‘Okay,’ said Riker. ‘What about the regular watchman?’

‘I’m on that.’ Arthur Wang entered the room, a very worried man. ‘Couldn’t reach him by phone, so I sent a uniform to knock on his door. The place doesn’t stink like a ripe corpse. But that’s all the cop could tell without going inside. He interviewed the landlord. The apartment’s been sublet.’

‘Works with the vacation theory,’ said Janos. ‘Still, it’s worth a look inside. The old guy might’ve left something to give us a lead. Let’s get a warrant and toss the place.’

‘It’s in the works,’ said Arthur Wang. ‘So now we wait another forty minutes. The chicken-shit DA doesn’t want to wake up a judge for a warrant.’

‘No judge is gonna sign that warrant,’ said Riker. ‘Not unless that uniform forgets he talked to the landlord. The sublet angle is a paperwork nightmare.’ He looked at Wang, and both men smiled in unison.

‘But what if we don’t know about the sublet tenant,’ said Wang. ‘Let’s suppose the cop forgot to mention it when I talked to him.’

‘Yeah,’ said Riker. ‘Let’s just suppose that.’

‘But it’s still gonna take forty minutes to get a warrant.’

‘Fine. I don’t see the scarecrow stringing up another blonde today. I’ll be at Charles’s place with Mallory.’ Riker looked down at his watch. ‘Where’s my ride? Has anybody seen Deluthe?’

Pssst.

The old-model humidifier emitted a light spray of insecticide every twenty seconds, flooding the room with poisonous fumes. No cockroach would ever brave this atmosphere. Yet there were roach traps on the floor, strips of sticky tape along the baseboards and fly paper on every surface, all the added precautions of a man with a phobia.

Ronald Deluthe sifted though the Polaroid photographs of Stella Small madly beating flies from her hair in a subway car. In another shot, a blue garment was slung over one arm as she actually smiled for the camera – while bleeding. Then she was climbing into a cab, unaware of the line of blood on the sleeve of her blouse. In the next photograph, Kennedy Harper twisted on her rope, blurring the shot. Among the other Polaroids of the dead and dying, the prettiest subject was Sparrow, the vegetable woman in the hospital.

He glanced at the newspaper beside the telephone. Backstage was open to the columns for auditions. Two for tomorrow were circled in red ink. The mission was an ongoing thing.

Pssst

CHAPTER 20

Lieutenant Loman set down the phone and yelled loud enough to be heard all over the squad room, ‘Hey, you bastards!’

Five heads turned his way.

‘Has Deluthe been around this morning?’

‘Blondie? No,’ said one detective. ‘I’d remember that.’

The East Side lieutenant closed the door of his office and returned to his phone call. ‘No, Riker, he’s not here. So, like I was sayin’, the kid ain’t the greatest cop material, but you got him all wrong. The brass didn’t put him on any fast-track. The deputy commissioner hates his guts.’

‘His father-in-law? Why?’

‘Deluthe’s marriage fell apart four months ago, and the wife’s old man is out for blood. He ain’t too subtle neither. Came right out and told me to crush his son-in-law. But I didn’t want any part of it.’

‘And that’s why you unloaded him on me?’

‘The truth, Riker? I forgot Deluthe was alive. He was only takin’ up desk space around here. Wasn’t just me – nobody noticed him much. Then, the night that hooker got strung up, he comes walkin’ in here with a bad bleach job.’

‘And that got your attention.’

‘Oh, yeah. So how’s he doin’, Riker?’

‘Good. The kid’s doin’ good.’

Pssst.

Ronald Deluthe listened to the police scanner as a dispatcher reeled off codes for domestic disputes and robberies. This address was not among the calls, and another few minutes would make no difference at all.

The insecticide permeated everything in the apartment including the closet and the clothes. There was no other discernible odor, though the body in the plastic bag was badly decomposed.

Pssst.

‘Great!’ Riker paced the length of the back office at Butler and Company. ‘Now I got two AWOL detectives.’ He leaned over the fax machine to read the last report from the Wisconsin State Police. ‘So Mallory’s on the phone with these cops, and then what?’

‘We talked about the scarecrow.’ Charles turned to the computer monitor. ‘She was working on this machine, and then she left. Just got up and left.’

Riker glanced at his watch. ‘We’ll give it a few minutes. Maybe she’ll call in.’ He sat down at Mallory’s desk and reached for the phone. While the detective waited on hold for Sparrow’s doctor, Charles left the room to give him some privacy, saying, ‘I’ll make some fresh coffee.’

The office kitchen was only marginally more comfortable than Mallory’s domain, though it housed fewer electronics. He loathed the coffee machine of chrome, plastic and computer components. The programmed brew was sterilized in his mind before it ever reached his taste buds. Unlike Geldorf, Charles was a Luddite by choice: he could work the machines, but he would not. Instead, he returned to his apartment, four steps from the door of Butler and Company, to light a flame under an old-fashioned coffeepot. The coffee was done by the time Riker had tracked him across the hall and into the kitchen.

The detective pulled up a chair at the table, and Charles set out an ashtray, inviting him to smoke if he liked. ‘So how is Sparrow?’

„Bout the same. Still dying. They keep telling me that. She keeps hanging on. Then, an hour ago, the doctor thought she might be coming around. But he was wrong. A nurse confused a muscle spasm with a hand squeeze.’

Charles filled two large mugs with coffee. ‘You check on her frequently, don’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘But not just because she’s a crime victim and a witness. You really like this woman.’

‘We got a lot of history, me and Sparrow. She was one smart whore, and she made my job a little easier. All the dirt she ever gave me was gold. If she’d been on the payroll, she might’ve made lieutenant by now.’ As an afterthought, he said, ‘And she was good to Kathy.’

Charles wondered how Riker could say that. According to the prostitutes, Kathy had been left to fend for herself most of the time – with a little help from the Hooker Book Salon. ‘Sparrow was an addict – hardly mother material. If she cared so much, why didn’t she turn the child over to the authorities?’

‘Because, more than clean sheets and three square meals, the kid needed somebody to love her. Sparrow loved Kathy like crazy. That was the best the whore could do – and it was a lot.’

Charles set the coffee mugs on the table, then sat down. ‘But now Mallory hates this woman, doesn’t she?’

Riker said nothing – and everything. The answer could only be yes. Charles held out a box of the detective’s favorite pastries.

‘Let me guess,’ said Riker. ‘A bribe?’

‘Just one question. It’s about the westerns and the prostitutes.’

Riker smiled. ‘What a kid, huh? We only saw ten hookers last night. Figure most of them died or left town. That means Kathy was workin’ whores all over the city.’

‘And you think that was her only use for the books – trading stories for a support network?’

‘Who knows?’ Riker shrugged. ‘Lou and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the attraction. We didn’t know about the Hooker Book Salon.’

‘You don’t think she cared much about the stories?’

‘Well, she always liked cowboys and Indians. Saturday mornings, she used to watch old westerns on TV with Lou. That was their only common ground for a while. She loved Helen at first sight, but it took Lou years to get that kid to trust him.’

‘You know,’ said Charles, ‘I always wondered why she never called him anything but Markowitz.’