Yet another bonus to being a widower, I thought. Oh, the joys of teleparenting.
“Put him on, Peep,” I said.
That’s when somebody else tried to walk into the small bathroom, and opened the door so hard it crashed into my back. I fumbled for my flying phone and managed to save it from the urinal by sheer luck.
“Ocupado, you moron,” I yelled, kick-slamming the door closed behind me.
What a day, I thought. Then—day? What the hell was I saying? What a lifetime.
Chapter 17
THE NEXT PRIORITY ON MY LIST was to start comparing descriptions of the suspects in the different incidents. The problem was, I had only the one that Beth Peters had given me. That kind of information from the 21 Club hadn’t gotten to me yet. I’d learned from Lavery that the street search and canvass of local doormen around the Polo store had produced nothing. And we were still waiting for a coherent statement from the men’s shop clerk whose coworker had been gunned down.
I decided it was time for some coaxing.
His name was Patrick Cardone. He was being cared for by EMTs in an ambulance that was still outside, double-parked on Madison Avenue. As I walked up to it, I saw him through the open rear door, sitting on a stretcher and crying.
I didn’t like intruding on people who’d just experienced a tragedy, but it had to be done, and doing it was my job. I tried to handle it as gently as I knew how.
I waited until he was between sobbing spells, then tapped on the door of the ambulance, at the same time giving the paramedics the high sign that I was taking over.
“Hi, Patrick? My name’s Mike,” I said, flashing my badge as I climbed in and quietly closed the door behind me. “I can only imagine how awful you’re feeling. You went through a terrible, traumatic experience, and the last thing I want to do is make it worse. But I need your help—me, and all the other people in this city. Do you feel up to talking for a minute?”
The clerk wiped his tearful face with his hands, too distraught to pay attention to the box of tissues beside him.
“Here,” I said, setting the box on his knees. He gave me a grateful look.
“Tell me about Kyle,” I said. “Was he a friend?”
“Oh, yes,” Cardone said emphatically, dabbing at his eyes. “We used to ride in to work together on Saturday mornings, and when he picked me up at my place in Brooklyn Heights, he’d have a coffee for me. You know how many kind people like him there are in this city? I’ll tell you—exactly zero. And that . . . that bastard in the Mets jersey just shot him. Just came in and shot him and?—”
“Whoa, wait,” I said. “The man who shot him was wearing what?”
“An orange Mets jersey. ‘Wright,’ it said across the back, and these atrocious basketball shorts and a . . . a green Jets cap.”
“This is very important,” I said. “Are you absolutely sure?”
“One thing I know, it’s clothes,” Cardone said, with a trace of wounded dignity. “His were ridiculous. Like a comic advertisement for the Sports Authority.”
So we had men wearing completely different outfits. Well, the incident in the subway and the Polo shooting had taken place hours apart. It was conceivable that it was the same guy, and he’d changed clothes. Or were there two psychos? A tag team? Maybe there was a terrorist angle after all. As Mary Catherine liked to say, Shite.
“What else did you notice?” I said. “His hair color, all that?”
“He had big sunglasses, and the cap was pulled low. His hair was darkish, and he was white, fairly tall. Everything else about him was a haze. Except his clothes, of course. And the gun he put to my head. It was square and silver.”
White, darkish hair, fairly tall—that jibed with the subway suspect.
“Did he say anything?” I asked.
Patrick Cardone closed his eyes as he nodded.
“He said, ‘You are the witness to history, I envy you.’?”
That unsettling sensation came back again—that we were dealing with a maniac, and maybe a smart one.
I stood up to go, and patted Cardone’s back.
“You did great, Patrick. I’m not kidding—the best possible way to help your buddy Kyle. We’re going to catch this guy, okay? I’m going to leave my card right here next to you. If you think of anything else, you call me, I don’t care what time it is.”
I thanked him again and hopped down into the street, already opening my cell phone.
