You've Been Warned

  My dream is more than a dream. It’s real. It happened. Past tense. I know because I was there.

  And it’s not only me, is it? Someone else knows I was at the Fálcon.

  Of course, he’s about the last person on Earth I want to see again. Am I so nuts that I’d seek him out?

  No, just very, very desperate.

  Chapter 87

  I DIG THE CARD he gave me out of my shoulder bag, bold black lettering printed on thick white stock. Detective Frank Delmonico, 19th Precinct, 153 E. 67th Street.

  Just the sight of his name makes me uneasy. The phone number is crossed out and another is written above it in pen. A couple of the digits I can’t make out, not that it matters. I have no intention of letting him know I’m coming, of course. I’m banking on the element of surprise. That, and something else.

  Only a complete idiot would physically assault me in a building filled with cops.

  Taking deep breaths most of the way, I cab it over to the East Side, the precinct mere blocks from the Fálcon. Amid the streetlamps and multiple floodlights, the stone building seems to glow under the night sky. It’s actually quite beautiful, albeit in a foreboding kind of way.

  In fact, given different circumstances, I’d be reaching for my camera to shoot it. Not now, though.

  I’ve taken enough scary pictures for a while.

  As I walk inside, two young policemen are walking out, deep in conversation. One glances my way, giving me a quick nod and a smile. I’m about to ask him if Delmonico is here, when from the corner of my eye I see what looks like the front desk.

  Behind it sits another officer, a hard-nosed type, much older, bulky, red faced, Irish as Paddy’s pig. He’s typing something into a computer as I approach him.

  “Help you?” he says without so much as looking up from the monitor. So far he’d never be able to pick me out of a lineup.

  “Yes,” I answer. “I’m here to see Detective Frank Delmonico.”

  His stubby fingers practically freeze on the keyboard. Slowly, he turns to me, his eyes collapsing into a squint. “Excuse me?”

  What’s that supposed to mean? “Is Detective Delmonico here or isn’t he?”

  He shakes his head. “No, he’s not here.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Matter of fact, I do. He’s dead. That’s where he is.”

  I take a wobbly step back. “What? I just saw him. He came to my apartment.”

  The officer leans forward in his chair.

  “When was this?”

  “A few days ago.”

  “I think you’re mistaken, Miss — I don’t think I caught the name?”

  “No, I’m sure of it. He was at my apartment.”

  He nods, stifles a chuckle. “Oh, yeah?”

  How can he be so cavalier about this? “I’m telling you the truth. Actually, I talked to him several times in the past week. He’s very thin. Older?”

  The officer leans forward even farther, stone-faced. “Now, let me tell you the truth,” he says slowly. “Delmonico has been dead for over three years.”

  I stand there in stunned silence as the precinct lobby begins to whirl around me. I can feel the blood draining from my head. My knees are starting to go.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  No, I’m not. I’m absolutely, positively not okay. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy?” I ask. “Detective Frank Delmonico? Homicide?”

  “Yep. Frank Delmonico.” He mutters something else under his breath.

  “What? I didn’t hear that last part.”

  “It was nothing.”

  “It was obviously something. What was it?”

  He glares at me. Who does this chick think she is?

  But I don’t back down. I actually raise my voice. “I want to know what you said!”

  The cop shrugs. “Hey, if you insist. I said, the cocksucker.”

  As if I’m not confused enough. “Why would you say that about him?”

  “You a reporter?” he snaps.

  “No. Hardly.”

  “All the same, we’re not supposed to talk about it. It was in all the papers at the time. Press has a ball with those kind of stories.”

  “I didn’t live here then. What happened?”

  “Let’s just say the detective’s not exactly missed around here.”

  “Why? I need to hear this. Please? This is very important to me.”

  “Because he almost single-handedly brought down this precinct, that’s why.”

  I open my mouth to ask how, but he cuts me off. “Seriously, I can’t talk about it. It’s over with. And so is this conversation.”

