Kurtz and Barent Mystery Series: Books 1-3, page 40
“I’m sorry,” Caruso said. “I couldn’t really see. Like I told you, I wasn’t real interested.”
“How about the Mercedes, then; anything else you can remember about that?”
Caruso squinted his eyes, trying to think. “It was a recent model, but not real recent. The headlights were set into the front and they were parallel to the ground. The older model Mercedes, the headlights were up and down and placed on the front bumpers. I liked those old model Mercedes. They had class. Daimler must agree with me, sort of.” Stanley smiled wanly. “The newest models have the headlights set into the front but they’re up and down, sort of the modern-retro look.” Stanley sniffed. “Frankly, I think the new ones look stupid.”
“Setting the headlights into the grill is supposed to be aerodynamic,” Barent said. “It promotes fuel mileage.”
“A guy owns a Mercedes, he shouldn’t have to worry about fuel mileage. He’s got a car that’s supposed to make a statement.”
“So it was a recent model Mercedes, but not too recent. Anything else?”
“No.” Caruso shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“The license plate?”
“I didn’t see it. I couldn’t even tell you what state it was.”
“How about the hubcaps?” Moran asked. “Were they chrome, or were they painted?”
Caruso looked as if he knew exactly what Moran was talking about, which was more than Barent did. He thought for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Chrome,” he said.
Moran nodded and leaned back again in his seat.
After a moment, Barent asked, “Getting back to the men,” Barent said, “were they young or old?”
Caruso shrugged. “No idea. I figure, a guy wears a nice coat and a hat and drives a Mercedes, he can’t be a kid. But aside from that, I didn’t see either of them close enough to tell.”
“Could you tell how tall they were?”
“The one in the blue jeans was a little taller than the other. How tall was that?” Stanley shrugged.
“And what time of the day was this?”
“It was two-fifteen. I always left at two-fifteen. After that, the kids start coming home from school. More chance of being seen.”
“And you didn’t notice when these men arrived, being occupied inside the house.”
Caruso gave Barent a wounded look. “Hey, come on,” he said. “Give a guy a break, okay?”
“Sorry,” Barent said. Strangely enough, he actually meant it. Stanley’s hang dog face made him feel guilty.
“The answer is no,” Caruso said. “I got to Linda’s house around twelve-thirty. I don’t think the Mercedes was there when I arrived but I’m not sure. I didn’t notice it.”
Barent glanced at Moran. Moran shrugged.
“Go on home, Mr. Caruso,” Barent said. Caruso looked up at him with sudden hope. “Please don’t discuss this with anyone.” The admonition was pro-forma. Stanley was getting off lucky, and he knew it.
“Fat chance,” Caruso said. “You think I’m crazy?”
Barent sighed. “Go home, Mr. Caruso.”
“You bet,” Caruso said. “Thanks.”
He rose from his chair and left the room, gripping his Homburg in both hands.
“The guy’s old-fashioned,” Moran said when Caruso had gone. “He likes hats. He likes the old-style Mercedes.”
“He likes young housewives.”
Moran shrugged. “There is that.”
“What was that business with the hubcaps?”
“Daimler-Benz used to paint their hubcaps the same color as the cars. Even when they switched to the modern front grill with the recessed headlights, they continued to paint the hubcaps for another couple of years. They changed to chrome hubcaps a few years later.” Moran frowned down into his coffee. “Doesn’t help us much. It’s probably been fifteen years since they switched. Maybe more.”
“How come you know so much about Mercedes?”
“We’re saving up to buy one. I want to make a statement.”
“The guy who killed Mahoney was making all sorts of statements. Nice suit, nice car. Carving somebody to pieces and stuffing his penis in his mouth … makes quite a statement, don’t you think?”
Glumly, Moran nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “But what does it all mean?”
“Isn’t it obvious? It means the guy didn’t like Rod Mahoney.”
“Oh,” Moran said. “Yeah. Thanks a lot.”
