by John Lutz
“I saw a cop run between the buildings!” he added. “I don’t think he came out. And there mighta’ been a shot. Oh, God! I dunno! The flames are so high!”
“Please try to remain calm, sir. I’m going to—”
He cut the connection, powered the van’s driver’s side window all the way down, and tossed the phone so it skipped once on the concrete and went down into a storm sewer. His rubber gloves he left on.
It seemed a long time before there was a reaction to his phone call.
Faraway sirens began a frantic howling, cries that were soon joined by others. The NYPD sirens were accompanied by FDNY wailing. Soon the distant din sounded like wolves calling loud laments to others in the pack.
Satisfied that he’d created an effective diversion, the killer drove the stolen white van away from the maelstrom of flames and sirens, toward the Far Castle.
70
Penny Fedderman lay alone in a king-size bed and stared at a fly walking on the ceiling, seeing things upside down. Or did the kind of eyes flies have automatically flip things right side up in their vision, the way cell phone screens and pads did? Was there an upside down, when it came to flies?
The question was like life, Penny decided. On the surface simple, but on a more thoughtful level, amazingly complicated.
She looked away from the lackadaisical fly, toward the dark window. She could see through the rain-distorted pane to the lights of the taller buildings in the next block. Now and then the tires of vehicles swished past on the wet pavement outside.
Here she lay in bed, angry with her husband, because he insisted on working a job that threatened the premature end of his life. Of their life together. But was she unreasonable to feel that way? She’d known he was a cop when they married. She simply hadn’t know all that that involved.
So here she was, warm and alone in bed, while he was away somewhere in a dangerous city, possibly in a place where it wasn’t safe, where he was wet and cold.
What were the odds on him coming home at the end of each shift? She’d looked them up and forgotten them, but she knew that only a small percentage of cops actually were wounded or killed on duty. A small percentage unless you were a cop. Or a cop’s wife.
Penny switched on the bedside lamp. She was going to read—a detective novel, no less. It would help her to get to sleep, because she knew that the odds were on the side of the detective in the novel, in this case a female PI. She would somehow not only survive any odds, but she would solve the case.
Penny had decided that she owed a certain fidelity to detective novels. They provided a different, safer world. Safer for the fictional detective, anyway.
She knew how life often imitated art, and found that reassuring.
Feds, where are you? Are you dry? Are you safe?
Weaver had managed to work her way onto her side, which gave her leverage as she kicked at the back of the BMW’s trunk, which was also the back of the backseat. She could manage to get only so much strength into her kicks, and the car, a 1995 model, was built solid as a damned brick.
Goddamned German engineering!
She’d known someone with this kind of car, and she knew that in this model the battery wasn’t beneath the hood; it was beneath the backseat and extended slightly into the trunk. She gave up kicking at the back of the seat, and instead began kicking at the carpeted floor up near the nose of the trunk’s interior. Over and over. In the same spot.
The tape over her mouth remained firm, and she couldn’t manipulate her bound body so that she could kick loud enough for it to be heard. She prayed that she could kick in the bottom of the seat back enough so that she might be able to move one of the battery cables. Kick it loose and perhaps bring about some condition that could be used to create noise. Maybe even set off a theft alarm.
But a part of her recognized that the rest of her was being foolish. She was bound head to toe with duct tape. Her possibilities had been reduced, if any had been genuine in the first place. Her battering bare heels could do only so much damage.
Her efforts were causing her nude body to twist around on the carpeted trunk floor so that she was no longer kicking the rear of the backseat. She was kicking with her bare feet the upholstered part of the trunk that housed the power source for the interior lights.
The trouble was that the lights drew current from circuitry that was no doubt connected by a thick wiring harness.
If I could just kick one of the damned battery cables loose!
Her heels ached. Her kicks were softer now, becoming feeble. She realized she was losing strength fast.
What she didn’t realize was that her kicks had finally dented the carpeted fitting, and done slight damage to the wiring.
Electrical current arced. She could smell its acrid scent.
But nothing seemed to have changed. No earsplitting horn blasting, no loud outside signals of theft or vandalism.
She couldn’t know that outside the trunk, the car’s taillights and one of the reverse lights were silently blinking regularly and out of sequence. Somewhere in the rear of the car, she had done enough damage to the wiring to create a repetitive spark.
But was that good? The car was no doubt parked in a desolate spot. Maybe even indoors. For all she knew, it was in the basement parking garage—or whatever it was—where they’d started from. There was no one around to notice the spark she had fought so hard for and finally attained. No one to see, hear or smell it.
Until that spark might ignite the gasoline fumes.
71
The killer had rented a small office in a building across the street from the Far Castle, telling the landlord he was going to set up a mail-order business. The landlord couldn’t care less, after the killer paid him six months’ rent and a generous security deposit.
