Feelers (20 page)

At Sears he found two more ice picks and boot laces. As was his practice in prison, he always discarded a shiv once he used it. That was a big factor in not getting caught in prison. Even if you were present when someone got killed it did not necessarily implicate you. In prison, you are almost never alone with just one other person, so killings always happen with people nearby. Prisoners who witnessed a killing would never divulge this to the authorities. Those that did usually ended up dead no matter how the guards tried to protect them.

Even as Danny was back in the mall bathroom rigging up the two ice picks in his sleeves, he told himself that he would have to cut back on the stabbings. A witness who was not a prisoner would be sure to tell the authorities.

Killing Rude Man was unnecessary. He knew it was reactionary on his part, like a reflex left over from prison.

He did not want to kill Mary, but she refused to tell him who cleaned the house and picked up the phone to call the police when Danny got angry. It was just as well, though, because the contents of her strongbox were useful. First, the check for the cleaner, Martinez, with his phone number. Second, there was a thousand dollars in mixed bills, which was in the same envelope with the check. The cash was useful on its own, but it was interesting that all of it was old bills—more than fifteen years old. Was this part of the five million? Since it was in the same envelope with the check, it could have been from the cleaner.

Dexter was asking for it, and had it coming. Did he really think that much of himself, that he could talk Danny into turning himself in?

Danny knew if he continued to ice pick people, the chances of getting caught sooner rather than later would increase. He was renting room 404 two more days, and he reasoned that as long as nobody went in he had at least that much time before the reporter’s body was found and he should get out of town. Forty-eight hours to find the cleaner—me—or whoever took the money, and get the five million. He hoped that I had his money. When I moved the couch to clean, Danny figured, one of the floorboards popped up and I discovered it. Otherwise, it got complicated, and he might not find the five million at all.

Danny walked from the mall and found a small park where
he could study his and Dexter’s phones to try to make sense of what happened earlier when he tried to use them.

He had my phone number—but not a way to find me. Until he managed to check Dexter’s messages, and heard the one I had left.

“Dexter, Morty returning your call. I’ll see you at the Vanderhoosen house at noon.”

IT WAS THE UPS DELIVERYMAN
who detected something was wrong at 901 East 109th Street. He knocked on the screen door with one hand, his other hand holding the plain brown package containing pornography. He heard something inside, he did not know what, and put his hands and face up against the screen to see inside.

“Hello?”

He heard the sound again, a squealing or squeaking sound. The deliveryman grew up in a rough section of the Bronx, and the sound was familiar. Rats fighting? Then he saw a rat scuttle across the hallway.

“Hello?” The screen door was locked. He detected the faint smell of decay, and he looked at the houses to either side. An older woman in a flower-print housedress next door was watering her flowerpots on her stoop.

“Excuse me . . .”

She squinted at the deliveryman.

“Do you know the man who lives here? Have you seen him recently?”

She smiled. “He’s an asshole. The less I see of him the better. Enjoy your day.” She went inside.

The deliveryman was undecided about what he should do. Rats don’t necessarily mean anything is wrong. The guy could have a rat problem and left his screen door open when he went out of the house to get the paper. No wonder he had a rat problem: You could smell the garbage was spoiling.

He posted one of those annoying yellow delivery stickers to the screen door and walked slowly down to his brown van. Calling 911 seemed overkill. He would have to come back the next day with the package. If the situation were the same, then he would call the police.

Twenty minutes later he was at a light on the boulevard two blocks away when a cop car pulled up next to him.

“Excuse me, officer?”

Ten minutes later two police officers forced open the screen door at 901 East 109th Street and found a pile of rats feasting on Rude Man’s chest cavity. One officer barfed on the spot; the other made it outside before he puked.

THE FORENSIC PEOPLE AT THE
Luna Motel, room 404, were as overwhelmed as they were at Upscale Realty. When they turned out the lights and turned on the black lights, there were thousands of semen stains covering virtually all the surfaces of the room. All were tagged, and then they turned on the lights and began tediously sampling and documenting each one.

