Shade of Pale Read online

  “Yes.”

  “Good, good. Now that we both understand each other, let’s have a drink of this fine New York springwater and ruminate for a moment. I think you’re going to find what I have to say interesting.”

  Jukes allowed himself to relax. Delusional or not, Charlie O’Malley was interesting.

  They drank in silence; then O’Connor put down his cup. “I’ll find Cathy for you, if you’ll help me find the Banshee.”

  Jukes exhaled, surprised that he’d been holding his breath. “Look, O’Malley, I’d love to get Cathy back, but I don’t have the slightest idea where the Banshee is. In fact, I don’t even think she exists, outside of your imagination.”

  “Right. But that has nothing to do with it, don’t you see? She doesn’t give a fuck if you believe in her or not. As I’ve explained, once you’re on her dance card she’ll hang around until she takes you, or she’ll pass over you to someone else, some other poor soul in the intricate web of destinies, someone who’s crossed your path.”

  Jukes shook his head. “And how will you find Cathy?”

  “Let that be my concern. I’ve done work finding missing persons before, and I’ve been known to get results. I can be more effective than the police. You get Cathy back; that’s the main thing. Are you willing to try?”

  Jukes didn’t know what to say. Part of him rebelled against carrying on any type of dialogue with this madman, to acknowledge even the possibility that the Banshee could be real. But Jukes desperately wanted Cathy back, and something about the man who called himself Charlie O’Malley suggested he just might get the job done.

  “Damn,” Jukes said. “I don’t know how to react to you, Mr. O’Malley. You’re in your own world and you’re convinced of this whole bizarre scenario. If I play along with you, it might lead you to some sort of irrational behavior. You might hurt somebody.”

  O’Connor snorted. “You’re right. I might hurt somebody. I might hurt Bobby Sudden.”

  Jukes’s ears rang when he heard Bobby’s name. Revenge presented itself to him on the tongue of a madman, and Jukes felt its narcotic tang. When Bobby punched him and took Cathy, something inside Jukes broke. The old Jukes would never had contemplated revenge, but now it seemed an attractive choice. At that moment he felt like it would have been like going against nature itself not to reach out and grab this opportunity.

  “You see? It’s fate, terrible fate,” said O’Connor. “The worst fuckin’ thing you can imagine, ain’t it? Now you’re forced to consider the possibility that I’m right, and that galls you.

  “But if you got your precious Cathy back, why, I don’t think you’d begrudge me my little request.”

  “But I can’t find the Banshee for you.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. You won’t have to find her at all. She’ll come to you, when she’s ready.”

  “But why do you want to find her?”

  O’Connor smirked. “I’ve got my own reasons, which don’t concern you. Suffice it to say that the Banshee is evil. The damned thing’s killed scores of good men, destroyed so many great families over the centuries … you have no idea. I myself have lost a brother.

  “Any attempt to shelter that monster, or side with her in any way, is absolutely treasonous to mankind. You must understand that.

  “Never underestimate the explosive nature of this creature. She kills again and again, and has kept on killing for centuries.

  “But, you’re probably wondering, how can I find Cathy for you?”

  Jukes nodded.

  O’Connor let his voice drop. “It’s my destiny. I’ll find Cathy, and the Banshee, and Bobby Sudden as well. I can no sooner fight destiny than I can change the world. All I have to do … is just be there when it happens. Events will occur. They will appear to be a series of unlikely coincidences. I don’t expect you to understand that, but it’s true.

  “I am a warrior. This is my battlefield.”

  Jukes’s face turned cold. “I don’t really care, as long as I get Cathy back.”

  O’Connor smiled, his Irish eyes twinkling with intensity. “Exactly. You get Cathy back; I get the Banshee. Fair enough?”

  Jukes found himself nodding, wanting to say no, but being unable. He felt as if his body were betraying him, acting on its own. The more he wanted to stop agreeing with O’Connor, the harder it became. “Fair enough,” Jukes said.

  “I’ll start by looking through Cathy’s belongings, listening to any tapes you might have of phone calls, correspondence, things like that. Somewhere here is the clue I need to proceed to the next level.”

  “You really think you can do what the police can’t?”

  O’Connor winked. “Yes, I do.”

  O’Connor/O’Malley left with a hodgepodge of possible leads on Bobby’s whereabouts. The message tape with the music on it seemed a good place to start. It took O’Connor an afternoon to run through all the band rehearsal spaces in Manhattan and make a second list of those places that also rented to artists and photographers.

  O’Connor agreed with Jukes that the music in the background was ska, and that narrowed it down even more. There were only so many ska bands rehearsing in New York.

  The old lady’s words came back to him like a song remembered.

  “They will appear to be a series of unlikely coincidences, but beware. There are no coincidences.”

  Working at her suggestion, O’Connor started in the vicinity of Mrs. Willis’s house. He spent the next day looking around, visiting the most likely spaces. Bribing and threatening people to get information, he narrowed the list down considerably.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The newspapers made a big deal out of the murder of Dolly Devane, especially the tabloids. Their headlines screamed things like: BOWERY STRANGLER STILL AT LARGE! almost daily. When the reporters tried to milk George for information, he gave them a shoulder so cold you could freeze ice cubes on it. He locked himself in his office and drank coffee.

