Don’t Look Now

by Richard Montanari

  The young woman smiled and wagged a finger at him. ‘Don’t be long. It’s way after hours and I don’t care if you are a cop.’

  ‘Thanks …’

  ‘Brenda,’ she said, and turned on her squeaky white shoes.

  ‘Brenda,’ he echoed, and looked for 303.

  He actually looked better than he had before he got shot. More robust, for some strange reason.

  Because, although Paris learned a half-hour after the shooting that Nick had been knocked out cold in that alcove, and that it was not he, in fact, who fired the bullet that dropped Cyndy Taggart, he also found out that Nick Raposo had taken the bullet meant for Melissa. It had hit him in the upper left thigh and exited through his left buttock as he lay unconscious on the cement. Nick had missed everything that took place in the parking-lot, but Paris filled him in.

  The identity of the person who fired the bullet that hit Cyndy was still unknown.

  Nick had been in Cleveland Clinic for six days and he – like the staff, faculty, volunteers and support personnel around him – was more than ready for Nicholas Carmine Raposo to be discharged.

  ‘What happened to the world when I wasn’t looking?’ Nick asked. ‘A woman? A woman, Jack?’

  Paris had no response. He remained silent.

  Nick leaned forward, getting down to business. ‘So, still no idea who bopped me? Or who shot Cyndy?’

  ‘No,’ Paris said. ‘We have the slug but it’s pretty common. Standard nine-millimeter.’

  ‘Unbelievable,’ Nick said. ‘I mean, I’m standing there, I got a perfect view of the BMW, the next thing I know, I’m kissing the cement. Man, did that hurt. I haven’t been hit that hard since I got jumped behind Leo’s Casino when I was twenty-two years old.’

  ‘And you didn’t see anything.’

  ‘Stars,’ Nick answered. ‘A whole shitload of stars.’

  ‘And you think that—’

  ‘And cologne. I remember that whoever sapped me was wearing cologne.’

  Paris filed this morsel of information in its proper mental drawer. He’d add it to his final report.

  Nick lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘What’s up with the case?’

  ‘The prosecutor’s office says that there’s a good chance that the recording I made in the alley won’t be admissible in court,’ Paris said. ‘Seems that because Cyndy didn’t know I was taping—’

  ‘Yeah, but you did. I thought the law was that only one party has to know.’

  ‘That will probably be the argument.’

  ‘Do you need the recording to nail her?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s all there is to link her to the Pharaoh killings. Otherwise, she skates on those charges. The arson team hasn’t come up with a damn thing from the house on Tarleton Street. Not a fiber, not a hair, not an unburned piece of paper. The place was sixty years old and the wood was dry as hell. It went up like kindling.’

  Nick shook his head.

  ‘The good news is that the coroner has ruled that Andrea Heller was already dead when her body was placed in the attic.’

  Nick met Paris’s eyes, knowing what a relief it must have been for Paris to find out that he hadn’t help set the house on fire while the woman was still alive.

  Nick looked out the window for a moment, then back. ‘And to think Cyndy’s in this building, right at this minute.’

  ‘One floor up,’ Paris said.

  Nick poured himself some water, regarded Paris. ‘How is your daughter? How’s she taking all this?’

  ‘My daughter,’ Paris began, ‘is amazing. I think she’s going to be okay, Nick. She’s seen a counsellor twice.’

  Nick just nodded.

  ‘But I don’t think her mother is ever going to speak to me again.’

  Nick smiled in understanding. ‘And Rita?’

  ‘She’s okay, I think. She’s tougher than all of us put together,’ Paris said. ‘The investigating team cleared her yesterday and she’s going to visit her sister in Erie, Pennsylvania. I’m going to take her to the Greyhound station in a little while.’ Paris looked at his watch. ‘Actually, I’m due at her place in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘I’m telling you, Jack. If I was thirty years younger.’

  ‘Maybe that doesn’t matter,’ Paris said. ‘I know for a fact that Rita likes older men.’

  ‘Nobody’s this old, though.’

  Paris grabbed his coat from the hook near the door. ‘Yeah, you’re so old that you saved my sorry ass in a dark alley.’

  ‘True,’ Nick said. ‘And what about that Diana? When am I gonna meet her?’

  ‘Next time I see you. Hand to God.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Nick said, pointing a finger at him. ‘When you bring the prosciutto.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Paris replied with a smile. ‘I promise.’

  Paris pulled up to the curb in front of the Greyhound bus terminal on Chester. A light drizzle began to fall as he put the car in park.

  ‘Well, I have to tell you, you’re a hell of a date, Jack Paris,’ Rita said, opening the passenger door. ‘What else could a girl ask for? Dressing-up, barhopping, assault and battery, handcuffs.’

  ‘I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you did.’

  ‘I’ll let you make it up to me someday. Just get your VISA card paid up. You’re not getting off cheap.’ She leaned over and kissed Paris on the cheek, her face looking impossibly young and unlined in the gray light of the overcast day. ‘Thanks for the ride.’

  ‘Need help with the suitcase?’

  Rita just glared at him. She stepped out of the car, grabbed her bag and shut the door.

