The Perfect Crime (8 page)

“Italy,” he was saying. “Definitely Italy. And of course England and France. Is there anywhere special you’ve always wanted to go? Switzerland perhaps? Spain? We can go anywhere, anywhere your little heart desires, pumpkin.”

I should tell her,
he thought.
But I can’t. It would spoil the trip, spoil everything. How do you tell your lover that you’re going to steal four million dollars from a drug cartel? Plus the million already taken from the bank where you both work? That when you leave the country, neither of you will be coming back? How do you tell her she’ll have a new identity? Easy! You wait until you’re in the islands and she sees the money all spread out on the bed. That’s when you tell her.

“Come on,” he said, digging in his wallet for tip money. “Let’s go. I want to go to the apartment. I’ve got some good stuff. The same stuff I used last time. Primo. I’ll put it all over you, lick it off.”

CHAPTER 8

“HI, CHERYL.”

Grady sat down at a front booth and watched her putting away silverware in the drawer beneath the counter. They were the only two in the diner. He figured Bandy was in the back somewhere like always. He was seldom far away. Grady figured he didn’t trust the help all that much. Either that or he didn’t have a home. Or maybe he did. One that came complete with a ball-buster wife, he suspected.

“Hi Grady. We heard about Jack. A bunch of us were talking about going up and seeing him. Can he have visitors?”

Grady could see the concern in her eyes. He and Jack spent many hours in Bandy’s, drinking cup after cup of coffee. Flirting with the girls. Cheryl was nice. Hell, Cheryl was
gorgeous
, who was he kidding? She seemed to ignore her looks. He’d considered asking her out several times but hadn’t. Back at Dunbar High, he had a crush on her but never got around to taking any action, like asking her for a date.

“I don’t think so, Cheryl. Not yet anyway. He’s in pretty bad shape. He’s in and out of consciousness. Not a coma...that’s what the doctor says...but it looks like one to me. When he comes to, he doesn’t seem to be aware of much. He doesn’t recognize anything or anybody. The doctors say it will take time. They...they’re not sure if he’ll ever be all right again. The impression I get is that if he makes it, he might be able to serve hamburgers at Mickey D’s, but he’ll need some help if he has to make change.”

“Oh, my!” Cheryl’s hand flew to her mouth and she sat down in the seat across from Grady in his booth. “Oh, my!” she said again, and, brow furrowed, she asked, “Are
you
all right?”

“What? Yeah. Compared... Sure. Listen, Cheryl, I need some help. The suits tell me you were on duty the night this thing happened.”

“You kidding, Grady? I work twelve-hour shifts. I’m
always
here. I told the police everything I could think of.”

“I know. I d like you to tell me if you would. You said a guy came in?”

Her brow lifted and she nodded. “A real jerk!”

“How so?”

“Well, he kept bitching about the coffee.”

Grady snorted. “
That
makes him a jerk? Cheryl, everybody comes in Bandy’s trashes the coffee.”

She twisted her mouth. “Well, yeah, maybe, but this guy was...well, he was
odd
. You guys are joking, but he was like bent out of shape over it. And we know you guys. You’re teasing. This guy was different. Nasty-like. That wasn’t what got me, though. It was his hair.”

“Hair?” Grady leaned forward.

“Yeah. Weird. It was blond.”

“What’s weird about blond hair?” Grady was puzzled.

“It was the wrong color for his eyes. His eyes were brown.”

He was thoroughly bewildered.

“I don’t get it.”

She got up and went around behind the counter, poured out a cup, put it on the counter and shoved it over, indicating with a nod of her head it was for him. He got up, went over and slid onto a stool, poured cream and sugar into the cup and stirred it.

“It’s a wonder I noticed anything at all,” she continued. “I was running my ass off. There was a mob of people in here. You know, come to think of it, I remember seeing a light on over at Jack’s. Nothing unusual. At least I didn’t think so at the time. You know Jack. Always coming in at weird hours, messing around with that stuff he has over there. I didn’t think anything about it until now. Would that be important?”

