Koko (82 page)

“I think he’d toss us all in the slammer if he saw us down here,” Conor said.
“Beevers
bought these, right?”

Poole and Underhill nodded.

“I want to see about something,” Maggie said, and went down the rest of the way, still
clutching the light bulb. Poole watched her go into the barber shop.

“I think Dengler took out the light bulb,” Conor said. “I bet Dengler was waiting
for him when he got here. And he took him somewhere, which means they aren’t too far
away.”

Maggie came out of the barber shop looking very excited. “They
saw
him. The barbers noticed that the bulb was gone—burned
out, they thought—early this afternoon. Later they saw a white man standing on the
stairs. They thought he was a policeman.”

“That’s funny,” Poole said. “Harry always wanted people to think he was a cop.”

“It wasn’t Harry,” said Underhill. “They saw Dengler.”

“Did they say anything else about him?”

“Not really. They said he stood there a long time, and then they forgot about him,
and when they looked the next time, he was gone. They didn’t see a struggle or anything.”

“I don’t suppose they would have,” Poole said. “If you were going to take somebody
quietly out of the arcade, which way would you go?”

“That way,” Ellen said, pointing toward Elizabeth Street.

“Me too.” Poole went up the steps ahead of the others.

“What are you going to do, Michael?” Ellen called after him.

“Take another look,” Poole said. “If Dengler hustled Beevers out onto the street,
maybe something else fell out of his pockets. Maybe Beevers was bleeding. Harry wouldn’t
have come unarmed, given what he intended to do. There has to be something out there.”

It was almost hopeless, he knew. Koko could simply have shoved a knife into Beevers
and dragged his body outside to a car. Anything Beevers would have dropped—a paper,
a matchbook, a scarf—would have been blown away by the wind.

“What are we looking for?” Maggie asked as they walked out onto the Elizabeth Street
sidewalk.

“Anything Beevers might have dropped.” Poole began moving down the sidewalk, looking
at the pavement and the curb. “Conor, will you take the middle of the street? Tim,
maybe there’s something on the other sidewalk.”

“Conor
,” said Ellen.

Tim nodded, hunched himself against the wind in his big coat and hat, and crossed
the street. He began making slow side-to-side sweeps up the opposite sidewalk. Maggie
floated across the street to join him.

“Conor?” Ellen repeated.

Conor put his finger to his lips and walked out into the middle of the street. Poole
moved slowly back and forth across the sidewalk, hoping to find anything at all that
might tell him what had become of Beevers. Looking down for something he was not finding,
he heard Maggie saying something to Underhill in her precise comedie voice, and then
heard her giggle.

“Oh, hell,” Ellen said, and went out into the middle of the street after him. “I suppose
if we find any severed fingers or other body parts you won’t object to my yelling
my head off.”

All Poole had seen on the sidewalk were two pennies, a punctured nitrous oxide capsule,
and a tiny unstoppered vial which he failed to recognize as the former container of
ten dollars’ worth of crack. Ahead of him on the pavement were a discarded black rubber
child’s boot and something that looked like a damp ball of fluff but which Poole was
certain would turn out to be a dead sparrow. More than two hours ago, Koko had caught
Beevers in his own killing box. It was likely that Beevers was dead by now. What he
was forcing the others to do was quixotic. Yet his body still felt a spurious excitement.
They had been right about the arcade; they were standing on ground that M.O. Dengler
and Beevers had crossed only an hour or two before. He had traveled thousands of miles
to come this close to Koko. His whole body balked at the idea of yelling for Lieutenant
Murphy and the fat-necked young policeman.

“Michael?” Maggie said softly from the other side of the street.

“I know, I know,” Poole said. He wanted to throw himself down on the sidewalk and
tear through the pavement with his fingernails, to rip through the concrete until
he reached Koko and Harry Beevers.

If he did that, if he could do that, if he knew where to dig and had the strength
and tenacity to do it, maybe he could save Harry Beevers’ ridiculous life.

“Michael?” Ellen echoed Maggie.

He balled his hands into fists and held them before his face. He could barely see
them. He turned around and through blurry eyes looked down Elizabeth Street and saw
a stocky body dressed in a long blue coat swing into view like a wandering ox.

