Mirror Maze j-4

by William Bayer

  Ray nodded. He and his wife, Grecia, were about to have their first child. Ever since Grecia had become pregnant, Ray had seemed to wear a special glow.

  Janek turned back to the room. "I better phone the wife."

  Aaron, perhaps out of sympathy for his exhaustion, offered to take on that unpleasant task. Janek thanked him. One of the Crime Scene detectives showed Janek a pair of empty miniature vodka bottles and a pair of fruit-juice cans in the waste basket. Janek shrugged. Mr.

  Blinken approached. He wanted to know whether Janek wanted him to close off the floor and move the guests to other rooms. Janek told him closing the whole floor wasn't necessary, but it would be a good idea to evacuate the nearest rooms. Ray handed him a Polaroid of the markings on Dietz's chest. Then Janek asked Sue to join him downstairs-he wanted to interview the lounge waiter.

  On the way down he examined himself in the elevator mirror. His suit was wrinkled, his hair was mussed and his face did not show a proper sportsman's Caribbean tan. He recalled the Polaroid of himself in Violetta's folder. Again he felt a flash of anger at the memory.

  The lounge was empty except for one man sitting by himself. The waiter and the bartender were the only staff. The waiter, who had slicked-back hair and a watery left eye, tried to be helpful, but he was anxious to go home. Janek asked him to describe the way Dietz and the redhead had acted. The waiter stifled a yawn.

  "They were getting… you know, friendly. He seemed to be interested in her and she seemed the same. Sort of." "What do you mean?" Sue asked.

  The waiter shrugged. "I think she was making him work for it. Anyway, when I brought him the bill I overheard something made me think they were going up to his room to get a little… friendlier."

  "Describe the girl," Janek said.

  "Young, well built, pretty."

  "That could be anybody." "I know." The waiter paused. "There was definitely something about her.

  "What?"

  "Not sure. Just something. She had… moves, know what I mean?"

  Moves: That could mean anything. Janek needed a face.

  "I want you to work with a police artist. There's one on duty.

  Detective Burke'll escort you. Then she'll drive you home." The waiter whistled. "Tonight?"

  "A man's been killed. You saw him leave with a woman. She may know something or be involved."

  "Sure," the waiter said.

  Janek left him with Sue. On his way to the elevators he was intercepted by Aaron, who had just gotten off the phone with Mrs. Dietz.

  "She took it pretty well, considering," Aaron reported "At least she didn't go hysterical on me. I asked if there' was anything I could do for her. She said someone in the family would be in touch." He paused.

  "The way she snapped up the phone I got the feeling she was expecting something. But, of course, not this."

  "What do you think she was expecting?" Aaron squinted. "Maybe some kind of news. She told me Dietz came East to meet with an executive recruiter. He hasn't been happy where he's been working. Maybe she expected to hear he'd landed a job. Thing is-on the phone I couldn't really tell what her reaction was."

  On their way back up to the sixteenth floor, Janek pulled out the Polaroid of the chest markings and held it up to the elevator mirror.

  The markings spelled out a sentence.

  Aaron read it aloud. " ' couldn't get it up." Jesus!" He looked at Janek. "How'd you do that?"

  "It's written in mirror-reverse."

  "What does it mean?"

  "I don't know. But it's interesting, isn't it?"

  Back in Dietz's room, Janek asked Lois Rappaport what she thought. She showed him a plastic envelope. There was a spent bullet inside.

  "Twenty-two. I found it under his head. He's probably been dead twenty-four hours. I may have something more for you tomorrow."

  "Like what?" Janek asked.

  "I'll let you know."

  "You got a feeling about something?"

  She showed him her crooked smile, then ordered her assistants to carry out the body.

  Janek stayed in 1664 another twenty minutes, talking to the Crime Scene investigators. They had collected a vast number of assorted fingerprints, fibers and hairs-not surprising in a hotel bedroom. Janek asked Ray to get a list of women currently registered in the hotel, and a second list of women who had checked out within the past twenty-four hours. Then he asked Aaron to drive him home.

  There was a three-person TV news crew waiting in the lobby, led by a tired young female correspondent he recognized, a Chinese-American named Meg Chang. When she spotted Janek she sprang to life and crossed toward him, trailed by her cameraman.

