Gladyss of the Hunt (27 page)

“You're saying the numbers correspond to the addresses of the
buildings?
”

“Yes! It's got to be O'Flaherty. Those new buildings signify the destruction of his old neighborhood. They represent everything he hates.”

“That's a bit of a stretch.”

“Want to know what's a stretch? Those clunky bracelets he puts on their left wrists? They're meant to resemble those flyswatters on the top of the Condé Nast Building,” he pointed out the window. “And the cards and crap he sticks in their right hand is that surfboard thing on the Reuters Building.”

“Still, even if the killer is mimicking Times Square, that still doesn't prove O'Flaherty did it. Most of the suspects lived around here.”

Bernie simply planted himself at the window and stared eerily out. I folded my arms together, sat in silence, and watched as the afternoon sky darkened.

“There were seven buildings in the World Trade Center complex too,” he finally said, clearly still obsessed by his months of cleanup at Ground Zero.

“O'Flaherty might not even come back until tomorrow.” I rubbed my freezing hands together.

Bernie opened his cellphone and punched in a speed-dial number.

“Alex,” he said. “Listen, we're waiting for O'Flaherty at his SRO,” Pause. “Grab a pen.” Pause. “On my desk is Nessun O'Flaherty's file. He was originally arrested way back on some kind of statutory rape charge. Call his tail—”

“Danny Rasdale,” I prompted.

“Right, call Rasdale and find out who O'Flaherty's original vic
was—who he raped twenty years ago. In fact, check if she still lives here and, if so, bring her in for an interview.” He paused while Alex was speaking, but then yelled impatiently. “Call right the fuck now! 'Cause I think we caught a break here, but we have to move quick. Find out where she is. Pronto. I'll be there with him soon.”

Bernie flipped off his phone and sat on the bed, leaning against the wall while I stared out the window. Exhaling on the cold, filthy glass, I wrote the name Gladyss Holden on it. As I wiped it off, I noticed movement below. In the adjacent lot, I saw a big, hairy rat slowly make its way across the hardened crust of snow toward some distant crack. I had a sudden realization that I hadn't seen rats in a while. The city really had made progress in eliminating undesirables. For a moment, I was nostalgic for the urban wilderness. The rat seemed vaguely bucolic, more like an evicted squirrel or an endangered groundhog.

When a large truck sped up Eighth Avenue, we could feel the old building shake.

“If there's an earthquake, you're supposed to stand in a doorway, right?” Bernie tried for some small talk.

“I guess, but I'm more worried about freezing to death.”

“I can't stop wondering what it must've been like for them,” he said quietly. “Those poor bastards didn't even have time to . . . If this building started to collapse, I'd jump out the window.”

“You wouldn't survive the fall.”

“But at least they'd have my corpse to bury. When I think of the rotting crap we found.” He nodded sadly. “Without a lab test we couldn't be sure if they were someone's remains or their lunch. And poor Bert, having to go through that in his condition.”

“You mean with cancer.”

“It wasn't cancer,” he said softly. “And everyone knew it wasn't cancer.”

Bernie didn't say what it was, but I'd figured it out when I was told his young wife Juanita had died of AIDS.

I breathed into my cupped palms, trying to warm them up. A view of Times Square from a distant window hardly seemed like a smoking gun, even if the carved numbers did line up. As the icy minutes grew colder, I warmed myself with thoughts of Noel, wondering if he might be thinking of me while he was in sunny LA.

When I was awakened from my daydream by Bernie's snoring, I realized I was shivering uncontrollably. I suddenly felt bad for the cub reporter Bernie had stuck in the back of the patrol car. It wasn't even five o'clock and the sky was black as charcoal.

“I'm fucking freezing.” I said, rising to my numb feet. “There's a deli on the next block. Want a coffee?”

“Light and sweet,” he mumbled without opening his eyes.

