It Happens in the Dark (26 page)

Of course Charles felt protective, but the man had not thought this through. So the detective spelled it out in words that a civilian could understand, words that had never sunk in before, but he was game to make one more try, yelling, “
She’s
the one with the damn
gun
!”

No luck this time, either.

The man on the other end of the line had a plan to stand guard all through the night—if Riker would only square this with the nice patrolman, who had handcuffed him.

“No, Charles.
Real
bad idea. Get away from Mallory’s building before she shoots you. She can do that from a high window. The kid’s a great shot.”

And her anger would be righteous. Tomorrow her name would figure in a patrolman’s report—and not in any flattering way, more like a very bad joke on her.

“Put the cop on the phone.” When he was done talking with the patrolman, done vouching for Charles’s sanity and good intentions, Riker lacked the energy to turn on a lamp. He sat down in the dim glow of streetlight shining through a slit in a window curtain. The dead cell phone fell from his hand.

In the kitchen, only steps away, a cold beer was calling his name. Dead tired, he rose from the chair and dropped his coat on the rug before entering the next room, where the sticky linoleum floor was not half as clean—and this passed for wardrobe maintenance. The bulb in the refrigerator made a bright slice in the open door, and he shut it quickly.

He did his best thinking with the lights out.

A bottle cap pinged off the countertop in the dark.

Maybe Charles had been right to worry. Mallory never would. She seemed not to care about the all too personal attentions of the ghostwriter. Would she see a kill strike coming—by a razor, an axe or a bat? It would happen in the dark—the only way to get her.

Charles had said that the play was about the love of killing women. Riker bolted down his beer as he considered the snag in that theory: Both murder victims were males.

Crimes of expediency instead of fun?

Was Charles afraid that the sick-fun part was yet to come?

Tired, so tired, Riker moved from room to room, skirting obstacles of trash by memory. Passing by the pitch-black bathroom doorway, he recalled Axel Clayborne’s complaint: The bulb of his plastic Jesus night-light had burned out.

•   •   •

If only a hot shower could wash away idiocy.

A bit damp, but wiser now, Charles Butler turned off the bedside lamp and burrowed into pillow and quilt, weary but too distracted for sleep.

Riker had been correct to upbraid him. Of course Mallory would have seen the Mercedes headlights following her home tonight. He could quite easily buy into the myth that she could even see in the dark. So beautifully equipped to survive was she—and with no help from him.

Fool!
He would
never
get that part right.

But perhaps he could also blame his recent foolishness on nights without much rest. So disturbing was the image of Mallory’s lost head rolling across a stage, he had been forced to consider a world without her. Could he live in such a place?

He
had
found some measure of peace by simply standing outside of her apartment building, standing guard against every comer—except for the patrolman, the one who had pulled up alongside him, finding his behavior more than old-world odd, not quite so gallant—stalking a woman.

Fool. Clown
.

Could he picture Mallory laughing at that scene? No, not on this planet.

Sanity and clarity restored, he knew there would be payback. But was it so wrong, this need to keep her safe from monsters?

In her opinion? Oh, yes. Very wrong. And how would she react tomorrow? How angry might she be?

For an hour more in the black of night, these thoughts crept around his mind, gnawing at him like vermin, raising his anxiety, and then—

An ice-cold jab at the back of his neck.

Eyes shocked wide and stuck that way, he was paralyzed, apart from the racing pulse, the galloping heart. And now—the endgame line for the Heart Attack Express.

“You’re
dead
!” said Mallory.

Fine!
Fair enough.

SUSAN:
If you die, the disability checks will stop.

ROLLO:
Oh, dead or alive, I have my uses. A corpse can attract more flies for their collection.

—
The Brass Bed
, Act III

Here on Fifth Avenue, God’s house spanned a city block, but it always took the tourists by surprise. The majestic spires gave them no advance warning. That grandeur was hidden and dwarfed in a neighborhood of skyscrapers, and the entry was only a short flight of steps from street level. Riker saw it as the in-your-face kind of Gothic cathedral.

The great doors were flanked by two other entrances, all of them built to the scale of giants, and so the steady stream of mourners was not impeded by five detectives gathered on the sidewalk out front.

“The Rinaldi twins got no life.” Janos pulled out a bagel and passed the deli sack to his partner. “Every night, they eat dinner in a crummy hole on Lexington. I talked to their regular waitress. She said they grew into scary little weirdos gradually. Before they started rehearsals, they just made her squirm a little.”

Detective Washington flipped the pages of his notebook. “They didn’t lie about their residuals. They’re not rich, but when they’re outta work, there’s enough income to pay the rent and then some.” He flipped another page. “Either they got no medical coverage or they’re insured under another name.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Mallory. “Plastic surgery won’t show up on insurance records.”

Why the interest in plastic surgery? Riker was not the only one to wonder. There were quizzical looks from the other men.

Mallory faced Janos, their expert on the Rinaldi brothers. “Did the agent give you their headshots?”

