Silent Prey (10 page)

“Yeah. Forty. That’s a pretty unbelievable number.”

O’Dell shrugged. “Some of the killings are probably just what they seem to be—thugs getting killed on the street by other thugs. But not all of them. And I’m sure we missed some. So balancing everything out, I think forty, fifty aren’t bad numbers.”

“How does Fell fit in?” Lucas asked.

“Petty ran the bad guys against cops who’d know them—a lot of complicated name sorts here, but I’ve got total access.”

“And Fell’s name came up . . . .”

“Way too much.”

“I hate statistics,” Lucas said. “The newspapers were always fuckin’ with them back in Minneapolis, drawing stupid conclusions from bad data.”

“That’s a problem, the data,” O’Dell agreed. “We’d certainly never get Fell in court, based on my numbers.”

“Mmmph.” Lucas looked at Lily and then O’Dell. “I need some heavy time to dig through this . . . .”

“Don’t,” said O’Dell. He pointed a fork at Lucas’ nose. “Your first priority is to find Bekker and to provide a diversion for the media. We need a little air. You’ve got to do that for real. If this gang is out there, these killers, they won’t be easily fooled. Bringing you to New York was supposed to be like bringing in a psychic from Boise: to keep the Boises in the newsroom happy. Everybody’s
buying it so far. They’ve got to keep buying it. This other thing has to be way, way in the background.”

“What happens if we catch Bekker too soon?” Lucas asked. “Before we identify these guys?”

Lily shrugged. “Then you go home and we find some other way to do it.”

“Mmm.”

“So. We’re in a position where we’re hopin’ a goddamn psycho holds out for another few weeks and maybe butchers somebody else’s kid, so we can run down our own guys,” O’Dell mumbled, half talking to himself, staring into the half-eaten sludge pile of toast and syrup. He turned to Lily. “We’re really fucked, you know that, Lily? We’re really and truly fucked.”

“Hey, this is New York,” Lucas said.

O’Dell slogged through the rest of the French toast, filling in background on Petty’s computer search for the killers.

“Is there any possibility that he turned up something unexpected with the computer?” Lucas asked.

“Not really. Things don’t work that way—with a computer, you grind things out, you inch forward. You don’t get a printout that says ‘Joe Blow Did It.’ I think something must have happened with this witness.”

When they left the restaurant, O’Dell walked ahead, again nodding into some booths, pointedly ignoring others. Lily grabbed Lucas’ sleeve and held him back a step.

“Here.” She handed him three keys on a ring.

“That was quick,” Lucas said.

“This is New York,” she said.

Lucas took a cab from Avery’s to Fell’s apartment building. The cabdriver was a small man with a white
beard, and as soon as Lucas settled in the backseat, he asked, “See
Misérables
?”

“What?”

“Let me tell you, you’re missing something,” the driver said. He smelled like a raw onion and was soaked with sweat. “Where’re you going? Okay—listen, you gotta see
Misérables,
I mean why d’ya come to New York if you ain’t gonna see a show, you know what I mean? Look at the crazy motherfucker over there, you should excuse the language, you think they should let a jerk like that on the streets? Jesus Christ, where’d he learn to drive?” The driver stuck his head out the window, leaning on the horn. “Hey, buddy, where’d you learn to drive, huh? Iowa? Huh? Hey, buddy.” Back inside, he said, “I tell you, if the mayor wasn’t black . . .”

Lucas called Fell at the office from a pay phone mounted on the outside wall of a parking garage. The garage paint, covered with indecipherable graffiti, was peeling off, to reveal another layer of graffiti. “Barb? Lucas. I gotta run back to my place, just for a minute. Are we still on for lunch?”

“Sure.”

“Great. See you in a few minutes,” Lucas said. He hung up and looked across the street at Fell’s apartment building. A thousand apartments, he thought. Maybe more. Ranks of identical balconies, each with a couple of plants, most with bicycles. Yuppie-cycles, the mountain bikes, in case the riders encountered an off-trail situation in Central Park. Some of them, as high as he could see, were chained to the balcony railings.

The lobby of her building was a glass cage surrounding a guard. At the back were two ranks of stainless-steel
mailboxes. The guard, in an ill-fitting gray uniform, was stupidly watchful.

“Where’s the sales office?” Lucas asked. A light flickered in the guard’s eyes. This situation was specifically covered in his orders. “Second floor, sir, take a right.”

