The Chessman (29 page)

“That was self-defense, Agent Cady.” Westlow sounded hurt. “And I didn’t eat the rest of him for dinner, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“Self-defense? You cut the man’s hand off.”

Cady had received a five a.m. wakeup call on Terri’s cellular. The wakeup call consisted of two sentences. Those sentences being: “It would behoove you, Agent Cady, to be outside Penn Station at noon today. There’s something you need to see.”

Cady scrambled. Called Agent Preston for two minutes. Skipped a shave and spent another two minutes in the shower. Five minutes later he was picked up in a Mercury and on the way to Union Station. In the back seat he spent another ten minutes on the phone with Assistant Director Jund. This was going to call for massive coordination with Federal Plaza—the New York Field Office.

“I’m the first to admit it went awry,” Westlow replied. “Palma was one tough hombre. I’ll spot him that much. It got real ugly real fast after the enhanced interrogation.”

“Enhanced interrogation?”

“Well, he hadn’t been terribly forthcoming, not at first. A Greek Chorus of ‘Cock Off’ and ‘Fuck You.’ After I’d gotten all I could out of him, I unsecured his hands from the table, one at a time, and then played nice and put the cuffs on in front. My bad.”

“Table? You waterboarded him?”

“It was a god-awful mess, Agent Cady; an inch of water on the floor, Palma’s soaking wet, seemingly exhausted, which made perfect sense considering what he’d been through. Before I leaned him upright, I explained that I was going to let him go—that he meant nothing to me, he was catch-and-release material. Evidently, Palma didn’t buy it. Not a lot of catch and release goes on in his world, I suspect.”

“He fought back?”

“Tell me about it. In a flash he’s got his cuffed hands around my throat. He jerks me in for a quick headbutt, but everything’s slippery at that point. If he’d tagged me good, that would have been all she wrote. So Palma’s got my neck in this iron grip—chubby fingers cutting off my oxygen. I’m feeling a bit woozy but it breaks through the haze that I’m still clutching the water hose I had hooked to the sink. I grab the back of his head with my left hand. Took me two tries and some shattered incisors as I jammed the hose down his throat. It was all I could do to twist the water back on before I passed out.”

“You
drowned
Palma in your kitchen?”

“Turns out filling lungs trumps old-fashioned strangling.”

“You’re not right in the head, Westlow.”

“Perhaps, Agent Cady, but we digress. You need to jump on the tube. Stat!”

“You’re kidding,” Cady said, wanting to draw out the conversation. “I just stepped off the train.”

“We’re on a tight schedule, my friend. Time is of the essence and you’ve only got twelve minutes.”

“To go where?”

“You decide. But I’m going to call back in twelve with more instructions and the reception’s shit in the tunnels. If you don’t answer, Agent Cady, enjoy letting the Gottlieb and Kellervick families know why you didn’t catch their killer. Best to hurry. And remember…I’ll be watching you at all times.”

“Bullshit.”

“I know, but I heard it in a movie once and have always wanted to say it.”

The line disconnected.

Cady switched phones as he jogged toward the steps of the subway station. “You get all that?”

“Yes,” Agent Preston replied immediately. They’d rigged up Terri’s phone so she and Jund could both listen in. “Go north to Times Square. We’ll have some people in the car with you, but keep your eyes wide. If you spot him, grab his hands. You will have immediate backup.”

“Anything on the phone?”

“Triangulation is tricky in the city, but from what I’m overhearing they think he’s by the UN.”

“Him and about two hundred thousand other people.”

“They’re trying to trace his mobile phone through the roaming signal. Possibly get a more accurate bead if they can track his phone’s GPS through the satellite. The techs here talk in a foreign language.”

Cady took the down steps three at a time. “He’ll be constantly on the move and switching phones. Or flipping his cell off until he calls again.”

“We’ll flood the zones with agents and NYPD. Keep Westlow on the line as long as possible to slow him down and we might catch a break.”

“He’s too smart for that.”

“Try to puncture that façade he’s got going, Drew. That may stall him up.”

Cady took the subway uptown one stop to Times Square, the busiest of all of the NYC subway facilities. He darted up the stairway, dodging in and out of passenger traffic, cut out through a 42nd Street exit right as Terri’s cell began ringing.

“So the New York mob killed Kenneth Gottlieb?” Cady said into the phone.

“Did I say that?”

“You left DNA pointing us in that direction.”

