Dead Famous

by Carol O'Connell

Every retail store in Greenwich Village was still locked behind burglar gates, but the bagel shop in Father Demo Square was open for business, and she stopped to buy coffee. She was unable to abide the swill at work, believing that the coffee grounds were strained through Riker’s old socks to save money on filters. Exiting the shop with a steamy paper cup in hand, she turned on Bleecker and, halfway down the block, she saw the shoe by the curb—Bunny’s shoe. There was no mistaking this mangle of tortured leather for anyone else’s. Another pedestrian passed her by, a true New Yorker, ignoring the evidence of violence, the blood in the shape of heel marks and red toe prints from one bare foot—and more blood later on down the sidewalk. The widely paced red tracks along the pavement were those of a loping man. Johanna followed the trail of lost blood, running fast, then faster, full-out, losing her paper cup somewhere along the way. And then—breathless and stunned—she came to a stop before the open gate of a playground.

  Dead stop.

  Bunny was seated on the small wooden board of a child’s swing, and his back was turned to the gate. From any distance, he might pass for a man at rest. Johanna walked toward him, her footsteps slowed by shock as she rounded the swing and saw his stark white face. A loose link in one of the chains had snagged the shoulder of his coat and prevented his body from falling. His throat was slashed open, and blood drenched his breast.

  How could he have traveled so far with that gaping wound?

  It must have taken great will beyond anything she had imagined him capable of—and focus—and all the strength that he had. Buzzing flies lighted on the gross tear in his skin. Others walked across his closed eyes. His hands were folded in his lap and fingers interlaced.

  Bunny, did you pray?

  What had drawn him here? She knew that his illness had begun when he was painfully young. A playground might be the last memory of joy, some old association with a time when his mother still loved him. During all of the telephone calls to Bunny’s mother, Johanna had listened to the voice of an automaton, a woman sucked dry by the incredible labor of raising a child who had early lost his mind.

  His most pitiable wound was the one bare foot blackened with disease and unprotected. In other respects, it was like revisiting Timothy Kidd’s murder. There could be no doubt that this homeless man was killed because he had met the messenger, the one who had taken such pains to imprint Timothy Kidd’s name on his poor, cracked brain. She brushed the matted hair from Bunny’s eyes, and a score of fat black flies took wing. Johanna’s skin turned clammy as her breakfast marched back up her throat. She fell to her knees.

  This death was a personal message. There could be no other point in slaughtering this poor lunatic. Bunny would have been so useless to a police lineup, unable to differentiate between a suspect and a shopping cart. The killer could not have guessed that she would be the one to find the body, but after all the months of noisy street encounters, it was predictable that the police, with only the description of a hunchback, would come knocking on her door.

  Johanna stared at the glint of metal near the dead man’s feet. This bloody knife, honed to a razor edge, had not been dropped by Bunny. His arthritic hands were no good at articulating small objects. Only in death would his fingers be pliant enough to press them to the metal. So Bunny’s murderer must have come this far with him, walked alongside him on the death march, keeping a discreet distance to avoid the splatter of vagrant blood.

  And saying what?

  Oh, all the things that would terrify the homeless man as he struggled toward this place. And what had kept him on his feet all the way to the playground? Perhaps he had come looking for a parent he had lost years ago, the one who had called him her honey bunny. Had he believed that this woman would heal his gaping wound and calm his banging heart with motherlove? How disappointed he must have been not to find her here.

  Bunny, did you cry?

  Johanna looked up at his face and whispered, “I’m sorry.” She was sorry that his life had been hell on earth, that he had died in pain and in such frightening company, sorry that she had not protected him. Johanna lost all track of time as she knelt in the dust, stuttering her apologies to a bloodied corpse. And now she heard the march of little feet and larger mother shoes and the giggle of soft voices approaching the playground. The children were coming.

  Riker never wanted to remember his dreams, intuiting that scary country as best left alone. This morning he had been tricked by a fake awakening, a dream inside the dream, wherein he had opened his eyes to see the scary boy astride his chest, riding him like a belly-up horse, pressing down on him with the heavy weight of crazy. Then came the sensation of lightness from great blood loss and trauma to the body and the brain.

