Looker Page 13

“And where did you come by this notion, sir?”

  “I am a newspaperman. I put things together. That’s what I’ve been doing all day. I don’t mean to be rude. I know it must be irritating to find me waiting at your door, but I couldn’t reach you by phone. I want to talk to you.”

  Her eyes came back to his. To his surprise, she put her hand on his arm.

  “I’ll talk to you, Mr. James, but not tonight, please. It’s so late.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow. I’ll call you.”

  “Will you?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll call you.”

  “You won’t put any of this in the newspaper? Please?”

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Her hand came from his arm as though released by the flip of a switch. She turned from him without speaking. She paused once at the door, then slipped inside. He heard the door click as it closed behind her. He stared at the place where she had been.

  At the end of the street, a taxi moving down Fifth Avenue passed along the shadowy darkness of Central Park. Behind him, somewhere in the city, a siren sounded and then was gone. He took a deep breath, reliving the past few minutes. The touch of her hand on his arm had affected him like a kiss.

  The first blow struck him in the back of the neck, sending a pain down his spine and making his eyes see white. He tried to turn, but he was hit again—two quick punches in his lower back. He sagged, his knees crumpling, struck a fourth time on the side of his face. He fell forward, scraping his right cheek against the rough pavement. He tried to turn over but was kicked in the hip and then again in his ribs. He wanted to cry out but all he could produce was a hideous moan.

  “Leave her alone!” The voice was a man’s. The words were uttered separately, and meanly. “Stay away from her!”

  The last blow was a kick to the side of his head. A.C. did manage to roll over, but by then his consciousness left him in a drowning roar.

  CHAPTER 6

  The word had come from the street, from snitches, from people in the neighborhood. Bad Biker Bobby Darcy had taken up residence in a building just off Lenox Avenue north of Central Park. He’d been seen leaving and entering at least twice that day and his motorcycle was now in the first-floor hallway of the building. It was a black machine, similar to the one seen by witnesses at the murder scene, though the license plate bore a different number. License plates could be changed. It was just a matter of breaking the law.

  Despite the late hour, a stereo inside the apartment was booming out raunchy blues music, the bass notes reverberating from the door. There was some laughter. The police were waiting for the noise to stop and Bobby and the others to go to sleep. They wished he were not a night person.

  Bad Bobby was not yet an official suspect in the Wickham case. The paperwork they had in hand authorized an arrest for questioning and for violation of his prison release agreement. But the team assembled for the arrest was worthy of a J. Edgar Hoover G-Man manhunt.

  Tony Gabriel and Charley Caputo were positioned in the second-floor hallway, on either side of the apartment door, backed up by two detectives from the precinct and several uniformed officers. Pat Cassidy and another precinct detective were on the fire escape outside the window of the apartment’s rear bedroom. Two uniformed men were in the alleyway below. More were on the street and one was on a rooftop opposite the building. There were too many cars on the scene and too many kids hanging around. The night was warm and the street was as busy as day. Bad Bobby could afford a telephone.

  It was a black neighborhood beginning to go white. The Ninety-sixth Street corridor that City Hall had long established as an unofficial boundary between the affluent Upper East Side and the East Harlem ghetto was quietly and quickly being invaded by developers and speculators who had bought up most of the property along the north edge of Central Park. The high-rises would not be long in coming. In time, Central Park North would be an address to compete with Central Park West and South. It would offer spectacular views stretching the length of the park south to the towers of midtown. Lanham saw the day when luxury high-rises would cover Manhattan all the way up to the Harlem River. Then let the black people complain about substandard housing.

  Lanham and Petrowicz were parked a block away from Bad Bobby’s building, in sight of some of the backup units, but they were there to observe, not participate—unless something went wrong and their assistance was needed. Lieutenant Taranto had joined them.

  “He’s going to have ladies with him,” Lanham said.

  “He’s a ladies’ man,” said Taranto.

