Nightbird (13 page)

“What about the old back door?”

Wacky seemed annoyed at being stopped from ticking off the entire list of those arrested. He spun around twice, then drummed
on his coin changer.

“The old stars,” he said. “The ones who built this street. Before the no-talent pretty faces and the bean counters. They had
a back door from the Broadway Arms into the alley behind these theaters.”

“I bet they closed it up when they built the Merrimac Hotel,” Danny said.

“You’d be wrong,” Wacky said.

In his lifetime Wacky Walzak had seen more minutes of live theater than any human being. Every show on Broadway for half a
century. But according to Anthony Ryan he’d never seen a single play beginning to end in one sitting. He’d catch the first
act of this, the last act of that. He was antsy now, his Air Jordans wanting to fly down the boulevard.

“I have other eggs to fry,” Wacky said, and feigned illness. “A television actor yelled at me, believe it? A regular soap
opera Barrymore.”

“We’ll talk again, when you have more time,” Danny said.

“Any day except Sunday,” Wacky said. “I never work Sundays.”

“
Never on Sunday
?” Danny said, smiling.

“I don’t work on Sundays,” he said. “But I do have sex on Sunday.”

And then, like a cellulite Peter Pan, he exited across Fifty-first Street without so much as a single curtain call.

B
y the time Ryan left Stella Grasso and crossed the hall to apartment 18K, Joe Gregory’s hands were already under the dress.
He squeezed her hips tightly as he waited for the breeze to wane. Gently he leaned forward until her thighs touched the rail,
with her light brown feet still atop the woolen hassock. He took a burlesque bite at her ass. Then, on cue from below, he
let gravity take the upper body, and the 109-pound hand-sewn canvas likeness of Gillian Stone tumbled eighteen stories into
the center of a huge air mattress surrounded by Emergency Services cops and a few hundred gawkers.

“If this was an Olympic event,” Gregory said, “that would be a gold medal half-gainer.”

The air mattress had been placed at the curb. A red sheet, cut to the exact dimensions of the roof of a 1984 Ford Econoline,
had been taped to the top of the mattress in the exact spot occupied by the van registered to the Times Square Ark of Salvation.
The mannequin scored a bull’s-eye.

“This is what they should do here on New Year’s Eve, instead of dropping the ball,” suggested one of the Crime Scene techs.
“A falling blonde has much more inherent drama than a lighted ball.”

“I’ll call Dick Clark,” Gregory said. “Maybe he can sign Madonna for the millennium.”

Down below, autos and pedestrians held up for the doll drop resumed the traffic dance. Emergency Services cops hauled the
mannequin from the heaving air mattress and commenced the deflation process. On the balcony of the eighteenth floor cops from
Crime Scene Unit filed back into the apartment to finish the room-by-room search. Anthony Ryan walked toward the door.

“Don’t go away mad,” Joe Gregory said.

“Who’s mad?” Ryan said. “I’m going down to the car to get a couple of DD fives. Write up the interview I did this morning
with the woman across the hall.”

Ryan filled Gregory in on his earlier canvass of the Broadway Arms, including his talk with Stella Grasso. He recounted how
Ms. Grasso observed Trey Winters using the stairs on a regular basis to sneak up to Gillian’s apartment. Tap-tap-tapping on
her apartment door. But on Tuesday night, during the eleven-fifteen
P.M.
weather report, he didn’t use the stairs. And he was angry. Bang-bang-banging.

“I never doubted he was lying about screwing her,” Gregory said. “But I definitely don’t see his coming here pissed off as
a major contradiction. He told us he was pissed.”

“No, he said he was coming up here to smooth things out.”

“Maybe he
intended
to come here peacefully, but when he heard her voice on the phone he knew she was sloshed. Got himself worked up on the way
over. Still, pally, the guy went home.”

The heavy slap of wooden police barriers being thrown into an open truck echoed throughout the canyon. The rolling lights
around the ITT building predicted a high of ninety-three, a low of seventy, slightly less humid.

“What the hell is it going to take to convince you, anyway?” Gregory said, gesturing down. “Didn’t that help?”

“That test? That didn’t prove anything.”

“Come on, pally. It proves she wasn’t tossed off. You saw me. I let her fall under her own weight.”

“We proved that’s exactly what happened,” Ryan said. “I believe that test. I don’t think it was a big shove, maybe not a shove
at all. But somebody did this to her.”