Chapter 18
Kurtz had been a junior medical student, on his very first clinical rotation, when he lost his first patient. The patient was a black man in his early thirties–Kurtz couldn’t remember his name–recently released from the ICU and assigned to Kurtz’ floor. The patient had advanced cirrhosis compounded by alcoholic hepatitis. Such patients rarely recovered. This patient, however, had responded to steroids and supportive therapy. His few remaining liver cells had groaned and begun to metabolize and his blood chemistries had returned, if not to normal, then at least to a range compatible with life, and so he was moved out of intensive care and into Kurtz’ inexperienced but eager hands.
Kurtz’ resident at the time, a tall, skinny second-year named Harold Klein, had scratched his head, sighed and gone with Kurtz into the patient’s room as soon as he arrived from the ICU. “Oh, boy,” Harold muttered. “This guy’s a train wreck.”
The patient lay on the bed, breathing shallowly and muttering to himself. He was skinny as a rail except for a huge abdomen, swollen with ascitic fluid.
Harold flipped through the patient’s chart while Kurtz awkwardly listened to his heart and lungs and percussed the abdomen. The patient, if he noticed Kurtz at all, ignored him and continued to mutter.
“Okay,” Harold said. “The first thing to do is draw some blood for labs and start a new IV.”
“He’s got an IV,” Kurtz said.
“Yeah, but it’s thrombosed.”
Harold was right. The IV site was red, the fluid barely dripping. “They should have changed it a few days ago.”
“Okay,” Kurtz said.
Harold grinned. “I’ll be down the hall. Come and get me when you’re done.” Harold walked out and Kurtz spent the next twenty minutes struggling to find a vein large enough for a catheter. That was probably why they hadn’t changed the IV, Kurtz thought. The guy had really lousy veins.
Absently, Kurtz noticed that the patient had stopped muttering. A few seconds later, Kurtz managed to slip a pediatric size catheter into a vein in the left antecubital. The blood seemed quite dark. Then it hit him. The patient was lying still, his eyes closed, his mouth barely open, his chest barely rising.
Oh, my God, Kurtz thought. He felt unreal, like a character in a TV show. He would always remember thinking, If this guy is arresting I have to call a code but if I call a code and it turns out that he’s just fallen asleep I’m going to look like a grade-A idiot.
Kurtz reached out a trembling hand and felt for the pulse in the neck. There wasn’t one. Okay, he thought, just like the movies. He stuck his head out into the hallway, screamed at the nursing station and started CPR. Within about sixty seconds it seemed that half the hospital was in the patient’s room.
So they ran the code and the patient died anyway, which was the way it happened more often than not, and Kurtz felt miserable.
Kurtz had been at a lot of cardiac arrests since then and the whole thing had long since come to seem normal. Disgusting but normal. He grinned. He thought about it now, not because anybody was dying but because of the feeling he had had at the time. He would never forget that feeling, the sense that the world he moved in was somehow unreal, was simply too strange to be believed.
He had the same feeling right now because someone was obviously following him, just like in the movies.
Kurtz had finished dictating his last chart at 5 PM and then closed the office. His apartment was crosstown but Kurtz liked the exercise and he usually walked. This day, however, had been cloudy and by evening, a fine mist filled the air. For a moment, he considered hailing a cab, but it wasn’t actually raining and the temperature was warm. He shrugged and started down the street.
He was strolling along with his hands in his pockets when his foot slipped for an instant on some sodden leaves. He stumbled, and had half turned around before he could right himself. Behind him, nearly the length of the block, he saw a man in a blue down parka walking along. The man stopped for an instant when Kurtz began to fall, then hesitated. Kurtz paid him no mind.
Two blocks later, in the darkened window of a shuttered store, Kurtz saw the reflection of a man in a blue parka. He stopped. The man in the parka stopped also. Was it the same man? He was too far away to tell much about him but Kurtz thought that he was. He was average height and thin. He had dark hair cut short around the sides. He was pale and appeared to be clean-shaven.
“Shit.” Kurtz muttered it to himself. He turned left at the corner and walked around the block, then turned right and went another block. He leaned over then, and pretended to tie his shoelace. Far in the distance, a man in a blue parka strolled slowly along behind him.
