Chill of Night (4 page)

Even though he'd taken a pill, Beam didn't sleep well.

His dreams were a jumble of images. Lani leaping without hesitation from a balcony high in the night, da Vinci smiling at him and holding out a badge, swastikas, pale stone buildings with columns, people lying dead with red letter
J
s on them, da Vinci again, still smiling, pointing at something on the sidewalk, something that had fallen.

He awoke after a dream of waking and finding someone had taped red ribbons all over the room. Ribbons in bows, in loops, simple strands of ribbons.

When he sat up and switched on the lamp, he almost expected to find them.

But it was his bedroom as usual. Their bedroom. He remained sitting up in bed, wondering what dark specter of the mind had plucked his wife from the balcony. Witnesses had said she'd put down her drink at the charity function cocktail party she was attending, then walked calmly and resolutely out to the twenty-fourth-floor balcony. She'd been alone out there, and apparently she'd simply let herself fall over the railing into space. The railing had been higher than her waist, so it couldn't have been an accident. Something like that, something so…monstrous and profound, what had moved her to do it?

Beam had been sure things had changed between them, but was that true? Had it been more that things had finally come to a head? Had it been the death of their only child, so long ago? Had all the years of doubt and wondering that any cop's wife endures finally taken its toll?

The fact was, when people committed suicide without leaving notes, they left agonizing, unfinished business behind. Questions that would never be answered. Guilt that might never be firmly affixed. Their survivors had to learn to live with uncertainty, and get used to being haunted.

Uncertainty was something that had always bothered Beam. Lani had known that about him, yet she'd chosen her anonymous and eternally mysterious death.

Or might it have been an accident? Somehow…

He knew he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. Light brighter than the lamp was beginning to show around the edges of the closed drapes. Glancing at the clock radio by the bed, he saw that it was quarter to five. Morning enough, he thought, swiveling on the mattress so he could stand up. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, still lean and strong but with undeniably more fat collecting around his waist, musculature still there, but now that of a fifty-three-year-old man. There on his right thigh was the scar where the bullet had been removed, a pink-edged pucker about two inches in diameter. He ran a hand through his mussed gray hair and looked away from his image.
Getting older fast.

Well, at the same speed as everyone else. Some solace.

Usually he showered and shaved, then walked to the diner where he had breakfast. The walk was part of his physical therapy to regain at least some of the wind and endurance he'd lost to his injury. He experienced normal stiffness and joint aches at first when he climbed out of bed—he hadn't been easy on his body over the years—but nothing connected to the gunshot wound actually hurt anymore. And he knew he should be pleased; his endurance had improved considerably. But it was only months since Lani's death, and to Beam she was still beside him, still in his dreams and his life awake. He knew she would be for some time to come.

Retirement might have been a good thing if Lani were still alive, but now retirement was like a disease. That was one of the main reasons Beam had accepted da Vinci's offer to take over the serial killer investigation. Beam desperately,
desperately,
needed something to do, needed to be useful, needed something to displace his grief, at least temporarily.

When he was showered and dressed, he looked out the window and saw that a light rain was falling.

Instead of walking, he decided to elevator to the building's garage and take his car.

 

The rain had stopped by the time Beam finished breakfast. He was paying at the register, when he glanced out the Chow Down's window and saw da Vinci standing with his arms crossed and staring at Beam's parked, gracefully aging black Lincoln.

“How come you drive a behemoth like that in New York?” he asked, when Beam emerged from the diner.

“I drove it this morning to keep the rain off me.”

“You managed to find a space right in front. I half expected to see an NYPD placard on your dash.”

The air smelled fresh from the recent rain. The street and sidewalks were still wet. A few of the cars and cabs swishing past still had their wipers working.

“I figured you'd come around again,” Beam said.

“Of course. Want to go back in for some coffee and conversation?”