  “‘This is just for questioning,’ you said.”

  “This is the third time you’ve reminded me of that, Ray. You could have had the fucking bust. You’re the investigating officer.”

  “You could also call this off.”

  “We’ve got two guys from the D.A.’s office up here. They don’t want to go home with nothing.”

  “I just want to go home,” said Petrowicz.

  They all needed a shave. Taranto’s growth of beard was dark, Petrowicz’s a reddish gold color. Lanham’s stubble was already gone to gray, very light in color. If he were a full-blooded white man, he could have gone a couple of days without shaving before much was noticed. Against his brown skin, the beard was a silver sheen in the light from the streetlamp.

  Lanham’s skin itched. He also needed clean socks and a clean shirt. He was hungry again, though a little queasy from the coffee and cheeseburgers.

  “I think we should all go home,” he said.

  “Cut the bullshit, Ray,” Taranto said, lighting a new cigarette. “You can’t tell me you’d close this investigation without having a few words with Bad Bobby.”

  “I’d talk to him, sure. I’d catch him on the street in a couple of days and talk to him. But this? I’ll bet you’re planning on a line-up and the whole damned show.”

  “Maybe. Can’t hurt.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  The car radio crackled. Petrowicz answered it, then summoned Taranto.

  “It’s for you, boss. A patch from a landline.”

  The lieutenant got into the car. He spoke, then listened, then swore.

  “Shit,” he said, handing the microphone back to Petrowicz. “That goddamn New York Globe has a piece in tomorrow’s paper saying we’re looking for Bad Biker Bobby.”

  “Quoting who?”

  “Quoting ‘it was learned.’”

  In the Plaza, Lanham had told A.C. James “not for quote.” What did he think that meant? Where in hell had he been a police reporter, Southampton?

  “In a news story, boss?”

  “No, in that candy-assed society column your great eyewitness writes. Do you suppose Bad Bobby reads the society columns, Ray?”

  “No, I don’t suppose he does.”

  “Well, let’s fucking hope not.”

  The first shot crackled and echoed. It was too loud to have been fired from inside the building, yet it had to have been. The echo vanished in a sudden roar and baffle of return fire. Taranto started running. Lanham and Petrowicz looked at each other, then followed.

  Tony Gabriel was not six feet from the door when the first shot went off. He saw the wood splinter as the round went through and dug itself into the opposite wall with a puff of paint and plaster.

  He fired his magnum several times through the door, kicked at the lock twice, then flattened himself back against the wall as the door swung open. He got off two more shots through the opening, then rolled through the doorway. Caputo followed him in, shooting. The two precinct detectives came after, emptying their pieces as Gabriel reloaded his, lying on his back on the floor.

  There was movement to the right, behind a couch. Gabriel fired twice, then rolled to the opposite wall. More gunshots killed the stereo in mid-note.

  “Tony!” shouted Caputo. “He’s goin’ out the window!”

  Gabriel saw only an instant’s black silhouette. It was gone be
fore he could get off another shot. Cassidy and a precinct detective were out on the fire escape. They’d get Bobby. That was the plan.

  The room was filled with gunpowder smoke and smell and all the lights were blazing, but it was eerily quiet. Gabriel got up slowly, keeping his back pressed against the wall, his big pistol held pointed toward the window. Caputo moved past him, stepping into the room.

  Utter silence, then noise and shouts from out on the fire escape.

  “We got an officer down!”

  The apartment was full of uniformed men when Lanham and the lieutenant entered, Petrowicz following behind them. Except for a sergeant already talking on the telephone, they were standing uselessly and stupidly. There were figures outside the window on the fire escape.

  Furniture was overturned and whiskey was dripping onto the floor from a bottle that had been knocked over. There was a moaning coming from behind the couch, and then coughing, a woman’s cough. One of the uniformed men was back there, kneeling.

