I pictured his clean, full of polished wood and cracked books.
Shelves lined with erudite literature and snifters of amber liquid, a fire roaring as he puffed a pipe and wrote great news of the day.
I looked around my apartment. Wondered if his vision of mine contained empty bottles of Pepsi and a subscription to
Glamour.
'Quick,' I said. 'Hide stuff.'
I picked up all the girly magazines, food wrappers and rubber bands I could find and threw them in the trash. Which was already overflowing with girly magazines, food wrappers and rubber bands.
'What are you doing?'
'Amanda, baby,' I said, taking her hands in mine. 'I idolized this man growing up. He's probably the only man
I've ever dreamt about. And now he's coming up to my apartment.' She eyed me like I'd just insulted her mother. 'Okay, forget I said that. Just help.'
For the next minute, we scrambled around the room tidying up as best we could. In those sixty seconds, our onebedroom apartment went from resembling a tsunami-affected college dorm room to resembling an apartment lived in by two people who cleaned dishes after using them.
I heard a knock at the door. I looked around, panicked, then threw myself onto the worn polyurethane sofa and crossed my legs. Amanda glared at me.
'You expect me to open the door?'
'Would you mind?' She gave an exasperated sigh.
'Just so you know, you're sleeping on the couch tonight.'
She went to the door. Peered through the eyehole for dramatic effect. 'Who is it?'
'Now it'd be some coincidence if it was someone other than the guy who was just downstairs,' Jack said, his voice muffled by the door.
Amanda unlocked the door and opened it. Jack was breathing heavy, the trenchcoat seeming to weigh him down. He took off his hat, a few loose gray hairs sticking to it.
'You must be Miss Davies,' he said.
'That's right.'
'Charmed.' He took her hand, kissed it as he looked into her eyes. She smiled demurely. 'Henry here talks about you nonstop.'
'Is that so? Well, at least one man here can call himself a gentleman.' She led him into the apartment. 'Can I get you a drink, Mr. O'Donnell?'
'Please call me Jack. And I'll take a Jack as well, if you have one, on ice.' Amanda and I looked at each other. 'It's been a long day.'
Amanda disappeared into the kitchen. She came back with a glass full of brown liquid over ice. 'Seagram's Seven.
All we had.'
'Do nicely,' Jack replied. He moved over to the couch, let out a groan as he sat down. 'How you holding up?'
'Me?' I said incredulously.
'Heard you were at the Franklin-Rees building when…it happened.'
'Nearby,' I corrected. 'I'm holding up fine. Jeffrey
Lourdes is the one who was shot.'
'Murder has a ripple effect, gets a lot of people wet,' Jack said. 'You better than anyone should know that.'
Jack took a sip of his Seagram's. His cheeks were red, eyes tinged with veins. I wondered whether he was simply fatigued from taking the stairs, or if that Seagram's wasn't his first cocktail of the evening.
'I'm fine,' I said. 'Really.'
'You know they haven't found a quote at the scene of
Lourdes's murder,' Jack said. 'The first two were left in such prominent locations, either he dropped the whole thing, or…'
'Or he just didn't have time.'
'You have to wonder, really, what kind of person walks up to a man in broad daylight and shoots him in the head.'
'Same kind of person who shoots an unarmed woman and a cop from a distance,' I said. 'They're not dealing with your average run-of-the-mill lunatic. This guy has an agenda.'
'You think so?' Jack said.
'Well, look at his targets. Athena Paradis, Mayor Perez and
Jeffrey Lourdes. Remember, Joe Mauser was a mistake. All three of those people are celebrities, in some form or another.
He's not killing random people, he's killing people whose deaths would pretty much dominate news coverage. I mean, just look at the Metro papers the last few days. Athena,
Mauser and tomorrow Jeffrey Lourdes will be everywhere.'
'What do you make of the gun?' Jack asked, another nip of brown disappearing down his throat.
'I really don't know,' I said. 'Seems like he's using some sort of antique, something with a meaning. Don't quite know what yet, but Amanda has a contact from school who might be able to shed some light. I spoke to Lourdes's assistant at the scene. She got a quick glimpse of the killer and a partial of the murder weapon. Unfortunately she couldn't ID the actual shooter, and her police sketch is more vague than a
Rorschach. Because of the chaos at the Franklin-Rees building, the guy was able to escape in the stampede.'
'Mayor Perez, Athena Paradis and Jeffrey Lourdes,' Jack said. 'Not exactly three people you could imagine having brunch together on a Sunday morning.'
'But someone sees them fitting in the same pattern.'
'In this city,' Jack said, 'there's no shortage of people like those three. People who hog the front page. And though our great police force is locked up tighter than my grandma's cooter when it comes to terrorism, there's no defense for a sick fuck who wants to kill one person at a time.'
'Lourdes,' I said, 'was surrounded by a hundred people when he died. His shooting caused a stampede. It couldn't have been any easier for the killer to disappear than if Scotty had beamed him aboard the Enterprise. '
'Nobody disappears,' Jack said, swallowing the last of the whiskey. 'It's our job to find out what rug they're hiding under.'
'I'm on it,' I said. 'You know the last quote he used. When he killed Joe Mauser.' I'd told Jack about my tip.
'I'll let them know what bad means,' Jack said.
'I looked it up,' I said. 'Guess quoting a junior reporter just wasn't scary enough, he had to upgrade to sicker game.'
'Billy the Kid,' Jack said. 'Carruthers scowled during his statement, like he couldn't believe this thing could get any more macabre.'
'He's moved on from quoting me to quoting mass murderers,' I said. 'Forgetting for a moment my disgust at being in that company, if the killer does see himself as some sort of avenger it probably means there's a longer list of people this guy doesn't like.'
'Billy the Kid,' Jack said. 'You know the Kid, or whatever the hell his real name was, pretty much started the trend of yellow journalism. His estate should get royalties from the
National Enquirer and Weekly World News. Reporters and hack novelists all over the country tripped over themselves to drool over this guy. Made him out to be some kind of hero.
Some kind of Robin Hood. Idolizing celebrities practically began with the Kid.'
'You think that's how this killer sees himself? Offing the rich and famous to help the poor?'
'Remember he also quoted your ass,' Jack said. 'Let's just hope all he's got is an affinity for scary words. In
