“You don’t,” I replied. “For that matter, I don’t either. Maybe I have a split personality. Maybe I slip out in the night and kill these women myself. That would certainly explain why I wake up so tired in the morning.”
He let out a derisive snort, Lulu staring up at him curiously. He took note of her. “What’s she doing?”
“Trying to make up her mind about you.”
“What about me?”
“You’ll have to ask her that. She doesn’t tell me everything.”
Now Feldman’s eyes flicked over to the pages laid out on the table beside us. “What I want to know is why he picked you.”
“I have no idea, as I’ve already told the lieutenant.”
“But he seems to know you.”
“He knows my work. A lot of people do. There are still plenty of readers out there for good, serious fiction. And when they run out of that they turn to me.”
“Quite the little comic, aren’t you?” Feldman snapped.
“I’m well over six feet tall.”
“Well, do me a favor and cut the comedy. Now isn’t the time.”
“On the contrary, now is the time—or I run right out of here screaming at the top of my lungs in Swedish. And, Inspector, I don’t speak Swedish.”
“What it is, Inspector,” Very affirmed. “Either you put up with it or you sedate him.”
“That’s the best idea you’ve had all afternoon, Lieutenant,” Feldman said.
We sat there in brittle silence a moment. Something told me we three weren’t going to be hanging out together when this was over. If it was ever over.
“Well, I guess you do have a certain rep,” Feldman grumbled at me. “By that I mean you spend a lot of your life on the gossip pages. If you call that a life.”
“I really don’t need to hear this just now, Inspector.”
“Hear what?” he demanded.
“That I brought this whole thing on myself. That I somehow made it happen.”
Feldman’s eyes narrowed. I doubt this man ever lost a no-blinking contest. “Okay, what do you need to hear?”
“How you plan to catch this lunatic would be nice.”
“Fine,” he agreed, rubbing his hands together. “That happens to be something I know a little bit about.”
“The inspector teaches a course on serial killers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice,” Very said, which explained why the guy reminded me of a professor I once hated.
“I’ve helped dozens of departments set up task forces of their own,” Feldman said proudly. “I’ve lectured on the subject in seven different countries. And I have to tell you, I’ve been sitting there listening to you two chowderheads helicopter over this thing until I’m about ready to puke.”
Lulu promptly got to her feet and started across the restaurant to the back.
“Where’s she going?” Feldman asked, watching her.
“She’s showing you where the men’s room is.”
“A figure of speech,” he protested. “It was a figure of speech.”
“She’s very literal-minded.” Also a charter member of the upchuck-averse. Has real problems with Sadie, our barn cat, over that whole furball thing.
Lulu returned and sat next to me, curling her lip at Feldman. She’d made up her mind. She didn’t like him.
Very, he just sat there sipping his tea in tight silence, his eyes avoiding mine.
“For starters,” the inspector lectured, “we strike early. Early on, we have the edge. He’s still new to this. Hasn’t perfected his methods yet. Maybe he’s even a little bit nervous. There’s still a chance he’ll trip over his own dick. The longer this goes on, the more he kills, the better he’ll get at it. So we hit the ground running. Okay, what does this mean? It means getting a system of procedures in place right away. For preserving the crime scenes. For ensuring that quality-control procedures are in place. Organization is critical. How we interface with the lab and the medical examiner. How we review and investigate outside tips. We have to establish good, working lines of intradepartmental and interdepartmental communication so that nothing, but nothing slips through the cracks. We harness our best minds, and I’m not just talking homicide. We want a team of shrinks working over these chapters. We want sex crimes to analyze his every—”
“But I thought there hadn’t been any sex,” I interjected.
“He hasn’t raped them,” Feldman countered. “He hasn’t left them with their blood-soaked panties stuffed in their mouths or their vaginas sealed shut with Krazy Glue. But his victims are young, they’re single and they’re pretty. He is sexually involved with them. He is exerting power over them. Don’t kid yourself, Hoagy—”
“But that’s one of the things I’m best at.”
“—these are sex crimes.” He paused to drink, then resumed. Like any veteran lecturer, he could pick up precisely where he left off. “We have to control and coordinate the flow of information to the public. Because, more than anything else, a serial killer on the loose in New York City, especially a serial killer who is stalking attractive single women, is a public relations nightmare for this department.”
“Pretty hard for the victims and their families, too,” I said.
Very let out a small groan, barely audible.
“Okay, I don’t need your smart remarks,” Feldman said to me coldly.
“Sorry. I’ll just share my stupid ones with you from now on.”
The inspector heaved his chest, exasperated. “So what’s the deal? You and me just going to tangle all afternoon?”
“That all depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether you’re planning to continue this on into the evening as well.”
We stared across the table at each other in charged silence. Until, abruptly, he decided to let it slide. “How much do you know about the serial killer, Hoagy? As a species, I mean?”
