Cry Baby

by David Jackson

  Except…

  This time she (she? Doyle still has difficulty getting to grips with that) wasn’t so careful. Somebody saw her. Bruce. He knows who she is. He can lead us right to her door.

  Doyle feels his pulse race. The excitement of a chase that could be nearing its climax.

  Play it cool. By the book. Don’t fuck this up now.

  He moves toward the body. Something on the floor, at the foot of the stairs, glints at him. He bends over to take a closer look. A knife. Its tip is covered in blood.

  So again this is something different. She has never left a weapon before. What was different this time? What caused her to drop the knife? Did she see Bruce watching her? Did she panic and run?

  Doyle shifts the beam from his flashlight up onto the corpse’s face. It’s a bloody pulp of a face, but the numeral that was slashed into the thin flesh above the eyes is clear enough.

  LeBlanc shuffles over. ‘Number four?’

  ‘Yup,’ says Doyle. ‘Number four.’

  6.52 PM

  ‘How much longer?’ she asks.

  She looks at Bruce, who is sitting the wrong way round on a wooden chair, his chin resting on his arms which are on the back of the chair. He has taken the cloth from her mouth, allowing her to speak.

  ‘I’ll give ’em a few more minutes. Cops are slow. They’re not as smart as they are on the TV.’

  ‘Okay, so you give them a few more minutes. Then what?’

  She notices how he creases his brow in puzzlement. He’s not such a smart cookie, and right now that’s the only thing Erin has on her side.

  ‘What do you mean, then what? I call them up. We negotiate a little. We make the transaction. That’s it.’

  She lets out a mocking laugh. ‘Yeah, right.’ Then she turns her head away from him.

  Wait, she thinks. Wait for him to take the bait. Give it time for the doubt in my voice to percolate down through his barely functioning brain and kick-start a few of those long dormant neurons back into life.

  ‘What, you think this is complicated? It’s not complicated. It’s a simple business deal. They pay me, I hand you over. Easy as.’

  She turns to face him again. ‘Sure. You’re right. It’ll be easy.’

  He’s chewing his lip now. Worried.

  ‘Why shouldn’t it be easy? The cops want you. They want you bad. Why wouldn’t they pay?’

  ‘Think about it, Bruce. Did you ever meet a cop you could trust to stick to their end of the bargain?’

  She knows what his answer will be. This man is a slime-ball whose past history with cops will not be the fondest of memories.

  ‘Cops pay out for information all the time.’ His voice is almost a whine now. Like a kid trying to justify why he should be allowed to stay up as late as his older brothers.

  ‘Information, sure. A few bucks for a little piece of gossip someone has overheard in a bar or someplace. But we’re in a different league here, don’t you think, Bruce? A whole new ball-game, in fact. You’re withholding information on the whereabouts of a multiple murderer. That’s a crime, Bruce. You could go to jail for that. And then there’s the kidnapping…’

  ‘Kidnapping?’

  ‘What do you think this is? You brought me here at gunpoint, threatened me, tied me to the bed. That’s kidnapping and imprisonment. Now we’re talking about a federal rap. And the gun, Bruce? Do you have a license for that? I thought not. What about other offenses? Any outstanding warrants you haven’t mentioned? Drugs, maybe? Oh, yeah, and what about the way you just stood and watched while I killed that other guy in the apartment building? You had a gun. You could’ve stopped it. But you didn’t. You just let it happen. What do they call that – accessory to murder?’

  Bruce is off the chair now. Starting to pace as he considers the barrage of thoughts she is firing at him.

  She presses home her advantage: ‘Why should they pay you? When they’ve got all that on you, why should they pay when they could just threaten to throw your ass in the slammer? You know what the best you can hope for is? That they overlook one or two of your more minor crimes. They give you a pass on a drugs beef or something. Maybe that way you’ll serve a little less time in jail.’

  There is anger and fear on Bruce’s face. He waves his hand at her. ‘Nah, you got it wrong. It ain’t gonna work like that. You’re too valuable.’