  Taranto pulled the couch away. A very tall, very naked black woman was lying curled up against the wall, clutching her knees. Blood was flowing from between them. Lanham could see one gunshot wound above her right breast. It was oozing blood and mucus that ebbed and flowed—what the military called a sucking chest wound. Her eyes were crazy with dope or pain or death. She was staring at them, but not comprehending what she saw.

  “I called for an ambulance,” the sergeant said.

  “Where’s Darcy?” Taranto said.

  Before the sergeant could answer, Gabriel backed in from the window.

  “Where’s Darcy?” the lieutenant repeated.

  Gabriel blinked. “Cassidy’s dead.”

  “Shit!” said Petrowicz.

  “Where the fuck is Darcy?”

  Gabriel looked down at the moaning black woman vaguely, as though she were just an object out of place.

  “He went up the fire escape,” Gabriel said. “Pat took some rounds and a precinct guy got knocked off the fire escape in the alley. He may have broken his back.”

  “Did you order a pursuit?”

  “Yeah. There’s precinct guys all over the roof. Charley’s up there.” Gabriel was shaking.

  Taranto snatched up the microphone from the portable of one of the uniformed men. He began shouting into it.

  The black woman’s arms lost their grip on her knees. Her legs slipped forward and open. The blood was spreading in a widening pool on the wooden floor.

  Petrowicz eased past the others and went into the bedroom.

  “There’s another broad here,” he said. “I don’t think she’s hit.”

  Lanham joined him, turning on a light. It was a white woman, a sallow blonde with long, pendulous breasts. She was also naked, sitting cross-legged on a bed, her back against the wall.

  “She’s okay,” Petrowicz said. “More or less.”

  She was stoned to brain mush, less aware of the world around her than the dying woman in the living room.

  Taranto was at his side. “I called a ten thirty-three,” he said. “A ten thirty-three, a ten thirteen—every fucking thing.”

  Lanham looked back at Gabriel. Taranto did the same.

  “They fired first,” Gabriel said. “We saw the round come through the door.”

  Taranto rubbed his eyes and then lowered his hands, gazing bleakly at the giggling blond woman. He shock his head, and then lit a cigarette.

  “If you had to wax one of the chippies, Tony, why the fuck couldn’t you have taken out the white one?”

  Now Lanham felt ill. It was the first time in years.

  “Somebody get me the mayor’s office,” Taranto said. “They got a guy there waiting to hear from me.”

  A.C. heard people speaking. There was an old man’s voice, speaking from high above him. More faintly, there was an old woman’s voice. They were talking about him, discussing the blood on his face with some seriousness, but also with much detachment. He might have been some object they had come upon, or a corpse in a casket.

  Nearer, he heard the tinkle of a tiny piece of metal. When it sounded again, he slowly, painfully opened his eyes and found himself looking into the face of a small white furry dog. Startled by his eyes, it skittered back and gave a quick yelp, then leaned forward again, sniffing and peering. It was on a leash and had a small metal tag hanging from its collar. Behind the dog, A.C. could see a man’s legs—highly polished black shoes and gray flannel trousers.

  He stirred slightly and felt a hundred kinds of pain in as many places. His head was resting against something firm covered by something soft. A cool hand was touching his cheek, a woman’s hand. He could smell perfume, an expensive scent, the kind the women he lunched with wore. He was reminded of when he was a small boy and a friend of his mother’s who always wore too much perfume would come into his room to kiss him good night. He had always slept so wonderfully well on those nights. He’d remembered that woman all his life. He closed his eyes, happy with the memory. Sleep came very near.

  “Shouldn’t we call the police?” the old man’s voice said. The man repeated the entire sentence again, as though it were a philosophical question. “Shouldn’t we call the police?”

  “Haven’t had a mugging in this neighborhood for years,” the old woman said. “It would be terrible to have all that start up again.”

  “We should call the police,” the old man pronounced.

  “It’s all right. I’ll take care of it. He’s a friend.”

