Sharky's Machine

Chapter Thirteen

Barney Friscoe stormed through the lobby of the Lancaster Towers West with Papa trotting at his side. The security guard watched them enter and came out of his office with his eyebrows arched into question marks.

Papa managed a lame smile. ‘Superintendent,’ he said, pointing to Friscoe, whose face looked like a volcano about to erupt.

Everything hunky-dory up there?’ the guard said, with a touch of panic in his voice.

‘Fine, fine,’ Papa said, ‘nothin’ to worry about. Routine.’ They got into the elevator. The guard watched the door shut and finally shrugged and returned to his television set.

‘What’s this “superintendent” shit?’ Friscoe snapped.

‘A cover. He thinks we’re workin’ on the elevators,’ Papa said.

‘The elevators? Jesus H. Christ, Papa, this better be important, that’s all I got to say, puffin’ me outa the symphony, right in the middle of Prokofiev. And Lieutenant Kije at that! My oldest kid made third chair tonight, you understand that? It’s important.’

Papa said nothing.

‘A fantastic programme, we got Brahms, we got Schubert, and we got Prokofiev! And there I am, third row centre.’ Friscoe, who -was wearing a tuxedo, pulled his velvet tie loose and opened the top button of his shirt as the elevator stopped.

‘To the right, first door on the right,’ Papa said.

Friscoe stomped down the hail, muttering to himself. ‘This better be good. This better be fingerfuckinlickin’ good.’

Friscoe hammered on the door to 10-A.

‘Who is it?’ Livingston asked from inside.

‘It’s Little Red Riding Hood, for Chrissakes, who do you think it is? Open the goddamn door.’

The chain rattled and Livingston swung the door partially open. Friscoe charged through it without looking to the right or left. He came face to face with Sharky and The Nosh. Friscoe stood in front of them, his hands on his hips and his tie dangling like black crêpe paper from his open collar.

‘Awright,’ Friscoe bawled, ‘what the fuck’s so urgent you jokers get me outa the symphony right on the dime, when in ten more minutes I could’ve sneaked out between numbers and nobody woulda been the wiser? I had to crawl over half of Atlanta society to —,

Livingston was tapping him on the shoulder and at the same moment Sharky pointed back toward the door. Friscoe spun around.

‘What the hell do you —, he said, and stopped in mid- sentence.

He saw the bloody pattern near the ceiling, the splash of blood on the wall where the force of the shot had thrown her, the streaks down to the crumpled body below.

A gaunt spider of a man was leaning over her, examining the body.

‘Terrible for the blood pressure, Barney, blowing up like that,’ the gaunt man said quietly.

‘Holy shit!’ Friscoe said, half under his breath. He took a few steps towards the corpse and stopped. His face contorted. He swallowed hard, shuddered, looked at Livingston, back at Sharky, and then at the corpse again.

‘What the fuck. . . who is it? What happened here?’

Sharky started to speak but his voice cracked and he stopped to clear his throat. Livingston finally spoke up. ‘It’s the Domino woman,’ he said. The words cut deep into Sharky’s gut when he heard them said aloud.

‘Domino!’ Friscoe said.

‘Yeah.’

Friscoe’s eyes widened. ‘So what happened?’

The gaunt man, his hands encased in blood-covered surgeon’s plastic gloves, looked up at him. ‘Somebody aced the lady,’ he said in a voice that sounded tired.

‘I ain’t blind,’ Friscoe bellowed. ‘What I wanna know is, what happened?’

‘What happened, Sharky’s on the roof monitoring the bugs,’ Livingston said. ‘She got away from us this morning and was out most of the day. About seven-forty there was a call from somebody named Pete saying he would be late and would call back. She came in at seven-forty-four. Two minutes later another call. Whoever it was hung up. At seven-fifty-eight the doorbell rang, she opened the door and’ — he nodded towards the corpse. ‘Couple more things. She was packing her suitcase when she got hit. It’s in there on the bed. Then about fifteen minutes after . . . it happened. . . there was another call. We let the machine answer it. It was this Pete again. I picked it up, but he hung up as soon as he heard my voice.’

The gaunt man stripped off his gloves, put a hand on his knee, and stood up. And up. And up. He was a shade over six-foot-six, thin as a stalk of wheat, his clothes hanging from bony shoulders like rags on a scarecrow. His complexion was the colour of oatmeal, his hair — what there was of it — the colour of sugared cinnamon. The bones in his long, angular face strained against wafer-thin skin. His long needle fingers seemed as brittle as the limbs of a dead bush. Art Harris, one of the city’s better reporters, had once profiled him thus: ‘Max Grimm, the Fulton County coroner, is a cadaverous stalk of twigs who looks worse than many of his subjects . . .‘ The description provided Grimm with his nickname, Twigs. At sixty-seven he had been coroner for forty-one years and had managed to stave off compulsory retirement at sixty-five with the excuse that he was suffering some vague terminal disorder and wanted to work as long as possible at the job he had held for almost two-thirds of his life. Nobody believed him, but that was immaterial. He was too good to retire anyway.