“Thanks.” Apartment security; it was wonderful, if you had it. Lucas walked back to the elevators, punched two. The second floor had several offices, all down to the right. Lucas ignored them, took a left. Found the stairs, walked up a floor, went back to the elevators and punched sixteen.

The telephone call assured him that Fell was still at Midtown; he didn’t have to worry that she’d slipped back home for a snack or to pay bills, or whatever. She lived alone, she’d said. He’d gotten her apartment and home phone numbers from an office roster sheet.

He rode up alone, got out in an empty corridor, took a left, got lost, retraced his steps past the elevators. Her door was green; the others were blue, a tomato-red and beige. Other than that, they were identical. He knocked. No answer. Looked around, knocked again. No answer. He tried a key, hit it the first time, popped the door. The silence inside seemed laced with tension.

Gotta move, move, move
 . . .

The apartment smelled lightly, inoffensively, of tobacco. The living room had a sliding glass door that led out to the balcony; the doors were covered by off-white curtains, half-drawn. She had a view of a similar building, but if he looked sideways, across the street, Lucas could see another rank of buildings across a gap. The gap was probably the Hudson, with Jersey on the other side.

The apartment was neat, but not compulsively so. Most of the furniture was good, purchased as matched sets. Two green overstuffed La-Z-Boy chairs faced a big
color television. A low table sat between the chairs, stacked with magazines.
Elle, Vogue, Guns & Ammo.
More magazines lay on the table, and under it he found a pile of novels. Beside the television was a cabinet with a CD player, a tuner, a tape deck and a VCR. A second table held more magazines, four remote controls, an oversize brandy snifter full of matchbooks—Windows on the World, the Russian Tea Room, the Oak Room, The Four Seasons. They were pristine, and looked as though they’d come from a souvenir packet. Other matchbooks were more worn, half-used—several from the bar they’d visited the night before, one with a crown, one with a chess knight, one with an artist’s palette. An ashtray held four cigarette butts.

On the walls around the television were photo portraits: a woman standing on a pier with two older people who might have been her parents, and another picture of the same woman in a wedding veil; a square-shouldered young man on a hillside with a collie and a .22, and another of the young man, grown older, dressed in an army uniform, standing under a sign that said, “I know I’m going to heaven, because I served my time in Hell: Korea, 1952.” Something wrong with the young man . . . Lucas looked closer. His upper lip was twisted slightly, as though he’d had a harelip surgically repaired.

Her parents? Almost certainly.

A hallway broke to the left out of the living room. He checked it, found a bathroom and two bedrooms. One bedroom was used as an office and for storage; a small wooden desk and two file cabinets were pushed against one wall, while most of the rest of the space was occupied by cardboard boxes, some open, some taped shut. The other bedroom had a queen-sized bed, unmade, with a sheet tangled by its foot, and two chests of drawers, one
with a mirror. An oval braided rug lay underfoot, just at the side of the bed, and a pair of underpants lay in the middle of the rug. A thigh-high woven-bamboo basket with a lid half-hid behind one of the chests. He opened it. Soiled clothes: a hamper.

He could see it.
She sleeps in her underpants, sits up, still tired, yawns, gets out of beds, drops her pants for a shower, figures to toss them in the hamper when she gets back, forgets . . . .

He went back through the living room to the kitchen, which looked almost unused—a half-dozen water glasses sat in a drying rack in the sink, along with a couple of forks, but no dishes. A Weight Watchers lasagna package lay inside a wastebasket. A bottle of Tanqueray gin sat on the cupboard, two-thirds full. He looked in the refrigerator, found bottles of lime-flavored Perrier and Diet Pepsi, a six-pack of Coors, a bottle of reconstituted lime juice and four bottles of Schweppe’s Diet Tonic Water. A sack of nectarines lay on top of the fruit drawer. He touched the stove-top. Dust. A freestanding microwave took up half the counter space. No dust. She didn’t cook much.

He did the kitchen first: women hide things in the kitchen or the bedroom. He found a set of dishes, inexpensive, functional. Rudimentary cooking equipment. A drawer full of paper, warranties for all the appliances and electronics in the place. He pulled the drawers out, looked under and behind them. Looked in tins: nothing, not even the flour and sugar that was supposed to be there.

In the bedroom, he looked under the bed and found a rowing machine and dust bunnies the size of wolverines; and in the bedstand drawer, where he found a Colt Lawman with a two-inch barrel, chambered for .38 Specials.
Swung out the cylinder: six loaded chambers. He snapped the cylinder back, replaced the weapon as he’d found it.

