The Night Watcher

by Lutz, John

  “And we haven’t,” Upman reaffirmed. Gideon Fine would approve of Upman.

  The woman with the violet glasses smiled. “Outstanding debts?” she asked, switching onto a safer track.

  For the next twenty minutes Stack fielded more conventional questions, but still some of them probed where the board had no business going. Some of the questions, Stack simply refused to answer. None of the board members objected to his refusal, or pressed him, but Stack had the feeling that if he were someone else, someone not NYPD and without a decidedly menacing aura about him, they would have been more demanding and threatening.

  At the end of the interrogation—and that was what it had become—he wasn’t sure if he’d helped or hurt Laura’s chances of being approved by the board.

  The board members all smiled amiably and thanked him profusely for his time, and Upman politely ushered him out. As he was leaving, Stack heard them discussing whether they should adjourn.

  Probably, Stack thought, so they could talk off the record.

  As he pushed the street door open and emerged into crisp cold air, he couldn’t help thinking it might have been a mistake to come here. Rica had been right again.

  It seemed to be happening more and more often.

  Or maybe he was listening to her more often.

  TWENTY-TWO

  May 2000

  “There is one problem,” Myra told Ed and Amy Marks, “but then there’s always at least one.”

  They were in Five-’n’-Dine, an inadequately air-conditioned diner around the corner from the co-op the Markses were buying. It was a sunny and glorious day on the other side of the window next to their booth. Inside the diner, the scent of frying onions seemed incongruous with the outside view of sun-brightened traffic and the potted decorative trees lining the other side of the street.

  Ed Marks stared at Myra in a way that suggested he wasn’t surprised by this turn of fate; he was a man who seldom believed his luck would hold. Amy stopped sucking the straw in her strawberry milkshake. Her cheeks that had been hollowed to fashion-model gauntness by vacuum force suddenly regained their youthful plumpness.

  “Problem?” she asked, as if it were a new word to her.

  “Nothing so out of the ordinary,” Myra said, smiling reassuringly. “It seems we need an additional sum to secure board approval for your residency.”

  Amy fingered the straw, kinking it. “You mean some sort of tax or residence fee?”

  “Residence fee would be accurate,” Myra said. “This isn’t at all unusual in New York real estate transactions, where space is at an absolute premium. Wheels within wheels, you might say.”

  She could see what Ed Marks would say, only he didn’t: Payoff. He wasn’t as naive as he seemed. He was, after all, a cop, even if still a probationary patrolman. Maybe he’d broach the subject later to his naive but spirited young wife, then clue her in on how the world worked.

  “How much?” was what he actually said. To the chase, like a good cop.

  “Twenty thousand dollars, but I don’t want the amount to frighten you away.”

  “Twenty thousand dollars? Why shouldn’t it scare the hell out of us?”

  Myra smiled, patient with the boy. “Because I’ve arranged for long-term financing of the fee so your total payment will only slightly increase. You might even view this as insurance. In fact it will be a separate monthly payment. And don’t worry even a little about the loan. I’ve arranged financing—I do it all the time for my clients.”

  “And you say this is the usual thing?” Amy asked.

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  Ed Marks sighed. “Do we have a choice?”

  “The deal’s not so locked in that you can’t back out,” Myra said.

  “Ed—”

  Marks raised a hand for his wife to be silent. “That’s not what I meant. What kind of payment are we talking about?”

  “Separately made, but of course figured in as part of the mortgage payment…Let’s see….” Myra got an amortization schedule from her purse, calculated, and wrote a figure on a paper napkin for the Markses to look at. “With your mortgage installments,” she said, “principal, interest, and taxes, total monthly payments will be…” She scribbled another figure, then looked across the table at the Markses with a serious expression. “Can you swing that payment?”

  “At the outside,” Ed Marks said.

  Myra nodded, smiling. “As your equity builds, you’ll see you’ve made the right decision.”

  “I hope so,” Ed Marks said, and bit into his grilled Reuben.

