Play dead jbakb-4

by Richard Montanari

  "Sure there is." Pistone put down his cigarette and his drink. He struggled to his feet. Byrne stood up, too. He towered over the man. "You can turn around and walk out that door."

  The two men stared at each other. The only sound was the click of the old wind-up alarm clock on Butchie's table, the cacophony of muffled shouts and laughter coming from the bar below. Jessica wanted to say something, but it occurred to her that both of these men may have forgotten that she was even in the room. This was real High Noon stuff.

  Finally, Byrne reached out, shook the man's hand. Just like that. "Thanks for seeing us, Butchie."

  "No problem," Butchie replied, a little surprised.

  Byrne was really good at these things, Jessica thought. His philosophy was, always shake a man's hand. That way, when the whip comes down, they never see it coming.

  "Any time," Butchie added.

  Except this lifetime, Jessica thought.

  "I'll pass along your regards to Sergeant Buchanan," Byrne said as they headed to the door, twisting the blade.

  "Yeah," Butchie Pistone said. "You do that."

  They rode in relative silence for a few blocks. When they made a right on Sixth Street, Byrne broke the quiet. It wasn't anything Jessica expected him to say.

  "I'd see her sometimes."

  "What do you mean?" Jessica asked. "See who?"

  "Eve."

  Jessica waited for him to continue. A block later, he did.

  "After we stopped seeing each other, I'd see her out on the town. Usually all by herself. Different bars, different restaurants. Mostly bars. You know how this job is. We all end up going to the same places. As soon as you find a place where cops don't go, somebody finds out about it and it becomes a cop bar."

  Jessica nodded. It was true.

  "I always thought about approaching her, seeing if we could just be friends, just have a drink and walk away. I never did."

  "How come?"

  Byrne shrugged. "I don't know. On the other hand, I never just turned around and walked out, either. I just seemed to sit there and watch her. I loved to look at her. Every man who saw her did, but I had this notion that I had reached her somehow. Maybe I did for just a second."

  "Did she ever see you?"

  Byrne shook his head. "Not once. If she did, she never let on. Eve had this way of shutting out the world."

  They turned onto Callowhill, then onto Eighth Street.

  "And here's the crazy part," Byrne said. "Do you know what she was doing most of the time?"

  "What?"

  "Reading."

  It was the last thing Jessica expected him to say. Calf-roping and macrame would have come first. "Reading?"

  "Yeah. I'd see her in some pretty rough places-Grays Ferry, Point Breeze, Kensington-and she would just be sitting there, sipping her drinks, and reading a paperback. Usually a novel."

  Jessica conjured the image of this beautiful, tough as nails woman, dressed up, sitting in a bar by herself, reading a book. This woman was something.

  "What did she drink?" Jessica asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "What was her cocktail of choice?"

  "Wild Turkey, rocks," Byrne said. "Why?"

  "Just curious."

  Byrne put the car in park, cut the engine. The car clicked and clacked and shuddered. It eventually fell silent.

  "What's in those missing notes, partner?" Jessica asked.

  "I wish I knew."

  "You think they were just misfiled?"

  "It's possible," Byrne said. "I'll go rooting around a little tomorrow."

  While it was possible the notebook pages were placed into another binder by mistake, it was unlikely. They might never know what was in them.

  The activity log did not give full names for these interviewees. Just street names. Byrne felt weary just thinking about the effort needed to try and track down three people without last names, pictures, or Social Security numbers.

  The point was, something in those notes might lead to their doer, something that would take him off the streets before he killed again.

  "All right," Jessica said. "I'm out. I feel like I've been up for three days straight. After that crawlspace, I want to take a five-hour bath."

  "Okay. See you in the morning. Bright and early."

  "I'll try to be early," Jessica said. "Don't expect bright."

  Jessica got out of the car, began to cross the lot. Byrne watched her go. He rolled down his window.

  "Jess."

  She turned around. "Yeah?"

  "I like your nails."

  Jessica smiled, the first time in days.

