Groza nonetheless followed close behind his fifty-eight-year-old partner, who was currently the oldest Manhattan homicide detective working the streets, possibly the smartest, and definitely the meanest, grumpiest bastard Groza had ever met.
Goldman was known to be somewhere to the right of Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh when it came to politics but, like most rumors, or what he called “caricature assassinations,” this one was off the mark. On certain issues—the apprehension of criminals, the rights of criminals versus the rights of other citizens, and the death penalty, Goldman was definitely a radical conservative. He knew that anyone with half a brain who worked homicide for a couple of hours would come to exactly the same conclusions that he had. On the other hand, when it came to women’s right to choose, same-sex marriages, or even Howard Stern, Goldman was as liberal as his thirty-year-old son, who just happened to be a lawyer with the ACLU. Of course, Goldman kept that to himself. The last thing he wanted was to ruin his reputation as an insufferable bastard. If he did that, he might have to talk to up-and-coming young assholes like “Sly” Groza.
Goldman was still in good shape—better than Groza, with his steady diet of fast foods and high-octane colas and sugary teas. He ran against the tide of people streaming out of Penn Station. The murders, at least the ones he knew about so far, had taken place in and around the main waiting area of the train station.
The killer had chosen the rush hour for a reason, Goldman was thinking as the train-station waiting area came into view. Either that, or the killer just happened to go wacko at a time when the station was jam-packed with victims-to-be.
So what brought the wacko to Penn Station at rush hour? Manning Goldman wondered. He already had one scary theory that he was keeping to himself so far.
“Manning, you think he’s still in here someplace?” Groza asked from behind.
Groza’s habit of calling people by their first name, as if they were all camp counselors together, really got under his skin.
Goldman ignored his partner. No, he didn’t believe the killer was still in Penn Station. The killer was on the loose in New York. That bothered the hell out of him. It made him sick to his stomach, which wasn’t all that hard these days, the past couple of years, actually.
Two pushcart vendors were artfully blocking the way to the crime scene. One cart was called Montego City Slickers Leather, the other From Russia With Love. He wished they would go back to Jamaica and Russia, respectively.
“NYPD. Make way. Move these ashcarts!” Goldman yelled at the vendors.
He pushed his way through the crowd of onlookers, other cops, and train-station personnel who were gathered near the body of a black man with braided hair and tattered clothing. Bloodstained copies of Street News were scattered around the body, so Goldman knew the dead man’s occupation and his reason for being at the train station.
As he got up close, he saw that the victim was probably in his late twenties. There was an unusual amount of blood. Too much. The body was surrounded by a bright red pool.
Goldman walked up to a man in a dark blue suit with a blue-and-red Amtrak pin prominent on his lapel.
“Homicide Detective Goldman,” he said, flashing his shield. “Tracks ten and eleven.” Goldman pointed at one of the overhead signs. “What train would have come in on those tracks—just before the knifings?”
The Amtrak manager consulted a thick booklet he kept in his breast pocket.
“The last train on ten…that would have been the Metroliner from Philly, Wilmington, Baltimore, originating in Washington.”
Goldman nodded. It was exactly what he’d been afraid of when he’d heard that a spree killer had struck at the train station, and that he was able to get away. That fact meant he was clearheaded. The killer had a plan in mind.
Goldman suspected that the Union Station and Penn Station killer might be one and the same—and that now the maniac was here in New York.
“You got any idea yet, Manning?” Groza was yapping again.
Goldman finally spoke to his partner without looking at him. “Yeah, I was just thinking that they’ve got earplugs, bunghole plugs, so why not mouth plugs.”
Then Manning Goldman went to scare up a public phone. He had to make a call to Washington, D.C. He believed that Gary Soneji had come to New York. Maybe he was on some kind of twenty- or thirty-city spree killer tour.
Anything was a possibility these days.
Chapter 23
I ANSWERED my pager and it was disturbing news from the NYPD. There had been another attack at a crowded train station. It kept me at work until well past midnight.
Gary Soneji was probably in New York City. Unless he had already moved on to another city he’d targeted for murder. Boston? Chicago? Philadelphia?
When I got home, the lights were off. I found lemon meringue pie in the refrigerator and finished it off. Nana had a story about Oseola McCarty attached to the fridge door. Oseola had washed clothes for more than fifty years in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She had saved $150,000 and donated it to the University of Southern Mississippi. President Clinton had invited her to Washington and given her the Presidential Citizens Medal.
The pie was excellent, but I needed something else, another kind of nourishment. I went to see my shaman.
“You awake, old woman?” I whispered at Nana’s bedroom door. She always keeps it ajar in case the kids need to talk or cuddle with her during the night. Open twenty-four hours, just like 7-Eleven, she always says. It was like that when I was growing up, too.
“That depends on your intentions,” I heard her say in the dark. “Oh, is that you, Alex?” she cackled and had a little coughing spell.
“Who else would it be? You tell me that? In the middle of the night at your bedroom door?”
“It could be anyone. Hugger-mugger. Housebreaker in this dangerous neighborhood of ours. Or one of my gentlemen admirers.”
