The Shadow Man (28 page)

‘Well,’ Alter replied slowly, ‘that’s what I thought you’d say. So I used the same guy that her office and your office uses. Vogt Investigations. How long have you guys kept old Bruce and his magical machine on a retainer?’

‘Bullshit! I don’t care what he passed, he still—’

‘You haven’t been to your office yet, have you, old buddy?’

‘No.’

‘Been busy, huh?’ Alter grinned at Espy Martinez.

She burst out, furious. ‘This is all crap, Tommy, and you know it. A lie detector test doesn’t mean a thing! It’s not evidence. It’s not anything. So cut the crap …’

Interesting report came into the Beach homicide office this morning,’ Alter continued, ignoring the anger flushing the faces of the prosecutor and the detective. ‘I mean, the $ort of thing that just makes you wonder if there could be

anything stranger in this odd world___’

‘Tommy, cut this shit, before I punch you out.’

What are you saying, Tommy. What report?’

The defense attorney grinned again. ‘It is fun to see you

two self-righteous avengers of society looking so discomfited. Perhaps you’ll indulge me for a moment while I appreciate this little show.’

‘What report?’

‘Fingerfuckingprint report, you conceited bastard.’

‘How do you—’

‘We’ve got some friends in your office.’

‘What are you saying, Tommy?’ Martinez demanded, her voice shrill.

‘What I’m saying, Espy, is that somebody else killed Sophie. That’s what I’m saying.’

‘Bullshit!’ Robinson interjected. He reached toward the defense attorney, then managed to pull his hands back at the last second.

‘Soddit,’ Martinez spat out. ‘Soddit. C’mon, Tommy, you can do better. The old “some other dude did it” defense. You think I’m so young I’ve never seen that bullshit before? How about something more original. Something more creative. Not the old Soddit defense …’

Alter wheeled toward her, pushing his face down angrily, abruptly shedding all the teasing jocularity he’d employed. ‘Oh, you think it’s boring? You think it’s unoriginal?’

‘That’s right!’

‘Well, guess what, boys and girls,’ he said, his voice low, conspiratorial and filled with sarcasm. ‘It also happens to be true.’

Alter turned to Walter Robinson.

‘The fucking body print. Right from her neck. Right from the fingers that went around old Sophie’s throat. That nice little partial thumbprint that your guys lifted from her skin. Guess what? It belongs to somebody. But not to Leroy Jefferson.’

He stepped back.

‘So, chew on that, kids. And take a nice look at this lie detector report. And when you’re ready to ask real nice and politely for our help in finding Sophie’s real killer, well, you just know where I’ll be waiting.’

He paused, then added: ‘And Walter, old buddy, you bring the fifty you owe me, huh?’

Thomas Alter dropped the lie detector report to the cement sidewalk, where a light breeze riffled the pages as he turned and strode purposefully away.

Simon Winter thought: he’s here. Somewhere right in front of me. Maybe he’s strolling down the wooden boardwalk, or eating an ice cream cone purchased from the vendor on the corner. Perhaps he’s in that group waiting in line for a table at the News Cafe. He could be that man reading the Herald on that bench near the bus stop. He could be anyone. But he’s here and he’s killed at least once, and maybe twice. I don’t know how yet. But he has. And he managed to make one killing look like an old man’s suicide, and I think he made another killing look like a junkie’s frantic handiwork, and I think if he needs to, he will kill again, because he’s not having any trouble with murder.

None at all.

Winter took a deep breath and spoke out loud, muttering: ‘How do I find you, Shadow Man?’

A teenage couple was walking past, a few feet away. They each wore mirrored sunglasses that glinted in the sun, and they turned when they heard his voice. Then they spoke to each other in Spanish, laughed and wandered off.

They made him angry. Just another old person talking to himself. That’s what they think. He started to watch two young women on roller skates dip and swerve amidst the

late afternoon crowds on Ocean Drive. The sidewalks were filled with the curious and the trendy, moving between the restaurants and outdoor cafe that dominate the Art Deco section of South Beach. It is a place of fast cars and neon signs; loud music, bass-heavy salsa or screeching guitar-driven metal, competing against the occasional squeal of tires and blaring horns. No one talks, everyone shouts. Miami, and by extension Miami Beach, honors the immediate, Simon Winter thought. If it’s new and noisy and colorful, it’s instantly accepted as part of the city’s preferred image.

