Atmosphere (22 page)

Frank led the way into the boutique, mostly ignoring the clientele and peeking around at the seemingly endless variety of black clothing. Amazing he thought, how they made it all fit in such a small area, racks and rounders crammed with black vests, jeans, and tops, the entire agglomeration looking like clusters of giant mussels fused in a union of ship-bottom solidarity.
  

Techno music blared from hidden speakers, its incessant drone reminding Frank of the music he sometimes heard tearing up the walls in Jaimie's room. He also recalled the CD's lining the bookshelf in Patrick Racine's room. The dead boy's taste had clearly implied this tedious variety of music. Curious, Frank peered around seeking the source of the music and instead noticed a security camera hanging from a brace in the ceiling at the right rear corner of the store. Right below it a sign read:
don't try any funny stuff, we're watching you

"Help you gentlemen?"

They turned and encountered an older, formidable version of the shoppers in the store: a man in his mid-forties, smiling, his brownish teeth playing hide-and-seek behind an overgrowth of mustache hair concealing his upper lip. His hair ran amok atop his head like a bale of tumbleweed, a tattoo of a snake slithering out from the perimeter of his brow down the left side of his face all the way to his jaw. He looked like he'd be much better off—society perhaps as well—holed up eating granola and whey in some far-off funny farm.

"Good evening," Hector said. "I'm Captain Rodriguez from the thirteenth precinct. This is Detective Ballaro." The man introduced himself as Judas and they exchanged handshakes. "Are you the store proprietor?"

Judas furrowed his hands into his jeans pockets. "Yes, I own this place."

"May we have a moment of your time?"

Judas shrugged a friendly gesture. "Sure. Come this way." Weaving away, he led Frank and Hector through the racks of clothing to the rear of the store. They went through a door that had an
employees only
sign on it and entered a tiny office on the right.
   

Frank had to practically shield his eyes at the colors.

The walls were inches deep in posters, mostly music-oriented, psychedelic prints of guitars, keyboards, lights and spaceships, the various names of techno bands splayed across their brightly hued surfaces like planets and suns in some extraterrestrial astronomical chart. Bandanas and scarves dangled from every dusty fixture in the place, like the shed skins of rare tropical reptiles. Floor lamps, incense holders, beaded lampshades. Candelabras, their waxes long burned, coating the metal capsules in a milky, hardened ooze. It was all here, scattered and neglected in this graveyard of psychedelica. Whether nostalgic or just plain messy, Frank couldn't come to a decision. Nevertheless, it was quite a sight.

Judas shoved aside a river of papers camouflaging an old metal desk and sat down on it, moccasined feet dangling.

Frank reached into his jacket pocket, removed the receipt he took from Harold's apartment and handed it to Hector. Hector unfolded it and showed it to Judas. "Do you remember this particular purchase."

Judas took the receipt, looked at it. Frank could see the veins at his temples throbbing, the one below the snake tattoo nearly sending it into motion. "What seems to be the problem?" Although Judas' appearance was more than unpleasant, his bearing seemed mannerly and cooperative.

"We're investigating a murder that took place a few blocks from here. One of the victims had this receipt in his pocket. We're hoping you might be able to tell us something about the person who might have purchased these clothes."

Judas ran a hand through his moustache. "This is dated two weeks ago. I see a lot of people come and go. I'd be lyin' if I had to pinpoint one particular guy, you know?"

"Who's
J.P.
?" Frank pointed to a small space on the receipt where the letters were written. "Is that the salesperson?"

"Jack. He's off today."

Frank opened the clasp envelope, removed the police sketch of Harold Gross and handed it to Judas. "He look familiar?"

Judas' eyebrows searched the heavens, lines of intense thought carving deep definition into his forehead. "Yeah, he does." He kept his eyes pinned to the portrait of the bald sunglassed man. "He your murder suspect?"

"Could very well be," Hector said.

