A Ticket to the Boneyard

Page 38

No rats scuttled as I moved among the garbage cans. They were probably hidden away somewhere, sleeping off the effects of the long night. Maybe Motley was doing the same.
Making as little noise as possible, I positioned one garbage can beneath the fire escape and clambered on top of it. I straightened up and reached overhead to grasp the descending ladder. I pulled on it and nothing happened. I gave a yank and it creaked a little in protest, and there was a screech of metal scraping against metal as it lowered itself for my ascent.
I waited, but no heads emerged from the windows overlooking the courtyard. The noise was minimal, and most of the tenants were probably at work at that hour, while the night workers would be asleep.
Over on Second Avenue somebody leaned on a car horn, and another driver answered with a series of staccato beeps. I hauled myself upward, pulling myself hand over hand until I could get a foot onto the lowest rung. The Smith in my pocket clanged against the metal railing. I climbed onto the first horizontal walkway, leaned my weight against the brick wall of the building, and tried to catch my breath.
After a minute or two I was ready to go the rest of the way. I climbed up to the fourth floor and kept a low profile when I reached it, hunkering down on the metal parapet and peering over the windowsill.
The apartment was dark within. There were window gates to render the place burglar-proof, but they were unfastened, and the window itself was open a few inches at the bottom. I got up close to the window and looked in, first through the space at the bottom, then through the glass. I was looking into a small bedroom. There was an old-fashioned metal bedstead, a chest of drawers, a pair of milk crates set on end to serve as bedside tables. One of them held a phone, the other a digital clock-radio.
I sat perfectly still for what the clock-radio assured me was a full minute. The seconds ticked silently but visibly away, and not a sound issued from the apartment within. And the bed was empty, and unmade.
But it was the right apartment, and Brian's information was good. And he'd been back since his visit to Elaine's apartment.
A jacket with a New York Auxiliary Police shoulder patch hung from the knob of the closet door.
So he had been there. And he would be back. And I would be waiting for him.
Slowly, carefully, I gripped the window at the bottom and lifted. It went up readily and made hardly any sound at all. I turned to look around, on the chance that someone was watching all of this from a neighboring building. I could envision myself waiting in there for him, only to have to open the door to some cops dispatched by some public-spirited citizen.
But there was nobody paying any attention. I opened the window the rest of the way and stepped in over the sill.
Inside, the bedroom smelled like some animal's lair. It was a woman's apartment, you could see that from the clothes in the closet and the clutter on the dresser top, but the scent was masculine and predatory. I couldn't tell how recently he'd been here but I could feel his presence in the room, and without even thinking about it I dipped into my jacket pocket and brought out the Smith. The butt was snug in my palm and my index finger found the trigger.
I walked over to the closet door and took Echevarria's jacket from the knob. I don't know what I expected to glean from it. I studied the shoulder patches, poked around in the pockets, put it back where I'd found it.
I moved to the dresser and looked at the articles on its top. Coins, subway tokens, earrings, ticket stubs, perfume bottles, cosmetics, lipstick tubes, hairpins. I wondered who Ms. Lepcourt might be, and how she'd gotten involved with James Leo Motley. And what the involvement might have cost her. I reached to open the top dresser drawer, then told myself to quit wasting time. I wasn't going to find her in there, or him either.
The apartment layout was typical for tenements of that sort, three small rooms in a row, with the doorways lined up. From the apartment's front door you could see straight through to the window I'd entered through, and for a moment I considered closing the window so that he wouldn't spot the change the minute he walked in. But that was silly, he wouldn't notice it, and as soon as he opened the door I'd be standing in front of him with a gun in my hand, so what possible difference could an open window make?
Even so, I took my time getting into position to wait for him. I passed through the middle room, and checked the little bathroom with its clawfooted tub. I hesitated at the archway leading to the front room. I stood there, holding the gun out in front of me like a torch, wishing it would cast a beam. Still, I could see well enough in the darkness. There was some light coming from the bedroom window behind me, and more light from windows in the living room that faced onto an airshaft between the building and the one next door.
I started into the room.
Something came out of nowhere and slammed down onto my arm a few inches above the wrist. My hand went dead and the.38 went flying.
Two hands fastened on my arm, one in the middle of the forearm, one near the shoulder. He heaved, and I went stumbling across the room as if launched by a catapult. I careened into a table, upending it, and my feet went out from under me. I reached out for support, grabbed at empty air, bounced off a wall and wound up on the floor.
He stood there and laughed at me.
"Come on," he said. "Get up."
He was wearing Echevarria's uniform, everything but the jacket. The shoes were wrong, though. The uniform code calls for plain black shoes with laces. He was wearing brown wing tips. He'd switched on a lamp; otherwise I wouldn't have noticed the color of his shoes.