  ‘But that’s just the problem, Bruce. I’m big news. And when this story breaks properly, you’ll be big news too. All kinds of people will be asking about you. The cops know that. They know they’ve got to do this by the book. They can’t just hand over money to a criminal like you and let you walk away.’

  Pace, pace, pace.

  ‘So what are you saying? You got a suggestion to make?’

  Here we go, Erin.

  ‘Yeah. Let me go.’

  He scoffs. ‘What?’

  ‘Let me go, Bruce. Untie me, let me walk out of here. Nobody will know. I’m not exactly in a position to go running to the cops, am I? If you don’t, if you try to see this thing through, it will go wrong. You can’t do this, Bruce. Yes, the cops are dumb, but they’re sneaky too. They’ll promise you everything and give you nothing. In fact they’ll take everything away from you. We could end up sharing a prison cell. Just you, me, and some broken promises. You don’t want that. You don’t need to take this risk. Let me walk away, and you’ll be safe.’

  So that’s it, she thinks. End of speech. The best I can do. What do you think, Bruce? Gonna give this girl a break? Show this psycho-killer bitch a little felon fellowship?

  He stares at her for a while. He pushes his fingers through his hair, scratches his neck, rubs his hand across his dry, flaking lips.

  And then he comes toward her. Bears down on her, looking as though he wishes he had never met this crazy woman and just wants to throw her out of her apartment and pretend none of this ever happened.

  His gaze shifts to her chafed wrist. He reaches for it.

  He’s doing it, she thinks. He’s going to release me. It worked!

  He grabs hold of the cord…

  Yes!

  … and tightens it. Pulls it hard into her sore, swollen flesh.

  ‘Nice try,’ he says. ‘For someone so insane, you got a way with words. No wonder you’re so dangerous.’

  And when he pushes the cloth back into her mouth and fastens it in place, she knows she has lost everything.

  7.16 PM

  There are just three of them in the squadroom: Doyle, LeBlanc and Cesario. Everybody else is hitting the bricks. Everybody else is running around like headless chickens, chasing a killer who as yet has no name, no face, no predictable pattern of behavior. How do you stop somebody like that? When you don’t know where they are going to strike next or when, what can you do except saturate the streets with cops and hope to get lucky?

  Well, maybe this is what you can do. Maybe you can sit and stare at a phone and pray for it to ring and for the caller to be a man called Bruce who says, ‘This killer you want? Here she is, boys.’

  That would be nice. That would be perfect. That would bring the working day to a satisfying close.

  Working day? How long is one of those? Time doesn’t make a lot of sense to Doyle anymore. He has been at work for a year, it seems. His mind is starting to turn to mush. LeBlanc, too, looks as though he could close his eyes and fall asleep in a heartbeat.

  The squadroom is deathly quiet. No two-fingered hammering of keyboards. No swearing, laughing, joking. No sound at all.

  And then the phone on Doyle’s desk rings.

  Cesario points at LeBlanc – the signal for him to pick up his own phone and instruct the guy from the Technical Assistance and Response Unit to trace the incoming call. Then Doyle and Cesario simultaneously pick up their own receivers, and Doyle hits the line answer button.

  ‘Detective Doyle,’ he says.

  ‘Hello, Detective. Busy day?’

  Doyle is confused. This is a woman’s voice. The killer? Could it be
her?

  He sees the questioning look from Cesario, and he shakes his head.

  ‘Uhm… I’m sorry, but you are…?’

  ‘Forgotten me already, Detective? It’s Vanessa Maynard. Psych Services?’

  Doyle feels the tension flood out of his system again. His answer is yes, he had forgotten all about her. Forgotten too about Albert, still cooped up in an interview room.

  ‘Oh. Oh, yeah. Listen, do you mind if I call you back? I’m right in the middle of—’

  ‘Yes, you can call me back. That’s the good news. The bad news is I can’t tell you anything about your boy Albert. Nothing pertinent to the murder he confessed to, anyway. On that he’s keeping quiet. I spent hours with him, but got nowhere. He’s put up some strong barriers there, Detective. It’s going to take more than one session with me to break them down again.’

  Doyle realizes that Cesario is using his finger to make throat-cutting motions, urging him to free up the line.

