The Killing Man

Pat was a cop who had seen it all. This one was just another on his list. But the kill wasn't what disturbed him. It was where it happened. He turned to the uniform at the door. 'Anybody outside?'

'Only our people. They're shortstopping everybody at the elevators.'

'Good. Keep everybody out for five minutes,' he told a cop who stood in the doorway. 'Our guys too.'

'Got it,' the cop said and turned away.

'Let's talk,' Pat said.

It didn't take long. 'I was to meet a prospective client named Bruce Lewison at noon in my office. Velda went ahead to open up and get some other work out of the way. I walked in a few minutes before twelve and found her on the floor and the guy dead.'

'And you touched nothing?'

'Not in here, Pat. I wasn't about to wait for you to show before I got a doctor for Velda.'

Pat looked at me with that same old look.

I could feel a twist in my grin. There was nothing funny about it. 'Oh, I'll get to the bastard, Pat. Sooner or later.'

'Cut that shit, will you?'

'Sure.'

'You know this guy?'

I shook my head. 'He's new to me.'

'Somebody thought he was killing you, pal.'

'We don't look alike at all.'

'He was in your chair.'

'Yeah, that he was.'

He was looking at the note and said, 'Who did you kill, Mike?'

I said, 'Come on Pat. Don't play games.'

'This note mean anything to you?'

'No. I don't know why, but somebody sure was serious about it.'

'Okay,' he said. His eyes looked tired. 'Let's get our guys in here.'

While the photographer shot the corpse from all angles and did closeups on the mutilation, Pat and I went into Velda's office where the plainclothes officers dusted for prints and vacuumed the area for any incidental evidence. Pat had already jotted down what I had told him. Now he said, 'Give me the entire itinerary of your day, Mike. Start from when you got up this morning and I'll check everything out while it's fresh.'

'Look . . . when Velda comes around . . .' I saw the look on Pat's face and nodded. My stomach was all knotted up and all I wanted was to breathe some fresh, cold air.

'I got up at seven. I showered, dressed and went down to the deli for some rolls, picked up the paper, went back to the apartment, ate, read the news and took off for the gym.'

'Which one?'

'Bing's Gym. You know where it is. I got there at nine thirty, put in a little better than an hour in the exercise room, showered and checked out at eleven thirty. Bing can verify that himself. It was a twenty-minute walk to the office and on the way I saw two people I knew. One was Bill Sheen, the beat cop, the other was Manuel Florio who owns the Pompeii Bar on Sixth Avenue. We walked together for a block, then split. I got to the office a few minutes before twelve and walked into . . . this.' I waved my hand at the room. 'Burke Reedey will give you his medical report on Velda and the ME will be able to pinpoint a time of death pretty well, so don't get me mixed up in suspect status.'

Pat finished writing, tore a leaf out of the pad and closed the book. He called one of the detectives over and handed him the slip, telling him to check out all the details of my story. 'Let's just keep straight with the system, buddy. Face it, you're not one of its favorite people.'

The assistant medical examiner was a tubby little guy with light blue eyes that bristled with curiosity. Every detail was a major item and when he was finished with the physical aspect of the examination, he stepped back, walked around the body slowly, seeming to do a psychological analysis of the crime. Pat didn't try to interrupt him. This was the ME's moment and whatever he could garner from his inspection now would be valuable because the body would never be seen in this position again. Twice he went back to do a close scrutiny of the desk spike in the dead man's forehead, then made a satisfied grimace and snapped his bag shut.

Pat asked, 'What do you think?'

'About the time?'

'Yes, for one thing.'

The ME looked at his watch. 'I would say that he was killed between ten and eleven o'clock. Certainly not after eleven. I will be more specific after the post-mortem. Has he been identified?'

'Not yet,' Pat said.

'An interesting death. Those facial and chest cuts seem to have been made with an extremely sharp, short- bladed instrument.'

'Penknife?' I asked him.

'Yes, possibly. Some people carry things like that.'

'Any medical reasons for the slashings?'

'Want me to speculate?'

'Certainly,' Pat said.

'Those were made to terrorize the victim. It's amazing what the sight of a blade opening up his own body can do to a person's psyche. Those wounds are too deep to be superficial, yet not deep enough to be fatal.'

'And that brings us to the hands.'

'A very unusual disfiguration.' His bright blue eyes looked at both of us, then settled on Pat. 'Have you ever seen this before?' Pat shook his head. 'Someplace I recall hearing of this happening. I'll do a little research on it when I get back to the office. Frankly, I think it's a signature stratagem.'

'A what?'

'Something a killer leaves to remember him by.'

I said, 'That's a pretty complicated way of writing your name.'

'Agreed,' the ME nodded, 'but you'll never forget it. But the one he was impressing it on was the victim himself. Look, let me show you how he did this.' He took the dead man's arm, stiff with rigor mortis, forcing the hand with the forefinger out and the other knuckles bent down, against the desk. Where the finger ended you could see the cut of the blade in the wood. 'Imagine having to watch as each finger was cut off at the knuckle and not even being able to scream for relief? The pain must have been incredible, but even then, it could not have been as bad as the final act of hammering that spike into his head.'

'What are you saving for last, Doctor?'

The ME gave Pat a sage little smile. 'You're wondering how a grown man would let himself be totally immobilized like that?'

'Right on,' Pat told him.

Swinging the swivel chair around so the back of the corpse's head faced us, the ME lifted up the shaggy hair and fingered a small lump over the ear. 'A tap with the usual blunt instrument, hard enough to render the victim unconscious for ten minutes or so,'

My mouth went dry and something felt like it was crawling up my back. The one he had laid on Velda wasn't to knock her out. That one was a killing blow, one swung with deliberate, murderous intent. I looked at the phone again. Meg still hadn't called.

Pat bent over and examined the body carefully. His arm brushed the dead man's coat and pushed it open. Sticking up out of the shirt pocket was a Con Edison bill folded in half. When Pat straightened it out he looked at the name and said, 'Anthony Cica.' He held it out for me to look at. 'You know him, Mike?'

'Never saw him before.' His address was on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

'You're lucky you had a stand-in.'

'Too bad Velda didn't have one.' The tightness ran up me again and I began to breathe hard without knowing it.

Pat was shaking my arm. 'Come off it, Mike.'

I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth and nodded.