  “I know so,” Amy told him, and went back to her milkshake.

  TWENTY-THREE

  February 2002

  Death itself wasn’t the object, the Torcher thought. Fire and change and balance and justice, those were the objects of the purity of flame. The man and his child weren’t supposed to die. The Torcher felt sympathy for the woman who was left; how deep must be her loss. But in a way, it was fate. Loss was always fate. Once alive the flames gained a strength and will of their own. It was terrible what happened at the Whitlock Building fire. A loss that carried the living not to hell but to a cold darkness forever. And the dead? Who could know but the dead? That was the terror.

  Where was the blame? Well, look to the reasons. The roots of the fire were firmly and deeply planted; the old building was a firetrap; the fire department’s equipment was inadequate for high-rise fires; no one had warned the public that after approximately ten floors high, those trapped above by high-rise fires could make cell phone calls or come to their windows and make their frantic, poignant gestures of helplessness and hope, or drop objects and notes to loved ones, missives of desperation. But the fire once vital and large enough not to be overcome would inevitably ascend to them, and their choice would be to burn or leap to their deaths.

  Two simple choices. Death. Or a different death. Reasons? Explanations? The fire simply had its way. It always had. It always would. Nothing in human history had worked more, and more profound, changes. Nothing was more elemental and powerful, in a struck paper match or a nuclear explosion. Fire had a way and a will.

  Unintended death was tragic, especially the deaths of the innocent. The horror of it was enough to make a strong man sob.

  But guilt?

  No. There were, as the psychobabblers were prone to say, larger issues in play here.

  Put simply, the fire had had its way.

  It would again. Soon.

  Right now, tears were unstoppable. Tears that stung the eyes but changed nothing. Look at everything else that had happened despite tears.

  “Look at this crap,” Rica said, tossing the folded newspaper to Stack. She was perched on the corner of Stack’s desk, the way she’d seen Marlene Deitrich perch on a barrel in that old move, The Blue Angel. Toned down some, but not much. Rica knew men were the same suckers as their grandfathers.

  Stack had already read the Times over breakfast. Leland Brand was making an issue of high-rise fires in his transparent effort to curry favor with the mayor and the public. Stack had come to understand such matters. Rumor had it that Brand might be appointed commissioner of the new and powerful Department of Public Well-being that was shaping up. Eventually Brand would run for mayor. Brand could use an issue, and Stack knew the mayor had given him this one to play with. The question was, why? Did the mayor see it as a win-win situation that would make his choice of Brand for commissioner look all the wiser? Or did the mayor see it as rope with which Brand might hang himself? A test, of sorts.

  Brand had set up an interview with a reporter who acted more like a publicity flak than a journalist. The questions might have been written by Brand as launching pads for his own queries that were designed to make sure the public knew yet another crisis was afoot, as well as who was taking it upon himself to rid the city of it. Was the FDNY prepared to fight fires near the peaks of buildings that rose like angular mountains? (Stack was sure Brand hadn’t written that one.) Were they adequately fami
liar with their newer equipment? How high would their ladders reach? Did most New York skyscrapers have evacuation plans in case of fire? How did people escape from a burning building if they were on a high floor? What was the survival rate? Was the FDNY properly trained? The public had a right to know this sort of information. It was the public whose lives were at stake.

  “He could have gotten his answers if he’d asked a firefighter,” Stack said, tossing the paper aside.

  “He wants to start a healthy public dialogue,” Rica said.

  “He wants to be appointed Public Well-being commissioner, then run for mayor.”

  “You figure? The election’s years away.”

  “He’s the kind of pol who’d start early.”

  “The two things aren’t mutually exclusive,” Rica said, “political ambition and a desire to serve the public.”

  “Uh-huh. Do you like New Yorker cartoons?”

  Rica smiled. Sometimes a cop and a cop’s partner could understand each other almost too well.

