Scorpio Rising

  “What’s up?” Hutchins said after Starrett was finished. “Any luck in Larkspur?”

  “That was Brane, just giving me an update.” Starrett brought his partner up to speed on the ferry terminal surveillance. “Brane went through the video clips, isolated half a dozen best shots and sent off JPEGs to the FBI. Guy over there had a quick look, said he’d do what he could. But given the camera angle and resolution, it’s one-in-a-million getting a hit with face recognition software. Assuming our mystery man’s even in the database.”

  Hutchins shook his head. “Gotta love those odds.”

  “Brane also sent the best face shot off to TRAK. Evening shift, it’ll be out there with every cop in the Bay Area, with a request to bring this guy in for questioning.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Hutchins said doubtfully.

  “Speaking of which, one of us needs to cruise Castro tonight, see if there’s any truth to what Munson said about Lang and rough trade.”

  “Don’t look at me, man, my knee is killing me.”

  “You don’t have to walk. Just wear a dress and high heels, sit at the bar showing some leg and they’ll swarm around you like flies on a fresh pile of shit.” Starrett tried to keep a straight face.

  Hutchins caressed his beer belly. “You think anyone’s going to hit on a pregnant cross-dresser?”

  “You got a purty mouth. Someone bound to take a shine to you, boy.”

  “You sound like one of those hillbillies in Deliverance.”

  Starrett twirled some rope between his legs. “Y’all git on down here and show me what you can do.”

  Hutchins had to laugh. “If anyone’s right for this, it’s you. At least you look like you’ve been to a gym.”

  “I’ll flip you for it.”

  “I’m not going.”

  Starrett tossed a quarter, caught it and slapped it onto the back of his hand. “Call it.”

  “You call it.”

  “Give me head or give me tail,” Starrett insisted.

  Hutchins showed him the finger.

  “We’ll call that a tail.” Starrett lifted his hand to reveal the eagle. He showed it to Hutchins. “You won the call. Guess it’s your lucky day.”

  Hutchins relaxed with a smirk. “My lucky day, maybe your lucky night.”

  Chapter 36

  New York

  Axel Crowe left Stockwell’s co-op and took the subway to Greenwich Village. He bought some cashews and a fresh carrot juice with a shot of wheat grass at a health food store. He walked over to Washington Square, sat on a bench facing the late afternoon sun and listened to a black kid play some Delta blues on a beat-up acoustic guitar.

  Crowe loved cashews even though Guruji had warned him that the human constitution was barely capable of eating nine a day without adverse effect. The nut, shaped like the tusk of an elephant, was a common offering in India to Ganesha, the elephant-headed patron deity of astrologers.

  Crowe checked the end-of-day results for Belmont. Yes! Black Daddy in the Ninth had placed, paying off 36-to-1 on a $10 bet. He’d picked a few other winners and was up a little over $500. Not bad for a day’s work, and the horses were still running on the west coast. He’d wait until later to check the race results for Santa Anita.

  The guitarist finished his set and circulated with a hat, seeking donations from locals and tourists. Many turned their backs and walked away, but at least half of them dug some change out of their pockets. Crowe dropped a ten in the kid’s hat. The guitarist did a double-take, like he expected Crowe to ask for change, but Crowe just gave him a thumb’s up sign.

