Good Day to Die (27 page)

The way I saw it, there were three problems in my immediate future. First, we, Bouton and I, had to find a way to pursue the investigation without alerting the task force. Chief Bowman might have been willing to let Bouton chase the proverbial wild goose, but if that goose ever came into sight, Bowman and his task force would take over in a hot second.

The second problem was how to check on Robert Kennedy without alerting
him.
Sheriff Pousson, if pressed, might be persuaded to let us have a look at Kennedy’s work sheets without a court order. But Kennedy would almost certainly find out about it. He’d find out and, like any good serial killer, destroy whatever trophies he’d accumulated over the years.

My final problem was Vanessa Bouton,
Captain
Vanessa Bouton. If she opted for the rules and regs, problems one and two wouldn’t be problems at all. Both the task force and Robert Kennedy
would
know. The task force would take over the investigation and Kennedy
would
have a chance to work on that van before we could impound it.

I watched Bouton and her professor go through the ritual of vowing to keep in touch, to call more often, to do lunch, while I considered a fourth problem. I’d been playing the part of the snitch (not without good reason) all along. If I now decided to withhold information, I’d probably spend the rest of my career in a little booth outside a foreign embassy. Especially if Kennedy turned out to be Thong. The brass would have to promote Bouton; she’d make deputy inspector, at the least. But Detective Means? Somebody would have to pay the price for making Chief Bowman look like a jerk, and the only someone I could think of was me.

We made our way out of the building and onto Amsterdam without saying much of anything, but that was as long as we could contain ourselves.

“Captain, I—”

“Means, I—”

We stopped, then grinned, then began to laugh.

“I think we should get some lunch, Means.”

“Lunch, yes.”

“And formulate a plan of action.”

“Action, yes. By all means. That’s a pun.”

“A bad one. You know any restaurants on Amsterdam? I haven’t been here for years, and I don’t feel like walking across the campus to Broadway. These kids make me feel like a relic from another age.”

“Not my neck of the woods, Captain. A little farther Uptown and I might be able to help you out.”

It was just after noon, and the streets were filled with Columbia students. I stopped one, a boy, and requested the name of a decent restaurant.

“What’s decent?” he asked, looking from Bouton to me to Bouton.

“Anything between consenting adults that doesn’t involve an exchange of money.”

“Pardon me?”

“How about anything within six blocks with a liquor license.”

He gave me the name of an Italian place,
Stella Mare,
near 111th Street, and ten minutes later we were uncomfortably seated on wobbly chairs in what could only be called a neighborhood joint. (A joint which, I was pleased to note, hadn’t added goat cheese pizza with broccoli to the menu.) I ordered a beer and the shrimp
fra diavolo.
Bouton settled for linguine with white clam sauce, extra garlic, and a diet Coke.

“What do you think, Means?” Bouton didn’t waste any time. She was literally rubbing her hands together.

“I think we have a genuine suspect. In fact, I think we’ve got two genuine suspects. And I want you to remember who steered you onto Kennedy. In case we get lucky and these suspects turn out to be perpetrators.”

“Don’t worry, Means. Even if Kennedy comes up clean, I’ll still remember who steered me onto him.”

“You play fair, Captain. But you don’t play nice.”

And neither did I. I wanted her happy when I hit her with the facts of life, and judging from her broad smile, I wasn’t going to get a better chance. I waited for her to say, “It’s a good thing I’ve got you for a role model,” then jumped into it with both feet.

“You’ve got some decisions to make here, Captain. I mean
right
here and
right
now. You make the wrong decision or no decision at all, you’re gonna lose control.”

Her grin dropped away, but it wasn’t replaced by annoyance or anger. More like curiosity.

“Spell it out, Means.”

“Tell me something—how do we go about accessing VICAP? Can you do it from any computer?”

That brought a quick frown. “Why do we want to contact VICAP?”

“Because, Captain, if, as
Brock
suspects, Thong is out there killing women and if,
as I
suspect, Thong turns out to be Kennedy and his old lady, we should be able to find some evidence of it in VICAP’s little computer.”

“Actually, it’s not so little. It’s tied into one of the biggest mainframes in the country.” She was nodding as she spoke, thinking it over. “What would you want to look for? And where would you want to look?”

