Lulu sure did. She’s always liked him. She thinks he’s cute. Plus he carries a gun, which I don’t. She whooped and thumped her tail until he patted her and said hello.
I said, “No offense, Lieutenant, but you look like shit.”
“No offense, dude, but I ain’t up for you right now,” he shot back, knuckling his bleary eyes. “So this better be good.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it
good,
Lieutenant.
Good
is about the last thing I’d call it.”
“Whatever.” He yawned deeply and poured some milk into his coffee, glancing over at the pages of the answer man’s letter and first chapter. I’d laid them out on the table next to us so Very could read them without having to touch them. No sense adding his fingerprints, too. He flicked a curious look at me, but didn’t bother to prod me. Just drank his coffee, loudly. The lieutenant was used to my ways by now, just as I was used to his. We’d been around the bases three times, most recently when Clethra Feingold ran off with Thor Gibbs, her famous stepfather. Maybe you read about it. I had grown rather fond of Very through the years. We would even have been friends except for one small detail—he believed I’d been brought into this world strictly so as to irritate, annoy and otherwise mess up his life.
We all three ordered lox and onions and eggs. Our waiter refilled our cups.
“How’s Tracy?” Very grunted. This was him being friendly.
“Not terrible. But give her time—she’s young. And you, Lieutenant? How are you?” This was me being concerned. “What have you been doing, pulling a double shift?”
Very made a face at me. “Pulling my pud is more like it. Night after night I’m out there, dude, doing what I gotta do, working at it, trying …” He sighed glumly. “Only, it just ain’t happening. Maybe I should just give up, y’know?”
Lulu and I exchanged a look. I told her to let me handle it. “Give up
what,
Lieutenant?”
He looked at me blankly. “Women, what else?”
I winced. “Hold it. This sounds like a personal problem.”
“Check it out; what I’ve decided is I focus way too much energy on my career and not enough on
me,”
Very went on, undeterred. “Which means I get my self-esteem from my job instead of from my home life. Which, like, I don’t even have. Which is really fucked up. So—”
“So you’re trying to meet someone,” I suggested, to hurry him up.
“And it ain’t easy, let me tell ya.”
“Lieutenant, I—”
“The shift I’m on these days I don’t get off until midnight. So I’m out cruising the after-hours clubs until four, five o’clock in the morning. I get home at dawn, mondo wired. Takes me hours to chill. And then, just when my head hits the pillow …” he scowled at me “… the goddamned phone rings.”
“I apologize for waking you, Lieutenant. But you won’t be sorry. Well, actually, you will be sorry. But you won’t be. Sorry that I called, I mean.”
“Dude, don’t do this on me. I don’t get you on a
clear
head.” Very shook his head, as if to loosen the cobwebs. “Don’t know why I can’t hook up, either. Ain’t like I’m fronting ’em or nothing. I’m being
me.
But I’m just not getting anywhere.”
“Maybe it’s the haircut. Have you thought about the haircut?”
“I’ve chatted up some dope ladies, too. I’m talking phat—beautiful, smart, nice. I buy ’em a drink. They buy me a drink. It’s decent. And then,
phhtt.”
I tried to resist. Really, I did. But I couldn’t.
“Phhtt?”
“I don’t finish off the play. Ain’t up for it. I ain’t buggin’ or nothing. Only, there’s no spark. And if there’s no spark, I walk—home to another chorus of ‘Randy Rides Alone.’” He drank some more of his coffee. “Sure wish I could meet someone like Merilee.”
“There’s only one Merilee, that’s for sure.”
Our food arrived. We dug in.
“She have any friends?”
“None that are sane.”
“How about you, dude?”
“Me, Lieutenant?”
“You must know a shitload of interesting women. Writers, editors—”
“I thought you wanted to meet someone interesting.”
“Would you fix me up with one of ’em?”
“No.”
He stared across the table at me, startled and offended. “Why not?”
I bit into my bagel and said, “I have my reasons.”
“Because I’m a cop, is that it? Not good enough for them?”
“I have my reasons,” I repeated. “And they have nothing to do with you. Let’s just leave it at that, okay? Now can we please talk about
me?”
“All right, all right. What you got, dude?”
“You tell me,” I said, gesturing to the pages. “Don’t touch. Just read.”
He read. I ate, watching the people go by on Amsterdam through the window. Most of them in that neighborhood at that time of day are elderly, the city’s survivors, still sharp, still tough, still New York. Lulu ate, too, though she had eyes only for her plate. When she had sanded it clean with her tongue she curled up on my foot with a satisfied grunt and went to sleep. Her world is a lot simpler than the one I live in.