  He walked back to Waverley Place and the Washington Square Hotel. His room had an Art Deco theme, with accents of dark wood, marble-topped night tables and art on the walls. He stripped to his underwear, did half an hour of yoga and took a shower. After toweling off, he spread a spare blanket on the floor and sat naked facing east to meditate for half an hour.

  ~~~

  Crowe looked forward to dinner with Tracey Lovegrove but wasn’t sure what he expected after that. She was spunky and it gave him a charge to talk to her, to be in her presence. But she occupied borderline territory, the exact limits of which he hadn’t yet determined.

  Because of his training under Guruji, Crowe often sorted people into categories. Although it had no status in western sociology, the Hindu caste system was a useful model. Intellectuals and spiritual people like Guruji were Brahmin. Police and other wielders of power were kshatriya. Businessmen like Blaikie and Stockwell were vaishya. Trades and service personnel like Stockwell’s maid were shudra. The outcasts of society were mleccha: derelicts sitting on street corners with hands out, lying on a park bench with empty bottle or spent needle.

  Women could be classed via the same model, but other categories were both descriptive and useful. Women were mothers, sisters, lovers, angels and rarely, but possibly, demons. You might have the bad luck to meet a Kali, the Hindu goddess of time and change, death and destruction, and she would add your head to her collection of skulls.

  Crowe had resolved many years ago never to fraternize too closely with clients. He wouldn’t allow himself to become intimate with a female client, no matter how attractive or available. In his line of work there were inevitable opportunities, and his knowledge of a client’s birth chart made any vulnerability all too transparent. For that reason alone it was unethical.

  Peers and associates were different but even there he was circumspect. There was no telling if or when a relationship would change and he might be left in an awkward situation, needing help perhaps, and the bitter end of an affair might preclude rational cooperation. He recalled one of Guruji’s remarks, about how certain people were sexually attracted to each other by virtue of their unresolved karma. If it is necessary, it will happen and give joy, he said, and if it isn’t necessary, it won’t happen, or it will bring pain.

  ~~~

  At seven o’clock Crowe walked over to Cooper Square, where 4th Avenue turned into the Bowery at 7th Street. Tracey was standing next to the big cube sculpture in the square. She wasn’t wearing her glasses this evening but was dressed in a red silk shirt over a tight pair of jeans tucked into cowboy boots. Surrounded by somber New Yorkers in black, she stuck out like a long-horned steer in a herd of Jerseys.

  “Waiting for the stagecoach?” he said.

  “What’s the matter, you don’t like cowgirls?”

  “Based on your accent, I had you pegged for a Georgia peach, not a Texan.”

  “Good ear. But I do love the Southwest.”

  “Me too.” He kissed her on both cheeks, a habit acquired during his early years in francophone Quebec.

  They walked a few blocks to the restaurant. Along the way, they engaged in one of those get-acquainted conversations so typical of first dates.

  “So, are you married?” she asked.

  “Never. What about you?”

  “I gave it a try. It lasted seven years.”

  “Lots of people hit that bump in the road. The seven-year itch.”

  “Never been married, and you’re how old?”

  “Forty.”

  “Peter Pan syndrome?”

  “I don’t think so. I just know myself.”

  “You think the rest of us are fools?”

  “It works for most, just not for me,” Crowe shrugged. “I lived with someone for a couple of years but that was a decade ago and it ended amicably.”

  “What happened?”

  “She said I never had any time for her. She gave me an ultimatum, not a hostile one, just a request to clarify my choices. But I’d already passed the fork in the road and I couldn’t turn back.”

  “And she accepted that with grace?”

  “Grace under fire. She understood me. She was good that way.”

  “You don’t get lonely?”

  He shrugged. “Every now and again, even the anvil misses the hammer.”

  “Is that why you’re having dinner with me?”

 
“Don’t New York women have a reputation for being ball-busters?”

  “Relax, I won’t hurt you.” She took his hand and led him toward the restaurant.

  Crowe caught a whiff of curry and turmeric. The front door of Dharma Dosa was flanked by two green ceramic elephants, each supporting a flowerpot into whose soil were thrust sticks of burning incense. Inside were a dozen tables, most of them occupied, but as they entered, another couple vacated a window table. A waiter cleared the table and brought them menus.

  “There’s only one thing to order here,” Tracey said, “and that’s the dosa.”

  Crowe looked around. It seemed everyone was eating rolled-up crepes stuffed with meat or vegetable. They ordered vegetarian dosa and lassi, a drink comprising water, yogurt and fresh mango. They ate with their fingers, dipping pieces of dosa in the condiment bowls.

  “You have a slight accent,” Tracey said. “Where are you from?”

  “I was born here but I grew up in Montreal.”

  “Born here in New York City?”

  “Upstate. My father was Boston Irish, my mother a French-Canadian from Montreal.”

