Ladykiller (2 page)

Turning tricks, you were almost never really alone. Even when some
john was heaving into her, back in her room, she wasn’t alone. Her
SRO hotel had tissue-thin walls she could scream through if a guy went
nuts. In an instant, Jackie Why or one of the other girls or somebody
would be there with a knife. Even the time when she was blowing a
guy on a walkway of the Queensborough Bridge, she had more company than now. Lots of people around, that was real life insurance.

She leaned against the small shack, uncomfortably close to the
garbage. This was where she was supposed to wait. Just as well. If
some creep passed by on the street, he wouldn’t see her as easily. It
was cold and she was irritable. She didn’t need this.What she did need
was a cigarette. She fumbled out a Virginia Slim and flicked her disposable lighter. And saw something.

She didn’t scream, but made a high-pitched, involuntary, animal
sound. The face hovered nearby, illuminated by the sashaying flame.
Even after she registered the face as familiar, she still croaked a little as
she lit her cigarette.The flame trembled.

“Shit.”The whore pocketed the lighter and dragged deeply on the
cigarette to steady her nerves. “Thank God, it’s you. I thought I was
going to have to wait.” Thinking it was funny that she hadn’t heard a
sound, she exhaled, a little jittery, but better, and glanced up. “Did we
really have to meet here? It’s creepy.”

“Nice gloves,” the whore said, trying to make conversation.What
was this all about, she yearned to ask. “They leather? Expensive?”
A glint from a far-off streetlight caught the chrome .45 pistol as
it emerged from the shadows. Held in the leather-gloved hands.
“What’s that for?” the whore asked. Jackie sometimes carried a
piece for protection. She wasn’t truly alarmed until she saw the gun
was pointed at her head.
The familiar face had become twisted into an ugly Kabuki mask.
This wasn’t like the person the whore knew and trusted. What was
going on?
The whore’s hysteria built with every word: “Hey, it’s me.What
the hell are you doing? Quit kidding around.This isn’t funny.”
The .45 fired, a brief thunderclap that rolled across the parking
lot. Its bullet smashed through her right eye, brutalizing the softest,
most vulnerable membrane. The bullet tore through her brain and
burst out the back of her skull in a spray of bone and blood and tissue.
Her soul, startled, fled. Her body, already cooling, slowly slipped,
dropped away, and fell back into the welcoming trash.
The killer remained holding the .45 in a two-handed combat
grip, held it where its fire had reached out and kissed the whore’s eye.
The killer’s leather-gloved hands relaxed finally; the silver pistol lowered and pointed toward the ground.

The bag lady continued her slow, painful progress up Tenth, pawing
through each trash heap, adding the occasional bottle or can to her
burgeoning shopping cart. Each one brought a nickel at the one deli
where they put up with her. Not much around, though, this time of
night on this well-picked-over block. Go through the motions, she
told herself. You’ll be okay. Spring was almost here and she could
sleep outside tonight, which was much better than in those hellish
shelters where they stole everything.

Wait. What was that over there? She pushed the creaky old cart
wearily across the dark parking lot to a promising heap beside the deserted guard shack. Stinky ignored the customary twinge in her back
as she bent to rummage through the trash pile, avoiding the brittle
spikes of a discarded Christmas tree.

“Lord God must’ve made garbage about the same as He made
men,” she muttered to herself. “It dirty, it smell bad, it stubborn.” She
tugged at an auspicious piece of cloth. Despite the darkness, her instinct told her the fabric was good quality. Probably the hem of a coat.
“It like to break your heart, the things people throw away.”

She tugged and met unusual resistance. She set her jaw and hunkered down to pull harder while trying not to tear the fabric. A
stiletto stab pierced her back. She grunted with the effort and gave
one more desperate, angry tug.

The entire heap shifted suddenly. The old lady, caught off balance, fell awkwardly beneath the weight of something far heavier than
a coat. She blinked and pushed up her stocking cap, which had
descended over her eyes, and with her other hand pushed at the
weight that held her down.

Swearing, spitting lint and God knows what, her nose running
like a gutter in the rain, Stinky took a full fifteen seconds to grasp
what lay in front of her. She found herself gazing into the cold, timeless face of the dead whore, inches from her own, with its parade of
slow, sad, red tears leaking from the terrible crater that had been its
right eye.

Detective Dave Dillon listened to the informant talk. You listened
first, then you asked questions. And tonight, amid the crackling,
otherworldly neon light of Times Square, Dave was listening very
closely.

“I know this is the dude, man,” Finesse said. “Scary motherfucker.
Cold.” Finesse pumped his head up and down, in agreement with himself, and the three rings in his nose tinkled against each other.