The women on roller skates wore identical tight black lycra shorts and fluorescent pink halter tops. One had dark hair, the other blonde. They moved with a sinuous grace, legs pumping to pick up speed, then relaxing, gliding ahead effortlessly. The crowds parted to let them pass, then closed ranks like some educated but disorganized army.

He sat on a bench across the street, his back to the pallid blue waters that curled effortlessly against a wide expanse of chalky sand. He realized that the street clamor that filled the air obscured the rhythmic music of the ocean surf rolling in against the shore. He could smell the salt air mingling freely with the aromas from a dozen different menus being prepared in as many kitchens. He wondered

for a moment why anyone would think that man’s sounds or smells were preferable to nature’s. He looked down the beach.

How do I find him? he demanded of himself.

From where he waited, he could see the small bandstand at Lummus Park, and as he watched, he saw a half-dozen

elderly men and women moving slowly away from the

beach; the end-of-the-day retreat. They carried aluminum

lawn chairs and folded parasols. The bandstand is a

popular place, often crowded, although the gatherings there seemed to grow slightly smaller with each passing month. It is an odd place, a cement slab that radiates blistering summer heat, next to an old, low-slung and faded, institutional green-painted storage building. A microphone and small amplifier are placed outside every day by city workers. Then, one after the other, the old retirees still living on the Beach rise to entertain each other with songs. A sign on the wall limits each singer to three efforts. The songs flow forth nonstop through the wavy hot air, a variety of Eastern European languages coupling with an occasional effort in English and a frequent reliance on Yiddish. It has a touch of the absurd about it, more often than not the old people seem mildly ridiculous, crooning away, mixing verses, dropping phrases, humming the forgotten parts. The singers gesture and pose, arms wide, in imitation of lounge acts everywhere. Only rarely do notes fit music, do tunes correspond with words. The old voices have a raspiness or a tremulousness that crack and fray the songs. Some chant, some keen, others ooze lugubriously. But the singers continue, regardless of the flatness of the voices, because it is memories that they are evoking. Often the singers are overwhelmed by the noise and raucous sounds that emerge from pumped-up jukeboxes and muscular stereo systems across Ocean Drive. But the old people sing on, oblivious to the competition. And when finished, receive the same enthusiastic applause and generous praise from their fellow singers, regardless of whether a word could be heard or not.

Simon Winter shook his head and stood up. He walked slowly down the street, passing the elderly people with their lawn chairs as they headed in one direction, following the two young women on roller skates, who briefly flashed

between a pair of shiny red sports cars and then disappeared ahead of him into the dusky remains of the day’s light.

His eyes tracked a Miami Beach patrol car that maneuvered slowly through the throng of traffic. He was abruptly reminded of a time he’d been fishing in shallow waters in the upper Keys, flycasting for bonefish, and had spotted the solitary profile of an osprey circling lazily in the air, riding the currents of wind and thermal blasts of heat. He had quickly recognized that the bird was not really hunting. There was no energy in its search. But it was opportunistic; when it spotted a bar jack cruising too close to the surface, it lifted its wings and plummeted, talons outstretched, splashing into the light chop with a resounding explosion, then instantly rising back into the hot air, a rivulet of silvery water streaming from its white wings. It had as little luck fishing that day as he had. Still, as the hours passed and no fish showed, it seemed happy just to curl in great graceful circles in the air, like a part of the sky itself.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the water with a fishing rod in hand, hunting, he reminded himself. Ten years perhaps. He tried to remember why it was that he’d quit, but could not recall a reason. It seemed to him that somehow he’d stopped doing all the things that used to make him who he was, and that maybe if he started doing them once again, he wouldn’t be so eager to blow his own brains out.

His feet slapped against the dusty sidewalk. He let the osprey fade back into his memory, and turned his thoughts to the man who left the final letter off his wife’s name.

I know who killed you, Herman Stein.

