It Happens in the Dark, page 21
part #11 of Mallory Series
This was clearly not what Mallory had expected. Her eyes narrowed as she leaned toward the gopher. “You told me he was riding her all the time.”
“He was. And Alma worked her tail off—just to get one payoff smile from him. That always put her over the moon. After Dickie left, her acting went down the tubes.”
“Something happened,” said Mallory, prompting him.
“Blame the drugs,” said Bugsy. “They make people crazy.”
The detective’s mouth was a grim line, a sign that her patience was frayed. She had been seeking an event, not a diagnosis.
Bugsy turned to Charles’s friendlier face. “Alma’s a little squirrelly. She thinks the ghostwriter’s after her. The poor kid.” The gopher’s sympathy was there to read in the simple lift of one thin shoulder. “She works so hard. But it’s hard to be good when she’s scared all the time . . . stoned all the time.” The little man looked down at his watch. “I gotta go. I can’t be late. This job’s all I got.” His anxiety was palpable, and yet he sat there waiting on the detective to release him. She nodded and, that quick, he was out the door and gone.
Mallory turned to Charles. “Don’t tell me he has a split personality. I don’t want to hear that.”
“Oh, no, nothing of the kind. Multiple personalities begin with early childhood trauma. Bugsy’s personality was fully formed long before his wife died. Based on what his mother told me, this current behavior was triggered by grief and—”
“Behavior? He’s delusional.”
Well, of course. So simple. Why had he ever bothered with all those years of schooling and training? “According to Mrs. Rains, her son was clinically depressed after the death of his wife. Now that’s a documented mental illness. I promise you Alan Rains did not wake up one morning as Bugsy the gopher. But it takes more than twenty minutes to do a proper evaluation. I’d need a few sessions alone with him.”
He was losing Mallory. She preferred speedy bullet replies over considered, thoughtful ones. Patience exhausted, she pushed back her chair and rose from the table. Raising one hand in goodbye, she walked toward the door.
“Oh, one more thing,” said Charles. “About that old sanity hearing years back. The court document might be useful if you can get me a copy.”
Well, that stopped her. Mallory turned around to face him. Was that surprise or suspicion in her eyes? Either way, this could not be a good thing.
“You’ve already seen it,” she said. Not asking. Insisting.
Charles shook his head.
The detective sat down at the table. “You’ve seen everything, the whole wall.”
“But no court transcript.” And it was not as if eidetic memory would allow him to forget a document like that one—or even a fly speck on her cork wall of papers, photographs and diagrams. “If it had been there, I would’ve—”
“No!” Mallory slapped the flat of her hand on the Formica. The table rocked on its uneven legs. And then she spat out, “Deberman!” At the mention of that name, Charles felt the heat of a blush coloring his face. She leaned toward him. “I believe you met him.” And, with more sarcasm, she said, “You remember that day.”
He was unlikely to forget grabbing a detective by the lapels of his coat and lifting the man off the floor—in defense of her honor. When word of that foolish altercation had gotten back to Mallory, had she laughed? The others did. Or had he merely annoyed her?
“Think! You were in the incident room. Where was Deberman standing when you went after him?”
“He was in front of your case wall. But I didn’t read any material that day. I was just waiting for—”
“After Deberman left, was there a blank space on that wall?”
Recently, her wall had become a bit jumbled with paperwork tacked up in the haphazard way of normal people who did not possess her mania for neatness. Though, he must say she had done her best to right many a wrong-hanging sheet. But on that day, the wall had been different; he had only taken notice of it because the paper display had been so obviously shaped by Mallory’s pathology—machinelike precision.
He looked down at a napkin and, upon that clean white field, re-created the earlier cork wall. Going back a bit in time, his job was made easier by Mallory’s meticulous pinning style, her creation of geometrical perfection. He saw it now, a square comprised of paper, each piece equidistant from the others to within the smallest increment of an inch.
And one hole in her pattern.
