A few days later it finally happened. At four in the afternoon Annie took a call from the “office manager” of College Girl Escorts. The madam told her a guy had just requested a “Kim Novak-sweetheart type.” He was waiting in a classy midtown hotel.
“Kim Novak was a big blonde, right?” Annie asked.
“Who knows?” Alex replied.
The suspect had said he just wanted to “sit with a girl for a while, and share a smile.” When the office manager asked for his credit card number, he offered to pay in cash. When she told him, according to the instructions we had given all the agencies, that they preferred a credit card, he gave up his number. She checked and found that the card had been canceled, but it hadn’t been reported missing.
Annie instructed her to say that his Kim Novak was on her way, but he had to negotiate with the girl directly.
The office manager gave Annie his room number at the Grand Hyatt at Forty-second and Lexington, only a few blocks from the Ticonderoga, the last murder site. We had maybe twenty minutes to get across town if we were to have any hope of catching him. I said I’d change into the schoolgirl outfit I had left in my locker as quickly as I could.
“Put it on in the car,” Bernie yelled, desperate not to lose our one and only suspect. We ran outside, Annie and Alex joining us for back up.
As we barreled up to Forty-second, siren blaring, snaking over the double gold lines and in and out of opposing lanes, I frantically pulled off my clothes and squeezed into my schoolgirl outfit while rolling around in the shotgun seat.
“Pull up your shirt,” Annie said from the back. When I did so she taped a transmission wire and microbattery pack to my ribs. For the first time I was wondering what the hell I was doing here. Instead of quietly ticketing cars with O’Ryan, I was about to get intimate with a possible serial murderer. The only problem with my little girl costume was there was no where to tuck my gun and shield. Annie held on to them.
“Now listen up.” Bernie went through the drill. “The only way you’re going to get hurt is if you try pulling some kind of heroics, understand? But this guy has brutally butchered at least four women. He’s not stupid and he’s not compassionate.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“So you have to have him solicit you. That means even if we can’t get arrest him for the murders, we’ll have him for prostitution. And we can hold him while we check his alibis.”
“I understand.”
“The good news is,” Alex half-joked, “he hasn’t shot or stabbed anyone.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “He only drugs, strangles, and mutilates.”
“Just don’t drink anything,” Annie said.
“But if anything at all happens, we’ll be in there in a matter of seconds,” Bernie insisted.
“I know,” I said, trying not to sound terrified.
“We’re going to be right outside the door,” he said emphatically. “So if we suddenly don’t hear anything, we’re coming in.”
“I know, it’ll be quick,” I assured him, cracking my knuckles tensely.
“What exactly are you going after?” he tested.
“Verbal contract: blow job for fifty bucks.”
“That’s all you’re charging?” Bernie said, as if he was about to take me up on the offer. “A BJ through an escort service has got to be at least a couple hundred nowadays.”
“Whatever,” I said tensely.
“It’s important, you have to sound credible. Ask him for one fifty,” he said, like a true pimp.
When we got to the lobby of the hotel, Bernie got me to go ahead of the rest of them, just in case the suspect was scoping out the lobby. As I walked toward the elevators, Bernie identified himself to the manager at the front desk and got a passcard to the suspect’s room. By the time we took separate elevators up to the eleventh floor, the suspect had been waiting for almost thirty minutes.
Bernie had me test my transmitter one final time. As one of the hotel occupants was exiting an adjacent room, Alex flashed his shield and we all crammed inside for an instant, just in case the suspect peeked out into the hallway when I knocked on his door. Apparently this had happened to Bernie and his old partner once.
When I was ready, I finally tapped on the suspect’s door. A soothing male voice called, “Come in.”
A small, well-dressed man who looked at least seventy was sitting in an armchair next to the draped windows. He didn’t look anything like the image on the overexposed video footage or in the rough sketch, but that was hardly conclusive.
He looked so benign that I had to reject the urge to relax and remind myself that despite his appearance, this guy might be a crazed killer.
“All right sweetheart,” I began. “What can I do for you?”
“Oh, I’m Thad,” He introduced and extended his hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Okay.” I tried to hide the fact that my hand was trembling. On the bed was a paper bag from Genovese Drugs. I couldn’t help but think those pharmaceuticals might be meant for me. No drinks were in view, though, nor anything that might be a weapon.
