Dead Famous

by Carol O'Connell

  “So you want me to spy on her,” said Riker. And now he waited for the pitch. A job offer was predictable, a carrot for the Judas goat.

  Argus waved off this suggestion. “I need your help. Tim was brilliant, but you weren’t such a bad cop yourself. I know your record in Special Crimes Unit. You did good work. Damn shame to retire that kind of talent. The Bureau needs a guy like you on this case.” He flashed a smarmy grin, man to man. “It’s not like I’m asking you to get in bed with a hunchback.”

  Riker’s hands balled into fists.

  Marvin Argus dropped the smile and shut his mouth, probably noting a sudden change in the atmosphere, a three-second warning that he had crossed a line that could get him decked. The agent’s tone was more serious when he said, “I want to be very clear about this. A maniac played a game that scared the hell out of Timmy, and this freak might want to play with you, too. You could wind up dead.”

  Riker nodded his complete understanding. The agent was setting him up to look like a coward in his father’s eyes if he dared to turn down the job. Argus clearly had no talent for sizing up other men. Dad’s hands were tensing, fingers curling and uncurling. Riker and his father were in accord this time; they both wanted to slap this man senseless.

  “Now, about that dead vagrant,” said Argus. “The one the cops found this morning. I understand Johanna had confrontations with him all the time. She only had to walk a block out of her way to avoid him, but she never did. Yeah, that made you curious, didn’t it? That’s why you dug up her history—and found an identical murder, Timothy Kidd’s.”

  Was this more guesswork or would that background check track back to Kathy Mallory?

  Agent Argus, the mind reader, said, “We had two standout hits on our data bank this morning—from two different precincts. One search was done by Flynn, the catching detective on the bum’s homicide, and he got zilch. But Johanna’s alias raised a red flag at the Bureau. Now the second search didn’t use her alias. And there was no password either. The hacker bypassed the lockout and raided the store. Nice work, Riker. I’m impressed. I guess you were visiting your old station house in SoHo. It was easy enough to sit down at an empty desk with a computer.”

  And now it was certain that Marvin Argus could trace nothing back to Mallory, who rarely left tracks. She had not used a police computer for her early morning hacking. And apparently Argus had no idea how many times she raided federal databases in an average week.

  Riker, a renowned computer illiterate, shrugged. “Yeah, I was the hacker. Good catch, Argus.” He turned to his father, checking for signs of trouble in the old man’s face, and discovered that Dad actually sanctioned this illegal act, this promising sign that his son was still thinking like a cop.

  Drumming the wood surface with two fingers, Argus called his attention back across the table. “Figure it out yet, Riker? Three days a week, Johanna Apollo goes round and round with this crazy bum. She’s dodging blows, getting used to the idea of being attacked. And why? Because she’ll never know the moment when our agent’s killer comes for her. Tim didn’t. And Johanna screwed up last night. That vagrant tripped her, and she took a bad fall.”

  If Jo’s fall had been mentioned in any of the witness statements, Detective Flynn would have pressed that point during the brief playground interview. Riker knew the man’s style: rattle the suspect up front and never let up on the pressure. So how would Argus have this detail? Had he been shadowing Jo, using a living woman for bait to catch a serial killer? And Argus had yet to mention the Reaper. That was curious, too.

  “So your suspect is one of the doctor’s patients,” said Riker. “And you figure he wants to kill her before she can give up his name?” That was one obvious scenario for the FBI surveillance.

  Marvin Argus’s smile said, Now you’re catching on. And by that smile, Riker knew that he was being misled.

  The FBI man lightly slapped the table with his palm. “So this is the deal. We need a guy on the inside, someone who has Johanna’s confidence. If you’re really tight with her, she might let something slip—something useful.”

  A snitch is the lowest form of life on earth, said the mere lift of Dad’s head. And now the old man’s eyes were asking if his son could sink that low; could he travel from the rank of detective first grade to a bottom feeder in the space of a day.

