Night Songs Page 5

  “One of the city reporters has a piece in tomorrow’s paper about a group of punks uptown terrorizing an old Jewish lady who’s a concentration camp survivor. Tyler thinks this group is tied to a bigger group out West somewhere, Idaho or Washington State, and he thought it’d be just nifty if I went out and poked around. It took me a week to convince him that those creeps kill FBI and IRS agents just for sport. Imagine sending a cute little Colored girl to ask them why they act so ugly?”

  Mimi was still pissed at the memory of Tyler’s insistence that she’d probably be perfectly safe. “Then, a couple of our New York Avenue Ladies of the Evening who’d been stringing me along for months with the promise of a blockbuster of a story disappeared on me. Just vanished into their nighttime.” Mimi shrugged and poured herself another glass of Sangria.

  Gianna heard the shattering sound of words and worlds colliding: White supremacists who kill people for sport and prostitutes who vanish into the night. And she felt, once again, her world colliding with Mimi’s. If she’d been alone she’d have asked, yelled, out loud, “Why? Why must she be tied to missing prostitutes and evil-doing skinheads?”

  Grim satisfaction was Gianna’s reward on Sunday morning when she read how the newspaper reporter, camped out in her car, caught the skinheads in the act of playing Wagner outside Sophie Gwertzman’s house shortly before midnight on the previous Saturday, how the reporter documented their screams to the old woman to visit their tattoo parlor and lampshade factory, how the reporter used the skinheads’ own words and deeds to cause them more trouble than the police ever could. But she also read how the reporter concluded that none of these actions, though certainly reprehensible, was illegal; she read how their spokesman, a lawyer, planned to exercise their rights to the letter of the law. And when she turned the page and saw their photographs she went cold inside. These were no scummy punk kids for whom violence was a substitute for discipline and direction. These were grown men in whom the evil was deliberate and directed and Gianna knew with a wrenching certainty that she had not seen the last of them.

  *****

  Mimi answered the phone, her mind on the immigration report she was reading, so the drugged, guttural voice registered no recognition in her consciousness.

  “Is that you, Newspaper Lady?”

  “Excuse me? Who is this?”

  “It’s me, Baby Doll. You know them two girls you was lookin’ for? Well, you can stop lookin’ ‘cause they dead.”

  Mimi instantly forgot about illegal immigrants and plunged right into the meaning of Baby Doll’s slurred words. It occurred to her that Baby Doll was in need of a fix and angling for money; but she also felt strongly that the girl was telling the truth. Mimi always attributed her success as an investigative reporter to the thing in her brain that categorized words as they came to her ears from others’ mouths: there were True Words; there were Lies; and there was Bullshit, which was usually a combination of truth and lies deliberately designed to obfuscate. Baby Doll’s words were true.

  “Do you know what happened to them, Baby?”

  “Oh, I heard some things,” Baby intoned much too casually.

  “Some things like what?” Mimi tensed because she knew what was coming next.

  “That’ll cost you, Newspaper Lady.”

  “I told you that I don’t pay for information.”

  “And I told you were fulla shit. You wanna know what I know, Newspaper Lady, meet me at the Connecticut Avenue Diner at two-thirty.”

  “Why the hurry?” Mimi looked at the row of clocks on the wall and saw that she’d need to leave now to be on time.

  “’Cause I’m hungry and ‘cause I need a fix, that’s why,” Baby said, irritated but with the guilelessness that never ceased to impress Mimi.

  “Baby, I hate drugs.”

  “Then don’t take ‘em. And you can either meet me and pay me or don’t meet me and don’t pay me but don’t lecture me ‘cause I don’t want to hear it.” And with that, Mimi was left listening to dial tone and cursing drugs as the greatest evil ever constructed by man.