Dave said nothing. He watched Finesse with a blank Irish cop’s
stare and let him talk.
“I seen him before. He smacked some brothers around once. Stay
clear of that motherfucker, no shit. He big. Big white guy. Like you.
Bigger. He said he done them women. I was in the bar and I heard it
myself. Motherfucker’s drunk off his ass. Say he shot them bitches in
the head.”
Dave’s eyes narrowed a millimeter. He needed more detail.
“He had a .45. Stuck in his pants. Stuck in like, it went off, it’d
blow off the family jewels.”
Dave watched impassively. Anyone who read the papers knew
the victims were shot in the head with a .45.
“Said he shot them in the eye.”
Dave’s reaction didn’t show on his face. “In the eye?”
“Said he didn’t like the way they looked at him. Said they could
give him the fish-eye in hell. I mean, this is one scary motherfucker. I
ain’t lying.”
“This was last night?”
“Yeah, last night. Like I told you,” Finesse said nervously, checking up and down the sidewalk to make sure no one was watching. “At
the Foxy Lady. I didn’t want my ass near this mean motherfucker. I
was with this dude, Ace. Ace the kind of dude likes to be close to the
action. Fucker’s going to get himself killed nosing around that kind
of shit. Anyways, Ace is buying this hard-ass drinks — actually, I’m
paying — and the mother starts up about killing them bitches, shooting them in the eye. I figured he was jiving. Trying to impress us. But
he hauls up his windbreaker and shows us his .45 in his pants, pointed
at his goddamn dick. I mean, I like to’ve shit my pants.”
“What color windbreaker?”
“Blue. Maybe green. It’s dark in there, you know. They keep the
lights down so’s you can’t tell how old and ugly a lot of them dancers
getting.” Finesse drew a breath.
“What else did he say?”
“Damned if I know. I got out of there so damn fast, you’d’ve
thought my ass was on fire.”
“He have a name?”
“Shit, all I wanted to know about him was how many miles between him and me.”
Dave pulled a photo out of his leather jacket. It was a criminal
booking shot, taken by the Miami Police Department, cropped to
omit the biographical information on the board that the prisoner held
beneath his chin. “This him?”
Finesse’s nose rings clinked. “That’s him. Mean looking, ain’t he?”
Dave got up and grabbed Finesse’s hand high in a brother’s grip.
The crisp bills clasped in Dave’s palm were easily transferred to
Finesse’s. “Stay in touch.”
Without examining the money, Finesse slipped it in his pocket.
His palms had eyes. “You generous tonight, Dillon.”
“In honor of spring.” He turned to go.
“You nail this dude, it make up for the bad mark on your record,
huh?” Finesse gave Dave a small, superior smile.
Dave was back in his face so fast that Finesse jumped a little.
Dave grabbed a handful of collar. “What did you say?”
Finesse’s cool expression slipped a little. “Sorry. People talk, is all.”
Dave leaned toward him until his teeth were close enough to
Finesse to tear the rings off his nose. “You tell me what goes down on
the street, not your opinions on my career,” he muttered with barely
caged ferocity.
“No problem,” Finesse blubbered.
After a few seconds, Dillon relaxed and stepped back. “Now, you
just get back to living the life.”
Finesse edged away, crab-like, into the swirling honky-tonk night
of 42nd Street’s eternal carnival. Dave watched the Deuce swallow
him up. He felt a twinge of guilt for leaning on the brother, but certain
references to his past triggered a knee-jerk reaction. He should have
more control.
Dave sighed as he stepped into the doorway of the shuttered
electronics store and pulled out his radio.
Lt. Blake was at the other end. “Positive ID?”
“Pretty good. Sufficient for questioning. Last night, suspect was
in a blue or green windbreaker. Carries his piece in his waistband. Last
seen in Foxy Lady. I’m close. I’m going there now.”
“I’ll send out an APB.Wait for backup.” Dave clicked off the radio.
Blake had personally requested Dave for this task force. If not for
him, Dave would be back in a uniform, with the coldhearted brass
waiting for him to slip up one more time so they could bounce him
out. Blake was an old friend of his father and one sodden evening at
McSorley’s, Blake had told him: “I couldn’t help your dad because I
didn’t have the rank back then. I do now and you’re his boy. Don’t let
me down, though, Dave.”
Not a chance, lieutenant. Dave trekked toward the Foxy Lady.
This case would save his life.This case
was
his life.
He took out the booking picture. New York had its share of
homegrown bad guys; it didn’t need to import them from Miami.
Billy Ray Battle had killed a man with a pipe in a fight over a woman
outside some redneck bar. Next, he had kidnapped the poor peckerwood’s girlfriend, raped her repeatedly, and ripped up her face. He
