“You’re policemen?”
Bettinger nodded his head, and Dominic ripped sinew from a rib.
“I follow the laws,” stated the manager.
“We’re not investigating you or this establishment. I’m Detective Bettinger and this is Corporal Williams.”
“Harold Zhang.”
“We’re looking for information.” The detective reached into the manila file and withdrew a photograph that showed Elaine James as a teenager, sitting on the hood of a blue sports car while holding a cigarette and talking to some friends. “This woman was murdered, and her last meal might’ve been here.”
Bettinger gave the picture to Harold Zhang, who treated it like a flower petal.
The detective dropped a wonton inside of his mouth, and across the table, the big fellow sank his incisors into a rib. Chewing, the policemen watched the face of the balding manager who was his own staff.
“She comes here,” announced Harold Zhang. “Though she looks different.” The fellow cupped the air in front of his chest.
“That’s her.” Bettinger swallowed a pulverized wonton and reclaimed the photograph.
Dominic slurped ginger ale. “She’s like a band with two smash hits.”
“She’s dead?”
“Yeah.” The detective withdrew a mechanical pencil, thumbed the eraser, and opened his notepad. “When did you last see her?”
“Last week.”
“Do you know what day?”
“Monday or Tuesday.” Harold Zhang adjusted his flap of silver hair and ruminated. “Tuesday I think.”
“That fits. Was she with anybody?”
“No.”
Bettinger was disappointed by the response. “Are you sure?”
“She always came alone. Ordered everything very, very spicy—hotter than most Chinese people can eat.”
Dominic set a fleshless rib upon a spare plate and cracked open a second hissing can of ginger ale. “Sounds like she wanted a colonic that went top to bottom.”
Bettinger wrote, Spicy food = Day off? and returned his attention to Harold Zhang. “Did she eat here or take out?”
“Ate here. Just before closing.”
“When do you close?” asked the detective.
“Ten. Earlier if it’s empty.”
Bettinger considered the partially digested contents of the victim’s stomach and wrote, Death occurred between 11:30 P.M. and 2 A.M. upon his notepad. “Anything different about her that night? How she looked or behaved? Anything she said?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did anybody talk to her?”
“Just me.” Harold Zhang pointed at the far corner of the restaurant. “She sat over there—where she usually did—ate her usual, and paid. She always tipped a lot.” His last remark had a wistful timbre.
Dominic set a fourth fleshless rib upon his spare plate, completing a square of bones.
“What was she wearing?” asked Bettinger.
“Baggy clothes—like she was a jogger. Gray or blue.”
“Sneakers?”
“I think so.”
“Did she walk here?”
“I never saw a car.”
The big fellow started to construct the second floor of his bone edifice.
“You know which way she went when she left?”
“East.” Harold Zhang shook his head. “You don’t want to go the other way at night.”
“Okay.” Bettinger withdrew a business card and gave it to the manager. “If you remember something else—or hear anything—call.”
“I will.”
“Thanks for your help.”
“It’s my duty.” Harold Zhang pocketed the card. “I hope you find the guy.”
“We will.”
“This city,” the manager lamented as he departed.
The policemen focused on their food, and ten minutes later, Dominic completed his five-story bone condominium.
Bettinger motioned east. “Let’s take a stroll.”
The big fellow drained the remainder of his third ginger ale and set a twenty atop the one that his partner had already yielded. “To eighty-four Margaret Drive?”
“So you can read.”
Together, the policemen left the table, watered urinal cakes, washed their hands, crossed the restaurant, and walked outside.
XVI
Sidewalk Rambling
The cold attacked. Bettinger shoved his covered hands into his jacket as he entered the parking lot, flanking Dominic, whose mind was again on Jupiter. Shivering, the detective marveled at the existence of sprawling cities in places that were cold enough to murder improperly clothed Homo sapiens. The businessman who had shot himself in Arizona was probably a direct descendant of the idiot who had settled Alaska.
Surrounded by air that was seventeen degrees (and lethal), Bettinger considered the Caribbean and then returned his mind to the case. “Has it rained or snowed since Tuesday?”
“No.”
“Then there’s a chance of finding something along the way.”
Dominic snorted.
“Keep an eye out for signs of a struggle.” The detective gestured at their concrete surroundings. “Scuffs, scratches, blood. A watch, earrings. Something that could fall out of a purse or a pocket.”
“Like a gun with a name tag?”
“Find that and you can play rap all day.”
The policemen reached the sidewalk and turned east. Parked in the middle of the road at the far end of the block was a long black car that had tinted windows. Sonic thuds resonated inside the vehicle like exploding depth charges.
Keeping an eye on the suspect automobile, Bettinger scanned the immediate area for evidence. “How far’s her apartment?”
“Ten, eleven blocks.”
The black car shuddered, awakening, and rolled forward, turning a pigeon carcass into feathered pulp.
“There are a lot of dead birds in Victory,” remarked the detective.
“You’re pretty observant.”
Fifty feet remained between the creeping automobile and the policemen. Depth charges thudded at forty-two beats per minute.
