by S. J. Rozan
Aha. “Lydia Chin. She’s my partner.”
“Goddamn it, Smith! Aren’t you the guy who said he wasn’t going to mess with my witnesses?”
“Unless I had to.”
“And you absolutely had to?”
“Remember,” I said, “Sam didn’t hire me to prove he didn’t do these killings. I’m supposed to find out whether he did.”
Grimaldi peeled off the gloves. “In other words, you couldn’t find him a bulletproof alibi.”
“Right.”
“I see. And?”
“The best we got was that, according to Kimberly Pike and one of the bartenders, Annika might have been hit on by an average-height dark-haired white guy. They couldn’t identify Sam from the photo, but they couldn’t say for sure it wasn’t him, either.”
“Jesus. And you didn’t tell me this?”
“Tell you what? That we showed them a photo and they weren’t sure?”
She took out a notebook. “How do I find your partner?”
I gave her Lydia’s address, her phone number. “So,” I said. “Last night?”
“Last night, what?”
“Oh, come on. Do we have to play this game?”
Grimaldi seemed to be thinking about what to tell me. She shrugged. “So, last night, Kimberly Pike and her friends decided to go to the Whitney to make the point that whether or not Tabor did Hausman, people who kill people shouldn’t get famous off it.”
“That’s not why Sam’s famous.”
“Not for nothing, but I don’t give a shit why he’s famous. My question is, was this one of these coincidences we all find unbelievable but there you go, or did her knowing the other vic get her killed? On the coincidence side, you’ve got the fact that she’s another short-haired blonde, which we know this killer likes, and that there were other people there who knew Hausman and nobody killed them. On the other side, you’ve got pretty much everything else.”
“Including physical evidence? At the scene?”
Grimaldi sighed. “Not that, no. Unless there’s something on Tabor’s clothes. Pike was stabbed, like the other ones.”
“Same kind of knife?”
“Don’t know yet. There’s blood on Tabor’s shirt.”
“From the bloody nose. What about the trophy?”
“You asking did the killer take one?”
“And was it the same as the others.”
“All right, yes and yes. Not going to tell you what it was.”
“Not going to ask. But how about this—you said there was another one, in Jersey, before Sam got out. Same MO? Same trophy?”
“Jesus,” she said. “I told you I’d call you when I know.”
“This mean we’re on the same team?”
She took a long pause. “Depends. If we’re not playing games, tell me this. Can you say for sure that except for that hour you lost him, you and your weirdo were together all night?”
I let the weirdo part go. “No. When I woke up this morning, the bathroom window was open. Sam says he opened it when he crapped in the middle of the night and then went back to bed. It’s small, but it might be just about big enough for him to squeeze through. He was flat-out wasted when he fell asleep, though. The idea that he got it together enough a few hours later to go out the window, make his way to—” I realized I didn’t know where Kimberly Pike had been found.
Grimaldi let me hang there for a moment, then said, “Back to the Whitney. Pike was found near there.”
I thought. “An hour there, an hour back, two subway lines—I don’t see it.”
“Or an Uber. At that hour, twenty minutes each way.”
I thought about that, too. Sam was just about crazy enough to take an Uber to a murder scene. “Why would she still be there, though? Waiting for him?”
“Maybe she wasn’t waiting. Maybe he just went back there because he’s crazy, and he ran into her coming out of a bar or something.”
I had to admit that wasn’t impossible.
“I already have someone checking with Uber and the cab and black car companies. I can get a warrant for Tabor’s phone, too. Though I agree, that’s a long shot. It’s more likely, if it was him, it was in that hour when you lost him.”
“You must be able to narrow time of—”
“You’d think so, but we can’t. Pike was found this morning in one of the meat trucks at the packing plant next door. Which is why we have no forensics—trace evidence in a meat truck, bad joke. The refrigeration unit was off, but it was still goddamn cold in there. We have no accurate time of death.”
16
I expected to find Sam huddled on his mattress with the bottle of scotch he’d told me was in the cabinet, but when I came back inside, he’d put on a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, made his bed to military standards, and, pencil in hand, was squinting back and forth between the canvas on the wall and one of the sketches taped up beside it. Three utility lights clamped at even intervals on an overhead pipe washed the wall with scalloped arcs and crisscrossing shadows.
Sam glanced over at me as I came in. Turning back to his work, he said, “Go away.”
“Sam—”
“I don’t like people here when I’m working. Did I kill that woman?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I do.”
“Grimaldi doesn’t, either.”
“Bullshit. Then what did she come here for? You don’t know where I was after I ran away.”
“I know up till then you’d had two drinks and after that you couldn’t get into any bars until the one I found you in.”
“I could’ve been drunk enough to kill someone on two drinks.”
“But not drunk enough to forget it.”
“You thought I left here last night. I’d had more by then. You thought I went out the window.”
“I asked if you did. There’s a difference.”
He straightened and looked me square in the face. “And did you get the answer?” When I didn’t reply he said, “That’s what I thought. Now go away.” He bent over his work again. “Go find out if I killed that woman. And the other ones. If you don’t find that out, you’re fired.” He laughed and started making minute pencil lines on the canvas.
