“That’s what the inside of your head looks like,” she said. “Scary, huh?”
This tough little woman had a bad attitude, a penchant for heavy sarcasm, and she had touched him in all the soft places of the heart. He understood that she wanted to fix him, to make him better by cleaning him up. But Mrs. O. was not so talented. She could not scour away the image of a skinny psychotic teenager sitting upon his blood-soaked chest, pressing the muzzle of a gun to an eyeball, then pulling the trigger only to discover that he had spent all his bullets on Riker’s prone body. Even now, with every loud noise he ceased to breathe, and he relived his dying.
“What’s all this crap?” Mrs. Ortega leaned down to sort through the pile of mail, passing over advertisements and bills to examine the letters from the city of New York and NYPD. Selecting one, she held it up to the overhead light. “This one’s got a check in it. I can tell. It’s a blackout envelope. That’s so you can’t see what’s inside.”
Riker shook his head. “You’re wrong. My paychecks were direct deposit.” And then one day, the deposits had ceased, and he had never even picked up a phone to ask why.
She slapped a worn five-dollar bill on the table. “I say it’s a check. I’m never wrong.”
He laid five singles alongside her money. “Okay, you’re on.”
Mrs. Ortega slashed open the envelope, then waved a slip of paper in his face. “It’s a disability check from the city.” Now she looked through the rest of the mail at her feet. “And here’s another one—and another one. Jesus, you’re rich.”
“This is a mistake.” Riker shook his head as she emptied the envelopes one by one and lined up the checks on the table. “The city screwed up. These have to go back.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not disabled.”
“Oh, yeah? Wanna bet?”
When Mrs. Ortega had pulled her rolling cart of cleaning supplies out onto the sidewalk, she heard the rattle of money in a beggar’s ratty paper cup. She had passed by this bum half an hour ago on her way to Riker’s apartment. And now she could tell by the sound of coins that his proceeds had been slim, and that alone was enough to arouse her curiosity. Considering the locals, all damn liberal idiots in her opinion, this youngster would have to work at driving off donations.
She might despise panhandling on principle, but she was even less tolerant of incompetence. Since Riker had sent her away before she could make inroads on his mess, Mrs. Ortega guessed she had a little time left over for charity work.
A man from the neighborhood stopped to give the beggar money, then had a change of heart and moved on. And now the cleaning woman knew how to fix the young man in the dark glasses and the red wig.
“Still here?” Her eyes were on the paper cup, and she counted up the paltry sum of two nickels and four pennies. “It ain’t goin’ so good, is it, kid? Well, I’m not surprised.” She walked around him, taking his measure. “I’ll tell you what you’re doin’ wrong. When that guy was gonna give you a dollar, you smiled. You looked at that bill and smiled. That’s why he got pissed off and stuck it back in his pocket. In the future, try to remember this.” Mrs. Ortega tapped the cardboard sign hung round the beggar’s neck to label his affliction, his need for alms. She raised her voice, as if he might also be hard of hearing. “You’re supposed to be blind, you moron!”
He cringed and pressed back against the wall, then raised his white cane, as if to ward off a blow, and that puzzled Mrs. Ortega. This conversation had been conducted on the decibel level of a standard New York street confrontation, and she had not even threatened him. Yet now he was reduced to a shivering geek show.
In a rare moment of weakness—call it mercy—she paid him a compliment. “That white cane is a good prop. Yeah, that’s a keeper.”
She stepped back to reassess him. He should definitely lose that stupid red wig. It was too long for the boy, even a weird boy. It was a girl’s wig, for Christ’s sake. Where the hell did this pansy come from? Puffed up with great xenophobic pride, she decided that he could not be a native of her New York. And it was on her mind to tell the boy that he should change the sign on his neck to say that he was crazy as well as stupid. But, having already done her bit for community service, she moved on down the sidewalk with her cart and never looked back. She never saw him raise his eyes to stare at Riker’s second-floor window.
Papers covered every stained inch of the carpet, and this created the illusion of an improvement in Riker’s front room. His deli sandwich disappeared in absentminded nibbles as he read another page of Dr. Johanna Apollo’s neat handwriting.