I could tell when the lieutenant got to the first mention of the organic pet food store. He froze, his face hardening. He looked up at me. I looked back at him. He shifted his chair in closer to the table. He read on.
When he was done reading he said, “Yo, when did you get this?”
“Yesterday.”
“Who else has touched it?”
“Merilee, by the upper left-hand corner of the envelope. No one else.”
“Any idea who he is?”
“None.”
“Any idea how to reach him?”
“None.”
“Why’d he pick you?”
“You know as much as I do.”
He tugged thoughtfully at his little tuft of chin spinach. “We may need a sample of your prints.”
“You already have them on file.”
“What, we busted you?”
“During my black hole days.”
Lulu let out a low growl. She remembered those days only too well.
“For what, dude?”
“I’ll let that come as a surprise to you.”
The waiter took away our empty plates. He came back and refilled our cups. Very sat there staring at the pages. His head had started nodding to his own personal beat. He was not sleepy anymore.
“Well, Lieutenant? Is he for real? Do I have myself a killer?”
“You know as much as I do.” He got to his feet. “Stay with me.”
He went and used the phone. When he returned he was slapping a small notepad against his thigh. He sat, staring down at the notepad. He cleared his throat uneasily. “Dude, it’s my unhappy duty to inform you that the answer is yes, the man’s for real.”
My stomach muscles tightened. “How do you know?”
“Because of what
he
knows. She was strangled. Side of her head was bashed in with a heavy object. Plus,” he added darkly, “she was branded.”
“Branded how?”
“He put a question mark on her forehead with lipstick. Orange lipstick.”
I frowned. “Why would he do that?”
“He’s the answer man. Maybe it’s about that.” Very puffed out his cheeks. “Fuck, I don’t know.”
“When was she killed?”
“Two, three days ago. They’re not sure yet.”
“How come the body wasn’t found until this morning?
“Most likely on account of he didn’t dump it there until last night.”
“Today’s Thursday. I got this in the mail yesterday. It’s a local letter, mailed from somewhere in Manhattan, postmarked on Tuesday. So let’s say he killed Diane Monday night … Christ, that means he held on to the body for two whole days. Why would he do that?”
“Because he’s a sick fuck, that’s why.”
“Didn’t anyone notice she was missing?”
“If they did they didn’t contact us.”
“She lived alone?”
“Unless you count two cats as roommates.”
“What about the kid who worked at the store with her? Didn’t
he
notice when she didn’t show up for work?”
“Good question. I don’t know the answer.”
“Was she sexually assaulted?”
“Good question. I don’t know the answer to that one either.”
“You’re starting to sound like a politician, Lieutenant.”
“Fuck you, too, dude,” he snapped. “We haven’t got that information yet, okay? All I know is she was found fully clothed and stuffed inside a large, zippered canvas wardrobe bag.” He glanced down at his notepad. “Garment bag was blue, to go with the color of her face.”
“I didn’t need to hear that, Lieutenant.”
“Sorry. Sometimes I forget you’re a civilian.”
“I’ll do my best to remind you from now on. How was she identified?”
“Pocketbook. It was right there in the garment bag with her. Contained her driver’s license, credit cards, a hundred and twenty dollars in cash.”
I tugged at my left ear. “Somewhat odd, isn’t it?”
“Mucho odd. It was like he wanted her to be identified. Could say the same about where he dumped her—it was like he wanted her to be found. Dig, it’s not like nobody happens by Grant’s Tomb.”
That gave me a thought. “Grant’s Tomb, Lieutenant.
G. T.
He says, ‘Found myself a semi-decent jack rack in the shadow of
G.T.’
He could be referring to Grant’s Tomb.”
“Could be,” he agreed.
“She didn’t live that far from there, did she?”
“She lived next to the river on Ninety-seventh. The tomb’s at Riverside and One-hundred-and-twenty-second. Not mondo far. But not walking distance either, not carrying a body.” He hesitated, thumbing his chin thoughtfully. “I, uh, schooled ’em to our thing. So I’m on this case. I wasn’t but now I am.”
“I’m glad you are, Lieutenant. I feel a lot better with you on my side.”
“Save it, dude. I ain’t up for your sarcasm.”
“Okay, fine. I tried for a warm moment. It didn’t happen. We’ll move on.”
“Who else knows about this?” he asked. “Who have you spoken to?”
“Well, I called Geraldo first thing, naturally.”
He glowered at me.
“No one, Lieutenant. Not a soul.”