“As little as possible.”
“First thing I want you to do is forget the standard psychobabble. He doesn’t want to be caught or helped or any of that shit. If he did, he’d turn himself in. What he wants is attention. That’s why he’s contacted you. Christ, Dave Berkowitz left us letters at the scene. Even wrote to that fat fuck at the Daily News, Breslin. Your boy, the answer man, is what I call a water walker. He’s walking on water. Making us plotz while we wait for his next move. He’s playing games with us, my friend. He’s playing God.” Feldman sat back, his eyes examining the ceiling. “We are not dealing with an ordinary criminal here, Hoagy. It’s vital to understand that going in. He’s a unique animal. A cunning and utterly sociopathic animal. A roving killing machine. A shark. Whereas in more than half of your common murder cases the victim was killed by someone they knew, ninety percent of the time your serial killer goes after a total stranger. Serial killers do not view their victims as human beings. They view them as prey. If he were to kill someone he knew it would spoil it for him. He has no remorse. None. And I choose the word ‘he’ carefully. Invariably they are men, with the rare exception of women who go after elderly nursing home patients for their life insurance money. For all practical purposes, there is no such thing as a woman serial killer.”
“Yo, what about that one down in Daytona Beach in eighty-nine, Inspector?” Very spoke up like an eager pupil. “They had her for doing seven guys, remember? She posed as a hitchhiker. She’d offer ’em sex for money and then she’d do ’em. What was her name again? Wuornos? Aileen Wuornos?”
“There is no such thing as a woman serial killer,” Feldman repeated, raising his voice insistently. He did not dignify the lieutenant’s comment with any other response. I didn’t like the way he treated Very. He treated him like he was a grease spot on the floor.
Very clearly didn’t care for it either. His ears were burning and one knee was quaking. The table shook.
The lecture resumed.
“Most of our common murderers, statistically speaking, are aged eighteen to twenty-four. They are below average
in intelligence. They also tend to be poor, and therefore more likely than not to be black. Your serial killer is white, he is above average in intelligence and he is typically a more mature individual, in his thirties or even forties. His crimes are not spontaneous. They are well planned. He cleans up after himself. We seldom find anything. We search, naturally. We look for a matchup from one crime scene to the next—a latent print, a hair, a fiber. But he is careful. And he is clever. Some are so clever they deliberately change their method of operation so as to confuse us. Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler, murdered thirteen women. Some he stabbed, some he smashed in the head with a pipe. Five more he raped but didn’t kill. Christopher Wilder, the so-called Beauty Queen Killer of the mid-eighties, killed some by suffocation, some by stabbing. One he shot. Often, we find that these guys are consummate con men. Wilder posed as a fashion photographer, Ted Bundy as a police detective. A number of them, like Bundy and Wilder and John Collins, the Michigan Coed Killer, were charming, engaging, clean-cut guys who possessed a magical touch with women. In that sense, your answer man is a classic. He’s the boy next door. He’s Jekyll and Hyde …”
Okay, now he’d done it—he’d succeeded in scaring Lulu, the big bully. She was cowering between my legs, shaking. I reached down and gave her a reassuring pat. I just wished someone would give me one.
“That’s why they fascinate and horrify the public to the degree that they do,” Feldman went on. “Let’s face it, there’s something inherently disturbing about a man who is capable of killing yet is also capable of functioning successfully in polite society. Wilder ran a business. So did John Wayne Gacy. Collins was a few credits short of getting his bachelor’s degree. Bundy was a law student. More than anything, these guys are clever. That’s what the answer man is—clever. Making us think he’s an addict. Making us think he’s just out of jail. Making us think he’s someone who washes dishes for a living.”
“You think he’s none of the above?” I asked.
Feldman sniffed. “He’s playing games with us. This is someone bright. My guess is he works in publishing.”
“I thought you just said he was someone bright.”
The inspector let that one slide by. He was thinking out loud now. “Sure, sure—he’s an editor or a proofreader. Maybe some guy who works in the mailroom, thinks he should be a famous author.”
“That’s half the people in publishing, Inspector.”
“He’s frustrated. He’s bitter. He’s angry.”
“That’s the other half.”
“I like this angle, Lieutenant,” Feldman concluded, pleased, as if someone else had raised it. “I want you to work it. Discreetly, so you don’t set off any alarm bells.”
“We have been, Inspector.” Very spoke up in his own defense. “We been checking the publishing houses to see if anyone remembers getting a submission that matches up even slightly. Also working the literary agencies. Maybe he shopped it to an agent first.”
“I’d focus your efforts on the smaller, independent agents, Lieutenant,” I said. “Most of the big agencies don’t read stuff that comes in over the transom anymore.”
Very made a note of this in his pad. Then he scratched his buzz-cut head reflectively. “Weird that he’s so polite, don’t you think? In his letters, I mean.”