Among the personal notes was a journal logging every meeting with Bunny, the homeless homicide victim, noting signs of physical and mental deterioration. The last entry was Bunny’s message from the late Timothy Kidd, and a note on the use of a hapless vagrant as a living telephone for a serial killer. Riker marked this final entry with a paper clip, then put the journal to one side. One day it might be used as evidence in a trial.
Next he read the transcripts of several interviews with the Chicago police, all the details and conversation that Jo could recall. The case detective had hammered her so hard, accusing her of withholding evidence. Another group of interviews had been conducted by FBI agents and would be better described as debriefings. Curiously, the murder of their own man was never mentioned—only the dead man’s theories about a serial killer. Agent Kidd had made contact with the Reaper. In Jo’s words, “He saw the Reaper in a liquor store.” Following an interruption from her interrogator, she admitted that “Yes, paranoia was at the heart of Timothy’s theory.”
Riker paused in his reading to digest the fact that the murdered agent was always Timothy to Jo. Only her FBI interrogators called the murder victim Agent Kidd.
He read the rest of her story: “Timothy entered the liquor store as another customer was leaving with a bottle of wine. This was a man he’d never met, yet the customer was obviously surprised to see him—a total stranger. Timothy gave the man a few seconds’ head start, then followed him back into the street. But the man was gone. There was no sound of a car starting its engine. He must have run at top speed to get clear of that block so fast.”
The FBI agent had returned to the store to interview the clerk. All he learned was that the departed customer had been overjoyed to see one particular wine in stock. In the clerk’s words, “He thought he’d already bought the last bottle on the planet.” According to Jo’s best recall of Kidd’s conversation with her, “Timothy said it was an oddball wine you’d never see in a food critic’s column, though it was surprisingly good.” And then Jo reminded her interrogators that the body of a dead juror had been found in that area on the following day.
Riker looked up from his reading. If Agent Kidd knew the taste of that wine, then he had gone to some trouble to track down another bottle of a scarce vintage. Though Jo’s notes provided no such detail, Riker could name the wine and even the year. The bottom drawer in Johanna’s armoire was stocked with ten bottles, all the same label, same vintage, but different store stickers and prices. He reached into a pile of bills from distributors and liquor stores in distant states. One reiterated the details of Jo’s reward of a hundred dollars over retail cost. She had also been collecting this particular vintage, and the FBI only had her version of a man as the stranger in the liquor store.
He placed the receipts in another pile that he had mentally labeled with the query To burn or not to burn?
At the conclusion of her last interview, the FBI had dismissed her with thanks, then placed her in the Federal Witness Protection Program. By Jo’s account, the feds had disregarded Timothy Kidd’s Reaper sighting, for who would believe an insane story like that one?
Riker would. No one was more paranoid than a cop with the scars of four bullet wounds. He studied Jo’s map of Chicago. Red circles marked the sites of three homicides, and one was four blocks away from the liquor store. He raised his eyes to the ceiling and played out the murdered FBI man’s scenario on
that blank white screen. Agent Timothy Kidd walked into a liquor store, and his mere presence startled another customer, a man he had never met. Most Chicagoans would be strangers to the Washington-based agent. Why, Kidd wonders, why does this customer appear to know him on sight? According to Jo’s interview, the agent had visited only one crime scene in Chicago, and that one had belonged to the Reaper’s second victim. Freaks sometimes returned to the sites of their murders to watch the ongoing show of cop cars and meat wagons, lights and cameras. Who but a haunter of crime scenes would have recognized Timothy Kidd as the law? And who but a guilty man would panic and run?
This was thin support for the identification of a prime suspect, but if it had been the Reaper in the liquor store that night, the most serious mistake he made was that flicker of recognition for an FBI agent who was also a world-class paranoid.
Good job, Timothy. Score one for the neurotics.
