Dressed to Kill

by Campbell Black

  He opened his eyes, blinked against the fluorescent light overhead, glanced at the folder on his desk, then stared at the young woman who sat opposite him. Pretty. And scared to death. Watching her, he experienced a wave of weariness rush through him.

  He said, “Let’s run it through again.”

  The young woman stared at him. “Do we have to?”

  Marino nodded. He leaned back in his chair, raising one finger to touch the fringe of his dark moustache. He slid his hands inside his belt and thought: I need to lose some poundage soon. I need to cast off some of this heaviness before I become a total blimp.

  “You pressed the button for the elevator,” Marino said.

  “I did—”

  “Then the car came—”

  “Right. The car came.”

  He studied her face again. Somehow he couldn’t make the connection between the face, the strange innocence of it, and the stuff he’d learned from the fact sheet that lay in front of him. Butter would have a hard time melting in her mouth, he thought. So much for appearances.

  She was silent. She rubbed the palms of her hands together.

  “The car came,” she said. “I don’t remember exactly the sequence of events.”

  “Try.”

  “I’m trying.” She smiled at him. It was a forlorn little expression, a brave front. “You don’t run into a situation like this every day, Lieutenant.”

  He leaned forward now. “The door opened.”

  “Right. The door opened. It was horrible. It was just so goddamn unspeakably . . .” She turned her hands over and stared at the palms. Lovely long fingers, Marino thought.

  “I know it was horrible,” he said. “I saw it, remember?” He listened to the sound of telephones ringing in the other offices. A shadow passed in front of the glass door. He watched it a moment. Then he was thinking of the husband that Sergeant Levinski had taken down to the morgue for an ID. You could see it in his eyes, grief struggling with the misplaced hope that it was all some fucked-up mistake, that the corpse in the cold room wasn’t his wife after all, a stranger, somebody he’d never seen before. Poor bastard. And then there was the kid, sitting out there right now like a zombie, waiting for the husband to come back from the ID. One shattered family, for Christ’s sake, and that thought hurt him, because that was the place where you started to identify, you started to say it could’ve been my wife . . . He forced his mind away from that direction.

  He said, “Okay. The doors opened. You saw a woman lying in her own blood. Then what?”

  “I reached inside the elevator—”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Jesus, I don’t know why. She was moaning. She lifted her hand in the air. Real slow. I just reacted instinctively. I might have screamed. I don’t know.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I saw this other woman, a blonde with these black glasses on, and she had this razor in her hand. She must have pressed the button because the doors started to close. Look, I don’t remember the sequence, dammit.”

  Marino leaned back again, his chair tilted to the wall.

  “Then the woman tried to slash me with the razor—”

  “While the doors were closing?”

  “I guess. Anyhow, I must have pulled my hand away, then the razor fell to the floor and I picked it up—”

  “That’s what I’d like to know about. Why did you pick it up?”

  She shook her head from side to side, opened her purse, took out a cigarette. Marino pushed a book of matches across the desk towards her.

  “Maybe I thought I should defend myself. I don’t know. A lot of things run through your head fast. Maybe I thought I could help the dying woman, I don’t know.”

  “So you pick up the razor. The doors close. The car goes down.”

  “Right.”

  “And then, still holding the razor, you rush down the stairs to the lobby—”

  “But she was gone when I got down. There was only the dead woman in the car, the blonde had gone. I must have been shouting something like—shit, I can’t remember.”

  “So you’re left in the lobby, holding the murder weapon, and there’s no sign of the alleged killer.”

  “Alleged? What do you mean alleged?”

  Marino put his elbows on the desk. His leather jacket crackled. He smiled at the woman. “You were the only person to see this tall blonde lady with the glasses, right?”

  “Hey, hold it—”

  “Nobody else saw her.”

  “I don’t think I like the direction of this, Lieutenant.”

  “The razor has a perfect set of your prints.”

  “Obviously,” she said, defensive now. “I picked the goddamned thing up, didn’t I?”