“Let's drive and talk,” Beam said, and stepped off the curb to get behind the wheel of the Lincoln. He and Lani had bought the car new ten years ago, with money she'd inherited from her wealthy family in Philadelphia. Lani had been rich with her own money when Beam married her. That bothered a few of his fellow cops, but the circles her wealth allowed them to travel in had been useful to Beam. He could talk to people otherwise inaccessible without a warrant.

As soon as he pressed the button on his key fob, the doors unlocked and da Vinci was climbing into the other side of the car. Beam settled into the plush leather seat and fastened his safety belt. As he started the engine, the car began to chime, and he noticed da Vinci wasn't using his seat belt.

“You forgot to buckle up,” Beam said.

“Never do.”

“Shame on you.” Beam pulled out into traffic. The warning chime finally stopped. “We making progress?”

“Computer guy will be at your place tomorrow afternoon. He'll make sure you're plugged into the department network,” da Vinci said.

“He didn't say ‘plugged into' I bet.”

“I didn't talk to him personally, but you're probably right. They think in terms of ports. The thing is, we don't want there to be any glitches.”

“We don't,” Beam agreed, swooping the big car around a corner to beat a traffic signal.

“This old boat's amazing,” da Vinci said. “You don't even feel the potholes.”

“It's like new. We didn't drive it much. I mostly drive it now to keep up the battery.”

“Anybody ever mistake it for a limo?”

“Sometimes. When I tailed or staked out suspects, I wore my eight-point uniform cap and they thought I was a chauffeur.”

“I never asked you,” da Vinci said, “do you happen to be Jewish?”

“My father was. My mother wasn't.”

“Was your father of the faith? Wear a yarmulke, all that stuff?”

“He went to synagogue for a while, then he drifted away from religion. I asked him why once, and he said he'd lost his faith in Korea, and it took him a while to realize it.”

“He was a cop, wasn't he?”

“Sergeant, Brooklyn South.”

“Didn't he—”

“He ate his gun,” Beam said.
Didn't leave a note.

“Shit deal. Korea? The job?”

Beam knew what da Vinci was thinking, that people close to Beam tended to commit suicide, as if he carried an infection.

“That when you joined the department?” da Vinci asked.

“You know all these answers,” Beam said.

Da Vinci smiled. “I guess I know most of them.”

“I dropped out of college and joined the Army, became an MP, then applied at the NYPD when I got out.”

“Because of your father?”

“I'm not sure. It seemed the natural thing to do.”

They drove without talking for a while, the big sedan seeming to levitate over bumps.

“I'm giving you Corey and Looper,” da Vinci said.

“What's a Corey and Looper?”

“Detectives, and good ones. Looper's early fifties, gone far as he's gonna get in the department and knows it. He's a good cop, but he's burned his bridges behind him, far as promotion's concerned.”

“What's his flaw?”

“Too honest. Nobody trusts him.”

“And Corey?”

“Nell Corey. Coming off a nasty divorce. Hubby used to bounce her around. Woman's got her faults.”

“She's a foul-up?”

“More a don't-give-a-damn type. Mind of her own. But only sometimes. Then there was that business with the knife?”

“She stabbed her husband?”

“Not that I know of. A security tape outside a convenience store in Queens caught her beating up a suspect with unnecessary force. What the tape didn't catch was that during the struggle the suspect pulled a knife, which was later picked up by one of several onlookers.”

“It's happened before,” Beam said.

“Probably happened that time, too. But since the knife never turned up, it doesn't officially exist. At base, Corey's a solid cop, and a talented detective. Trouble is, without that knife, she's permanently screwed. And knows it.”

Beam neatly swerved left and squeezed the Lincoln through a space between a van being unloaded and some trash piled at the curb. It was tight enough to make da Vinci wince.

“Andy,” Beam said, “is there somebody in the department who doesn't want this endeavor to succeed?”

“Sure, lots of them. Because of me. They think I'm coming on too fast. You know how it is, I'm a young Turk. Look like and act like one, anyway.”