Riker had no conceit that the Bureau had not arrived at the same conclusion, so why was a serial killer still at large? Nowhere in Jo’s files was there any mention of the suspect’s name, nor even a description, and he was not surprised by that. It was the kind of thing that a smart cop, even a fed, would not confide in a civilian. Yet Agent Kidd had told her the name of the wine.
Unaware of time passing, crossing over from day into night, Riker did not recall turning on the lights so that he could continue to read every scrap of text, every news clipping and note. Before his alarm clock sounded, he was well versed on the Reaper murders, and it was time for Ian Zachary’s show.
He turned on the radio, the source of the game clues.
“You crazy bitch!”
The sound engineer looked up from her computer screen. “Pick your words carefully, jerk-off, or I’ll wipe all your calls.”
Did she know they were still on the air? Yes, she did. Somewhat impressed, Ian Zachary lowered his voice as he spoke to his radio audience. “Crazy Bitch will take the next call after this word from our sponsor.”
He pressed the button for the security lock. At the sound of the buzzer, a delivery boy entered the studio bearing a gift from a fan, Randy of SoHo. After the messenger had left the room, Zack continued his involuntary habit of checking the dark window of the producer’s booth, looking for signs of movement within. Might Needleman be looking in on him tonight? Zachary considered the possibility that the producer was not shy, but brilliant, and playing a nervous game within the game. However, the more plausible theory was that his mysterious producer was a spy from the Federal Communications Commission. A federal court was still in the process of defining that fine line between entertainment and conspiracy to murder via public airways. The issue had been further complicated by all the newspapers and major television networks following the lead of Ian Zachary and his fans, reiterating every crackpot theory and juror sighting. The defense attorneys had argued that the Reaper had multiple sources for the same information, thus clouding the issue of cause and effect.
Upon ripping open the envelope from the local fan, he discovered that last night’s caller had indeed snapped the picture of a surviving juror. Zachary glanced at the clock, then flipped the switch to open a line to the sound booth. “Oh, Crazy Bitch?”
She extended her middle finger to confirm that he was back on the air.
“Well, people,” he said to his listening audience, “we have an official winner in the photo contest. Randy from SoHo, I assume you’re listening tonight. So, Crazy Bitch, will you tell our contestant what he’s won?”
Zack hit the time delay button to cut off a stream of obscenities from the sound booth. “That girl’s really losing it. So, my friends, I propose a new contest. Pick the hour and the minute that she cracks. Something dramatic, maybe drool and speaking in tongues, pulling out patches of hair—mine or hers, your option. Five hundred dollars. Crazy Bitch will take the first ten callers. We won’t have time for more players. I have a feeling that tonight’s the night.”
Oh, shit. Couldn’t you wait another hour?
He overrode her own controls and cut to a commercial break five minutes ahead of schedule. The lights of her squirrel cage had gone out; and now he faced two black windows. She was taking a cue from Needleman and hiding in the dark.
Not for long, babe.
It was time to sweep out her idiot remains, the living body but not the mind—that was already lost.
Fun’s over.
He raised the lights of his studio, for all the good that did. The lighting had been designed to suit his love of dark, cave-like environs. With the slight increase of illumination, he could barely make out her black silhouette in the booth. He walked toward his own lean ghost reflected in the darkened glass, enjoying this vision of himself, for he appeared to be strolling on thin air, neatly surpassing that tired old biblical trick of walking on the water.
At the top of her volume dial, Crazy Bitch screamed, “Showtime!”
He ripped the earphones off his head. The pain, Jesus. “Are you crazy?” he yelled at her—and how crazy was that? “Are you trying to break my eardrums?” Another silly question. Of course she wanted to hurt him. And his eyes were the next target. All the lights in her booth switched on at once. The desk lamp and track lights had been redirected at him, and he was blinded. The pain was passing off, but his vision was scorched with patches of hot white lights, and the earphones were still clutched in his hands when he heard the tinny distant sound of her voice at a normal decibel level, singing to him, “Oh, jerk-off?”
He lifted the microphone element to his lips and whispered, “You incredible bitch.”
