The body was still there, sprawled full-length on the king-size bed. It had bled white, leaving the skin with the trans-lucence of old china. Only the genitalia, hacked almost beyond recognition, identified the victim as male. The face was that of a woman. So was the smooth and hairless skin, the slender but full-breasted body.
"She'd fool you," Garfein said. "See, she had the preliminary surgery. The breast implants, the Adam's apple, the cheekbones. And of course the hormone shots all along. That keeps down the beard and the body hair, makes the skin nice and feminine. Look at the wound in the left breast there. You can see the silicone sac. See?"
Blood all over, and the smell of fresh death in the air. Not the stale reek of a late-found corpse, not the stench of decomposition, but the horrible odor of a slaughterhouse, the raw throat-catching smell of fresh blood. I felt not so much nauseated as overpowered, oppressed by the warmth and density of the air.
"What was lucky is I recognized her," Garfein was saying. "That way I knew right off she was a pross and that made the connection in my mind with that case of yours, Joe. Was the one you caught as bloody as this?"
"Same thing," Durkin said.
I said, "You recognized her?"
"Oh, right away. I did a hitch not that long ago with the Pussy Posse over in Long Island City. They still got a stroll there, they've had street prostitution in that same location for forty or fifty years, but now you're getting a lot of middle-class people moving in there, converting lofts for residential use, buying up the old brownstones and converting them back from rooming houses to nice homes. They sign the lease in the daytime and then they move in and they look at what's around them and they aren't happy, and the pressure comes down to clean up the street." He pointed at the figure on the bed. "I must have arrested her, oh, say three times."
"You know her name?"
"Which name do you want? They've all got more than one. Her street name was Cookie. That was the name that came to me when I saw her. Then I called in to the station house at Fiftieth and Vernon and had somebody pull her file. She was calling herself Sara but back when she made her bar mitzvah the name they wrote down was Mark Blaustein."
"She had a bar mitzvah?"
"Who knows? I wasn't invited. But she's a nice Jewish girl from Floral Park is the point I'm making. A nice Jewish girl who used to be a nice Jewish boy."
"Sara Blaustein?"
"Sara Bluestone a/k/a Sara Blue. A/k/a Cookie. Notice the hands and feet? They're on the large side for a girl. That's one way you can tell a transsexual. Of course it's not foolproof, you get girls with big hands and boys with small ones. She'd fool you, wouldn't she?"
I nodded.
"She would have had the rest of the surgery soon. Probably already had herself scheduled for the operation. Law says they have to live as a woman for a year before Medicaid'll pick up the tab. Of course they all got Medicaid, they all got welfare. They'll turn ten or twenty tricks a night, all quickie blow jobs in the johns' cars for ten or twenty bucks a pop, they'll bring in a couple of hundred dollars a night seven nights a week, all of it tax free, and they got Medicaid and welfare and the ones with kids get ADC and half the pimps are on SSI."
He and Durkin batted that ball around a little. Meanwhile the technical people were busy around us, measuring things, taking photographs, dusting for prints. We got out of their way and stood together in the motel parking lot.
Durkin said, "You know what we got, don't you? We got us Jack the fucking Ripper."
"I know it," Garfein said.
"You get anything with the other guests? She musta made some noise."
"You kidding? Cheaters? 'I didn't see nothin', I didn't hear nothin', I gotta go now.' Even if she did some screaming, in a job like this everybody'd figure it was a new way to have fun. Assuming they weren't too busy having their own fun to notice."
"First he checks into a decent midtown hotel and phones up a fancy call girl. Then he picks up a TV streetwalker and drags her to a cheater's motel. You figure the cock and balls came as a shock to him?"
Garfein shrugged. "Maybe. You know, half your street prostitutes are guys in drag. Some sections it's more than half."
"The West Side docks it's a lot more than half."
