Dancer in the Flames

by Stephen Solomita

  ‘Find a place to begin.’

  ‘And how long will that take?’

  ‘A couple of days? A couple of weeks? I only know we can’t afford a lot of dead ends, there being only the pair of us. Of course, you could make both our jobs a lot easier.’

  ‘Me?’

  The corner of Jill Kelly’s mouth slid a few millimeters to the left. A smile? A sneer? Boots maintained a neutral expression as he continued. ‘Your father was murdered six years ago and you’ve been out for revenge ever since. This I can tell just by looking into your eyes. And I don’t blame you. If it was my father, and I had to look at his body—’

  ‘Get to the point, Boots. I don’t want to hear any more bullshit.’

  ‘OK. Why did you suddenly show up at Brooklyn North after Parker was killed? Why were you assigned to the case? Is there anything you need to tell me that I won’t find in the files?’

  ‘Boots, it’s like I already said. Uncle Mike sent me to keep an eye on Corcoran.’

  ‘Now who’s bullshitting?’

  This time Jill’s smile was quick and genuine. ‘Well, that’s my story,’ she declared, ‘and I’m stickin’ to it.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Boots got busy within minutes after Jill Kelly’s departure. He had no intention of spending weeks, or even days, working through the files. If the answers were buried somewhere in the mass of paper filling the room, Jill and her uncle, the Chief of Detectives, would already know it. But that didn’t mean there was nothing to be gained, no questions to be answered. First, there was the need to impress Jill with his diligence when next she visited his humble home, and to deceive her if necessary.

  Boots spent the next three hours examining the Chris Parker files. He found no trace of Rajiv Visnawana’s statement, nor any mention of the Hoyden of Humiliation. Instead, the paperwork documented a thorough neighborhood canvas, including six statements given by individuals who’d also testified before the grand jury. The statements were uniform in nature: two shots fired, a dash to the window, a car pulling away, a body on the corner.

  After skimming the witness statements, Boots quickly reviewed the autopsy report which included a dozen photographs. One photo especially caught his attention. Chris Parker was positioned on his back prior to the beginning of the autopsy, staring up at the camera through his open right eye. His left eye was an empty socket, the bullet fired into the back of his skull having chosen this point to exit his body. A second exit wound appeared six inches to the left of his navel, and what appeared to be a third wound crossed his right hip. But when Boots took a closer look, the gash on Parker’s hip was a healed scar sunk deep into the underlying muscle. It looked as if his flesh had been gouged.

  Boots replaced the autopsy report, then turned to an unmarked folder tucked away at the rear of the box. Inside, he found a single sheet of Internal Affairs Bureau stationery. He read it quickly, then read it again. A drug dealer from the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant named Maurice Selman, facing serious federal time, had claimed that Chris Parker was extorting money from his operation. The item had been routinely forwarded to Internal Affairs by the FBI, though no proof was offered, and IAB had routinely opened a file, but made no effort to follow up.

  On one level, this was less than nothing. Vague accusations against cops assigned to Narcotics Division are an everyday occurrence. But two things caught Boots’s attention. First, the allegation had been made six years before, within a few months of Patrick Kelly’s murder. Then there was Maurice Selman, a legendary drug dealer well known to New York cops. Selman had been shot down shortly after his release from prison, probably by a rival named Elijah ‘Maytag’ LeGuin. Cock of the walk in the Bed-Stuy projects, LeGuin had earned his street name as an eight-year-old when he drowned the family cat in a washing machine.

  Boots turned next to the thirty-seven boxes containing the Lipstick Killer files. Reading through them was clearly beyond his capacity and he limited his attention to three items: the crimes scene photographs, the statement given by Jules Cosyn following his arrest and a profile worked up by Detective Adam Khouri, the NYPD’s Quantico-trained profiler.

