CHAPTER FOURTEEN
With their meeting with the Gaines brothers set for midnight, Guthrie and Vasquez didn’t go into the office until six o’clock the next evening. The day’s heat was beginning its slow slide down. The Garment District was still busy with rolling racks, and shouts accompanying last-minute deliveries. A message waited for them on the old-fashioned answering machine Guthrie kept in the office, signaling laconically with a blinking red light.
“Guthrie, this is Mike Inglewood. You remember me, right? The guy who works for NYPD in the big building downtown. Say hello to—what’s her name, the new one? Vasquez! Say hello to Vasquez for me. Tell her she should go to the Academy if she wants to learn how to do real police work. Unless she likes that Peeping Tom stuff you got her doing.” He laughed roughly. “I been trying to get hold of you all day, Guthrie. Too bad. I had to talk to your client—Olsen. Maybe you would’ve liked to be there to take notes, or something. I think Rikers agrees with him. People say the air is cleaner, but knowing what I know about the East River, I ain’t so sure.” He laughed again. “I don’t know which one of him I talked to. I think it’s the one that dummied up and asked for a lawyer. But like I was saying, we should get together. I’ll be down at Mako’s after hours. Come on by; we’ll laugh at the Angels game. Talk shop. You know.” More laughter was amputated by a disconnect.
“He’s waving the other murders in my face,” Guthrie said. “That don’t really matter, though. He’s asking us down there, so we go and have dinner on the city. We got time for an extra meeting in front of midnight.”
Vasquez drove downtown and parked by the old Custom’s House. They walked down to the sports bar off the park. People lounged like cats on the waterfront, catching a breeze off the bay to unwind. Mako’s was dark inside, noisy with diners and a half-baked crowd jeering the Angels on the large screen behind the bar. The NYPD detectives had a booth in the back; Inglewood shouted and waved like a lunatic when he saw Guthrie. On the way to the back, the little detective slowed a waitress long enough to order steak sandwiches, fries, and a pitcher.
The little detective poured himself a mug of beer from the pitcher waiting on the table. Landry was there, too. He shot him a sour look, then scowled when Inglewood grinned and reached beneath the table to produce a folder. All of Inglewood’s work was on paper. He was a man determined to avoid the computer revolution, along with anything else new, exciting, or championed by somebody under the age of forty. He pushed some dirty plates aside, dabbed at a puddle of beer with a napkin, then spread his folder on the table.
The front part of the folder held crime-scene pictures. A doll-like blonde, pretty in a battered way, was splattered with blood. Beneath her the ground was a mess of crumbled asphalt, dust, and gravel. Her blouse was messy with blood, dead center. She was faceup, with her legs bunched up but her arms askew. A second, less messy wound decorated the base of her neck between the collarbone and spine.
“Pictures of Camille Bowman?” Guthrie asked. “Before these, I’ve just seen glamour shots.”
“She was a beauty,” Inglewood said. He dipped a cold steak fry in sauce and folded it into his mouth. “Keep going.”
Glaring light illuminated the photos. In each one, Bowman was very dead. Wound photos with measurements and layouts of the scene accompanied photos of trace evidence gathered by ISU. Guthrie became impatient and flipped photos faster. Soon he came to the point where the photos began a fresh sequence.
The second fashion show also starred a pretty young blonde—an eerie similarity that could’ve been a remake of the same movie. Guthrie extracted the topover shot of the second girl—body faceup, with bunched legs, arms askew, a messy wound in the center of the chest, and a second bullet hole in the base of her neck. Guthrie flipped back to find Bowman’s matching picture. He grunted.
“GI Ken didn’t have much reaction, either,” Inglewood said, pushing his taped-together glasses back up his nose. “Anyway, I heard you found a wit didn’t turn up on canvass. That right?”
“Sure,” Guthrie said. “His handle’s Ghost Eddy; it fits. I ain’t cornered him yet, but I’m gonna get another interview to see if he eliminates my guy.”
“Well now!” the ginger-haired detective said, then smiled. “Let me level with you, Guthrie. I got no feelings about GI Ken, myself. Then you’re not even sure what your witness says? How’s that gonna help?” He rapped a fingertip on the stack of pictures, then folded them away and tucked them beneath the table. “Now this is coming soon. Where are you?”
