The Eleventh Victim (31 page)

H
E STILL WASN’T CRAZY ABOUT NEW YORK, BUT CRUISE COULDN’T
complain about the food.

Roast Long Island duckling.

Filet mignon.

Stuffed lobster.

He was visiting the best restaurants in the world…restaurants whose chefs were once friends of his back in culinary school.

Imagine if they knew he was here, dining on their creations, all picked out of metal dumpsters behind each restaurant.

Most of it was barely touched, having been served to thin, wealthy women who frequented Manhattan’s five-star restaurants strictly for the scene. Forget the food…they couldn’t care less about the artistry behind each dish.

Most people would likely recoil at the thought of devouring the remains of food that had first been on somebody else’s plate. But they’d never eaten at Reidsville State Pen.

He was definitely eating better than he was sleeping…seeking out park benches, subway tunnels, and, when the cold was the worst, the city’s homeless shelters.

He imagined Hailey in her apartment in the sky, asleep beneath blankets on her bed.

What did she wear when she slept? A nightgown? A T-shirt? Did she have silk sheets or high-count cotton? What did she keep in her refrigerator? What was in her closet…her drawers?

All he had to do was get past the doorman and up to her apartment door. He’d been watching the service entrance and underground parking entrance. Visitors, movers, and work crews were in and out all day. He could easily slip in there…but what floor? Oh, yes, the bar directory had given him that on a silver platter.

For now, though, he’d have to settle for watching from a distance.

Tonight he was lurking on the steps of a brownstone down the block, keeping an eye on the entrance to her building, hoping she would emerge. Nobody seemed to be home. He wondered how he could get in.

He hadn’t seen her yet…but he was sure there were no other entrances than these two, and he had a bird’s eye view of both.

The wind off the East River was bitter. Soon he’d call it a night and find a place to bed down. Probably at one of the shelters, he thought, and sighed, his breath puffing out frosty in the night air…. Unless he could jimmy a door or window here at the brownstone.

Then a shadow loomed behind him in the glow of the street lamp.

“Cruise.”

What the hell?

Who here knew his name?

Cruise turned around.

Stunned, he managed to ask, “What the hell are you doing here?”

He spotted the glint of a butcher knife’s blade. Cruise twisted away and it struck his arm, just inches from a vein.

Ignoring the gushing blood, he fought off the attack.

Working out daily for years in prison had made him even stronger. After throwing a brutal left jab to the throat, Cruise took off as best he could. He found a filthy rag in a garbage can and used it to stave the flow of blood from the gaping wound on his forearm. If he hadn’t turned at the last second, he’d be lying in the city’s morgue right now wearing a John Doe toe-tag.

A
T
6:30
A.M., HAILEY’S HEAD SNAPPED UP FROM WHERE IT RESTED
on her chest for the last two hours.

It was time for breakfast.

The walk was just a few blocks, the shorter the better, and getting there was crucial. There was absolutely no reason for them to stop her, question her, detain her. But cops didn’t always need a reason. Who would a jury believe? Two cops or her, carrying a murder weapon concealed inside her sweatshirt?

In her bedroom, she pulled on sweats and running shoes, and snapped on her plastic running watch. Over her clothes, she pulled
on an extra, baggy sweatshirt. With no time to waste, she headed into the den.

Climbing up on the kitchen stool, she removed the sharp-pronged lifter from the mosaic ceiling fixture where it spent the night.

The sweatshirt was several sizes too large and hung loosely on her, leaving plenty of room. Wrapping it gingerly in a bath towel, she gently turned the deadly tines away from her stomach as she slipped the weapon into the pouch in front of her sweatshirt. Taking one last look around the apartment, she left, locking the door behind her.

It was 6:38 a.m.

The elevator descended from the floor just above her. When the doors slid open, there stood a man in running attire like herself, but with a golden retriever attached to a leash. He stood in the far corner. Not recognizing him, she almost backed off the elevator, but realizing that would seem unusual and, more important, memorable, if asked by police, she stepped on as normal. She kept her eyes down, focused on the dog.

The security cam in the upper corner bored into her.

She shifted to the corner and glanced over. He was staring straight into her face.

“Out for a run?” he asked.

Red flag. He was engaging in unsolicited conversation. Her antennae shot up immediately. A normal New Yorker would never do that.

She nodded politely.

