Cuts Through Bone (23 page)

“Oh God.” For a long moment, the only sound was rain and the creak of the Ford's windshield wipers. Guthrie didn't press, because they had plenty of time. They were driving all of the way down to Flatbush. “You think somebody at the school did it?” she asked.

“You were doing something there that could get somebody shut up. Maybe it already got Camille Bowman shut up. What scares me is that they left the pictures behind. Maybe they took the ones that could damage them—” The little detective came to a sudden stop.

“What?” Tompkins asked.

“Tell me about Justin Peiper. I know already he was with Camille; what was he doing at Columbia? Is he connected to someone in the city?”

“No. Justin's a pretty face from upstate. His face unlocks doors.”

“No money? How fast could he find eight thousand dollars, you think?”

“I don't…”

While a pause stretched on the phone, and the Ford waited at a light, Vasquez opened her palmtop. She had Peiper's credit-card statements in his file. The accounts were paid off on the second of August. The young Puerto Rican frowned. Guthrie was stalking a trail.

“Justin doesn't have money,” Tompkins said. “He's a sponge. I think he carries summer classes so he can live on campus.”

“So who knew about the pictures? Have you got a straight answer for that? And maybe you should volunteer everything connected to it,” Guthrie added.

“Fuck,” she said acidly.

“There was a strong resemblance.”

“Everybody knew about the party pictures, but nobody knew about the action pictures.” Tompkins paused, then continued. “Scratch that. Three people knew about the action, directly. After that, I can't say who told whom, beyond that my mouth stayed shut. Cammie's dead. Amanda Hearst knows. Cammie was a shutterbug, and that's how it started. She was always taking pictures. I think if she hadn't met Greg, she wouldn't have considered law. She was definitely following him, and eventually she would've regretted that decision. I think she would've gone for film.”

“An aspiring actress?”

“Uh-uh. A director. The pictures were her idea. That became my position in ‘the court.' I took the pictures.”

“You starred in some of them.”

“Cammie took those, or Amanda did after she came inside. Cammie had a streak of … I guess that was something we all shared. Anyway, we had the goods on one another. That way, everyone was covered, and anything went. Crazy stuff went on at Grove Street. I thought she had her pictures secure. A lot of people knew about the party pictures, and sometimes they freaked people out. When Cammie put people together, she wanted a trophy. Some of the pictures are pretty crazy. I guess you haven't looked through all of them.”

“Not even close. Fat-Fat screened a bedroom video clip, and I decided I didn't want to look at anything else. Should I?”

“Shit. Who's Fat-Fat?”

“A computer wonk who knows he shouldn't cross me. You say she secured her pictures. Fat-Fat said that her machine was tinkered with. I didn't let him go all the way with it—I just wanted to find out if anything was erased. He said the machine had an attack system. That's what you mean?”

“I use the same system.”

“Like Amanda Hearst?”

“Same system, but not as much info. She doesn't have anything on me. She barely had anything on Cammie.”

“You don't think Cammie could've sold you out?”

“No. She played with Amanda, and everybody else, including Justin, but she never teased me like that.” A pause was filled with the sound of raindrops. “I never thought about it that way before. She was my friend.

“I guess here's where it's complicated, though,” she continued. “I don't know how many videos there were. Grove Street was like a circus sometimes. I don't think a ‘complete copy' exists, except for the party pictures. She kept a court history. Every ‘performance' hookup had a spread. The pictures were more or less docile, unless they were really drunk, or really into each other. But a minimum of a kiss and a fondle.” Tompkins laughed softly. “Okay, when I say ‘fondle,' I mean something that could probably make a cheap magazine, and thrill perverts to no end. And definitely spoil a Goody Two-shoes image.”

“And at least one other person knows you have pictures,” Guthrie said. “That would be Justin Peiper—and somebody knows enough to pay him off. Any ideas?”

“Shit. Are you sure?”

“He's dirty for something, but I don't like him for Camille's murder. This scheme fits, and he's good with a computer. Who would he hit?”

“Amanda,” Tompkins replied. “Try Amanda. She was upset.” Another pause stretched. “Can you do something about it?”