“Maybe. What’s this stuff about the guy’s hair?”

“Well,” she sat down on a stool and leaned over, placing her head in her hands and her elbows on the counter and gazed at Grady. “Like I said, he has blond hair and brown eyes. Oh--and a beard. And glasses. The beard was blond, too. Darker, but blond.”

“I still don’t get it.” He picked up his coffee and sipped. He was getting exasperated, but tried not to let it show.

Cheryl laughed. “I shouldn’t wonder! Men never observe things like that.”

“Like what? Cheryl--”

“Keep your shorts on. I’ll explain.” She reached behind her for the coffee pot, turned and poured more into Grady’s cup, then put the pot back on the warmer. “Blond hair and brown eyes are the rarest combination of hair and eye color there is.”

“It is?” He didn’t know that. It seemed to him it was a pretty common combination. He said so.

“Well, it isn’t,” Cheryl said, snappishly.

“Come on. I’ve seen lots of people with that combination.”

“You have?”

He sat for a moment trying to remember which of his acquaintances had blond hair and brown eyes and was surprised that he couldn’t remember a single one.

“See?”

It was as if she were reading his mind.

“Cheryl!” It was Bandy. He stood at the rear of the diner, hands on hips, a little martinet of a man, all in white, a cigarette stuck between his lips.

“What?”

“You got those receipts done?”

“Pretty much. I’ll bring them back in a minute.”

“Twenty minutes. I need them.” He turned and disappeared into the back room again and closed the door.

“Asshole,” she said, shaking her head and turning back to Grady. “I went to beauty school for a while after Dunbar. Wigs were my specialty. I can spot a wig a mile away. This guy was wearing one. Fake beard, too, would be my guess although I have to admit this was a decent enough one. I wouldn’t have caught it if it wasn’t for the color of his eyes. Soon as I saw his brown eyes, I knew he was either wearing a wig or had colored his hair. Another thing. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but it seems odd, doesn’t it? He kept looking over at Jack’s place. Like he was studying it.”

Grady’s stomach muscles tightened.

“Can you describe him any more?”

Cheryl nodded, her eyes widening. “That’s easy. Not a real big guy, but one who works out. You could tell. Muscles. He looked...hard. Like his suit didn’t fit him right, you know? I don’t think he needed glasses, either. Don’t ask me why I think that. I don’t know, something about the way he was wearing them. Like he wasn’t used to them. He kept messing with them. Taking them on and off. Maybe he got glasses for the first time, I don’t know.”

He slid his empty coffee cup over for a refill and asked a couple more questions trying to pin her down to a more detailed description, but she wasn’t able to add much more other than the color of the suit, which was blue. The man’s tie was blue as well, but that was the most she could remember. Grady wrote down his home phone number and told her to call him if she remembered anything else, no matter how slight or unimportant she thought it might be.

“Thanks, Cheryl.” He put a dollar bill on the counter on top of his card. “I appreciate your help.”

“You need anything...,” she said as he opened the door, “...you call. We all like your brother around here.” 
You too,
 he thought he heard her say as the door closed behind him.

Grady climbed in his car and began the drive home. Along the way he went over in his mind the information he’d gathered. Why would a guy be wearing a wig? For a disguise, sure, but why? What would a guy in a disguise want from Jack? That is, if he 
was
 his brother’s attacker. Somehow, he knew Cheryl had described Jack’s assailant. There was no hard proof, just a gut feeling. Over the years he’d learned to trust such feelings.

Sometimes, gut feelings were all you had to go on.

CHAPTER 9

THE IDEA FOR THE perfect crime didn’t come full-blown out of, say, a beery conversation in some low-down, mean-streets bar, nor from the meanderings of an idle mind situated behind a pair of vacant eyes staring up at a two p.m. ceiling.