“How come?” asked Bettinger.
“How come what?”
“How come there’re so many dead pigeons everywhere?”
The music stopped, and its absence was a warning that the detective felt on his nape. Silent as a shark, the car continued its slow approach.
Dominic threw a hard look at the vehicle and rested a palm on the handle of his gun. Tires screeched, and the long, four-wheeled organism shot past the policemen.
Bettinger gleaned the car’s license plate number and wrote it down in his notepad.
“That ain’t nothin’ but some niggas with nothin’ to do.”
“Probably,” the detective agreed, “but there’s no harm in running the plate.”
“You can get those here for ten dollars.”
“License plates?”
“Yeah.” Dominic led his partner across the street. “I once busted a nigga who had more than three hundred in his crib—he took the metal from construction sites and junkyards and had his grandma paint on the numbers.”
“Did you make that bust with Tackley?”
Prior to that moment, neither policeman had uttered the name of Dominic’s former partner, the short man with vitiligo who stirred his coffee with a knife.
“I forget.”
The duo reached the end of the block, and the big fellow motioned south, redirecting their ramble onto a street of high walls, iron gates, and tall apartment buildings. Bettinger circumvented an open manhole and returned to the sidewalk, stepping over a dead pigeon that was wedged against the curb. Rigid talons extruded from its feathers like the legs of a cancan dancer.
“Any idea what’s killing these things?”
“Birds can go anyplace they want, right?” Dominic gestured at the sky. “Flap their wings, and these niggas is in Hawaii, enjoyin’ the sun, or maybe over in Paris, shittin’ on ri
diculous hats. So it figures that the ones who stay in Victory are damaged.”
“Psychologically?”
“I’m thinkin’ somethin’ with their radar or whatever. Either way, it’s been like this for years. Niggas just droppin’.”
Something occurred to the detective regarding the Elaine James case. “Who’s the best clerk in the pillbox?”
“Ain’t like you got a lot of choices.”
“Of them?”
“Irene.”
Bettinger recalled a stuffy, middle-aged white woman whose orange perm resembled a planetoid. “The one with the hair?”
“She’s in there.”
“She’s reliable?”
“You got any idea what these people get paid?”
Passing a concrete playground, the detective stripped off a glove and withdrew his cell phone, which was an old device that looked like a calculator.
“Arizona didn’t pay too good,” remarked the big fellow.
“Disposable technology isn’t where I put my money.”
“I seen your automobile.”
“In a city like this, I’d classify a car as ‘disposable technology.’”
“So then you must live in a mansion.”
Bettinger thumbed the preset number for the front desk and brought the receiver to his ear.
The receptionist answered on the second ring. “Police Precinct of Greater Victory.”
“Hello, Sharon. This is Detective Bettinger.”
“Hello, Detective Bettinger.” The woman spoke with a formal flourish.
“Please connect me to Irene.”
“She likes to be called Miss Bell.”
“I’ll respect her wishes.”
“Hold.”
The connection clicked over to a doo-wop track that featured a falsetto singer whose keening voice was almost a bird noise. Listening to the high-pitched tale of love gone awry, Bettinger followed Dominic onto Margaret Drive. A verse spilled into a chorus, and as the vocalist repeated the refrain, “Put your love in my lunchbox,” the detective noticed a broken streetlamp and stopped walking.
“Williams.”
The big fellow looked at his partner.
Bettinger said, “We should—”
“Miss Bell speaking.”
“Hello, Miss Bell. This is Detective Bettinger. We met earlier.”
“Yes. I remember. Good afternoon.” The woman sounded like a robot the day before it received the chip that contained its personality.
“Good afternoon. Are you familiar with the Elaine James case?”
“Mrs. Linder built that file. Shall I transfer you?”
“I’d rather you assisted me, if you don’t mind.”
A keyboard rattled like a machine gun. “Murdered. Raped postmortem.” A vacuum of silence followed these proclamations.
“I’m looking for cold cases that might be connected to this one.”
“Mrs. Linder found no viable matches. Necrophilia is very rare—even in Victory.”
Bettinger constructed a careful question that he hoped would not offend the clerk. “Is it possible that we have an unsolved murder case where the act of necrophilia occurred but was not identified?”
There was a click on the line, and the detective wondered if the robot had ended communications.
“It’s … possible,” said Miss Bell, her voice betraying a glimmer of humanity.
“Then I’d like files on every woman who died in Victory during the last eighteen months—accidental deaths, natural causes, murder victims—all of them. Put the last six months on top, and put prostitutes on the very top. Please.”
“The information that you have requested will be on your desk by five o’clock today.” The robot had returned. “I shall also send digital files to your e-mail account.”
“Thank you very much, Miss Bell.”
“Have a good afternoon.”
“You too.”
Bettinger cut the connection and pocketed his phone. Gloving his frozen right hand, he examined the overhead streetlamp. Bits of sheer plastic that looked like baby teeth sat in the broken fixture, as did a bird’s nest and a few rocks.
