Most Wanted (14 page)

This never happened to him. Women chased him, but mostly, since Diane, he felt more comfortable alone. Hit the gym, walk the dog, work like a fucking maniac—that pretty much summed up his routine. Every once in a while, he got drunk and wound up in bed with some girl he met in a pub. He’d get so depressed afterward he couldn’t even look her in the face. And if she tracked him down, if she called, he’d freeze her out before it ever went anywhere. He couldn’t help it somehow. He was beginning to think he’d be alone forever, even though he imagined himself with a nice wife and a houseful of kids somewhere, Jersey maybe, or Rockland.

Then, out of left field, he meets her. He’d only known her for a day, and already he was thinking up excuses to spend extra time with her. Was she working late tonight? Could he swing by after this, maybe say he was checking if the wiretap boxes showed up okay? He knew it was crazy. She was married with a baby, for Chrissakes. Even if he hadn’t been to church since the divorce, he was still a Catholic in his heart. He oughta act like one, try harder to resist. But he just didn’t think he could. It wasn’t only her looks or her smarts—there was something else to it that he wasn’t strong enough to fight. Something in her eyes he recognized when they met, like the loneliness he saw in his own every time he looked in the mirror. That feeling like she needed him, was what had him hooked.

He sat there thinking about Melanie Vargas, not even trying to discipline himself, that’s how bad it was already, that’s how much it’d taken over. By the time he looked at his watch, he knew this asshole wasn’t showing up. He sighed and dug a damp scrap of paper from his pocket, moving some folders out of the way to uncover the phone on the desk. He dialed the pager number written on the paper, then punched in the callback number of the beeper store, followed by his personal code and 911. Much to his surprise, in a few minutes the phone rang. He reached for the receiver.

“Yo, Bigga,” he said, “where the fuck you at?”

THEY GONNA SEE HOW HE GET DOWN WHEN HE MAD, and it ain’t pretty. He ain’t like the way shit was unfolding. Sitting in a fucking closet in a fucking hotel in Jersey. He trying to be real calm about it, but he starting to get pissed. He feel it building, that humming inside his blood. He take that energy and put it to use. He always feel that way before he do something.

First off, his concentration got interrupted. He hate that more than anything. That weaselly little motherfucker call him before with the location on the maid, all worried she be telling, when he right in the middle of scoping somebody else. As if he already ain’t screwed things up enough by arguing last night and bringing police down. That motherfucker got to go. Yeah, sure, he worried the maid be telling, too, but one thing at a time. Everybody be telling on this job—that’s why he got to kill them all. No reason to interrupt what you doing. No reason to break your stride. You get nervous, you jump the gun, you make mistakes. He shoulda just stayed where he at, took care of the other one first. That other Chinese bitch, the architect. Ain’t never bodied no Chinese bitch before that he could remember. He did that girl
China
, but she Colombian, they just call her that because she got them scrunchy little eyes. No, he definitely ain’t bodied no Chinese bitch before, and now it look like he doing two in one night. When it rains it pours. Ha, he make himself laugh.

The rain. That another thing got him real pissed off. Rain make him sad. And it bad for planning, too. All them scary movies fucked up when they show the killing happen on some night with a big storm. Ain’t no serious killer like to work in the rain. Slows you down, just like it slow down anybody doing regular shit. How you gonna stand outside and scope when it pouring like that? He sitting for a while in between the Dumpsters out in the parking lot. Good spot, too. The place real deserted, he stick his head up and scope what going on with her window. But then it start to rain so hard he getting wet. Couldn’t even light a cigarette. The drops blowing on him. So he find a door in the back unlocked before he was really ready to go inside. Rain force your hand. Not to mention he gonna have to drive back from fucking Jersey in it. He hated to drive in it.

So he go in the stairwell for a while, but that wasn’t no good. Too open. Whole fucking place deserted, but they still got some cleaning ladies and shit. He find a closet on the same floor as the mark, and he sitting there for a long time in the dark, waiting. He know her door taken care of, but he still worried about the bitch making noise. If he can’t see her window, he can’t know if she sleeping. He gonna have to wait real late if he want to get the jump on her. It better that way in a place like this, so nobody hear. He ain’t come this far by taking foolish chances.

He don’t believe in no wristwatch. Tell time by his head, and he always right. He smart with shit like that—not just time, but like how far one thing be from another, which window you got to go in to get to which apartment. His brain built for this work. So he know he got maybe another hour to wait before she be asleep. The lock been handled, so it wasn’t no problem for him, and his eyes be all adjusted to the dark. No guns this time. Too loud. He like his knife best anyway. He lifted up his pants and took it out of the holster on his leg. He like to feel it in his hand. Maybe it catching the light from the crack under the door, because even in the dark closet, it shine real nice.

ROSARIO WAS SURE SHE’D FALLEN ASLEEP WITH the TV on, but she must be wrong. It was off now, as she awoke from a vivid, pill-induced dream, mouth dry, body heavy to the point of paralysis. She had no sense of how long she’d been sleeping. In her dream she was back home. The strong sunlight and the bright colors lingered on her eyes, radiating circles of blue light out into the pitch-dark hotel room.