Judas hopped from the desk, walked around and took a seat in the chair set behind it. He opened a drawer and removed a remote control apparatus. "I have a security system set up that takes video snapshots of the store from the rear, at the left of the checkout desk. I had it installed two years ago after the store was held up. I stay open till midnight every day, and figured it was the least thing I could do, afford really, that might prevent this type of thing from happening again. The camera's visible from almost anywhere in the store, and I think it does a good job at deterring shoplifters."

Frank nodded. "We saw it."

"Look." Judas pointed the remote towards a black and white surveillance monitor perched on a small cart at the side of his desk. The dust sheathing it was thick enough to write his name in. Frank and Hector edged around the side of the desk and saw a grainy video-cap of nearly three-quarters of the floor space in the shop. In the foreground, several customers stood frozen in time; in the background, Frank and Hector were caught walking through the entrance. Judas pressed a button on the remote and a second shot flickered into view showing the two cops having a conversation alongside a rounder of leather jackets, a few nearby customers eying them suspiciously.

"It's rigged to run three seconds of video every time the front door is opened, this way I get at least something of everyone that comes into the store. With all the traffic I get, I'm guaranteed to catch a few precious moments of all my customers."

"How come you run it only when the door is opened?" Frank asked. "Wouldn't it make more sense to keep it going at all times?"

Judas reached down beneath his desk and pulled out a cardboard box. Opening it, he revealed a dozen or more videotapes, each labeled with a month and year. "If I kept it running at all times, I'd use up two tapes a day. I couldn't afford that, and really, I'd have no place to store them all. This way, I change 'em once a month."

Frank felt a twinge of excitement. He looked at Hector who was looking at his watch.
Good 'ol Hect
, Frank thought. No doubt he was sorting the same thoughts through his head: that this surveillance system of Judas' could possibly prove Frank's theory. Finding Harold Gross on the tape would be one thing, albeit an unimportant factor at this time (the conclusion had already been made that Harold Gross was indeed at this store).

But, what if another one of...
them
had been here, making a purchase?

Frank let his eyes roam the cramped office. A poster on the wall caught his eye:

Village Clothing! Techno-Wear For Every Mind-Bending Occasion!

The detective personality inside couldn't help but think of all the CD's in Patrick Racine's room.

"Frank?"

Frank shook away the momentary lapse of lucidity. "Yes, Hect."

"What do you think?"

"Judas, would you mind if we took a quick look through your videos from the last two months?"

"Sure. The tape that's in now has the last three weeks on it. Judging by the date on the receipt, your boy will be on it towards the beginning." Judas aimed the remote down and Frank noticed two VCR's stacked on top of one another on the floor below the cart. One was rewinding the tape currently in.

The tape clicked to a stop, and Judas began flipping through a multitude of grainy, blurry frames.

A few minutes of silence passed showing a multitude of youthful customers coming and going from the store. Finally Hector abruptly pointed to the screen. "There! Stop!"

Judas stopped the tape and Frank saw him at once. A man, completely bald, wearing sunglasses.

But it wasn't Harold Gross. Someone else had come into Village Clothing recently, someone shorter, stouter. Someone that looked eerily similar to Harold Gross.

Judas pressed a button on the remote. The next frame showed the bald customer perusing a rack of clothing. The third showed him at the checkout counter making a substantial purchase. When he advanced to the next frame, the bald customer was gone.

"That sure looks like your boy," Judas offered.

Frank rubbed his chin in thought, the drone of the music from out front pounding on the walls. He felt a slight stirring of a headache, inducing the onset of fatigue, and he suddenly hoped he wouldn't be here much longer. "Judas, would you mind going through this tape with us? I'd like to see how many guys fitting a similar description had come in over the last two weeks."

"No problem, officer." He smiled in jest, nodding. Clearly he was enjoying this little adventure.

So they went through the tape, stopping a total of seven times in order to get a closer glimpse of bald men, some with sunglasses, all of whom made purchases. The third one they saw had been Harold Gross.

