Corpus Corpus (20 page)

 ON MONDAY MORNING Bogdanovic double-parked his car at the corner of Broadway and Eighty-sixth Street, bounded out, and picked up the first edition of the Monday morning New York Graphic. Feeling vindicated in his prediction of how the press would treat Janus's murder, he read the headline:

MIDNIGHT HORROR AT GRAMERCY PARK: SATURDAY SLAYING OF MOB MOUTHPIECE THEODORE JANUS WAS GANGLAND-STYLE EXECUTION; FOUND SHOT ONCE IN HEAD

To the right of the headline a photo showed Janus slumped on the front seat of his car with a half-smoked cigar in his mouth.

The caption read, "Legal legend shot to death in Rolls-Royce as he puffed on cigar after receiving top award at literary society's banquet."

Below this was "Photo: A Graphic Exclusive. Other pictures of Janus's last news conference on page 3."

A FEW MINUTES past seven, as Bogdanovic searched for a gap in traffic that would allow him onto the East River Drive, the chief of detectives sat in the rear seat with the newspaper on his lap. "If the press was kept away from the crime scene until after the body was removed by the medical examiner," he demanded, "how did the Graphic manage to get its slimy hands on this picture?"

"That's an excellent question," Bogdanovic replied, finding an opening in the traffic. "Because there was no way it could have been taken by one of the paper's photographers, it has to have come from someone at the crime scene with a camera."

"Meaning one of our own people! That's just great! First we have three assistant district attorneys watching television while in the other room Paulie Mancuso is leaping out a window. Now we apparently have someone from the crime scene unit or the medical examiner's office peddling a crime scene picture to a newspaper. And not just any newspaper. The New York Graphic. No wonder the public has nothing but contempt for government."

"There is another explanation."

"Really! If the Graphic's man didn't take it, and it didn't come from one of our people, who snapped the damned thing?" "The murderer."

Goldstein bolted forward. "Did you say the murderer?"

"At the time of the killing," Bogdanovic answered as he negotiated from the center lane into the faster far left, "a man who lives across Gramercy Park saw a bright light that came from the direction of Janus's car."

Goldstein sank back in the seat. "He saw muzzle flash."

"It couldn't have been. The man heard a bang. The noise is what got his attention. Then he saw the light. He said it looked as if someone took a picture using a flash camera."

"That's a first! Somebody brings a gun and a camera, shoots someone, snaps a picture of the body, develops and prints it, and then sends it to a newspaper. Why would he do that?"

"I can't say for sure until we arrest him," Bogdanovic said, turning slightly toward Goldstein. "But I have a theory."

"I'm sure you do. But while you expound it, do me the favor of keeping your eyes on the road. And while you're at it, ease up on that lead foot of yours so that you and I will live to see if your theory proves right."

Facing forward, Bogdanovic said, "I think the killer snapped the picture to guarantee that the shooting of Janus would be recognized for what it was. He used the picture to send us the very clear message that this was not a chance murder."

Goldstein let out an exasperated sigh. "Then why didn't he just send the picture direcdy to us?"

"Evidently, we were not the only ones he felt he had to send his message to. Either he wanted the general public to know it, or he expected the picture to be seen by someone who, like him, wanted to see Janus dead."

"Your theory is highly imaginative, Johnny, but I think it's also highly improbable."

"Improbable, maybe. But not impossible."

"Anything is possible, such as your slowing down this car and our making it to One Police Plaza alive, well, and ready to fight crime."

"When you have eliminated the impossible, according to your favorite sleuth, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street," Bogdanovic said with a smirk, "whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

"Presuming Janus's killer was the same individual who took the picture of him," Goldstein said, "you should be looking for a psychopath with a fetish for necromancy, not to mention a flair for publicity. If cameras had been available to Jack the Ripper when he was hacking up prostitutes, London newspapers would have been flooded with snapshots, instead of a chunk of human liver."

"It was a piece of kidney, actually," Bogdanovic said as he edged the car into the exit lane for the government center. "As to Janus's killer being a psychopath, I don't think so. I believe Janus was being stalked, and I have evidence that indicates that Janus knew it."

As the car turned from the highway with police headquarters looming direcdy ahead, Goldstein again leaned forward urgently. "What evidence?"

"The windows of Janus's car were tinted black."

"He was a famous person. Celebrities sometimes want to enjoy a bit of privacy."

"The windows were also bulletproofed. Recently."

Two HOURS AFTER Bogdanovic drove his car into the garage of police headquarters and accompanied Goldstein in an elevator to the sixteenth floor, a houseboy rapped twice on the white door of Wiggins's bedroom, entered, and found the proprietor of the Usual Suspects bookstore wrapped in a yellow silk oriental robe with dragons embroidered in red. Propped like a pasha on purple satin pillows, he lounged on a massive Victorian four-poster bed.

"Ah, good," he exclaimed with delight. "My breakfast!"

Carrying a silver tray bearing an eight-ounce glass of hand-squeezed orange juice, a white porcelain mug of freshly ground coffee with cream and three lumps of sugar, a stack of raisin scones slathered with clotted butter, and the New York Graphic, the youth said, "There's a headline that should be of interest to you on the front page of the paper."

