Shadow Dancers (44 page)

“They’re the same guy,” Mooney boomed so loud the driver flinched and the car swerved. “Don’t you see? It’s the same guy. All the copycat crapola. All that doo-da. It was always just one guy.”

“I know. I know. That’s what you said. But I still don’t understand. I mean, I heard the girl. I saw the picture, too. But it still don’t make no sense.”

The siren screamed above their heads. Faces whirling past on the street were a gray blur.

“Don’t you see? He’s one of those multiple whatchamacallits — personalities. When he’s in one place, like Bridge Street, he’s Warren. When he’s up on Eighty-first Street, he’s Ferris Koops. Wait till Mulvaney hears,” Mooney groaned. “We had the son of a bitch in custody. In our hands, goddammit, and we let him go. We let him walk right out the front door.”

Mooney suddenly began to giggle.

Pickering scowled, understanding very little of his partner’s glee. “What the hell’s so funny?”

“I love it. I absolutely love it.” Mooney’s giggles swelled to hooting laughter. “Well, he can’t hang this one on me. I’m the one who said hold him. He’s the one who said let him go. Didn’t he say that, Rollo? Didn’t he?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“And wasn’t I the one who said put a tail on him? Wasn’t I?”

“Sure. That’s right.”

“But, oh no. Not them. They’re too smart. Too wise. The corporation counsel says …” Mooney pressed his jaws between his palms. “Bullshit the corporation counsel.”

“You said it. You said all that,” Pickering conceded. “But I still don’t understand. I don’t see. So he was a blond guy who rinsed his hair black from time to time. What about the broken teeth?”

“Broken teeth just when he was dark. Nice, straight teeth when he was fair. Bridgework, dummy. Didn’t you ever hear of bridgework? The temporary kind. You put it in, you take it our. Talk to Konig. He’ll tell you.”

“And the blood type?”

“Very easy. Both of them were AB pos. Naturally.” Mooney slammed his forehead again and laughed out loud. “I keep saying both of them …”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Pickering fretted. “I mean, the two sperms. That don’t explain the two sperms. The azo-whatever you call it.”

“The sperms?” The mirth faded from Mooney’s face. “That’s right. How the hell can one guy alternate between fertility and infertility? That doesn’t make sense.” He took his pad out and scribbled something onto the page.

Pickering’s frown deepened. “And how come the Pell dame didn’t recognize him when you showed her the mug shot?”

“That’s easy. She was looking for a dark-haired guy with broken teeth. I showed her a blond pretty boy with straight teeth. Naturally, she didn’t recognize him. But, the sperms. I don’t get that.” Mooney fretted.

“And what about Berrida — Berrida saw him face-to-face in the street and then he saw him in a lineup.”

“Same thing. Berrida said he was looking for a Latin type. ‘Cause that’s what he saw in the street that night. We showed him a preppy Wasp kid. Remember. The only time Berrida saw Koops, or Mars, or whatever the hell, it was at dusk and then he saw him for maybe only a minute or two. Same thing with that Coles babe. She saw a dark guy with busted teeth who smelled bad.”

“The only one who saw a blond …”

“Was the Bailey girl. And then that old doorman, what’s-his-face?”

“Carlucci.”

“Right. Carlucci. Up on Fifth Avenue. Where the Bender kid lived.” Mooney flipped rapidly through his pad, flipping back and forth until he found the entry. “Carlucci. Here it is. Anthony Carlucci. Doorman. Eight-sixty Fifth Avenue. Claims to have seen young blond man. Five eight or five nine. Approximately twenty-two, twenty-three years old, watching apartment house from across Fifth Avenue. Followed Carolyn Bender into the park the night of August third.”

“We never called Carlucci in to make an identification.”

“After we struck out with Berrida and Pell, it made no sense to.” Mooney glanced up and out the window. “Where the hell are we?”

“Ninetieth and First,” the driver replied.

“Hang a right,” Mooney boomed. “Five’ll get you ten, Koops has blown the place.”

“Koops?”

“Koops. Mars. Whatever. I’ll lay odds he’s skipped.” Mooney thumped his head again. “My God. My God. We had him right there in our hands. How could I have missed this so …”

Up ahead they could hear sirens and see blinding lights. A half dozen patrol cars had all nosed into the curb in front of 420 East 81st. Dozens of uniformed men were already out cordoning off the block.