  Across town, Larry Chips thought he could go for the busty blonde sitting alone at a table in Eb’s Irish Lounge. The lounge was Chips’s idea of a bar. Of a dive, actually. It was narrow and dim and still smelled of last night’s stale beer. A dank cave of a place, at this hour. Which is why he was drinking here when it wasn’t even noon. Even cops didn’t like going into a place like Eb’s at this time of day. It was so unlike the sunshine outside.

  Except for the blonde. She could be a bit of sun and warmth, Chips thought. It had been a long time since his last woman, and in truth he hadn’t much felt the urge lately, what with all the stress in his life. But this bitch, he figured, might be a great stress reliever. It was very possible she was a hooker, he thought, the way she was sitting there drinking margaritas in a place like this at this hour of the morning. Little Miss Nonchalant, with a tight skirt and a blouse like white paint, legs crossed, showing good ankles made better by four-inch heels. Well, he didn’t care if she was peddling ass. He wouldn’t have to pay. He could talk his way into it.

  She looked in his direction through the dimness and he smiled at her. She looked away. Looked back. Might have smiled.

  Might was enough. Chips swiveled around off his bar stool and carried his Wild Turkey on the rocks over to the blonde’s table. Smiling big, he sat down without asking, “Pardon me if I’m pushing it,” he said, “but did I notice you notice me?”

  “Not noticeably.”

  “But some?” Wider smile.

  A smile back. “Okay, some.”

  “I’m Larry.”

  “Mirabella.”

  Sure you are, Chips thought, gently shaking her extended hand. The back of her hand looked older than her face, maybe mid-forties. And her wrists were thin. She was, in fact, kind of gaunt except for the great rack of tits. Maybe she was some sort of addict. Maybe the tits weren’t real. Chips didn’t much care what was real or not, or if Mirabella was a real name and not just some magazine, if he had the name right. Something like that, anyway. The bitch was real enough, what he was interested in, here in Eb’s Irish Lounge.

  “You Irish?” he asked, getting her talking, chatting her up so he didn’t have to come right out and ask if she was working.

  “I used to be,” she said. She had a nice voice, kind of throaty.

  “How could you used to be?”

  “I was married to a guy named Rourke.”

  He gave her a grin, as if to say it was okay with him if she wanted that to mean she used to be Irish. Maybe she needed to used to be Irish.

  Chips saw that her glass was low and signaled the bartender for fresh ones.

  “It didn’t work out very well,” she said.

  “That’s a real shame. He beat up on you?” Showing he was a concerned and sensitive guy. New Age type that might do the dishes and keep a florist in business.

  “Why would you ask that? Are you stereotyping the Irish?”

  Whoops! Too far. “No, no, Mirabella, I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I didn’t know if the son of a bitch was really named Rourke or was Irish, but he said he was and we used to come in here and he’d drink rye whiskey. And he didn’t beat me. I wish he would have. He didn’t care enough. He beat up on somebody else.”

  I think we’re gonna get along swell. “You’ve gotta excuse my manner, me blurting out something now and then. I spent too much time in the bush.”

  She looked inquisitive, which kind of wrinkled her nose in a way that was cute. “Bush?”

  Yours later, sweet. “I been working up in Alaska, on the pipeline.” What I want to do is lay some pipe in you.

  Mirabella grinned. “I thought they finished building that pipeline twenty years ago.”

  “Everyone thinks that. Me and the rest of the guys that work on it don’t set them straight. The pay’s still damned good, if you don’t mind living out in the bush for months at a time.”

  “You mean the tundra?”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. I think you’re full of shit, Larry.”

  “You mind?”

  “Not much.” She accepted her fresh drink from the old guy who’d walked out from behind the bar to bring the order to the table. Chips made a mental note to leave a tip, but not too large a one. He didn’t want to be remembered later.

  “To us,” Chips said, raising his glass of Wild Turkey.

  “Why not?” She toasted with him and took a long pull of her Margarita, then made a deal out of licking salt from the glass rim.

