Carolyn Banks - The New Black Mask (№6)

He dressed for the twentieth, thirtieth, nth time in the cheap suit, checked the buttons again to be sure they were on tight. His fingernails had been cut and filed to the quick for months. He left all his jewelry in his office once more. His hair had been washed every day, all the labels had been removed from his clothes long ago. He carried nothing on his walk past Roth’s site that could be dropped, not even his cigarettes or matches.

In the drugstore he browsed, bought a new razor, had his cherry ice-cream soda. He talked to the counter boy about the books he had lent the boy. That, he thought, was an especially good touch. A smart lawyer could make a lot of the books, with his nameplate in the front, as a sure sign that he couldn’t have been planning a murder that day.

A noisy group of juveniles slouched into the store and engaged the counter boy with multiple orders. He was held up a few minutes, with dusk settling outside. He didn’t think it would be serious, Roth always remained at the site at least five minutes to make his inspection, usually longer, but he decided not to stop and talk to the owner this time as he paid his check.

On the street he walked a little bit faster. He bought his newspaper, spoke briefly to the newsstand man, and continued briskly on to the site. Fast, but not so fast as to attract any attention, and it was just dusk as he reached Roth’s building.

The street was deserted as usual, the other buildings dark, the twilight gloomy, the site itself silent. He stood back in the shadows and waited. His plan had always been rigid: Walk away instantly if even possibly seen by anyone, and, if unseen, five minutes’ wait and not a second more.

He had one minute to go when the car drove up. Norman Roth stepped out, seemed to search the twilight for a moment. Castro tensed, ready to follow the younger man into the empty building shell. Roth leaned back into the car to speak to someone.

The car was Susan’s car! She was dropping Roth off on her way to her Thursday Junior League meeting. Not even Roth’s car would be on the street to attract anyone’s attention!

Roth leaned in for a kiss, turned and walked across the sidewalk and the dirt to his partly finished building.

Susan drove off around the next corner.

The street was empty.

It was at just that stage of dusk when it is harder to see than in full night, and no one was in sight anywhere.

Castro hurried across the debris of the building site. As he neared his enemy he slowed, became casual. He made a small smile play across his face. Roth heard him, turned.

“Don’t you ever give up?” Roth said.

“No, Norman, never,” Max Castro said.

“Go away, Castro. You’re beaten,” Norman Roth said. “I’m getting the boys, there isn’t a fucking thing you can do.”

With a gesture of contempt, Roth turned his back and walked into the interior of the unfinished building.

The hate surged through Max Castro. He looked around once more. He was totally alone in the dusk, all but invisible.

He bent, picked up the brick, stepped through the open doorway into the hidden interior of the unfinished building. He looked for Norman Roth, the brick raised.

Norman Roth struck viciously.

Pain hammered through Max Castro’s head.

Something dusty, smothering, covered Castro.

The brick in Norman Roth’s hand smashed... smashed...

I felt the crushing pain as Norman Roth bludgeoned Max Castro with the brick. The shock, and the fear, and the horror, and the final agony of all — the moment of realization that he, Maxwell Castro, had, after all, lost. A loser. A dead man. The horrible agony as Castro realized he was not the hunter but the hunted. Not the predator but the prey. Outwitted. Dead...

I sat in Captain Pearce’s dim, silent office behind its drawn shades that seemed to make the city outside light-years away.

“It was the only way they could have gotten Castro to that building site under those conditions at that time. He would never have gone there alone, at dusk, unarmed, unprotected, unless he was planning to kill Roth.”

“Theory, Fortune,” Schatz said. “That’s all you’ve got.”

“It’s the only answer,” I said. “Castro set up the conditions, and Roth and his wife used them to murder him. They manipulated him like Pavlov’s dog, goaded him until they were sure he would decide to kill Roth. That was their plan, and Castro walked into the trap like a sheep to the slaughter.”

Pearce said, “Roth waited inside that building shell.” His voice had a tone of wonder. “He hit Castro once with the brick, covered him with a canvas tarpaulin, and hit him four more times. No blood except under the canvas. No witnesses. No fingerprints on the brick or canvas. No clues. The debris on Roth from the building site is useless, he went there every day. Only not that day, he says, and we can’t prove he did. No evidence at all.”

“Except,” I said, “Castro’s little mistake.”

Schatz shook his head in even more wonder. “Both of them, Castro and Roth, stripped of everything. No labels, no jewelry, no hair or skin under fingernails, nothing. Zero.”

“Yeah,” I said, “that’s what got me thinking. Castro had nothing in his pockets — not even cigarettes, and he was a smoker. No labels. A cheap suit. Fingernails cut to the quick. With Castro the victim, those things made no sense. But if Castro had been the killer, then it made a lot of sense. So I put myself in his mind, dug into what had made him decide to commit murder. Then I did the same for Roth and the woman, imagined how they planned to make Castro try to kill Roth, how they rigged it.”

I had been inside one killer’s mind, Castro’s, and now I put myself inside the minds of two killers. Saw the scene between them, Norman Roth and his wife. Susan Roth, once Susan Castro.

Norman Roth lay naked in the giant circular bed of the luxury condominium high above the city. Tall and muscular, lean in the hips, he looked up at himself in the mirrored ceiling of the bedroom. “He’s going to beat me, Susan. He’s a fucking devil in business. He’s taking losses, cutting corners, mining me.”

“I like a winner, Norman,” Susan Roth said.

“Susan!” Roth stared at her.

She was still slim, curved, her breasts reflected full in the ceiling mirror. She touched Roth in the bed. Her fingers played with his belly, stroked his chest.

“If he beats you, I’ll go back to him,” she said. “I can’t live without what success brings, Norman. Big success. I never lied about that I’m a practical woman, Norman.”

“I’ll never let him take you back!”

“Then stop him,” Susan said.

“I’ve tried. I’m almost to the wall. The only way I can stop him now is to kill him.”

“All right,” Susan said. “Kill him.”

Roth blinked at her. “Kill—?”

She kissed his neck, his throat. Her tongue flicked over his chest as she slid softly against his body.

“He’d kill you,” Susan said. “But we’ll kill him first.”

“How can we kill him? The police would guess at once it was me. Or you. The way he’s ruining me, ruining us.”

“But they would have to prove it, Norman,” Susan said, licked his belly. “We’ll make it simple. We’ll make Max come to you where there’ll be only the two of you alone, and no evidence afterward, and they can’t prove you were there when it happened.”

“What in God’s name would make Castro come to me like that?”

“To kill you,” Susan Roth said simply.

Roth looked at her and at her naked body touching him in the big bed. “Why would he kill me? He’s already got me ruined.”

Her tongue was in his ear now, her breath. “We make him think you’re not anywhere near ruined. We convince him you’re growing bigger and richer every day, and then we make him have to murder you fast or lose something very important to him.”