The Exterminator

by Peter McCurtin

  He got the body down and put it in the trunk of the car. There was nothing more he could do to Pontivini. The plan hadn’t worked, but at least the scumbag was dead—wiped out, exterminated. Yeah, Eastland thought, driving away, he hadn’t just killed Pontivini: he had exterminated him, just as you’d gas out a building with rats and roaches swarming in it.

  Grinning, Eastland decided that he liked the word “exterminator.” Disposing of human vermin like Pontivini, like the Ghouls, was something that should have been done long ago. And now for the first time he knew he wasn’t going to stop now. For eight years he had done absolutely nothing with his life. Work and sleep, a few women, a few beers, a few games of pool in between. Maybe the cops would catch him or he’d get killed. No matter. He’d do as much work as he could and maybe someone else would take up where his life left off. He knew there had to be other men who thought as he did. Hundreds? Thousands? A few—even one good man—would be enough. It was time to hit back at the System; to let the men who controlled it or prospered under it, know that the day of reckoning was at hand.

  Driving down into Manhattan he knew he couldn’t right all the wrongs of the world. He had to work with what he had; what he had was New York City. He had to let the men who ran the System know that they were on notice. The judges who could be bought with money or the promise of higher office had to know that no longer was it business as usual. Whether they were crooks or bleeding hearts made no difference, just as it made no difference to the victim robbed or raped or murdered by some hoodlum turned loose by the court with nothing but a slap on the wrist. The politicians and the cops on the take had to know that the honeymoon was over. The mobsters and the hoodlums of every kind had to get it into their heads that the gravy train had broken a wheel.

  Of course the System would fight back; he would have to plan every move with great care if he hoped to survive. Against him would be thrown all the resources of the police department; the police and the Mob would be united in their efforts to kill him. The FBI would get into it, too, though so far he hadn’t broken any interstate laws. Naturally, there would be stern editorials in the newspapers calling for a “return to the rule of law.” What law? There was no law. As administered now the fucking law was like a game of pin the tail on the donkey. All too often, guys who fell behind in their alimony payments did more jail time than murderers. And when a killer did get life he didn’t do life or anything close to it. In jail he wrote novels or poetry or painted, or got a law degree by mail—and the parole board let him out because he’d been such a good boy.

  So fuck the law and fuck the System. Every election the fucking glad-handing politicians said it was time for a change. Now—by Christ!—they were going to get it.

  Eastland got off at the East Houston Street exit and drove west to Broadway and went south after a left turn. A few cars went down Broadway, but City Hall Square was deserted. If a few bums were sleeping in the shadows he didn’t see them. Edging his way through a gap in a police barricade, he drove to the steps of City Hall and got out.

  Nothing stirred in the square as he dragged Pontivini’s body from the car and threw it on the steps. No one stopped him as he drove away, heading back to the Bronx and the hideout apartment. The clock in the kitchen said he had thirty-five minutes to write the note and then leave for work.

  He used rubber gloves when he rolled a sheet of paper in the portable typewriter:

  TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN, he began.

  THE THREE GHETTO GHOULS WERE JUST THE BEGINNING. TONIGHT I KILLED GINO PONTIVINI AND IT WON’T STOP WITH HIM. THIS IS TO SERVE NOTICE THAT NO LONGER WILL VICIOUS CRIMINALS BE ALLOWED TO RULE THE STREETS OF THIS CITY. THE POLICE, THE JUDGES AND THE POLITICIANS WHO MUST BEAR THE FINAL RESPONSIBILITY MUST DO SOMETHING TO MAKE THE STREETS SAFE FOR DECENT PEOPLE. UNLESS SOME ACTION IS TAKEN I WILL CHOOSE TARGETS OF OPPORTUNITY AND KILL THEM WITHOUT MERCY.

  Eastland signed the letter THE EXTERMINATOR. He addressed one letter to the Mayor of New York, and mailed it on his way to work. The envelope would bear a Bronx postmark, but the Bronx was a big place. He called the city desks of the three New York papers and let them in on the party. Then he called City Hall.

  When he got to the market and clocked in he was only two minutes late.

  CHAPTER 10

  Dalton fumbled for the light and then for the phone. It was 2:35 a.m. and he felt as if he’d been clubbed.