His partner in crime was George Barret, head of the forensics lab. Together, they were the Mutt and Jeff of Pathology, the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of crime lab and morgue. Barret stood barely five-five, outweighed Grimm by at least twenty pounds, wore rimless bifocals, and parted his strawberry-coloured h4ir down the middle like a turn-of-the-century snake-oil pedlar. He was an arch-Baptist who neither smoked, swore, nor drank and was constantly offended by Grimm’s penchant for Napoleon brandy, which the coroner nipped constantly from a Maalox bottle. Barret entered the scene from one of the bedrooms carrying an ancient black snap-satchel which his late father, a country doctor, had willed him. Inside were crammed all the mysterious vials, chemicals, and tools of the forensic trade.

In his soft Southern voice he said, in a single sentence virtually uninhibited by punctuation: ‘Nothing here, I got all the pictures and measurements I need, oh, hi, Barney, I think we can assume from the tape and what we can .- or more correctly, what we can’t — find that the killer never ventured beyond the door there.’

Friscoe was a man fighting frustration, pearls of sweat twinkling on his forehead. ‘Well, where’s everybody else?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’ Livingston replied.

‘I mean where the hell is everybody else? Where’s Homicide? I see the ME there. I see Forensics. Where is everybody else? Here it Is an hour and five minutes since it happened and there ain’t a Homicide in sight yet.’

‘Nobody called Homicide,’ Livingston said.

Friscoe’s eyes went blank. ‘Nobody called Homicide?

‘Nobody called Homicide.’

‘Well, uh, is there a reason nobody called Homicide? I mean have all communications between this here apartment house and the main station busted down or what?’

Sharky was staring at the floor. He had said nothing since Friscoe arrived. He was still having trouble putting together an intelligible sentence. The one thing Friscoe would not understand, would not accept, was Sharky’s personal feeling and Sharky knew it would be difficult, if not impossible, to put his personal anger aside. He had to be cautious and it was that necessity that kept him from saying anything. Friscoe finally turned to Livingston. ‘Arch?’

‘Sure,’ Livingston said and then suddenly words seemed to die in his mouth, too. It was Papa who finally broke the awkward stammering cadence of the conversation. ‘We wanna do it,’ he said simply.

‘We wanna do what?’ Friscoe said.

‘We wanna handle this one.’

‘What are you talkin’ about?’

‘He means we want to run with it, Barney,’ Livingston said. ‘We know more about —‘

‘Wait a minute! Wait a fuckin’ minute,’ Friscoe said, and his voice wavered. He held up a finger. ‘You all understand, right, that the golden rule, I mean rule number one of the holy scriptures according to The Bat, is that in the event of any sudden or unexplainable or suspicious death, any death of that nature, Homicide gets notified first. Before anybody even goes to the fuckin’ bathroom, the Homicides are brought in. That’s gospel, boys.’

‘Listen a minute,’ Livingston implored.

‘No! I don’t believe my ears. Maybe the robust second chorus of Lieutenant Kije has temporarily damaged the old ears here, because if what I’m hearing is what I think I’m hearing, you’re all off the wall. You’re all dangerous if that’s what’s comin’ off here. You’re as dangerous as a goddamn cross-eyed barber if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking.’ Friscoe’s face had turned red with anger.

‘Look, don’t take it personal, for Chrissakes,’ Livingston said.

‘Well I am talkin’ it personal. How about that? I’m talkin’ all this bullshit personal. And that’s what it is — bullshit.’

‘Look,’ Livingston said, ‘we’re all a little, uh, freaked right now.’

‘Oh, I can tell that, yessiree. You’re all around the bend, if you ask me. You — you’re Abrams, that right?’

The Nosh nodded.

‘And you go along with this?’

The Nosh nodded again.

‘Shit, you’re all nuttier than a team of one-legged tap dancers, you wanna know what I think. That’s if anybody’s interested in what I think.’

The Nosh smiled.

‘It ain’t funny there, Abrams,’ Friscoe roared. ‘You got yourself one hell of a pile of trouble. What you think’s gonna happen when D’Agastino hears about this? You think I’m going up? Hah! D’Agastino’s gonna break eardrums in Afghanistan. That fuckin’ wop can outscream Billy Graham.’

‘Will you just listen for a mm —, Livingston started to say.

Friscoe cut him off. ‘Crazy,’ the lieutenant said, ‘crazeeee.’ He put his hands over his ears.

Livingston looked at Sharky and shrugged. ‘What’d I tell you?’ he said.

‘What’d I tell who?’ Friscoe said, still holding his hands over his ears.

‘1 told him you’d think we were nuts.’

‘You are nuts. Absogoddamulutely nuts. The lot of you. N-u-t-s.’

‘I thought at least you’d. . .‘ Livingston started, and then let the sentence dangle.

‘Thought what? Thought what?’ Friscoe said, his voice beginning to rise again.

‘I thought you’d hear us out.’

