Over My Live Body (16 page)

I look her over from head to toe, wondering
where
can she possibly conceal
any
kind of weapon, no matter
how
small. She’s got dipped-in-chocolate ammo dangling from her earlobes, and the laces on her Doc Martens are strung through what could be spent casings, but I can’t even guess where she’s packed this ladylike gun of hers and I don’t intend to ask.

“In here,” she says, reaching into the supply cabinet and dangling a purple satin pouch from its black cord strap. “That’s how small it is.” She unzips the pouch and pulls out a tube of hair pomade, a set of keys, a wad of silver foil packets branded TROJAN and RAMSES, and then her hand fits nicely around the rubber hand grip of a pistol that seems custom made for her, the perfect fashion accessory for a kinky Barbie doll.

“Where’d you
get
that?”

“Ah’m from Texas, remember? Here, see how easy it is to hold.”

“I don’t think…”

She pulls the cartridge out of the handle nonchalantly, like this is no bigger a deal than taking the refill out of a pen, and flicks a bullet out of a nook in front of the firing pin, then jams the empty gun into my hands. “See, it’s not loaded and the chamber isn’t rounded raght now. You’re not going to
shoot
me, if
that’s
what you’re worried about.”

The only gun I feel comfortable with is the green water pistol I use to shoot water at my sculptures to make the clay malleable, not this. Sweat from my palms makes the handle slippery, rubber grips or not. It may be small, as advertised, but even squeezing it with both hands, it feels as weighty as the charges against me would be if I were caught carrying this thing. I wonder if anyone from the academy is still looking over here now that the peep show is over. It would give them probable cause to stop and frisk both of us on our way out, something I’m not sure Heidi wouldn’t immensely enjoy. I know
I
wouldn’t.

Unless maybe it were Quick doing the frisking. Just thinking this makes me flush.

“
You’ve got a real nahce hold on that
. Stop shaking
so much
.
You saw for yourself, it’s
not loaded
.
Here
,”
she steps behind me and holds my wrists steady
. “
Take aim at that painting on the wall over there and just
laghtly
squeeze the trigger. Lahk
this
.” She makes a popping sound with her pursed lips.

“No…I can’t…I
can’t
shoot a Renoir, I mean, I can’t do this. I
can’t
shoot a gun; it isn’t in me.” I drop my hands, pointing the gun to the floor.

“Well, at least you know what it’s lahk.” Heidi takes the gun from me and slides the cartridge back in with a thrust of a vampish nail until it makes a satisfying
click
. She drops the loaded gun in her satin bag the same way she’d probably toss a lipstick. “But if things should get worse and you change your mahnd, let me know and ah can take you somewhere to practice shooting
real
bullets. Ah promise you won’t be defacing any great mastahs.”

“Thanks,” I say, “I will.” I know I won’t.

Heidi walks me through the corridor like a school monitor. When we get outside, she waves good-bye and heads east down Twenty-First Street, her purple satin pouch filled with condoms and hair goo and a gun swinging benignly around her neck like a sightseer’s camera case.

I turn away and see a familiar dark car parked curbside, its driver beckoning me toward him with a hand gesture that isn’t quite a wave, his gold shield beaming amber, reflecting the overhead mercury vapor light straight in my eyes. “De
li
lah!” he shouts at me as if I haven’t noticed him. If he yelled “Freeze!” and pointed his gun at me, he couldn’t have rendered me more immobile than he has by calling me De
li
lah. My heart starts beating the way it does when I gulp down a triple cappuccino. I wonder what he’s doing here, what he’s seen. He gestures toward the passenger door, reaches over, and pushes it until it’s wide open, like a gaping mouth. He pats the torn upholstery of the seat next to him. “Want a ride?” I better make it
quick
is what he’s implying. There is no question whatsoever that I’m going to take him up on the offer without even asking him where it is he’s taking me.

The first red light he stops at gives him the green light to turn to me and start talking. “I’m taking you to the First,” he says. “I want you to look at some pictures.” Tucked in the console between the seats is a manila envelope marked CITY OF NEW YORK: OFFICIAL USE ONLY.