  “This better be good,” he said.

  Captain Shea’s voice came at him from the other end of the line. The captain sounded rattled. “Gino Pontivini just got killed and dumped on the steps of City Hall. There’s not a mark on him but he was murdered. The killer called City Hall after he dumped the body and got some security man. Then he called all three newspapers. Said he was The Exterminator.”

  Dalton rubbed his eyes. “The what?”

  “Wake up, for Christ’s sake! The same guy that killed the Ghetto Ghouls. He told the papers the mayor would get a special delivery letter.”

  “You sure it’s Pontivini?”

  “I wish it wasn’t. Everybody knows what that guinea gangster looks like.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “On my way to the Medical Examiner’s office. Get down here fast as you can. I know you’re not in the Bronx, but you started with the Ghoul killings and this is tied in. Move it, Dalton. This is bad business.”

  Dalton threw clothes on and headed downtown, using the red flasher and the siren. In less than ten minutes he was pulling into the parking lot at 28th Street and 1st Avenue. There were a lot of other cars there ahead of him. People other than Shea were worried; they had good reason to be worried. Dalton flashed his shield at the guard and went downstairs.

  Gino Pontivini lay naked on an enameled table with gutters in the sides. A group of men, some in uniform, stood around while a doctor prodded and poked at the corpse. The body might have been a hunk of meat for all the expression on the doctor’s face. Dalton went and stood beside Shea.

  “He’s dead,” Shea said. “So far that’s all we know. After I called you some informant called in and said there was a rumor about Pontivini being snatched earlier tonight. That’s all the guy knew, all he said he knew. He’s one of Lieutenant Murdock’s snitches—that’s Murdock over there with the cigar.”

  Dalton saw a beefy, middle-aged detective in a double-knit blue suit that looked slightly ridiculous. “I’ll catch Murdock later.”

  Turning for a moment, the doctor said, “Well, he wasn’t shot or stabbed and it doesn’t look like he was poisoned. All the signs point to cardiac arrest. It will take an autopsy to make sure. Put it down to heart failure until I tell you different.”

  “That look on his face,” a man in civilian clothes said.

  “Yeah,” the doctor said. “This is hardly a medical opinion, but it looks like our friend here was scared to death.”

  “Is that possible?” the same man asked.

  The doctor smiled. “It is if you have a bad heart. Now if all you distinguished gentlemen would be so good as to get the hell out of here so I can go on with my work. That is, unless you want to hang around and watch.”

  “We got to talk,” Shea said to Dalton. The man who had been asking questions went upstairs with them and Shea introduced him as Deputy Mayor Kahane. Dalton shook hands with Kahane and with Murdock, who came along, too.

  The deputy commissioner was just under forty and he had come out without combing his hair. Now, glancing at his reflection in a glass door, he ran his fingers through it. Under a dark blue windbreaker he wore a Big Apple tee-shirt. Dalton guessed he spent most of his weekends in the Hamptons shaking his big ass to disco music.

  “I’m speaking for the mayor when I say this,” he said importantly. “The mayor is in Washington and the first deputy mayor can’t be reached, so I’ll be handling this. At least for now. It’s vital that this madman be caught before he kills again. What are you going to do about Pontivini’s murder?”

  Dalton didn’t like the
deputy mayor. The gossip page of the tabloids said he was “dating” the third highest paid model in New York. He looked like a guy who had gone to City College but liked to think Yale. Bloomingdale’s just had to be his favorite department store.

  “We just got here,” Dalton said.

  Captain Shea gave him a dirty look. “We’ll put every available man on the case.”

  “You better do more than that,” Kahane said. “Catch this maniac and catch him fast. We might have been able to manage this a little better if he hadn’t called the newspapers. I haven’t talked to the media so far, but I’ll have to give them a statement. My God! I shudder when I think of how the Post will handle it. That awful thing in the Bronx was bad enough but it was starting to die down.”

  “We’ll get him,” Captain Shea said in a confident voice that Dalton knew was fake. “Already we’ve got several important leads, isn’t that right, Dalton?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  Deputy Mayor Kahane waved his hand impatiently and Dalton saw that he was wearing a Mickey Mouse watch. Jesus, Dalton thought. No wonder the city’s in the shape it is.

