Creepers (27 page)

But her manner didn't escape Frank's notice. Something was wrong. He'd seen it the moment Louise spoke; though her eyes sparkled almost unnaturally, her voice was dead. He'd seen this reaction before in accident or mugging victims in the subway. The trauma is so intense that a mechanism deep inside closes off vulnerability with a thick wall of protection. Sometimes its working shows in the face, oftentimes not. But it always appears in the voice, leaving only the plodding, grinding mechanical sounds of speech.

Because Corelli had seen it so often before, he'd been waiting for it in Louise. God, she was only human, and she'd been under tremendous pressure. That it had taken so long for her defenses to overload was a tribute to her tough spirit. Other women, men, too, would have crumbled long before. But Louise had fought it off...long enough for Corelli to get involved . . . long enough for Louise to need him. He wondered now if the Louise Hill he was falling in love with was actually a ghost, a persona that evolved to cover the shocking loss of her daughter. Whatever the answer, he had to deal with her objectively now, personal feelings aside. There was too much at stake.

"Look, Louise, tonight is a very special night and it's going to be very dangerous. I can't take you with me." He took her hand and squeezed it, hoping she wouldn't put up a fight.

"Don't worry about me, Frank. I'll find something to do while you're gone." She smiled enigmatically, then looked around. "There's television . . . and books . . . and the newspapers"--she poked them with her foot "I'll be just fine."

Corelli wasn't so sure. He was relieved she'd acquiesced to his wishes, but the rapidity of it bothered him. Louise was a fighter, not a quitter. Damn! It just didn't feel right. But there was a simple solution to his quandary: later, he'd ask Willie if maybe a woman friend of his or his mother's might stop over to keep Louise company...and to keep an eye on her.

"I'm glad you feel that way," he said softly, trying to intuit what was going on behind her eyes; she showed no emotion whatsoever. "Willie, I want to make a phone call."

"Use Momma's room, it's more private."

Before leaving, Corelli made one last attempt to break through Louise's lassitude. She finally looked up at him, and all the pain and fear surfaced in her eyes. His heart went out to her. "I know what it's like to lose someone you love without warning. I know the gaping hole it leaves in your life. Only I'd hoped I might fill it for you before the pain got too bad." He knelt in front of her chair and took her hands. "You're a very special lady, do you know that?"

"Maybe you bring that out in me."

"On the contrary, I'm known around town as "hardhearted Corelli,' the last true bachelor on earth."

When she smiled, her lips began to tremble. She pulled his hands to her face and rubbed them against the soft skin. "Oh, Frank, what am I going to do about Lisa?" Her voice trailed off to silence, and the emotion went as fast as it had come.

"It's okay. You've got every right in the world to cry. Let it go." He squeezed her hands. "You need the emotional release."

"No, no, I'm all right." She regained her composure. "I just got carried away."

"You sure?"

She nodded. "Go make your call. 111 be all right . . . really."

Corelli kissed her on the cheek, then went into the bedroom, pausing just long enough to take one last look at Louise. Something definitely was wrong with her. Under the mask of lethargy boiled a caldron of rage. Louise was keeping it contained for a reason. Why? Why did she need to keep herself angry? Well, there was no use guessing now; he had other, more important things to do.

Ten minutes later Dolchik picked up the call in the mayor's office. The call had been transferred from uptown and was placed on the conference line. Matthews sat at his desk, eyes closed, listening. Corelli had said it was urgent; Dolchik wondered. "What can I do for you, Frank?"

"I want to know what the fuck's going on, Dolchik," Corelli said hotly, "I want to know why, in the past twenty-four hours, I've been tailed all over this city."

"I don't know nothing about no tail, Frank."

"And don't give me any more of your redneck deezes, dems and dozes, Stan, I don't buy it."

Matthews nodded his head toward Dolchik in acknowledgment of Corelli's astuteness.

"Frank, you're blowing this whole thing out of proportion. I--"

"Hold on, Dolchik. Let's say, for the sake of argument, there was a good reason for you wanting to haul me in. That still doesn't convince me that my fear of what's going down in the subway's 'out of proportion'--to use your words."

