Looker

by Michael Kilian

  It had been forty minutes since she’d been grabbed and nearly twenty since Lanham and the others had been summoned from Cassidy’s funeral mass. The Texan, reportedly quite nervous, had called down to the desk twice asking the girl’s whereabouts. Bad Bobby was likely considerably more nervous.

  “Shit,” said Petrowicz, skidding their unmarked Dodge around a Cadillac limo. “Who’d have thought he’d turn up in Moneyland?”

  “Just get us there, and in one fucking piece,” said Taranto from the back seat.

  They were speeding as fast as practicable down FDR Drive. Other police cars were converging on the area from West Street and the Brooklyn Tunnel. They had orders to keep sirens off and to stay away from the hotel entrance. The cops on the scene had said the Texan’s room was on the twenty-seventh floor, and had a view of the street in front of the hotel.

  Tony Gabriel and Caputo had been sent back to the division. Taranto wanted them miles away from Darcy when the action closed.

  He wanted Lanham as close as possible, but that was what Lanham wanted, too.

  Lanham was in the seat next to Petrowicz, leaning forward tensely and clutching the radio mike as though it were a hand grenade with the pin pulled. He paid no attention to the traffic they were careening by. His mind’s eye was on the door to the Texan’s hotel room. They might have only seconds. Bad Bobby didn’t know it, but for the moment he was in charge of everything.

  Swearing, Lanham realized he was holding down the mike switch. He was cutting off all reception.

  He released the switch. Static and garbled voices filled the car. They were on an emergency channel. Someone was holding down a mike key on the other end.

  “What a fuck-up,” said Petrowicz.

  They rounded a curve so far on the outside the fender seemed only millimeters from the steel guard rail. Lanham expected sparks and an explosive scrape of metal against metal, but it never came.

  The radio quieted. Lanham activated his microphone, calling the captain from the precinct who was now the senior man on the scene.

  “Ten-seventeen at Twenty-third Street,” Lanham said. “What is your present situation?”

  “We’ve got men on the floor, men on the floors above and below,” said the captain, a man Lanham did not know. “But the room is directly across from the elevators. Cannot secure.”

  “Call some shots, Ray,” said Taranto, “before we get some downtown heavies on the scene.”

  Lanham allowed himself the luxury of ten seconds to think.

  “Subject is still in the room?” he said.

  “Affirmative.”

  “Have the girl call the room. Have her say she has the money and is coming up.”

  “Give her the money?”

  “Have her call the room and say she has the money and is coming up.”

  “Are you crazy, Ray?” said Taranto.

  “Just want to buy a little time,” Lanham said. He wasn’t just buying time for the dumb son of a bitch from Texas. He was buying it for himself, so that he could be the man outside the door, so that he would be the one to lay hands on Darcy.

  Lanham hit the switch again. “Have you placed the call?”

  “Calling now,” said the captain.

  “Freeze the elevators,” muttered Taranto.

  “Freeze the elevators,” repeated Lanham.

  “Affirmative,” said the captain. “Already done that. Got a man on each.”

  “Clear the lobby.”

  “Already done that. Subject responding to call. Subject on line.”

  “Are you monitoring?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Everyone fell silent. Petrowicz had the gas pedal on the floor. The only control he was paying attention to was the steering wheel.

  Traffic was thinning. The high-rises of lower Manhattan were very near.

  “Oh shit,” said the captain.

  “What’s wrong?” said Lanham.

  “She fucked it up,” said the captain. “Subject has us made. Subject has terminated the call.”

  “Let them take him, Ray,” Taranto said.

  “No, boss. I don’t want any more shot-up corpses.”

  “Ray!”

  “You said I could have him. I want him.”

  “Five minutes,” said Petrowicz. “Maybe four.”

  They were on South Street, passing beneath the ramp of the Brooklyn Bridge. A red stake truck was heaving into view. Petrowicz hit the whooper for a few seconds. The truck jerked over to the side as they whipped around it.

  “Why couldn’t he have picked Sunday?” said Petrowicz.

