Footsteps of the Hawk (14 page)

"Not
the
money," I reminded her. "
My
money."

"Fine," she said with a sniff, taking her hand off my forearm. "Give me an hour. I'll leave you a message.

"See you around," I told her. I walked away, leaving her standing there. When I got as far as Worth Street, a pair of Chinese kids in matching red silk shirts under fingertip–length black leather jackets nodded an "okay" at me. I nodded back to show them I understood—I hadn't been followed.

I
went over to my office, patted Pansy for a minute, opened the back door so she could get to her roof. Then I spread the contents of Belinda's envelope out on my desk. Everything was on that cheap flimsy paper they use in government copiers. Nothing but DD5s, the Complaint Follow–up form they use to keep track of investigations. Three women. Three bodies. All cut to pieces, first stabbed to immobilize them, then sliced for fun. Sex crimes for sure, every one of the women razor–raped. The report was in Cop–Speak: "On the above date, the undersigned Detective Oscar Wandell, Sh#99771 of the Manhattan Homicide Squad, entered the premises known as 1188 University Place Apt 9B at approx. 09:45 hours…" Whoever prepared it had just X–ed out any typos he saw—cops don't use Wite–Out.

All the homicides were south of Midtown, west of Fifth. All inside the victims' apartments. Somebody they knew? Bar pickups? No way to tell. All the victims were white. The youngest was twenty–nine, the oldest thirty–six. The killer was working a narrow band—maybe they were all targets of opportunity?

I took a yellow legal pad from the desk, started working on a chart. The dates synched with what Belinda had said: One of the murders—the woman on University Place—went down before Piersall had been popped over in Jersey. The other two came while he was being held without bail. No indication that the cops had linked the crimes in any way.

I went back to the different reports. Some were more detailed than others. One detective had really done a job—even included a diagram of the apartment's floor plan, an outline to show where the body had been found, an inventory of the victim's medicine cabinet. I checked the signature box at the bottom—I couldn't make a name out of the scrawl. But next to it was a box for the detective's name to be typed.

Morales.

Fuck!

B
eing in a box is bad enough—it turns to all kinds of holy hell when you don't know where the walls are. Or what they're made of. I folded up the reports, stuck them in my pocket and split.

I hit the switch for the garage door, nosed the Plymouth out onto the street behind my building. Once I got the car rolling uptown, I hit the cellular, reaching out for Hauser.

"It's me," I said. "Now a good time?"

"
Very
good," he said. "Come on up."

I couldn't find an open meter, so I settled for an outdoor parking lot. The attendant looked at the Plymouth with distaste, but he gave me a claim ticket without a word.

I knocked on Hauser's office door—he doesn't have a bell or a buzzer. He opened it quick, a phone with a long cord in his hand. Hauser motioned me over to the couch, made a "just give me a minute" gesture and went back to his conversation.

"Of course it's sourced," he said into the receiver. "No way I'd write it otherwise."

He listened impatiently to whoever was on the other end of the line. Then he said, "Look, here's the deal. I'll let you see the stuff, but there's no way you can talk to my source. You want to do it that way…okay. If you don't, I'll just—"

Hauser listened again, this time nodding his head in satisfaction. "I'll be there," he said, hanging up the phone.

"Great–looking boys, aren't they?" he said to me, pointing to a framed color photograph on the end table next to the couch.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Yours?"

"All mine," he said, a broad smile on his face. "The big one's J.A., the other one's J.R. You want to hear something absolutely fucking incredible," he went on without taking a breath, cluing me to one of those stupidass cutesy–poo stories all parents tell…like it's a big deal if their kid smeared jam on the wall or something. But I wanted something from him, so…

"Run it," I said.

"Okay. Last night, I'm reading JA a bedtime story. 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears.' Now, he's heard this one before, see, but it's one of his favorites. You remember how it goes, right?"

"Sure," I said, to prevent him from telling it to me.

