It Happens in the Dark - M11

by Caroll O'Connell

  Mallory turned on the lawyer. “Did you actually talk to your client this time?”

  “Well, no.” Monroe spread his hands to ask, What the hell for? “Interference with a corpse—a penny-ante charge, and they’re not even gonna fine my guy. I got him a deal.” The lawyer raised one fat thumb. “First, you get his confession.” Next he held up his index finger. “Then I plead him out.” And last came the middle finger for the fuck-you finish. “And we all go home early.”

  “So classy.” Riker turned to his partner. “The arraignment’s already on the docket, and Bugsy hasn’t even been charged yet.”

  “Yeah,” said Monroe. “It was timed for the press conference. You got an hour, Mallory. Shouldn’t take that long. I hear my client’s bug-shit crazy.”

  And the gopher could not be in worse hands.

  • • •

  Mallory was wearing her shades when she entered the watchers’ room, dressed like visiting royalty.

  Late. No apology. No excuse.

  Every cop turned her way, and the tension ratcheted up a notch. Only Lieutenant Coffey was smiling, far from pissed off with her new-and-improved wardrobe selection. He stared at her high-heeled boots. His detective was now two inches taller than the captain and half his men.

  The young assistant district attorney rushed to the stack of metal folding chairs. Lifting one, he carried it to Mallory so the lady could sit down.

  “What the fuck?” Captain Halston snatched the chair from the ADA and flung it back to the wall. “She won’t be staying!” He turned his anger on Mallory as he pointed at the glass window on the adjoining room. “Get in there. Now!”

  Not so fast.

  She only looked down at the captain. And then she made a show of slowly turning to her boss, deferring to Coffey, a man of lesser rank. She stood there, motionless, a woman with all the time in the world.

  And when Jack Coffey thought he could drag out the fun no longer, he gave her a nod and said, “Go.”

  She turned on one heel and marched out like a good soldier. Later in the day, he would recall this moment as the one that should have set off warning bells.

  • • •

  Detective Riker had the public defender in tow, more like in custody. His hand was on the lawyer’s back as he propelled him through the door of the watchers’ room.

  Surprised and then angry, Captain Halston glared at Eddy Monroe. Was he silently reminding the man that this was not their deal? Riker caught the captain’s eye and managed to convey that Monroe would stay—that this was the new deal.

  The more witnesses for a lynching, the better.

  There could be no argument, not with an assistant district attorney in the room. That youngster looked to be fresh out of law school, no doubt handpicked for this assignment because he lacked experience and guile—a boy still in love with all things legal.

  Riker faced the one-way glass as his partner entered the next room and sat down across the table from Bugsy. She held out a pen and a pad of lined, yellow paper. The writing pad fell to the table when Bugsy grabbed both her hands and held on tight, so happy to see her, too afraid to let go of her.

  She spoke to him softly. Too softly. Captain Halston reached out to the control panel and jacked up the volume to hear her say, “Trust me.”

  Bugsy’s head bobbed up and down in the affirmation of a dumb animal. He released her hands to pick up the pen. Following instructions, he turned his eyes down to the yellow pad, and he wrote out his real name, Alan Rains. When she dictated his bogus flophouse address, he looked up for one quizzical moment, and then he scribbled another line for her.

  “In your own words,” she said, “write down how you stole a wheelchair from backstage—how you used it to transport Dickie Wyatt’s corpse to the theater seat.”

  He raised his eyes to hers and shook his head.

  “Do what I tell you.” She said this in the same soft vein as trust me.

  And Bugsy, true to the character he played in life, did as he was told. He bent down to his work, confessing to pushing a two-day-old corpse around in a wheelchair.

  On the other side of the glass, the youngster from the DA’s Office said, “She’s not eliciting a confession—she’s dictating it.”

  Captain Halston placed an avuncular arm around the young lawyer’s shoulders. “Kid, we’re not taping this. Don’t worry about it. Your boss can tell you cops do this kind of thing all the time.”

  The worried ADA glanced at the public defender, who showed no interest in this debate. Eddy Monroe leaned back against the rear wall and read the sports pages of his newspaper, unconcerned. And this seemed to mollify the DA’s man—the DA’s boy.

