's why I'm calling you out there. We never left.”

“Then where's Nora? Is she with you?”

“No, she isn't. The truth is: We don't know where she is. That's why we're still here. She had late appointments. We decided to wait to go out to the house till tonight. Now for God's sake, calm down and tell me what's wrong.”

“Nothing's wrong,” I must have babbled at him. “Nothing's wrong. Nothing's wrong at all. Only that Halloran's on the loose and he's going after her, that's all.”

“All right, Phil. All right. Calm down. Start at the beginning. Take a deep breath, then tell me what's going on.”

I took a deep breath. Then I told him, as quickly and succinctly as I could, what Powell had said. And that Vincent Angus Halloran was a killer, one, I thought, of a gang of party-boy killers, and on the loose in New York. And that Nora was his next target.

“All right, Phil,” he said when I was done, in a surprisingly steady voice. “Now listen carefully. I won't repeat myself. Here's what I want you to do. As soon as I get off, I'm going to call Fincher, I'm going to call in the police, I'm going to find Nora. I want you here. Get here as fast as you can. Come right to the office. It'll take you how long?”

“Two and a half hours,” I said.

“You're to come right to the office. I'll have instructions for you here.”

“What about Powell?” I said.

“That's up to you. Leave Derr with him. Good-bye now, I'm hanging up. Get here as fast as you can.”

I hung up and went back to where Bobby was standing over Powell and the two girls. It looked like the two girls were trying to administer to their fallen hero, and Powell, propped against a wall now, was rubbing his throat. His complexion had paled out, and he looked like he was going to throw up any second.

I pulled Bobby Derr aside and told him what I wanted. Moments later he came out to the Fiero with me, and I gave him my gun. But first I had one more go-around with Powell.

“Booger,” I said, crouching next to him so I could see his eyes. “I want it all, everything you know, and fast.”

“What about my deal?” he said, the chirping sound gone hoarse and whispery.

“What deal?”

“My immunity. The DA with the Wop name. You said you'd …”

I had to fight back the impulse.

“I'll tell Bobby what to do the minute I'm gone,” I said. “He'll make the call. But if you don't talk right now, no deal.”

He looked at me, I guess to see if I meant it. Then his head drooped. I think he started to cry.

“
Now
, Booger,” I repeated.

“You got it right,” he said in the same hoarse whisper. “We took turns. I did the Park Slope one, but that was the only one. It wasn't me who did Suzi Lee.… Hal …”

He broke into a blubber then, and I slapped him once, hard, to make him stop.

“What's the plan with Nora?” I asked him.

“I don't know. All I know is he made an appointment to go see her.”

“He
what?
”

“That's right. He said he was going to see his shrink, that's what he said. He said he even had an appointment. Then he took off, with Shrimp. It was before you got here.”

“When was the appointment, Booger? What time? Where?”

He said he didn't know, and I grabbed his throat again, lifting him, shook him till the tears rolled out of his eyes. But he still swore he didn't know.

I let go of him. I told Bobby to call the Counselor the minute I'd gone, to pass on what Powell had just said. Then I told him to find Andy Intaglio, in Woodbridge, New Jersey, tell him what we had, let him decide what he wanted to do about Powell.

Then I drove off, alone, headed for New York.

CHAPTER

17

Parts of it I didn't learn about till later. There are still details I don't have the answers to. But that November night, driving faster than I dared against the steady flow of Thanksgiving traffic, I was in the dark every which way. I couldn't believe Nora had agreed to see Halloran professionally, not after what she'd said that morning in the park. Hadn't she told me she wasn't taking on anybody new? Hadn't she understood that Halloran might be more dangerous than Carter McCloy?

What I had no way of knowing was that not only had Margie Magister called Nora direct, but that Vincent Angus Halloran had called her himself, that same Tuesday.

He'd introduced himself as Carter McCloy's closest friend. Carter's suicide, he'd claimed, had pretty much wrecked his life. He hadn't been able to get over it. He'd diagnosed his own problems as one of deep, deep depression, to the point that he felt paralyzed in everything he did, or tried to do. Sex included. He knew Carter had thought the world of Dr. Saroff. He'd talked about her all the time. He, Vincent, understood that she wasn't taking on any new patients, but in a funny way, because of Carter, he didn't feel like a new patient. Wouldn't she see him just once? For one hour? Couldn't she at least orient him toward what he should do next?

Don't ask me to analyze Halloran for you. They say killers have got to escalate the risk each time, that they get their kicks out of danger. They also say they want to get caught. Who knows? Maybe Halloran, feeling the noose closing on him, had some such wish. Just possibly, though, he wanted to test his own invincibility.

In the end, he'd persuaded her. She'd even agreed to see him that same day, at five. Then, when he called back, she'd agreed to wait for him till he got there.

In between, he'd talked to yours truly. We must have passed each other on the road.

