Full Frontal Murder (10 page)

“How? She used a phony address.”

“Think back. The owner of Maids-in-a-Row, Egrorian—what's his first name?”

“Gordon.”

“Gordon Egrorian said that this Consuela Palmero showed up looking for a job
on the same day one of his regulars quit
. Doesn't that strike you as just a little too convenient? Who was this regular, why did she quit without giving notice, where is she now?”

Perlmutter was nodding. “Yeah, that's right. We missed that.”

“I want you both on it. Get hold of a picture of both Galloways, and take along the computer likenesses of Consuela Palmero and the guy in the morgue. Find that employee who resigned, and find the connection. O'Toole, did you talk to the rest of the cleaning crew?”

“Yeah, but they don't know nothing,” he said. “They just met the Palmero woman that day, and Rita Galloway's house was the first one they cleaned. The brother threw her out when he caught her snooping, and that's the last the crew ever saw of her. They knew her maybe an hour is all.”

“Yet she was bonded in the name of Palmero,” Marian mused. “Could her bond papers have been faked? Well, leave that for now. Find the employee who quit. And do it fast. The One-Three is running the dead guy's prints and once we get an ID, I'm going to have to put you on that. So let's move.”

She heard from Dr. Wu in the medical examiner's office first. “I got only one bullet,” he said. “The other one passed right through the body and presumably is still at the location where he was shot, wherever that is. The Crime Lab boys tell me it's a nine-millimeter. Makes a big hole.”

Not Rita Galloway's .38, then
. “Can you tell me anything about him?”

“Nothing that will help you.” Marian could hear the shrug in his voice. “I haven't finished the autopsy yet, but so far there's nothing unusual. Male Caucasian, mid-thirties, six two. Slightly overweight, but not seriously so. General health was good. The only thing wrong with this guy is two bullet holes in him. One of them caught the heart.”

“If you do find anything else, will you call me?”

“Sure, but don't hold your breath.”

“Okay. Thanks, Doc.”

“Don't call me Doc,” he said crossly and hung up.

It was another two hours before the promised fax arrived from the Thirteenth Precinct, and it told Marian what she was waiting to hear; the dead man's prints were indeed on file. The man identified by Rita Galloway as the one who'd attempted to kidnap Bobby was named Nick Atlay. He'd done short time twice, once on a burglary rap and once for grand theft auto. He'd been questioned but not charged in two petty burglaries and one B and E. The name of the arresting officer in the burglary case was a familiar one.

Marian stepped out into the squadroom. Sergeant Buchanan was at his desk typing up a form while a young black man sat handcuffed to a metal chair. Marian went up to the desk and said, “Sergeant, I'd like to see you when you finish here.”

“I'm finished now,” he said, pulling the form out of the typewriter. “Just let me put this loser in the tank.” He unlocked his prisoner and led him away.

Marian sat on the metal chair and waited.

Buchanan was back in a few minutes and sat down with a wheeze. “Okay, Lieutenant, I'm all yours.”

“Four years ago you arrested a perp named Nick Atlay. Stole some TV sets and other appliances. Remember him?”

Buchanan half-grunted, half-laughed. “Nickie Atlay. Is he in trouble again?”

“You could say that. He's been killed.”

The sergeant's bushy gray eyebrows came together in a scowl. “Nickie? How?”

“Shot twice in the chest, then dumped in the East River.”

Buchanan shook his head. “Why would anyone want to kill Nickie Atlay?”

“Tell me about him,” Marian said.

A deep sigh. “Nickie wasn't none too bright, Lieutenant. He couldn't hold a steady job, so he took any kind of work that came his way. Most of it was legit—I'm not sure he always knew the difference. He'd deliver groceries, wash dishes, like that. Then some little shrimp wants to heist a few TV sets, he gets Nickie to come along and do the lifting. No difference to Nickie. You seen his rap sheet? No
violent
crimes. Tell you the truth, Lieutenant, I felt kinda bad about sendin' him up that one time. Prison's no place for a guy who can't take care of himself.”

“He survived prison twice. Short time.”

