Ladykiller (13 page)

Dave waited across the street from the Foxy Lady until Tony Topnut
sauntered through the front door. He came in every day in the late afternoon, ready for a night of peddling watery drinks and slippery sin.

Dave had just gotten back from seeing his mother in Queens. As
ever, it had been a trying experience. Mrs. Corrigan had hovered
around the bedside, complaining about hospitals and the sad state of
the world. His mother lay in bed in a frilly, oddly girlish nightgown,
bony and filled with weariness.

“I have one son, and he can’t find himself a decent woman to give
me a grandson,” she told Mrs. Corrigan, as if Dave were invisible.
“Well, to tell the truth, Ma, I’m starting to see someone now,”
Dave said. “She’s very nice.”
“Not another hooker, I hope,” Mrs. Corrigan said acidly.
Dave exhaled loudly. “She’s a very nice girl, Ma. I’d like to bring
her by when you’re up to it. I’m sure you’d like her. Her name’s
Megan. Megan Morrison. She’s part Irish.”
“Part Irish,” his mother said. “That woman of your father’s was
part Irish.When I die, don’t you let her come to my funeral.”
Dave crossed 42nd Street at the light. The traffic strained at the
crosswalk, eager to lunge at every pedestrian and splatter him across
their hoods. It would be a wild night on the Deuce, and the animals
would howl.
Tony Topnut, his Hawaian shirt featuring bare-breasted hula
girls, presided at the bar, where the lost souls clustered for their
seamy communion. A woman in pasties and a G-string gyrated on
stage, her sagging belly keeping time to the thumping music. Dave
gave Tony Topnut a mock salute. Tony Topnut stopped his chore, wiping dirty glasses with a dirty rag.
“What do you want, Dillon?” Tony Topnut was smug and mean
today, capable of facing down every cop in the city or every demon
from hell.
“In the back,” Dave said, and jerked his thumb.
“What the fuck for?”Tony growled.
“Because it’s good for your health.”
Tony Topnut threw his rag down on the bar in disgust and walked
toward the back.
En route, Dave passed Billy Ray Battle, who sat at the bar over a
beer. He glared at Dave, his eyepatch in place.
Dave stopped. “I heard you made bail.”
Billy Ray muttered something obscene and inaudible. He turned
away. Dave kept going.
In the back, among the mops and ladders, Tony Topnut crossed
his arms across his bulk. “What, Dillon?”
“I got it on good authority that you sold a piece to Ace.”
“Your authority is smoking the wacky weed, Dillon. I don’t sell
no guns. Not to nobody. You trying to haul me into the Ladykiller
case, selling unlicensed weapons to murderers? No chance.”
“Listen, you don’t like me, and I don’t like you. But you know I’ll
be straight with you and I’m telling you that I’m not aiming to charge
you or anyone else with a weapons beef. I don’t care if you sold Ace a
warehouse full of crack.Your dealings with him stay in here.”
“What’s your question, Dillon?”
“Did you sell him a .45 day before yesterday?”
“Why should I tell you?”
Dave caught Tony Topnut by his fleshy throat and slammed him
against the wall. “Because if you don’t, I will kill you.”
“I did, I did, I did,”Tony Topnut croaked. Dave released him, and
he rubbed his throat. “Brand-new .45. Got it off this Bolivian dude.
No way Ace could’ve used that gun for any of his killings. Television
said the gun he used was forty years old.”
`”We haven’t found a brand-new .45 in Ace’s room,” Dave said.
“How do you explain that?”
“How the fuck should I know, Dillon? Jesus.”

The West Side Crisis Center was bathed in the crimson light of the
hamburger-pink sunset. There was an eerie, after-the-battle calm
about the place. Dave used his key to let himself in. When he topped
the stairs, Nita stood waiting for him. File folders lay in piles atop a
creaky old table.

“Here are Reuben’s files, detective,” Nita said. “As you requested.
I truly hope that this will be the end of it. You have your murderer.
We’d like to get back to business as usual, if you don’t mind.”

