The Pride Trilogy: Kyle Callahan 1-3 (45 page)

Chapter 27

K
yle and Linda
walked down a half block from Keller and Whitman. Kyle stopped near the corner and took a seat on a bus bench. It wasn’t like any bus bench Linda had seen: a single, curved piece of aluminum with low handles strategically placed to create three seats. Kyle took one end, Linda the other.

“This is a bus bench?” Linda asked, wondering how uncomfortable it must be for anyone who didn’t fit between the handles.

“It’s the new thing in urban architecture,” Kyle said. “You’ll notice there’s no enclosure, either. When it rains, you get wet. Bus benches designed for comfort and shelter have gone the way of pay phones. Now it’s all about the homeless.”

Linda looked down at the bench they were sitting on. “The homeless?”

“Think about it.”

Linda quickly understood. The benches were impossible to lie on, being both spiked and rounded. Only an infant might be able to lie between seat handles. And the absence of any shelter made them distinctly temporary: you were meant to sit here, if you sat at all, only until the next bus came.

“New York has changed so much since I moved here thirty years ago,” Kyle said. “It’s for the wealthy now—at least Manhattan is, and good luck finding much affordable in the outer boroughs. They don’t want poor people here, and the homeless are treated like pigeons. At least people feed the pigeons, but I think it’s against the law. Pretty much everything is.”

Linda liked what she’d seen of Manhattan so far and wasn’t sure she would prefer it the way it had been. She’d read about the success the city had with Times Square, turning it from a dangerous playground for degenerates and criminals into a place you could bring a family. Was it better then, she wondered. Kyle thought so, but Linda had her doubts.

“What did you think of his story?” Linda asked, referring to Diedrich Keller.

“It wasn’t much of a story. He said Victor never came in, and there’s no reason to doubt him.”

“So where did he go?”

“That’s the million dollar question. He was at Cargill’s, we know that. He left and headed here but never made it.”

“And there was no more communication with anyone after that.”

“We don’t know that,” said Kyle. “We don’t have his phone. We don’t know if anyone has his phone. The police might have it. The killer might have it.”

“Or,” said Linda, “he may simply have turned it off, or ignored it. I do that sometimes. I hate a vibrating phone, it’s like Pavlov calling to his dog. Vic’s brother said he liked to disengage. Anything could have happened that afternoon and evening.”

“Correction,” Kyle said. “Something did happen. Victor Campagna was killed. But he had to get there, wherever ‘there’ is. He had to go
somewhere
after he left Cargill’s, and the most obvious direction for him to head was here, where he intended to go. I mean, for godsake, it’s only six blocks!”

“Did you see the moving
Vanishing
?”

“What?”

“Vanishing,” Linda said. “It was about this couple who stop at a gas station. The woman goes inside to buy something and never comes back.”

“No, sorry, I didn’t.”

“Well, we seem to be looking at something like that. My point is that no one simply disappears. There’s always somewhere they went, or someone who took them—willingly or not.”

They sat in silence another minute. A bus came by and stopped in front of them, letting two people off. Linda gave a small wave to the driver and watched as an elderly woman with a cart on wheels climbed up into the bus and took a seat in front. The bus pulled away.

“Let’s walk it,” Kyle said.

“Walk where?”

“From Cargill’s to here. Let’s go back to Cargill’s, imagine we’re Victor and follow in his footsteps. We have his picture. I say we stop in every store and ask if they saw him, or if they saw him talking to someone.”

Linda did a quick calculation in her head. “That’s probably thirty stores, on one side of the street. Sixty if we hit both sides.”

“We’ll be logical about it. We’ll go back to Cargill’s, which is on the south side of the street. We take an immediate right, which most people would do. We walk up to Lexington, cross to the east side—the side we’re on—and head north.”

The directions meant nothing to Linda. She knew most of Manhattan was designed in a grid, which made navigating the city very easy once you understood the ‘north, south, east, west’ business, and the whole ‘uptown, downtown’ thing. Generally speaking, Fifth Avenue was the dividing line between east and west. She had no idea if there was one for north and south, but she knew if you were going downtown you were going south, and if you were going uptown you were going north. And to know you were going in one of those directions was as easy as looking at the street signs: the numbers only went up or down! Cargill’s was near the corner of Lexington and 72nd Street. Keller and Whitman was on Lexington near 78th. Six blocks. Thirty stores.

