Creepers (2 page)

Fear slowly edged its way into Jesus' brain. He hadn't imagined those screams. He'd heard them for real. Then why wasn't there a woman in trouble? Even the whore with the twenty-dollar bill was gone. Where the hell was she? No train had come in in the last ten minutes. He gripped the baseball bat tighter and backed up to the escalator. Something bad had happened down here tonight. Something he didn't want to think about.

On his way back to the token booth, Jesus spotted something lying on the dirty floor partially hidden behind a metal girder. He prodded it gingerly with his toe, and when he saw it was a woman's purse, quickly retrieved it. Besides the usual women's things inside, there were a wallet and credit cards, all with the name Penelope Comstock. The driver's license sported a bad photograph of the woman who'd given him such a bad time earlier--the offending twenty-dollar bill was still there along with the rest of the change.

Jesus called the TA police and waited for them to send a man around. Too bad about Senorita Comstock. She was a good-looking woman. With real nice legs. If she'd stopped for a few minutes to be friendly, none of this would have happened to her. Whatever did happen. Jesus shook his head. Women! He'd never figure them out if he lived to be a thousand.

He pocketed Penny's twenty dollars, leaving the three singles to make it look good. Then he tossed her purse onto the counter and returned to Mary Tyler Moore.

September 3

Labor Day

Chapter 1

Detective Frank Corelli of the New York City transit police sipped the first cup of coffee of the morning and sniffled loudly. How the hell had he caught a cold when the weather the past three weeks had broken all heat records? Jesus! A sudden sneeze caught him off guard, and the explosive exhalation scattered a handful of week-old reports onto the grimy floor of the oversized broom closet that was laughingly called headquarters.

"Hey, Frank, there's an easier way to deal with reports. Watch." Francis Xavier Quinn--just "Quinn" unless you wanted your nose broken--Scooped up the papers and dumped them unceremoniously into the wastepaper basket next to Corelli's desk. "That way they don't create a public nuisance, if you get my drift." Quinn perched himself on the edge of the desk and flashed a warm smile. At thirty-five he was four years older than Corelli, but his freckled Irish good looks and his irrepressible sense of humor most often made him seem the younger of the two detectives.

"I appreciate your help, Quinn, but how do we explain missing TA documents to Dolchik?" Captain Stan Dolchik was their immediate superior. Corelli knew Quinn agreed with his appraisal that Dolchik was a pompous, ignorant bastard.

"Oh, yeah, Dolchik." Quinn ran his hand through his fiery red hair and thought a moment. "You wouldn't have to explain. Dolchik is sure to find them. You know, rooting around in garbage is his favorite hobby. There's only one place to put the reports where he'll never think to look if you really want them to be missing." Quinn retrieved the papers, squared them neatly on the desk, and dropped them into Corelli's "in" basket. "The prick will never find them there."

Corelli cracked up. "You know, Quinn, without you around here, life would be a lot duller."

"And without you around, Detective Corelli, life would be a lot simpler." Quinn deflected the compliment in his usual bantering way, but he was blushing furiously. He'd liked Corelli from their first handshake a couple of years before. Since then the feeling had grown into a solid friendship. Corelli was straight-arrow, an okay guy who forswore the bullshit that so many TA cops--particularly the detectives--handed out. But then, most of the other guys hadn't become cops for the reason Frank had. Frank Corelli was a man with a mission, and Quinn respected him for it.

"Face it, Quinn, life would be a whole lot simpler all around if we just got out of this rotten job altogether." His voice suddenly grew serious; it was time to get down to business. "What's been going down since I got sick?" Four days out of work was a record.

"The usual shit--a spate of purse snatchings, a couple of assaults, and someone tried to knock over the Eighty-first Street token booth." Quinn yawned with exaggerated ennui.

"So. . ."

"So Lou Jacobs was checking out the john for perverts. When he returned to the platform, he caught the kid red-handed."

Corelli shook his head. "Won't they ever learn?"

"Times are rough, Frank. Hunger and anger is a bad combination."

