Mr. Apology Page 20

  Moody smiled, sipped his drink. “Your wife?” He indicated the photograph on the mantelpiece. “She’s got a good face. Frank. She’s got those really unsettling eyes that just kinda look through you.”

  “Tell me about them,” Nightingale said. He sighed, settled back in his chair. From the apartment below was the sound of a stereo being played; the bass notes reverberated along the floor. “There’s a punk rock band living under me, Doug. They call themselves the Welfare State. They dyed their hair yellow and orange and they go around in green coveralls and hiking boots. I talked with one of them one time, a pretty nice kid, a bit weird, and he told me they were protesting supply-side economics. I don’t even know what the fuck that means.”

  Moody nodded. “Without being presumptuous, Frank, I could take a minute out and explain it to you.”

  I knew you could, Nightingale thought. “I don’t want to know, Doug. I just don’t want to know.”

  He went back inside the kitchen and splashed more scotch into his glass. He stared at the stove, the crusts of old food spills on the enamel, then went back to the living room, sat down, tried to ignore the roar of music from downstairs. “Okay, where are we? What have we got?”

  Moody looked down into his drink. “A couple of stiffs,” was all he said.

  “Number one, we know who killed Camilla Darugna. I gave some thought to letting something slip into the newspapers, something along the usual lines … ‘Police are looking for William Arthur Chapman in connection with the slaying of his sister …’ You know the form.”

  “He reads it, of course. Then he splits faster than soft shit through a goose’s ass.”

  “Exactly,” Nightingale said. He shrugged. Sarah, don’t gaze at me that way. He stared at a pile of newspapers on the floor. This joint used to be warm and welcoming. They had a word for such a place: home. “Which is why I put the word out the way I did. It’s a crapshoot. Some guy out there turns something up. Who knows? I only know we’ll get him. I wish I knew when.” He rose and strolled to the window and looked down into the street. “Then the strange affair of Henry Falcon. His narcissistic notebook, the man who comes down the street regularly, bringing memories of dear Carlos.”

  Moody turned in his chair. “Consider how busy that neighborhood is, Frank. Consider how many guys would have passed under old Henry’s window every day. Any one of them might have gone up there.…” Moody paused, dipped a finger into his scotch, sucked his fingertip.

  Nightingale looked at his partner.

  Moody said, “Take William Arthur Chapman, Frank. Think about this a moment, that’s all.”

  Nightingale spread his hands out, turned them over. Billy Chapman, Moody was always coming back to Billy Chapman. Too much old hurt pride’s a dangerous thing, he thought. You can get swamped with past failures; you can let them devour your brain like so many shuttling worms.

  “Now, Chapman uses cocaine, which isn’t the cheapest form of recreation to come down the pike. So maybe he sees old Henry someplace, goes up to his apartment with him, thinks to himself, ‘rich old fag, gotta be big bucks laying around’—the rest is dismal history.” Moody looked intense, leaning forward in his chair, eyes burning.

  Give it up, Doug, Nightingale thought. Don’t keep pressing at it. Squeezing it this way. Give it up.

  “Simple robbery, Frank. Maybe Billy made off with some item of jewelry, something like that.”

  Nightingale returned to his chair, sat down, crossed his weary legs. “On the other hand, maybe we’ve got a sicko, a guy who kills on a whim.” He gazed at his partner. Obsessions made him feel uncomfortable; he’d seen too many cops burned out on obsessions, grudges, irrational determinations to make links and connections. How the fuck did Billy Chapman fit in all this anyhow? He rose from his chair. Christ, why was he so restless? He wandered out of the room, went inside the bedroom. He stared at the large unmade bed. He moved towards the bedside telephone. He picked up the receiver. Lovesick ass, he thought. You’re going to call Sarah again—but then he realized Moody must have been using the extension in the living room because before he could dial, a faintly nasal voice came on the line and said, “Hello, this is Mr. Apology. Apology is not associated with the police or with any other organization. It’s simply a way to tell people what you have done wrong and how you feel about it”—then Moody must have hung up because the voice stopped and there was the click of the receiver going back in place. Christ, what was Moody doing?