When they pulled up in front of the small, six-story residential building hard by the East River, the street in front of the building was overrun with SWAT personnel in navy windbreakers toting shotguns. Pedestrians on the street were being herded off to safe spots behind the blockades. The windows in the buildings overhead were full of people staring down into the street.

Mooney grabbed one of the special forces men moving past just then. “Anyone been up there yet?”

“We been up already. Looks like no one’s there.”

“The place locked?” Pickering asked. “Can we get in?”

“They’re tryin’ to locate the super now. Why don’t you just go right on in, lieutenant. They’re all inside in the hallway.”

Inside, there was more confusion than out on the street. The hallway was teeming with police and nervous neighbors poking their heads out of the doors. A steady stream of special forces men kept clattering up and down the steps. You could hear them bellowing instructions to each other from floor to floor.

“Hey, Mooney,” someone shouted down the hall from behind them. “Over this way. I got the super.”

Mooney and Pickering threaded their way through a maze of teeming activity. At the end of the corridor, in a reeking little cul-de-sac, Jimmy DeFranciscus, an old buddy from the 82nd, stood talking with a short, barrelchested man with a helmet of short cropped blond hair full of tight, knotty little curls.

“This is Mr. Schuttle.” DeFranciscus made the introductions. “He’s the superintendent. He says the Koops kid ain’t around.”

“How long since you seen him?” Mooney inquired. What followed was a stream of heavily inflected, barely comprehensible English. DeFranciscus observed the consternation on Mooney’s face.

“He says he ain’t seen him in a couple of weeks. But that’s not unusual. Guy’s in and outta here a lot.”

Mr. Schuttle nodded stolidly. “Yah. In and out a lot. Sometimes we don’t see for weeks.”

“Can we get into the apartment?” Mooney asked him, almost shouting, as if he were talking to a deaf man.

“That’s what we’re working on now,” DeFranciscus explained. “He just sent his wife downstairs to see if they have a spare key. He says Koops was a nice, quiet fellow.”

“Yah. Nice. Quiet.”

“A pussycat,” Mooney muttered.

There were three sharp claps followed by a stir at the head of the hall. Crowds parted as a small, dark, energetic man with darting eyes bustled into the area. He clapped his hands hard. “All right. Can we get some of these people outta here. Anyone without official business, back out on the street.” He wheeled about on his heels and barked at anxious residents hovering in their doorways. “Okay, folks. Nothing going on now. Everyone back in their apartments. Have a cup of coffee. Let the officers do their jobs here.”

Edward Sylvestri clapped his hands again, his eyes flashing up and down the hallway. Spotting Mooney and Pickering with DeFranciscus and the superintendent, he bustled over, pumping his shortish arms importantly. “Hey, Mooney, what’s the big idea? Who authorized all this?” Sylvestri looked around at all the SWAT personnel crawling over the site.

“I did. You were on a job up in the Bronx and there’s a chance right now we maybe nab this guy.”

Sylvestri’s eyes narrowed skeptically. “Who told you to interrogate the McConkey girl? Why wasn’t I called immediately? I wanna know the name of the man who notified you before me.” He stared hard at Pickering.

“I called you.” Pickering’s voice squawked unconvincingly. “You were out. I left a message on your wire.”

“That message was left on my wire around ten
A.M.
That’s about an hour and a half after you had the goddamn girl in custody.”

Pickering’s jaw dropped. He was stymied. “I figured —”

“From now on, Rollo, you figure nothing. Okay?”

“It wasn’t Rollo’s fault,” Mooney intervened. “The girl saw me on TV and asked to talk with me.”

Sylvestri’s chest thrust forward pugnaciously. “Oh, she saw you on the TV, did she? And would only talk to you?” The small, dark man swelled dangerously. “Now, listen up, my friend. Just so’s we have no more fuck-ups. In future if there’s any opinions to be expressed to the media regarding this matter, it’s yours truly who’ll do the expressing. Okay? We understand each other?”

Just as Mooney was about to reply, an immensely fat woman with a red splotched face waddled up. The strong ammoniacal odor of perspiration reeked from her clothing.

Mr. Schuttle proceeded to rattle off something in German to her. Puffing heavily she held a key up in her pudgy fist.

“Okay. We got a key,” DeFranciscus said, uneasy to find himself between two warring factions. “I guess we can go on in now.”

