Huh? “Exactly, dear. Well, Mayberry perhaps.”
Marge pressed a finger to her dimpled chin and looked around, a thinking pose to let him know she was weighing his advice. “Pattern…”
“Pattern, dear. Fewer solids and unbroken surfaces, less blah. More busy, busy.” He raised a cautioning forefinger. “But not too much. Only the sofa. And with a throw in an accent color.”
“Yes, I do think I see what you mean. I wouldn’t have realized it myself.”
Byrd sent an offhand wave the way of the drab sofa. “I’ll make arrangements for you to have that removed, then you and I will go shopping for a divine divan. It will be fun.”
Marge put on another smile, waging the ongoing battle to push away her past and fit into her new life. “It will be,” she agreed. “There’s no reason for it not to be.”
“What I like about you, dear,” Byrd said, “is you got the spirit!”
As he left the apartment, he was already planning their shopping expedition, a series of specialty furniture stores that wouldn’t have what they needed, then Niki’s Nook on Second Avenue, where there was plenty of pattern and he received twenty percent of markup for furniture sold to his clients. Furniture was such fun merchandise. Even after Marge’s special discount, Byrd’s finder’s fee would be considerable.
Down on the sidewalk, he was waiting while the doorman tried to hail a cab, when he glanced across the street and saw the same man-he was sure it was the same one-he’d noticed twice during the last few days watching him in the Village. He was wearing a blue or black T-shirt with an eagle on its chest, dark sunglasses, tight Levi’s tucked into black boots. Going for the Harley Davidson look, not so noticeable in the Village, but here on this block of Third Avenue, he stood out the way Marge’s old sofa would. Though his eyes were concealed behind the dark lenses, Byrd was certain the man was staring directly at him. He could feel it.
The Dodge dealer? Had the Dodge dealer found Marge? Byrd had been spending a great deal of time in her apartment; might the man think he was Marge’s new lover, moving in on her money that her ex-husband believed should be half his?
Me and Marge? Hah!
But everybody loved somebody, if they were lucky, and Marge had been the Dodge dealer’s wife.
Or maybe the Dodge dealer’s interested in me!
Am I insane? Maybe it isn’t even the same man.
“Heads up, sir!”
Brakes eeped and tires scraped on concrete. Byrd had to leap back from where he’d wandered off the curb while lost in thought. The vehicle’s right front fender had barely missed him.
His heart hammering, Byrd tipped the doorman and hurriedly got into the cab and blurted out his destination. He was determined to get hold of his imagination. His analyst had cautioned him about flights of paranoia that could lead to panic attacks.
Think pattern, think pattern…something that will pop…something wild…
But as the cab accelerated away from the curb, Byrd craned his neck to peer out the rear window.
Everyone else on the busy street seemed to be facing any direction other than toward the cab, but Harley Davidson man was looking directly at Byrd.
33
Looper suggested they prioritize, and Looper was right. Beam should have thought of it first.
In Beam’s comfortably messy den, they sat around his desk and looked over the list of controversial acquittals during the past ten years, supplied to them by da Vinci. The air conditioning was working well and the den was cool. One of the trees planted outside happened to be right in front of the window, providing a view of morning sunlight glancing off green maple leaves.
Beam sat in his leather desk chair, and Nell and Looper were in chairs pulled close to the other side of the desk, where the murder files were stacked. Beam wished he had a cigar. He didn’t want to smoke one in front of Looper, who was trying hard to quit cigarettes, and he had a suspicion as to what Nell would say, or at least think, about what he could do with his cigar if he asked if she minded. The world was rapidly closing in on smokers.
“These three,” Beam said. “Bradley Aimes, Sal Palmetto, and Irwin Breach. They seem to have had the most publicity, and all three defendants sure as hell looked guilty but were allowed to walk.”
“At least that’s what the public thought,” Nell said.
“Still thinks,” Beam added. “Which means murdering someone who had any part in their trials will only make the Justice Killer more…famous.”
He’d almost said popular.
“Breach is dead,” Looper said. “Hanged himself in a holding cell when he was arrested on a later burglary charge.”
“And Palmetto’s left the country,” Nell said. “He lives someplace now in Spain or Italy.”
“A perpetual vacation,” Looper said in disgust.
“It’s the jurors we’re most interested in,” Beam said. “And we can’t rule out Aimes as a potential victim. Not with this killer.” He laid the three files out side by side on the desk. “You take the Palmetto jury,” he said to Looper. “Make sure they know the danger to them, and at the same time try to find out anything they might know that might help us.” To Nell, “You get the folks who gave Breach a free pass.” He tapped the remaining file with his forefinger. “I’ll do the Bradley Aimes jury.”
“Loop and I already talked to the Dixon family as potential suspects,” Nell said.
“You wanna do that jury?” Beam asked.
“I don’t see where it makes any difference. Not unless we seriously consider any of the Dixon family members suspects.”
Looper gave her a look over the Palmetto file. “Do we?”
Nell shook her head. “Not a chance. All they are in my view are Bradley Aimes’s secondary victims. Somebody kills Aimes, I guess we’d need to consider the Dixons, but it’d only be routine as far as I’m concerned. No more likely than Genelle Dixon returning from the dead to kill Aimes.”
“I’ve never known that kind of thing to happen,” Looper said. He sniffed the air. Beam wondered if he could smell the cigars sealed in their desktop humidor. Beam could.
“Okay, then,” Beam said, standing up behind his desk. “I’ll do Carl Dudman. He was foreman of the Aimes jury.”
“I’ve seen his real estate agency ads in the papers,” Looper said. “He sells high end property. Guy like that, he’s probably too rich to be in much danger.”
Nell and Beam looked at each other. Maybe Looper was right; neither could, offhand, think of a serial killer case where the victims were wealthy, their murders spread over a period of time and following a psychotic theme.
But then, the killer they were chasing had a nasty unpredictable streak in him.
Beam picked up the phone to dial information for a number for Dudman Properties.
He watched Nell and Looper leave the den, and as he was jotting down the phone number, heard them find their own way out.
It was surprisingly easy to see Carl Dudman. His offices were in Tribeca, in a tall, prewar building that covered half a block and contained three banks at street level. It was being remodeled, and while no one was visibly working at the moment, the main entrance was flanked by iron scaffolding painted a dull, flaking red. Pedestrians streamed over plywood that covered mud where the sidewalk had been torn up. The city was an organic being that changed constantly, and its citizens understood and accepted it.
The building’s lobby was a symphony of oak paneling, polished brass, and dark-veined marble. Temporary but neatly painted signs directed visitors to the street-level bank entrances. A uniformed attendant behind a marble desk gave directions to Beam and had him sign in.
Dudman Properties occupied the building’s entire ninth floor. Beam elevatored up in about a second and a half. A trim, efficient gray-haired woman, wearing a severe dark skirt and blazer with a white blouse and man’s maroon tie, had him wait only a few minutes before ushering him into Dudman’s office.