“Tangentially,” Westlow said. “I was staking out a lead, snapping pics of a man I suspected of having daily meetings with my lead. On the beginning of the third day I noticed Palma following this man. People who tail others tend to be founts of information, so I figured he’d be the one to talk to.”

“What did your
torture
session tell you, Westlow?”

“Torture? They waterboarded us in officer training. It was scary as hell, but a couple of hours later we were at a tavern and most of the guys were hitting on the cocktail waitress. Tell me, Agent Cady, can it be considered
torture
if you’re hitting on a cocktail waitress two hours later?”

“Doesn’t sound like there’ll be more cocktail waitresses in Palma’s future.”

“Who are you rooting for, anyway? That mob enforcer damn near killed me.”

Cady switched tacks. “Did Patrick Farris rape and murder Marly Kelch that night at the lake?”

A dead silence descended.

“I’ll have to save that for another phone call, Agent Cady. Time for another jaunt. I need you to get to the 72nd Street stop along Central Park West. You’ve got twelve minutes and counting.”

“You’re wasting my time,” Cady said to a dial tone, then turned back inside the station. He hustled down the steps, scanning heights and faces on autopilot, grateful that Agent Preston had a doubledozen federal agents shadowing his trajectory, each armed with a couple pictures of Westlow’s mug from his navy days. If the Chessman did attempt direct contact, they’d have him in a net. Of course, Cady knew in his gut it would never be that easy.

“How’s your field trip to the Big Apple so far, Agent Cady?”

“Peachy.” Cady stood on the corner of West 72nd Street and Central Park West, outside the Dakota apartment building. “You were going to tell me about Marly Kelch?”

“You ever see
King Kong
?”

“The giant ape?”

“You’re missing some of the finer subtleties. Let’s see, there’s the classic from the ‘30s and the last remake by that Hobbit guy is pretty good.”

“You got me here to talk movies?”

“They did a film in the ‘70s, too, but best to skip that one.”

“What the hell are you going on about, Westlow?”

“Bear with me, Agent Cady. You see, Kong’s a busy fellow, eating dinosaurs, flinging natives—all sorts of crazy shit to do on Skull Island. But once Kong sees Ann Darrow, that’s all she wrote. He must be with her. He will do anything to protect her. He loves her. In the end, to borrow a line from Lincoln, Kong gives Ann Darrow his
last full measure of devotion
.”

“You’ve got some eccentric musings on love, Westlow, but if I remember correctly, the ape spent most of the movie on a murderous rampage.”

“There are, of course, those drawbacks,” Westlow responded. “Say, have you ever gotten a chance to visit the John Lennon memorial?”

“Nope.”

“Guy can’t come all the way to New York City without stopping by Strawberry Fields and paying his proper respects. You’re at the entrance. Can you
imagine
a better day for a quiet stroll and meditation on a nice pathway? Yup, Agent Cady, I’d highly recommend that you stick to the path.”

“Enough of the bullshit, Westlow.” Cady crossed into Central Park. “It’s another phone call, already.”

“As you wish.”

“What made you get involved ten years after Marly’s death?”

“The
drowning
made no sense. Marly was an incredible athlete. And just as unbearably painful as her loss, there was this silent river of uncertainty—running deep, forever cutting. Then one day Dorsey Kelch mentioned that Marly had known Patrick Farris at Princeton.”

“The
Newsweek
article on the Farrises.”

“Marly was loved by anyone who met her. The funeral was standing room only. Except a certain someone didn’t make an appearance. Care to hazard a guess, Agent Cady?”

“Patrick Farris,” Cady responded, slowly stepping along the Strawberry Fields pathway. “So you went to have a chat with Bret Ingram.”

“Ingram didn’t know diddly-squat, but the broken little man shared a common belief with me—that it was anything but an accident that had occurred.”

“He didn’t know about the senator’s son?”

“Like I said…diddly-squat about what truly went down. Swore he was shaken awake by the Zalentines and, after he barfed out more of his guts, he was promised shiny objects to say that Marly had been fooling about with him that night, that she didn’t get out of the water when he did, that the poor girl drowned while he was passed out on shore. The Zalentines told Ingram that it was all an unfortunate accident, but that any bad PR, however unfounded, could devastate the family business, and cause them financial ruin. It was later, after he’d already done his piece and gone on record, that Ingram began believing otherwise.”

“Then how did you connect it to Farris?”

