Scudder - Eight Million Ways To Die Part 65

A dozen of us wound up around a couple of tables in a coffee shop on West Broadway. I didn't take a very active part in the conversation, or pay too much attention to it. Eventually the waiter distributed separate checks. Jan paid hers and I paid mine and the two of us headed downtown toward her place.

I said, 'I didn't just happen to be in the neighborhood.'

'There's a big surprise.'

'I wanted to talk to you. I don't know if you read today's paper - '

'About the killing in Queens? Yes, I did.'

'I was out there. I'm all wound up and I feel the need to talk about it.'

We went up to her loft and she made a pot of coffee. I sat with a cup of coffee in front of me and by the time I stopped talking and took a sip it was cold. I brought her up to date, told her about Kim's fur jacket, about the drunken kids and the broken wine bottle, about the trip to Queens and what we'd found there. And I told her, too, how I'd spent this afternoon, riding the subway across the river and walking around Long Island City, returning to knock on doors in Cookie Blue's East Village tenement, then crossed the island to work the gay bars on Christopher Street and up and down West Street.

By then it had been late enough to get in touch with Joe Durkin and learn what the lab had come up with.

'It was the same killer,' I told Jan. 'And he used the same weapon. He's tall, right handed, and pretty powerful, and he keeps a sharp edge on his machete, or whatever the h.e.l.l he uses.'

Phone checks with Arkansas yielded nothing. The Fort Smith street address was a phony, predictably enough, and the auto license plate belonged to an orange Volkswagen owned by a nursery school teacher in Fayetteville.

'And she only drove it on Sundays,' Jan said.

'Something like that. He made up the whole Arkansas business the same as he made up Fort Wayne, Indiana. But the license plate was real, or almost real. Somebody thought to check the hot-car sheet, and there was a navy blue Impala stolen off the street in Jackson Heights just a couple hours before Cookie was killed. The plate number's the same as he used checking in except for a pair of digits reversed, and of course it's a New York plate instead of Arkansas.

'The car fits the motel clerk's description, such as it was. It also fits what they got from some other hookers who were on the stroll when Cookie was picked up. They say there was a car like that cruising around for a while before the dude in it made up his mind and picked up Cookie.

'The car hasn't turned up yet, but that doesn't mean he's still driving it. It can take a long time before an abandoned stolen car turns up. Sometimes the thieves leave 'em in a No Parking zone and the police tow truck hauls them to the pound. That's not supposed to happen, somebody's supposed to check towed cars against the hot sheet, but it doesn't always go the way it's supposed to. It doesn't matter. It'll turn out the killer dumped the car twenty minutes after he finished with Cookie, and that he wiped it clean of prints.'

'Matt, can't you let go of it?'

'Of the whole business?'

She nodded. 'It's police procedure from here on in, isn't it? Sifting evidence, running down all the details.'

'I suppose so.'

'And it's not as though they're likely to put this on the shelf and forget about it, the way you thought they might when it was just Kim who was dead. The papers wouldn't let them shelve it even if they wanted to.'

'That's true.'

'So is there a reason why you have to push yourself on this? You already gave your client his money's worth.'

'Did I?'

'Didn't you? I think you worked harder for the money than he did.'

'I guess you're right.'

'So why stay with it? What can you do that the whole police force can't?'

I wrestled with that one. After a moment I said, 'There's got to be a connection.'

'What kind of connection?'

'Between Kim and Cookie. Because, d.a.m.nit, otherwise they don't make sense. A psycho killer always has a pattern for what he's doing, even if it only exists in his own mind. Kim and Cookie didn't look alike and didn't have similar lives. For Christ's sake, they weren't even the same s.e.x to start with. Kim worked off a phone in her own apartment and had a pimp. Cookie was a transs.e.xual streetwalker doing the johns in their cars. She was an outlaw. Chance is doing some double-checking to see if she had a pimp n.o.body knew about, but it doesn't look likely.'

I drank some cold coffee. 'And he picked Cookie,' I went on. 'He took his time, he drove up and down those streets, he made sure he got her and not somebody else. Where's the connection? It's not a matter of type. She was a completely different physical type from Kim.'

'Something in her personal life?'

'Maybe. Her personal life's hard to trace. She lived in the East Village and tricked in Long Island City. I couldn't find anybody in the West Side gay bars who knew her. She didn't have a pimp and she didn't have a lover. Her neighbors on East Fifth Street never knew she was a prost.i.tute, and only a few of them suspected she wasn't a woman. Her only family's her brother and he doesn't even know she's dead.'

I talked some more. Ricone wasn't an Italian word, and if it was a name it was an uncommon one. I'd checked telephone directories for Manhattan and Queens without finding a single Ricone listed.

When I ran dry she got more coffee for both of us and we sat for a few minutes without speaking. Then I said, 'Thanks.'

'For the coffee?'

'For listening. I feel better now. I had to talk my way through it.'

'Talking always helps.'

'I suppose so.'

'You don't talk at meetings, do you?'

'Jesus, I couldn't talk about this stuff.'

'Not specifically, maybe, but you could talk about what you're going through and the way it makes you feel. That might help more than you think, Matt.'

'I don't think I could do it. h.e.l.l, I can't even say I'm an alcoholic. 'My name is Matt and I pa.s.s.' I could phone it in.'

'Maybe that'll change.'

'Maybe.'

'How long have you been sober, Matt?'

I had to think. 'Eight days.'

'Gee, that's terrific. What's so funny?'

'Something I've noticed. One person asks another how long he's been sober, and whatever the answer is, the reply is, 'Gee, that's terrific, that's wonderful.' If I said eight days or eight years the reaction'd be the same. 'Gee, isn't that great, isn't that terrific.' '

'Well, it is.'

'I guess.'

'What's terrific is that you're sober. Eight years is terrific and so is eight days.'