On the table was a bowl. In the bowl was a mound of what looked like soggy Cheerios. The cereal was being probed by a single, large black fly.
The room was as repulsive as the man.
"It's raining like shit out there," Timothy said. "Like shit. I'm stuck in here, in here. And the TV's broken. It's like being in a cell. You know what I mean?"
"Yes."
"I'm used to wandering, finding things, meeting people," said Timothy, rubbing his face.
"I know."
"Hell of a time for a visit," said Timothy. "Hell of a time."
Timothy picked up three magazines from the sofa and dropped them on the floor in a corner to give his guest a place to sit. Then he turned and tried to smile.
"I've got a couple of Cokes."
"No, thanks."
"So, have a seat."
"No, thanks."
"Then what, what?"
"You ever make a promise?"
"A promise. Yeah, sure. I must have. Everybody makes promises," said Timothy, noticing, sensing that something was odd about his visitor.
"Did you keep your promises?"
"Some, I guess. Don't remember."
Timothy sat on the sofa and looked up. Then he saw what was wrong. His visitor was wearing white, skin-tight gloves.
"I made a promise," the limping man said.
"Interesting," said Timothy. "Sure you don't want a Coke? Sure you don't want to start making sense or get the hell out of here?"
"Remember, I know what you are."
"And I know what you are," said Timothy. "So what? That's what you came to talk about? You need a shoulder to cry on? We've got a place for that, remember? Once a week, remember?"
"I remember."
The limping man moved toward the sofa. Timothy rose. He didn't like the blank look on his visitor's face.
"Get the hell out," Timothy said. "Or say something interesting that makes sense."
He took another step forward. Timothy stood, legs apart, hands ready. He was no stranger to violence. There were times when he welcomed it. He expected no problem in throwing out this intruder. He reached for the limping man's poncho.
The limping man ducked and in a crouch came up with a knife in his right hand. He stepped forward, flowing into the move and plunged the blade under Timothy's armpit, burying it to the hilt.
Timothy grunted, not sure of what had happened, thinking he had been punched, losing his breath. He reached for the limping man's hair, but the man knocked his hand away with an elbow and delivered a short, sudden chop to Timothy's neck.
Timothy went down with a moan, reaching out for something to grab, to hold him up. The pain under his arm had spread to his chest. He was sitting now, puzzled, dazed. He looked up at his visitor who kicked him in the chest. Timothy went to the floor on his back, panting, trying to catch his breath.
"You…you're…my only friend," Timothy whispered.
"Not anymore. Not ever."
Timothy felt the straps of his overalls being pulled down. Then he felt the overalls being pulled off.
"What?" he managed. "Why?"
"You know."
When the next wave of pain came, Timothy wanted to scream. His mouth was open, but nothing came out.
* * *
DJ Riggs sat, towel over his shoulders, cup of awful coffee in his hands. One of the narc cops who had caught him sat across from him. The other stood behind him.
DJ knew the drill. He knew the room. All these rooms and all these cops were the same. They had him. They could play back and forth, good cop, bad cop, we know what you did, do you know what's going to happen to you?, we don't need you to talk but it will go better for you if you do.
"You saved a baby," the cop across the table said. He was young, younger than DJ, Hispanic, long hair.
"That buy me a ticket out of here?" asked DJ.
"Not hardly," said the other narc behind him, a tall black man who looked like somebody on the Yankees DJ couldn't quite place. "But it inclines us to listen to anything you might have to tell us."
"Okay, I tell you I want a lawyer."
"We can't help you once your lawyer comes," said the Hispanic cop.
DJ looked at the wall. He could have been left alone and supplied all the dialogue.
"Yeah," he said. "And you want to help me."
"Hell of a thing you did saving that kid, coming out of that doorway so we could see you. Hell of a thing," said the Hispanic narc.
"We're inclined to be nice," said the black cop behind him.
"Okay," said DJ. "I've got something. Deal is, I give it to you and it's good shit, I walk."
"It would have to be damn good," said the first cop.
"It is," said DJ. "I want it on tape and I want to hear your voices on that tape and I want my lawyer to hear the deal."
"Deal is off the record," said the first cop. "You trust us or no deal. And there will be no deal anyway if you don't have some top quality information."
DJ looked at them and said, "I saved that baby's life."
"You did," agreed the black cop.
"Okay," said Riggs folding his arms. "Deal."
"Talk," said the black cop. "Make it good."
"Terrorist," said DJ.
Neither cop seemed moved by the information.
"I dealt him some detonators."
"You're a drug dealer," said the Hispanic cop.
"I'm an entrepreneur," said DJ.
"Go on," said the black cop.
"He came to me. Don't know how he knew I was the man to come to. White guy, maybe fifty, one of those British accents, you know. I asked him if he needed bombs too. Not that I had them."
"Of course not," said the Hispanic cop. "More coffee?"
"No. All he wanted was detonators. I happened to know where I could get a few. Hoisted from a construction site over in Jersey."
"This man in search of detonators, he have a name?" asked the black cop.
"Everybody's got a name," said DJ, "but no one gives a real one to me and I'm fine with it."
