Shade of Pale (18 page)

O'Connor walked over to the watercooler and filled a paper cup. He handed it to Jukes. “Have a nice, cool drink of water, Dr. Wahler. I have a proposition for you.”

Jukes accepted the cup and drank, never taking his eyes off O'Connor.

Jukes cleared his throat. “You realize all this is just a lot of delusional rhetoric, don't you? It's the kind of story a child would dream up.”

O'Connor chuckled. “Of course. That's only logical. From your perspective, what else could it be?” He looked around the room, appraising Jukes's office and nodding approvingly. “Not bad; nice place. You make good money from explaining the likes of me away, don't you? Armed with your bloody logic, you go out there and fight the good fight, until the end. That's the kind of guy you are Dr. Wahler. A real company man.”

“There's no need to insult me.”

O'Malley raised a hand. “Sorry. What I mean to say is I would expect you to take the logical course and be a disbeliever until you see proof with your own eyes. That reasonable enough?”

“Yes.”

“Good, good. Now that we both understand each other, let's have a drink of this fine New York springwater and ruminate for a moment. I think you're going to find what I have to say interesting.”

Jukes allowed himself to relax. Delusional or not, Charlie O'Malley was interesting.

They drank in silence; then O'Connor put down his cup. “I'll find Cathy for you, if you'll help me find the Banshee.”

Jukes exhaled, surprised that he'd been holding his breath. “Look, O'Malley, I'd love to get Cathy back, but I don't have the slightest idea where the Banshee is. In fact, I don't even think she exists, outside of your imagination.”

“Right. But that has nothing to do with it, don't you see? She doesn't give a fuck if you believe in her or not. As I've explained, once you're on her dance card she'll hang around until she takes you, or she'll pass over you to someone else, some other poor soul in the intricate web of destinies, someone who's crossed
your
path.”

Jukes shook his head. “And how will you find Cathy?”

“Let that be my concern. I've done work finding missing persons before, and I've been known to get results. I can be more effective than the police. You get Cathy back; that's the main thing. Are you willing to try?”

Jukes didn't know what to say. Part of him rebelled against carrying on any type of dialogue with this madman, to acknowledge even the possibility that the Banshee could be real. But Jukes desperately wanted Cathy back, and something about the man who called himself Charlie O'Malley suggested he just might get the job done.

“Damn,” Jukes said. “I don't know how to react to you, Mr. O'Malley. You're in your own world and you're convinced of this whole bizarre scenario. If I play along with you, it might lead you to some sort of irrational behavior. You might hurt somebody.”

O'Connor snorted. “You're right. I might hurt somebody. I might hurt Bobby Sudden.”

Jukes's ears rang when he heard Bobby's name. Revenge presented itself to him on the tongue of a madman, and Jukes felt its narcotic tang. When Bobby punched him and took Cathy, something inside Jukes broke. The old Jukes would never had contemplated revenge, but now it seemed an attractive choice. At that moment he felt like it would have been like going against nature itself not to reach out and grab this opportunity.

“You see? It's fate, terrible fate,” said O'Connor. “The worst fuckin' thing you can imagine, ain't it? Now you're forced to consider the possibility that I'm right, and that galls you.

“But if you got your precious Cathy back, why, I don't think you'd begrudge me my little request.”

“But I can't find the Banshee for you.”

“That's where you're wrong. You won't have to find her at all. She'll come to you, when she's ready.”

“But why do you want to find her?”

O'Connor smirked. “I've got my own reasons, which don't concern you. Suffice it to say that the Banshee is evil. The damned thing's killed scores of good men, destroyed so many great families over the centuries … you have no idea. I myself have lost a brother.

“Any attempt to shelter that monster, or side with her in any way, is absolutely treasonous to mankind. You must understand that.

“Never underestimate the explosive nature of this creature. She kills again and again, and has kept on killing for centuries.

“But, you're probably wondering, how can I find Cathy for you?”

