Shadowtown

by Lutz, John

  “Is that the only reason, Jennifer?”

  The bastard knew she was lying! He could always tell. “It wasn’t because I miss you,” she said, more sharply than she’d intended.

  “Sure,” he said.

  What did that mean?

  Zach leaned down toward her until she could feel the warmth of his breath. “Listen, Jennifer, how about having a cup of coffee with me in about an hour and putting the past to rest. I know I didn’t behave well—”

  “That’s a hell of an understatement,” Jennifer interrupted.

  “Yeah, it is. I can understand why you wouldn’t cherish any memories from those days. I was under a lot of pressure then, and I did some things I’m sorry for. Things I’m … well, things I’m ashamed of, Jennifer.”

  “That’s how you used to talk each time after you beat me. And each time, I believed you.” She shook her head. “Jesus!”

  He spread his long arms in a pleading gesture. “I’m different now. Really. I’m not sure why. I suppose I’ve grown up. I’m not the same hostile young guy who acted and then was sorry.”

  “You hurt me, badly, Zach. And probably killed our unborn child. God, I can’t forget that!”

  He brushed a strand of straight, lank hair from his forehead, a boyish gesture that sent a thrust of memory through her. “I understand,” he said. “But we oughta bury the past, since we can’t change it. Now that the emotional tug-of-war’s over, there’s no reason we can’t be friends.”

  “I don’t think going out for coffee’s a good idea, Zach.”

  He seemed surprised and hurt, as if she’d turned him down for a first date. “Okay,” he mumbled, and briefly tried a smile that didn’t quite manage to take form.

  “When I heard you were in town,” Jennifer said, “and involved in a case Ox was working on, I thought I ought to see you, talk to you.”

  He did grin at her now. “Well, you have,” he said.

  She couldn’t help smiling. Looking at the gentleness in his eyes, it was impossible for her to fully comprehend what had happened. It seemed no more important or real to her just then than an unpleasant dream remembered in the light of day.

  He held out his hand and she took it. For an instant he rested his other hand on top of hers, then he pulled both hands back.

  “Guess it’s good-bye again, then,” he said.

  “Good-bye, Zach,” she told him, and turned quickly and walked toward the exit.

  She knew he was watching her as she pushed open the glass door and walked down the short flight of steps to the sidewalk.

  She was outside without immediately realizing it. The visit with Zach had disturbed her more than she anticipated.

  When she reached the corner, she stood for a moment leaning against a traffic sign. The motion of the cars rushing past made her dizzy and slightly nauseated. Was she the only thing in the world not moving?

  The light winked to red, and the traffic stopped. Jennifer straightened, breathed in deeply, and crossed the intersection. She decided she’d walk back to the apartment; she needed the physical exertion to clear her mind.

  Coming here to talk to Zach hadn’t been a good idea, she realized. She hadn’t faced only her fear. She’d also faced the past and, unexpectedly, found not the Zach of her hate and imagination, but the kind Zach, the familiar Zach who seemed somehow disassociated from his occasional brutalities, who perversely inspired guilt and self-revulsion in her for the things he’d done. As if she’d caused them simply by being herself.

  Jennifer realized she was walking very fast, slamming her heels down on the pavement with each long stride. She’d found a different fear, a greater fear at “Shadowtown” than the one she’d gone there to lose.

  Because she’d found the old Zach Denton. The old familiar set of emotions, in perfect working order after all these years.

  The old yearning.

  Smiley Manders—3:30 P.M.

  Manders sat behind his wide, cluttered desk, wondering if there was anybody in the world who wasn’t on his ass. Only the people who didn’t know about him, he figured.

  The mayor and the police commissioner and the chief knew about him. Every newspaper reporter, talking-head TV anchorman, newsmagazine journalist, gossip columnist, crime buff, crackpot, and people who could read or just see or hear in general seemed to know about him. They were all on his ass.

  He sighed and decided it was time to quit feeling sorry for himself. God helped those who helped themselves—unless God felt like having a good joke.