Kurtz hailed a cab. He gave the cabby his address and within five minutes arrived at the front door of his building. He looked around. No blue parka. Kurtz breathed a sigh of relief.
“He must be an amateur,” Barent said. There was a faint crackle of static over the phone. “You would never have spotted a pro.”
Amateur or pro, Kurtz was not pleased. “So what do you figure?”
“Hard to say. Number one, the character might have been simply out for a walk. It’s possible that he wasn’t following you at all.”
“He was definitely following me.”
Barent went on as if Kurtz had not spoken. “Number two, it might have been some kid who was sizing up his chances, maybe thinking about a mugging, but you kept to well-lit streets and never gave him a chance.”
“That’s possible,” Kurtz said.
“And number three, you’ve been asking a lot of questions. Maybe you’ve started to attract attention.”
“I’ve been asking questions but I haven’t been getting any answers.”
“Maybe you’re closer than you think.”
“I don’t see how. The only people I’ve talked to about the murder are Nolan and Redding, and they don’t know shit.”
“How about the drug business? You talk to anybody about that?”
Kurtz shrugged uncomfortably. “A few.”
Barent cleared his throat. He sounded reluctant. “Want us to put a man on you for the next few days? Ordinarily, a story like this, it’s pretty soft, but I figure you deserve it.”
Barent had briefed Kurtz some nights ago about Stanley Caruso. Barent had already decided that Rod Mahoney’s murderer had to be an amateur. Caruso’s story tended to confirm it. Pros did not use garden implements to carve up their victims. They didn’t hit them in the head with a crowbar, either. They shot them in the head with a gun.
The cadavers on Halloween night had been dismembered by more than one person. That was a safe supposition. Too many bodies had been mutilated and too many body parts scattered about the room for the perpetrator to have been one person. Then there was Jerry Rubino, Hickey and Marcia Rice. Two murders plus a whole slew of lesser crimes, all of which might have nothing to do with each other …
“If you had to guess,” Kurtz said. “What would it be?”
Barent was silent for a moment. Then he said reluctantly, “Your involvement with Rod Mahoney’s murder is peripheral at best, and despite the fact that you’ve been talking about the mutilated cadavers, frankly, you’re just dicking around. You haven’t gotten a thing. If I had to take a guess, I would say Rubino. Your role in that particular incident has been well-publicized.”
“You think it’s someone in the hospital?”
“I have no idea.”
“Great.”
“So, you want us to put a man on you, or not?”
“No,” Kurtz said shortly. Whoever was doing this couldn’t possibly know how much Kurtz knew (which was nothing). If Kurtz were merely curious, then the smartest thing by far would be to let him strictly alone. If Kurtz were more than curious (which of course he was), then it would be even smarter to leave him alone. After all, if Richard Kurtz was the duly appointed agent of the police, then the police were a pretty pitiful bunch (which maybe they were). In either case, the best course of action for the bad guys to follow would be to avoid creating any more of a stir than they already had.
The question was: were the bad guys smart? Bad guys often weren’t. It was the cops’ greatest weapon, the general stupidity of the criminal mind. People who were smart rarely turned to crime.
“Hell no,” Kurtz said again. “As long as they’re amateurs, let them nibble. Maybe I can catch one.”
Barent grunted. “Be careful,” he said.
“You bet.”
For the next few days, Kurtz watched his back. He avoided lonely streets. In the evenings, when he was in the habit of running, he ran along avenues crowded with pedestrians. He told Lenore nothing of what was going on.
And, in fact, nothing was going on.
He saw nobody in a blue parka and no matter how closely he peered at the crowds, nobody seemed to be following him. Reluctantly, he concluded that Barent’s choice number two must have been the correct one. Most likely it was just a kid sizing up the odds, a chance encounter that would not be repeated.
He wished he could believe it.
It took him a few moments to place the voice. “Detective Barent?” Uncertain, high-pitched …
“Yes?” he said.
“This is Evelyn Richter.”
