Dead Famous Page 11

  “How did you rule out Kidd’s prime suspect?”

  “The alibi was me and my crew. The next juror died at three in the morning. We were watching Timmy’s suspect round the clock, covering all the exits of the apartment building.”

  “How many men were on that detail?”

  “What? Four agents. All day, all night. I’m telling you, the suspect’s alibi was solid.”

  Riker did the math of twelve-hour stints, partners split between two exits and no one to keep each agent company and awake in the graveyard hours. He recalled the drowsiness of that late shift, the first night of a detail when no amount of coffee—

  Agent Argus was turning round to look at the hotel as Jo walked out the front door and down the sidewalk, and Riker said, “I know who the Reaper is.” The window was forgotten, and he had all of the agent’s attention. “I’m betting it’s the suspect Kidd gave you. One of your guys screwed up and went to sleep on the job.” Riker rose from the table, hoping to convey that he was suddenly fed up with this man’s company—and that was true. “You had the bastard’s name and address all this time.” He laid down the cash to cover his uneaten lunch and walked quickly to the door, never glancing back to catch Argus’s reaction.

  The slow hydraulic pump above the restaurant door prevented him from slamming it. Standing out on the sidewalk, he watched Jo’s gray shawl in the distance. She was so changed in this disguise, he had almost failed to recognize her. But even without eyeglasses, he knew that long-legged walk; he knew it better than any man on the planet; he had spent that much time speculating on the shape of the limbs beneath her jeans. In the short skirt she wore today, her legs more than lived up to the fantasy.

  There was no need to close the distance as he followed her down Seventh Avenue, then underground and onto a southbound train. He already knew where she was going. According to his source, the woman was good at spotting and dodging her shadowers. This, of course, was Mallory’s rationale for sometimes losing Jo’s trail. But no one had ever shaken off Riker, not once in all his years on the force.

  It was a cold day, yet Victor Patchock was perspiring profusely. He blamed this on the cheap red wig and the press of the surrounding subway passengers. He had no fear of getting caught by the cop in the brown leather jacket. Riker was so intent on following his own prey that he never looked back at his stalker, a smaller man lost among the taller riders.

  The train stopped at the Franklin Street station in Tribeca. Victor had lost sight of the detective. With swipes of both hands, he wiped the sweat from his eyes, and the white cane dropped from his slippery fingers. He bent low to retrieve it, and the dark glasses slid down his wet nose and fell to the floor, where they were trampled by departing feet. He snatched up cane and glasses, holding each in a tight fist. And now his vision was blurred not by sweat but tears. He turned his crying face to another passenger, and the man stepped backward slowly in that New York drill of no sudden movements while encountering a lunatic. For the moment, Victor, the faux blind man, had truly lost his sight as he fought his way to the door of the train, colliding with those who were boarding. Tears falling, his mouth wide open in a silent scream, he waved his cane in the air, and the crowd magically backed away as he rushed off the train, stepping onto the platform, which might well have been a dark hole for all he knew. He made his way toward what he hoped was the exit, looked up and saw a bright patch of daylight.

  Victor scrambled up the stairs, stumbling on every second step, and out onto the sidewalk, breathing deep and blinking like a mole. He opened one fist to see the twisted frames of his sunglasses, then put them on, lopsided as they were. He fancied himself to be all but invisible now and fearless. And then he spotted Riker—and he was terrified.

  Riker walked the streets of Tribeca, craning his neck to look up at the buildings, unabashed at playing the gawking tourist. He loved this town, terrible and wonderful. Each time he turned a corner, he walked into another state of mind. Though he might flirt with Mexico, he could never leave this great, grand, bitch city; it had him by the balls. His immediate surroundings lacked the hustle of the Financial District or any other distinctive marker. Tribeca was a shifty character among New York neighborhoods. There was no quirky definition to the façades; her face gave no clue to her intentions. Between the sprawling yuppie lofts and the hole-in-the-wall bodegas, anything might be going on.