  They swept into the depths of the Battery Park tunnel. They road curved sharply to the right, leading around the southern point of Manhattan. The tires were in a continuous squeal; the wall lights of the tunnel blurred into a single line.

  “Slow down!” said Taranto, “before we pile right through the World Trade Center.”

  They flashed into daylight again. Lanham was sweating. He held the microphone tightly, but uselessly. He didn’t want to speak into it again, not wanting to alter the situation in the slightest degree. He wanted time to stop.

  Roaring up West Street now, Petrowicz slid the car across all its lanes, hit the brakes twice, and bounced up onto the sidewalk. Uniformed patrolmen scattered as he skidded to a halt in front of the hotel entrance.

  Lanham swung the door open with great violence and hurled himself up the stairs, almost crashing through the revolving doors. There were only police in the lobby, but there were many. No one moved. Everyone stared.

  “Get me a floor plan!” Lanham bellowed. He held up his gold detective shield.

  Several men in suits came hurrying from an adjoining corridor. Lanham guessed the gray-haired one holding a portable was the captain.

  “You Lanham?”

  He nodded. “Yes sir. I want a floor plan.”

  “I thought you had your division commander with you.”

  Taranto had come up behind Lanham. “It’s our case,” he said. “Our collar. Give him a floor plan.”

  The captain snapped his fingers. One of the men with him produced a glossy sheet of paper. “He’s in Twenty-seven-oh-one—right across from the elevators.”

  “There’s a stairwell there!”

  “Got it covered. Two men.”

  “I’ll use it,” Lanham said. “Give me a portable.” He turned to Petrowicz. “You’re my backup.”

  “You got it.”

  “Have you reestablished contact?” Lanham said to the captain.

  “Negative.”

  “Bad Bobby’s thinking,” said Petrowicz.

  “Come on,” said Taranto.

  “What about the girl?” Lanham said.

  “Broke down. She just wants out of here.”

  “Okay,” said Lanham. “We’ll take an elevator to twenty-six. Let’s go.”

  It was the longest elevator ride Lanham could ever remember taking. He had never given a thought to power failure or breakdown before. Now he watched the floor numbers flicker by one by one, each number an achievement, each flicker a threat. When the doors finally opened, he took a deep breath before moving.

  Then he moved very quickly, Petrowicz on his heels. The uniformed men on the floor were waiting for them. One held the door to the stairwell. Two others were on the landing, flattened against the wall, peering up the stairs with their sidearms drawn.

  “Detective Lanham from homicide. We’re going up.”

  “Be our guest.”

  Lanham made a last check over his portable. “Any contact yet?”

  “Negative,” crackled someone’s voice. “He’s got the phone off the hook.”

  Lanham started up, two stairs at a time. He had his weapon still in its holster. He didn’t plan to touch it until he got to the hotel room door. He didn’t want to use it.

  They made the midway turn and started up the final flight of steps to the twenty-seventh floor landing. There was one uniformed ma
n at the door to the corridor. Just as he turned to look down at Lanham and Petrowicz the door flew open, crash-banging against the wall and bouncing back.

  Bad Bobby whirled through, eyes white and widened. Someone screamed as Bobby made another turn and flung himself down the stairs. He seemed to be flying, a great dark shape with suit coat billowing. Lanham saw something in his hand—a red razor. Lanham was oddly fascinated by the brightness of the color.

  Darcy’s arm was swinging. Lanham had his weapon in hand. He brought it up as Darcy’s arm came down. Something tore through Lanham’s shoulder. The pistol discharged. There was a grunt and a shout. Lanham was turning, falling, his buttocks striking the edge of the stair painfully, as Bad Bobby catapulted by. Lanham felt his finger pull. Another shot exploded, echoing all over the concrete walls. Petrowicz went down. Darcy went rolling, crashing, bouncing, thudding, landing with an ugly sound like a dropped melon.

  All sound stopped. Everyone was motionless. Gun smoke hung in the air.

  “Son of a bitch,” said Petrowicz. He got slowly to his feet, rubbing his elbow. There was running on the floor above.

