I stared at the remains only because I had to. It’s why I was there.
You want me to see them all, don’t you? You want me to see what you’re capable of, the power you have. You want me to see that yes, you’re holding all the cards…
I turned to Elizabeth. “You mentioned the Yankees?”
“Driver’s license from the aluminum wallet,” she said. “It’s Colton Lange.”
Lange was the best Yankees closer since Mariano Rivera. Homegrown, too. Came up through the organization. He had somewhat of a bad-boy reputation after a few scrapes with the law, barroom fights and such. As long as the radar gun kept lighting up in the high nineties, though, no one in the city seemed to care.
I’m a Mets fan, so it’s not like I knew all his stats. Or even his jersey number. But I did now.
“The nine of diamonds,” I said.
Elizabeth nodded. “Nine’s the only number he’s ever worn.”
There were a ton of questions that needed answers, not the least of which was what the hell Colton Lange was doing in an alley in Harlem in the middle of the night. Although there was some low-hanging fruit in terms of guesses.
But my head was elsewhere. It was as if I could feel the suction between my ears, the Dealer pulling me deeper into his game. It was like an undertow. A riptide.
Who’s next?
“Do you have it?” I asked.
It sure as hell wasn’t on Lange, not anymore. Was it ever? Did he actually wait and watch him burn—wait until the flames died out—before placing his next card?
“He pinned it to Lange’s chest with one of those fancy cocktail toothpicks,” said Elizabeth. “You know, the kind that look like little swords.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen them,” I said. What I didn’t know was why I hadn’t seen the card yet. Why aren’t you showing it to me?
“This one’s a little more problematic,” she said.
Elizabeth told me which card it was.
I immediately knew what she meant.
Chapter 54
LINGERING NEAR a dead body was one thing. Loitering was another.
After eyeballing the area around Lange’s body to make sure the Dealer hadn’t left anything else behind besides his calling card, I told Elizabeth I’d meet her back out on the street.
“Good idea,” she said.
It was a simple reply, but the subtext spoke volumes. She still had some work to do, only it wasn’t anything that would be showing up in the police report. In fact, that was the point. The “good idea” was that I not be a part of it.
Instead I had my own job to do. One thing. Think.
Almost all serial killers choose their victims in one of two ways: randomly or very, very carefully. The reason boils down to a single word: motive. When the victims are unrelated—when there’s no real link between them beyond, say, physical characteristics such as sex and age—the motive tends to be about the act itself. Killing.
But when there’s a link, something seeded deeper among the victims, the motive goes beyond the act of killing and becomes about the result. Death. In some way, shape, or form, the victims are being judged.
Or so I wrote in my book. The same book the Dealer surely read before mailing it off to—
“Well, if it isn’t Dr. Death,” came a voice over my shoulder.
I’d been leaning against my bike, as good a place as any to block out the world and get lost in my thoughts. But there was no mistaking Allen Grimes. His voice matched his persona, loud and obtrusive.
“Dr. Death? How much do I have to pay to make sure that nickname doesn’t show up in one of your columns?” I said.
“I’ll get back to you with a figure,” answered Grimes, not missing a beat. “It’s true, though. Anytime there’s a dead body these days, there you are.”
“And here you are,” I said. “I could say the same thing.”
“Yeah, except I actually get paid to be here. It’s my job,” he said. “This is my business.”
“Business has certainly been good for you lately, huh? A serial killer with a clever hook, tailor-made for the papers, and of all reporters he reaches out to you with a special package in the mail,” I said. “If you ask me, you couldn’t have it any better if you had planned it all yourself.”
Grimes stared hard into my eyes.
A horde of cops and EMTs were shuffling about, and half the neighborhood had gathered along the perimeter trying to see what they could see. But all Grimes could see was me.
There’s a moment in human behavior, a few telling seconds, when a person is trying to figure out if you’re being serious with him or not. In Grimes’s case, it made him look constipated.
“You fuckin’ with me, Doc?” he asked finally.
I smiled. “I don’t know. Am I?”
Chapter 55
“YEAH, YOU’RE fuckin’ with me,” decided Grimes, nodding his head.
I could tell he still wasn’t sure, but that same persona of his wasn’t about to let indecision get in his way. Besides, he had that job of his to do.
“Do you know that I never work at home?” he said, lighting up a cigarette. “Not once have I ever written a column from the comfort of my own couch. Do you know why?”
“I will as soon as you tell me,” I said.
“It’s because comfort and crime don’t mix, that’s why. To write about crime, to really understand it, you need to be out here breathing it,” he said. “Do you know what I mean?”
“Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out,” I said. “James Bryant Conant.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
“Fine,” he said. “Only now tell me what I really want to know.”
I stifled a yawn and played dumb. I knew exactly what he wanted. “Tell you what?” I asked.
“C’mon,” he said, making quick work of his cigarette. “I know you know, and soon enough I’ll know, too. The new card, the next victim…help me speed things along.”
“You’re going to have to get that from Elizabeth,” I said. “Although I don’t know if she’ll—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah…I know, she’s pissed,” he said. “I couldn’t sit on the story any longer; you know that.”
“Maybe she’s forgiven you,” I said.
“Fat chance. That girl’s like G.I. Joe with the kung-fu grip when it comes to grudges,” he said. “That’s why I’m asking you. I did try to give you the heads-up about her and the mayor, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember,” I said.
“So you’ll tell me?”
“Nope.”
Grimes sighed. Swing and a miss. “At least give me this,” he said. “Was Lange up here buying drugs? He had to be, right?”
“Are you asking because you’re guessing or because you’ve heard rumors about the guy?”
“Both,” he said. “But I don’t write sports. I did once arrange an interview with him, though. He’d been busted for going Sean Penn on some paparazzo, so suddenly he was in my wheelhouse. I told his agent that it was Lange’s chance to tell his side of the story.”
“And did he?”
“He was supposed to. We agreed to meet at the King Cole Bar, and I stared at that damn Maxfield Parrish mural for more than an hour waiting for him. Then he calls me and says he changed his mind.”
“You must have been pissed,” I said.