"Maybe," he breathed deeply, "but I don't think so."
"What's your intuition on the thing. Jack? You say you have a hunch. Hell. Let's hear it," Springer said.
"A hunch is all it is. Nothing more. Nothin' solid at all. I can tell you what I'm afraid it is and can't even give you one firm indication of why I feel this way." Nobody spoke so he went ahead. "I discount the Rutledge ID. Bud, you got a space cadet," he said, smiling. They laughed. "You got BeBop. A flaky snitch headed for the joint behind a coke bust. He wants to sing our song. So even with him ID-ing the voice on the Rozitsky tape I'm afraid we don't have anything.
"But" — he tilted his head as if it suddenly weighed too much — "on a visceral level I think it's the same perp, and if it is, we're looking at something pretty frightening. I've never come up against anything like it before.
"You got your psychopath, your assassin or hit man who will have an organized mind, and a psychotic: somebody who is disorganized in his kill pattern. The first guy — sometimes above average in smarts. Plans what he does. The second perp has psychoses that cause him to murder at random. The psychopath knows the difference between right and wrong and he has a motive for what he does. If he kills it may be emotionless and carefully planned in execution. The psychotic on the other hand, he or she kills according to mood, the traditional crime of passion, the unplotted and sometimes motiveless random kill.
"As you know, the main way we catch psychotics is by the murder weapon which they often will keep in their possession or leave at the scene of the homicide. The psychopath of course carefully destroys the murder weapon or he hides it. In a psychotic we have to look at what the perp does to the victim before he kills them. Does he tell them to say hello to Mary Garner or whatever? In other words if these killings are somehow interconnected, and I feel like they may be, we're looking at a perp who is BOTH a psychopathic killer and a psychotic looney. A professional assassin of some kind such as a trained mercenary or a hit man who is also, simultaneously, going out of control and killing people at random. We're looking at a hybrid killer, in my opinion."
"Jeeezus," somebody said as the phone on Springer's desk rang.
"Lieutenant Springer."
"Right." He hung up and jumped to his feet, moving. "Let's go. He just firebombed Measure. Four dead." They all rushed for the door in a cop logjam, Leech and Eichord rode with Vic Springer and a detective sergeant named Thompson.
Homicide and Arson, Intelligence, ET, all screaming down Missouri Avenue in the River North area behind Fire. Redballs and light bars flashing, sirens screaming past the condos and rehabs, chic boutiques and galleries, plant-choked eateries and ferny bars on the way to the Measure house.
"What the fuck." People milling around. Guys getting pissed at one another. Some signals had got crossed and it hadn't been a firebombing, after all.
"Where's the fire?" somebody said.
"Fuck you," somebody replied.
There were four dead inside. And one they didn't know about yet. Spain had hit James Measure, Gino Sclaffani, Edward Sidenfadden a.k.a. Eddie Sides, and Tony Alba. All deader than last year's Christmas trees.
"Holy shit."
"Man, they look like they been used for targets at a firing range."
"Unreal."
"Whatya got?"
"It was a fire in the other room, is all. One of these things caught the drapes on fire. Little smoke. No problem."
It looked like some sort of a gas canister.
"Lieutenant, here's another one." He showed him another of the canisters.
"Must be how he took 'em down. If it was gas I don't smell any trace of it." He glanced at a man examining one of the bodies. "Any idea how long, Doc?"
"Not really." Wonderful. "An hour, two hours, maybe longer. I ain't what-sisname on TV f'r chris-sakes."
"What'ya think? An Oozey?" he pronounced it. "Or an Ingram? Something?"
"Shit. Hadda be. Probably something like an Uzi. He gathered up the mags but he left all the brass. Why the rock would he do that?"
"Because the son of a bitch is a whacko. Fucking looney tunes, that's why."
"Coulda been a belt-fed weapon," somebody offered. "That'd explain why there aren't any magazines, only brass shells, eh?"
