It Happens in the Dark (11 page)

His chorus of homeless people performed a few competent soft-shoe steps, all yelling, “
Dance
, boy,
dance
!” And Bugsy did. He tapped out a nervous tattoo of leather, toe and heel, running in place, and he was good. He was
great.
The audience clapped and whistled. And then the little man said, “I’m doin’ the best I can.” The homeless trio did their own dance steps again, yelling their same line, as Bugsy made a deep bow, folding then to his knees and lowering his head. His act was over.

The clapping began with cheers and whistles from the crowd.

Riker was reminded of days when panhandlers were plentiful, and the subways were more entertaining, dance and song for coins in the hat or the hand. There were not so many ragged people in plain sight these days. He knew only one Bible verse by heart:
The poor we shall always have with us.
And so he suspected the mayor of easing the budget crunch for sheltering the poor by giving them one-way bus tickets to warmer climates. And that was
cold
.

Leonard Crippen waited for a lull in the wild applause, and then, in an aside to Mallory, he said, “I call his chorus the tap-dancing Iagos. You see, their role in this particular scene is to torment Bugsy.”

Riker read his partner’s mind. By Mallory’s lights, that was
her
job.

Bugsy’s audience was departing, some of them waving at the drama critic and calling him by his first name as they took their leave. “Well,” said Mallory, “it looks like you go to a
lot
of Bugsy’s subway shows.”

“Oh, yes,” said Crippen. “
Years
of—” Perhaps it was her
gotcha
smile that made the old man realize he had been caught in a lie to the police.

“I’m a little confused,” said Riker, not at all confused. “You told
us
your only chance to see Bugsy act was when he pitched you a new play.” He nodded toward a departing couple who had bid the critic farewell and
“
—
see you tomorrow night.”

Mallory was still smiling. Big lies, small ones, she loved them all, and she knew how to work them like crazy.

Crippen pursed his lips and pretended distraction, watching the gopher pass a baseball cap among the remainder of the crowd, filling it to an overflow of dollar bills. And now the critic found his voice again. “That was a scene from the play that won him a Tony Award. Too bad we missed the beginning. His soliloquy opens with ‘I’m just a little man, and I’m dancing as fast as I can.’” By heart, Crippen recited lines of glowing reviews for the Broadway play that had starred a young actor named Alan Rains, alias Bugsy.

Mallory and Riker were not listening. They were watching the gopher give all the bills in the hat to his ragged chorus line, every dollar. The detectives turned to the critic, wordlessly asking,
What the hell?

“Well, Bugsy can’t
keep
the money,” said Crippen. “The character he plays doesn’t have any.”

They stared at him, willing him to make sense. When nothing came of that, Mallory dragged the old man off toward the wall, and Riker grabbed the gopher by the collar of his jacket.

SUSAN:
Do they hate all women?

ROLLO:
I think they rather enjoy spending time with women . . . so to speak.

—
The Brass Bed
, Act I

Bugsy rode in the back, slouched low, shoulders hunched, doing his best to disappear into the car’s upholstery.

The black Crown Victoria pulled up to the curb of a SoHo street two blocks from the station house, and Mallory let the engine idle as she turned around to face their passenger. “Your bedroll’s still at the theater?”

Poor Bugsy. His night was not over yet.

Neither was Riker’s. His coat pockets were filled with detectives’ interview notes, and he stepped out on the sidewalk with plans to spend a few hours wearing his reading glasses. As the car sped away, he turned to face the saloon that he called home, though his apartment was up the stairs from this bar that catered to police.

When he moseyed inside, he was hailed by the barkeep, his landlord. More hands went up, and other voices called out to him from tables all around the room. The place was toasty warm, and the lighting was low key, but no one would call it cozy. Even off duty, these men and women were packing guns, and the tension level would be in flux all through the night, rising with every sober cop to walk through the door, carrying a bad day on his back.

A mahogany bar ran the length of one wall, and the only civilian customer sat a head taller than everyone else on the barstools. Charles Butler was always the tallest man in every room, even while sitting down. And he was definitely the only three-piece suit allowed to drink here. The surrounding police knew how to make the public feel unwelcome, but shrinks like Charles were pariahs.

And rich guys? Forget about it.

Yet they all tolerated this man, whose passport to the cop bar was issued by Riker, and none would challenge it.

The psychologist had been a good friend to that late, great cop, Lou Markowitz, and that was enough to make him Riker’s friend for life. He slapped the man on the back. “Hey, how’s it goin’?” And when Charles turned to face him, the detective’s first thought was trouble. Missing was the goofy hello smile, a fool’s smile that belied a boxcar string of Ph.D.s.

