It Happens in the Dark (10 page)

ROLLO:
They need me for my disability checks. But also . . . they need an audience.

—
The Brass Bed
, Act I

The strong cologne slathered on the corpse could not completely mask an odor of putrefied flesh. But going by appearances and not the smell, the man with pale skin and a stubble of beard might be only dozing. Decomposition had not yet grotesquely altered the features, though wrinkles would have smoothed out with the ultimate relaxation of death, and so he might be thirty or ten years older. And he had not died in that red velvet chair, not tonight.

Riker snapped on latex gloves and lifted the ball cap to see a good head of brown hair, no distinguishing bald spots. In life, the victim had been a sloppy eater—or maybe drunk when he had stained his shirt with food. And there was crusty vomit trapped in the laces and tongues of his shoes.

Just the kind of corpse that Riker could relate to.

He caught the eye of the man piloting the medical examiner’s gurney. “Hold off till we get an ID.” The detective jabbed one thumb back over his shoulder to point out the cast and crew lining up in the aisle to view the dead body. “Maybe another fifteen minutes, okay?”

Riker turned to the young man at his side, an on-call pathologist, who hoarded words as if they might be worth money, and whose name he had not bothered to remember. The pencil-line moustache alone had earned the detective’s contempt. “Is there
anything
you can tell me?”

“Rigor passed off.” The doctor lifted the corpse’s left hand and let it fall. “But this is secondary laxity. The victim didn’t die tonight,” he said, telling the detective nothing that he had not already guessed the moment he saw the body—
smelled
the body.

“Great,” said Riker, “just
great
.” He elbowed the boy pathologist out of the way, and then leaned down to peel back the dead man’s coat—a
nice
coat,
lots
of money. He freed the arms from the sleeves, and leaned the torso forward. Raising the shirttail high, he could see dark stains on the shoulder blades where contact was made with the ground and gravity had pooled the blood. He knelt down to lift one of the victim’s pant legs and found more stain on the calf muscle. “And now we know the guy was laid out flat after death.” Some winters they would find the bodies of street people dead of exposure, but those corpses were almost always curled on their sides, different blood pools. He rolled the shirtsleeves up past the dead man’s elbows. “Okay, we got old track marks from a needle, but no new punctures. Good to know.” And the detective left the on-call pathologist as he had found him, a man with nothing useful to do.

Riker strolled down the aisle, passing the line of people waiting to view the corpse. Joining his partner near the stage, he said, “I figure the guy’s been dead at least two days.”

Mallory resumed her conversation with the head usher. “And you can’t remember a
dead
man handing you a ticket at the door?”

Tough one. The usher scratched his head.

“The smelly man,” said Riker.

And now the usher smiled. “Oh, yeah—the guy in the wheelchair. His nurse gave me the tickets. Hers was standing room, his was handicap seating. That means we park ’em in the aisle. He wore a baseball cap, so I never saw his face. I told the nurse to wheel him down front. She said no, he wanted to sit in the back. Well, nobody
asks
for a bad seat.” The usher looked toward the last row, where the ME’s team obscured the body. “So . . . is he wearing a—”

“Yeah,” said Riker, “that’s our guy. Can you describe his nurse?”

“There were at least a
thousand
people here tonight.” And now he realized that petulance would not fly with either cop. “She had a black coat. No, maybe brown. Yeah, could’ve been dark brown. . . . I remember the nurse’s cap for sure.”

“Short woman, tall woman? Hair color?
Anything
?”

“Her mouth was huge, or maybe that was just the lipstick. Who knows? All I remember is this big splash of red on her face. Does that help?”

No. Red was the color of distraction. It was the standout memory of every eyewitness, and all other detail would fade alongside it.