“I have no idea.We’ve been busy here, thanks to you people. She
must be tired.”
“If you see her, please tell her I’ll call her later.”
Nita said nothing. She settled down at her desk to do her own
paperwork, but Dave felt her watching him.
Dave couldn’t find any files that remotely resembled the victims.
No housewives with handicapped children, no cheerleaders with teen
problems, no stockbrokers, no hookers with AIDS.
“No luck,” Dave said to Nita. “I’d better examine the other files to
see if they got mixed up with the other social workers’. Or maybe Ace
was mistaken or lying about whose clients the victims were.”
“You’ll have to arrange that with Dr. Solomon, detective. This is
outside my purview. I am sorry.”
“The funny thing is,” Dave said, “that I can’t find Ace’s file. It was
here when we were going through the files together.”
“I don’t know about that, detective,” Nita said. “You were the last
one to touch it. We entrusted the files to you, and I do hope you
haven’t lost one.”
“The file would have been helpful in Ace’s prosecution, Nita,”
Dave said, ignoring her accusatory tone.
“That’s not my concern.”
“Ace murdered your colleague and, supposedly, four of your crisis center’s clients — and this is not your concern?”
“Today has been a long day, detective. Please don’t make it any
more trying. I’ll deal with my grief in my own way.” Nita resumed
reading.
“Something else is odd,” Dave said.
She lowered the paper in front of her. “What is that?”
“Reuben’s file on Ace was neatly typed. His other files here are a
mess. Some are even handwritten. Why should Ace’s file have been
any different?”
“If you hadn’t lost it, maybe we could find an answer,” Nita said
shortly. “Now, if you don’t mind, would you please leave and let me
get on with my work?”
“Your work isn’t the only important work, Nita.”
“Is that a fact?” Nita lay down the report she had been reading.
“Your work is done, detective. Time for you to go out and get drunk
with all your pals, slapping butts or whatever you do in your spare
moments.You’ve caught your killer.”
“Have we, Nita? Have we really?”
“You’re the policeman.You tell me.”
“I’m fascinated by serial killers,” Dave said. “And this building has
something to do with the Ladykiller that we still don’t comprehend.
It’s interesting how it starts.”
“How what starts?” Nita sat back in her chair in an attempt to be
calm.
“Serial killings.With Henry Lee Lucas,Ted Bundy, practically all
the infamous serial killers, the series started in the same manner. See,
the first incident was an accident.Then they went through a panicked
phase, fearful they would be caught. When nothing happened, they
got cocky. They started to plan the murders. No accidents anymore.
Method. Calculation. They began to think of themselves as God. No
one could touch them. They were smarter than the police, than the
victims. They didn’t grasp the awful penalty of their actions, even if
they never got caught.”
“Penalty, detective?”
“They had lost their humanity. They’d descended into madness.
They were lost to the world. They were lost to themselves and to
whatever nobility they once aspired to.”
“I’m not an expert on this subject, detective,” Nita said, after a
pause.
“I don’t believe Ace Cronen is the Ladykiller,” Dave said evenly. “I
don’t believe he has what it takes to kill another human being.”
Nita stared at him. “How can you be sure, detective?”
Dave tapped his forehead. “Cop’s intuition.”
Clumping down the stairs, he met Megan. Dave brightened and
reached to embrace her. But she shrank away from him.
“What’s the matter?”
“Not here.” She pushed past him on the stairs.
He caught her arm. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’ve been busy
with the arrest and had to visit my mom. Please don’t be mad. Maybe
we could get a bite to eat.”
“I can’t. Not now. Nita is waiting for me.”
“What’s going on, Megan? I thought we —”
“Not now, Dave. Not here.” She ran up the stairs.
“Megan,” he called after her. She disappeared into Nita’s territory
at the top of the stairs. Dave slowly walked downstairs and out the
door.

Nita took Megan out for dinner to a tiny French restaurant, where the
waiters fussed over them and the food blessed the palate. She listened
as Megan talked confusedly about men in general and Dave in particular.

