"Cold Day in Hell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Richard)

10

EXCEPT FOR THE CABBIE who drove Zachary Riddick to Central Park, the lawyer had last been seen alive at 12:20 on the day he was murdered. This was at the news conference, where Riddick had bellyached for a mistrial to be declared and for the immediate release of Marshall Fox from custody. He had been pure Riddick, decrying “the abysmal miscarriage of justice” and working up the sort of lather that Joan of Arc could have only dreamed of from one of her defenders. He also managed to slip in the phrase “my good friend Marshall Fox” or “my personal friend Marshall Fox” fourteen times, according to Jimmy Puck’s column in the Post. And as Joseph Gallo predicted, Riddick had produced a tape player and played the phone threat that had been recorded on Rosemary Fox’s answering machine.

I’m coming, you whore. Can you taste the blood yet?

The police did what they could to track Riddick’s whereabouts in the several hours between the end of the news conference and the discovery of his body in Central Park. Rosemary Fox reported speaking with him briefly on the phone some minutes after the conclusion of the news conference. Riddick had told her he would come by her apartment later in the afternoon to discuss where things stood. He did not disclose his plans for the intervening hours. One would presume lunch. But the contents of Riddick’s stomach, once his body was turned over to the medical examiner for the up-close-and-personal, showed nothing since the twin stack he had shoveled down at his local diner-where he was a regular-at approximately 7:45 that morning. One of the local stations went ahead and dug up the waitress who had served him, a moon-faced Ukrainian who informed the viewing audience, “He luks fine when he leaves here. You think, He vull be back tomorrow like always. Who can know he vull be kilt like that? I hud no idea.”

The police had questioned everyone they could round up in Central Park in the immediate minutes after arriving on the scene. They showed photographs of Riddick. A few people said that they might have seen him, but the information provided no real insights into the murder. Riddick had entered the park from the southeast corner, dropped off by a taxi. The cabbie was tracked down. He had picked Riddick up at Church Street, a few blocks from the courthouse. On the ride uptown, the two shared an animated conversation on the subject of Marshall Fox’s guilt or innocence (the cabbie saw the new murder the same way Riddick did, proof that the real killer of Cynthia Blair and Nikki Rossman was still out there); however, Riddick failed to reveal what his purpose was for heading into the park. The cabbie reported a good tip. He last saw his fare heading into the park via the walkway that runs by the zoo at approximately a quarter to one.

Speculation centered on the possibility that Riddick was on his way to meet someone for lunch at the Boathouse Café-he’d been known to eat there on more than one occasion-but no one surfaced claiming to have been stood up by the lawyer for a lunch date.

Essentially, Zachary Riddick took a cab to the park, briskly walked the quarter mile to the area of the Boathouse and saw his life end amid blood and snow and dead leaves on a nub of a hill overlooking Central Park Lake.

The police weren’t saying much. I’d had to poke and prod just to pick up what little I knew.

IT WAS DIFFICULT to go anywhere in Manhattan the next several days without getting caught up in a conversation about Marshall Fox and this new set of murders. In point of fact, it was difficult to get anywhere in Manhattan in general, unless you were going by subway. Eight additional inches of snow had fallen on the city in the space of twenty-four hours, slowing street traffic to a skidding crawl and leaving the curbs lined with large cloudlike mounds. After the snow stopped, the temperature had tumbled to record lows, locking the city in an arctic freeze. An elderly woman in Fort Apache froze to death in her unheated apartment. A visitor from Columbus, Ohio, lost a leg to a skidding taxi. In Sunset Park, two sisters aged six and nine died when snow leaching from the roof into their bedroom ceiling melted and dripped onto their space heater, igniting a fire that gutted the entire second floor of the house. The mayor put out a call for all nonessential businesses to remain closed. Stores were shuttered. School classes were canceled. Trash collection was suspended. In general terms, as much as a city of nine million restless inhabitants can ever truly grind to a halt, that’s what happened.

Two nights after Zachary Riddick’s murder, Margo and I attended a talk on Wicca given at the American Museum of Natural History. The museum is only several blocks from Margo’s place, but getting there was half the fun. Margo went down on her lovely can as we approached Columbus Avenue but then got the last laugh a minute later as my lunge for a lamppost failed to keep my feet beneath me and I slid to the ground like a cartoon drunk.

Margo had done a recent piece for The Village Voice on the woman giving the talk, so she was curious to hear the presentation. The woman was a Wiccan herself, though in civilian life, she ran a small advertising agency out of her apartment in Chelsea. You know what they say, scratch an ad exec, find a Wiccan. It turned out to be a good talk, much more engaging than I had expected, but even so, the buzz in the auditorium during the reception afterward barely included the word “Wicca.” The murders of Riddick and Robin Burrell had taken place a mere quarter mile from the museum, and their grip on the crowd was palpable. Even the Wiccan, when Margo introduced us and told her what I did for a living, shrugged off my compliment on her presentation and asked my opinion on Marshall Fox in light of these recent killings. The woman was in her sixties, overweight in a hippie-gone-willingly-to-seed way. She was wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a gold breastplate necklace that shot off reflected light every time she moved. A thick graying braid nearly as stout as one of her arms snaked down her broad back.

