‘You figure he hung her, then ran two blocks to the firehouse to set up an alibi?’
‘Yeah, Mallory.’ Coffey paused a beat, perhaps to remind her that sarcasm was insubordination. ‘The sloppy noose and a slow death bought him some time. But he did want her to die.’ He turned back to Charles. ‘According to a report filed by Zappata’s own crew, he physically restrained another fireman when the guy tried to cut Sparrow down.’
Riker faced his partner. ‘It’s got some merit.’ And this, of course, was code for, Play nice, or he won’t consolidate the cases. And when was she planning to bring up Lieutenant Loman’s connection? That would get the boss’s attention real fast. He caught her eye and mouthed the name.
Mallory shook her head, then turned to Coffey. ‘How would Zappata get details of a twenty-year-old murder?’
‘I think his old man told him,’ said Coffey. ‘Look at all the details
that don’t match up. He knew there were candles, but not how many. He knew there was a noose, but not what kind. This fits with third-hand information. Twenty years ago, Zappata’s father might’ve had connections to one of the crime-scene cops. We’re checking that now.’
‘There wasn’t any fire at Kennedy Harper’s apartment. If Zappata was – ’
‘Maybe he was practicing, Mallory. Or maybe he knew that woman. Suppose he killed Sparrow to draw us off the – ’
‘No,’ said Mallory. ‘You want it to be Zappata. I don’t like that creep either, but there’s a problem with your theory. Sparrow could’ve taken him down with a dull kitchen knife.’ She spoke with something close to pride in an old enemy. ‘Even without a weapon, that whore would’ve done a lot of damage. She was that good.’
Riker could attest to that. Sparrow would have been damned hard to intimidate. Once, the hooker had survived a stabbing that should have been fatal. Fifteen years later, she was still proving impossible to kill. Against the best medical advice of her doctor, she had lived through another night.
Jack Coffey was smiling at Mallory – always a bad sign. ‘So why didn’t Sparrow bone the perp like a fish? No answer? I’ll tell you why. He rushed her in the dark. The lightbulb over her door was unscrewed.’
Riker stared at his shoes. He knew what was coming. He had forgotten to tell her -
‘One more thing,’ said Coffey. ‘And you can thank your partner for this. He called CSU back to the scene to dust that bulb, and they found Zappata’s prints.’
Riker glanced at Mallory. To the extent that she was capable of pity, that would best describe her smile and the slow shake of her head. ‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘You found a fireman’s prints – at the scene of a fire.’
Damn fine shot. Elegant, simple. All that remained was to have her name engraved on the winner’s cup. But Riker could see that Jack Coffey was not about to concede. The boss was smiling when he said, ‘All right, here’s my best deal. We keep the motive open -the suspect list too. But you and Riker stay on the Cold Case file.’ He splayed his hands to say, See? I’m a fair man.
The actress hangings, old and new, would remain with their assigned primaries and their separate lines of investigation. Riker knew that was not going to change. But Mallory had poisoned the lieutenant. All day long, it would worry Jack Coffey that she might be right, that the next kill would happen on his watch.
While Mommy drank paper-cup tea with another mother, the child had been drawn away from her and toward the sound of flies round the other side of a garbage drum. He was quite impressed by the sight of them, a living, swarming blanket over something small yet wonderfully stinky at the center of a piece of wax paper. The grass of Tompkins Square tickled his bare knees as he knelt before the frenzy of insects and wondered what they were attacking. Might their prey still be alive and twitching? Hopeful, he prodded the fetid meat, using a common stick of the sort that is issued to all boys at their birth. He found the underlying flesh to be squishy but definitely dead, impervious to pokes. Somewhat disappointed, he continued to watch the writhing mass of legs and wings and fat black bodies. The loud buzzing was really evil, quite delightful.
The boy’s interest waned and wandered to a nearby bench and a man clad in jeans and a baseball cap. This figure was as rigid as any beast in a long parade of dead hamsters, songbirds and goldfish. He was as lifeless as the flesh beneath the flies, though not one winged thing dared approach him. The child solved this mystery as he drew closer to the bench and caught a whiff of insecticide on the man’s clothes. An open gray bag on the ground held a canister of the stuff Mommy used when she chased down lone bugs flying through the rooms of their apartment. The bag also contained a large glass jar half filled with dead dry flies and a few that were still alive.
A collector.
Well, now the world made sense again as the boy connected the man to the foul-smelling meat and the swarm. An excellent solution – no need to chase the flies down.
The man took no notice of the little boy, and this was odd behavior to a child who knew himself to be the center of the universe. The man never blinked, never moved. The boy’s eyes rounded as he watched intently for some sign of life. At the end of his attention span, perhaps half a minute, he pronounced his subject dead as a dead hamster. But just to be sure, and only in the spirit of scientific enquiry, he poked the dead man’s leg with his stick.
The corpse turned its head, and the child screamed.
Fast mother steps came up behind him, fleshy arms wound round his small body, lifted him and bore him away. As the boy bounced with his mother’s running gait, he looked over her soft shoulder to see the dead man don a pair of yellow rubber gloves. Now the man approached the mass of buzzing flies with his insecticide can and rained down clouds of aerosol poison on the swarm.
The young actress had won a seat on the subway by beating another straphanger to a crack between two passengers on the plastic bench. She carved a wider niche with her squirming backside and settled in for the long ride home to the East Village. After inspecting her suit jacket for battle scars, she removed one long blond hair from the lapel. The pale blue linen matched her eyes, and it was the most expensive outfit she had ever owned. Perversely, she regarded the suit as her lucky charm, though it had failed her in one audition after another.
In dire need of distraction from the sweaty press of flesh, she balanced a new packet of postcards on her knee and penned her weekly lies to the Abandoned Stellas. She borrowed a phrase from the rack of advertisements posted above the car’s windows, New York is a summer festival.
A canvas bag hit her in the side of the head.
‘Hey!’ she yelled, just like a real New Yorker. ‘Watch it!’ She looked up to see the crotch of a man’s faded blue jeans a few inches from her face. He reeked of insecticide. She lowered her eyes to the postcard and wrote the words, I love this town.
She wanted to go back home to Ohio.
Last year, as the family’s first college graduate, she had qualified for the traditional entry-level job of all theater majors – serving fast food to the public. And this had come as a bitter surprise to the Abandoned Stellas, two generations of tired truck-stop waitresses, impregnated and deserted before the age of seventeen.
Grandma, the original Stella, had cashed a savings bond to send the aspiring actress to New York City, a place with no roadside diners, and more money had followed every month. The second Stella, also known as Mom, still waited on tables and sent all the tips to her daughter, the only Stella ever to leave Ohio.