“God, I wanted him,” Megan said over coffee. “I wanted him so
bad.”
“Megan, please,” Nita said with a small smile. “Hormonal urges
are awfully trivial, aren’t they? Your work is far more important than
some man, no matter how sexy he seems.”
“I know,” admitted Megan, miserably.
The restaurant’s owner brought over brandy and insisted they
join him in a small drink. Nita thanked him and told him no.
“Let’s go back to my apartment for a night cap.”
At Nita’s, they both threw down their bags and kicked off their
shoes. Megan collapsed into a chair. Nita poured them cognacs. Then
she noticed Megan staring past her. She turned around and saw that
her bag was open and the butt of her new .45 was sticking out. How
had she been this careless?
“Oh, my God,” Megan exclaimed. Her eyes were as wide as headlights.
Megan charged out of her chair. But she sailed right past Nita’s
open bag to stand beside the fish tank, bent over in wonder. “Is that
bright blue one new? I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”
“Do you like it?” Nita asked. She casually strolled over to the
tank, making certain to close her bag on the way.
“I love it.” Standing close together, they toasted the bright blue
fish.
Once Megan had left, Nita sat in her window and gazed at the
apartments across the street, imagining them to be Skinner boxes,
compartments for rats in psychology experiments. One couple was
arguing, their unheard invective fairly reddening the air. Another couple was reading, him a newspaper, her a paperback. And a lonely
young woman was absorbed in television, mentally chewing her cud.
The lonely young woman bore a resemblance to Megan.
She thought about what Dave Dillon had said about serial killers.
Obviously, the man had read some foolish FBI pamphlet. She had been
interested and had failed to take offense. Because the serial-killer
genre did not apply to her. Nita also possessed some rudimentary
knowledge about the breed. She had done some preliminary research
to doctor Ace’s file, to which she forged Reuben’s signature. She had
thrown in the part about Ace’s violent youth and cruelty to animals to
hook Dillon — and the ploy certainly had worked. She was actually
pleased that Dillon was sharp enough to spot the difference between
the cleanly typed, doctored file on Ace and Reuben’s other files. But
Nita remained convinced that, in the end, she had Dillon and the
police fooled.
Still, she kept returning in her mind to his description of the first
killing in a series. An accident? Well, Evelyn Hernandez was an accident, truth to tell. Nita remembered her frustration with the woman,
who insisted on staying with her abusive husband, insisted on bringing
handicapped children into the world — and was pregnant again.
“I don’t care if my husband, he beats me,” Evelyn said. “My
babies, they love me.”
“But you’re bringing burdens into this world,” Nita argued. “Say
what you want about your husband, the man can’t cope financially.
The children are often in pain. They contribute nothing to society.
This makes no sense.”
“My babies love me,” Evelyn insisted, drawing the scarf around
her head and looking about anxiously, as if someone she knew would
recognize her.
And so it had gone. Over and over on continuous play. Nita tried
every manuever she knew to shake the woman awake. To no avail.
Finally, she arranged to meet Evelyn out of the crisis center. Nita figured a trip to the SPCA would work; she would let Evelyn listen to
the cries of the doomed animals and make the point that her babies
weren’t much better off.
The lesson, though, didn’t take. “My babies love me,” Evelyn said
over the dogs’ barking.
“These animals are going to be put to sleep, you idiot,” Nita
shouted at her. “Can’t you get that through your thick skull?”
“My babies love me,” Evelyn repeated maddeningly.
Nita pulled out the .45, which she had always carried for protection. She pointed it at Evelyn’s right eye, the one that fronted for the
irrational, the emotional, the intuitive half of the brain — the half of
the brain that should be brought under control in a well-functioning
society.
She pointed the .45 at the startled Evelyn’s right eye and said,
“They put these troublesome animals to sleep.”
Perhaps if Evelyn hadn’t stubbornly repeated, “My babies love
me,” Nita would not have pulled the trigger. But she did, and half of
Evelyn’s head exploded. Nita stood over the woman’s fallen body, not
in shock, rather with a strange sense of triumph.
And just as Dillon had said, she went through a period of intense
fright that she would be discovered. And when that didn’t occur, she
set about dispatching her other hopeless cases, cleansing the world of
them. The cheerleader, the stockbroker, and the hooker — each
brought more harm than good to society.
Descent into madness? No, Detective Dillon, that hadn’t happened to Nita Bergstrom. If anything, she had descended into sanity.
What could that testosterone-dosed monkey with a badge understand? And with Ace taking the rap for her first set of removals, she
could begin again in a different way, in peace until she had completed
her work.
Nita smiled serenely at the Skinner boxes across the street, at the
poor people ensnared in their anger, their alienation, their loneliness.
Oh, what gorgeous alchemy she would perform.