The last part was true, Beam thought. Though in his forties, da Vinci might pass for thirty. He was too young looking, good looking, and blatantly ambitious to be universally popular. It was as if a small-market TV anchorman had somehow gotten hold of an NYPD shield and was aggravating the piss out of his betters.

“Am I gonna get cooperation when I need it?” Beam asked.

“Oh, yeah. I got the push to make it happen. I've got allies, Beam.”

“You must.”

“You don't wanna ask who they are. I will say this: they see you pretty much the way I do.”

“Which is how?”

“They know your reputation as a bad ass who can't be bought or bumped off course, that
nothing
will stop you.”

Not even the law.

Beam remained stone faced as he shot through an intersection barely in time to avoid colliding with a cab that had run the light. Da Vinci flicked a glance out the windshield but showed no emotion. There was a toughness and drive beneath all that smooth banter, cologne, and ass kissing. In truth da Vinci was one of the main reasons why Beam had agreed to take on this assignment. Not only did he rather like the brash, manipulating bureaucracy climber, but he still owed da Vinci for being willing to put his ass on the line seven years ago in Florida. The way it worked out, he hadn't had to, but it was the willingness that counted. A lot of life was favors owed, favors paid.

A bus hissed and paused in the traffic coming the other way, a billboard-size sign featuring a Mets star pitcher in full windup on its side. Beam hadn't been to a ballgame in years. Looking at the sign, he felt his stomach tighten, a pressure behind his eyes.
Florida…

The bus roared and moved on.

“Send me Corey and Looper,” Beam said, “along with copies of the murder books on the three killings. I don't want to waste any more time.”

“I'll arrange it,” da Vinci promised.

They'd circled the neighborhood and were approaching the diner. There was a break in traffic, so Beam took the big Lincoln up to sixty and abruptly spun and locked the steering wheel and brakes simultaneously. The car rocked and skidded to face the opposite direction, then sedately double parked so da Vinci had room to open the door and get out on the passenger's side.

Throughout the maneuver, da Vinci had braced himself with his feet against the floor and his hands on the dashboard.

“Somebody oughta call a cop!” an elderly woman pushing a wire basket cart full of grocery bags yelled over at them from across the street.

“Somebody oughta tell her people call us things all the time,” da Vinci said, completely unrattled.

 

Bev overslept. That was okay; her and Floyd's West Side apartment was only a few blocks from Light and Shade. Even if she couldn't hail a cab, she could walk it in no time. Breakfast she could make up later, maybe send one of the employees out to pick up Danish and coffee at Starbucks.

She was alone in the king-size bed. Floyd was still in Connecticut on a golfing outing with his buddies. Bev had slept so soundly the covers were only slightly disheveled. She slid both bare legs out from beneath the sheets, then stood up and removed her nightgown, which had somehow bunched its way up around her hips.

In the morning light she examined herself briefly in the mirror. She and Lenny had played rough and she had a few bruises, but nothing Floyd was likely to notice. Not that she cared that much if he did notice; she just didn't want a scene. She was tired of scenes.

The apartment was large by New York standards, furnished with a hodgepodge of furniture and decorated without much style. Except for the lamps. Lamps they had, and good ones. And ceiling fixtures. Bev was proud of the massive crystal chandelier dangling above the dining room table that they hardly used.

She padded nude into the bathroom and took a quick shower, managing not to get her hair wet. She'd dropped by Tina's Beauty Shop and had it done yesterday afternoon after taking off work early. After the wreck Lenny had made of it.

The shower had fully awakened and refreshed her. Yesterday had been a hell of a day, and today she'd better concentrate on work. She knew her business and got the job done, but her attendance record was abysmal. No one from the company had said anything to her, but they might. You could push them only so far. Besides, her job was the one thing in her life she liked. Her job and Lenny.

Bev was fully dressed in her new mauve outfit, seated before a teakwood vanity she'd bought in Mexico and had shipped home, leaning forward and applying just the right shade of lipstick to complement the dress—red, but with the slightest touch of purple—when her heart almost stopped.