“Like a guru, you mean? Hypnotized her.”

“Anything is possible.”

“No, it isn’t,” Gregory said.

Detective Armand Coletti rumbled across the white Berber carpet and appeared in the open terrace doorway. The partners ended
their conversation; their disagreements were their private business. Under his breath Gregory said, “Speaking of gurus.”

Coletti was the rotund poster boy of the Crime Scene Unit. Always on the news with information on the latest big case. Within
the whispered world of cops he was known more for his dress than his expertise. White linen suits and Borsolino hats. The
terrace trembled when his full weight settled on it.

“We’re wrapping it up,” he said, looking over the rail. “We found traces of a substance that appears to be resin on her ballet
shoes. We got a few prints, a coupla fibers. Nothing to get excited about. Nothing from the balcony at all.”

“Anything in the safe?” Ryan said.

Detectives had found a small built-in safe in the closet. Ryan called Trey Winters, who declined to come to the apartment
but gave him the combination over the phone.

“Empty, except forrrr,” Coletti said, as if expecting a drum-roll. “A little Bolivian marching powder.”

“The safe was locked,” Ryan said. “I doubt Gillian knew the combination. The coke could have been there for years.”

“Ko-kane is ko-kane to me. It’s your job to find out who, where, and when.”

“How do you know it’s cocaine?” Ryan said.

Coletti held up a plastic bag. Inside was a small tube from a test kit. It looked as though it had been tie-dyed dark blue.
Positive for coke.

“Remind me why we hate him, Joe,” Ryan said, turning to his partner.

“We don’t hate Armand, pally. We hate his brother, Louie. Armand we just don’t care for.”

“Who the fuck are you two to hate anybody? Two old fucks hanging on by the skin of your teeth.”

Ryan grabbed Coletti by the tie and yanked him forward, pulling his face over the rail. Opaque panels shook like cheap windows
in a storm. A button flew off the tech man’s shirt, pinged off the rail, and sailed into space.

“See down there, Armand?” Ryan said. “A girl named Gillian fell from here. Could’ve been your wife, your sister, your daughter.
That’s how you should be thinking. Of Gillian. Now I want you to wait for the bloodwork from the lab before you go shooting
off your mouth to the press. Allow Gillian that much dignity.”

“My partner’s talking to you,” Gregory said. The ITT sign reported, “Yanks 11–Whitesox 3, Martinez is one-man show, hits two
homers.” “He can’t answer when you’re choking him, pally.”

“We don’t want to read this in the paper,” Ryan said, releasing his hold on the chunky technician.

“You’re fucking nuts, you two,” Coletti said, readjusting his tie and collar. He waddled away quickly, up the step into the
apartment.

“You gotta relax here, pally,” Gregory said. “You’re starting to scare me.”

“He needed that, Joe. It’ll make him a better person.”

“I think Armand’s just become the Coletti who hates us. And we can’t hate Louie no more, he’s gonna be handicapped.”

“That’s right, his lifelong dream,” Ryan said.

Armand’s older brother, Lou Coletti, was the kind of sleazy and underhanded cop who wasn’t aware how sleazy he was. He was
the kind of cop that cops talked about among themselves but never mentioned to any civilian. Lou Coletti was a useless cop
whose only goal in the police department was to acquire a line-of-duty injury so he could retire on three-quarters pay, tax-free,
for the rest of his life. It was no secret. Louie said it was like winning the lottery. But he wanted the perfect injury,
one that wouldn’t interfere with his lifestyle or cause him any pain.

Louie’s first attempt was a back injury from a minor radio car accident. He spent a fortune in orthopedists, but his attempt
failed. Then he tried to get out on the heart bill, citing all the pressure from a six-month stint in Narcotics. But it backfired.
Word was, he took so many stress tests on the treadmills of a dozen heart specialists that he inadvertently worked himself
into fairly decent shape. Rejected again, Louie was bitterly disappointed, swore he was going to give up the chase.

But about a month ago Gregory saw Louie in headquarters. He said he’d just been transferred to the outdoor pistol firing range.
Innocently Gregory asked him why the hell he wanted that assignment. Louie put his hand up to his ear and yelled, “To get
deaf, Joey. To get deaf.”

As they left the apartment, Gregory kept repeating the line in Louie Coletti’s gravelly Brooklynese. He had Ryan smiling despite
himself. He was still smiling when he opened the apartment door and ran into Danny Eumont.