I poured the rest of the coffee and watched him from the kitchen while I drank it. He ignored me, focusing on what he was doing as if I’d already gone. He didn’t react at all when I rinsed my coffee cup, pulled on my jacket, stuffed my tie in my pocket, and left.
* * *
As I walked to the subway I lit a cigarette and called Lydia.
“Hey! Have a good night out there in Brooklyn?” she asked when she picked up.
“No, and a worse morning.” I told her what had happened, ending with, “Grimaldi wants to talk to you. I gave her your number.”
She ignored that. “Oh my God. Oh, God, Kimberly Pike? Bill, we saw her last night.”
“We did?”
“Around the back, when we were trying to leave. She was the one who kept screaming, ‘It’s him, it’s him,’ to get everyone else to come around back. Oh, that poor woman. I talked to her. I showed her Sam’s picture. She might not have gone to the Whitney if I—”
“Or she might have. Or whoever wanted her dead would’ve found her wherever she was. You didn’t do this.”
She took a long silence and I gave her the space for it. I smoked and held the phone to my ear. Finally, she said, “Bill? You think someone wanted her dead? Her, specifically?”
“I don’t know about that,” I admitted. “But another murder in Sam’s orbit—Grimaldi says she’s just barely willing to entertain the possibility it’s a coincidence, but there’s no way she thinks it is, and I don’t, either.”
“No,” Lydia said, “me, either. What details do we have?”
Back to business. Good. I knew what she was feeling and that she’d have to work through it—and that the best way to do that was actual work.
I told her about the refrigerated truck. “That means time of death could be
anywhere between nine last night, when Pike’s friends say they lost her in the crowd rushing around to the back, to about six this morning, when the driver found her.”
“They don’t lock those trucks?”
“I guess not once they’re empty.”
“Bet that driver will from now on. Was she left there on purpose, do you think? To confuse the time of death?”
“Possible, though it also could have been just a place to hide her.”
“Is there anything linking Sam to it, other than who she was?”
“Grimaldi says not yet. She took Sam’s clothes from last night to test.”
“She came with a warrant?”
“No. Sam just handed them to her when she asked.”
“I’m beginning to see what Peter means about everyone taking advantage of Sam. You couldn’t stop her?”
“I could’ve, but what’s the point? I’m not his defense attorney. He wants to know. I don’t think he did it, but I can’t guarantee that.”
“You think he needs an attorney?”
“Not yet. If we’re right, he won’t.” My phone buzzed. I checked the screen. “Hey, I’ll call you back. Peter’s calling me.”
“Good luck.”
“Peter,” I said, answering the call. I’d reached the subway and stood off to the side at the top of the steps. I dropped the cigarette butt and ground it out.
“Smith! Where are you? I just called Sam, he said you left. What the hell is going on? He says some detective came this morning. Named Angela? And you just let her in?”
“Angela Grimaldi. NYPD. Sam let her in.”
“Of course he did! He’s clueless. Your job—”
“Another woman was killed last night. That’s what Grimaldi came about.”
Silence, then, “What? And why—”
I thought of Sam: what, when, why, where, how. “A friend of one of the other two, and at the Whitney. Are you in your office?”
“Yes.”
“I’m on my way.” I hung up in case he wanted to argue.
I called Lydia to tell her to meet me at Peter’s office. Then I backtracked a couple of storefronts to a bakery, where I grabbed a sweet roll and more coffee. I had a feeling it was going to be a caffeine-heavy day.
17
Lydia was waiting for me, as arranged, outside the subway exit when I hit midtown.
“You look like you spent a sleepless night on someone’s couch,” she said as she kissed me.
“I wish it had been sleepless. I wouldn’t ache any worse, and Sam would have at least half an alibi.”
“Half?”
“Even if I hadn’t fallen asleep, there’s still that hour I lost him.”
“We lost him. And you can’t really think that he could’ve done this, no matter when he was alone.”
“I don’t, but that doesn’t matter.”
“Grimaldi, you mean.”
“Not even her. If he didn’t do it, she won’t find anything. But that won’t convince Sam. I wanted to be able to prove to him he couldn’t have killed anyone last night.” I shook my head. “But my thinking was theoretical. That’s why I let myself fall asleep. I wasn’t actually expecting anyone to get killed.”
She squeezed my hand, said nothing as we walked to Peter and Leslie’s office building. After a few moments, I smiled and said to her, “By the way, you look great.” She wore the leather jacket again, over a blue striped shirt and black slacks.
“I slept very well, thank you. Since I had nothing else to do except sleep.”
“You’re not going to let me forget that, are you?”
“Not a chance. How often do I arrange to spend the night at your place?”
“Not often enough. I’m going to talk to your mother about it.”
“You do that.”
We rode up, arrived at The Tabor Group’s glass entrance, went in, and asked for Peter. A minute or two later Leslie threw open the waiting room door. “My God,” she said, stopping in the doorway when she saw me. “You look like a homeless person. Did you have to come here like that?”
“A woman’s been killed,” I said. “The cops came to talk to Sam. Peter called me, all pissed off. I thought it might be better to get here fast than go home and make myself presentable. If that bothers you, don’t look at me, look at Lydia.”