A half-hour later, when they finally returned to the frames Frank and Hector appeared in, Frank asked Judas to put in a tape from last month, then pulled Hector aside. "Well, what do you think?"

"Weird—but so are a lot of the kids that come in here. We'd find a hundred of 'em wearing green hair and eyebrow rings."

"Yeah, but this is different, I just...well I just know, Hect. C'mon, I haven't been wrong yet, have I?"

Hector closed his eyes and rubbed them, the dark semi-circles underneath arising like cold shadows. "No, you haven't. Believe me, at this point I'm pretty amazed that there seems to be a bunch of bald guys wearing sunglasses running around committing crimes, more so that they actually seem to be coming to this store to buy black clothing, just as you said. But why
this
place?"

Frank leaned away from Hector. "Judas? Do you play that techno music here all day long?"

Judas nodded. "You bet. Most of the time, anyway. Kids love it."

"I have another theory regarding that. At least now I do."

Hector put his hands up, palms facing Frank in a defensive posture. "Whoa Ballaro, one thing at a time. You still haven't told me how your Bobby Lindsay fits in with all this."

"Gentlemen?"

Frank and Hector faced Judas. He was pointing to a frame of a bald male customer wearing sunglasses standing right below the scope of the camera's eye, staring straight into the lens.

Bobby Lindsay.

S
hivering wildly, wracked with pain and nearly frozen in fear, Jaimie stumbled up the steps of the Sixth Street station, her sneakerless feet scraping against the concrete steps, glass and pebbles tearing holes through her socks, cutting her soles. At the top step she stubbed her toe and cried out. A number of folks passing by took brief notice of the dirty-socked, straggled-haired girl, but shuffled on their way, disinterested in lending any support—which was all well and fine with Jaimie. She simply wanted to get to the safety of her home as quickly as possible, into the warm caring embrace of her father, where she would be safe.

She found it amazing how the people of New York just ignored those in apparent distress. After staggering on the train in the Bronx, her soles wet and bloodied, trailing tacky footprints on the aisle floor, she pulled herself into a seat and closed her eyes, trying gravely to block out the heavy stares of the twenty some-odd riders scattered throughout the length of the train. In the darkness of her shuttered eyes, she heard gentle footsteps approach and then the voice of a male stranger questioned her, asked if she were all right, but she kept her eyes sealed in answer, fearful that the voice might belong to a mysterious bald man with sunglasses, or even the bloodied disemboweled cadaver from the subway platform, and she simply replied, "I'm fine" in a curt yet civilized manner, keeping her hands to her face, running them through her sweaty, matted hair, all the while trying to control her shakes.

The footsteps backed off, no additional questions asked, and she sat utterly alone, trembling, feeling the multitude of cold stares penetrating her as the train slowly shook its way back into the city. She felt an alarming warmth at her feet, the blood, seeping through her sneakers, through her socks, through her skin, perhaps into her very bloodstream, seemingly poisoning her with whatever horror it carried—the same one that had stricken the poor young man sitting amidst his decimated viscera on the subway platform.

The first stop came and the doors opened up. Unable to withstand the inquisitive stares from the other passengers, or the bloody poison tainting her sneakers, she impulsively stood and darted from her seat out through the opened doors onto the elevated platform at the 78th Street Station in the Bronx. The doors quickly closed behind her and the train once again left her in solitude, elevated thirty feet in the cold nighttime air. Her concerns suddenly centered on ridding her body of the rotten sneakers, and she kicked them off onto the tracks. She then ran to the furthest end of the platform, waiting nearly twenty minutes until the next train into the city pulled in. She took a seat in the sparsely filled car—still gathering some wary looks—and pulled her knees to her chest, her chin on her knee-caps, her sneakerless feet at the edge of the seat. She stared out the window, watching the stops come and go for what seemed an eternity, all the way to the 6th Street Station in Manhattan where she hurried off, lightheaded, stumbling up the steps like a drunkard after an all night binge.