God Told Me To (8 page)

The neighborhood where the dual suicide had occurred was much changed from what it had been ten years ago. The corner grocery store was now called a
bodega.
The Sanitation Department didn’t make as many pickups as it used to. Nicholas and Jordan went knocking on doors. They found a few residents who hadn’t moved with the change and who remembered the suicides.

The victims had kept to themselves and seldom said more than a couple words to anybody. They had moved to the neighborhood shortly after their marriage. Judith Phillips was already pregnant. Her husband was rumored to have had his own accounting business which he gave up after the birth of their child. The child had rarely been seen. The woman remembered the child as being very beautiful with pale skin and delicate features. He never played with other children. Two women blamed the child for the Phillipses’ isolation. They believed he suffered from a defect which embarrassed his parents. This, they said, would explain why the father gave up his business to stay home. And as proof of their theory, they pointed to the child’s awful paleness and the fact that guardrails were kept on the Phillipses’ ground-floor windows.

The Deputy Commissioner placed his hands over their report and slowly shook his head. His eyes narrowed with suspicion and his thin lips were pulled tight. Ice was in his voice.

“There is little that is specific in this report.”

Nicholas said, “Sir, it’s as if somebody deliberately and carefully has kept Bernard Phillips hidden all his life.”

Hendriks stared coolly at Jordan. “You two wouldn’t be trying to put something over on me.”

“Everything we’ve learned is in the report,” said Jordan.

“That isn’t very much.”

Nicholas spoke up. “Sir, the lack of information is what’s significant. It’s the exact opposite of a case which has too many suspects.”

“Lieutenant, this whole business is the result of your talking me into it. I gave you a shot. Once you turned up with a name, I gave you free rein. Don’t think this hasn’t been noticed by others. People are becoming curious. Both about what it is you’re doing and by the expenses you are running up. Do you have any idea what would happen if this report should get out? Frankly, we would all look like idiots. I have no intention of letting that happen. Do you understand, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir. I think you—”

“I assume you have no objections to answering a few questions which this report has prompted?”

“No, sir.”

“Fine. Now it says here certain people suggested that the child known as Baby Boy Phillips on the records, and whom you claim is Bernard Phillips, possibly suffered from birth defects. Why haven’t you checked with the doctor who delivered the baby?”

“The man is vacationing in Europe,” Nicholas answered. “I’ve made an appointment to see him the day he returns.”

“What’s the significance of the barred windows? That’s a common burglary protection in this town.”

“Ten years ago that neighborhood had a low crime rate. Bars were uncommon.”

“Eleven-year-old boys don’t just go off on their own and survive. Detective Jordan, would you care to speculate on how this was accomplished.”

Jordan shrugged.

“Come, come, Detective Jordan. You must have some idea.”

“Maybe a rich family took him in. Maybe he was blessed.”

Hendriks’ tongue darted out and snaked along his lips.

“It also reads here that you two checked with homosexual organizations and covered known homosexual hangouts. I hope you enjoyed your work. Since the blond beauty described by your witnesses sounds queer as a Greek sailor, I wonder if you covered that aspect enough.”

Jordan said, “You might say, sir, it came to a dead end.”

Hendriks’ mouth curved into a frigid smile. “I’m happy you possess a bit of wit, Detective Jordan, as you may soon find yourself without a rank. Now about drugs?”

“None of our informants on the street ever heard of Phillips,” Nicholas answered.

Jordan added, “There’s no evidence of any of the slayers ever using them.”

“No drugs, no sex. Yet Phillips, for whatever reason, gets people to obey his will.”

Nicholas said, “Some form of hypnosis is the best we can come up with at this time.”

“Like Lamont Cranston, Bernard Phillips has the power to cloud men’s minds. Unfortunately, the D.A. will undoubtedly wonder whether or not a jury can withstand such power.”

“Sir, it’s in our report. We’ve talked with two psychiatrists who use hypnosis in their work and a nightclub performer who uses it in his act. All agree it is possible. The right hypnotist given the right subject under the proper circum—”

“That’ll be enough, Lieutenant. I’m giving you one more week. I’ll be spending this week going over my options. I’ll choose the appropriate one if you don’t bring me something solid.”

