That afternoon when he passed through the outer room of Special Squad, Ray Galindez approached, asked if he could speak to him privately.
"Sure," Janek said, motioning him into his office.
Ray stood solemnly before the desk, then he touched a corner of his mustache.
"I feel a little awkward asking this. I want to make it easy for you to say no."
"Maybe the best move is just to ask, Ray. If it's about a transfer, you know that won't be a problem."
Ray grinned. "It's not about a transfer, Frank. It's about being godfather to my child. Grecia and I talked it over last night. We'd be honored if you'd agree to stand with us at the christening."
Janek was moved. He immediately stood up. "I'm the one who'll be honored."
"We had the test. It's going to be a girl."
"God, that's so great." He hugged Ray. "As if I'd even dream of saying no!"
At nine that night he was watching an old Bogart movie when his telephone rang loud. He must have moved the volume knob by accident.
He nearly jumped as he fumbled for the receiver.
It was Sue. Even before she explained why she'd called, he knew something was wrong. She was over at Kirstin Reese's studio. She'd arrived to find the door unlocked and Kirstin's body on the floor. "She doesn't look too good," Sue said. "I mean-" Sue paused. "She's dead."
When he arrived he found three police cars in front. Also, the med examiner's car, a meat wagon and a Crime Scene van. A small crowd had gathered on the street. People in adjoining tenements stood at their windows staring down. Ninth Avenue traffic, bound for Jersey via the Lincoln Tunnel, was snarled, with trucks and cars honking helplessly, trying to squeeze their way through the bottleneck.
Janek made his way up the narrow stairs, particularly ripe with the smell of fish. Near the top he heard Stiegel's rusty voice. As he drew closer, he found the old cop in a heated argument with Sue.
"I'm the one put you on to her. Next thing-"
"You didn't put us on to shit, Stiegel. You didn't even know her name!"
"So, how'd you find her?"
"I'm a detective, asshole!"
When they saw Janek, they broke it off.
"She was cut bad, Frank," Sue said. "Then shot in the head."
"It's gotta be the same guy cut her before," Stiegel said.
Sue turned on Stiegel. "You haven't been listening. It wasn't a guy who cut her. She told us who it was. It was the woman who runs the bad girls."
Stiegel turned to Janek, eyes pink. "You kept that to yourselves! "
"We didn't think you'd be interested," Sue said.
"Interested! Bad girls is my case!"
"That why you took such great notes?"
Janek studied Stiegel. He was drunk and about to get violent. "Take it easy," he said as soothingly as he could. Then to Sue: "Did you call him?"
Sue nodded. "Out of courtesy. Now I'm sorry I did."
Stiegel stared at her. "You don't like me, do you, Missy?" "What do you think?" Sue asked.
It was time to separate them. Janek put his hand on Stiegel's shoulder.
"Come on, Detective-I'll walk you downstairs. "
Stiegel's eyes glassed over. Then, docile, he allowed Janek to escort him to the street.
"I'm overworked, Lieutenant. I told you the other night. I couldn't give priority to this… specially when the girl wouldn't talk. Then, out of the blue, your Missy Detective c@ills-I mean, Jesus! What the hell was I supposed to think?"
Janek wanted to show Stiegel sympathy, but he found it difficult. "Go home," he said. "Like you said-the girl wouldn't talk."
Stiegel nodded, stumbled onto the sidewalk. He mumbled: "Still think it was the same guy… When Janek had trudged his way back up the five flights, he found Sue in the stairwell, head and hands pressed against the wall. She was shaking, crying softly to herself. Janek didn't say anything, just took her in his arms.
"You'll be okay."
"Oh, shit," she moaned. "I meant to come see her this morning. Then I got busy and couldn't get to it." She pointed at the floor. "See, I brought her my old air conditioner. Got two uniforms to carry it up.
They set it down there, I rang the buzzer and the door popped open.
There she was, lying by the couch."
He knew there wasn't anything he could say that would make her feel better, so he fell back upon a standard consolation: "It's not your fault. Don't think it is, even for a second."
When she was calmer, he entered the apartment to check in with Lois Rappaport. As usual, her face was sour, her smile crooked and her report toneless.
" Shot in the head at close range. Like Dietz down at the Savoy.
Wounds indicate It twenty-two. Still looking for the bullet."
Rappaport beckoned Janek to join her beside the body. He complied although he didn't want to-to him Kirstin wasn't an ordinary victim.
He'd spoken to her, seen her pain, had felt connected to her. Looking at her now-her pale broken face, her large, ghostly Nordic eyes-he thought he saw a less troubled person than he had interviewed three days before.
Then, as Lois Rappaport traced the old scars on Kirstin's cheeks, he felt weighed down by grief.
"The way these cuts are drawn-you can see they were made carefully. Sue told me this girl was deliberately disfigured. But these new incisions … " Rappaport pointed. "These weren't done to mar her beauty. These are torture cuts, Frank. Looks to me like someone was trying to make her talk." As Janek considered what Rappaport had said, he was struck by a thought: What if someone had tried to make Kirstin tell what she had refused to reveal to him and Diana's full name and address? If that's what this is about, he thought, it's very likely she did talk. How could she resist with a knife held to her face? And the fact that she'd been shot through the head suggested her torturer had gotten what he'd wanted.
He was angry. He had lost his only lead in the Dietz case. He was not waiting until the morning to go on. He phoned Aaron and Ray at home, told them to meet him at Special Squad. At eleven-thirty, when he and Sue arrived, the two men were waiting.
"Here's my theory," he said. "Someone was tracking us, hoping we'd lead him to the Omega. He followed us to Kirstin's, then came back later and finished up our interview. Now he's a step ahead."