“I thought maybe we could just talk.” He had some kind of backwoods dialect and spoke very gently.
“You want to talk while I’m sucking your cock?” I asked, hoping to get things moving.
“Gosh, no. I was hoping that maybe we could just catch up on old times.”
I watched as his large hands fluttered nervously in and out of his jacket pockets.
“Sure. But I need to know what we’re going to catch?” He had to say Blowjob for one fifty in order for us to make an arrest.
“Did the lady at the service tell you—”
“She didn’t tell me a thing,” I interrupted. “She just sent me here. I’m not one of the house girls. I make my own deals and take cash, so . . .”
“I understand,” he said tensely. He slowly took out his wallet and politely said, “Allow me to make a small donation toward your education.” He counted out seven twenties. That was progress—he had offered me money. But I still needed to hear some reference to sex.
“Look,” I said, “I’ll go out with you, but you got to tell me exactly what you want.”
“I just want to talk about good times.”
“Then you want a blow job? ’Cause I give great, sloppy blow jobs.”
“No, I just . . .”
“You want your balls licked?”
“Please, stop!”
“Hold it!” I held up my hands in frustration. “Do you know what I do for a living? I’m a working girl.”
“Of course,” he replied, holding out the twenties. I didn’t touch them.
“We’re not communicating here,” I said, grabbing his sleeve. “Repeat after me: Put my dick in your . . .”
“Let go of me!”
When he pushed me away. I should’ve just let him go, but the longer he kept me there, the more likely it seemed that he was the killer and I was being lured into some kind of trap. I could feel the sweat trickling down my back. I was afraid the adhesive holding my wire in place was going to fail and it would slip off.
“Just say you want sexual gratification,” I stated, which was clear entrapment. When he stood up, I was so full of fear that I seized his arm. Nervously he tried to push me from him.
“Relax,” I said tensely, still holding on. But he panicked and pulled away, inadvertently smacking my cheek and squealing, “LET GO OF ME!”
“Fuck!” I yelled in shock. He shrieked.
Suddenly we were in hyperspace. The door flew open and Alex and Annie had the old guy on the bed, face down, his hands cuffed behind his back. Bernie read him his rights, then looked through the guy’s wallet. I guess he was looking for the stolen credit card, but he only found one card, which he held up.
“Thaddeus J. Tinkerman,” Bernie read, adding, “You know your credit card is invalid.”
“I was going to pay in cash. I swear it!” Tinkerman said, as though they were working for Mastercard or Visa.
Bernie inspected his other ID and announced: “Our friend here is a veterinarian from Buffalo Mop, Texas.”
The old guy didn’t respond. He just sat there looking sincerely ashamed.
“You okay?” Annie asked me quietly. I didn’t mention the slap.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Actually, he was the one who yelled.”
“What happened?” Alex asked.
Still whispering, I confessed, “I got nervous and pushed him too hard.”
I took Bernie aside and asked him what he was going to do.
“We’ll check him for warrants and prints. If he comes up blank, we’ll just write him a summons.”
On our way out Bernie thanked the hotel manager and returned the passcard. We squeezed the old gent him into the backseat and headed back to the station.
“So you got a thing for Kim Novak, do you?” Bernie yelled over the blaring siren. Mr. Tinkerman didn’t utter a word.
“She was the Scarlett Johansson of his day,” Annie said, and they both chuckled. I looked in the rear view and saw Tinkerman staring despondently out the window.
We returned to the precinct where he was interrogated. It wasn’t until he was alone with Bernie that the old guy opened up. Evidently he was embarrassed to talk in front of the gentler sex. I watched through the one-way as he explained that he no longer had sexual urges. Fifty-six years ago he had married a young girl. Her parents annulled the marriage and took her away, and soon after she died of pneumonia. But even though she’d been dead for over half a century and he had remarried more than forty years ago, he still needed to speak to her from time to time.
“One’s first love is always the strongest,” he said. And unfortunately for him, she happened to be a big blonde.
Apparently when the ache to see her got too bad, the old veterinarian would reincarnate her for a few minutes in the form of a hooker. He had no priors. He had only arrived in town that morning to attend a convention.
When I finally finished filling out a half a dozen forms and reports, I found myself walking out of the precinct at the same exact time as our geriatric john.
“Mr. Tinkerman,” I began awkwardly. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but we have a killer who’s going after the type of girl that you asked for.”