No, it was like that horse-by-committee--the camel. A product--and that’s what it was--a
product
--of a lifetime. A development, as it were, of a mind formed and transformed by the abuses, excesses, and even banalities of a traditional run-of-the-mill lower-class family and social environment to which a son of genius was born. In other words, a dysfunctional background, common to more people than is supposed.

The
burst,
that is the
birth
of the perfect crime
idea--
that
came from the blank canvas of a ceiling, but there was more involved than merely the technical perfection of a criminal act. The crime that Reader Kincaid dreamed up was a felony only
he
could have invented. For the inspiration to come full circle and experience the miracle of birth, it required the particular genius of a certain species of man, not an immoral man, but more accurately an
amoral
individual.

It began a germ of an idea while Reader was lying in a cell in Angola State Prison. It began with his asking himself a series of questions and answering them. Sometimes the answer didn’t come for a long time. He spent more than ten years in the planning of this one job.

What’s the easiest way to pull a robbery and not get caught?
That was the first question he asked himself at the beginning.

Answer. Get the mark to pull his own robbery.

How do you do that?

His first idea was to kidnap a family member--of say a bank official--and hold that person, child or spouse, for ransom. The ransom being the bank’s money. He soon discarded that idea for all the reasons kidnappings usually go wrong. One day the answer came to him. He was talking to Bobby out in the yard at Angola State Prison and Bobby was saying he wished he could get the material to build a remote-controlled model plane. He’d build one big enough to carry a man and fly that over the wall. With him in it, of course.

What else can you do with a remote-control transmitter, Reader wanted to know. An idea was forming itself.

Why, anything that requires energy you want to control from a distance, was Bobby’s reply.

A bomb? Reader asked, grabbing Bobby by the front of his blue denim prison issue shirt.

Well, yeah, sure. You could set off a bomb by remote control. Terrorists do shit like that all the time.

That’s when the plan got legs. Little by little, Reader worked through the rest of it, always looking for a flaw, until he’d eliminated all the weak spots he could think of. Then, just when he had it all figured out, a thought came to him. An even better plan. A plan within a plan. And now it was time. He was ready to attach a bomb to a man who had access to a large sum of money and force the man to bring it to him. That was the first plan. The visible one. The plan within that one was even better. It was so good it was all he could do to keep from grinning all the time. Now, Reader Kincaid truly had the perfect crime.

And he had the perfect situation in which to use it. A situation in which he could settle an old score. That was the best part.

CHAPTER 10

THE COP WHO ANSWERED Grady’s call was another new one with a name like Smithers or something. Christ! Three years out to pasture and they’d replaced the whole damned department! Every time he ran into somebody or called down there he was talking to people he’d never heard of. Grady couldn’t remember any mass retirement exodus three years ago, but there sure as shit seemed to be a whole new bunch there now and they all seemed to have button-down names. Where the hell were all the micks and eyetalians? What kind of police department was it becoming what with all these kids’ names, like Ivy League MBAs?

Come to think of it, he didn’t recall seeing any of the “noses,” that day at Jack’s. That’s what they called the Macedonians he’d served with. Dayton’s Macedonian population was substantial. He’d gone through the academy with a Macedonian who was a cousin of Dayton’s most famous native son, Jamie Farr, the guy who dressed in drag on
M*A*S*H*
. He’d met Mr. Farr at a smoker one time. Nice guy, although his cousin said Farr always claimed to be Lebanese because nobody knew where Macedonia was. Grady got the idea this pissed off his cousin, one of the countless Bojrabs in the Dayton phone book.

“Lemme speak to Detective Sprague,” he said.

“...see if he’s available, said the voice on the other end, softly, the speaker sounding like he was all of thirteen years old and taking a call for his dad, the insurance big shot. “Sir.”

“He’s available, hotshot. Tell him it’s Fogarty.”

Marty must have been standing a foot away, his raspy voice on the phone in less than two seconds.