  "Hi, Lieutenant!" Janek nodded. "We hear a businessman was shot. Can you tell us anything?"

  She tried to stick her microphone in his face. Janek gently pushed it away.

  "Check with me tomorrow, Meg. I got nothing now."

  He and Aaron walked out the door. The air was cool. A breeze was coming off the harbor. The stark towers of Battery Park City and the domes of the World Financial Center loomed like monoliths.

  Following West Street on their way uptown, Janek asked Aaron if he'd taken a look at the Savoy lounge. Aaron shook his head.

  "It's not the kind of place you'd drop in for the evening-unless you were staying at the hotel. Not many people live around here. It's not like your neighborhood watering hole."

  "So, if the redhead wasn't staying there-?"

  "Then, maybe it wasn't a pickup. Maybe the meeting was arranged. "

  "Or maybe the redhead was working the lounge. Twenty-two's a lady's gun."

  "Or an assassin's." Janek glanced at the river. The water, lapping at the embankment, was black like oil. "I think we want to know a lot more about this guy."

  "What do you want to do first, Frank?"

  "Find the redhead. That's number one."

  Aaron stopped in front of Janek's building. It was a bleak brick and graystone apartment house with an exterior fire escape on West Eighty-seventh. Someone had scrawled graffiti beside one of the pilasters. There was a pile of black polyurethane garbage bags stacked by the curb.

  "Thanks for phoning the wife." Aaron smiled ruefully. "Best part of the job."

  Janek waited until Aaron drove off, then he entered. The lobby smelled of cabbage and cats. A crudely lettered sign was taped to the wall beside the elevator: NO HOT WATER TOMORROW DUE TO BOILER REPAIR. SUPR.

  When he opened the door to his apartment, the only thing he could see was the tiny red light on his answering machine signaling there were messages. He set down his suitcase, made his way through the gloom, found a lamp and switched it on. The apartment was simply furnished, mostly with pieces inherited from his parents, including, most prominently, the old workbench from his father's accordion shop. A half-dozen instruments in various states of disrepair sat upon it. Janek knew it would be years before he got them all working.

  His phone messages were routine, except the one from Sarah. She said she'd received three estimates from roofers and the lowest came in at ninety-eight hundred dollars. He found that information as irritating as the tone of her voice. He turned off the machine, stripped, looked at himself in the mirror. The marks were gone. He took a shower and lay down on his bed. Then he remembered-there would be no hot water in the morning. He went back to the bathroom and shaved. It was 4:15 A.M. At two the following afternoon he sat in Kit Kopta's office on the twenty-third floor of the Police Headquarters building at One Police Plaza. Kit, dwarfed by her huge desk, came around to embrace him. Then she gestured him to the conference area by the windows.

  He presented her with his treasures-exposed roll of film, fingerprint card, audiotapes and Tania's affidavits. He stared out the window while she read the English version. People crossing Police Plaza looked like ants.

  "Beautiful, Frank." Kit's dark Greek eyes sparkled. "How'd you do it?"

  "It wasn't easy."

  She studied him. "Something happened down there." Janek nodded.


  "Want to tell me about it?"

  "Not particularly."

  "You had some trouble?"

  "You could put it that way." She stared at him. He shrugged. "They put on a little show. I played the lead."

  "That's kind of abstract."

  "Yeah, I guess so."

  "Hey-I'm your friend. Remember?"

  "It's embarrassing, Kit. Let it go now. Please."

  She nodded reluctantly. Eventually, he knew, she'd get the story out of him. It still pained him to think about his three days in detention; he felt no desire to describe them to her. And perhaps there was another reason, too. Since he had gone to Cuba to please her, whatever he had suffered there, he had suffered, he believed, on her behalf.

  "Actually," he said, "the way it ended up, I got to work with a terrific Cuban cop. If it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have brought back the goods."

  Kit nodded slightly, sat back. "How do you like your new case?"

  "Too soon to tell. You don't want me reporting to you?"

  She shook her head. "To Deforest, as usual."

  He looked at her. "Thing is, Kit, this little diversion isn't going to fool anyone. There're rumors all over the place about where I went and why. Even Sarah heard about it."

