Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (79 page)

The man picked up a few tapes, flipped them over, read the credits, put them back on the rack. He stepped back, hands on hips, surveyed the titles.

Then a middle-aged, quite rotund white woman approached from the right side of the frame. She wore a flower-print shift and had her thinning hair in hot rollers. It appeared as if she said something to the man. Staring straight ahead, still denying the camera his profile—as if he knew the security camera position—the man answered her, gesturing to his left. The woman, nodded, smiled, smoothed the dress over her abundant hips, as if waiting for the man to continue the conversation. He did not. She then huffed out of the frame. The man did not watch her go.

A few more moments passed. The man looked at a few more tapes, then quite casually took a videotape out of the bag and put it on the shelf. Mateo rewound the tape, replayed the section, then froze the tape and slowly zoomed in, sharpening the image as much as possible while he did so. The graphic on the front of the videotape box became clearer. The image was a black-and-white photograph of a man on the left and a woman with curly blond hair on the right. Down the center, splitting the photo in two, was a ragged red triangle.

The tape was
Fatal Attraction.

The sense of excitement was palpable in the room.

“Now, see, the employees are supposed to make customers leave bags like that at the front counter,” Kilbane said. “Fucking
idiots.
”

Mateo rewound the tape to the point where the figure entered the frame, played it back in slow motion, froze the image, enlarged it. It was very grainy, but it was clear that there was elaborate embroidery on the back of the man’s satin jacket.

“Can you get closer?” Jessica asked.

“
Oh,
yeah,” Mateo said, firmly center stage. This was his wheelhouse.

He began to work his magic, tapping keys, adjusting levers and knobs, bringing the image up and in. The embroidered picture on the back of the jacket appeared to be a green dragon, its narrow head breathing a thin crimson flame. Jessica made a note to look into tailors who specialized in embroidery.

Mateo worked the image to the right and down, centering it on the man’s right hand. It was clear that he was wearing a surgical glove.

“Jesus,”
Kilbane said, shaking his head, running a hand over his jaw. “Fucking guy comes in the store wearing latex gloves and there’s no red flag with my employees. They are
so
fucking yesterday, man.”

Mateo flipped on a second monitor. On it was the freeze-frame of the killer’s hand holding the weapon in the
Fatal Attraction
killing tape. The gunman’s right sleeve had a ribbing similar to the jacket in the surveillance video. Although not concrete evidence, the jackets were definitely similar.

Mateo hit a few keys and began printing off hard copies of both images.

“When was the
Fatal Attraction
tape rented?” Jessica asked.

“Last night,” Kilbane said. “Late.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. After eleven. I could look it up.”

“And you’re saying that whoever rented it watched the tape and brought it back to you?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“This morning.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. Ten, maybe?”

“Did they drop it in the bin or did they bring it inside?”

“They brought it right to me.”

“What did they say when they brought the tape back?”

“Just that there was something wrong with it. They wanted their money back.”

“That’s it?”

“Well,
yeah.
”

“They didn’t happen to mention that someone had spliced in an actual homicide?”

“You gotta understand who comes into that store. I mean, at that store, people brought back that movie
Memento
saying that there was something wrong with the tape. They said the movie was on the tape backward. You believe
that
?”

Jessica continued to stare at Kilbane for a few moments, then turned to Terry Cahill.

“
Memento
was a story told in reverse,” Cahill said.

“Uh, okay,” Jessica replied. “Whatever.” She turned her attention back to Kilbane. “Who rented the
Fatal Attraction
tape?”

“Just a regular,” Kilbane said.

“We’ll need the name.”

Kilbane shook his head. “He’s just a regular schmuck. He ain’t got nothing to do with this.”

“We’ll need the name,” Jessica repeated.

Kilbane stared at her. You’d think a two-time loser like Kilbane would know better than to try to finesse the cops. On the other hand, if he was smarter, he wouldn’t be a two-time loser. Kilbane was just about to object when he glanced at Jessica. Perhaps a phantom pain in his side flared momentarily, recalling Jessica’s wicked body shot. He acquiesced and gave them the name of the customer.