  Boots took the crime scene photos into the living room and spread them out on the floor, separating the four scenes. Then he crawled from one to another in search of any indication that all four murders were not committed by a single individual. He found none. The crime scenes were as uniform as they were depressing. Each of the women had been strangled in a public space – two on stairwells, one as she entered her apartment, one in a basement laundry. The attack on the woman entering her apartment was the most telling. Her killer might simply have pushed her through the open doorway, then taken the time to enjoy himself, or at least to conceal her body. Instead, she was found lying across the threshold, fully clothed, her face smeared with her own lipstick.

  Like Boots, Adam Khouri had made much of this particular attack in concluding that the perpetrator was disorganized and severely delusional. Many other factors supported this judgment. Though he placed no great faith in profilers, Boots could see them clearly. Each of the women was killed in a blitz attack that left her dead within two minutes. There was no sign of the sadistic behavior associated with organized serial killers like Ted Bundy, nor was there evidence of a sexual motivation. All the victims were fully clothed when discovered, and the lipstick marks (which the media had made so much of) were limited to random smears with the victims’ own lipsticks. In fact, there was no indication that Cosyn had brought anything with him to the crimes scenes – no restraints, no weapons.

  The subject, Adam Khouri wrote in his summary, is a white male in his mid-to late twenties. He will have been diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic in early adolescence and have a long history of institutional care. Although he sometimes lives with his parents, he is currently homeless. Just as he has no plan of attack before an assault, he will have no plan of escape afterward. Look for him to linger within a block or two of a particular crime scene for several hours. He will be dirty, disheveled and confused when approached, but he will speak to investigators if properly handled. Under no circumstances should he be exposed to stressful interrogative techniques. If pressed, he is likely to retreat into his paranoid delusions. If allowed to proceed under gentle questioning, he will eventually reveal his motive for the homicides.

  Boots was about to check the profiler’s final prediction by examining Jules Cosyn’s statement when he heard a knock on the door.

  ‘Hey, Boots, open up. My hands are full.’

  Libby Greenspan to the rescue. It was past seven and Boots hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He opened the door to find Libby holding a tray loaded with lasagna, mesclun salad and a small loaf of seeded Italian bread.

  ‘Your father says I’m supposed to stay with you until you eat.’

  ‘Does he?’ His mouth already filling with saliva, Boots took the tray and set it on his coffee table.

  ‘Myself, I don’t think you need a mother.’

  Boots picked up the knife and fork on the tray. ‘What’re you saying, Libby?’

  ‘Your father and I have been talking about marriage. I think he already spoke to you.’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Andy tells me you didn’t have much to say.’

  ‘My opinion wasn’t asked for.’

  ‘Well, I’m asking now.’

  Boots carried a chunk of lasagna to his lips, pausing a moment to let the steam drift into his nostrils. ‘How old are you, Libby? Forty-four? Forty-five?’

  ‘Forty-seven.’

  ‘Well, my father’s sixty-seven.’ Boots looked directly into Libby’s hazel eyes. She was a good woman, quick to smile and full of energy. As far as he could tell, she didn’t have a mean bone in her body. ‘Right now, Dad’s healthy. In fact, I’d have to say he’s rejuvenated since he met you. But down the line, that’s all gonna change. I don’t know how long it’ll take – maybe five years, maybe ten. But however long it is, one morning you’ll wake up an
d realize that you’ve gone from wife to nurse. You’ll realize that the last of your good years will be spent caring for Andy in his bad years.’

  Libby shook her head. Somehow, she hadn’t expected Boots to get right to the point, the one she’d been thinking about for the past two months. Stupid of her, to be sure.

  ‘I love Andy,’ she said. ‘Beyond that, I can only say this: I’ll never desert him, no matter how bad it gets. And I know Andy will never desert me. Remember, the difference in our ages doesn’t mean that he’ll go first, or be the first to get sick.’

  As Boots returned to his dinner, he remembered that Libby, an only child and childless herself, had no close relatives. ‘You know it’s gonna be a church wedding, right? You’ll be married by a Catholic priest?’

  ‘Followed by a Jewish ceremony at home.’

  ‘Well, I can’t say I know much about Jewish ceremonies, but if you want, when you walk down the aisle at Mount Carmel, I’ll walk beside you.’

  Libby’s eyes welled up, as Boots had known they would. She reached out to touch his hand.