  TWENTY-NINE

  As the sun softened into a dusty orange corona over West Philadelphia, Byrne drove to the location where Eve Galvez's body had been found. The crime scene was still taped off, secured by two officers in a sector car. It appeared that the CSU team had not completed its investigation.

  Byrne identified himself to the young officers, passed the time of day with them, commiserating over the sheer numbing boredom of such a detail. He had been exactly where they were many times in his early days on the force. He wondered how badly these two guys had fucked up to draw this one. As a patrol officer, Byrne once had to stake out a trash can in a South Philly alley for a full shift, a trash can in which a homicide suspect had dropped a handgun used in a crime. Ostensibly, Byrne was staking out the Rubbermaid on the outside chance the perp might come back for the weapon. Nothing came of it, except for a sore ass, a stiff back, and a career-long empathy for twenty- something uniforms stuck in a beater, drawing a crap tour on a hot summer evening.

  A few minutes later Byrne stood at the edge of the now-empty grave, a pall of sadness and anger washing over him. Nobody deserved a fate such as this, especially not a woman like Eve Galvez. He thought of the last time he had seen her. Then immediately flashed on the first time he had seen her.

  That's all there is, Byrne thought. There are always memories in between, but the landmarks are the first time and the last time. You never get the chance to do those two over.

  And you never see either of them coming.

  They met at a wedding. The bridegroom was a detective from Central named Reggie Babineaux, an affable, slope-shouldered Cajun in his late thirties who had cut his teeth in the hard Fifth District in New Orleans, pre-Katrina. The ceremony and reception were held at the Mansion on Main Street, a sprawling ornate facility in Voorhees, New Jersey. In addition to a grand spiral staircase, vaulted mural ceilings, and cascading waterfalls, there was also a swan-filled pond and an all-glass ceremony site. To Byrne, it looked like it might have been decorated by Carmela Soprano, but he knew it was all pretty cher, as Reggie Babineaux would put it. Reggie had married into new money. His bride was far from a Vogue cover girl, but Reggie was still the envy of every mortgage- laden, shrew-burdened male civil servant in the room.

  He spotted her as she stood at the bar with a fellow detective from the Philadelphia DA's office. Eve Galvez wore a tight red dress and black heels, a thin strand of pearls. Her silken brunette hair was down around her shoulders, her cafe au lait skin and dark eyes were incandescent in the soft light of the crystal chandeliers. Byrne couldn't take his eyes off her. He was hardly alone. Every man in the room was sneaking covert glances at the slender, Latina beauty at the bar.

  Byrne asked his old friend, Assistant District Attorney Paul DiCarlo, for the details-the 229 as they said in the trade. A 229 report was a basic background form. DiCarlo told Byrne what little he said he knew. Eve Galvez had come to the DA's office three years earlier, had quickly made a reputation for herself as a smart, no-nonsense investigator.

  DiCarlo added that just about every man at 1421 Arch Street- where the DA's office was located at the time; it had since moved to 3 Penn Square-unmarried and otherwise, had taken the obligatory run at Eve Galvez. As far as DiCarlo knew, she had rebuffed them all. Rumors abounded, but according to Paul DiCarlo, that's all they were: rumors. A beautiful woman in law enforcem
ent, anywhere in the country, probably anywhere in the world, was subject to the worst nature of men. If they couldn't have her, some felt the need to demean her, to minimize her accomplishments, sometimes to thwart her advancement.

  ADA Paul DiCarlo said Eve Galvez had taken it all, and had given most of it back. Despite behaviors that bordered on harassment- incidents that might have called for reprimands, even firings-she had never taken it to the bosses.

  That night, at Reggie Babineaux's reception, three bourbons offshore, as the band swung into Robert Palmer's "Simply Irresistible"- a song Byrne would forever associate with that moment-he mustered the courage to approach Eve Galvez.

  The attraction was instant, almost visceral. They verbally sparred for a while, until both realized that neither was going to back down, neither was going to have a glove raised in victory. Byrne was older than Eve Galvez by at least ten years, had three times as many years in on the job, but they quickly fell into a rhythm, a comfort zone that surprised them both.