  “It’s for Dr. Apollo’s own good,” said Argus. “She left the witness protection program.”

  “Here’s where you’re messing up,” said Riker. “This killer watches you watching her. He’s probably laughing his tail off every day. All those hours of FBI manpower, all for nothing. You’ll never catch him that way.”

  “There was no surveillance on Johanna. We didn’t know where she was before that raid on our computer.”

  “Oh, can it, Argus. You as good as told me the feds were watching her the night before Bunny’s body was found.” Riker hoped it would drive the agent crazy trying to figure out where the stumble had been made. Rising from the table, he nodded farewell to his father rather than say good-bye, for that would have been more familial affection than Dad could stand. Next, he turned to the FBI man, saying, “Keep the job. I’m not your boy.”

  On his way out of the bar, Riker glanced back to see the trace of a smile on the old man’s lips—finally.

  When the door had swung shut behind him, and he stood on the sidewalk again, an old sedan rolled by with the loud fart of a backfire. Though Riker knew the difference between the bang of a car and the bang of a gun, anxiety paralyzed him. His feet would not carry him away, and all his muscles constricted at once. He felt a great pressure on his chest—no air—and he could not fight down the panic of suffocation. People passed him by on the sidewalk, and he could not call out to them, nor even wave at them; his arms were leaden and fallen to his sides. The pedestrians saw nothing amiss—just a man frozen in place, sweating on a cool day. Only his eyes were in motion, silently begging each passerby, Help me! No one paused to see that his chest was not moving, lungs not breathing in and out—that he was dying.

  The paralysis passed off. His lungs filled with oxygen. His feet obeyed him. And he walked down the sidewalk with a surefootedness that belied his idea of himself as a cripple.

  When he greeted Riker at the door to the reception area, Charles Butler wore the vest, but not the jacket to his tailored suit, and this was his idea of casual attire. Strands of light brown hair curled past his collar, for though he possessed eidetic memory, he never seemed to remember a barber’s appointment. But that was not his most outstanding characteristic. The man had once described himself as the bastard child of Cyrano and a pop-eyed frog. Though his eyes were heavy-lidded, the whites overwhelmed the small blue irises, giving him an air of constant astonishment, as though every word said in his company was absolutely fascinating. Oh, and that nose—what a magnificent beak. He sat behind an eighteenth-century desk. Most of the furnishings at Butler and Company were antiques, except for the couch that was custom-made to accommodate very long legs. Charles stood six foot four in his socks, but just now he slouched low in his chair, for he thought it rude to hover over visitors of normal height, even while sitting down. Among his other quirks was a monster IQ and an equally staggering generosity.

  Riker had never believed the reason for the low rent on his own apartment one flight below. His old friend and new landlord still maintained the fiction that he felt more secure with a police presence in his building, even though Charles had the size and strength to pound the average human right into the ground. But that was not his nature. He was the most pacific of giants. Also, there was already one cop in residence; the building superintendent was a retired patrolman. And then there was his silent partner, Mallory, and her expertise in electronic burglar alarms and state-of-the-art locks. This might be the most secure building in New York City. So the cheap rent was a gift of charity disguised in a lie told by a man so hobbled by honesty that he could not run a bluff without blushing.

  However, R
iker had had nowhere else to go.

  Returning to his old apartment in Brooklyn had never been an option. The prospect of entering that place one more time had been the stuff of nightmares, waking and sleeping. And so, upon his hospital bed, he had handed his keys to the moving men with instructions to steal what they liked—but to leave the rainy-day stash of good bourbon intact. That rainy day had come.

  “Has Mallory been by?”

  “Not today,” said Charles. “She’s been rather busy lately.”

  “You mean with her real job?”

  “Well, yes. When she does come by, it’s usually late in the evenings. Hence the term moonlighting.”