“He musta had help. Somebody the other prisoners feared made him an errand boy or something. But Nickie wasn't the sort of guy who gets killed. He didn't know nothing, he didn't understand nothing.”

“Are you telling me he never initiated a crime?”

“Naw, not him. He didn't have the smarts. Besides, Nickie was a natural-born follower.”

“So he couldn't have planned a kidnapping?”

“Kidnapping!” Buchanan looked surprised, then made the connection. “This the Galloway case?”

Marian said yes. “Mrs. Galloway identified the body this morning.”

He shook his head. “No way Nickie could have planned that. And I'll tell you something. He was fed a line of bull to make him take part. Like, the real perp coulda told him the woman the kid was with had stolen him from his real mother. Nickie coulda thought he was
saving
the boy.”

She thought that over. “It fits. Even the part about no smarts. He didn't check to see if there was a prowl car cruising the street. And when the cops caught up with him, he struggled at first instead of just dropping the boy and running.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Nickie.”

“Do you know if he ever worked as a janitor?”

“Coupla times, 'til he'd get fired. Why?”

“The Galloway boy said he had a strange smell, something like cleaning solvent.”

“Then he was probably moppin' floors somewhere.”

A new voice called out “Lieutenant!” She turned to see Detective Dowd holding up a phone. “Perlmutter. Line one.”

Marian took the call in her office. “You got her?”

“Not exactly,” Perlmutter said. “Her name's Annie Plaxton but she's no longer at the address we got from Maids-in-a-Row. We tracked down her nephew, and he says she's moved to Hoboken. And get this, Lieutenant. She's opened a laundromat there.”

“Bingo. New money.”

“Yep. Looks as if our Annie was paid to quit Maids-in-a-Row. Do we go to New Jersey?

“No, you and O'Toole come on in. We've got a name for our dead kidnapper—Nick Atlay, and he may have been working as a janitor. Buchanan arrested him once. Ask him for known associates.”

“Atlay—strange name. I'll bet it was ‘Atlee' at one time. Lieutenant, traffic's pretty bad—it'll take us a while to get back.”

“Okay, do the best you can.” She broke the connection and went to Captain Murtaugh's office.

This time he was in, talking on the phone. He hung up and snarled,
“What?”

Marian grinned. “Do you want me to come back later?”

“No, no. Sit.”

She sat. “Progress.” She summarized for him what they'd learned. “I've put Perlmutter and O'Toole on the homicide, so I want to go to New Jersey tomorrow, to Hoboken—to talk to this former cleaning lady who now suddenly and mysteriously owns her own business.”

“You're doing the divorce lawyer's work for him.”

“Probably. But if I can pin down the missing Consuela Palmero as Hugh Galloway's way of playing a dirty trick on his wife, then we won't have to spend any more time on it.”

“You're still convinced he's innocent?”

Marian sighed. “No, I'm not
convinced
. I'm hoping Annie Plaxton in Hoboken will convince me one way or the other.”

“All right, then, go talk to her. It's a loose end that may have nothing to do with either the kidnapping or the killing. But tie it up.”

“Right.”

“On a related matter,” the captain said, “earlier today I got a phone call from Alex Fairchild. He wanted to come here and take pictures. I told him no.”

“Good.”

“We can't have someone connected with a case under investigation running loose in the station. I told him to wait until the case is settled and then call me again.”

“Bad.”

A smile flitted across his face. “You don't want your picture taken by a world-famous photographer?”

“
Is
he world-famous?”

“Oh yes, he's quite well known. He takes these stark, stunning photographs that make you come back and look again. You should see his work.”

“I'm going to,” Marian said. “Tonight.”

10

When he picked her up that evening, Holland noticed that Marian had dressed up for the occasion: she was wearing a gold chain around her neck. Everything else was the same.

On the way to the Albian Gallery, she told him about how she'd misplaced the invitation Alex Fairchild had given her and she could remember only that the gallery was on Fifty-seventh Street. But the computer department had gone to something called a Web site and had been able to pick out all the Fifty-seventh Street galleries from the
NYNEX Yellow Pages
.