"I've heard that," Garfein said. "You talk to the johns, some of 'em'll admit they prefer if it's a guy. They say a guy gives better head. Of course there's nothing queer about them, see, because they're just receiving it."
"Well, go figure a john," Durkin said.
"Whether he knew or not, I don't think it put him off much. He went and did his number all the same."
"Figure he had sex with her?"
"Hard to tell unless there's traces on the sheets. He doesn't figure as her first trick of the evening."
"He took a shower?"
Garfein shrugged, showed his hands palms up. "Go know," he said. "The manager says there's towels missing. When they make up the room they put out two bath towels and two hand towels, and both of the bath towels are missing."
"He took towels from the Galaxy."
"Then he probably took 'em here, but who knows in a dump like this? I mean who knows if they always remember to make up the room right. Same with the shower. I don't figure they gave it a scrub after the last party left."
"Maybe you'll find something."
"Maybe."
"Fingerprints, something. You see any skin under her nails?"
"No. But that's not to say the lab boys won't." A muscle worked in his jaw. "I'll say one thing. Thank God I'm not a medical examiner or a technician. It's bad enough being a cop."
"Amen to that," Durkin said.
I said, "If he picked her up on the street, somebody might have seen her get into the car."
"A couple of guys are out there now trying to take statements. We might get something. If anybody saw anything, and if they remember, and if they feel like talking."
"Lots of ifs," Durkin said.
"The manager here must have seen him," I said. "What does he remember?"
"Not a whole lot. Let's go talk to him some more."
* * *
The manager had a night worker's sallow complexion and a pair of red-rimmed eyes. There was alcohol on his breath but he didn't have a drinker's way about him, and I guessed he'd tried to fortify himself with liquor after discovering the body. It only made him vague and ineffectual. "This is a decent place," he insisted, and the statement was so palpably absurd no one responded to it. I suppose he meant murder wasn't a daily occurrence.
He never saw Cookie. The man who had presumably killed her had come in alone, filled out the card, paid cash. This was not unusual. It was common practice for the woman to wait in the car while the man checked in. The car had not stopped directly in front of the office, so he hadn't seen it while the man was checking in. In fact he hadn't really seen the car at all.
"You saw it was missing," Garfein reminded him. "That's how you knew the room was empty."
"Except it wasn't. I opened the door and-"
"You thought it was empty because the car was gone. How'd you know it was gone if you never saw it?"
"The parking space was empty. There's a space in front of each unit, the spaces are numbered same as the units. I looked out, that space was empty, that meant his car was gone."
"They always park in the proper spaces?"
"They're supposed to."
"Lots of things people are supposed to do. Pay their taxes, don't spit on the sidewalk, cross only at corners. A guy's in a hurry to dip his wick, what does he care about a number on a parking space? You got a look at the car."
"I-"
"You looked once, maybe twice, and the car was parked in the space. Then you looked later and it wasn't and that's when you decided they were gone. Isn't that what happened?"
"I guess so."
"Describe the car."
"I didn't really look at it. I looked to see that it was there, that's all."
"What color was it?"
"Dark."
"Terrific. Two door? Four door?"
"I didn't notice."
"New? Old? What make?"
"It was a late-model car," he said. "American. Not a foreign car. As far as the make, when I was a kid they all looked different. Now every car's the same."
"He's right," Durkin said.
"Except American Motors," he said. "A Gremlin, a Pacer, those you can tell. The rest all look the same."
"And this wasn't a Gremlin or a Pacer."
"No."
"Was it a sedan? A hatchback?"
"I'll tell you the truth," the man said. "All I noticed is it was a car. It says on the card, the make and model, the plate number."
"You're talking about the registration card?"
"Yeah. They have to fill all that in."
The card was on the desk, a sheet of clear acetate over it to preserve prints until the lab boys had their shot at it. Name: Martin Albert Ricone. Address: 211 Gilford Way. City: Fort Smith, Arkansas. Make of Auto: Chevrolet. Year: 1980. Model: Sedan. Color: Black. License No.: LJK-914. Signature: M. A. RICONE.