  Marino watched her in silence for a moment. “You want to know how I know they’re your prints, Miss Blake? Or can I call you Liz?”

  She reached for the matches, lit her cigarette. She blew a stream of smoke at him. He stood up, the folder open in his hand. “Arrested January 4, 1979, act of prostitution, Park Avenue Hotel—”

  “Okay,” she said. “Big deal. You’ve got my prints on record—”

  “March 19, same year, act of prostitution—”

  “That was goddamn entrapment,” she said. “That was some vice squad guy who used a certain escort service, and it was a bum deal that didn’t go down—”

  Marino closed the folder. He leaned against the wall. “Check one, your prints on the murder weapon. Two, the deceased’s blood on your clothes. Three, a neat set of scratch marks from the deceased’s nails across your hand—”

  “Why the hell would I want to kill her? I didn’t even know the woman. You can’t hang this on me. No way.” She stubbed her cigarette underfoot, an impatient stamping gesture. Marino stared at the sparks that fluttered up, then died.

  “You’re a hooker, Liz. A pretty expensive hooker, but a hooker just the same. And right now everything points in your direction, doesn’t it?”

  She watched him in silence. She fumbled nervously with her purse, snapping the clasp time and again. She’s scared, he thought. You could almost smell the fear upon her.

  “I didn’t know this woman. I didn’t kill her. It was pure accident, coincidence, call it what you like, that I was waiting for the elevator at that time . . .”

  Marino said, “You were in the building during the course of your business, right?”

  “Look, I was visiting a friend—”

  “What friend?”

  “Ted. I don’t remember his last name. He was from out of town. The apartment was borrowed.”

  “Some friend,” Marino said. “Must be real close, if you don’t know his last name.”

  She looked down at the floor for a moment, then raised her face angrily towards him. “Why the hell are you giving me such a hard time? I don’t need this. Why are you putting me through this shit?”

  Marino sat down again. He watched her for a while.

  Putting her through the shit, he thought. He felt almost sorry for her: a moment of weakness. Try another tack, another direction.

  “Maybe you can give me a general description of this . . . alleged blonde?”

  Her expression was cold. A face like that shouldn’t look so chilly, he thought. It was the kind of face that might belong to the hostess-wife of some young hotshot attorney angling for a partnership in his firm, giving dinners and gracing parties with her presence, making sure the martinis were just so, the food exactly right. Instead, a goddamn hooker.

  “The alleged blonde was maybe five-ten. Pretty tall anyhow. I can’t be exact,” she said.

  “Wearing what?”

  “I didn’t have time to look. I only remember her face—and not too much of that because of the glasses.”

  “Yeah, the glasses—”

  She leaned forward in her chair, her face strained. “Look, if you think I did it, why don’t you just go right ahead and arrest me?”

  “It’s a temptation,” Marino said.

>   “I get the feeling you don’t believe a word I’m saying—”

  Marino looked down at the surface of his desk. It wasn’t a matter of belief or disbelief; it was all a process of elimination in the long run, striking names off lists, erasing motives, hoping that in the end you came up with the candidate most likely to . . . He watched her now, touching his moustache lightly, wondering if his wife were right: That strip of hair does nothing for your face, Joseph. He smiled at her. “I want you to look at some mug shots.”

  “Does that mean you believe me?”

  Marino shrugged. He picked up the telephone, said something into it, and a few moments later a uniformed cop came into the office.

  “Niven, take Miss Blake here and show her some mug shots.”

  The uniformed cop looked at Liz, who got up slowly and followed him to the door. Marino stood up.

  “Liz,” he said.

  She turned round in the doorway.

  “One thing,” he said. “Don’t leave town. I’ll be keeping tabs.”