  It was a young woman’s voice, speaking very close to his ear. It was wonderfully familiar—the strange, aristocratic accent; the warm, mellow tone.

  A.C. twisted his head, wincing, and looked up. There were Camilla Santee’s wide blue-gray eyes, full of fear, sorrow, and an intense curiosity. She stroked his bruised cheek with her fingers, keeping the long nails away from his skin.

  He wanted to lie there forever, but he slowly sat up, fighting dizziness. He wanted the old man and woman to go away.

  “Are you all right?” he heard Camilla say.

  “I don’t know. I think so.” His speech was mushy. His lower lip was swollen.

  “I’ll take care of him,” Santee said. “Thank you for your help.”

  The old couple hesitated, then began to move away.

  “You should call the police, dear,” said the old woman. “We can’t have this.”

  “Thank you,” Camilla said. “Thank you.”

  She shifted and leaned to look at A.C.’s face, her eyes searching for serious injury.

  “Did you see who did this to you?” she said.

  “No. It was a man. Hit me from behind. Kept hitting me.”

  “Come inside. I want to see how badly you’re hurt.”

  “Said I should stay away from you.”

  “I said the same thing, sir. Can you stand?”

  “I’ll try.”

  With her help, her arm around his waist, his arm around her shoulders, he managed it. He stood a moment, wobbly, his vision a little blurry. His ribs hurt, but he didn’t think any were broken. His lower back hurt awfully.

  “Do you know who it was?” he asked. “He said I should leave you alone.”

  “Let me get you inside.”

  She kept her arm around him until they reached the door and she had to busy herself with her keys. He managed thereafter on his own, hobbling after her into the apartment.

  It was small and crowded with too much furniture. The walls were covered with so many paintings it was hard even to see the pattern of the wallpaper. There were bookcases everywhere, all full. It amazed him that a fashion model would have so many books—that she would have any.

  Camilla took him to an overstuffed love seat with an expensive floral pattern, gently easing him into a reclining position with his head supported by a large cushion. If he was bleeding, she didn’t seem concerned about stains.

  “Lie still,” she said softly. “I’ll get something.”

  He listened as she moved away, down a s
hort hallway to another room. He heard a cabinet door open and close, and then a drawer. Water was running, and then it stopped.

  She returned quickly, kneeling before him, a wet beige towel in her hand. Her face was full of worry.

  “Do you think you need to go to a hospital? Do you want to see a doctor?” She hesitated.

  He had no idea. When he’d been shot in the leg in Northern Ireland, a doctor had come almost at once. No decision had been required of him.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Carefully, she pressed the cold, wet towel against his face. It was painful, but he did not cry out. She began to cleanse the torn skin. When at length she took the towel away, it felt as though part of his face came with it. There was blood on the towel, but much less than he had expected.

  “You need something on this,” she said. “All I have are Band-Aids.”

  Holding the towel uselessly, she rose. Noticing the window, she abruptly went over to it and pulled down the shade.

  “If you want to go to the hospital, I’ll take you. I hope you don’t need to, but I will.”

  “I’ll be all right.” He said it as strongly as possible.

  “I’ll get something for you. There’s a late night drugstore over on Lexington. Can you wait here till I come back? It won’t take long.”

  “I’ll be fine.” He sat up. His mind was clearing. She looked so beautiful in the soft light of the table lamp.

  “Is there anything else I can get you?”

  “I could use a drink.”

  “Of course. I haven’t much. I have some brandy.”

  “A brandy would be wonderful.”

  She went this time into the kitchen, returning with a very expensive bottle of French cognac and a large snifter. A jelly glass would have done. He supposed Camilla Santee wouldn’t have allowed a jelly glass into her house.

  He took a sip. “That helps.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t let anyone in. Don’t answer the phone. Just wait for me.”

  “A hundred years.”

  She smiled nervously, then took up her purse and left. There were three dead-bolt locks on her door and she turned them all from outside with her keys.