In that moment, the full horror of the situation became crystal clear. This man, this flailing thing on her chest, intended to kill her. Why? For what earthly reason? What harm had she done him? Well, let him try. She had no intention of making things easy for him.
Suddenly, she was screaming. But not merely screaming. It rose from someplace far down inside her, some dark place she scarcely knew existed. No mere human sound, it was more like the wailing cry of banshees rising from the netherworld.
Her shouts were now answered by the sound of voices hollering from windows in the adjoining houses and, shortly, footsteps pounding on the pavement outside in the street.
The stream of vileness continued from her assailant’s mouth, borne on a breath that smelled meaty and putrid, as if he’d recently fed on something not quite, but nearly, spoiled.
She felt the cold tip of the knife pierce the skin of her throat, then sink beneath it. There was a spurt, then the flow of something wet and warm.
Someone had started to bang on the front door. She could hear the whooping of a police siren not far off. Barely conscious, she felt the weight lift from her chest and, out of the corner of her eye, saw a figure flee toward the rear of the house.
In the next moment, she was half up, holding her hand pressed over her throat where blood seeped between her fingers. The wound didn’t keep her down for long. Instead, scrambling to her feet, she pursued the fleeing figure through the dining room out into the kitchen where the back door now stood open, and through which her assailant had fled.
“Motherfucker! Motherfucker!” she bellowed into the huddled dark. The icy air had revived her and she kept shouting. “Get outta here! Get outta here! You pig! You scumbag!”
Neighboring voices shouted back at her across the courtyard, assuring her that help was coming.
There was a rending sound from out front. The front door burst open. Dozens of people in pajamas and robes poured in: old, toothless black women with nylon stocking nightcaps on their heads, middle-aged men in outlandish pajamas with frightened eyes, carrying baseball bats in their hands; the police followed, pushing through the crowd, streaming into the kitchen, where Arlette Coles stood in a pool of sequins, shivering in her shredded dress, the bodice down around her front, a hand held to her bleeding throat. The other hand pointed out the door like a road sign in the direction of the fleeing figure. She was still shouting obscenities after him at the top of her lungs.
SHADOW DANCER ON NEW RAMPAGE
CITY IN PANIC
MAYOR DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY
VOWS INTENSIFIED HUNT
SECOND ATTACK IN THREE DAYS INDICATES
QUICKENING OF SLAYER’S ACTIVITY
$25,000 REWARD OFFERED FOR INFORMATION
LEADING TO KILLER’S APPREHENSION
CITIZENS GROUPS AND NEIGHBORHOOD
VIGILANTES PROWL CITY STREETS. SOME
NEIGHBORHOODS DESCRIBED AS
ARMED CAMPS
RUN ON ALARM SYSTEMS AND ILLICIT STREET
GUN TRADE UP 100%. POLICE OFFICIALS
CONCERNED AT TURN OF EVENTS
SHADOW DANCER FLEES ATTACK SITE
CHASED BY ANGRY MOB WIELDING
BATS, TIRE IRONS, AND FRYPANS
The phone rang. Mooney looked up from the stack of clippings on his desk and gazed morosely at it. He knew who it was before he’d even lifted the receiver.
“It’s all here on my desk,” he said, without bothering to say hello or good morning.
“Well, read it and weep,” Mulvaney’s voice rasped into the phone. “His Honor’s been on the phone two hours this morning with McClenahan. From what I hear, they’re still at it.”
“What d’ya s’pose they’re talking about?” Mooney’s voice croaked wearily.
“Not about the weather, I can assure you. More probably, something about your job performance.”
“A bit about yours, too, no doubt.”
Mulvaney’s long, tired sigh drifted across the wire. “Heard anything on McConkey?”
“Not a word. Her name’s out all over the AP wire and the networks. Her face is plastered on every rag in the country. If she’s out there, anywheres, and still alive, she’s gotta have seen something by now.”
Mooney waited for some response. When none came, he spoke again. “Now that’s the bad news. Would you like to hear some good news?”