"Looks like the same hand," I told Durkin. "But who can tell with printing?"
"The experts can say. Same as they can tell you if he had the same light touch with the machete. Guy likes forts, you notice? Fort Wayne, Indiana and Fort Smith, Arkansas."
"A subtle pattern begins to emerge," Garfein said.
"Ricone," Durkin said. "Must be Italian."
"M. A. Ricone sounds like the guy who invented the radio."
"That's Marconi," Durkin said.
"Well, that's close. This guy's Macaroni. Stuck a feather in his hat and called it Macaroni."
"Stuck a feather up his ass," Durkin said.
"Maybe he stuck it up Cookie's ass and maybe it wasn't a feather. Martin Albert Ricone, that's a fancy alias. What did he use last time?"
"Charles Owen Jones," I said.
"Oh, he likes middle names. He's a cute fucker, isn't he?"
"Very cute," Durkin said.
"The cute ones, the really cute ones, usually everything means something. Like Jones is slang, it means a habit. You know, like a heroin jones. Like a junkie says he's got a hundred-dollar jones, that's what his habit costs him per day."
"I'm really glad you explained that for me," Durkin said.
"Just trying to be helpful."
" 'Cause I only got fourteen years in, I never had any contact yet with smack addicts."
"So be a smart fuck," Garfein said.
"The license plate go anywhere?"
"It's gonna go the same place as the name and address. I got a call in to Arkansas Motor Vehicles but it's a waste of time. A place like this, even the legitimate guests make up the plate number. They don't park in front of the window when they sign in so our guy here can't check. Not that he would anyway, would you?"
"There's no law says I have to check," the man said.
"They use false names, too. Funny our boy used Jones at the Galaxy and Ricone here. They must get a lot of Joneses here, along with the usual run of Smiths and Browns. You get a lot of Smiths?"
"There's no law says I'm supposed to check ID," the man said.
"Or wedding rings, huh?"
"Or wedding rings or marriage licenses or anything. Consenting adults, the hell, it's none of my business."
"Maybe Ricone means something in Italian," Garfein suggested.
"Now you're thinking," Durkin said. He asked the manager if he had an Italian dictionary. The man stared at him, baffled. "And they call this place a motel," he said, shaking his head. "There's probably no Gideon Bibles, either."
"Most of the rooms have them."
"Jesus, really? Right next to the television with the X-rated movies, right? Conveniently located near the waterbed."
"Only two of the units have waterbeds," the poor bastard said. "There's an extra charge for a waterbed."
"Good thing our Mr. Ricone's a cheap prick," Garfein said. "Cookie'da wound up underwater."
"Tell me about this guy," Durkin said. "Describe him again."
"I told you-"
"You're gonna get to tell this again and again. How tall was he?"
"Tall."
"My height? Shorter? Taller?"
"I-"
"What was he wearing? He have a hat on? He wearing a tie?"
"It's hard to remember."
"He walks in the door, asks you for a room. Now he's filling out the card. Pays you in cash. What do you get for a room like that, incidentally?"
"Twenty-eight dollars."
"That's not such a bad deal. I suppose the porn movies are extra."
"It's coin-operated."
"Handy. Twenty-eight's fair, and it's a good deal for you if you can flip the room a few times a night. How'd he pay you?"
"I told you. Cash."
"I mean what kind of bills? What'd he give you, a pair of fifteens?"
"A pair of-"
"He give you a twenty and a ten?"
"I think it was two twenties."
"And you gave him twelve bucks back? Wait, there must have been tax, right?"
"It's twenty-nine forty with the tax."
"And he gave you forty bucks and you gave him the change."
Something registered. "He gave me two twenties and forty cents in change," the man said. "And I gave him a ten and a one."
"See? You remember the transaction."
"Yeah, I do. Sort of."
"Now tell me what he looked like. He white?"