The detective swept an arm in an arc that included the sidewalk, the street, and the parking lot of a two-story teal building. “It would’ve been dark in this area when she was coming home.”
“As dark as you.”
“Clever.”
Bettinger entered the parking lot, eyeballing the teal building, which had a sign that read CHRIST THE SAVIOR COMMUNITY CENTER. A pale oval drifted behind one of the windows, paused at an altitude of six feet, and was joined by three smaller dots that barely crested the bottom edge of the glass. Silent and still, the children and their monitor observed the trespasser.
The detective withdrew his badge and angled it until he saw its bright reflection upon the windowpane.
Suddenly, the watchers vanished.
“Ain’t eager to help.”
Dominic entered the parking lot, and together, the policemen searched the area. The dumb gray canvas yielded nothing of value.
“We ain’t turnin’ up much,” the big fellow remarked as he and his partner returned to the sidewalk.
The pair continued south and soon arrived at a well-maintained redbrick high-rise that wore a bright number 84 on its chest. Bettinger proceeded directly to the security gate, where he stopped, scanned the intercom, and fingered the button for the superintendent. Nearby, Dominic leaned against an iron pole that looked like a spear.
Static crackled. “Yes? Who is it?” The voice that emerged from the grill sounded like it belonged to an old man.
Again, Bettinger fingered the talk button. “It’s the police. We’d like to see apartment five twelve.”
There was a moment of silence, followed by two squirts of static. “A policeman was already here. He looked around and did his business.”
The detective recalled the name of the officer who had done the inspection. “Officer Langford?”
“My wife thought he looked like some actor.”
“We’d like to inspect the apartment again.”
This request was followed by a long silence. “Why?”
“We just want to double-check.”
The speaker spit static, and the oldster coughed. “He didn’t do it right the first time?”
“We just want to double-check.”
“Um…”
A woman whispered something. Wet crackles erupted from the grill and were replaced by silence.
The detective leaned on the talk button. “Sir? May we see room five twelve?”
“Someone’s in there.”
“Who?”
“Mexicans. A family.”
The policemen exchanged a glance, and Bettinger thumbed the talk button. “You rented it?”
“People want to live in this building. We … we didn’t know.”
“Nobody told us or the owners that we couldn’t,” defended the super’s wife.
The grill spat static.
Bettinger exhaled steam and fingered the button. “What did you do with Elaine James’s possessions?”
“Donated them to charity,” said the old fellow. “There wasn’t much.”
“Thanks for your time.”
“That other officer should’ve told us—we didn’t know you’d be back.”
“Thanks for your time.”
“Okay. Bye.”
Static crackled.
The detective looked at his partner. “Officer Langford’s young?”
“Shavin’ is a seasonal event for him.”
“Christ’s uncle.”
Bettinger faced the intercom, scanned the numbers, and thumbed the button for apartment 512.
Static crackled, and an excited little muchacho inquired, “¿Quién es?”
The frustrated detective turned away from the iron gate and began his journey back to Sichuan Dragon.
“Where to now?” asked the big fellow, trailing his partner.
“The pillbox.”
“Not Bermuda?”
Bettinger hoped that Miss Bell’s files would contain something useful, because the cold winds of Victory had just frozen the case.
XVII
Her Opportunities
“Congratulations.” Happy for the first time that day, Bettinger kissed Alyssa on the mouth and hugged her. “A show in Chicago,” he said into her wild curls. “Wow.”
“I really didn’t expect to hear back from him.” The woman withdrew from her husband and took a glass of grapefruit juice from the refrigerator. “I squeezed some before.”
The sight of the beverage conjured a salivary premonition in the detective’s mouth. “What’s the name of the gallery?”
“David Rubinstein Gallery of Chicago.”
“Sounds rich.”
“He is. And so’s his clientele.”
“I’ll dust off my yarmulke.”
“Too bad they’re worn on the back of the head.”
Alyssa eyed her husband’s balding scalp.
“Hey.” Bettinger slid a palm across his head until he reached the silver-and-black growth that began on the far side of the North Pole. “I’m sensitive.”
“You aren’t.”
The woman drank some of the grapefruit juice, puckered her face, and gave the glass to her husband, who received it happily. His eyes stung and his throat burned as he swallowed the astringent beverage.
“This’s the bitterest one yet,” said the detective.
“It sure is.”
Bettinger returned the glass to Alyssa. “Almost impossible to drink.”
“I know. Right?”
Both of them liked challenging grapefruit juice.
“What pieces are you going to show?”
“The Breathing Cargo.”
Disbelief shone upon the detective’s face. “Really?”
“Uh-huh.”
The series depicted white aristocrats dining, playing croquet, and lounging atop piles of black bodies in the cargo holds of slave ships. Unlike most of Alyssa’s paintings, which were subtle and impressionistic acrylics that had nothing to do with race, the Breathing Cargo pieces were highly detailed and politically aggressive.
“You know how much I like that series.” There was an implication in the detective’s remark.
Mean Business on North Ganson Street Page 8