  She stared at him, then she left. Alone, Marino picked up a piece of paper from his desk. It was covered with his handwritten notes, scrawled words done in black ballpoint. The itinerary of a dead woman, he thought. A journey into oblivion. A trip to nowhere. The husband had said she’d gone to an appointment with her shrink, a certain Dr. Elliott. (Why a shrink? The husband hadn’t been sure, but then he hadn’t been in the mood to be sure of anything very much.) After that, she’d gone to the Museum of Modern Art, which was where that character Lockman had picked her up. A casual pickup, a slice of midday frivolity, some spice. (Question: Did she do that kind of thing often? Was it a one-shot deal?) He’d talked to Lockman already when he’d gone to the apartment building after the slaying—but the guy didn’t even know the dead woman’s name, for Christ’s sake. Anyhow, he’d come forward during the commotion in the building, he’d volunteered the information about the pickup, about how the afternoon was spent, and Marino had no instinctive reason to distrust the guy. Some apartment building, he thought. Everybody’s getting laid in the afternoon, it seems. He made a small cross against Lockman’s name, then he pushed the paper aside and rose, standing in the doorway of his office, looking out across the collection of desks in the large central office. The sight depressed the hell out of him somehow. Maybe it was the dreary institutional color of the walls or the faded Wanted posters or the endless ringing of telephones.

  Across the room, on a bench pressed to the wall, he saw Kate Myers’ son. The sight touched him: he felt a vague pain, like a knot, in his throat. He wanted to go over to the kid and say something, but what the hell could you say? He was just sitting there looking forlorn, confused, empty, struggling with God knows what grief. You don’t have time to bask in pity, he told himself. Who needs it?

  He went back to his desk, picked up the telephone, pressed a button. “Send me Betty Luce. Yeah. Right now.” When he put the receiver down he sat for a time staring into empty fluorescent space, wondering about Liz Blake’s blonde with the black glasses, wondering about Kate Myers’ shrink, wondering in that pointless way in which random thoughts turned over and over until they came full circle.

  He closed his eyes a moment, trying to drift away from the noise around him, but what he saw was the butchered woman lying in the elevator car, razored to a point that was almost beyond recogniton.

  Liz turned the stiff pages of the book of mug shots. She couldn’t stop her hand from shaking—it wasn’t the flat dead eyes of the women who stared out of the photographs that bothered her; it wasn’t even the memory of seeing the elevator doors open, the sound of her scream, the sight of that blood-red car, the reflection of herself in the black glasses, the cold arc of the blade whistling through the air and missing her hand by inches, it wasn’t even the touch of the dying woman and the feel of the fingernails scraping the back of her hand—

  It was Marino. It was the idea Marino entertained that she’d done the killing. How the hell could he even think that? She turned the pages. Now she was hardly seeing the photographs. They all looked alike, the same grim expressionless faces: they were like the pictures of victims of some ancient war. How can he think I did it? The bastard . . . She lit a cigarette, watched the smoke drift and curl upwards to the dim strip of fluorescent light. She thought: A minute or two earlier, a minute or two later, and I wouldn’t have seen a goddamn thing, I wouldn’t be here now suspected of killing a woman I never even met. She lightly rubbed the side of her head; some tiny ache was starting there, a faint pulse. Maybe he doesn’t really think I did it, maybe he believes me . . . But she couldn’t be sure of that, she couldn’t be sure of anything.

  The blood-red car.

  The touch of the dying woman.

  Those black glasses.

  She felt cold even though the room was stuffy, overheated. She remembered rushing down the stairs, the razor in her hand; she remembered shouting something, words, words, indistinct in her recollection. Why did she run like that? Some heroic instinct? Catch the killer coming out of the elevator in the lobby? And then there were doors opening, other people emerging from apartments: a Puerto Rican maintenance man who started screaming in Spanish, an elderly woman who fainted—the total confusion of death. And the sight of that poor woman in the car, surrounded by her own blood, her face slashed so that it resembled some hideous Halloween mask.

  She turned another page. The faces stared at her. They were empty faces. They meant nothing to her. She gazed at her hand, trying to still the way it trembled.