From the neck down, Charles Butler was a well-made man, but north of that great body, his heavy-lidded eyes were the size of hens’ eggs with small blue marbles floating in the whites, and his nose might attract pigeons looking for a likely perch. A comical face. High anxiety did not belong there.

Riker pulled out a barstool and sat down. “I saw you take a run at Mallory this morning.” He had watched this poor bastard reach out to her, but then Charles had thought better of making physical contact. Very wise. Now the detective asked the man who loved Mallory, “What was that about?”

“She wouldn’t take any phone calls or return them. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Yeah, I see the problem.” Actually, Riker did not.

Of course, Charles would never show up at Mallory’s apartment unannounced. Nor would he make a social call to the squad room. The penalties for that kind of behavior were severe. But the man had seemed right with the world this morning, and blown-off phone calls would not account for the worry in his eyes right now. Charles Butler had the look of a man who should not go to sleep tonight, for he would surely wake up screaming.

Riker glanced at his watch. This was going to take a while.

Well, whatever this man’s story might be, it could have been worse. At least Charles had not been sitting in the front row when Mallory’s lookalike got her head knocked off. Riker could not get that image out of his mind. He flicked one hand at the busy bartender to ask,
What’s up?
Where was his drink? He
needed
that drink.

“It’s not just me,” said Charles. “She’s cut ties to everyone.”

Except maybe, oh, thirty-five thousand cops.

The psychologist emptied his glass in one draught, not his usual manner of drinking goddamn expensive liquor, smooth,
sipping
whiskey. “David was so concerned, he called Lieutenant Coffey. . . . He probably shouldn’t have done that.”

“Probably not.” But David Kaplan had been Lou Markowitz’s rabbi, and that job title had high privileges at Special Crimes. Jack Coffey would have been sympathetic, making excuses for the bad behavior of Lou’s kid—her heavy workload, the budget cuts, the jumped-up pressure on the job.

What
else
had Coffey volunteered?

And what had the rabbi passed along to Charles Butler?

Riker glanced at the tally of drinks listed on the bar tab. This was where he really shined at math. Counting the shots of liquor, he could roughly guess the hour when Charles had started drinking, and now he knew why his friend was so rattled.

The bartender laid out a cocktail napkin and the detective’s customary drink, the cheapest bourbon in the house. Silently saying grace,
God, bless this booze
, Riker downed half his glass, and then he smiled at the man beside him. “So, Charles, how did you like the play?”

•   •   •

Only one light was left burning in the theater. A wire-caged bulb hung down from the catwalk and lit the brass bed on the stage. “That’s the ghost light,” said the gopher.

Mallory and Bugsy sat in front-row seats, eating slices of pizza and tipping back bottles of beer. She stretched out her long legs, and he perched on the edge of his own chair, ready to fly.

“It stays lit all night long,” he said, “
every
night—even when the theater’s got no show runnin’.”

“Safety regulation?”

“Naw, that ain’t it. We got a jillion built-in lights. But that one? Somebody’s gotta set it up. Doesn’t always hang down from a wire. Some places, it’s a bulb that sits on a battery. But it’s only got one job.” Bugsy settled back in his chair, not so frightened anymore. Or maybe he was only tired. His head lolled back, and the solitary light was reflected in his blue eyes. “There’s people who’ll tell ya it keeps away ghosts, but that ain’t right, neither. Theater ghosts don’t hurt nobody. No, it stays lit so the ghosts won’t ever be left alone in the dark. . . . Ya see those lights in theaters all over the world. They’ve always been there, even back in the days when all they had was candles.”

“You believe in ghosts?”

“I dunno. It’s more like tradition, I guess. It’s good luck if ya see a ghost, an’ every theater’s got one. Ours is the old guy who built this place. A long time back, he drove an actress crazy, so the story goes, and that’s why she stabbed him to death. . . . I know a lotta stories.” Bugsy turned to her, and for the first time he smiled without a touch of fear, so open, unguarded now.

Done with her pizza slice, Mallory wiped her hands with a napkin, saying so casually, “The accent is perfect, but you never lived in the Bronx.” This native son of Connecticut had grown up in a gated community—if she could believe in the fruit of her subway chat with the lying drama critic. “You come from money, but you live like a bum in flophouses with rats and roaches. And that’s when you’ve got the price of a room. Half the time, you bed down in theaters. You went to Yale Drama School, but you took a job as an errand boy.”

“An’ I had to audition to get this crummy job,” said Bugsy.

She paraphrased a review for Alan Rains, the real name of this Tony Award winner turned gopher. “You were a shooting star at twenty-one. Five years ago, the critics loved you. Then something happened. What was it?” When no answer was forthcoming, she leaned toward him. “How crazy are you, Alan?”

“Bugsy’s the name,” he said.

“No. That’s the name of a character in a play. Bugsy isn’t a real man.”