  "Sarah… " Kit shrugged. "Doesn't matter, Frank. The case is legit.

  And the rumors are deniable." She cleared her throat.

  "Remember Netti Rampersad?" Janek smiled. "To meet her is never to forget her."

  "She does come on strong, doesn't she? Well, it seems now she's taken over Mendoza's appeal. Which means "Kit stretched her arms over her head, then set her palms on the arms of her chair- "she'll want to see these affidavits right away. In fact, she called me twice to find out how you were doing. This morning she served me with an order to produce."

  "Soon as she sees this stuff she'll move for a new trial. She'll claim that because Tania's statement contradicts Metaxas's note, the note should be thrown out."

  Kit gazed out the window. "Yeah, that's probably what she'll do. It won't be easy for her to get a new trial. But she'll try. And maybe she'll succeed."

  "Is that what you want, Kit? Are you using her as your cat's-paw in this?"

  Kit shrugged again. "We're cops. Not lawyers or prosecutors. She's got her agenda. We've got ours."

  "What is ours-if you don't mind my asking?"

  "We want to know if someone around here did something corrupt." Kit pointed at the affidavits. "Give Rampersad the ball and let her run with it."

  "Sure. And after?"

  "You got a homicide case, Frank. Work it. It's what you do best."

  "That's it?"

  "That's it."

  She stood to signal the meeting was over. He started toward the door, had just reached it when she called him back. "There is something else.

  I want you to see Dakin. You know, courtesy call. Fill him in on what you found." He stared at her, outraged. "That's a pretty dirty task."

  "it is," she agreed. "So-am I your cat's-paw, too?"

  "We're working together on this, Frank. That's the way I see it. Any problems?" Janek nodded. "If I brief Dakin, I brief Timmy, too.

  Otherwise, get someone else."

  "Sure, brief Timmy. Play it down the middle. I should have thought of that myself." She turned back to the papers on her desk.

  Janek worked out of two interconnected rooms on the fourth floor of the Police Property building off University Place. The outer room of the suite, which bore the words SPECIAL SQUAD on its door, contained four beaten-up desks, as many chairs and a large blackboard at one end. The smaller inner room was his office. He kept it austere, without the usual departmental certificates, clippings about his exploits and personal photographs on the walls. He liked the notion that he worked in a plain city-owned space. He wasn't interested in personalizing it or in turning it into a nest.

  When he arrived, Aaron and Sue were at their desks talking into phones.

  They waved as he passed through. In his office, he found the police artist's computer-generated sketch of the redhead and messages to call Lois Rappaport and Meg Chang at Channel 6. He dialed Rappaport, then examined the portrait. It showed a very attractive young woman with high cheekbones and a superbly modeled chin. She looks good, he thought.

  "That you, Frank?" Lois's voice grated against his ear. He wondered if she had a husband, and, if so, how he felt about her when she smiled.

  "Yeah, it's me. What's up?"

  "I finished the workup on Dietz," she said. "Turns out I was right."

  "About what?" "Oh, thought I told you last night. Dietz was asleep when he was killed."

  Asleep! "How do you know that?"

  "From the drug screen. High level of triazolam in his blood. It's a classic, Frank. KO girls, dope-'em-and-roblem girls-call ' what you like. They pick guys up, go up to their rooms, spike their drinks, take their cash. They used to use chloral hydrate, the old Mickey Finn. Now they carry triazolani. What they do is they grind up some pills, dilute the powder with vodka, then pour the mix into a vodka-based drink. No taste, no smell, puts you out in five minutes.

  When you wake up you can be disoriented, depending on the dosage." She paused. "Only difference here is the girl doesn't usually shoot the boy in the head."

  After Janek hung up, he studied the portrait some more. Yes, he decided, there was something very attractive about the girl, something vulnerable in her eyes. He shook his head. Why would you kill him?

  What were you after? How, could you shoot a person who's asleep?

  Aaron came in. Janek told him what he'd learned. Aaron picked up the portrait.

  "It's looking more and more like she's the one, isn't it?"

  They discussed whether to hand out the police sketch or restrict its distribution. There were arguments to be made on both sides.