  ‘Okay, thanks. But you still think it would be worth my while calling you back?’

  He intends it purely as a work-based enquiry relating to Albert, so it surprises him when what he gets back is a soft purr of a voice.

  ‘Yes, I do, Detective. We can talk about the psychological effects of me fingering your bobble-head.’

  Doyle almost gulps audibly. He wasn’t expecting a come-on like this. He certainly wasn’t expecting to get it when two other guys were listening in to his conversation.

  ‘Yeah, okay, listen, I gotta go. I’ll call you.’

  He hangs up quickly, instantly putting out of his mind his promise to call her again. Less easy to dismiss is the embarrassment he feels when he sees the expressions on the other men in the room. LeBlanc in particular seems to be enjoying himself.

  ‘Fingering your bobble-head?’

  ‘Uhm, yeah. I… She’s referring to… Oh, never mind.’

  Cesario doesn’t let it go, but for different reasons. ‘Don’t tell me we’ve still got that water-cooler guy here – what’s his name?’

  ‘Albert.’

  ‘Albert, yeah. What have you done with him?’

  ‘He’s, uhm, he’s in the cage.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Well, has he committed a crime or hasn’t he?’

  Doyle feels like squirming in his chair. ‘I don’t know yet. That woman on the phone – Vanessa? – she spent a coupla hours with him, and she doesn’t know either.’

  ‘That much I gathered. So what’s your next move?’

  Doyle shrugs. ‘We’re trying to find out where he lives. I sent his picture out. Problem is, everyone’s so tied up with the DOAs, nobody’s got time to go knocking on doors looking for people who recognize him.’

  ‘You can’t keep him here forever, Doyle. He’s got rights, whether he knows it or not.’

  ‘I didn’t drag him in here. He came to us.’

  ‘Then make a little more use of that cooperative nature of his. Find out what the hell he knows. If you can’t, then you’ll have to turn him loose. Either way, I don’t want him tying up my interview room for much longer. He should be downstairs.’

  Doyle lapses into silence, considering himself rebuked. Albert shouldn’t be downstairs, he thinks. Albert is different – in more ways than one. There’s more to his story than he’s saying – which, admittedly, is not very much. The problem is getting at it. What did you do, Albert? What’s going on in that head of yours?

  Oh, and yeah, what do you know about these numbers?

  Two. Three. One. Four.

  As if responding to an eccentric countdown, the phone on Doyle’s desk bursts into life.

  7.23 PM

  I need to be more like Bruce, he thinks.

  It’s a nerdy name, Bruce. But there is no doubting that Bruce Willis is the coolest guy on the planet. Bruce Lee was also pretty cool. And Bruce Wayne.

  Come to think of it, why does the name Bruce have such a bad rep?

  I should think and act like Bruce. Yippee Ki-Yay, motherfucker. Bruce would know exactly what to do here. He would make all the right moves, say all the right things. He would always be the one in control.

  Right now, Lemmy Bilinski doesn’t feel in control. He feels like a rabbit facing up to a pack of wolves. One false move and they’ll rip him to shreds. The vast might of the New York Police Department is on the other end of this phone line, and all he’s got is his wits.

  Gotta be careful here, Lemmy.

  He wishes he hadn’t listened to that crazy murdering bitch. She put doubts in his head. Before that, he knew what he was doing. He had it all planned out.

  Well, actually, that’s not strictly true. He had some of it planned out. Like many a story writer, he had a beginning and an end in mind, and was hoping that one could be made to lead seamlessly into the other. He hoped to wing it in between.

  But now the bitch has made him hold up a magnifying glass and scrutinize the detail, and he’s no longer certain he can overlook the plot holes in this story. He’s not sure he can pull it off.

  Shit!

  ‘Eighth Precinct. Detective Doyle.’

  Too late now, Lemmy. You’re committed, guy. The light’s on green and you gotta go.

  ‘Yo, Detective. It’s me again. Bruce. You remember me?’

  He thinks that sounds good. Confident. He’s the man.

  ‘I remember you, Bruce.’

