Symphony of Blood, A Hank Mondale Supernatural Case (2 page)

“Big Joe! How’s business?”

“You know, enough to keep me busy, not enough to retire.”

“Sounds better than my business.”

“What’s the matter?”

“No work.”

Suddenly, my cell phone rang. I looked at the number; it was Flip. I ignored it.

“Really? Sorry to hear that. You’re still working for Flip, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but it’s not steady. I need some work. Desperately.”

Joe sighed and exhaled loudly. He shrugged and his chins lined up like a seven layer cake.

“Wish I did, Hank. I don’t have anything right now.”

“Nothing? You must have something for me, Joe.”

Joe shrugged again.

“I tell
ya
, I’m desperate. There must be something. A jealous girlfriend who wants her man followed. A rich guy getting divorced who needs dirt on his wife to lower the alimony payments. Something? Anything?”

“Sorry, Hank. You know I’d pass along anything I had to you. You’re my guy.”

My cell phone rang again. This time, I didn’t look at the number to see who it was.

“Okay, Joe. Give me a call if you hear anything.”

“Sure, Hank.”

“Anything….anything at all.”

“I heard you.”

I walked back out onto Houston Street and felt the rush of wind. Normally, my next stop would be Dempsey’s. I could use a drink and sometimes Rory heard things and could refer me some business. But Rory was pissed at me, and if Flip was looking for me, that’s the first place he’d look.

Instead, I grabbed a cab and took it up to Twenty-First Street. Who better to have a few drinks with than one of my oldest friends in the world, Detective Victor Ortega? Vic worked for the Manhattan South Homicide Task Force out of the thirteenth precinct. In all honestly, hanging with a cop wasn’t a bad idea at this point. At least until I could figure out a plan to deal with Flip. Owing him a couple thousand dollars was no sweat, but if I wasn’t ready to settle up, he’d want juice for carrying me. If I could just avoid him for the night, I’d have an excuse prepared for the morning.

I looked at my phone: four missed calls. Three from Flip’s cell phone. The fourth was a blocked caller, which meant Flip called me a fourth time from a blocked line. He only did that when he suspected I was avoiding him. That meant he already spoke to Rory and was getting ticked off that I didn’t bring his money straight over like I was supposed to. Truth was, this wasn’t my first time holding out on him.

The wide-faced, red-cheeked desk sergeant nodded as I walked in; his name was O’Hara, or O’Malley or
O’something
. I was well known at the thirteenth, but not necessarily well liked. Still, I was with Vic, and Vic had the respect of all his peers. So, that guaranteed me at least a modicum of courtesy in this building.

“Hey, Hank.”

“O’Malley,” I said as I nodded back.

“It’s O’Hara.”

“Sorry. My fault.”

“Whatever.”

The stationhouse was pretty bleak: sheetrock walls painted beige with posters and memos thumb-tacked in a chaotic collage; black and white tiled floor with the white tiles stained so dirty they were almost as black as the black tiles; and lamps reflecting dust clouds in pale florescent light.

Victor was in the back of the room. He shared a ‘desk’ with his partner that was really two folding tables pushed together. He was sitting at it, wearing a slick black suit that probably looked good when he put it on, but at the moment looked pretty beat up, along with a white shirt and shockingly bright red tie. Vic was always a sharp dresser. His partner, Detective Jimmy Tate, sat at the other end in a worn gray suit; the same one he wore every day. There were no less than half a dozen empty coffee cups laying about the desks between scattered papers, open files and empty potato chip bags.

“Vic, there is no way. The descriptions don’t match,” Tate said, his voice as cranky as my mother after a few days without a call or a few hours without a smoke.

“Yes, but use your common sense! It’s too coincidental,” Vic replied.

“Come on! We have an eyewitness to our perp. The killer was a woman. The Bronx thing was a hooker. Forty year old, attractive businesswomen don’t kill hookers in the Bronx. Sleazebag johns do. Or pissed off pimps.”

Vic looked up from his partner and smiled. “Hey, Hank.”