“Yeah, and the twins had surgery for sure.” Janos held up his phone. Onscreen was an image of the twins as children. “No pug noses in this one.” He clicked to the next portrait. “Now this is a later shot, but see? They look a lot younger. The agent wouldn’t say, but I figure their noses got clipped to keep ’em from aging out of kiddie roles.”

Mallory took the camera from his hand. As she clicked through all of the actors’ photographs, Riker squinted to watch the Rinaldi brothers age from boys to men.

“No jughandle ears,” she said. “Ask the agent if they ever had—”

“Just curious.” And mildly pissed off. Riker leaned toward her.
“Jughandle ears?”

Before he could ask what she was holding out on him, Mallory volunteered that “The boys from the Nebraska massacre had—”

“No way,” said Janos. “You like these guys for the ghostwriter? Dead wrong
.
They’re not imbeciles, but they’re not all that smart. They got one trick. They’re flesh-crawlin’ scary. That’s
it.
”

“Nobody took a hard look at Gil Preston,” said Gonzales. “He got high grades at Columbia. Maybe lightin’ up stages isn’t his dream job. I bet
he
could—”

“No,” said Mallory, “he’s harmless.”

And four men deferred to a woman’s radar for any poor bastard so labeled as lame.

Janos handed Riker a copied magazine article dating back to the sitcom days of the Rinaldi twins. “It’s a press agent’s bio. Two kids growing up in an ideal American family and a picture-postcard town. Check out the shot of Mom and Dad.”

Riker did not need his eyeglasses to make out Janos’s margin note:
No such people, no such place.

•   •   •

Charles Butler unlocked the theater’s alley door with a newly minted key. Mallory had stolen the one used for a template, though Bugsy would have given her a hundred copies if she had only asked.

Before the end of this morning’s session, the purloined original must be restored to the gopher’s key ring—
surreptitiously—
per the thief’s instruction. And
then
Charles would be forgiven for last night’s unfortunate stalking incident.

A small price.

All he had to do was deceive the little man whose trust he had earned, and Charles said to himself, as Mallory would say, “Yeah,
right
.”

He carried his bag of pastries and coffee up the stairs and down the railed walkway to knock on the door of the last dressing room.

“Come in.” There was no wariness in Bugsy’s voice, no curiosity about who might be out here.

Perhaps the effects of the drug had not yet worn off. Charles opened the door to see the gopher crawling about on the floor, sorting through the tattered pages of his old play, the one he had starred in on Broadway. “Good morning, Bugsy.”

“I missed my performance last night. I only figured on takin’ a nap, but I slept like the dead.”

“There’ll be other nights,” said Charles. But there should be no more brownies from Mallory. And now for her chore of subterfuge, his penance, he pulled the stolen key from his pocket and handed it to Bugsy. “I believe this is yours.”

“Yeah, thanks.” And the key was pocketed with no suspicion, no questions asked. Though it could hardly have fallen off the gopher’s formidable key ring, theft would not occur to him. Since it was returned in a straightforward manner, he would assume that the key had been borrowed, not stolen.

So simple. Charles knew it would be.

Bugsy lacked guile, and his heart was generous. In previous conversation, he had voiced empathy with Alma Sutter, and he clearly felt protective of her. That fit so well with his gift of a kidney to another young woman. A more facile psychologist would have labeled him with a rescue complex and called it a defect. But Charles saw the gopher as a noble, albeit improbable, knight, sans shield and sword and armor. Vulnerable. Fragile to the core.

When they were seated side by side on the bedroll, sipping coffee and eating bakery goods, Charles learned that the gopher had a perfectly normal response to the Rinaldi brothers. They made him uncomfortable.

“And they drive Alma nuts. That’s their idea of fun.”

“Only her? They single her out for abuse?” Charles turned toward the door. “Did you hear that? Sounds like someone crying.”

“Yeah,” said Bugsy. “That’s Alma. I never get used to it.”

“But there’s no rehearsal today.” Charles glanced at his watch. Right about now, the actors and the crew would be assembling for the funeral service. As yet, he had no idea why Bugsy had been excluded. “Why would she—”

“Sometimes Alma drops in just to check out the blackboard.”

“And now it’s upset her.” Charles got up from the bedroll and walked to the open door. This would certainly bear investigation.

“Don’t bother. There’s nothin’ on the board to make Alma cry. There never is. She’s just seein’ things again.” With one finger, the gopher made a spinning motion at his temple. “Not quite right in the head. . . . Poor kid.”

Poor Alma. Poor Bugsy.

Charles stepped over the threshold to stand by the railing. He looked down to see a doll-size Alma Sutter backing out of the wings and covering her mouth to stifle the crying. She turned around, dabbed at her eyes with a tissue and then shredded it, leaving a trail of wet confetti as she tottered across the backstage area. This actress was the true ingénue, not yet a woman, but practicing—a girl on the verge of toppling from the great height of her mother’s high heels.