"Wonderful," Springer said.
"He got in here somehow. Or got somebody else in here. Or two of 'em got in here somehow. And they put 'em under with the gas and then he and his partner made meat loaf out of them with submachine guns. No?"
"Why not?"
"Jack?"
"Vic?"
"It's a mess, huh?"
"Shit." A hybrid killer. Some kind of superfly mother.
What they didn't know yet was how the hit team or hit man made his entrance. Measure's pad was supposed to be a fortress. But they got in somehow. Or he got in. They could scarcely believe one man could have brought about all this slaughter. It was a mess, all right.
They didn't know about Lowenstein yet.
Ben Lowenstein, a slickie from Narcross, Georgia — Spain used him for the door key. Got him alone and took him home to the interrogation room in his house and worked on him for a few minutes and he gave him a way in. Told him about a boy who would do anything for money. And Spain got a mule to take the gas bombs inside. It cost him five thousand but it was worth it to nail Measure. When Spain was through with Lowenstein he put him down in the culvert in Treflan cans. A right leg and torso here. An arm, head, and leg there. You could say Lowenstein was laid off permanently. He got the ax. With severance.
There was nothing at the crime scene but the gas cans and lots of spent brass. Brass and gas. And gangster blood. There was one hell of a lot of that. No fingerprints that didn't check out. Nobody saw anything, as usual. Nobody heard anything, until a neighbor saw the smoke from the drapes. Zero. And these were not the GSA, these were hard core, made Mafs. Experienced wise guys and he — or they — took 'em like they were asleep. If this was a single man, crazy or not he was very, very good.
Eichord drove around, wanting to call Rita and not wanting to wish himself on anyone that sweet in the condition he was in. The idea of a couple of beers sounding pretty marvelous. Jack was neither brilliantly deductive nor was he even extraordinarily ratiocinative. The process of exact thinking, the mastery of reasoned train of thought, the Holmesian modes of deduction, all eluded him.
What it was, instead, was his ability to distill and extract the essence of a thing that made him so relentless a bringer-forth of the coldest trail or the faintest clues. However dissimilar, he was a pro at educing the latent commonalities when there appeared to be none.
He could evoke the forgotten images, elicit carefully guarded responses, extract the buried nuggets of data, extort the best-kept secrets. Eichord was superb when it came to extrapolating the unknown, excavating the buried, exculpating the innocent, extricating, exonerating, extirpating, and eliminating, and don't mess with Mister In-between.
He called it by a simpler name. To Eichord it was — vibes. His was a critical mission in the holy war of Good vs. Evil and it was the mission that made his work autotelic and sancrosanct. He plodded down the center, absorbing, listening, soaking it all in, watching. And he never stopped working. Not completely. Except with Rita. That was his one time to let it all fall apart and cleanse his mind in the soft, clean, happy, and carefree music of their relationship.
He was drawn to a phone like a magnet and he called her and just the sound of her voice on the phone lifted the load from his shoulders and he couldn't wait to see her again. And that night his blue funk dissipated and for a short time he was able to forget the sick, violent world of murder and madness and lose himself in her.
She was his music and he soloed magnificently, blowing hot, unashamed jazz licks. Triple-tonguing the instrument. Playing riffs he never thought possible. His embouchure so flawless the mere touch of his lips made her come to life beneath him. Nice 'n' easy and then penthouse-wild and finally jail-house jam. Kissing the delicate hollow of the throat, the edible declivity of the lower tip, the back of the knees, above her metatarsal arch, the delicate ligatures; tactile symphony of smokin' hot, mouth marmalade. And then easing out in a dreamy coda and back for a steaming, cookin' finish to blow minds, loving each other with the loose insouciant ease of soulmates.
And they loved it. It had never been better between them. And after a long time Rita turned and whispered, "Oh, boy? The memsahib would like to fool around with the natives again? Speak to me, gun-bearer."
But he was gone.