“Do you know the woman on the surveillance tape?” Palladino asked. “The woman who talked to that man?”

“What, that heifer?” Kilbane screwed up his face, as if
GQ
gigolo studs like him would never associate with an overweight middle-aged woman who went out in public wearing hot rollers. “Uh, no.”

“Have you seen her in the store before?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Did you watch the whole tape before you sent it to us?” Jessica asked, knowing the answer, knowing that someone like Eugene Kilbane could not resist.

Kilbane looked at the floor for a moment. Obviously, he had. “Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you bring it in yourself?”

“I thought we went over this.”

“Tell us again.”

“Look, you might want to be a little nicer to me.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I can break this case wide open for you.”

Everyone just stared at him. Kilbane cleared his throat. It sounded like a farm tractor backing out of a muddy culvert. “I want assurances that you’re going to overlook my little, uh, indiscretion of the other day.” At this he lifted up his shirt. The game zipper he’d had on his belt—the weapons violation that would have put him back in prison—was gone.

“We’ll want to hear what you have to say first.”

Kilbane seemed to think about the offer. It wasn’t what he wanted, but it appeared as if it was all he was going to get. He cleared his throat again, looked around the room, perhaps expecting everyone to hold their breath in anticipation of his earth-shattering revelation. It didn’t happen. He plowed ahead anyway.

“The guy on the tape?” Kilbane said. “The guy who put the
Fatal Attraction
tape back on the shelf?”

“What about him?” Jessica asked.

Kilbane leaned forward, playing the moment for all that it was worth, and said: “I know who he is.”

43

“S
MELLS LIKE A
slaughterhouse.”

He was rake-handle-skinny, and looked like a man unstuck in time, unencumbered by history. There was good reason for that. Sammy DuPuis was trapped in 1962. Today Sammy wore a black alpaca cardigan, blue-on-blue point-collar dress shirt, gray iridescent sharkskin pants, and pointy cap-toe oxfords. His hair was slicked back, fused with enough hair tonic to grease a Chrysler. He smoked an unfiltered Camel.

They met on Germantown Avenue, near Broad Street. The aroma of simmering barbecue and hickory smoke from Dwight’s Southern permeated the air with its fatty sweet tang. It made Kevin Byrne salivate. It made Sammy DuPuis nauseous.

“What, not a big fan of soul food?” Byrne asked.

Sammy shook his head, hit his Camel hard. “How do people eat that shit? It’s all fuckin’ fat and gristle. You might as well just put it into a needle and shoot it into your heart.”

Byrne glanced down. The gun was laid out on a black velvet cloth between them. There was something about the scent of oil on steel, Byrne thought. There was a terrible power in that smell.

Byrne picked it up, checked the action, sighted the barrel, mindful of the fact that they were in a public place. Sammy generally worked out of his house in East Camden, but Byrne didn’t have time to cross the river today.

“I can do it for six fifty,” Sammy said. “And that is a bargain for such a
beauty
-full weapon.”

“Sammy,” Byrne said.

Sammy was silent for a few moments, conveying poverty, oppression, destitution. It didn’t work. “Okay, six,” he said. “And I’m losing money.”

Sammy DuPuis was a gun dealer who never dealt to drug dealers or anyone in a gang. If there was a backroom small-arms dealer with scruples, it was Sammy DuPuis.

The item for sale was a SIG-Sauer P-226. It may not have been the prettiest handgun ever made—far from it—but it was accurate, reliable, and rugged. And Sammy DuPuis was a man of deep discretion. On this day, these were Kevin Byrne’s main concerns.

“This better be cold, Sammy.” Byrne put the weapon in his coat pocket.

Sammy wrapped the other guns in the cloth, said: “Like my first wife’s ass.”

Byrne pulled his roll, peeled off six hundred-dollar bills. He handed them to Sammy. “You bring the bag?” Byrne asked.

Sammy looked up immediately. His forehead was corrugated with thought. As a rule, getting Sammy DuPuis to stop counting money was no small feat, but Byrne’s question stopped him cold. If what they were doing was outside the law—and it broke at least half a dozen laws that Byrne could think of, both state and federal—what Byrne was suggesting broke just about every other.