“Fogarty! How goes it ol’ bud!”

“You tell me, Marty. They get the inventory done?”

“Yeah. Last night.”

“I thought you were gonna call me.”

“I was getting ready to. It was late when they finished. I got in about two minutes ago. Look, I got a note on my calendar to give you a holler.”

Grady waited. He lighted a Marlboro medium and stared at his shoes. He told himself to remember to pick up a can of shine.

“Hey, it turns out your brother keeps good records. I think we got a pretty accurate list of what he sold last week after his inventory. They woulda got it done sooner ‘cept they had to put all the shit back on the shelves and count it. You wouldn’t believe all the little knickknacks there were!”

Yes, I would, Grady thought. I helped him do that inventory last week.

“All I need is what’s missing,” Grady said. “Don’t worry about what he sold. I don’t think whoever hit him bought anything.”

“Well, ol’ bud, I think you may be partly wrong there. We found something.”

“What?”

“We got a pretty sharp gal who did the inventory. Remember Ida? She spotted something.”

“I remember Ida. She’s a good cop.”

Grady took a long drag off his cigarette and felt his lungs ache. He ought to quit smoking. His lungs probably looked like a couple of black walnuts.

He remembered Ida all right. He remembered a night on a stakeout in a van whose lettering said
Smitty’s Heating and Air Conditioning
on the outside, and he remembered especially a pair of long, long legs. He remembered a couple of other nights as well, then it wore itself out. Only they remained friends, not enemies as is the usual case. The way it happened, Ida gave out signals that she wanted to move past a casual affair and as soon as he saw that, the relationship changed. Cops shouldn’t get involved, he’d told her when he saw things were heating up. Especially with other cops. She must have agreed with his logic, as her affection for him soon cooled and a week later she was dating somebody else. A straight guy, somebody who sold insurance. Smart move, Ida, he remembered thinking at the time, but every once in a while he wondered what would have happened if they had gone on seeing each other. It’s all so much ancient history, he thought, and switched focus back to the present.

“What’d Ida find?”

“Well, you’re wrong about the perp not buying anything, looks like...but we’re right, this wasn’t a B&E. In fact, I’d say you were right on the money. This looks more like armed robbery.”

“How so?”

“You know your brother pretty well so I guess you know he kept ace records. Turns out he kept a receipt for every single thing he ever sold. Bullshit cost less than a buck, he has a friggin’ receipt for it.”

“Yeah, Jack’s a righteous sort. Likes to be straight on his taxes. Good citizen.” Good
man
, too. Whoever did this was going to pay. He’d nail him if it took him the rest of his life.

“Ida figured that out pretty quick with all the records we founde noticed something missing. A receipt. All his receipts were in perfect order, even the ones he messed up. He’d write a void on them. Well, listen to this...she couldn’t find the last one he wrote. She knew it was missing ‘cause his sales book was right there on the floor where it’d been knocked off. According to the numbers there was only one not accounted for. The last one used. And she found all the rest. Every single one of them.”

“So that one’s gone. We don’t know what was on it. The inventory’d show what was missing. That’s what would be on that receipt, I’ll bet. Read me the list of what’s missing.”

“Don’t have to. I told you Ida’s a sharp cookie. She took the receipt book to the lab and they got the whole thing. Your brother had written it without taking it out of the book. Came through on the next receipt and the lab boys said it was the easiest thing they did all week. I got it right here. You know I’m not supposed to do this, give you this, but what the hell. I don’t think it’s gonna help much though. Looks like pretty normal stuff you’d buy in a store like that. One big item. A remote control transmitter. Futaba. You heard of those? Expensive. My guess is that’s what the perp killed him for. Cost three grand, but there’s something I don’t understand. Two hundred of this is for something your brother wrote down as a ‘Service Charge,’ only it doesn’t say what the service was. Doesn’t look like any big-time deal to me. Probably a punk like we figured. Want me to fax it to you?”