‘What is this here you’re layin’ off on me, Arch? What’s with this heartbreak hotel shit? Jesus, right now, this here very minute you are all up to your ass in alligators. And for Christ’s sake, so am I. I ain’t even involved in this and I’m in trouble. The Bat’s gonna have ass, man. Ten fat cheeks nailed to his fuckin’ wall. And you, too, Twigs. You and George there. You know the procedure.’

‘I work for the county,’ Twigs said quietly. ‘Captain Jaspers can go suck a duck egg.’

‘That’s real cute,’ Friscoe said. ‘How about you, George?’

‘He owes me,’ Livingston said. ‘I just called in my green stamps.’

‘Jaspers won’t bother me,’ Barret said. ‘I can remember when he was pounding a beat. He had difficulty tying his shoes in those days.’

‘He still does,’ Twigs said. ‘Besides, until you arrived, Barney, Arch was the senior officer on the scene. All I am required to do is make a preliminary study of the corpse on the scene prior to performing an autopsy. The officer in charge gets the results. In this case, I believe Sergeant Livingston was the ranking man on the scene.’

Barret smiled. ‘I follow the same procedure. Livingston will get my report. If he handles it improperly, it’s his problem, not mine.’

Friscoe sat down on the couch. ‘Cheez,’ he said. He sat for several seconds shaking his head slowly. Finally: ‘Okay, okay. Everybody here’s gone a little ape. I can understand that. I’ll work it out. I’ll take on The Bat and get it straightened out.’

‘Barney, all we want is the weekend. Sixty hours. What the hell’s that? Until Monday-morning roll call,’ Livingston said.

‘It’s nuts, that’s what it is,’ Friscoe said. ‘Look, I said I’d get it straightened out. But right now we got to get some Homicides up here and fast.’

Ironically, it was Papa who exploded. Papa — who rarely said anything and when he did could reduce the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to a single syllable, Papa who rarely showed any emotion — exploding like a wounded bull.

‘Fuck ‘em!’ he roared, jolting the anguished Friscoe, ‘Fuck ‘em all. Fuck The Bat, fuck Homicide, fuck that goddamn psalm-singin’ moron of a DA. Fuck ‘em all. Arch and me have been stuck down in that stinkin’ garbage pail at Vice for six years. You been there longer, Friscoe. Everybody in the House thinks all we’re good for is puttin’ the arm on hookers and perverts and wipin’ dogshit off our shoes. We ain’t a bunch of morons, y’know. Between you, me, and Arch there we got about fifty years in. This here’s our caper. We turned it up. I’m the one waltzed that god. damn Mabel around interrogation until my arches fell and that’s what started it all, got us into this here spot in the first place, or maybe you forgot that. Now you know what we’re gonna get outa all this? More shit, that’s what. The rest of the force is gonna come down on us with their wisecracks and insults. It don’t make no never mind that Sharky was up there on the roof doin’ his job proper. Don’t make no never mind that we turned this whole thing up and followed through. Hell, no! All we’re gonna hear is that we had a man on the roof when that lady there got her brains handed to her. Well, I’ll tell you what — I’m tired of bein’ the asshole of the whole police department. Fuck ‘em all, Barney. I say we go after this son of a bitch ourselves and when we get him we hang his goddamn balls on Jaspers’s wall. I’m tired of hem’ shit on.’ Papa pulled open the french doors and stormed out on the balcony, his face as pink as a salamander.

Friscoe was flabbergasted. ‘I don’t understand what’s happening to everybody. I’ve known Papa for ten years. Worked with him for six. That’s more in one breath than he’s said the whole rest of the time I’ve known him. What the hell’s the fuss? What we got is a hooker suspected of complicity in a felony who got totalled. Big fuckin’ deal. It ain’t the first time somebody put the zap on a goddamn prostitute.’

‘She was a nice lady,’ The Nosh said.

‘A nice lady?’ Friscoe said.

Sharky had been sitting on the couch without a word. Now he had to say something. But what? How could he possibly explain that he had met Domino and the strange circumstances of the meeting. Or that he had sensed a vulnerability that had drawn him to her. Or that because he had felt an attraction to her this senseless violence that had snuffed out Domino’s life seemed somehow directed at him, too.

‘Don’t you understand?’ he said finally. ‘I feel responsible. Whether I am or not, I feel responsible.’

Friscoe stared at Sharky and his anger began to subside. ‘Okay, I do understand that. Thing is, nobody here’s responsible. You were doin’ exactly what you were supposed to be doin’. Look here, did you — did anybody — have any idea she was gonna get shoved over?’

No answer.

‘Anybody at all?’

Still no answer.