“Slow day, guys?” I forced out an awkward laugh, feeling a little weird about interrupting.

Jimmy didn’t laugh. He bit his lip, gave a slight nod and subtle grunt.

“Never slow, Hank. Never slow,” Vic said.

“Aren’t you off the clock like an hour ago?” I asked.

“Yeah, but we’re on a murder case that we thought was dead. But now it’s live again, and we just can’t let it go.”

Part of me wanted to drag Victor out the door. Judging by the bags that were bulging below his bloodshot eyes, I could tell they’d been going around and ‘round about this case for
awhile
. And judging by the hoarseness of Vic’s voice, the only productive thing they’d done was get their heart rates up. Still, my curiosity got the best of me.

“What’s the deal on this?” I asked.

“Last summer a woman was murdered, Ginny Olsen. Fifty-four years old, pretty well off, but I wouldn’t call her rich. Lives in a nice building off the FDR Drive overlooking the East River. Comes in from walking her little shit dog, and an attractive woman follows her in. Security cameras catch it and everything. Woman follows Mrs. Olsen into her apartment, and kills her. No motive. No one’s ever seen her before or since. Super of the building gets a noise complaint, goes to check it out, and gets run over by the killer as she flees the scene. Eyewitness. Confirms that it’s the woman from the security tape, but we can’t turn up a thing on this broad.”

“Weird,” I said and shook my head.

Tate looked over like he didn’t really approve of Vic letting me in on such privileged information, but he didn’t say anything. I think secretly, he may have wanted a fresh opinion on the case but he’d never admit it.

Vic continued. “Coroner’s report comes back really freaky. Says Mrs. Olsen’s internal organs are partially deteriorated.”

“Partially deteriorated?”

“Yeah, says there is no way they could have decomposed that quickly. So we have no idea what to make of the whole thing. We’re thinking maybe some kind of poisoning. But we check around, and we get word that Bronx Homicide has a similar stiff.”

“No shit,” I said, not sure what else to say.

“Crazy, right? Just a couple days after our murder, they have a murder. The thing is, their stiff is a hooker, and she’s found only two days after being murdered, but in her case, she’s almost entirely decomposed. There’s almost nothing left of her.”

“How can you be sure she wasn’t dead and rotting for longer?”

“We’ve got witnesses that saw her two nights before, including a cop who was real familiar with her, says he busted her a dozen times or more, and swears he saw her and even thinks he knows which john killed her. Middle aged white dude with an Oldsmobile. But we haven’t been able to find him either.”

“That does sound like a crazy case.”

Tate finally added his two cents to the conversation and said, “If you’re going to tell the guy the case, tell him the whole case.”

“Are you holding out on me, Vic?”

Vic smiled and said, “No, just building up to the kicker.”

“Okay, spill.”

“The coroner’s report doesn’t say that the bodies are decomposed, exactly.”

“What does it say?”

“Well, it basically said the bodies were hollowed out, maybe even eaten.”

“What? Maybe it’s some kind of cult thing? Satanic ritual shit?”

“No, it’s too clean. A cult would be messy, blood trails all over the scene, and jagged cuts from dull knives or something. But the coroner’s report says these bodies were partially digested. Like someone ate them from the inside out.”

The room went silent for a minute, then I said, “That is creepy.”

“I’ll say,” Vic said with a nod.

“Maybe some kind of animal ate the body parts, after they were dead,” I suggested.

“Yeah, sure, I’d say it was a gerbil but it’s the wrong hole,” Tate said, laughing at his own joke.

Vic cringed and said, “Come on! Is that necessary?”

“So, that was last summer. Why you guys back on the case?” I asked.

“I don’t know. We could be reaching, but there was another body found upstate a ways outside a diner near Bedford, found after that crazy Indian summer we had. Has some of the same markings.”

“Well, I heard it’s supposed to warm up soon. Maybe he’ll strike again.”

“Maybe he doesn’t like the cold,” Vic offered.