  Kathy Mallory’s second source of income was unauthorized, for cops were forbidden to use investigative skills in the private sector, but Riker well understood her interest in this place. Down the hall, she kept a private office where she housed her favorite toys. Most of them required a judge’s warrant to operate or even to possess them. Fortunately, Charles Butler was a committed Luddite, who would not recognize the electronic equivalents of lock picks, and who no doubt believed that she used all her equipment to run the background checks on their odd clientele.

  Mallory’s boss at Special Crimes Unit was equally deluded. Lieutenant Coffey was still pretending that she had followed his direct order to sever all ties with Butler and Company. Instead, she had submerged her financial interest in the small firm of elite headhunters, becoming an invisible partner. And now this office was a warrant-proof squirrel hole, the perfect place to leave the suitcase of files and notes removed from Jo’s hotel suite. If Detective Flynn had discovered Riker’s interference, he would have papered the city with warrants to find his missing evidence, and he would have started with Riker’s apartment. But this was no longer a problem. As Mallory had predicted, the FBI had hijacked Bunny’s homicide, and feds were less diligent than Flynn.

  “I suppose you’ll want your property back.” Charles stood before the open door of a closet and pulled the red suitcase down from a high shelf, handling this heavy luggage as if it weighed nothing at all. It would have been normal and natural to ask why Riker had stashed it here instead of in his own apartment downstairs, but Charles had been hanging with Mallory for too long, and he had learned to regret asking questions. Instead, he said, “Mrs. Ortega will be sorry to have missed you. She asks about you all the time.”

  That was odd and touching news, for Charles’s cleaning lady, under normal circumstances, would rather be shot dead than admit concern for Riker. He was her favorite target for caustic remarks. “Tell her I said hello.”

  “I will,” said Charles. “It seems that we see less of you now that you live in the same building. Are you getting enough heat and hot water? Any problems I should be aware of?”

  “Naw, everything works great.” Riker was rising, reaching for the suitcase, more than ready to take his leave. He had the sense that his friend was checking him for unplugged bullet holes and other signs that he was not quite mended. But then he realized that he did have a use for a man with a Ph.D. in psychology. “You know, there is one thing you could help me with—if you’ve got a few minutes.”

  “Of course.” Charles inadvertently smiled like a loon, and he was all too aware of this unfortunate characteristic. His skin was deeply flushed with every happy expression, an apology of sorts for his foolish face. “My time is yours.”

  Riker settled back into the armchair. “It’s about paranoia.” He noticed the sudden concern in his friend’s eyes, then hastily added, “Not me. This is another guy. You test people for oddball gifts. What about paranoia? We’re talkin’ wigged out, full-blown, to the nth degree. Could you see that as a useful talent?”

  Charles, bless him, gave every stupid idea polite consideration. A few moments passed, and then he said, “Well, that’s the sort of thing I’d try to fix with a psychiatric referral. Encouraging paranoia would be unethical. And there’s really no market for mentally ill employees.” He considered his own clients to be merely eccentric.

  But Riker had other ideas. The job applicants of Butler and Company had rare talent and high intelligence prized by think tanks and government projects, and they were frequently a hair away from crazy, neatly explaining this man’s vast expertise in abnormal psychology.

  Head tilted to one side, Charles was having second thoughts, or perhaps he simply disliked disappointing a friend. “Well, I suppose it might have some applications. If your man worked in a dangerous environment, extreme paranoia could give him an edge in staying alive.”

  Riker had anticipated that much. New Yorkers who were not the least bit neurotic were listed on police blotters as the dead and wounded. A mild case of paranoia was considered a sign of good mental health, for it made people wary of strangers and dangerous streets. But Agent Timothy Kidd had been the king of paranoia, and he had not managed to stay alive in Chicago, a town with a lower homicide rate.

  “Okay, suppose my guy is an FBI agent tracking a serial killer? Would paranoia give him an edge in dealing with suspects?”

