The Silver Chariot Killer. Richard A. Lupoff
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holiday season and blah-blah-blah and.…
Lindsey jerked awake. He’d set the timer and dozed off. Now the microwave signal was sounding. His dinner was ready, and he was too sleepy to do more than pick at it.
Once he’d disposed of the tray and the uneaten food, he washed up and climbed into Cletus Berry’s futon. There were times when Lindsey had done some of his best thinking lying in bed at night, staring at the ceiling and reviewing the day’s events. There were other times when he’d found comfort in the presence of Marvia Plum.
But tonight Marvia was almost 2,000 miles away, and there was no comfort for Lindsey in that.
And as for thinking—he fell asleep thinking about thinking.
Not an idea, not an image or a hint of a dream. Just the watery December sunlight waking him again. He put on a pair of socks to keep his feet warm, even though Berry had furnished the office with a carpet. He made himself a cup of instant coffee in the nuker and sat at Cletus Berry’s desk to drink it.
After he’d taken a few sips he got up and shuffled to the closet, warming his feet with the friction. He pulled the button and pamphlet that he’d bought at the Amoroso rally the day before, from his overcoat pocket. He returned to the desk and laid them in front of Berry’s computer, swallowed another sip of coffee and opened the pamphlet.
The coffee was drinkable—barely—but grocery store instant was a far cry from the Jamaican Blue that Marvia Plum used to brew. For a moment he tried to imagine himself facing Marvia across a breakfast table in a cozy apartment, maybe with Jamie in colorful pajamas sitting in another chair, then shook away the image. That was not to be.
He focused on the pamphlet.
The front page featured a photo of Congressman Amoroso in what might have been a vaguely imperial pose, the familiar horse-and-chariot logo ghosted in behind him. The headline read AMERICA NEEDS AMOROSO and the body type—actually pretty minimal—touched on a series of hot buttons. Apparently Amoroso was a reformer. In fact, his solution to every problem seemed simple and emphatic. One word. Reform.
Tax Reform!
Budget Reform!
Welfare Reform!
Education Reform!
Immigration Reform!
Law Enforcement Reform!
The centerfold of the pamphlet consisted of a review of Amoroso’s brilliant career and endorsement statements from leading citizens, all superimposed on that ghostly chariot image.
Lindsey picked up the shiny button. Yep, there it was again, in glossy silver ink on an imperial purple background, and the word AMOROSO in glaring yellow letters.
Back to the pamphlet. Lindsey shook his head. He was learning more about Randolph Amoroso than he really cared to know…and next to nothing about Cletus Berry. Even so, it was all information, and he’d been surprised more than once when seemingly unconnected facts had suddenly fallen into place to clarify a previously puzzling picture.
Back to the pamphlet.
The last page was topped by the chariot image, not ghosted this time, and a couple of paragraphs about its history, connecting it with the great men of history including Julius Caesar and the greatness that was Rome.
Lindsey shoved the pamphlet and button into a coat pocket; he was ready to forget about the Amoroso rally and the whole senatorial race. It had nothing to do with Cletus Berry, he kept telling himself. The trouble was, so far nothing had to do with Berry.
He phoned Marcie Sokolov at Midtown North. She was not happy to take his call and she had nothing new to tell him. She made it clear that she was a very busy police officer and that she didn’t have time to chat with every amateur sleuth and detective wannabe who happened to take an interest in a strictly routine murder.
After that rebuff Lindsey climbed into a sweater and woolen slacks, pulled on a warm coat and rode down in the elevator. Traffic in the lobby was light. Lou Halter sat at his desk wearing his gray guard’s uniform, blue sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve, his holster strapped to his hip, coffee cup and Daily News in front of him. He looked up and nodded to Lindsey.
“Lou,” Lindsey said, “if you don’t mind—how many hours do you work? Is there a guard here around the clock?”
Halter said, “Regular eight-hour shift. Me and the Bermúdez boys. Rodrigo and Benjamino. We swing through weekends, double shifts, so we can get a day off. Boss brings in temps for days like Christmas and Easter. I’d take the extra shift myself, it’s golden time, but he won’t go for it.”
He folded his newspaper carefully and stifled a yawn. “The work isn’t really too hard, see. I’m on Social Security, got nothin’ else to do, this gives me a place to go, keeps me out of trouble—heh—and I get some nice pocket money. Send it to my kids and grandkids. I don’t need it. Nope. Rigo an’ Mino, they’re a couple of go-getters. Came here, studyin’ hard, the two of ’em. They’re going places, believe you me.”
Lindsey gestured at the tabloid, and asked if there was anything new on the Berry case.
Halter turned to a black headline on an inside page. “Just finished reading about that, Mr. Lindsey. Not a peep about Mr. Berry. But they’ve got some stuff here on Frankie the Four-flusher.”
He tapped a photo with one blunt fingernail. “See that? I guess he knew his way around a little.” He turned the paper so Lindsey could see the photo.
It was a file shot. Lindsey recognized Frankie Fulton from the corpse photo in the previous morning’s News. This picture showed Fulton in better days, posing with a prosperous-looking older man and a lightly-clad showgirl. The scene was apparently a nightclub, and the clothing and hair-styles looked like something ten or fifteen years out of date.
The cut-line identified Fulton as a “Onetime mob enforcer and café society habitué.” As for the showgirl with him—she was spectacular, there was no denying that, and she did not make any effort to conceal her charms. The cutline identified her as Millicent Martin, “Photographed shortly before her still unsolved gangland-style slaying.”
The older man was identified as “Prominent antique dealer Alcide Castellini.”
Lindsey blinked. He was not surprised to recognize Fulton. But the second man—the older man—looked oddly familiar, too. Who was he? Lindsey tried to visualize him in living color instead of static monochrome.
And then he had it. The man in the photo was younger, a little thinner, and his hair was darker. His eyeglasses were different—they had black plastic rims and the ones he’d worn when Lindsey saw him were silver-rimmed. But he was the same man. He was the last man to climb from Congressman Randolph Amoroso’s limousine at the Times Square rally.
Lindsey looked up from the newspaper. “You mind if I clip this?” he asked Halter.
The guard pulled open a drawer in his desk and came up with a pair of scissors. “From my sewing kit,” he explained. “Never know when a button’s gonna come loose or—something.” He handed the scissors to Lindsey. Lindsey snipped out the photo and the accompanying story and put them in his pocket. He’d scanned the story itself. It added nothing to what he already knew.
But the photo had added two fresh players to the drama. Millicent Martin—probably a stage name, but it was a start—and Alcide Castellini. Martin had been murdered, “gangland style.” And Castellini was an antiques dealer.
What could either of them—in fact, what could any of the three—have to do with Cletus Berry?
There was no way that Millicent Martin was going to tell Lindsey anything. She was dead.
Ditto Frankie Fulton.
But Alcide Castellini.…
Lindsey found a working pay phone in a kiosk and punched for directory assistance. Apparently the vandals who had attacked pay phones for decades had finally lost