Ladykiller (18 page)

Dave met Don Cole for a late afternoon beer at McSorley’s. They sat
far from the TV, where the Sunday football game drew the other
patrons, bugs to the light. Dave had met Cole when the two were
rookies in the 19th Precinct. Cole left the force to go to St. John’s
Law School and then joined the Securities and Exchange Commission
as an investigator.

Dave came right to the point. “I need information about an investigation.”
Cole inspected the foam on his beer. “Dave, I can’t tell you about
any ongoing stuff. Maybe if Mancuso formally —”
“Forget Mancuso. And forget formally. This is about a dead
woman. Name of Kimberly Worth.”
“One of the Ladykiller victims.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Of Corson & Worth.”
“You got that right.”
Cole downed some brew and pursed his lips in thought. “I guess
she can’t sue us for defamation of character. But you haven’t heard a
word from me.”
“Fine.”
“Kimberly Worth was a real classy girl.Went to Stanford Business
School. Had a hot rep as a young broker at one of the best firms on the
Street.Along came the 1987 stock market crash. She got caught doing
all kinds of unethical shit to save her hide. Traded from her own
account and ignored her customers. Whatever it took to come out
ahead. Her license got revoked.”
“So how did she end up heading an outfit that had her name on
the door?”
Cole lit a cigarette and sent dragon plumes of smoke shooting
out his nostrils. “She got a temporary injunction. Sued everbody in
sight. Since nobody legit would hire her, she went into business with
this major sleaze, Corson. They started a bucket shop. And it’s still
pretty profitable.”
“Tell me how a bucket shop works, exactly,” Dave said.
“Specializes in penny stocks,” Cole said. “That’s anything less than
five bucks a share, usually. Their brokers work the phones, night and
day, doing cold calls. They love a retiree with a little money to burn,
but not a lot of market sophistication. They dangle riches in front of
the poor slob. Tell him the stock will take off any day now. When it
does move up — from the demand generated by the bucket shop, as
often as not — they persuade the pigeon to sell and roll his gains into
another hot number. Every time there’s a sale, the brokerage gets a
commission. This goes on and on. The customer never can cash out
and go home.”
“Not good,” Dave said.
“It gets worse. Lots of times, the broker will make sales without
the client’s permission. More commissions roll in. That was the specialty of Corson & Worth. These sleazeballs convinced retirees to
pledge their homes as collateral for loans to buy more stock. Unreal.
We have documented cases where their shenanigans cleaned out several old people.They lost their houses, everything.At least two I know
wound up homeless. One poor widow died of overexposure. She used
to give bridge parties, for Christ’s sake.” He shook his head and took a
drink. “Corson & Worth — they’re pigs. We’ll get them sooner or
later. Corson won’t budge and throws up a smokescreen of legal crap
to stop us.”
“How about Kimberly Worth? Did she feel guilty? Maybe want to
quit? Get help or something?”
“Are you kidding? That bitch was cold. All she cared about was
how much long green she was raking in. I mean, she had a nice place
in the Hamptons, a swanky condo on the Upper East Side, the works.”
“Any clue if she ever sought psychological counseling for anything?”
“Nothing that I know of. Unless she was worried about her
habit.”
“Her habit? What habit?”
Cole looked startled, then laughed. “Hey, I thought you cops
knew everything. Kimberly Worth had a horse habit. Big time.”
“No she didn’t. There was an autopsy. It would have come out.
Besides, I examined the body myself and there were no track marks.
Nothing.”
Cole shook his head, grinning. “Are you living in the fifties? Track
marks? She didn’t shoot it, she inhaled it. It was designer horse. Actually, it was probably some synthetic. Probably got it from Mexico or
Belgium or something. Maybe it didn’t show up in the blood, but she
was doing it and it could be she was worried about it. Other than that,
I don’t think she had a care in the world.”
“Until she faced that .45,” Dave said thoughtfully.
“Until then.”

Billy Ray Battle spent the early evening pacing back and forth on
the other side of the street from Nita’s apartment building. A big
man like him was conspicuous. If he simply stood there and waited for
her, someone would notice. So he had to keep moving. But where the
fuck was she? He spied a pay phone in a Korean grocery. He dialed
directory assistance and asked for the number of the West Side Crisis
Center.