I got to my feet. He just didn't look like a cop, I thought, and it wouldn't make any difference what shoes he wore. There are a lot of cops who don't look like cops either, not since they killed the height requirement and allowed facial hair, but he didn't look like any kind of cop, regular or auxiliary, old or new style.
He leaned in the doorway, flexing his fingers, looking at me with evident amusement. "So noisy," he said. "You're not much good at sneaking up on people, are you? Climbing on garbage cans and running up fire escapes at your age. I was worried about you, Scudder. I was afraid you might fall and break a bone."
I looked around, trying to track the Smith. I spotted it on the other side of the room, half-hidden under an armchair with a needlepoint back and seat. My eyes went from it to him, and his smile flashed.
"You dropped your gun," he said. He picked up Echevarria's nightstick and slapped his palm with it. My forearm was still numb where he'd struck it with the stick. It would hurt for days once the feeling returned.
If I lived that long.
"You could try to get it," he said, "but I don't think your odds are very good. I'm closer to it than you are, and I'm faster. I'd have you before you got the gun. All in all, I think you'd have a better chance of getting out the door."
He nodded toward the front door, and I obediently glanced over toward it. "It's unlocked," he said. "I had the chain on but I took it off when I heard you making a racket in the backyard. I was concerned that you might see the chain and know somebody was home. But I don't think you'd have noticed. Would you?"
"I don't know."
"I hung the jacket on the closet doorknob for your benefit, you know. Otherwise you might have gone into the apartment next door. You're such a buffoon, Scudder, that I've had to make things as easy for you as possible."
"You're making it all very easy," I said.
I looked within myself, scanning for fear, and I couldn't find any. I felt curiously calm. I wasn't afraid of him. I didn't have anything to be afraid of.
I shot a glance at the door, as if I was considering making a run for it. It was a ridiculous idea. It very likely wasn't unlocked, even if the chain was off, but even if it were he'd be on me before I could get the door open and myself through it.
Besides, I hadn't come here to run away from him. I'd come here to take him down.
"Go ahead," he said. "Let's see if you can get out the door."
"We'll go through it together, Motley. I'm taking you in."
He laughed at me. He raised the nightstick and pointed it at me and laughed again. "I think I'll stick this up your ass," he said. "Do you think you'll like it? Elaine liked it."
He was looking at me carefully, watching for a reaction. I didn't give him one.
"She's dead," he said. "She died hard, the poor darling. But I guess you know that."
"You're wrong about that one," I said.
"I was there, Scudder. I could report in detail, if I thought you could stand hearing it."
"You were there but you left early. The doorman got there in time and called an ambulance. She's in New York Hospital and doing fine. She already gave them a statement, and the doorman backed up her ID."
"You're lying."
I shook my head. "But I wouldn't worry about it," I said. "Remember what Nietzsche said. It'll just make you stronger."
"That's true."
"Unless it destroys you, of course."
"You're becoming tiresome, Scudder. I like you better when you're begging for mercy."
"Funny," I said. "I don't remember doing that."
"You'll be doing it soon."
"I don't think so. I think you've had your run and now you're finished. You were very careful early on. Lately you've been getting sloppy. You're ready for it to end, and you know how things always end for you. You wind up losing."
"I'll tape your mouth," he said, "so nobody can hear the screams."
"You're done," I said. "You lost the momentum when you left Elaine alive. You had her for two hours and you couldn't even manage to make sure she was dead when you left. Now all you can do is stand there and make threats, and threats don't mean much when the person you threaten isn't afraid of you. You have to back them up, and you can't do that anymore."
I turned away, as if to show contempt for him. He stood there, getting ready to do something about it, and I reached down for a bronze Chinese incense burner. It was about the size of a half-grapefruit and it had been on top of the table until I'd come crashing into it.
I picked it up and threw it at him, and I went in under it.
This time he didn't make the mistake of trying to catch what I tossed his way. He swung out a hand, knocking the incense burner aside, then moved forward to meet my charge. I feinted at his head, ducked in and hammered punches at his middle. There was no softness there, nothing but ridged muscles. He swung a fist that caught me on the side of the head. It was a glancing blow and it didn't do much. I ducked the next punch he threw, tucked my chin into my chest and hit him just below the navel, then swung a knee up at his crotch.
He pivoted, blocking with his hip. He grabbed at my shoulder and his fingers dug in. His grip was as strong as ever but he wasn't on a pressure point now and the pain was nothing I couldn't stand.
I hit him again in the gut. He tensed in response, and I bulled forward, shoving him back against the wall. He rained blows on my shoulders and the top of my head, but he was better at pressing and probing and squeezing than he was at infighting. I tried for his groin again, and when he moved to protect himself I stomped down on his instep. That hurt him, and I pressed the advantage and did it again, raking his shin with the heel of my shoe, stomping down hard on his foot, trying to break a couple of its small bones.