But Sammy DuPuis did not judge. If he did, he wouldn’t be in the business he was in. And he wouldn’t cart around the silver case he carried in the trunk of his car, the valise that held instruments of such dark purpose that Sammy only spoke of their existence in hushed tones.

“You sure?”

Byrne just stared.

“Okay, okay,” Sammy said. “Sorry I asked.”

They got out of the car, walked to the trunk. Sammy looked up and down the street. He hesitated, fumbling with his keys.

“Checking for the cops?” Byrne asked.

Sammy laughed a nervous little twitter. He opened the trunk. Inside was a group of canvas bags, attaché cases, duffels. Sammy moved a few of the leatherette cases to the side. He opened one. Inside was an array of cell phones. “Sure you don’t want a clean cell instead? A PDA, maybe?” he asked. “I can put you in a BlackBerry 7290 for seventy-five bucks.”

“Sammy.”

Sammy hesitated again, then zipped up the leatherette satchel. He cracked another case. This one was ringed with dozens of amber vials. “How about pills?”

Byrne thought about it. He knew Sammy had amphetamines. He was exhausted, but the uppers would just make things worse.

“No pills.”

“Fireworks? Porno? I can get you a Lexus for ten G’s.”

“You
do
remember I have a loaded weapon in my pocket, don’t you?” Byrne asked.

“You’re the boss,” Sammy said. He pulled out a sleek Zero Halliburton suitcase, dialed the three digits, subconsciously shielding the operation from Byrne. He opened the case, then stepped away, lit another Camel. Even for Sammy DuPuis, the contents of this case were hard to look at.

44

G
ENERALLY THERE WERE
no more than a few officers in the AV Unit in the basement of the Roundhouse at any given time. This afternoon there were half a dozen detectives crowded around the monitor in the small editing bay next to the control room. Jessica was certain that the fact that a hard-core porno movie was running had nothing to do with it.

Jessica and Cahill had driven Kilbane back to Flickz, where he had gone into the adult section and retrieved an X-rated title called
Philadelphia Skin.
He had emerged from the back room like a covert government operative retrieving secret enemy files.

The movie opened with a stock footage view of the skyline of Philadelphia. The production values seemed fairly high for an adult title. Then the film cut to the inside of an apartment. This footage looked standard—bright light, slightly overexposed digital video. Within seconds there was a knock at the door.

A woman entered the frame, answered the door. She was young and delicate, a gaminelike body in a pale yellow teddy. Barely legal by all appearances. When she opened the door fully, a man stood there. He was of average height and build. He wore a blue satin bomber jacket and leather face mask.

“You call for a master plumber?” the man asked.

A few of the detectives laughed, then quickly stowed it. The possibility existed that the man asking the question was their killer. When he turned away from the camera, they saw that he was wearing the same jacket as the man in the surveillance video: dark blue with an embroidered green dragon.

“I’m new to this city,” the girl said. “I haven’t seen a friendly face in weeks.”

As the camera moved closer to her, Jessica could see that the young woman wore a delicate pink feathered mask, but Jessica could see her eyes—haunted, scared eyes, portals to a deeply damaged soul.

The camera then panned to the right, following the man down a short hallway. At this point, Mateo freeze-framed it, made a Sony print of the image. Although the freeze-frame from the surveillance tape, at this size and resolution, was quite fuzzy, when the two images were put side by side the results were all but conclusive.

The man in the X-rated movie and the man putting the tape back on the shelf at Flickz appeared to be wearing the same jacket.

“Anyone recognize this design?” Buchanan asked.

No one did.

“Let’s check it against gang symbols, tattoos,” he added. “Let’s find tailors who do embroidery.”

They watched the rest of the video. Another man in a mask was in the film also, along with a second girl in a feather mask. The movie was of the S&M, rough-sex vintage. It was hard for Jessica to believe that the S&M aspects of the film were not causing the young women severe pain or injury. It looked like they were being seriously beaten.

When it was over, they watched the meager “credits.” The film was directed by someone named Edmundo Nobile. The actor in the blue jacket’s name was Bruno Steele.

“What’s the actor’s real name?” Jessica asked.