  He woke up dying.

  And then came the real awakening. The ringing telephone jangled his raw nerve endings, though the sound had to travel down the hall from his front room. The bedside phone had been broken long ago, deliberately and violently. He opened his eyes, wondering if this was his wake-up call from Miss Byrd. He was prepared to roll over and go back to sleep, for the receptionist only rang twice. He waited out the next ring, then five more.

  Not Miss Byrd.

  Riker’s most persistent caller was Mallory. She always rang exactly twenty times to punish him for his long silence. He rolled the covers back. His feet hit the floor wearing both of yesterday’s socks, but only one shoe. Shoelaces were sometimes difficult for him. Their knots asked too much of him when he was falling-down drunk or hungover. Sometimes a week would go by when he was entirely shoeless for only the time it would take to shower and shave.

  The phone was still ringing as he made his way to the kitchen, where he prepared his faster-than-instant coffee, using hot water from the tap. Alternately inhaling black liquid and cigarette smoke, he counted off the twentieth ring—ah, silence—and waited for the rush of caffeine and nicotine to kick in. And now his heart beat faster. The pump was started. The day had begun.

  The phone rang again.

  One fist sent it flying into the wall, then crashing to the floor, and a familiar voice—but not Mallory’s—was yelling with great alarm, as if the caller had also been injured by the fall. “What’s going on? Riker! Talk to me!”

  As he reached for the phone, the caller asked, “Are you okay?”

  No. No, he was not.

  The most senior employee of Ned’s Crime Scene Cleaners was a retired teacher of the ruler-wielding, knuckle-smashing, authoritarian school. Everyone on the payroll called her Miss Byrd, never Frances. None of them would cross that line of respect (call it fear) drawn in youth, for each of them had been hostage to at least one imperious Miss Byrd during their formative years.

  Her gray eyebrows delicately arched as she glared at the front door. It had been left unlocked. Well, this was just one more sign of Riker’s dereliction of duty. It never occurred to her that he might have come to work at this early hour, for Ned’s brother was not a morning person. She had long suspected the man of drinking on the job, and this was proof; he had grown careless about locking up. Upon entering the reception area, she counted up the office machines, wall hangings and furnishings. All was as it should be, no signs of a thief, no thanks to Riker. The door to the private office was ajar, and, in the habit of thoroughness, she entered the room, then froze midstride.

  Well, this was outrageous.

  Seated behind the desk was Riker’s rude young friend from the police department, the only visitor who had ever ignored Miss Byrd’s attempts to prevent her from entering the boss’s office unannounced. She was a lovely child to be sure, but such uncivilized eyes, so cold and showing no deference whatever for her elders.

  It was Miss Byrd’s habit to put everyone in their place by the use of diminutive first names, as though kindergarten had never ended. Of course, Riker foiled her in this regard; only the first letter of his name appeared on the payroll roster. However, this young woman posed no such problem, for she was much talked about by the crew.

  “Kath
y! What are you doing?” The tone implied that the girl should cease and desist immediately. “Kathy, do you hear me?”

  “It’s Mallory,” the younger woman corrected her, “Detective Mallory.” She regarded Miss Byrd with grave suspicion, then said, “You’re overpaid, Frances.”

  Miss Byrd sucked in her breath as she grappled with the novel experience of hearing her Christian name spoken aloud. And then she roughly guessed what lay in store for her. Yesterday’s mountain of papers was now arranged in neat stacks around the edges of the desk, and an open account ledger had pride of place on the blotter.

  Mallory ran one long red fingernail along a column of payroll figures. “Riker thinks you only work part-time. That’s what you told him, isn’t it, Frances? Before his brother left for Europe, you were working eight-hour days every week. But now you get the same paycheck for half a day. Interesting.” She gestured to a chair beside the desk. “Sit down, Frances.”

  And Miss Byrd sat.

  The young detective casually leafed through a few stacks of statements and tax forms, bills and letters, dragging out the moment, while the senior woman held her breath.

  “Riker has the strange idea that you’re a receptionist,” said Mallory. “Nobody told him that you were the company office manager. He thinks all this paperwork is his job.” She closed the heavy account book with a loud slam to make Miss Byrd jump, though she never raised her voice when she said, “Payroll fraud is a serious crime, Frances.”