‘Of course not. Nobody’s responsible for nothin’. Nobody knew it was comin’ down, right? Now I can understand Doe Twigs here goin’ a little off the wall. You gotta be a little weird, goin’ around sniffin’ that goddamn formaldehyde all the time. But not the rest of you. See, no matter what we did, if we wrapped this one up before breakfast, we’d all end up one through five on The Bat’s shit list. When he finds out, that’s it. And he’s gonna find out, make no mistake about that. Anybody wanna argue that point? No, there ain’t no argument there. And even, see, even if Jaspers falls deaf, dumb, and blind in the next thirty seconds, we still got one J. Philip Riley to contend with. I’m sure you will all recall that Lieutenant Riley heads up Homicide, but what maybe you don’t know is that when God handed out brains this same J. Philip Riley was on the front of the line. And also what maybe you don’t know is that J. Philip Riley has got a temper that when he blows, The Bat and D’Agastino’re both gonna sound like a pair of sopranos in the Sunday school choir. I mean, Riley ain’t gonna take too lightly to the fact that a bunch of stand-up comics from Vice just hi-de-ho stepped in and took over one of his homicide cases. That’s for openers. For closers I would like to point out that this same J. Philip Riley happens to be a friend of mine and a damn good cop and I ain’t inclined at this minute to stick my dick in the meat grinder just because Sharky here feels responsible.’

‘That was quite a little speech, Barney,’ Barret said in his quiet, funereal voice. ‘All they want is the weekend. I happen to know that Jaspers is in Chicago addressing the NAPO convention. He won’t even be back until Monday night.’

‘That’s fuckin’ immaterial,’ Friscoe snapped.

‘I don’t think so,’ Twigs said.

Friscoe whirled away from him as if he had the plague. ‘Just keep your dime out of it, Twigs,’ he snapped.

‘Why? What you’re saying merely points up the fact that Sharky and Livingston, Papa out there on the porch, are right. It doesn’t make any difference what you do now, the Bat and Riley are both going to be on the warpath. What’ve you got to lose?’

‘I don’t go for breakin’ procedure — that’s one thing I don’t go for. That’s suicide!’

‘Yeah, Barney,’ Livingston said, ‘the reason you’ve been in Vice for almost seven years is because you’re so big on procedure. Shit, we haven’t followed procedure since I been in the squad.’

‘This is interdepartmental,’ Friscoe said.

Sharky stood up and began pacing around the room. The shock was wearing off and in its place was anger, a welling fury deep inside him. ‘Maybe you like it down there in Friscoe’s Inferno,’ he said, and his voice was brittle. ‘Maybe you been lying with the dogs so long you like the fleas.’

‘Who the hell do you think you are, to say a shit thing like that to me?’ Friscoe said, his face turning blood red.

‘I’m just thinking about that spiel I got ‘when I checked in yesterday,’ said Sharky. ‘Was that all bullshit? About how you and Arch and Papa were down tbere because you didn’t suck ass. Didn’t play by the book. A bunch of hard-. beads. I’ll tell you what, Lieutenant, you gave me this machine and Arch and Papa and The Nosh there are along for the ride. Now you want to hand it over to Riley? Shit, maybe you were right. Maybe I should walk. Maybe I should walk right now, right out that door, and go after the son of a bitch myself.’

‘You do and I’ll bring you down myself. I don’t go for headhunting. That’s cheap shit and you know it.’

‘Look, every minute we Sit around here arguin’, the son of a bitch is moving farther away,’ said Livingston. ‘Why not give Twigs and George a chance to tell us what they’ve picked up? Five, ten minutes more. Like you say, we’re up to our asses in alligators anyway.’

Friscoe’s shoulders sagged. Defeated, he waved his hand at Twigs. ‘Go ahead, for Chrissake.’

Twigs smiled. ‘Don’t worry about Riley. He’s got seven stiffs down there in the icebox and two of them are John Does. He’ll probably be grateful for any help he can get at this point.’

‘That’s a laugh,’ Friscoe said. ‘Riley ain’t happy unless his caseload looks like the casualty report from World War Two.’

‘May we go ahead?’ Barret asked.

‘Sure, why not?’ said Friscoe. ‘Before this is over we’re all gonna be directing traffic on the outskirts of Boise, Idaho, anyhow.’

‘What do you remember from ballistics training?’ Barret asked.

‘You must be kidding,’ Friscoe said. ‘I been in Vice so long, I can remember when they busted Socrates for pinchin’ little boys on the ass. Keep it basic.’

‘All right. First, the obvious. The weapon was a shotgun, twelve-gauge, judging from the number of pellets in the shot, and I think we both agree that it was sawed-off. Why? Because the shot leaves the barrel at a muzzle velocity of about eleven hundred feet per second. Up to about three feet the shot is contained; the effect is like a single rifle bullet. After that, the pellets begin to spread. If you want the shot to spread faster, the best way to accomplish your purpose is to saw the barrel off. The effect of a sawed-off scattergun is the same at about three feet as the pattern of a normal shotgun at about eight or ten yards. Now, let’s take a look at the scene a minute. Mr. Grimm?’

‘Yes, Mr. Barret.’

The gaunt man took a pencil from his inside pocket and drew the point along his hairline at the forehead. ‘Singed hair along the frontal lobe here. In fact the hair was burned in places. Also some scorched bits of skin embedded in the wall with the pellets that didn’t hit her. The heat from a shotgun blast dissipates very rapidly. So I would say the weapon was three to four feet from the victim’s face when it was fired.