  Lanham grabbed the railing and pulled himself erect. His left arm and shoulder were throbbing and there was blood flowing through the cloth of his suit.

  Bad Bobby had landed upside down on his back. His head was turned sideways. One leg was flung up against the wall. An arm was caught under his back. His dark blue suit was rapidly turning purple with blood. Darcy’s eyes were closed but his mouth was gaping open stupidly.

  Lanham’s knee wobbled as he started down the steps. Petrowicz reached to help him.

  “You okay?” Lanham asked.

  “Yeah. But you’re not.”

  “I’ll live,” said Lanham.

  They both leaned over Darcy. Nothing was moving but liquid.

  “He won’t,” said Petrowicz.

  There was shouting from above and urgent, hurried conversation over the portable.

  “What’s going on?” Petrowicz shouted upstairs.

  “He cut the john,” said one of the uniformed men at the door. “Real bad.”

  “Is he alive?” Lanham asked.

  “Shouldn’t be,” said the patrolman. “But he is.” He made a slashing gesture across his throat.

  “Goddammit to hell,” Lanham said.

  “You made a good stop, Ray,” said Petrowicz.

  Lanham knelt next to Darcy, as much from weariness and dizziness as from interest in the corpse. He stared at the long, blood-covered razor lying on the concrete near Darcy’s hand.

  With two shots of his pistol, he’d done more than end the life of Robert Darcy. As far as the mayor, the commissioner, the newspapers, and the television stations were concerned, he’d probably just “solved” the murder of Molly Wickham. The case would now be as good as closed. He’d been as dumb as Bad Bobby.

  CHAPTER 10

  Sunday came to New York as a day of oppressive heat. It had been carried into the city by winds that had changed to a southerly flow, winds that had died once the thick, soggy, hazy air had settled in. A.C. had left the terrace doors open to the night and now lay listening to the infrequent traffic passing in the street. He’d gone to bed full of drink-inspired important plans for the day, but now he had forgotten just what they were.

  He lay there, trying to remember, then finally stirred from his sodden sheets and, after managing some minor washing up, pulled on a pair of old khaki shorts and a clean white dress shirt, leaving the latter unbuttoned.

  He was unused to hangovers and this one was gigantic. His head was pounding and it hurt his eyes to look at the windows. He retrieved the Sunday papers from the hall, but he found on their blurry front pages nothing to compel his attention—some sort of screaming police story headlined in the Globe, the stories covering the dull face of the New York Times all to do with consequential national and foreign concerns that interested him about as much as the garbage that was piling up in his kitchen trash can. He dropped the papers on the living room floor with a thud and went out onto the terrace, collapsing into the chaise longue at the end.

  The street was so empty and quiet he could hear people talking on it. At one point, he heard raised voices and looked to see the woman sunbather from the building across the way arguing loudly with some man who had intruded upon her rooftop sanctuary. The man said something rude and went away. She returned to her towel, and the quiet resumed.

  A.C. managed to eat a little something, then attempted a desultory clean-up of the apartment. He removed the accumulated garbage to the disposal chute, but when it came to doing the dishes, he gave up. Tuning his radio to an FM jazz station, he returned to his terrace and spent the rest of the afternoon listening to music and drinking gin.

  Sometime during the day, a David Sanborn recording was played, reminding him of his first encounter with Camilla. He tried to think of what he might do about Kitty, but he fell asleep with his mind full of the mysterious blond model.

  When he awoke again, night had fallen. The city lights were soft in the haze. He stared at them forlornly. He’d known a mystery writer once who had gone to Hollywood to work on a movie project and had returned hopelessly and helplessly in love with an actress. Their encounter had been transitory as far as she was concerned, but the writer had fallen into an abyss of yearning. When she’d stopped returning his phone calls, the man had retreated to a cabin he had up in the mountains. A.C. had gone there to bring the writer back, finding him dirty and unshaven, spending his days watching the woman’s old movies on videotape and, every twenty-four hours, emptying a half-gallon jug of whiskey or vodka.

  “This is how I love her,” he had said.

