Ladykiller Read online

  Nita asked her caller to hold for a moment. A phone line buzzed unnoticed.

  “Hey, hey, hey. Nothing like Chinese to take the bite out of a cool night, huh?” Reuben Silver emerged from the dark hallway toting a large paper bag.

  Megan and Nita traded long-suffering looks.

  “What are you doing here?” Megan asked. “Didn’t we relieve you? This isn’t your shift.”

  Reuben smiled sheepishly at Megan as he unpacked the white, waxy cardboard containers of fragrant Chinese food. “I figured you girls were going to need some help around here.”

  Nita, still on the phone, glared at him.

  Reuben managed an apologetic grimace. “Women. Whatever. There’s another murder. Only a few blocks from here, this time,” he mentioned as if in explanation. He unwrapped three packages of wooden chopsticks and jabbed them into three of the steaming containers. “I thought as soon as the jungle drums spread the word, our phones would start ringing off the hook with I-did-its, I-know-who-did-its, and I’m-next-to-dies. You know the drill. Most of them have already called the cops and got shot down. But they know we’ll always talk to them, the lousy losers.”

  He gestured for them to join him at the impromptu buffet of the Chinese food he had arranged on an empty desk.

  “Dig in, folks,” Reuben said with forced gusto. “I brought enough for everybody.”

  When the two women didn’t move, he tried again. “Hey, don’t you ever wonder whether the Ladykiller is one of our own people? One of the real loonies we just try to keep the lid on?”

  “Really, Reuben,” Nita said, disapprovingly.

  Reuben launched into one of his patented comedy routines. “We could start counseling murderers. Sort of like Killers Anonymous. ‘Hi, I’m Sam and I’m a serial murderer. But with the love and support of my peer group — a great bunch of guys — I haven’t killed in two months.’‘We’re here for you, Sammy.’‘Hold me,Ted.’ ”

  Nita simply stared at him. Megan gave a small chuckle. He grinned and shrugged boyishly. As if on cue, two phone lines lit up. Their buzzing filled the room.

  With Nita and Megan both on the phone, Reuben stood eating out of a carton, his chopsticks dripping evil-looking dark bits and brown goo. His smile faded as he chewed the congealing Chinese food. And his eyes never left the women.

  A half hour later, the calls were coming nonstop. As Reuben had predicted, word of the latest Ladykiller slaying had ignited traumas inside every shaky psyche in Manhattan. Nita felt privately thankful that Reuben had shown up. He manned one of the phones, giving advice through mouthfuls of Szechuan cuisine.

  Nita picked up the receiver to field the next call. “Crisis center. Can I help you?”

  “It’s me,” the familiar reedy voice said, investing each word with slow, poisonous menace.

  “How can I help you?” Nita decided not to favor him with immediate recognition tonight. Coldness was the best response.

  “You know who this is, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Ace,” she said tiredly. “What do you want?”

  “I want you. I need you. I need you tonight.”

  “I’m busy,” she said, preparing to hang up.

  “I did something terrible tonight,” he said quickly.

  “And what was that, Ace?”

  “I killed a woman tonight.”

  Nita was no more perturbed than if he were announcing the train schedule. She knew which of her regular clients were capable of violence. Ace was not. “You don’t say? Who was the lucky woman?”

  “A whore. Like you.You’re all whores.”

  “And you’re a pillar of the community.” Nita knew when compassion’s usefulness had ended. “Listen, I’m busy.We’ll discuss this at our session.And not before. Real people with real problems are calling in tonight.”

  “I’m the Ladykiller, you bitch,” Ace yelled. “I killed every one of them.And I’ll fucking do it again. Do you hear me?”

  But Nita had hung up the phone.

  FOUR

  “These killings are something else. People are really shaken up,”

  Dave glanced over at his oldest friend from Queens, now a wellknown crime reporter, running beside him. “The press conference about the latest shooting is at ten this morning,” Jimmy went on, panting slightly. “You were there last night, right?”

  “I can’t help you on this, Jimmy,” said Dave, who wished he could. Big Dick Mancuso would trace any leak to him.

  “Christ, this is a big story.”

  “Sells newspapers, right?” Dave said in jest, knowing this would get to Jimmy. It did.