  Manders got up out of his chair, burped and tasted again the greasy pizza he’d had for lunch, then walked to the door and peered out into the squad room and booking area. Felstein was busy behind the desk, collecting and writing out receipts for the valuables of two suspects who looked like hookers who’d just been brought in by a rookie patrolman named Anderson. Hookers in the middle of the day, yet. If they were street workers it might be hard to make a soliciting charge stick. Somebody had better talk with Anderson.

  After Felstein had placed the sullen women’s valuables in large brown envelopes and sealed the flaps, Manders called to him: “Send me Ox and Tobin immediately when they check in, Murray!”

  “They’re coming in the door now, sir,” Felstein called back.

  Manders waved a hand languidly at Felstein, glanced again at the scantily dressed suspects, and turned to reenter his office. He burped again, sat back down, and waited.

  Within a minute there was a knock on the door. Manders called to enter, and Oxman and Tobin stepped in. Tobin was gnawing on a toothpick and seemed preoccupied. Oxman appeared as stolid and quietly observant as ever, a tough man to read. Manders liked both men; they were his best, though he seldom let them in on that fact. Better to keep them striving.

  He mentally crossed his fingers. “Tell me you’ve driven a stake through the heart of the ‘Shadowtown’ vampire,” he said, “and now all the villagers can sleep securely.”

  Oxman smiled faintly and shook his head. “Sorry, Lieutenant, can’t say that.”

  “Ernest Dickerson would sleep better,” Tobin said.

  Manders felt a vague resentment toward Dickerson for confusing the “Shadowtown” case and supplying the media with something juicy to write up and to yak about on TV. One of the New York papers had run an interview with Dickerson, before the publicity-shy wino had wisely disappeared into the wilds of the Bowery to find privacy.

  “We’re going to have to step up protection for Lana Spence,” Oxman said.

  Manders didn’t want to do that. More and obvious protection meant the threats on her life would be made public, and the media would do cartwheels of delight.

  Oxman must have interpreted the expression on Manders’s face. “More publicity, Lieutenant,” he said, “but I don’t see how we can get around it. She received another threatening note, signed ‘Edgar Grume’ like the rest, only this time it was addressed to Lana Spence instead of Delia Lane, and it made mention of a strawberry birthmark on her breast. It had to have been written by somebody who knows her, and wants her to realize it. Not by some crank fan getting his kicks.”

  Manders cupped his long face in his hands, bowed his head for a moment, then looked up and nodded. The media would be even more ecstatic if some brain-fried fanatic murdered a celebrity like Lana Spence. “We’ll keep Austerman on her for now. This evening some extra manpower will be assigned, and the uniforms in the area will be alerted.”

  “Speaking of Lana Spence,” Tobin said, the toothpick bobbing in his mouth. “I spent the morning digging into her life, and it ain’t pretty. Seems she hopped in the sack with every leading man she ever played opposite, then she managed to break off the affairs some way that left them pissed off for life. I mean, this beauty liked to maim. Her poor husband—”

  “Husband?” Manders interrupted.

  “Former husband,” Tobin amended. “They been divorced over ten years.”

  “Calvin Oaks?” Oxman asked.

  “Yeah.�
�� Tobin looked surprised.

  “She told me about him this morning,” Oxman said.

  Tobin winked at Manders. “Ox is halfway in,” he said.

  Manders looked at Oxman, saw nothing in his eyes. It wouldn’t do to have one of his detectives getting mixed up with the object of death threats in an active murder case. Manders decided not to ask Oxman about that possibility. Oxman was a pro and had learned the hard way not to free-lance or get personally involved.

  “Anyway,” Tobin was saying, “she drove this poor bastard Oaks into some kind of religious cult in Missouri.”

  Manders began tapping a pencil on the desk, holding it loosely between two fingers. He watched it bounce until the lead broke. A religious cult member with a motive. Had to be covered. “I’ll have Missouri law question Mr. Oaks,” he said. “Maybe they can give us some idea of his whereabouts when McGreery was killed.”

  “This Lana Spence really is some ballbuster,” Tobin said. “That’s what comes across stronger than anything when you question men she’s worked her magic on. Not a one that I can remember said anything in her favor, and I talked to plenty of them. The producers sure as hell cast her right in that soap opera. I felt like I was hearing about Delia Lane most of the morning.”

  “Lieutenant!”

