The Silver Chariot Killer. Richard A. Lupoff

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СКАЧАТЬ black-and-white photograph filled most of the lower half of the page. It showed two bodies lying on an icy sidewalk, a couple of corrugated metal garbage cans and some cardboard boxes behind them. The face of one corpse was thin, middle-aged, unshaven. The man wore what looked like a badly frayed, too-thin coat, and the splotches on it had to be blood.

      The second corpse was better dressed, but the angle of the photo showed little of its face. That shortcoming was offset by a smaller photo, framed in an oval and inset in what would have been the right-hand third of the larger photo. It was the face of a black man. He wore a white shirt and a dark necktie. You could see the edge of his suit inside his overcoat. His eyes were open and staring; they had the filmed-over look of the grisly post-mortem photos taken to celebrate nineteenth century hangings.

      There was a perfect black dot above and between the eyes. On a Hindu, it might have been a caste mark. But on Cletus Berry’s dark, African American face, Lindsey knew that the dot was a bullet hole. He knew that inside the cranium behind that small, neat hole, Cletus Berry’s brain had been scrambled like a pan of eggs.

      “So you’re from the insurance company,” the guard said. “You come to pay off on a policy?”

      Lindsey said, “No. I’m here to find out who killed Cletus Berry.”

      The guard opened his newspaper again. He grinned up at Lindsey. Come to think of it, he looked more like Edmund Gwenn than Wilfred Brimley. He’d need to grow a beard, of course. Then he could play Santa Claus in the next remake of Miracle on 34th Street.

      “So, you going to be using Mr. Berry’s office now?” Halter asked.

      Lindsey nodded. “For a while.”

      The guard said, “I hope you can do some good. Cops sure won’t. Too busy with politics and graft. Same as ever.”

      Lindsey said, “Sergeant Halter—” He reached for his wallet. He had a discretionary fund, and this looked like a good time to be discreet. He extracted a couple of medium-large bills from his wallet. “Mr. Halter—”

      “Just call me Lou.” The bills disappeared. David Copperfield would have been proud. “Anything I can do to help.”

      “Isn’t a little bit unusual for a tenant to have his office furnished the way Cletus Berry’s was?”

      Halter frowned. “How’s that?”

      “Well, it looks as if he might have lived there sometimes.”

      “Never in there. I wouldn’t know.”

      “But is it even legal?” Lindsey persisted.

      Halter frowned, concentrating. “Building’s zoned commercial, not residential. But I guess anybody can put a couch in his office, don’t you think? And maybe a little kitchenette, and nuke a cup of soup if he feels like it? And if he’s working late and he decides he wants to catch forty winks.… I don’t think it’s nobody’s business. Nobody’s. Do you?”

      “No.”

      The lobby behind Lindsey was getting busy. People were arriving, the elevator was humming. Clearly, there were more tenants than the elevator could handle, and the ones who had to wait shuffled their feet and watched the indicator as the car creaked up and back down.

      It was Christmas, though, so at least the small talk was friendly. “I was wondering, Sergeant—ah, Lou.”

      Halter looked at Lindsey over the tops of his glasses.

      “What goes on in this building? It isn’t exactly, well, the latest in posh surroundings, is it?”

      Halter grinned crookedly. “Sure ain’t. Probably get pulled down one of these days. But for now, it’s a great address and it don’t cost no arm and a leg to rent a little office. So you got a lot of little guys trying to look big in this building. Couple of music publishers and theatrical agents, half a dozen loan companies and lawyers. Shylocks and Sherlocks, I call ’em. Got a few outfits call themselves consultants, I wouldn’t know who consults ’em or for what.”

      Lindsey grunted a vague thank-you. It seemed unlikely that the killer was a fellow Torrington Towers renter, but you could never tell. Somebody who had it in for Berry might want to do his dirty work away from the building to keep the spotlight off himself.

      Lou Halter had gone back to his newspaper.

      Lindsey crossed the lobby. In seconds he was part of the crowd passing on the sidewalk. Yep, it was Christmas. Christmas, and NFL playoff time.

      Lindsey walked along 58th Street. The morning was still gray, but the sun was starting to fight its way through the clouds. Lindsey wasn’t used to sidewalks this crowded, to people moving with the speed and seeming urgency that New Yorkers did.

      Well, he’d adjust. He’d managed to speed up for Chicago, to slow down for New Orleans, he’d find the right pace for New York.

      He stopped in a counter-joint, slid onto a stool and reached for a menu. Before he could look at the menu a waitress poured a cup of coffee and shoved it at him and asked, “What’ll you have?”

      Lindsey took a breath.

      The waitress didn’t wait. “How ’bout the special? I’m busy. Scrambled eggs and a muffin.”

      Lindsey said, “No. No eggs.” An image of Cletus Berry’s scrambled brain presented itself and Lindsey blinked, hard. “Bring me a couple of pancakes.”

      “You got it.” And she was gone.

      Lindsey had never seen the likes of this place. Most of the men and women at the counter held newspapers or magazines in one hand and read while they shoveled food into their mouths with the other. A few of them talked to each other. More of them talked to themselves.

      He found himself wolfing his food, tapping his finger impatiently while the waitress brought his check, slapping his money on the counter and striding rapidly to the door.

      Why?

      He didn’t have an appointment. He had work to do, but his style was to take a steady, gradual approach to each case. He wasn’t in any hurry.

      No, he wasn’t in any hurry. He was just finding his pace.

      CHAPTER THREE

      He wanted to talk with Berry’s wife. He knew she would be in shock. It was only thirty-six hours since the discovery of her husband’s body, give or take a few hours, and she would not even have begun to come to terms with his death. But sometimes that was a help. She wouldn’t have edited her husband’s life and death, she wouldn’t have erected any barriers or sealed off any facts or memories that might have a bearing on the case.

      Lindsey found a working pay phone and looked up Cletus Berry’s home number in his pocket organizer. It was a good thing he had the number with him. Ducky Richelieu insisted on all SPUDS agents having unlisted home telephone numbers. Sometimes that was a convenience, sometimes a nuisance.

      He dialed and a woman answered. She was crying. That was no surprise. Lindsey identified himself, told the woman he was a friend as well as a colleague of Berry’s, asked if he could come and see her.

      She СКАЧАТЬ