by John Lutz
Well, at the same speed as everyone else. Some solace.
Usually he showered and shaved, then walked to the diner where he had breakfast. The walk was part of his physical therapy to regain at least some of the wind and endurance he’d lost to his injury. He experienced normal stiffness and joint aches at first when he climbed out of bed—he hadn’t been easy on his body over the years—but nothing connected to the gunshot wound actually hurt anymore. And he knew he should be pleased; his endurance had improved considerably. But it was only months since Lani’s death, and to Beam she was still beside him, still in his dreams and his life awake. He knew she would be for some time to come.
Retirement might have been a good thing if Lani were still alive, but now retirement was like a disease. That was one of the main reasons Beam had accepted da Vinci’s offer to take over the serial killer investigation. Beam desperately, desperately, needed something to do, needed to be useful, needed something to displace his grief, at least temporarily.
When he was showered and dressed, he looked out the window and saw that a light rain was falling.
Instead of walking, he decided to elevator to the building’s garage and take his car.
The rain had stopped by the time Beam finished breakfast. He was paying at the register, when he glanced out the Chow Down’s window and saw da Vinci standing with his arms crossed and staring at Beam’s parked, gracefully aging black Lincoln.
“How come you drive a behemoth like that in New York?” he asked, when Beam emerged from the diner.
“I drove it this morning to keep the rain off me.”
“You managed to find a space right in front. I half expected to see an NYPD placard on your dash.”
The air smelled fresh from the recent rain. The street and sidewalks were still wet. A few of the cars and cabs swishing past still had their wipers working.
“I figured you’d come around again,” Beam said.
“Of course. Want to go back in for some coffee and conversation?”
“Let’s drive and talk,” Beam said, and stepped off the curb to get behind the wheel of the Lincoln. He and Lani had bought the car new ten years ago, with money she’d inherited from her wealthy family in Philadelphia. Lani had been rich with her own money when Beam married her. That bothered a few of his fellow cops, but the circles her wealth allowed them to travel in had been useful to Beam. He could talk to people otherwise inaccessible without a warrant.
As soon as he pressed the button on his key fob, the doors unlocked and da Vinci was climbing into the other side of the car. Beam settled into the plush leather seat and fastened his safety belt. As he started the engine, the car began to chime, and he noticed da Vinci wasn’t using his seat belt.
“You forgot to buckle up,” Beam said.
“Never do.”
“Shame on you.” Beam pulled out into traffic. The warning chime finally stopped. “We making progress?”
“Computer guy will be at your place tomorrow afternoon. He’ll make sure you’re plugged into the department network,” da Vinci said.
“He didn’t say ‘plugged into’ I bet.”
“I didn’t talk to him personally, but you’re probably right. They think in terms of ports. The thing is, we don’t want there to be any glitches.”
“We don’t,” Beam agreed, swooping the big car around a corner to beat a traffic signal.
“This old boat’s amazing,” da Vinci said. “You don’t even feel the potholes.”
“It’s like new. We didn’t drive it much. I mostly drive it now to keep up the battery.”
“Anybody ever mistake it for a limo?”
“Sometimes. When I tailed or staked out suspects, I wore my eight-point uniform cap and they thought I was a chauffeur.”
“I never asked you,” da Vinci said, “do you happen to be Jewish?”
“My father was. My mother wasn’t.”
“Was your father of the faith? Wear a yarmulke, all that stuff?”
“He went to synagogue for a while, then he drifted away from religion. I asked him why once, and he said he’d lost his faith in Korea, and it took him a while to realize it.”
“He was a cop, wasn’t he?”
“Sergeant, Brooklyn South.”
“Didn’t he—”
“He ate his gun,” Beam said. Didn’t leave a note.
“Shit deal. Korea? The job?”
Beam knew what da Vinci was thinking, that people close to Beam tended to commit suicide, as if he carried an infection.
“That when you joined the department?” da Vinci asked.
“You know all these answers,” Beam said.
Da Vinci smiled. “I guess I know most of them.”
“I dropped out of college and joined the Army, became an MP, then applied at the NYPD when I got out.”
“Because of your father?”
“I’m not sure. It seemed the natural thing to do.”
They drove without talking for a while, the big sedan seeming to levitate over bumps.
“I’m giving you Corey and Looper,” da Vinci said.
“What’s a Corey and Looper?”
“Detectives, and good ones. Looper’s early fifties, gone far as he’s gonna get in the department and knows it. He’s a good cop, but he’s burned his bridges behind him, far as promotion’s concerned.”
“What’s his flaw?”
“Too honest. Nobody trusts him.”
“And Corey?”
“Nell Corey. Coming off a nasty divorce. Hubby used to bounce her around. Woman’s got her faults.”
“She’s a foul-up?”
“More a don’t-give-a-damn type. Mind of her own. But only sometimes. Then there was that business with the knife?”
“She stabbed her husband?”
“Not that I know of. A security tape outside a convenience store in Queens caught her beating up a suspect with unnecessary force. What the tape didn’t catch was that during the struggle the suspect pulled a knife, which was later picked up by one of several onlookers.”