“Good. I want this kept under wraps until we got all the facts. In the immortal words of Rickey Henderson, I don’t need no pub right now. That means you talk to me and to nobody else. None of your grandstanding to the press. Keep that shit off my wave. Last thing I want is someone like Cassandra Dee breathing down the back of my neck.”
“She’s much better at breathing down the fronts of trousers, actually.”
He sat back in his chair, a dreamy smile on his face. “Woo.”
“Woo?”
“She’s
someone I wouldn’t mind getting with. Most bonus babe on television, except for maybe Cokie Roberts.”
“I don’t think I want to hear any more about this, Lieutenant.”
“Dig, you
know
her, am I right?”
“Cokie Roberts?”
“Cassandra Dee.”
“We’ve tangled,” I said, groaning inwardly. Because she was the sleaziest of the sleazy. We ghosted dueling memoirs back when Cassandra was fresh from the
Enquirer.
She wasn’t ghosting anymore. Now she had her own red-hot nightly tabloid news show,
Face to Face
or
Cheek to Jowl
or whatever the hell it was called. Now she was a megastar. “And I never grandstand, Lieutenant. At least, not without a celebrity.”
“You got one, dude. You just haven’t met him yet.”
That one I left alone. Didn’t want to go anywhere near it.
He peered at the letter again, frowning, “Weird how retro this all is, don’t you think? I mean, we are talking serious low-tech here—manual typewriter, snail mail,
paper …
“Oh, God, you’re not going to bring up the
I
-word, are you?”
“Well, yeah. Everyone’s on it,” he said, meaning the Internet. “They’re using E-mail, voice mail, faxes … Nobody uses the U.S. Postal Service anymore.”
“I do.”
“That’s not the point, dude.”
“On the contrary, Lieutenant, it most definitely is the point.”
“Oh, I dig. You’re thinking we’re dealing with an older person like yourself.”
“Thank you. Yes. Another troglodyte like myself.” Although perhaps not as well dressed.
“All I’m saying,” Very went on, “is no one under thirty would use these methods.”
“You made your point. Now shut up about it.”
He shut up about it, his eyes scanning Chapter One again. “What do you think of it?”
“Think of it?”
“He an educated fool? He got talent? What kind of gee is he? School me on him.”
“He can write, there’s no doubt in my mind about that. He has the tools. That doesn’t have to mean he’s college-educated, but given his use of the language, I’d have to say that he is. As far as what kind of person he is, that’s much harder to say. This could be his confession, a blow-by-blow account of what went down. Or he could be a member of the frequent liar club. He
is
claiming that it’s a novel. That would make his letter writer, T, a fictional creation, which is to say someone not to be confused with
him.
Holden Caulfield
wasn’t
J. D. Salinger, after all.”
“Yeah, but check it out, dude—chick’s
really
dead.”
“Trust me, I didn’t forget that part, Lieutenant.”
“You okay with this?”
“Why, don’t I look okay?”
He didn’t answer me. I gathered by his silence that I didn’t.
I sipped my cold coffee. Under the table, Lulu stirred in her sleep, dreaming of epic battles with baby squirrels long since won and lost. Mostly lost. “What happens now?”
“We talk to Diane’s friends, find out who she was giving it to. Could be she’s got an ex-boyfriend who’s a crazed, frustrated author.”
“Is there any other kind?”
“She seemed to recognize him,” Very mentioned, scanning the pages. “He says he gets a lot of that. What’s up with that?”
“I don’t know. I wondered about it myself.”
Very shook his head in amazement. “Damned thing’s full of chewy little morsels. Makes me want to scream. Like this G.T. thing of yours. And the mention of the hot plate. That tells us SRO hotel. Used to be a whole bunch of ’em in the low hundreds, west of Broadway, until the developers moved in. There’s still a few. And look at this—he’s buggin’ here on the no-smoking laws. Those kicked in April of ninety-five. Where’s he been? Was he in jail? Was he in a drug treatment facility? He
sounds
like a recovering addict, way he dumps all of that sugar in his coffee. Or maybe he’s just plain wiggy. He’s got this business here about the doctors letting him out. Could be he was just released from a psychiatric hospital. Could be he
escaped.
We got the Manhattan Psychiatric Center sitting right out there on Ward’s Island with all kinds of security problems. Guy walked right out of there a while back and shoved a grandmother under a train at Herald Square. We got Kingsboro in Brooklyn, Creedmoor in Queens. Maybe he was in one of them. He and Friend E both. Who
is
Friend E? Does he exist? We got to check all of this shit out. Every goddamned morsel. Each one’s a potential lead. Could be he works in a restaurant. Could be he’s a social worker for the city—”