I peeked out the door. An old lady was standing there in a night-gown like a frozen ghost. As I walked past her, I realized she was leaning against the radiator, which emitted a faint hiss as if letting out its dying breath.

“You should call the Heat Hotline and complain,” I suggested, though I don't think she heard me. “You can call 311 and they'll put you through.”

I took the stairs down, dashed through the lobby and out to the well-heated corner deli, where I got on the end of a long line. I was grateful that it moved slowly enough for me to get my core temperature back up. When it was my turn I ordered two cups of coffee, and in another minute I was back in the meat-locker lobby holding the burning hot brown bag. Seniors were standing around and the clerk was watching his portable TV as I raced through.

When the dented elevator door opened, I patiently waited as the frozen lady who had been holding onto the radiator slowly exited. Suddenly a violent force slammed into me, throwing me forward. As I fell to the floor, I whacked my forehead against the back wall of the elevator. The hot coffee, crushed under my chest, scalded me from my belly to my neck. As I struggled to get up, my assailant jumped on my back. Grabbing my hair he tried to slam my head against the floor. The elevator doors slid shut with him on top of me.

My first instinct was to go for my pistol, but with his weight on top of me I was unable to grab it.

“My fucking knee hasn't been the same since you hit me, you bitch!”

A sharp punch to my right kidney was followed by a succession of blows. I shoved my hand down and grabbed my piece from its holster.

Sensing what I was doing, O'Flaherty flopped forward, his chest pressed down on my back. His hands reached under my arms just
as my elbow was pulling it up. Feeling his hands dig in under me, I shoved my piece down below my waist, so it was out of his reach. Pissed that he couldn't snatch the grip, he shoved his hands further down into my underwear.

“You motherfucker!”

“Fuck you, cunt!” he screamed back. Unable to reach any farther, his cracked yellow claws dug into my belly like a wild animal's. Finally he grabbed my hips and started dry-humping my ass.

“You fucking cocksucker!” I shouted as I reached down and found the top of my Glock. As he frantically ground his loins into my buttocks, I slowly worked the gun up between my flattened body and the filthy, wet elevator floor.

Just as I pulled it up, he grabbed hold of it and tried to yank it from my hand. Just as he succeeded, I pushed the release lever, popping the ammo clip out of the bottom. But there was still one bullet left in the chamber.

Breathing deeply and conjuring up what had to be Kundalini strength, I hoisted his bucking ass up in the air just as he squeezed the trigger. My head slammed against the floor as the shot went off. Feeling the burning sensation, I feared I had been hit.

“Fuck!” he cursed as he collapsed on top of me. Angrily he shoved the hot muzzle of my pistol hard into the back of my skull and pulled the trigger again.
Click
. I lost bladder control.

“
Cocksucker
!”

I frantically twisted to my side and finally knocked him off me. As we rolled around on the coffee-drenched floor, he cursed at me nonstop. Suddenly a blow hit me across the mouth. Another, sharper one across my nose brought him closer to me. I used everything I had to grab his wrists and yank him forward, taking away his space to wind up and punch me. But now his saggy, bristly face was just above mine, and he tried to shove his rotting tongue into my mouth. I clenched my jaws shut and dug my fingers into his side until he rolled over. Then we struggled until that fucking elevator door finally slid open.

As soon as it did, Bernie reached in and grabbed O'Flaherty by his hair, peeling him away from me, and threw him backwards onto the hallway floor.

“‘Are you shot?”

“No,” I managed to say.

Without any sign of his foot problems, Bernie raced down the hall, catching up with O'Flaherty just before he could slam the door of his room behind him. I grabbed my bullet clip and slipped it back into my gun, then rose on wobbly legs, fell to my knees, and rose again. As I was pulling my pants up, I suddenly vomited. Straightening up, I gingerly felt my head. The flash from the gun blast had singed my hair; there was pain, but no blood.

Slowly I stumbled down the hallway after my partner. When I reached O'Flaherty's room, I saw that Bernie had cuffed him and was dragging him screaming into his disgusting bathroom.

