However, the tourist’s first language was Danish, and Officer Chu thought the woman might have heard this wrong. Nevertheless, the plainclothes policeman wrote the words down in his notebook. Two uniformed cops collected cameras from the other tour-bus passengers, and a citywide search was under way for the apprehension of a killer socialite.
So ended Arthur Chu’s surveillance detail and his best shot of advancement in the NYPD. After this fiasco, the department would not trust him to polish the shoes of detectives from Special Crimes Unit.
He had already given his own witness statement to the local police, and now he repeated it on his cell phone for the benefit of Detective Mallory. With a glance at the bloody smear on the front of the vehicle, he said to her, ‘Oh, yeah. Really dead.’ He explained that the acting police commissioner had made a pass at Miss Fallon. The lady had taken offense and retaliated – New York style – by the balls. Oh, and then, of course . . . by the bus.
Toby Wilder opened his door, and there she was, the skinny brunette who had tossed him the gold cigarette lighter. Her eyes were too bright, and her skin was flushed. The lady was in a fever when she said, ‘Let me in.’
Why not?
He stepped aside, and she walked into his front room, asking, ‘Where do you keep the booze?’
When he had rinsed out two glasses and returned from the kitchen with the wine, the kind that came with a cap instead of a cork, his visitor had appropriated the couch, arms sprawled across the back cushions, both feet up on the coffee table.
He handed her one of the glasses. ‘Who the hell are you, and where did you get my lighter?’
‘You don’t remember me?’ Her tone was asking, How could he not know who she was?
Toby shook his head to say he had no idea. He could see that she did not believe him. ‘No, thanks,’ he said, when she offered him pills from the stash in her purse. And this also surprised her.
He was still feeling a buzz from his last round of oxycodone, neither jonesing for another rush nor stoned. All his heavy doses were for the nighttime hours, and then only pills that guaranteed sleep without dreams. Come morning came the painkillers he favored over every other drug to chase away the sweaty shakes and nausea. Lunch at one o’clock, and then there were more pills to pop. He had his routine. It never varied. Every day was the same day relived – until now.
She swallowed the wine in one long draught and handed him her empty glass. ‘Get me another one.’
Why not?
He brought in the bottle to fill her glass again. When they were seated facing one another, she dropped names into the conversation: the Driscol School, Humphrey, Aggy – each one ending with the lilt of a question to prompt his recall or maybe to catch him in a lie.
Finally, she came back to his cigarette lighter. He sipped his wine and answered her questions, though she responded to none of his. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘you could call it an heirloom.’ He pulled the lighter from his shirt pocket, and looked down at the etching in the metal, so faint now, he could barely read the numbers. ‘My father scratched in this date on the day I was born. Dad loved this lighter.’ It had been left to Jess Wilder by his own father, another drunk who had abandoned his family. ‘He left this with my mother.’
Dad had been afraid that he might pawn it. He had hocked everything else he owned to pay for booze, but not this lighter. Never this. Toby’s mother had given it to her son when he was old enough to understand the family tradition: Leave your kid a gold cigarette lighter before you run out on him.
His visitor’s voice seemed far away when she said, ‘I remember when you lost that lighter. The crazy bum in the Ramble, the one who hit you – did he try to take it away from you?’
‘No. I was trying to give it back to him.’ Toby slurred his words. Odd. He stared at his glass. ‘So you were there that day.’ And this should have been a more exciting revelation, but he was stoned. Not drunk on wine – he could drink all day and never feel it. His breathing was slow and shallow, then – full stop. For ten seconds of panic, he fought for air. When he could breathe again, his heart was racing at the pace of a heart attack.
‘You bitch, you drugged me!’
The oxycodone bottle lay open on the coffee table. He grabbed it up and emptied the remaining two pills into his hand. How many had gone into his wine? When he reached out for the woman, she sprang up from the couch and danced away, laughing. The dregs of his knocked-over glass were splashed across the carpet like spilt blood.
The squad room down the hall was a chaos of phones ringing, detectives hollering, chasing down leads on Willy Fallon. But here in the incident room, it was quiet. ‘The news is carrying the story as a traffic accident,’ said Jack Coffey.
‘Good,’ said the chief of detectives. ‘Let’s hope our guys collected all the civilian cameras.’ Joe Goddard walked beside the lieutenant, eyeing the latest exhibits on the cork wall. Many of these tourist photos contradicted any possibility of accidental death. Alongside them were the pinned-up phone messages faxed over by Rolland Mann’s secretary.
‘This is where it begins.’ Mallory tapped one of the shadow cop’s cell-phone shots taken earlier in the day, when Willy had visited Grace Driscol-Bledsoe. She was pictured here, emerging from the mansion with a bulging purse. ‘Grace claims she can’t stand the sight of Willy Fallon.’
‘So I called the lady,’ said Riker. ‘Asked her if they kissed and made up.’ He talked with pins in his mouth as he affixed more pictures to the cork. ‘According to Mrs Driscol-Bledsoe, Willy just stopped by to pay condolences on the death of her beloved pervert son. But we figure Grace sicked her on Rocket Mann.’ The next exhibit was another one of Officer Chu’s pictures. ‘A fast cab ride later, here’s Willy standing in front of Police Plaza with the deputy commissioner. Arty Chu says Rocket Mann ran away when the reporters closed in on them. And here’s Willy with her cell phone out.’
‘She made three calls to Rocket Mann’s office.’ Mallory strolled down the wall to stand before the fax from the secretary, Miss Scott. ‘Willy didn’t feel the need to leave her name. Her last message was Call or else.’
‘The secretary says the messages rattled him,’ said Riker. ‘Then Willy gets a call on a phone that was reported stolen. Had to be one of Mann’s throwaway cells. So they meet on the Upper West Side.’ The detective tapped the last photograph from Officer Chu. It was a rear view of Rolland Mann and Willy Fallon standing in the street. ‘Here he’s got one hand on her back.’ The next shot was a frontal view taken by a Nebraska tourist, who had mistaken the bland neighborhood as a point of interest worthy of a photograph. ‘In this one, Rocket Mann’s watching the oncoming bus, picking his moment.’ The next shot was the local precinct’s photo of a badly smashed body. ‘But Willy got him first.’
‘And she skates on self-defense,’ said Joe Goddard.
‘Murder,’ said Mallory. ‘Grace Driscol-Bledsoe set him up for the kill. She aimed Willy like a gun.’
‘But you’ll never prove it.’ The chief of D’s was reading Officer Chu’s witness statement forwarded from the Upper West Side precinct. ‘Your surveillance cop thinks Rocket Mann made a pass at Willy. And then the little bitch went psycho. You know that’s the way her lawyer’s gonna play it.’
‘Willy did a murder,’ said Riker. ‘And we don’t think it’s her first time out.’
‘The West Side cops will handle the bus accident.’ And now that the detective stood corrected, Chief Goddard turned to the lieutenant, suddenly remembering the chain of command for issuing orders. ‘Jack, your guys need to focus. They’re gonna sidestep Mrs Driscol-Bledsoe. All I care about right now are the Ramble murders. You got a nice revenge motive for Toby Wilder. Nail him for the Hunger Artist murders – and we are done.’