Very didn’t answer me. He didn’t want to. His eyes turned to the letter. “I can’t believe he was watching us at Barney Greengrass. That’s twisted.”
“Twisted.”
“Kind of makes you wonder if he’s watching us right now.” He shot a glance over his shoulder.
“Kind of.”
“But this is good that he wants you to contact him. This we can do something with. Only, a fucking
personal
ad. That is so retro.”
I said nothing.
Very peered at me suspiciously. “Why’d you suddenly go quiet on me?”
“I wasn’t aware that I had.”
“Dude, you wouldn’t hold out on me, would you?”
“Why would you say that, Lieutenant?”
“The fact that you always do, for starters.”
“Believe me, if I knew anything I’d tell you.”
He stared at me doubtfully a moment, then gave a short nod and sat back in his chair. “Me, I keep thinking this guy’s got himself some serious chops. Check it out, these two women were both lookers, the kind who get hit on all the time. They weren’t naive. They weren’t dumb. Yet they both fell for his line. Diane went home with him. Laurie invited him up—even though he was a total stranger. You know any women who would do that? I don’t. They’d be a helluva lot more careful. That means we’re talking about someone who can really play the game. He’s got to be charming. He’s got to be good-looking—”
“Not necessarily good-looking. Laurie was a would-be actress, don’t forget.”
“So?”
“So she’d invite a two-hundred-pound dung beetle into her home if she thought he could help her career.”
“Who
is
this guy, dude?”
“He’s someone who can be whomever they want him to be, Lieutenant.” Our tea came. I sipped mine, wrapping my icy hands around the cup. I still felt chilled to the bone. It was a feeling I couldn’t seem to shake. “So tell me, does the answer man qualify as a serial killer now?”
Very’s eyes widened with alarm. “Ssh, not so loud!”
Not that anyone else had heard me. We had the place practically to ourselves. There were three women busy talking over near the door. There was a guy with white hair going one-on-one with the
Daily News
crossword puzzle. There was us.
Very leaned toward me. “Officially, the FBI won’t consider him a multiple until we have three confirmed strikes.”
“How comforting.”
“And for your information, dude, we’re giving the press next to nothing about Laurie.”
“I didn’t know that was possible anymore.”
“It’s possible if you’re waiting on next of kin to fly in from Minnesota. It’s important we keep a lid on Laurie’s murder. We don’t want ’em to link it up with the Shavelson killing. They do that, they’ll turn this place into fear city.”
“They won’t exactly be wrong.”
“Hey, we’re handling it. As of today, there’s thirty men working this case around the clock. We’re talking full-fledged task force, under the personal direction of Inspector Dante Feldman, who doesn’t believe in waiting for three strikes.”
I tugged at my left ear. “Dante Feldman? Isn’t he the one who they call the Human Hemorrhoid?”
Very drew his breath in—a pained look crossing his face. “Not on the job, we don’t.”
“Sure, sure. I’ve read all about him in the newspaper. He’s the one who they say makes George Steinbrenner look like Chuckles the Clown.”
“He’s my boss of bosses,” Very said stiffly. “Commanding officer of all Manhattan homicide detectives. Made his rep on Son of Sam.”
“I asked you not to mention him, Lieutenant.”
“He wants to meet you.”
“Isn’t he still locked away in Attica?”
“Feldman, I mean.”
“I can’t wait.”
“That’s good, because you don’t have to.”
“Meaning?”
“Looking at him, dude,” Very said uncomfortably.
It was the white-haired guy, the one who’d been doing the crossword puzzle. He was on his way over to us.
Very half-rose from his seat. “Inspector Feldman,” he said, his manner turning vastly more formal and respectful than I’d ever seen it, “I’d like to introduce Stewart Hoag.”
Feldman just stood there glaring down his long, narrow beak of a nose at me. It was a penetrating glare. It was an intimidating glare. It was the glare of a man who knew my every vice and weakness and human failing. He didn’t, of course, but he wanted me to think he did. Then again, maybe he just didn’t like being called a hemorrhoid.
“Mr. Hoag,” he finally growled, by way of greeting. “What do your friends call you?”
“Haven’t got any.”
“This doesn’t surprise me.”
Okay, fine. Now he had Lulu’s attention.