Looked through the chest of drawers. Bundles of letters and postcards in the top drawer, with cheap jewelry and a sealed box of lubricated Trojans. He looked through the letters, hurrying.

Dear Barb, Just back from New Hampshire, and you should have come! We had the best time!

Dear Barb: Quick note. I’ll be back the 23rd, if everything goes right. Tried to call, but couldn’t get you, they said you were out, and I was afraid to wake you during the day. I really need to see you. I think about you all the time. I can’t stop. Anyway, see you on the 23rd. Jack.

The letter was in an envelope, and he checked the postmark: four years old. He made a mental note: Jack.

Not much else. He pulled out the drawers. Ah. More paper. Polaroid photos. Barbara Fell, sitting on a man’s lap, both holding up bottles of beer. They were naked. She was thin, with small breasts and dark nipples.

He was as thin as she, but muscular, dark-haired, and looked at the camera with a practiced lack of self-consciousness. Another shot: the two of them sitting on what looked like a zebra-skin rug, both nude, their eyes red pinpoints. In the background, a mirror, with a brilliant flash reflecting back at the camera. The camera in the mirror was on a tripod, unattended. No third person. The expression on her face . . . Fear? Excitement? Trepidation?

Another photo, the two of them clothed, standing
outside what looked like a police station. A cop? He went back to his briefcase, got the Polaroid out, clipped on the close-up attachment, knelt, and duplicated the photos.

There was nothing else in the bedroom. The bathroom was odorless, freshly scrubbed, but the vanity countertop was a jumble of lipsticks, shampoos, soap, deodorant, a box of something called YeastGard, panty shields, a pack of needles, tweezers, a huge box of Band-Aids and a bottle of sesame body oil. The medicine cabinet held a small selection of over-the-counter items: aspirin, Mycitracin, Nuprin.

He headed for the office.

She was meticulous about her accounts, and everything seemed about right: she had one bank account, a safety-deposit box, and an account with Fidelity Investments, which turned out to be an IRA.

And where was her book? He shuffled through the desk drawers. She must have a personal phone book. She probably carried an annual one with her, but she should have some sort of book she kept at home, that she wouldn’t be changing every year. He frowned. Nothing in the desk. He walked out to the front room and looked around the telephone. Nothing there. The phone had a long cord, and he walked over to the pile of magazines on the television table, stirred through them. The book was there, and he flipped it open. Names. Dozens of them. He got the Polaroid and began shooting. When he finished, he’d used all but two shots.

Enough. He looked around, checked the lights and backtracked out of the apartment. The guard was staring stoically at a blank marble wall when Lucas left, and never looked up. The guard’s job was to keep people out, not keep people in.

• • •

Kennett and another detective were looking at paper, while a third cop talked on a telephone.

“Barbara’s down the hall,” Kennett said, looking up when Lucas walked in. “We got you an empty office so you can have a little peace . . . .”

“Thanks,” Lucas said.

Fell was sorting through a stack of manila files. He stopped in the doorway, watched her for a moment. She was focused, intent. Attractive. The nude photos popped up in his mind’s eye: she looked smaller in the photos, more vulnerable, less vivid. She began paging through a file. After a moment, she felt him in the door, looked up, startled: “Jesus, I didn’t hear you,” she said.

He stepped inside, walked around the table. Picked up a file: “Robert Garber, 7/12.” “Is this everything?”

“Yeah. I’ve been reading through it. A zillion details,” she said. She brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “The problem is, we don’t need any of it. We know who Bekker is and what he looks like, and he admits in these crazy medical papers that he did the killings. All we have to do is find him; we don’t need all the usual shit.”

“There must be something . . . .”

“I’ll be goddamned if I can see it,” Fell said. “The other guys made a list, like the stuff you were talking about at the meeting this morning. He needs an income. He needs a place to hide. He needs a vehicle. He needs to change his face. So they’ve put out the publicity to employers: watch who you’re paying. They’ve contacted all the hotels and flophouses and anyplace else he might stay. They’re talking with the taxi companies, thinking maybe he’s moving around in the cab—that would explain how he gases them, using the backseat as a gas chamber. They’ve gone to all the stores that sell cover-up makeup for people who are disfigured, and every place
that sells theatrical makeup. The narcotics guys are talking to dealers, and we’re chasing fences. What else is there?”