Her eyes quickly adjusted to the blackness, but her mind was foggy and sluggish from the painkillers. She knew the shape looming over her bed was important, so she struggled to decipher its meaning. It slowly came back to her why she was here in this room. The horrors of the night before, the blood and the fire. Suddenly she understood what the shape was. She opened her mouth to scream at the exact instant his hand shot out, fast as a bullet, to grab her by the hair. She listened as if from far away to the guttural, bubbling sound that emerged, not from her mouth, but from her slit throat.

MELANIE COULDN’T DECIDE WHICH PART OF HER job she loved best—the courtroom or the investigating. She was crazy for the courtroom. Standing up there in front of the jury, all eyes on her, she felt like a movie star. But discovering a smoking gun in a hot investigation—that was a huge thrill, too.
Smoking gun
. What a great phrase. It made her think of finding a murder weapon in the bushes when everybody else had missed it. That’s how she felt tonight, like she’d picked up a gun with smoke rising from the barrel, held it in her hand. Only the gun was a cassette tape.

She kept a tape recorder in her bottom drawer. They’d stopped issuing them to prosecutors when wiretaps went digital. Now you could listen to recorded calls on your computer speakers. She’d meant to turn her recorder in to Supply, but who had time for administrative details these days? Lucky she hadn’t, or she would’ve had to wait until morning to hear the tape. The C-Trout Blades wiretap was old style; the calls were all stored on cassette. She was so giddy with discovery she couldn’t have stood the delay.

The animal-torture photos led her to it. When she saw the pictures of the black dog training to kill at Jasmine Cruz’s apartment, she knew Slice had been there. Not only been there but hung out there, maybe even lived there, treated the place like his own anyway. You don’t teach your dog to kill in an environment you don’t control. And if he spent a lot of time there, no matter how careful he was, Slice must’ve talked on that phone. She would read every transcript in every box, if that’s what it took to find it.

The task turned out to be easier than it looked, precisely
because
Slice was so careful. The regular players openly used Jasmine Cruz’s phone every day. The wiretap monitors quickly learned their voices and labeled the transcripts of their calls with their names. The call she was looking for, she quickly realized, would stand out because it wouldn’t bear the name of a regular player. Slice would be called “UM”—unidentified male. It would be a slip up, a one-shot deal, made in an emergency or in anger. Once she figured that out, things moved quickly.

She recognized it the instant she found it. The monitor had marked it as non-pertinent because they weren’t discussing drugs. Maybe it wasn’t pertinent to their investigation back then, but it was sure as hell pertinent to hers. She read along on the transcript as she listened to the tape, sure in her gut the “UM” was Slice. Who else would have that voice—low and urgent and dangerous?

Calm down, Melanie told herself. She shouldn’t assume the “Mighty Whitey” they were talking about was Jed Benson. Just because Rosario Sangrador said Slice had referred to Jed Benson as “Mighty Whitey” at the town house last night didn’t mean anything. He probably called all legit people that, anybody who wasn’t street. Slice and Jasmine were discussing somebody else. Assuming otherwise was taking a huge leap. She’d made an important discovery just by tying Slice to this location. She should be satisfied with that, not jinx it by asking for the moon.

But what if Mighty Whitey
was
Jed Benson? What if—four years earlier—Jed Benson had had a relationship with a woman who had a relationship with Slice? What if Slice had used Jasmine Cruz to get to Jed Benson, or to get something from him? Then something had gone wrong, and Slice went after Jed? No, it couldn’t be. Impossible. It was completely inconsistent with everything she knew about this victim. Unless,
unless
, she didn’t know everything there was to know about this victim.

That reminded her. She’d never followed up on that strange incident in the elevator at Jed Benson’s law firm. It seemed less significant in contrast to this exciting new discovery, but still, it would take only a second to cover that base. She hopped on the Internet and pulled up the directory for the Reed firm. The firm’s Web site posted photographs. Bingo. Within seconds she’d identified the woman in the pink suit. One Sarah Elizabeth van der Vere, a recent graduate of Columbia Law School. Sarah was twenty-six, from Grosse Point, Michigan, and she specialized in securities and ERISA law. Melanie clicked “print,” and Sarah’s bio emerged from her printer. She exited the Reed Web site and went to a telephone-directory program. Sarah lived within walking distance of the Reed firm, off Second Avenue in the Sixties. Melanie jotted the address and phone number onto the printout of the bio, grabbed the dog photos, the transcript, and the cassette tape, and stuffed everything into her big black leather shoulder bag.

She turned off her light, lingered for a moment in the doorway to bid a fond good night to her darkened office, then headed for the elevator with a light step. With all these leads, she’d wrap up this case in no time.

WHEN SHE CHECKED HER WATCH IN THE ELEVATOR, it was after ten o’clock. Her finger paused in midair, about to press the “Lobby” button. All she wanted was to go home and watch Maya sleep, put her hand on that little tummy, follow it up and down with each breath. But she’d made a promise to Rommie Ramirez. They were putting a lot of faith in her with this case. She sighed and pressed “B” for the basement instead.