  Finished with his writing, Bugsy looked to Mallory for more instructions.

  “Now we have to mention how you got that corpse,” she said.

  Bugsy’s only sign of rebellion was to mouth the words, Please no.

  “Do what I tell you, and I promise they’ll let you go. I’ll take you out of here myself. We’ll go get some pizza and beer.”

  “This isn’t right,” said the ADA.

  “Yeah,” said Captain Halston, “it is.” He placed both hands on the younger man’s shoulders and squeezed—hard. “Mallory can lie to him all day long. She can be a lying bitch on wheels.” The captain raised his voice to bully volume. “The Supreme Court fucking said so!”

  “Amen,” said Eddy Monroe, looking up from his newspaper. He gave the ADA a thumbs-up. “Relax, kid. It’s all good.”

  In the other room, Mallory was saying, “Look, Bugsy.” She pointed to the one-way glass. “There’s an audience behind that mirror. They all turned out to see you.” In a lower voice, she said, “Today you play the part of the man who killed Dickie Wyatt.”

  “What’s she doing?” Halston looked back over one shoulder to see if this had gotten the public defender’s attention. It had not. In a hoarse angry whisper, he said to Jack Coffey, “We’re going for a light charge here. She knows that. Wyatt wasn’t even a homicide.”

  Riker smiled. Apparently no one from Midtown North had bothered to check with the Medical Examiner’s Office. And Dr. Slope was still sitting on Dickie Wyatt’s autopsy report.

  “Gimme the lieutenant’s personal notes.” The captain snapped his fingers, and Harry Deberman handed him a small notebook page filled with lines of Jack Coffey’s handwriting, the spoils of Halston’s raid on Special Crimes. “Jack, you talked to the ME’s Office right after your guys found the junkie’s body. Am I right? It says here, the pathologist’s call was a drug overdose.”

  “I told her you only wanted a half-assed job,” said Coffey, “but I guess she just can’t help herself.” His eyes were on Bugsy in the next room, where the little man was still writing out the details of his imaginary crime. “Mallory’s bringing it home, wrapping the case. A murder confession—just in time for your big press conference.”

  “Murder?” Eddy Monroe dropped his newspaper and stepped up to the glass. “This ain’t the deal I cleared with my boss. Halston, what’re you tryin’ to pull? You tryin’ to get me fired? The deal’s off! Gimme back my paperwork!”

  “I got better paperwork.” The captain turned to Harry Deberman. “Give him the transcript.”

  Detective Deberman handed a thick wad of paper to the defense lawyer. “Here. This says your client’s already done time on a psych ward.”

  Once the papers were unfolded, Riker recognized the stolen transcript of Bugsy’s old sanity hearing.

  “And Dickie Wyatt OD’d,” said Halston. “He killed himself. Monroe, you know we’re not gonna charge a lunatic with a murder that never happened.” Halston turned to the younger lawyer. “You tell him!”

  “Mr. Rains can confess to a murder,” said the ADA, “but the police aren’t obligated to charge him. I personally guarantee they’ll go with the lesser offense—interference with a corpse. But if he’s certifia—”

  “Good enough.” Eddy Monroe stuffed the transcript into his briefcase.
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br />   The ADA jabbed a thumb at the one-way glass and asked the captain, “How crazy is that man?” As Eddy Monroe beat it out of the room, the younger lawyer called out to his back, “Could I see those papers?”

  Too late. The door closed.

  “No, you don’t.” Captain Halston gripped the ADA’s arm, restraining him when he tried to follow Monroe. “There was a sanity hearing years ago. Our guy walked free. So he might be nuts, but he’s legally sane. Not your problem, kid.”

  Riker knew Eddy Monroe would never read through that transcript—not before the arraignment. Too much like work. If only he had been a better lawyer, he could have quashed the confession and walked his client out the door. Even less work.

  And how carefully had the captain read that transcript of mind-numbing legal jargon? Had he even scanned the summary page? The old sanity hearing had damn little to do with sanity. Five years ago, only Bugsy’s freedom had been at stake.

  Still at stake—thanks to Eddy Monroe.