  Riker glanced over one shoulder—just checking his back. He was vaguely unsettled by the blurred shape of a dark coat disappearing round a corner, but this was beyond squinting distance for a man who would not wear eyeglasses in public. He caught only the impression of a splash of bright red and a long slice of white on black. Was this another stalker, one of the people who followed him day in and day out?

  No. This feeling was only nerves, nothing more; this was his mantra as he headed toward a renovated warehouse, home to a slew of small commercial ventures. The sign in one third-floor window advertised classes in self-defense. If the feds had ever followed Jo this far, that would have been their first guess for her business at this address. After entering the building, he followed Mallory’s instructions, emerging from the elevator on the third floor. There was a sign on the fire door at the end of the hall, large block letters that even he could read told him that there was no access from the stairwell side. Clever Jo had picked this location well. No covert surveillance crew would have dared to use the elevator and risk a hallway encounter with her.

  According to Mallory, the offices that did not advertise their businesses were rented on time-shares and paid for in cash—always a good sign of criminal activity. Neither the tenants nor a tax-evading landlord would readily share information with local police or government cops. And any verbal inquiries by a tall blonde with memorable green eyes would have gotten back to Jo and put her on guard. Mallory must have been so pissed off.

  On his way down the hall, he looked in on the karate class of women slamming one another to floor mats. They were playing roles of victims and attackers, and deeply bowing with entirely too much courtesy. He wondered if these students understood that their training would only help them if a real rapist agreed to strike the classroom poses. Then the guy would have to wait for the women to kick him in the right place. And maybe, given a good-natured pervert, time would be allowed for a second shot if they missed the testicles on the first try.

  He continued on down the hall and found a young man in conversation with an elderly janitor. The pair stood in front of the room that was Riker’s own destination.

  “You’re late. They’ve already started,” said the old man with his cluster of keys in hand. He unlocked the door for the other visitor, not wanting to disturb a meeting in progress by using the buzzer. Riker followed the other man through the door, nodding his thanks to the janitor, as if he had also come here by invitation.

  In order to find out which of the many doors led to Jo’s rented rooms, he guessed that Mallory, poor kid, had probably been forced to plant illegal eavesdropping equipment in every office on this floor. He could never ask her about that, but it was a safe bet.

  Upon entering the small reception area, he could hear Jo’s voice behind a closed door. She was welcoming the new arrival. Instead of following the other man into the next room, Riker settled into a shabby chair with worn upholstery and pretended to read a magazine plucked from the only table. More people entered this waiting room, and now he knew that Mallory had been right about the members of this select group, for he recognized these two visitors.

  The little girl tugged on her mother’s hand, wanting to stop awhile by Riker’s chair, saying, “I remember you.”

  “Mr. Riker!” The child’s mother was more enthusiastic with her own greeting. Fortunately, her voice was too soft to carry above the conversation in the next room. The woman reached for his hand and pumped it up and down, grinning widely, so happy to see him. “Thank you. Thank you so much.” She caressed her child’s curly dark hair. “Not the same little girl you met th
e night—the—”

  The night your husband cracked half the bones in your face? The night you killed the bastard with a kitchen knife?

  The damage was still visible in the broken planes of the mother’s cheek and nose. Riker remembered her injuries well. The catching detective had called him to this woman’s home while the blood was still wet on her kitchen floor and droplets streamed down the walls. An assistant DA had made the call of justifiable homicide, and the confessed killer, the victim’s own wife, was not charged. The crime scene had been released to the cleaners that same night, for the mother and her child were poor. They had nowhere else to go.

  Riker knew that feeling.

  Jo, his new trainee, had been his helper on that pro bono job. And he well remembered this little girl, the witness to an assault on her mother and the death of her father. What a difference. Once she had been a painful reminder of Kathy Mallory at the same age—same look about the eyes.