Detectives Ruez and Pool were there, wearing their shoe covers and staring thoughtfully down at the blood drag across the carpet into the bathroom.

“Dexter’s not going to make it.” Ruez shook his head.

“Bad shape.” Pool made a clicking sound in his teeth, an expression of regret.

“This’ll be murder for sure.” Ruez sighed.

“Think a girl was involved? You know, thump and bump . . .”

“Angry husband or boyfriend comes in, smashed his face in with the phone?”

“Whoever it was didn’t pull punches.” Pool looked at the shattered phone, which had been poured into an evidence bag and
was sitting by the door. “Funny that Dexter was at the Upscale murder scene just last night, and now here dead.”

“Funny?”

“You know.” Pool looked at his partner. “Not ha-ha funny. A coincidence.”

“Or not.”

“Think Dexter was following something on the Upscale murder, got close to the murderer?”

“Low percentage. It’s a thump and bump. Had to do with sex.” Ruez smiled faintly. “Did we find Dexter’s cell phone yet?”

Pool said no with a frown.

“Not in his car?”

Pool said no with another frown. “We called the paper, they’re checking his office.”

Ruez sighed. “Let’s go look at the security tapes. But we need that phone.”

Pool headed for the door. “Possible the killer took it?”

“Why would the husband take it?”

“Maybe his number was on it. Voice mail, you know, like that.”

“Hmm. Let’s have the paper give us the cell provider, download the incoming and outgoing calls, messages.”

They started down the hotel corridor for the manager’s office, the plastic on their shoes going
scrench scrench scrench
.

“Ooo.” Pool winced. “Hear about Rat Man?”

“Guy they found eaten by rats?”

“Whew!” Pool waved a hand in front of his wrinkled nose as if there were a stench. “Glad we didn’t get called in on that.”

If Ruez and Pool had taken the phone research a step further, they would have had the provider triangulate the signal and locate
Danny and stop all this carnage and destruction right then and there.

But they did not.

Idiots.

FANNY AND I LEFT THE
apartment about nine. She was running late. I was carrying the busted lamp down to the trash.

“
Cara mia,
you must tiptoe down the last flight of stairs,” I whispered.

“Morty, I have to get to work, come on.”

“My sweet, we do not want the landlord to come from his lair.”

“His what?”

“His lair. Like a monster from a cave under the stairs.”

“Morty, can’t you talk like everybody else? It’s not always cute.”

I threw up my hands as she tromped down the last flight of stairs. I could picture the monster toad in his gloomy grotto, his leviathan ogre wife parked in the corner surrounded by abused Entenmann’s boxes and torn Cheetos bags. He hears feet coming down the steps, and the monster toad wonders: Who is this? Can I make this person miserable? And so he pries his bulk from the sofa and goes to the door.

Like clockwork. As soon as Fanny hit the ground floor, my landlord emerged.

“Who are you?”

Fanny shrieked, startled, and the monster toad looked up at me.

“Whatsimmatter with her?”

“You scared me,” Fanny scolded.

“Morty, you know we live down here. Tell her not to stomp on the stairs.”

“Yes, of course. Sorry.”

“I wasn’t stomping,” Fanny protested. “I don’t stomp.”

“Morty, is this the girl from . . .
Jersey
? The one from last night when you came creeping in?”

You see what I mean? He emerged to make my life miserable. Though to be brutally honest, I do not think he had any idea that what he was saying was making me miserable.

Monsters are horrible by nature.

Fanny was staring holes through me as I tiptoed the last few steps to the landing.

“You’re not from New Jersey, are you?” I asked Fanny.

“What
girl
from Jersey?” When a woman puts her hands on her hips while talking to you, there is often going to be trouble. “You were creeping?”

“Oh, then this is the other girl,” my landlord added. He was talking to me like Fanny was not even there. I just blinked at him, looked at Fanny, and laughed. Hey, when things like this happen, you can either laugh or cry. Take your pick.

“This is Fanny.” I said this like an introduction . . . and tried to ignore the growing suspicion and awkwardness.