Anger. For a moment Corelli tasted the bitter gall that signaled the presence of his personal demon. Five years he'd lived with a blinding rage. Christ, was it really that long since Jean was taken from him? It hardly seemed possible. Five years. When the hell would the pain ever go away? Or would it ever?

"Lots of people are hungry and even more are angry, Quinn, but they don't go around ripping off their neighbors. Most of the easy targets in this city don't have much money themselves. Christ, when I think of the number of old ladies these punks manhandle to get a few bucks for the movies..."

"Yeah," Quinn replied listlessly. He'd heard Corelli's sermons too many times before to pay much attention now. "So, how ya feeling?" He veered the conversation toward a safer topic.

"Like shit," Corelli admitted. "But I'm needed here."

"You and an army. The City Council should change the name of Labor Day to Sitting Duck Day."

"Did Dolchik get in any extra men?"

"Three. But with our roster down by four, that still makes us one short."

"Who's not here?"

"DiBattista and Amory are on vacation. Harper's still in the hospital and Valeriani is still. . . out." Quinn pulled a toothpick from his shirt pocket and began assailing his front teeth. "Need I say more?"

"I've heard too much already." Corelli's stomach began to twist into a tight knot. "How the hell can we do a good job when we're understaffed? Don't those fucks downtown realize the city is being taken over by the yahoos?"

"Tell it to the Marines, Frank." Quinn slid off the desk. "Glad to see you're back." He ambled away to a desk he shared with three other cops.

Corelli stared after him a moment, then shook his head. Jesus, there I go again, spouting off about bureaucratic stupidity. No wonder Quinn beat it. He should get some kind of special recognition from the TA for putting up with two years of my shit. Still, there was a lot to complain about--two cops on vacation when they should be at work. Labor Day is a tough one. The summer is over for most people. Kids are getting ready to go back to school. Everyone is restless, looking for that one last good time before settling down to work for the fall and winter. For some it would be the last blowout--ever. If there were more cops there'd be less trouble. But two men were on vacation, one was in the hospital, and the other was "out"--on suspension.

Corelli turned his attention to the reports Quinn had filed so neatly, but after a minute of rereading the same sentence over and over, he gave in to the uneasiness picking at his brain. This time anger was overshadowed by simple, direct fear. Chick Harper was in the hospital with a bullet wound in the chest. It could have been worse. He was lucky. Still, he had a collapsed lung and a fractured rib and that was no picnic. Frank shook his head in wonder at the ease with which he accepted the ugly status quo of life as a cop in New York. "Lucky" meant being shot by some kid who'd probably never fired a pistol before. A pro would have offed Harper without batting an eye.

That was lucky? It was lucky to live in a city--in a society--where handguns were as available as a pack of cigarettes, and where they were used indiscriminately against innocent people? That's what scared Corelli. Not that he might be the next one gunned down, but that the basic fabric of the society was unraveling. Every day it became clearer to him that people no longer held themselves--or anybody else, for that matter--in reverence. Dammit, it was the jungle reclaiming the land in an insidious and highly sophisticated form.

And what happened to Detective Joe Valeriani was the lousiest form of that creeping erosion. He'd been caught shaking down the food and newsstand owners at the Forty-second Street access to the crosstown shuttle. It was penny-ante stuff, five bucks a week to be there when help was needed. And it always was. In that particular station the churning rivers of the city's low life formed a confluence with the homeward-bound middle-class office workers. Some punk was always trying to rip people off, and it was the TA police's duty to protect them. Yet somehow it became Valeriani's aim to rip off the very people he was paid to protect. To Corelli Joe was no better than a punk looking for quick cash for a fix. There was no honor in being a punk--less in being a cop gone bad.

Corelli had known Valeriani in police academy. He was honest then; a good cop. Knowing that scared the shit out of Frank. What was to guarantee that he wouldn't go looking for his palm to be greased one day? Being a TA cop was a thankless job--both financially and spiritually. And it was getting tougher every day. The loss of integrity was a slow-moving, patient process. Corelli often wondered if Joe had felt himself going rotten, or if he just woke up one morning to discover that "us" and "them" had simply become "us."