  ‘Boots Littlewood,’ she said, ‘you are such a prick.’

  The impending union of Andy Littlewood and Libby Greenspan fled Detective Littlewood’s mind before Libby reached the bottom of the stairs. He turned on the Yankee game, which was in the third inning, and muted the sound. Then he retrieved Jules Cosyn’s recorded statement, which ran to forty pages and was every bit as delusional as Khouri had predicted. Here, Boots was greatly aided by the efficiency of the task force. Passages that bolstered the state’s assertion that Jules had confessed were highlighted. Most of these involved references to the malevolent female deity who plagued Cosyn’s days. This deity, who bore many titles, including the Great Whore of the Seven Systems, generally lived on Venus, but had been recently kidnapped and taken to Saturn where the planet’s rings were actually her chains. For reasons unexplained, Jules Cosyn had facilitated the kidnapping and was now the target of the Great Whore’s minions. These lesser demons appeared to be ordinary human females but were actually soul-sucking vampires. Killing them was the only way Jules could secure his personal survival.

  Satisfied, Boots returned the files to their appropriate boxes. Jules Cosyn fit Adam Khouri’s profile as if designed for no other purpose, virtually every element falling into place. Twenty-six years old, Cosyn had been diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic at fourteen, been in and out of various institutions, lived on and off with his parents, been within a block of the last crime scene when first approached by investigators.

  Bottom line, the Lipstick Killer investigation was righteous and there was no reason to suppose any connection between that investigation and the death of Patrick Kelly.

  Boots glanced at the clock as he retrieved the Kelly files. It was now approaching eleven o’clock. He’d been at it for more than twelve hours and he had hours to go. He considered retreating to his bedroom, catching a few hours’ sleep, but decided to continue. He had plans for the following day and he would have to be out early. There wasn’t all that much to review anyway. The small task force assigned to the investigation had stuffed the file with paper, almost all of it interviews with relatives, friends and co-workers, none of whom had anything to contribute. The exceptions were three statements given by independent witnesses, and the statement given by Jill Kelly.

  Although provided by individuals unknown to each other, two of the statements were as similar as they were brief: somewhere between six twenty-five and six thirty, both witnesses heard ‘what might have been gunshots’ coming from the general direction of the Kelly home. The statement by the third witness, who lived around the corner, was more elaborate. She’d first observed a car, a Toyota, parked in front of her home at four o’clock in the afternoon. As her own car was in the driveway, she was hoping the Toyota would be moved before her husband came in at seven thirty. From time to time, she’d parted the curtains in her front window to check, but it wasn’t until the conclusion of the nightly news at seven o’clock that she’d looked out to watch two men drive away ‘in a big hurry’. One of these men, she’d added when pressed, ‘might have been’ wearing a ski mask.

  ‘Well, I know he had on a knitted cap, but it seemed like it was pulled down too far, like it was covering his neck and his ears.’

  The times didn’t match up – the shots at six thirty, the getaway at seven. Not that it mattered all that much. The first two witnesses had gone about their business after hearing the shots. It was Jill Kelly who’d finally called the police.

  Suddenly, Boots realized that he didn’t know the final score of the Yankee game. The TV had been on the whole time, but he’d been too absorbed in the files to even note the highlights. Jill Kelly’s statement in hand, he tuned his set to a cable sports channel, discovering, after a few minutes, that the Yankees had coasted to an easy victory over Toronto. A-Rod and Jeter had both gone deep, while Jeter had made a spectacular play on a foul ball that would be featured in highlight reels across the country. That left the Bronx Bombers in front of the Red Sox by two games, and Boots Littlewood up three hundred dollars for the week.

  Triumphant, Boots dropped on to the couch and read the statement given by Jill Kelly, then a pre-law student at Fordham University. Amazingly brief, it could only have been the product of an intervention by one of her well-placed relatives. Otherwise, the simple possibility that she was the shooter would have led to a thorough grilling instead of the terse recitation she’d offered to Detective Lenny Olmeda.