You were smarter than he thought, weren’t you? Even though you were terrified, and you knew you were going

to die, you were still clever enough to leave a message behind. The missing H. It took a long time for someone to figure out what you were trying to say, but I know now.

Simon Winter concentrated on Herman Stein’s death, trying to form a portrait of the events in his mind. It was a simple, effective technique, one refined over years of standing above dead bodies. Create a mental moving picture of what happened and then you’ll see a way to find the man who did it.

All right, first question: access - how did he get into the apartment?

Front door. Did you open it for him? No, you wouldn’t do that. You were elderly and upset and frightened. You wouldn’t open the door without checking the peephole first. So how? The hallway. Were you regular and routine, like so many old people? You were a man of precision, Herman Stein, did you go out to the deli on the corner every morning for breakfast and return at the same time after eating the same bagel with cream cheese, cereal and coffee, just like a clock chiming the time? Yes, that would be you. And stalking you would have been easy, even knowing that you were scared and perhaps thinking of taking precautions. And so, all he would have to do is to wait for you to go out, and then take up a position in that hallway, trap you on your return. Is there a stairwell? A fire escape? A closet. Winter knew without going to the dead man’s apartment that there was some space that a person could wait in without being seen.

He breathed out slowly. Some of the terror that Herman Stein had felt slid into his own veins.

You knew he was out there, and you knew it wouldn’t do any good this time to call your sons or daughter, would it? It was always the same. When you spoke of Der Schattenmann, they persuaded you otherwise. Like the little boy who cried wolf, you knew they would not believe you, even though this time was somehow different, and you were scared right to your core, weren’t you? So you wrote the rabbi a letter and put it in the mail.

Because you were all alone and facing death.

So how did you know about the rabbi?

Winter made a mental note of this question. Find an answer, he thought, because if Herman Stein can find out about the rabbi, so can he.

So there you were. He trapped you in the hallway and forced you into the apartment. Then he sat you down in the desk chair. Did he make you type your own death letter? I think so, because that was where you had the idea to leave off the H. Did it give you a moment’s satisfaction? Did it strengthen you just a tiny bit, help you to turn toward the gun as he pushed it at your forehead?

Simon Winter thought: Herman Stein, I take my hat off to you. You were a brave man, and no one knows it except me.

The old detective paused. He had reached the entrance to the Sunshine Arms.

Did he talk to you, Herman Stein?

What did he say?

Winter could see the old man sitting stiffly in his desk chair, eyes open wide, seconds before dying. He could see the fear, he could feel the same rush of dizzying anguish that Herman Stein must have felt. To have come so far, only to finally arrive face-to-face with a nightmare.

He stood on the sidewalk. The day’s heat still radiated up through the wavy air, but he remained oblivious to the sensation. Instead, in his mind’s eye, he started to place the faces of killers he had known onto the vaporous shape

ross from Herman Stein. He ransacked his memory,

right through the long catalogue of crimes. A psychotic who’d used a butcher knife on his wife and children; a contract killer who’d preferred a small caliber pistol shoved up against the base of the skull; a gang enforcer who liked to use a baseball bat, starting with the legs, then moving methodically upward, allowing his frenzy to grow. He mixed into this gallery a few serial killers, a pair of punk teenagers who’d killed for thrills, several rapists who’d discovered a greater, more noxious excitement. One after the other he fit these characters onto the form, only to discard them into the dust heap of his memory.

He lifted his hand to his forehead and wiped away the thin line of sweat that had gathered just below the rim of his old baseball cap.

You’re not there, are you, Shadow Man? You’re not going to fit into any cop’s memory, are you?

Simon Winter glanced over toward Sophie Millstein’s empty apartment as he trudged toward his own. Tell me something. Anything, he demanded silently. But the apartment stood blankly, a shaft of final daylight illuminating one wall. He opened his door and stepped inside, letting the cool air flow over him like a clear thought. He congratulated himself for leaving the air conditioner running, worrying only momentarily about the bill from the electric company that would inevitably reflect his wastrel ways. As he stepped into the living room, he saw that there was a message on the telephone answering machine. He wanted something to drink, suddenly parched. He thought he remembered some canned lemonade in the refrigerator, and he took a step in that direction, then stopped, turning toward the machine.