Reading it, Wiggins slapped his chest with a meaty hand and gasped, "Oh, my soul, no."

Leaving the bedroom, the young man looked back and said in a singsong voice, "I told you you would be interested."

With stunned disbelief as he looked at the gruesome photo of Janus, Wiggins bellowed, "Timothy, you'll have to tend the store this morning." He flung the paper to the floor. "Maybe all day."

The boy spun round in a sullen manner that was half of his charm. "Oh yeah? How come?"

"I have business at police headquarters," Wiggins roared as he rolled from the bed. "I must speak to the chief of detectives and Sgt. John Bogdanovic. Go out front and hail me a cab!"

Half an hour later, with the mangled bullet given to him by Janus tucked into a vest pocket and the newspaper jammed into a pocket of his Inverness cape, which was flapping like the wings of a huge brown bird, he crossed police plaza with the agility and grace of a ballet dancer one-third his weight. Pausing at a metal detector in the lobby, he placed into the tray a cluster of keys, coins, the mashed bullet, and a pinky ring with an enormous diamond.

"That's an interesting trinket," said the officer in charge of the detector, reaching into the tray.

With pounding heart and expecting the officer to pick up the slug, Wiggins blurted, "That's nothing. A friend gave it to me."

"That's quite a gift," the officer said, picking up the ring. "I recommend you not wear this openly out on the streets. People have been murdered for a lot less."

With a long, relieved breath Wiggins retorted, "You needn't advise me on the subject of murder, Officer. I am expert on the subject. Indeed, I have come here about a murder."

The cop blurted, "You have a murder to report?"

"Nothing to trouble you, Officer," Wiggins said blithely as he went through the metal detector. "I am taking up the matter with the chief of detectives himself." Scooping up the ring, the coins, the keys, and the mercifully overlooked slug, he added, "I know the way to his office. I have been there many times. We are old friends, you see. You might even say the chief and I are comrades in fighting crime."

As the elevator lifted him toward Goldstein's office, each floor was noted by the ding of a bell and a lighted numeral. At the sixth, two uniformed police officers got on wordlessly, but scanned him suspiciously until the bell and the light signaled the thirteenth floor. Exiting, one quipped, "Inspector Lestrade's office is on sixteen, Sherlock."

When the door opened, a sign on the opposite wall declared: Chief of Detectives. An arrow pointed to a corridor on the left.

Seated behind a desk at the end of the hallway, a woman in police uniform whom he knew only as Officer Sweeney greeted him with a surprised smile. "Mr. Wiggins. How nice to see you. Was Chief Goldstein expecting you?"

"No, but I must see him without delay."

"I'm sorry. The chief is in a conference at the moment."

"Then I'll see Sergeant Bogdanovic."

The officer smiled. "That's who the chief is meeting with."

Jerking the Graphic from the pocket of the Inverness and unfurling it, he demanded, "Inform them I have come with vital information concerning this."

A stubby thumb and pudgy forefmger dipped into the pocket of the vest and brought out the slug.

"And this may be the clue that will solve the murder."

BOGDANOVIC SLOUCHED IN a bulky, encompassing red leather armchair with his long legs straight out and crossed at the ankles.

"I doubt that this bullet came from the gun that was used to kill Janus," he said, studying the slug as he rolled it between thumb and forefinger. "This looks like a thirty-eight caliber. A bullet this size fired at the close range at which Janus was shot would have blown his head off."

Resembling a giant jack-o'-lantern with slits for its eyes, Wiggins turned his massive head toward Bogdanovic. "Sergeant B., I do not claim that this bullet came from the same gun. What I do say is that it came from a weapon that was fired at Janus from a passing car and that Janus gave it to me as evidence to take to the police in the event of his death to prove that somebody was determined to kill him."

"Why didn't he go to the police at the time?"

Wiggins turned to Goldstein. "Chief, with all due respect to Sergeant B., may I be permitted to tell you the story behind this bullet without interruption?"

"You know me, my friend," Goldstein answered with a glance at Bogdanovic that conveyed a command to remain silent. "I love a good mystery, well told."

Speaking with the spellbinding skills of a storyteller long before the advent of mysteries in books, Wiggins conducted the detectives to the Sunday afternoon of summer sun and hot air of a countryside, Janus's horses frolicking behind white fences, and green pastures.

There was every reason to believe, Janus had told him, that there would soon be an attempt to kill him. Indeed, someone had already tried. He had been exercising one of his horses when a shot was fired from a passing car. He heard the bullet's zing as it went past his ear.

"When he gave me what remained of it-the very slug you hold in your hand, Sergeant B. Janus said that in the event he was murdered I could take it to my friends on the police. In answer to your question, Sergeant B., as to why he did not report the incident to the police, he said he preferred to handle the matter by himself. I replied that an attorney who hired himself as a detective had a fool for a client. Janus told me that in order to catch the individual, he had to be given the chance to try again. He thought there might be an attempt to do so on the occasion of the Black Orchid dinner."