“Chief, I just got a description of the Polo shooter,” I said when McGinnis answered. “Same physical type as the subway guy, but he was wearing an orange Mets jersey.”
“An orange what?” McGinnis fumed. “I just heard from the Twenty-one Club scene, and they’re saying that the shooter was dressed like a bike messenger and actually left on a ten-speed. But otherwise, he looked like the subway guy, too.”
“It gets worse, Chief,” I said. “He spoke to one of the other clerks here, and told him that he was a quote ‘witness to history’ unquote.”
“Christ on a cross! Okay, I’ll put all that out over the wire. You triple-check the details there, then get down to the clambake at Twenty-one and see if you can make any sense of it.”
Now we were getting into the realm of nightmare, I thought.
Part Two
PUKE BY THE GALLON
Chapter 18
IN THE SMALL, blessedly quiet foyer outside the Bennett apartment, Mary Catherine picked up the day’s mail, and then paused for a moment. What a nice little space, she thought, lingering before the framed architectural drawings, the antique light fixture, the tarnished copper umbrella stand. the next-door neighbors, the Underhills, had arranged a cornucopia of golden leaves, baby pumpkins, and squash on the mail table.
But the pleasant tour ended all too soon as she came back to the Bennett apartment. She took a deep breath, bracing herself, and opened the door.
Sound slammed into her like a collapsed wall as she stepped inside. In the living room, Trent and Ricky were still loudly squabbling over PlayStation rights. Not to be outdone, Chrissy and Fiona had become locked in a DVD death match at their bedroom computer. The old, overworked washing machine accompanied the yells, thundering from the kitchen as if a full rehearsal of the musical Stomp was under way.
Mary Catherine jumped back as a small, yowling, vomit-colored object streaked between her feet. She stared at it, refusing to believe her eyes. But it was true.
Somebody had just thrown up on Socky, the cat.
Amid all the clamor, she could hardly hear the phone ringing. Her first thought was to let the machine pick it up. The last thing she needed was another hassle. But then she decided, The heck with it. Things couldn’t get worse. She stepped over to the wall phone and lifted it off the hook.
“Bennett residence,” she half screamed.
The caller was a woman who spoke in a clipped, no-nonsense tone. “This is Sister Sheilah from Holy Name.”
Oh, Lord, Mary Catherine thought—the kids’ principal. This was not going to be good news. Well, it served her right for taunting fate.
The din seemed, if anything, to be getting even louder. She glanced around, trying to think of a quick way to quiet it. Then inspiration hit.
“Yes, Sister. This is Mary Catherine, the children’s au pair. Could you hold on one second?”
She calmly set down the phone, got the stepladder out of the pantry, and climbed up to the electrical box on the wall beside the door. As she unscrewed each of the four fuses, the noise abruptly stopped—the TV, the computer game, the washing machine, and finally, the voices.
Mary Catherine picked up the phone again and said, “Sorry, Sister. I’ve a bit of a mutiny on my hands here. What can I do for you?”
She closed her eyes as the principal curtly informed her that Shawna and Brian, half of the Bennett faction that Mary Catherine had managed to get out the door this morning, had “become ill.” They were in the school nurse’s office and had to be picked up immediately.
Perfec
t, she thought. Mike was involved in something too serious to break away from, and she couldn’t leave the little ones here alone.
She assured Sister Sheilah that she’d have someone pick up the latest casualties as soon as humanly possible, and she called Mike’s grandfather, Seamus. This time, fate relented. He was available to go get them right away.
Mary Catherine had just finished talking to him when Ricky, Trent, Fiona, and Chrissy wandered into the kitchen with a chorus of complaints.
“The TV stopped!”
“So’d my computer!”
“Yeah, like—everything.”
“Must be a power blackout,” Mary Catherine said, shrugging. “Nothing to be done about it.” She rummaged in the utility drawer and took out a deck of cards. “Have you guys ever played blackjack?”