“Me too,” he responded, trying to engage her in conversation.

The guy was standing there stiffly, just like a cop would. And his shoes. He said he was going running, but his shoes were tennis shoes, not running shoes. His jacket was extremely lightweight, not for outdoor winter running. Were those slacks under his running pants? She couldn’t tell…. This was bad.

The bell dinged. Lobby. She was out like a shot, as fast as she could walk without breaking into a full-blown sprint right there across the lobby floor.

It was empty but for the doorman, who called out after her, “Have a good run, Hailey!” Ricky blurted it out after her just as she darted past him and his morning newspaper.

Great…if the elevator guy hadn’t been sure before, now he definitely knew it was her.

She might have one thing on him though…she could run.

She didn’t bother to answer, just blew out the door. The cool air off the East River hit her and she ran north for all she was worth.

Cutting the corner against a red light, she glanced back over her left shoulder. She heard wild yelping and saw the elevator guy, fifty feet behind her now, trying to jog, but his retriever had tangled immediately in a knot of other leashes—a dog walker coming his way with an even dozen dogs, all shapes and sizes.

One block north, she looked back: no sign of him.

It was 6:43 a.m.

She cut left, heading west up the incline. She heard barking in the distance behind her…at just the right spot, she darted left into a parking garage and circled back south toward her own apartment, cutting through alleys and garages until she made it back just two doors from her own building’s entrance. She headed north, and in the distance, she could see him…the elevator guy. He looked to be getting farther and farther away with every step.

She had four city blocks on him and turned left, heading west crosstown. Two more blocks and two more avenues, and she was right where she wanted to be.

Ducking into the Century Diner, she immediately saw that there was a wait. She made her way politely through the crowd made up of the early business crew, all of them headed to offices around the city. In an hour, they’d be replaced by the more laid-back bunch: designers, sales, elderly retirees still on work schedules. Then would come the leisure brunch crowd, followed by moms with their babies in strollers.

Not a single suited male looked up from the business sections. They barely noticed her graze past.

She walked straight to the single bathroom positioned just across a narrow hallway from the diner’s kitchen. The kitchen was a madhouse, already in the throes of a hot, sweaty, frenzied morning rush.

The tiny bathroom was empty. She locked the door at the knob and with a latch, and looked at her little plastic Casio.

It was 6:53 a.m.

The bathroom was hot, overly heated by its next-door neighbor, the kitchen. Putting the lid down on the commode, she stepped on top and reached up to remove one of the perforated ceiling blocks above her. Staring up, she realized there was no way to hoist herself up. She placed the square back into position and looked around the tiny bathroom. There had to be a way. This was her only plan…if she could just get up there….

Only one other choice. She stepped up off the commode and over onto the sink, a full foot higher up. Standing on its two outer edges, she reached up again, lifting away a second block.

Pay dirt.

Using all her upper body strength, she pulled herself up on the two-by-four over the door beside the sink. Her foot kicked loudly against the door when she used it instinctively for leverage and she froze, waiting for a reaction from the other side.

Not a sound.

She hoisted herself through the opening and gently placed the square back where it belonged. She was in the pitch dark now and began to crawl through the dark, clammy ceiling space. It was musty and filthy, obviously undisturbed for years, if not decades.

Peering down through tiny holes in the ceiling squares as she crawled, she could see there was no one in the tiny hall waiting for the bathroom…yet. But she’d have to hurry.

She kept moving forward. She only had about fifteen more feet to go. She could see through the tiny specked holes in the ceiling squares that now she was over the kitchen. But the kitchen wasn’t good enough.

She needed the sinks…deep, steel industrial sinks, by this time, inches deep in gray soapy water and dirty dishes.

Pressing her eye to a hole in the ceiling tile, she spotted it on the far wall.

On her stomach, she army-crawled across the filth, making her way over and looking down through another tiny hole, just in time to see a short, thin busboy dump a stack of gooey egg dishes into the sink. She was right. The sink was half-full of dishes covered in water, iced with liquid soap bubbles.

Her right hand was outstretched above her. The Casio glowed in the dark.

It was 7:03 a.m.

Hailey lay there on her stomach, barely breathing. She slid the square over just a few inches, and then reached down with her right hand and gently, gently, pulled the lifter, sharp tongs facing away, out from under her shirt. Unwrapping the towel, she held the lifter by its base, the towel still wrapped around the handle.