"Yeah, sure. White."
"Heavy? Thin?"
"Thin but not too thin. On the thin side."
"Beard?"
"No."
"Moustache?"
"Maybe. I don't know."
"There was something about him, though, something that stuck in your memory."
"What?"
"That's what we're trying to get, John. That what they call you? John?"
"Mostly it's Jack."
"Okay, Jack. You're doin' fine now. What about his hair?"
"I didn't pay attention to his hair."
"Sure you did. He bent over to sign in and you saw the top of his head, remember?"
"I don't-"
"Full head of hair?"
"I don't-"
"They'll sit him down with one of our artists," Durkin said, "and he'll come up with something. And when this fucking psycho ripper steps on his cock one of these days, when we catch him in the act or on his way out the door, he'll look as much like the police artist's sketch as I look like Sara fucking Blaustein. She looked like a woman, didn't she?"
"Mostly she looked dead."
"I know. Meat in a butcher's window." We were in his car, driving over the bumpy surface of the Queensboro Bridge. The sky was starting to lighten up already. I was beyond tiredness by now, with the ragged edges of my emotions perilously close to the surface. I could feel my own vulnerability; the smallest thing could nudge me to tears or laughter.
"You gotta wonder what it would be like," he said.
"What?"
"Picking up somebody who looked like that. On the street or in a bar, whatever. Then you get her someplace and she takes her clothes off and surprise. I mean, how do you react?"
"I don't know."
" 'Course if she already had the operation, you could go with her and never know. Her hands didn't look so big to me. There's women with big hands and men with little hands, far as that goes."
"Uh-huh."
"She had a couple rings on, speaking of her hands. You happen to notice?"
"I noticed."
"One on each hand, she had."
"So?"
"So he didn't take 'em."
"Why would he take her rings?"
"You were saying he took Dakkinen's."
I didn't say anything.
Gently he said, "Matt, you don't still think Dakkinen got killed for a reason?"
I felt rage swelling up within me, bulging like an aneurysm in a blood vessel. I sat there trying to will it away.
"And don't tell me about the towels. He's a ripper, he's a cute fucking psycho who makes plans and plays by his own private rules. He's not the first case like that to come along."
"I got warned off the case, Joe. I got very professionally warned off the case."
"So? She got killed by a psycho and there could still be something about her life that some friends of hers don't want to come out in the open. Maybe she had a boyfriend and he's a married guy, just like you figured, and even if what she died of was scarlet fucking fever he wouldn't want you poking around in the ashes."
I gave myself the Miranda warning. You have the right to remain silent, I told myself, and exercised the right.
"Unless you figure Dakkinen and Blaustein are tied together. Long-lost sisters, say. Excuse me, brother and sister. Or maybe they were brothers, maybe Dakkinen had her operation a few years ago. Tall for a girl, wasn't she?"
"Maybe Cookie was a smokescreen," I said.
"How's that?"
I went on talking in spite of myself. "Maybe he killed her to take the heat off," I said. "Make it look like a train of random murders. To hide his motive for killing Dakkinen."
"To take the heat off. What heat, for Christ's sake?"
"I don't know."
"There's been no fucking heat. There will be now. Nothing turns the fucking press on like a series of random killings. The readers eat it up, they pour it on their corn flakes. Anything gives 'em a chance to run a sidebar on the original Jack the Ripper, those editors go crazy for it. You talk about heat, there'll be enough heat now to scorch his ass for him."
"I suppose."
"You know what you are, Scudder? You're stubborn."
"Maybe."
"Your problem is you work private and you only carry one case at a time. I got so much shit on my desk it's a pleasure when I get to let go of something, but with you it's just the opposite. You want to hang onto it as long as you can."
"Is that what it is?"
"I don't know. It sounds like it." He took one hand off the wheel, tapped me on the forearm. "I don't mean to bust balls," he said. "I see something like that, somebody chopped up like that, I try to clamp a lid on it and it comes out in other directions. You did a lot of good work."