  George arranged all the evidence on his desk and stared at it until he got a notion. He didn’t know it, but he was doing exactly what psychics did, only he called it “getting a gut feeling.” George dismissed anything that smacked of the supernatural as “crack-pot.”

  But no one could argue with his batting average: best in the department, too good to promote.

  He stared at the evidence, held it in his hands, played with it, smelled it, and lived with it until it began to tell him things.

  He was particularly interested in the portion of ticket stub he’d found in the hall. He studied it meticulously and got the distinct impression that it came from the killer. Another “gut feeling.”

  He held the ticket stub in his hand.

  Popcorn. Ticket stub.

  Most theaters changed ticket colors every day so that people couldn’t cheat and use the same one twice. This one was ripped in an odd way, though, he thought, in quarters. It had been torn, then torn again. George knew that tickets were torn in half when you entered a theater, but torn again?

  He thought about the kind of movies to which the killer might have been attracted—porno was the first thing to pass through his mind. George closed his eyes. Yeah, that made sense, but it was too obvious. Obvious things always bugged George; only on TV could you make a connection that easy. George used his bloodhound sense to play with it, kick it around.

  Hell, it could be any kind of movie.

  Maybe the strangler watched movies because his own life was such a disaster. Then he went out and killed prostitutes and took pictures of them. George put down the ticket stub and picked up his coffee.

  He placed his feet up on the desk and tried to visualize the killer. The desk clerk had mentioned a guy leaving later that he didn’t recognize—a tall guy with red hair. George closed his eyes.

  First he kills them; then he strangles them.

  The more George considered it, the more sense it made—the rope was a prop. The killer twisted it in deep so you’d be able to see in the phot
os that the victim was really dead, not just faked.

  He picked up his phone and called Panelli.

  “Yeah?” a voice answered. “Panelli here.”

  “Let’s go downtown. I want to check on something.”

  Panelli sighed. “Sure, George. I’ll bring the car around.”

  They drove down to the area near the Star Hotel. George said he wanted to cruise the neighborhood. He hadn’t told Panelli or anyone else about the ticket stub, another Jones idiosyncrasy.

  It wasn’t really evidence; it didn’t even come from the room; he just had a hunch. Lying out there in the hall, it could have come from anyone, and there was no physical reason to believe that the killer had dropped it. Still, the thought intrigued him.

  “What are you looking for?” Panelli asked.

  “I don’t know; I’ll know when I see it.”

  There were many porno theaters in the neighborhood, one after another, but sprinkled among them were a few legitimate places. One was showing a Laurel and Hardy festival, another an Italian art film, and the next a kung-fu movie.

  “I want to check all these places.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Let me out on the corner. I think I want to walk around a little.”

  Panelli was exasperated. “What the hell for?”

  “Panelli, you amaze me. How did you end up in Homicide?”

  “Just lucky, I guess.”

  George laughed. Panelli could be funny when he wasn’t trying. “OK, let me spell it out for you. The killer doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’s hangin’ out on the street. Chances are, in this neighborhood, he’s not gonna be drivin’ a car either.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, look around. Where would you park? No place is safe here; it’d be stripped in an hour. All the people you see on the street here use the subway or cabs. So, I figure he was probably on foot the night he killed Devane.”

  “So?”

  “So, he had to be walkin’ around; maybe somebody saw something. He picked up the girl somewhere, right? People notice shit. You’d be surprised.”

  Panelli nodded.

  George continued, “He probably found her on the street around here. We can start by asking the other girls who work this area if they’ve seen anyone strange.”

  “But they’ve already gone over this.”

  “Yeah, but it’s my investigation now, and I’m going back over everything.”

  O’Connor, following in a cab, passed Panelli’s car and turned the corner. He paid the tab and doubled back. George Jones was easy to spot. Careful to stay half a block away, O’Connor pretended to look at the girls in the movie posters.

  George said, “I’m gonna start flatfootin’. Catch up with me at the corner place, after you park the car.”

  Two blocks later he found a gaggle of working girls.

  “Hey, Officer, you want a date?” one of the girls shouted. They all laughed.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Where’d you get those shoes? Honey, I didn’t think they even made shoes like that anymore.”

  George smiled and flashed his badge. “I’m looking for the guy who killed Dolly Devane. I thought maybe somebody saw something.”

  “Dolly baby? I swear that was a damn shame. She was always real nice to me.”

  “Did you see the guy she went with the night she died?”

  “Nope, but maybe one of the other girls did.”

  After talking to all the rest of the street girls, George found one who said she thought she might have seen Dolly that night walking with a man with red hair. Her name was Sugah, and she spoke with a southern accent.

  “He was weird-lookin’. Plus I seen him before once or twice checkin’ out the action.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He had goofy-lookin’ hair, kinda long. It was a real dumb shade of red, carrottop. I can’t really remember anything else. Plus I’m not sure what night that was.”

  George walked around the neighborhood some more, checking each of the movie theaters. It turned out that they all used gray tickets at least once a week. It was impossible to identify the theater that had issued the one he had found.

