American Devil (40 page)

‘We got to talk to you, now,’ said Harper. ‘Your man, the big guy who works here, where is he?’

The short guy stood up and looked them up and down. ‘Not again, for fuck’s sake.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s out. What’s it to you?’

‘Listen, Mr Marconi, we’re investigating a homicide case and we need to speak to the big guy. Where is he?’

Benny laughed out loud. ‘Are you kidding me? Fuck you! We don’t hear nothing out here. We don’t know nothing. All I know is he’s not here.’

‘I promise we ain’t kidding you,’ said Eddie, moving up tight to the storekeeper. ‘I can have twenty detectives tear the store to pieces, close you down for so long you ain’t never gonna open again.’

‘You think the fucking shakedown is gonna work on me? Forget it. Show me a warrant. You ain’t got a thing. Go find him yourself.’

Harper turned quickly. ‘What name does he go by here?’

‘He’s called Redtop, on account of his preference for wearing the same top every day of his life. I gave him the name.’

‘What about his real name for payroll?’

‘I pay him cash. He’s called Mo. I don’t know any more.’

‘You got an address?’

‘No. Don’t know where he lives. I pay him peanuts and I pay him daily. He’s only just started. He’s the cheapest labour I ever had so I ain’t asking questions.’

‘You want to be an accessory after the fact in a major homicide case, Mr Marconi? Now, give us his address.’

The man went into the back store and came out with a ledger. He put it on the desk and turned it to them.

‘This is his employment record. It’s all I got.’ On the page was the name Mo and a straight line under the address. ‘I don’t know where this man lives or even if he has a place to live. He carries a laundry bag everywhere, maybe he lives out of that.’

Harper handed him a card. ‘The moment you hear from this guy, you call me. He could be a killer.’

Benny laughed. ‘He’s not a killer. He can’t even swat a fly.’

‘Call us,’ said Tom.

They didn’t know if this had anything to do with the American Devil but Harper felt this was the nearest they’d been since the beginning. They just had to find this guy now. How hard could it be to find a man like that in Harlem?

They walked out of the store. ‘I’ve got a team coming up to watch the 7-Eleven. What do you say we do, Tom?’ asked Eddie.

Tom wasn’t sure. He stopped for a moment. ‘The thing that’s bothering me is this. If he’s got Lucy James hidden somewhere in the city and we spook him, she could starve to death. We got to tread carefully. Can you get any more bodies up here to walk the streets?’

‘I’ll call in some favours,’ said Eddie.

 

‘H
ere’s your guy,’ Eddie said as he tossed a folder into Harper’s lap. ‘This drawing is based on the description given by Lucy James’s boyfriend.’ The police drawing was a close enough fit to the man they’d seen at the store. The big guy with the red turtleneck. They had an ID but no name.

The next part was harder - finding someone in a city of eight million. Mo was likely to be on foot. As far as they knew he didn’t have a vehicle so he was likely to be only a short distance from the 7-Eleven and Washington House. All they had to do was get a team together and start asking the streetwalkers and searching the areas in the radius.

Eddie had done a job on this one too. He hadn’t told Tom a thing. They pulled into the car park of North General Hospital in East Harlem and there in front of them were six detectives from the NYPD. Cops who had not taken to the mayor’s bureaucratic reforms. They wanted to help out a cop with good instincts. They also wanted to shake the hand of the man who’d floored Lieutenant Jarvis, twice.

A detective called MacGyver spoke for the group.

‘We understand you need help on this. Help of the unofficial kind. We’re happy to do charity work, we’re that kind of people.’

Harper smiled. He outlined the case against Redtop. He was the last person to see Lottie Bixley alive and he was spotted moments before Lucy James’s disappearance. And the bonus was that this kidnapper might have some connection to the serial killer called the American Devil. All the team had to do was to spread out and get the low-down from every wino, lowlife and prostitute in the area and then see if they couldn’t track Redtop down.