Careful…fingerprints.

She watched as the busboy stood there running more hot water into the soapy goo. When it reached almost to the top, he wrenched the hot water off and turned away. In that split second, Hailey moved the ceiling square six inches further to the right and dropped the lifter directly into the sink, eight feet below.

It hit the top plate underwater and slid left to the bottom of the sink.

Instantly moving the square back into place and almost afraid to look, she forced herself to peer through another pinpoint speck hole. To her amazement, nothing had changed. The kitchen continued on and the busboy returned almost immediately with another load of plates for the sink

Still on her stomach, Hailey turned back on the night-glow feature of her watch.

It was 7:10 a.m.

Backtracking, she crawled as fast as she could toward the bathroom, just in time to hear the first of a stiletto of sharp knocks on the bathroom door.

Moving the bathroom ceiling square, she lowered herself to the sink, returned the square, hit the floor, and opened the door.

Would the elevator man be there with a pair of handcuffs?

She looked straight into the prunish face of a Wall Streeter, who brushed by her without a word, as if somehow she had insulted him by just being there.

She did the same, worming her way through the crowd at the door, and finally lifting her face only as she stepped onto the sidewalk and back into the morning air.

Turning left, then left again, she made her way back to the East River, sprinting east until she was back to her regular path. She ran crosstown to her building, then two steps at a time up to the front door and quickly tucked into the high-rise lobby.

Ricky was there still, smiling. “That was a quickie for you, Hailey! No pain, no gain!”

“I can’t pull anything past you, Ricky…but don’t worry, I’ll make up for it tomorrow.” She breezed past him and into a waiting elevator.

Her head buzzed as the elevator climbed the thirty floors, minus floor thirteen, for good luck.

It was 7:18 a.m.

Stepping off the elevator, all was quiet.

With the murder weapon safely soaking in the soapy water of the sink at Century Diner, Hailey had one job left on her to-do list.

Catch the killer before he caught her.

“D
AMN! DAMN! DAMN
!”

Why the hell couldn’t anyone do anything on their own?

Why did he, Floyd Moye Eugene, have to do everything himself?

Eugene was steaming under the collar; his face was red and his temperature had to be soaring. Sitting there behind his mahogany desk, which was completely free of clutter, not a single stray piece of paper or even a tiny silver gem clip out of place, he fumed.

Just off the phone with the Palmetto Dunes “leadership” down on the Island, Eugene decided, as he slammed the phone down mid-conversation, to make good on the threat to fly down to the Island and straighten things out himself.

If you want anything done right, you have to do it yourself.

That moron of a commissioner at St. Simons couldn’t foul this thing up any better if he tried.

Two months of constant delay had cost Eugene over two hundred thousand dollars so far. The bill was rising. Time was wasting. Failure to open the doors in time for tourist season would drain millions from short-term “flip” investors hoping for a quick recoup to then sell out before moving on to another so-called paradise high-rise development.

Eugene and his backers out of Vegas already had their eye on a “protected” strip of land in Hawaii—nothing but fisherman’s huts dotting the beach for miles.

Perfect.

But that was a no-go until Eugene could make good on St. Simons.

This should have been a freaking shoo-in, right here in his own freaking backyard.

With all the strings he’d had to pull with that moron Judge Carter; the reversal in order to get the federal funding back…in order to get the statute changed; the bust at the strip club…

Eugene breathed in hard and exhaled.

He had to calm down. Reaching for his right top drawer, he unlocked it and pulled out a manila folder, just to reassure himself.

Ah—the black-and-white photos of C.C. in the bathroom stall with the tranny.

They were beautiful. Thank God Hadden knew how to take a shot, even though he was a drunk. And excellent quality. You could make out every single hair combed over C.C.’s head.

C.C.

The idiot had to be shitting himself, waiting for the bomb to drop.

Then it would be bye-bye “Mansion,” as C.C. insisted on calling the governorship.

Wonder if he’d ever put two and two together and figure out that it was no coincidence that just after the reversal and the refunding of federal money to the law firm, he got busted with a tranny.

Probably not.

C.C. would probably blame it on some right-wing Republican conspiracy. Self-important moron. As if the Republicans would go to so much trouble to destroy a pimple on their ass like C.C.

Still seated behind his desk, Eugene patted the photos gently, as if they were a little pet, then locked them back away in the drawer.