  Byrne recalled the way she leaned against the bar, the way she focused on him to the exclusion of everyone else in the room.

  Those eyes.

  They did not make love on their first date. They had dinner at Saloon in South Philly, a nightcap at Overtures. Somehow it became 4 AM. Byrne drove her home, walked her to her door. She did not invite him in. Instead, on the sidewalk in front of the entrance, she leaned into him, and gave him one of the softest, most seductive kisses on the cheek he'd ever received. The kiss promised redemption, if not life eternal.

  Byrne stood there for ten minutes after she'd gone inside, staring at the gated door, willing it to open. No such luck.

  Their second date was pretty much over before coffee was served. It was almost over before the appetizers. They made it back to Byrne's place-barely. But instead of the animal rutting they both expected, things slowed down rather quickly, and it became the sort of sweet, knowing intimacy you hope for deep into a relationship, the kind of love you make, say, on your fifth anniversary. It was that secret.

  On their third date, five days later, Kevin Byrne gave Eve a charm bracelet-a bracelet bearing five small golden angels. He'd had her name engraved behind the clasp. He knew it was far too early in the relationship for jewelry, but when he saw the bracelet in the window of a jewelry store at Eighteenth and Walnut, he couldn't stop himself.

  That year, as spring gave way to summer, the crime rate soared. For just about everyone involved in Philadelphia law enforcement, there were three parts to the day: your shift, your overtime, and four hours' sleep. Family obligations and lawns went untended. Relationships waned.

  Byrne and Eve Galvez saw each other infrequently over the next few months. Neither could, or was willing to, explain why. The job and its stresses were the prevailing theory, one they both offered and accepted. They ran into each other at the Criminal Justice Center a few times. Once at a Phillies game. Byrne was with his daughter that day. Eve was with a man she introduced as her brother, Enrique. Weekly phone calls became biweekly, then monthly.

  They had never promised each other a thing. That's who he was. That's who she was. There was so much he wanted to tell her, so much he should have told her.

  Byrne turned his face to the sun for a moment, then knelt down. A bright blue tarpaulin was still stretched over this makeshift grave.

  A few moments later Byrne touched the grass just inside the crime- scene tape. The vision came back in a brutal rush. For the first time in his life he wanted it to.

  In his mind, behind a bloodred curtain of violence, he saw — Eve talking to a man in shadows… her hand in his… an enormous house surrounded by rusting iron spires… the sound of the shovel piercing the soil… the jangle of the charms on Eve's bracelet as her body was rolled into the earth… a man standing over the grave, a man with silver eyes…

  Byrne eased himself to the ground. The grass was warm and dry. The pain in his temples pounded.

  He closed his eyes, saw Eve's face. This time it was from the heart of a beautiful memory, not a dark and violent vision. She tossed her head back when she laughed. She would cross her legs, letting one high heel dangle from her toes as she read a newspaper.

  Kevin Byrne stood, put his hands in his pockets, looked at the shimmering city.

  A man with silver eyes.

  He made Eve Galvez his very first promise.

  THIRTY

  The roof was deserted. The wind blew powdery white grit and blistering heat across it.

  Swann had brought the chair up to the roof a week earlier, had secured it to the roof with a strong construction adhesive. He could not have the chair blowing over, not at a critical moment.

  He placed Katja on the chair, secured her feet and arms. She peered out over North Philadelphia like the masthead of a grand sailing vessel, a sea witch, perhaps, or a golden mermaid. Swann took a moment, reveling in the accomplishment of planning and execution. The flourish-the very prestige of the Seven Wonders-was yet to come.

  He unraveled the seven swords from the velvet. Repositioning them would be tricky, but he knew the sight of her would secure his place in history when they found her.

  A few minutes later, he was finished. He gathered his belongings, walked across the roof to the stairwell, removed the plastic bags from his feet, surveyed the landscape.

  Perfect. He glanced at his watch. Patricia Sato was waiting for him at Faerwood.

  Five minutes later he pulled out of the garage, into the alley, unseen. He would return home, to his dressing room. He would emerge in a new guise, in the skin of a new man.