  “Bit of a stretch,” said Charles. “But it might—if it shows in his outward behavior, and that’s usually the case. His overt suspicion would increase the pressure on the person he was interviewing. The suspect might exhibit more enhanced reactions, involuntary facial expressions and nervousness—all the giveaway signs of a lie. A full-blown paranoid could pick up on all of that, consciously or unconsciously. However, here’s another aspect to consider. A paranoid is working with more perceptions than the average person, taking in details and information that you or I would rightly deem irrelevant. That’s the downside to your theory. They frequently detect patterns that simply aren’t there.”

  “So flaming paranoia could never help him find a suspect?”

  “I wouldn’t think so. Everyone would seem suspicious to him. I imagine his illness would only clutter up the landscape and make things more difficult.”

  Then why had Marvin Argus gone to such trouble to spin the lie of a gifted paranoid?

  Riker rose from his chair and picked up Jo’s red suitcase. At least he had a satisfactory answer to the only question that had really mattered. Unlike Agent Argus, Charles Butler would not, could not, lie to him, and he had the man’s assurance that Mallory had not visited this office today, that the contents of the suitcase were unrifled and still intact. And this oversight of hers, this failure to plunder Jo’s papers behind his back, had sealed his theory that Mallory was playing him.

  6

  SO MUCH FOR THE WORLD-CLASS SECURITY FEATURES of his new address. When Riker unlocked the door to his apartment, he knew immediately that there had been a break-in. His laundry was no longer scattered about the room, but neatly gathered into a wicker basket. His other clue was the small, wiry woman cleaning his windowpanes.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “As any fool can see,” said Mrs. Ortega, “I’m robbin’ you blind.” She turned around to glare at him with dark Spanish eyes that silently asked if he had any more stupid questions. She also managed to convey that she was a woman on a mission, and he was the intruder here.

  “Did Charles let you in? Or was it Mallory?”

  “I got the super to open the door,” said Mrs. Ortega. “I told him I was your cleaning lady.” She looked down at her apron lined with pockets of plastic bottles, rags, brushes and other tools of the trade. “Great disguise, huh?”

  She dropped a wet rag on the windowsill and walked over to the wicker basket. “Riker, there’s something I just gotta know. I think I’ve figured out your system, but tell me if I’m wrong. You throw your socks into a different corner every night so you can rotate dirty laundry instead of washing it. Have I got that right?” She eyed the red suitcase he carried. “And now you’re running away from home. I understand.” The wave of her hand included the entire front room, its litter and streaks of—whatever that was on the walls. “Overwhelming, isn’t it, Riker? Easier to pack up and leave.”

  He se
t the suitcase down by the door. “Okay, no more cleaning. Not today.” He wanted to read all of Johanna’s papers, and that left him no time to deal with Mrs. Ortega. Well, not much time. “I got cold beer in the fridge. Want one?”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” She followed him into the kitchen, where his unopened mail covered most of the floor tiles. She swept a slew of envelopes from the seat of a chair and sat down at the table. “Maybe I should just ream this place out with a blowtorch and start over from scratch.” She accepted a beer from his hand, stared at it with grave suspicion, then wiped the top of the can with a clean rag before opening it.

  “Well, this room’s not so bad,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah?” With the toe of one shoe, she nudged an open pizza carton on the floor. The remaining slice had grown enough mold to qualify as a houseplant. “You know why you don’t have cockroaches, Riker? Those genius bugs, they know it’s not safe to eat here.”

  “So you noticed I’m probably not the type to hire a cleaning lady. Now why are you doing this to me?”

  “I got a philosophy,” she said. “I’m gonna write a book—Zen and the Art of a Clean House—that’s my title. You put a house in order, and you put your life in order. All this stuff is weighing you down, Riker. You might as well drag it around on your back, the dirt, the mess, the busted coffeemaker that probably hasn’t worked in twenty years. But that ain’t the worst of it.”

  He followed the point of her finger, looking through the doorway to the room beyond, where dust balls, having acquired tenure, roamed free and fearless across the open floor. One windowpane she had cleaned; all the rest were fogged with a yellow grime of nicotine. And a layer of dust colored everything else in gray.