Masquerade for Murder

Chapter Fourteen

A white-haired butler in traditional black livery met me at the door to the co-op apartment. He was so ancient that he’d been doing this long enough for such a thing to be common among a certain class. That included the Colbys, of course, although frankly they may have been among the poorer folk housed in one of the twenty-two apartments on these sixteen floors. Billionaires looked down their noses at measly multi-millionaires in these here parts.

I was visiting, after all, an art deco, limestone-fronted monument to wealth on Fifth Avenue between 64th and 65th with a view on Central Park. Built between the wars, this was one of those white-glove palaces sporting a twenty-four-hour doorman at a canopied entrance and uniformed elevator operators waiting inside for those deemed worthy. I was expected, worthy or not, having called ahead. Otherwise, I couldn’t have gotten in without a search warrant.

This was Tuesday and a laundered story of what happened in a certain Meatpacking District warehouse Sunday night had been all over the media on Monday. I’d met privately with my client’s son to take a sort of deposition (so went this version of the “facts”) about things I uncovered in my investigation of the chophouse hit-and-run; Vincent Colby became excited and attacked me — I defended myself with tragic results. For him. The personality change that followed his concussion was mentioned. Not much else.

Mostly it’d been photos in the papers of young Colby at the brokerage and out on the town, with footage on the tube of him at the Tube (and other clubs) as well as social and charity events. I spent much of Monday at One Police Plaza in Pat’s office, viewing the video tape — Captain Chambers watching it with cold interest.

I won’t go into how furious Pat was with me over my tactics, but he knew damn well having a non-police officer staging a charade like that had a positive side — namely, it made the tape’s contents useable in court... or would have if Colby had lived to go to court. A citizen can’t be accused of entrapment, after all. And for all his glowering, Captain Chambers had trouble holding back a smile when I looked at the camera and apologized to him.

For all his talk of putting Vinnie in stir to endure a lifetime away from privilege and freedom, Pat obviously didn’t mind seeing the sick fuck dead. I knew I sure didn’t.

But that attitude needed some sanding off at the edges for my client. I had a check in my wallet refunding his ten-grand retainer, though I doubted the old man would give a damn about getting his money back. I clearly hadn’t delivered what he was after.

Vance Colby deserved the truth, though. Softened a little maybe, but when one day you have an heir ready to take over the reins of your successful brokerage, and the next you’ve got a dead murdering maniac for a son, nothing much can take out the sting.

And it would get worse. Soon Vincent Colby would be a notorious name in the headlines, joining the ranks of Bundy and Berkowitz, as more and more inevitably came out. With garish TV movies and documentaries to come.

What hit the papers this morning was the discovery of the body of Harry P. Strutt, dead of a blow to the back of the head, in the trunk of his Camaro, left on a country road outside Marlboro, New York.

After handing over my trenchcoat and hat, I was ushered through a black, white and gold deco-appointed foyer with a two-story ceiling and led past an ivory marble staircase with black and gold bannisters into a living room with, oddly, no art moderne touches at all.

This high-ceilinged, marble-floored living room with its golden-brown paneling and overstuffed furnishings — tall, burgundy-swagged windows looking out on Fifth — should have had a welcoming warmth. Despite the lived-in, overstuffed furnishings, a museum-like stuffiness pervaded.

Over a wood-burning, decorative fireplace loomed a large gold-framed portrait of a very beautiful dark-haired woman whose features prefigured her late son’s; judging by the gown, I’d say the painting dated to the 1940s. For some reason I had a sense that when Vincent Colby’s mother died (because this was surely her), she’d taken the warmth with her.

Of course, the fireplace wasn’t lighted, so maybe that had something to do with it.

I was shown to the kind of bulging, tufted sofa you can get lost in, along with the change in your pockets, gold-and-brown brocade and decades old. Plump brown leather chairs at left and right completed a sitting area on an oriental carpet, in front of the not-roaring fireplace with the painting supervising.

And then it hit me — nothing in here had changed since this lovely woman passed. I would give ten-to-one odds on that. This felt not so much like the chamber had been preserved, rather frozen in place, like her warm hovering expression. Either the artist was a liar or that expression conveyed genuine compassion, and a touch of sadness.

Had she died too young to pass her humanity on to her son? Or was he just born that way, blind and crippled to right and wrong?

A voice behind me wasn’t what I expected.