  Course you do, Doyle. You need me, man. I’m gonna make you famous. Gonna hand over a serial killer and make this city safe. Because you dumb cops can’t do it without me. That’s why this will work, because you need me.

  He says, ‘You checked out my info, right? You know I’m the real deal here, right?’

  ‘We know it. Where did you hear about it?’

  Lemmy has prepared himself for this. He knows how the cops play. This isn’t one guy on his phone, all by himself. This is a whole team of cops listening in. A couple of tech-heads pressing buttons and shit to track him on the phone network. Lemmy has seen enough movies to know that this cop will try to stall for time until they can pounce on his ass.

  ‘Don’t try to get me into no long conversations, Detective. I know how you guys work, so I ain’t hanging around. Now are you gonna pay for this bitch, or what?’

  The answer isn’t immediate. Lemmy makes use of those few seconds to take a good long look around him. He’s at a payphone on the corner of a block, just outside a bodega, with a good view of approaching pedestrians and traffic. A different payphone from the one he used last time, which probably has cops swarming all over it. That’s something else he learned from the movies. Keep moving, keep changing your routine. Don’t, whatever you do, make use of a cellphone. Those satellites can home in on your ass from a thousand miles up, wherever you are.

  ‘You there, cop? Don’t fuck with me, man, or I’m gone.’

  ‘I’m here, Bruce. Don’t hang up. We’ll pay, okay? If your information leads to an arrest, we’ll pay.’

  The magic words. We’ll pay. Well, fuck me sideways. How easy was that?

  Lemmy starts to think numbers. How far can he push this? Five thousand bucks? Ten thousand? Nah, gotta be more than that. This woman is a menace to the city. She’s running rings around the cops. Start at twenty? Better to aim high and come down rather than go home regretting he didn’t ask for more. Better to—

  Wait a minute. Hold the bus.

  What did the cop say?

  ‘What do you mean, if it leads to an arrest?’

  ‘Just what it says, Bruce. If what you give me is solid, and we can make an arrest on the strength of it, then you get your money.’

  Lemmy doesn’t like the sound of this. This doesn’t sit right with his plans at all. What he’s got is solid, all right. It’s cast iron. He can fulfill his side of the contract, in spades. But what’s shaking his tree right now is the small print. The terms and conditions. These are worrying.

  ‘Uh-uh. I don’t like that if business. You gotta
pay in advance, dude. You get me the money, then I deliver you a killer.’

  ‘Sorry, Bruce. It don’t work like that. It’s obvious you know more than most about this case, but that’s as far as it goes. Shouldn’t be a problem, though, right? We’re the law, Bruce. We ain’t gonna scam you.’

  In Lemmy’s experience, anyone who says they ain’t gonna scam you are going to do exactly that. Cops in particular rank especially low on his list of people who are trustworthy.

  ‘I don’t care how you usually do things. This one is different. This time I tell you how to get me the money, and when it’s in my hands and I know I’m safe, I’ll tell you where Suzie Psycho is.’

  The response is immediate. Not even a second to mull it over. ‘Forget it, Bruce. We can’t do it that way. What are you worried about? Your intel is good, right?’

  ‘My intel is fireproof,’ he snaps back.

  Which makes it all the more difficult. Lemmy knows what a prize he has in his hands. He knows she is worth more money to him than he has ever had in his life. His plan was to get the money, tell the cops where she is, then leave the city. Just take that money and hop on a Greyhound and get the fuck out of here.

  But what if the cops know who he is and where he lives even before he has the money? What if they become aware of the kind of person they’re dealing with? Will they still be willing to play ball then?

  Kidnapping and imprisonment, the bitch said. Illegal possession of a firearm, she said. Drugs offenses, she said. And then there’s what she doesn’t know about. The fact that he’s on parole. One minor infringement and he’s back in jail.

  With that kind of leverage, why would the cops even consider bargaining with him?

  This is starting to look doubtful. All that money, just out of reach. So close and yet so far.

  ‘What if,’ he says, ‘what if this intel I got, it was obtained by some slightly dubious means?’

  A pause. Lemmy can imagine the cop grinning to himself, thinking the scales are quickly tipping his way.