  I begin walking away. Then something occurs to me, and I quickly turn back. “At least let me ask you this,” I say. “Does it have anything to do with the murders at the Fálcon Hotel the other day?”

  The officer looks at me with a completely blank stare. “What murders?”

  And then — what can I say? — I faint.

  Chapter 88

  FIFTEEN OR TWENTY minutes later, still dazed and with another good-sized bump on my noggin, I walk a block before I even realize it’s raining. I’m too busy replaying every single encounter with Detective Delmonico in my mind.

  Is that where all of this has happened? In my mind?

  It’s impossible. Has to be.

  I talked to him. He talked to me. He gave me his card. How does a dead man do that?

  Wait a minute! Hold on!

  I stop short in the middle of the sidewalk, the raindrops feeling icy cold against my face. Pulling Delmonico’s card from my pocket, I rub it between my fingers just to prove to myself that it’s real. It sure feels like it.

  “Taxi!”

  The first thing I do after rushing into my apartment is turn on my computer. I should be too freaked out, too bewildered to think straight. And yet the obsession to learn the truth about Delmonico — what happened and what is happening — has me focused like never before.

  “It was in all the papers,” said the cop at the precinct.

  Let’s see about that.

  I Google away, and the hits on Frank Delmonico’s name number more than a thousand. Jeez, Louise! Some of the sites are the venomous rantings of bloggers, but most are indeed news stories — all archived — from the city’s papers. The pages never turn yellow on the Internet.

  I click on one site, then another and another. Not all of them include a picture, but when they do he’s always wearing that same gray suit. His dark, intense eyes are unmistakable. It’s him, all right. And each and every article confirms what I still can’t bring myself to believe.

  He’s been dead for over three years.

  The more I read, the more I realize why the police don’t like talking about the guy. Cocksucker, indeed, and that’s putting it mildly.

  Delmonico was a highly decorated officer with over twenty years on the job. He was also on the take for at least ten of them.

  And that’s just for starters.

  I keep clicking on sites until I find this one piece in the New York Times that lays the gory story out in grand detail. The article must be twenty-five hundred words.

  Delmonico had gotten in bed with the Russian mob, protecting their interests in drugs and prostitution, as well as helping to launder money through the poker rooms of several Atlantic City casinos. The worst part was what happened when two young detectives from his precinct got close to linking one of his Russian comrades to a homicide in Queens. Delmonico whacked both detectives. Did the job himself.

  What’s more, he arranged it so he’d be the lead detective in the investigation. There was just one hitch. Delmonico thought they were alone in the alleyway when he pulled the trigger on the two detectives. He never saw an old Hasidic man who happened to be looking out a nearby tenement window. But the man in the window sure saw him.

  Still, it seemed everyone thought Delmonico would get away with it — including most in the DA’s office. It was the word of a veteran
detective against that of an elderly man with admittedly bad eyesight. Speculation had it that the only reason the case went forward was that a nervous mayor didn’t want to seem soft on police corruption, especially two cold-blooded murders.

  But in the end, it was the Russians who proved even more nervous. A week before the start of the trial, Frank Delmonico was shot twice in the head at point-blank range. The gun used was a Makarov, a Russian-made 9 mm. Just in case that wasn’t enough of a “message,” there was something stuffed in Delmonico’s mouth. A big black rat.

  But that rat wasn’t the real kicker.

  At least from where I’m sitting.

  Hoping to avoid the reporters and cameras camped outside his apartment in Queens, Delmonico had decided to check into a hotel. That’s where they found his body.

  At the Fálcon.

  There was even a photo of his body being carried out in a long black bag.

  Chapter 89

  I STAND UP from my computer, having had more than enough of this. I’m woozy and in a daze. If Frank Delmonico’s no longer alive, whom have I been talking to the past few days?

  Impulsively, I reach into my pocket and pull out Delmonico’s card. I think back to when he handed it to me outside the hotel. I can picture it clearly.