‘Judging from the destruction, the pattern was already wide, seven to eight inches in diameter. Where it hit the wall there it has already spread to ten inches. That’s the kind of dispersal we would normally expect at eight or ten yards. So I would say the gun was fired from the vicinity of the door and that it was sawed off pretty close, maybe eight or nine inches from the firing pin as opposed to a normal barrel length of thirty or thirty-two inches. Mr. Barret?’

‘Thank you, Mr. Grimm. As for the weapon,’ Barret said, ‘if you listen to Sharky’s tape recording you will notice that the two shots came almost simultaneously; in fact they overlap slightly. They are too close together for the weapon to be an automatic or a pump or lever action. So what we got is a sawed-off double-barrel twelve-gauge shotgun and one that was very effectively silenced.’

‘A lupara?’ Livingston asked, and there was surprise in his voice.

‘What’s a lupara?’ Sharky said.

‘It’s Sicilian for a shotgun of this kind. The classic Mafia execution weapon,’ Barret said. ‘Certainly a possibility.’

‘You sayin’ this is a Mafia hit?’ Friscoe said.

‘I’m saying it’s a similar kind of weapon. And I’m also saying that this was no amateur at work. No amateur would have a weapon like that. Certainly not one that was silenced. Besides, this was very well planned.’

‘There’s another thing,’ Twigs said. He knelt and picked up one of the pellets from a plastic bag with a pair of tweezers and held it under Friscoe’s nose.

‘Smell anything?’

‘Yeah,’ Friscoe said, ‘gunpowder.’

‘Anything else?’

Friscoe closed his eyes and sniffed. His forehead wrinkled up. ‘What is that — garlic?’

‘Exactly,’ Twigs said.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Friscoe said, ‘the shotgun had spaghetti for dinner.’

Barret smiled. ‘Perhaps. It is another Mafia trademark. The caporegimi, the Mafia lieutenants, sometimes soaked their bullets in garlic. it infected the wound and also made the wound more painful. It was a tactic used mostly for revenge or official executions. But never in a shotgun. it’s quite strange.’

‘You’re not saying this is some kind of official Mafia hit?’ Friscoe said.

‘I tend to doubt it.’

‘What then?’

‘Maybe it’s part of his m.o.,’ Sharky said.

‘That’s more like it,’ Barret said. ‘A habit. Or perhaps even a trademark.’

‘So he could be an old-time caporegime,’ Livingston said.

Barret nodded.

‘What the hell good is that?’ Friscoe said. ‘So you’ve narrowed the field down to a coupla thousand ace hitmen spread out all over the country. Big deal.’

‘Profiles, dear Barney, profiles,’ Twigs said. ‘A few more details. The projectile was upward. You can tell from the way the shots hit the wall. The victim measures approximately 178 centimetres, that’s about five-ten. Assuming from the other physical evidence that the killer was standing in the doorway, we can draw an imaginary line from the centre of the pattern through the victim’s head to a point where the killer was standing. We can assume he did not shoot from the hip. If he had, the second shot probably would have hit him in his own chin. So he either fired with the piece under his armpit or against his shoulder. From all this we can make a pretty good guess at the killer’s height. Mr. Barret?’

Barret had drawn a diagram on a sheet of paper and was punching the keys of a small pocket calculator. ‘Five-nine tops. More likely five-seven or eight. Also from the position of the two shots, I would say you’re looking for an over- under double-barrel rather than a side-by-side.’

‘Pretty common, right?’ Friscoe said.

‘Yes,’ said Barret, ‘I wouldn’t waste my time trying to trace the gun. The significant thing is that it adds to his m.o.’

‘The more you talk, the more I think we better get Riley and company up here fast,’ Friscoc said. ‘Let Homicide and the OC worry about it — it’s their problem.’

‘If D’Agastino gets involved you can forget it,’ The Nosh said. ‘Before it’s over, he and Riley will be killing each other. That D’Agastino actually keeps evidence to himself so the OC can get the glory.’

‘That’s okay. I’ll put Riley against him any day. You ain’t seen nothin’ till you’ve seen that crazy Irishman mad.’

‘Barney, Phil Riley got his job because he deserved it. D’Agastino is a politician. In your experience which gets preference ih the official hierarchy, politics — or talent? Riley’s going to spend weeks wading through the red tape and then he’ll be lucky if the case stays in his department.’ Twigs took out his Maalox bottle and celebrated his analysis with a swig of brandy.

‘Let’s add up what we know about the shooter, shall we’?’ Barret said. ‘I think we’re looking for an old-timer, some.. one with definite habits. Extremely cautious, a careful planner, experienced enough to be sure of himself. I’d say he goes back a ways. The young ones avoid habits. They vary their methods constantly to avoid detection. The older ones are too set in their ways. They follow traditions. They’re scared to make changes. They stick with what they know works. So I’d say an old-timer definitely. Late forties, early fifties at least, maybe older. Five-seven to five-nine. Quite possibly a contact killer, someone who likes to work close to the victim, perhaps even psychopathic in that sense. Mafia and possibly an executioner fairly high in the Mafia hierarchy, because of the garlic thing. The use of garlic these days, I would think, is part of his ritual, something associated with luck or tradition.’