The little detective shook his head, and spent a few minutes making a steak sandwich vanish after the waitress set it on the table. The quiet at the table made the bar seem louder. To Vasquez, they seemed like a table of old guys studying hard on a draw of dominoes. The hard eyes, the scowls, and sharp glances were only missing a slam and a click to punctuate the points.
Guthrie shrugged after wiping steak sauce from his mouth with a napkin. “I should start at the beginning,” he said. “Down there at Major Case, your guy Barber was never working the Bowman case. He was working the other case all along. I know this because I’m working the Bowman case, and I got fresh trail. I think Olsen’s clean. After I’ve looked around for a while, maybe I pinpoint him elsewhere when Bowman gets killed—I’m not even done with that much, Mike. You see where I’m going?”
“I never thought you were gonna lay down on it, Guthrie,” Inglewood said.
“Here’s my theory—somebody framed Olsen on sexual jealousy. Maybe this happens to be Barber’s killer, who crossed paths with Olsen. Or maybe somebody lucked into a good copy while they were placing the frame. Those are guesses. What I’m not guessing about is this: some serious heavyweights are involved, from uptown. They’re gonna line up for a crack at whoever fucked this one up. I don’t think it ever goes to trial, unless the ADA has a sick desire to be kicked repeatedly where the sun don’t shine.” The little detective paused to finish his beer. “That brings me to my problem. If I give you a list of suspects, you could get stuff splattered all over you. It ain’t gonna wash off easy if it goes in the air.”
Inglewood shrugged. “I was born dirty,” he said. “But I gotta say, if you don’t want it out, you better find another way to clear Olsen.”
“All right, Mike. We appreciate the beer and sandwiches. I’ll let the bigwig get you next time.”
Across the hazy bay, Brooklyn lay humpbacked and slumbering beyond Governor’s Island. Daylight drained from the sky like bathwater. Standing outside Mako’s, Guthrie called Justin Peiper. After a disjointed phone conversation loaded with exasperated pauses, the college student gave Guthrie an address for a midtown club where he would be available all night.
“I think that kid gets high,” Guthrie said to Vasquez as they walked back to the Custom’s House for the car. “Or maybe he’s got some nervous tic.”
The club was on Third Avenue. Coming into midtown, the big buildings hovered overhead like pregnant clouds. They towered above Everland, a redbrick building squatting behind a chain-link fence and a narrow parking lot. A row of loading-dock doors into a stepped-down sublot on one side suggested brewery. Fresh entrances had been carved through the brickwork, but paint and a smeared patina of decorations didn’t hide the grilles of industrial windows near the roof.
Everland’s vast interior space was wrapped in a mezzanine disguised as a crenellated wall, and crudely divided with rough-sawn lumber. Wide cloth banners drooped in ranks from the high ceiling, dampening the sound. The gamer club still had the bones of industrial machinery thrusting through its medieval facade like the knobby knees and heavy boots of giants. Banks of computers lined side bars and filled booths. Music washed over the crowd, but they were talking, not dancing.
Vasquez spotted Justin Peiper at a side bar, tapping flurries on a keyboard and talking to himself. A cheap tapestry of a dragon hung above his head on the high wall. He wore blue jeans and a collared shirt, but the crowd swirling around him was decked in medieval pageantry—gowned ladies, armored knights, bards, robed wizards—while two tall men in armor battered each other with padded staffs on a raised platform. The crowd hooted and jeered each blow.
Guthrie and Vasquez pulled chairs from nearby tables to sit on either side of Peiper, and discovered that his conversation was with an earpiece, not an invisible friend. Vasquez prodded him with a fingertip, but he only glanced at her before returning his attention to the computer.
“We need some answers, chico,” she said. “Don’t waste our time.”
Peiper grimaced but didn’t look away from his computer screen. “Shouldn’t you bring somebody big to do the bruiser part?”
Guthrie ignored the jab. “Where were you on the twenty-third?”
“In there,” Peiper replied, pointing briefly at the screen before turning to face Guthrie. A sly smile brightened his face, but even the hint of malice left him charming. “I think somebody wants to challenge you, Mr. Detective.” His finger flicked at a crowd gathering around them like wings spreading from the two tall men wearing armor and visored helms. “You must’ve said something to the wrong lady on your way over here.”
Guthrie glanced at the crowd, then turned back. “I ain’t got time for nonsense, son,” he said.
One of the armored men extended his staff and rapped the little detective on the side of his head. His brown fedora rolled beneath the table. Guthrie spun to his feet, scanning the crowd. The tall men held their padded staffs poised, while the crowd began chanting, “Joust! Joust! Joust!”