“Innocent until proven guilty,” I said colorlessly.

“But your opinion. I’ll share mine. Mr. Fox is serving as a touchstone, if you will.”

“Touchstone.”

“I see these as ritual killings. Maybe not so much sacrifices. But more a ritualized and symbolic cleansing. Purifying.”

“You’ll excuse me, but I fail to see what is purifying about slitting innocent people’s throats.”

The Wiccan brought her fingers together as if in prayer. Her tiny smile was astonishingly smug. “Innocence is in the eye…or, should I say, the heart of the beholder. From the sphere the killer or killers are operating on, these subjects were clearly anything but innocent. In fact, they were probably considered a poison, or represented a poison, and so it was necessary to remove them from the world.”

I glanced at Margo again to see how she was taking this. She had slipped on her inscrutable mask. “So where does Marshall Fox fit into all this?”

“He’s the touchstone. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say the godhead.”

“I’m sure he’d be flattered to hear that.”

“Mr. Fox held a position of great significance for millions of people. Don’t forget your Simon and Garfunkel: ‘And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made.’ The television is our society’s alternative altar. A person such as Mr. Fox takes on the symbolic role of the deity.”

I said, “And religion makes some people go cuckoo.”

She nodded. “There is a history of excess and frenzy, yes.”

Excess and frenzy. I liked that. You could slap that headline on the morning paper each day of the year, and you’d never be wrong. I asked, “So you don’t think that Fox murdered those two women last year?”

The Wiccan pushed her glasses back up on her nose. “I don’t. I believe each killing was performed by a unique participant.”

Margo’s mask dropped. “You mean a different person for each killing? That’s four separate murderers.”

“That is correct.”

“My God. That’s crazy.”

“From the perspective of our sphere, absolutely. But you recall Charles Manson and the so-called Manson family? This was a group of people completely at peace with their actions. Ritualized killings. Purgings. Cleansings. Symbolic. Iconic. However you wish to term it.”

I blurted, “What was so iconic about Robin Burrell? Or any of them?”

“I could hardly say with any certainty. All were intimates of Mr. Fox. We know that much. Perhaps the killer or killers perceived that the victims had betrayed Mr. Fox or were a source of danger to him. Or that they were in some way corrupting him.”

“That’s a joke.”

Margo asked, “Do you really think it’s some kind of a cult? Four different killers? The idea makes my skin crawl.”

“It’s merely a theory, dear.”

I said, “I can tell you the police wouldn’t be too happy with your theory.”

She gave her tiny smile again. “People do not kill in order to make the police happy.”

The morning after the Wicca talk, Margo and I had another tussle. It started while I was shaving, though the seeds had been planted ten minutes earlier, right as Margo was stepping into the shower, when I had told her that I was planning to go to Robin Burrell’s memorial service that morning. I’d fudged somewhat. I was actually planning to attend Robin’s weekly Quaker meeting, not precisely her memorial service. A phone call to one of the Quaker elders in charge of the meeting had informed me that Robin’s death would be the unofficial agenda that Sunday morning. Margo had taken the information in deafening silence, pulling the shower curtain closed with a little extra something.

I was running a razor down my cheek when Margo, in her robe and with a twisted towel piled high on her head, passed behind me on her way out of the bathroom.

“Got to look good for your big date?”

She moved into the apartment, tightening the sash on her robe. The bathroom was warm from her shower, but her exit left behind a chill nonetheless. I took a deep breath and squared off with my reflection. “Let it go.”

Margo barked from the next room, “I heard that.”

I should have counted to ten. Instead I barked back, “If you did, then you were eavesdropping. I wasn’t talking to you.”

The face in the mirror shook its head sadly. Not good. Margo gave a response that I didn’t hear. But I caught its drift. She went on to the kitchen. I quickly finished up the shaving, rinsed off my face and followed her. She was running water into the kettle, staring a hole deep into the sink.

“This isn’t like you,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

She cranked off the water. “Let me check. You are talking to me this time?”

I made certain of an even tone. “I’m talking to you.”

“Nice.” She set the kettle on the stove and kicked up the flame. It’s one of those stoves that makes a click-click-click when you’re activating the pilot light. Maybe it was just me, but I thought she let it click a few seconds longer than necessary. “This isn’t like you, either,” she said.

“What isn’t? Attending funerals and memorial services for the victim is straight out of the handbook. You know that. If you don’t believe me, ask your old man.”