“Of Curtis?”

“That’s what you’re going to tell me.”

I gesture toward the envelope. “Is this them?” I ask. He nods. I reach for it. “Not here. When we get to the First.” He gently pushes my hand away. “I
can’t
just show you
these
pictures. I’m going to show you
several
pictures of
several
perps and you’re going to try to pick him out of the pile. Like you would in a line-up.”

“Those
are
pictures of him. You’re sure of it or I wouldn’t
be
here,” I say. “If those are pictures of him, it means they had to be taken for a
reason
.
What
reason? What did he
do
?”

Quick runs the next red light and glares at me like I’m to blame. “We’ll discuss it when we get downtown,” he says, and turns on the radio to some the-doctor-will-see-you-now music. The kind of music Sauer told me his father listened to after dealing with street crap all day. The kind of music I hang up on when I’m forced to listen to it when put on hold. Quick scowls at it too. “Royko,” he grumbles barely audibly and pops the buttons under the dial until he finds a station he can live with for the rest of the ride. Willie Nelson appropriately enough croaks ‘On the Road Again.’ I try to picture Quick relaxed and on the open road, his hair tousled from the breeze, his shirt unbuttoned, his tie tossed on the back seat. I know what it would take to get
me
to relax and that what Quick is bound to tell me when we get to the First is likely to have the opposite effect.
It’s something he doesn’t dare tell me in a moving vehicle.

“Curtis followed me again this afternoon,” I tell him. “He chased after me for blocks before I could get away.” I struggle to keep my voice calm. I don’t tell him
how
I got away, how I caused an accident, how I literally upset the apple cart just before boarding the bus at East Fourteenth, or any of my other misdemeanors. He swerves around the corner at Seventh Avenue and changes lanes abruptly, missing a cab by inches. “He’s wanted for something more than just
following
me, isn’t he?”

Quick runs another red light.

“I have a
right to know
,” I protest.

“I’ll
tell
you,” he promises, “when we get where we’re going.” He reaches in his pocket and takes out a package of peppermint-flavored Carefree, probably wishing the brand described
him
. “Want some gum?” He hands me the package and I take out two sticks, one for me and one for him, and put the package on the dashboard. He nods his thanks and pops the stick in his mouth and starts chewing energetically, signaling End Of Conversation. I fold the gum in half and then in quarters and suck on it almost as if I expect it to melt. The pungent burst of flavor makes me think of mouthwash. Quick shoots through a yellow light and just as abruptly slows up to stop at the next light at the intersection of Christopher Street even before it turns. He scopes Sheridan Square to his left and the cigar shop across the street to his right and then he steals a look at me, probably contemplating how what he’s got to tell me is going to play with me. Once he’s been caught at it, he doesn’t turn away. I decide to try to force a confession of my own. “Is this standard procedure? Coming uptown, out of your jurisdiction, to pick me up?” I ask.

“My first order of business was picking these pictures up,” he says, patting the envelope.

“At the Academy?”

“No, on Thirteenth. It’s at two-thirty, three doors down from where you said you were going to be.”

My sigh of relief is audible, like an emphysemic’s wheeze. “So you thought, why not try to kill two birds with one stone.” Quick begins to smile. “Has Curtis killed anyone?” I ask.

I’ve committed overkill. “We’re almost there” is all Quick will say. His jaw tightens. He doesn’t seem to be chewing the gum any more. I wonder if he’s swallowed it. The car picks up speed past Houston Street as Seventh Avenue becomes Varick Street. Quick looks like just another dogged rush hour commuter, eager to get home. As we shoot past Canal Street, I recognize the giant ad for some Italian cheese painted on the wall above and behind the entrance to the precinct house. The car jerks to a stop at the curb. Quick pulls the envelope out of its niche next to his seat and tucks it under his arm as he gets out of the car. As I walk up to the sidewalk to follow him in, I suddenly remember what I’ve got in my pocket, I hear the
click click click
of the sculpting tools rattling against each other with every step I take. I jam my hands in both pockets to silence them, to not arouse his suspicion, to not invite a body search.
At least not while these tools are on my body. 