“Mr. Hammer,” a husky female voice intoned, “are you sure this is wise?”

I craned my neck and saw Sheila Ryan, in a black sweater dress that I guess was her idea of mourning weeds. She was walking briskly toward me, her red hair bouncing off her shoulders. She seemed cross. Well, I had killed her boy friend.

She planted herself a ways behind me, as I turned to look at her from the sofa. Her arms were folded on the impressive shelf of her bosom. Her make-up was subdued, but the red lipstick on her bruised Bardot mouth brought to mind blood. The green eyes flashed.

She got some indignation going. “Hasn’t poor Mr. Colby suffered enough? What more would you put him through?”

I stood and moved around to her; we were rather small players in this orchestra pit with sitting areas, paintings worth thousands, and furniture that had been antiques decades ago, when the late lady of the house likely decorated it.

“Mr. Colby knows I’m coming,” I said. “I spoke to him on the phone and he seemed calm enough. Or at least weathering this well, considering. I told him he had a right to face me, if he wished. He said he did. So here I am.”

Her eyes bore into me. “It’s ill-advised.”

“Excuse me, Sheila, but... who are you to be handing out advice, anyway? And what the hell are you doing here? Why is it your place to comfort the father of a dead guy you’d been dating for, what? A few weeks?”

She unfolded her arms and, as they dropped to her sides, something winked at me...

...the rock on her ring finger.

I grabbed her hand, startling her, and had a good look at the diamond, which was ten karats anyway, in its simple four-prong setting. Your classic solitaire-style engagement ring. It said money, all right.

But there was a smaller band that spoke even louder.

I asked, “So you and Vincent tied the knot?”

“We did.”

“When?”

The smile on her lips was barely there, but her eyes were laughing. Her cranky attitude had vanished. A cockiness was in its place.

“Saturday,” she said. “City Hall. No one knew but the two of us.”

“How romantic.”

“We got the license Friday. Did you know it’s just a twenty-four-hour wait in this state? I’m here, since you asked, to look after my grieving father-in-law.”

I grinned, laughed. “So, then — congratulations are in order... Mrs. Colby. And of course condolences, since you’re a widow.”

Her chin came up and her smile was at once mocking and feral. “Maybe you’d like to kiss the bride.”

“I’ll pass. You know, since I killed the groom. But, hey — let’s sit. Catch up a little.” I gestured to the nearby sitting area by the fireplace.

“Why not?” she said and, her gait defiantly sexy, went over and settled her curvy self into the nearest brown leather chair. I sat on the sofa, close by.

She had an arm on either arm of the big chair, and put her feet up on the matching ottoman. Comfy. Cozy by the non-fire.

Her tone light now, the crossness wholly gone — it had been phony, anyway — she said, “I showed up at the door yesterday, in tears, and Vance welcomed me in and we wept together. He’s such a sweet old boy. I’m moving in.”

I stuck a smile onto my frowning face. “He’s a little old for you, isn’t he? And, anyway, you must already have a piece of all this — unless Vincent insisted you sign a pre-nup.”

She shook her head and the red hair flew. “No pre-nup. Vincent was nuts about me, didn’t you know? And it’s going to be strictly platonic between me and the elder Colby. I’m the daughter he never had.”

I nodded toward the choke-a-horse rock on her hand. “What did that bauble set your hubby back?”

She frown-smiled back at me. “That’s the kind of question a person just doesn’t ask.”

“But I bet you did. How much?”

Proud of herself now, she said, “A hundred grand.”

I had to smile. That was my bogus blackmail demand to her late husband.

I said, “How would you like to hear the real story of what went down Sunday night?”

“Sure.”

I gave it to her — the whole megillah, from the charade at the warehouse and all the in’s and out’s of that, to how Vincent had confessed to the killings of Casey Shannon, Roger Kraft, Jasmine Jordan, and Gino Mazzini. And of course how he’d copped to the whole Plan B that the phony hit-and-run had put into play — the Jekyll and Hyde routine, after the faked concussion.

She frowned through some of that.

“It’s awful,” she said, “what you did to him.”

“Yeah. I can be kind of a shit sometimes. Anyway, that’s it. Well, there are a few things I left out.”

She sat forward a little. “What did you leave out?”

I shifted on the sofa. “Funny running into you here. I had it in mind to look you up. Go over a few things. But the truth is, honey, I don’t have a scrap of anything.”

