by Darren Shan
“You have two minutes to decide.”
Not wishing to appear a pushover, I spent ninety seconds pretending to struggle with my options, but in truth there was never a choice. To defy The Cardinal would have been suicide.
“OK,” I sighed. “Tell me what you want me to do.” Grinning, he leaned forward to explain, and the impression I had was of a vulture swooping in to feast on a kill.
5
I‘d switched my cell phone off while in conference with The Cardinal. As I changed clothes in the basement, I turned it back on. It rang before I made the door.
“Al? This is Bill. I’ve got some bad—”
“I know,” I interrupted.
“You do?” He sounded relieved.
“Can I ring you later, Bill? I’m kind of—”
“Sure. Whenever you want. I’ll be here.”
“Thanks.”
I cycled home with The Cardinal’s file under one arm, coming to terms with all that had happened. Finding Nic… meeting The Cardinal… learning of my father’s death… a forced career change.
He’d put all my other duties on hold. I was an independent agent now. Free to operate as I pleased. Answerable to no one bar himself. I was to request assistance if I needed it. Frank, Tasso, the Troops, his lawyers — all would be made available should I ask.
But where to start?
I hurried up the stairs, let myself in, switched on the lights and opened the file. If I was lucky, The Cardinal’s experts would have made my beginning for me, and I could simply follow their directions, tidy up after them, make a few inquiries, chase a few red herrings, declare my investigation a failure and get back to where I belonged. If I worked quickly it might be over by the weekend.
It didn’t take me long to realize that wasn’t in the cards.
The file was mind-boggling. Sheet after sheet of facts — where Nic went to school, her grades, her sources of income, friends, associates, names of those who’d made deliveries to her home, a seemingly complete list of shops she’d favored with her custom, clubs she’d frequented, vacations she’d enjoyed.
After an hour of scanning doggedly through the statistics, I threw the file away, stripped and had a shower. Turned it up hot, then down cold. Came out shivering but sharp. Dried myself, wrapped a towel around my middle and returned to the discarded papers.
A few minutes later I closed the file and laid it aside. The only way to approach something like this was with a purpose. What did I want? What did I need?
Drawing up a sheet of paper, I jotted down a few thoughts.
The names of those closest to her would be essential. I knew she had a brother but what about other relatives? Maybe someone stood to gain financially from her death.
Old boyfriends. Could be a jealous ex-lover among them.
Her sun brooch and the carving on her back. I’d have to check on those. Find out where she got the brooch. Go through the list of organizations she was a member of — perhaps one of them boasted a sun symbol for an insignia.
What else…?
The night in question. Last Friday. I’d have to know where she’d been, whom she’d been with, what she’d been doing. That would be the best place to start — I might pick up a name or two that would make my other inquiries less complicated.
Laying down my pen, I turned aside from Nic for a while to ponder the death of my father. I wasn’t sure what I should feel. Even though I hadn’t known Nic very well, I knew more about her than about Tom Jeery. He’d been a vague figure in my life, hardly ever home when I was a child, turning up out of the blue every so often, disturbing my mother, disrupting our daily routine. I had very few clear memories of him. A couple of trips to the movies. An afternoon spent together in a park. Playing soccer on the road behind my house. I’d always thought he was a salesman, never felt close to him, never thought we had anything in common. And now…
Now I’d learned we were both in the pay of the same master, that years before I made any move to join the ranks of The Cardinal, he’d been there, testing the waters, preparing the way. I felt cheated. Many of my childhood friends had turned to criminal pursuits, but I was the only one from the old neighborhood to serve with the Troops. I’d thought I was something hot when Ford Tasso singled me out for special treatment. Now I realized he’d only done it because of my father. That bugged the hell out of me.
I’d have to think on it some more one day. Make inquiries, find out what sort of a man he’d been, what kind of impact I should allow his death to have on me. But not now. I’d deal with Nic first and get The Cardinal off my back. Playing detective was going to take up a lot of my time. I couldn’t afford distractions.
I passed a couple more hours scouring the file, digging out names and relevant details. There was more to Nic Hornyak than I’d imagined. I’d never pegged her for a virgin, but according to these reports she’d been with everything on two legs in the city. If I had to search among the ranks of ex-lovers for her killer, it would be a long, arduous task.
I’d had enough for one night, so I laid the file aside and prepared for bed. I’d go over it thoroughly in the morning. Hopefully sleep would clear my head and I’d be able to think directly.
It was while I was brushing my teeth that it hit me.
I wiped around my mouth and returned to the file. Picking it up, I leafed through, counting pages. Forty-three, excluding photos, of which there were plenty.
I checked some of the entries. Many of the sheets were photocopies with dates going back to Tuesday, Monday, Sunday. Interviews had been conducted with friends and relations. A lot of man-hours had gone into this. The investigation seemed to have been launched early Saturday.
But Vincent hadn’t known the corpse’s identity. Nor had Dr. Sines. The official line was, nobody did. She’d died a Jane Doe and lain in the Fridge, unidentified, until I turned up.
So how the hell had this dossier been compiled?