  “Spare me the details, that’s your job,” Kahane said. “What the mayor wants is action, not talk. You know what they’re calling New York? The crime capital of the world. The murder capital of the world. Something has to be done about it.”

  Dalton had to say it. “The Exterminator seems to think so.”

  The deputy mayor frowned before he spoke. “That’s another thing. I don’t want any man in the police department using that name. Verbally or in writing. The name doesn’t exist, you understand. It’s obvious that this man craves publicity. Let the papers call him what they like. They’ll soon get sick of it. That’s all. Report to me when you have something.”

  Captain Shea remained silent until Kahane left in a chauffeured car, then he exploded. “What the fuck’s the matter with you, Dalton? Talking that way to a deputy mayor? One word from him and you’re out on your ass. If that’s what you want, why don’t you quit and do us all a favor?”

  “That fucking pansy,” Dalton snapped back. “I’m up to here with guys like that.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Kahane’s no pansy. Anyway, what’s that got to do with it?”

  “You don’t have to suck dicks to be a pansy.”

  Lieutenant Murdock took the cigar from his mouth. “Let us not get so excited,” he said in a high voice that didn’t go with his middle-aged bulk. “As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Kahane is a fine, upstanding young man and unless he’s struck by lightning he’s going to be mayor of this city some day. And …”

  Captain Shea started in again before Murdock had a chance to finish. “You heard what Murdock said. Kahane’s the last guy to get on the bad side of. Am I right, Murdock?”

  “Most definitely.”

  “It’s a good thing you have me to protect you, Dalton.” Some of the red was starting to drain from Shea’s beefy face. “I just hope you know that.”

  “I appreciate it, sir,” Dalton said. “I spoke out of turn.”

  Affable again, Shea said, “You have to learn to roll with the punches. Look! Everything is politics when you get right down to it. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. That’s how the system works. Face that fact and you’ll go a long way. As of now forget about everything else and concentrate on this killer. If anybody questions your authority tell them to call the deputy mayor. You’ll do yourself a lot of good if you nail this guy.”

  They walked out to the street and Shea’s car drove away. In a few hours 1st Avenue would be roaring with traffic. For now, it was quiet.

  “I wish I was two years older,” Murdock said, putting another match to his cigar.

  “Why is that?”

  “If I was two years older I’d have my twenty years in and could retire. When I do put in my papers I’m going to buy a nice little bar and grill in the Rockaways. But before I open my doors I’m going to put up a sign: NO POLITICANS SERVED HERE.”

  “You don’t like Kahane?”

  “Kahane is particular. The trouble with Kahane is he doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up. In the meantime, he’s playing house with New York City. How’d you know he was a pansy?”

  “I didn’t know. Is he?”

  “Queer as a three-dollar bill,” Murdock said. “That model shit is just a blind. If he ever fucks her he must get some other guy to do it while he watches and jerks off for the guy’s ass. However, let us proceed to more important matters. Such as this Exterminator character. What have you got on the lad?”

  Dalton sensed that Murdock’s drollery masked a deep bitterness. He found himself liking the guy. “A boot print made when he stepped in a pool of blood. The guys at the lab are still working on that, trying to make a match. A hooker who was there gave me a description that isn’t much good. He was wearing a baseball cap and big sunglasses.”

  “Smart boy. Of course he didn’t leave any prints.”

  “The only prints they found matched up to some kind of record. Hookers, punks—nobody else. The hooker I talked to said he was tall, fair complexion, maybe Irish, she thought.”

  “Or German, or Scandinavian, or north Italian, or Scotch. I’m Scotch, but it wasn’t me.”

  “What about the snitch?”

  “Another fine lad,” Murdock said. “My snitch didn’t know where the wop was grabbed from, but I know for a fact that every Sunday night for years Pontivini ate at the Old Homestead, a steakhouse over by West 14th Street. So it looks like The Exterminator, so called, figured this out well in advance.”

  “What do you figure?”

  “Maybe hold him for ransom and it went wrong. Maybe hold him for ransom, then kill him. Or just kill him. Now I got to get the manager of the Homestead out of bed and find out if Pontivini was there, and what time.”