From the office’s single window, the killer could see not only the outside dining area of the restaurant; he could see the hedge maze in the garden, and near it, the birdbath.
The concrete structure had a floral motif and was bulky enough to contain a smaller, more elegant statue. He found himself sitting and staring at it, imagining what might be concealed inside its rough surface. There was nothing about the birdbath that suggested grace or the magic of true art. It was exactly the opposite, overdone and rather awkward. Lacking an artful symmetry. Surely, the killer thought, the monstrosity couldn’t have been created to be itself. It must have some other purpose.
The other thing that particularly demanded the killer’s attention was the garden’s hedge maze. He sat for hours at the window, memorizing its every turn and angle. It became like a map in his mind.
And now the time to peel the concrete onion had arrived, layer after layer, until the beauty inside held sway, and the ugliness fell away forever.
The last thing on his mind was Nancy Weaver.
The killer knew the best way to do this was out in the open, clearly visible to anyone who would notice him. Not that anyone would pay particular attention to him. He had made himself into a common sight, even at night, in New York City.
His van was white, with “Consolidated Edison” stenciled on magnetic signs on each side. He had on workman’s clothes, including boots and a dented and dirty yellow hard hat. Noise was something he didn’t want. It might allow someone to approach him unseen. So he eschewed the air-driven jackhammer and stuck to his rusty pick and shovel. He gave himself plenty of light, running a thick wire from the truck’s small generator set up next to the rear bumper. It was very directed light, centered on the concrete birdbath, so it didn’t disturb his vision if anyone came at him from any direction. The compressor chugged away steadily; he could hear it and smell its exhaust fumes.
Keeping his attention narrowly focused on the birdbath, his senses tuned to his surroundings, he worked steadily with the air hammer and then, for finer work, with the pickax, chipping away concrete to reveal harder marble beneath. The more concrete he removed before trying to transfer the birdbath, the lighter it would be, and th
e less likely that it would be damaged. Concrete and marble weren’t the lightest and most manageable substances on earth. If he didn’t remove one while preserving the other, his task would be herculean as well as futile.
Even over the soft sound of the generator and compressor, he heard now and then the wail of a distant siren. The police were diverted, along with the FDNY. The public, as well as news wolves like Minnie Miner, would be occupied by a major fire, and maybe a dead cop. And the woman who knew too much to stay alive, Nancy Weaver, was most likely dead in the trunk of an old and untraceable BMW sedan.
Engines, sirens, death, flames—that was all somewhere else so he could accomplish his purpose here.
And it was happening! His quest would be satisfied. He couldn’t help stopping work now and then to look down to see the cumulative effects of his steady effort with the pickax.
He felt a wild exhilaration. An awe. He was like a shadow Michelangelo, giving marble birth to something rare and beautiful. Doing what sculptors always did—chipping away everything that didn’t look like some part of whatever it was they were creating.
The toil of his hands was revealing great beauty that would soon be his.
He would, of course, continue to kill. And he would win his war with Quinn.
Nancy Weaver was in almost complete silence in the darkness of the BMW’s trunk. Sweat streamed down her face, into her eyes. Her tears were like acid, burning wherever they touched.
She continued to fight. Her bonds were slightly looser now, the tape twisted. But not nearly enough to suggest she might slip free, even though her flesh was coated with perspiration. Her futile kicks were becoming weaker. Her bare feet were bloody and battered. She tried to kick harder, repeating the single, desperate word in her mind with each effort. Kick! Kick! Kick!
None of it seemed to make a difference, but it was all she had.
Outside the car, a reverse light and one of the brake lights continued their repetitive blinking.
At least the result of the electrical arcs she’d created weren’t as drastic as Weaver had feared. There was no fire, no gasoline explosion.
But the blinking taillight and reverse light were dimmer. The battery was running down.
72
In the Far Castle’s garden, the killer continued to work with pickax and shovel and Consolidated Edison equipment. Enough concrete had been knocked loose from the birdbath’s outer structure to reveal Bellezza—certainly Bellezza! What was left of the concrete clung firmly to the marble, and there was still plenty of mud on what had been revealed.
The killer put down the pickax, backed up a step, and swiped the back of his wrist across his forehead. He felt almost tired enough to consider sitting cross-legged on the ground for a while. But he couldn’t entertain that thought for long. His plan didn’t allow for staying still in the same place for any unnecessary length of time.
He made a mental note to step up his dieting and exercise regimens, then began using his thick gardener’s gloves to brush off what he could of the mud where it caked what used to resemble a birdbath.
When he thought enough mud and concrete chips had been brushed away, he attempted to lift the statuette. He didn’t really expect to be able to move it by hand, but he wanted to get some idea as to its weight.
It weighed more than he could lift. He leaned his weight into it and rocked it back and forth until it broke loose from the depression where it had long sat in the garden.
