Gladyss of the Hunt (18 page)

Bernie went on: “O'Flaherty stopped showing up at his AA meetings about a year back. Roughly nine months ago, he got picked up for jostling in Times Square.” This meant he was bumping into passersby then picking their pocket while they were distracted. “The plaintiff vanished before they could have him swear out a complaint. Then, about six months ago, he got picked up by the pussy posse
during a big hooker sting in the area. He was charged with a 230-02, but that's only a class B misdemeanor, not enough to put him back in jail. He also got picked up for slapping a female tourist. Again the parole officer tried to put him back in, but the fucking tourist refused to fill out a complaint.”

“Where is he now?”

“An SRO on Fortieth and Eighth, across from Port Authority.”

We double-parked in front of O'Flaherty's dump, which turned out to be across the street from where Bernie had clobbered Youngblood, on Eighth Avenue between Fortieth and Forty-first. Every other building on its side of the block had been pulled down as part of New York's latest nip and tuck. Engraved in the filthy stone over the doorway I could just make out the building's name, The Centurion, one of those many urban details no one notices any longer. Inside we saw it was clearly a place where neglected seniors slowly ran out their clocks.

Bernie recognized the desk clerk, a retired cop named Hal. He asked him if he knew O'Flaherty.

“Sure, he's a regular hero around these parts.” The clerk explained that the ex-con had been instrumental in getting a stay of execution for the old hotel. He had managed to unify the remaining tenants in the dilapidated building and lobby local politicians, and somehow convinced the court to grant a six-month injunction against knocking down this final, teetering domino at the end of the dying block.

“Have you ever seen O'Flaherty with any prosses, or smacking anyone around?” Bernie asked.

“Nessun? No, he's harmless. Why, what did he do?”

“We got some dead girls in the area. Is he upstairs?”

“I doubt it. Every morning, he's out early. He goes to the OTB on Forty-fourth and Seventh. He loves the ponies. Spends the day out.”

“At the OTB?”

“He used to hang out at the Cupcake Cafe over on Ninth, but from what I heard, he would complain that the holes were too big in their donuts, so they eighty-sixed him. Try the Starbucks at Thirty-eighth and Eighth.” He gave us a brief description of O'Flaherty

As we walked over there, Bernie said he wanted to try a little test. Once we'd located our suspect, I was to watch O'Flaherty closely
as Bernie walked past him. It was my job to determine whether O'Flaherty recognized Bernie. If he did, he was probably the one who'd mugged Bernie, since Bernie had never previously met him.

Three-quarters homeless shelter, one-quarter corporate refueling depot, the Starbucks was an amusing blender of social classes. Sleeping junkies, turned-out shut-ins, and misguided tourists were interspersed among the usual laptop jockeys, who I liked to believe were struggling writers. But it was the steady flow of busy yuppies who popped in, bought their sugary hot fuel, and dashed back out, that bankrolled the franchise. In the back, settled in a cozy armchair which he probably shared with endless microscopic parasites, was our lapsed sex offender. He was a balding, jaundiced man with dark, deeply inset eyes. A gray trench coat insulated him in the poorly heated establishment, and an old fedora with clipped-on waterproofing rested on the coffee table. When we got closer I could see his ruddy, pockmarked cheeks. Matching the stereotype, every capillary in his nose had been ruptured by booze. If I hadn't known he was in his late fifties, I'd have guessed he was at least ten years older. To his credit, the ex-con was deeply engrossed in an old leatherback.

Outside, Bernie had taken off his coat, scarf, and jacket, rolled them into a ball, and handed them to me. With a discarded section of the
New York Times
folded under his arm, he now lumbered by the old ne'er-do-weller and plunked himself down in a chair across from him. I watched diligently as O'Flaherty glanced up at Bernie. He seemed to genuinely take note of him, but there was no display of guilt, or any indication of twitchiness.

“Excuse me,” I finally approached. Bernie took back his coat.

“If it's locked, it's occupied,” O'Flaherty muttered without looking up. He thought I was inquiring about the bathroom. Its door was right there, a foul odor emanating from behind it.

“Nessun?” Bernie asked.

“Officer.” He looked up with a pleasant smile. Either he had great instincts or he was Bernie's mugger—and our killer. Then looking at me, he joked, “What's this, Take Your Daughter to Work Day?”

“Actually it's Take Your Convict to Jail Day,” Bernie countered. “Parole violation.”

O'Flaherty closed his book. It was a weather-beaten copy of
Bullfinch's Mythology
. He gulped down the dregs of his small coffee, grabbed his hat, and labored to his feet. I could see him grimace as he shuffled along.

“What's with the leg?” Bernie asked, perhaps wondering if he was being mocked.

“Hip replacement in my right leg two years ago, and the cartilage in my right knee is shot.” O'Flaherty explained. “An old prison injury that just gets worse and worse.” We let him walk the few blocks in silence before directing him to the Lumina.

“You're not carrying anything?” Bernie asked before opening the car door. “Drugs or weapons?”

“No.”

“I better not hit a needle,” Bernie said as he patted him down, then cuffed him. I opened the back door and helped O'Flaherty inside, Bernie slid in next to him. For the first time with him, I got to drive.

“Christ it's a freezer in here,” O'Flaherty said, as Bernie started going through his pockets. “What's this—a shakedown?”

“Got any ID?”

“Library card, voter's registration,” he replied as Bernie pulled out his wallet.

“You went to Sacred Heart?” Bernie asked, seeing something.

“Oh yeah, you too?”

“For two years.”

“You know Sister Mary Ellen?”

“Oh God, did she fill her habit.” Bernie replied. “You knew Father Bill?”

“Shit, don't get me started. That poofter tried to finger my holy ghost every chance he got.”