“Go!” Mallory waited in silence until the usher had joined the line halfway up the aisle. “Backstage, they’ve got two wheelchairs, one for the actress, one for the mannikin. I’m guessing a chair was missing for about ten minutes before the play started.” She held up a ticket with a number for their corpse’s theater seat. “This ticket was reserved for Leonard Crippen. The cashier was holding it for him. She didn’t know we moved him to the front row.”

“Well, somebody knew that seat was gonna be empty.” Riker walked toward the line of people that was now moving slowly toward the corpse. He pulled Crippen aside, asking, “Who knew we gave you Peter Beck’s seat?”

The critic smiled and spread his hands.
Silly question
. “I told
everybody
!”

Both men turned toward the sound of a woman’s scream.

Nan Cooper, first in line to view the corpse, yelled, “
Dickie!
Oh, God,
no
!” The wardrobe lady’s legs failed her, and she would have fallen, but Cyril Buckner caught her in his arms.

The stage manager stared at the dead man. “That’s our director, Dickie Wyatt.”

The line broke formation, and all of them gathered near the corpse. No one spoke. Nan Cooper buried her face in Buckner’s breast. She could not stop crying. Alma Sutter was also tearing up. The rest of them only seemed surprised—except for Axel Clayborne. Riker could not read this man’s face.

•   •   •

Cops, cast and crew were spaced out in separate rows of red velvet chairs. For this special occasion of a third death in as many nights, each suspect had a man from Special Crimes to take down a statement. Tomorrow these elite homicide cops would be lost to their own cases—unless Mallory could find a way to hold on to them.

Detective Gonzales stood by her side. He had the physique of a bodybuilder, though he was best known as the squad’s Doubting Thomas. There was no one better at poking holes in statements, and he doubted every word out of Alma’s mouth. “Nobody backs up the actress’s story about the blackboard. They all think she’s nuts. But me? I say she’s lying.”

Mallory agreed. She would not buy insanity. One certifiable lunatic like Bugsy was all that the odds would allow. She drifted down a row of tipped-up seats, stopping behind a conversation between Alma Sutter and Detective Janos. The actress was elaborating on her story: The ghostwriter was after her—
only
her—leaving secret messages and forcing her to
do
things.

This fairy tale was pushing the patience of Janos, not an easy feat. Despite his thuggish appearance, he was a very gentle man, and so it was almost an outburst of temper when he said, so softly, “I’m not buying it, lady. The ghostwriter? That’s bull. He tells you to cut your hair, and you just
do
it? Gimme a break.” He openly assessed her wardrobe, her newly shorn locks and the contact lenses of neon green. “It was
your
idea to impersonate a cop tonight.”

So far, no one from Special Crimes was buying into any part of the ghostwriter story, nor could they believe that any grown-up would. All the detectives smelled collusion. As Mallory walked away, she heard Janos say to Alma, “Incidentally, the real-deal detective wears better threads than yours.”

Stealing up on Axel Clayborne’s blind side, Mallory sat down behind him to listen in on his interview with Rubin Washington, a detective with nearly as much seniority as her partner. Unlike Riker, Washington was no film buff, not the least bit awed by the movie star. And he had already taught this actor that charm only irritated him.

Clayborne was subdued when he said, “In hindsight, I suppose Dickie’s death was predictable. Anyone can tell you he was getting high in rehearsals. Then his contract expired after the third week. That’s when the stage manager took over for him. But the play’s opening was always getting canceled by lawyers. And now we
still
meet for—”

“
Not
what I asked,” said Detective Washington. “Where’s Dickie Wyatt been for the past two weeks?” No one else had been able to fill that hole in the dead man’s timeline.

“I thought he took a job out of town. He wasn’t answering his phone or his—”

“The audience was let in a half hour before the play started. Where were you?”

“In my dressing room. It takes a while to do the makeup for the bulging cheeks and the—”

“Can anybody vouch for you? Just yes or no, okay?”

“No.”

Mallory shot a hand signal to Washington, and then she leaned forward, very close to Axel Clayborne’s ear, saying, “You and Dickie Wyatt were tight. He directed your films in Hollywood. He even got blacklisted with you.”