He didn’t reply.
“I just want you to rest assured that no one will know about this.” I was referring to his wife.
“Wait until you reach my age, my dear, when young surrogates like yourself are the closest you can get to those you lost so long ago, leaving so much unfinished.”
“Nothing personal, but if I ever reach that point, I’ll use my pistol to make my own happy ending.”
I knew it wasn’t kind, but the man had freaked me out. I had been expecting him to jab a syringe into my neck at any moment. And even though the suspense was over, I kept replaying the anxiety of those few minutes as I walked home. I kept thinking about how I had panicked and grabbed his wrist—to keep his hands off of my throat.
By the time I reached Twenty-third Street, I found myself breathing deeply. I finally reached my front door at the same time as a lady who looked quite a lot like Maggie, except this woman had canary yellow hair and wore tight black spandex.
“What the hell is this?” I said, when I realized it was in fact my crazy neighbor.
“I just landed this three-week role on the soap opera Siblings and Spouses. I play an arty bisexual type, and since it might be my last big shot, I figured I’d try to become the character in advance.”
In the elevator, I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. She rambled on electrically about her first work day, and told me that tomorrow she was scheduled to do a big on-air kiss with another woman.
When I opened my door, she followed me inside uninvited. While I was putting down my things, I realized my cell phone had been turned off the whole day. Since Maggie was rambling on, looking this way and that, I headed into the kitchen and listened to my three messages.
They were all from Noel Holden. The first was asking me where I was for our second date, apparently forgetting that I had already turned him down. “I’m outside your place,” he said, “and I’m trying to remember the last time I got stood up.”
“Oh fuck!” I exclaimed, reducing Maggie to silence.
In the second message he was calling from the premiere: “Gladyss, I wanted to introduce you to Julia Roberts. She’s such a sweetheart.” I could hear a bunch of people squawking in the background.
“What’s the matter?” Maggie asked.
Absentmindedly I told her that I had missed a date with Noel Holden.
“You’re kidding! Where is he?”
I focused on the third message, which had only just been recorded. “At a party at the Cavalier Club, wherever the hell that is.”
“You should go!”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. It’s early. You can still make it.”
After the pointless hotel sting that day, and feeling so knotted and tense I couldn’t even face yoga, the idea of being out with a movie star at a glamorous party suddenly sounded wonderful.
“What the hell,” I said, and called his cell. It went straight to voice mail.
“Just go there,” Maggie prompted.
“I don’t even know where it is.”
“The Cavalier Club is near Fulton. On the South Street Seaport,” Maggie said. She made it her business to know the location of every major club as well as all the premiere and post-screening parties in New York City. It was as if her fabulous life was always elsewhere but had forgotten to invite her along.
When she left, I exchanged my sweaty shirt for a newer, nicer one, perfumed myself, then dashed downstairs and hopped a cab down to the South Street Seaport.
A ’roid-abusing doorman wearing a black velvet sports jacket over a white cotton tee stretched out by bulging muscles, blocked my entrance. When I explained that I had a date with Noel Holden, the four-hundred-pound ape shook his head. “Unless you have an invite, you ain’t going in.” So I opened my wallet and flashed my shield, which he showed to another doorman before he let me pass.
The Cavalier Club was designed in a shiny hi-tech style. Everything was new and glossy. A large cardboard standee showed Julia Roberts in a cute beret holding a crepe suzette in front of the Eiffel Tower. At the bottom was the tag line, If you’re pretending to speak French, you’d better not slip. . .
Most of the glamorous guests and the paparazzi crud were gone. Busboys were clearing the buffet tables. But one last gasp of partygoers had rallied at the end of the bar, where they were still drinking and laughing it up.
“Darling!” a voice shot out.
It was as though a spotlight were focused on Noel Holden’s extremely angular face. For the first time he truly looked magnetic, made of steel. He raced through all the little people and gave me a big hug.
“I can’t believe you actually made it! I just realized I forgot to mention where the club was.”
“Maggie told me.”
“I waited for you. It broke my heart that you weren’t there.”
“How’d it go?”
“Oh, same old crap. Tell me about your day.”
“Well, we finally made an arrest . . . but it turned out to be the wrong guy.”
“No one got shot or anything?”
“Actually I got slapped, but I’m fine.”
“Oh God! Where?”
