“What is limerence?” Trebek said, repeating the word twice.
Each of the contestants groaned.
“Obsessive love, folks. An infatuation that’s not necessarily reciprocated,” the host continued. “Coined in 1979 by a psychologist named Dorothy Tennov,” Trebek said. “I guess that was a tough one.”
“I got to say, Coop, that’s a word right out of your playbook.”
“Never heard of it.”
“But you live it, girl. Infatuation. Not necessarily reciprocated. Like first there was this investment banker type, then the newscaster dude, then the Frenchman with the frying pan.”
“You are so close to the fire, Mr. Chapman,” I said, “you might get scorched if you don’t keep your mouth shut.”
“Don’t knock my girl off her game,” Mercer said, crossing behind Mike as he tried to playfully muzzle him. “I need her positive energy beaming in on finding a killer.”
“So buy us dinner,” Mike said, flashing his best grin at me. “I’m all tapped out after being suspended without pay for three weeks. Oh, and then there’s the dimes I blew on the rest of the vacation.”
“Dinner it is,” Mercer said. “That’ll give Rocco’s guys time to get to the Bronx and see if they can bring Paco in for questioning. I can flip back down to talk to him after we eat.”
“Let’s shoot up to Primola,” I said. My favorite Italian restaurant was on Second Avenue near 64th Street, a ten-minute ride from the morgue and an atmospheric world away, part of the Upper East Side scene. The food was consistently good and the staff took great care of me and my friends. “I’m obsessing about prosciutto and figs and maybe a half order of pasta. Positively manic about it. My limerence for food is so much more rewarding than a romance.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Mike said.
“Now that’s a joke. You’ve probably sublimated more with food than anyone on the planet,” I said.
“Another twentieth-century word I’m not familiar with. Sublimating? What are you suggesting, exactly?”
“She sort of means you eat all the time instead of hooking up with the ladies,” Mercer said.
“Guaranteed less agita in chowing down,” Mike said. “Anyway, I don’t have my car.”
“Neither do I. Mercer’s the wheelman.”
The three of us said good night to the security guard and walked around the corner to Mercer’s car. I climbed into the backseat and rested my head. Mercer filled Mike in on our day, including my story about Raymond Tanner.
We parked near the restaurant and were greeted at the door by the owner, Giuliano. The bar was crowded and busy, packed with well-dressed Upper East Siders who liked the scene as much as they enjoyed the food.
“Ciao, Signorina Alessandra,” the big man said, sticking out his hand to Mike and Mercer. “Nice to have you here.”
“You have a quiet table in the back?” I asked.
“Right here,” Giuliano said. “I’m going to put you right here at table two, by the window, so Dominick can take care of you. Just give me a minute.”
Giuliano wanted us to have the best service in the front of the always-crowded room, but the seating was too visible for a serious catch-up with Mike.
“The usual, Alessandra?” Dominick asked.
“No Scotch tonight, thanks. Something light and refreshing.”
“I’ll bring you a nice pinot gri, okay?”
“Perfect.”
Mike ordered a dirty martini, super dry, with onions and olives. Mercer, who was counting on going back to work, asked for a large bottle of sparkling water.
“You ready to order?”
“Not yet, Dominick. We just need to relax for a while,” I said.
In the three minutes it took for the drinks to arrive, we were already back in conversation about Corinne Thatcher’s death.
I told Mike about the work she had been doing with returning vets, and Paco’s vituperative rage at the president for his brother’s injury.
“Then she broke up with Paco,” Mercer said.
“So you can’t rule out limericks, can you?”
“Limerence,” I said, correcting Mike.
“See, I knew all along you had that word in your vocabulary.”
“I just heard it for the first time tonight.”
“Obsessive love. Paco makes mincemeat of Corinne.”
Mercer looked at his watch. “I should have a handle on that before midnight.”
We were all aware the clock was ticking and the FBI would be on board by midday tomorrow to do the presidential advance work.
“But why the Waldorf?” I asked. “Too much drama, and he couldn’t get it done alone.”
“I’ve been thinking about those drawings on her skin,” Mercer said.
“The ladders?” Mike asked.
“The double helix is constructed on a ladder,” Mercer said, sketching one with his finger on the tablecloth. “Suppose it’s someone with a familiar DNA profile. A killer who’s already in the data bank, taunting us to figure out who he is. The ladder is the frame for his genetic fingerprint, which is in the system.”
“Has to be a really sick motherfucker to plan one this big. If there were fava beans in her belly at the autopsy, I’d be looking for Hannibal Lecter.”
“No fava beans. Just a lot of green salad,” Mercer said. “And we don’t know this guy, because his turf is some other part of the country.”
“It’s a thought.”
“But your SVU buddies have been checking serial killer cases all day,” I said.
“So they need to go international,” Mercer said. “Maybe Canada, maybe Europe.”
When Dominick saw a break in the conversation, he approached us to take our order. I went first, followed by Mike’s spaghetti alle vongole with a grilled veal chop, and Mercer’s salad with a chicken paillard.
It was almost ten by the time we finished eating dinner. I had sipped two glasses of the chilled white wine and was thinking about whether to top it off with a third.
