Anatomy of Fear

9

But we have theater tickets, Perry, you know that.” His wife whined in the singsong Indian accent that he once found so adorable.

“Take one of your girlfriends, baby.” He pulled her to him, locking his fingers firmly behind her back, their faces inches apart.

“You smell like a cigar.” She managed to get one of her hands to his chest and tried to push him back. “And don’t call me baby.”

They’d met at the UN, some party for the delegate to Botswana. He’d come with the woman he’d been seeing at the time, a leggy blonde, secretary to the delegate from Botswana, but the moment he’d met Urvishi he’d forgotten about the blonde. Urvishi was a translator, and the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. But that had been seven years ago. And who was it who said that no matter how beautiful the woman, somewhere there was a man who was tired of fucking her? Wise man, thought Perry Denton.

“You used to like it, bay-bee.” He grinned and tightened his grip, then let her go and took a step back. “Look, baby, you’re the lucky one. You get to go to the theater. Me, I’m stuck in another damn meeting with the mayor.”

“You spend more time with the mayor than you do with me.” She pouted like a little girl.

“You have any idea the kind of pressure that comes with my job, baby?”

“I think you like your important meetings.”

Denton’s hands clenched into fists and twitched at his sides, but the wife of the chief of department could not be seen in public with a black eye. Too bad, he thought.

His wife seemed to read his mind. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Sure you are, baby.” He phoned in a smile. “Enjoy the play-and don’t wait up.”

No driver tonight, Chief?” The doorman, a young Irish kid who Denton thought looked like half the rookies in the academy, tipped his cap.

“Just going for a walk.”

“Can I call you a cab, sir?”

“Hard to take a walk in a taxi,” said Denton, lighting up a cigar as he headed toward the corner.

The subway car was half empty, the evening rush long over. At Ninety-sixth Street most of the white people got off.

Denton brushed a few hairs-blond, definitely not his wife’s-off the lapel of his cashmere jacket and stared at his reflection in the smudged windows that looked out on nothing but darkness. He adjusted his sunglasses and glanced around to see if anyone recognized him. There were only a few people in the car and no one looked his way.

The subway roared into the station and Denton got off. This was the last time he would meet Vallie up in the fucking Bronx. He had made the decision. Vallie had forced his hand.

Terri looked past the drawing in her gloved hand to the victim sprawled on the pavement just a few feet away: life imitating art.

She handed the drawing back to Crime Scene. “Not for public consumption,” she said. She did a slow three-sixty of the quiet street, the four- and five-story brownstones, mixed with taller apartment buildings, and tried to reconstruct the crime.

Had the shooter approached the vic, shot him point-blank, or had the shots been fired from a distance?

“Any witnesses?” she asked one of her detectives, Vinnie Dugan, a pug-nosed Irishman who’d expected to get Terri’s job and hadn’t gotten it. He’d been going through the crowd, which wasn’t that big, maybe twenty people who had been awakened by police sirens at 2:00 A.M. Had it been earlier, and a different neighborhood, this sort of spectacle would have been SRO.

“Nada,” said Dugan. “And no one heard the shots.”

But someone had to have the heard shots! Terri took another look at the quiet residential street. Had the shooter used a silencer? And if so, why? Was it some sort of paid hit? But that didn’t make sense. And there was another drawing, another fucking drawing.

Terri tapped a CS tech. “Have you checked the vic’s shirt for anything that could have gotten on it when the drawing was pinned onto him?”

The guy looked insulted by the question. “Of course.”

“And you’ve got the pin, right?”

He displayed a plastic bag, the pin inside.

The medical examiner swabbed the dead man’s forehead with a Q-tip and zipped it into a bag. “The lab will do further tests for GSR, but right now I’m saying there’s residue.”

Terri studied the victim’s position and turned to the photographer. “Can you get a shot of the vic from both east and west? Full-body shots. Pictures of the street too-and the crowd.” She turned to survey them, the outer fringes already breaking down, people returning to the comfort of their homes, which surprised her. Most people did not leave until the body had been bagged and taken away, the best part of the show. She figured things weren’t moving fast enough for them, no close-ups, no snappy dialogue. She signaled to Dugan.

“Who’s doing the canvass?”

“Detectives from the Twenty-third,” he said. “It’s their beat, remember?”

“And part of our investigation,” said Terri. “Take a uniform and start on the north side of the block.” She gestured to her other men. “O’Connell, you and Perez can work the south.”

“People up here don’t like being awakened in the middle of the night,” said Perez.

“Like I give a shit?” Terri sighed. “Look, guys, I know it’s late. I’d like to be home in bed as much as you. Tell you what, finish up here, meet me at the station, and I’ll treat you to breakfast.”

“As long as it’s a real one,” said O’Connell. “None of that Egg McMuffin crap.”

“You got it.” Terri watched them walk away. Maybe they wouldn’t be calling her bitch behind her back, which she knew they’d been doing her first few months on the job. She wondered where Denton was. Off screwing one of his interns, her best guess. He’d be pissed that he had missed a photo op. The press had just arrived, TV reporters hooking up mikes, film crews angling for shots as CS finished up and EMT finally bagged the body.

She glanced over at the man who had discovered the body, a young guy who had been to a bachelor party, reeling a bit as if his feet were glued to the ground and his body tugged by opposing magnets. He hadn’t seen anyone, just the body. He’d probably tripped over it.

One decent witness, was that too much to ask? Someone who had seen something, who could sit down with Rodriguez and let him do his transference thing, his magic.

Terri’s adrenaline was starting to ebb, replaced by an empty sinking feeling.

Hell, it would have to be real magic if they did not have a witness. After all, Rodriguez could not make up a face from thin air.