Chapter 78
SOMETHING BAD HAD HAPPENED, indeed, I thought, twenty siren-blaring minutes later as I burst into Berger’s holding cell in the back of the precinct.
Berger had fallen out of the bed. Also, his butt had fallen out of his sheet again, I couldn’t help but notice, to my horror.
The EMTs were long gone, replaced by the thin, birdlike female Medical Examiner I’d worked with before named Alejandra Robles.
As Alejandra went through her rou
tine, I stared down at the massive dead man. He’d had everything—education, wealth, the coolest apartment in Manhattan—and decided on this? Setting off plastic explosives? Killing children? Committing suicide? He was the most inadequate person I’d ever come across, and that was saying a lot.
The worst part of it was that it all felt almost scripted. The people who’d been killed seemed like they’d been bought for Berger’s fifteen minutes of slimy fame.
I tried not to think about what it meant, about what kind of future the human race was heading toward. But I couldn’t help it.
Alejandra knelt in front of Berger, pointing a flashlight into his mouth.
“I take it he’s having trouble saying ah,” I said.
“You take it correctly,” she said, beckoning me over. “I think it was poison. Cyanide, I’d guess by the bright red rash, but we won’t know until the toxicology.”
She held the light over his upper back teeth.
“Check this out,” she said, directing me to peer into Berger’s pie hole. “See that molar? That’s not a cavity, Mike. It’s a fake tooth. That must be where he hid the poison. Can you believe it?”
After Berger was rolled out, I called Emily Parker at her hotel from the hallway outside the precinct detective squad room upstairs.
“If you thought the pantie bomber was crazy, have a seat,” I said when she answered.
“You found Carl?” she guessed.
“Nope,” I said. “It’s Berger. He’s gone. Killed himself. He had poison in a hollowed-out tooth, a cyanide pill most likely, like a Nazi spy. How’s this for an epitaph? ‘Lawrence Berger, weird in life, weird in death, weird in the hearts of his countrymen.’ ”
“Wait. Did you say cyanide? Hold on. Let me get my notes. Crapola! He’s done it again. It’s happened before. Maggie O’Malley, a nurse dubbed the ‘Dark Angel of Bellevue,’ swallowed a cyanide pill after she was accused of some baby murders in the early nineteen twenties.”
“I need to watch more of the History Channel,” I said squeezing my temples.
Book Three
THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR
Chapter 79
A NOONTIME THREE-CAR pileup halted the traffic on the Sunrise Highway two miles west of Hampton Bays, Long Island.
Behind the wheel of the Mercedes convertible, Carl Apt watched a Suffolk County Highway Patrol cruiser drive past on the grass center berm to his left, followed by an ambulance. Frowning, he slipped on his designer aviator shades. He cranked the A/C as he pressed the button for the automatic hardtop.
Why had he pushed it? he thought, watching the cop’s bubble lights spin. He knew he should have ditched the car already.
He held his head in his hands. Christ, he was exhausted. The sun was like an ice pick in his eyes. He’d had a splitting headache since four a.m., when he’d climbed from the basement through a sidewalk grate on the 70th Street side of Berger’s building.
What he wouldn’t do for one last soak in his penthouse bath.
As he waited in the dead-stopped traffic, he glanced at the motorists around him. There were a lot of Range Rovers and Cadillac sedans. What was it Lawrence had called loud-mouthed, showy people from Long Island? LIDS. Short for Long Island Dimwits.
After a few minutes, from three cars behind him, a group of lug-nut teens with gelled hair, no shirts, and bottle tans started making some noise. A painful thump of rap music bass began to emanate from their tricked-out convertible Mustang.
“Anywhere, anywhere, woo-whooo, woo-whooo,” they sang along to The Show’s instant summer classic. A fat girl wearing a bikini top and short shorts stood in the passenger seat, threw her hands above her head, and started grinding her hips.