Iceman (8 page)

He had pushed a twenty-five-dollar chip onto the black, and he moved his head from side to side, head going back as he smiled up at the one-way mirrors of the eye-in-the-sky surveillance, feeling his beautiful bitch lightly massage his neck. It was so tiring when you had to sit all the time. Normal movement was something people took for granted, but how lucky they were. These lucky, hayseed schmucks with legs that worked.

He'd show them luck. It was red, and Alberta took his chip, raking it with the others. He pushed another quarter out as soon as she cleared the table of losing bets. Nobody won. He put fifty dollars on black and went down. A heavy man with gold chains and an immense diamond ring won a big combination bet on the bottom dozen. The man in the chair never bet anything but straight-up bets. He shoved three hundred dollars onto the black, and the wheel spun.

“I gave you a second chance,” Alberta teased the players as it hit red again, his bet swept away. He pursed his lips up in a silent kiss to her and she gave him a big smile. She wondered what sex would be like with a guy in a wheelchair. Could he have sex at all? The beautiful woman who usually accompanied him was obviously very devoted. No gorgeous woman would love a man like that unless the sex was okay. He had a great mouth, maybe he gave dynamite head. She had to jerk her mind back on the job. She loved dealing roulette because you didn't have to think. Mindlessly she watched the good-looking guy shove seven hundred dollars in hundred-dollar chips out. He'll hit this one, she thought, and when he missed again, she raised her eyebrows and shrugged as she raked the chips. The fat guy had hit the lower twelve again—what a chump bet.

The man in the wheelchair slid a thousand-dollar chip toward Alberta and caught her attention. “Give me hundreds, babe,” he said, and then slid another one over. She gave him twenty hundred-dollar chips and he kept the stack where it was. “Put ‘em down for me, doll. Please cover all the blacks.” She supposed it was hard for him to reach all the numbers on the layout.

“Yes, sir,” she said as she quickly dropped a chip onto each of the eighteen black squares. She knew as she did it he was hitting this time for sure. Smart gambler, she thought. She started to hand him the two hundred dollars back and he said, “Cover the zeroes please,” and she did. She didn't mind helping him. He always toked her at least a hundred.

“Way to go, sir,” she told him when black hit. She payed him $3,500 on the number, and saw he'd covered black with a thousand-dollar chip.

“Cash me out, hon,” he said. He'd been at the table maybe five minutes and hit the casino for fifteen hundred. True to form he toked her a hundred. Then he changed his mind and dropped four hundred dollars back down on black and hit again, and the “model” wheeled the gambler away with an easy nineteen hundred dollars. Chicken feed on his way to dinner.

“
E
nemies,” Eichord told the men in the squad room, “we have to take a look at every possibility."

“I don't much like it,” Brown said, his gaze wandering with unconcealed desultoriness and boredom, “but, um, hell, uh, I dunno. I don't see it. Not with an icepick."

“Suppose somebody had her at the top of their shit list and they paid somebody. Somebody with an icepick."

“Unnnnn,” Brown groaned, “you know what I mean?” As if that was a logical response.

“We got an eyeball on her leaving the speaking engagement and we got driving time. We got her pulling up in front of the church. We got an ETA. Now. Something happens to Tina Hoyt. She gets out. The killer who her political enemy has paid the money to is surveilling her. He grabs her as she gets out of her car, throws her into his vehicle, does her with the icepick. Drives out to the park and dumps her. Huh?"

“Nah. It's somebody knows her. He's waiting for her and she parks, gets in with him, he drives to the river and whacks her inna ear."

“Dana? You agree?"

“Hey, I can suddenly answer riddles now?” Dana whined. “Whatta hell do I look like, a fuckin’ contestant on
Wheel of Fortune
?"

“No, you look like a contestant on
Dialing for Hippopotami
. But what do you think—if anything?"

“You really wanna know what I think?"

“No. But tell us anyway."

“I think somebody did her because she was a diesel dyke. Some ole man finds out his missus was gettin’ the double-dildo put to her by this bull dagger, see. And he makes her get inna car like you said. Takes her down to the park and reams her ears out real good, pushes her out the door, and roars off into the night. Or jacks off into the night."

