'On the basis of your fantasies?'
'Three men are dead by their own hand, Lieutenant. That's no fantasy. And all three were in a religious trance when they died. That's no fantasy.'
McCloskey shook his head. 'I hate the fucking F.B.I., just the same as your brother hated the fucking F.B.I, when he was a cop. We don't need those arrogant, glory-hogging fucks in here.'
'Then what are you going to do about it, Lieutenant?'
'I don't know,' McCloskey said after a long pause. 'I'll tell the captain what you said, see what he wants me to do.'
'Garth and I are getting back on it right after you let us out of here. You know that.'
'Shit,' the man with the pockmarked face said. 'You guys are to trouble what a magnet is to steel filings.'
'We're looking for a little girl, not trouble. We're the ones who are being hassled.'
'Mongo and I understand that you're caught between a rock and a hard place, McCloskey,' Garth said evenly. 'If we do come across something unsavory-criminal-in connection with Nuvironment, would you rather we not tell you?'
McCloskey's black eyes flashed. He sat up abruptly, winced with pain-and then deliberately straightened his back. 'Don't you condescend to or patronize me, you son-of-a-bitch! I'm still a cop, and until next week I'm still on active duty! Don't you forget it! You find out anything, you'd
'Okay,' Garth said in the same even tone. 'I didn't mean to offend you.'
'Well, you did offend me! And let me tell you-!'
McCloskey was interrupted by the sudden ringing of the phone on his desk. He grunted with disgust, snatched up the receiver. 'Yeah, what is it?' He listened, and the blood slowly drained from his face, making him look even more exhausted and haggard. 'What the fuck?! No, leave everything as it is. I'll be right there.' He hung up the phone, rose and snatched his overcoat off a rack in the corner, headed out the door. 'You two come with me!' he shouted over his shoulder.
Garth and I looked at each other, then rose and followed after McCloskey. 'I wonder what that was all about?' I said as we walked through the squad room, ignoring the heads that turned in our direction.
'I assume we'll find out soon enough,' Garth replied in a low voice. 'Incidentally, all that talk about athletes jogged my memory; I remember where I've seen that big, ugly chauffeur before.'
I abruptly stopped, looked at my brother. 'Where?'
'On a football field. It was Tanker Thompson.'
'Tanker Thompson? Are you kidding me? I thought he was in prison.'
Garth slowly shook his head. 'He's out now, working for Nuvironment.'
Thomas 'Tanker' Thompson, born-again Christian or not, was not a man I wanted at my back, whether in a car or on foot. When he'd played defensive tackle for one of the now-defunct U.S.F.L. football teams, he'd weighed upwards of three hundred pounds, and had been quick as a cat. His problem had been that he was a virulent racist; considering the number of pro football players who are black, he'd apparently never had a problem getting himself worked up for game day. One day he'd gotten himself a little too emotionally worked up. After a missed tackle and an exchange of words with a black running back from another team, Thompson had chopped the man in the larynx with the side of his hand. Despite an emergency tracheotomy performed on the field, the other man had died two days later. Tanker Thompson had been convicted of aggravated assault, and had become the first athlete in the United States to go to prison on a sports-related charge. A while back, in a 'where they are now' column in some magazine, I'd read that he'd undergone a 'spiritual conversion' while in prison, and was devoting all his time to religious studies. Obviously, he had been let out on parole, and was now on the payroll of Nuvironment.
It figured.
Still pondering the unpleasant implications of having a murderous behemoth of an ex-football player assigned to watch over us, I followed Garth out of the station house into a cold, gray Christmas dawn that seemed ominously still and foreboding. I smelled snow; lots of it.
Malachy McCloskey, still pale-faced and looking very agitated, was standing at the curb, nervously tapping his palm on the roof of a squad car that had its motor running. 'Let's go, you two!' he shouted when he saw us, then hurried around to the other side of the car and got in behind the wheel.
'Where are we going, Lieutenant?' I asked as Garth and I got in the back.
McCloskey slammed his foot down on the accelerator, and Garth and I were pressed back in our seats as the car sped away from the curb. He switched on the flashing red light atop the car, but not the siren. 'Central Park,' the gray-haired man said tersely as he cut between two cabs.
'And I'll bet we're not going to a sunrise service.'
'Hardly,' McCloskey replied, and grunted. 'I think someone's left you two a Christmas present, and it wasn't Santa Claus.'
9
It wasn't a present, but a message.
The good Reverend William Kenecky certainly was no longer going to be abusing Vicky Brown-or anyone else, for that matter. Somebody had crucified the self-styled 'scourge of the Lord,' nailed him upside down and naked, with his skinny arms and legs grotesquely splayed, to the trunk of a massive, gnarled oak tree about twenty-five yards off a narrow, twisting path in the heavily wooded section of Central Park known as the Ramble, a notorious trysting place for homosexuals. He was missing his genitals, which had been cut off-or out; he looked like he'd been cored like an apple, and I hoped he'd been dead when it had been done to him. He was a sight, and if I hadn't so detested this skinny, spiritually bent creature that had walked like a man, I'd have vomited. I was glad I hadn't eaten in a while. I glanced at Garth to see how he was reacting to this less than cheery Christmas morning sight; my brother didn't look sick, only thoughtful.
We were standing just behind the police lines-strips of yellow tape that were flapping in a stiff, cold breeze from the northwest. On the other side of the tape, uniformed police officers, detectives, police photographers, and technicians from the coroner's office were going about their grisly business. Measurements were made as strobe lights flashed; the scene somehow reminded me of one of Kenecky's shows on television. Twenty yards behind us, crowded together on the narrow trail, a phalanx of reporters and television camera crews were being held at bay by a second phalanx of police officers.
Reverend William Kenecky's last picture show, I thought.
Shit.
McCloskey, his grizzled, scarred face once again wearing its riot-act expression, separated himself from a knot of uniformed officers and detectives and stalked over to where Garth and I were standing behind the fluttering yellow tape.
'It's no wonder the two of you are famous,' the detective said in a thick voice. 'Lots of people die around you. I'd always heard that about the Fredericksons, but now I'm seeing it for myself.'
I was getting just a tad weary of Malachy McCloskey's increasingly uninspired quips about my brother and me; I started formulating what I thought would be an appropriate response, one that would undoubtedly include unflattering references to the man's ancestors, as well as the suggestion that he perform an unlikely act of sexual self-abuse. Fortunately, Garth spoke before I did.
'I haven't noticed any of the good guys dying around us lately, McCloskey,' Garth said calmly. 'And we never met the gentleman hanging on the tree over there. We used to watch him on television; for a piece of shit, he was a great comedian.'
'You're a cold son-of-a-bitch, Frederickson.'
Garth raised his eyebrows slightly. 'Am I? If that means that I don't feel a lot of sympathy for that skinny, kid-fucking scumbag over there, I guess you're right. It must be a personality defect. At least somebody put him out of his misery; but the child he abused may have to live with the nightmare memories of what he did to her for the rest of her life. Because of Kenecky, Vicky Brown may never be able to lead a normal life.'
