Wild Cards [07] Dead Man's Hand Read Free Page B

hear it was you found the body," he said. "Was it really the ace-of-spades guy?"
    "There was a card next to the body," Jay said. "Yeoman," Lupo muttered angrily. "Son of a bitch. I thought he was gone for good. He used to drink Tullamore Dew. I served him once or twice."
    "Ever see him without the mask?"
    Lupo shook his head. "No. I hope they catch the fucker." His long red tongue lolled from a corner of his mouth.
    Jay looked around the room again. "Where's Elmo?"
    "No one's seen him. I heard the cops got a whatchacallit, a APB, out on him."
    Kant came up behind them. "Your turn, Lupo," he said, gesturing toward an interrogation room. He stared at Jay. "You still here."
    "I'm going, I'm going," Jay said. "As soon as I use the little cops' room."
    Kant told him where to find it. By the time Jay emerged, Kant and Maseryk and Lupo were off doing their thing. Jay went back to the captain's cubicle and walked in unannounced.
    Captain Angela Ellis was behind the desk, chain-smoking as she scanned a file, flipping pages like a speed reader. She was a tiny Asian woman with green eyes, long black hair, and the toughest job in the NYPD. Her immediate predecessor had been found dead in this office, supposedly of a heart attack, but there were still people who didn't buy that. The captain before him had been murdered, too.
    "So," he asked, "you have a lead on Elmo yet?"
    Ellis took a drag on her cigarette and looked at him. It took her a moment to remember who he was. "Ackroyd," she finally said, with distaste. "I was just reading your statement."
    "There are holes in your story I could drive a truck through." "I can't help that, it's the only story I've got. What kind of story did you get from Sascha?"
    "A short one." Ellis stood and began to pace. "He woke up, sensed a strange mind in the building, and came downstairs to find you sneaking out of Chrysalis's office."
    "I didn't sneak," Jay said. "I sneak very well, I majored in sneaking in detective school, but on this particular occasion I didn't happen to be sneaking. And there's nothing strange about my mind, thank you. So you don't have a thing on Elmo yet?"
    "What do you know about Elmo?" Ellis asked. "Short guy," Jay said.
    "Strong guy," Ellis mused. "Strong enough to smash a woman's head into blood pudding, maybe."
    "Real good," Jay said, "only wrong. Elmo was devoted to the lady. Utterly. No way he'd hurt her."
    Her laugh was hard and humorless. "Ackroyd, you may be the world's chief authority on philandering husbands, but you don't know much about killers. They don't waste the real atrocities on strangers, they save them for family and friends." She started to pace again. Ash fell off the end of her cigarette. "Maybe your friend Elmo was a little too devoted. I heard Chrysalis fucked around a lot. Maybe he got tired of seeing the parade go in and out of her bedroom, or maybe he made a pass of his own and she laughed at him."
    "You setting up Elmo to take the fall?" he asked.
    Ellis paused over her desk just long enough to stub out her cigarette in an ashtray overflowing with butts. "No one gets set up in this precinct."
    "Since when?" Jay asked.
    "Since I took over as captain," she told him. She took a pack of Camels out of her jacket, tapped one out, lit up, and resumed pacing. "You're supposed to be a detective. Look at the facts." She stopped at the wall long enough to straighten a framed diploma, then spun back toward him. "Her head looked like a cantaloupe run over by a semi. Both legs broken, every finger in her left hand snapped, her pelvis shattered in six places, massive internal hemorrhaging." She jabbed the cigarette at him for emphasis. "I had a case once, back when I was on the street, where some Gambione capos went to work on a guy with tire irons. Broke every bone in his body. Another time I saw what was left of a hooker who'd been done in by a pimp fried on angel dust. He'd used a baseball bat. Those were pretty ugly, but they looked a lot better than Chrysalis.