Shoot (21 page)

“Quite a nice whorehouse,” I said aloud.

“Nice to be the king,” Reed laughed.

“Until someone else wants to be king,” I said.

“Right.”

I noticed more dark fingerprint powder everywhere, including on the surfaces of a large dresser and two night tables flanking the royal bed. One of the night tables had a book on it about Ronald Reagan that looked untouched. I began opening drawers. One night table was empty. The one with the book on it had a Gideon Bible inside, also unopened. I moved on to the dresser. There was a large bulky lamp in the shape of a fluted column. I tried to move it but it was obviously bolted to the top of the dresser. I opened a drawer.

“Careful,” Reed cautioned.

“His clothes are still in here?”

“Yup.”

“Anybody go through everything?” I asked her.

“Yup. All photographed, videoed, checked out. The stuff here will have to be removed after the FBI is done. No touch.”

“And?”

“Who are you again?”

I told her I had been hired by Chesterfield to investigate the death threats against him. I neglected to mention that I had sort of been fired.

“Nothing major. Some rubbers. Unused. Prescription meds.”

“Okay. Where were the rubbers?”

“Next to the Bible.”

Where else? The bathroom décor was not Louis XVI style but Roman emperor, with black and white floor tiles forming a mosaic. The tub, toilet and sink were large, rounded white porcelain, as was a statue of the Venus de Milo in the huge shower area. Everything in the bathroom gleamed, clean as a whistle. I noticed a small gold button in the shape of a flower on top of the toilet, about the size of a small strawberry. There was a little hexagonal hole on top. I pushed the gold flower, tried to slide it, then unscrew it, but nothing happened.

“The flush is the gold dolphin on the side,” Reed told me.

“Oh. What’s this?”

“Top lock,” Reed explained.

“They lock the toilet top on?” I asked her. “I understand they nail the lamps down so nobody will steal them—but a toilet top?”

“Yeah, some jails and mental hospitals do it too, so nobody uses it as a weapon. It’s really heavy. You can bash someone’s brains out with one of those. Maybe even smash out a window.”

“Oh. Never thought of that. Right.”

The medicine cabinet had been cleaned out, only black fingerprint powder smears remaining. The shower floor had a nice mosaic of a porpoise. The spigots in the shower, tub and sink were matching gold-plated dolphins. Draped over the side of the tub was a floor mat, which had suction cups on one side—so guests wouldn’t slip and fall and sue the hotel. The bathroom alone must have cost twice what my apartment was worth—and I couldn’t afford that either.

“He should have been safe,” I told Reed. “He was locked in a soundproof room, he was armed, his majesty couldn’t slip in the bath and no one could brain him with a potty top or a lamp or shove him out a window.”

“Yeah,” Reed agreed. “Too bad he opened the door.”

“Speaking of which, the hotel must be bugged that all these fancy rooms are still crime scenes?”

“Tell me about it,” Reed laughed. “Those guys are up here every hour on the hour, batshit, telling us how much coin they’re losing every day. They claim they’ll go to a judge if we don’t leave soon but I think they’re just huffing and puffing.”

Chesterfield’s suite alone cost $5,000 a day. With the other rooms at lower rates, it had to be fifteen or twenty grand a day the hotel was losing.

“What kind of asshole blows people away with a flintlock anyway?” Reed asked.

“An asshole who owns a flintlock and wants to make a really stupid point.”

“I guess. How the hell did they get it in and out of here?”

“This place was a gun convention,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Also, it doesn’t have to be huge—it might have been a pistol,” I suggested.

“You mean like a pirate pistol?”

“Yeah, or a dueling pistol. I think that might have the same effect.”

“Okay. So, this is the Tea Party guys bumping off their own people who are in their way?”

“Maybe. Not sure yet.”

“Don’t muzzle-loaders take, like, five minutes to reload?” she asked.

It was a good point. Did the killer waste one person, reload for several minutes, and then proceed to the next room to do it again—until all five were dead? That would mean a lot of exposure for a single gunman.

“I think you’re right. Maybe there was one rifle—or pistol—for each hit.”

“So you could be looking for five guys with one gun each, or one guy with five guns?”

“Or six—looks like they wanted to whack Senator Carroll, too, but maybe something went wrong.”