Yes, it was now very clear. The empty space was inches longer than the standard format for typing paper. He looked up to meet her eyes. “There was a blank spot in the upper left-hand quarter. . . . And it was the length of a legal document.”
“That was the transcript for the sanity hearing. . . . Now Deberman has it. And that bastard has my margin notes. He knows Alan Rains is Bugsy . . . and Bugsy is crazy.”
Guilt set in. Riker surely would have noticed the theft of the transcript that day—if not for the diversion of the thief dangling above the floor, shouting as he hung there, his feet kicking out in midair. Following that distracting scene, the hole must have been filled in by another piece of paper, someone else’s contribution to the wall.
“Delusional or not, I need Bugsy to be legally sane,” said Mallory, as if that would make it so. And now she tacked on her deadline. “Today!”
• • •
Backstage, the actress reached out to grab Bugsy by the arm while he was on the run. He stumbled and stopped.
Oh, shit! Alma was high—eyes like shooting marbles. Cocaine again? And maybe some speed? Yeah. The girl was twitchy and quick, blocking his only exit, her hands slicing air fast as blades on a fan, locking him in between the stage manager’s desk and a wardrobe rack. Had the twins been at her again? The gopher looked at his watch, though the battery had died years ago. He must hurry.
Hurry where? Just now, he could not say.
Alma pressed both hands to her ears. “I hear things—nails scratching on the blackboard. And I hear footsteps behind me, but there’s no one there. Nobody believes me, not even the cops. The ghostwriter wants to hurt me, maybe kill me!”
Oh, Alma, come down from the ceiling. It’s not safe up there.
Poor kid, she’d get the boot from Cyril Buckner if he saw her this way.
“Hey, it’s not like you’re the only one to get spooked in this place.” Bugsy perched on the edge of the desk and nodded to the chair behind it. “Sit down. I’ll tell ya the story.”
Alma did take a seat, but she could not sit still. Her legs moved up and down like pistons, like she could run somewhere in a chair.
Bugsy told her the tale of another actress driven insane by a haunt. While he talked to her softly, she popped two pills, tiny white ones. Valium? Yeah. Good. And when his story was done, he said, “But here’s the kicker. That old bastard was alive when he drove that poor woman nuts. He wasn’t no ghost—not then. Ya get it? Nobody’s gonna get hurt. Theater ghosts don’t do shit like that. I’ll show ya.”
He hopped off the desk and unlocked a drawer to pull out the stage manager’s laptop. “There’s maybe forty theaters in this town, and they all got ghost stories.” He powered up the machine and tapped in the words Haunted Theaters to call up a website. “It’s all there. All the ghosts that never hurt nobody. You’re gonna be fine . . . just fine.”
She looked down at the lighted screen. And Bugsy ran away. He had nowhere else to be, but he could not be late.
• • •
More pills had gone down her throat to balance out the Valium, too much of it. She had crashed too fast, and nausea came on in a wave as she continued to scroll down the glowing pages of hauntings, though the words hardly registered anymore.
But her faith was strong.
Alma believed in the power of lucky shoes, broken mirrors, the jinx of the Scottish king—and the ghostwriter. Now the actress knew she was not going to find him on the Internet.
He was behind her.
Though there was not much space between the wall and her chair, she sensed a presence within touching distance. She could feel eyes on her. She was deaf to Cyril Buckner calling her name from the stage.
“Alma?” Gil Preston touched her shoulder, stepping back a pace when she raised her arms to protect herself. “Alma, they need you onstage.” She stared at the beanpole boy, uncomprehending, and he had to say it again. “Cyril needs you now.”
The actress upset the chair in her rush to stand, and it crashed to the floor as she ran through the scenery door to find her mark on the floorboards, and she stood there to face the actor on the brass bed.
Axel Clayborne spoke his line, her cue, and—she—said—nothing.
The new words were lost, and scary seconds were ticking by. Her mouth was dry. Her mind was blank. She turned to see Cyril Buckner’s angry face. Panic time. She fled the stage to collide with the stagehands in the wings. They followed her up the stairs to her dressing room. And when they were all locked inside, she looked down at her hands. Tremors! Christ! “I need something to—”
“We know what you need,” said Joe Garnet.