I pointed to my cheek. Noel looked closely at it, then planted a sharp yet delicate kiss on the injury. At that moment, I wished I had pointed to my lips.
“What are you drinking?”
I looked up and saw the dog-faced director.
“A light beer would be great.”
When Crispin turned to wave toward the bartender, Noel told me he’d got some good news. His agent had just messengered a script to him. He pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to me. It was entitled, Flat on My Back.
“It’s a romantic comedy with Angelina Jolie—and it’s not awful.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“What’s wonderful is the two million dollar paycheck.”
Instead of thinking that he was being paid more for one film that might take two months of his time than I would earn in my entire working life, all I could think—despite myself—was that Angelina Jolie was gorgeous—and single.
Crispin handed me a tall, frosted pint of beer and a Bushmills chaser.
“We’re having a chugging contest,” he said, dropping the short glass into the frosty mug and sending beer splashing over the sides. “Officer, if you can down this in one go, I’ll confess to any crime you want.”
“Crispin! What does she look like, some fat frat boy?” Noel rebuked him.
“Just to show that a woman can hold her own with the men,” I answered, bringing the tall glass to my lips. I had to use yogic breath control to chug the beer down to its frothy depths, but I did it. Then I let out a long, unladylike belch. Crispin and a group of male spectators applauded and pounded on the oak bar.
“Another!” one of them called out.
“Another! Another! Another!” the guys at the bar all joined in.
Before I could reply, Noel grabbed my arm and led me outside. As we climbed into his waiting Lincoln, Noel told the driver we’d be heading first to my apartment and then to his. Perhaps because of his stated itinerary– which precluded even the possibility of seduction—I felt a little bolder than usual. As the car pulled out, I mentioned to Noel that the river view was romantic this time of year.
“Driver,” he called out. “Let’s go south along the FDR and up around the West Side Highway. We need to see the river.”
Wordlessly, the driver complied.
After several back and forth moves, I found Noel Holden holding, kissing, and caressing me. In what seemed like seconds, the car halted in front of my house. We continued kissing, while the driver just sat silently, staring dead ahead.
“God, you’re good,” I said, finally coming up for air.
“You’re not half bad yourself.”
For the first time I felt I was looking at him through Maggie’s eyes. Without even knowing it I asked, “Would you like to come up?”
“Not tonight,” he replied with a sigh.
Why the hell did he bother with all this if he didn’t want to follow through?
“Fine.”
I opened the door and jumped out. Before I could slam it in his face, he said, “I’m going back to LA soon, Gladyss, and I really am not the Casanova they all make me out to be. I need to move at my own pace.”
At least we weren’t naked and he hadn’t suddenly seen a photo of my twin.
“All right,” I said, doing my damnedest to swallow my fears of rejection. “We’ll take it nice and slow, I guess.”
“I’d like that,” he said with a smile. The car sped off to the economic sanctity of his uptown palace.
I didn’t know how drunk I was until I took the few wobbly steps into my apartment building. The elevator seemed to be spiraling upward. I tried closing my apartment door gently, so as not to alert my nosy neighbor, but of course Maggie came dashing over immediately. She was holding a large, black hardcover book in her hand.
“You’re alone,” she said almost gleefully, as she dumped her heavy book on the cabinet across from my sofa.
“What are you reading?”
“The Bible. I need it for my scene tomorrow.” She spoke with a slight slur that made me realize I wasn’t the only one who had been drinking.
“You’re rehearsing now?” I asked, feeling wobbly from the beer and whiskey.
“Sure,” she said, then eagerly asked, “So tell me about the big date.”
“Well . . . for the first time, I found myself really turned on by him.”
“You’re kidding!”
“No, but . . .”
“What happened?”
“We started kissing on the drive back here, then the next thing I know he’s wishing me a good night.”
“When?”
“Just now.”
Maggie thought for a moment. “I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but it might be that you’re not using the right technique.”
“What kind of technique should I be using?”
She got up, went to my pantry, and took out the bottle of vodka she had given me earlier that evening, along with two old wine glasses.
“Over the years, I’ve collected quite a few tools in the art of seduction.” She plunked down on my couch and flipped on a lamp.
“Like what?”
“Trust me,” she said, patting the cushion next to her. When I took a seat, she poured a shot of vodka for each of us.