  Miss Byrd’s mouth was suddenly dry. She had never worried about the cleaning crew ratting out her fiddle of the hours, for she knew all the secret vices of every employee. However, now she felt queasy. Her voice cracked when she said, “You’re going to tell Riker, aren’t you?”

  “Well, that depends on you, Frances. His brother Ned’s due back on Monday. That’s not much time to fix all this damage. I suggest you brown bag your lunch. Dinner, too. You won’t be getting out much.” Mallory moved a stack of papers to reveal the steel box that belonged in a locked drawer of Miss Byrd’s own desk. “And here’s another odd thing. Riker didn’t know about the petty cash fund. He’s been drumming up business, buying lunch for homicide cops out of his own pocket. You’ll want to correct that error on his final paycheck.”

  The older woman’s head wobbled in a lame version of a nod.

  The detective pushed the account ledger across the desk. “You’ll be putting in an eighty-hour week—for free. I’ll stop by to check up on you, and when I do, there shouldn’t be any problem with these figures. I want them to match the bank statements and—”

  “I never stole money from the accounts. I was dead honest with—”

  “With his brother? Yes, I know. I looked at all the accounts. But Riker’s hopeless with paperwork. So now you’ve got a huge backlog to deal with. The bank statements don’t agree with his deposits and debits. And the payroll deductions are all wrong, months of errors. He botched every one of them. That’s more paperwork. Did I say eighty hours? You might have to camp out here every night. During the day, you’ll be busy setting up the jobs and working as the dispatcher.”

  “But that’s Riker’s—”

  “That’s right, Frances. You’ll be running the whole shop, doing your own job and Riker’s. He’s taking time off for a little police work. You don’t have a problem with that, do you? No? Good. And get this place cleaned up. It’s a mess.”

  After the detective had stalked out the door, Miss Byrd let out a long sigh in a hoarse, dry whistle as her body went limp. In the next moment, her heart lurched and fluttered like a goldfish when she felt a hand curl round her shoulder, cold steely fingers, not human—Mallory’s.

  The cop reached out with her free hand to run one finger down the dirty glass pane and through the painted name of the company. “Do you do windows, Frances?”

  “I do now,” said Miss Byrd.

  A detective from the Greenwich Village copshop stood by the curb collecting notes from a patrolman. Flynn was his mother’s son, tall and dark-skinned with features of Africa. Only the ten freckles across his nose came down from his Irish side. He smiled as his erstwhile drinking buddy lumbered toward him. “Hey, you’re lookin’ great, man!”

  Untrue. Riker had not shaved this morning, nor had he taken the time to select the least dirty clothes from a wardrobe of flannel shirts and faded jeans, and his leather jacket was unzipped, exposing the worst of his stains. Hungover and dragging, he stopped to thank Flynn for the phone call to tell him that one of his employees might need a friend.

  Riker moved on toward the playground at the other end of the block. Though this was not his own precinct, there was no trouble getting past the men in uniform posted at the entrance. They stood aside for him, all but saluting as he passed through the gate. He was royalty now that he had been shot. Apparently, these men had not heard the news of his separation from NYPD via a stack of unopened mail. Even the medical examiner’s men paused to slap him on the back, mumbling their greetings as they rolled a gurney toward the waiting meat wagon. Though the corpse was concealed in a zippered bag, Riker knew that Flynn had revised his earlier call of suicide, upgrading this case to murder. No lesser offense would merit the attentions of Crime Scene Unit. He watched one CSU investigator overturn a trash barrel and sift through the contents while others walked with their eyes to the ground, stopping now and then to collect small objects and map their locations on a sketch pad.

  Jo was seated on a bench near a sandbox, bent forward, her long hair covering her face. Riker sat down beside her and gingerly encircled her with one arm. The hump on her back was a mystery to him, and it crossed his mind that he might hurt her if he held her tight. She raised her face to show him her red and swollen eyes. She had been crying, but now she seemed oddly calm. Shock could do that. The case detective was walking toward them. Flynn was a first-rate cop and a decent one. Riker trusted him to go light and easy with Jo.

