Compulsion

Another silent sisterly consultation.

Barb Bruno said, “He’s a real smoothie. Drives a Bentley, wears nice suits. For all we know it’s not even his real name.”

Milo waited.

Susan Appel said, “Tell them.”

Barb Bruno said, “He goes by Nick. Nicholas St. Heubel.”

CHAPTER 29

Milo paced the interview room.

The sisters had just left, reminding him not to forget “our zoning issues.”

He’d pressed them for details on the man they knew as Nicholas St. Heubel. Barb Bruno thought her rude guest played tennis. Susan Appel believed the game of choice to be golf. Both women admired his clothes, but thought him “way too smooth.”

Both had discarded his address and phone number.

Milo cited the Brentwood street where we’d encountered Heubel and the Bentley and they said, “That’s it,” in unison.

He asked for their husbands’ work numbers.

“Mike wants nothing to do with this.”

“Same for Hal.”

“Thanks, ladies, you really are heroes.”

“Heubel.” Working his shoulder and torturing his hair.

I said, “He’s the right age and height. Thinner than the descriptions we’ve gotten of Bright but nothing a diet couldn’t accomplish.”

“Able to keep it off.” One hand grazed his belt. “That alone makes him a goddamn criminal.”

“Tasha described ‘ Tweed ’ as having a puffy face and Heubel has a pouchy mouth, as if someone’s compressing his cheeks.”

“Kissy-poo,” he said.

“Kissing off the world,” I said.

He slapped a wall hard enough to send vibrations through the floor. “Bastard called in the Bentley to stir it up face-to-face. He’s that confident the cops are stupid.”

“He’s been getting away with serious bad deeds since childhood, thinks he’s invincible.”

“No more St. Heubel – what’s that, another game? I’m really not so pure?”

“It’s all about games,” I said. “He played with the sisters’ heads, returned months later and buried a body under their noses. The image of a backhoe churning up Kat’s bones gave him serious jollies.”

“Putting on the frightened-citizen act, I’m calming him down.” Frown. “I was worried he might know the mayor.”

“He might. Rosalynn Carter partied with John Gacy.”

“Oh, man,” he said.

Three more circuits.

“Asshole stalks Kat in his own wheels, spins a yarn about theft and recovery, leaves blood. All that just to jerk us around.”

“Using his own wheels was the perfect cover,” I said. “The Bentley’s a conspicuous car, even at that hour he had to consider someone might see it. But so what? He’d be the last person to suspect. If he hadn’t made the sisters nervous, he’d never have been connected to any of it.”

“True,” he said. “What was that family plot stuff about?”

“Arrogance.”

“Why spook the sisters if he wanted their husbands to invest with him, Alex?”

“By that time he probably knew the husbands wouldn’t bite, and taunting their wives was a subtle form of aggression. Or he just felt like being extra-naughty. What makes him a tough quarry is it’s hard to say what he wants. I’m not sure he always knows.”

“What do you mean?”

“I see his brain as a battlefield, with logic and compulsion constantly skirmishing. His lifestyle – his ability to adapt, to live simply when he needs to – says logic dominates. Then there are the times he needs to work off a little energy and people die.”

“That lifestyle of his was grubstaked by slashing his way to a million-plus inheritance.”

“Most psychopaths would’ve burned through the money quickly. He managed to parlay it into affluence. I wouldn’t be surprised if he really does trade commodities. It’s a loner job with high thrill capacity.”

He rubbed his face. “Eight years between the Safrans and Kat is way too occasional.”

“I agree. There’re bound to be more bodies.”

“No other black-car murders so far, but that means diddly,” he said. “Lots of stuff never hits the news.”

“The cars are props,” I said, “not his signature. He uses them in locales where everyone drives. He’s adaptable. Never registered a vehicle in New York.”

“Walking the Safrans somewhere and doing them… then what, off to Europe? Something he actually told the truth about?”

“Good liars mix it up. He used his own name in New York but adopted a new identity when he returned to California. That could be covering his tracks for the bad deeds he pulled off during the interim.”

“Nicko St. Heubel, continental naughty boy… wonder where he came up with the name.”

“Could be the old-fashioned way.”

He plugged Heubel into criminal databases, came up negative. A Web search proved no more fruitful.

“Okay,” he said, “the antiquated way.”

The chief’s secretary said the boss was in Sacramento, smoking cigars with the governor, she’d pass on the message.

I called Sal Polito and he greased access to his brother-in-law the Manhattan deputy chief. The D.C.’s secretary took down the information and ten minutes later a clerk in Albany phoned.

Nicholas Heubel, born in Yonkers the same year as Ansell “Dale” Bright, had died of meningitis at the tender age of five. No Social Security number issued until twenty-five months ago.

Milo wrestled with the IRS for half an hour in order to learn that Heubel had filed tax returns for the last two years.

I said, “Six years he’s out of the country. He comes back, goes the legal route.”

“I’ll get an Interpol thing going, but with the focus on terrorism, it’s gonna take time. Meanwhile, Tricky Nicky’s having leisurely breakfasts at the Brentwood Country Mart.”

He stood, grabbed his jacket, checked the magazine of his gun, and holstered up.

He asked the watch commander for six officers in plainclothes and three unmarkeds. That took another forty- five minutes to put together and it was nearly two by the time we convoyed to Brentwood.

No SWAT team because that would’ve been too conspicuous in Nicholas Heubel’s leafy, lovely neighborhood. But bulletproof vests for everyone, shotguns and rifles at the ready.

Milo had the other cars hold back a block, parked ten houses up from the vanilla house, told me to sit there and proceeded on foot.

Ambling, as if this were a casual visit.