“I’m aware of that.” She turned to face me. “But a victim is not necessarily a client. Do they say anything about that in the handbook? Or is your pretty little client writing you checks from beyond the grave?”

I didn’t say anything. Margo knows a cheap shot when she hears one. She pulled the towel from her head and coiled it tightly in her arms. She might have been counting to ten.

“Okay, let’s back up a second,” she said. “I know you feel bad about what happened to that woman. Of course you do. So do I. For Christ’s sake, so does anyone in America who is paying attention, which, as best I can tell, seems to be pretty much the whole damn country. But I’m sorry, Fritz, whether you spoke with her a few times or not, it’s none of your business. I’m sure you have this fantasy that you could have protected the beautiful maiden across the street, but that’s not how it played out. Some crazy psychopath got in there and slit her throat. But we have a police force in this city, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. They’re looking into it. That’s their job. Robin Burrell is their client. She’s their responsibility.”

She unwrapped her arms and set the towel down on the counter. One of the edges was too near the stove flame, but I didn’t say anything.

“What is it exactly that you don’t like about this?” I asked. “It’s not as if this is the first time I’ve taken up a case on my own. You know that.”

“I do know that. Daddy used to do it, too, and it drove Mom nuts.”

“I’m not your daddy. And you’re not-”

I stopped myself. One of our relationship’s more tender spots was Margo’s fear that in being with me, she was on track to replicate her mother’s life. On its face, the concern was absurd. But it was an argument we had agreed not to enter into. Many times.

I went on, “You know what I’m saying. There’s someone running around this city slicing people’s throats. And too damn close to home to suit my tastes. I know the police are investigating. They’re doing their thing. And Joe Gallo’s a good cop. He’ll probably nail the guy. But another set of eyes never hurt. For Christ’s sake, Margo, this is what I do. What do you want, for me to take up bridge?”

The kettle began to whimper. Margo shut off the flame and picked it up. “I don’t like being jealous,” she said flatly. “It’s one of the most pathetic emotions.”

“There’s nothing to be jealous of. What do you-”

The kettle went down with a rattle. Her eyes were hard black pebbles. “You were quiet about her! You didn’t tell me that you went over there more than once. You tried to hide that from me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Oh, bullshit, Fritz. It is true, and you know it. You never really said to me what it was you two talked about.”

“Not true. She showed me her letters and the e-mails she’d gotten. I told you that.”

“That takes two visits? You brought that stuff up here after the first time you saw her.”

“Perhaps you can remind me of the last time you came home from one of your interviews and recited everything back to me word for word.”

“This is different.”

“Why is it different?”

“Because she lived right across the street. Because she was a beautiful woman.”

“This city is lousy with beautiful women. Present company very much included.”

Margo fingered the ends of her wet hair. “Right. My name is Medusa, it’s nice to meet you.” She fetched her favorite teacup from the drying rack and set it on the counter. “Listen, Fritz, I’m not going to let you charm your way free of this. I’ve already said I’m jealous, and that’s embarrassing enough. We both know I’m not normally the jealous type. So I’m asking myself, what is it? Maybe it’s just that she was on TV all those weeks and she was all that people were talking about. The woman had an affair with Marshall Fox, for Christ’s sake. A very vivid affair, I might add. Thanks to that stupid trial, I practically know more about that woman’s sex life than I know about my own.”

“I’m here to remind you whenever-”

“Shut up. All I’m saying is that every horny hound in America must’ve had that woman in their dreams, and the next thing I know, you’re dropping by to lend her a shoulder to cry on and being just a bit too blasé about it.”

“What was I supposed to do, run up here and-”

“Let me finish.” She very nearly stomped her foot. It had been a long time since I’d seen her this upset. She took a sharp breath. “I watched you sitting at that window the other night. What can I tell you, Fritz, girls don’t like that. I can’t know what you’re feeling when you go to that place. You go very far away. No Margos allowed. Nobody allowed, as best I can tell. I hate it. And now it’s Sunday morning, and you’re going off to the dead girl’s funeral or whatever you want to call it. And I know you. You’re going to get into her head. That’s how you do what you do. I know you. You’re going to get into her head and you’re going to get into her life and you’re going to get into her ugly, stupid death. And I just wish this one time that you wouldn’t.”

She snatched up the kettle again and began pouring water into her cup.

“You forgot the teabag,” I said gently.

With lightning speed, she rattled the kettle to the stove, snatched up the teacup, and smashed it against the side of the sink. She was left holding the broken cup handle, attached to nothing. She threw that into the sink as well.

“You should just go. Really. Go. This is all now officially very stupid. Just go to your stupid funeral. Do whatever it is you need to do. Just do me a fucking favor, will you, and don’t come home dead.”