  “Get lost. We make money from advertising, not newsstand sales, for God’s sake.” Conlon’s irreverence toward every national institution stopped short when it came to his own, which he viewed as a sacred shrine.

  “You’re right that people are shaken up,” Dave said. “Hey, I’m shaken up.”

  They were running in Central Park along with battalions of yuppies getting early morning exercise before dressing for success and going to work. The park this early had a promising March snap to it, its grass already succulent with rain-fed green, its tree branches laden with fat spring buds, its blue-domed sky streaked with angelic contrails. Its women beginning to show their skin.

  “Jesus, I’m in love,” Jimmy said as they passed a sleek-thighed goddess, her breasts bouncing gently.

  Dave hadn’t noticed. “We’re under a lot of pressure.We have to find this hump before he does it again.”

  “You think you’re frustrated?” Jimmy said, chugging along beside his friend, who was almost a full head taller. “My editor’s going nuts. He believes that a kid from Queens who grew up with a million cops should be coming up with exclusives.”

  “We honestly don’t know anything, Jimmy.”

  “It’s so stupid.” Jimmy loved newspaper reporting but he loathed his boss. “Bunch of snotty, Ivy League assholes who spend their time sucking up to each other on the squash court. This dickbrain asked me,‘Have the cops ruled out organized crime?’ ”

  Dave snorted. “What’d you tell him?”

  “I answered, ‘Yes, Chip. They’ve ruled out organized crime, beings from outer space, sharp-hooved giraffes, and you.’ ”

  Dave chuckled. “For all I can tell, a being from outer space is behind this.”

  They ran in companionable silence for a minute. “Seriously, Jimmy, if we break the case, and I have anything to do with it, you’ll be the first to hear.”

  They ran past a massive shoulder of majestic rock that looked as if retreating glaciers had shoved it into the light of a prehistoric sun.

  “Break it,” Jimmy said, “and I’ll make you a hero. Like you ought to be. Again.”

  At 8 A.M., Dave Dillon slouched into the operations room that housed the Ladykiller task force. The detectives clustered around a battle-scarred table strewn with manila folders leaking papers, Styrofoam cups leaking coffee, ashtrays leaking butts. Dave pulled up a chair and muscled in between Wise and Jamie Loud.

  Jamie, not for the first time, gave thanks that her black skin covered her blushing. Jamie touched Dave’s arm, giving herself a tiny frisson as her fingers touched his muscled, honey-colored skin, bare below rolled-up sleeves. When he turned to her, she passed him a sheet of briefing paper.The hooker now had a name.

  As Dave read the information on the girl, her short rap sheet, last known address, and preliminary medical findings, Jamie studied him. She had a sudden, hot, vivid image of the two of them in her bed together. Not how it would feel. How it would look. An aerial view of them beneath the slow blades of the ceiling fan, the crisp white sheets crumpled after hard-pumping sex, the large fern beside the bed brushing his golden skin where his arm hung over the edge, his muscular blond nakedness a perfect match for her supple black curves. She shuddered and sighed aloud.

  Jamie jerked her attention back to the operations room in time to catch Lt. Blake’s entrance. One corner of his mouth was twisted upward.


  “Chief of Detectives Mancuso is not pleased,” Blake said. “We’ve got to start moving, people.”

  “Big Dick Mancuso,”Wise said.

  “This is no joking matter,Wise,” Blake said sternly.

  “Sorry, Loo.Too much coffee, too early.”

  “Or maybe too little,” Safir added.

  “Thanks to Detective Loud’s late-night session with the computer, we have some stuff on our victim,” Blake said.

  Jamie resisted the temptation to smile at his praise.

  “Lydia Daniels,” Blake continued. “Age 22, born in Minnesota, came to New York three years ago. Arrested three times for prostitution, twice for possession. Lived in an SRO on the Deuce, the Dixie. Pimp that ran her is a minor player named Jacob Weinstein, street name Jackie Why. Dave, you know him?”

  Jamie looked up, startled. She could swear she felt Dave bristle beside her at the question. But his voice was calm when he replied.

  “Jackie? Sure. Two or three convictions for girls and possession. Went to Attica on a felony dealing beef, but was back on the streets in a short time. I think he turned over his dealer, which makes it a little more surprising he’s still around. He’s always had a string of girls and a little dealing action. Kind of a complete entertainment center for traveling businessmen. Not too high class. Not the worst, either. When trade gets slow, though, his girls work the street. He likes production.”

