‘Well, I banged on the door. No answer. I couldn’t hear anybody moving around inside. It didn’t sound like – ’
‘What does a hanging woman sound like, Deluthe?’
‘Right.’ He walked back to the red door and unlocked it.
‘Where did you get that key?’
‘The management company down the street.’ Deluthe held the door open for her, then slipped past her to lead the way up the stairs to the second floor. ‘They wouldn’t give me a key to her apartment – not without a warrant.’ He stopped at the door to 2B. ‘This is it. You’re sure it’s legal to go in there?’
‘Yes, if we believe she’s dying.’ Mallory did not appreciate having to repeat a lesson that he should have learned at the police academy. Deluthe had obviously not excelled in academics. So far, in every way, the son-in-law of the deputy commissioner was a mediocre candidate for the NYPD Detective Bureau.
He motioned for her to move away from the door. ‘I’ll take care of it.’
Yeah, right.
Mallory stood to one side, arms folded.
Apparently, Deluthe had learned nothing on the subject of locked doors either. Putting all his might behind his right foot, he kicked the door dead center, and, of course, the locks held. There was not even a dent on the heavy metal surface. Mallory decided that some lessons should be learned the hard way, and so she waited patiently as he made a second attempt to break his foot, then asked, ‘Are you done?’
It was gratifying to see him limp as he backed away from the door. She pulled out the velvet wallet, selected two pieces of metal and worked close to the door, blocking Deluthe’s view. First she opened the top lock, the one reputed to be pick-proof.
He edged around to one side of her, trying to see. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m using a bobby pin,’ said Mallory, who owned no hair pins. ‘I always carry one for emergencies.’ And now she was done.
Like most New Yorkers, Stella Small had not bothered with the other two locks. The knob turned easily, and the door opened on to a room of cheap furniture and cheaper clothes strewn about amid the general clutter of dirty dishes and an unmade bed. A couch cushion lay on the floor, half covering a copy of Backstage.
‘Looks like she’s been robbed,’ said Deluthe.
Mallory shook her head. She recognized Riker’s modus operandi in this mess. ‘Stella was only looking for something to wear.’ In Riker’s case, he would have been hunting for the wardrobe item with the fewest stains and cigarette burns.
‘No corpse hanging from the ceiling.’ Deluthe looked up at the light fixture and smiled. ‘I told you she wasn’t home.’ A pale blue garment lay in a heap on the floor – in plain sight, yet he did not find this at all interesting.
‘That woman you guys were chasing,’ said Mallory. ‘What was she wearing?’
‘A light blue suit,’ said Deluthe. And now he noticed the material on the floor. Sheepish, he picked up the blue blazer and unfolded it to display an X on the back.
‘Stella Small is the next victim,’ Mallory said, believing that this needed to be spelled out for him. She took the suit jacket from his hands and checked the label of a very respectable designer. The lines were good and so was the material. She walked among the piles of clothing and hangers on the floor. With an eye for what was out of date, she could tell that most or all of the wardrobe was secondhand. Yet there was an innate sense of style in a few good pieces of vintage clothing. The ruined blue suit was the best of the lot. Though Mallory’s blazers were all tailor made, she pronounced this one excellent. A cash receipt in the pocket bore out her suspicion of a discount house, a liquidator of unsold designer stock.
A pile of unopened letters lay on a table near the door. The loose stack was labeled with a yellow Post-it that bore the words hate mail – all bills and none of them paid. Mallory opened the table drawer and hunted among the contents till she found a checkbook. All the actress had listed in the register were check recipients – no amounts, no running balance, and none of the checkbook entries were for credit card companies. So the woman was flat broke and would not be doing any more shopping today.
Mallory turned to the window on the street. It cost money just to walk out the door in this town. The impoverished actress would probably be home soon. ‘Deluthe, stay here and wait for Stella. I don’t care if it takes all day – all night. You got that?’
Given his choice of interview rooms, Riker had selected the lockup, the smallest space in Special Crimes Unit. The walls were brownish yellow, and it had taken years of cigarette smoke and the projectile vomit of junkies to produce this special patina. Half the room was taken up by a flimsy coop of chain-link steel and wood. The door of this cage stood open, as an invitation and a threat to the tallest platinum blonde in New York City.
The transsexual sat on a metal folding chair and knocked knees on the underside of the table. ‘Where have you been, man? I’ve got a date tonight.’
Riker closed the door behind him – slowly – and glanced at his watch. ‘This shouldn’t take long, Sal. Tell you what. If you’re in a rush, we can do it tomorrow. Suppose I have a police car pick you up at the store on your lunch hour?’
‘Oh, yeah. Now that’s a favor and a half. No thanks.’ Tall Sally was staring at the clock on the wall and fidgeting with brassiere straps and flyaway strands of hair. ‘I already talked to that other cop. The blonde with the Armani sunglasses.’ And now, the ex-prostitute, ex-male, ex-thief forgot the ladylike facade. ‘Armani. Tell me that bitch ain’t on the take.’
‘I know what you told that detective.’ Riker dropped an old folder on the table. ‘And I know you lied.’ He sat down and put his feet up on the table in the posture of a man who had all the time in the world. ‘Let’s talk about Sparrow. Or, if you like, we can talk about old times.’ Riker turned the folder around so that Sal could read the name of the subject in capital letters, frankie delight. ‘It’s been fifteen years, but his murder is still an open case, and I can put you on the scene.’
Score.
The transsexual was backing up while sitting in a chair, all four metal legs scraping the floor. ‘I had nothing to do with it! Frankie was seriously crazy. Must’ve been a hundred whores lined up to kill that little bastard.’
‘You’re probably wondering how I know you were with him the night he died.’ Now that Tall Sally had decamped from the male gender and joined the ladies, Riker was the only man alive who knew that Frankie Delight was the corpse found in the ashes of a fire. ‘There’s no statute of limitations, Sal. Murder never goes away.’
‘If Sparrow says I’m the one that knifed him, she’s a liar.’
Frankie Delight, known to the medical examiner as John Doe, had indeed been killed with a knife. Sal was reaffirming a long-held belief that criminals as a class were stupid to the bone.
‘Now that’s another problem,’ said Riker. ‘Sparrow got stabbed the same night Frankie died.’ He opened the folder and scanned the four sheets of paperwork necessary to requisition an electric pencil-sharpener. ‘Here’s a statement from the ambulance driver. He was heading for the scene when he saw a seven-foot-tall blonde hightailing it down the street.’ That was actually true. However, fifteen years ago, Riker had been the only one to hear that statement, and he had never written it down. ‘So, Sal, can you – ’
‘If it wasn’t for me, that junkie whore would’ve bled to death.’ Sal’s hand waved in the air in a girlie affectation. ‘Or the rats would’ve got her. I saved her damn life.’