told the cops he’d done it for love. Billy Ray did five years hard time in
the Florida penal system before convincing the local yahoos that he
was a reformed man. After that, he was chief suspect in a series of
rapes. One had resulted in a woman’s death: from a .45 to the head.
Unfortunately, the Florida cops were too busy sucking on oranges or
skinning gators or whatever they did.They could pin nothing on him.
And now, Billy Ray Battle had shifted his horizons.
Dave saw two uniforms walking ahead, a man and a woman.They
were giving each face they passed a hard look.
One of them, a pale kid with the nametag “Blitzer,” nodded to
Dillon. “Green or blue windbreaker, right?” he asked.
“You got it,” Dave said.The all-points bulletin had gone out quickly.
“I hear he’s dangerous,” Blitzer said. “Carries a .45.”
“Yeah. Be careful.” Dave glanced at his nametag again, then at his
face. “You’re Zoltan Blitzer’s younger brother.Vic, isn’t it? I heard you
were out of the Academy.Welcome to hell.”
Blitzer grinned sheepishly. Veteran cops usually weren’t friendly
to rookies. “Sir.”
“How’s Zoltan? I haven’t been to see him in a month or two.”
“He’s okay. Working on weights in the basement a lot, y’know.
Builds up his upper-body strength.”
“Tell him I said hello,” Dave said. “And give my best to Cathy and
the kids.”
“He talks about you all the time,”Vic Blitzer said.
Dave interrupted him by clapping him on the shoulder. “Let’s get
back to work.” He nodded at the kid’s partner, a tough female cop
who sported an admirable arrest record and a reputation for street
smarts. “Keep an eye on this guy, Martino.”
The Foxy Lady was exactly what high-minded city planners
meant by cleaning up the Deuce. They talked of bringing in Disney,
But if Donald Duck set one webbed foot in the Foxy Lady, he’d end
up rolled and sodomized. Actually, 42nd Street had no more hope of
being cleaned up than a plutonium dump site.
The Foxy Lady was so sleazy that Dave, after a visit, felt like taking a shower. Major slimeballs hung out here. Billy Ray Battle would
naturally gravitate to it.
You couldn’t avoid knowing about the place. On each street corner for blocks around, skeevy types passed out handbills promising:
“Hot girls and more at the Foxy Lady.” The street-corner touts
snapped the handbills like a lash, catching attention. The “more” that
they promised had provided numerous arrests when Dave was working the street. Still did.
The Foxy Lady had a life-sized neon sign, the red silhouette of a
woman that flashed back and forth as if she were dancing. Loud 1970s
rock tunes blared out the door. As usual, Tony Topnut, the owner,
stood guard at the front door, repeating, “Check it out, check it out,
check it out,” into the auto exhaust of the traffic heading for the
Lincoln Tunnel.
“You back?”Tony Topnut exclaimed. “They let you back?”
“They do a lot of things without consulting you,” Dave said dryly.
“Busy tonight?”
“Not bad.” Despite the cool temperature, Topnut wore a garish
short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt that covered his ample gut.The hula girls
on the shirt were lifting their grass skirts to expose themselves. His
short goatee failed to give the desired Satanic effect due to his bulging
triple chin.
“Seen a big white guy in a blue or green windbreaker? Southern
accent.”
“You know my memory’s shitty, Dillon.”
“Sort of like your taste in clothing. I’ll just have a look inside.”
Dave shouldered his way into the bar.A dancer, clad in a G-string
and tiny bra, undulated on the small stage. Her body was nice for the
Foxy Lady: a tight, snaky torso moving with the music. But her downcast face would have been more at home at a funeral.The major stripping action was a while off. This act was just to keep the clientele’s
blood moving.
Every physically and mentally misshapen boulevardier of the
Deuce seemed to have found his way into the Foxy Lady tonight.
Horny, pimply college boys. Horny, alcoholic businessmen. Horny,
chain-wearing street hustlers. Horny, ugly — well, maybe they were
extra-terrestrials on shore leave.They sipped their watery drinks and
waited patiently for more skin.
The bartender nodded at Dave, squirted club soda into a glass,
and passed it to him without being asked.
Dave took the glass and walked along the bar, peering at the
hunched-over horny toads as they ogled or pretended not to ogle the
bored looking woman on the stage. He heard Billy Ray Battle before
he saw him.
“Where’s the tits?” he bellowed.You could tell he had enough mule
muscle packed in his arms and shoulders to disconnect a man’s life with
a punch. Never mind the .45 in his waistband. Dave could see the
L-shape outline of the weapon through the fabric of the windbreaker.
“Where’s the pussy?” Billy Ray foghorned across the bar. The