It goes like that between us. Always has, always will.
“You have any particular boyfriends you want to tell me about?”
Nana cackled again. “No, but I suspect you have a girlfriend you want to talk to me about. Let me get decent. Put on some water for my tea. There’s lemon meringue pie in the fridge, at least there was pie. You do know that I have gentlemen admirers, Alex?”
“I’ll put on the tea,” I said. “The lemon meringue has already gone to pie heaven.”
A few minutes passed before Nana appeared in the kitchen. She was wearing the cutest housedress, blue stripes with big white buttons down the front. She looked as if she were ready to begin her day at half past twelve in the morning.
“I have two words for you, Alex. Marry her.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not what you think, old woman. It’s not that simple.”
She poured some steaming tea for herself. “Oh, it is absolutely that simple, granny son. You’ve got that spring in your step lately, a nice gleam in your eyes. You’re long gone, mister. You’re just the last one to hear about it. Tell me something. This is a serious question.”
I sighed. “You’re still a little high from your sweet dreams. What? Ask your silly question.”
“Well, it’s this. If I was to charge you, say, ninety dollars for our sessions, then would you be more likely to take my fantastic advice?”
We both laughed at her sly joke, her unique brand of humor.
“Christine doesn’t want to see me.”
“Oh, dear,” Nana said.
“Yeah, oh, dear. She can’t see herself involved with a homicide detective.”
Nana smiled. “The more I hear about Christine Johnson, the more I like her. Smart lady. Good head on those pretty shoulders.”
“Are you going to let me talk?” I asked.
Nana frowned and gave me her serious look. “You always get to say what you want, just not at the exact moment you want to say it. Do you love this woman?”
“From the first time I saw her, I felt something extraordinary. Heart leads head. I know that
sounds crazy.”
She shook her head and still managed to sip steaming hot tea. “Alex, as smart as you are, you sometimes seem to get everything backwards. You don’t sound crazy at all. You sound like you’re better for the first time since Maria died. Will you look at the evidence that we have here? You have a spring back in your step again. Your eyes are bright and smiling. You’re even being nice to me lately. Put it all together—your heart is working again.”
“She’s afraid that I could die on the job. Her husband was murdered, remember?”
Nana rose from her chair at the kitchen table. She shuffled around to my side, and she stood very close to me. She was so much smaller than she used to be, and that worried me. I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it.
“I love you, Alex,” she said. “Whatever you do, I’ll still love you. Marry her. At least live with Christine.” She laughed to herself. “I can’t believe I said that.”
Nana gave me a kiss, and then headed back to bed.
“I do too have suitors,” she called from the hall.
“Marry one,” I called back at her.
“I’m not in love, lemon meringue man. You are.”
Chapter 24
FIRST THING in the morning, 6:35 to be the exact, Sampson and I took the Metroliner to New York’s Penn Station. It was almost as fast as driving to the airport, parking, finagling with the airlines—and besides, I wanted to do some thinking about trains.
A theory that Soneji was the Penn Station slasher had been advanced by the NYPD. I’d have to know more about the killings in New York, but it was the kind of high-profile situation that Soneji had been drawn to in the past.
The train ride was quiet and comfortable, and I had the opportunity to think about Soneji for much of the trip. What I couldn’t reconcile was why Soneji was committing crimes that appeared to be acts of desperation. They seemed suicidal to me.
I had interviewed Soneji dozens of times after I had apprehended him a few years ago. That was the Dunne-Goldberg case. I certainly didn’t believe he was suicidal then. He was too much of an egomaniac, even a megalomaniac.
Maybe these were copycat crimes. Whatever he was doing now didn’t track. What had changed? Was it Soneji who was doing the killings? Was he pulling some kind of trick or stunt? Could this be a clever trap? How in hell had he gotten my blood on the sniper’s rifle in Union Station?
What kind of trap? For what reason? Soneji obsessed on his crimes. Everything had a purpose with him.
So why kill strangers in Union and Penn Stations? Why choose railroad stations?
“Oh ho, smoke’s curling out of your forehead, Sugar. You aware of that?” Sampson looked over at me and made an announcement to the nice folks seated around us in the train car.
“Little wisps of white smoke! See? Right here. And here.”
He leaned in close and started hitting me with his newspaper as if he were trying to put out a small fire.
Sampson usually favors a cool deadpan delivery to slapstick. The change of pace was effective. We both started to laugh. Even the people sitting around us smiled, looking up from their newspapers, coffees, laptop computers.
“Phew. Fire seems to be out,” Sampson said and chuckled deeply. “Man, your head is hot as Hades to the touch. You must have been brainstorming some powerful ideas. Am I right about that?”
“No, I was thinking about Christine,” I told Sampson.
“You lying sack. You should have been thinking about Christine Johnson. Then I would have had to beat the fire out someplace else. How you two doing? If I might be so bold as to ask.”
“She’s great, she’s the best, John. Really something else. She’s smart and she’s funny. Ho ho, ha ha.”
“And she’s almost as good-looking as Whitney Houston, and she’s sexy as hell. But none of that answers my question. What’s happening with you two? You trying to hide your love on me? My spy, Ms. Jannie, told me you had a date the other night. Did you have a big date and not tell me about it?”