  He met Panelli at the diner and ordered coffee.

  “Well, our boy’s been around the neighborhood. One of the girls saw him.”

  Panelli nodded. “That’s great. What do we do next?”

  “We check all the buildings within a ten-block radius.”

  “That could take days!”

  “Yep.”

  They paid for their coffee and walked past the porno theaters. The sky darkened with storm clouds, and the smell of rain blew on the urban wind.

  George liked the rain. The city needed it. It washed away some of the filth, although never quite enough. George looked up at the marquees as they went by. There was only one legitimate theater left in the block—the Temple Theater, a 1940s movie house that had seen grander times. On the marquee it said: CINDERELLA, except the last A was missing, so the sign read: CINDERELL.

  George thought that was funny.

  The hamburger was greasy and fries were cold. Bobby was alone in the diner except for a couple of teenagers talking loudly in a corner booth. Things were damn fine. He was nice and relaxed since his photo session with Dolly. Even Cathy was in line.

  The pictures were definitive, perfect. He’d captured the elusive face of death like a butterfly pinned and mounted.

  He was looking forward to a day at the movies. He liked to spend a whole afternoon at the theater, slipping out occasionally to the bar across the street for a few pops, then back to the movie.

  Bobby didn’t have too many days like this. It usually only happened after he’d had a good photo shoot. He felt alive, free.

  He knew that soon he’d have to split for a while, and he wanted one last blast of the old neighborhood.

  He finished up his lunch and walked out into the street just as it started to rain. He slipped his hands in his pockets; Bobby was always putting his hands in his pockets or pulling them out, a nervous habit he had. He felt the reassuring weight of his Smith & Wesson .38 Special, its two-inch barrel snug against his thigh.

  Bobby seldom went anywhere without the gun these days. It was a necessary fashion accessory in this part of town, one that any self-respecting tough guy should never be without. He liked the .38 ’cause he could pack it easy in his jacket and it didn’t show.

  He turned the corner and saw the movie theater up ahead. It was time to see the wicked stepmother again; she was so much like Bobby’s real mom. In fact, Bobby fancied himself to be very much like Cinderella. Life’s like that, he thought, a real unfair trip. At least, in the movies it had a happy ending. He looked up and saw the sign, CINDERELL; he was so used to seeing it without the final A that he had all but forgotten it was ever there to begin with.

  It was time to see his old buddies again, the same ones that he’d visited when he was a kid.

  He walked up to the old woman behind the glass. “One for Cinderell.”

  She took his money and gave him a ticket. He entered the theater and the doorman took the ticket and tore it in half, dropping one piece into a cigar box and handing the other back to Bobby.

  He walked down the center aisle and waited for his eyes to adjust. Kids skittered past him laughing and spilling popcorn. He cussed at them and made his way toward the front, close to the screen.

  The movie began and Bobby slid back into his seat and relaxed. Life was grand, at least for a few hours until he had to go back out into the real world again. Until then, he was a citizen of the magic kingdom.

  He watched in rapt attention while the evil stepsisters made Cinderella’s life a living hell. They baited her and teased her, gave her all the dirty jobs to do. Man, he thought, ain’t that the truth.

  Bobby knew the movie by heart and he was sailing along, deep into another viewing, when he saw something that made him sit up.

  He lo
oked around, wondering if anybody else saw it. Then he realized that everybody around him was a kid.

  He looked back up at the screen and became somewhat confused. Why hadn’t he noticed this character before?

  Bobby figured that the theater had gotten hold of a new version, anew print, with a new character in it. He stared up at the screen and wondered why the new character looked familiar to him.

  The new character wasn’t interacting with the others in the story; it seemed to be preoccupied with something outside the screen, something beyond the frame. Bobby couldn’t pull his eyes away.

  I’ve seen her before.

  He wanted to laugh, to throw his head back and howl like a dog. Something about that new character was making him feel crazy.

  He leaned forward in his seat, his shoes making sucking sounds as they shifted on the sticky, gum-splattered floor beneath him. The new character leaned out of the screen, out of the movie itself, and pointed at him.

  Bobby nearly jumped out of his seat.

  It was a woman, a real babe in Bobby’s estimation, with wild red hair and ivory white skin. Her eyes were neon intense, an unnatural shade of green, and Bobby could see a tear running down the side of her face.

  Where did she come from?

  Something about her hypnotized him and he couldn’t wrest his eyes away long enough to blink.

  Her animated beauty seemed to shimmer on the screen.

  The thing Bobby thought was cool was that the woman reached right out of the movie and pointed directly at him. 3-D at its finest, and he wasn’t even wearing the special glasses. Wow!

  How did they do that?

  Bobby jumped back in his seat as the pale, slender finger extended from the screen and stopped a few inches from his face:

  The red-haired woman stared at him and whispered something.

  Bobby kept looking around, but none of the kids seemed to notice. His eyes went back to the screen. The woman whispered again. She said, “Dolly. What did you do to Dolly?”

  George Jones cursed the fact that he didn’t have an umbrella. Panelli cursed the fact that George was making him tromp all over the city.