"That's all you have?" asked the Hispanic cop.
"He made a cell phone call. He didn't know I could hear him. Argued with somebody, said whoever he was talking to should calm down, that everything would be fine, that he'd meet him at Doohan's in the morning."
"And when did this conversation happen?" asked the black cop.
"Last night," said DJ. "Did I give you enough?"
"We'll check your tale, talk to an assistant DA," said the Hispanic cop. "You can identify this British guy?"
"Damn straight," said DJ. "Am I walking?"
"You saved a baby," said the black cop.
"You dealt detonators to a possible terrorist," said the Hispanic cop. "Homeland Security will want to talk to you."
"And the FBI," said the black cop.
"Hey, man, I saved the baby."
"That you did," said the Hispanic cop. "It's in the mix." He looked up over DJ's shoulder and nodded. The door opened behind DJ and then closed.
"I want a lawyer now," said DJ.
"It's still raining hard," said the Hispanic cop.
"Then he'll just have to slog his way over here. I'm through talking," said DJ.
The Hispanic cop got up and motioned for DJ to do the same.
"How's the baby doin'?" asked DJ.
"High and dry. His mother's a crackhead. She lost track of him when she was high and the kid wandered off. Name's Linda Johnson. Know her?"
"Yeah," said DJ, thinking there was an outside chance that he had saved the life of his own baby.
7
IT NEVER RAINED like this in Poland.
Well, almost never.
Waclaw longed for a command of English. Instead his grasp of the language was more of a whimper. To be fair, Waclaw had been in the United States for less than two weeks and the lessons he had taken in Poland had proved to be almost useless.
He was on vacation from his job in Lodz. Actually, it was more of a pilgrimage
than a vacation.
Waclaw wanted to see his son and daughter-in-law and their children before he died- if he indeed was going to die soon. He had a liver disease. There was a hospital in New York City where his son Alvin and his family lived, a hospital that specialized in liver disease. Waclaw had an appointment at the hospital, but now the time of that appointment had long passed.
The geography here eluded him. His son and his family lived in Brooklyn. Brooklyn, he was told, was part of the city. There were other parts of the city, five of them, called boroughs. One of these boroughs was the island he had heard of since he was a boy, the island where his son worked, Manhattan. It was all very confusing to an outsider, Waclaw thought.
Waclaw had an international driver's license. His task had been simple: he would drive the five blocks to the train station, park in the lot and wait for his son to come home from work. Then his son would drive them to the hospital.
Waclaw had not made it to the parking lot.
The rain had made driving so treacherous that Waclaw had driven off the road. He saw a brown patch of mud and water in front of him, lost control of the car and drove into what looked like a river or a lake. The engine stopped. The lights went out. The car surrendered to the rain, began drifting out into the river.
Then Waclaw could feel the car sliding slowly down farther into the water.
He tried to get out. The pressure of the water and the angle at which he sat made it impossible to open the door. His panic increased. But then the car had stopped moving, with the water level at the bottom of the window.
And so there he had sat for four hours, according to his waterproof watch, while the rain pounded on the roof of the car and he fruitlessly scanned the shore for possible signs of help.
Waclaw was hungry. He was tired. He needed a shave. He probably needed a new liver.
The rain continued to fall.
Then he had an idea. He slowly opened the window. Water and rain blew in. Waclaw, who was lean and taut, eased his way through the window and took off his shoes, which would weigh him down. He looked toward the shore. He didn't think he could swim that far- he could barely swim at all- but he could float on his back. So that was what he did. Better that than sitting around and waiting for help that might never come. He eased into the rushing river, floating into darkness and a rain that tried to pelt him under.
* * *
Arthur Alexson was hunched over, head into the wind and rain. He had cut a hole in a large piece of clear plastic he had found in an empty furniture box. It made a fine poncho, though it whipped around hard and with a snap when the wind caught it. He had tied a length of frayed cord around the makeshift poncho the way he had seen Sylvester Stallone do it in the first Rambo movie.
Arthur Alexson had a home, at least for now. The house he lived in was for sale. The people who owned it had moved somewhere. It was a nice house on a nice street with a basement window that didn't lock and which he entered after dark. He kept the finished basement clean and never went upstairs.
Arthur Alexson had left the house that morning, head and body bent over into the wind and rain in search of food. He had money, forty dollars, hard earned, asking for handouts right in front of the Fulton Street and Hoyt-Schermerhorn Street subway station entrances. It took him fifteen days to accumulate that much money, but what else did he have to do? He had spent five of his forty dollars for the goods he now hugged under the makeshift plastic poncho.
As he walked carefully along the muddy bank of the creek, Arthur noticed a spot of white drifting past him, heading for the East River. Arthur stopped. No doubt. It was a man, and the son-of-a-bitch was alive.
"I'll get you," called Arthur, as the pale man floating on his back flowed closer.
The man called back something in Chinese or Russian or some such shit.
Arthur ran ahead of the man, heading in the direction in which the man was floating. Slipping in the muddy embankment, almost sliding into the water, worrying about snakes, which he hated, Arthur searched until he found a broken tree branch. It wasn't much and it wasn't all that long, but it was that or watch that poor bastard float away.