Half an hour later Frank had read the reports and forgotten most of them. Quinn was right; it was the usual run-of-the-mill crap that plagued the subway system day after day, year after year. Nothing special. Nothing different. Except for that one MP--missing person. What the hell was her name? That report was right on top. Penelope Comstock. Her friends probably called her Penny. Nice name. Like Jean was a nice name. He quickly shook off the thought. Not now. There was no time for reliving that night now. He lit a cigarette, and when he still found himself thinking of Jean, headed for the john.

Once inside the tiny, airless room, Corelli flicked the butt into the toilet, stretched, and stared at himself in the cracked mirror over the permanently stained porcelain sink. He'd lost a couple of pounds from being sick, but he'd needed to. Angel's doughnuts, unlike the coffee, were something special, and two a day, week after week, had begun to take their toll. Corelli worked out three times a week at a West Side gym, but age and the erratic diet of a bachelor were giving his body-building stiff competition. Even so, he was in good shape. He flexed in the mirror, and as the hard definition of his chest and biceps pushed against his shirt, he smiled with satisfaction.

Frank Corelli stood just over six-feet-two and tried to weigh no more than two-ten. He was big, but agile; muscular, but lithe. And he looked less formidable than he actually was. That was good. Punks usually thought they could topple him, and by the time they discovered it was the wrong thing to try, it was too late.

And best of all, Corelli didn't look like a cop. Quinn called his buddy a handsome sonofabitch. His dark complexion, inky black hair, and piercing blue eyes combined to create a striking appearance; a moody guy who could get deeply involved--when he wanted to. Corelli's facial impassivity was as much a part of his professional equipment as his badge. But the rare glimmer of fear or love or compassion that flickered in his eyes told that, like the old saw, they were the windows to his soul.

A thick, perfectly maintained mustache capped his heavy upper lip. The facial hair was to disguise his mouth. It was the mouth of a man who would last exactly one minute in the rotten world of subway crime, the mouth of a man who appreciated the better things in life, the mouth of a man who cared deeply about other people . . . the mouth of a lover.

The bathroom door flew open and bounced against the wall. Corelli instinctively braced himself as his right hand sprang across to his left hip, scant inches below his shoulder holster. His breathing grew shallow, and surprise turned to readiness.

The man blocking the doorway hadn't missed Frank's reflex actions. He smiled at Corelli's hand, then let his eyes travel slowly to his face. "Shit, Frank, I'm just here to take a leak. The way you act, you'd think I was checking to see you weren't playing with yourself." Stan Dolchik smirked at the joke and edged into the room. Corelli relaxed and started for the door. "Don't let me scare you out. You combing your hair or something?"

"Something," Corelli replied tartly. In his book, Captain Dolchik was a perfect example of a man who had risen far beyond his level of competence. He was ignorant, prejudiced, and looked like a sausage with too much filling for the size of the casing.

Dolchik positioned himself in front of the urinal and kept talking. "Glad to see you're back after being so sick. I never thought a cold was much to sneeze about. Guess you did, huh?"

They both knew nothing short of pneumonia could keep Corelli from work, but needling was Dolchik's style. "Next to pig ignorance, the worst thing that can happen to a man is a summer cold, Captain," Corelli replied.

"You're a real pisser, Corelli." Dolchik bellowed with laughter. "I never knew a man with a college degree didn't think he was king shit." He gave himself a few exaggerated shakes, zippered up, then flushed. "'Round here, brains is just something to get blown out of your head." He moved to the sink and began washing his hands.

Corelli watched him with contempt. Rednecks like Dolchik still got under his skin. "What's the story on this M.P.?"

"Which missing person are you talking about?"

"She was snatched from the Fifty-third Street IND."

"Oh, that snatch." Dolchik paused, realized he'd inadvertently made a joke, then bellowed with laughter once again. "Don't take no degree to be clever, Corelli. That's the problem with you guys."