They stood from the bench. Linda looked at it again, wondering who sat in a room and came up with the idea for bus benches that could only be endured for very short periods of time and could never provide comfort for the homeless or weary. Subtly sadistic. Maybe Kyle was right. Maybe New York was now a place that welcomed only money. She was beginning to be glad she hadn’t come here for thirty-five years until last spring. She had no before-and-after comparisons to make. She knew only the magical city she’d been to with her parents when she was eight years old. That was the New York City she had wanted to remember. Now, all these years later, it was its own version of pristine. There was still garbage everywhere, and scaffolding covering what looked like half the buildings. But it did not feel dangerous anymore. Clearly the victims of the Pride Killer found out it still was.

Her hand unconsciously dropped down to pat the gun beneath her jacket. It was an automatic gesture, making sure it was still there, seeking comfort in its bulk and its lethality. Some people sought food for comfort, some sought booze, some sought the embrace of a lover for the night or a lifetime. Linda sought the grip of a Colt .45.

Chapter 28

D
watched from
the corner of the store. He’d seen them walk to the bus bench and sit down. He thought they might be going downtown, but then a bus pulled to the curb and they did not get on. They were talking. What were they talking about, he wondered. Were they comparing notes? Were they preparing to come back and ask him more questions?

They had not seen Jarrod enter the store just a few minutes after they’d left. And if they had, they would only think he was another customer. His luck was holding out and he tried to be soothed by it, even as an unfamiliar nervousness took root in him.

Diedrich Kristof Keller III believed himself destined to be remembered as the Pride Killer, among the most successful killers America has ever known. But unlike its most famous celebrity killers, he would not be caught. His murders would go unsolved. He would be the modern Jack the Ripper, as well known as any Hollywood star or politician, and with a reputation far outlasting most.

He had only been questioned once before, after his first victim. He’d met the young man through an advertisement in one of the gay newspapers that were stacked outside the bars. David was his name (a killer remembers his first victim the way he remembers his first love; they may well be the same). He called himself a “body worker” and only did outcalls. D thought at the time David probably lived at home with his parents, or a lover. For whatever reasons, he did not want his clients coming to his home, so he headed off to the Upper East Side to an address D had given him several blocks from his townhouse. When David arrived and was understandably surprised to see the man he knew as Leo waiting for him in front of an abandoned jewelry store, D told him it was a precaution. Body workers were not the only ones who took measures to protect themselves. Come, let’s walk, D had said. Tell me about yourself. This way he had a chance to take the measure of this man and to keep him from knowing where he was really going. David might write down the addresses of his customers and D wanted no trail that could lead directly to him.

The questioning had been by accident. Two detectives, frustrated at a lack of progress, had canvassed the area where the cabbie said he’d dropped David off. Despite being several blocks away, they knocked at D’s townhouse as they went door to door asking if anyone had seen the young man. No, D told them, he had not seen the man he had recently killed in his basement (leaving out that detail). Perhaps his wife had seen him, but she was gone at the moment with their daughter at an orthodontist appointment. Should he call her? They told him not to trouble her and headed on to the next building. That was as close as D had ever come to being found out, which was not close at all. Until this morning. Until the man and woman came into his store.

“I’ve seen flyers,” Jarrod said. He was behind D, opening a shipment of cufflinks that had arrived late the previous afternoon.

It startled D out of his reverie. He turned around. “Pardon me?”

“Flyers, Mr. K, of that young man they found in the river. I saw several posted around the area.”

This was news to D—bad news. It must be the man’s family. They’d done it before, several times over the four years he’d been active before going to Berlin. Desperate posters with the faces of missing men and a toll-free number to call. All of them had taken their last breaths as he watched them, their eyes bulging out, their bodies convulsing. He had not seen these latest flyers and was worried now. He may need to think of moving after this. Yes, Keller and Whitman may need to close, the townhouse may need to be sold, and D may need to relocate to another large city. Maybe take a year off, then resume his trade. He would have to think it all through very carefully.

“I’m not feeling well, Jarrod,” he said.

“Again? You might want to see a doctor, Mr. K.”