“Get back, hide, don’t rush but get out of sight,” he said.

“What—” Ellen began, but Conor grabbed her hand and began walking her up the street.
Poole ducked his head and moved into the shelter of the arcade’s entrance, trying
to look like a preoccupied citizen on his way home. He felt the policeman’s eyes on
him as he slipped into the arcade. He heard a wobbly, unearthly sound and realized
that Conor was actually whistling. As soon as he got into the arcade Poole flattened
out against the side and peeked out. The stocky young policeman was still looking
in his direction. He seemed puzzled. Poole looked across the street, but Maggie and
Underhill had disappeared into one of the tenements.

The policeman put his hands on his hips—something had disturbed him. Probably, Poole
thought, he had just gotten around to recognizing Maggie and Conor and himself. He
looked as if he was trying to work out what they could all be doing on Elizabeth,
Street. He looked back down Bayard Street at the other policemen, then took a step
up toward the arcade. Poole stopped breathing and looked up toward the other end of
the street. Conor and Ellen Woyzak were now doing a better imitation of a tourist
couple who had wandered into unpromising territory. The young policeman looked behind
him, then back toward the other officers. He stepped backwards and began motioning
toward the policemen around the patrol car.

“Oh, shit,” Poole said.

He heard a short, sharp whistle and thought that Conor had relapsed into his Gary
Cooper imitation. Poole looked across the street and saw Tim Underhill, like a scarecrow
in the voluminous coat and droopy-brimmed hat, just inside the arched entrance of
one of the tenement buildings. Maggie Lah was standing slightly behind him, and behind
her Poole saw a portion of a little courtyard. Maggie’s eyes seemed very wide. Underhill
was gesturing for Poole to join them, waving his arms like a traffic cop.

The young policeman stood down at the end of the street, waiting for someone—he was
as impatient as Tim Underhill. Then the young policeman straightened up, and Dalton
sauntered into view.

Poole glanced up the block: Conor and Ellen had disappeared around the corner. Dalton
could see nothing but an empty street.

For a moment the young policeman spoke to Dalton. Dalton’s only movement was to look
once up Elizabeth Street.

Michael wished he could hear everything they said.

Are you sure you saw them? The same ones?

Sure I am. Dey were up dere.

Then did Dalton say
I’ll be right back with Lieutenant Murphy
, or did he say
Keep an eye on things until we finish with Mulberry Street?

Whichever it was, Dalton strolled back out of sight, either leaving Thick-Neck by
himself or on his way to get Murphy. Thick-Neck turned his back to stare down at the
crowds of Chinese on Bayard Street, and sighed so hugely Poole could almost hear it.

Poole looked back across the street. Underhill was practically exploding, and Maggie
stared at him with wide eyes he could not read. The brooding young policeman did not
shift his stance as
Poole advanced out onto the street. Now Elizabeth Street seemed very wide. Poole moved
as fast as he could, trusting that he would not hit a stone or make any noise. The
wind seemed to roar around him. Finally he came up onto the opposite sidewalk. Underhill’s
whole face was blazing at him. Down at the end of the street, he thought he saw Thick-Neck’s
shoulders start to turn his way, a movement as slow and clumsy as that of a large
machine, and he flew the final yards across the pavement and into the protection of
the arch.

“He might have seen me,” Poole gasped. “What is it?”

Underhill wordlessly moved through the arch into a narrow brick courtyard surrounded
on all sides by the dingy high walls of the tenement. A smell of grease and sweat,
odd and dislocating in the cold, hung in the air. “We saw it by accident, really,”
Underhill said. He was moving toward one of the entrances. Beside the rough peeling
door to the ground floor and the staircase was a semi-circular well that allowed for
at least one window in a room beneath ground level.

It was in that well, Poole knew. Tim Underhill had stationed himself beside the tenement
door. He grimly looked down at whatever was in the well. Poole hoped that it was not
Beevers’ dead body. But that was what would be in the well. Koko had yanked Harry
Beevers out of the arcade, dragged him through the arch, and then slit his throat.
After he had performed the operations that were his usual signature, he had dumped
Beevers’ body into the window well. Then he had melted away.