There was an awkward pause while the two men stood glaring at each other.

It was a peculiar little place, diminutive and spotless. Everything was immaculate and in precise order, almost obsessively so. It was hardly what one might expect from the “Monster of Chaos.” It gave, instead, the impression of being a little place for little people, excessively fussy but well kept, like a dollhouse. It was as if a little old lady had lived there, rather than the notorious Shadow Dancer.

Moving about inside, Mooney stooped as though afraid to graze his head on the ceiling. Most curious of all, as they moved about through the neat little rooms, no one spoke, and when they did it was in a whisper. It all had an air of reverence about it, a sense of awe, more appropriate for churches and funeral parlors than for the lair of a murderer.

Mooney had left the others and was circling about the apartment, moving from one tiny room to the next. Mr. Schuttle followed doggedly at his heels. He shook his head and muttered to himself while Mooney went through the little Pullman kitchen, opening drawers and cabinets and poking about.

From behind he could hear Sylvestri’s high, nasal voice issuing a rapid-fire stream of orders, full of scorn for what he kept referring to as “shoddy police work.” He went about strutting and fretting, glancing sharply at people to see what sort of an effect he was having. Less than convincing, he gave the impression of a person who’d recently completed a mail order, selfassertiveness course.

Trying not to hear him, Mooney continued his own perusal, full of regret and misgivings, plagued by a host of deep, unsettling thoughts. His wanderings took him from the kitchen into the tiny bathroom just behind it.

It was an innocuous little place with a toilet, a shower, and a tub. The floor showed a good deal of chipped black-and-white tile with large unsightly patches of grouting looming up from beneath.

A pink shower curtain upon which astrological signs floated drooped from a chrome bar above the tub. Sliding his fingertips lightly across it, he noted that it was rusty in places and slightly damp.

Mooney stood for a while at the sink, aware of his image floating in the mirror before him. Gazing down at the cracked porcelain, he noted a dark stain that rose from the bottom of the bowl to a point roughly up to the sinktop.

He stared at it for a time, then opened the door of the medicine cabinet behind the mirror. On first glance it contained nothing unusual: aspirin, mouthwash, a plastic bottle of baby oil, a half-used tube of lather shaving cream, a tatty beaver brush with which to apply it, a plastic injector razor, and some prescription drugs with the name Koops on their labels.

He started from the bottom shelf and began working his way up. On the top shelf he had his payoff. It came in the form of ten paper packets of black Clairol hair rinse, which explained not only the discoloration of the sink, but also the discrepancy between the two descriptions of a man who, for nearly two years, was believed to be two entirely separate and distinct individuals.

Pickering’s big, red face poked itself in through the open door. “Looks like he’s blown.” His eyes followed Mooney ‘s gaze to the upper shelf of the medicine cabinet and the Clairol packets. He moved into the room and stood just behind Mooney.

“Jesus.”

“Yeah,” Mooney muttered and they stepped back out into the living room. Two or three forensic people had come in during the interim and were already on their knees, working with tweezers and plastic envelopes and dusting for prints.

Sylvestri was still out front, staging a tirade, finding dissatisfaction with everything.

Mooney nudged Pickering in the ribs. “Come on. Let’s get outta this.” They started out.

“Just a minute,” Sylvestri called after them. “Where you two going?”

“Back to the office.”

“I’m not finished here yet.”

Mooney’s jaw tautened. “I got a lot of work to do, Eddie.”

“It can wait,” Sylvestri snapped.

“I’m afraid it can’t,” Mooney snapped back and kept right on going.

Sylvestri, standing amid a group of his minions, watched him go, stymied and a bit puzzled by the outright disobedience.

“I’m not finished here yet, Frank,” he cried after him. “You keep right at it, Eddie. Don’t let me disturb you. You got a lot of people around here to help you.” Mooney’s great mass lumbered down the hallway in the direction of the stairs.

“No more surprises, Frank,” Sylvestri shouted after him. “No more unauthorized alerting special forces. No more funny business. Like with the McConkey kid this morning. All that goes through me. You hear?”

Mooney never turned. He just kept going. Halfway down the stairs he realized that Pickering was right behind him. He turned and glared up at him. “What the hell you think you’re doing?”

“I’m going with you.”

“That’s dumb. I’m nine months from retirement. You’ve gotta live with this little prick for another fifteen years.”

“I’ll take my chances.”