  He stuck the receiver down and walked back into the living room. Moody was standing at the window now, hands in the pockets of his coat.

  “Look, Doug, I wasn’t eavesdropping, but I overheard you call that Apology number,” he said.

  Moody turned, smiling. “Sheer curiosity. I’ve been wondering about that guy ever since I found the handbill. Wondering what he would sound like.”

  “You got something to confess?” Nightingale asked.

  “I cheated on my income tax return in 1976.”

  “Did you tell the guy that?”

  “Sure … I also told him I had various sexual perversions and a penchant for kicking sick kids.”

  Nightingale smiled. Sometimes there was a slight edge to Moody’s sense of humor, as if there were an underlying tone of seriousness. Sometimes the guy was just plain hard to figure. And all this Billy Chapman stuff—it didn’t sit well with Nightingale.

  The telephone was ringing. Moody picked it up. There were a series of mmmms and yeahs, then Moody hung up.

  He said, “It beats me why they can’t find something useful like a driver’s license or an ID card with a good photograph on it. Why do they always find such small things, Frank?”

  “Run that past me again. I don’t get your drift.”

  “That was the lab, and I was lamenting the fact, in my inimitable sarcastic way, that they never come up with anything immediately useful.”

  “So what did they find?”

  “Hairs. Strands of hair that didn’t match Henry Falcon’s.”

  “Prints?”

  Moody shook his head. “Something else.”

  Don’t keep me in suspense, for Christ’s sake. “I’m waiting, Doug.”

  “Sperm. Traces of sperm inside old Henry’s mouth.”

  Nightingale had a sudden flash—men in white coats picking around inside the mouth of a corpse. Maybe they went to a bar after work for drinks and they sat around saying Hell, it’s a living.

  “Traces of sperm,” Moody said again, looking suddenly bright and determined.

  Nightingale watched his young partner a moment. There was more; he could sense it coming. He felt tense, suddenly irked by Moody’s way of drawing things out like this.

  “Traces of sperm which, according to the guys in the lab”—and here Moody sighed, paused, stared a moment into his hands—“must have been deposited at the point of Henry’s death or …”

  “Or?”

  “Or immediately after.”

  6.

  Marybeth Passolini surveyed the shelves of gleaming telephones. There were those that resembled Mickey Mouse and some that looked like they belonged in a French whore’s bedroom. Still others were computerized and could remember a certain amount of regularly used numbers. Some came in wooden boxes that looked like tiny coffins. Hundreds of telephones in a variety of colors, from dark browns to bright yellows. She walked towards the window of the store and looked out into the darkening street. She turned her head when she heard Ruth Gomez come up alongside her. Ruth Gomez was always looking at herself in a tiny compact mirror she kept in the pocket of her skirt; she was young and pretty, dark-haired, full red lips, slim. A small shiver went through Marybeth Passolini as she mentally compared herself with her colleague. You won’t see thirty again, kid, she thought. And you can almost reach out and touch that dark barrier they call forty. And menopause, which had once had all the mystical significance of a holy relic and was therefore incomprehensible, seemed now like a hard brass fact to her.

  “That
guy still out there?” Ruth asked.

  Marybeth shook her head. “He’s gone.”

  Ruth Gomez worked a wad of chewing gum around in her mouth. “You ought to have told the supervisor, Marybeth. I told you that already.”

  Marybeth looked across the width of the store, past all the telephones, at the frosted glass window of the Princess’s office. Agnes Larue was the supervisor’s name but behind her back she was always called the Princess or Her Highness. You didn’t go to Agnes with just any old thing; she was always too busy, always talking to some executive on her private red telephone. Marybeth looked through the window again. It was almost dark and the traffic that flowed along threw out a sequence of quick bright lights. She raised her hand to the surface of the window, noticing that her amber nail polish had begun to lose its luster. The guy had been standing across the street by the stoplight before lunchtime, then he’d gone for a couple of hours. Sometime in the middle of the afternoon he’d come back. He’d just stood there for ages, staring at the window of the store. Staring and staring, as if he were in a trance or something. Now and again he’d caught Marybeth’s eye, unnerving her, putting her on edge.