Once he passes through the green-globed doorway, Quick acts like the Wizard of Oz returning to Emerald City, in charge of
every
thing. He pauses at the foot of the stairs to his left. “Want a candy bar before we go up?” he asks me. I shake my head and start following him slowly, scanning the array of WANTED fliers posted on the wall, some with photos, some with drawings, a veritable gallery of rogues. Quick turns around at the top of the stairs and waits for me. “This way,” he says, leading me down the narrow hallway. He pauses in front of the detective squad room. “Take a seat in here,” he says, gesturing to a room to the right that would best be described as Spartan were it not for the large-screen TV propped on top of a no-doubt fully-stocked refrigerator, pulling out a chair, not letting go of that manila envelope.

“Hat trick, that you?”

Quick points his index finger at me. “I’ll be right back,” he promises. He might as well be saying, “Stay!” I recognize the overweight guy pausing for breath at the top of the stairs. It’s the defective detective, the one Morgan referred to this morning as
fat pig cop
. He looks down the hall, but I can’t tell if it’s me or maybe the refrigerator behind me that he’s ogling. I slump in the hard wooden seat Quick pulled out for me and try to distract myself from the reason I’m here by studying them. Quite a pair. Physically, they’re the Laurel and Hardy of law enforcement. After an hour or two of heavy questioning from the likes of Ollie
in solitary, the sudden appearance of someone like Stan probably elicits relief and quite a few confessions. Right now they’re acting out what I suppose is their own routine, a variation of Who’s On First at the First.

“The Flyers are facing off against your guys in the Garden tonight and you’re not there.”

“Neither is Callahan. He’s benched. His shoulder’s acting up again.”

“They need you more than
ever
, Hat trick.”

“My apologies to Bam-Bam. Can’t do it. I’ve got pressing business
here
to take care of.”

“All the better for Giroux.”

Quick momentarily turns his back to me and turns down the volume. A burst of ribald laughter tips me off that they’re speaking locker roomese. Suddenly both detectives turn and look down the hall at me looking at them. I shift my gaze to the rectangular wooden table in front of me and read the many sets of initials gouged deep into the waxy veneer. The voices in the hallway lower to murmurs as the two begin to walk back toward me. Quick pauses at the doorway and holds up the envelope. “It’ll just be another few minutes. I’m going to get the rest of the photos. The coffee maker is broken, but there’s soda and juice in the fridge if you want…”

“All I
want
is to know what you’ve got to tell me.”

Quick nods. “You will,” he assures me in a tone that makes me wish this seat came equipped with a safety belt, to secure me during the moment of impact. The other detective, who I realize must be his partner on this case, stands guard in the doorway. “I hear you’re a regular Rembrandt,” he says. I shrug. “Hat trick’s got the picture you drew hanging on display right by his desk in the squad room. You got to get him to show you.”

I hear metallic drawers screech open and clang shut and something rustling in the squad room next door and then more footsteps galloping up the stairs. Another detective struts down the hall toward the squad room, his eyes casing me before he veers to his left. “Who’s the babe?”

I hear whispering in response, then more screeching, then silence. Quick comes around the corner carrying a loose-leaf binder in one hand and the manila envelope in the other. “Just another minute,” he says, unwinding the string securing the top flap. He turns his back to me the way a doctor does when filling a syringe, sparing the patient the sight of the needle until it’s time to stick it in. I hear Quick turn plastic pages and then pause to slide in the pictures. My mouth goes dry. “Can I have some of that soda now?” I croak.

Quick places the book open in front of me. “Let me know if anyone looks familiar,” he says. He opens the door to the refrigerator and looks inside. “Diet ginger ale all right?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, splashes some into a paper cone cup and hands it to me. “Take your time,” he admonishes me as I flip from page to page and back again. “They weren’t taken yesterday. They may not leap out at you.”

“I’m worried about flesh-and-blood Curtis leaping out at me,” I retort. “Not five-by-seven glossies.” I’m aware of Quick and his partner studying my reactions to this and that picture as I use my fingers to crop a mustache here, the beginnings of a beard there, trying to imagine what twenty extra pounds will do to a formerly scrawny face. I flip to the next page and gasp. Half the ginger ale sloshes over the rim of the cup and onto the plastic envelope. A droplet falls on a corner of the actual photo and does a slow fizz, marking it for life.