  Felstein’s voice. He was standing in the doorway, looking smug in the way of a kid with a big secret to tell. Felstein could do that better than anyone Manders knew.

  “So what is it?” Manders finally asked, aggravated.

  “Thought you oughta know, a call just came in. A landlord over on West Forty-fifth dicovered the body of one of his tenants, a guy named Burt Lassiter, in an apartment.”

  Manders waited, raised his eyes to gaze at the ceiling. “And? …” he said.

  “There was a vampire costume hanging in the closet.”

  Manders was trying to figure out what that could mean, if anything, in this bizarre business, when he saw Tobin remove the toothpick from his mouth.

  “Burt Lassiter’s the name of one of Lana Spence’s former lovers,” he said. “He was on my list of people to talk with this afternoon.”

  “You got the address?” Manders asked Felstein.

  Felstein handed him a folded sheet of memo paper. Manders glanced at the West Forty-fifth Street address and gave the paper to Tobin, who squinted at it.

  “Same address, same guy,” Tobin said. “I didn’t figure there could be that many Burt Lassiters.”

  “Not with Lana Spence in their past,” Oxman said.

  “Lassiter is—was—an actor,” Tobin said. “He was Lana Spence’s leading man in some off-off-Broadway play about a guy who imagined he was a St. Bernard. She played a poodle.”

  Manders tried, but couldn’t believe that one. He frowned at Tobin.

  “Really,” Tobin said, as if insulted by being doubted. “Dogs.”

  “I know what St. Bernards and poodles are.”

  Manders’s phone rang. Somebody in the booking area was yelling for Felstein. A siren singsonged outside, not more than a few blocks away. The cadence of the dispatcher’s voice on the police radio in the next room picked up. Manders reminded himself that the “Shadowtown” case wasn’t the only crime in town.

  “Ox. Tobin,” he said, ignoring the jangling phone for the moment. He pointed toward the memo sheet with the address scrawled on it, still in Tobin’s hand. “Go. Find out what the hell’s the deal with this Lassiter guy, other than that he’s dead.”

  He lifted the receiver and waited until Oxman and Tobin had left the office before saying hello.

  Someone who identified himself as an aide from the mayor’s office said hello back.

  Manders tasted pizza again.

  E. L. Oxman—4:15 P.M.

  What was left of Burt Lassiter was dressed in yellowed jockey shorts and a T-shirt. It was lying on the bed in harsh light from a shadeless, drapeless window. The brilliance of the scene made it all too vivid. The dominant color was red; Lassiter’s throat had been slashed.

  Felstein’s information was off the mark. The apartment turned out to be in a small residential hotel on West Forty-fifth, the Penmont, and the “landlord” who’d discovered the body actually had been a weasly little gray desk-clerk who’d sometimes played chess with Lassiter. When he’d come upstairs after getting off duty, to meet Lassiter for their weekly game, he’d gotten no answer to his knock, tested the door and found it unlocked, and then discovered that Lassiter had already been checkmated that afternoon.

  The photographer, fingerprint crew, and lab men had come and gone. Two white-uniformed orderlies were gingerly fitting Lassiter into a black plastic body bag, trying to keep their rubber-gloved hands out of the mess. They weren’t having much luck. Oxman looked away.

  “Any idea about time of death?” he asked Wellman, the assistant Medical Examiner who’d made the prelim on Lassiter’s body.

  “Couple of hours is my guess,” Wellman said. He was a short, wiry redheaded man whom Oxman disliked. There were times when Wellman seemed to enjoy his job too much.

  “Ox,” Tobin said, and stood aside from the open closet door.

  Oxman saw hanging among a sparse and mostly threadbare wardrobe an impressive black outfit complete with red-lined cape. The lapels of the old-fashioned suit were of the same silky material as the long cape. There were even pointy-toed shiny black shoes to go with the outfit. Laceless dress shoes. Had Dracula worn slip-ons?

  “Guy’s throat was slashed with a knife, not fangs,” Wellman said. “Big blade. Quite a grin; damn near ear to ear.” He laughed softly, somewhere between a chuckle and a giggle.

  “Not funny, though,” Oxman said.

  “Oh, I dunno. Lassiter’ll smile forever.”