Jukes nodded.

O'Connor let his voice drop. “It's my destiny. I'll find Cathy, and the Banshee, and Bobby Sudden as well. I can no sooner fight destiny than I can change the world. All I have to do … is just be there when it happens. Events will occur. They will appear to be a series of unlikely coincidences. I don't expect you to understand that, but it's true.

“I am a warrior. This is my battlefield.”

Jukes's face turned cold. “I don't really care, as long as I get Cathy back.”

O'Connor smiled, his Irish eyes twinkling with intensity. “Exactly. You get Cathy back; I get the Banshee. Fair enough?”

Jukes found himself nodding, wanting to say no, but being unable. He felt as if his body were betraying him, acting on its own. The more he wanted to stop agreeing with O'Connor, the harder it became. “Fair enough,” Jukes said.

“I'll start by looking through Cathy's belongings, listening to any tapes you might have of phone calls, correspondence, things like that. Somewhere here is the clue I need to proceed to the next level.”

“You really think you can do what the police can't?”

O'Connor winked. “Yes, I do.”

O'Connor/O'Malley left with a hodgepodge of possible leads on Bobby's whereabouts. The message tape with the music on it seemed a good place to start. It took O'Connor an afternoon to run through all the band rehearsal spaces in Manhattan and make a second list of those places that also rented to artists and photographers.

O'Connor agreed with Jukes that the music in the background was ska, and that narrowed it down even more. There were only so many ska bands rehearsing in New York.

The old lady's words came back to him like a song remembered.

“
They will appear to be a series of unlikely coincidences, but beware. There are no coincidences.
”

Working at her suggestion, O'Connor started in the vicinity of Mrs. Willis's house. He spent the next day looking around, visiting the most likely spaces. Bribing and threatening people to get information, he narrowed the list down considerably.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The newspapers made a big deal out of the murder of Dolly Devane, especially the tabloids. Their headlines screamed things like:
BOWERY STRANGLER STILL AT LARGE!
almost daily. When the reporters tried to milk George for information, he gave them a shoulder so cold you could freeze ice cubes on it. He locked himself in his office and drank coffee.

George arranged all the evidence on his desk and stared at it until he got a notion. He didn't know it, but he was doing exactly what psychics did, only he called it “getting a gut feeling.” George dismissed anything that smacked of the supernatural as “crack-pot.”

But no one could argue with his batting average: best in the department, too good to promote.

He stared at the evidence, held it in his hands, played with it, smelled it, and lived with it until it began to tell him things.

He was particularly interested in the portion of ticket stub he'd found in the hall. He studied it meticulously and got the distinct impression that it came from the killer. Another “gut feeling.”

He held the ticket stub in his hand.

Popcorn. Ticket stub
.

Most theaters changed ticket colors every day so that people couldn't cheat and use the same one twice. This one was ripped in an odd way, though, he thought, in quarters. It had been torn, then torn again. George knew that tickets were torn in half when you entered a theater, but torn again?

He thought about the kind of movies to which the killer might have been attracted—porno was the first thing to pass through his mind. George closed his eyes. Yeah, that made sense, but it was too obvious. Obvious things always bugged George; only on TV could you make a connection that easy. George used his bloodhound sense to play with it, kick it around.

Hell, it could be any kind of movie
.

Maybe the strangler watched movies because his own life was such a disaster. Then he went out and killed prostitutes and took pictures of them. George put down the ticket stub and picked up his coffee.

He placed his feet up on the desk and tried to visualize the killer. The desk clerk had mentioned a guy leaving later that he didn't recognize—a tall guy with red hair. George closed his eyes.

First he kills them; then he strangles them
.

The more George considered it, the more sense it made—the rope was a prop. The killer twisted it in deep so you'd be able to see in the photos that the victim was really dead, not just faked.

He picked up his phone and called Panelli.

“Yeah?” a voice answered. “Panelli here.”

“Let's go downtown. I want to check on something.”