Mercer dialed Rocco Correlli’s number and waited for him to pick up. Mike was staring across the room and seemed miles away from both of us.
“Loo? I’m hanging close, hoping I can do the boyfriend’s interview tonight.”
I couldn’t hear the lieutenant’s answer but saw the expression on Mercer’s face change.
“When did that go down?” he said, listening again. There was a long pause while Mercer took in information, motioning to Mike for a piece of paper and pulling a pen from his jacket pocket. “What street? Say that again. What kind of track marks?”
Mercer ended the call. “You want the bad news first, or the really bad news?”
“The bad,” Mike said.
“Corinne’s boyfriend took his brother home today.”
“Home?” I asked.
“Yeah. They flew to the DR at nine A.M. Two one-way tickets. Hasta la vista, Paco.”
“So the good news is we can have another round,” Mike said, waving his hand at the bartender. “What could be really bad about that?”
“The really bad news is that the cops just found another body.”
“A woman?” I asked. “Another mutilation?”
“Not this time. It’s a guy, actually,” Mercer said. “And you’d better make that cocktail a roadie. We ought to take a look.”
I didn’t get the link to our homicide. “The hotel again?”
“No. A deserted alleyway in the East 40s. What we’ve been calling ladders? First cops on the scene looked at the same lines and saw them as tracks.”
“Track marks?” I asked. “Like a junkie?”
“Railroad tracks. We’ve been looking at the marks on Thatcher’s body like little ladders, just because that’s how Rocco described them to us the first time he talked about them. That’s
the power of suggestion. But these cops find a body right outside Grand Central and they make a different connection.”
“Railroad tracks,” Mike said, repeating Mercer’s words. “What the hell does Corinne Thatcher have to do with something like that?”
“Maybe the killer first saw her on a train,” I said. “Maybe the madman’s a trainspotter. Maybe he . . .”
“Your maybes can fill a trash can, Coop. As usual,” Mike said. “Who’s the dead man?”
“Thirty years old or so. Caucasian,” Mercer said. “’Bout as filthy dirty as can be. Single stab wound in the back. Could be homeless, ’cept he’s got some decent clothes on. Labels and all that.”
Dominick came over with the bill, and Mercer stood up to pay.
“Found on the loneliest piece of pavement in Manhattan,” Mercer said. “DePew Place.”
THIRTEEN
At 10:30 P.M., in the pitch black of a hot summer night, I was standing in a desolate alley in Midtown Manhattan. The city street sign marked it as DePew Place.
Mike and I had often jousted over the existence of old roadways on our island. I figured if I’d never prosecuted a crime that occurred on an obscurely named motorway in my dozen years on the job, then it probably had been obliterated by developers. I was wrong about DePew.
I spotted the salivating dogs before I saw the dead man’s body.
Four guys in civvies were each holding leashes—two with Jack Russells straining against their owners’ grip and two others with small terriers as well.
“Gentlemen,” Rocco Correlli said to Mercer, Mike, and me, “I’d like you to meet Toby Straight. He’s the man who found the vic.”
“Actually, it’s Bertie here who did the deed,” Straight said, commanding his pet to sit.
“Mr. Straight runs a little club called RATS,” the lieutenant said. “Guess all the classy names were taken.”
“What’s that?” Mercer asked, keeping one eye on the medical examiner’s team, which had set up a spotlight over the deceased.
“It’s an acronym, really. Rat Alley Trencher-Fed Society.”
“RATS, obviously,” Mercer said. “So help me out.”
“We had our first go at this here in DePew Place,” Straight said, gesturing at the narrow alley just east of the 45th Street piece of the landmarked train terminal, running north-south for the length of one city block. “We come back at least once or twice every year.”
“I know where we are,” Mercer said. “You’ll have to help me with trencher-fed.”
Mike had both hands in his pants pockets as he stepped closer to the body. “Probably in the twenty-first-century dictionary, m’man.”
“Afraid not, Detective,” Straight said. “The word comes from a much earlier time. It refers to the keeping of hounds to hunt.”
“No wonder you lost me. Granddad wasn’t from the hunting-hound Chapmans. Must have lost ours in the potato famine. What’s your deal?”
Toby Straight looked like a fish out of water in this urban cul-de-sac. His long-sleeve shirt, rolled up at the cuffs, had initials monogrammed on the pocket. His jeans were perfectly clean and neatly pressed, and his tasseled loafers seemed impervious to scuffs. He wore a tweed cap and carried a walking stick or fancily carved cane, despite the fact that he appeared to be younger than I and wasn’t limping.
“We started meeting almost fifteen years ago, right after I got out of graduate school. When I lived in town.”
“You don’t live here now?” I asked.
“No, Bertie and I drive in from Darien,” Straight said, bending over to pick up his dog and stroke his belly. “The group meets once a week.”
“Here?” I looked around the dark alley, which had none of the familiar trappings of a city street—no traffic lights, trash bins, or pedestrian crossing lines. Wedged between the edge of the terminal building and bordering the west side of the US post office that fronted on Lexington Avenue, DePew was now a dead end, filled with loading docks and truck bays.