Frank wanted to see me the next morning, so I made Party Central my first port of call. He was in his office, catching up on a frightening tower of paperwork. He signed his name to stray pieces of paper while we talked.
“Heard about your promotion,” he grunted. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
“The Cardinal’s told me I’m to put myself at your beck and call.”
“Yeah?” I grinned. “Like a personal assistant?”
“Fuck you.”
I laughed and handed him a stack of papers.
“Any idea what it’s all about?” I asked. “Why he picked me and what he expects?”
“Didn’t he tell you?”
“He did and he didn’t. Said I should be setting my sights higher. Told me I was wasting my time where I was. I get the impression this is a test of some sort but I haven’t a clue what I’ll win if I pass.”
“The Cardinal’s a queer fish,” Frank said. “Sometimes he seems to do shit just for the fun of it. And maybe he does. Many think so. But I beg to differ. I don’t think he spits without evaluating every angle.”
“How should I proceed?” I asked.
“Why ask me? I’m no detective.”
“But you’ve had dealings with them. You know more about it than me. Do I need cameras, recorders, bugs? Approaching people — do I pretend I’m a real detective? What about the cops? And how do I recognize a clue from a lump of dog shit?”
Frank laughed and pointed at the space above the door behind my head. I turned and looked up. A sign hung there. when in doubt, decide!
“Ford Tasso said that to me the day I started. When life got me down, I had one of the girls print it up. I glance at it twenty times a day, more if I have to.”
“If I’d wanted dry old proverbs I’d have bought a fortune cookie.”
Frank shrugged. “You asked for my advice — that’s it. There’s a thousand ways you could investigate. Sitting around thinking won’t get you anywhere. Nor will doing things the ordinary way — The Cardinal doesn’t want that. When I s
tarted, I made some lousy calls, but they were my decisions. The Cardinal respected that and left me to work things out. You’ve gotta do the same. Go out on a limb and hope you don’t fail.”
“I was looking for more practical advice,” I grumbled.
“Then look elsewhere,” Frank told me, and that was the end of our discussion.
I met Bill next, in a bar close to Party Central. We ordered sandwiches and sat in a quiet corner, away from the crowd, discussing Nic and what had happened.
“How are you holding up?” he asked.
“Pretty well, considering.”
“I damn near fainted when Kett told me. We were joking about her Friday, on the way up, remember?”
“You said if the fish didn’t bite, we should invite her up and tell her to bring a friend.”
“I’m sorry, Al.”
“Don’t be. You didn’t know her. I barely knew her myself.” I took a bite out of the sandwich — the bread was stale — and chewed mechanically. “Who told Kett about her?”
“He won’t say. All I know is, he got a call at home, Thursday. Somebody told him there’d been a murder at the Skylight and the body had been removed. Gave him the room number, date and time, a description of the victim.”
“Her name too?”
“Yes.”
“Any idea who the caller might have been?”
“If it had been any other hotel, I’d have said a maid or bellboy. But employees are more tight-lipped at the Skylight. My guess is it was another guest, somebody with a conscience. Or it could have been the killer.”
“You reckon?”
“The symbol gouged into her back — he didn’t do that for fun. When someone goes to that much trouble, he’s looking to be noticed. He might have wanted the case dragged through the media. Maybe he’s planning to strike again and wants to be recognized when he does.”
“A serial killer?”
“Possibly. But from what I’ve gathered it was a clumsy kill. Slow and messy. So we’ve either got a beginner on our hands or somebody who wants us to think he’s a beginner.”
“Any clues?” I asked. “Any leads?”
“Not by the time we arrived, but the better part of a week had passed before we were called onto the scene. Whoever brought her back might as well have dropped her off at the station.”
I hadn’t told Bill that I’d collected Nic’s body from the Fridge. Didn’t intend to. Those were the kinds of details you learned to withhold from friends. Nor did I plan to tell him about my meeting with The Cardinal.
“What are your chances of catching him?” I asked.
“Slim to none. If we’d been informed as soon as she was discovered…” He sighed. “The pathologist will do his best, but I doubt he’ll discover anything useful. We’ve questioned the staff — nothing. There’s a few to go but we won’t get anything out of them. Unless he strikes again or Kett receives another phone call… nada.”
I nodded slowly. I’d figured as much.
“What about a private investigation? Any point?”
“You could hire someone,” Bill said. “Costly. Probably wouldn’t achieve anything. But it couldn’t do any harm.”
“What if I was to investigate?”
He frowned. “Don’t be crazy. What do you know about detective work? It’s not as easy as it looks in the movies.”
“I know. But how would I go about it?”
He studied me silently for all of a minute.
“You’re not asking my opinion, are you, Al? You’re committed to this already. Right?”
“Right.”
“Jesus.” He pushed the remains of his sandwich away. “How far are you into this?”
“I’ve got some names. Background information.”
“Any angles?”
“I was hoping you’d provide me with a few. Old enemies, a family feud — something like that.”