“I’m all ears,” Mulvaney said with a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm.
“The Coles dame.”
“Who?”
“The lady who was hit last night. Arlette Coles.”
“What about her?”
“I spoke to her on the phone this morning,” Mooney went on, trying to suppress the excitement in his own voice. “She’s over at Kings County now. Got a nasty puncture wound in her throat, but the doctors say she’s gonna be fine.”
“She willing to talk?”
“Talk? Sing. Shout at the top of her lungs is more like it. I could barely stop her. This is the first solid description we’ve had.”
“And it’s our boy?”
“No chance it could be anyone else. Dark, straight hair. Broken front teeth. Caucasian, or possibly light Hispanic, or mix. And get a load of this: they picked up a broken pink crayon on the floor where they were scuffling. Fell out of his pocket.”
“Any prints?”
“She says he was wearing rubber surgical gloves, which fits with everything else we’ve heard about him. That accounts for the fact we never come up with any prints. But this time the forensic guys think they may lift something off the Crayola.”
“When you seeing her?” Mulvaney asked grimly. “I’m going over this morning with Rollo. Soon as I finish up here.”
Now that it was all out, Mooney felt breathless and a little lightheaded. If he was waiting to hear some expression of approval, he didn’t get it.
“Frank.” Mulvaney’s voice dropped several decibels lower and, suddenly, sounded portentous. “This case has now been transferred to Sylvestri.”
There was a pause. A long, embarrassed silence. “Sylvestri?”
“That’s right. It’s what we’ve been talking about the last few months. Eddie Sylvestri is in charge now.”
“Sylvestri.” He whispered the name again, as though he’d never heard it before.
“Don’t say you weren’t warned, Frank. It wasn’t my decision. McClenahan tossed this at me six o’clock this morning. I guess that’s part of what came out of the talks with the mayor.”
Mooney had recovered sufficiently to sputter, “What about my extension? I’ve still got about six days to go on our deal.”
“The mayor doesn’t care about our deal. He just wants this thing resolved, and for nearly two years you haven’t been able to do that.”
“First of all …”
“Let me finish, Frank. Then you can talk. If you want it straight, here it is. Eddie Sylvestri’s marked for a captaincy and, possibly, a divisional job. He’s considered by management to be the coming thing.”
Mooney’s face was hot and a pulse throbbed at his temples. “All I need is a few days more on this thing and I can —”
“Sorry.”
Though he’d been expecting it for some time, it still felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. “Gimme five days. Just five days more.” Mooney could hear himself pleading. “Four … give me four.”
“Sorry, Frank.”
“Three.”
While the voice was sympathetic, it was uncommonly firm. Mooney recognized the tone. “So this means you’re throwing me off the goddamn case now?”
“Worse,” Mulvaney said. “It means you’re still on it. Working for your old pal, Eddie Sylvestri.”
THIRTY-TWO
IN A BATHROBE AND SLIPPERS, SPRAWLED ON a day couch that converted to a sleeper at night, Janine McConkey watched the gray phantom figures drift across the television screen. She lay in a darkened parlor, in a small suburb of Philadelphia, while her oldest and dearest friend, Bobbie Murdoch, slept hea
vily in an adjoining room.
The figures moving back and forth across the screen were mostly black people. They wore robes and pajamas with overcoats thrown over their shoulders. They brandished sticks and other objects. Police were getting in and out of patrol cars. Neighborhood merchants discussed the awful scourge of the Dancer and the heavy toll exacted on small businesses that remained open all night.
A tall, attractive black woman appeared on the screen, her throat swaddled in bandages. In a rasping, rapid-fire delivery, peppered with expletives, she related her experience to reporters. She was shortly followed by a tall, rumpled detective with a thatch of white hair and staring eyes that gave him the fierce look of a totem god. He stood in a hospital corridor growling curt replies at clamorous reporters and seemed anxious to go.
As he quickly summarized all that was known by the police up until that time, Janine McConkey attempted to follow developments, but the thought of Warren Mars obsessed her, crowding everything else from her mind. Where was he at that moment and, more critically, had he any idea where she was? The thought that he might almost suffocated her with panic.