Needless to say, if Nora hadn't had something else to take care of, I've my doubts that she'd have agreed to either the first or the later appointment. The Counselor, for one thing, wasn't one to be kept waiting. But neither he nor anybody, myself included, knew about this something else.

Unless Halloran himself did, and exploited it?

I wouldn't have put it past him to mix a little blackmail into his insane party plans.

The other thing I had no way of knowing was that, sometime early that afternoon, she'd given Bud Fincher's people the slip. She'd done it in the cleverest of ways and knowing, obviously, exactly what she was doing. She'd taken a taxi downtown to one of the department stores and, by changing clothes in a dressing room, had succeeded in walking out right past Fincher's unsuspecting agent. By the time Fincher's man checked with a sales clerk and found out that Nora had bought the whole new outfit
before
trying it on, she'd disappeared.

Clearly she'd realized she was being followed, if not why.

The Counselor had only heard from her once, and then indirectly. Around four o'clock, she'd called Roger LeClerc. First she'd asked for me. Roger said he didn't know where I was, or when I'd be back. Then she'd told him to tell the Counselor that she'd be later than she thought, that he wasn't to wait, that she'd drive out to the Hamptons herself when she was done. She'd hung up before Roger could pass the call along.

By the time I got there, at about 9
P.M
., the house was lit up like Christmas, top to bottom, and there were two cop cars double-parked in the street outside, their lights revolving, and the Counselor was storming the premises like a caged animal. I pulled in behind the cop cars, and even as I got out of the Fiero, he was shouting at me from the sidewalk. In his shirtsleeves despite the late-November cold, the great mane of his white hair glistening and wild in the light. I glimpsed Roger LeClerc peeping out of the open doorway behind him, like some kind of scared rabbit.

“For Christ's sake, Phil,” the Counselor raged at me. “Where the hell have you been?”

I couldn't get a word out. He seemed to tower over me on the sidewalk, even though we're not all that different in size.

“I've got the whole damn city out looking for her, the police aren't worth a goddamn nickel, you goddamn well better find her!” and words more or less to that effect. I'd never seen him like that, wild and bloody-eyed, never heard him curse like that at his worst moments.

I talked to him, or at him, or tried to, while he strode back into the house.

“Did Fincher …?”

“Damn Fincher! I've already fired Fincher. He's hiding in your office, but don't bother talking to him, it's a waste of time.”

“Margie …?”

“I talked to her. I even called Barger. Sally Magister. I told them they were defending a goddamn murderer. Nothing.”

“What about her office?”

“Not there. It's surrounded, but goddamn it, she hasn't been there all day!”

“But I …”

“Goddamn it, Phil, stop chattering at me. Find her! What about Powell?”

“He said Halloran had an appointment with her, that's all.”

“What do you mean, that's all?”

“That's all he knows.”

“How the hell do you know?”

“I squeezed him. I squeezed him hard. I think that's all that's there.”

By this time we were standing in the middle of the reception area downstairs. All the lights were on, and there were several men, in uniform and out, moving in and out of my office, and Roger LeClerc in their midst looked like a whirling dervish.

“Where's the dog?” I asked the Counselor. “She never goes anywhere for long without the dog.”

“Muffin's here,” he answered. “Upstairs.” Then, lowering his voice: “Find her, Phil, for God's sake. If anything's happened to her, we'll never forgive ourselves. She's pregnant, you know, in addition to …”

I didn't hear the rest. I don't know what I said, or didn't. The news dumbfounded me. It made a lot of things fit, but at the same time it jumped a lot of others out of sync.

“Jesus,” the Counselor said, staring at me. “Didn't you know that?”

I shook my head.

“I thought she'd have told you, of all people. But she's been so funny about it. Anyway, Phil, yes, it's true, at my advanced age I'm going to be a father. Well, what the hell? Worse things have happened to people.” His voice, right there, had gone gentle—a phenomenon about as common as snowflakes in July. But then it hardened, and he gripped my shoulder, saying: “For Christ's sake, Phil, find her.”

I went into my office. It had been turned into a kind of makeshift command post. My old friend Martindale, none other, the bigshot cop, was sitting at my desk, listening to somebody on the phone, while Bud Fincher sat on my couch, even more cadaverous-looking than usual and holding his bowed bullet head in his hands.

“Hello, Revere,” Martindale said, hanging up the phone. “Welcome to one holy mess. That was Dr. Santamaria on the phone. No dice.”

“Who's Santamaria?” I said.

“Dr. Anna Santamaria,” Martindale said, looking down at a notepad. “Saroff's office mate. They split the use of the place. We've been hunting high and low for her, finally found her.”

“What did she say?” Bud Fincher asked from the couch.

“Nothing is what she said. Tuesday afternoons, the place is Saroff's. She hasn't seen her, talked to her, in several days. She has no idea where she is.”