  My father picked me up at school and we drove directly home. We came into the house somewhere around a quarter to seven. I came in first. I heard my father lock the door, then I heard the shots. I knew what they were right away, but I couldn’t make myself turn around. I was crying and I kept calling, ‘Daddy, daddy?’ Then I finally ran into the kitchen and dialed nine-one-one.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Boots didn’t know exactly what excuse he was going to make until he pulled to a stop before the Staten-Island home of Anita Parker, Chris Parker’s widow, and noticed a ‘For Sale’ sign on the front lawn. It was too good to be true, but he wasn’t complaining. Luck, good and bad, played a part, sometimes critical, in any investigation.

  He got out, stretched and looked around. Except for a second-story addition over the garage, Parker’s small colonial was as nondescript as any of its neighbors. Nothing about the house spoke to his alleged corruption, and neither did the Toyota mini-van parked in the driveway or the above-ground pool in the back yard.

  Boots climbed the few steps to the front porch, slid a tricycle off to one side and rang the bell. The woman who answered had done everything possible to disguise her grief. Anita Parker’s make-up was carefully applied, her dark hair tumbled evenly about her shoulders, her rose-pink blouse was freshly ironed. Nevertheless, her face was all bones and hollows, and the sooty pouches beneath her pale eyes were too dark to conceal. When Boots displayed his badge, she flinched, as if anticipating more bad news.

  ‘Hi, I’m Boots Littlewood. I was part of the task force. They used me to find Vinnie Palermo.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Lenny Olmeda mentioned you.’

  Boots took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been wantin’ to pay my respects, but I had a little accident and I never got a chance. Then I heard you were putting your house up for sale and I figured now or never.’

  As far as Boots could tell, Anita Parker’s smile was genuine. He watched her back through the door, then followed her into a living room cluttered with toys.

  ‘How many?’ He gestured to a playpen.

  ‘Three. And you?’

  ‘One. He’s in college.’

  ‘With what they charge for tuition, I don’t know whether to offer condolences or congratulations. Anyway, I’ve got a pot of coffee going. If you have time for a cup, I’d like to hear about what you did.’ She paused to brush her hair away from her face. ‘I don’t know why, but knowing about the investigation, about what happened, makes it better. At least f
or a while.’

  Settled in a chair at the kitchen table, Boots went on for the next ten minutes. He was good at telling cop stories and Anita, a cop’s wife, seemed eager to listen. She even broke a smile when he described himself limping into the back yard to find Jill Kelly whomping on Vinnie Palermo.

  ‘You know,’ she said when Boots wound it up, ‘there’s a question I’ve asked Lenny Olmeda a number of times, but I can’t seem to get a straight answer. Do you mind if I ask you?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘What was Chris doing by the Williamsburg Bridge at that hour of the morning?’

  Boots sipped at his coffee as he weighed his response. He saw no reason, at this point, to add to Anita Parker’s misery. ‘My guess is that he was meeting a snitch, but nobody knows for sure.’

  Anita’s response was quick. ‘My husband commanded a narcotics unit. He didn’t work in the field.’

  ‘Maybe the snitch would only talk to him, or maybe the snitch was so high-level he couldn’t be trusted to a subordinate. Anyway, you’re asking the wrong man. I’m a precinct detective and I was only assigned to the job for a couple of days. The task force used me to find Vinnie after he went to ground and that was it.’

  ‘But Palermo confessed to you first, isn’t that right?’

  Though Vinnie’s statement was actually a claim of innocence, Boots nodded agreeably. ‘So, tell me, when are you planning to move?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ Boots glanced around the kitchen. Not a single item had been packed. ‘You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you.’

  ‘I’m going to let the movers pack me up. It’s expensive, I know, but …’ Her mouth curled into a sneer as she folded her hands and laid them on the table. ‘The ironies keep piling up. Chris and I were living on credit cards before he was killed. Now, between the insurance and his pension, you could even say that I’m wealthy. Anyhow, I was raised in Buffalo and I still have family there.’ She smiled and spread her hands apart. ‘Everybody tells me I have to get on with my life, but somehow New York doesn’t seem like the right place to start.’