The mist had kept its promise, though the thunder had overstated its case, raindrops half-heartedly spattering, then angling down the slanted glass like unattended tears, throwing eerie shadow streaks on a room lighted only by a bedside lamp. It was half an hour or so past my discovery of the body, which I’d made with a key and directions from Sheila Ryan, who’d remained with her friend Julie.
Seemed when she’d got there to collect her things, Sheila had knocked, no answer, then used her key to get in. She found her ex-boyfriend dead, with his chest pushed in. That’s all I bothered to get from her before heading to the bartender’s NoHo loft apartment — Pat would get the details out of her later.
The apartment was mostly one big room, dominated by a king bed with black faux-silk sheets and a few cheap black-and-white modern furnishings from one of those “apartment living” joints; a fridge hummed in the kitchenette, its overhead light the only other illumination, and the john was boxed in at a corner (I checked, but no corpse was seated in there this time).
The gray walls were bare but for a pair of framed movie posters — Rocky, signed “Best,” with a fluid scrawl that presumably said, “Sylvester Stallone,” and The Godfather Part II autographed to the late tenant by Robert DeNiro (“You mix a mean Martini!”).
Pat Chambers, glancing at the posters with a humorless smirk, said, “Well, at least he was proud of his heritage.”
We stood there in our trenchcoats and snapbrim hats, daring the rain to get at us, two men from another time, staring at a man totally out of time. The forensics team hadn’t arrived yet, but one uniform was on the landing outside and another at the bottom of the stairs at the street.
The captain of the Homicide Division worked days, of course, but I’d called him at home, knowing if I didn’t somebody else would. Everybody at the PD knew who among the brass was personally handling the murders that the newspapers had not realized constituted a single story yet, since the small detail of victims with caved-in chests continued to be withheld.
“This will get out,” I said. “Four kills with the same distinctive MO. Four kills tied to each other in various ways.”
“Jasmine Jordan isn’t.”
He was staring at the dead man. We were maybe four feet from the body’s bare feet.
“Not yet she isn’t,” I said. “But three victims definitely are — Kraft, Shannon, and now the Italian Stallion here. And you and I both know the Jordan broad is somewhere in the mix.”
Neither of us said anything for a while.
Rather dryly, Pat commented, “The papers will say we have a serial killer on the loose. Another Son of Sam.”
“Will they be wrong?” I gestured at the flesh-and-blood pile of evidence before us. “Just because some thread connects the murders doesn’t make this less the act of a homicidal maniac.”
His laugh was short and had little to do with the normal reasons for laughter. “The FBI would disagree with you. They define a serial killer as someone who commits at least three murders over more than a month... with an emotional cooling off period in between. No traditional motive but a deviant sexual aspect.”
“You say tomato.”
The gray-blue eyes looked at me now. “Mass murderer is closer. Anyway, who are you to talk? You make Jack the Ripper look like a piker.”
“Hey, I’m just a good citizen, helping keep the city clean.” I shrugged. “So he’s not a serial killer, technically — but he is a cold-blooded bastard, removing people who know too much about him.”
Those eyes narrowed. “You mean, your client. Vincent Colby.”
“He’s not my client, his father is.” I started counting off on my fingers. “Shannon was zeroing in on young Colby for the strangled secretary and the hit-and-run boiler-room broker. That dominatrix kept a little black book with her clients in it, and if she wasn’t blackmailing a certain one, who liked to dish it out rough — and if his name wasn’t Vincent Colby, whose favorite room at the Tube is the S & M suite, then I’m in the wrong damn business. As for our dead mixologist here, he was the previous boy friend of Vincent’s current squeeze — a young female that Vincent is obsessive about, who the ex here liked to pound like minute steak.”
He was nodding, barely. “The girl who found the body.”
“Sheila Ryan, yeah. You’ll be talking to her. Tonight, I bet.”
Another non-laugh. “How smart you are. But smart enough to explain the second hit-and-run? The one that clipped young Colby right in front of your private eyes?”
I thought for a moment, then shrugged again. “Could be Colby and Kraft had a prior grudge. Maybe Colby’s been backing the play of that bank-heisting crew. Maybe he staked them and was getting a cut of the action, and the crew got more successful than they ever dreamed of and Kraft was sent out to get rid of a troublesome ongoing expense.”
“Oh brother.” His eyes rolled. “You are really reaching.”
I leaned in and thumped his chest with a forefinger. “Or maybe Kraft was hired to do that first hit-and-run in the parking ramp! Maybe for some reason Vincent Colby wanted that broker dead and hired a hit, and then stiffed Kraft or otherwise had a falling out with him. So Kraft tried to run him down, too.”
He was shaking his head. “Sad. Really sad to see the depths a once great deductive mind has sunk to.”
It was time to throw my hands in the air, so I did. “Okay, so our killer isn’t a textbook serial. He isn’t a mass murderer by standard thinking, either. Neither was Penta — he was a hit man who left a serial-killer-style signature.”
“Granted.”
“But for some reason, somebody — and it looks like Vincent Colby to me, just about has to be Vincent Colby — is settling old scores or cleaning up after himself. Right now we can see no connective tissue between the kills, other than Colby himself — he’s the connective tissue. Colby, who has martial arts training. Colby, who has outbursts of rage since his concussion. And all of these bunkai kills, remember, came after Vincent got hit by that car.”
Silence.
Then, finally, Pat said, “I don’t disagree.”
“Good. Nice to see your great deductive mind hasn’t sunk.”
His eyes returned to mine. “I’m making no deductions yet. Not necessary. Simply experiencing the resistance any good cop has to coincidence. A resistance a certain Michael Hammer claims never to have had.”
“No resistance, buddy,” I said, “when there are this many coincidences.”
The forensics team arrived and Pat gave them some instructions, then he sent me home. I offered to sit in on the Ryan girl’s interview, but he said no. He was still going this one alone, and I, if anybody, understood the impulse.
I had called Velda to say I’d be late. She met me at her door, hair freshly washed, all that creamy skin smelling of soap and wrapped up in a pink chiffon robe that hugged her figure in a way that made that Julie Olsen kid look sick. Of course, that kid was sick with that daddy complex of hers.
With it going on two a.m., I suggested we go down to the all-night diner for a breakfast that was either very early or really damn late; but she cooked me some eggs and bacon herself, instead. I risked a cup of coffee because I didn’t think there was enough caffeine in the world to threaten my tiredness at the end of this interminable day.
So I filled her in about the new murder — all that got was wide eyes and a shake of the head out of her — and recapped my conversation with Pat.