“Make it Hoagy,” I said.
“As in Carmichael?” There was a trace of Brooklyn in Feldman’s voice. Not much.
“As in the sandwich.”
“A fan. I’m a huge one.”
“Why, thank you.”
“Of your wife, I meant. Merilee Nash.”
“She’s my ex-wife.”
A faint smile crossed his thin lips. “Sorry. My mistake.”
“No, I believe this one’s on me.”
Dante Feldman was in his fifties, tall and taut and sinewy, with a carefully combed snowy-white pompadour, pale lips and hooded black eyes that never seemed to blink. He was a sharp dresser for a cop, which meant a navy-blue Ungaro knockoff, pale blue broadcloth shirt with contrasting white collar and cuffs, a Hermès tie. And he was a preener. Standing there, he kept shooting his cuffs and smoothing his pompadour, shooting his cuffs and smoothing his pompadour. It was, I would discover, a thing he did. Somewhat like a tic. “I like to get a feel for an individual when his guard isn’t up,” he told me. “That’s why I’ve been observing you without your knowledge. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Would it matter if I did?”
“Mind if I join you?”
“Would it matter if I did?”
Feldman glanced severely at Very, who looked away, coloring. Then the inspector pulled up a chair and sat, being careful not to kick Lulu under the table. The waiter brought him a teacup. He filled it and drank, swishing the tea around in his mouth like Listerine. He swallowed it. He sat back. “I would have preferred meeting with you alone.”
“You can say anything in front of Lulu you would say in front of me, Inspector. She has my complete confidence.”
“I was referring to Lieutenant Very here.”
“Oh.”
“But he insisted on sitting in. He felt I’d need a … what was it you called it, Lieutenant?”
“Interpreter,” Very said quietly.
“Actually, what he said was that you have no license to practice but you’d try to operate on my head.”
“He said that?”
“I didn’t know what he meant at first, but now I do. You see, I am on to you, my friend,” Feldman informed me with a smug, self-satisfied smile.
I don’t do well around smug. Never have. “On to me, Inspector?”
“It has been my experience that most people are one shade or another of gray,” he said. Actually, he didn’t so much speak as deliver weighty, carefully worded proclamations. It was as if he were standing outside on the curb giving a press conference of nationwide import. “You are what I call Kodachrome Brash.”
I glanced down at Lulu. She didn’t particularly want to touch that one, so I tried Very. “Was I just dissed?”
Very didn’t reply. He was like a different person around the inspector. Loyal. Obedient. Silent. I had never seen him in toady mode before. I didn’t much care for it.
“The lieutenant was telling me about how you helped crack the Son of Sam case, Inspector,” I said. What the hell, I was going to have to hear about it eventually. Might as well get it over with.
Feldman took another gulp of his tea and sat back, his hands gripping the narrow arms of the chair like huge claws, his hooded eyes flicking from one side of the restaurant to the other. He reminded me of a hawk perched there waiting for some unsuspecting prey to come out of its burrow so he could swoop down and snatch it in his powerful jaws and fly off with it, its tiny limbs flailing helplessly in midair. “That was the Omega Task Force,” he recalled, his voice booming. “Largest manhunt in department history. We had seventy-five detectives and two hundred and twenty-five uniforms working around the clock in all five boroughs of the city of New York. Cost the city almost a hundred thousand dollars a day in overtime. Ended up costing over two million. At one point, we were getting as many as four phone-in tips a minute, people who were sure they’d spotted him. We checked them all out. Every single one. We investigated more than three thousand suspects. We consulted shrinks, hypnotists, numerologists, astrologers, biorhythm specialists.…” He paused to swallow more tea. “Dave Berkowitz attacked eight times in fourteen months. Stabbed two, shot six. Six of the eight died. And do you know how we got him in the end? On a parking ticket. The man parked too close to a fire plug.” Abruptly, he turned his penetrating glare back on me. “How do I know
you’re
not the answer man?” he demanded harshly.
“You don’t,” I replied. “For that matter, I don’t either. Maybe I have a split personality. Maybe I slip out in the night and kill these women myself. That would certainly explain why I wake up so tired in the morning.”
He let out a derisive snort, Lulu staring up at him curiously. He took note of her. “What’s
she
doing?”