  “How’d they meet?”

  “In the sixties, my mother was a devotee of Swami Muktananda who had an ashram in upper New York State. My father was a peace activist, giving lectures all over the state. They met at the ashram and fell in love. They commuted back and forth to be together but never married. I was their love child.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “My mother runs a halfway house for juvenile girls in Montreal. My father has a software firm in Boston.”

  “Do you see them often?”

  “I try to check in regularly.”

  “Any other family?”

  “No. What about you?”

  “My parents had tried but almost given up on having kids by the time I came along, so I’ve got no siblings either. My dad was a civil engineer for Georgia’s Department of Transportation. He’s retired now, lives in Daytona Beach. I go down every three months to spend time with him. My mom died a few years ago of breast cancer. I worry about that now, thinking it might happen to me. I have anxiety attacks sometimes, but I work out a lot and try to eat well.”

  “Where’d you go to school?”

  “Georgia Tech for my bachelor’s in chemistry, then University of Florida for a master’s in digital forensics.”

  “What brought you to New York?”

  “My ex got a transfer here. So I applied to the NYPD and got a job just like that.” She snapped her fingers.

  They finished their meal and sat content, just looking at each other and savoring the moment. The waiter cleared their plates and they ordered a pot of tea.

  Crowe asked her about her job. She told him about some of the cases she was working on – a grade school white boy dumped in the Hudson with his wrists wired to his ankles, a black man in his late twenties shot at close range by four different weapons on Central Park South, a gay playwright found hanging from the chandelier in his Bryant Park condo.

  “Not exactly dinner conversation,” she apologized. But she’d made no mention of the Stockwell case. However curious Crowe might have been, it was unethical for her to discuss it without clearance from Levinson.

  “Think of me as a doctor,” he said. “I have a morbid curiosity for the human condition.”

  “I can relate to that. In my line of work I’ve become all too familiar with the human condition, especially its decaying process.”

  “What got you into forensics? Is there a cop somewhere in the family tree?”

  “Two of my uncles were detectives in Atlanta. I loved hearing them talk about cases they’d worked. I liked the idea of catching criminals with science. Police culture I could do without. Hanging around cops is a lousy lifestyle. Most of them have way too much stress in their lives but they think they can drink their way out of it. Not a good combination.”

  “So what do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “I’ve been with the NYPD five years. Lab work is a total snore, so technical and repetitive it’s like a clerical job with scientific equipment. Field work is more interesting, so I enjoy getting out of the office to process a crime scene. But you know what really turns me on?”

  The double-entendre sparked a little something in Crowe. He found her very attractive in a way he couldn’t put a finger on, although he wouldn’t mind feeling around for it. He resisted the temptation to flirt, knowing it was a slippery slope. He reminded himself not to get personally involved. Maybe when this case was over...

  “An Aries always enjoys a chase,” he said.

  “How’d you know I was an Aries?”

  “Intuition.”

  “You’re good.” She looked into her tea cup, as if she was going to read her tea leaves. “Now I’ve lost my train of thought...”

  “What turns you on... professionally?”

  “Yes, thank you.” She raised her eyes. “I’d really like to get into researching new technology, finding new applications in forensic science. Forensic profiling, for instance, is a relatively new science and we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible. It could have a greater impact on crime resolution than anything else I’m doing.”

  Crowe nodded. A kindred spirit.

  Tracey leaned back and stretched her legs. “Ready for a walk? Maybe we can find a drink in this part of town.”

  “There’s a blues bar on Bleecker that I visit every time I’m in town,” Crowe said. “Are you up for that?”

  Tracey raised one of her boots from beneath the table. “Even cowgirls dig the blues.”

  Chapter 37

  Santa Fe

  In the late afternoon quiet of the north-end suburb, Piños Verdes seemed like a dead-end street to nowhere. Stucco houses with red tile roofs lay baking under the sun. Vehicles were parked in the shade of car ports, draped with covers or left victim to the sun from whose glare the stunted pine trees of the street offered no protection.