Leslie did, giving Lydia a sharp glare. Lydia returned a bland smile. Leslie snapped, “Come on,” and stalked down to Peter’s office, followed by Lydia, me, and the furtive stares of the sleek young people behind the glass wall.
Peter’s mood was no better than Leslie’s, but his office was a lot less chaotic than the day before. Leslie must have done some of the roto-rootering she’d told me about.
“Smith! What’s going on?” Peter demanded as Leslie clicked his door shut. “Who was killed? Why did the police come to Sam? What did they say?”
I could see people in the drafting room cautiously eyeing the office through the window wall. Clenched jaws and red faces on the bosses might herald a tough afternoon.
“Her name was Kimberly Pike,” I said. “She was a friend of one of the other two victims, and she was found at the Whitney.” I sketched them the morning, starting with Cavanaugh.
“Oh, Jesus, I remember him.” Peter ran his hand down his face. “He still has it in for Sam?”
“Why wouldn’t he?” Leslie snapped.
Peter just looked at her, his shoulders slumping. I went on, told them about Grimaldi and Sam, Sam’s impressive memory, the open window. I finished with, “Grimaldi took Sam’s clothes from last night, to test.”
“What the fuck?” Peter came back to life. “You fell asleep? And you let that cop take his clothes?”
I could hear the bell ringing for another round between me and Peter, but Leslie jumped in. “What difference does it make? They must already have some kind of evidence. Something makes them think he’s guilty, or they wouldn’t have come.”
I said, “Grimaldi says except for who the victim was and where she was found, they don’t.”
“Why would she tell you?” Leslie retorted. “They must have something.”
“What makes you think that? Because she came to Sam? There’s enough circumstantial evidence to make that reasonable.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Les, you’re wrong,” said Peter. “If they actually had anything, they’d have arrested him.”
“I agree,” I said.
“Who gives a shit?” Peter wheeled on me. “What the hell good have you been so far? If you hadn’t lost him last night in the first place, and then fallen asleep, he’d be off the hook now. Or if you hadn’t been so eager to get rid of us. If I’d stayed, I wouldn’t have lost him.”
“I wasn’t the only one who wanted you out of there.” I looked at Leslie, who just glared back.
“Jesus,” said Peter. “You’re useless. You’re fired. Get out.”
“Nice try,” I said. “You keep forgetting I don’t work for you.” I didn’t mention that Sam had already threatened to can me. “But the ‘get out’ part, fine. Just one thing. Where were you last night?”
“Where was I?”
“Where were you—both of you?”
“Are you insane?” Leslie demanded.
“I don’t think Sam did this. Or the three earlier ones, either.”
“Three?”
I nodded. “The first was in Hoboken about two months before Sam got out. Same MO, same trophy.” Actually, Grimaldi hadn’t confirmed that to me yet, but I wanted to see what would happen if I said it. What happened was interesting: a flash of confusion in Peter’s eyes—and what I could have sworn was a veil of despair in Leslie’s.
Peter said, “Before? That—doesn’t that prove Sam’s innocent?”
“No,” Leslie said, rousing herself. “It just proves he didn’t do that one.”
“True,” I said. “But it’s getting clearer, even leaving that one out, that the others are related to him in some way.”
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“Obviously,” Leslie said. “And the simplest way would be, he did them.”
“Les!” Peter turned to her. “What are you saying? You know he didn’t.”
“Peter.” Leslie gave him steely eyes. “I think it may be time to face facts.”
“What facts? What are you talking about?”
“We’ll discuss it later.” She turned the steel on me. “Last night—since you have the balls to ask—we got away from that riot as fast as we could. Peter took an Uber home to Brooklyn. I went back into the Whitney to see if I could smooth Michael Sanger’s fur. Then I went home, too. Now get the hell out of here.”
She jerked open Peter’s office door and stood there. As soon as Lydia and I had walked through, she slammed it shut.
“Can we stay and be a fly on the wall?” Lydia asked. “I bet they’re about to have a doozy of a fight.”
“Except we wouldn’t be flies on the wall,” I said, nodding and smiling at the young people behind the glass, whose stares had followed us out of Peter’s office and down the corridor. Eyes quickly dropped back to computer screens. “More like fish in a bowl.”
“Too bad,” said Lydia as we reached the elevator. “I’d sure like to know what they’re hiding.”
“You think so, too?”
“Oh, my God. The question is, are they both hiding the same thing from us? Or are they each hiding something different from each other?”
18
“And by the way,” I said as Lydia and I melded into the foot traffic on 46th Street, “I couldn’t fail to notice up there that you had nothing to add to the conversation.”
“You were doing so well.”
“The way a worm does on a fishhook.”
“Your grasp of metaphor is weak today. What now?”
“Before anything else happens, I need to go home and take a shower. Then we need to talk about what we’re going to do next. I want to look into some things, but I don’t want to step on Grimaldi’s toes.”
“Coming from you, that’s unaccustomed consideration for the sensitivities of a cop.”
“No, she just scares the crap out of me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Coming?” I started for the subway.