Ten minutes later, the kitchen island had become a card table with Trent as the dealer and the others squinting at their hands. The noise level was reduced to the little guys counting out loud and grappling with the rules. Mary Catherine smiled. She wasn’t one to encourage gambling, but she was pleased to see them having fun without batteries. She decided to make sure the entertainment devices were turned off, then screw the fuses back in so she could finish the laundry and make soup. They’d be too absorbed to notice.
But first, there was an important matter to take care of. Socky was still complaining piteously and trying to rub its vomit-stained coat against her ankles. She gingerly lifted the cat by the back of the neck.
“You’ll thank me in the long run,” she said, and carried it, clawing the air in furious protest, to the kitchen sink.
Chapter 19
“YOU MUST BE A COP, because you certainly don’t look like a customer,” a young woman called to me as I was exiting the Polo store.
Well, if it isn’t Cathy Calvin, intrepid Times police reporter and all-around pain in the ass, I thought.
She wasn’t somebody I wanted to talk to right now. On top of all the problems I was facing, I was still very annoyed at how distinctly unhelpful she’d been at the St. Pat’s Cathedral siege.
But I put a smile on my face and walked over to the barricade where she was standing. The enemies we cannot kill, we must caress, and deception is the art of war, I remembered. Thank God for the classical education I’d received from the Jesuits at Regis High. You needed to brush up on your Machiavelli and Sun Tzu to survive an encounter with this lady.
“Why is it every time we meet, it’s over police sawhorses and crime scene tape?” she said with a big bright grin of her own.
“Good fences make good neighbors, I guess, Cathy,” I said. “I’d love to chat, but I’m really busy.”
“Aw, come on, Mike. How about a quick statement, at least?” she said as she turned on her digital recorder. She was giving me some pretty intense eye contact. For the first time, I noticed that hers were green—striking, and actually kind of playful. She smelled good, too. What was it she’d just said? Oh yeah, she wanted a statement.
I kept it as by-the-book vague and as short as possible. A store clerk had been shot, I told her, and we were withholding his name pending notification of his family.
“Wow, you’re a font of information just like always, Detective Bennett. What about the shooting at Twenty-one? Is it related?”
“We can’t speculate at this time.”
“What’s that mean, really? Chief McGinnis isn’t letting you in on that one?”
“Off the record?” I asked.
“Of course,” Cathy said, clicking off her recorder as I leaned in.
“No comment,” I whispered.
Her emerald eyes didn’t look so frolicsome anymore as she clicked the recorder back on.
“Let’s talk about last night, up in Harlem,” she said, totally switching tracks. “Witnesses say police snipers shot an unarmed man. You were right next to the victim. What did you see?”
I was used to aggressive reporting, but I was starting to wonder where I’d left my pepper spray.
“Cathy, I’d just love to relive that experience, especially with you,” I said. “But as you can see, I’m in the middle of an investigation, so if you’ll excuse me.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it over lunch? You have to eat, right? My treat. And no tape recorder.”
I snapped my fingers in fake disappointment. “Wouldn’t you know it? I already have a reservation at Twenty-one.”
“Very funny,” she said with a wry look. Then she shrugged. “Oh, well. A girl has to try. I probably shouldn’t tell you this—it’ll go to your head—but I could think of worse lunch dates. If you ever put an ad in the personals, I’ll give you a couple of tips on what to say. Tall, nice build, thick brown hair, definitely cute.”
I was startled that she thought that about me. Maybe she was just flattering me to get more information, but she seemed like she meant it.
“I don’t have any plans to,” I said. “But thanks.”
“And that crack I made about you not looking like a Polo customer was below the belt. You’re actually a very sharp dresser.”
My hand rose automatically to smooth my tie. Christ, was she really hitting on me? Or was I a total fool to even imagine it? Cathy was damned nice-looking herself, and in the kind of outfit she was wearing right now—short, tight black skirt, tighter blouse, and patent leather pumps—she was flat-out hot. As long as you could ignore her being a bitch on Rollerblades.
