Desperate Souls (38 page)

Maria’s eyes widened. “L.T., you can’t do that!”

“Can’t I? I just did. The primaries for each set of three murders will do the legwork on their respective cases, but they’re answering to you. This whole bag of shit is yours.”

“I’m too inexperienced. I’m a third grade gold shield …”

“Bullshit. Edgar mentored you for a year, and he’s the best we’ve got, God help him. You’re no rookie, and fortunately for you, Reinhardt’s a seasoned pro. Aren’t you, Reinhardt?”

Bernie pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I’m a seasoned pro.”

“For now, you’ll work out of Detective Hopkins’s desk.”

For the first time, Bernie’s expression registered emotion as he glanced at Maria with something akin to terror in his eyes.

“Now both of you get over to the ME’s office. I understand Walsh has some eye-opening information for you.”

Maria stood, and Bernie did the same. She opened her mouth to speak.

But Mauceri waved her on. “Run along. I’ve got to requisition uniforms and plainclothes cops to help out with this workload.”

Maria led Bernie to Edgar’s desk in the bull pen.

“I’m sorry about this, Maria.”

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. Just do me a favor.” She gestured at a framed photo of Edgar and Martin. “Leave his stuff up. You’re going back to Gang Prevention when this is over anyway.”

“No problem. I only need the back of a chair for my jacket and one drawer for my lunch and gun.”

“Thanks. Shall we go?”

He offered a slight smile. “Lead the way.”

Jake laid a bouquet of lilies on Sheryl’s grave in the cemetery off the LIE.

Maybe for the last time,
he thought, gazing at Sheryl’s marker.

He had checked into a fleabag hotel with an hourly rate and slept for three hours. Standing before the bathroom mirror, he stared at his closed left eyelid. The swollen muscles behind it made it appear as if his eye was still there. Then he forced himself to pull his lower lid out and apply the flush and healing ointment. After checking out of the hotel, he went to a pharmacy and bought his first eye patch, which he now wore.

Looking around the cemetery to make certain no one stood within listening range, he spoke in a low and tentative voice. “I could use some help, babe. Edgar was the only one I’ve been able to turn to since … the Cipher, and now he’s gone. I have to save him just like I did you, and I don’t think I can do it alone.”

Taking a deep breath, he waited for a reaction.

The clouds in the sky did not part. A shaft of golden sunlight did not fall upon him. No choir of angels sang. The gentle breeze that blew his hair into his eye remained consistent.

Jake sighed. Abel had warned him that he would never see Sheryl again unless he ascended to the Realm of Light, a situation that became more in doubt whenever he killed a living person, even in self-defense.

Fuck you, AK.

“What about you, Abel? You didn’t exactly rule out another meeting between us. I’m freeing souls, just like before. What makes this any different than last time? Tower had thirteen souls. Katrina has hundreds.”

Nothing.

Jake supposed the souls of drug addicts didn’t rate very high on heaven’s list of priorities.

“You owe me!”

No response.

Alone as usual,
he thought. Then his cell phone vibrated in his pocket, and he checked its display.
Just the call I’ve been expecting.
Pressing the phone against one ear, he gazed across the cemetery at the Manhattan skyline in the distance. “Yeah, talk to me.”

The silence on the other end seemed interminable. “I want my drugs.”

“Sorry. You have the wrong number. I’m no drug dealer. You must want some lowlife, murderous scumbag.”

The breathing on the other end grew louder. “I want
my
drugs, cracker.”

“Oh, you mean those twenty keys of Black Magic? Be more specific, sport.”

The breathing on the other end came in short, angry bursts. “When can we meet?”

“As it happens, I’m free for lunch. What do you say we meet someplace public?”

A pause. “Name the time and place.”

Jake had just the place in mind.

Maria and Bernie walked down the long corridor on the fourth floor of the City of New York Office of Medical Examiner.

“I need a shower,” Maria said.

“That makes two of us.” Bernie pushed open the swinging door leading into Autopsy Room C and followed her inside.

Assistant Medical Examiner Samuel Walsh stood in the middle of the room, poised to cut into the skull of a male corpse with a bone saw. A dozen metal autopsy tables surrounded him, each home to a corpse. A young woman in a smock and face mask assisted him.

“I’ve never seen it so crowded in here,” Maria said.

“Standing room only,” Bernie said.

Walsh turned at the sound of their voices and killed the bone saw. “Ah, the cavalry has arrived.” He handed the bone saw to the woman. “Why don’t you take a break, Janet?”

“Thanks,” the woman said, nodding. As she passed Maria and Bernie, she removed her face mask, revealing tired features.

“You’re not the only ones feeling the budget crunch,” Walsh said, joining them. “We’re shorthanded and overworked, too.”

Maria looked around at the corpses, most of them male. All of them had mutilated stumps rather than toes, with identification tags strapped around their ankles. “Business is booming.”

“Death is a growth market. These are all yours. There’s more in Room B and Room D …”

Bernie walked over to a table and pointed at the gray corpse upon it. “
This
just came in last night?”

“Actually, it came in just a few hours ago.”

Bernie gestured at the Y incision that divided the dead man’s torso. “And you already autopsied it? Wham, bam, thank you, Sam.”

Walsh smiled. “As much as I like to believe that I’m a model of efficiency, I can’t take credit for that. It came in self-autopsied. Or, rather, self-
embalmed.
They all did.”

Maria gaped at the dead bodies. Every one of them had a Y incision. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Walsh motioned for them to follow him over to the table occupied by the corpse he and his assistant had been working on. The body’s chest had been peeled back in three sections of flesh, revealing a dry rib cage.

