Down Here (25 page)

“He’ll stay where he is, if you want.”

“Is he who I think he is?”

“Yeah.”

“I
heard
about him for years. Friends of yours, stories get so wild about them, people never seem to know if they’re real or not.”

“Your call,” I said.

“Some of your friends, people don’t even know if they’re
dead
or not,” Sands said, dropping his voice.

“People don’t know a lot of things,” I said. “But it never seems to stop them from talking about them.”

“Nobody’s doing a lot of talking about her now.”

I knew he meant Wolfe. “Meaning they
do
know something?” I said.

“You’re too cute for me,” Sands said. “I get enough of that on the job. The way things are today, the smart guys are wearing their vests on backwards. Why don’t you go back to your friend? I’ll let the place fill up a bit before I stop by.”

M
ax and I each bet a sawbuck on his pick in the first. Or, I should say, we bet twenty bucks together—if we didn’t go partners, it wasn’t any fun for either of us. Max came back from the window with a ten-dollar wheel on the Double, too, meaning we had a hundred invested, total.

By the time they called the pacers for the first race, it was dark enough for the track lights to come on. Max’s horse, Dino’s Diamond, was a ten-year-old gelding who had been racing since he was a kid. He slipped in behind the gate like a journeyman boxer climbing through the ropes. Another tank town, another nickel-and-dime purse—getting paid to be the opponent.

The pace car made its circuit, then pulled in the gate. None of the horses seemed to want the lead—they hit the first turn in a clump. On the backstretch, Max’s horse fitted himself sixth along the rail. “Saving ground,” the track announcer called, but it looked more like phoning it in to me.

The horses came around the second turn Indian-file, Max’s pick still where he started. Two horses came off the rail, one drafting behind the other as they challenged the leader. Max’s horse closed up the gap they left. When the two challengers stayed parked out past the three-quarter pole, the file passed them by, moving them out of contention. At the top of the stretch, the leader was tiring, but none of the others seemed to have the will to make a move.

I felt a sudden stab of pain in my forearm. Max, using his rebar forefinger to tell me what my eyes had just picked up—the lead horse, exhausted, was drifting wide . . . and Dino’s Diamond was charging the inside lane like a downhill freight.

It was photo-close, but Max’s horse got a nose in front at the wire. Max stood up and bowed to the valiant warrior who had found his way home one more time. His flat Mongol face was split in a broad grin.

I spent the next few minutes acknowledging the celestial perfection of Max’s handicapping methods, admitting that we should have wheeled his pick instead of mine—sharing in my brother’s joy.

Dino’s Diamond paid $35.20, making us major winners, no matter what happened in the Double. Max would brag on this one forever, starting with Mama.

It was one of those times; anyone I’d have to explain it to, I wouldn’t want to.

They had just called the trotters for the second race when Sands sat down next to me.

^“
T
here’s three more,” he said, without preamble.

“Three more not in the—?”

“Yeah.”

“Why not?”

“No complaining witnesses.”

“Then how would you know they were cases at all, never mind his?”

“One of them, he was almost caught in the act. But the vic denied it ever happened.”

“A hooker who—?”

“No. Stop asking questions. I can’t hang around here. Just listen. It was on the Lower East Side. A neighbor hears sounds of a struggle. Glass breaking, a scream. She calls it in; she’s too scared to go out and see what’s happening herself, so she turns off all the lights in her apartment, peeks out the window. And there’s the perp, going down the fire escape. She doesn’t get enough for an ID, but it’s our man, no question, right down to the ski mask and the gloves. In fucking July.

“By the time that one went down, everyone knows there’s a serial rapist making the rounds, so the uniforms don’t bother to knock. The door goes right in. And there’s the vic, still tied up, blood coming out of her. Nails on one hand all broken. She must have put up a hell of a fight. Place is ransacked, too.

“But the woman, she says nothing happened. She was playing with the ropes—‘experimenting,’ is what it says in the report—then she fell down and hurt herself. Utter, total bullshit. But she doesn’t budge an inch.