They worked in pairs. Harper teamed up with a rookie cop by the name of Shane Dell. He was a clean-cut redhead with a clear sense of justice.

They walked the area non-stop for a couple of hours. They must’ve stopped and talked to over a hundred people. Some just ignored them, others tried to help but had nothing. There were a couple of near misses - people thought they recognized the picture but then changed their minds. They had one thing that was helping them, though: solidarity. This was a man who might have murdered a prostitute, so they found the hookers happy to talk for once.

At the western side of Marcus Garvey Memorial Park, they got their first positive identification. Shane Dell approached a group of prostitutes sitting on a low wall next to a basketball court. He talked to them for five minutes and then called Harper across.

‘This is Tom Harper. He believes someone took the woman we were talking about.’ They looked up and nodded. ‘Tell him what you told me.’

A black woman in her late twenties moved her head back and forth and looked around her suspiciously.

‘I’m only saying we’ve seen that guy. Don’t know who he is. He’s one of the roaming-lonely you see around. Always carrying a heavy bag. Lost his mind.’

‘Where have you seen him?’

‘Around. Nowhere in particular. He sits in the parks. I seen him sitting in the parks.’

They couldn’t help any more so the two policemen thanked them and moved on. At six, the unofficial search team all met up at a restaurant.

Bridges and Swanson had the same experience. Plenty of interest, not a lot of positives, but two who’d definitely seen him around. MacGyver and Lacey had nothing. Eddie and his partner had had better luck.

‘We got a positive who identified him as “Redtop”,’ he said.

‘Anything we can go on?’ asked Harper.

‘They’ve seen him twice around East 126th Street. We could put a couple of guys on the street corner and see what comes up. How about it?’

Harper agreed and they sent Bridges and Swanson to watch East 126th Street. The rest of them drank their coffee and went back to the search.

 

M
o was standing in a shop front with his suitcase by his side. His coat was buttoned up high to hide his red rollneck. The cops were after him again. He’d seen them around the store and called Benny from a callbox. Benny told him that they wanted to speak to him. They thought he’d murdered someone. Mo hadn’t murdered anyone. He’d only ever loved Lottie. He was terrified. He didn’t dare go home or back to the store. So he had to hide out in an abandoned building for most of the day, but he couldn’t stop himself worrying.

The thought of having no more nights with Lucy was hard. He loved Lucy now. She was warm like a big hound and her skin was soft. She was just about perfect. And now she was up in his dirty little apartment with no one to care for her. It was breaking his heart.

At one time during the evening, Mo walked by the end of his street and saw a cop standing right there, only a few hundred yards from his building and from Lucy James. The fact of the matter was Redtop wasn’t going to be able to visit the girl from the park again for a while - not while the cops had his apartment covered. Lucy would just have to wait until this whole thing had blown over. Then he could go back to see her and give her some yoghurt and fresh fruit. In a couple of weeks or so, he could fetch her.

In the doorway, Mo entertained himself by capturing moths that flew towards the bright shop light. He had caught three already. He liked the sensation of their flapping wings in his hand. It tickled him. Then when he opened his hand and they flew out, it was like he was a magician or something.

He wanted to see Lucy so damn much, though. It meant that he’d have to sleep alone for a few days on a hard stone floor. Mo sat down in the doorway and cried.

 

Less than half a mile away, Lucy James was tethered to the bed in the disused school building where Mo lived. The effect of the chloroform had worn off and no one was there to give her a fresh lungful. Lucy opened her eyes. The room was not hers. She could smell that straight away. It smelled bad. Very bad. She looked up at the cracked, dirty ceiling. Her limbs felt leaden. They ached. In fact, she ached all over. As consciousness began to piece together her situation, she felt her head throbbing. She looked around, left to right, unable yet to lift herself.

The room was dark and cold. She was lying in a bed. The memory was quick. It came in a flurry, like a door opening on to a wall of water - suddenly everything flooded in. The night in the snow, Seth, the fear, the blow to her head.