  ‘Sorry,’ Paris said, hoping he hadn’t trodden on any feminist doctrine.

  Rita smiled and looked back in the half-open window. ‘See you on the dance-floor, detective.’

  ‘Sure thing.’

  He watched her walk toward the tattered art deco building, a bright, capable young woman, and wondered if Melissa would one day be as resourceful and independent as Rita Weisinger.

  He had a feeling she would.

  49

  SHE WAS STILL dressed for work. And she had cut her hair. Although Paris preferred long tresses on a woman, she actually looked better. Sexier, if that was possible, although he didn’t see how.

  ‘I can’t say it’s the way I wanted to get ahead in this town,’ Diana said, pouring the last of the chardonnay into their glasses. They were in front of the fireplace at Diana’s condominium in South Euclid. The flat was small, decorated in shades of peach, white and gray. ‘I mean, the BMW-accessory jokes are already up and down the Justice Center.’

  ‘Price of fame, I guess,’ Paris said, stroking the back of Diana’s newly cropped hair.

  ‘Well, I would have preferred fame for some other reasons,’ Diana said. ‘Putting away people like Cyndy Taggart. I mean, I’m a lawyer, Jack, and a damn good one. I want to be known for something other than my ability to be victim of the week.’

  ‘You will. Doesn’t matter how people get to know about you, it’s how you dazzle them once you’ve gotten their attention.’ He leaned forward and kissed her, gently, at the corners of her mouth. ‘And I know you’ll dazzle them.’

  They clinked glasses one more time, sipped, then fell into each other’s arms for a few eager, impassioned moments.

  Diana pulled back, smiling.

  ‘What?’ Paris asked.

  ‘Got two questions for you,’ she said, demurely now. ‘Personal ones.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Did you think I was unbelievably forward our first night together? I mean, me showing up with condoms and controlled substances?’

  Paris had considered the fact that she was rather predatory that night. But compared to the other things he had suspected her of, being forward was well within the confines of acceptable adult behavior. ‘Nah. I’m used to it. Women are always showing up in the middle of the night with rubbers and reefer. It’s why I had to get such a killer dog.’ Paris sipped from his glass. ‘A
nd what was question number two?’

  ‘Have you ever done it in the trunk of a car?’ Diana burst out laughing, snorting once, bringing her hand to her mouth.

  ‘Criminally unhumorous, counselor.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ She poked him with a stiff index finger. ‘Then why’d you smile?’

  ‘Because it was funny.’

  Five minutes later, as Paris removed Diana’s blouse – the two of them adrift in the thrall of their new and strange and genuine ardour – Paris looked over her shoulder and thought of the door to room 419 at Cleveland Clinic, the veiled visage of Cyndy Taggart lying still in her hospital bed, her once perfect body plugged into machines, connected to IV bags, guarded by one of Cleveland’s finest.

  An hour after that, as he and Diana lay near the chasm of dreams, Paris considered, as he sometimes would for years to come, the one photograph he had not taken with him to the Motel Riverview that night, the one that sat, at that moment, in a safe deposit box, in an envelope, in a twice-folded piece of bright white typing paper, all sealed up in an even bigger envelope.

  A six-by-nine-inch envelope with a signature along the flap.

  EPILOGUE

  IT HAD BEEN eight months since the last of the Pharaoh killings. The Swing Set had moved three times and the people of Cleveland had since voted to retain Mayor Michael R. Brown.

  It was the Friday before the Wednesday that would be Christmas Day.

  Seven forty-five p.m.

  The phone rang and I answered. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Danny, it’s Jack Paris.’

  Jack Paris was the cop who had killed Saila. Actually, he had lured her to a deserted parking-lot to do the job himself, but I had put the bullet in her. She did her actual dying in the hospital a week or so later – during my watch guarding her door, ironically, some sort of blockage in her respirator, I believe – but for all intents and purposes, Jack Paris had killed her.

  I knew he’d call me, socially speaking. A lot of men hated me for my looks, my sense of style, my wardrobe, but, for the very same reasons, a lot of men wanted to be my friend, too.

  The spillover and all.

  ‘Jack,’ I said, full of piss and vinegar and cop camaraderie. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Same shit, different diaper.’

  ‘Merry Christmas.’

  ‘Merry Christmas to you.’

  ‘What’s doin’?’ I asked, as if I didn’t know the answer. Once it gets under your skin, you see, you never really shake it. So I knew.

  ‘I was wondering,’ Paris said, ‘if you weren’t doing anything tonight, if you wanted to hit the Caprice. Or maybe go somewhere where the crowd has active DNA. Beachwood, maybe. You up for it?’

  ‘Jack,’ I said. ‘You have to ask?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I laughed. ‘It’s Friday.’

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781409022015

  Published by Arrow Books 2011

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  Copyright © Richard Montanari, 1995

  Richard Montanari has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  ‘I Feel So Good’ by Richard Thompson, copyright © 1991 Beewing Music.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  First published in 1995 by Simon & Schuster Inc (as Deviant Way)

  First published in Great Britain in 1996 by Penguin Books Ltd (as Deviant Ways)

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9780099524830

  ISBN 9780099538721 (export)