  Oxman ignored Wellman and looked around in vain for the murder weapon. He hadn’t really expected to find it.

  Wellman said, “Sorry to leave good company, but I was on my way to pick up some carry-out chow mein when I got this call. Hope it’s still warm. Warmer’n Lassiter, anyway.” He gave his soft, weird little chuckle, hoisted his black bag, and left.

  A few seconds later, the morgue attendants got the body bag zipped with the usual grating, ripping sound, and wheeled out Lassiter’s corpse.

  Oxman walked over to the closet and brought down a square cardboard box from the top shelf. According to the illustration it had once held a Sony portable tape player, a medium-sized ghetto blaster. The box was light now, and felt almost empty. Oxman shook it back and forth gently, then he pried up the interlocking flaps. Inside was a luxurious white wig. He held the box out so Tobin could see its contents.

  Tobin craned his neck to stare, then grunted.

  “What do you know about this guy Lassiter?” Oxman asked.

  Tobin glanced at the unmade and bloodstained bed, as if to make sure Lassiter was gone before they talked about him. “Like I said, he played opposite Lana Spence in this play. It ran about four weeks, which wasn’t bad, considering where it opened. This was about nine years ago, probably right after she sent Calvin Oaks on his way. It’s the first role her present agent, Manny Brokton, got her. Everybody I talked to says Brokton’s a snake, incidentally, so it’s no wonder he’s represented Lana all these years. Changed her luck for her, too; moved her up from acting with guys like Lassiter into bigger parts. She ditched Lassiter, and the play, when Brokton got her a film role in Los Angeles. The play folded right after she left, and the way I hear it, Lassiter held her responsible and figures she ruined his career. He drank a lot, got into drugs, and used to talk all the time about how Lana ran out on him, and that the play was his turning point, where his life started to go sour.”

  Oxman remembered the bony, ravaged features of the dead man on the bed. “Lassiter looks pretty rough, and old, to have been one of Lana’s leading men and lovers.”

  Tobin shrugged. “He was forty-five, Ox, even if he looked sixty-five. Drugs, remorse, and sudden loss of blood through a gap in the throat will do that to a man.”

&
nbsp; True enough, Oxman thought. Or maybe Lana did that to her men. Black Widow Lana. “Didn’t Lassiter land any good roles after his affair with Lana?”

  “I was told by other actors who knew him then that Lana cooked up a story to put what she did in a better light. She blamed Lassiter for ruining the play, and said that was why she left it without notice. She spread the word he was a temperamental no-talent and impossible to act with. It worked well enough to send him into a spin that hit ground in the crash we just saw here.”

  Something like the way she’d treated Overbeck, Oxman thought. And Arthur Sales. Draining them of their worth to her, then moving on and leaving them with blame and innuendo.

  He walked to the dirty, drapeless window and looked out at an airshaft and the stark zigzag of wrought iron that served as a fire escape. He felt uneasy about what they’d found here. This wrapped it up too neatly.

  Tobin must have known what he was thinking. “It’s convenient, Ox. Lassiter stays full of hate and drugs and goes whacko. Envies Lana’s success and pictures himself in ‘Shadowtown,’ in the part he might have had instead of Ames, if his life had gone differently. So he gets his jollies sneaking onto the set and dressing up like Edgar Grume. And leaving threatening notes for Lana Spence. It’s our most likely solution to McGreery’s murder; this Lassiter guy was twisted.”

  “So twisted he slit his own throat with a knife?” Oxman asked.

  “Hell, Ox, anybody might have killed a dopehead like Lassiter. Maybe the desk clerk did it over cheating at chess. Maybe some fellow junkie did it for Lassiter’s stash. People have been killed for less. You and I have both seen it. Maybe Lassiter was dealing and got the wrong people pissed off at him.”

  “It’s all maybe,” Oxman said.

  Tobin snorted and crossed his arms. “Okay, let’s change it to probably. We both know Smiley will.”

  Oxman had thought of that. Manders would have no choice but to hang everything on Lassiter; everybody in the chain of command above Manders, all the way to God, would be pressuring him to close the case. Manders was a good cop, but also one practical enough to have made lieutenant.