  Someplace like he Connecticut Avenue Diner probably existed in some form in every big city in America, Mimi thought. An old place, spruced up and modernized, but eternally old. New booths of bright red pseudo-leather and lots of silver-looking chrome probably intended to suggest that it was polished on a regular basis. New miniature juke boxes at each booth with vintage country, blues, and rock and roll tunes. The new neon sign blinking continuously outside and reflecting its red and green glow back into the not quite clean windows. A waitress who hasn’t seen her twenty-fifth birthday, and a short order cook probably couldn’t remember his sixty-fifth but knew all the regular customers not only by name but how long they’d been customers because he’d been there thirty-two years himself. Laminated and therefore non-greasy menus spoke of eggs and omelets of every kind and description, accompanied by sausage and bacon and ham and grits and potatoes and all with or without cheese, all of the above to be had with cholesterol-free quasi-eggs and whole wheat or raisin toast instead of old-fashioned white bread. Pancakes, waffles, French toast served twenty-four hours a day. Smoking, drinking and bad attitudes not permitted. One sign above the cash register read, “In God we Trust, All others pay cash.” The other read, “If you’re in a hurry you’re in the wrong place.”

  Mimi knew that people came to the Connecticut Avenue Diner to eat and to read their newspapers—racing forms, sports pages, help wanted sections, advice columns; to argue politics; to work the kinks out of troubled relationships; to drink better coffee than was available at home; to be catered to and ignored at the same time. Men and women in the business suits of the commercial end of Connecticut Avenue shared booths and counter stools with beauticians, taxi drivers, construction workers, kids cutting class, hookers meeting reporters. The Connecticut Avenue Diner was the kind of place that had seen every kind of person and heard every kind of story and no matter how new and shiny the fixtures, the building had been in the same spot since 1937 and that much life raised the cholesterol count whether or not you ate the food.

  Mimi opened the door, spied a couple standing up to leave in the far left corner, and sprinted for the booth just as a guy in paint-spattered khakis came out of the bathroom and aimed toward it. Mimi slid into the seat, beating him by a hair of a second. He scowled at her and plopped onto a stool at the counter next to a teen-aged girl with orange spiky hair who held up a bottle of ketchup, waiting, in inane imitation of a commercial, for the stuff to come out. Mimi didn’t need to read the menu to know that she couldn’t safely eat anything listed, but she studied it anyway to have something to do while she waited for Baby Doll. Waited and decided how to say what she knew she must say without having Baby Doll explode.

  The stillness that enveloped the room was Mimi’s notice that Baby Doll had arrived, and she was surprised at how angry she felt at the hypocrisy of the people in the crowded and now silent diner. She had no qualms about believing that fully half of the men in the place had paid for the services of a prostitute at some time in their lives, and too many women allowed themselves to be treated worse than hookers for them to look down their noses a woman because she sold her body. But as Mimi turned toward the door, she had to admit that Baby’s appearance was sufficient to quiet even the sizzling bacon and burgers on the grill. Baby’s wig was peroxide white and cascaded at least a full twenty inches down her back. She wore thigh-high white patent leather boots with red laces and a skin-tight white leotard that began in the vicinity of her crotch and ended at the tops of her breasts. Underneath she wore a sheer red body stocking. On her nose perched a pair of wire-rimmed sunglasses with yellow tinted lenses, over which she peered in search of Mimi.

  “Hey Sister! You can’t hustle in here!” the short order cook yelled over the noise of sizzling grease.

  “It’s a diner, Sugah, not a motel. I got that much figured out,” Baby called back without the slightest trace of rancor. And she grinned good-naturedly at the pe
ople she passed en route to the booth where Mimi sat. The girl with the ketchup smiled back and the two boys in the booth next to Mimi gave her the thumbs up.

  “Hey, Newspaper Lady. What’s up?” Baby slid into the booth across from Mimi.

  “The temperature. Hot as hell out there.”

  “That’s why I said meet me in here. I’m hungry. You hungry?” Baby picked up the menu, scanned it with a practiced, nonchalant air, slapped it shut, and looked around for the waitress.

  “No, I’m not hungry. Listen, Baby...” Mimi was cut off as the waitress sidled up to the table with a closed-lidded look at Baby, who totally ignored the dirty look and didn’t wait to be asked her order.

  “I want waffles and sausage. And some scrambled eggs. Sure you ain’t hungry?” she asked Mimi.

  “Coffee, black,” Mimi said so that the waitress would go away.

  “That how you keep that body? Ain’t healthy, you know.”