Grady said, “You think I got a fax machine in my shoe, Marty?”

They both laughed.

“Tell you what. If it’s not a long list, read it off. Hold on a minute--let me grab a pencil. Marty?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you ask yourself what punk spends three grand on electronic stuff? Doesn’t sound like a punk or a kid to me.”

“You’re right, Grady. I think I got my partner convinced it wasn’t, either.” The detective read off the items and rang off.

Grady stood for a minute with the receiver in his hand, then he shrugged and put it back on the hook.

The phone rang. It was Marty again.

“Hold on to your hat, partner. We got a break, maybe. Something just came in.”

“What?” Grady felt the skin prickle on the back of his neck.

“I told you we circulated a flyer with the description that waitress gave us?”

“Yeah. Cheryl.”

“Yeah, the one at that grill. Well, we got a call from a guy that owns the Clark station on White Avenue. You know, a couple of blocks from Jack’s?”

“I know the station. Go on.”

“Well, this guy took care of a customer that night that matched the description we sent out. This guy was driving a blue or a black Chevy, he thought. That’s not the really good news, though.”

“What’s the good news?” Grady tried not to be impatient.

“The good news is the guy paid for his gas with a hundred dollar bill. The better news is the station guy still had it. And we got prints.”

“You got prints!” This time, Grady couldn’t contain himself. “Well, fuck it, man. Who the prints belong to? Quit fucking with me and tell me what you’ve got!”

“Sorry. We may have something and we may not. Anyway, what the lab boys found was two sets of prints, one which was the station owner’s, guy by the name of Binford... and this other set. This other set is real interesting. Belongs to a guy by the name of Chales Kincaid. This Mr. Kincaid is from New Orleans, his last address according to the NCIC, and...listen to this, Grady...Kincaid has quite the little record. Nasty cocksucker. Looks like he killed his own father, for starters.”

“Only two sets of prints? On a hundred-dollar bill? Doesn’t that strike you as odd, Marty?”

“My thoughts,” he said. “What’s your theory?”

“That’s a no-brainer. He wiped down the bill before he spent it. Didn’t want any prints on it besides his own.”

“I’m with you. That’s what I figured, too.”

“You know what else?”

“What?”

“Jack always kept a C-note in the drawer. For emergencies. You didn’t find one in the register, did you?”

“No. We sure didn’t. Buncha change on the floor was all.”

“I’m on my way down.” Before Marty could reply, Grady slammed the phone down and was out of his house sprinting for his car.

***

“Marty!”

“Hey, Grady. Man! You must have flown to get here this quick! I can’t fix any tickets you got, you know,” he said, chuckling.

“Never mind the jokes. Tell me what you’ve got.”

“Cool down. Come in here.”

Marty motioned for him to follow him into a conference room. “Tactical Room” it said in big letters over the door. It was a room Grady was familiar with. Detective Sprague rummaged through some papers on the desk, extracted one from a pile and handed it to Grady. It was a rap sheet on one Charles Kincaid. No middle name. Under “Aliases” he only saw one:
Reader.

“Interesting nom de plume. You got any art?”

“Yeah.” Sprague picked up a 5” by 7” black and white photo and pushed it across the desk to him. Grady studied the features. Black hair--guess Cheryl was right--husky build, as she’d said, but what struck him the most was the guy’s eyes. There was no expression in them. As if the guy was there, but he wasn’t. Kincaid was a double for the actor Charles Bronson, but Grady had seen movies in which Bronson smiled. Grady couldn’t imagine a smile on this creep. He took one more look at the photo and placed it in his jacket pocket. Marty started to say something and changed his mind, waving his hand as if to say go ahead and keep it.