“Close that door,” he yelled. As I did, I saw him kicking O'Flaherty repeatedly in the crotch and belly. His bum foot seemed to have miraculously recovered.

“Don't do this,” I said to Bernie, struggling to catch my breath. “You're going to blow the arrest.”

“Stay out!” he shouted, closing the bathroom door. I could hear O'Flaherty screaming for help, but I felt nauseous and frail. The struggle had left me covered in sweat and utterly exhausted. Having my own pistol grabbed from me and pointed at my skull was as close to death as I had ever come.

As the adrenaline in my system ebbed, it took all my strength just to stay seated on the bed and stop myself from trembling and crying. My ribs and back throbbed with pain where I'd been punched. When I pulled up my shirt and looked at my stomach, it was burning bright red from the hot coffee. Three purplish-red gashes ran down the center of my belly into my pubic hair.

“You fucking
dare
shoot at a cop!”

I looked inside the bathroom and saw that Bernie had O'Flaherty on the floor. He was kneeling on his ass, while yanking him back by the collar of his cheap trenchcoat, pulling his neck back so far I thought it would snap.

“She kneecapped me!” O'Flaherty gagged.

“Let me fix that for you, you fucking—” Bernie shifted his weight onto O'Flaherty's bum knee. The man howled in agony.

“Bernie, stop it!” I said.

“He got me too, goddamn it. Didn't you, pal!” Bernie shouted.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“He was the one who whacked me over the head while I was sleeping in my car!” Bernie said, yanking O'Flaherty's neck back farther. Pushing the cuffed man forward, he shoved his face right into his black-stained toilet. When I made an effort to stop him, he shoved me out of the room and closed the door. My muscles and nerves throbbed and twitched with pain. I was too shaken up to stand any longer. This had to be what they meant by being in shock.

“Bernie,” I said, kicking the door. “Remember Diallo! Abner Louima! You wanna drag this department through that shit all over again?”

“Take a look at yourself in the mirror,” he yelled. “Then tell me Amadou Diallo!”

Catching sight of myself in a small oval wall mirror, I jumped. My upper lip was split and blood was streaming out of both my nostrils. My nose didn't seem to be broken, but several cuts and bruises were rising on my cheek and forehead.

The crackling of the police radio over O'Flaherty's gurgling broke my exhausted trance. I heard official policespeak, although it sounded like a foreign language. The bathroom door popped open, revealing Bernie calmly holding his radio in one hand as he requested an ambulance and backup. With his other hand he was still plunging O'Flaherty's face deep into his filthy toilet bowl, as if cleaning it with a johnny stick.

I opened the window and gasped involuntarily. As the cold air filled my lungs, I looked again at the postcard of the Goddess of the Hunt statue that was taped to O'Flaherty's wall. I grabbed it and stared at it for a moment as a very palpable force rose out of me. I tried to regain composure, steadily breathing the freezing air. Suddenly I felt I was being pulled forward. I dropped the postcard and grasped the ancient wooden window frames with both hands to keep from tumbling downward. With my head entirely outside the room, I saw that there was an adjacent window between this room and the next that looked like it had been bricked up decades ago. Something small, dark, and compact hung in it like a pendant, barely visible in the darkness.

I reached back for one of O'Flaherty's t-shirts and, using the tips of my fingers, tried pulling at the object, which was stubbornly wedged in a crack where the concrete had eroded, between the old
bricks. Soon there was a bit of play. What I was holding was a wooden handle. In another moment I was able to pry it from the cement crevice. It was a large, thick knife.

Back inside the room, I turned on the bedside lamp. I could make out a rinse of dried blood, not only on the blade, but all along the wooden handle as well.

“Got him,” I whispered. Then shoving my way into the bathroom, I yelled to Bernie, “We've got him!”

Bernie was still drowning O'Flaherty, and cursing at him all the while.

“Stop it before you blow the case! I've got it!”