“You haven’t been listening to me, Lieutenant,” Feldman huffed impatiently. “Just because he’s psychotic doesn’t mean he’s ill bred.” Now the hooded eyes turned back my way. “Which reminds me, we’re shortstopping your mail at the post office from now on. Before your carrier delivers it. That way, if you get another installment we’ll get a jump of several hours. We’ll make sure you get a copy, so you’re kept abreast.”
“What about this personal ad I’m supposed to place in the Times?”
“All taken care of,” Feldman answered brusquely.
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“Meaning exactly what it sounds like. It’s taken care of. It’ll run in tomorrow’s paper, bottom of page one, just like he asked.”
“And what does it say?”
“It says, ‘Answer man—Have promising news. Let’s meet at Barney Greengrass at ten.’”
Lulu let out a cough.
He frowned down at her. “Now what’s her problem?”
“Well, it could use some tweaking.”
“Tweaking? What’s that mean?”
“It means,” Very translated, “he thinks it sucks.”
“I usually write my own material, Inspector. I really wish you had consulted me.”
Feldman shot a cold, hard look at me. “Consulted you? What do you know about it? You ever been on a task force?”
“I’ve worked with seriously disturbed individuals a number of rimes. We just don’t call them disturbed; we call them celebrities. In my experience, it’s vital that I gain his trust. He and I have to get a dialogue going. That’s the only way he’ll reveal himself to me. For starters, he has to believe I wrote that ad myself.”
The inspector shook his head, disgusted. “Christ, I’ve heard about you writers and your egos—”
“This has nothing to do with my ego. It has to do with right and wrong. I’m right and you’re wrong.”
Feldman turned to Very, incredulous. “You believe this guy?”
“Welcome to my nightmare, sir.”
“Pull your ad, Inspector. Pull it and let me write my own.”
“I know what I’m doing, Hoagy.” Feldman was speaking with exaggerated patience now, as if he were trying to placate a shrill, annoying old lady whose petunias had gotten trampled by some little boys. “I been through this kind of thing before. Just let me do my job, okay?”
“Fine, but he won’t show. He’ll know it’s a trap. He’s not stupid. You said so yourself.”
“Maybe he won’t,” Feldman allowed. “But we have to try it, don’t we? We have to try everything. You never know—just because he’s clever doesn’t mean he’s smart.”
“Maybe you should let me write your material, too.”
“I picked Barney Greengrass because he’s already observed you there. It’s a familiar location. He’ll feel at ease.”
“That’ll make one of us.”
“You just start showing up there every morning at ten, starting tomorrow, until he makes contact.”
“He won’t,” I insisted.
“I’ll be the one behind the counter slicing sturgeon, dude,” Very informed me. It didn’t sound to me like his heart was in it, but I may have imagined that.
I tugged at my left ear. “Is that wise, Lieutenant?”
“Hey, I worked at a deli all through high school.”
“But he’s seen you.”
“That’s the whole idea,” explained Feldman. Clearly, it was his plan, not that I ever had any doubt. “We want him to walk in and make the lieutenant. That’s how we’ll know he’s our man.”
“I’ll go in real early, dude. He won’t make me—not until it’s too late.”
“And he won’t get away,” Feldman vowed. “Once he reacts, he’s ours.”
“What if he resists?”
“We’ll put him down. Sharpshooters stationed across the avenue and at neighboring tables.”
“I don’t like this.”
“Now, there’s no reason to feel concerned,” Feldman said reassuringly. “We’re very good at this sort of thing.”
I said it again, louder. “I don’t like this.”
“We’ll even outfit you with a bulletproof vest,” added the inspector.
“Thank you, no. Kevlar doesn’t do a thing for me.”
“Hey, it’s not like appearances are a priority,” he said scornfully.
Which drew another cough from Lulu.
And another look from Feldman. “Now what is she …?”
“She doesn’t know how to laugh,” I explained. “May I ask you a stupid question, Inspector?”
“Of course.”
“Will the answer man strike again?”
“Can I ask you another stupid question?”
“You can ask me any question you want.”
“Are you going to catch him?”
“Of course we will,” he replied, totally confident. “Two things have to happen, that’s all.”
I leaned forward anxiously. “What are they? What are those two things?”
Feldman shot his cuffs. He smoothed his white pompadour. He said, “The first is, we have to be lucky.”
“And what’s the second?”
“He has to fuck up.”
But the answer man wasn’t going to fuck up—he wasn’t stupid. I knew this. I knew this because Feldman had said he wasn’t. And I knew this because way down deep inside, where the great big ugly black snakes and the three-headed toads and the cackling rats lived, I had a feeling I knew who the answer man was.
Oh, yeah, I had me a feeling.
The Man Who Loved Women to Death Page 7
