Psycho is forever misrepresented as a horror film when it is not-to go with something by Dario Argento or Lucio Fulci. Maybe Herschell Gordon Lewis or even early George Romero.'
'Who are these people?'
'The first two were pioneers of seventies Italian splatter cinema,' Terry Cahill said. 'The latter two were their American counterparts. George Romero is most noted for his zombie series: Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, et cetera.'
Everybody seems to know about this stuff but me, Jessica thought. Now would be a good time brush up on this subject.
'If you want to talk pre-Tarantino crime cinema, I would go with Peckinpah,' Butler added. 'But all of this is moot.'
'Why do you say that?'
'There doesn't seem to be an obvious progression insofar as style or motif at work here. I would say that the person you are looking for is not particularly cerebral about horror or crime cinema.'
'Any idea what his next choice might be?'
'You want me to extrapolate the mind-set of a killer?'
'Let's call it an academic exercise.'
Nigel Butler smiled. Touche. 'I should think he might choose something recent. Something released in the past fifteen years. Something that someone might actually rent.'
Jessica made a few final notes. 'Again, I would appreciate you keeping this all to yourself for the time being.' She handed him a card. 'If you think of anything else that might be helpful, please don't hesitate to call.'
'D'accord,' Nigel Butler replied. As they walked to the door, he added: 'I don't mean to be forward, but has anyone ever told you that you look like a movie star?'
Here we go, Jessica thought. Was he coming on to her? In the middle of all this? She shot a glance at Cahill. He was clearly fighting a smile. CCi 1 о» 'Excuse me?'
'Ava Gardner,' Butler said. 'Ayoung Ava Gardner. Maybe around the time of East Side, West Side.'
'Uh, no,' Jessica said, brushing the bangs from her forehead. Was she primping? Stop it. 'But thanks for the compliment. We'll be in touch.'
Ava Gardner, she thought, walking to the elevators. Please. ON THE WAY back to the Roundhouse, they swung by Adam Kaslov's apartment. Jessica rang the buzzer and knocked. No answer. She called his two places of employment. No one had seen him in the past thirty-six hours. These facts, added to the others, were probably enough to get a warrant. They couldn't use his juvenile record, but maybe they wouldn't need it. She dropped Cahill off at the Barnes amp; Noble on Rittenhouse Square. He said he wanted further peruse books on crime cinema, buying whatever he thought might be relevant. Nice to have Uncle Sam's credit card, Jessica thought.
When Jessica returned to the Roundhouse, she wrote up a request for a search warrant and faxed it to the DA's office. She didn't expect much, but it never hurt to ask. As to phone messages, there was only one. It was from Faith Chandler. It was marked URGENT.
Jessica dialed the number, got the woman's answering machine. She tried a second time, this time leaving a message, including her cell phone number.
She hung up the phone, wondering.
Urgent.
41
One of them there bis-cottis.' Them there? I almost laugh. I don't, of course. I've never broken character and I'm not going to start now. 'I'm new to this city,' I add. 'I haven't seen a friendly face in weeks.'
She makes my coffee, bags the biscotti, caps my cup, taps the touch screen. 'Where are you from?'
'West Texas,' I say with a broad smile. 'El Paso. Big Bend country.'
'Wow,' she replies, as if I had told her I was from Neptune. 'You're a long way from home.'
'Aren't we all?' I hand her a five.
She stops, frozen for a moment, as if I have said something profound. I step out onto Walnut Street, feeling tall and fit. Gary Cooper in The Fountainhead. Tall is a method, like weakness.
I finish my latte, breeze into a men's clothing store. I fashion up, vogue briefly near the door, gather my suitors. One of them steps forward.
'Hi,' the salesman says. He is thirty. His hair is cropped short. He is suited and booted, wearing a wrinkled gray T-shirt beneath a navy-blue three-button number at least one size too small. This seems to be a fashion statement of some sort.
'Hello,' I say. I wink at him and he colors slightly.
'What can I show you today?'
Your blood on my Bokhara? I think, channeling Patrick Bateman. I give him my toothy Christian Bale. 'Just looking.'
'Well, I'm here to offer assistance, and I hope you'll allow me the privilege of doing so. My name is Trinian.'
Of course it is.
I think of those great St. Trinian's British comedies from the 1950s and '60s, and consider making a reference. I notice he has a bright orange Skechers watch on his wrist, and realize that I would be wasting my breath.
Instead, I frown-bored and beleaguered by my excessive wealth and station. He is even more interested now. In this setting, abuse and intrigue are lovers.
Twenty minutes later it hits me. Perhaps I have known it all along. It really is all about the skin. Skin is where you stop, and the world starts. Everything you are-your mind, your personality, your soul-is contained and constrained by your skin. In here, in my skin, I am God.
I slip into my car. I have just a few hours to get into character.
I'm thinking Gene Hackman in Extreme Measures.
Or maybe even Gregory Peck in The Boys from Brazil.
42
Mateo Fuentes freeze-framed the image at the point in the Fatal Attraction tape when the gun was fired. He toggled back, forward, back, forward. He ran the tape in slow motion, each field rolling top-to-bottom on the frame. On the screen, a hand came up on the right side of the frame and stopped. The shooter wore a surgical glove, but it wasn't his hand they were interested in, although they had already narrowed down the make and model of the pistol. The Firearms Unit was still working on it.
The star of the movie, at this point, was the jacket. It looked like a satin jacket, the type of jacket that baseball teams or roadies at rock concerts wear-dark, shiny, and with a ribbed band at the wrist.
Mateo printed off a hard copy of the image. It was impossible to tell what color the jacket was-black or navy blue. This jibed with Little Jake's recollection of a man in a dark blue jacket inquiring about the Los Angeles Times. It wasn't much. There had to be thousands of jackets like that in Philly. Still, they would have a composite suspect sketch that afternoon.
Eric Chavez entered the room, extremely animated, a computer printout in hand. 'We've got a location on where the Fatal Attraction tape is from.'
'Where?'
'It's a dump called Flickz on Frankford,' Chavez said. 'Independent store. Guess who owns it.'
Jessica and Palladino said the name at the same time.
'Eugene Kilbane.'
'One and the same.'