  Ruth Gomez said, “Nobody just stands around like that, Marybeth. The guy might be dangerous or something. Her Highness would have called the cops.”

  “The guy was probably just a doper,” Marybeth said.

  “Hey, maybe he took a fancy to you, Marybeth. Maybe he’s hanging around out there waiting to ask you for a date. Maybe he couldn’t get his courage up, huh?” Ruth Gomez was smiling. Marybeth didn’t particularly like the girl’s beautiful smile.

  “Oh, yeah. For sure.” A shiver, something cold crossed Marybeth’s heart. Waiting for me, she thought. She didn’t remotely enjoy that notion. She looked at her watch. Five minutes to closing. Usually she looked forward to going home to her small apartment on 76th Street, but tonight—well, tonight she would have liked to find some opportunity to work late. But they’d cut back on overtime recently, so there wasn’t any chance of lingering in the store beyond five-thirty. God damn it! She didn’t have to feel this way. She didn’t have to feel nervous like this. The guy was gone. He was probably only one of those spaced-out drifters you see everywhere, probably lost inside throes of some weird drug trip, digging his own little world.

  Ruth Gomez was looking into her little mirror again. Ruth’s nail polish was glossy, catching the overhead fluorescence in bright red flashes. “Buddy’s taking me to see a movie tonight,” she said.

  Buddy was one of Ruth’s stable of young men. He’d come to the store a couple of times. Big, built like a linebacker, a face that was square and reliable, like his jaw had been hacked out of concrete. Marybeth found herself wishing she had a Buddy of her own. But all the Buddies in her life had somehow just vanished in recent years and the last date she’d had was with a cable TV salesman who’d only wanted to get into her pants and who had a wife and five kids up in Saratoga Springs anyway. The slob, she thought. She saw the Princess begin to turn the lights out.

  “Don’t want to go home tonight, Marybee?” Her Highness asked, her high heels clicking across the tiles. She flashed a glassy smile.

  Marybeth went to the closet in the back where she kept her coat and purse. She put the coat on, moved back through the store, waved good night to Ruth Gomez, stepped out on to the sidewalk. Fear. Good Christ, she told herself. You’re behaving like some timid spinster, like some old crone of a librarian who imagines shadows lurking behind the books. She walked quickly along. The after-work crowds offered some kind of security in any case. She paused for a stoplight, then crossed the street. The subway, she thought. The subway would be safe and crowded. She shook her head at her own ridiculous fears, then wondered if perhaps she didn’t get the slightest thrill at the idea of some guy watching her, following her, maybe even admiring her from a distance. She looked at herself in a store window. The red coat wasn’t bad—it nipped her figure nicely at the waist even if Ruth Gomez had once told her there was just something a little old-fashioned about the coat, no offense. Her hair looked pretty good too, braided around the sides of her head and held with two yellow barrettes. She moved on towards the subway entrance. Nobody was near her. Everything was okay. The guy had gone. Vanished into the murky side streets someplace.

  A good thing, she thought.

  She started down the subway steps. She had to stand all the way to her station, pressed on all sides by guys. Rude guys who hardly gave her any room to breathe. She was glad when she was able to get out and go back up into the street.

  She was less pleased when she turned on 76th Street, because that’s when the feeling of uneasiness returned to her. The feeling she was being followed. Grab control of yourself, Marybeth Passolini. Take yourself in hand, for Christ’s sake. She turned around, glanced back along the quiet stretch of street, saw nothing but parked cars and the reflection of streetlamps. It’s this city, she thought. It works like crazy on your nerves sometimes. It’s like some big animal that’s always panting just behind your back. You should be used to it after fifteen years, kid.