  The detective sat down on the other side of the bench and leaned forward to catch her eye. “Ma’am? I understand you knew the victim pretty well.”

  “Everybody knew that freak,” said Riker. “He’s been a pest in this neighborhood for—”

  “Let the lady talk.” Flynn turned back to his witness, prompting her. “Ma’am? What can you tell me about this guy?”

  “I know his mother lives in Vermont,” said Jo, “but she hasn’t seen him in years.”

  Riker was stunned to hear her rattle off the long-distance telephone number for a homeless bum’s next of kin. And now she gave another number that she had memorized, that of a local attorney who could supply more current information.

  Detective Flynn’s pen hovered over the notebook. “A vagrant with a lawyer?”

  “New York City versus Bunny’s Foot.” She was quoting a tabloid headline that had been pinned to the bulletin board at Ned’s Crime Scene Cleaners as homage to a neighborhood celebrity.

  Flynn nodded. “I remember that case.”

  Even Riker knew this story, though he never read newspapers anymore. His only tie to the world was office gossip. According to his crew, an ACLU lawyer had defended the homeless man’s right to die rather than lose his diseased foot to a surgeon’s saw, thus nicely defeating the city’s criteria for hospitalizing a vagrant as a danger to himself. The court, weary of drawn-out appeals by the American Civil Liberties Union, had decided that Bunny was legally entitled to a slow painful death on the street, though that initial plan had gone awry this morning.

  Detective Flynn flipped through the pages of his notebook. “There’s just a few things we need to clear up. We canvassed the block where this man spent most of his time. According to the neighbors, you match the description of a woman who went round and round with this guy three nights a week. So this freak attacks you on a regular basis, but you don’t even cross the street to avoid him. Can you explain that, ma’am?”

  No, apparently she could not. Jo closed her eyes.

  Flynn moved closer, trying to connect with her.
“So when this bastard used you for a human punching bag, did he lead with his left or his right?”

  “He was right-handed,” said Jo, “and he never hit me.”

  “I know. He just threatened you,” said Flynn. “He scared you, and you gave him money. That’s what the neighbors say. Are you right- or left-handed?”

  “Hold it,” said Riker. “I can give you at least twenty people who wanted this bum out of the neighborhood—permanently. Just walk along that street and count the houses. The tenants must’ve filed a hundred complaints with you bastards.”

  “Hey.” Flynn splayed one hand to say that the lady was not a serious suspect, and would Riker please shove his head up his butt so they could get on with this interview.

  “Back off,” said Riker. “Her lawyer’s the same guy who defended the bum.” He was making this up as he went along. “And now that you know the lady has counsel, that ends the interview.”

  “She’s a witness, not a suspect,” said Flynn, “I can question her all damn day long.”

  “Wrong. She was a suspect the minute you asked her what hand she used to hold the murder weapon. I think a judge is gonna see it that way, too. You like the idea of getting your ass reamed out in court? No, I guess not.” Riker gently raised Jo from the bench. She was docile and made no resistance to going with him. “Now, if you don’t plan to book her—with squat for evidence—I’m taking the lady home.”

  Flynn had a bewildered look about him as his eyes turned skyward. Riker, a fourth-generation police, had chosen the wrong side; and, though the sun was where it ought to be, the world was definitely out of order this morning. After clearing the playground gate, Riker turned back to see the detective hovering over a crime-scene technician, watching the man dust the bench for fingerprints—Jo’s prints.

  Long after Riker had left her hotel suite, Johanna Apollo sat in a patch of direct sunlight and never felt the warmth. It was a spider’s business that called her attention to the window. Hours ago, the little spinner had begun a delicate web stretching across the sill. The ambitious project was complete, but horrific in light of the arachnid’s nature. The web’s pattern was flawed, strange and twisty, with ugly knots in the silk and gaping holes where a fine network of threads should be. Before the web was half done, all attempt at weaving symmetry had been abandoned. Johanna flirted with the idea that the tiny creature had lost its mind. She glanced at the cat curled on his red pillow, as if he might be the cause of the spider’s affliction, but Mugs was in a mood of rare calm and watching her through half-closed eyes. He was the sane one this morning.