  And now Riker had to get himself and his boss out of here fast, before Mallory’s fallback plan began. As the others filed out through the door, he glanced at the window on the interrogation room. Where had she gone?

  Did he really want to know?

  • • •

  Where was she?

  Bugsy sat alone, staring at his broken watch and waiting out Mallory’s promised return in ten minutes. He heard the click of the lock. The door opened, and she entered the room, but with no key in her hand, only two bits of metal that were quickly pocketed.

  “Time to go.” The detective leaned over the table to set down a shallow box of brown bags and paper cups. “I hijacked it from a delivery boy.” She pointed to a customer’s name on a deli order. “This one’s for Detective Kay. Remember—his lunch comes last.” Next, she opened her coat and pulled out a plastic bag with the protruding brim of a pink baseball cap. “Just a few things I borrowed for a wardrobe adjustment. And you’ll need these.” She handed him her sunglasses.

  He nodded as she gave him the rest of his instructions, and when she quit the room, the door was left ajar.

  Bugsy pulled a bright pink T-shirt from the plastic bag. It matched the borrowed cap, and this color decided him on a persona of campy effeminate. He donned Mallory’s sunglasses as he carried the box of food and drink down a hallway that opened onto a room of desks, where men and women talked on phones and tapped the keyboards of laptops. Affecting a high falsetto voice, he sang out the names of two detectives. As hands went up, he carried deli bags and cups to each of them.

  And now for the last one. “Detective Kay?”

  “Over here.”

  Bugsy danced up to the man’s desk, the one closest to the stairs, and he set down a brown sack. “Ham on rye.” Now the paper cup. “And a coffee light. That’s seven-fifty.” He held out one hand for payment.

  The detective gave him a ten-dollar bill. “Keep the change, kid.” The man gave Bugsy a long appraising look. “Nice shades. Are those rims real gold?”

  Bugsy giggled like a shy girl and sashayed out of the room and down into the stairwell, where Mallory snatched the pink cap and stripped off his T-shirt. She handed him his coat and a set of keys. When they reached the ground floor, he trailed ten feet behind her, invisible in her wake.

  • • •

  Mallory stood at the rear of the crowd in the briefing room. Riker was long gone, back at the SoHo station house by now. And apparently the lieutenant had also left Midtown North, wanting no part of the upcoming perp walk, the cameras and lights and the lies to come.

  Captain Halston stood behind the lectern. Following his announcement that a person of interest was being detained, he responded to rapid-fire questions from reporters by raising both hands for silence. “No,” he told them, “I’m not going to name this individual just now.” But, if they were patient, he assured them, they could catch a glimpse of the man being escorted from the building.

  An alarm sounded in a jarring metallic scream as a uniformed officer sprinted toward the lectern. Another uniform closed the door and stood before it, arms folded. All through the building, officers would now be blocking stairwells and fire escapes.

  Mallory looked out over the crowd of media. The cophouse reporters in this mix knew that sound. It was not a fire alarm, but the steady siren of lockdown mode. One newsman turned her way, and his was a face she knew well. Lou Markowitz had made good use of this reporter from time to time—this memorable man named after his left leg.

  Woody limped toward her on one prosthetic limb. “Hey, Mallory. What’s going on? Who got away?”

  “No idea.”

  Sardonic to the bone, he said, “Okay, next question. Who’s the captain’s person of interest?”

  “As far as I know, there isn’t one.”

  “You mean—not anymore,” said Woody Merrill.

  The reporter’s photographer joined them, and he pointed to the commander of Midtown North. “I was three feet from Halston when this cop runs up and tells him the guy’s gone—just walked out.”

  “He didn’t say what guy? No name? No—too easy.” Woody turned back to Mallory. “Okay, so now I know the person of interest is on the run. He’s the killer, right?”

  “Special Crimes has nothing to do with this circus,” said Mallory. “The man Halston detained was nobody I’d call a person of interest. It’s still my case. I should know.”

  “So the captain’s blowing smoke? Can I—”

  “Don’t.” Mallory smiled at this veteran, once revered by her foster father for his wartime service and sacrifice, and she repeated Lou Markowitz’s terms, word for word: “You quote me—and I blow out the kneecap on your good leg.”

