Ladykiller (11 page)

Megan lay on her bed, dressed and ready to go, reading the paper. Or
trying to. Her neighbors were going at it above her head, their bed
creaking like a freighter in a storm.

Megan had been trying without success to suppress indecent
thoughts about Dave. She wondered whether he was noisy in bed.
Robin had just blown a few short gusts of air out his nose when he
came.

All was quiet upstairs now. Megan folded the paper on her lap.
Her buzzer sounded.
“It’s me,” Dave said over the intercom. Familiar, as if they had
been going together for ages.
“I’ll be right down.” Megan checked herself in the mirror for the
tenth time since she emerged from the bathroom a half hour early,
ready to go. She made sure her stockings were straight under her
skirt, which was shorter than the one she had worn the day before.
Dave seemed tired, dark smudges hung below his eyes. But he
seemed glad to see her, and smiled broadly.When he greeted her, the
way he said her name had a pleasing sound. She shivered.
“I’m fine. How have you been? You look tired.”
“I was up late working. And I didn’t get much sleep. My mother
went in the hospital last night with chest pains. I raced out to Queens
early this morning.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. They’re sending her home in a little while. A few
chest pains. Nothing to be alarmed about. She’s a tough, old Irish
lady.”They got in the car. “Are you Irish, by any chance?”
“A bit.The name is.We’re mongrels really.”
“Grow up Catholic?” he asked.
It was a prospective-boyfriend-type question. It didn’t displease
her. “Presbyterian. If we get married, though, I can convert.”
They both laughed. She had no idea why she had blurted that
out, but his evident pleasure over the remark dispelled her embarrassment.
“I’m glad you’re not angry at me,” he said. “Yesterday at the crisis
center, it was, well, a little tense toward the end.”
“Yeah. Nita can be like that sometimes. But she is really terrific.
You have to get to know her. Everyone worships her.”
Dave sped through a red light. “She have a guy?”
“Nita doesn’t need men.There’s just her work.That’s her life.”
“She’s very attractive.”
“You bet. Men meet her one time and fall madly in love with her.
But she has no time for them.” Megan noticed that Dave had been admiring her legs as he dodged in and out of traffic, speeding through
red lights; she felt she was in strong, capable hands. “Unlike me.”
He looked over sharply. “You must have a guy. A woman like
you.”
“Not at the moment. I’ve got the crisis center, my graduate
work, and Nita. No fellas.What about you?”
“I don’t have any fellas, either.” They laughed, but he answered
the question.“No. I’m unattached, too.”
“I could have sworn that that detective —”
“No. Never shit where you eat —” He gulped, sorry that he had
let the locker room vulgarity escape. “She’s a good detective. And a
great chick. But I work with her.”
Megan smiled to herself.They drove in silence for a while.When
Dave spoke his tone was darker.
“I was going out with someone for a while, but it ended badly.”
She decided not to pursue it. “Where are we going?”
“The husband of Evelyn Hernandez works at a hotel in Midtown.
She was the first victim.”
“I thought Lucy Cristides was the first victim?”
“Lucy was the first we paid attention to. Maybe, I hate to say this,
because she was white.Then we linked her to an earlier, unsolved case,
that of Evelyn. The third was Kimberly Worth, the stockbroker. Then
Lydia Daniels, the hooker. And of course, Reuben.You can tell from
the list that, at least on the surface, they have nothing in common.”
“Yes.” Megan pondered for a moment. “I haven’t seen any of them
around the crisis center, but that doesn’t mean much.They could have
used aliases or dressed differently. Some people are awkward about
coming to visit us.”
“Do you know a client at the crisis center named Thomas Cronen? Goes by Ace.”
Megan nodded. “Sort of. He’s some kind of scam artist, a petty
criminal, right? I think I can place him. Maybe.”
“He was a client of Reuben’s. I know him from the precinct.
You’re right. He’s not exactly a solid citizen.”
“What was the story on Evelyn Hernandez?”
Dave turned onto Lexington Avenue. “She was the housewife.
Had four kids, all of them disabled. She stayed home, in Spanish
Harlem, caring for them. Her husband works the desk in a hotel.”
“Where did she die?”
“In a vacant lot beside the SPCA. You can hear the dogs in the
pound around the clock. Their howling must have drowned out the
gunshot. Someone spotted the body at first light.”
“They were all killed late at night?”
“Yes.”
They parked in front of the Lexington Arms. The doorman
started to object that they were blocking the taxi pickup area, but
Dave waved him away by flashing his badge. As they climbed the
red-carpeted steps to the plush lobby, Dave said, “The Hernandezes
didn’t have such a great marriage, according to their neighbors. She
had bruises from where he beat her.”
“Maybe it was the pressure from all those handicapped children.
The money it costs to support them is one thing. The emotional toll
on the parents can be harder.”
“I guess,” Dave said. “When she died, Evelyn was one month
pregnant.That was too soon for the autopsy to tell whether this baby
would have been handicapped or not.”
“Her husband couldn’t have been happy about another kid coming. Are you sure he didn’t kill her?”
“Very sure. He was working the night shift when she got shot. A
dozen witnesses confirmed that.” Dave strode authoritatively up to the
desk and displayed his badge. “Felix Hernandez, please.”
Behind the desk, a woman dressed in the uniform of a nineteenth-century Prussian hussar, complete with gold epaulets, spoke
quietly into the phone.
A burly man dressed in the identical getup emerged from the
back. His thick moustache bristled at the sight of Dave.
“I’d like to ask you a few more questions, Mr. Hernandez,” Dave
said.“This is Ms. Morrison, a sociologist working with the police on
this case.”
Hernandez made no move to shake hands. “Let’s go over to that
corner so we don’t disturb nobody,” he said, pointing. As they crossed
the lobby, he muttered to himself.
They sat on brocade covered chairs.
“I know you’ve answered a lot of questions about your wife, sir,”
Dave began. “We’re sorry to bother you again.”
Hernandez’s moustache squirmed in irritation. “Now what?”
“How are your children doing, Mr. Hernandez?” Megan asked.
“This must be an especially tough time for them.”
“No kidding, lady,” Hernandez said. “I got them all at relatives.
Before Evelyn went and got herself killed, I had to work like a son of a
bitch to support them. Now I got them with relatives but I got to pay
them. I’m paying more now than ever before. My own damn relatives.” He shook his head. “The kids can’t feed themselves. Can’t even
go to the bathroom themselves.”
“I know it must be difficult,” Megan said, full of sympathy. She
sensed Dave watching her. She was in charge of the interview.
Hernandez bristled. “Difficult? You don’t know the half of it,
lady.You got kids?”
“No, sir. I’m not married. Could you tell us if your wife had any
interests outside the home?”
“Interests? Christ.” He glared suspiciously at Megan. “Evelyn
wasn’t one of them feminists, if that’s what you mean. It was all she
could do to cope with being a good wife. You think caring for four
retarded kids was easy? She didn’t have the time for none of your
‘interests outside the home.’”
“Then what was she doing in the middle of the night, miles from
her apartment?”
Dave watched with interest as Megan put some steel in her voice.
“Look, I talked to the cops a million times.” Hernandez was getting angry. “I don’t know what she was doing. I was working. Here.
Ask anybody. Maybe she was coming to see me. I don’t know.”
“Actually,” Dave said, “we wanted to know if you ever heard
Evelyn mention the West Side Crisis Center?”
Hernandez turned red and got up. “What’s this?” he said, furious.
“No. Listen, I’m getting tired of these questions —”
“We believe it might have something to do with your wife’s
death,” Megan said forcefully.
Hernandez stood with fists clenched, eyes bulging, and moustache flared. “No, I never heard of it,” he shouted, not caring that
guests in the lobby turned to stare. “And if I ever caught Evelyn going
there, I’d have —”
Megan stood up also, watching him carefully. “What?” she
taunted him softly. “You’d have what?”
“I’d have —” Hernandez seemed about to detonate.
“Megan,” Dave said in warning. He stood up.
She ignored Dave and leaned toward Hernandez. “What would
you have done, tough guy? Or don’t you have the guts?”
“I’d have killed her, you bitch,” Hernandez screamed. He lunged
for Megan, his fists enormous, his face swollen and red.
Dave intercepted him, grabbing his arm and twisting it, bringing
the man hard to his knees. Dave with one hand held Hernandez’s wrist
between the man’s shoulder blades. He grabbed the guy’s neck with
the other and forced it toward the floor.When Hernandez grew still,
Dave said, “I’m going to release you now. One wrong move, and
you’ll get hurt.”
Hernandez’s face tilted up at them. His eyes were brimming.
“She went to some bullshit psycho clinic.Telling all them about what a
shit I was. Me who worked so hard to take care of her and the kids.
She’s the one kept having them idiot kids. It was killing me.”
Megan nodded. She was shaken, but she stood her ground.
The lobby was at a standstill. People were like mannequins, immobile, limbs and heads freeze-framed, absorbed in the drama.
As they walked down the red-carpeted stairs, Dave said to
Megan, “I thought you took the sympathetic approach.”
“Sometimes, you need another way,” Megan said.
“How’s this for an approach?” Dave said. “Want to go out to dinner tonight?”