“That’s him,” I say.

Quick nods and turns to his partner for confirmation that he too witnessed what I’ve just done. “I been telling her she’s a regular Rembrandt,” the partner responds.

“Thanks, John.”

“No prob,” he says. “Thank
you
, Miss Rembrandt.”

I nod, wondering if that’s the only artist’s name he knows. Quick goes out in the hall with him, says a few more things I can’t hear, then comes back in the room and shuts the door behind him. “How’d you happen to come up with a picture of him so
quickly
?” I blush and stammer over my choice of adjective. “After all, you said, based on the flimsy information I had…”

“The computer uptown compared the drawing you did and the description we gave to several photos on file and came up with the match.” He closes the book and pushes it to the side. “There’s more.”

“More pictures?”

“No. More I have to tell you.” He pulls over another hardwood chair with masking tape wrapped around two spokes and sits to my left. I detect a trace of peppermint when he leans forward and wonder again if he swallowed the gum. “Some uniforms used your picture on a recanvass of Franklin Street late this morning and someone IDed it.”

All of a sudden we’re back on Franklin Street. I feel like I’m on a film reel set on rewind. “You mean someone recognized Vittorio and
saw
something?”

“Someone recognized the picture, Delilah, but it
wasn’t
the one of Vittorio Scaccia. The drawing I gave to the uniforms from the Sixth last night was faxed here and the guys doing the canvass got the two drawings mixed up, picked up the wrong one on their way over there.” He gulps. “Or I should say, as it turns out, the
right
one.”

“What are you saying?”

“After looking at the drawing you did of Curtis, the house guest of a neighbor IDed him as being in the vicinity of the loading dock around the time Vittorio was murdered Sunday night.”

“
Cur
tis,” I sputter.

“This witness thought he was on private security duty, he claimed, because he wasn’t wearing street clothes. He was wearing a uniform and had on a cap with some kind of insignia… ”

“The same one he had on last night…”

“And he was having a very loud altercation with somebody there who, based on the description this guy gave, we
believe
was Vittorio. Our witness thought at the time that the
security guard
—Curtis—had stopped Vittorio for a simple trespass and went on his merry way. He didn’t associate that with what happened on the loading dock. Or so he said. We checked with a couple of companies that have provided security service in this area and neither of them had contracted
anyone
to work
any
where on Franklin Street Sunday night at the time in question. He showed up in a uniform and didn’t think anyone would question his presence there, and if not for your picture being shown around, no one might have even remembered him. A uniform blends right into the urban scene, particularly at
night
. People
trust
uniforms.” Quick pauses and gives me a chance to swallow this and the rest of my ginger ale before continuing. “You said before that you couldn’t be sure if you’d ever seen him before he made his presence known to you, that he was nondescript. Don’t you think it’s possible you might have bypassed him, coming in or going out of West Eighth Street or any one of the other places where you work and not noticed because he blended in with the scenery,” Quick’s eyes hold me captive. “Because at the time he was wearing a
uniform
?”

I shrug. “Someone wearing a uniform can walk into an office and gain access to information he shouldn’t have any business knowing, right?” I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. “Like my home address, my cell number, not to mention the names and addresses and numbers of everyone
else
…including Morgan and Vittorio.
Why
would Curtis kill
Vittorio
?” My hand crumples the paper cone cup into a sticky ball.

“In one of those notes he left you, he said something about getting rid of the competition…”

“
Weeding out
the competition.
That
came with the
flowers
.”

“Did he have any reason to believe that you had become involved with Vittorio?”

“Vittorio was
gay.”

“
He might not have known that.”

“Why wouldn’t he? He seems to know everything
else
about me and everyone I’m close to. He
told
me so.” I suddenly remember bumping into Curtis in the subway station yesterday and what he said to me.
I’m sorry about your friend. It’s terrible to lose a friend, especially like that. So unexpected. So undeserving. Obviously at the wrong place at the wrong time
. I choke up. “Could I have some more soda?”