“It’s happened before,” Beam said.
“Probably happened that time, too. But since the knife never turned up, it doesn’t officially exist. At base, Corey’s a solid cop, and a talented detective. Trouble is, without that knife, she’s permanently screwed. And knows it.”
Beam neatly swerved left and squeezed the Lincoln through a space between a van being unloaded and some trash piled at the curb. It was tight enough to make da Vinci wince.
“Andy,” Beam said, “is there somebody in the department who doesn’t want this endeavor to succeed?”
“Sure, lots of them. Because of me. They think I’m coming on too fast. You know how it is, I’m a young Turk. Look like and act like one, anyway.”
The last part was true, Beam thought. Though in his forties, da Vinci might pass for thirty. He was too young looking, good looking, and blatantly ambitious to be universally popular. It was as if a small-market TV anchorman had somehow gotten hold of an NYPD shield and was aggravating the piss out of his betters.
“Am I gonna get cooperation when I need it?” Beam asked.
“Oh, yeah. I got the push to make it happen. I’ve got allies, Beam.”
“You must.”
“You don’t wanna ask who they are. I will say this: they see you pretty much the way I do.”
“Which is how?”
“They know your reputation as a bad ass who can’t be bought or bumped off course, that nothing will stop you.”
Not even the law.
Beam remained stone faced as he shot through an intersection barely in time to avoid colliding with a cab that had run the light. Da Vinci flicked a glance out the windshield but showed no emotion. There was a toughness and drive beneath all that smooth banter, cologne, and ass kissing. In truth da Vinci was one of the main reasons why Beam had agreed to take on this assignment. Not only did he rather like the brash, manipulating bureaucracy climber, but he still owed da Vinci
for being willing to put his ass on the line seven years ago in Florida. The way it worked out, he hadn’t had to, but it was the willingness that counted. A lot of life was favors owed, favors paid.
A bus hissed and paused in the traffic coming the other way, a billboard-size sign featuring a Mets star pitcher in full windup on its side. Beam hadn’t been to a ballgame in years. Looking at the sign, he felt his stomach tighten, a pressure behind his eyes. Florida…
The bus roared and moved on.
“Send me Corey and Looper,” Beam said, “along with copies of the murder books on the three killings. I don’t want to waste any more time.”
“I’ll arrange it,” da Vinci promised.
They’d circled the neighborhood and were approaching the diner. There was a break in traffic, so Beam took the big Lincoln up to sixty and abruptly spun and locked the steering wheel and brakes simultaneously. The car rocked and skidded to face the opposite direction, then sedately double parked so da Vinci had room to open the door and get out on the passenger’s side.
Throughout the maneuver, da Vinci had braced himself with his feet against the floor and his hands on the dashboard.
“Somebody oughta call a cop!” an elderly woman pushing a wire basket cart full of grocery bags yelled over at them from across the street.
“Somebody oughta tell her people call us things all the time,” da Vinci said, completely unrattled.
Bev overslept. That was okay; her and Floyd’s West Side apartment was only a few blocks from Light and Shade. Even if she couldn’t hail a cab, she could walk it in no time. Breakfast she could make up later, maybe send one of the employees out to pick up Danish and coffee at Starbucks.
She was alone in the king-size bed. Floyd was still in Connecticut on a golfing outing with his buddies. Bev had slept so soundly the covers were only slightly disheveled. She slid both bare legs out from beneath the sheets, then stood up and removed her nightgown, which had somehow bunched its way up around her hips.
In the morning light she examined herself briefly in the mirror. She and Lenny had played rough and she had a few bruises, but nothing Floyd was likely to notice. Not that she cared that much if he did notice; she just didn’t want a scene. She was tired of scenes.
The apartment was large by New York standards, furnished with a hodgepodge of furniture and decorated without much style. Except for the lamps. Lamps they had, and good ones. And ceiling fixtures. Bev was proud of the massive crystal chandelier dangling above the dining room table that they hardly used.
She padded nude into the bathroom and took a quick shower, managing not to get her hair wet. She’d dropped by Tina’s Beauty Shop and had it done yesterday afternoon after taking off work early. After the wreck Lenny had made of it.
The shower had fully awakened and refreshed her. Yesterday had been a hell of a day, and today she’d better concentrate on work. She knew her business and got the job done, but her attendance record was abysmal. No one from the company had said anything to her, but they might. You could push them only so far. Besides, her job was the one thing in her life she liked. Her job and Lenny.
Bev was fully dressed in her new mauve outfit, seated before a teakwood vanity she’d bought in Mexico and had shipped home, leaning forward and applying just the right shade of lipstick to complement the dress—red, but with the slightest touch of purple—when her heart almost stopped.
She managed to start breathing again and turned to gaze back and up at the figure she’d glimpsed in the mirror. At the hand that held the object that was indeed what she’d first feared. A gun, a small one with some kind of bulky cylinder fitted to its barrel. She’d seen enough TV and movies to know what the object was—a silencer.
