wrapped up?'
'No.'
'Anyway, forget the airshaft. He bolts out of the apartment with the knife in his hand. Or the razor, whatever the fuck it was. He drops it on the staircase. He runs out in the street and drops it on the sidewalk. He puts it in an open garbage can. He drops it down a sewer. Matt, we don't have an eyewitness who saw him come out of the building. We woulda turned one up if we needed one, but the son of a bitch was dead thirty-six hours after he cooled the girl.'
It kept coming back to that. I was doing a job the police would have done if they had had to do it. But Richard Vanderpoel had saved them the trouble.
'So we don't know when he hit the street,' Koehler was saying. 'Two minutes before Pankow got to him? Ten minutes? He coulda chewed up the knife and ate it in that amount of time. Christ knows he was crazy enough.'
'Was there a razor in the apartment?'
'You mean a straight razor? No.'
'I mean a man's razor.'
'Yeah, he had an electric. Why the hell don't you forget about the razor?
You know what those fucking autopsies are like. I had one a couple years ago, the asshole in the medical examiner's office said the victim had been killed with a hatchet. We already caught the bastard on the premises with a croquet mallet in his hand. Anybody who could mistake the damage done by splitting someone's skull with a hatchet and beating it in with a mallet couldn't tell a razor slash from a cunt.'
I nodded. I said, 'I wonder why he did it.'
'Because he was out of his fucking mind, that's why he did it. He ran up and down the street covered with her blood, screaming his head off and waving his cock at the world. Ask him why he did it and he wouldn't know himself.'
'What a world.'
'Jesus, don't let me get started on that. This neighborhood gets worse and worse. Don't get me started.'
He gave me a nod, and we walked together out of his office and out through the squad room. Men in plainclothes and men in uniforms sat at typewriters, laboriously pounding out stories about presumed miscreants and alleged perpetrators. A woman was making a report in Spanish to a uniformed officer, pausing intermittently to weep. I wondered what she had done or what had been done to her.
I didn't see anybody in the squad room that I recognized.
Koehler said, 'You hear about Barney Segal? They made it permanent. He's head of the Seventeenth.'
'Well, he's a good man.'
'One of the best. How long you been off the force, Matt?'
'Couple of years, I guess.'
'Yeah. How're Anita and the boys? Doing okay?'
'They're fine.'
'You keep in touch, then.'
'From time to time.'
As we neared the front desk he stopped, cleared his throat. 'You ever think about putting the badge back on, Matt?'
'No way, Eddie.'
'That's a goddam shame, you know that?'
'You do what you have to do.'
'Yeah.' He drew himself up and got back to business. 'I set it with Pankow so he'll be looking for you around nine tonight. He'll be at a bar called Johnny Joyce's. It's on Second Avenue, I forget the cross street.'
'I know the place.'
'They know him there, so just ask the bartender to point him out to you. He's on his own time tonight, so I told him you'd make it worth his while.'
And told him to make sure a piece of it came back to the lieutenant, no doubt.
'Matt?' I turned. 'What the hell are you gonna ask him, anyway?'
'I want to know what obscene language Vanderpoel was using.'
'Seriously?' I nodded. 'I think you're as crazy as Vanderpoel,' he told me.
'For the price of a hat you can hear all the dirty words in the world.'
Chapter 3
Bethune Street runs west from Hudson toward the river. It is narrow and residential. Some trees had been recently planted. Their bases were guarded by little picket fences hung with signs imploring dog owners to thwart their pets'