“I’ll be fine. I just need to go home and rest. I haven’t been sleeping well. I’m just tired, really.”

“By all means go home and lie down then. I’ve got the store.”

“You always do, Jarrod. I’ve counted on you for a long time now, and you have never let me down.”

D prepared to leave.

“What if someone comes in here asking?” Jarrod said.

“About what?”

“About that young man.”

D stared at him. “What young man is that, Jarrod?”

“The one who’s missing. The one on the flyers. I’m sure he was in here.”

“Oh,” said D, in as cold and flat a voice as his assistant had ever heard. “They were already here. I told them the young man had come in looking for a suit but had not seen anything to his liking.”

“But I thought …”

“What, Jarrod? What did you think?”

A chill ran through Jarrod that froze his blood. He clearly remembered his boss talking to the young man, and in a very friendly tone. He hadn’t heard their conversation, but he could swear the young man, the one whose face was now on flyers being put up around the area, had said, “See you later.”

“Nothing,” Jarrod said. “Nothing, Mr. K. I’m glad you told them whatever they needed to know. I won’t worry about it. Now you just go home and rest. Take the day if you need to, I’ll be here till closing.”

“That’s a good man. I’ll call you if I’m coming back.”

“No need to call. Just surprise me.”

Oh, I’ll surprise you
, D thought.
When this is over, when it’s time for me to quickly and quietly disappear, I’ll have a very big surprise for you
.

“See you later then,” D said. “Or maybe not. It will be a surprise.”

D left the store, looking down the sidewalk as he did to see if the man and woman were still there. They were not.

Jarrod stood behind the counter absent-mindedly fingering the cufflink boxes. For the first time in his years of working for Diedrich Keller he had the sense that he did not know the man at all … and that he did not want to. Something was not right. He began to hope the police would come by again. He would be a good citizen, even though he knew there was nothing untoward about Mr. K’s encounter with the dead man. He may have misheard their conversation. The young man may not have said, “See you later.” But he would tell them and let them decide. He was just a sales clerk, a retail assistant. He did what he was told. Mr. K had not told him to
not
say anything. He decided he would pass on what he had heard and seen,
if
they came back. He would not seek them out. He would not call the police, but if they came in asking questions again, he would just politely tell them about Monday afternoon. There would be no harm intended, and surely none caused, but the man’s family must be frantic by now to learn anything about his disappearance. Mr. K surely had nothing to do with that, but if Jarrod could help them in their search, then that was his duty.

Chapter 29

I
t was nearly
noon and Kyle and Linda had managed to cover five blocks, stopping and asking store owners if they had seen Victor Campagna walking by on Monday afternoon. As he had feared, Kyle soon discovered how little attention people paid to each other in their daily routines. Most of the shop staff did not spend much time looking out their windows—they were busy watching the customers who’d come in, offering to help them find what they were looking for, or hovering nearby to make sure they didn’t steal anything. They struck out at the dry cleaners, the shoe repair store, two diners, and a newly installed pinball arcade where the machines were for sale as well as play.

“I’m beginning to think he never left the bar,” Linda said, as they walked north on Lexington just a block from Keller and Whitman.

“Or he didn’t get very far from it.” Kyle was disappointed, too, having placed his hopes on a sighting by someone along the avenue.

“Keep in mind it was the afternoon. People pay less attention then. They’ve been at work all day, they want to go home or out to play. They’re thinking of themselves more than they are of passersby.”

“True,” said Kyle. He was feeling glum. There had already been a second victim, ahead of schedule. For all they knew the third victim was selected and might be heading to his death right now. The thought depressed and angered him. He kept thinking they’d missed something, that if they’d asked a different question at Cargill’s, or in any of the businesses they’d stopped in, they could have jogged someone’s memory.

“Should we keep going?” Linda asked. “We backtracked. Should we move forward now, stop in all the shops heading uptown?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

There was a newsstand a half block from Keller and Whitman’s. Just a hole in the wall, a narrow box of a shop where the owner sold a dozen newspapers, gum, candy, and sodas from a small back cooler. “Let’s stop in here,” Kyle said.

“Who reads newspapers anymore?” Linda asked as they entered the small store. She, like everyone she knew, got her news online now. She barely used her smartphone as a phone, except to call Kirsten. “Shit!” she blurted.