smaller men seated on the stools near him stared straight ahead as if he
were not there. No sense riling the boy up.
Keeping Billy Ray Battle firmly in view, Dave dialed Blake on the
pay phone. Using his radio wasn’t an option.
“We’re on the way,” Blake said. “Five minutes.Tops.”
As Dave hung up,Tony Topnut popped up next to Billy Ray, who
was busy drinking shooters. Billy Ray gave a displeased roar at being
interrupted.Then he listened.Tony jerked his head in the direction of
the red exit sign. Billy Ray made for it. Fast.
“Shit,” Dave said. He ran after the man, dodging through the
tables, and caught up with him as he was pushing the crash bar into the
alley. “Halt, police.” Dave had his .38 out now. Just in case.
Billy Ray hesitated for only a moment. Long enough to glance
back at Dave with such hatred it was like opening the door to a furnace.Then he slammed the crash bar down and vaulted into the alley.
Dave followed, spinning outside low and quick, in case Billy Ray
had the doorway sighted with his .45. He hadn’t. Billy Ray’s long legs
had sped him down the alley and out onto the Deuce. He wore large,
heavy work boots of stone-hard leather.
“Halt. Police,” Dave called again. He pounded out to the street. If
that enormous cracker thought he could run, he was about to learn
something. From a cop who wore Air Jordans.The balls of Dave’s feet
bounced along the crowded sidewalk, darting among the walkers.
Stark faces that didn’t want to know too much swiveled at him,
saw the gun, then looked away. Bright storefronts reeled by on his
right. Dave’s leather jacket billowed behind him. His breath huffed,
locomotive-like, relentless, gathering steampower.
Billy Ray’s broad, satin-clad back — the windbreaker
was
blue —
heaved ahead, elbows working like pistons, down the sidewalk. He
was a strong runner, but the constricting leather of his dead-weight
boots sucked the flight out of each stride. And his running tactics
made him a bad sidewalk fugitive. Good sidewalk fugitives weaved
among the pedestrians. Billy Ray bumped into them, sent them
sprawling along the cruel concrete.That slowed him down still more.
“Halt. Police,” Dave was almost on him now. Almost within grabbing range. His father had taught him never to let anyone get away
with running on you.When you caught him, smack the shit out of him.
Hearing Dave right behind him, sensing the menace in the cop’s
command, Billy Ray made a sudden, broken-field dodge into a T-shirt
store, knocking over a carousel of postcards.
Dave overshot the store and skidded to a stop. He warily inched
to the side of the door, .38 ready, crouched low.
Billy Ray had a sobbing Korean salesclerk by the neck in an armlock. His arm was like an oversized blue noose. He held the dull gray
.45 against her skull. Sweat cascaded down Billy Ray’s mottled red
face. His jaw hung open so he could suck in air.
“It don’t matter to me,” Billy Ray shouted over the screams of the
passersby as they fled.
“Let her go, you stupid fuck.” Dave sighted his pistol at Billy Ray’s
head, which was in clear view. But he had to take the bastard alive. Besides, hitting a target in the head, even from twenty feet like now, was
never easy except on TV.The best place to aim was the chest. Billy Ray
at least knew that. He held the hysterical salesclerk in front of him.
“It don’t matter to me.” He twisted the gun barrel back and forth
against his hostage’s head. And showed Dave an opening.
Dave sheathed his .38 in the holster at his hip. He stepped into
full sight. “Okay, Billy Ray. Here I am.” He held his arms wide.
Billy Ray jerked his head to get the salty, stinging sweat out of his
eyes. A sprinkle of it shot from his face. The movement tightened his
armlock on the salesclerk, who squeaked in pain.
Dave advanced a few feet toward Billy Ray. “I’m coming to get
you, fuck.” He looked fierce, his teeth bared in an animal rictus, eyes
full of fire, flesh molded to the bone. Scare them, his father had said.
Scare them.
Billy Ray arced the gun around to point at Dave. Right where he
should aim, at the chest. The center of mass. The cage of his fragile,
pulsing heart. As he shifted the weapon, his grip inadvertently loosened on the salesclerk. She wiggled free and scrambled past Dave.
Billy Ray, his gun on the cop, didn’t seem to notice her departure.
“Coming to get you...” Dave paused and took another step.
“Coming to get you, you fuck.”
Dave stood inches from the .45’s black hole of eternity. Close
enough for what he wanted. He could smell Billy Ray’s breath, part
booze, part landfill. Billy Ray was considerably bigger than Dave — a
full three inches. If Billy Ray connected a fist to Dave’s head, it would
snap his spinal cord like uncooked spaghetti.That’s why Dave was glad
Billy Ray’s hitting hand had wrapped around the handle of a .45.