“Of course,” he said. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Richter?” He made a shushing motion at Harry Moran, who raised an eyebrow, looked briefly amused but nevertheless stopped speaking to Arnie Figueroa.
“I should have told you the other day when you were talking to us but Jay told me not to.” Her voice was a breathy whisper. She sounded distraught. “I know who might have killed Rod.”
Might have killed Rod? Any one of the twenty million people in the New York Metropolitan area might have killed Rod Mahoney. “Who, Mrs. Richter?”
“Kevin,” she said.
Barent paused. “Professor Mahoney’s son?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you say that?”
“About six months ago, Rod and Kevin had an argument. It was terrible. Afterward, they wouldn’t speak to each other for weeks.”
“What was this argument about?”
Evelyn Richter’s voice seemed to hesitate. “I’m not sure. Jay and I were over for dinner. The argument was in the bedroom and we couldn’t hear very much of it. As soon as we arrived, Claire knocked on the door and they shut up. When they came out, they barely looked at each other. It wasn’t a very pleasant evening, I can tell you that.”
“Did you hear any of this argument?”
“I heard Kevin call his father a prick.”
Really … Evelyn Richter might have something after all. “And you have no idea at all what they were arguing about?”
“I didn’t say that. I said I wasn’t sure what they were arguing about.”
Evelyn Richter, he reminded himself, was not one of the world’s great minds. “What do you think they were arguing about, Mrs. Richter?”
“Drugs,” she said.
“Drugs,” Barent repeated slowly. Moran raised his head and looked at him, a hunting dog on point.
“I’m not certain, but that’s what I think.”
“Why do you think they were arguing about drugs?”
“Because it sounded like they were arguing about drugs.”
Sounded … A defense attorney would have licked his chops and torn her to shreds. “And what exactly do you mean by that, Mrs. Richter?”
“I could hear Rod yell something like, ‘too stoned to study,’ and then he said something about Kevin treating college like ‘a summer camp for psychotics.’ I remember that distinctly, ‘a summer camp for psychotics.’ That’s a very clever line, don’t you think?”
It was clever. Barent would have to remember it. “Was there anything else that you recall, Mrs. Richter?”
“No,” she said.
“Did Mrs. Mahoney say anything?”
“No. As soon as we arrived, she went in and shut them up. I told you that.”
“Did you ever hear anything like this again?”
“No. Just the one time.”
Evelyn Richter and her husband were not exactly close to the Mahoneys, Barent reflected. Quite a lot could have been going on and she wouldn’t necessarily have known a thing. “Thank you, Mrs. Richter,” he said. “You’ve been a big help. We’ll look into it.”
Chapter 19
Kevin Mahoney went to Hanover College, which used to be an exclusive institution for women but had been co-educational since 1971. Hanover was in Ithaca, near Cornell. Barent and Moran drove up the next day and arrived at the college a little after two in the afternoon. The place looked just like Barent imagined a college should, tree lined walkways, ivy-covered buildings. A college. Barent himself had gone to NYU, which was a pretty good school academically but which looked more like a series of jails. Then again, there wasn’t a lot to do up in Ithaca during the winter. Except study, and maybe get drunk and stoned. Two pretty coeds carrying books under their arms looked at Moran and then at each other, giggling … well, maybe a few other things to do up here, as well.
“Nice place,” Moran said.
“Yeah,” Barent said.
They had already finished a meeting with the Dean of Students, who had informed them that Kevin Mahoney got good grades and had never–so far as their records went–been in any sort of trouble. They had not even bothered to ask about drugs on campus, figuring that the Dean would have nothing to say. Their next meeting was with Edward Horvath, the senior student who was Kevin Mahoney’s floor counselor.
Horvath was a pale, blonde kid with pimples. He was short but built like a weightlifter. The two cops met him in a small office on the Fifth Floor. The office had undoubtedly been converted from a dorm room. It was tiny and had a sink in the corner. The carpet was threadbare. One window that appeared long overdue for a washing looked out on a tree-lined quad. There was barely enough room for two rickety chairs opposite the small, wooden desk.
