Shadow Dancers (17 page)

Lights shone in all the windows of the building, casting a glow of warm radiance down onto the street. There was an air of holiday gaiety and excitement about it all, a sense of some impending joy. He could not say why, but what he felt just then was a curious sort of exultation.

He rose and walked to the edge of the curb and stared up at the building. Eyes scanning the face of the structure, he counted fourteen floors up and eight windows to the right, ending at a corner window. Seventeen years before, he’d stood behind the glass panes of that window and gazed out at the onrushing magical night. It spread like an inkstain across the woody rolling hills of the park.

He knew, of course, that he was staring up at the window of what was once his own bedroom. Four windows to the left of that were the big four-pane casements of his parents’ bedroom. The lights in there were on now and the shades drawn. He was aware of a momentary darkening motion drifting behind them and knew that people walked there. He liked to play a game in which he imagined that his own mother and father moved there now behind the drawn shades, and that they were waiting for him. He felt a rush of warmth and love rise fast and hard in him, settling finally in his throat and causing an ache there.

He was aware suddenly of the doorman out front, watching him intently. There was something wary, even slightly belligerent in his gaze. He’d encountered that sort of look from doormen before — and police. He’d always seemed to elicit that same response from uniformed people. It alarmed him and he was about to move off. Just then, a young woman in a flannel jogging outfit emerged from the revolving doors with a small King Charles terrier on a leash.

The doorman tipped his hat to her. Ferris heard her voice carry across the narrow strip of avenue where taxis and buses and private cars rolled endlessly.

There was something warm and friendly in that husky, laughing voice. Ferris watched her with growing fascination as she walked to the end of the block, waited for the light to change, then crossed toward him, the small yipping terrier straining at its leash.

On the west side of the avenue where Ferris stood, thirty or so feet down from him, was an entrance to the park. It was into that entrance that Ferris watched the young woman disappear.

It occurred to him with rather startling urgency that he had to speak with her. He wanted to say hello and tell her that as a small child he’d lived in the same building she lived in now. Possibly even in the same apartment. Was that her window at the corner on the fourteenth floor?

How odd. What a coincidence. How long had she lived there? Maybe they’d all lived there together at the same time. Had she known his parents? Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Koops. He was a tall, dignified-looking gentleman. “My mom was small and pretty.”

In the next moment, Ferris was moving off into the park after the gray figure up ahead receding quickly into the gathering dark. By that time, in his surging joy at the prospect of a reunion with someone he might have known as a child, he’d completely forgotten the doorman, who watched him as he struck off after the girl.

“YOU’RE GONNA HAVE TO SPEAK LOUDER,”
Mooney shouted into the phone, but that was only because Konig was shouting at him. “We got a lousy connection.”

“Where the hell are you?”

“We just left the park. I’m up on Fifty-eighth and Third.”

“Sounds like you’re at the bottom of the Hudson Tube.”

“I’m on a pay phone. There’s a construction job going on right over my head. Speak louder, will you?”

“Was there anything in the drain?”

“What?”

“The drain. The goddamned drain. Did you find anything?”

Mooney held the receiver away from his ear until he’d finished ranting. “Nothing special. Pretty much the same sort of thing as the Bailey job. Only this time the drain wasn’t so deep. It was easier locating the body. And the dog —”

“Dog? What dog?” Konig bellowed. “Will you speak up, for Chrissake?”

“She was walking a dog. The doorman found the dog wandering out on the street, trailing his leash. That’s how he knew something had happened. He watched her walk into the park with the dog, then saw this guy follow her in.”

“He saw the guy?”

“Right.” Mooney’s head had started to pound just talking to the man. “He’d been standing across the street, watching the building. Looked kind of suspicious, the doorman said. It wasn’t dark yet and all the building lights were on. He got a good look at the guy. We have a fairly detailed description.”

“Does it match up with any of the others?”

“This one looks like the fair-haired, slender one.” There was a pause and Mooney could hear him breathing heavily. “You got anything for me?”

“She’s still on the table now,” he snapped. “But I can tell you right now, she’s covered with bite marks.” Mooney caught his breath. “Where?”