The movie star twisted around in his seat to face her. “You Googled me. I’m flattered. Yes, Dickie and I were old friends.”

“You’re all smiles again!” said Washington, and he said it loud, as if this might be a beating offense. He leaned across the armrest to crowd the personal space of the actor. Nose to nose, faking anger, he said, “You weren’t too broken up when you saw your buddy’s corpse tonight.
No
tears.
Nothin’.
Your friend dies, and you don’t give a rat’s ass?”

Axel Clayborne was not
acting
surprised. He was stunned. Speechless. He had a lost look about him—an actor with no script.

Mallory rose from her seat and moved on down the row, pausing behind one of the Rinaldi brothers and his interrogator. The actor was saying nothing, only nodding or shaking his head, sometimes giving a shrug in response to a question. She turned around and watched the other twin being questioned four rows away. More shrugs and nods. Maybe these two had once shared a lawyer and taken advice to keep their mouths shut, to volunteer nothing. Had the background checks missed something?

And what else might have been missed for the lack of manpower? She had been crippled at the outset by CSI Clara Loman. And now Jack Coffey hobbled her case. The lieutenant had failed to do his damn job, refusing to stand up to the brass and decline homicides that any precinct could handle.

Rows and aisles away, Detective Sanger questioned Ted Randal, the stagehand her partner called Lollypop. Mallory watched the body language. Each time the boy threw up both hands, she knew he was giving responses like “I didn’t see nothin’, I don’t know nothin’” and last came the one-hand finale of Talking-to-Teenagers, “So
what
?”

Elsewhere in the audience, other interviews were winding down when Riker walked out onstage. “I can’t find Bugsy. Who cut him loose?”

A detective got up from his seat in the audience. Lonahan was remarkable for dogged persistence, hairy knuckles and a loud voice. He stood near the back row, yet he had no need to shout. “I finished the guy’s statement, but I didn’t say he could leave.”

Riker’s eyes fixed on the critic in the front row. He must have read guilt on Leonard Crippen’s face. He walked to the edge of the stage and hunkered down to stare at the man. “Tell me where Bugsy is.” Unspoken were the words,
or I’ll shoot you.

The critic heaved a sigh of
I give up
and said, “You’ll find him in Times Square. He’d want to get a jump on the theater crowd tonight. It takes a while to teach homeless people to tap-dance.”

•   •   •

“Bugsy has something of a cult following.” In the company of two detectives, Leonard Crippen descended the stairs to the sallow lighting of the subway. “He’ll only perform one scene this time. If you want to see the whole play, you have to catch his act in a different place every night.”

Mallory waved her badge at the clerk in the token booth, and the turnstile opened for them. “He always does his act around Times Square?”

“Yes, and always underground,” said the critic. “Better acoustics.”

The three of them moved across the wide space of crisscrossing shift workers, partiers and tourists, all bound for platforms or exits. Through the soles of Riker’s shoes, he could feel the rumble in the tunnels as trains pulled in and departed. And now he could hear a high-pitched screech as they came within sight of train brakes sparking off rails.

Crippen led the way down the platform. “After each performance, Bugsy tells his audience where the next scene will be. If they miss a night, they can find his location on a fan’s webpage. Personally, I don’t own a computer, can’t abide them. I have an office boy keep track of him. And that’s how I know he’s—” The critic pointed to a cluster of people near one tiled wall. “
There
. Follow me.” Crippen walked over to a long wooden bench that held the standing overflow of the audience, and some of these people gave him smiles of recognition as they made room for him. With a creak of old knees, he climbed up to join them.

Riker flashed his badge to make room for two more. Standing on the bench, the detectives could see over the heads of the gathering to the open space where the gopher stood in front of three ragged people, who smiled with less than full sets of teeth, and Bugsy spoke his line, “I’m so tired. I can’t.”