The gopher only nodded in complete agreement, and then he shut his eyes—and he shut down. Still as a photograph. Still as death.

Mallory grabbed his arm and shook him hard. “Alan!” Was he breathing? “Bugsy?”

The gopher’s nickname was the charm.

His eyes slow to open, his body squirming, he came back to life—back to her. Though he was not smiling anymore. Bugsy seemed nervous again. And fearful?

Yes, that, too.

Mallory stayed with him for a time, but now they only spoke of ghost lights up and down Broadway. He
did
know a lot of stories.

•   •   •

The detective led the psychologist to an empty table in the back, not wanting to advertise his partner’s business to the whole bar.

“Just tell Rabbi Kaplan she doesn’t have time to socialize.” Neither did Riker, not even time to dance with his niece at the wedding reception last night. But he always made time for friends in need, like this sorry man, who was so troubled by a headless Mallory. And now he discovered that Charles had left the theater after the bat-swinging scene and before the director’s dead body was found.

As they settled into the chairs, Riker shot a glance at the cocktail waitress on the other side of the room, and he raised two fingers. Ruby gave him a thumbs-up to say that fresh drinks were on the way. And now it was time to take his favorite shrink to school on life in Copland. “Did Lou ever tell you about the bad old days when he set up our unit?”

Charles nodded. “The city needed a full-time task force for the—”

“The big messy murders that jam up every copshop. Back then, a busy precinct might handle four stiffs a day, two cops per kill and six minutes to close their cases. Lou took over their bottleneck cases.”

The waitress had two drinks on a tray, and she was heading for their table.

Good girl.

“But our idiot mayor keeps cutting the budget. No new hires to replace guys who leave. Get the picture?” No, he could tell that Charles Butler was still seeing that other picture—Mallory getting hit in the face with a baseball bat and her bloody head rolling across the stage.

“Fewer cops in every precinct,” said Riker, who played therapist tonight. “Now
every
homicide in town’s a bottleneck, and Special Crimes is feelin’ the squeeze.”

“You should call Major Case,” said the waitress, as she set down their drinks.

Riker did not shoot her. He liked redheads. “Kid, you’ve been watchin’ television. You know that can’t be good for you. Major Case doesn’t handle homicides. They never did.” He could see that the girl from the TV planet had it in mind to argue with him, but Ruby left the table without a fight.

The detective turned his tired eyes to Charles Butler, a quasi Luddite who owned a television but never watched it. “So Mallory’s got no spare time, and the rabbi should cut her some slack.”

“You
know
why Louis started that poker game.”

Yeah, he did. Lou had founded the weekly game of close friends so that his Kathy would never be alone, not even when she was all grown up—when she carried a gun, a big one. But Lou’s poker cronies with their stupid rules and small stakes
still
tailored to a little girl’s allowance money—they played cards like old ladies.
Hell with that
. Riker had played with them one time. Never again.

Charles did not have his heart in this argument—Rabbi Kaplan’s argument. He sat well back in his chair and finished his drink before he said, “It’s not like she’s surrounded by friends at work. She’s got you. . . . Anyone else?”

And did the man actually need an answer for that question?

No, Kathy Mallory made no effort to make friends, and Riker could not count himself as one, either. They never hung out together off the job, no drinking, no ball games or movies. Sure as hell no girl talk. She would be the last one to bring him her problems. Mallory had barely tolerated Lou Markowitz. In the early days of foster care, her pet name for him had been “Hey, cop.” And the only clue that she had fiercely loved the old man was the grudge she held against him for dying.

“That poker game is her safety net,” said Charles.

“Oh, sure.” Oh,
crap
! There was no such thing in a police world, where life was simplified: Lay down and die or muscle up. But the man across the table was an alien in cop culture.

This was an interspecies communication problem.

A dicey problem. Whatever he said, he knew that Charles would carry it back to the rabbi. On this account, Riker sipped his bourbon, stalling till he found the right words to politely make the case for leaving Mallory in peace. “Why not just poke her in the eye with a sharp stick?”

•   •   •

Half the woman’s face was covered by a woolen scarf, which could not kill the stench of gasoline, but frosty clouds of breath did not hang in the air to give away her position.

The underground parking garage was cold enough to freeze meat, every finger and toe, though Clara Loman had not waited long. Officially on sick leave—no doubt thanks to Mallory—the CSI supervisor had returned to her office on the sly to download codes for the tracking device installed in every NYPD vehicle. The rest of her night had been spent following the young detective’s movements on a glowing laptop map. And so she had managed to arrive at this underground parking garage ahead of her prey.

From her hiding place behind a cement pillar, the gray-haired woman watched the tall blonde hand over keys to an unmarked police car. Clara pulled back as Detective Mallory turned around to fetch her personal vehicle.