“First, let’s toast to losing your virginity to the most eligible bachelor in the world.” We clicked glasses and down the hatch.
“Now let’s see how you smooch,” she said.
“Am I suppose to kiss the air?”
“No, kiss me.”
“Uh, I don’t think so.”
“Why? What’s the big deal?”
“Maggie, I never suspected you were a dyke.”
“Weren’t you the one weeping to me for weeks after your cop buddy rejected you?” she asked.
“That’s low!”
“I’m just saying, this is the second sexy guy you had on the hook who wriggled free. Now if you like, I can show you how to reel them in.”
“I know why you’re really doing this,” I suddenly realized. “You want practice for your lezzie soap kiss tomorrow.”
“You caught me,” she chuckled, and poured us both a second shot. We knocked them back in unison. “Okay, now come on and pucker up!”
I started giggling.
“Look, I’m an actress, not a lesbian.” Pinching her arm, she said, “This is just a big pink instrument that I’ve spent years learning how to use in order to get specific reactions. If you don’t want me to share the secrets of my craft, that’s fine, but I’m telling you—a good kiss is your gateway to love . . .”
Just to shut her up, I closed my eyes, aimed my head toward her, and nervously pursed my lips.
Delicately she put her lips over mine. Then, withdrawing just a bit, more tenderly than I’d ever experienced it, she grazed the tip of her lips over the bulbous edge of mine.
When I opened my lips to inhale, she plunged her hot tongue into my mouth. Instinctively, I tried to back away. She reached around and embraced me tightly. Soon I felt my heart going pitter-patter as she held me and playfully flicked her tongue back and forth. Then she brushed her fingertips down my bare arms, and along my chest, until I felt paralyzed by the tenderness.
“Come on!” she suddenly broke off.
“What?”
“This is a rehearsal, remember? I’m supposed to be one of the handsomest men in the world.”
“So?”
“I’ve seen more responsive corpses!”
I took a deep breath. “I’m just not used to being . . . the assertive one.”
“There’s your problem!” she said. “Modern guys are a lot softer than they used to be. They’ll just melt away like marshmallows if you don’t take charge.”
“What should I do?”
“You took some acting classes in college, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, one. Why?”
She poured us both another shot of the Grey Goose. “Pretend you’re the man. I’ll be the chick. You kiss me.”
“I’m the man?”
“Yeah, you’re a little tomboyish already. It shouldn’t be that hard.”
“How?”
“Think of some specific guy you find manly and be him.”
I closed my eyes and considered some of the macho men I knew. For a moment, O’Ryan crossed my mind, but after his reluctance to ask me on a second date, he seemed more like a wuss. What other attractive, intriguing men did I know? Surprisingly, Detective Farrell popped into my head. Even with his wheezy remarks and decomposing foot, he struck me as a decent, courageous man and a straight shooter.
Leaning forward, I fixed on the thought that I was Bernie, and Maggie my little coquette. Matter-of-factly, I put my mouth around hers and slipped my tongue between her soft lips. I felt her swoon, and the warm, wet tightness of her vodka-flushed mouth. Moving my hand up her back, I held her firmly and pulled her in. Just as she had done to me, I started caressing her large, firm breasts.
Stop!” Maggie said, pushing me back. “I just can’t.”
“Can’t what?” I asked, thoroughly lightheaded.
“I mean . . . Good! That’s a good start.” She got up, blushing, and grabbed her Bible off the chest of drawers.
“So that’s it?” I asked. I was hoping there was something more she could impart.
“If you showed him you can be submissive and he doesn’t bite, try that.”
“I guess I can try.”
Glancing at my wall clock, she said it was time for Letterman and Leno and dashed back to her place. It was her habit to sit, remote in hand, and ping pong between the two, making them into one single, blurry talk show. TV really was the center of her celebrity-driven existence.
My brother called before I went to sleep. He was unusually mellow, even sort of sad. I figured he was on his meds. Usually it was hard for me to get a word in, so I took the opportunity to mention that I had met a new guy, a movie star, and we’d actually made out.
“Who?” he asked, clearly not impressed.
“Noel Holden,” I said, expecting him to ask what life was like in the fast lane – or at least not the slow lane.
But he answered, “Then things are over with you and the scorpion.”
“Yes, but Eddie’s a good guy. Please stop calling him that.”
“Goodnight,” he said, and hung up before I could tell him anything more.