“If Kennedy works a rotating schedule at the sheriff’s department, he’d do five days, five swings, and five nights, then get six days off. That gives him a lot of driving time. I’d say, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York.”

“You forgot Rhode Island.”

“
Everybody
forgets Rhode Island. It’s a culture thing. Now, as to what we’re looking for, that would depend on how the computer works. Which is not my department. Ideally, we’d like to ask the computer for unsolved homicides with evidence of a woman perpetrator. If that doesn’t work, we can broaden out. Ask it for any evidence of a serial killer working in Kennedy’s territory.”

Bouton sipped at her Coke, then leaned back as the waiter approached with our food.

“Clams for the lady,” he said, setting a plate in front of Bouton. “And shrimps for the gentleman.”

I watched his back for a moment, then popped a shrimp into my mouth. “Bland,” I said, “as usual.”

“Not enough garlic,” Bouton responded. “As usual.”

“So how do we get in touch with VICAP?”

The question caught her chewing a mouthful of linguine. Which wasn’t all that bad, because it gave her a minute to consider what I was really after.

“I take it,” she said, “that you don’t want to go through the task force.”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

I laid down my fork. “You know about stealing collars?” I paused, got no response, then continued. “Stealing collars is one of the job’s oldest and least publicized traditions. Sergeants steal collars from patrolmen; lieutenants steal collars from sergeants; captains …”

“I get the point.” Now Bouton wasn’t eating either. She was sitting straight up, holding her fork like a baton.

“We’re working on the biggest case in New York since Son of Sam,” I said, rubbing the point in as hard as I could. “Do you really think Chief Bowman (who, by the way, is at least as ambitious as you are) is gonna sit by and let you bring in King Thong? Do you
really
believe that?”

“Never.” She spat the word out.

“How many times did he make you eat shit, Captain? How many times did he make you eat shit with other cops in the room? How many times did he make you eat shit because you’re a woman?” I paused, but she chose not to respond, though her eyes were blazing. “Like I said, you’ve got a decision to make and you have to make it now. As for me, I’m not sure I care. I’m not saying the idea of hunting down a multimurderer doesn’t appeal to me, because it does. I’m a hunter; it’s as simple as that. But on the other hand, I’ve done exactly what you asked me to do when you dragged me out of the ballistics lab. If Bowman takes over and you’re out of it, then it’s time for you to make good on your promise to have me returned to Vice.”

Bouton smiled, then took a sip of her Coke. “You’re very persuasive, Means. You should have been a lawyer. But you’re forgetting one thing. The paperwork. Filing a false report is a serious violation of NYPD procedure. Not to mention a criminal act.”

Her statement caught me by surprise. According to Pucinski, she didn’t have to file the paperwork until after the investigation was completed. Not that I could bring that up.

“Look, Captain, today’s Friday. Nobody will say anything if you don’t file any reports before, say, next Wednesday. In the meantime, I’ll go visit Sergeant Pucinski. I’ll tell him you’ve got this fixation on an upstate cop named Kennedy just because Kennedy’s father has money. You wanna hear how it goes?”

“Yes, I do.”

“‘She’s crazy, Pooch. She thinks some redneck, hillbilly cop murdered and mutilated seven men so he wouldn’t have to share his inheritance. And me, I have to sit there and nod my head like I was dealing with a real cop instead of an ambitious desk jockey. I’m tellin’ ya, Pooch, I take much more of this bullshit, I’m gonna kill some people on my own. And I’m gonna start with that worthless bitch.’”

She flinched at the B-word, then leaned forward again. “That’s very convincing. You practice? Or does it come naturally?”

“You want the five days or not, Captain?”

“Oh, I’ll take them, Means. Being as there’s no price to pay. But what happens then? Where do we go for the subpoenas? The search warrants? The personnel to set up surveillance?”

I didn’t answer right away. And not because I didn’t have an answer. I had answers, all right, but not answers she was ready to deal with. Not yet.