“The uniforms don’t know what to do. Fuck, neither would I—whoever heard of something like this? I mean, sure, people playing sex games, they get carried away, someone gets hurt . . . so they don’t tell the truth about how it happened. Anyone who works ER around here is going to see a few of those every year. But this one, with the witness and all, it was for real, all the way.

“So they call in the detectives. Nothing. They even try a social worker. Blank. Zero. Nada.”

“Christ.”

“The second one, she gets found by her aunt. Comes to pick her up in the morning for church, can you believe it? We get a statement. Same pattern, right down to the mouthpiece.

“Then, a week or so later, out of the blue, the vic calls up, says she doesn’t want to ‘press charges.’ Like it was some bitch-slap incident or something.

“Okay, so the plainclothes guys go to see
her,
too. A total washout. She’s not talking. Not saying it didn’t happen, just saying she’s not going to cooperate.”

“So they figured she probably knew the perp?” I said.

“That
is
what they figured. And we were going to put surveillance on her. If she was covering for the guy, or, better yet, blackmailing him, we could end up with a solid ID.”

“What happened?”

“She moved. To fucking Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Lock, stock, and barrel. They tried to get a wiretap going, but the judge laughed at them, said they were a mile short of probable cause. And what was the crime, anyway?”

“Maybe she just wanted out of New York,” I said. “Some people do that, put a lot of distance between themselves and . . . whatever happened to them.”

“I don’t know,” Sands said.

“You said three.”

“Yeah. The first one, who denied anything happened? She turned up, later. Dead.”

“You think it was Wychek?”

“He was already locked up by then,” Sands said. “For the one Wolfe nailed him on. Besides, something else was going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was tortured,” Sands said, voice flat and hard, a shield against his feelings, like the booze. “Somebody worked her over with a stun gun. Or electricity. Had those burn marks all over her . . . in the worst spots.”

“In her own apartment?”

“Nobody knows where it was done. Where they
found
her was in a building that was getting rehabbed over in Williamsburg. One of the workers spotted her, hanging, when he opened up in the morning. It was in the papers.”

“She was hung?”

“Not to kill her. They did
that
with a bullet. Two of them, one in each eye.”

“A message.”

“Yeah. Maybe it was for the third one.”

“Huh?”

“Her best friend. Roommate. Wasn’t home when the rape—the one she said never happened—went down. That one—the third one— just plain disappeared. The detectives looked for her as soon as the original vic wouldn’t cooperate. On the books, she’s a missing person.”

“Missing and presumed.”

“Yeah.”

“So the homicide case is still open, too?”

“Yeah.”

“You got names and—?”

“I see you already got a pen,” he said, nodding toward the program.

M
ax nudged my shoulder, bringing me back from wherever I’d gone. I looked up at the board. The third race was two minutes to post.

Max pointed to the info I’d jotted down, held up three fingers, made a questioning gesture.

“I don’t know,” I told him. I drew a stick figure of a man, surrounded by a ring of swastikas. “But it looks like Wychek’s friends may have started taking care of him earlier than we thought.”

M
ax hadn’t left my side, so I knew he hadn’t gotten a bet down since the second race. I turned to that page in the program, made a “What happened?” gesture.

He held up the ticket. All the answer I needed. If my horse hadn’t gotten home first, he would have torn it up.

I found a place in the program with some white space showing, handed it to Max. He diagrammed the race for me in increments, drawing it as clear as a video.

My mare had left hard, cranked off a good first quarter, put some real distance on the field without a challenge, and maintained strong fractions until her second time past the clubhouse turn. Then they
all
came at her, slingshotting around at the top of the stretch. She was fading fast, but still game, staggering home a half-length ahead of the nearest horse. Paid $8.80 to win, anchoring our four-hundred-and-change Double, a personal record.

Max held up his hand, fingers spread, to emphasize that we didn’t just have it, we had it five times!

Neither of us wanted to stay around after that. The minute they get ahead, suckers say they’re “playing with the track’s money.” That’s why they’re called suckers.