  “Like Big Dick Mancuso,” Wise said in an undertone that everyone could pick up.

  Blake ignored him. “Great. You talk to this character, then. The beat guys brought him in an hour ago. Says he doesn’t know where Lydia is or where she spent the night. He says she was supposed to be working, but he hasn’t seen her.”

  After Blake issued some marching orders to the twenty detectives on the Ladykiller task force, the meeting adjourned with a tortured scrape of chairs. Dave slouched over to the wall where the hooker’s bloody crime-scene photo had been added to those of the other victims. Beneath each glossy picture was a summary of the murder. Dave stood before them, scanning every one, back and forth.

  The first murder, six weeks ago, was Evelyn Hernandez, 29, a housewife and mother of four who lived in Spanish Harlem. Her husband worked the desk at a big Midtown hotel. She had been shot on the desolate street behind the SPCA building just off the FDR Drive, the yelps of the dogs no doubt drowning out the gunshot.

  The second murder, a week later, established the pattern. It captured the attention of the media, the politicians, and Dick Mancuso. Lucy Cristides, 16, a cheerleader from Queens whose parents owned a Manhattan coffee shop, was found in the Meatpacking District. Nobody ventured there after dark.

  The third came three weeks hence: Kimberly Worth, 35, a moneyed stockbroker who lived on the Upper East Side. She met her killer in Carl Schurz Park, several blocks from her elegant apartment building.This park, bordering the East River, was populated with yuppies by day and by no one at night.

  And now, Lydia Daniels.

  Blake said to Jamie, “Loud, you go with Dillon when he interrogates the pimp.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And keep him out of trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Any kind,” Blake said as he left.

  There was something about Dave that no one was telling her. Jamie joined him as he examined the victims’ photos.

  He didn’t look at her, but acknowledged her presence by saying, “There’s a pattern in there somehow. It only appears to be random. Normally, a serial killer will go for one type: prostitutes or coeds or redheads or some other easily identifiable trait. They also rarely kill outside their ethnic group. Here, we have three whites and an Hispanic. One teenager, two in their twenties, one in her thirties.And the spectrum of social classes: a wealthy stockbroker, a middle-class borough kid, a working-class wife, and a streetwalker. Two worked for a living: the stockbroker and the hooker. Two didn’t: the Spanish Harlem mother and the high school girl.There’s nothing to link them. They apparently didn’t know one another.”

  Jamie nodded encouragingly.

  “But there’s some thread. Some thread binds them together.”

  Jamie gazed at Dave while he perused the victims, as intense as if he were determined to penetrate the secret smile of the Mona Lisa. “I’m sure you’ll find it,” she said.

  Jackie Why sat in the interrogation room. He sat insolently backward in his chair, his legs splayed to either side. His hair was greased and combed flat back, ending in a ponytail so oily he could lube an engine with it. Jackie Why chainsmoked unfiltered cigarettes. Several burnt-out ends lay crushed on the floor around his cowboy boots.

  Dave held the door to the room to allow Jamie to enter first. Then he stepped in and closed it softly behind him.

  Jackie Why, his lips pressed around a cigarette, shook his head and smiled. “You got taste for a change, Dillon.” He winked at Jamie. “Y’know what they say: Once you go black, you never go back.” He sucked hard on the butt and its ember glowed.

  Jamie seemed to be taking the insult stoically. Dave stood in front of the pimp and said,“Haven’t you heard the new rules, Jackie? No smoking.”

  “Ain’t no rules in a cop shop, Dillon. Anything goes, pal.”

  Dave grabbed the cigarette out of Jackie Why’s mouth and threw it hard at him.The burning end sizzled briefly against his forehead, and he swatted at it and grimaced in pain.

  “Hey, watch it, Dillon. Don’t go around assaulting citizens, okay?”

  Dave bounced a hard finger off the pimp’s chest. “Don’t worry about it, creep.”

  Jackie Why was not cowed. “Dillon, I’ve been sitting here for an hour like a good little boy. No one has charged me with shit. No one has served me with any papers. So unless you get on with your bullshit, I’m booking out of here.”