  Wait.

  That’s it!

  I rush to my darkroom and the pictures lining nearly every inch of wall space. I shot so many that morning outside the hotel. I covered every angle twice over. All the commotion. All the people. Police, paramedics — there’s no way he could’ve escaped my lens.

  Grabbing my loupe, I begin to search. It’s my own desperate version of Where’s Waldo? I move left to right across every photo, looking for that gray suit, those unmistakable eyes. Where’s Delmonico?

  I can’t find him in any of the pictures.

  So what do I do? I start over. I go slower, inch by inch, top to bottom. The sweat from my face and arms is sticking to the photo paper. My head is throbbing; my eyes are killing me.

  C’mon, where are you, Delmonico? I know you’re here somewhere.

  But he isn’t.

  Taking a giant step back, I breathe in deep and try to think. Dead or alive, real or imagined, what does Detective Frank Delmonico have to do with me? I’d never heard of him before, never seen him until that first time at the Fálcon. What does it mean that he wasn’t there when the four bodies were carried out but afterward he was Frankie-on-the-spot, investigating me? That’s something, but what does it mean?

  Just then, I feel a pair of eyes on me and I nearly jump out of my skin.

  Chapter 90

  I TURN TO SEE my father staring down coldly from behind his thick glasses.

  Next to the picture of him is the one of Dr. Magnumsen. They certainly have a connection with Delmonico. They’re dead. At least they’re supposed to be.

  I study the image of my father on the streets of New York, his body such a startling contradiction: the square jaw versus the hunched shoulders; a strong man beaten down by an unfair world. My dad was a gifted carpenter, a volunteer fireman. Once, he rescued a little boy from a flooded ravine by tying a loop in his belt and hanging upside down from a bridge.

  But being the town hero didn’t pay well, and when his carpentry jobs started to dry up during the recession of the eighties, money in our house got tight. Ironic, really. He helped to build so many homes but ultimately couldn’t afford to keep his own.

  Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad had my mother been a little more understanding. She wasn’t, though. I remember the night at the dinner table when she called him a failure in life, right to his face.

  That’s about when the drinking got out of control. But never in front of me. Never. I was his princess, his girl. No matter how bad things got, he always had a hug and a smile for me.

  Right up until the end. Less than an hour before Dad shot himself in our dilapidated backyard shed, he held me in his arms and squeezed me tight. “It’s going to be all right,” he whispered in my ear.

  I never forgave him for that lie. I know that I should’ve felt sorry for him, but I was too busy feeling sorry for myself.

  Now, after all these years, he shows up somehow on a street corner in Manhattan. If only he hadn’t run away that morning. I’d have given him the biggest hug and kiss, and whispered softly in his ear, “It’s okay, Dad. I understand.”

  Chapter 91

  I’M CRYING IN MY DARKROOM, the tears falling faster than I can wipe them away. I miss my dad. I miss a lot of things right now, but most of all my own sanity.

  Could I be more of a mess?

  It’s late, and I’ve given up on trying to reach Michael tonight. I’m exhausted and should get some sleep.

  But knowing that the dream — and God knows what else — awaits me in the morning, I instead reach for the shots I snapped of Penley and Stephen in front of the hotel.

  Talk about a great Exhibit A.

  In fact, it’s enough to swing my mood. As I look at the first shot, I can’t help relishing the thought of Michael going for the jugular in divorce court. I’m so giddy — or is it punchy? — I actually start singing, “Penley and Stephen in NYC, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

  But the feeling is short-lived.

  I stare at Stephen’s transparent image — the exact same ghosting effect — and I surrender all faith in myself and in the real world as I experienced it before the last few days. I know I stood outside the Fálcon and watched those gurneys get wheeled to the curb, but I also know a pattern when I see one.

  First Penley.

  Then Michael.

  Now Stephen.