  Mimi was irritated and didn’t mind showing it. “I don’t eat this kind of food. I’m a vegetarian. Now can we get to the business at hand?” Mimi was edgy because she knew she was about to disappoint Baby and she wanted to get on with it.

  “My friend Patricia was one of those. Vegetarian. One of the other girls, too. Said they liked eating that funny food. Not me. Personally, I can’t eat—”

  “One of what girls?” Mimi’s spine tingled.

  “One of your friends, that Shelley Kelley. I heard she was really into that whole spiritual thing. Don’t you get bored just eating vegetables?”

  Part of Mimi’s brain urged her to regain control of the situation, while the other part admitted that this was Baby’s show all the way. She knew that Baby regarded her on-demand presence as tacit agreement to pay for information. She also knew that she had no intention of giving Baby money, so that it was cruel to lead her on. Yet...and yet...

  “Baby, can you slow down and tell me in as few words as possible about this ‘spiritual thing’ so we can talk about what we’re here to talk about?”

  “Ain’t you a demanding bitch?” Baby intoned, and with a shrug, explained that members of what sounded to Mimi like an Ashram or some other communal group had begun working among the street prostitutes, urging them to take precautions against AIDS, offering free vegetarian meals at their headquarters uptown, and offering to teach yoga and meditation as a path to salvation. Free food was the initial attraction, according to Baby, though in the case of her friend, Patricia, the spiritual aspect had taken hold quickly and strongly.

  “She started talkin’ a lot about findin’ peace and joy inside herself, and about forgiveness. Stuff like that. And I guess it must’ve worked ‘cause she got clean.” For the briefest instant Baby was overcome by a palpable sadness. Then she shook it off, resumed her usual languor, and remembered why she was inhaling waffles, sausage and eggs at the Connecticut Avenue Diner. “And that’s enough free information, Newspaper Lady. Where’s my money?”

  “I don’t pay for information and I don’t pay for drugs.”

  An ugly look crossed Baby’s face, anger tinged with desperation and need. The need for drugs. “Don’t fuck with me,” she said quietly.

  “I’m not. I’ll help you if I can, Baby, pay your rent or your phone bill, but I won’t buy your drugs or give you money to buy drugs.”

  Their eyes met and held and Baby slowly stood, gathered her belongings, turned and walked away without another word or a backward glance.

  Mimi felt let down. Not because she’d not gotten the information from Baby: she’d expected that result when she made the decision not to pay her. But she’d also expected ballistics. Histrionics. She’d expected Baby to yell and scream and curse and be angry. That would have made her feel better, would have justified her decision. Now she felt manipulative and dishonest. Because she’d gotten information from Baby after all, a lead about some group who proselytized in the streets among the hookers, and though she’d thoroughly check it out, it didn’t make sense that people who preached internal joy, provided free vegetarian meals, and taught yoga and meditation to prostitutes, would then systematically murder them. But then, lots of things didn’t make sense to her. It didn’t make sense that teenagers sold their bodies for drugs and money. It didn’t make sense that the drugs were so easily and readily available. It didn’t make sense that she found herself caring what the hell Marlene Somebody aka Baby Doll did with her life. It didn’t make sense that she really wanted to know what had happened to those other girls, not for a newspaper article but because some part of her believed that whatever happened to them was unwarranted. It didn’t make sense that it was a hundred fucking degrees for the fifth day in a row and it was only June. July and August would be hell.

  Tim McCreedy somehow managed to create the illusion that he had contorted and compressed his weightlifter’s body into that of a mincing, nerdy twerp, as he demonstrated for the Hate Crimes team his queenly badgering of one of the investigators in Homicide. He played to his colleagues gathered in the Think Tank as if to the Saturday night crowd at the Comedy Club.

  “By the time I finished talking to Mr. Boy about the sanctity of the evidence chain, he was ready to throw a knife in my heart. And your Captain Pelligrino, Lieutenant. So very embarrassed to have to admit that portions of the files were missing. Until I found them. ‘How the hell did you know where to look,’ Mr. Boy growled at me when the Captain left the room. ‘Simple,’ I told him. ‘I just have to pretend to be as brilliant as you and everything just falls into place.’ If looks could kill, I’d be one dead queen.”