“What about picking up that Cronen character?” Blake asked.
“Where are we on that.”
“We should bag him by tonight,”Wise said. “He hasn’t been to the
SRO he calls home.Who knows what garbage can he’s sleeping in? But
he usually comes out to the Deuce after sundown, sort of like a mosquito.”
“Buzzes out of hiding,” Safir said.
“What about that background check on the staff at the crisis center, Jamie?” Blake went on.
Dave had felt her watching him, as he often did. The weight of
her eyes shifted to Blake.
“Pretty nondescript bunch, Loo,” Jamie said. She ran through the
life stories of the do-gooding group that worked at the center. When
she came to Nita, Dave sat up straight to listen. “A brilliant student.
Working on her doctorate, but she’s run into some kind of trouble
with her adviser. The person I talked to would only hint. But the adviser seems to feel that she’s gone off the deep end with her topic.
Seems that she probably won’t get her degree.”
“Have you covered everybody at the crisis center, Jamie?” Dave
found himself asking.
“Why, no, Dave,” Jamie said with a wry twist of her mouth. “I
don’t want to leave out Megan Morrison.”
“Tell us about Dillon’s girlfriend,”Wise said.
“Takes her for one interview a day,” Safir chimed in.
“That’s so he can stretch it out,” said Wise.
Dave scowled. “Get off it. She can’t afford the time to do all the
interviews at once.”
“I don’t have much on Morrison,” Jamie said. “Nice white girl —
what can I tell you. Except...”
“Except?”Wise said.
“Except?” Safir said.
“She had an affair with this married professor at college. Robin
Tolner. He busted it up. Broke her heart. I’ve got the report here.”
Jamie pushed the folder across the table to Dave. “Want to take a peek?”
“No, thanks,” Dave said coldly.
Jamie looked at him searchingly, then pulled back the folder.
Blake leapt in. “One other item.This comes from the medical examiner’s.” He waited for all to turn their attention back to him and
continued. “Lydia Daniels was HIV-positive, although she showed no
symptoms, yet.The hooker had AIDS.”
Dave nodded. “That makes sense. I bet she went to the crisis
center because of it. Evelyn Hernandez because she had a bunch of
crippled kids, with another en route, and an old man who beat her.
Who knows why the cheerleader and the stockbroker went.”
“If they went,” Safir said.
“Remember that Bergstrom bitch” — Wise caught himself and
made a semi-apologetic face at Jamie — “that Bergstrom woman told
Dave they’d know if their loonie-tunes types ended up blown away by
a .45. So how can any of them have gone to the crisis center?”
“Megan pointed out to me that they could have come in looking
different, even in disguise,” Dave said. “Besides, the center’s records
about their clients are pretty sparse. It’d be easy to use an alias. The
staff is afraid of scaring away people by demanding too much identification.”
“Megan?”Wise said. “That’s Megan Morrison you’re making the
first-name-basis reference to at this point in time?”
“Megan, your interview pal?” Safir said.
“Knock it off,” Blake said. “Listen, now, I —”
Chief of Detectives Mancuso blasted into the room, followed by
his entourage. “They told me you were in here, Blake,” he brayed.
“Why aren’t you people finding this damn killer?”

