She sat down with her own plate of just one scrambled egg and a cup of coffee, incredibly beautiful without a bit of make-up, and said, “You really think that’s what’s going on?”
“It’s got Vincent Colby written all over it, doll. He’s gone psycho after the head injury, and he’s going after a laundry list of people who crossed him or offended him. The trouble is, unless Pat gets lucky with a witness who saw him at one of the scenes, or some other standard perp failing... each one of these murders has to be individually looked at, because the motives are singular.”
An eyebrow went up. “This doesn’t seem like a perp with many if any failings.”
“I did keep one thing from Pat.”
“Oh?”
“He doesn’t know about Chris Peters and me making that trip to Shannon’s place, or the floppy disk we found. Poor ol’ Patrick would have a cow. So my sniffing Obsession on my attacker I kept to myself, too.”
She smiled wryly over the rim of her coffee cup. “Popular cologne, Mike. Narrows your suspect list to a few hundred thousand New York males. Not your usual mystery, is it, darling?”
“What do you mean?”
She made a cute face. “No whodunit with a big surprise at the end.”
“You never know. I may come up with a big surprise for this prick yet.”
The phone rang — always a startling thing in the wee hours. She took the kitchen extension on the wall nearby.
“Yes... yes, Pat... Well, he’s right here... Oh. Oh, okay... All right, I’ll tell him.”
She hung up. Her expression was dazed.
“What?” I asked.
“Pat interviewed Sheila Ryan,” Velda said, and sat back down. She was looking past me, into thoughts that were forming. “Sheila was with Vincent Colby earlier this evening — all evening.”
I set my cup down, sloshingly. “Is Pat sure? She was at that Olsen girl’s apartment earlier, I thought.”
“No, that was later. Exact time of death is yet to be determined, remember, but rigor had set in...”
“So when Sheila found Gino,” I said, my words in slow motion, “he had been dead at least three or four hours.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Mike... if Vincent Colby didn’t kill that bartender, then somebody is fitting our client’s kid for a frame — elaborate enough to fool Mike Hammer.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe.”
Gansevoort Street — running east to west in downtown Manhattan’s riverfront neighborhood, till the Hudson cut it rudely off — undulated its cobblestone way along the foot of the brick warehouses known as the Meatpacking District. Here animal carcasses began their travel to the kitchens of Manhattan restaurants and residences from considerately distant slaughterhouses. Little had changed for decades in this foreboding, desolate-looking section of the city, though a few galleries and eateries had started popping up, like stubborn mushrooms, to foretell a fashionable future. On this sunshiny but chill November afternoon, a red-trimmed black 1985 Ford Mustang LX pulled out from in front of a warehouse onto an all but deserted Gansevoort. The driver immediately hit the gas, really punching it with a clear straightaway ahead.
Clear, anyway, till a dark green Mercury Capri emerged from an alley and into the Mustang’s path.
Honking his displeasure, the driver swerved around the Mercury, just missing collision, but before any sense of relief came, a mother in jeans and a parka came out from between parked cars, jaywalking a baby in its stroller right in front of the oncoming Mustang.
With a screech of brakes, the red-and-black vehicle wheeled around the obstacle, the woman helping avoid tragedy by running, the cobblestone street giving the stroller and its contents a rough ride, but safely out of harm’s way.
All well and good, but the driver in the Mustang now confronted two town cars coming right at him, taking up both lanes of the one-way street, and he could only avoid them by riding up on the sidewalk, sending a few random pedestrians scurrying.
Swinging back into the street now, the Mustang and its driver were confronted by a pile of construction materials beyond which were heaps of sand. The former acted as a ramp, overturning the vehicle and returning it to the street upside-down, the latter stirring up a hazy cloud to makes things even worse.
The Mustang skidded down the street on its roof, like a turtle some cruel child had uncaringly tossed. It came to a spinning stop, finally, but its tires continued on their ride to nowhere.
“Cut!”
The B-unit director, a guy in his thirties in an NYPD baseball cap, Yankees t-shirt and sweats, turned to a clutch of waiting crew members. “Go! Get over there!”
Three guys in sweatshirts and jeans scurried to help the driver out of the turned-over car. Four 35mm cameras, at strategic locations, including one riding train-like tracks and another on a crane with a jib, had captured the elaborate stunt, which had seemed to be the work of a major male star behind the wheel. You’d recognize him.
But as soon as he got his feet under him, the driver yanked off the rubber mask resembling that famous white actor — who was watching from the sidelines, smiling, chewing gum — and revealed himself as my African-American friend Thalmus Lockhart who was stunt and special effects coordinator on the film.
Velda and I were sightseers, approved in advance thanks to Thalmus. I just couldn’t seem to get away from warehouses and cobblestones.
Thal spotted Velda and me, on the sidelines, and grinned and nodded and waved, then took off Caucasian-colored gloves and handed them to a crew member.
The B-unit director yelled, “Okay, next set-up! Warehouse rumble! Check your bullet hits and blood bags, boys!”
My friend — a muscular six-footer with a shaved head and a close-trimmed horseshoe mustache — came trotting over to us in a yellow turtleneck, jeans and running shoes. This side of the street had been off-camera, lined as it was with Ryder rental trucks, Winnebagos, honeywagons (semi-trailers of portable toilets), massive lights and craft service (snack) tables.
We shook hands and exchanged grins.
“When I drive like that,” I said, “I get my ass in stir or the hospital or both.”
“When I do,” Thal said, “I get paid. You want to say hello to Burt?”
“Why not?”
“Well, he may be grouchy. He hates not doing his own stunts.”
Velda and I went over and met the star of the film, who was dressed identically to Thal. But the actor (and former stunt man) was not grouchy at all, and flashed his trademark smile at Velda, who could compete with any actress Hollywood threw at him. The guy could barely keep his eyes off her, and who could blame him?
After a brief jokey chat with movie royalty, Thal took us inside the warehouse and over to a craft service table in a corner. The lighting was being tweaked on much of the yawning space nearby with its iron catwalks and brick walls. We helped ourselves to coffee and a cookie or two before the stunt coordinator showed us to waiting director’s chairs with GUEST on the canvas backing; we sat, Velda in the middle, out of the path of the bustling, buzzing movie set.
Thal, as a stunt coordinator, did many of his own gags — as movie folk called stunts and on-set “practical” special effects. About forty, he’d made a splash in the early seventies as Richard Roundtree’s stunt double. He was expert at non-stunt effects, too, such as horror make-up and prosthetic masks like the one he’d worn today. But his specialty was stunt driver.
“Mike, my man,” he said. “I only have a few minutes. Big scene coming up. But you can hang till after, if you like.”