  Back in the days when he was still allowed to call his partner Kathy, the former street kid had been more determined to hold on to her own emotional wounds, insisting that her history belonged to her alone, and, as a child, she had dealt with it alone—and so quietly, without tears or complaint, without recovery or repair. But this little girl before him now was making a comeback, a return to humanity. Her eyes were no longer adult and wary when she smiled for him. Jo had done a good job. What a pity that there had been no talented Dr. Apollo to heal young Kathy.

  And while he was admiring this less damaged child, the mother expressed her thanks to Ned’s Crime Scene Cleaners for the generosity of providing a therapy group. Mallory had uncovered the function of these rented rooms weeks ago, but Riker had only learned of it today. And now one mystery was solved: Jo’s work on homicides was her introduction to the survivors, trauma victims all.

  Mallory must have been so disappointed to find no money motive here, that far from working a fiddle on the side for profit, Dr. Apollo was applying her old trade free of charge. But trust a cop to come up with a sinister reason for acts of charity. The young detective had damned the doctor with the filthy crime of atonement. And now he remembered the gist of Mallory’s final caustic remark: for her next act, Johanna Apollo would be washing the feet of lepers—expiating what sin?

  Mother and child disappeared into the next room, and Riker listened to the healing balm of Jo’s conversation on the other side of the door. He closed his eyes to be alone with that voice that also spoke to him.

  Mallory slid her lock picks into the back pocket of her jeans, then opened the door to Riker’s apartment. As always, her first impulse was to open a window, but Riker might notice the missing smell of stale smoke and the sweet rot of leftover food. Other emotions were in play: revulsion, and the almost unbearable desire to create order out of this unholy mess. But intuition and distrust held sway and led her to the fireplace, and there she found the evidence against him. There were no signs of a burnt log in the grate, only the flat ashes and remnants of papers.

  A few of Dr. Apollo’s notes? One of these pages might have explained Riker’s cryptic line about the wine.

  Well, this was not the plan—not her plan. Riker was running a different game. There could be no other explanation for this travesty of ashes. It was like cheating at chess—also Riker’s game, or once upon a time it was. There was no chess set in this apartment. She had looked for it on previous expeditions, recalling the set he had thrown away and wondering if he had bought a new one. Evidently he never played anymore, and Mallory sometimes wondered if she might be the cause of that.

  As the foster child of Helen and Inspector Louis Markowitz, most of her baby-sitters had been cops. The Markowitzes’ early experiments with civilians had all ended badly; tender old ladies and teenage girls had proven no match for a ten-year-old semireformed street thief. Out of all her cop wardens, Riker had had the most staying power. He had taught her to sit still for hours—he had taught her to play chess. The child had loved the game, but hated losing, and she had devised schemes of distraction to cheat him. One night, his hand had been faster than hers. He had captured her tiny fist, which had barely concealed a stolen chessman, the pawn that had previously blocked her hopes of bringing down Riker’s queen.

  “Is this fun for you, kid?” Those had been his last words to her that night. She had watched him pick up a letter opener and gouge the cheap plastic pawn with a K for Kathy. He set it on his mantelpiece, then tossed the other chessmen into the trash can along with the board and never mentioned it again—no punishment, no lecture, nothing but silence. And he never ratted her out to her foster parents.

  Secrets had such power.

  Every night for a week, that ruined pawn on Riker’s mantel was the last thing young Kathy thought about before she went to sleep. Guilt was not in her vocabulary; she was simply mystified. This puzzle followed the little girl all through the days. She bought a new chess set, actually paid for it instead of stealing one. Every day after school, she carted her chessmen and her board to Special Crimes Unit and sat for long hours in the squad’s lunchroom—waiting. After three days, Riker finally came in to play.

  She lost, lost every game, game after game, for a week. And then she won. And then, while Riker was still at work, she broke into his apartment and stole that defaced pawn from his mantelpiece. She had it still. It was in the back of her closet, hidden in the small box of a child’s treasures: shoplifted items and baseball cards.