‘Thank you, Mr. Barret,’ Twigs said.

‘Thank you, Mr. Grimm,’ Barret said.

Papa broke into the conversation from the balcony. ‘You know what I think?’

‘God knows,’ Friscoe said.

‘The fink was watchin’ the apartment. Had to’ve been. Wouldn’t stand in the stairwell all day waitin’ for her to come home. Wouldn’t be out in the open — too easy to spot. Phone call was probably to make sure she was home. Had to be where he could see lights come on. He was watchin’. From over there someplace.’ He gestured towards the east tower.

They all looked towards the other building, at the irregular boxes of light shining through apartment windows. Sharky felt a sudden chill. Goose pimples rippled along his arm and he rubbed them away as surreptitiously as he could. Perhaps the killer had been there, all day, watching as Sharky listened from his perch on the roof. Anger began replacing the sorrow he felt for Domino, worms nudging his instinct for revenge, urging it into motion. He remembered the previous day when they were planting the mikes in the apartment and Domino had returned. He said, ‘Papa’s right. He had to be watching. It happened too fast to be luck or coincidence. And you can’t see this apartment from the street. Yesterday Arch had to warn The Nosh and me when we were up here. We couldn’t see her when she came home.’

‘You can’t see it too good from the swimming terrace, either,’ Papa said. ‘Which leaves the north side of the building, and that’s all residential, a lot of trees and backyards. . .‘

‘And over there,’ Papa said.

They all stood on the balcony, looking across at the east tower.

‘He could be sitting over there watching us right now,’ said Twigs.

‘You kiddin”?’ Friscoe said, ‘He’s halfway to Detroit by now.’

‘Makes sense, y’know,’ Barret agreed. ‘Perhaps an empty apartment?’

‘Too chancy,’ Friscoe said. ‘He’s sittin’ in there, somebody comes in for a look-see, a prospective tenant, you know. Bingo, he’s made. Too smart for that.’

‘How about somebody who’s out of town?’ Sharky suggested.

‘Sounds like a lot of crap shootin’ to me,’ Friscoe said.

‘No,’ Twigs said, ‘it’s deduction. And that’s what’s going to break this one no matter who handles it. You, D’Agastino, Riley, or whoever.’

‘There’s not enough physical evidence at this point. I agree,’ Barret said.

‘I think,’ said Sharky, ‘it’s time to have a chat with the security man.’

‘Look,’ Friscoe said, ‘if we are gonna do this we can’t even tell the press she’s dead. We can’t even n3tify her next of kin. What the fuck are you going to tell the security man?’

Sharky smiled for the first time since Domino had been killed. ‘I’m goin’ to con him,’ he said. ‘How do you think I stayed alive on the street for eighteen months?’

The security guard was in his office watching an old Randolph Scott movie on television when Sharky appeared at the doorway. He smiled and said, ‘Hi.’

The guard nodded back. ‘Everything copasetic up there?’ he said.

‘Yeah, sure,’ Sharky said. He lit a small cigar. ‘Old Randy was tough, wasn’t he?’

The security guard said, ‘Don’t make ‘em like that anymore,’ without taking his eyes off the screen.

Sharky blew smoke towards the ceiling and decided it was time for a long shot. ‘How long were you a cop?’ he asked.

The guard Looked up, surprised, ‘How’d you know?’ he said.

Sharky took out his wallet and flipped it open, baring his shield.

‘I’ll be a son of a bitch,’ the guard said. ‘You know somethin’? I had a feelin’ all along that story about the elevators was a lot of crap.’ He leaned towards Sharky and said very softly. ‘What in hell’s goin’ on, anyway?’

‘We need to trust you,’ Sharky said. ‘What I’m going to tell you is very confidential.’

‘Hey, I was nineteen years on the College Park force. I’d still be there only I piled up a blue-and-white chasing some goddamn teenagers and almost lost a leg. Had to retire early.’

‘That’s tough,’ Sharky said. ‘What’s your name?

‘Jerry. Jerry Sanford.’

‘This stays between us, right?’

‘Tellin’ Jerry Sanford is Like talkin’ to a grave.’

‘Okay. The boys up there with me, we’re all a special team from burglary. For three weeks now we’ve had a cat burglar working the high rent apartments and condos along Peachtree. He’s very good, driving us up the wall. He always knows exactly what he’s after, who to hit, and who not to hit. He knows when people are out of town. He can pop a double-lock LaGard box easier than opening a can of beans. So far he’s been two feet ahead of us all the way. We figure he’s got to take this place sooner or later,’

‘We got good security,’ Sanford said.

‘He’s hit just as tough.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Believe me, this guy is first rate. He’s into tricks we never heard of.’

‘No shit. What’d you say your name was again?’

‘Sharky.’