With their faces hidden in visored helms, the tall men were unreadable. One thrust his staff at Guthrie. The little detective swiveled his hips to dodge, and caught the tip of the staff in a firm grip; while they struggled for the weapon, Guthrie slid slowly closer along the smooth floor. The other jouster swished his staff like a bat. Guthrie’s head rolled like a ripe melon. He doubled over, still clinging to his grip on the outstretched staff.
“O, foul!” one of the costumed ladies cried.
Vasquez caught Peiper’s wrist when he tried to stand, and shoved him against the side bar. “No, chico, you stay here with me,” she said.
He grinned, raising his other hand in mock surrender. “No problem.” He leaned against the bar, watching, as the crowd scattered to avoid a wide slash from a padded staff.
The little detective unrolled a sloppy somersault on the floor, ramming the legs of one jouster. The other tall man jabbed with his staff, but he missed. Guthrie sprang to his feet, clinging to the leg of the man standing over him. Guthrie’s punch connected solidly with the tall man’s crotch, folding him onto the floor. The crowd groaned in sympathy.
Guthrie sidestepped to avoid a hammer blow. The jouster backpedaled, recovering his staff, while the little detective paused to wipe a thread of blood from his nose. His face wrinkled with a disgusted frown. A lady and her bard pelted the tall jouster with jeers and square leather cushions from a nearby bench.
The jouster slashed. Guthrie ducked, then sprang forward with a kick before the backswing began. The jouster fended him away with a cross-check, then tried a jab, but the little detective slipped inside and slapped his visor. The jouster landed on his ass amid a chorus of laughter. Guthrie kicked him in the chest and he slid into a sprawl.
“Another blow receives banishment!” A pair of hefty bouncers dressed as English foresters pushed through the crowd. The onlookers swirled and scattered, while the bouncers pulled the tall men to their feet. Guthrie crawled beneath the table to retrieve his fedora before looking them over once their helmets came off, but he didn’t recognize them.
“You got plenty of friends, Justin,” the little detective said, dusting himself off.
“I can’t help that you piss people off, Mr. Detective,” Peiper said. He shrugged.
Vasquez prodded the young man again. “That was your little man, chico, the one that fell down?” She pointed at the unattended computer.
“Fuck!” Peiper stepped to the computer, and his fingers blurred on the keyboard. “What happened to the clerics? Morons!” He dropped back into his chair, and the snarl vanished from his face. “Don’t matter … just a game.”
“Right now, you got real-world problems,” Guthrie said, “besides playing games with me. You need to account for your time on the twenty-third of July.”
The young man turned to face Guthrie, grinning nastily. “No problem, Mr. Detective. I was in my dorm room, raiding with my guild. They’ll vouch. We popped a Quarm on Time on the twenty-third, and it was my drop. I had a buyer waiting with five hundred to buy costume jewelry to wear during chat.” He pointed at the costumed gamers around them. “Like those. This’s where it turns freaky, though. I stayed in the dorm because I was running another account, selling crack—clarity—in the Nexus. Usually I wear my headset, but that Thursday I didn’t. It wouldn’t work without tinkering every few seconds. I didn’t feel like being bothered, so I ditched it.”
“Usually your mates could hear your voice when you played, but that Thursday, not so much?” Guthrie asked.
“My guild can vouch,” he repeated. “I’ll send you names. Anyway, that freak Olsen used his own gun to kill Cammie—that’s in the papers, Mr. Detective.”
Guthrie nodded, handing over a business card. “Sure. The same gun he kept at the Grove Street apartment in the Village. You remember that place? How many times did you have the key?”
Peiper laughed without missing a breath. “Silver-spoon central, right? Who cares? So I’ve been there.” He turned back to his computer.
Unsatisfied, the detectives left Everland; the midtown night was under way. Traffic on Lexington was like a swing orchestra, and people rushed like blood from beating hearts on the sidewalks. Vasquez paused after she started the old Ford. “You looked pretty good in there, viejo, after you warmed up.”
Guthrie shot her a sour look and wiped his nose.
“He was real comfortable on that computer,” she offered.
Guthrie nodded. “Maybe enough to leave it behind after he took what he wanted,” he said. “We’re lucky he gave us the alibi. We ain’t cops, to beat it outta him. That piece of crap is dirty. I can smell it. Boxing him in a corner is gonna be the hard part.”