The little detective stared out the window at the wet, gray version of Brooklyn that was being scoured by the rain. “Sure. I'll see if I can find some tracks tonight,” he said before he cut off the phone.

Vasquez rounded the plaza and they slid along Prospect Park. “Less than murder,” she said quietly. As she turned onto Caton, the rain intensified. The sky seemed determined to make up for all the dry, hot dog days at once. Guthrie directed her to a nondescript storefront looking out onto the Parade Ground. Faded paint blended the narrow street entrance of Bob's Sports into the pavement. Next door, the windows were boarded, with a dusty
COMING SOON
sign marked with the empty promise of a restaurant.

The gutters were awash, and the sidewalks covered with splashing puddles. By the time Guthrie and Vasquez reached the door, they were soaked. An old-fashioned hanging bell rang when they went inside. The inside smelled musty; most of the lights were burned out, or buzzing at the end of an ill-used life. An old clerk looked up briefly when they came inside, then sighed and flipped a page on the magazine he had spread on the countertop.

Vasquez scanned the shelves as she walked along behind Guthrie. The sporting goods all looked used, including muddy baseballs and splintered bats. An ancient leather maskless football helmet leered at her, and she picked it up. The inside smelled like vomit, and the price tag said $4. She decided that her middle brother, Indio, needed to have it. She brushed some loose wet strands of hair away from her face and grinned.

“Don't bother the displays,” the old clerk said wearily.

“You mean I can't buy this?” Vasquez demanded.

“Hey, I just work here, you know?” the old man said. He perked up on his stool, suddenly ready to talk.

“Can it, Mike,” Guthrie said. “She's with me. Vincent here?”

The old man shrugged. “In back.”

Vasquez kept the helmet and followed Guthrie into the back. The clerk gave her a martyred look. Beyond a swinging door, four old men were playing pinochle. Two looked up when the detectives came through the door. One old man's eyes looked huge behind thick glasses; even sitting down, he was a giant. He could hide his spread of cards behind his palm. His voice was a match, like gravel roaring down a chute.

“Vincent, we got company,” he said.

“Just Guthrie. I
can
see him, you know.”

“Sometimes…”

The back room was decorated with old junk and a flimsy card table. A door on the back wall was marked
EXIT.
Vincent wore a fisherman's cap and wire-rimmed spectacles. He peered at Vasquez, raising his chin because the glasses had slid down to the tip of his nose.

“Hey, that's not Wietz! Who you bringing in here, Guthrie?”

“I tried to tell you,” the big man said. “You don't never listen.”

“Vincent Pagliaroli, Salvatore Lucci, this's Rachel Vasquez,” the little detective said. “These two are junk dealers—”

“
Bad
dealer,” another old man said, flicking the spread of his cards with a fingertip. “Would you believe no marriage?”

“So?” Vincent asked. “That makes her good people? What's a name?”

“Names are words,” Guthrie said. “She made bones a few hours ago. We need some replacements.”

The old men set their cards down, and they all turned to stare hard at Vasquez. With her hair wet, her ears stuck out even more than normal, and she looked as narrow as a drenched cat. She reddened and held up the old football helmet. “I want to buy this for my brother,” she said.

Vincent smiled. “You don't like him, huh? He won't keep his teeth wearing that.”

“No, no, I like him. I'll just hide it in his room to make him clean it.”

Sal laughed. “Wouldn't do no good for my brother,” he rumbled.

“All right. Let's take a break, guys. I don't think Guthrie needs long. You know what you want?”

Guthrie nodded. The other two old men went out to the front of the store. Vincent opened the exit door, grumbled about the puddles, and handed umbrellas to everyone before he went into the alley. Sal followed Vasquez and Guthrie. Vincent opened the alley door to the side and they entered a stockroom piled with cans of tomato sauce, tomatoes, and paste. Sal came in last and locked the door.

Three wire cages stacked full of wooden crates waited beyond the stockroom's locked door. Each cage had to be unlocked and relocked. Cameras peered down from overhead into rooms kept uncomfortably cold, like a meat locker. Orange-scented cleaner didn't cover the sharp smell of oil and metal. The last room was full of standing steel cabinets: Even without couches and reading tables, it looked like a library.