  "Channel Six wants an interview. That would be a chance to show the sketches. But we need a lot more before we can name the redhead as a suspect. Meantime, she sees herself on TV, she could get spooked and run."

  Aaron agreed that for the time being they should keep the sketch to themselves. Then he said he was starting to wonder about Dietz. "I've been talking to his brother. I think there's something wrong there.

  Like maybe the executive-recruiter story wasn't quite the truth and there was another reason Dietz came to New York."

  "You following up?"

  "Sue's on it now. She's talking to his company. Ray's out showing the sketch around the hotel and the neighborhood." Aaron lowered his voice.

  "How did it go with Kit?"

  Janek shrugged. "One minute we're pals: ' you can do this, Frank." Next she's the boss and I'm the errand boy." He exhaled. "By the way, we're reporting to Deforest.

  Sue came into the room.

  "I just got off with Dietz's boss in San Jose-Eliot Cavanaugh, chairman of Sonoron Corp. I should say former boss. Seems Dietz was an executive there until six days ago, when there was a big blowup and he got fired.

  Cavanaugh says that on his way out Dietz may have stolen some kind of valuable prototype computer chip from a high-security area of their research lab. They think he brought it here to sell to a foreign competitor."

  "Well, there you are, Frank. Whoever killed him tossed his room to find the chip." "Did they report him for stealing?" Janek asked.

  "They didn't have any proof it was Dietz, so they just reported it as a robbery. Cavanaugh said at first they were expecting Dietz to offer to return the chip in exchange for a heavy-duty severance package. When they didn't hear from him they figured he was out to screw them. Now Cavanaugh wants to send his security guy here. I got the impression he could care less about Dietz, that all he cares about is getting back his thingamajig."

  Janek instructed Sue to run a check on all known KO girls and outstanding KO cases. He made a date to meet Aaron for dinner at Peloponnesus, then phoned Meg Chang. He tried to convince her that the Dietz story wasn't worth her time, but she wouldn't let go. Finally, h
e agreed to give her an interview in front of the Savoy at eight the following night. Then he called Netti Rampersad.

  "Hi! I hear you got goodies," Netti said.

  "Goodies for you could be bad dies for somebody else."

  She laughed. "You're funny, Janek. A witty fellow. Come on down. I could use a chuckle or two."

  The address for her office was on Canal Street, within walking distance of the Criminal Courthouse, but the building, on the edge of Chinatown, was mostly occupied by Asian import-export firms and garment manufacturers inhabiting lofts designated by signs in Chinese characters.

  Hmmm, this is curious, Janek thought as he mounted a steep stairway to the fourth floor. He was almost out of breath when he reached a bright red fire door. A neat little sign on it said RAMPERSAD amp; RUDNICK, CRIMINAL DEFENSE. Janek pressed the buzzer. He heard a click.

  Someone was examining him through a peephole. Then he heard several locks being unlatched. A moment later he was facing Netti, who was standing in the doorway wearing a black tanktop, red sweatpants and immaculate white sneakers. Her face, arms and chest were slick with sweat.. "Ah-so-you come velly fast," she said in the same imitation Chinese accent she'd used when she'd said goodbye to him at the safe house.

  Her office was as surprising as her clothing: a vast open space broken up by columns and decorated with old framed posters for Tangier, Port Said and other exotic ports of call. A home Nautilus machine and a Stairmaster were arranged like sculptures on a bright yellow platform.

  On one side of the loft a pretty young woman was working at a computer.

  On the other, a middle-aged gray-bearded man wearing a yarmulke was talking into a phone.

  "That's my partner, Burt Rudnick," Netti said, gesturing. "This is our secretary, Doe Landestoy." Doe looked up and beamed.

  "What's with the Chinese-waiter accent?"

  "You don't like it?"

  "I don't understand it."

  Rampersad shrugged. "Just seems to come out of my mouth sometimes."

  Maybe you should learn to restrain yourself, Janek thought. He peered around the room. "I've never seen a law office like this."

  "It used to be a karate school. It folded and we picked up the lease.

  The clients like it, those who get to visit us. Mostly, of course, it's us who visit them… in jail, prison, wherever." Rampersad grinned. "I like it here. These old walls have seen lots of pain.