“You’re fuckin’ right I don’t believe you.”
“They probably wouldn’t even know who the guy is if it wasn’t for me.”
“What’d you do?”
“I helped ‘em find out where the guy lived.”
“How’d you do that?” asked the man as others bent their ears toward the conversation.
“I found the Slasher’s jacket in a trashcan. ‘Course I didn’t know it was the Slasher’s jacket at the time, but it had blood on it and the cops must’ve been lookin’ for it because when they saw it on me they picked it up. I told them where I found it, and that’s how they figgered out where he lived.”
An old bum on another bunk pshawed.
“Take that shit on down the line, buddy.”
“It’s the truth!” Doolan insisted. “You just ask any of the detectives workin’ on the case. They’ll tell you.”
“Sure they will.”
“They will!”
“I think you’re fulla shit.”
“Aw, fuck you guys,” Doolan said, turning the page of the Daily News.
He brought his face close to the page, because his eyes were bad, and read about Barbara Collins, the Slasher’s third victim. Bums streamed back and forth from the communal toilet and shower stall at the end of the room, and the lights would go out in about a half-hour.
In a cot against the wall, a heavyset man in a beard glared ferociously at Jackie Doolan.
Chapter Two
Rackman sat in a chair in his darkened apartment, smoking a Lucky and sipping bourbon. He wore jeans and a tee-shirt and had the television set on, although he wasn’t watching it. It was eight o’clock in the morning and he’d just come off duty. He and Olivero had spent the night rousting people out of their beds in the cheap Times Square hotels, hoping to find Kowalchuk. They hadn’t.
Now Rackman was trying to wind down so he could go to sleep. His insomnia had worsened, and when he found time he intended to see a doctor and get a prescription for some sleeping pills. He was tense and anxious about the Slasher case, because he knew the longer the Slasher was on the loose, the more victims he’d claim.
There was a knock at the door. He got up and looked through the peephole. A man in a sport jacket was standing in the hall. Rackman opened the door.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Daniel Rackman?” the man asked.
“That’s me.”
The man took out a shield. “I’m a New York city detective and I’d like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.”
Rackman stared at the shield and wondered if he was dreaming.
“Sorry to wake you up,” the detective said apologetically.
“I wasn’t asleep,” Rackman said, “and by the way, I’m a detective too. I’m with Midtown North.” He took out his wallet and showed his shield.
The man looked at it, surprised. “I’m Tommy Randazzo from the Ninth Precinct.”
“Come on in.”
Rackman led Randazzo into the living room and motioned for him to have a seat. He turned off the television set and turned on a light, then sat opposite him.
“What’s the problem?” Rackman asked.
Randazzo reached into his jacket pocket and came out with a folded crumpled piece of paper. “Gee, I feel strange asking you about this because you’re a detective too,” he said with a self-conscious smile.
“Just do your job and don’t worry about me.”
Randazzo unfolded the paper. “This is a Master Charge receipt. It was found in the jacket pocket of a man who was killed in a Bowery hotel early this morning, and it’s got your name and Master Charge number on it.” He handed the receipt to Rackman. “Do you remember it?”
Rackman looked at the receipt and recognized the address of the men’s store on the Bowery. “I remember it,” he said, his voice a few octaves lower. “It’s for a wool jacket I bought for a bum named Jackie Doolan. He gave me some information in the Slasher case.”
Randazzo blinked his eyes twice and thought for a few moments. “That’s very interesting,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because the victim was found in the toilet with his throat cut just like the Slasher’s victims.”
“Did you see the victim yourself?”
“Yes I did.”
“Was he about five-four, real skinny, in his late fifties, sandy hair turning gray?”
“That’s the one.”
“Let me get dressed,” Rackman said. “I’ll go downtown with you.”
Chapter Three
Kowalchuk awoke under a bush in Central Park near the Seventy-second Street Transverse Road. His hair and beard had become quite long, effectively obscuring his features, and he’d lost thirty pounds since he’d moved out of East Ninth Street. He wore sneakers, jeans, and his blue bomber jacket, all filthy. Standing and stretching, yawning softly so as not to attract attention, he put on his gray cap and walked toward the path that led out of the park.
He took out a cigarette and lit it with a match. Passing two joggers on the Seventy-second Street road, he felt a rumble of hunger in his stomach. He headed west, toward the cheap restaurants on Broadway, where he could get the most for the four dollars he had in his pocket.
He bought a Daily News near the subway stop on Seventy-second Street and Central Park West and stopped beside an apartment building to glance through it. On page four near the bottom he found what he was looking for. “Derelict Found Stabbed in Bowery Hotel.”
He read the item and was pleased that the police hadn’t linked the killing of the bum to the Slasher, because he wanted to make his reputation for killing women, not bums. Tucking the newspaper under his arm, he whistled a tune and made his way through the early morning crowds to Broadway, and decided to have breakfast at the McDonalds on Seventy-first Street. He passed two cops on their beat but they didn’t take any special notice of him. He didn’t look like the picture of Kowalchuk that they’d put in the paper. They’d never get him now.
Entering the McDonald’s, he walked to the counter and got in line. People looked at his filthy clothes and he realized he smelled a little bad, but to hell with them. If they didn’t like it they could kiss his ass. He came to the head of the line and ordered his breakfast from a skinny little black girl, and he thought that this was a decent girl who worked for her living in a decent way, unlike the Times Square porno girls who were disgusting. He paid her three dollars and a quarter for the meal and carried his tray to an empty table, sitting down and digging in.
He had to do something about his money situation, he realized as he chewed on sausage. He didn’t even have enough for a pack of cigarettes. He couldn’t drive a cab or get any other kind of job because they had his Social Security number. This meant he’d have to steal some money, and he didn’t have a gun for a hold-up. Besides, he didn’t like the idea of a hold-up. He was the Slasher and he was at war against women. The best thing would be to kill another porno girl and take whatever money she had with her.
But what porno girl? He didn’t want to go to Times Square because it was crawling with cops looking for him, and he didn’t have any money to go in peep shows and places like that. He couldn’t even afford to buy a copy of the New York Review of Sex to find out what the whores were doing. He was in a tight spot, that was for sure. But he’d get out of it somehow. If he’d outsmarted the whole New York Police Department for as long as he had, he should be able to get together a few hundred bucks from some filthy bitch someplace.
He thought about the famous porno girls who acted in hardcore movies, but didn’t know how to go about finding where one lived. He didn’t dare to try and pick up one of the street corner whores because he was too famous for that now. His victim would have to be somebody easy to get to who deserved to be killed and robbed. Some really rotten bitch. Someone who deserved to die.