“What a load of shit,” Monroe Tucker said. “This is a definite political assassination."

“Wait a minute. I got it. Dig this, Monroe, Martians beam the bitch up into a flying saucer and—"

“You give me d’ porker-dorkers,” the huge black detective told his partner.

“Yeah? You give me the jungle jitters, Rastus."

“We assume a feminist with a high profile and with political aspirations as well could easily have crossed paths with somebody who wanted her hit.” Eichord continued as if uninterrupted. “So we'll start with that. Who stood to gain a political advantage by her death?"

“Yeah,” Dana mumbled, “we'll round up all the known heterosexuals."

“That'll leave
YOU
out."

“
G
osh,” the small woman said, her face scrunched up at Eichord's. “This makes the third time I've had to go through all this. The fourth, if you count the press. No! Five times is how many times, counting television. You know they came out from Chan—"

“I understand, Mizz Wright. Just a couple more questions and I won't bother you anymore.” He spoke soothingly, a look of genuine concern on his face. He knew what it was to go over the same ground endlessly.

“It's not that you're bothering me, but, you know, I've just told it so many times I don't have anything to add."

“Sure.” He shook his head sympathetically. “I understand. But if you could just make a couple of comments, maybe you'll hit on some seemingly insignificant fact you haven't remembered before."

“Okay. Sure.” She had a face like a tiny bird. Just on the borderline from being one of the little people. Very tiny bones. The features chiseled like a sculpture's face. She wasn't pretty but she made him think of movie stars and a case he'd worked on in Southern California. He'd seen some of the familiar faces from the silver screen. Tiny people with little shrunken images made well known by the celluloid pictures. Some of them disappointing up close. Smaller than life, as it were.

“You're sure of the time."

“I really am. She'd just ... Ms Hoyt had just given her talk and we were standing right there"—she pointed—"and I was telling her how effective she'd been. And she thanked me. And she walked over there and got into her car and pulled out."

“Did you happen to notice if anyone had pulled out after she did. Somebody else leaving or pulling out of the parking lot about that same time?"

“No. And I would have seen them. I was standing right over there by her car with her and I stood there a while watching her car pull out. And then I went back inside. Nobody else pulled out of the lot during that time."

“If you were to describe her mood, what was her mood when she was leaving?"

“Her mood?” She acted as if the word was one she'd never heard before.

“Was she frightened? Anxious? Relaxed? Worried? You know. How did she seem to be when she left.” The man talking to her softly. Drawing her out.

“Hurried. I would have to say she seemed businesslike. Pleasant. In a hurry."

“Mizz Wright, I know you're active in the women's movement. How was Tina Hoyt regarded within the movement?"

“Highly. That much I can tell you. Everybody thought highly of her. She was vitally important to the movement."

“Might someone have conceivably reasoned that they could strike a serious blow at the movement by hurting Tina Hoyt?"

“Sure. I suppose that's possible."

“Did she ever speak of having any threats? Or any enemies or someone who had expressed animosity toward her?"

“Not that I ever heard of, huh-uh. No. I'm sure she hadn't. I think she was well liked by everyone and respected even by most of the people whose opinions differed from hers. I never heard of anyone expressing any sort of serious hostility. The reverse, in fact: her adversaries admired her, um, strong, iconoclastic positions."

Eichord nodded but automatically saw the Greek word derivation: one who breaks images. What a name for a Greek gasoline. Ikonoclas, the Gas with Class. He was trying to read Ms. Wright as she responded to his questions. Something a hair off-center.

“Did she comment on why she was so hurried when she left here?"

“Yes. I believe she made some comment about running late. Or she had to give a speech at this church, which was quite a long drive from here—maybe forty-five minutes away. And I know I felt guilty talking to her, taking so much of her time, but I wanted to tell her how important her speech was, you know?"

I know. He nodded slowly tilting his head back another eighth of an inch.

“Important to all of us. How much we appreciated her. But I could sense she was in a hurry and I tried to be succinct."

“Okay. Do you have any idea who might have wanted to do her harm? Any speculation at all?"

“None whatsoever.” The small woman shook her head at Eichord. “It was a total shock to all of us."