Eugene realized he actually looked forward to the inevitable phone call from C.C., ’fessing up and begging Eugene to save his jiggly ass. He reached under his jacket into his short pocket, pulled out his dark aviator sunglasses, and touched a button on his phone.

“Yes, sir?”

“Call Peachtree DeKalb and get a pilot ready. I want to leave in thirty for St. Simons. I want the Gulfstream. I refuse to be cramped in a Citation. And for God’s sake, no stewardess yammering. I only want to hear from the pilots, and then precious little. And get
the car and driver. And have a white Escalade waiting on the Island.”

Eugene clicked her off before she could utter the usual, “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Minutes later, the traffic blurred as Eugene’s limo sped up I-85 toward PDK, Peachtree-DeKalb Airport, one of Atlanta’s most exclusive private airports. With pilots on the ready for those who could afford it, PDK had a steady stream of veteran Delta pilots standing by to fly your plane, carry your luggage, fix you a drink, and shine your shoes if you wanted. Pilots were in the surplus in Atlanta, thanks to carrier layoffs and gas prices at the biggest Delta hub in the country.

The limo pulled up in front of EPPS Aviation with Eugene seated in the back, behind tinted windows.

Like the Wright brothers, the Epps started off as bicycle repairmen. Now they catered to an elite clientele that was willing to drop $8,000 for a one-way forty-five-minute jet charter flight.

The limo door was opened for Eugene, and he crossed a few feet of hot asphalt through wide glass automatic doors and onto a red carpeted walkway, leading to a white birch front desk.

To one side past closed frosted doors was the pilots’ lounge, and to the other, an elaborate setting for waiting passengers, complete with food, liquor, coffee, and widescreen televisions flush against polished birch walls. Magazines and newspapers from practically every major city in the world lined one side of the lounge.

Eugene breezed past it, heading straight through the lounge area to a second set of glass doors opening out onto private runways.

Standing there holding the door for him were two former Delta pilots, one gray with a deep tan, the other younger, paler, and taller.

“Mr. Eugene, happy to have you back….”

“Skip it. Let’s go.” Eugene cut him off mid-sentence.

The two pilots exchanged a glance and fell silently into step behind Eugene. They’d flown for him before.

Eugene was one of only a handful of customers who made them question their decisions to leave being true captains in exchange for
opening doors, saying “Yes, sir,” eating shit, and cashing a big, fat paycheck every other Friday.

At the plane’s metal steps, Eugene looked up and barked, “This isn’t the Gulfstream V. What the hell is it?”

“It’s a Citation X, Mr. Eugene. This is all that was available at short notice.”

He climbed the steps without a word and sank down into a creamy leather seat.

A flight attendant who had also flown with Eugene before knew better than to speak. She waited silently until he signaled by holding up the aisle-side index finger.

“Bourbon on the rocks.”

“Yes, sir. Right away.”

She disappeared for just a few moments, reappearing on his left with the drink and a napkin. He took it silently and she melted away into the air-conditioned seats just outside the cockpit.

The engine whined and they were off, suddenly looking down at a crazy slant onto the city. Eugene sipped his drink and eyed the familiar landscape. The Capitol shone bright gold, the Georgia Dome, the Fulton County Courthouse, the Georgia Supreme Court building, CNN Center, all closely woven together in Atlanta’s downtown.

Eugene’s bourbon was down only an inch or so when the city fell away and they were flying over deep, deep green fields that stretched as far as the eye could see.

This was the “other Georgia,” the dream that Sherman had coveted, the land that had sparked hundreds of tales and a body of folklore…the Deep South. Thousands of square miles of peanuts and soybeans and peach orchards and pine trees, swamp and live oaks and the remnants of vast plantations, with great white lines, Interstates I-75 and I-16, slicing the state generally down the middle.

Here lay the voters: voters who didn’t like six-foot-tall transvestites getting it on in a bathroom stall with a gubernatorial candidate.

Eugene drained his first drink and was soon on his second.

Before thirty-five minutes had passed, out the window he saw water, a million sparkles playing on the dark ocean from the sun. Marshes and sand melted into each other at water’s edge. The white beaches of St. Simons shined like a string of translucent pearls beneath him.

How gorgeous that beach would be with Eugene’s Palmetto Dunes high-rise luxury living, right there on the water’s edge.

For the first time that day, he nearly smiled.