“The hotline?” the operator asked.
“Hotline, coldline, whatever fucking line you got.”
An electronic female voice, which was vaguely seductive,

chirped out the number.
“Just one damn minute,” Billy Ray said. “You got a pen?” he called
to the Korean counterman. Snatching the pen from him, Billy Ray
copied the number onto his palm when the voice repeated it.
An older woman answered the hotline. “Crisis center, may I help
you?” She sounded Jewish, whiny, motherly.
“Looking for Nita.This here’s an old friend of hers.”
“I’m sure you are, dear. Nita stopped by for a minute, but she’s
off today. Is there anything I can help you with?”
“She go home?” Billy Ray demanded.
“I don’t know where she goes. If you have a problem —”
“Don’t got no fucking problem.” Billy Ray slammed the receiver
home and quickly returned to the street. Could he have missed her?
He could taste her already.Then he saw her approaching, her legs
in snug jeans, her ripe breasts in a nice pullover, the hair, the face. His
fingers and crotch tingled.

Nita needed time to plan. She studied the sidewalk as she headed
home. Megan wanted to have dinner, but she couldn’t spare the time
tonight.The younger woman’s eagerness to please was more than Nita
could handle now. Life had become entirely too complicated. Planning was the answer.

She was sorting out her keys at the front door to her building
when she felt the looming presence behind her.
“Open the door, darlin’,” came the man’s drawl from behind and
above. “Got us some things to do.”
She stifled the yelp that shot up from her heart. And she froze,
gripping the keys.
“Open the door, darlin’.”
Nita’s hand slid toward her bag. But the man’s massive paw was
there already, clamping it shut. He slid it off her shoulder.
“Don’t want no trouble, do we? Trouble gets in the way of loving, every time.” His voice had the low, honey menace of a tiger’s purr.
Her own voice came out surprisingly steady. “If you don’t leave
me alone and drop my bag, I’ll yell for the police.”
His broad fingers slid across her throat. “You try that, and you
won’t make no more noise, ever again.” He squeezed gently.
She took a tortured sip of air, and said nothing.
“Now, let that key in, nice and easy,” he urged.
Her key zigzagged toward the lock, slid in, and turned.The door
opened with a disheartening snap.
She felt his erection against her behind.
“See how nice that key went in?” His lips were near her ear.
She trudged up the stairs, his hand still around her throat. At her
apartment door, she dropped the keys. She bent to retrieve them, and
as she did, he bent over with her, his hand still at her throat, his bulge
bumping against her ass. Nita opened the door and they entered the
apartment, which was dark except for the fish tank, lit by an eerie
inner glow.The door closed.
His hand moved from her throat to the collar of her pullover.
“Let’s take them clothes off.
“You were with Ace at the playground, weren’t you?” she asked.
The dead calm in her tone remained.
“Maybe I was, little darlin’.” The large hand roughly fondled her
breasts. “That was then.Tonight is now.”
“Let me turn around and look at you,” Nita said, spicing the
words with a flirtatious lilt. “You seem big and strong.”
The hand went to one of her shoulders and turned her to face
him. He stood there in dark immensity, the lusty grin catching the
light from the fish tank.
“You have an eye patch,” she said. “I like men with eye patches.
They’re so — manly.”
“You do?” His grin widened.
“Yes. Like an old shirt ad.”
The grin dropped a few watts. “What you say?”
“I wish you weren’t carrying a purse.” She gestured at her bag,
which he had clamped in his other hand. “A man like you wouldn’t
want that, would he?”
He delved inside the bag. “Well, well, lookie here. Got ourselves
that piece you was shooting at poor little Ace.You got the fire in you,
girl. I like my women wild.” He threw the bag behind him, where it
lay at the foot of the door, the gun inside and too far from her.
“Why don’t we turn on the light, so we can see each other better?” she suggested.
He flicked the wall switch.Totally visible, he appeared less terrifying. It was a good sign that he had obeyed her.
“Strip off them clothes, darling,” he said.
“I need a drink of water first,” Nita said.
“You can drink all you want after,” he said.
“Let me get my drink of water, Billy Ray,” she said. Her knowing
his name jolted across his face. Before he could respond, she turned,
and walked into the kitchen.
He followed her. “You make it a short drink. Hear?”
Good. Nita had won another psychological point. She picked up
her coffee cup, where it sat upside-down in the dish drainer, right beside the toaster oven and the butcher block full of carving knives. She
rinsed out the cup and filled it with water. She forced herself to down