  One by one, the body bags are being accounted for, and I don’t have to be Einstein to do the math.

  There’s one left.

  Chapter 92

  I COME OUT OF THE DARKROOM and notice there’s a message on my answering machine — just one — and I’m afraid to listen to it. No, I’m petrified to press the button and hear what somebody has to tell me.

  What now?

  Who could this be? Another call from Kristin Burns?

  I get a cold bottle of water in the kitchen and gulp it right down. How did I get myself into this mess? How do I get out?

  There has to be a way, but I can’t imagine what it might be. I’m supposed to be creative, aren’t I? So why can’t I begin to figure this puzzle out? Could anyone?

  I can still see the red light flashing on my answering machine. It might be Michael, and maybe, maybe he’s okay now, back to normal.

  Of course, it could also be Delmonico, calling from where, exactly? Do they have phones there, wherever dead people hang out these days?

  I approach the infernal message machine and I’m starting to shake like a leaf. How insane is that? Given what’s happened to me? Not so crazy.

  I stab the button on the machine.

  I get myself ready to listen to whomever, about whatever.

  I hear a voice I don’t know — a woman’s voice. Who’s this?

  “Kristin . . . this is Leigh Abbott. I own the Abbott Show on Hudson Street, and I’m calling to tell you that we all love your stuff. Love it! Please give me a call at 212-555-6501. I would like to put your astounding work in the Abbott Show. Call me, Kristin: 212-555-6501. We are so impressed with your vision of New York.”

  I press the button on the machine again.

  Listen to Leigh Abbott again.

  It’s the best news I’ve gotten since I moved to New York City. Absolutely the best by far. My dream has come true.

  So — why am I crying uncontrollably?

  Chapter 93

  THE SOUND OF MY OWN SCREAM jolts my head off the pillow, piercing the still air of my bedroom like a jet engine on takeoff. I rip back the sheet in a panic, the sweat dripping from my hair.

  I’m burning up — almost literally.

  The dream’s never been more real. It’s getting worse.

  I feel sick to my stomach and barely make it to the bathroom. I throw up so violently, my
neck muscles convulse, cramping into knots. I begin to gag, then choke. Collapsing to the floor, I can’t even call for help. This is it, I’m going to die — on a cheapo bath mat from Bed Bath & Beyond!

  And the very last thing I’ll hear is the music now starting to blare in my head.

  Somehow, though, I keep breathing. What saves me is my lack of appetite last night. The stomach’s barren; there’s nothing left to get caught in my throat. I’m dry heaving and it hurts like crazy, but at least I’m alive.

  Any other morning I’d be crawling back into bed, calling in sick. Instead, I take a shower and quickly get dressed. I don’t have a choice. No free will at all. This is no time to be on the sidelines.

  I try calling Michael at his office. The odds are he’s arrived by now, but his line rings and rings and rings. It’s too early for his secretary, Amanda. She doesn’t normally get to her desk until around eight-thirty.

  So I head off to Fifth Avenue, knowing no more about Michael’s intentions than I did yesterday. Is he going to hurt somebody? Is he another Scott Peterson?

  For the first time, I’m actually eager to see Penley. She needs to be okay. I certainly don’t want her murdered. My God, could it have happened already? Is that why Michael isn’t at work?

  Chapter 94

  “KRISTIN, IS THAT YOU?” I hear from down the hall as I step into the foyer of the Turnbulls’ apartment.

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  And that’s her. Phew. I instantly feel guilty about thinking the worst of Michael, putting him in the same company as a wife killer.

  Penley turns the corner of the foyer and peers suspiciously at me. She’s dressed in her “workout” clothes.

  There’s a moment as we eye each other, and it feels weird. So what else is new?

  “Are you okay?” she asks. “You look a little pale, Kristin. You’re not coming down with something, are you?”

  “I’m fine. A little tired, I guess.”

  She gives me that “just us girls” smirk. “Late evening, huh?”