  Murdock was headed for his car when he turned, “Do me a favor, Dalton, if this Exterminator calls you, tell him I have a short list of people I’d like him to exterminate before he hangs up his guns.”

  “My list comes first,” Dalton said.

  The rented apartment had an old TV set that worked well enough if you moved the rabbit ears around, depending on the channel you wanted to get. Eastland had it turned up high to hide the sound of the small electric drill. On the desk, close enough to be heard in spite of the television set, was a police-band scanner radio. From it came all the horrors that were happening out there in the city. It described the crimes and listed the places where they had happened. A taxi driver had taken a crippled girl down under the 59th Street Bridge and raped her. A member of some UN delegation had been robbed and stabbed on East 44th Street. Bandits had shotgunned a grocery clerk …

  Eastland screwed a .44 magnum cartridge into a vice and picked up the drill and mounted it in a drill-holder. Then he switched on the drill and brought the drill-head down exactly on the lead nose of the bullet. A copy of The Anarchist’s Cookbook was propped up in front of him; the passage he had been reading explained how to make do-it-yourself explosive bullets. The drill was pre-set, so there was no danger of drilling too deep a hole. After he finished and raised the drill, he blew away the shavings that curled out of the hole.

  His arm still throbbed from the dog bites, but some of the swelling had gone down. He took the bullet from the vice and stood it on its end on the desk. Taking care not to knock the bullet over, he filled a dropper from a small bottle labeled MERCURY/POISON. Slowly, he filled the hole in the bullet with mercury and put the dropper down. Next, he placed two slivers of lead solder on top of the hole. After that he lit a small propane blowtorch and moved the flame around the top of the bullet. The lead slivers melted as he moved the flame. Then, when he was sure the hole was sealed, he turned off the blowtorch and filed off the excess lead. He held the bullet up to the light and ran his fingers over the nose. It was smooth—perfectly rounded.

  Now six other explosive bullets stood on the desk in front of him. The police rad
io continued to drone its litany of disasters: “Flasher reported seen in girls’ school, 72nd and Fifth Avenue …”

  Eastland was loading the magnum with the doctored cartridges when a new flash interrupted a game show on TV. “We interrupt this program to bring you a special report on the crazed vigilante who calls himself The Exterminator,” said a young woman with an unsteady voice that was striving for authority. “We bring you now the Deputy Mayor Edwin Kahane, who is standing in for Mayor Koch.”

  The TV camera moved in to show Kahane standing in front of a sea of microphones. There was a breeze but the deputy mayor’s well-sprayed hair didn’t move. The Big Apple tee-shirt had been replaced by a dark suit, a white shirt and tie. Questions were fired at the beleaguered deputy from all directions.

  What progress was being made in The Exterminator murders?

  How would all this affect the new gun law?

  Had the mayor been threatened?

  Had the letter from The Exterminator arrived yet?

  Kahane held up his hand for silence and the questions ceased. He took the letter from his pocket and it fluttered in the breeze. The deputy mayor said, “There is no need to read the text of this letter. You’ve all seen it in the morning specials. Obviously this is the work of a deranged mind, the rantings of a publicity seeking madman who sees himself as some sort of avenging angel.”

  Somebody shouted, “He doesn’t sound so deranged to me.”

  Kahane went on as if he hadn’t heard the jibe. “A special task force as been assigned to this case. Make no mistake about it. This psychopath will be caught, and I urge you, members of the responsible press, to do nothing that will make a hero of this man. Speaking for the mayor, I say here and now that this city will not stand for mob rule and lynch law. Ladies and gentlemen of the media, I would remind you that we are not living in some wild lawless town on the frontier. This is New York, the greatest city in the world. Here the rule of law must prevail.”

  The deputy mayor looked straight into the camera, a man of destiny whose time had come. “If you are the kind of man I think you are,” Kahane said in doomsday tones. “I am speaking directly to you, wanton killer of four human beings. I pass no judgment on the dead. That should have been left to the courts which you chose to ignore. I say to you, whoever you are, you will be helped. No one will harm you, as you have harmed those you condemned without a trial. However, if you do not come in voluntarily, you will be hunted night and day until you are found. If you choose to resist duly appointed officers of the law, I cannot guarantee your safety.”