the entire thing.
“I’m sorry about what Dillon did to your eye,” she said.
A storm gathered about his mouth and remaining eye. “What you
say, woman? You mocking me?”
Careful. She had to work this just right. “No, no, no, Billy Ray.
He’s a terrible man. I’m sure you would have demolished him if it
were a fair fight. But cops don’t fight fair.”
“You damn straight.” He pulled back his shoulders. “Now, take
them fucking clothes off.”
“Billy Ray, do you know what would be really exciting?”
His lips puckered like a little boy’s. “What?”
“Why don’t you take your clothes off first? Then you could take
mine off.”
“Well —”
“Oh, please. For me, Billy Ray.”
Somewhere inside the most brutal, woman-hating rapist lurked a
desire to be bossed around in sex by a woman. The grin returned.
“That turn you on, huh?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe. Oh, please.”
“Okay, then. Anything for a lady.” With tripping, almost silly
alacrity, he pulled off his boots and yanked at his clothes. In seconds,
he stood before her, an overfed, oversized version of Michelangelo’s
David
. His erection curled out aggressively from under his slag-bag of
a gut.
“Come to me, my love,” Nita said, and held out her arms.
Grinning ferociously, he crossed the kitchen tile. She reached for
his genitals. “Yeah, baby,” he said.
Billy Ray’s balls rested in Nita’s palm, tight, bulbous prizes.With
every erg of strength she had, she squeezed them hard. Crushed them
like rotten pears.
The man jackknifed forward and roared in exquisite agony. Nita
backed off quickly to get clear of his arms, which flailed around before
they clamped around his crotch. He made gagging sounds. His face
had turned sunset red.
Nita, losing not a moment, pulled a large knife out of the butcher
block.When Billy Ray could look up from his intense pain to croak his
curses at her, he saw the knife zooming at his bad eye. It went through
the eye patch and sliced deep into his skull. For a moment that seemed
like forever he stood there, staring at her from his one good eye, then
he slipped down, slid down the knife blade, and slowly eased down
onto the floor.
Nita stood over him as he twitched in death. When he was still,
she took the knife and washed it carefully in the kitchen sink. Fortunately, little blood leaked out his eye onto her floor. She would clean
that up later.
In Manhattan, even on a Sunday night, you can get any items you
want. Delivered too. In an hour, a moving company had delivered a
crate and hand truck to her door. She bought industrial-strength trash
bags from the deli. And she picked up the van from the 24-hour car
rental herself. Happily, there was a parking place right in front of her
apartment house door when she drove the van back.
Now came the hard part. Billy Ray lay on her linoleum, a twisted
lump of meat with overly large joints shooting in all directions. He
had started to stiffen. She had to push hard to get his arms to his sides
and his knees tucked up to his chest. He had started to smell, too.
Dark ooze, from where his bowels had given way, puddled the floor
beneath him. She would clean that up later, as well. His waxen face
was wrenched into the wretched gorgon’s snarl of sudden death.
Previously, she never had to bother with her victims after she dispatched them. Just walked away. She unfolded the trash bags. Billy Ray
would need at least three.
Nita struggled the big man into the black plastic. He was like a
bag of rocks, inert and muscle-strainingly heavy.
Next came the hard part: shoving him into the crate. She had
chosen a sturdy one whose top and bottom could be removed without
the sides collapsing. She braced a corner of the crate against her
kitchen door jamb to prevent it from moving backward, and dragged
Billy Ray’s bulk into the crate. It took a long frustrating half hour.
Even though she had the advantage of being able to pull him through
the far, open end of the crate, the damn box kept shifting from side to
side. And God, was he the deadest of deadweight?
At last, he was safely inside. Nita sat wearily down on the floor,
soaked with sweat, muscles on fire.
Her buzzer sounded. Nita struggled to her feet and hit the intercom switch. “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” came Megan’s perky greeting over the tinny speaker.
“Ready for dinner?”
“Dinner.”
“Come on. Let’s celebrate. One of your neighbors let me in. Be
right up.”
In a frenzy, Nita sealed up the top of the crate, which had a latch.
The bottom, though, needed to be nailed shut. No time for that. She
leaned the bottom panel across the opening, hiding the plasticsheathed mass inside.With a fistful of paper towels and a blast of Ajax,
she cleaned up the soiled linoleum.
Her doorbell chimed. Megan had on smart slacks and a light