“These bodies have no blood. Their organs were removed and soaked in a cleansing solution, which makes it all but impossible for us to determine the causes of death, then returned to their proper arrangement. The bodies were packed with sawdust, which acts as a fill-in agent, and sewn back up. I’d hazard a guess that the fingers, toes, and gums were mutilated at the same time.”

Bernie said, “Forgive me for stating the obvious, Doc, but it’s pretty apparent to me that there was only one cause of death: a bullet to the brain.”

Walsh jabbed the air in a gleeful manner. “You’re wrong! They were all shot in the head
after
they were embalmed.”

“Fuck you,” Maria said. Then she covered her mouth with one hand. “Oh. Sorry. That just slipped out.”

“That’s okay. You sounded just like Edgar. Sorry to hear the news, by the way.”

“Thank you. I’m still pulling for him.”

Staring at the bullet hole in the corpse’s head, Bernie rubbed his forehead. “Any theory as to why all this occurred?”

Walsh snorted. “That’s your job. I’m just telling you what we have on our hands.”

“We need to tie these stiffs to Malachai,” Maria said. “And then we need to tie Edgar’s disappearance to him.”

“Why is that?” Bernie said.

“Because if we do, the bosses can’t keep me from working Edgar’s case.”

Jake sat in the back of Viand, a Greek diner on the corner of Eighty-sixth Street and Second Avenue. He and Sheryl had lunched here often. With his back to the wall, he had a perfect view of the entire restaurant, and no one could sneak up on him.

He ordered lunch, then waited for his dates to arrive. A few minutes later, three men walked parallel to the windows, their backs to him. He recognized Malachai, Marcus, and their fat bodyguard from two nights earlier at Caribbean. The drug dealers approached the diner’s entrance and peered inside. Perhaps because they saw the diner’s narrow dimensions, Malachai and Marcus left Fat Boy stationed outside the door and entered. They strode between patrons eating at the counter and in the booths opposite it, making their way toward Jake. Jake sipped his half glass of ice water.

“You Helman?” Malachai said.

“That’s right.” Jake gestured at the seats opposite him.

Marcus sat next to the window, leaving Malachai to sit across from Jake.

“I never met a real private dick before,” Malachai said. “You don’t look like one.”

“You mean I don’t look like detectives on TV?”

“Yeah, you know,
Magnum, P.I.
and shit. You’re no Tom Selleck.”

“I was a lot prettier before one of your scarecrows stabbed me in the eye.”

“I don’t know anything about that.” Malachai turned to Marcus. “You know anything about that?”

Before Marcus could answer, a server set down Jake’s lunch: a turkey burger deluxe with melted Swiss cheese, fries, and a Diet Coke with lemon. Flipping open his order book, the server said, “What can I get for you today, gentlemen?”

Watching Jake slap ketchup onto his burger and fries, Malachai said, “We’re not hungry.”

Marcus handed the server a twenty-dollar bill. The man thanked him and left.

“It’s funny,” Jake said, biting into his burger, “but you two look
exactly
like drug dealers do on TV.”

Malachai’s face darkened. “Where’s my product?”

“Someplace safe,” Jake said, chewing.

“What do you want for it?”

Chewing, Jake considered the question. “I don’t know. What’s it worth to you? A million dollars?”

“Is that your price?”

“Not necessarily, but it’s as good a place as any to start.”

“What else you want?”

Jake swallowed. “I want your girlfriend to lift the curse she put on my ex-partner.”

Malachai’s left eye twitched at the mention of his girlfriend. “This ex-partner of yours a dick, too?”

“No, he’s a cop. You two have a lot in common. For one, he’s in charge of the Black Magic Task Force.”

Malachai turned silent for a moment. “I don’t know nothing about no cop. The drugs are mine. You deal with me on that. You want something from my woman, you deal with her. Separate deals.”

Jake gulped his soda and set the glass down. “Good, because I flushed your shit down the sewer, where it belongs.”

Malachai slapped the table, causing Jake’s plate to rattle, then touched Jake’s table knife. “I should stab your other eye out.”

Jake picked up his burger again. “I think I’m going to get that a lot. Cut the shit, Daryl. You’re not going to do anything to me, and neither is your boy here.”

Malachai narrowed his eyes. “What makes you so sure?”

“Because Katrina wants me alive for some reason.”

“Katrina doesn’t call the shots. I do.”

“Okay. Whatever you say.”

“What kind of curse did she put on your friend?”

“If you don’t already know, I’m not saying. He’s safer that way.”

“Why’d she curse him?”

“I’m not sure. I guess because she was fucking him behind your back, just like she was fucking you behind his, and he learned the truth. She must have wanted him out of the way, but she cared for him too much to kill him like she did Brown and Beck.”

With his eyes appearing ready to pop out of his skull, Malachai leapt out of his seat.

As a precautionary measure, Jake dropped his hand to his Glock, hidden inside a newspaper folded on his bench.

Marcus stood and set his hand on Malachai’s shoulder. “Not here, not now. Later. Let’s just do what we came here to do and get out.”

Glowering at Jake, Malachai sat down again, and so did Marcus. Malachai leaned forward and spoke through quivering lips. “You’re lying.”

“Katrina’s real name is Ramera Evans. Edgar knew her as Dawn Du Pre, a publicist.” Jake took out a business card on which he had scrawled Dawn’s address. “She has a second apartment not far from here on 105th. You can probably see it when you step outside. That’s where she fucked Edgar, and that’s where she cursed him. See for yourself. She’s playing you.”