Part 59 (1/2)

He hung up, looked at me. His expression was a curious one, self-satisfaction mixed with something that might have been pity.

He said, 'The Powhattan Motel, you know where Queens Boulevard cuts the Long Island Expressway? It's just past the intersection. I don't know just where, Elmhurst or Rego Park. Right about where they run into each other.'

'So?'

'One of those adult motels, waterbeds in some of the rooms, X-rated movies on the teevee. They get cheaters, the hot-sheet trade, take a room for two hours. They'll turn a room five, six times a night if they get the volume, and a lot of it's cash, they can skim it. Very profitable, motels like that.'

'What's the point?'

'Guy drove up, rented a room a couple of hours ago. Well, that business, you make up the room soon as the customer leaves it. Manager noticed the car was gone, went to the room. Do Not Disturb sign hanging on the door. He knocks, no answer, he knocks again, still no answer. He opens the door and guess what he finds?'

I waited.

'Cop named Lennie Garfein responded to the call, first thing that struck him was the similarity to what we had at the Galaxy Downtowner. That was him on the phone. We won't know until we get the medical evidence, direction of thrust, nature of wounds, all that, but it sure as h.e.l.l sounds identical. Killer even took a shower, took the towels with him when he left.'

'Was it - '

'Was it what?'

It wasn't Donna. I'd just spoken to her. Fran, Ruby, Mary Lou -

'Was it one of Chance's women?'

'h.e.l.l,' he said, 'how do I know who Chance's women are? You think all I do is keep tabs on pimps?'

'Who was it?'

'Not one of anybody's women,' he said. He crushed out his cigarette, started to help himself to a fresh one, changed his mind and pushed it back into the pack. 'Not a woman,' he said.

'Not - '

'Not who?'

'Not Caldern. Octavio Caldern, the room clerk.'

He let out a bark of laughter. 'Jesus, what a mind you got,' he said. 'You really want things to make sense. No, not a woman, and not your boy Caldern either. This was a transs.e.xual hooker off the Long Island City stroll. Preoperative, from what Garfein said. Means the t.i.ts are there, the silicone implants, but she's still got her male genitals. You hear me? Her male genitals. Jesus, what a world. Of course maybe she got the operation tonight. Maybe that was surgery there, with a machete.'

I couldn't react. I sat there, numb. Durkin got to his feet, put a hand on my shoulder. 'I got a car downstairs. I'm gonna run out there, take a look at what they got. You want to tag along?'

TWENTY-EIGHT.

The body was still there, sprawled full-length on the king-size bed. It had bled white, leaving the skin with the translucence of old china. Only the genitalia, hacked almost beyond recognition, identified the victim as male. The face was that of a woman. So was the smooth and hairless skin, the slender but full-breasted body.

'She'd fool you,' Garfein said. 'See, she had the preliminary surgery. The breast implants, the Adam's apple, the cheekbones. And of course the hormone shots all along. That keeps down the beard and the body hair, makes the skin nice and feminine. Look at the wound in the left breast there. You can see the silicone sac. See?'

Blood all over, and the smell of fresh death in the air. Not the stale reek of a late-found corpse, not the stench of decomposition, but the horrible odor of a slaughterhouse, the raw throat-catching smell of fresh blood. I felt not so much nauseated as overpowered, oppressed by the warmth and density of the air.

'What was lucky is I recognized her,' Garfein was saying. 'That way I knew right off she was a pross and that made the connection in my mind with that case of yours, Joe. Was the one you caught as b.l.o.o.d.y as this?'