He knew that everyone she met today would share the same thought:
Don’t fall.

•   •   •

Alma was late, though most people had not been seated yet.

The funeral service for Peter Beck had filled the cathedral with mourners, and the procession up the center aisle was moving slowly. It was an easy guess that most of them had come for a glimpse of the rich and famous, and everyone with a press agent had come to be seen.

The actress scanned the crowd, counting the house by habit, as she took another step, making little progress toward the pew reserved for the theater company. She recognized the back of every head in that front row. Even a few of the understudies had come.

Oh,
no.
One ankle twisted outward, and she almost tripped in her stilettos.
Damn it all!
She had stupidly reversed her wardrobe mantra: High heels for cocaine—
flats
for Vicodin.

Was she weaving?

Alma glanced at the theater’s cashier, the slim brunette who walked alongside her, and she thought of asking Donna Loo for a supporting arm. Before she could speak, the other woman was roughly pushed out of the way.

And now the Rinaldi brothers appeared on each side of Alma, walking in lockstep, pressing up against her, shoulder and thigh. It was like cuddling with worms. Nowhere to go but forward, and her ankles wobbled. One of the twins stroked her arm in a mockery of offering comfort, and they both stared at her with that look of dead flies for eyeballs, and, oh, those stereo halfwit smiles.

They giggled.

Her stomach was queasy, her palms were wet.

The organ music was loud, and her voice could not rise above it when she screamed, “Get
away
from me! Leave me
alone
!” She turned and tried to push her way through the people who blocked her escape, begging, “Let me get
out
!” No use, the aisle was packed with bodies. And then—
inspiration—
she yelled, “I’m gonna throw up!”

A path was opened for her, and the grinning twins trotted along close behind her—giggling.

•   •   •

While detectives snapped photographs of mourners mounting the stairs to the cathedral, Riker noticed that it was a very cheerful crowd.

A limousine pulled over to the curb, not the first one to stop here this morning, but it was the longest car. The chauffeur had a bit of a hike to let his passenger out by the rear door. The first cry went up, and a flock of funeral-goers turned like birds in formation. They flew down the steps to converge on the movie star, whipping out autograph books on the run. Axel Clayborne signed for his fans and smiled for photographers.

Riker was still preoccupied with the stretch limousine. How did that thing turn corners?

“Captain Halston hasn’t backed off.” Mallory pointed to a lone figure standing on the sidewalk at the corner. The man was bareheaded, hands in his pockets and stomping his feet to keep warm. “That guy’s from Midtown North.”

“Ron Bowman,” said Riker.

“Didn’t he used to be one of
your
men?”

“Yeah. In another life.” That was back when he had rank and a squad under his command—good times—when he had rolled into work still drunk from the night before, stayed that way all day long, and
still
racked up commendations. A screwup Judas cop had done some damage to hasten the end of Riker’s captaincy. And then, in the tradition of weasels, Halston had made his way up through the ranks, and now, with command of Midtown North, he also had Ron Bowman, Riker’s favorite blue-eyed boy. The final insult.

How did Bowman like his new commander?

Riker walked to the edge of the stairs, and waited until the other detective’s searching eyes had found him. He made a curt wave to Bowman, signaling,
Come here
. And then he jabbed the air twice to say,
Now! Right now!

The cop from the Midtown precinct did come, but in his own time, time enough to remember his roots and find a smile for the first man who gave him a chance to shine. Bowman was fourteen years older now. How fast these rookie dicks grew up.

When they stood facing each other, Detective Bowman recited his standard snatch of poetry. “O’ Captain, my captain.”

“You’re still an affected little snot,” said Riker.

And then they fell into the natural patter of “How’s it goin’?” and “What’s new?” gradually winding down to “Yeah, Halston’s still a real shit.” However, that man was Bowman’s shit, Bowman’s captain now. “So, if I find Alan Rains first, I’m gonna bring him in.”

Right or wrong, orders were followed in Copland.

“Well, the guy’s in the wind,” said Riker. “No chance he’d turn up here. Makes me wonder how hard you guys are workin’ this case.”

“The whole squad’s hunting down Alan Rains, or Bugsy, whatever the hell you call him. Halston thinks that little guy’s all he needs to blow Special Crimes out of the water—hopefully before he gets demoted and shipped out to the South Bronx.”

Riker smiled. He could dream. “Got any leads?”

“I found a website posted by one of Bugsy’s fans. Last night, we made a sweep of the subway under Times Square . . . and we’ll make another one tonight.”

A nod from Riker thanked him for the heads-up.

Both men turned to see Alma Sutter running out of the cathedral—full throttle in four-inch heels, an accident in the making. She lurched in a stumble of one shoe off and one shoe on.

Any second—

Holy
shit
! Who knew Janos could move so fast? He broke her fall when she tumbled.

The Rinaldi twins stood on the top step, their backs to the cathedral doors.

Smiling.

Freaks.