“I need two more of those Chief's Specials,” Guthrie said.

“Those were hers?” Vincent asked, then glanced at Vasquez. “You liked those? Forties, right? I got something with more pop, if you want.”

Vasquez shook her head. The smell of the ancient football helmet was making her queasy. In the card room, she hadn't understood what Guthrie meant when he told the old Italians she had “made bones.” The armory was as cold as a mortuary, and she realized the old men had stared to size her up.

Vincent opened a cabinet. The metal clanged like prison doors. “I only got one forty-caliber. You want to go up, or down?” He looked at Vasquez, one small pistol cuffed in his withered fist.

Her mouth stayed stuck shut for a moment. “What's bigger?”

“I got forty-five, forty-four Mag, forty-four Special, forty-one Mag—”

“Let me get the forty-five,” she said.

The old man peered into the cabinet, drew out a second pistol and some empty clips. “Okay. You need something?” He glanced at Guthrie, then frowned. “This was a confirmation?”

“It'll be in the papers, Vincent. NYPD took all the iron. So I need a pair of forty-four Mags—Colt, Smith, Ruger, don't matter as long as it's four and three-quarters.”

The old man had a pair of Trooper IIs and a handful of speed loaders. Guthrie bought a double shoulder rig and some boxes of ammo. Sal watched them through his thick glasses while they loaded cylinders and clips, then tucked away their purchases. Vincent marked tallies inside his cabinets.

“Well, Guthrie, you're ready for the army,” Vincent said. He ticked items off on his fingertips. “That'll be thirty-two hundred. And another five for the helmet. I'd give it to you for free, but it used to belong to my mother's brother.”

“The tag says four dollars,” Vasquez said.

The old Italian gave her a surprised look. “You're cute. I gotta say that. The helmet's been sitting there since sometime in the 1970s. That's a lotta inflation. You want me to add it up?”

“No, thirty-two hundred five is good,” Guthrie said. He pulled bills from one of his pockets.

“I tell you what you better give her,” Sal said. “An umbrella. She ain't big enough she can afford to have anything else wash away.”

Vincent grinned, peering at Vasquez through his spectacles again. “Okay, I throw in the umbrellas,” he said.

*   *   *

On the way back to the city, Guthrie and Vasquez paused to buy a bag of snacks: the grab bag. The grab bag was the ritual that accompanied sitting in a park or on a street corner to watch Manhattan get a few hours older. In Vasquez's first three months, the grab bag was filled a few times a week. Back in the city, they drifted into a spot in Battery Park, looking out over the bay. The rain wore away to nothing, but the clouds didn't thin. Guthrie kicked a can several laps around the Ford, while Vasquez just sat in the driver's seat.

The first time with the bag, Guthrie hadn't said anything. He'd sat down on a bench in Tompkins Square Park and ignored Vasquez like she was a pesky fly for four hours. Then he peppered her with questions about what had happened while the time was passing. After she realized he was serious about wanting answers, she began to spin lies to fill the big silence of not having anything to say. The little old man laughed at her. The night before, he hid a camera in the tree beside the bench to catch her if she tried bullshit. On top of that, he knew she was snowing him, because he had been watching, and his eyes were always on record. The camera was just proof.

After the first few trips with the grab bag, the little detective had added a twist. He asked her to explain the people they saw: who they were, why they were there, what they were doing, and even why they did what they did the way they did. “Why'd he throw that can down?” he asked, pointing at a Yuppie in Gramercy Park who was tossing litter, with a trash can twenty feet away. Something like that could start a quarter-hour argument—with Guthrie still expecting her to watch at the same time.

Mixed into the mess were the videotapes. Vasquez got angry when he showed her a black-and-white video and asked her what color things were. That was impossible. Then he brought out a color copy and ran them side by side; he used two cameras just to ask her about the colors. “At night, it's hard to tell colors apart,” he said, but that was one of his rare moments of explanation. He had loops of tape from robberies, suicides, car wrecks, and fires, with rapidfire strings of questions to go with all of them. Clayton Guthrie was crazy; he paid her to shoot a pistol and do nothing.