She knew Warren well enough to know that eventually he would come after her. Once his mind was set on something, nothing could deflect him. He would not stop until the business was accomplished. Indeed, hadn’t that been precisely the case with poor Mickey?
It was unlikely that Warren knew where she was at that moment. She told no one where she was going. She’d left no forwarding address. No one had seen her leave the apartment. No one, to the best of her knowledge, had followed her to the Port Authority building and watched her purchase a ticket or board the bus to Philadelphia—at least, no one she was aware of. However, with Warren, you could never be certain. His powers of tracking were uncanny, and, while he’d never met her old friend, Bobbie Murdoch, whom she’d known since they met in a foundling home when they were both five years old, she had often spoken to him of Bobbie. She couldn’t be certain, however, if she’d ever mentioned to him the fact that she lived in Philadelphia.
“… Janine McConkey, aged twenty-three …” The sound of her name droning quietly over the television speakers sounded curiously alien to her, like the name of someone else. Some perfect stranger. It was only when the snapshot of her, a fairly recent one taken at an outing the year before at Coney Island, flashed on the screen and the name and face came suddenly together that she recognized herself.
“… believed to be a vital link to the Dancer …” The voice droned on through the darkened room, even as the image of her face smiled pleasantly out at her over the airwaves.
“… police are searching desperately for this young woman who it is said may hold the key to the identity and whereabouts of the Shadow Dancer. Police characterize her sudden disappearance from both her home and job as ominous. Sources fear she may have been abducted by the Dancer and her life may be in danger.... Any person having information leading to the whereabouts of Miss McConkey is urged to call the following toll-free number: one eight hundred, six two four, five three hundred. All calls will be kept strictly confidential.”
Her image faded from the screen, leaving in its place a scene of a soccer game in a teeming stadium in São Paulo, where thousands of fans had proceeded to riot. Long after her image had faded, she continued to sit there on the futon, her head swimming, her knees drawn up tight to her chest while she hugged them for dear life. She had the feeling that if she dared let go, she’d be swept off by some swift, engulfing tide.
She started up to wake Bobbie and tell her. Then, she thought better of it. If she told Bobbie that the police were searching high and low for her and, possibly, Warren too, friend or no friend, Bobbie might very well ask her to leave. She had no place to go. For her part, Janine never wanted to go out into the world again. She wanted instead to huddle there in the dark, curled up in a little ball on that lumpy futon that smelled of mold and tired bodies. Safe and warm in the dark forever.
She racked her brain, trying to figure how the police had established this “vital link” between her and Warren. She knew where they’d found the photograph. That was easy. It had been on a shelf in the kitchen. So, they’d been to the apartment and had, no doubt, searched it. But what had they found there to make the connection? There was nothing. Nothing incriminating that she could think of. A surge of elation went through her, only to be dashed the next minute when she recalled the crumpled letter, smoothed out and pressed flat beneath a stack of pots and pans in a kitchen cabinet.
Could they possibly have found it? Obviously, they had. If someone were searching, seriously searching, common sense told her that in such a tiny apartment it wouldn’t have been too difficult.
But still, how had they known enough to go to the apartment in the first place? Then she thought of Mickey and what had happened, and then it was clear. She knew at last how the connection between her and Mickey and Warren had been made. And that’s why the police now wanted her so badly. Well, they could forget about it. She had no intention of turning herself over to the police, not with Warren Mars out on the loose. Not even with Warren Mars in captivity. She knew quite well how that all worked. If information she provided resulted in Warren’s capture and conviction and they put him away for life, okay. But it seldom worked like that. More likely, the scenario ran to appeals, with the possibility that Warren would be out on bail or, if he was convicted, out on parole after serving only a few years, then declared “rehabilitated” by the penal system. Since he’d know that his conviction had stemmed largely from her testimony, it wouldn’t take Warren long after he’d been released to be around again, looking for her the first opportunity he had. Warren never forgave and never forgot.
