Gladyss of the Hunt (9 page)

“No! You're
not
supposed to eat sushi on a Sunday,” some young cell-phone retard babbled as he walked beside us. “Cause the last catch is on Friday.”

“It wasn't until cell phones were invented that I realized exactly how dumb most people are,” Bernie declared.

“Yeah, we went out last night, but absolutely nothing happened!”
the cellphoner either didn't hear or just ignored him.

“'Cause you're a fucking idiot!” Bernie yelled right in his face. The kid stopped dead on the sidewalk, allowing us to continue without his moronic accompaniment.

Along the east side of Eighth Avenue, from Forty-second down to Fortieth Street, almost all the buildings had either been torn down or were boarded up.

“Bert, my old partner, told me he once dreamed that somewhere on the north slope of Alaska there was a place where all the buildings that are torn down here miraculously reappear.”

Did that include all the rats and roaches, and the riffraff?”

Bernie laughed. “Can you imagine, in the middle of some vast wasteland coming upon a frozen city consisting of all the old tenements and office buildings that this city has sloughed off over the years?” he asked. “The old Penn Station, the two former Madison Square Gardens. . .”

“I guess the Twin Towers would be there . . .”

“I wouldn't mind going there after I die,” he said. “If you don't look carefully, I mean really look, you can miss how quickly this city shakes off its old skin. It's always growing another, taller, glistening new one. In a matter of months there'll be a row of shiny new office buildings there.” Bernie pointed across the street. Word was, the New York Times was going to move its offices to somewhere along Eighth Avenue.

When we reached Forty-first Street, I noticed Bernie was staring dead ahead. Like a pitbull after a rat, he had caught a scent.

I tried to figure out who he was looking at, but before I could ask him, he pulled out an inhaler and gave it a hard shake, then pressed it three times while inhaling deeply.

“Would you mind looking behind me and tell me if you see any cops?”

“Why?” I asked as I turned, wondering if we needed back-up.

An older African American man in an army coat brushed by me, holding a pair of old shopping bags in each hand. Bernie whipped his arms up in a mock yawn, clocking the poor guy right on the jaw and sending him to the pavement.

“Hey! I don't see many faces from the old days,” Farrell said, eagerly helping the poor man to his feet. The contents of his shopping
bags—packaged bundles of new tube socks—three for ten dollars—were scattered along the icy ground.

“Please, I don't want no trouble,” the guy said, searching for the black knit beanie that had fallen off his head. I wasn't sure what to do.

“Say hello to Youngblood Barnett,” Farrell said to me. “Twenty years ago, he helped hookers off the mean streets of Brooklyn.” Youngblood was no longer young.

“Officer,” he replied, “I've been out for ten years and I don't do nothing no more.”

“Hold on,” Bernie grabbed him. “Last time we talked was in Queens Criminal Court.”

“Yeah, and I didn't get out for twelve years.” Youngblood replied.

“We still have to catch up about Lily,” Bernie said, and he lunged forward, causing Barnett to jump back and smack his head into a bronze statue of Jackie Gleason's famed TV character, Ralph Kramden, which had been temporarily installed in front of the bus depot.

“You've got to be careful,” Bernie said with a friendly grin.

“Look, I didn't know she worked for you, did I?” Youngblood winced, holding his scalp. “And why would I deliberately kill my best earner?”

“Let's see, that was around twenty years ago,” Sergeant Bernie replied, “Lily would've been near forty now. She'd probably have two kids and a husband somewhere in Elmhurst.”

“I'm not the only one here who wasted someone,” Youngblood answered, loud enough for the few bystanders to hear.

Crazed, Sergeant Farrell pulled the guy backwards over his knee, knocking him to the ground again, then he bent his knee on the guy's chest. He leaned slowly on Youngblood's turkey gobbler with his other knee. A crowd started forming.

“Lily told me she wanted a little boy and girl, so that's two other people you killed.” He smacked the old guy in the face. At that point I heard someone in the crowd mutter, “police brutality.”

“Come on Bernie, we've got an audience,” I nudged.

“Take a fucking look at a killer,” Bernie yelled to me, but really to the surrounding crowd. “he used to beat up on innocent white girls for a living.”

“The AIDS would've killed her by now anyway.” Old Youngblood mumbled, squeezing out from under him and struggling to his feet. “It got them all in the end.”

Bernie made a pained expression, then smacked the former pimp upside his skull, knocking a small flesh-colored wedge out of the old man's head.

“I know what you did in Bushwick,” the ex-con squealed. “You wasted Tyrone saying it was a holdup, but we both know he never woulda drawn on you!”

When a pair of Port Authority cops came out of the bus station, I showed them my badge and explained that a drunk and disorderly situation had turned into resisting arrest. Bernie backed off, and the ex-con spat bloody saliva on the icy sidewalk. With the PA cops and the crowd watching, we couldn't just let the guy walk, so I pushed Youngblood against a wall and read him his rights.

As I cuffed him, I saw Bernie pick up the thing that had fallen out of Youngblood's head.

“Give it here,” I said, before he could stomp on it. He tossed me a waxy hearing aid.

Somehow I sensed that I was now doing his old partner's job—reining Bernie in. After a minute, when most of the people had dispersed, I uncuffed Youngblood and handed him the hearing aid. The former pimp grabbed the one shopping bag that wasn't ripped apart and scooped up a handful of the bagged socks. Several packages had disappeared into the black slush in the gutter. Then he hurried off down the block.

“Isn't this the kind of shit that got you assigned to desk duty in the first place?” I said to Bernie.