“It's called a search function,” he said, “and it's old news. Don't you think it's about time you got wired? You could have looked that up for yourself.”

She shuddered. “Learn all that stuff? Uh-uh. Besides, I don't need a computer.”

“Everybody needs a computer,” he said flatly. “You especially. Here you are, a lieutenant in the country's largest police force, and you don't even have an e-mail address!”

This time she laughed. “You sound scandalized.”

“Well, I am. If you don't join the twentieth century soon, you're going to miss it altogether.”

“Hey. That was a put-down. Don't be so damned superior.”

“I'm sorry.”

“No, you're not.”

“No, I'm not.”

She hit his shoulder and he smirked.

There was no place to park near the gallery, so they had to walk back a few blocks. He didn't know whether to bring the subject up or not, but he couldn't leave it completely alone. “How's Murtaugh?”

“Murtaugh?” She was surprised. “Since when are you interested in Murtaugh's health?”

“I'm not. But you haven't mentioned him lately.”

“Hmm. Well, he was a little grumpy today. I think his wife's out of town.”

So he hadn't told her about the incident in the bar
. Holland was content to leave it at that. He knew from past experience that Marian didn't have much patience with his
im
patience with other people. “Arrogant” she'd called him, more than once.

Suddenly he pulled her to him and kissed her.

She didn't pull away. “That was nice.” But he could hear the puzzlement in her voice.

He kissed her again. Holland didn't understand his own need for the reassurance that physical contact with her brought, and it troubled him. But not overmuch.

“Get it
awn!”
Three teenaged boys passed, cheering.

They smiled and broke out of their clinch. Another half block took them to the Albian Gallery.

All Marian had told him was that the photographer was the uncle of a small boy who'd been the target of a foiled kidnapping attempt. And that the kidnapper had turned up dead that morning … but the case was not closed. Fairchild's name was known to him; Holland had once looked through a book of the photographer's stark, memorable images.

Only one photograph was on display in the window, blown up to poster size. Black and white, details crisp in the foreground but fading to a teasing fuzziness in the back. Shot in one of New York's grubbier streets. The entire left half of the foreground was taken up by the bleary-eyed, unshaven face of an old wino looking into the lens, some spark of curiosity left after years of self-ravagement. But his curiosity was misdirected; what he didn't see behind him in the background were the figures of a man and a woman on a fire escape who seemed earnestly trying to kill each other.

“Strong picture,” Holland remarked.

Marian agreed. “He told me all his pictures had to have a compelling face in them. This one certainly does.”

They went inside. Holland automatically checked the place out, knowing Marian was doing the same thing. Albian Gallery was a long, white, narrow rectangle with a balcony running around three walls and with two doors in the rear wall, one above and one below. No music was playing and no food table was in sight, but most of the twenty-odd people there were holding wineglasses.

They strolled along one wall, looking. No photographs were of
just
faces, but the faces were always the focal point of a larger picture. And the faces were almost invariably grim, reflecting fear, anxiety, hopelessness. There were a few exceptions; they stopped in front of one, an elfin little boy laughing with delight as a baby goat in a petting zoo nuzzled his ear. On a greeting card, the picture would have been cute, even coy. But the shot had been taken on a gloomy, overcast day; food wrappers and other trash littered the ground; and a bored zoo attendant was looking on. The child's laughing face was a moment of sunshine in a drab world.

“That's his nephew,” Marian said. “The little boy who was almost kidnapped.”

The next shot was of an older boy standing at a urinal in a men's room, while a silver-haired man fondled the boy's neck and smiled insinuatingly into his face.

Holland felt only contempt for this blatant bit of mahipulation. “Not exactly subtle, is it? Moving from the innocence of childhood to the corruption of childhood in one easy step. The picture of the boy and the goat was only a setup. Preparation for shock value.”

“Some people say,” a new voice proclaimed, “that my pictures are easier to take when you have a slight buzz on.” A man with reddish brown hair and large moist eyes handed them each a glass of white wine.