“Ingram told me about the bribe—Sundown Point Resort—and about Sanfield, the Magician, who had arranged it all for him. I’d done my homework, Agent Cady. I knew Sanfield was Senator Farris’s right-hand man. That was all the connection I needed.”

“What did Sanfield tell you in the last fifteen minutes of his life?”

“Everything I needed to know.”

“What happened at Snow Goose Lake, Westlow?”

“I’m afraid the operator is insisting on another two bits and I’m all out of coins. Enjoy the memorial, Agent Cady.”

“Westlow!”

He’d been cut off. Cady dropped Terri’s cell into his front pocket and continued onward. Seconds later the phone in his breast pocket began vibrating.

“Did you catch all that, Liz?”

“More than that, Drew. He’s in Central Park.”

Cady stepped to the side of the pathway and did a three-sixty. He scanned the grove of elms, glanced across the black-and-white mosaic with the word IMAGINE in the center, looked at Rose Hill and then down the pathway toward the bronze plaque. People were milling about everywhere—tourists, school kids, people watchers crowding the benches, picnickers with homemade sandwiches, and other lunch dawdlers in no hurry to return to the grind. An army of humanoids. Cady studied faces.

“Do they know exactly where?” Central Park was over two miles long and a half mile wide.

“Yes,” said Agent Preston. “And after he hung up, he left his cell on. We’ve got the coordinates on the phone.”

Cady listened as Preston talked to someone in the background.

“He’s not moving, Drew. We have him at a hundred yards southeast of you.”

“Get a team ready, but send a jogger by for a visual. He probably ditched the phone in a trash bin or behind a tree to play more games.”

“Already happening. I’m also flooding the entrances and exits with our people.”

“Good move, Liz, but he might already be out of the park.”

“He’s not done with you yet.”

“I’ve been instructed to stick to the path, which loops back around. I’m getting the feeling that something’s been left for me.”

Less than a minute after Cady clicked off, Terri’s ringtone sounded.

“What did Sanfield tell you?”

“No time for small talk, Agent Cady?”

“It was Patrick Farris, right? He raped Marly?”

“Farris had done a dozen lines of cocaine by the time Marly arrived at Schaeffer’s party. He’d been washing that down with whiskey sours. He’d had a thing for Marly, all right, and the twins took the two of them out on Schaeffer’s pontoon, some kind of
booze cruise
, Farris had called it. Marly sipped wine, Farris kept sucking down sours out of a Princeton Tigers football mug. This led to some light necking. Then some untoward and not-so-light necking, Agent Cady. Marly kept telling Farris to stop it, but Farris was beyond hearing. He shoved his hand down the front of her pants.” Westlow’s voice had gone cold. “Marly slapped Farris across the mouth to make him stop. Stunned, he put the offending hand to his lip and came back with blood. He called Marly a ‘whore cunt’ and spit a mouthful of blood into the water. Then, like the ghosts from hell they were, the Zalentine twins were on Marly like a burial shroud, clutching at her arms, a sticky palm across her mouth as she tried to scream, pressing Marly slowly to the floor of the pontoon, ripping her shirt off, then her bra—then pants, then panties—spreading her legs as an offering for Patrick Farris to have his way…and Patrick Farris had his way, Agent Cady. He raped Marly on the floor of Schaeffer’s pontoon while the Zalentines held her still and watched. And afterwards, a decision was made by Adrien and Alain. Farris, Sanfield tried to justify, was a worthless lump by that point, not involved in the murder as he lay fetal himself in shock, knowledge of what had just occurred seeping in through a fog of whiskey and cocaine. The Zalentines then tossed the only girl I’ve ever loved in my entire life, Agent Cady, into the center of that dark fucking lake.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“They cranked Def Leppard from the boat’s boom box and revved the outboard to cover the sounds of Marly’s struggle and screams for help. You’ve been to Snow Goose, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know how big the lake is. No matter how hard Marly tried, the twins didn’t allow her to swim to safety. There was a pool net on board that they used to dunk her whenever she screamed or broke for the distant shore. Farris told Sanfield how it seemed to go on forever, but was likely no more than ten minutes before Marly fought her way back to the surface after a final dunking with lungs full of lake water. It went quickly after that, but Farris shared with Sanfield how even in the black shadows of that deadly night, he could see that Adrien and Alain had erections, obvious in their swim trunks, the entire time they ran around the boat killing Marly.”