"Frank, you jumped the gun on this whole thing. Sure, we've got a problem downstairs, but if you had come to me with your suspicions, I could have explained . . . made you one of the team," Dolchik lied, wishing Matthews weren't so adamant about Corelli.

"I went to you, Stan. I confronted you about Penny Comstock, about the missing-persons file, and you gave me a load of crap about hiding a bottle of Scotch."

"So I played it wrong. Give me a second chance, Corelli."

"Not a shot." He lowered his voice to a properly impressive level. "I know about the creepers, Dolchik. And I know that Lester Baker is dead. I saw his body this morning in the morgue at New York Mercy."

"Jesus!" Matthews shouted without thinking about his anonymity.

Corelli's laugh echoed around the room, amplified by the telephone system. "Dolchik, you're a real prize. You want to sweet-talk me...right into a trap. Who's your playmate, fat man?"

"It's Russ Matthews, you meathead. It's the goddamned mayor of this fucking city," Matthews screamed as he leaped from his chair. "I've listened to about as much of this adolescent you-show-me-yours-and-I'll-show-you-mine crap I'm going to. Now, listen to me, you asshole, I want you in my office within the hour or your ass is in a sling." Matthews hated to drop the Ivy League facade that got him elected, but Corelli was just a dumb wop in his book, and a dangerous one at that.

"Enter your office and disappear in a cloud of smoke, is that it, Mr. Mayor?" Corelli chuckled. "You never did impress me as much more than an overdressed windbag, Matthews, and as a man whose word is worth about as much as the paper it's written on. So, no deal. You want me, you've got to find me."

"Corelli, you dumb sonofabitch, you're out of your mind," Dolchik hissed toward the conference phone.

"Maybe, but until you catch me, I've got the upper hand, so now I want you to listen to me a minute. You've been sitting on this situation for months, as far as I can tell, and people have died because you haven't taken any action. I don't have to tell you the latest mess is the subway situation down at Chambers Street . . ." He paused to let that bit of information sink in.

Matthews' eyes narrowed and he shook his head. Dolchik shrugged; what could he do? He'd warned the mayor that Corelli was on the ball.

"We're working on it, but it'll take time," Matthews said evenly.

"That's just not good enough, Mr. Mayor. I want better...or if you don't do something, I will. I'll bring physical proof that the creepers exist up out of the subway and I'll have your ass for trying to cover it up. It's your move." Corelli hung up without giving Matthews a chance to answer.

"That lousy, crusading prick," Matthews burst out "He'll have my ass? I'll have his balls for this." He cooled off almost immediately. It was too late for self-righteous anger. "Corelli's given us no choice, Stan. We have to move tonight for sure." Until the call, he hadn't been convinced he'd implement the plan to smoke the creepers out.

Dolchik remained silent throughout all this, hating Russ Matthews' petty politicking more than ever. It had taken Frank Corelli to get that cocksucker Matthews to take affirmative action; yet it was Corelli who was the fugitive. Where the hell was the justice in that?

"I'll call the governor and discuss finalizing the plans with him. There shouldn't be a problem getting the National Guard mobilized."

"What about me?"

"You round up the team. I want two men at the street-level entrance of every operating station in Manhattan." Aside from Matthews, Dolchik, Dr. Tom Geary, and a few tactical experts, the team was mainly composed of TA and NYPD cops who were on twenty-four-hour duty for a secret mission.

"No problem getting them together. But what about Corelli?"

Matthews shoved his chair back from the desk and went to the large window that overlooked lower Manhattan. "There's only one way Corelli can make good on his threat--go into the subway tonight to find one of those things."

"And?" Dolchik asked uneasily.

"And the Guard will have orders to shoot everything not in uniform--shoot now, ask questions later." Matthews whirled around, his face an icy mask. "That should take care of Detective Corelli's crusading. Now, get the hell out of here and get going. We've got to get this cleaned up by tomorrow morning first thing."