  She walked on, a little more quickly this time. She paused at a corner, turned—it was funny how she imagined that the sound of footsteps behind her stopped exactly when she did. But she couldn’t see anybody. She continued. Farrago’s Deli was open on the corner, a nice little warm light splashing across the sidewalk. She always liked the smell of things when she passed the deli but tonight, especially, she enjoyed seeing the light in the window. Sausages and hams hung behind the glass. Piles of rolls lay beyond them in great wooden baskets. Maybe she’d go inside the place, buy something. She paused and looked in the window and then she thought: You’ve only got one more block to go before you’re home and dry.

  Home and dry, triple-locked in your three-room apartment with the maroon drapes and the blue rugs and the Hitachi TV and cold roast beef in the refrigerator.

  One more block.

  She walked more quickly still.

  Behind.

  Someone was walking behind her.

  You don’t look back, Marybeth. Just keep right on trucking.

  Half a block. She opened her purse and fumbled inside for her keys. Half a block and home. A piece of cake, kid.

  She dropped the keys. Goddamn! She heard them clatter to the ground and go skidding away from her on the damp concrete. A time like this …

  She bent down, searched around, couldn’t find them.

  She half turned, looked back along the street.

  Nobody. Nobody at all.

  Her fingers encountered the keys. She broke one of her nails and moaned to herself. She stood upright, rattled the keys as if the sound might dissolve her fears, then hurried along. She could still hear the noise from behind, though, the clickclick of heels that seemed to move in time to her own. Don’t stop, Marybeth. Four, five more houses.

  She realized she was sweating. That thin lines of perspiration were falling from her hairline and making tiny cracks in her makeup. She hoped she could get inside the house without anybody seeing her, because she knew she looked awful. Mrs. Goodbody, the landlady, usually came out into the hallway when she heard the sound of the front door being unlocked. Not tonight, she thought. I don’t want to run into her tonight.

  The steps.

  She could see the steps.

  She could see the pale light that shone from the doorway.

  A few more yards. Only a few more yards.

  Then it didn’t make sense, because somebody stepped onto the sidewalk in front of her, a guy suddenly stood there, and for a moment she was confused, because she’d assumed he was behind her, which meant he must have come along the street, masked by the parked cars. She felt herself freeze. She couldn’t see his face. She suddenly remembered some horrifying story about a Puerto Rican girl being stabbed to death on a sidewalk and although the poor kid had cried out and neighbors had heard her screams nobody had come to do a damn thing about it.

  She heard herself
say something like, “Excuse me, get out of my way.”

  The guy had his hands on her shoulders. Strong hands. She couldn’t move.

  Please …

  When he spoke his voice was gentle, almost soft: “I was watching you.”

  She nodded her head, realized she was crying, tears blinding her sight.

  “I watched you for a long time. At the telephone store where you work. I’ve been watching you for the last two days. You live alone, don’t you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “I know you live alone. I took the trouble to find out. You don’t need to lie to me.”

  She couldn’t see anything now. She could feel her makeup break and fall down her cheeks, the eye shadow running and running.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, you understand.”

  “What do you want?”

  “A drink. A nice little drink. Just you and me. In your apartment. Understand?”

  She nodded. She felt his fingers massage her shoulders.

  “I need to ask you a question, that’s all. A simple question. Then I’ll leave. I won’t hurt you. I promise you.”

  She felt him take the keys from her trembling hands, then he was ushering her towards the steps, towards the light, then beyond the locked door to the stairs that led up through various strata of darkness to the apartment where she lived. She wanted to scream as she climbed. But she couldn’t, because he had his hand across her mouth.

  7.

  Harrison opened the pages of the magazine, noticing that smudges of ink came off on his fingertips. He looked over the edges of the pages at Jamey Hausermann, who was sitting at the kitchen table with Maddy.