  “You could be arrested for illegal use of the tongue,” he said, grinning.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Mirabella, don’t take this wrong but you’re not in here…uh, you know?…”

  She smiled and shook her head. “I’m not a working girl. Not anymore. Not Irish, not a working girl.”

  A lush? Chips wondered. “You got a deep, dark secret?” he asked, leaning over the table to look deep into her eyes, keeping his voice and expression somber. He’d pulled this one before. It was surprising, some of the things they’d admit if they were a little drunk and you asked them right out. If they really thought you were curious about them and their fucked-up lives.

  It worked with this one. She was smiling but her eyes were dead serious as she leaned toward him so their faces were only inches apart. He could smell her perfume, smell the booze on her breath. “I’ve got a feeling you’re gonna be my deep, dark secret,” she said in that husky voice, as if she needed a throat lozenge. As if she needed something and everything.

  Surprising, but not surprising. Chips rolled with it. He gave her a light kiss on the lips. Waited. She sat back, but she was breathing hard, the major bazooms rising and falling beneath the thin material of her blouse. Nipples visible now, hard, definitely hard. Chips knew he’d started the fire.

  They left together even before they finished their drinks.

  The Torcher looked around Bruni L’Farceur’s apartment, at the designer furniture and the artwork on the white walls. L’Farceur was a rich and successful woman who owned a gallery in the Village where some of the city’s—the country’s—most talented and accomplished artists displayed their work. It was only coincidental that most of the art in the apartment would be spared destruction, unlike its owner.

  How quiet it was here, high above the city and its noise and confusion and problems. Problems for some, thought the Torcher, gazing around at the sleek modern furniture, the sea of plush white carpet. The paleness and sparseness of the apartment set off the colors of the furnishings and artwork, yet nothing seemed to clash or be incongruous except intentionally, a clever and daring decorator’s trick. The Torcher wondered what it would be like to live here. Or to die here?

  Like dying anywhere else, once the fire becomes the everything. Once the agony becomes the end and the beginning. A place like this, any place, it makes no difference to the fire.

  The kitchen was what most interested the Torcher, and it was pretty
much as expected: expensive. Lots of copper and light marble and pale stained paneling. Two of everything—dishwashers, refrigerators, freezers, wine cases, sinks, stoves, and ovens, even twin elaborate, copper-trimmed blenders on the wide countertops.

  L’Farceur would be the richest one yet, so maybe the most deserving.

  The Torcher had experienced a learning curve as well as a guilt curve. The ceramic tile floor wouldn’t burn, of course. The copper and marble were also safe. Curtains had to be dealt with, perhaps soaked and placed in the sink. That was no problem, since it had four separate basins. The main thing here was, this was a newer building—constructed in the eighties, so it was classified as “fire-resistive.” That meant the floors and ceilings were fire-retardant material, so that each floor was sealed off from the ones above and below. Almost like a ship with waterproof compartments. Air-conditioning and heating ducts and vents were also equipped with mechanisms that sealed them in case of fire. Most important, the thick and solid walls of older buildings that made installing sprinkler systems a problem weren’t part of this construction. The building was equipped with a sprinkler system of a brand and type familiar to the Torcher. The learning curve. Outside the kitchen, the fire would have to travel along a tiled hall to reach carpeting, and there was a sprinkler head set in the hall ceiling. Excellent compartmentalization.

  All of this was important to the Torcher, since FDNY aerial ladders would reach only approximately ten stories. Bruni L’Farceur’s apartment was on the fifty-second floor.

  It was Ernest Fagin who called the meeting with Stack and Rica. The three of them sat in a booth of a diner on Amsterdam on the Upper West Side. Stack and Rica were having only coffee, Fagin a cup of hot tea and an aromatic warm cinnamon bun that was mostly frosting.

  “After reading the Times piece where Leland Brand tries to make it seem like there’s a crisis in the FDNY, I thought I oughta talk to you two,” Fagin said. He took a generous bite of cinnamon bun and chewed. Rica hated him for his gawky, skinny build and his big appetite.