“Breasts and genitals.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“That’s good news. Here’s the bad. We did a couple of quick impressions.” Mooney could hear him shuffle some papers on his desk, then start to speak again as though he were reading from a report. “Bite marks in evidence here show no indication of either a broken front or broken left lateral incisor.”

Mooney stared bleakly into the black perforations of the speaker.

Konig didn’t wait for him to reply. “And something else … We took a load of semen samples out of her.” He paused, drawing it out for maximum effect while Mooney waited with his head pounding. “Yeah?”

“The samples we took from Torrelson and the Pell woman and a few of the others were deader than old custard. The stuff we sucked out of this gal — what’s her name?”

“Bender. Carol Bender.”

“Bender. Right. This semen was jumping with live sperm. So all I can say now for sure is you’ve got two suspects: one with broken front teeth and azoospermia, and another with straight, sound teeth and fertile as a fruit fly. One blood type looks like an AB pos, and I can’t say about the other.”

“One dark, one fair,” Mooney added softly to himself. “We know all that.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Doesn’t matter.”

“Well, there you have it,” Konig boomed heartily. Mooney could hear satisfaction brimming over in his voice. “Sounds to me like a couple of lads who are reading each other’s press and trying to outdo one another.” Mooney stared at the receiver, then made a face back at a man outside the booth waiting to use it. “This job gets more unpleasant by the minute,” he said.

“That’s what adds zest to life, my friend. You wouldn’t want them all to be too easy, would you?” Konig crowed like a cock and the phone clicked off.

Outside on the street the noise level was like the inside of a boilerworks. They were digging a foundation right outside of the phone booth. The machine-gun rattle of compressor drills banged through Mooney’s pounding head. In the squad car Pickering was just signing off on the car radio. “What’s up?” Mooney snapped, sliding into the back seat beside Pickering.

“Mulvaney wants us to come in right away.”

“Shit.”

“Commissioner just had him on the carpet for two hours. CBS ran an editorial last night calling for the old man’s resignation.”

With Mulvaney, Mooney always looked for the rosy flush of apoplexy. This usually informed him that things were okay, basically normal. That morning when they were brought in to see him, he was ashen. His skin was the color of parchment and he sat slumped over his desk, so limp that if you happened to nudge him he might just topple over.

“Look a bit peaked, Clare,” Mooney said with the breeziest insouciance he could muster under the circumstances. “Looks like you et something.”

Mulvaney looked up at them, his jaw slack, his eyes bleary, as though he’d peered too long into a blast furnace. “Sit down.”

There was no starch in his voice, no snarl, no four-letter words,’ all of which would have been customary and welcome and put them at their ease. Instead, there was an ominous quiet, and for the first time since Mooney had known him, Mulvaney looked defeated.

“I’ve been in with the commissioner this morning,” he said. “I don’t have to go into details about what it was like. Suffice it to say, he’s unhappy about the way things are going.”

“I know. You told me all this in April.”

“Well, now it’s August and I’m telling you again.”

He paused to let the solemnity of the event seep in.

“Now, listen, Clare —”

“No, you listen. Let me finish. Then we’ll hear your side.”

He looked at Pickering, then at Mooney, then back and forth for a while. “No doubt, you heard the CBS editorial on the six o’clock news last night. I’m sure you heard they were out beating the drum for the old man’s resignation.”

“That old devil blowtorch again, eh?” Mooney quipped.

“Right. And you know where it’s pointed now, don’t you?”

“I noticed you were sitting kind of funny there, Clare — like up on one cheek.”

“Spare me the funny stuff, will you, Frank.”

“Sorry,” Mooney replied, trying not to look too worried.

“Let me finish, please.”

There was something so weary and beaten in his voice, Mooney grew genuinely alarmed.

“I’m sure what I have to say is not going to displease you.” He poured a glass of water from a carafe on his desk and drank slowly. Mooney watched him while he regained his train of thought. “No one is going to shove a blowtorch under your ass, Frank. Given the fact that you’re a little more than a year from retirement, you’re perfectly safe. As of this moment, you have ninety days to wind up this investigation on the so-called Shadow Dancer case. That puts you somewheres in the middle of November. If there’s nothing tangible by then —”

“Tangible?”