‘Tell you, Sharky, Raymond Security is tough.’

‘Here’s the thing. We figure he does a real number before be hits. Checks out the residents. Maybe even has a method for scoring financial statements. He usually hits apartments or condominiums where the tenants are out of town for a while. Business, maybe, r travelling. He might even ca1 ahead, ask questions about the tenants. But very clever.’

‘We don’t tell nobody nothin’ about our occupants.’

‘He’s clever, like I said. Maybe passes himself off as a delivery man. A salesman, like that.’

‘No solicitations in the building.’

‘Maybe a door-to-door thing?’

‘Nobody gets by this desk without we check who they’re going to see and get an okay from the occupant.’

‘How long are you on? What’s your shift?’

‘I’m on two to ten right now. The graveyard man takes over from ten to six in the A.M. Then the early man does six to two. We revolve the shift every six weeks. I been on the evening trick for a month.’

‘How about the other men?’

‘First rate, everybody. I’m telling you, Raymond Security is the best.’

‘And there hasn’t been anyone around? No phone calls?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Nobody suspicious hanging around?’

‘If there was, you’d be the first to know. We’ve had a couple of people looking at apartments, asking about vacancies. The place stays a hundred per cent full. We got four on the waiting list now. The two empties are bein’ renovated. They’re both leased already.’

‘Which ones would they be?’

‘Let’s see, there’s 10-B west and 4-C east.’

‘10-B west?’

‘Yeah. They’re puttin’ in the carpeting now. It goes to an elderly lady. A widow. Very well fixed. The other one goes to a young couple. He’s a doctor.’

‘Anything temporarily vacant? You know, people away on vacation, anything like that?’

‘Sure. But we got the list. Let’s see. There’s the Cliffords, 9-C east. They’re in Florida for the holidays. Go down every year. He’s retired. And then there’s Mrs. Jackowitz. She’s in Hawaii with her daughter. They take a trip every year this time. The daughter’s a travel agent. Mr. Jackowitz passed on about two years ago.’

‘Where’s her apartment?’

‘That would be 12-C in the east tower.’

‘That would face?’

‘West. A and B are on the east side of the building. C and D on the west. Four apartments to the floor.’

‘So the Jackowitz apartment is on the twelfth floor of the east tower facing the west tower?’

‘Right.’

‘And the Cliffords?’

‘9-C, east.’

‘Both apartments face the other tower, right?’

‘Right.’

‘And nobody soliciting, no calls, nothing like that?’ The guard shook his head.

‘Okay, Jerry, thanks. We’ll be in and out for a couple of more days.’

‘You want to stake out one of the empties, it’s okay with me. I got a passkey.’

‘Thanks, we may just take you up on that.’ Sharky started out of the office and brushed against a tall corn plant in the corner, its leaves turning brown at the tips. ‘You’re over- watering your plants,’ he said to Sanford. ‘You can always tell when the leaves turn at the ends like that.’

‘I got the original brown thumb. I already killed one of the Jackowitz plants and two more in here.’

‘You go in the Jackowitz apartment?’

‘Yeah, I water the plants for her. I hate to do It, too. I don’t have the feel for it, know what I mean?’

‘Yeah. When’s the last time you were in there?’

‘Jackowitz? Lessee, it was Sunday. I water them on Sundays.’

‘Thanks. We’ll keep in touch.’

Sharky started to leave and Sanford suddenly snapped his fingers. ‘Hey, I just thought of something. There was a call. I just thought about it when you started talkin’ about those plants. It was. . . uh. . . day before yesterday. He was with some plant store. I’ll think of it here in a minute.’

‘What did he want’?’

‘It was a new service. Plantland, that’s the name of the place. Right up the street. What they do, they water and fertilize plants for people.’

‘Did you tell him anything?’

Sanford chewed on his lower lip fr a moment. ‘What I did — see, I hate takin’ care of the plants, like 1 said. I told him to send them some literature.’

‘Who. Send who?’

‘Everybody in the place. I was afraid, you know, I’d forget if he sent the stuff to me.’

‘Did you tell him the Cliffords and Jackowitz were away?’

‘Uh, well, I told him I was having trouble, y’know. I thought maybe he could gimme a tip or two.’

‘Did you tell him they were out of town?’

‘I didn’t say anything specific. I told him they were potentials, see. Send the stuff direct to them but that it may be a little while before they get baclc.’

‘You gave him the names and addresses?’

‘Yeah, four or five different people who travel a lot, not just them.’

‘But did you mention specifically that the Cliffords and Jackowitz women are out of town now?’

‘Just so he’d know it might be a. while before they got back to him.’

‘I see.’

‘I fucked up, right?’

‘Maybe not.’

‘I’ll call them right now, check it out.’

‘No,’ Sharky said quickly. ‘I wouldn’t do that. If it is a possibility you’d just warn them, right?’

‘Oh, yeah. I didn’t think of that.’

‘Let us handle it.’

‘Sure, sure.’

‘I’ll keep this between us.’