  Lynda Lopez was laughing so hard Bobby Gilliam had to slap her on the back to restore her breath. Eric, tears in his eyes, gave up trying to maintain decorum. Kenny Chang stood and tried to imitate Tim’s mannerisms. Cassie Ali let out a whoop then hurled herself at Tim and wrapped him in a bear hug that almost shut off his breath, quite an accomplishment since he was a foot taller and almost a hundred pounds heavier than she.

  “McCreedy, you’re beautiful,” she intoned in her deadpan voice. “May we always fight on the same side, and may we always win.” She raised an imaginary glass in an imaginary toast and they all joined in saluting McCreedy.

  “Good work, Tim,” Gianna said through her laughter.

  “Thanks, Lieutenant,” he said, always knowing when to cut off the act. “I hope none of this comes back to haunt you.”

  “They better hope it doesn’t come back to haunt them,” Kenny snorted from his Tim-like pose. “They’re the ones who screwed up the files, not us.”

  And Tim McCreedy had unscrewed them. He had located the misplaced autopsy and forensic reports; the missing death certificate; the witness and interview lists. It had taken three tedious weeks. Then he had spent another week helping Cassie construct her file on Andrea Thomas, aka Starry Knight; helping Lynda construct her file on Sandra King, aka Shelley Kelley; helping Bobby construct his file on Rhonda Green, aka Lady Day; helping Kenny construct his file on Patricia McIntyre, aka Patty Mack. That was after he’d confirmed his boss’s fears and suspicions and privately delivered to her the two additional files: There were at least two more victims of the knife-wielding killer, Jane Does, never identified and therefore never claimed. Pieces of these Jane Doe files had been merged with the other files—not intentionally, Tim had emphasized—but no less disconcertingly. In one case, the knife had been removed from the victim’s chest before authorities took possession of the body—in other words, Tim had told Gianna, somebody stole the knife from the murdered woman’s body while it lay in an alley—and it was months before investigators realized that the murdered woman probably was a Daniel Boone victim, though without the weapon, they’d never know for sure.

  *****

  The Chief of Police didn’t walk so much as propel himself forward on the balls of his feet, bouncing a bit with each step, generating urgency and immediacy and a sense of purpose. He was pacing back in forth in his huge office on the top floor of the Municipal Center, his shiny black shoe
s sinking with every step almost to invisibility in the plush gold carpet. When he’d sent for her, told her to be in his office at seven thirty, she’d thought he wanted an update on the Daniel Boone investigation, so she gave him an update. Walked him through every detail of each of the cases. Talked to him like the homicide detective he once was.

  Now, watching him, she wasn’t certain what he wanted. He’d ceased his pacing. When in repose, he stood almost on tiptoe, heels raised slightly off the floor, torso leaning forward, ready to launch into action at the slightest provocation. He was fifty-four years old and it was only the grey in his hair and moustache and the network of fine lines around his eyes and mouth that verified that truth, for he could, on any day, step into the ring and become again the Golden Gloves boxer whose card name thirty-odd years ago was Scrappy. He was, to her dismay, in exactly that frame of mind.

  “Don’t complain to me about the sorry state of some files, Maglione. Don’t you read the newspapers? You’re lucky there were files.” He thrust his hands into his pockets and jingled the change in one of them.

  The gesture, for some reason, irritated her more than his words. She didn’t need the newspapers to tell her that D.C. had one of the highest murder rates in the country, and one of the lowest case closure rates. She didn’t need the papers to tell her what she read from the sag in Vince Pelligrino’s shoulders. But she did need the Chief to respond to her concerns, especially since he’d ordered her to report to him and not to her immediate boss, a situation that made her increasingly uneasy.

  “Anyway,” he continued in his rapid-fire delivery, “you suspected all along that what we saw was just the tip of the iceberg. Now you know you were right.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” She was getting angry and did nothing to disguise the fact. “You want me to break my arm patting myself on the back, or do you want me determine just how serious a problem we have?”

  “I know how serious the problem is, Maglione,” he snapped at her. “And I’m gonna tell you how serious it is. Serious enough for me to move Hate Crimes into my office.” He dropped that bomb and stood on his toes waiting for it to register, waiting for her to grasp the full impact.