She tried to sit upright but her arms and legs were tethered to the bed with restraints like they had in mental hospitals. Someone could be in there with her. She looked about. The room seemed clear. There were two doors, one either side of her. She wasn’t one of life’s copers. She had been spoilt from birth with all kinds of stuff. Daddy and Mummy had spoilt her with toys and gifts when she was little because they never saw her. They both worked so hard. But she had a nice nanny. Then when Daddy and Mummy got their divorce, they both spent all their time spoiling her. So she had never thought about anybody but herself. And she always got what she wanted. And now Lucy was in real trouble and she had no idea what to do.

She prayed first. Tried to think about God and asked him to protect her. Then she began to assess her position. She tried to look under the bedclothes. She could see by her arms and shoulders that she was wearing a nightdress. Across the room, her clothes were lined up all neatly folded. This was so weird, it felt dream-like.

She’d also soiled herself. The smell was coming from her. Jesus, what the hell was going on! Lucy looked about her for something to help her, but there was nothing. Her incapacity was terrifying. She couldn’t even raise her hand to her face. What had her captor done to her? He might have done anything. The white flashes of fear kept washing away her thoughts. It was all too frightening. Even worse, what might he do next?

The man who’d been holding her in this room was clearly deranged, but she didn’t know yet what he wanted from her. She shuddered with the thought and pushed it from her mind. She couldn’t allow herself the luxury of dwelling. She had to do something. She needed a plan. If he came back, should she be nice, or resistant? Which way would save her? She had no idea.

Mummy and Daddy would be going crazy. She had no idea how long she’d been gone for, but even a few hours would freak them out. They’d be in pieces and then they’d start arguing over whose fault it was. She could hear them in her head.

As she lay there, another thought occurred. This was worse. What if he wasn’t going to come back at all? It made her cry as she lay there, the tears welling in her eye sockets and streaming down her face. She couldn’t just lie here and die. She knew nothing about living, let alone dying. But if no one came back . . . what would happen?

She was already thirsty. How long could a body survive without water? She’d done it in biology. Was it a few days? Something like that. Yeah. There was time. About three days. She could survive. But Christ, what she’d give for a glass of Evian.

 

T
he limousine cruised powerfully over the Hell Gate Bridge. At night, New York had to be one of the most beautiful sights in the world, sparkling with lights over the stretch of water known as Hell Gate. There was nothing like coming home to Manhattan. Nothing in the world, according to Senator John Stanhope. He loved New York. He’d given his life to New York. He’d worked his ass off to represent the 34th Senate District at the New York State Senate and now he was a state senator and everything was groovy. His daughters made him promise not to use that word, but in secret he still did. It made him laugh. Why not laugh? You had to, right?

At fifty-five years old John Stanhope was a family man, a Protestant who worked hard and believed in America. He was brought up very modestly in West Virginia, on a farm in the north-east of the state, and had worked himself into the privileged position of senator after becoming CEO of a pharmaceutical company. It didn’t concern his morality that this company was making millions selling drugs to African nations, that was just business. John knew how to separate business from private morality and the lessons of the Bible.

His second wife, Caroline, was a political lobbyist and she got on with his two daughters, Mary and Rose, who were twenty-one and nineteen. And all four of them got on real well. He was delighted with that. A real happy family.

It had been a busy day for him. It started with a run round the park at 6 a.m. and then breakfast with several newspapers before his briefing at 8.30 a.m. and his first committee meeting at 9.30. He was a member of quite a few committees so he was always back and forth from the State Senate to deal with aspects of Security, Education, Armed Services, Housing, Health and Urban Affairs.

It was amazing what you ended up dealing with, but you just had to listen closely, remember what you were there for and vote or decide accordingly.

Now he was whacked and ready for a whisky by the fire with Caroline and a cuddle from the girls.

His security men got out of his car and stood still, their eyes scanning around. Senator Stanhope climbed out and walked across the drive behind the tall electronic gates.