Arthur very reluctantly put his plastic bag of food down after quickly tying the top. Then he held out the branch and shouted into the rain, "Over here. Here. Here."
Waclaw heard the voice and began to paddle awkwardly toward it even though he didn't understand the words. The waterway had narrowed, and Waclaw thought that even with his poor swimming skills he might be able to make it to the source of the voice.
"Come on. Come on. You can do it," called Arthur.
Waclaw neared the shore and felt something against his chest. It scratched and cut. He grabbed it and Arthur Alexson pulled him in and then grabbed his outstretched arms to drag Waclaw onto the embankment.
When he was sure the man was safe and wouldn't slip back in, Arthur sat and panted. He looked over his shoulder. His bag of groceries was still there.
"That was close," he said.
Waclaw, too exhausted to move, thanked him in Polish.
"You're welcome," said Arthur, shaking his head and taking off his poncho. He covered the man with it and said, "What's your name?"
Waclaw took his wallet out of his pants, reached into it and pulled out a card. Arthur looked at it.
"This is my father. His name is Waclaw and he does not speak English. My cell phone number is 1-888-000-CHEM."
The name printed at the bottom was Alvin Havel.
* * *
Mac pressed the top of the mouse and the screen of James Feldt's laptop appeared with a musical hum. The computer sat on Mac's desk next to a cup of hot herbal tea.
The tickle in his throat had become a discernible soreness. He didn't have to use a thermometer, but he knew that he had a temperature.
He knew that cold and flu viruses came from human-to-human transmission and were not caused by cold or damp weather. Mac had also concluded, with reservations, that cold and wet weather might well create conditions under which the cold virus was more easily transmitted.
In any case, Mac Taylor had a sore throat and a cold and maybe some kind of flu. He drank some of the lukewarm tea and examined the computer screen.
Columns of numbers faced him each with an identification attached: "Woodrow Shelton, June Billing, $14,234; Monica Kobilski, June Billing, $18,333."
What interested Mac was the last entry on the page. It was a note that read:
*Primary associate billing and carryover billing adjusted is %12.23 higher than adam
Adam. Lowercase. No period. Mac could imagine a number of ways to end the sentence including something like "higher than adam predicted." But this was the last thing Feldt had written. "adam." No time for capitalization?
The tea soothed for a few seconds. Mac took a bottle of aspirin from his desk, removed three tablets and downed them with the help of the tea. Then he popped a lemon lozenge into his mouth.
Mac pressed more keys and pulled up the photos of the two mutilation victims. He scanned the photos and found the ones that showed the letters D and A carved into the thighs of the victims.
Time of death. Of course. If it hadn't been for the semi-fog of the flu, he would have seen it earlier. The body of Patricia Mycrant had been found first, a D carved into her thigh. Then Feldt A. But the temperature and condition of the two bodies indicated that Feldt had been the first one murdered, which meant first A and then D. Adam?
Were there going to be four victims? Another A and then an M? Not enough evidence yet. He could be carving anything into the victims, perhaps his initials, A.D. Or the two letters were the beginning of another word they didn't yet know. It would take another corpse to confirm Mac's suspicion that the next letter would be another A.
* * *
The other corpse existed. And the second A was carved into his thigh. The mutilated dead man was Timothy Byrold. His body had just been discovered by Dorrie Clarke, who saw the partly open door to Timothy's apartment and pushed it
open farther.
Dorrie had gone down the hall to retrieve a tennis ball she had thrown. Dorrie was six years old.
* * *
"Umbrella Man?" asked Flack.
"That's what he calls himself," said Achmed from behind the counter of the Brilliance Deli.
There were no customers. Those who had been there earlier to escape the downpour had all fled when the blood-red rain gushed through the awning. Most of them had hurried into the rain under umbrellas purchased from Dexter the Umbrella Man.
"No name?" Flack pressed. "The Umbrella Man?"
"Dexter," said Achmed.
"And he stepped out on the street?"
"As soon as the bloody rain started to flow through the awning," Achmed said. "Went out there and looked up toward the roof, just stood there looking for a little while like he saw something or someone up there."
"How did he look?" asked Flack.
"Frightened, I think. Then he crossed the street and was gone."
Flack had stepped into the rain a few minutes earlier and looked up at the roof. Dexter the Umbrella Man would have been looking up at the spot where Mac had found evidence that the killer had leaned on the edge of the roof. Dexter the Umbrella Man could have seen the killer.
"And you don't know his last name or where he lives?" Flack asked Achmed.
"No, wait," said Achmed. "I know where he gets the umbrellas. He told me he gets the watches he sells when it isn't raining and the umbrellas when it is from somebody named Alberto, yes, at Alberto's place, I think he said on 101st Street."
"I know the place," said Flack.
His phone beeped.
"We've got another one," said Mac. "I'm on my way there. Find anything?"
"Maybe. Possible someone who saw the perp. And I want another crack at the victim's mother. Something's off about her. I feel it."
"Stay on it," Mac said. "Let me know if something turns up."
"Right," said Flack.
"You all right, Don?"
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