sweater. She carried a bottle of champagne. “I’m really in control,” she
gushed. “I went on another call with Dave today, and I really have my
emotions where I want them. I don’t need him. I proved that to myself
today.You’d have been proud of me.”
“That’s great, but —”
Megan stepped inside, holding the champagne by its neck. The
handbag with the .45 still sat beside the door where Billy Ray had
flung it. “I saw today that you’re right. He wants to steal my soul. But
he’s weak. I can be stronger than him. I can tell him no. And I can
mean it. I wish you could have seen me.”
“Megan, please —”
At last, her young friend realized she was intruding. Then she
noticed Nita’s appearance. “Oh, you look —” Yet Megan couldn’t
bring herself to say that Nita looked any less than perfect. “You’re not
ready.”
“I’ve been a little busy,” Nita said with heavy irony, suppressing
the urge to laugh. She recognized incipient hysteria when she saw it.
She sat down and pushed back her damp hair.
“What’s that crate?”
“I’ve been doing a little spring cleaning.”
“Can I help?”
“No.That’s okay.Why don’t I give you a rain check? This is dirty
work.”
Megan walked over to the crate, pulled the bottom panel away
from where it leaned, and peered inside. Nita tensed. Her eyes darted
to the handbag in the corner, where the lump of the .45 showed
clearly.
“What is this?” Megan asked.
“You wouldn’t want to know.”
“Woo, it smells.” Megan jostled the side of the crate. “My God, it
weighs a ton.”
“You wouldn’t believe the trash I have to throw out.” Nita got up
and slowly walked across the room and picked up her bag.
The two women looked at each other as the night gathered itself
together beyond the window. And they seemed to find some elusive
something behind each other’s eyes, some sturdy spiderweb of trust
that bound them together for all their seasons.
Megan exhaled and said in a small voice, “The box is very heavy.
I can help.”
Nita stood quietly for a moment, then nodded. She fit the bottom panel squarely against the crate and nailed it shut. “There,” she
said.
Megan helped her upend the crate and shove it onto the handcart.Then Megan went first down the stairs, holding the cargo steady
as they bumped the crate down to the street.The two women strained
to push the crate into the van. Without Megan, Nita doubted she
could have managed.The burden must have weighed 250 pounds.
“Let me go with you,” Megan said. “It will be just as heavy —
wherever you’re going.”
“You’ve done enough,” Nita said. “I can take it from here.”
“I’ll do anything for you, Nita.”
“I know.”
As Megan left, Nita called after her, “Remember. A rain check on
dinner.”
Nita decided on New Jersey. She could have unloaded the body
on some deserted back street in Lower Manhattan. But in the city,
there was no telling who would happen along as she struggled with
the crate.
She drove through the back streets to the Lincoln Tunnel, which
sat at the end of the Deuce like a giant drain for all the human sewage
that sluiced along that putrid street. As she sped into the dirty,
white-tiled tunnel, lit in a sickly yellow glow, Nita felt the triumph
begin to swell.
She went quickly past the evil-smelling New Jersey towns that
wadded up against the nether end of the tunnel. Without too much
searching, she found a lonely road threading through the sewage pools
of the Hackensack Meadowlands. She pulled the van over beside a
shallow ditch and waited. No other car came along. She killed the
headlights and got out.
Over the reedy horizon, Manhattan’s towers stood waist high
against the night sky, incredible statements of pure light where the
world’s work got done. Gearhouses that ran the machinery of society.
And the Billy Rays and Aces and Reubens and Lydias and Kimberlys
and Lucys and Evelyns were nothing but sand in those gears. Off to
the west rose the arenas of the Meadowlands sports complex.The soft
breath of air that rattled through the reeds carried faint cheering.
“Thank you,” Nita said, making a mock bow to the ghost applause.
Inside the van, she braced her shoulder against the crate and
inched it out the back. It fell hard to the ground, but didn’t break
open. Nita popped open the top and squinted into the crate.The trash
bags might rip and break if she tried to pull the body out. Instead, she
hammered the sides of the crate loose. And she rolled the stinking
plastic load into the ditch. The shards of the crate went back into the
van, so no one could trace it back to her. She turned once more to the
luminous Manhattan skyline.
There was another burst of distant cheering and triumph swelled
out of her. She laughed and laughed.To think that removing scum like
this was against the law. Her laughter mounted to a manic crescendo.
Well, how fitting that the law was easily outsmarted. The laughing
tripped into a fit of coughing and gagging.