For the first time, Poole really feared for his own life. He moved up to the well
and looked down.

His certainty about what he had been going to see was so great that at first he saw
nothing at all. The back wall descended seven or eight feet down to a dirty concrete
floor before a window that had been painted black. Yellowed bits of paper and old
beer cans lay on the dirty concrete. There was no body. He looked up at Underhill’s
face, then at Maggie’s. Both of them were regarding him with a wild impatience. Finally
Maggie pointed down at one of the corners where the curved brick wall met the tenement
wall.

A shiny steel knife lay on top of a nest of old papers. A smear of bright blood lay
across the blade.

Poole looked up and saw Conor and Ellen coming toward them through another arch set
in the west wall of the tenement.
They had circled around the block onto Mott Street and ducked into the first entrance
they had seen.

“I think Lieutenant Murphy is probably right behind us,” he said. “I want to go inside
the building.”

“Don’t,” Maggie said. “Michael—”

“I know Dengler. Murphy doesn’t. Maybe Beevers is still alive.”

“You might know Dengler,” Maggie said, “but what about Koko?”

This was an excellent question, and the response that came immediately to Michael
Poole’s mind made so little rational sense that he stifled it before it was born.
Koko’s mine, was what he almost said—he belongs to me.

“He probably left hours ago, Maggie,” Tim said in his low calm voice. “I’ll come with
you, Michael.”

“If Murphy shows up before we come back, tell him where we went,” Poole said, and
pulled open the rough, sagging wooden door that was the tenement’s entrance. Poole
stepped inside and found himself before an iron staircase, painted dark green, which
ascended up into the tenement; on its far side another section of the staircase went
into the darkness beneath ground level. To his left was a door to one of the rooms.
Poole rapped on the door, thinking that the tenant might have heard what had happened
just outside his door. He rapped again, but no one came.

“Let’s start taking a look through the building,” he said to Underhill.

“I’m here too,” Conor said from behind him.

Poole looked back and saw Conor pulling Ellen’s fingers off his arm. “We’ll be safer
if we all go together.”

Maggie put her arm around the taller woman.

Poole moved toward the staircase. For a moment he paused and looked up toward the
six or seven flights through which the staircase turned; then he continued around
the front of the staircase and took the downstairs steps.

As soon as his head passed beneath ground level, the staircase became as dark as a
grave. The walls were cold and damp. Just behind him, Conor and Tim were moving so
quietly he could still hear Maggie and Ellen Woyzak shuffling their feet on the floor
above. Poole slowly groped down the steps. The air grew colder around him. Underhill
had to be right: Koko, who had once loved Babar, had fled hours before, and somewhere
down here in a cold shabby room, they would discover the dead body of Harry Beevers.
Poole wanted to find it before the police did. He knew it
would make no difference to Beevers, but he thought he owed him at least that much.

At last Poole saw yellow light outlining a door at the bottom of the stairs. He leaned
over the railing and looked up. A milky nimbus of light hovered over the top of the
stairs.

He came down onto the landing. Through the crack in the door he could see a fragment
of wall painted the same green as the staircase. It was splashed with red and black.

Either Conor or Tim squeezed his shoulder again. Poole noticed a dark smear of blood
on the section of landing before the door.

Poole gently pushed open the door. The chill inside the room, colder than the staircase,
drifted out toward him. In the thick motionless light within the room, Harry Beevers
sat strapped into a wooden chair facing the door. His body leaned against thick straps.
Blood had run down the side of his face, over the white rags that gagged him, and
down into his sweater. At first Poole saw that Beevers’ left ear had been cut off,
and he knew that Beevers was dead. Then Beevers’ eyes snapped open, bright with pain
and terror.

Spatters of blood lay on the floor around Harry Beevers. The walls were covered with
waves and writing, and a slender man sat cross-legged on the floor with his back to
them, gazing in rapt concentration at the painted walls. Directly before him was the
crude representation of a small, black-haired Vietnamese girl, stepping forward with
her hands outstretched, smiling or screaming.