She parried by extending her middle finger close to the glass. Her tone was actually sweet when she said, “We have a first-time caller on line three. He claims he’s one of the surviving jurors.”
“Good one,” said Zack, all injury and hatred forgotten. What did it matter if this was a hoax? He had an audience of feebleminded, motivated believers. He ran to his panel and tapped the third light on his phone board. “Daddy loves you,” he said to the caller, and he was sincere, for this one had drama potential. “Talk to me.”
A man’s angry voice responded, “You’re an idiot!”
“The caller seems a bit confused,” said Zack. “To recap for new listeners or anyone just tuning in, this man was on the jury of celebrity-blinded morons. He was so starstruck, he ignored all the evidence of guilt. We’re talking blood and fingerprints, people. DNA and eyewitnesses. Out of three hundred million Americans, only the twelve jurors thought the defendant might be innocent. A verdict of sheer stupidity. No wonder the Reaper wants them all dead. Who doesn’t? So, listeners, does our serial killer have a point? Is it time to clean out the gene pool?”
“Stop it!” yelled the caller. “You can’t—”
“Or, as our hero the Reaper would say—is this juror too stupid to go on living? And now the most important question, the one that’s worth hard cash. When will this one die?” Zack looked down at the photograph in his hand. It was a good likeness. “I didn’t get your name. Who are you?”
“It’s MacPherson, and you know damn well who I am!”
Yes, you fool.
The rules his lawyers had carefully laid out were tricky, but now that the juror had identified himself on the air, the man was fair game.
“McPherson? Still there?” Yes, he heard the sudden intake of breath. There was no more doubt. He had the genuine article on the line. “Any . . . last words?”
“How can you do this to me?” Frustration made the caller’s voice crack.
Better and better.
“You and your fans,” said MacPherson, “you did everything but draw that maniac a map to my damn house!” His voice was stronger, getting louder. “What the hell’s wrong with you, man? I was one of the jurors who set you free!”
“Yes,” said Ian Zachary. “So what’s your point?”
7
CHARLES BUTLER, AN AVID COLLECTOR OF ANTIQUES, entered the only visually chilly room on the premises
of Butler and Company. The furnishings of his business partner’s office were twenty-first-century cold steel. It was a place of hard edges, mechanical clicks and whirs, and long shelves lined with electronics and technical manuals surrounding three computers on workstations. The single charming aspect of eighteenth-century arched windows had been neatly killed off with stark white metal blinds. Only one wall provided him with relief from severity; it was covered with cork from baseboard to ceiling and served as a gigantic bulletin board. This morning it added a rare human aspect to Mallory’s private domain. It appeared as though Riker had taken all the papers from Johanna Apollo’s suitcase and hurled them at the wall, pages sticking there of their own accord, and pushpins later added as an afterthought. Each crookedly hung sheet would be an affront to Mallory’s pathological neatness.
And so Charles was unprepared for her response, and it gave him pause. She never smiled this way to convey any happiness. The young police detective paced the length of her cork wall, pausing sometimes to read a note or a newspaper article in its entirety. Her standard uniform of jeans, T-shirt and blazer only varied by color and material, smoky silk and cashmere today. Charles had long ago recognized this as the sign of a highly efficient brain with no spare time to waste upon wardrobe decisions. Her long black coat was slung over one arm. She had not yet committed to going or staying awhile.
Please stay.
They needed to talk about what she had done to Riker. While she scrutinized her wall, Charles was busy censoring his comments on this subject, culling the words outrageous, dangerously irresponsible and the like. But then he found himself altogether out of words. He stared at his shoes and said nothing. As her friend and foremost apologist, he would always excuse her most questionable behavior. By secondhand stories and deduction, he knew the darkest things about Mallory’s childhood on the street, and he had paid dearly for that knowledge; on occasion, it still cost him sleep and peace of mind. She had lost everything that mattered to a little girl before she had even reached the age of reason, and yet a remarkable creature had emerged from devastating trauma. How prescient was the poet Yeats, for he had written his finest lines for Kathy Mallory long before she was made: All changed; changed utterly. / A terrible beauty is born.
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