  He had one more stop to make, and his preparations would be all but complete.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Antoinette Ruolo hated tuna fish. Especially the kind that had those funky purplish brown streaks in it. Even though the can said "Solid White Albacore," you always got some pieces affected with what Antoinette figured had to be some kind of fish disease.

  Some kind offatal fish disease.

  And yet she ate tuna fish for lunch once a week. Every Friday. She was raised Catholic and, even though the Pope said you were allowed to eat meat on Friday these days, she never had, not once in her fifty- nine years.

  As the elevator climbed upward, she felt the reflux of the sandwich. She wanted to belch, but she dared not. The elevator only held five people, and she figured the four other occupants, all strangers, might not appreciate it.

  The car stopped on the forty-fourth floor. They emerged onto the observation deck, and its breathtaking views of Philadelphia. Antoinette took a deep, fishy breath, and continued the tour.

  "Originally, it was supposed to be the tallest building in the world at just over 547 feet, but was surpassed by both the Washington Monument and the Eiffel Tower. Both were completed first," she said. She'd been a tour guide at Philadelphia City Hall most of her working life, having started in 1971 as a "City Hall Bunny," a silly promotional gimmick someone had come up with in the 1960s, a la Hugh Hefner, the idea being to hire pretty young things to give distinguished city visitors a personal tour.

  It had been a long time since anyone had considered Antoinette Ruolo a pretty young thing.

  "It was the tallest building in Philadelphia for many years, of course, and was to remain so forever, until the City and Arts Commission broke an eighty-five-year-old 'gentleman's agreement' and allowed the construction of One Liberty Place, which measures 945 feet," Antoinette said. "Since then, of course, the Comcast Center has eclipsed that honor at a height of about 975 feet, making it not only the tallest building in Philadelphia, but in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as well."

  As her charges gazed out over the city, Antoinette considered them. Mostly middle-aged, casually dressed.

  "Now, the tower of William Penn is a marvel unto itself," she continued by rote. "It stands thirty-seven feet tall and weighs twenty-seven tons. It is still the largest statue on any building in the world."

  At this point a man at the back of the group raised his ha
nd, as if he were in junior high school. He carried a huge backpack, the kind hikers carry on long treks.

  "I have a question," he said. "If I may."

  Wow, Antoinette thought. A polite person. "Please."

  "Well, I've done a little reading in my Fodor's," he said, holding up the tour book. "The book goes into great detail about the building, but it doesn't say too much about the clock. I've always been fascinated by timepieces."

  Antoinette brightened, gave a quick bob to her graying hair. Lord, she needed a perm. "Well, you've come to the right person…" Joseph Swann tuned the woman out. It was an ability he had developed as a child, listening to his father's well-oiled patter during his close-up routines, the facility to not listen to someone, but still be able to comprehend and recall everything they said.

  He realized he was drawing attention to himself by asking questions, but he just couldn't seem to resist. Besides, he had learned the art of makeup and costuming from a master. No one knew what he really looked like, and before they would be able to connect him to the events of the next twenty-four hours, it would be far too late.

  The truth was, he knew everything there was to know about the massive timepiece at the base of the tower at Philadelphia City Hall. He knew that the clock had begun running on New Year's Day 1899. He knew that the faces had a diameter of twenty-six feet, and were larger than even those of Big Ben. He knew that each hour hand was twelve and a half feet long.

  He also knew that the door he needed to get in was just on the other side of the tower, opposite the elevator. He had taken this tour once before, posing as a much older gentleman, a man with a thick German accent, and knew that the lock on the door was a standard Yale deadbolt. With his skills, it would take him less than ten seconds to open the door. Probably much less.

  Swann knew that if anyone noticed he was missing and called security, he would quick-change his clothing and return to the ground level via the south stairwell.

  Most important, he knew about the clock's lighting. He had detailed drawings of the schematics, had pored over them for years. Originally, the clock's faces were lit by 552 individual lightbulbs. Now gold-colored fluorescents illuminated them.