  Dave glanced at Jamie. He knew Blake had sent her along to make sure he behaved. And he was determined to keep his temper in check.

  “So tell me, Jackie,” Dave began, “who were Lydia’s friends?”

  “Only me. I was her friend.”

  “What about other hookers?”They went around and around for a spell. Dave showed Jackie the pictures of the other three murdered women and recited their names. Jackie was aware of them solely from media reports of their deaths; he was sure Lydia didn’t know them. Shown the long coat she had died in, he opined that it didn’t belong to her, although he volunteered no notion of its true owner’s identity. He knew little else about her other than her performance as an employee.

  “She was a world-class suction pump.” Jackie Why leered at Jamie. “Know what that is, baby? She had the — what they call — labial control. Sit on top of you and blow your mind. Shit, take her to an oilfield and strap her on top of a rig, this country’s energy problems would be history.”

  “She had a batch of condoms in her purse,” Jamie said. “But they were in unopened packages. Not one was used. Did she practice safe sex?”

  “Fucked if I know. She did with me. I ain’t letting none of them scuzzy bitches get around my nice pork without something between us.” He winked at Jamie. “I use French ticklers.”

  Dave persisted. “Did Lydia’s customers like to do it without condoms?”

  “Maybe some did. Feels better when you can do it raw.” He smirked at Jamie. “Right, honey?”

  Jamie said nothing. She kept her eyes fixed on his.

  Dave rapped Jackie Why’s temple with his knuckles. “Knock, knock, asshole.Anybody home? We don’t go around making stupid remarks to police officers. Otherwise, bad, bad things can happen.”

  Jackie Why sneered. “Hey, I got a lawyer, Dillon. After the heat you took for Mr. Slice and Dice, you don’t need another brutality problem. Good break for you that fucking redneck last night was too dense to file charges.”

  Jamie could feel Dave’s tension as he shrugged and got up to leave. She followed and they were at the door when Jackie took one last shot. “Oh, by the way, I had a phone ca
ll from a friend of yours. A special friend.” He sniggered unpleasantly.

  Dave’s face became a mask, as he held back his urge to go back and bounce Jackie Why’s oily head off the wall. Instead, he opened the door and spoke evenly. “You can go, Jackie.”

  The pimp got to his feet and swaggered to the door, giving Jamie an up and down appraisal as he moved past her. “Nice legs you got, for a cop.”

  “Beat it, scumbag,” Jamie said quietly, “Or I’ll kick your butt so hard, you’ll be wearing it as a necklace.”

  Jackie Why left without another word.

  Dave looked at Jamie in surprise, as if he were seeing her for the first time.

  She smiled.“I’m not partial to pimps.”

  “Me neither.You can tell Blake I didn’t smack him around.”

  Jamie’s smile evaporated. “I’m not here to spy on you.”

  “Good,” Dave said tersely.

  “And if you had smacked him around, I might have helped.”

  Dave allowed himself a glimmer of a smile. “You’re okay, Loud.”

  “Call me Jamie,” she said.

  Dave decided to like her. She was smart, strong, and steady. Exactly the sort of woman the Dillon men needed but never got.

  For the hundredth time that morning, Dave thought of the woman Jackie Why had called his special friend. She was lost to him forever. His heart ached.

  Despite having pulled the graveyard shift, Megan was expected at the West Side Crisis Center’s weekly staff meeting the next morning. She had slept only a couple of hours and wore the same clothes as the night before.

  She entered the center’s main lobby, a dirty cavern where motes of dust jigged in the light from the soot-caked windows.The clientele wandered about the lobby, as purposeless as the dust. A woman strutted by with boxes under her sweater, giving her large, square breasts. A man, his entire head wrapped with mummy-like bandages, sat nodding in a corner. One old woman was taking small steps in a circle, around and around. A hubbub of conversation filled the lobby, although it was mostly from clients talking to themselves.

  The staff had crammed into the staff lounge, a tiny room with lockers, a coffee maker, and old furniture that bled stuffing. Reuben sat laughing inanely on a sofa with Tim, a young, gay man with a buzz cut. Nita sat in a chair off in the corner, in a fresh change of clothes; she was absorbed in a file and there was no place near her to sit. Megan ended up on the sofa with Reuben and Tim. She said hello to Rose, the sweet motherly lady who sat on a rickety chair next to her.