  He had refused to come back. A few weeks later, it was in the papers that he’d shot himself.

  A.C. shuddered. He had fashion magazine pictures of Camilla all over his coffee table. He gathered them together and put them in a drawer. Still bleary, he stumbled into his kitchen and made himself a fresh drink, hoping it would revive him. Instead it pushed him into total drunkenness. In the way of drunks on lonely Sunday nights, he began making phone calls—to Camilla, to Vanessa, to his wife, to Camilla again, to Theresa Allenby. To Camilla.

  None of them were home. None. Every time he called Camilla, the recorded message was the only response.

  He fell asleep in a chair.

  Monday morning was announced with a ringing of his doorbell. A.C. staggered to the door, forgetting that he was barefoot and still wearing the same shorts and open shirt of the day before.

  It was Detective Lanham, wearing a blue seersucker suit and sunglasses and filling the doorway with his angry bulk.

  “It’s me,” said Lanham, in a growl. “The ‘hero cop.’”

  “What are you talking about?” said A.C., his words slightly slurred.

  “Don’t you read your own goddamn newspaper?”

  A.C. stepped aside to admit the man, then led him into his disreputable-looking living room. He paused to pick up the copy of the Sunday Globe, sitting down on the couch and staring at it. There was a huge picture of an occupied body bag being wheeled on a gurney; above it was a particularly bold headline proclaiming HERO COP KILLS SLAYER OF MODEL!

  “That’s you?”

  Lanham lowered himself into a chair, looking around at the disarray as disdainfully as though he’d just entered some festering slum dwelling.

  “Yes. That’s me.”

  “What happened?”

  “We met up with Molly Wickham’s pimp Saturday. It didn’t go down well. He cut up a citizen. He cut me.”

  A.C. blinked his eyes to clear the blur. Lanham was wearing his suit jacket hung loosely over the shoulder of his left arm, which was in a sling.

  “We had to shoot him. I did. I shot him.”

  The wrongness of the headline suddenly struck A.C.

  “But he didn’t kill Molly Wickham. I mean, he wasn’t the man I saw on the motorcycle.”

  “That, Mr. James, seems to be completely irreleva
nt.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Look, I don’t have a lot of time. I’m on my way downtown to join our beloved mayor at a news conference. I’m going to receive a commendation. Do you know how many weeks it takes for one of those fucking things to go through channels? I’m getting mine in a day, not even that.”

  “A commendation for …?”

  “For doing what cops do in the South Bronx every night. Bad Bobby Darcy came at me with a razor and I had to use my service revolver to stop him. I stopped him forever. End of story. End of case.”

  He rose. He looked as haggard as A.C. probably did.

  “The case is closed? It’s all over?”

  “Technically, no.” Lanham was looking out the terrace doors. “The district attorney’s office is keeping an ‘active’ file on it. So is my homicide division. But you know what that means. I’ve got ‘active’ cases in my files dating back to 1981. This case is going into the files with Bad Bobby as the lead suspect. The presumption is of guilt, not innocence. It amounts to a de facto conviction.”

  A.C. rubbed his eyes. His hand brushed the harsh sandpaper of his chin.

  “But that doesn’t mean you have to drop the investigation.”

  What was wrong with him? What had happened was a godsend. It was precisely what Camilla Santee needed to have happen. Now the police would stop looking for her. She could come out from wherever she’d gone into hiding.

  It was Monday. Her booker would be at her modeling agency.

  “If some startling new evidence is uncovered, then maybe I can get back to this,” Lanham continued. “But in the meantime, there’s the press of other business. They found a girl under some bushes behind the zoo last night. Naked, sexually assaulted, strangled. I caught the case. I wasn’t up. I wasn’t even on duty. But my lieutenant tossed it to me anyway.”

  A.C.’s stomach clenched. A shivering chill followed.

  “That girl, it wasn’t someone named Bailey Hazeltine?”

  “No. We got a positive ID. It was a girl named Claudia Schatz. A waitress from one of the clubs on Upper Broadway. I’m supposed to be on a week’s medical leave and I worked the case all yesterday afternoon.”