No, there was no way in the world she was going to surrender herself to the police. Better stick your head in the oven or jump off a bridge, she thought. Instead, she was going to stay put right there, if Bobbie would let her. If not, she’d make a run for it. There was a whole country out there in which to lose oneself. She was frightened to go it alone, but anything was better than the alternative offered by the police.
Now, for the time being, for the few hours remaining until dawn, she would sit right where she was. Pull the blankets up over her head, hide in the stuffy, comforting warmth of the dark, and pray not to hear a tap or a sudden nervous scratching at the front door.
On Sunday morning Mooney slept late. It was his custom to do so, then to rise about ten, shower and shave, and while still in his robe, enjoy a long, unhurried breakfast, lingering over coffee and the racing forms. It was ritual, hence inviolate. Nothing was ever permitted to intrude.
On this particular Sunday morning, however, Mooney remained in bed. He had not slept all night. He had no particular appetite for breakfast and no great zest for news of any sort. His mood was one of anger and despair — anger that he’d been replaced by his archrival, Eddie Sylvestri, fifteen years his junior, who had already amassed a notable record for himself on the force and who was destined, so they said, for greatness; and despair that after nearly two years of hard, thankless rooting about, he’d at last picked up a strong scent of the Dancer. It was now sharper than ever before and, keenly, he felt the distance between himself and his quarry closing. But he no longer headed the case.
A bright wintery sun came streaming through the windows over 83rd Street. He could hear Fritzi out in the kitchen, puttering about. There was the smell of coffee and the doughy, slightly burned smell of pancakes frying on the griddle.
Still, he had little inclination to rise, even to the temptation of those enticements. His pride bristled far too much for him to derive any solace from the gratifications of the stomach. The prospect of now taking orders from a brash Wunderkind like Sylvestri, whose nose was never too far from the commissioner’s ample fundament, literally sickened him. What had kept him sleepless and tossing all night was the growing certainty he felt, that Sylvestri, capitalizing on Mooney’s hard work, would march right in now, nab the Dancer, and take al
l the credit for himself.
“Breakfast’s on,” Fritzi trilled from the kitchen. That was followed by a stream of coarse invectives out of the throat of Sanchez.
Mooney’s response was merely to lie there, fuming in his rumpled bedding, feeding on his own intestinal lining.
Shortly, Fritzi herself appeared in the doorway, looking cross. With an apron wrapped around her still-girlish waist, her thick reddish hair barely brushed, she made a pretty picture.
“You’re waiting for me to carry you piggyback to the table?”
“I’m not coming to the table.”
“I’ve got a stack of flapjacks out there, and you’re coming to the table.”
“I’m not hungry.”
A look of perturbation crossed her face. In the next moment, she smiled with mock commiseration. “Ah, I see we re feeling sorry for ourselves this morning.”
“Look, Fritz, I’m really not in the mood.” He rolled over on his side and faced the wall.
“I’d think you’d be relieved. I’d think you’d be ecstatic. It’s not your headache anymore. It’s that twit Sylvestri’s. He’s welcome to it, I say.”
At the mere mention of the name, Mooney’s hands flew to his ears as if to block out the hated sound.
“Now, you listen to me, Mooney. You get out of that bed and march right out there to breakfast.” She hauled down the blankets and proceeded to yank him up forcibly.
He tried several times to pull the blankets back up around him, but each time she yanked them back down. He groaned and bayed and flailed the air with his hammy fists until at last he capitulated. Robed like the priest of some esoteric cult, he permitted himself to be steered across the long living room to the pretty little breakfast nook adjoining the kitchen.
The marble refectory table was set with stoneware mugs and bright Quimper crockery. A tall tumbler of freshly squeezed orange juice stood beaded and chilled at his place and coffee gurgled fragrantly from the percolator. Even the surly, sardonic Sanchez seemed more solicitous of his feelings that morning.
“Morning, Mooney. Morning, Mooney.”
Shadow Dancers Page 33
