“I get your drift,” Looper said. He glanced around. “But lots of these clothes, you only have one of.”

“Oh, maybe some are rented out, or maybe we only received one costume because its mate was damaged. And it isn’t unusual for one or more of the actors to like an article of stage clothing and, after the play closes, keep it for personal use, or maybe as a souvenir. But if you’re looking for a recent police uniform rental, I can’t help you. I’m afraid cops aren’t in great demand on Broadway.”

“Except outside the theater, to control traffic when the shows let out.”

Laverne smiled. “I get your drift.”

They began walking idly back toward the freight elevator.

“We have all the decorations, patches, and badges to go with the uniforms,” Laverne said. “I’m sure we have a badge exactly like yours.”

“You’re starting to make me uneasy, Laverne.”

“I mention it because I’m assuming you suspect someone is impersonating a policeman and committing crimes.”

“It’s a theory,” Looper said.

“The Justice Killer?”

Looper only smiled.

“He’s the one on everybody’s mind,” Laverne said.

“Certainly our celebrity killer of the moment.”

“I don’t like what he’s doing. I don’t see him as a hero. And I think that Adelaide Starr bitch needs a good spanking.”

Looper’s smile turned to one of gratitude. “That’s pretty much the way we see him. And her.”

“I’m also letting you know it’s possible he could be passing for a real policeman, right down to the details and identification. That kind of merchandise is available in this city.”

Looper already knew that, but he said, “You’re not making me feel any better.”

“Well, that isn’t why you came here.”

She smiled at him and pushed the button that opened the elevator door.

Uptown, Bradley Aimes returned from a lunch with his accountant and jogged up the steps to the entrance to his apartment building. He was plenty worried. The IRS, those were people you didn’t mess with. Harv, his accountant, kept telling him not to fret so much about the audit, or he’d get sick. But Harv didn’t know that some of the receipts for business and travel expenses were copies of previous years’ receipts, with the dates artfully altered. Harv was a stickler and would have been shocked to know. But hell, everybody did that kind of thing. It was a guy on a golf course in New Jersey who’d first given Aimes the idea, said he’d been doing it for years. You just had to be careful to use receipts that were more than three years old.

Well, the IRS agent hadn’t figured that one out yet, and Aimes sure wasn’t going to clue old Harv in. Harv was the kind of guy who spilled his guts about everything. Some of the things he’d said about his wife…

Ah! There was something showing through the vertical slots in Aimes’s mailbox. Probably ads, or maybe something else from the Internal Revenue. Well, better check. Might be a check. Aimes had a fifty-dollar rebate check coming from when he’d bought some computer equipment last month.

He crossed the hexagonal-tiled lobby floor and fit his key in the brass mailbox with his name over it.

That’s when the headache struck.

An explosion of pain.

A dizzy sensation. Everything moving, moving.

What? Stroke or something…?

Too much strain because of the audit. Harv had warned him about worrying too much. He tried to take a step, but his foot moved through air. Odd. Harv had…

That’s the ceiling, stairs leading up and up and up. How’d I get on the floor?

The wind…It’s so cold…How’d I get in a boat?

I’m only five. I shouldn’t be alone in a boat.

In the dark.

Looper had finished his Greek salad and was about to bite into his baklava, when his mobile phone buzzed.

He’d removed his suit coat and had the phone out of its pocket, lying next to the condiments on the table where he could get to it, so he answered after only two buzzes.

“Looper,” he said simply, knowing from caller ID that it was Beam.

“It’s Beam, Loop. We’ve got another Justice killing.” He gave Looper a West Side address, while Looper used sticky fingers to grip a pencil and write on a napkin. “Victim’s name is Bradley Aimes.” He spelled it out for Looper.

“Isn’t that—”

“Yeah,” Beam said. “The asshole who killed Genelle Dixon.”

“Allegedly.” Looper licked his fingers.

“I’ll meet you there,” Beam said. “Nell’s on the way.”

Looper was already signaling for a take-out box for his baklava.

65

Murder was popular. The narrow vestibule of the brownstone apartment building was so crowded that half a dozen cops and CSU personnel were standing outside. Tenants were directed to a basement entrance usually accessible only to the super. Several windows were open above, and people leaned out of them, silently watching what was going on below.

Beam flashed his shield but didn’t go all the way into the vestibule, simply leaned in and saw Bradley Aimes’s body on the bloody tile floor. Aimes was lying on his back, his eyes open and gazing up the stairwell but seeing nothing. Techs were tending to business with their tweezers and brushes and plastic bags. A photographer was sending brilliant flashes over the scene every ten or twelve seconds. The little mustachioed ME, Minskoff, was stooped next to the body. He glanced over and saw Beam.

“’Nother one,” he said.

Beam looked and saw a bit of red cloth clutched in the dead man’s right hand. “That what I think it is?”

“I’d say so,” said the ME. “Haven’t touched it yet.”

“That a gunshot wound I see in his head?”

“Certainly is. Bullet went in just behind his right ear.”

“Thirty-two caliber?”

“Could be. It’s still in his head, so we’ll know better after the postmortem.”

On the floor, near the hand clutching the cloth J, was a small brass key. “Mailbox?” Beam asked, pointing to the key.

“Haven’t touched that, either,” Minskoff said, deftly using the back of his wrist to adjust his glasses. “But his mailbox is open. Looks like he came downstairs to get his mail, but never got a chance to read it. It’s still in the box. Envelope I can see looks like it contains a rebate check. His lucky day.”

“You notice a lot for an ME.”

“Too many years hanging around guys like you. I learned to observe. Too much, I might add.” He bent back to his task, signaling that he was now ignoring Beam.

“I’m observing blood getting on your shoes,” Beam said, backing away from the doorway.

“Damn it!” he heard Minskoff say.

“Let’s find the super,” Beam said to Looper, “so we can have a look at Aimes’s apartment while Nell keeps tabs on things here.”

What they learned as soon as the super opened the door for them was that Aimes had bad taste and didn’t bother keeping things neat.

Aimes had been a smoker. His apartment reeked of tobacco smoke, and there were ashtrays scattered around, most of them with ashes or filtered cigarette butts in them. Looper closed his eyes and took in a deep and blissful breath, like a man who’d stepped into a perfume factory. The blinds on one of the windows were broken and hanging crookedly. The furniture was a mishmash of styles, a couple of uncomfortable looking Danish chairs, a fat sofa with a rose and vine pattern, an Oriental rug that managed to avoid every color in the sofa. On one wall were some framed photos of a racehorse—“Secretariat,” Looper announced, after closer inspection—and a blown-up color photo of a big sailboat, the racing kind, listing to starboard almost enough to capsize. There was a crew of about half a dozen in the boat. Beam looked closely and saw that one of them was a younger version of the dead man in the lobby.