  • • •

  Mallory stood beside a reeking alley Dumpster that hid her parked car from view of the sidewalk. She held a flat carton in one hand and a six-pack in the other.

  Bugsy fitted his key in the lock and opened the theater’s rear door. After relieving her of the pizza and beer, he stood to one side and said, “Ladies first.”

  Before she flipped the wall switch, she knew the place was empty. Dead space. “All clear,” she said, and Bugsy followed her inside. They passed behind the stage set, where the ghost light glowed through the backdrop of the scenery window, and they climbed the stairs leading up to the dressing rooms.

  “I sleep in the one at the end.” The gopher led her down the railed loft platform to stand before the last door, where he pulled out his key ring. “This room was locked up for goin’ on twenty years. It’s cursed. Nobody ever goes in here but me. I got a toilet and a sink.” He whispered, “Don’t tell nobody,” as he unlocked the door and turned on the light. “The others got renovated, but this one’s still a dump. So don’t expect much, okay?”

  When Mallory entered the dressing room, the first thing she saw was a cracked mirror with missing shards. It was ringed with small lightbulbs, only two of them working, and it hung above a skirted table, where lipsticks and makeup brushes were layered in dust like every other surface. A tangle of wires plugged into the only electrical socket.

  The gopher set the pizza carton and six-pack down on a bedroll of threadbare blankets, a small pillow and stacks of newspapers for his mattress. A past flood of leaky pipes had peeled the green paint and warped the baseboards around a rusted radiator. A hot plate sat on the floor beside it.

  All the conveniences of home for the homeless.

  Bugsy pointed to the armchair that held his duffel bag. “Don’t sit there. Ya might choke on the dust.” He used a rag to polish the seat of a wooden chair for her, and then he sat down on his makeshift bed on the floor, where he drew up his legs, hugged his knees and rocked his body, rocking away the day’s anxieties. “I wish I could stay here forever. These are the best digs I ever had.”

  But she knew he had grown up in a house expensively furnished with antiques that met Charles Butler’s high standards. “I hear your mother’s place is really nice.”

  “I go
t no mother,” said Bugsy. “When I was born, it tore her up so bad she died.”

  Was that a line from a play?

  Maybe the drama critic was right, and Alan Rains was gone. No one home but Bugsy anymore. “I’m sorry for your loss,” said Mallory, one motherless child to another. “So what’ve you got for me? Any new messages on the blackboard?”

  “Alma says yeah, but I don’t think so. She’s always seein’ things that ain’t there. Hearin’ things sometimes.” The gopher looked up at her, his eyes less fearful now. He turned to the makeup table. “I’ll tell ya how that mirror got cracked. See where that one big piece is missin’? They found it buried in the heart of the old guy who used to own this place. Did I tell ya this story? The actress who killed him was nuts—thought she was stabbin’ a ghost.” He popped the top off a beer bottle and handed it to Mallory. “They say the old man haunts this room, but I ain’t never seen him. I showed Alma where to find the story on the Net. I thought it might help. She thinks the ghostwriter’s the haunt.”

  “But not you. You don’t believe in ghosts.” Not much.

  Bugsy took her meaning. His smile was sheepish. “Hey, this place is where we make the stuff that isn’t real.” He bowed his head. “Ghosts. I dunno. Late at night, I hear things, too. Midnight, a security guard does his rounds, but sometimes there’s footsteps that ain’t his. More footsteps in the mornin’. That’s been goin’ on since the play opened. Ya know what’s really creepy? What I don’t hear. Listen.” He held up one finger to ask for her silence. “Nothin’—no mice crumbles in the walls. Old theater like this one, that’s weird. If ya got no mice, that means ya got rats. And that’s a fact. But I never seen any. No sound, no sign of ’em. . . . Ya get my drift?”

  Yes, she did. What was so scary it scared away rats?

  ROLLO: Why? What possessed you to go anywhere with those two?

  SUSAN: They gave me this note. It says you need help.

  (She hands him the piece of paper. He stares at it. Shakes his head.)

  ROLLO: I had no idea they could write.