“A scrap of anything what?”

She was staring at me.

I stared back.

“Proof,” I said, “that you were Vincent’s accomplice in this, or anyway much of it. He had several accomplices, of course, but you I think were the key one. And that makes you an accessory to murder. At the least.”

She wasn’t looking at me now. “Does it really?”

I pointed at her and got her attention back. “I bet you were the one who threw off the light switch in that apartment building in Tudor City, when Chris Peters and I were looking for that floppy disk, with Vincent waiting in the hall to intercede. I’d love to have that disk, by the way, because it might clear up the last two murders — the girl your honey raped and strangled, and the broker he ran down in that parking ramp, God knows why. I wonder how long homicide had been his hobby? How many others there are?”

The red lips were tight now. “You’re cruel.”

“Is it cruel when a doctor delivers a diagnosis? And mine is that young Vincent was a sociopath or maybe a psychopath — the finer points of homicidal lunacy elude me. I was absent that day. But you, honey — you’re no sociopath, or psycho, either.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You? You’re just plain greedy.”

“Is that right.”

I gave her the really nasty grin. “Your late husband was a lunatic who didn’t realize he was one — and figured he could beat a murder rap by pretending to be what he actually was, then talk his way out, or fake another head-trauma injury, curing him this time. And in a year or two, he’d be graduated from the laughing academy. That itself was lunacy, of course, and you knew it — and sat on the sidelines urging him on, with dollar signs in your eyes.”

She gestured to nothing in particular. “Why don’t you try telling all this to old man Vance — see how he takes it. See if he buys it.”

“He won’t, huh? You think? Even though it’s all true?”

“Even though it’s all true.”

I laughed softly. “I wonder if you were the one who came up with this whole crazy scheme — the hit-and-run farce outside where you worked... knocking off anybody who could cause the future Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Colby grief, like a blackmailing dominatrix and a boyfriend who battered you... Gino had it coming, did he? Maybe that’s where it started. Getting back at a guy who liked to give his girl a black eye. Guess I’ll never know, ’cause you sure as hell won’t tell me.”

Her chin came up again. “You’re right. I won’t. But I will tell you one thing.”

“Please do.”

She held up the hand with the huge rock glittering on it. “I was a waitress for a long damn time, Mike. I had acting dreams that went bust and the only one that came true at all was landing the hostess gig at that stupid chophouse. When I saw how much Vincent was into me... how the rich, so rich Vincent, had such a thing for me... how much he wanted me... how obsessive he was about having me... I said to myself, ‘Sweetie, you finally caught a break.’”

“Sure,” I said. “And it didn’t matter that you’d originally thought of Vincent as a stalker. You knew once you married him, he’d self-destruct before too long. And if he didn’t, well, you could always expose him as a murderer.”

She was nodding. “I could, yes. And if he didn’t get himself killed somehow, he’d be institutionalized. What you call ‘Plan B.’ Either way, I’d be set for life. The old man isn’t going to live forever. Till then, I’ll be on Easy Street. Until the whole damn fortune is mine.”

How much he had heard I couldn’t be sure — he might have been just outside the door. But I knew he’d stepped inside the room and heard her say, “Even though it’s all true,” and everything that followed.

Vance Colby didn’t get my full attention until he was a few feet away and his hand came up and had the small gun in it, a little .22 S & W Escort; before that, he’d just been a distinguished mustached little man wearing sorrow like a coat of dripping gray paint.

She didn’t see him.

What she saw was me easing my hand inside my coat — Vance’s gun was pointing right at me, and if it coughed, I’d be coughing, too, coughing up blood. Then finally she heard his soft footfalls and whirled and stood, her hands out from her sides, fingers wide, as if looking for something to steady herself on.

“Mr. Colby?” she said. “Vance?”

He was pointing the gun at her now.

She ran to another door — there were plenty in that place — but she didn’t make it. He caught her like a duck on the wing, in the back, the crack ringing in the high-ceilinged room, and she dove to the floor and slid on the slick wood, then shuddered and murmured self-pitying words before getting very still. Very quiet.

He looked at me. I was on my feet and the .45 was in my hand. I didn’t want to do it and my expression told him so. But when — after a lingering look at his wife’s portrait — he raised the gun, I knew I was not the target.

Sheila had been right.

The old man wasn’t going to live forever.