  During her years as a cop, what sometimes passed for conscience was an echo of Riker asking, “Is this fun for you, kid?”

  Yes. Yes it was. She loved to win, and she did not cheat the pieces of evidence that worked against her cases. She won because she was good—and because she was not above unlawful entry, robbing data banks and lying like crazy. But she never destroyed evidence.

  Mallory stared at the ashes in Riker’s fireplace.

  Well, the man was not in his right mind, and she blamed Dr. Apollo for this. Yes, it was the doctor’s fault. Mallory fixed this thought in her mind and pushed away the idea that she was cheating the pieces to hold Riker harmless and blameless.

  At the end of the hour, when the last of the patients had filed out, Riker entered the next room to catch the psychiatrist unawares amid a clutter of wet tissues, ashtrays and paper coffee cups. This was Jo transformed. Earlier, he had only glimpsed her from a distance and only the back of her shawl. Most of his observation time had been devoted to the long expanse of nylon stockings below the short skirt—oh, and the high heels, stilettos, his personal favorites. But now he was staring at her wine-dark lipstick, and it shocked him. Until this moment, he had only seen her face naked.

  “Hey, Jo.”

  She was folding metal chairs and leaning them against the wall when she turned to see him standing near the door. Guilt was there to read in her face and her body language. Her head lowered and her hands folded in prayer, as if asking forgiveness for her crimes. His partner would have loved this moment, but Riker was not enjoying his role this afternoon. He was at war with himself. Always inexplicably happy to be in the same room with Jo, he was also unsettled by suspicion, a symptom of Mallory’s poison.

  Aw, lady, what have you done?

  He kept his silence, waiting for Jo to speak. There was a rhythm to an interrogation and it came as naturally to him as breathing. He was already predicting her opening gambit and laying plans to stun her and knock her sensibilities loose from their moorings.

  “So you’ve read everything,” she said. “And now you want an explanation.” She slowly settled down on a chair, head bowed in the time-honored posture of the police interview.

  How many times had she been through this before?

  His face was somber as he walked toward her. “You know who the Reaper is.”

  Jo shook her head.

  “That wasn’t a question, lady. Agent Kidd told you. That’s what brought you to New York. The Reaper’s here, isn’t he?”

  “Timothy never told me.�
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  “Then you worked it out on your own.”

  “You’d have to be as paranoid as Timothy to—”

  “Been there,” said Riker. “The Reaper was the guy he met in the liquor store. I believe his story.” And now he saw shock in her eyes—and something else. Fresh guilt? Yes, and he nodded to say, I can read your damn mind. Aloud, he said, “But you didn’t believe him, did you, Jo? Not then. Not till he died.”

  “And now you know all my secrets.” She smiled to pass this off as banter. “I failed him—badly.”

  “What about Bunny, that poor homeless bastard? What was that all about? Did you use him for a sparring partner? Is that how it started? Just a little practice for the main event?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Yeah, life sucks.” He stood before her, not bending one bit, forcing her to look up at him as he was looking out at her—as if across a great gulf. “And what about Mugs? I think that cat keeps you in a constant state of alert. Hard to tell when he’ll go ballistic, isn’t it? Good practice for a scary situation. Or is Mugs your burglar alarm? Wouldn’t take much to set him off.”

  “And sometimes a cat is just a cat. I love Mugs, I do.”

  “Then don’t take chances, Jo. Live a long life. ’Cause if you die, you know what’ll happen to that cat. If you’re not around to protect him, he’ll get kicked in the teeth by the next cop he mauls. Nobody’s gonna take him to the vet and put him down with a nice painless needle. Whoever finds him first is gonna stomp him into the rug. Or maybe Mugs will get away with just a few missing teeth and some cracked ribs.”

  She rose from the chair, then picked up a plastic bag and collected a fallen tissue from the floor, clearly announcing the end of this conversation.