“Tell me about it,” Dave said. He hoisted his beer. The bar light
played through the mug. “Jimmy, I wish I could help you.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy said mournfully. They sucked on their beers and
let the good cheer of the other drinkers wash over them. At last
Jimmy said, “What you doing tonight?”
“I was going out to see my mother, but she’s playing the martyr.
Mrs. Corrigan will be buzzing around. I’ll go out tomorrow.”
“Knowing your mother, she’ll be back on her feet tomorrow,
kicking ass and taking names.”
“Tonight, I’ve got a date,” Dave announced.
“A date? With who?”
“This very nice girl I met the other day.” Dave realized he had to
watch what he said about Megan, lest he tip off his friend to the crisis
center phase of the investigation.
“Pretty?”
“Very pretty. And very smart. Sexy, in a clean cut kind of way.”
“What does she do?” Jimmy asked.
“Oh, she’s a social worker. Name’s Megan.”
“Yeah? Where does she work?”
Dave said nothing and took a swig of beer.
Jimmy instantly knew he had struck a nerve. “What’s the matter
with asking where she works?”
“She works at the West Side Crisis Center,” Dave told his friend.
“That’s the same place Reuben Silver worked.” Jimmy ran his
thumb down the frost on his mug. “Are you guys focusing on the crisis
center? Is it connected with the murders?”
“Jimmy I can’t talk about this.” Dave understood that he was as
much as confirming Jimmy’s suspicion. “Look, if any of that appears in
the paper, Mancuso will cut my heart out. Already, he suspects I leak
to you.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy said to his friend. He drank some beer. They ordered another round.Then Jimmy said, “So, you really like this girl?”
Dave found himself breaking into a smile. “I do. A lot. A whole
lot.”
Jimmy watched Dave shrewdly. “I haven’t seen you this excited
about a chick since — for a long time. I think you’re on the road to
recovery, my friend.”
Dave nodded at the insight, which had not occurred to him until
now. He took a long drink of beer, almost a toast to good fortune. “I
think you’re right,” he said.