‘I-Icy, Sharky. that’s damn white of you. I appreciate it.’ ‘Any time, Jerry. Any time.’

Forty minutes in the Cliffords’ apartment yielded nothing but bruised knees. Barret was a fanatic. He checked everything. Under the beds, in the commode, behind pots and pans in the cabinets, the disposal, the windowsills, under chairs and couches.

Forty minutes later he said, ‘Forget it,’ and they headed to the Jackowitz apartment on twelve. I3arret told Sharky and The Nosh to stand back until he vacuumed the carpeting around the door and dusted the doorknob. He carefully swept the small camel’s-hair brush on the brass handle, smoothing out the black powder.

He looked up and grinned.

‘What d’ya know,’ he said. ‘Clean as a new dime.’

‘So?’ The Nosh said.

‘So how many people do you know polish off the doorknob when they enter or leave their place?’

Sharky stepped close to Barret. ‘You through here?’ he asked.

‘Yep.’

‘Then why don’t you step over there out of the way and let Nosh and me take the door, just in case.’

‘Why, indeed,’ Barret said and walked ten feet down the hail. The Nosh knelt down and popped the lock with less trouble than it would have taken to open a can of soup. Sharky took out his automatic and, holding his arm close to his side and bent at the elbow, pointed the gun towards the ceiling and slipped the safety catch off. The Nosh took out a snub-nose .38 and leaned back against the wall on the opposite side of the doorway, the pistol nestled in two hands.

‘Here we go,’ Sharky whispered and The Nosh nodded. He twisted the doorknob slowly and then pushed the door open, jumped inside and fell flat against the wail in the dark room. An instant later The Nosh came through and kicked the door shut behind him. They waited for a few seconds, listening to each other breathe. ‘Scares the shit outa me, doin’ that,’ The Nosh said finally.

Sharky clicked on the light. The apartment was empty. They let Barret in. Barret slipped on surgeon’s plastic gloves and went to work. Slowly and methodically he moved through the apartment. The doorknob inside was also devoid of fingerprints. He spot vacuumed the rug, marking each bag of dirt and grit with a small diagram of the room showing the exact location of the sample. He got down on his hands and knees with a flashlight and perused the carpeting. Then he told Sharky to turn off the lights.

‘Kneel down here beside me,’ he said. The finger of light skipped across the piling of the carpet. Barret moved it slowly back and forth. ‘See anything?’ he asked.

‘You mean the marks there on the floor?’

‘Urn hmm.’

There were four deep grooves in the rug. Then Barret saw something else twinkling in the rays of the flashlight under the chair. He took tweezers and picked it up. It was a small red oblong pill.

‘Look familiar?’ Barret said.

‘Looks like a red devil to me,’ Sharky said.

‘Could be, could be. Or some kind of angina medication. Perhaps the woman who lives here dropped it.’ He plopped it in a baggie, then turned his attention back to the chair.

‘Somebody swung this chair around in front of the window,’ Barret said. ‘And see here, on the windowsill, those circles. Still damp. It looks like somebody put a glass of water down here.’ He looked at it under his magnifying glass. Along the edges of the water ring was a slight red discolouration.

‘When’s the last time anybody was in here?’ Barret asked.

‘Last Sunday,’ Sharky said.

‘Hmmm.’

Barret went over the living room in minute detail, then the kitchen and bedroom.

‘Okay,’ he said finally, ‘here’s what we got. Somebody moved the chair. Somebody dropped a pill on the floor. That could’ve happened a week ago, yesterday, or last month. But the water rings on the windowsill — that was recent. No more than a few hours. Still damp. Also there’s water in the sink in the kitchen and one of the glasses is damp. I’d say three or four hours on the outside, or both the glass and the sink’d be dry by now. That red discolouration on the sill could have come from that pill we found on the floor. I took a scraping. The lab’ll confirm that. No prints in the apartment, no recent prints in the apartment. Everything’s latent. Okay, we can expect that. There’s also a trace of oil on the carpet in front of the window. Smells like machine oil but I’ll check that out. It could have been from a gun if somebody laid one there on the floor. The phone is clean. Some old prints and smudges. My guess is somebody wearing gloves picked up the phone. It’s operating, by the way.’ Barret went to the window and parted the venetian blinds with two fingers. ‘Direct view of the other apartment from here.’

He stopped and for several moments he stared into space, saying nothing. Then he said, ‘I think he was in here. Somebody was, and within the last few hours.’ He nodded to himself, still staring.

‘I have one more idea,’ he said.

He took his brush and vial of black powder and went first to the guest bathroom and kneeling down, dusted the handle on the toilet. It was clean. He went to the other bathroom and repeated the procedure.

The loops and whorls seemed far away at first.

Then as Barret dusted them they seemed to jump out at

‘Well, I’ll be a son of a gun,’ Barret said with a grin. ‘Ding,! We got ourselves a fresh print.’ He looked up at Sharky and The Nosh and winked. ‘Keep that in mind,’ he said. ‘Nobody likes to wear gloves when they take a leak.’