“Yeah, sure,” Tate said. “Maybe he flies south for the winter.”

“You need a drink,” I said. “Come on. Call it a day, Vic.”

“Ah, why not?”

“Yeah, why not,” Jimmy said with obvious sarcasm.

“Why not come along, Jimmy?” Vic asked. “We’ll get a few drinks, watch the Knick game.”

Jimmy looked over at me, then said, “Nah. I’m
gonna
go over my notes one more time, then go home and get some rest.”

“You can’t go on forever,” Vic said. “Everyone needs a break sooner or later. I know I could use a cold one, or two, or ten.”

“You guys go ahead.”

“You sure?” Victor made one last plea. He was a loyal partner even though I never really saw the two get along. They argued nonstop over every case they worked.

“Get lost! Go on,” Jimmy snapped, half joking. The other half clearly wasn’t.

Victor and I walked out into the cold evening, quickly leaving the stationhouse behind.

“Where we going?” Victor asked. “Dempsey’s?”

“Nah. Anywhere but Dempsey’s!”

“Really?”

“I’m getting tired of that place. Could use a change of scenery.”

Victor looked at me crossly. Every day some poor sap covering up for a friend, or some psychopath accused of murder tried to lie to Victor, and he made his living seeing through them every time. He had a special gift for reading people that made him really good at his job.

“You in some kind of trouble again, Hank?”

“No. Just looking for a change. What’s the big deal?”

I could tell he wasn’t convinced. But he let it go. “Fine. Let’s catch a cab then. Head up to Haley’s.”

“Sure.”

As we stepped into the taxi, my phone rang again. I looked over at Vic and he looked back. He caught me. He could spot a liar. The number on the phone was blocked. It had to be Flip. To be calling for a fifth time meant Flip was pretty pissed. I turned the ringer off on my phone, and slid it into the pocket of my overcoat.

The cab let us out on Thirty-Seventh Street. Haley’s was just up the block. It was easier to jump out there then to have the taxi fight through the traffic and make three left turns to get around the one-way streets. Even on a chilly night we weren’t so spoiled that we needed door-to-door service. We could walk a block up.

Haley’s was a brighter place than Dempsey’s, had more ambiance for sure. Ambiance attracted women, and women attracted cops and business guys in nice suits. I didn’t really care for either. I didn’t have time, patience or bankroll to chase the kind of women that came into Haley’s, but they were nice to look at when whatever game I was watching went to a commercial break.

Victor saw a woman he liked. I think he already knew her, but it was hard to tell; he was always flirting.

“I’ll be right back,” he said and walked over her way with a wide smile.

I put my coat over a barstool in front of the big screen television, grabbed my cell phone from my coat pocket, then walked to the back. The place was loud, but the back area where the payphones and bathrooms were was a little better.

I called Flip’s “office.” They called it an office, but that wasn’t exactly what it was. It was a dingy room in a tiny apartment off Mott Street where no one actually lived. Inside the eleven-hundred-a-month studio generally sat two or three old guys chewing on cigars, sitting at desks as crusty and old as they were, taking bets over the phone.

“Office,” the voice of a million smoked cigars croaked.

“Yeah, it’s Hank.”

“Flip’s Hank?”

“Yeah.
What’daya
got on the Knicks tonight?”

“Knicks are minus five.”

“Okay, give me the Knicks four hundred times.” That meant two thousand. They were an old school, neighborhood sports book and still insisted on saying it that way. It dated back to the old days when they thought they were fooling the local cops by not using dollar values. I figured if I could hit the Knicks—and they were an absolute lock to torch the hapless Milwaukee Bucks—then I’d have Flip’s two grand for him. No harm, no foul. He’d be a little ticked off that I didn’t call him back, but he’d get over it quick if I told him I got hammered at Haley’s and couldn’t hear my phone ringing.

I walked back to my seat and a Jim Beam with two cubes of ice was waiting for me. Victor and his lady friend were at the next stool, her sitting, him hawking over her as he worked his magical tongue. The place was loud, and I could barely hear him.