“He almost caught me in the boy's room once. I never ran so fast.”

“Oh, I miss the old days. Cardinal Spellman mighta sucked off an altar boy or two, but we had style and power back then.”

The two of them made the Roman Catholic Church sound like the golden days of the mafia.

I parked in the rear of the precinct on Thirty-sixth. Bernie tried to suppress his own limp as he led O'Flaherty upstairs to an interrogation room. Before our suspect could sit down, Bernie had him
take off his coat and told him to roll up his sleeve. When O'Flaherty did so, I watched Bernie looking carefully at him. I thought he was looking for possible track marks, but when he made him undress to reveal his chest, back, and neck, I realized he was hoping to find a defensive wound, a possible scratch or bruise on his arms inflicted by poor Jane. None were apparent.

“So what are you doing for money these days?” Bernie asked.

“Disability,” he said. “This isn't just about a parole violation, is it? What am I suspected of, exactly?”

“You tell us.”

“Oh wait! You're her, aren't you, officer?” he asked, suddenly turning to me.

“What are you talking about?”

“I saw the photos, read about those killings. Tall, sexy, and blonde, and here you are.”

“Do I look like one of the victims?”

“You look like all of them, which is why you're the bait,” he replied. “But here's my question: how do you know he didn't kill all those girls just hoping the NYPD would eventually sacrifice
you?
”

“What are you talking about?”

“He's saying, he killed all the blonde hookers so that he'd eventually find a blonde cop posing as a hooker,” Bernie said, amused.

“Not me, and not quite,” Nessun replied, staring at me. “I'm saying those hookers were the bait; the killer was just waiting for the NYPD to toss you into the bear trap.”

“And now that you know I'm the bait, you wouldn't come on to me?”

“That's right,” he said with a smile.

“How about that guy you pickpocketed at the Starbucks a few months back,” I replied. “What was the matter—he didn't have a credit card?”

“An innocent mistake. I thought it was my coat. That's why the good man dropped the charges.”

“Did you think it was your wife when you got stung with the hooker?” Bernie asked.

“In enlightened countries prostitution is legal.”

“See a lot of hookers, do you?” I asked.

“The last one I saw was just some curly haired runaway, followed
me home from the bus depot across the street.”

“And that's when you choked her?” I asked, approaching him.

“Hey, I've had hundreds of bus depot runaways in my place and I never touched the one of them.”

“Tell us about the last one,” Bernie said.

“She laid back on my bed and I could see right up her skirt. Damned if that wasn't the day her knickers were in the wash. So young, she hardly had any hair down there.” Narrowing his eyes right at me, he smiled and in a throaty tone, added, “Damned if she didn't look just like you.”

I just meant to scare him. but accidentally I dropped my clunky Motorola police radio right on his bum knee.

“Fuck!” he screamed, clutching it painfully.

“It just slipped out of my hands,” I said to Bernie, who smiled, probably thinking I was finally toughening up.

“Accidents happen,” Bernie said philosophically.

As O'Flaherty clenched his knee, tears flowed down his cheek. I honestly felt bad for him, but I knew I couldn't let on. When he struggled to stand up on his one good leg I pushed him back into his chair.

“Let's start again. The last girl you were with?”

“I don't remember. Honest to God . . . Christ!” He spoke between gasps, still squeezing out the pain. He claimed he had to get something from his coat pocket. Bernie checked the pocket and found some loose pills.

“Looky here,” he showed me. “Possession of narcotics, a class C felony. That's a ticket back upstate.”

“They're Advil, just over-the-counter painkillers.”

“We won't know that for a couple days, until we get the lab reports back.”

“I don't think I can walk,” O'Flaherty groaned.

Bernie gave him two pills. He swallowed them then looked fearfully at me.

“You want out, start talking.”

“I spent the last fifteen years in jail because one night I got into a fight with my bitchy teenage stepdaughter, and she gets back at me by telling my wife that I'm screwing her.”

“You went to jail 'cause you hit a cop.”

“He hit me first.”

“Then you killed an inmate.”

“Fucker grabbed my Thanksgiving turkey right off my plate—the best meal of the year. But his neck looked just as juicy, so my fork went right into his jugular.”

“Sure, a piece of turkey for ten years of your life,” said Bernie, as if it seemed like a fair trade to him.

“Would you believe me if I told you I had ten grand in Microsoft stock in 1982? It would've been worth a couple million today, if I'd just left it there.”

“In Microsoft?”

“No one believes me, but an aunt left me the cash, and someone in law school gave me the tip, so I bought the stock. But I sold it the day after I got arrested to pay for a lawyer. The ambulance chaser turned out to be worthless. I shoulda defended myself.”

“We each create our own life,” I said, “and everything that comes with it.” The Renunciate had said that during his last class.

“Sick . . . alone . . . broke. I'm the youngest resident in a hotel of dying old losers.”

“And in six months you're all going to be evicted anyway,” Bernie added blithely.

“My family owned a brownstone on Forty-fifth between Tenth and Eleventh, right across from Shamrock Stables. It was taken by the city in '89 for nonpayment of taxes. All I got now is what you see.”

“You like tall blondes, don't you?” Bernie asked.

“Please, I can barely walk, let alone whack off anymore.”

“Just give us someone who saw you on these three particular days,” Bernie said, flipping through his notepad. He read out the dates and times of the four murders, including Jane Hansen's death two days ago.

Two days ago was still fresh in his head. He told us he was hanging in the lobby with Hal, the retired cop, and a half a dozen geriatrics.

“Call and confirm it!” he said eagerly. “We have a fixed routine on Fridays. We eat hot sandwiches and watch the replays of the races at Belmont and Aqueduct.”