But there were always a few. And he was patient. A disturbance on the periphery of the meat market attracted his attention. A woman was telling off a short, squat man with a monkey face and greasy black hair. The guy was trying to calm her down, but she was blowing him away. The rapist couldn't hear the exact words she was using, but her expression, and his expression, and her tone of voice attested adequately to the force of her invective. The squat man threw up his hands, said something nasty, and disappeared into the crowd. The woman turned back to her drink at the bar.
The rapist studied the woman with growing interest and excitement. She was wearing a sleeveless jersey dress in some silvery shade, which showed off the slendemess of her back and her lean arms. He could see the delicate bones of her cervical vertebrae through the cloth and above it, under her short dark hair.
Her hair was glossy and reflected the strobe lights from the dance floor. There was an empty space at the bar next to her, and he went over and stood in it. He ordered a drink. She pulled a cigarette out of her purse and he snapped a lighter under it. Their eyes met as she puffed, and he smiled his most harmless smile and said, "That was quite a performance. You really scorched that guy."
She snorted. "Yeah, the asshole! My girlfriend talked me into coming here. What a pit!"
"Yeah," he agreed, "I never come here either. I was supposed to meet somebody here, but she never showed. You're right, it's a slime joint. Amazing, in a way-all these supposedly civilized young adults. Get them in a place like this and they turn into cavemen. And women."
"And women, right. I should know. I haven't screamed at anyone like that in years." She looked at him with more interest. She saw an ordinary but not unpleasant face: dark eyes, a good tan, a long bumpy nose, dark hair growing low on the forehead and swept back in an old-fashioned ducktail. He wore a nice silk cable-knit over an open white oxford shirt, tan slacks, and tasseled loafers without socks.
"It looked OK to me," he said. "The slob was probably asking for it."
On the basis of sympathy thus established, the two of them exchanged names and talked congenially for twenty minutes, about how unlike the unhappy people in this bar they both were, about their jobs, their likes (her: Jamaica; him: underwater photography) and dislikes (her: the arrogant; him: the phony), their apartments, how they were both Italian, how rotten the city was to live in.
Much of what she told him was true. She was a naturally frank person and was attracted in a cautious way to this well-built, good-looking young man, who seemed mannerly, open, and pleasant. Nice eyes, she thought. Well-dressed. No gold chains, seems smart.
Everything he had told her about himself was a lie.
She waited for him to make his move, but here she was surprised, and, she had to admit, disappointed. He looked at his watch and gulped the remains of his gin and tonic. "Damn, I've got to go to work."
"This late?"
He stood up and smiled ruefully. "Yeah, like I said, I'm a film editor at ABC. If you want to see film on Good Morning America tomorrow, I've got to run."
"Well, it was nice talking to you," she said.
"Yeah…" He paused, shuffled his feet shyly. "I was wondering-maybe we could get together sometime. I'll buy you some spaghetti."
She laughed. "Anything but," she said, and gave him her number.
The girl lay curled up on the front seat of the car, a white '68 Pontiac, leaning against the door, her left hand drawn protectively up to her face. Except for the blood and the smell, she might have been sleeping next to Daddy on a long car trip.
"When did you find her?" Art Dugman asked the patrol officer.
"About seven-thirty this morning," the young cop replied. "A trucker spotted the car when he came in to make a delivery and called it in. When we got here, we saw it was the girl in your citywide, and we called you."
The killer had stashed his car on one of the short streets that lead to the Hudson River just south of the Thirtieth Street Terminal. There were truckers all around, standing impatiently beside their rigs, barred from the loading docks by the police vehicles and the portable barriers that had been set up around the crime scene. The crime-scene-unit people were poking through the car, taking photographs, and collecting anything that looked like evidence. Dugman doubted they would find much.
After speaking briefly to the medical examiner at the scene, he walked back to his own car. Maus was in the front seat, talking to someone on the police radio. He hung up the receiver and said, "The car's stolen. Belongs to a Hector Baldwin, lives up on St. Nick. He parked it at six-thirty last night and missed it when he wanted to go to work this morning. What's it look like?"
Dugman leaned against the car and chewed his lip. What did it look like? From one angle, another dead whore down by the docks. Not that unusual. Whores went into cars all the time, worked in cars. There was an extensive trade in quick hose jobs for businessmen on the way home. Sometimes they got unlucky, got picked up by a John whose particular fancy was not on any girl's menu.
"You think it was Slo Mo?" Maus asked.
Dugman looked up. "No. Slo Mo didn't have no cause to kill this girl, and if he did, he wouldn't have stole no car in Harlem to shoot her in."
"So what, then? A perv? Robbery?"
"Possible, but I don't think so. There's something too clean about it. Girl was shot in the head point-blank with a small-caliber weapon. She's fully dressed, or as dressed as she ever got, with no real obvious marks on her besides the shot to the head. It don't sing perv, do it?"
Maus shrugged. "The fuck should I know? I'm not a perv. The robbery angle any better?"
Dugman shook his head. "It sucks too. Her bag's missing, yeah, but I been trying to think of another case where a guy robbed a whore, killed her, and left her in the car. It doesn't figure. Why not dump her and drive away? It also means he needs another car. What's he gonna do, walk back from the river at night? Call a cab?"
Maus considered these questions for a moment. He knew Dugman had already figured it out, was waiting for Maus to catch up. Dugman always did this, would always diddle with him like that. Maus didn't mind playing the straight man. Maus thought Dugman was the best detective in the city, and understood that this was part of his own education. Playing the honky fool was the tuition.
Maus said slowly, "You're saying like maybe it was a… a hit-not just any whore, but this one, because… because we wanted to talk to her on the other thing?"
Dugman's pouchy face broke into a broad smile. "Yeah! That's thinking, Maus!" He poked his head into the back of the car, where Jeffers sat calmly reading the News. "You hear that, Mack? I told you we get a white boy on the squad, we start solvin' some crime!"
Jeffers looked up from his paper. "He can't dance, though."
"I can too!" said Maus indignantly.
"Shit, you can," responded Jeffers. "It took me six months to teach you to clap on the off beat."
Dugman raised his hands, palms out. "Brothers," he said, his voice assuming orotund tones, "this is not a time to be confusin' ourselves with racial disharmony, discord, and dissensions. Rather, it is a time to rededicate and remotivate our own selves to the cause."
Jeffers said, "Hear him tell it!"
Maus said, "Yes, Lord!"
Dugman climbed into the car and slammed the door. "And what is our cause, brothers?"
"Say it out!" said Jeffers.
"Let us hear it!" said Maus.
"It is to investigate and invigilate. It is to detect and suspect. It is to bring to the bar of justice lowlife motherfuckers of every description, but especially the lowlife motherfucker responsible for the heinous crime which we got before us now."
"That the truth!" said Jeffers.