If Carroll really was an intended target.

“So there was probably a crew of half a dozen or more, who offed armed, highly protected politicians inside a security fortress and got away clean, along with an arsenal, and you have to find them?”

“Uhhh… yeah.”

“Better you than me, pal. Watch your ass.”

“Thanks.”

It was already dark when I left the convention center, walking south on Seventh Avenue, the hot, humid air rumbling everywhere with the sharp sounds of combat— firecrackers, heavy fireworks exploding like small arms fire, artillery and missile strikes, near and far, echoing off the buildings. It sounded like the whole world was at war. I could feel the larger detonations in my gut, the adrenaline building. My senses began to speed up at the familiar noises, my heartbeat matching the battle rattle, gearing up mentally for attack.

The crowds of demonstrators and counter-demonstrators were gone but the barricades were still up. My parents were nowhere in sight. Manhattan seemed normal after the incredible events at the convention, or as normal as Manhattan ever got. The crowds were light, probably because of the holiday.

I thought about what Sergeant Reed had said. It felt like an inside job, of course. The most logical conclusion was that the politicians got whacked as a result of a power struggle within the party. What she said also felt like a warning. The victims all opened their doors to their murderers, which meant the killers looked like good guys. Also, if these guys could do this to powerful men and get away with it, I was a bug. I suddenly needed dinner badly—I was dying of thirst.

That was when the eye in my neck blinked again. I spun around but no one was there. I walked back the way I came but saw no familiar or suspicious faces. I continued south toward Amy’s place. Every few blocks, I would try to shake out a possible tail but I couldn’t find anybody. Nobody paid attention to the paranoid guy whirling around and charging backwards, then turning back on his original course. Just another psycho on the streets of the City That Never Sleeps. All the way, the eye blinked. Maybe it was
on
the blink? Maybe the fireworks were freaking me out. Where could I go for a repair job? My best idea was arak. Booze and food and then sleep. Couldn’t hurt.

“Siri, where can I get the eye in the back of my head repaired?”

“I don’t know what that means, Shepherd.”

“Neither do I.”

Skippy went berserk again when I arrived back at Amy’s place. I brought Amy up to speed, while wrestling with Skippy.

The sensation of being followed was gone. Amy invited me for a barbecue but I told her Skippy and I were going back to Jane’s. I would work from there.

“Good,” Amy responded, as she followed me upstairs, followed by bounding Skippy and his playmate, Dr. Strangelove. “Glad to hear it.”

“You know, Amy, you come off as a tough chameleon, a hard-ass professional, but it turns out you’re just a goopy blob of warm feelings.”

“Don’t be a dick. I’m trying to like you.”

We laughed.

“Seriously, Shepherd. That’s the last time you fuck a client of mine. Bad for business.”

“Tiffany wasn’t really the client,” I pointed out.

“If you can’t follow my rules, there’s the door.”

“Okay, Amy. You got it. Shouldn’t be a problem—anyway, she blew me off.”

“Yeah, like you wouldn’t jump through hoops naked if she changed her mind tomorrow.”

It always felt great to be a predictable male moron. I couldn’t argue.

“Either way, no hanky-panky or I spanky,” Amy concluded.

“Okay,” I agreed.

I fastened his leash onto Skippy’s collar and apologized to him. He hated the leash but I had already gotten a ticket for having him off it. In the City That Never Sleeps, neither did the people who gave out tickets. I turned to my new boss.

“Group hug?” I asked.

“Fuck off and get back to work,” she said, slamming the front door.

Skippy had some business to take care of in a local park, which was why I carried plastic bags in my knapsack along with the computer. When he was done, I called Jane.

“Hi,” Jane answered. “I’m still at the morgue. This is taking forever.”

“So leave and we can get some dinner,” I told her.

“I’m going to hang in for a while because the lab results should be ready in an hour or two and we’ll be done. Then we’ll get something to eat.”

“You’re really taking this seriously,” I told her.

“I said I wanted to help. I’m curious about the lab results.”

“Anything new?” I asked.

“Well, so far, nothing new except Congressman Abner Hatfield has a tattoo on his groin just above his penis of a little red devil guy pointing his pitchfork and the words ‘HOT STUFF.’”