Seated on the padded vanity chair, staring up at the intruder, she was aware of her insides melting away, heard a slight trickle, felt a warmth, and knew she’d wet herself. She began to cry, tightening her grip on the chair back with one hand, on the lipstick tube with the other. She begged with her eyes. It was unmistakable, her silent pleading. He did nothing, drawing out the moment. She managed to speak, but her voice caught in her throat and the words came out as a sob.
“What’d I do? For God’s sake, what’d I do?”
Then she knew. Floyd! Floyd must have hired someone to pretend—
The silencer spat and a bullet thunked! through the thinly padded wooden chair back and clipped her spine before smashing through her heart.
The way she dropped and her chin hit the edge of the vanity on the way down, it would have hurt like hell if she’d been alive.
The killer gently pried the lipstick tube from her dead right hand.
8
Beam silently watched the NYPD computer genius da Vinci had sent.
He looked about fourteen and seemed to know everything. It was obvious from the way the kid—actually in his twenties—had handled Beam’s five-year-old notebook computer that he knew his stuff. Soon there’d been talk of RAM and giga and mega and pixels while Beam looked on in gray mystification as his computer was upgraded and brought into the present world of tech.
By the time the kid was finished, Beam was patched into the NYPD system and had gone wireless so he could use his computer anywhere in the apartment, or—the computer kid had assured him—various places outdoors, or in certain restaurants and entire areas that were set up for wireless.
“That’s damned amazing,” Beam told the kid.
“I don’t understand why anybody’d ever use a typewriter,” the kid replied. “Or how they ever got that complicated machinery to work at all.”
“I don’t type, either,” Beam said.
With a pitying shake of his head, the kid gathered up his bits and bytes and left. Beam watched him out and down the hall to the elevator.
Beam closed the door and looked at his watch. Almost four o’clock, when da Vinci had told him by phone that detectives Nell Corey and Fred Looper were coming to the apartment to meet Beam to get acquainted and have a strategy session.
Moving out to the middle of the living room, Beam looked around. It was a pleasant room with a hardwood floor, throw rugs, a comfortable overstuffed cream-colored sofa, a tan leather armchair, smaller, rose-colored upholstered chair, green marble-top coffee table, some oil paintings on the walls, bought more as decorative pieces than as art. Lani’s touch. For that reason, maybe, Beam didn’t want to settle down in the room with Corey and Looper.
He used both hands to lift the rose-colored chair—Lani’s chair—and carried it down the hall and into his den.
The chair didn’t go with the den’s decor, but that was okay. Three of the den’s walls were oak paneled, the fourth painted off-white and covered with framed photos or department commendations. A baseball trophy sat on a table with some other framed photos. Some of the photos were of Beam and Lani, sometimes with their son Bud, who’d played All American minor league ball in the Cincinnati farm system in Florida and been struck in the head by a pitched ball. He’d died the next day of massive subdural hematoma. Only nineteen years old, and his death had killed something in Beam and Lani, in their marriage. The pitcher who’d hit Bud, a retread player named Rowdy Logan, had also aimed for his head on the previous pitch, so it was a deliberate beaning. Logan had been demoted from the majors for similar headhunting, and this time charges were brought against him. Charges that were going nowhere. Murder on the baseball diamond was a difficult thing to prove.
That was something Beam owed da Vinci. Da Vinci said he had connections in Florida and could help to actually prosecute Logan. As it turned out, that wasn’t necessary, as Logan was found a few days later full of barbiturates that had given him the courage to shoot himself in the head. The bullet had struck with the same effect that the ninety-mile-per-hour fastball had on young Bud Beam.
Justice, delivered not by the legal system but by the killer himself. Beam’s faith in the system he served had been severely shaken. As had his faith in everything.
Seven years ago. First
Bud gone, now Lani.
Beam placed the rose-colored chair at an angle facing his large mahogany desk. There was already a brown leather chair in a similar position at the other corner of the desk. Beam would have the two detectives sit in the chairs, facing him across the desk. They would talk. They would plan. They would take the first step in finding and stopping the maniac who was killing people in his city.
At first, hesitant to take on the case, Beam now was beginning to feel the old eagerness take hold. He was on the job again. He was a cop. He was a hunter set to stalk his prey.
Exactly what da Vinci wants.
“You home, Bev?” Floyd Baker called.
He stood just inside the apartment door, his golf club bag slung over his shoulder. Something about the place wasn’t right. It wasn’t just that it was twilight and the apartment was dim without a lamp on. Or that his wife Bev wasn’t yet home from work. She often stayed late on the job.
It was something else making him uneasy.
It was the stillness.
Floyd Baker had been an Army Ranger in action with UN troops in Kosovo. He and another ranger had once come across a house with its front door hanging open, and investigated to find an entire family of five slaughtered inside.
The feeling, the stillness, the subtle scent he was experiencing now made Floyd think of that house, that day, what they’d found. Jesus, what we found! His heart clawed its way into his throat.
“Bev!” There was a note of desperation in his call.
He leaned his golf bag against the wall by the door and moved farther into the dim apartment, then switched on a floor lamp.
Still no sign of Bev, but there was her purse on the table near the door. He hadn’t noticed it before. It meant she was probably home.