“We got something else. A dead hooker. We think he did her too. She was found stabbed. Don’t know if it was the same guy or her pimp or what, but she was done the same way as Jack. That’s what makes us think the same guy did both victims. Whoever did it twisted the knife in like he was drilling for oil. Like he was having fun and couldn’t bear to take the knife out. Got her in the stomach. I’m having the coroner compare the entry wounds from the hooker and from Jack’s wounds and see if it’s the same knife. I’m betting it is. If it is, I’ll let you know. Listen, I want this scumbag about as bad as you do. Nobody comes in my house and does this shit. I want this asshole.”

He went on, after a slight hesitation. “Yeah, it looks like maybe this is our guy. We got a problem, though.”

“What problem?” Grady’s brow knitted and his eyes narrowed.

Marty sighed. “Even if this is the perp, we can’t do much. There’s not enough evidence to convict. We’ve notified the New Orleans P.D. and gave them what we had and they laughed at us.”

“What!” The word exploded out of Grady’s mouth.

“Calm down. They’right. All we’ve got is a set of partials that might be this guy’s. The prints weren’t that clear. They’re good enough we’re pretty sure this is the guy--at least we know he was in Dayton--but there’s not enough points to make it positive far as a court’s concerned. All we got is enough to make him a suspect. No court in the world is going to convict a perp on the little we have. The captain talked to the prosecutor. Jerome laughed him out of his office. Said to come back when they could give him something he could use. When we told him we figured Kincaid was gone, probably back to New Orleans, he laughed harder. Said there was no way they could get an extradition order with what little there was. Said to quit wasting his time.”

Grady sat down heavily in the chair in front of Marty’s desk. He knew Marty was right. He’d dealt with Jerome Higgins, the prosecutor, before. The guy was the supreme conservative. Wouldn’t take on a case unless it was airtight. And of course, this wasn’t. Yet.

“You got an address on this creep?” he asked.

“Well, yeah. Probably not any good. Some apartment in a town called Algiers. I gather it’s across the river from New Orleans. It’s two years old though. Here.” He wrote on a piece of paper and gave it to Grady who looked at it for a second and stuck it in his coat pocket with the photo. “What you got in mind?”

“I’m going to get him.”

Grady stood and folded Charles Kincaid’s rap sheet into four squares and put it in his pocket with the other papers. “I’ll get all the proof you need.”

“Wait.” Marty caught him halfway out the door, grabbing him by the shoulder. “You’re not on the force anymore. You can’t go off like some damned vigilante after this guy.”

Grady turned, reached up and removed Marty’s hand from where it was gripping his shoulder. “Yes, I can, Marty. And I am. I’d appreciate your help, but without it I’m still going after this guy.”

“Grady...” Marty started to say something and scratched the top of his scalp instead. “Hell, Grady. I’d do the same if I was you. Be careful, man. Tell you what--I’ve put in a request with the Feds for NCIC info in case they got anything else. I’ll see what the FCC and ATF might have too. Be cool, man. You don’t want to be the one ends up in jail.”

“I won’t,” he said. “I’ll let you know where I’m at. You get anything more, you call me right away.”

“New Orleans? That where you’re going?”

“I’m halfway there,” Grady said, moving through the doorway.

“Flying?”

Grady turned around and saw Sprague shaking with silent laughter.

“Fuck you, Sprague,” he said.

***

The sun was creeping to the edge of the horizon when Grady threw the last pair of socks in his suitcase and closed it.

He thought about Sprague’s earlier crack. Fly! Yeah, maybe he’d get the seat next to John Madden. They could white-knuckle it together. He wondered idly if the sports announcer’s phobia had the same roots as his own. If he’d been in a small plane crash when he was a kid. A crash in which his uncle had just taken off and suddenly the engine stalled and he set it down at the end of the runway. Even though no one had been hurt it was the last time he had been in a plane. It wasn’t even really a crash, strictly speaking. Just one of those semi-minor quirky close calls. He wondered if an experience like that had been behind Madden’s own well-known phobia? Naw, he decided. Madden was just naturally smart about things like that!