The detectives were about to leave the office when Hendriks said, “In your report I didn’t read that you checked out the marriage license bureau. Your Bernard Phillips may have gotten married.”

Jordan responded, “Sir, without an approximate date to start with, going through those licenses could take weeks.”

“You have one week.”

It was dusk gray when they left the headquarters building. They walked silently along the little street named Police Plaza, hands in their pockets, footsteps thudding softly.

Jordan said, “Don’t take that lame sonofabitch too serious. We got him just as much by the balls as he’s got us. He used us to try picking up a long shot. He won’t risk letting that come out.”

“We still have a week.”

“Nicholas, we’re not getting anywhere.”

“I’ll find him.”

“Terrific. Then you can start building a case.”

Their car was parked on one of the many short, narrow streets that crisscross lower Manhattan like a scrambled tic-tac-toe. Nicholas told Jordan to take the car, they would see each other in the morning.

“Sorry, Nicholas. I got that court appearance. You’re on your own the next two, maybe three days.”

“Forgot about that.”

“Call me if—”

“Listen, Jordan. I want to thank you for going along with the report the way I wrote it.”

Jordan chuckled. He shoved a cigarette into his mouth and the flame of a lighter lit his face. “We can control Hendriks just so far. Any idea his reaction if he learned this all started ’cause a couple psychos thought God was giving the orders?”

Nicholas asked, “What’re you thinking?”

“Hell, I’ve been a yo-yo on this thing. Phillips might exist or he might be just a big happenstance. For your sake, I hope he exists. I like you, Nicholas. You’re a good cop. We don’t exactly wear the same hats, but believe it or not, I respect you. Wouldn’t want to see you go down. You’ve been working yourself ragged. I hate to think maybe you’ve overdone it.”

“Meaning?”

“Straw and mud, buddy. Phillips could be a puppet you created.”

“You think I’ve lost part of the deck?”

Jordan laughed and drove away.

Nicholas stood with his hands in his pockets. He was surrounded by the various federal and state and city buildings which take up much of lower Manhattan. Some loomed as high, stark, black shadows in the growing darkness; the court buildings were low and sedate with long flat steps leading to the columned entrances. The architecture of the courts gave them the appearance of silhouettes from the past. There was little traffic in this part of town after business hours. The noises of traffic from a few blocks away echoed with a hollow, unnatural sound. The echoes, the looming darkness, the contrasting styles of architecture caused him to feel curiously abstracted from time and place.

He could think of nothing he could do tonight to help his case. He had a whole night, the first in over a month, free to himself and it seemed a loss.

There was a church nearby that he had sometimes stopped into. He headed toward it. After walking only half a block he decided a church wasn’t the place to take the mood he was in.

He turned. Walked the short distance to Chinatown. The milling crowds, the garish splashes of neon, the babble of a language he didn’t understand, suited him. He experienced the submissive comfort of the stranger who gives himself over to an unfamiliar place. He strolled, passing windows marked with strange Chinese characters and painted dragons, windows hung with steamed orange ducks and smoked black eels, windows displaying bins of fish and squid and pegged lobsters crawling over chipped ice, windows with baskets of odd vegetables, with multicolored herbs and roots and nuts, with masks, silks, papier-mâché lions, plaster Buddhas, daggers, woks, slippers, carvings.

He entered a phone booth and dialed Casey.

SEVEN

Green-shaded lamps hung low over the tables in the Harlem pool hall and spilled puddles of flat white light over dusty green felt. Only one tabletop was level and untorn. There was a dank, unfriendly odor about the place. A radio sitting on top of a broken jukebox was tuned to WNCN. The classical music was incongruous with the place. A man, tall and black and wearing sunglasses, was practicing complicated shots on the good table. The man’s mustache resembled an inverted
V.
He was the only person in the place. The pool hall was not meant to make money—it was merely an address the tall shooter used.

A side door opened. Detective Jordan entered.

The shooter didn’t look up. He kept his concentration on his game. He sank the five balls that were on the table with a single shot.

“Little early, Jordan. Mr. Straight-Arrow Nicholas let you off the leash?”

The black man threw an envelope on the table. Jordan picked it up and put it in his pocket without opening it.