But was she even such a bitch? I started wondering. Or just a hard-driving professional trying to do her job, with a brassy style of flirting, and I was a hopelessly grumpy old bastard who’d been taking it all wrong?
I backed away, as confused as a schoolboy. She was watching me with her hands on her hips and her head cocked a little to one side, like she’d challenged me to a duel and was waiting for my response.
“Don’t let it go to your head, Cathy,” I said, “but I could think of worse lunch dates, too.”
Chapter 20
I SPENT THE REST OF THAT AFTERNOON at the 21 Club, mostly interviewing witnesses who had been there when the maître d’, Joe Miller, was shot. When I finished, I sank into a red leather banquette in the back bar and yawned. There’d been a lot of them.
No one here had seen the actual killing, but there didn’t seem to be any doubt that the shooter was a bike messenger, who had come in and left again quickly at just that time. Miller had been found with the bloody message tucked between his shoes. There was also a general consensus that the messenger was a fairly tall, white male, probably around thirty years old.
From there, it was a good news/bad news scenario. Every single person I’d talked to, from the high-powered executive customers to the busboys, confirmed that he’d been wearing a light, uniform-style shirt—not an orange Mets jersey. But he’d also had on a helmet and sunglasses. Like at the Polo store, nobody had gotten a clear look at his face, or even his hair color. Which left us still without any details for matching the suspects in the various assaults.
Along with that little problem, there was another troubling mystery. The bullets that had killed the maître d’ were .22 caliber, very different from the .45s that were used on Kyle Devens. Then again, shell casings were also clean of fingerprints.
There were still a ton of possibilities. But in spite of the contradictions, my increasingly queasy gut pushed me more and more toward thinking that the two shootings, at least, were related. The suspects’ ages and general physical descriptions were similar. Both crimes had occurred at high-end establishments.
But most important was the text of the typed message found with the maître d’s body. I lifted up the evidence bag and read it again.
Your blood is my paint. Your flesh is my clay.
It had a creepy similarity to what the Polo clerk shooter had said to Patrick Cardone.
You are the witness to history. I envy you.
My hunch was that we were talking about a guy who’d gotten an A in Crackpot Composition 101, and wanted people to know
it—wanted them to buy into his delusions of grandeur. But the only way he could get that kind of attention was through vicious, cold-blooded murder.
Unfortunately, if I was right, he was smart, and also careful. Different outfits, different guns, face hard to see, no fingerprints.
Then there was the question of whether he was the same wacko who’d pushed the girl in front of the 3 train, down at Penn Station. No weapon, no coy message, and he’d let himself be seen. But again, the overall physical description fit.
Well, at least there hadn’t been any more Manhattan killings in the last few hours. Maybe we’d get lucky and find out that our nutburger shot himself. But probably not. This guy seemed too organized to be a suicide. And besides, my birthday wasn’t until next month.
I closed my notebook and scanned the football helmets, musical instruments, and kitschy knickknacks hanging from 21’s famous bar ceiling. The bartender had told me that the toys, as they called them, had been donated over the last hundred years by movie stars and gangsters and presidents.
The thought that Bogie might have tied one on with Hemingway at the very table where I was sitting made me consider having a quick burger before I left. I lifted the menu. I had to read the prices twice before realizing I wasn’t hallucinating.
Thirty bucks?
“Here’s lookin’ at you, kid,” I mumbled as I stood.
On my way out, I studied the wall of photographs behind the reservation book. In each one, the deceased maître d’, “Nice Guy” Joe Miller, was smiling with an A-list celebrity. Ronald Reagan, Johnny Carson, Tom Cruise, Shaq, Derek Jeter. “Any good maître d’ can get you to sit where he wants you to sit,” the manager had told me. “Joe had that rare ability to actually convince you that his choice was better than yours.”
Miller hadn’t missed a day’s work since he’d started as a busboy thirty-three years ago. Thirty-three years, and tonight, his two girls at Columbia and his widow got to ask themselves, What the hell do we do now?