Quick goes over to the refrigerator and reaches in for the two-liter bottle on the top shelf. I hold out the crumpled wad of paper in my fist. “I think I’m going to need another cup too…while you’re there.”

He stands over me while handing me the cup. I feel like I’m in the shadow of a giant, strong-rooted Sequoia. “Did he mention Vittorio to you at all when you spoke to him those few times?”

“He said he was
sorry about my friend
,” I concede. “Yesterday, in the subway station, when I was on my way to meet you here. And I wondered how he even knew I
knew
Vittorio, but that was before he told me that he knows where I go, what I do, who I see. The only person in my life he seemed obsessed with was Ivan. He apparently called my home number quite a lot when I wasn’t home when this…
infatuation
of his began, to get Ivan riled up, to rouse his suspicions. Enough so that he resorted to physical force…” I remind him. “Every time Curtis called me, even in the message he left on my voice mail, the one you heard, he dwelled on my involvement with
Ivan
, always referring to him as that
tight-ass stockbroker.
Even after I told him I was involved with someone else.”

“
Are
you?”

“No,” I say. “I just told him that, hoping that would get rid of him.”

“
When
did you tell him that?”

I bite my lip. “Saturday night was the first time…when I got home from the dinner party at Morgan and Vittorio’s loft. I was
very
drunk when he called, I’m not sure if I can remember exactly…”

“Try.”

“
I think I said something like I’d had a special date and he was wasting his time. He said it couldn’t have been
that
special because I wasn’t dressed for anything like that.”

“He knew what you were wearing, so he obviously saw you coming or going.”

I suddenly remember what else I said. It didn’t really matter what I wore since I wasn’t going to stay dressed once I got there. Or something like that.

“Do you remember seeing Curtis, seeing
anyone in a uniform
, on your way home from that party Saturday night?”

“I took a cab…I went to a bar across from Sheridan Square to use the phone because I forgot to charge mine, then I went home and one of my neighbors told me that
I
van had been there looking for me, but no Curtis…there may have been
some
one in a uniform around, but I don’t remember.”

“Near your place or near Franklin Street?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did you leave the party by yourself Saturday night?”

“Morgan called me a cab and Vittorio waited outside with me and…” I cover my face with my hands. The ginger ale mixed with a sudden wash of tears leaves a burning streak of fizz down my throat. “Oh God.”

“What?”

“I kissed him good night before I got in the cab.” I whimper. “It wasn’t a tongue-to-tonsils kiss or anything like that, it was just a—” I bring the tip of my index finger to the hollow of my cheek and give it a light swipe “—
brush
of my lips kind of thing, but it
was
a kiss.” I gulp. “Are you trying to tell me that Curtis may have seen it and thought…my God, in
that
case, I’m just as guilty as
he
is, I gave Vittorio the kiss of death!”

“All I’m saying is that there’s good reason to believe Curtis is guilty of a
lot
more than disorderly conduct, and we’re going to have a nice long talk with him,” he promises, “once we find him.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard. I keep bumping into him. Him and Ivan.” Follow me and he’s yours is what I ‘m telling him. Follow me. Don’t let me out of your sight for a minute. I don’t know what will happen to me if you do.

“We haven’t found Ivan yet either,” he adds. “Have you heard from him since last night?”

I shake my head numbly. I know I didn’t give Ivan the kiss of death, except metaphorically, something he refused to accept.
So what
if something has happened to him too.
So
what
! I’m too anesthetized to react to any more.

“What we did find out when we got this,” he slaps the book filled with pictures, “is that Curtis moved from his last known address and left no forwarding address, so his landlady was stuck with a lot of dead mail that she put aside for him and started to read one day when her afternoon soaps got preempted. She complained to the Thirteenth because some of it was
dirty
. Some of the mail she found lying around
also
turned out to be addressed to other people who were on record as having been victims of various crimes. He was booked for one of them in ‘05. That’s how we got the mug shots. He didn’t do time, though. The complainant dropped the charges.”