The Silver Chariot Killer. Richard A. Lupoff
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stood up, Lindsey saw that she was wearing fresh new jeans to go with her blouse and sweater. She had a holster strapped to her belt and the grip of what looked like a revolver sticking out of it.
It was still too early to visit Cletus Berry’s widow. Lindsey stood outside Midtown North watching the traffic, then asked a stranger for directions and learned how to get to Times Square. It wasn’t far.
He started walking.
He heard the noise well before he got there. Band music was playing through a loudspeaker and he could hear voices but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.
When he got closer he found himself on the edge of a mob. Brawny individuals in neat suits were striding around, eyeing people who approached. They might have been Secret Service men but Lindsey doubted that they were. There was something about them that made him uncomfortable.
They were wearing lapel pins. Lindsey had trouble making out the shape of the pins, but he passed a vendor selling buttons that seemed to have the same design. Each button was attached to a campaign pamphlet. He bought one and studied the design. It looked like a Roman chariot pulled by a team of horses. He slipped the button and pamphlet into his overcoat pocket.
If he’d seen Central Park in a hundred movies, he’d seen Times Square in a thousand. It must have taken amazing political clout to have this piece of New York shut down, even for a few minutes. Amazing clout to shut it down any time, but this was the middle of the day, on a business day, counting down to Christmas.
A few blobs of sleet were falling. Lindsey felt one on his cheek, then another. They felt like icy tears.
He moved into the mass of people. He didn’t see any opening in the crowd, but somehow a limousine managed to move down Broadway, rolling through a narrow lane, and a number of people climbed out. One was the broadcaster who’d been mentioned in the morning newspaper. Lindsey recognized another, Congressman Randolph Amoroso, from his photo in the Times. A well-dressed woman was holding onto Amoroso’s arm; even from this distance Lindsey could tell that she was gazing at the Congressman adoringly. The perfect political wife. Fourth was a distinguished middle-aged fellow with silvery temples and silver-rimmed glasses, a dark blue suit and a wine-red tie.
TV lights glared.
Some functionaries ushered the party to a microphone on the steps of a monument. Behind the microphone, the Doughboys who fought in the Great War were memorialized forever. They had caught three-quarters of a century of pigeon droppings for their trouble. A couple of other flunkies were setting up a covered display behind the Congressman.
The radio personality took the microphone, gestured for the music to cut off, and started warming up the crowd with a series of jabs at the President, the President’s political party, and Mr. Oliver Shea.
Finally he introduced Congressman Randolph Amoroso from the great city of Poughkeepsie in the great county of Dutchess.
Amoroso stepped to the microphone. Someone on his staff must have coordinated the event with the Weather Bureau because the sun popped through and brightened Amoroso like a spotlight. It reflected off his bulbous, bald skull like a halo. It glinted off a silvery pin in the Congressman’s lapel.
“Just an hour ago,” Amoroso said, “on the steps of my home in the beautiful Hudson Valley, I formally announced a great crusade for the heart and soul of America. I announced my candidacy for the Senate of the United States. I’ve been informed that I will be opposed in my bid by a very decent man.…”
He grinned as the crowd rustled. There were a few boo’s.
“…an intelligent man.…”
There were a few more boo’s. Amoroso’s grin widened.
“..and a well-intentioned man.”
Some shrill whistles. Amoroso positively beamed.
“But my opponent is thoroughly out of touch with the times. He offers us the same old solutions that were tried and failed ten, twenty, thirty years ago. They failed back then. He wants us to try them again.” Amoroso paused.
“And maybe he’s right.”
More shrill whistles.
“But I don’t think so.” There was a round of applause. “I say—” he paused and looked around at the crowd “—that anybody who sells dope to a kid should be shot.”
There were cheers.
“Anybody who sells porn to a kid—or who sells kiddie porn to anybody—should be shot.” More cheers. “And anybody who tries to foist a filthy, degraded lifestyle on a decent, God-fearing America—”
He held up his arms and grinned at the audience.
They responded in unison: “Should be shot!”
Amoroso chuckled. His voice boomed through the loudspeakers. “Right you are. Right you are, my friends. Right you are.” He waited for another round of applause and cheers. Then: “My opponent—my decent, intelligent, well-intentioned opponent—and his tweed-jacketed cronies at the universities and on the talking-head shows, accuse me of wanting to make America into a new Roman Empire.”
He tilted his head. He grinned and the sunlight actually sparkled off his oversized teeth. The lapels of his suit jacket—no topcoat for Congressman Amoroso—were just a trifle too wide. The pattern on his necktie was a trifle too loud. He was the perfect populist.
“Well, an honest citizen could walk down the main street of Julius Caesar’s Rome and not get mugged, my friends. Nobody tried to sell him a syringe full of poisonous dope. And nobody offered to sell him a magazine full of kiddie-porn, either.”
He shook his head ruefully.
“The new Roman Empire?” He paused for a beat. Another beat. “The new Roman Empire?” he repeated. “I think it’s a great idea.”
Behind him, a tarpaulin was pulled from a giant poster. The poster showed a Roman chariot pulled by a team of rearing horses.
The Congressman beamed.
The Congressman’s wife gazed at him adoringly.
The broadcast personality clapped him on the shoulder and grabbed the microphone and started working the audience again.
The television lights in front of the doughboy monument winked off, one by one.
Randolph Amoroso, Mrs. Amoroso, and the rest of his entourage climbed into their limousine, made a U-turn, and sped away, going the wrong way up closed-off, one-way Broadway.
The crowd dispersed.
Lindsey checked the time, then headed for a subway entrance.
CHAPTER FOUR
One thing about Cletus Berry. He hadn’t talked about his private life but he talked about New York. He wasn’t a native, he’d revealed that much, but he’d taken to the city like a native, and over drinks at SPUDS conferences he’d told stories about New York with obvious pride in his voice.
His favorite was the story of the Second Avenue Subway. The city had planned a whole new line to serve the East Side, got a referendum past the voters and floated a multi-billion-dollar bond issue to pay for it. They’d torn down the elevated rail line that served that part of the city, the famous Third Avenue El. They even broke ground for the new subway line, but when it came time to start serious work they looked at their bank account and discovered that billions of dollars had somehow disappeared.
“One thing about New York politicians,” Berry had roared with laughter, “they may be crooks, but at least they’re not petty crooks.”
Cletus Berry had lived in an old red-brick high-rise—or what must once have passed as a high-rise—in the East 70’s. The building might be a little past its prime; Lindsey didn’t expect to see high-flying yuppies screeching up to the front door in their Porsches or sleekly turned out movers and shakers climbing out of stretch limos. Instead, he got the