^“
A
nything new?”

“Stone-fucking-
wall,
” Davidson said. “Cocksuckers must think they’re playing with an amateur.”

“I spoke to Wolfe; she doesn’t seem worried.”

“I wouldn’t play poker with her, I was you.”

“Yeah, I know. So you’re saying . . . ?”

“I’m saying that
somebody’s
cooking up
something.
I don’t give an obese rodent’s rump what that is, so long as it isn’t my client on the burner.”

“I’m still with it,” I promised.

“You maybe got something?”

“Maybe. A
long
maybe.”

“Want to tell me?”

“I’m your investigator,” I said, “not your client.”

^“
N
o, no,
no,
” Michelle said, hands on hips. “You can
not
wear that same jacket.”

“But you said it would be like a—”

“Never mind what I said. This is different.”

“How?”

“Stop being such a dolt, Burke! We already went over this. That girl wants something. And if I’m right, we have to go for it.”

“I don’t see why I can’t wear the—”

“She’s a money-girl, right?”

“I . . . No, I don’t think so. Everything we have about her background says middle-class.”

“Give me strength,” Michelle muttered. “Sweetheart,” she said, her voice a mockery of patience, “I don’t mean a
from
-money girl, like a trust-funder. I mean she
works
with money. That’s her
thing.
”

“So?”

“So I’m guessing she wants to see you know how to make some. Or you already have.”

“Maybe she just wants to go slumming.”

“That could be,” Michelle admitted. “But any woman who’s willing to buy a man a cell phone and let him use her credit card can get all the downmarket action she wants. We play it like it’s something else,” she said, firmly.

“What do I have to buy
this
goddamned time?”

“You don’t have to buy anything,” she said, triumphantly. “Remember that beautiful Bally jacket I got you when we were working that movie scam?”

“How could I forget? It cost—”

“Well, maybe
now
you see the value of the classics,” she said. “You wear
that
number over a nice shirt with a plain tie. . . .”

“A tie now?”

“She said
dinner,
am I right?”

“Yeah. But she said ‘dinner’ that first time, and
you
said—”

“Oh,
do
shut up,” she said, closing the subject.

T
hat night, I motored up Third Avenue, taking my time—as if I had any choice, at that hour. Still, I was in place twenty minutes before I was to meet Laura. The Plymouth isn’t the kind of car any cop lets sit at the curb, so I circled the block, budgeting ten minutes for each pass.

I wasn’t far off. At 6:55, she was already standing at the curb, wearing a fuchsia dress. As I pulled over, I could see her shoes matched it.

“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting,” I said, out the window.

“Oh!” she said, as if startled. But she trotted around to the passenger door and let herself in.

“You look—” I said, deliberately cutting myself off, like I’d said too much.

“What?” she said, flashing a smile. Her lipstick was only minutes old.

“I was going to say ‘great,’ I guess. But I didn’t want you to think I was—”

“What? Being polite?”

“No, no. Being . . . unprofessional.”

“Hmmmm . . .” she said.

“Where to?” I asked.

“The Midtown Tunnel,” she said. “I’ll guide you once we get out.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, touching two fingers to my forehead.

^“
T
his is quite an . . . unusual car,” she said, as we waited in line at the tunnel entrance.

“It’s one of my hobbies,” I said. “I restore muscle cars from the Fifties and Sixties. This is an original Plymouth Roadrunner.”

“Roadrunner, like in the cartoon?”

I “meep-meeped” the horn for her. She clapped in delight.

“Oh, that’s
exactly
it. Are these . . . cars valuable?”

“Well, it’s not a Bugatti or a Duesenberg,” I said. “This one was mass-produced, and not exactly to the highest standards. But clean survivors are pretty rare now. When I get it all done, it should be worth, oh, thirty-five thousand.”

“And how much will all that cost you?” she said, looking over the raggedy dashboard out to the gray-primered hood.

“Depends on how much of the work I do myself,” I said. “Like, see this steering wheel? It’s an original Tuff model,” I bragged. “Pretty hard to find.”