It was a total shock to Tina too, baby, he thought. He thanked her and got back in the car. Turned the key and headed back toward the station.

He thought about the place she'd been found in. The look of her with the dress in a small pool of muddy water. Dirt on her shapely, pantyhosed legs. The hair and the skin-fiber reports. The extra time they'd taken with this one: the fingernails, rectum, under the eyelids, the soil-deposit trace, the forensic analysis, the whole fine nine that Earl Rich at the police lab had summed up in two syllables: “Nada."

MacTuff's guys in the white coats hadn't been able to add a shred of anything to what Earl's boys and the old redneck Buckhead M.E. had handed him. They did have some lab work on the possible weapon.

Not necessarily an icepick. PROBABLY an icepick. Could be one of the old, long, wooden-handled type. Could be a sharpened awl or a homemade job: any steel weapon ground down to that particular configuration. A group of examples included various antique and contemporary sword canes and umbrellas. Jack remembered his grandmother had still used an icebox in the late 50s. They'd had to come in and replace it with a fridge while she was asleep. She never did get use to that “'Frigerator” but at least she wouldn't be stabbing herself to death with the mean, needle-sharp pick that she kept stabbed into the butcher's block beside the door.

Back at the station he picked up the phone, twirling his Rolodex until he saw the number he wanted and began dialing.

“Yes. Is Letty there, please?” He waited, tapping a felt-tipped pen on the desk.

“HI! Letty, it's Jack Eichord.” She said something friendly. He smiled, responding, “Do you recall a serial killer you ran a story on some years back? This must date back close to fourteen, fifteen years or more. The Icepick Killer?"

“My God,” she said, “you sure have some memory there, Jack.” She paused for a second. “No. Not offhand. I don't."

“It's important, hon. Guy was killing women, and I don't think they ever caught him. The Icepick Murders? Something like that?"

“Oh, hell. Sure! The Iceman."

“Yeah."

“Yeah. That's it, eh? The Iceman. Yeah. Um hmm. I remember the stories vaguely. Whatcha need?"

“I need every scrap, kid. I would be very grateful if you can dig it all out for me. Every bit you have on it."

“Okay. We can do."

“And I need it last week. But if you can't get it here that soon, yesterday will do."

E
ichord was reading one thing, hearing another, thinking about yet another. No. That's not quite right. He was hearing one thing, reading another thing, and thinking about two different things—two things, that is to say, that were different than the things he was hearing and more or less reading.

“In circuit court,” he heard Marv Peletier say. “Yeah. He's a complete and total anus.” As he heard the word “anus,” he READ the word “Venus.” Weird.

“VENUS WITH THE NAKED EYE,” he read. “According to the United States Naval Observatory, Buckhead residents will see the planet Venus appear to kiss the earth's moon today, in a spectacular astronomical show that should take place shortly before sunset.” It was the third or fourth time he had read the sentence.

“Yeah. He gave him an affidavit for a wiretap—"

“With a good pair of binoculars, the planet that appears as a mere white speck to the naked eye will take on a crescent shape.” He thought about the boy. Then about a homicide. And he read “expansion of the nascent cosmos” and realized he had no idea what the hell he was reading and closed the paper.

Dana lumbered by. “Drunk again,” the fat detective mumbled.

“You know it."

“Sit there like that staring off into space or jacking off into space nobody will know it's Fill-’ em-up Marlowe, Supercop."

“Speaking of jacking off into space, did you know that the surface temperature on Venus is 830 degrees Fahrenheit?"

“Shit. That ain't nothin',” Tuny said, sorting through a pile of papers strewn across the slum area he called a desk, but his mind wandered before he could finish whatever Danaism he'd been about to impart.

It had been several days since Eichord had seen the old crime file on the Iceman Murders and reached out for everything MacTuff had. The task force was a high-tech miracle worker, but as the saying went, it couldn't take shit and give you apple sauce.

MCTF was a storehouse, a main-frame computer center, a decoder, a think tank, a search-and-transfer giant linked on-line to your data base. And it could make a machine, a snitch package, and that made it a copper's dream. But Eichord, tapped into all the stored data on the planet, didn't have J. Walter Diddley Zip.