“I’m screwing up so bad. I’ll get canned if Cyril thinks I’m high, but my nerves—” And now her whole body quaked.
“It’s okay, we got a pill for that.” Ted Randal dropped a yellow tablet into her open hand.
“What’s this?”
“It’s what you need,” said the stagehand. “It’ll kill the shakes—real fast.” Ted produced another pill, a red one. “Give it a minute. Then take this chaser.”
With absolute trust in a doctor-patient relationship with her drug dealers, Alma put the teenager’s pill into her mouth. The panic dissipated. And so quickly. She raised one spread hand. Rock steady. But her mind was still blank.
Ted gave her the red pill. “This’ll get you up to speed.”
And it seemed like the pill was no sooner down her throat than—speed indeed—she was zooming. Her opening line popped back into her brain, and then the next line and the next. Absolute focus. Moving quickly through the door, she descended the stairs, three at a time—she could fly—stumbling only once in her hurry. She ran toward the stage—then stopped.
The actress shied back into the wings.
The others had not waited for her. The dresser, Nan Cooper, was playing the scene with Axel Clayborne, speaking Alma’s words as an overhead light bounced off a balding patch on the woman’s scalp.
Even that wardrobe hag was line perfect.
Alma came down from her high. Shrinking now, sinking to her knees, she fell to earth, all the air sucked out of her.
The players went on with the scene. No one looked her way. She was invisible to them—as good as gone. Alma pressed both hands to her mouth so no one would hear her crying.
• • •
Bugsy scrambled up the aisle, silently saying his new lines.
Pastrami on whole wheat, orange soda.
Really hoofing it now, he sped through the lobby.
Ham and Swiss cheese on rye, coffee light.
Out the street door, onto the sidewalk, into the sunlight. What? Two cops in uniform—watching him.
Burger, fries and a Coke.
Turning left now, heading for the deli—one cop on either side of him.
Four-bean salad and coffee black.
“Alan Rains,” said the cop on his right, and he said it like a command to stop.
Cheese Danish and Perrier.
Their hands were on him. They dragged him away.
He was going to be late.
ROLLO: Mothers are fierce. They fight just as hard when their arms are broken. They fight to the death.
—The Brass Bed, Act III
This was all wrong—like reading another man’s diary.
Carpetbagger.
Captain Halston had entered the incident room uninvited and unannounced. Playing prince of the city today, the new commander of Midtown North—smarmy twit—had explained his plan to cut the legs out from under Special Crimes. Prick. And then, in a show of no hard feelings—Oh, yeah—the captain had extended his soft manicured hand, maybe expecting the lieutenant to kiss it. This interloper was leaning way too heavy on his higher rank.
In response, Jack Coffey had taken a seat in a metal folding chair—no handshake—and finished eating his sandwich. Screw Halston.
Now, done with his lunch, the lieutenant crumpled his empty deli bag into a wad the size of a walnut—while the captain from the Theater District strutted up and down the length of the cork wall. Another man from that precinct, paunchy Harry Deberman, trotted at his master’s heels.
Riker walked in the door and turned to his boss. “What’re they—”
“The deputy inspector from Midtown North retired. Halston’s filling his slot for a while. The captain tells me we now have a joint task force.” There was no need to add that placing a captain in charge of a busy precinct could only mean that man’s career was on the rise; it was an elaborate job interview for the next rung.
Riker nodded his understanding. “So Halston’s out to grab headlines—from us.”
Mallory entered the room in time to see the Midtown poachers ripping sheets from the wall. Jack Coffey disliked repeating himself, and so he said to her, “The chief of Ds saw your ad on TV. He figured you could use a little help.” This was a lie, but he had no doubt that, by now, the chief of detectives had seen her impersonation of the actress on the local-news channel.
Mallory shook her head to say, That’s not possible.