“Anywhere there’s garbage, Ms. Cooper. Ryders Alley downtown, Bayard Street, the walkways in Riverside Park.”
“What’s the attraction to garbage?” Mike asked.
“Where there’s garbage, Detective, there are rats. And the hunt for rats is what indulges the basic instincts of these terriers.”
“Sorry?”
“These dogs were bred to chase small game—to chase vermin, if you will,” Toby Straight said. “It’s sort of like a twofer. In a city with a rat population that’s out of control, we may not make a noticeable difference, but we do our bit. And the dogs have a good time at it.”
The other Jack Russell was yelping now, tugging against his leash and posing like a pointer. A homeless man came out of a doorway at the rear of the alley, below the Park Avenue Viaduct that circled the majestic terminal, now a century old. The dog barked again, practically howling, as the man dragged a huge plastic bag that clanged along the street as though it was filled with empty soda cans.
“Watch this, Mike,” Rocco Correlli said, lighting a cigarette. “Let your dog go, Mr. Straight.”
“Are you crazy, Loo?” I said. “There’s a dead body twenty feet away and some helpless vagrant stumbling around, not expecting any police activity.”
Straight bent down, holding Bertie over the ground while we argued.
“You’ll see. He doesn’t want either of them.”
When Straight let go of the terrier, he scrambled faster than a racehorse out of the gate, past the ME crouched over the deceased and around the startled homeless man. The other three dogs barked furiously.
Bertie disappeared out of sight for almost a minute before returning with a rat in his jaws, shaking the rodent vigorously from side to side to make sure he was dead.
Toby Straight seemed pleased with the kill. I was revolted.
“We’ve offended you, Ms. Cooper,” he said.
“Hard to do,” Mike said. “I’ve been trying for years.”
“Bertie’s exercising his brain. It’s a form of mental stimulation. It’s in the nature of a terrier.”
“And what does this have to do with the dead man?” I asked. “This—this urban fox hunt.”
“I never think of you as having such delicate sensibilities, Alex,” the lieutenant said. “Or else I wouldn’t have invited you here tonight.”
“Let it be, Rocco,” Mercer said. “I’m the one who invited her.”
“I’m not sure what it means,” Toby Straight said, cocking his head in my direction, “that the sight of a dead man doesn’t bother you, but a dead rat does.”
“I could give you a solid answer to that one,” Mike said, “but I’m hoping to hang on to my private parts.”
Straight turned away from me, gloved up like a Crime Scene investigator, bagged the creature that Bertie deposited at his feet, and then rewarded the dog with a treat. “The Department of Health actually pays us for ridding the streets of these creatures.”
“So you guys,” Rocco said, referring to Straight and his friends, “you call yourselves—?”
“Ratters, Mr. Correlli. We’re ratters.”
“You came in here tonight—when was it?”
“About eight forty-five, sir. Right after dark.”
“You didn’t see the body at first.”
“Not at all,” Straight said. “We know DePew well. As you’re probably aware, it’s owned by the railroad company—Metro-North—and it’s mainly used for mail trucks and as a freight loading area, so there’s no automobile traffic to endanger the dogs.”
“That makes it the perfect free zone for rats,” the lieutenant said. “Workmen create garbage during the day, throwing away remains of sandwiches and food and tossing soda cans. There’s a couple of Dumpsters towards the rear. The rats come out of the sewers and subway gratings at night and go hog-wild.”
“I walked to the end of the alley,” Straight said, lifting his walking stick and jabbing it into the air, waist-high. “This cane isn’t an affectation. I lead off by pounding on the Dumpsters and stray piles of debris.”
“And that stirs up the vermin,” I said.
“Exactly. Tonight a stream of them came shooting out the big hole in the bottom of the Dumpster. And the stick protects me if any of them decide I’m fair game. Then we let the dogs off the leashes and they hunt,” Straight said, smiling at me as though to test my reaction, “like they were born to do.”
“The dead man,” I said.
“When the rats came running out of the Dumpster, there weren’t many places for them to go. Bertie and I were closest to them, and he was pretty agitated. Farther up the alley were my friends, and three other excited terriers. So they scattered, looking for a safe way back underground or out onto the streets of Manhattan.”
I shuddered. Popular lore was that in New York City, where the rodent population matched the size of the human population, one was never farther than thirty feet away from a rat.
“Bertie kept pointing to that last truck bay on the left,” Straight said, lifting his stick. “I let him take me there. That’s where the body was.”
“And rats?” Mercer asked.
“Some of them must have smelled blood—or death—and found it irresistible to stop and explore. But when Bertie turned the corner he was within six, seven feet of them, and they were gone in a flash.”
“Any damage to the body?” Mercer said to Rocco.
The lieutenant shook his head. “I don’t think he was there very long. Might be a scratch on his eyeball, but that’s about it.”
“But he was moved?”
“My fault entirely,” Straight said. “I knew if I left the man in that dark cul-de-sac, they’d be chewing on him in minutes. I dragged him out here, where you see him now, and yelled to one of my buddies to call 911.”
“You flipped him?” Mercer asked.
“I did. If he were still breathing, I’d have tried to resuscitate him.”
Terminal City (Alex Cooper) Page 10