My landlord just glanced at her as if she were a photograph.

“Well, make sure Fanny doesn’t stomp down the stairs, OK?”

“Sure.” I smiled at him reassuringly and guided Fanny out the front door.

As soon as we reached the stoop she ground to a halt. “What
girl
from Jersey?”

I groaned. “Fanny, he is insane. That is why I wanted you to walk softly down the stairs, so he would not come out of his apartment.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“But I did, my sweet.”

“No, you said something about your landlord being a liar.”

“
Lair.
I meant his apartment.”

“You could have just said so. What about this
girl
from Jersey?”

“There is no
girl
from New Jersey.”

“Then why—”

“I told him that. It was to make him stop bothering me. I had the . . . money bag in my hand and he came out and—”

“What, like a shopping bag? What the hell are you talking about, Morty?”

“Look,
querida,
please, we can discuss this as I drive you to work, yes?”

“
Yes.
”

So I managed to shovel my way out of the pile of shit my landlord dumped on me—and I did it by telling her the truth. It was too fantastic not to be true. Though I felt like an idiot telling her I transported the money in a cheesy plaid suitcase, and said it was in a duffel bag to simplify the story. Although I think she was beginning to think I was an idiot anyway for telling my landlord that I was taking my shirts to New Jersey. What could I say: It seemed like the thing to do at the time, yes? Anyway, Fanny was still vaguely suspicious and cool when I dropped her off at Tangles.

I had a couple hours before I had to meet Dexter at the
Vanderhoosen house. Where to? The library—I wanted to check my e-mail, see if the real estate people had sent me the photograph of the Martinez three-tiered fountain.

I parked at a meter on the parkway, shoved some quarters in, and headed for the library entrance.

I checked my e-mail: no message from the people with the fountain. I looked over the pictures again. It sure looked like the place. I could almost transport myself there, feel the salty warm breeze, taste the air tinged with the smoke of burning palm litter, hear the birds and the hum of hummingbirds flitting through the bougainvillea, see the stark shadows tracking along the stucco where lizards sunned. It was like I had been there in a former life. Perhaps I had.

I checked out some other listings and the La Paz site, mainly just daydreaming. I checked the time and realized I had better log off and go meet Dexter.

Exiting the library, I had the image of the fountain in my mind. Steps away from the library entrance, I received a tremendous shove from behind—I tripped and fell, rolling to my side on the cement sidewalk.

My attacker? Pete the Prick, standing over me with a two-by-four at the ready.

“I want that money! I know you fixed that bid with Mary! The tight ones are rightfully mine!”

I told you, Father, about how he had nice teeth, but that he rarely used them to smile. He was not smiling, but the teeth were literally snapping at the air with every syllable, spittle flying.

My arms were held out to protect myself. If he started in with the two-by-four, I would take a serious licking.

Think, Morty, think.

I obeyed Martinez’s First Rule of Combat: Don’t.

“Pete, you are right! The money? The tight ones? They
are
yours. But if you hit me, if you hurt me, I will not be able to take you to the ten thousand, right?”

I could tell: He really wanted to hurt me, and in a bad, bad way.

“Balkan Boys are busted up, why shouldn’t
you
be?” He was frothing mad, to be sure.

Here is this insane man brandishing a two-by-four threatening to seriously harm me on a public street. Citizens are passing by, giving us a wide berth. There is even a security guard in the library watching from behind the glass doors. Is anybody calling the cops? I know New York has a reputation for being a cold place, but despite my predicament, this is not true. If you ask directions, New Yorkers will stop and give them to you in great detail, with other natives dropping in on the conversation to give their version of the directions. But when it comes to physical altercations, not many of us will intercede. Cowardice? Not as such. I think it has more to do with survival of the fittest. If you are weak, it is your fault. That is not to say that a New Yorker would not protect a child from an adult, or a woman from a man, but not a woman from a woman, and not a man from a man. The good news is that after you are beat up, lying there bleeding, a New Yorker will call the EMS and do a nominal job of making sure you do not die. A small consolation, I know, but a consolation nonetheless.