“We went to Kinkead’s for dinner. Had a good time. Good food, great company. One little minor problem, though: She’s afraid I’m going to get myself killed, so she doesn’t want to see me anymore. Christine’s still mourning her husband.”
Sampson nodded, slid down his shades to check me out sans light filtration. “That’s interesting. Still mourning, huh? Proves she’s a good lady. By the by, since you brought up the forbidden topic, something I should tell you, all-star. You ever get capped in action, your family will mourn you for an indecent length of time. Myself, I would carry the torch of grief up to and through the funeral services. That’s it, though. Thought you should know. So, are you two star-crossed lovers going to have another date?”
Sampson liked to talk as if we were girlfriends in a Terry McMillan novel. We could be like that sometimes, which is unusual for men, especially two tough guys like us. He was on a roll now. “I think you two are so cute together. Everybody does. Whole town is talking. The kids, Nana, your aunties.”
“They are, are they?”
I got up and sat down across the aisle from him. Both seats were empty. I spread out my notes on Gary Soneji and started to read them again.
“Thought you would never get the hint,” Sampson said as he stretched his wide body across both seats.
As always, there was nothing like working a job with him. Christine was wrong about my getting hurt. Sampson and I were going to live forever. We wouldn’t even need DHEA or melatonin to help.
“We’re going to get Gary Soneji’s ass in a sling. Christine’s going to fall hard for you, like you obviously already fell for her. Everything will be beautiful, Sugar. Way it has to be.”
I don’t know why, but I couldn’t quite make myself believe that.
“I know you’re thinking negative shit already,” Sampson said without even looking over at me, “but just watch. Nothing but happy endings this time.”
Chapter 25
SAMPSON AND I arrived in New York City around nine o’clock in the morning. I vividly remembered an old Stevie Wonder tune about getting off the bus in New York for the first time. The mixture of hopes and fears and expectations most people associate with the city seems a universal reaction.
As we climbed the steep stone steps from the underground tracks in Penn Station, I had an insight about the case. If it was right, it would definitely tie Soneji to both train-station massacres.
“I might have something on Soneji,” I told Sampson as we approached the bright lights gleaming at the top of the stairs. He turned his head toward me but kept on climbing.
“I’m not going to guess, Alex, because my mind doesn’t ever go where yours does.” Then he mumbled, “Thank the Lord and Savior Jesus for that. Addlehead brother.”
“You trying to keep me amused?” I asked him. I could hear music coming from the main terminal now—it sounded like Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.
“Actually, I’m trying not to let the fact that Gary Soneji is on this current mad-ass rampage upset my equilibrium or otherwise depress the hell out of me. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“When Soneji was at Lorton Prison, and I interviewed him, he always talked about how his stepmother kept him in the cellar of their house. He was obsessed about it.”
Sampson’s head bobbed. “Knowing Gary as we do, I can’t completely blame the poor woman.”
“She would keep him down there for hours at a time, sometimes a whole day, if his father happened to be away from home. She kept the lights off, but he learned to hide candles. He would read by candlelight about kidnappers, rapists, mass murderers, all the other bad boys.”
“And so, Dr. Freud? These mass killers were his boyhood role models?”
“Something like that. Gary told me that when he was in the cellar, he would fantasize about committing murders and other atrocities—as soon as he was let out. His idée fixe was that release from the cellar would give him back his freedom and power. He’d sit in the cellar obse
ssing on what he was going to do as soon as he got out. You happen to notice any cellarlike locations around here? Or maybe at Union Station?”
Sampson showed his teeth, which are large and very white, and can give you the impression that he likes you maybe more than he does. “The train tunnels represent the cellar of Gary’s childhood house, right? When he gets out of the tunnels, all hell breaks loose. He finally takes his revenge on the world.”
“I think that’s part of what’s going on,” I said. “But it’s never that simple with Gary. It’s a start anyway.”
We had reached the main level of Penn Station. This was probably how it had been when Soneji arrived here the night before. More and more I was thinking that the NYPD had it right. Soneji could definitely be the Penn Station killer, too.
I saw a mob of travelers lingering beneath the flipping numbers of the Train Departures board. I could almost see Gary Soneji standing where I was now, taking it all in—released from the cellar to be the Bad Boy again! Still wanting to do famous crimes and succeeding beyond his craziest dreams.
“Dr. Cross, I presume.”
I heard my name as Sampson and I wandered into the brightly lit waiting area of the station. A bearded man with a gold ear stud was smiling at his small joke. He extended his hand.
“I’m Detective Manning Goldman. Good of you to come. Gary Soneji was here yesterday.” He said it with absolute certainty.
Chapter 26
SAMPSON AND I shook hands with Goldman and also his partner, a younger detective who appeared to defer to Goldman. Manning Goldman wore a bright blue sport shirt with three of the buttons undone. He had on a ribbed undershirt that exposed silver and reddish gold chest hairs sprouting toward his chin. His partner was dressed from head to toe in black. Talk about your odd couples, but I still preferred Oscar and Felix.
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