He smiled wryly. “I told you, it’s not like in the movies. Motives and deaths of this nature rarely go together. Nic checked in under a transparent pseudonym — Jane Dowe. Why do people normally give false names in hotels?”
“Because they’re there to fuck?”
“Crude but precise. Chances are she picked up a guy, took him back to the Skylight, he turned psycho, end of story.”
“Did anybody see the two of them together?”
“The receptionist remembers Nic but insists there was no one with her in the lobby. The room to the right of hers was unoccupied. The old couple in the room to the left went to bed early and slept the night through.”
“If I investigate,” I said slowly, “where should I start?”
He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He looked old and tired in the dim light. Bill had been talking about taking early retirement for a couple of years — looking at him now, I began to think maybe he should pack it in, before the job made a premature end of him.
“You might glean something from the staff at the Skylight,” he said reluctantly. “They weren’t anxious to talk to us. Given your connections, there’s a chance they’d be more open, assuming they know anything. But leave it for a couple of days. You don’t want to run into Kett. Let us complete our investigation and move on before you poke your nose in.”
The previous detectives had already interviewed the staff and come up blank, but I’d have a crack myself, as Bill suggested, though I wasn’t sure I could wait until the dust settled.
“What about friends and family?” I asked. “Anybody suspicious?”
“None that we know of, though we’ve only been on the case twenty-four hours and those are the kind of details you don’t unearth immediately. Her closest friend was Priscilla Perdue. Know her?” I nodded. The name was in the file and Nic had spoken of her a few times. “And there’s her brother. We couldn’t get anything out of him. He didn’t bat an eyelid when we called him in to tell him about the death and ask him to identify the body.”
“That’s peculiar, isn’t it?”
“Not really. People react to death in all sorts of ways. Very few weep openly in front of the police.
“Apart from those two, I can’t help you. I might know more in a day or two but right now we’re struggling to get inside her head. Nic kept her personal life to herself. In fact, if you haven’t any objections, I’d like to hear what you have to say about her.”
We ordered another round of orange juices and I ran Bill through my time with Nic. Toward the end of our talk he returned to the topic of detective work and honored me with some much-needed advice.
I shouldn’t bother with bugs — such technology was for the professionals. He told me to be honest when interviewing people, tell them who I was and why I was interested in Nicola. “That way they’ll have sympathy for you and may be more inclined to talk. If you pretend to be a real detective, they’ll see through you and close up shop.”
He stressed the importance of keeping things simple. “Don’t weave webs of intrigue. Murder’s not a complicated business. If you start building up networks of suspects and theories, you’ll chase your tail into madness. Take people at their word. Turn a blind eye to conspiracies. Look to narrow your options. Jump to no conclusions, especially dire ones.”
I listened intently, filing his words away.
We parted with a handshake and a smile. If Bill had grave misgivings about my getting involved, he kept them to himself. Told me to call if I needed help or ran into a blank wall. I promised to let him know if I discovered anything.
I cycled back to Party Central and flicked through the file one more time. The moment had come to take my first step. I probably should have heeded Bill’s advice and waited a few days before interviewing those close to Nic. But, keeping Frank’s motto in mind, I decided to strike fast, figuring people in mourning might reveal more than they would when composed. I grabbed my bike, tucked my pen and notebook away and set off for the twisting maze of city streets beyond the gate. As I cycled into the wind, a cliché whistled through my thoughts, an
d I grinned — Al Jeery was on the case!
part II. “i’m your man”
6
I called on her brother first. Nic had never told me much about him, apart from his name, Nick, which was confusingly similar to her own. Nicholas and Nicola, but both had used the abbreviations since childhood, prompted by their father, who had a peculiar sense of humor. I’d asked why they let the arrangement stand now that he was dead. She said neither wanted to change. She liked Nic and he liked Nick. Besides, they didn’t see a lot of each other, so it wasn’t that big an issue.
He was twenty-nine, three years older than Nic. He had inherited the bulk of the estate when their parents died and was to have been Nic’s financial guardian until she turned thirty, whereupon she could have drawn from her share of the funds as she pleased. He had no head for business but he spent conservatively — he hadn’t frittered the family fortune away and there was a sizable amount left in the kitty.
The two weren’t close, but there didn’t seem to be any bad blood between them. They just didn’t have much in common. Or, to put it another way, they had too much in common — as well as sharing names, they also shared a taste in men. Nick Hornyak was, as the file succinctly phrased it, “bent as a eunuch.”
Nick lived in the family mansion in the suburbs. An architectural monstrosity, oozing old money. It had been Nic’s home too, though she’d hardly spent more than a few months there in the last several years of her life.
The butler wasn’t impressed when he saw my bike leaning against one of the pillars. “Deliveries to the rear,” he said snootily, and I had to jam my foot in the door to buy the time necessary to explain who I was and why I was there.
Master Nick, he informed me, was not at home and not expected back any time soon. He didn’t answer when I asked where I could find the absent master, so I said I had some personal belongings of Nic’s I wanted to pass on. He deliberated for a couple of grudging seconds, then told me I’d probably find Nick at a club called the Red Throat.