Panelli sighed. “Sure, George. I'll bring the car around.”

They drove down to the area near the Star Hotel. George said he wanted to cruise the neighborhood. He hadn't told Panelli or anyone else about the ticket stub, another Jones idiosyncrasy.

It wasn't really evidence; it didn't even come from the room; he just had a hunch. Lying out there in the hall, it could have come from anyone, and there was no physical reason to believe that the killer had dropped it. Still, the thought intrigued him.

“What are you looking for?” Panelli asked.

“I don't know; I'll know when I see it.”

There were many porno theaters in the neighborhood, one after another, but sprinkled among them were a few legitimate places. One was showing a Laurel and Hardy festival, another an Italian art film, and the next a kung-fu movie.

“I want to check all these places.”

“Why?”

“I'll tell you later. Let me out on the corner. I think I want to walk around a little.”

Panelli was exasperated. “What the hell for?”

“Panelli, you amaze me. How did you end up in Homicide?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

George laughed. Panelli could be funny when he wasn't trying. “OK, let me spell it out for you. The killer doesn't seem like the kind of guy who's hangin' out on the street. Chances are, in this neighborhood, he's not gonna be drivin' a car either.”

“Why not?”

“Well, look around. Where would you park? No place is safe here; it'd be stripped in an hour. All the people you see on the street here use the subway or cabs. So, I figure he was probably on foot the night he killed Devane.”

“So?”

“So, he had to be walkin' around; maybe somebody saw something. He picked up the girl somewhere, right? People notice shit. You'd be surprised.”

Panelli nodded.

George continued, “He probably found her on the street around here. We can start by asking the other girls who work this area if they've seen anyone strange.”

“But they've already gone over this.”

“Yeah, but it's my investigation now, and I'm going back over everything.”

O'Connor, following in a cab, passed Panelli's car and turned the corner. He paid the tab and doubled back. George Jones was easy to spot. Careful to stay half a block away, O'Connor pretended to look at the girls in the movie posters.

George said, “I'm gonna start flatfootin'. Catch up with me at the corner place, after you park the car.”

Two blocks later he found a gaggle of working girls.

“Hey, Officer, you want a date?” one of the girls shouted. They all laughed.

“Is it that obvious?”

“Where'd you get those shoes? Honey, I didn't think they even made shoes like that anymore.”

George smiled and flashed his badge. “I'm looking for the guy who killed Dolly Devane. I thought maybe somebody saw something.”

“Dolly baby? I swear that was a damn shame. She was always real nice to me.”

“Did you see the guy she went with the night she died?”

“Nope, but maybe one of the other girls did.”

After talking to all the rest of the street girls, George found one who said she thought she might have seen Dolly that night walking with a man with red hair. Her name was Sugah, and she spoke with a southern accent.

“He was weird-lookin'. Plus I seen him before once or twice checkin' out the action.”

“What did he look like?”

“He had goofy-lookin' hair, kinda long. It was a real dumb shade of red, carrottop. I can't really remember anything else. Plus I'm not sure what night that was.”

George walked around the neighborhood some more, checking each of the movie theaters. It turned out that they all used gray tickets at least once a week. It was impossible to identify the theater that had issued the one he had found.

He met Panelli at the diner and ordered coffee.

“Well, our boy's been around the neighborhood. One of the girls saw him.”

Panelli nodded. “That's great. What do we do next?”

“We check all the buildings within a ten-block radius.”

“That could take days!”

“Yep.”

They paid for their coffee and walked past the porno theaters. The sky darkened with storm clouds, and the smell of rain blew on the urban wind.

George liked the rain. The city needed it. It washed away some of the filth, although never quite enough. George looked up at the marquees as they went by. There was only one legitimate theater left in the block—the Temple Theater, a 1940s movie house that had seen grander times. On the marquee it said:
CINDERELLA
, except the last
A
was missing, so the sign read:
CINDERELL
.