“What?” Kyle said, startled.

“I forgot to call Kirsten this morning. Listen, you talk to this guy and I’ll wait outside. I call her every day. She’ll be wondering what’s wrong.” She pulled her phone out of her purse. There were two messages in her voicemail. “Too late. She’s called me. I had the damn thing on silent mode.”

“Go,” Kyle said. “I’ll meet you outside.”

Linda left the store to make her phone call. Kyle walked up to the man seated on a stool behind the counter. He’d watched them when they’d come in but had said nothing.

“No more cigarettes,” the man said.

Kyle looked at the wall behind the man and was surprised to see an empty cigarette rack. “I don’t smoke,” he said.

“Gum? Candy? Not too many newspapers left, they go fast.”

“Actually,” Kyle said, taking out the photograph of Victor, “I was hoping you may have seen this man. Monday afternoon.” He handed the picture to the shop owner. “What’s your name, by the way?”

“You first.”

“Kyle. Kyle Callahan. I’m trying to find my friend.”

“Omar. I’m the owner here, twenty years. Everybody else come and go, but Omar stays.”

The man took a pair of glasses from under the counter and perched them on his nose. He stared at the picture. “This is the one they found in the river, yes?”

“Yes, I’m sorry to say.”

“Then you found who you are looking for.”

Kyle couldn’t tell if the man was being facetious or just literal. “Okay, then, I’m trying to find out where he went
before
they found him in the river. He was last known to be in this area.”

The man peered again at the picture, then handed it back. Kyle felt his disappointment rising. He expected to hit another dead end among too many that day.

“Sure, I saw him.”

“Really?”

The man, who Kyle now knew was named Omar, scowled at him. “What, you think I’m just saying it?”

“No, no, I believe you.” Kyle glanced out the window and saw Linda talking on her phone. He wished she was with him to hear this.

“I was outside smoking—I smoke them, I just don’t sell them—and I saw him come out of the store.”

“Which store is that?”

“The men’s store, the snooty one. Their customers never come in here. That’s why I notice him. He leaves the men’s store and comes in here to buy gum. He speaks to me. Not everybody does. Most just put what they buy on the counter, pay and leave. But this young man, he was very nice.”

“What did he say?” asked Kyle.

“He say he’s feeling lucky, or it was his lucky day, something like that. Maybe he felt lucky because he didn’t buy a suit. Very overpriced, that place, I went there once. My brother’s a tailor. You need a suit, I get you a good one at half what you pay there.”

“Thank you, Omar. I don’t need a suit but I’ll keep it in mind.”

Omar handed the photograph back. “I’m sorry about your friend,” he said. “I guess it wasn’t his lucky day after all.”

Kyle took the picture and slipped it back in his pocket. He quickly picked out a pack of spearmint gum and tossed a ten dollar bill on the counter. Omar rang up the purchase and was taking out the change when Kyle said, “Keep it,” and hurried out of the store.

Linda was saying goodbye as Kyle came out on the sidewalk.

“How’s Kirsten and her mother?” Kyle said.

“I can’t say fine. Dot’s in the final stages, but they’re keeping her comfortable. Kirsten thinks we’re looking at a week, two at the most.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It happens … to all of us. Some people just have the misfortune of dying in pain. My concern is getting Kirsten through this. I didn’t tell her about the Pride Killer, that’s not something she needs on her mind.”

“Right.”

“How did it go in there? Nothing helpful?”

“Oh,” said Kyle, “to the contrary. It was very helpful. He saw Victor Campagna. They spoke.”

“What did they say?”

“Omar didn’t say anything, as far as I know. But Victor told him it was his lucky day.”

It was an odd thing to tell a stranger, unless you’d just had a nice surprise. “I wonder what he meant by that.”

“I don’t know, but I know someone who might. Someone who told us he’d never seen Victor.”

“Diedrich Keller.”

“You guessed it. Omar—that’s the store owner—said Victor had just come out of Keller and Whitman. He was there, and something happened that put him in a very good mood.”

“I think it’s time to pay another visit,” Linda said. She slipped her phone back in her purse and the two of them began walking toward the men’s store.

Kyle wondered what Diedrich Keller would tell them this time. Whatever it was, he knew it would be a lie.