Silently he led us back to the car. As we were heading downtown, his cell phone rang and he answered it, even though he was driving. From the awkwardness of his tone, I figured he was talking with his estranged wife. In a clear, somber tone, he started talking about his failures as a husband. I quickly pulled out my cell and called my brother.

Seeing my name on his display, without even letting me say hello, Carl began: “I know that sometimes I get a little manic, and you're always the first to warn me, but this time it's you. You went from one extreme to the other with this scorpion guy.”

“Stop calling him that, asshole!” I shouted. Bernie looked over and abruptly ended his conversation.

“All right, I'm sorry,” my brother replied. “I just worry about you. Are you still in that weird cult?”

When I'd told Carl about Kundalini and its alleged psychic properties, he insisted that it was dangerous and said I should stop attending immediately.

“It's just yoga,” I said, and told him I had to go.

“Annie discovered our Jane Doe is one Nelly Linquist,” Bernie said. Apparently it wasn't his wife but his fellow detective he'd been talking on the phone with. After establishing the vic's identity, Annie and Alex had called escort houses until they located the one our victim had worked for. Annie had just given him the address, so Bernie and I drove to a luxury high rise in Gramercy Park to break the news.

The madam was a big-breasted Southern magnolia with a head of stiff dyed red hair. When Bernie showed his badge at the door, she gasped.

“Relax,” Bernie said, “We're homicide. We've found Nelly Linquist.” He showed the sketch of her face.

“Damn! Nelly was such a special gal, you know?” she eulogized. “A lot of fellas will really miss her.”

Using a rolled-up Kleenex, she dabbed her tears before they could erode the dried layers of mascara. It looked as if they had been plastered on her face one over the other for years.

Bernie cut to the chase.” Who was Nelly's last customer?”

The poinsettia-haired office manager went to a little card catalog box, rummaged in it, and exclaimed, “Oh, yes! I remember now. This guy couldn't spell his own gosh darn name—Dhaka.”

“Couldn't spell his own name?” Bernie echoed, glaring at her.

“Yeah, he had to do it a couple times till it came out right for the credit card.”

“You're a fucking moron,” Bernie spat ferociously. “I should arrest you as an accomplice.”

She gave him a sour look.

“I don't care that you run a whorehouse, but at very least you should protect your girls! Which means if a guy calls up and can't spell his own fucking name, I'd expect you to be a little suspicious.”
I could see the madam looking puzzled.

“How would this guy have found out about your place?” I asked softly, since Bernie had immediately alienated her.

“We advertise on cable TV, and in the back pages of newspapers. We're trying to run a business.”

“Why did you send Nelly?” Bernie asked.

“He asked for a big blonde.”

Bernie reached into his pocket and located a photo of the crime scene, something he hadn't shown to anyone else because it was so disturbing and handed it to her. “First he strangled her slowly, then he cut her up like a piece of meat.”

“I don't see her . . . face.”

“That's because he chopped her head off,” Bernie said bluntly. Pointing within the photo, he added, “See! That's where he stuck it.”

She covered her mouth in horror then started weeping painfully. Bernie snatched the photo back.

“There's no possibility he saw any of your other girls?” I asked.

“I don't know. I don't know who he was,” she said as she staggered into a seat.

“Do you recognize that?” Bernie asked, handing her a close-up photograph of Nelly's wrist that showed her blood splattered bracelet.

“No.”

“No, it's not hers? Or no, you don't recognize it?” he pushed.

“I don't recognize it. It could be hers. I just don't know.”

“And you didn't recognize the client's voice?”

“No, I don't remember anything unusual about it.”

“Did he sound educated, foreign? Regional?” Bernie asked.

Looking grim, she stiffly nodded no.

Bernie handed her his business card, and said she should call him if anything relevant came to mind.

As we headed back to the car, Bernie called Annie who contacted VISA headquarters and tracked down one Mr. Ahmed Dhaka. Though he had used his credit card about a dozen times in the past week, the only place he'd used it recently, prior to paying for the vic, was at a porn arcade across from Penn Station. It turned out Mr. Dhaka worked for an investment firm on Times Square, Dunleavy Money Management. Bernie got the address: 3 Times Square. He
thought it would be a good idea to pop in unannounced, just in case the guy really was a crazed murderer. Since our killer had already established a clear MO of stealing credit cards, he agreed this was a long shot. Still, Bernie pointed out that this was the first guy who hadn't bothered to report his card missing, and it seemed odd that the two sex-related expenses were back to back. The killer had never used a stolen card more than once.

We parked in a small police lot on Forty-second and headed to 3 Times Square, which turned out to be the new Reuters Building, an artsy-fartsy modern structure that curved every which way. It occupied the northeast corner between Forty-second and Forty-third. As we approached the entrance on Seventh Avenue, Bernie halted abruptly.

“What's up?” I asked, looking around nervously in case he had spotted another shady character from his angry past.

“I just need a moment,” he said, going over to one of the many food carts that lined the curb. I watched him buy a cold can of Coke and reach into his shirt pocket. He took out a small pill, put it in his mouth, opened the Coke, took a sip to wash the capsule down, then tossed the remainder into the garbage can on the corner. Next he pulled out a cigarette, lit it, took one puff, then dropped it, crushed it underfoot, and walked past me into the building. When he looked up at the building index to check where we needed to go, I could see his forehead was covered in sweat.

Since 9/11, all modern buildings had installed security turnstiles, much like the subway, that everyone had to pass through to gain entrance. We showed our IDs, got sticker badges and went inside. As we took the elevator up to the 26th floor, I noticed Bern's jacket collar had flipped up so I reached over and folded it down.

“I don't mind you doing that when we're alone,” he said, “but not when we're with anyone.”

“I know.”