“Trying to make up her mind about you.”
“What about me?”
“You’ll have to ask her that. She doesn’t tell me everything.”
Now Feldman’s eyes flicked over to the pages laid out on the table beside us. “What I want to know is why he picked you.”
“I have no idea, as I’ve already told the lieutenant.”
“But he seems to
know
you.”
“He knows my work. A lot of people do. There are still plenty of readers out there for good, serious fiction. And when they run out of that they turn to me.”
“Quite the little comic, aren’t you?” Feldman snapped.
“I’m well over six feet tall.”
“Well, do me a favor and cut the comedy. Now isn’t the time.”
“On the contrary, now
is
the time—or I run right out of here screaming at the top of my lungs in Swedish. And, Inspector, I don’t speak Swedish.”
“What it is, Inspector,” Very affirmed. “Either you put up with it or you sedate him.”
“That’s the best idea you’ve had all afternoon, Lieutenant,” Feldman said.
We sat there in brittle silence a moment. Something told me we three weren’t going to be hanging out together when this was over. If it was ever over.
“Well, I guess you do have a certain rep,” Feldman grumbled at me. “By that I mean you spend a lot of your life on the gossip pages. If you call that a life.”
“I really don’t need to hear this just now, Inspector.”
“Hear what?” he demanded.
“That I brought this whole thing on myself. That I somehow made it happen.”
Feldman’s eyes narrowed. I doubt this man ever lost a no-blinking contest. “Okay, what
do
you need to hear?”
“How you plan to catch this lunatic would be nice.”
“Fine,” he agreed, rubbing his hands together. “That happens to be something I know a little bit about.”
“The inspector teaches a course on serial killers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice,” Very said, which explained why the guy reminded me of a professor I once hated.
“I’ve helped dozens of departments set up task forces of their own,” Feldman said proudly. “I’ve lectured on the subject in seven different countries. And I have to tell you, I’ve been sitting there listening to you two chowderheads helicopter over this thing until I’m about ready to puke.”
Lulu promptly got to her feet and started across the restaurant to the back.
“Where’s she going?” Feldman asked, watching her.
“She’s showing you where the men’s room is.”
“A figure of speech,” he protested. “It was a figure of speech.”
“She’s very literal-minded.” Also a charter member of the upchuck-averse. Has real problems with Sadie, our barn cat, over that whole furball thing.
Lulu returned and sat next to me, curling her lip at Feldman. She’d made up her mind. She didn’t like him.
Very, he just sat there sipping his tea in tight silence, his eyes avoiding mine.
“For starters,” the inspector lectured, “we strike early. Early on,
we
have the edge. He’s still new to this. Hasn’t perfected his methods yet. Maybe he’s even a little bit nervous. There’s still a chance he’ll trip over his own dick. The longer this goes on, the more he kills, the better he’ll get at it. So we hit the ground running. Okay, what does this mean? It means getting a system of procedures in place right away. For preserving the crime scenes. For ensuring that quality-control procedures are in place. Organization is critical. How we interface with the lab and the medical examiner. How we review and investigate outside tips. We have to establish good, working lines of intradepartmental and interdepartmental communication so that nothing, but
nothing
slips through the cracks. We harness our best minds, and I’m not just talking homicide. We want a team of shrinks working over these chapters. We want sex crimes to analyze his every—”
“But I thought there hadn’t been any sex,” I interjected.
“He hasn’t
raped
them,” Feldman countered. “He hasn’t left them with their blood-soaked panties stuffed in their mouths or their vaginas sealed shut with Krazy Glue. But his victims are young, they’re single and they’re pretty. He is sexually involved with them. He is exerting power over them. Don’t kid yourself, Hoagy—”
“But that’s one of the things I’m best at.”
“—these
are
sex crimes.” He paused to drink, then resumed. Like any veteran lecturer, he could pick up precisely where he left off. “We have to control and coordinate the flow of information to the public. Because, more than anything else, a serial killer on the loose in New York City, especially a serial killer who is stalking attractive single women, is a public relations nightmare for this department.”
“Pretty hard for the victims and their families, too,” I said.
Very let out a small groan, barely audible.
“Okay, I don’t need your smart remarks,” Feldman said to me coldly.