  She looked up at the grimy window, the darkness of the city pressing upon the glass.

  It struck her then.

  It came at her like the rush of a wild arrow.

  I saw the killer.

  Nobody else.

  She felt dizzy. She felt a certain tightness in her chest.

  I saw the killer.

  I would recognize her again.

  No, she thought. You wouldn’t. You didn’t get a long look, only a flash, a quick flash.

  But the killer didn’t know that.

  The killer didn’t know.

  She was afraid suddenly, staring at the blackness against the glass, conscious of the overhead light humming, aware of the noises all around her, she was afraid.

  Then she tried to relax. Even if the killer was scared that I could identify her, how would she know where to find me? The thought made her feel easy. It was a large city: it was a city where you could easily lose yourself. She couldn’t find me even if she tried. Could she?

  She sighed, seeking relaxation, ease, but it wouldn’t come.

  2

  Elliott picked up his telephone and dialled his home number, imagining the ringing sound echoing in the darkened master bedroom of the house in White Plains, imagining his wife reaching for the receiver—groggy, doped out on one of her sleeping pills, her movements slow and cumbersome. He looked across the surface of his desk as he waited: the pale bulb of the angled lamp threw a thin light down on the neat pile of folders, the flimsy copies of correspondence that hadn’t yet been filed. He picked up a letter opener and turned it around in his fingers, then he found himself looking at the answering machine. He’d listened to the taped messages several times, unwilling to believe at first what he’d heard, then ready to accept it only after it had been repeated, then repeated again. Kate Myers, he thought. It couldn’t be possible. But the voice was so certain, so assured, that he had to dismiss the thought that it was some wretched practical joke.

  He laid the letter opener down, touched the ON button of the answering machine, and then he heard his wife answer the telephone. He pressed the OFF button, listening to the dreamy quality of her voice.

  “Hello,” she said, drawing it out into three syllables.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  “Oh.” Then, after a pause, “What time is it?”

  Elliott looked at his watch. “It’s almost nine. You must’ve gone to sleep early.”

  She was silent
for a time. Now he could picture her clearly, her face faintly puffy from the sleeping pills, her body spread across the bed as she held the receiver. He could see her dark hair contrasted against the white pillows, the way she held the receiver with the cord coiled around her fingers, as if she were afraid of the frailty of a telephone connection.

  “I was tired,” she said. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” He hesitated, looking at the answering machine, remembering the echo of Bobbi’s voice. I guess you found what I took, didn’t you? And then the other message, the one from the lieutenant. One of your patients, Kate Myers, was murdered late this afternoon . . . Now they ran together in his brain, the two messages playing one against the other, playing in a confused way. For a moment he couldn’t think straight. How could there be a connection between poor Kate and Bobbi? How could there be? He looked at his fingers in the light of the lamp; there were lines of sweat forming like webs between the fingers. I’d like you to get over to the thirteenth precinct as soon as you can, Doctor.

  His wife yawned. He heard the escape of air, only partly stifled by her hand. He thought how ugly she looked when she yawned, her face distorted by the movement of mouth; it was almost as if, for a fraction of time, she had an enormous gaping hole instead of a face.

  “Are you coming home tonight?” she asked.

  Why? he wondered. Why did he feel a vague sense of dread? It wasn’t possible that there was some connection between Bobbi and Kate. They didn’t know each other. They hadn’t even met, so far as he could tell. Therefore: no relationship, no connection, nothing.

  The razor.

  He shut his eyes. “Something has happened,” he said. “One of my patients was murdered today—”

  “No—”

  He waited a a moment before saying, “I don’t have any details yet. I saw her only this morning. I have to talk to the police tonight . . .”

  Suddenly it seemed to him that she was no longer there, that she had somehow evaporated at the other end of the line. He had the feeling of talking into an electronic nothingness, his voice whipped away from him, spilled down wires, broken into syllables, then analyzed into the most minute sounds. Then she sighed and the illusion was broken.