“You’ve got a point, Captain. A good point. And right now, I can’t see a way around the task force. Not if the shit really hits the fan. But if we take good notes and find the right ghostwriter, we just might be the first ones out with a book.
Thong Lives.
By Commissioner Vanessa Bouton and Chief of Detectives Roland Means.”

V
ICAP SOMEHOW, DESPITE ALL
my professed cynicism, I’d envisioned Vanessa Bouton tapping away at a computer keyboard. Envisioned her reaching directly into VICAP’s bowels for the information we needed to connect Kennedy and spouse to the King Thong homicides. I should have known better.

VICAP’s files could only be accessed by FBI personnel. For the rest of us piss-ant, law-enforcement types, using VICAP meant submitting a fourteen-page, fill-in-the-blanks report, followed by a three-week wait. And even that wouldn’t do us any good. We were looking for any unsolved series of homicides in the Northeast involving a woman. The official VICAP form assumed knowledge of a specific crime. Fishing expeditions, apparently, were out of the question.

But, in law enforcement as in everything else, it’s not what you know that counts. It’s who you know. And Bouton, as it turned out, had been working closely with a special agent named Timothy Donovan, VICAP’s official liaison with the King Thong Task Force. Their phone conversations, Bouton explained as we drove toward my Long Island City apartment, had been especially lively.

“See, Donovan’s no jerk,” she explained. “He knows the murders don’t fit established theories, but he doesn’t buy my explanations. He thinks he’s onto something entirely new, an intellectual who’s spent time in the library. Someone smart enough to pull off a series of homicides, then move on to establish an entirely different MO. in a new jurisdiction. Donovan thinks Thong masturbated into a condom to throw us off the track.”

“That’s all well and good, Captain, but how does it help us?”

“It helps because Donovan will run our request through the computer without asking too many questions. All we need is a fax machine to receive the case files.”

The fax machine wasn’t a problem. Nearly every small printer in town has a fax machine. For a price, they send and receive information. The printer we found on Vernon Boulevard, four blocks from my apartment, was more than willing to call us if anything came in. The ten-dollar bill I pressed into the clerk’s palm virtually guaranteed that he wouldn’t forget.

Once inside the loft, Bouton wasted no time. She was dialing the phone before I finished locking the door. Her manner was quick and imperious as she dealt with the switchboard down in Quantico, but once she got to Agent Tim Donovan, her tone changed abruptly. Low and rich, punctuated by deep chuckles, it cajoled and flattered its way through the pitch, shifting only at the end, when she had to ask Donovan to keep the request under his hat. At that point, she became apologetic, slightly embarrassed, like a little girl caught peeping into the boys’ bathroom.

“Well done, Captain,” I said as she laid the phone down. “Really impressive. If I could do that, I’d be mayor.”

She frowned at the backhanded compliment, then shrugged. “It’s a butt kisser’s world,” she admitted. “But what are you gonna do?”

“Get ahead by getting behind?”

I thought the pun was rather witty, but it appeared to sail over her head.

“We’ve got some time to kill. Three or four hours, at the least. Why don’t we kill it with paperwork?”

“Actually, I have another idea. While we’re waiting for the FBI, I’m gonna get in touch with the Albany cops. You remember how Kennedy bemoaned the horrors of urban life? Like we’re supposed to believe that he left the APD because he was too sensitive to be a big city cop? With a little luck and a lot of begging, I just might be able to find out why he
really
left.”

The begging began almost as soon as I got started. First I begged Albany information for the phone number of APD personnel. Then I listened to the phone ring thirty or forty times before a civilian clerk informed me that all requests for information on “Members of the Force” had to be submitted in writing. It wasn’t until I got Sergeant DiMateo, a supervisor and a cop, that the phrase “multiple homicides” produced results.

“We’re talking about seven homicides, Sergeant. And we’re sure the killer’s still active. We don’t have two or three weeks to screw around with this.”

The last bit of begging got me the promise of a return call. It also bought me a little time. I hung up, then leaned back in the chair and stretched out. “You know, Captain, there’s something we should talk about. Being as we’ve got nothing better to do.”

“Step two in the corruption of Vanessa Bouton? Is that the hot topic?”

I was tempted to make a joke of it, but something in her eyes warned me off. She wasn’t angry; more like sad and puzzled. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.