Coffey smiled. This was her blind spot in life: She truly believed that dark glasses rendered her unrecognizable—not so pretty—all but invisible. That queer flaw of hers fueled a running squad-room joke that, like a vampire, she could not see herself in mirrors.
Harry Deberman hitched up his pants and waddled toward her, gloating as he held out a photograph of Bugsy. “You screwed up on the guy’s flophouse address. He hasn’t been there for months.”
“Very sloppy work.” Captain Halston tore another sheet from the cork, ripping it and scattering pins on the floor. “I had Alan Rains picked up outside the theater.” The man stepped back to survey the whole wall. “Well, I think we’ve got what we need for his interview.” When the captain turned around, he was quick to drop the smug attitude and startled to see Riker—one very pissed-off detective—standing on the far side the room.
Back in the days of Riker’s legendary drinking binges, before falling down through the ranks, he had been Halston’s captain. Drunk or sober, few cops in the NYPD commanded more respect, and so, in many ways, Riker still outranked this man. And now the detective issued an order to the captain. “Bugsy is Mallory’s informant. She’ll do the interview.”
Halston’s eyes darted toward the door. He had a history of retreating from every showdown, but that was not an option today. “My shop,” he said. “One hour.”
Riker nodded and the deal was done.
The captain summoned enough bravado to swagger out the door, followed closely by his dog, Deberman.
“An hour.” Jack Coffey caught Mallory by the arm. “That gives you time to go home and change. Don’t let me see you wearing that shearling jacket to Midtown. There’ll be reporters crawling all over that station house. We don’t want them confusing you with Alma Sutter again, do we?”
She looked down at his grip on her cashmere blazer, probably checking his fingernails to see if his hands were clean where they touched her. And where did he get off touching her? But this was a conversation of the eyes. Aloud, she said, “You know why they grabbed Bugsy.”
The lieutenant let go of her arm and shrugged. “Halston wants to put on a show for the media, and the gopher doesn’t have a pricey lawyer. He was the easy choice.”
Riker shook his head. “That’s not it. When they charge Bugsy with murder—”
“Ain’t gonna happen,” said Coffey. “We got a deal. Midtown’s only charge is a misdemeanor. And that’s just to make the arrest look solid. Halston’s real happy to let Special Crimes do the real work. But his squad delivers the first break in the case—Bugsy. Then the captain gets his headline and goes away.”
“Naw,” said Riker. “You can’t trust that prick. Halston’s planning to kill our case today. He’s gonna hang it all on Bugsy.”
“No way,” said Coffey. “He can’t. He’s got nothing to back it up. The last thing Halston wants is a murder charge.”
“You’re right, but he doesn’t need to go that far.” Mallory stared at her ravaged wall. “It all fits. The day you caught Deberman sneaking around back here? He stole the transcript for Bugsy’s sanity hearing. Now Halston knows Bugsy was institutionalized. So he’s got a patsy too crazy to stand trial. At the press conference, he only has to say the magic words—a person of interest. The reporters fill in the rest. . . . Case closed.”
“Yeah,” said Riker. “We’re dead the minute Halston trots that little guy out in front of the cameras.”
Mallory stood before a blank space on the cork wall. “They ripped off the interview notes for Beck’s lawyer. He can give Halston a motive. His client tried to get Bugsy fired. Not a great motive—but Bugsy’s crazy, isn’t he? And this won’t ever go to trial.”
The lieutenant raised both hands. “Enough.” He knew they were right. It was a case with no forensics—thank you, Clara Loman—and all they would ever get was circumstantial evidence. When the real killer stood trial, his defense counsel would only need to point a finger at the certified lunatic in custody—reasonable doubt for any jury. “Nothing I can do to stop it. But with Mallory doing the interview, maybe we got a shot at damage control.”
“Okay,” said Riker. “So what’s Halston’s bogus misdemeanor?”
“Interference with a corpse. If the little guy wasn’t totally nuts, that would be a six-hundred-dollar fine.” But custom dictated that lunatics undergo evaluation on a psychiatric ward. And there Bugsy would stay.