“A suspect, or suspects, fully identified …” Mulvaney’s eyes narrowed. “Barring that, then Eddie Sylvestri of the Nineteenth will at that time take full charge of the investigation.”

Concluding the announcement with a small flick of his upraised wrist, Mulvaney popped several Maalox into his mouth and chewed gloomily. “Oughta make you very happy, Frank. You’re back chasing pickpockets and three-card-monte dealers. All roller-coaster, no-sweat duty from here on in.”

Mooney sat there, staring at him, feeling as though he’d been kicked in the stomach.

“Why?” he asked, when he’d caught his second breath. “Why dump me just when we’re starting to make some real progress?”

“Not real enough, my friend. And not nearly fast enough.” Mulvaney shuffled through a stack of night reports on his desk. “The commissioner is not about to sit around and take heat from City Hall and the media without any real progress to show. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed it yet, Frank, but this city has a way of getting very jumpy in emergencies, and ten million people jumping all at once tend to have a seismic effect. Like something of the order of ten megatons.”

“But why Sylvestri? Why him?”

A bitter smile flickered at the corners of Mulvaney’s lips. “Because everybody knows your great regard for him.”

“He’s a jerk. He’s a mouthbreather. There’s ten pounds of suet between his ears where his brain oughta be.”

“You’ve got ninety days, Frank. You just might beat him out yet. But for now I’d say he’s the odds-on favorite.” He was smiling again, but it was a tired smile. There was no great cheer in it. Then, rather grimly, he added: “The commissioner authorized him to form a new fifty-man special task force.”

That was the breaking straw. “So what you’re saying is the decision’s already made. Sylvestri will take over in ninety days whether I’ve got something tangible or not.” Mulvaney sat at his desk staring down at the night reports and doing his best to ignore him. “I’m sorry, Frank. This wasn’t my decision. I warned you about this, didn’t I? You’re out. Sylvestri’s in.” He glanced at Pickering as if surprised to see him still there. “Rollo, you, of, course, will be reassigned to Sylvestri’s group for the duration of the investigation.”

It was spoken with the kind of finality intended to signal the end of an unsatisfactory interview.

Mooney stood up. “You think that’s it?”

“Frank.” Mulvaney’s voice was tired. “You’ve already had one coronary.”

“I’m still on this job,” Mooney shouted.

“You are. For three more months.”

“Sylvestri can head it. But I’m still on it.”

“Sylvestri doesn’t want you on it,” Mulvaney said wearily. He could barely look the detective in the eye. “Take my word for it, Frank.” His voice was still quiet but this time it had an edge of threat to it. “If after ninety days you continue to mess around in this thing against my authority, the commissioner, who still retains his fondness for you, will find that fondness wearing thin.”

“Meaning?” Mooney hovered over his desk glaring down at him. The chief of detectives didn’t bat an eye.

“Meaning, butt out — or you’re gonna find yourself out on the street thirteen months still shy of that full pension.”

“You say he’s been up here before?”

“That’s right.”

“How often?”

“I don’t know. But you know how things sometimes come back to you. All of a sudden, like that. Things you think are gone forever.”

“Sure. Like something happening today causing a lot of things that happened long ago to become suddenly all related. Like a chain of events. Something like that?”

“Yeah. Exactly. That’s right. How nice you put it.” The old man laughed lightly. A look of gratitude shone from his rheumy eyes. “That’s exactly it. What you described. Excuse me. Good evening, Mr. Wexler.” Mr. Carlucci doffed his cap to a portly gentleman in bold plaids just turning into the revolving doors. He smiled and resumed his conversation with the young man who said his name was Hoskins and that he was a reporter for a large newspaper in Houston.

“And 1 tell you something else, Mr. Hopkins —”

“Hoskins.”

“Oh, that’s right. Hoskins. I beg your pardon.” Mr. Carlucci spoke with a lilting Neopolitan accent. In his green doorman’s livery with its gold frogging and epaulets, he looked like a cross between a Stromboli fisherman and a Gilbert and Sullivan vice admiral. “I seen this guy before.”

“Well, sure. That’s what you’ve been telling me. You saw him standing out there across the street a couple of times. Right.”