I had a mini-hangover the next day, but I took off my sunglasses as soon as I walked into the precinct. I didn’t want anyone to sense something was wrong. In the squad room, Bernie was reaching for his coat as I was taking mine off.
“Leave it on,” he said. “We got a new one.” Clearly he meant a victim.
“It gets worse,” he said as we started down the stairs. “Remember your cheap date, Tinkerman?”
“What about him?” I asked, thinking, Could he be the killer after all?
“He went back to his hotel room last night, called his wife, told her he loved her, then hung himself.”
“Oh no!” I froze mid-step, recalling that I had essentially told a desperate, old man that it was time to kill himself if he couldn’t handle his loneliness.
“She told me he was battling cancer.”
“Shit!”
“Come on,” he said. “Feel bad on the way to the scene.”
“Where is it?”
“That’s the kicker. You remember the two hotsheets we had under surveillance?”
“Are you kidding?”
It was the Hotel Fabio, one of the two remaining establishments he’d said did not have closed circuit cameras. After Jane Hansen’s body was found at the Ticonderoga, the captain decided to pull the surveillance teams, which were needed elsewhere, since the killer was evidently now working outside his original territory.
As we drove to the hotel, Bernie called Raj to see if pictures of this new crime had turned up on the Marilyn web site. More importantly, if the killer did upload the photos, could Raj again trace their point of origin?
I could tell Raj’s response by the disappointment in Bernie’s voice. No new pictures had come in.
It didn’t really matter. All I could think about was Tinkerman. I kept remembering his sad little shriek when he thought I was trying to rape him. I might not have murdered the poor old guy, but inadvertently I had been an accomplice in his death.
We doubleparked at Thirty-eighth and Ninth and went up to the fifth floor of the Fabio, where uniforms had already locked the scene down. O’Ryan and Lenny were stationed outside. Eddie said hi to me as I walked past.
The techs had widened the perimeter of the crime scene this time, and were combing the entire stairway. We snapped on our rubber gloves and overshoes and I followed close behind Bernie.
The killer had returned to all his original rituals. A tall blonde had been drugged and strangled: Her limbs were taped up. Her head had been brutally cut off. The same numbers were carved on the same corresponding limbs, just like the first three vics.
“See, this isn’t like the Jane Hansen murder,” Bernie said. “This is Coke Classic—like Mary Lynn, Denise, and Nelly.”
In addition, a long V-shaped incision had been made up and down her inner right thigh, as with the first victim. And, again like Mary Lynn, a sock had inexplicably been left dangling from the tip of her left foot. The number 8 had been gouged into her forehead. A paneled bracelet, set with what looked like jasper, was dangling from her left wrist, and wedged in her right hand was a business card for this rat hole hotel.
Another fallacy I had picked up watching movies was that you could run your hand over the eyelids of the deceased and gently close them. But however much I tried to close her sad eyes, they remained fixed in an upward gaze, as though she were longing to be reconnected with her detached body.
Bernie looked closely at the point where her head had been severed. Judging by the corkscrew twist of the top of her spinal column and the way a piece of the esophagus trailed below the head like a little tail, it looked as though the fucker had literally twisted her skull off.
“Did he ever twist off a head before?” I asked Bernie.
“He had to cut the muscles before he did the twisting, but no.” Then he added. “This is one pissed response.”
“To what?”
“He’s got to be one of the cocksuckers we interviewed. This is his fuck-you to us.”
“Why did he go back to West Side fleabags?” I asked. “Do you really think—”
“—The same reason he went back to decapitations and forehead numbers and single socks . . . Who the fuck knows?”
After I interviewed the witless desk clerk, who apparently had noticed absolutely nothing, Annie and I spent an hour knocking on all the other doors in that house of horrors. Next we canvassed other residents of the block looking for possible witnesses, and checked for any outside surveillance cameras—no luck. Bernie had me keep pushing Missing Persons, whose job it had been to take the dead girl’s prints and try to make an ID. By three o’clock we got a hit. Her name was Tabetha Sayers.
Bernie had Alex attend the big news conference the commissioner was holding in time for the six o’clock news. The commissioner had decided it was time to reveal more details about the murders of Tabetha and her four predecessors. If we couldn’t catch the son of a bitch, he wanted to make sure that any blonde hookers who were tricking around midtown knew what was awaiting them.