"Okay, when you get to the part about the Papa Bear saying, 'Someone's been sitting in my chair,' J.A. pops up and asks me, 'How would he know?' I was gonna brush him off, finish the damn story so he'd get to sleep, but then he pipes up again. 'It's a
hard
chair, Dad. See? in the picture? So you couldn't tell by
looking
, right? So how would the bear
know
?' And it just knocked me out. You see it?"

"Yeah. The kid figured it out, right? How's a little girl gonna make a dent in a chair that holds a goddamned
bear
. That's amazing," I said, not lying now.

I guess a minute or two passed. Hauser was staring at my face. "What is it?" he asked.

"Nothing," I told him, shaking my head to clear it, feeling wetness on my face. Thinking about Hauser's kid being a genius so early, how Hauser adored that kid, how he must have hugged him and kissed him and been proud of him. Thinking about another kid, a little kid who questioned what he was told. Thinking about the vicious slap in the face, the ugly curses. Thinking…Ah, fuck this! I didn't need Hauser poking around in
my
life. So I pointed at his kids' pictures, asked him, "What's all those initials stand for?"

"Same as mine—nothing."

"You wanted to name them after you, how come you didn't just call one of them Junior?"

"Jews don't do that," he told me in a serious tone. "You only name a child after someone who's dead."

"Okay, I kind of knew that, I think. But I thought only Southerners named their kids with initials."

"There's Jews in Atlanta." Hauser smiled. "Now, how about showing me what you got?"

I handed over the reports. Hauser put them on his desk, pulled a few sheets of paper from his wire basket, laid them side–by–side with what I gave him. I smoked a couple of cigarettes while Hauser browsed around in the paperwork.

"Nothing here," he said finally, looking up from the desk.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing that would support the idea that it's the same killer."

"The signature—?"

"There
is
no goddamn 'signature,'" Hauser said. "It's not there. Take a look for yourself."

He shoved the sheaf of papers across the desk to me. I sat down to read, then stopped as soon as I saw AUTOPSY centered at the top of the first page. "How'd you—?" I asked.

His answer was a shrug, just a hint of self–satisfaction at the corner of his mouth.

The language of the reports was as cold as the corpses. They all ended the same way.

MANNER OF DEATH: HOMICIDE.

"Check where I marked," Hauser said.

Portions of the reports were covered with a yellow highlighter. But I didn't need it to pick out the red ribbon Belinda told me about—the woman on University Place had one stuffed inside her, just a little piece trailing out. But the two later ones—after Piersall was locked up—there was no ribbon mentioned. What the hell…?

"So this one woman, the one in New York, that's the only place they found the red ribbon?" I asked. "What about the one in Jersey—the one who survived?"

"They didn't
need
any red ribbon there, Burke. I did a NEXIS spin too. This cop pal of yours, he didn't happen to mention DNA, did he?"

"No," I said, already getting it, wondering if I could possibly be as stupid as Belinda must be thinking I was.

"The investigation they did—the one in Jersey, not here—they introduced DNA–fingerprinting evidence on top of the ID. The woman had enough of Piersall's flesh under her fingernails to make it open–and–shut. No question about it—they got the right guy"

"You're…sure?"

"A dead match," Hauser told me.

"So why wouldn't the ME report on the red ribbon in the other killings?"

"You got me, Hauser said. "It's the same coroner's office, true enough, but they used a different doctor for each one. I don't see anything suspicious in that—whoever's around, that's who gets to do it. And I read it
close
,too—no red ribbon, no trace of red fibers, no nothing."

"So there's no way this guy is innocent?"

"Not of the Jersey crime," he confirmed. "That DNA stuff is dynamite. I've been reading up on it. Even checked with an expert. There's some people in the forensics field who claim it can get screwed up pretty easy—wrong samples, not enough differentiation fields to work with, poor tagging procedures…all that. But the bottom line is that it's still being used—you got people being convicted with it every day—people getting
out
of jail with it too. They use it for paternity tests too–when the regular blood test isn't conclusive enough for the court."

"So you're off the job?" I asked him.

"Not a chance," he replied. "
Something's
going on here. Maybe not what you—or that cop friend of yours—think. But something. Let me know what happens, okay?"

"Yeah."