“Always nice to see a man so trusting he don’t bother to count.”

“You wouldn’t cheat us, Zero.”

“Who’s the us, Jordan?”

The detective smiled. “I’ve good news for you. One more week and Nicholas and me are done.”

“Too bad.” Zero dropped six balls on the table and arranged them for his next shot. “Having Nicholas off the street was good for business.”

Jordan sneered, “Why? He didn’t work Narcotics or Vice.”

“Cop like Nicholas works everything. Not like a fat pig like you who jus’ works both ends ’gainst the middle.”

“After next week I’ll have more time to look after your interests, Zero.”

Zero picked up his cue stick and chalked it.

“I figure I owe you a little more time, Zero. ’Cause starting next week the envelopes have to be bigger.”

Zero continued chalking the cue stick. “No way.”

“Inflationary times. Ten percent.”

“Can’t be done.”

“I’m only passing on my orders, Zero. You talk to the people who give you orders. They’ll just absorb it in the next shipment of white that hits the street.”

Zero put the chalk on the edge of the table. “You’re pushin’ it, Jordan.”

The detective picked up the white cue ball.

“Orders, Zero. We both take ’em. It’s a take-order world. Break them and you break the perfect pattern.”

He rolled the white ball and smashed the arrangement Zero had made for his shot.

“You spoiled my game, Jordan.”

Zero held his cue stick with both hands. He held it level with his chest and parallel to the table. He smiled. The inverted
V
of his mustache took on the look of a dark scar. And he broke the cue stick as effortlessly as he would have snapped a dry twig.

The waiter cleared the last of their dinner dishes and placed a fresh coffee and another brandy in front of Nicholas. Casey had never seen him drink as much as he had tonight. Two cocktails, wine with the meal, and now he was on a third brandy. It wasn’t a great deal of alcohol for some of the other men she had shared time with, but then she had been attracted to Peter Nicholas because he was unlike the others. Men who were self-destructive and uncommitted, and who she had come to view as living in a headlong spin to nowhere.

She watched him tilt back the brandy snifter. Since she had last seen him, he appeared to have lost weight and he looked exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes, his shoulders sloped as if he had been carrying a heavy burden. He put down the snifter and resumed talking. In addition to the drinking, a second first for the night had been his opening up to her about his work. He had talked a steady, speedy rap.

“Everyone of them said the same thing. So did the old suicide note. Never mentioned Jesus. It was always God. God told me to. And I’m the one who put it together.”

“Supercop.”

“Ha ha.”

“What do you think it means.”

He took a quick sip of brandy. “I’m not sure. I’m just following through on the investigation. I’ll get Phillips. That’s one thing I know. I put it together and I’m going to get him.”

“Maybe you just lucked out on learning about it.”

He shook his head. “No. More than that. It’s like I’m involved in some other way.”

She grinned. “Something supernatural?”

“I’ve had this feeling ever since being on that water tower with the Gorman kid. I guess you could call it supernatural.”

She screwed up her face into a mask of mock horror and made a low, howling sound.

“You’re getting to be a very spooky man, Peter Nicholas. I don’t know if I want to be married to a spooky man. Ghosts are supposed to have cold hands and icy feet and hollow weenies. What kind of children would we have? Vampires. Little goblins. Poltergeists.”

She quit when she saw he wasn’t laughing with her. She reached across the table and lifted his hand by the thumb and gently shook it.

“Hey. You going to spend a night at home for a change?”

He nodded. Grinned a slightly lopsided grin that gave his tired features a boyish quality. Playfully scolded, “Listen, little lady, a cop’s wife has to get used to being alone now and again.”

“Swell. For my next affair I’ll try shacking up with a fireman.”

He made a feeble attempt at a joke about firemen and hoses.

She said, “I’m not yet a cop’s wife. I am getting damn lonely being a cop’s woman.”

He snapped, “I’ve been busy! Okay! Told you what I’m doing. Thought you understood.”

He threw back his snifter and drained it. She decided not to say anything as she watched him raise the empty glass and wave it until he got the waiter’s attention. He kept his eyes on the table until his refill came. When he spoke again, it was with an apologetic tone.