“Sweet. Abner, we hardly knew ya. Okay. I got Skippy. Maybe we’ll get a snack or something and see you later.”

“Okay, Shepherd. See you at home.”

Again, she called it home. Our home? I found a deserted upscale deli, got a bottle of fancy water from a glass cooler and ordered a turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread from the man behind a high, food-jammed glass counter. I also asked him for a plastic soup bowl.

“What kind of soup do you want, sir?”

“No soup, just the empty bowl, please.”

He made a face.

“Can you cut that sandwich in half and only put mustard on one half, please?”

“Yessir. Only half?” the guy asked, confused.

“Yeah.”

“What do you want on the other half?”

“Nothing.”

“No mustard?”

“Right.”

I watched him make the sandwich, cut it in half, and pick up a knife from a mustard bowl.

“Which half?” he asked, pointing the mustard knife.

I looked at him but couldn’t tell if he was serious.

“You pick.”

Skippy got the half without mustard. We wolfed down our food on the sidewalk. He even ate half of the pickle. I poured half the contents of the water bottle into the empty soup bowl and put it on the pavement for him. We both drank from our respective containers and I made a satisfied “ahhhh” sound. Skippy did the same. It tasted better that way. We walked for a few minutes and I decided that, since Jane was still busy, I’d do a little more work.

“What do you say, Skippy—shall we go hunting in the bowels of Brooklyn?”

“Wowf!”

“Okay.”

I scanned the street at the corner but I couldn’t find a yellow cab. I preferred to use official medallion cabs but it was often hard or impossible to find one when you needed it. Also more expensive. After a while, I took out my phone, and opened the Uber app.

In five minutes, a black SUV pulled up. A guy with a beret lowered the window.

“Hi, I’m Raymond. Are you Shepherd?”

He was listening to jazz.

“I am. My dog okay?”

“Sure, but if he makes a mess, you get charged a hundred bucks.”

“You don’t mean fur, right?”

“No, I mean solid or liquid waste.”

“Not an issue,” I assured Raymond, giving him the address in Brooklyn of the APN, the Aryan Purity Nation, which had been raided by the FBI.

We crossed over the East River on the Williamsburg Bridge, a huge monster that looked like a giant child had pasted it together out of rusty popsicle sticks. As we crossed, a subway was also crossing next to us, rumbling and screeching toward the City of Churches.

I was surprised how quickly we were there, the dim streets filled with groups of Hassidic men in long black coats, long beards and black hats. Williamsburg was almost entirely an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood.

“Do you want me to wait?” Raymond asked.

“Nope, thanks, Raymond. I’m going back soon but I’m not sure how long I’ll be.”

“Okay, take care.”

He drove away with a friendly wave. Having him wait would be expensive. Also, I might not want a witness.

The raided building was a converted storefront with bricks where the large plate glass had been. There was yellow crime scene tape across a steel door, and a blue-and-white NYPD car out front with two cops inside. Some businesses seemed to be still functioning but were closed at this hour.

I walked toward the entrance of the white supremacists’ headquarters, Skippy pulling at his leash. There was a small sign on the door that read “APN,” but nothing that identified it as a right-wing terror group. The two cops popped out of their car, hands on their pistols.

“Can we help you, sir?” one of them asked, suspiciously eyeing Skippy.

“Yeah, thanks,” I replied.

I gave them my name, the fact that I had just come from the convention center, and was investigating the homicides. One of them clicked a flashlight onto my GOP ID card and looked at my face.

“Okay, but this is a crime scene and we can’t let you in unless one of our bosses says it’s a go,” the cop said. “They pretty much cleaned the place out, anyway. We’re just babysitting.”

“Oh. Okay. I’ll just ask around the neighborhood.”

“Good luck with that.”

Across the street, there were several townhouses with lights on inside. I went up the steps to the closest one, as the cops got back inside their patrol car. Neither ringing the doorbell nor knocking on the door got any answer. Same thing at the second house. At the third, a peephole in the door flashed. Someone was looking out. Slowly, cautiously, the door opened. I smelled food. I wasn’t sure what kind of food but it smelled good and probably wasn’t pork. I told Skippy to sit. A teenaged girl opened the door wider.