“You taking us to lunch?” Gregory said.

“I’m taking you to the basement,” Danny replied.

W
inters knew about this entrance,” Anthony Ryan said, his voice echoing. “No doubt in my mind.”

The door Wacky Walzak had described to Danny led to a twelve-by-twelve outdoor space between the Broadway Arms and the Merrimac
Hotel. Cluttered and claustrophobic, it was like being at the base of four sheer cliffs. Most of the ground space was occupied
by generators, electrical boxes, and other metal containers that hid the mystery machines that made skyscrapers work. An immense
aluminum air-conditioning duct, wide enough to be an on-ramp to the Jersey Turnpike, curved across the ground and up. The
airspace above their heads ended in blue sky.

“Didn’t that woman across the hall tell you Winters used the elevator the night of the murder?” Gregory said.

“Right, and he made a big show of it. Talking to the doorman on the way out.”

“So he leaves Gillian, says hello to the doorman to set up the alibis. Then sneaks back, climbs seventeen stories.”

“No, maybe this is where the Scorza connection comes in. Anyone could come through that service door in the Merrimac Hotel
and get into the Broadway Arms this way”

“Provided it was open,” Gregory said.

“It was open just now,” Ryan said.

The three of them were standing at the foot of the metal stairs leading up to an entrance to the Broadway Arms known only
to air-conditioning mechanics and a dozen living Ziegfeld girls. Cigarette butts, crushed Styrofoam cups, and soda and beer
cans littered the concrete. On the other side of the courtyard was a back entrance to the Merrimac Hotel.

“See?” Gregory said. “You’re taking little bits and pieces and making a case in your head.”

“That’s what we do, Joe. Put little bits and pieces together. What’s your plan? Pack it in? Go play golf?”

“I hate golf.”

“You don’t even like grass, for chrissakes,” Ryan said.

“Your voices are echoing,” Danny warned.

“Maybe we just tread water a little,” Gregory said, his voice lower. “Mark it closed pending further information. We can come
back to it when we get some real evidence.”

Danny, who once thought himself immortal, felt unusually vulnerable. Gregory and his uncle seemed unconcerned about dangers
from above. They were an easy target for someone near a window to dump his stale coffee, hock a loogie, or toss out a half-eaten
salami sandwich. Airmail garbage express. And he was the schlemiel it would surely splat down on. Or was the victim the schlemazel?
He kept peeking up, hoping nothing lethal would fall: a loose air conditioner, a brick, a piano, a safe. He regretted watching
all those Saturday morning cartoons as a kid.

“I don’t see Gillian as a coke head,” Ryan said. “She was too intent on her career. And you don’t handle a schedule like she
had with your nose full of powder. Beside, coke is not as big a deal as it was in the eighties.”

“That’s not true,” Danny said. They both looked over at Danny as if they’d forgotten he was there. “Powder coke is bigger
than ever. They’ve done studies: whenever the economy is booming, so does the cocaine business. Stock market rises, everybody
gets high.”

“He’s right,” Gregory said.

Danny felt like a traitor, but he was surprised at his uncle, who was usually up on drug trends. Cocaine was king again, thanks
to Dow Jones and Colombian efficiency in manufacture and distribution. The kilo price was only twenty grand, half what it
was in the eighties. It was cheaper than pot. Any bozo could score a three-and-a-half-gram eight-ball for thirty bucks a gram.
It was the in drug with the cocktail culture. The three C’s: cocktails, Cubans, and coke.

“Where did she get it?” Ryan said.

“Anywhere,” Danny said. “It’s easy.”

Danny knew a hundred people who bought coke. People who didn’t even have the street smarts to find a cheap black box to unscramble
cable TV. You could score it in mailrooms on Wall Street, oyster bars in the Hamptons, unisex bathrooms in SoHo or Chelsea.
Or if you were too lazy to go out, bike messengers delivered it to your home, as did limo drivers.

“So what are you saying, Danny?” Ryan said. “That you think Gillian was using cocaine?”

“No. Just that it’s easy to get.”

“Give the kid a break,” Gregory said. “He’s just starting to see the logic in this.”

“What logic? And when exactly did you decide this case was closed?”

“Yesterday at two forty-five,” Gregory said, then his voice got higher, imploring. “I don’t know when, pally. I just don’t
see this guy getting himself in a jam where he has to kill somebody.”