  At the house at the end of Piños Verdes, a red Honda Accord sat under a car port. Beneath the car, a small grey lizard crouched in its oasis of shadow, tiny tongue lapping water that had dripped from the Honda’s air-conditioning system.

  Inside the house, the drawn curtains produced a midday gloom. A large fireplace was framed by bookcases, shelves groaning with books on science, art, and travel. Above the fireplace hung the head of a long-horn steer, horns coated in chrome, skull cloaked in leather, like a mask Georgia O’Keefe might have designed for a Mardi Gras costume ball. A brown leather sofa and two easy chairs flanked the fireplace area. A Mexican throw rug lay on the wide-planked floor.

  Alone in the living room, wearing only camisole and panties, Carrie Cassidy danced and whirled, clapping her hands and stomping her feet to the nouveau flamenco of local guitarist Ottmar Liebert thundering from the sound system.

  Carrie loved music. During high school her favorite bands had been Aerosmith, Bon Jovi and Tom Petty, but for sheer emotional power, she’d related most to Alanis Morissette whose angst and anger came through loud and clear via her unique lyrics and phrasing.

  At her mother’s urging, Carrie had taken piano lessons but never liked it. At age sixteen she’d unearthed the four-piece drum kit her father had stored in the garage but rarely played because Frances said it disturbed the neighbors. From the outset, when she kicked the bass pedal and beat the sticks across the tom-tom, snare and high-hat, she knew she’d found the perfect medium to pound out her frustrations and defy her mother at the same time. Every day after school she was in there for an hour or two, ghetto blaster cranked to the max, playing along with the music, learning the licks. Within a year she began sitting in with local garage bands.

  Guitarists were a dime a dozen but drummers were rare, and she’d liked the way it felt to be a desired commodity. And even though she sat behind the rest of the band, she knew she was in charge, because she who controlled the beat delivered the song.

  ~~~

/>   Los Alamos

  Twenty-five miles away as the helicopter flies, a satellite dish on the roof of National Laboratory Site 8 was receiving a signal routed via the communications system to a monitoring station.

  Mack Horton exited the elevator, turned down a hallway and entered an office. Agent Green sat at a desk watching a live video feed on his flat-panel display. At his side was a telephone with multiple speed-dial buttons, a clipboard with a pale green form, and a half-eaten burrito. He nodded in acknowledgement but said nothing as Horton looked over his shoulder.

  On the screen, Carrie Cassidy was dancing like a dervish in her living room.

  “Is she alone?” Horton asked.

  “Just her and her dancing muse,” Green said.

  They watched her for a minute. At one point she skidded on the Mexican rug, almost lost her balance, but recovered nicely to continue her clapping twirls around the furniture.

  “And the subtext is?”

  “Psychologists say exercise produces anti-depression endorphins. Perhaps she was advised it was a good way to combat grief. You’re familiar with the five stages defined by Kubler-Ross? Instead of ‘Denial’, maybe she’s simply chosen to substitute ‘Dance’.”

  Horton looked at the back of Green’s head. Had he been equipped with X-ray vision, perhaps he could have looked right into Green’s brain, and determined whether Green was (a) infected by the New Age virus rampant in the Santa Fe area, (b) so well read he had to be a Democrat, or (c) a wiseacre. But from his vantage point, all he could see was that Green had a bad case of dandruff – a social liability but nothing to merit a reprimand.

  Horton turned his attention back to the video feed. Mrs. Cassidy’s performance had turned erotic. As he watched her spirited bump-and-grind, the like of which he hadn’t seen since one blurry night in a Singapore bar two decades ago, parts of his body warmed to the sight.

  “Does this strike you as suspicious?” Horton asked.

  “Just because she’s happy doesn’t mean she’s guilty,” Green said. “What if your spouse died and left you a fortune?”

  “No amount of money could replace my wife.” Horton’s unsullied marriage of seventeen years was the one thing in his life he was most proud of, eclipsing anything he’d done in his country’s service, and the devotion to which paid emotional dividends he hoped to enjoy till death did them part. “But I get your point.”