I
called in to Mama's. "Same girl," she said, as soon as she recognized my voice. "No wig this time."

"It's starting to get messy," I told her. "Any other calls?"

"Lawyer call. Say his name: For–too–not–toe. He say, he have your material. Six o'clock tonight."

"Thanks, Mama. Nothing from the Prof?"

"No. Maybe busy with fighter?"

"Maybe. I'll call you later."

I
ran through it in my head, showering and shaving on automatic pilot. Copycat crime, it's a fact of life. But most of the time, they copy the style more than the deed. There's no such thing as a first–time crime—humans have been on the planet too long for that. But once the media
names
a crime—like when the newspaper jerks started calling gang rape "wilding"—it becomes the hot ticket and every punk wants to play.

Take carjacking—nothing new about it except the name. But once the name catches on, the crime catches fire. It's all grapevine stuff: no way there's a nationwide group of mutants united in a giant conspiracy to hijack cars. It's a moron–move all the way—you risk life in the pen for a used car. But as soon as the media names it, the twenty–four–karat dumb–fuck imbeciles have to go and do it. Starts in D.C., spreads to New York. Then over to L.A., back to Chicago, down to Miami. You ask one of those idiots why they do it, they couldn't tell you. A whole battalion of sheep, following the herd, armed and stupid.

The latest craze is so totally retarded I almost couldn't believe it when I first heard about it—now they're robbing toll booths on the bridges. The G.W., the Triborough, the Whitestone…you name it. They just drive up to the booth, stick a gun out the window, and demand the cash. Incredible. Start with armed robbery, throw in a string of other crimes, and you're risking a dozen years Upstate before you can even
dream
about the Parole Board. All for what? A few handfuls of change and a bunch of tokens you'd have to sell at a discount. That's why prison never changes anybody—you can convince a man to be honest, but there's no way to make him smart.

Of course, the people who collect the tolls, they're demanding the right to carry firearms. There's a pretty picture—some self–righteous loon who watched too many cop shows blazing away in the middle of rush hour.

The real answer would be to eliminate the toll collectors entirely. They could train chimps to do it, but the chimps would probably get bored and swing off the job.

You see it everywhere. Somebody says they found a syringe in their can of Pepsi, next thing you know, tampered cans are showing up all over the country. Sure. Good thing they don't make you pass an IQ test before they accept you into prison—most of the joints would be empty.

A pattern crime, one with a
signature
, that's custom–made for copycats. That's a fact of life in this cancer ward of a city. But who could be copying something he never heard of…?

I finished shaving, still no closer to an answer. Time to go to work. I know how to look like a lawyer. All you need is a dark pinstripe suit, a dress shirt with a monogram on the cuff, any necktie that looks expensive. The younger breed goes more for the Italian look, more silk, more slouchy—the older guys stay closer to tradition. They wear their hair different too. The older guys go for blow–dried razor–cuts—the younger ones wear their hair longer, go heavy on the gel. They both display flashy wristwatches and leather attaché cases—slim ones, so they don't get confused with the 18–B guys, who have to haul files around with them. And the look is indispensable: superior, snotty, arrogant, with a distinctive weasel–tint to the eyes.

I didn't bother with any of that to go see Fortunato. He knows what I do. And I know what he is. I put on a pair of carpenter's pants over steel–toed work shoes. Then a black sweatshirt under an old leather jacket. Lots of pockets, lots of room…I didn't need an attaché case.

Fortunato makes most of his scores downtown, from the pits on the first floor of Centre Street to the tower in Foley Square, but he wasn't a Baxter Street type of guy—his office was on Forty–second, between Madison and Lex.

His name was in large gilt letters, standing guard over the double doors to the office. I stepped inside, into an empty reception area. The sliding glass window to the receptionist's desk was standing open. I reached my hand in and rapped on the top of the desk. A guy in his twenties came around a corner. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His tie was pulled loose from around his neck. He looked pressured.

"Can I help you?" he asked, an undercurrent of annoyance in his voice.

"I'm here to see Fortunato," I told him. "Name's Burke."