Ace sauntered up to Dave as jauntily as if he were trolling the Deuce.
Neat for once, garbed in jailhouse blues, he slid into a chair and
burped. “Not bad eats you got in this place, Dillon. I like it here.”

“None of the inmates given you an injection of hot beef yet, huh,
Ace?”
Ace laughed. “Man, I’m a world-class prisoner. I don’t mix with
the other inmates.You assholes want to make sure your Ladykiller is
fit to stand trial. I’m a fucking king.”
“You’re a fucking asshole, is what you are,” Dave said. “I dropped
by the crisis center to pull the files on your victims. They all were
missing. I wonder why?”
Ace shrugged. “The place is a mess. Rueben couldn’t find his ass
with both hands. You accusing me of taking the files? Ooooo. That
could draw me some serious prison time. I’m scared.” He laughed
again, enjoying himself.
“Tony Topnut told me he sold you a brand-new .45 a couple of
days ago.That would be after you committed the murders.”
“Tony said that?” Ace shrugged again. “So what? I wanted another
.45 in case my old one broke down.”
“Okay, smart ass, where is it?”
“I had it in my room. Maybe one of your thieving cop pals lifted
it during their search. You bastards think you own the city.” Ace
belched once more.
Dave reached inside his jacket and produced a .45. He extended
it to Ace, butt first. “You’re right. Here it is. Take it. Go on. It’s not
loaded.”
Ace was startled but said nothing. He reluctantly accepted the
weapon. He held it with two fingers as though it were a bomb instead
of a gun.
“I want you to show me how you field-strip the gun to clean it,
Ace. That old .45, the murder weapon, was in mint condition. You
really knew how to maintain it.You didn’t want any jams when you
cornered your victims. Go on. Show me.”
Ace tried to hand the gun back to Dave. “I don’t feel like playing
your game, Dillon. Get the fuck out of my face.”
“You don’t know the first thing about this weapon, do you, Ace?
Do you now?”
“Of course I do,” Ace said. “I just don’t want to let you jerk me
around.”
“Show me, Ace.Then I’ll go. Break it down. Killer.”
Ace fumbled with the L-shaped gun, moving the slide clumsily
back and forth. But he couldn’t get it to come apart. “The fucker’s
busted, Dillon. Jesus fucking Christ.”
“You might try pressing the little button on the side.”
“I did that, Dillon,” Ace lied. “It’s stuck. How do you expect me
to —”
Dave grabbed the gun and removed the slide. He handed it back
to Ace. “Try it now.”
“Dillon, what are you —“ Ace fiddled with the innards of the
pistol, and it flew into pieces, the spring hitting the far wall. The rest
fell on the floor.
“Very deft, Ace.” Dave said. “Why don’t you tackle putting the
weapon back together again?”
“Why don’t you fuck yourself, Dillon?” Ace jumped to his feet
and pounded on the door for the guard to fetch him.
“You’re not the Ladykiller, Ace,” Dave said. “But I suspect you
know who is.The night Reuben died, we have a witness who saw two
people with him. I bet you were tagging along somehow. You aren’t
much for weapons, but you can tag along pretty well. Isn’t that right,
Ace?”
“Kiss my ass, Dillon.”
“Oh, your ass is going to be out on the street, pal. Where it
belongs.”
Ace howled in panic.
“You don’t have what it takes to be a killer,” Dave told him as he
left the room. “Sorry.”
Ace pounded the wall. “No,” he screamed. “No, no, no, no, no.”
Dave made straight for an outside phone booth and called Jimmy
Conlon. “Am I too late for deadline?”