"Did I?"
"No question. There were things we missed. It might give us a little jump on the psycho, some of the stuff you came up with. Who knows?"
Not I. All I knew was how tired I was.
He fell silent as we drove across town. In front of my hotel he braked to a stop and said, "What Garfein said there. Maybe Ricone means something in Italian."
"It won't be hard to check."
"Oh, of course not. Everything should be that easy to run down. No, we'll check, and you know what we'll find? It'll turn out it means Jones."
I went upstairs and got out of my clothes and into bed. Ten minutes later I got up again. I felt unclean and my scalp itched. I stood under a too-hot shower and scrubbed myself raw. I got out of the shower, told myself it didn't make any sense to shave before going to bed, then lathered up and shaved anyway. When I was done I put a robe on and sat down on the edge of my bed, then moved to the chair.
They tell you not to let yourself get too hungry, too angry, too lonely or too tired. Any of the four can put you off balance and turn you in the direction of a drink. It seemed to me that I'd touched all four bases, I'd boxed that particular compass in the course of the day and night. Oddly enough, I didn't feel the urge for a drink.
I got the gun from my coat pocket, I started to return it to the dresser drawer, then changed my mind and sat in the chair again, turning the gun in my hands.
When was the last time I'd fired a gun?
I didn't really have to think very hard. It had been that night in Washington Heights when I chased two holdup men into the street, shot them down and killed that little girl in the process. In the time I remained on the force after that incident, I never had occasion to draw my service revolver, let alone discharge it. And I certainly hadn't fired a gun since I left the force.
And tonight I'd been unable to do it. Because something clued me that the car I was aiming at held drunken kids instead of assassins? Because some subtle intuitive perception made me wait until I was certain what I was shooting at?
No. I couldn't make myself believe that.
I had frozen. If instead of a kid with a whiskey bottle I'd seen a thug with a tommy gun, I wouldn't have been any more capable of squeezing the trigger. My finger'd been paralyzed.
I broke the gun, shook the bullets out of the cylinder, closed it up again. I pointed the empty weapon at the wastebasket across the room and squeezed the trigger a couple of times. The click the hammer made as it fell upon an empty chamber was surprisingly loud and sharp in my little room.
I aimed at the mirror over the dresser. Click!
Proved nothing. It was empty, I knew it was empty. I could take the thing to a pistol range, load it and fire at targets, and that wouldn't prove anything either.
It bothered me that I'd been unable to fire the gun. And yet I was grateful it had happened that way, because otherwise I'd have emptied the gun into that car of kids, probably killed a few of them, and what would that have done to my peace of mind? Tired as I was, I went a few hard rounds with that particular conundrum. I was glad I hadn't shot anyone and frightened of the implications of not shooting, and my mind went around and around, chasing its tail.
I took off the robe, got into bed, and couldn't even begin to loosen up. I got dressed again in street clothes, used the back end of a nail file as a screwdriver, and took the revolver apart for cleaning. I put its parts in one pocket, and in another I stowed the four live cartridges along with the two knives I'd taken from the mugger.
It was morning and the sky was bright. I walked over to Ninth Avenue and up to Fifty-eighth Street, where I dropped both knives into a sewer grating. I crossed the street and walked to another grating and stood near it with my hands in my pockets, one holding the four cartridges, the other touching the pieces of the disassembled revolver.
Why carry a gun you're not going to shoot? Why own a gun you can't carry?
I stopped in a deli on the way back to the hotel. The customer ahead of me bought two six-packs of Old English 800 Malt Liquor. I picked out four candy bars and paid for them, ate one as I walked and the other three in my room. Then I took the revolver's parts from my pocket and put them back together again. I loaded four of the six chambers and put the gun in the dresser drawer.
I got into bed, told myself I'd stay there whether I could sleep or not, and smiled at the thought as I felt myself drifting off.