For the rest of the day Corelli went over his plans both mentally and with Willie. If the mayor heeded his warning, there would be no need to send the letter he had written after his phone conversation. The mayor had always impressed Corelli as an arrogant sonofabitch who, despite his promises, put his own pleasure and needs before those of anyone else in the city. Matthews' acid voice over the phone had convinced Frank that the corruption behind the veil of secrecy about the creepers went straight to the top.

The letter would do something in correcting that situation. Addressed to the editors of the city's newspapers, the letter detailed the events since Labor Day, since Corelli began his investigation of what he discovered later to be the creepers. It detailed Penny Comstock, Lisa Hill, Ted Slade, and Lester Baker, plus connecting them with the accident at Chambers Street. Corelli couldn't be sure the editors would believe him, but he'd given them enough , cold facts to get an investigation started. The letter was to be delivered by a friend of Hoyte's only if Frank Corelli disappeared--or was found dead from any cause.

Louise had withdrawn into herself. She huddled in a chair by the window in the Hoyte living room and stared fixedly into the backyards of the tenements. She was mentally preparing herself for her mission, preparing herself to die in search of Lisa. How, she wondered, have I managed to live through the last days without once losing control? My baby is gone. Dead, probably. Or maybe worse, in the hands of those things.

Thoughts of Lisa were with her now all the time. Once Louise began savoring the memories of her daughter, the torrent of emotion she'd been suppressing gained full power and inundated her. She remembered Lisa that last day, dressed so like a happy child in her painter's overalls and red shoes. Lisa had been so excited about the trip to SoHo and the prospect of the street fair. Louise remembered the enthusiasm and it made her smile all over again. And right now, feeling so alone in this strange apartment in Harlem, she needed to smile.

Frank had deserted her. No, that wasn't entirely true. He wanted to comfort her; she knew he saw the change in her, but Louise wasn't able to accept his ministrations right now. The pain of Lisa's fate was too new. She needed time alone, to examine the wound, test its depth. Corelli, in turn, went about his business. He and Willie had something planned for later, something that by its very nature, would exclude her. But that was okay. She had things to do herself.

"I'm going to leave this letter with a friend of Willie's," Corelli said sometime after ten. "Want to come along? The walk might do you good."

"Nothing will do me much good right now, Frank." Louise smiled bravely. "You and Willie go ahead. I'll be fine right here."

"Sure?"

She nodded. "In fact, forget about me altogether tonight. You just go. Lettie Jean said she'd be coming back soon."

Lettie Jean DuChamps was the friend of Willie's whom Frank had enlisted that evening to raise Louise's spirits. She'd stopped over for an hour about seven, and was due back soon. At well over two hundred pounds, the twenty-two-year-old Lettie Jean was lead singer in an uptown gospel group called God's Angels. When she was not singing the praises of the Lord, Lettie Jean was swilling down beer, laughing, and telling dirty jokes. It had been Willie's hope that Lettie's boisterous joking would be infectious, and thus cheer up Louise. The fat woman's caterwauling actually depressed Louise, but she kept that information to herself.

"Maybe we should wait till Lettie gets here," Frank mused. He still didn't like Louise's distant mood.

"Hell, man, time's running out," Willie chimed in. "Louise is okay by herself. 'Sides, Lettie's just down the hall. We'll knock on her door as we go by."

There really wasn't time to quibble. Frank kissed Louise lightly on the mouth, promised to see her later, then took the letters for the newspaper editors and left with Willie.

Bimbo Calhoun smiled broadly as he let Willie and Corelli into his small apartment. "Well, well, if it ain't the gravedigger hisself." He laughed raucously. "Welcome to the land of the livin'. Come in, come in."

Bimbo ushered them into a living room overstuffed with cast-off furniture rescued from the streets. The Dogs of Hell were there waiting. Willie had been able to round up only eighteen of them, but a dozen and a half people in Calhoun's apartment was more than a crowd.

"I'd show y'all into the ballroom, Willie, but we's havin' a cotillion in there tonight." Bimbo laughed.