Movement out near the street caught his eye, and he stood still and watched a man and woman stroll past on the sidewalk. They were holding hands, and the woman playfully hopped over the electrical cable leading from the van. To them, this was just another late-night Con Ed job. The utility company making sure the city would awaken to full power. They walked on.
The killer was reassured. He counted to twenty, slowly, then walked out of the garden to get a two-wheeled dolly from his parked van.
Much of the concrete had been chipped away from the birdbath. It should be light enough now that it wouldn’t simply damage the dolly.
With the dolly, it should take him no more than ten or fifteen minutes to load the birdbath, generator, and cables into the van.
The rest of the tools he would leave for the losers.
Lucky Amber and his buddy Bill Jefferson, who liked to be called Jamal, were walking through the hot, humid night toward where there might be some traffic and they could flag down a cab. They were both sixteen, but Jamal could pass for twenty-one, which tended to get the two friends in trouble. They’d drunk beer while playing cards, but both boys were sober.
“Sounds like a major thing on the other side of town,” Lucky said. “Sirens and shit.”
“Maybe somebody with worse luck than me,” Jamal said. He was a tall black youth who was prone to taking a short hop when he contributed to a conversation, as if footwork were necessary to make his point. The two were on their way home from a seven-card stud poker game, where Jamal had lost over twenty-two dollars. No small amount in their neighborhood.
“Some of them sirens are FDNY,” said Lucky. He was shorter than Jamal, and broader. “My guess’d be a major fire.”
“I wouldn’t bet against you, man. Not tonight.”
“Not any night on anything,” Lucky said.
Jamal gave a little hop and said nothing. Right was right.
“That an emergency vehicle or something there?” Lucky said, pointing.
“Maybe a cab,” Jamal said.
“A gray cab?”
“Guess not. And it’s got the wrong kind of lights, and the red one’s blinking. Wrong kinda car to be where it is, too. Looks like a Bimmer.”
“Might be worth a look.”
“So let’s go take a look,” Jamal said, with his habitual hop. Maybe the car was temporarily abandoned and would contain something worth stealing. Like drugs, cash, or an iPhone. Luck could change, couldn’t it?
“Could be somebody wants us to walk over there so they can bash in our brains an’ steal our wallets and watches,” Lucky suggested. He wasn’t called Lucky for nothing; he always considered the downside and seldom took chances.
“Or could be two hot MILFs looking for action.” Hop, hop.
Faced with these polar-opposite choices, Jamal’s suggestion prevailed. The two men crossed the street and started toward the parked car with the flickering reverse light and what looked like a blinking red turn signal.
But as they approached the car, Lucky saw that the blinking light wasn’t a turn signal, or the front signal would probably be blinking white or yellow. And the back-up light should be steady, if the car was in reverse.
“Something’s stuck,” Lucky said when they were about twenty feet from the car. It was, as Jamal had thought, a BMW, but an old one. With some rust on it, and beat all to hell if you looked closely at it.
Jamal peered inside. The car was unoccupied. Just sitting parked, blinking. “Ghost car,” he said
Lucky was beginning to get a bad feeling. “Let’s haul our asses outta here.”
“It’s a BMW, bro. Things shouldn’t go wrong with it.”
“It’s also about twenty years old,” Lucky said.
Jamal shrugged, hopped. “So it’s a classic. Belongs to some rich guy who’ll give us a reward for alerting him that his car is screwed up.”
“If we could find him,” Lucky said.
“Or her.”
Lucky smiled. “There is that possibility.”
The two kids had almost reached the car when a taxi turned at the intersection.
The cabbie saw them and steered toward them, cruising for a fare.
“Here’s where we spend some of your winnings,” Jamal said.
The cab was veering in to be at the curb in front of them. Lucky took a step. Paused. He was staring at the old gray Bimmer.
“Wha’s it?” Jamal asked.
“I heard something knocking.”
“I heard a voice said, ‘Take this cab.’ ” Jamal hopped
toward the taxi.
“It’s coming from that car.” Lucky pointed toward the BMW. He glanced around. “Who’d park here, anyway? It’s a long walk to anything.” He raised a hand, stood still. “There it is again. And look at the car. It’s kind of rocking.”
“So maybe some couple’s in there doing the nasty.”
“No. There’s nobody in there.” Lucky headed toward the BMW again.
Jamal turned halfway and raised his hand, signaling to the cabbie that yes, they wanted the cab, and motioned for it to come on.
Lucky was already at the BMW, cast in red from the blinking taillight, when Jamal reached him.
Jamal stopped and stood still. He heard the knocking, too.
“There’s something trapped in there,” Lucky said. “Or someone.” He moved to where he could see the car’s interior. He tried the door and found it locked “There’s nobody inside here.”
“What I said, man.”
“Noise gotta be coming from the trunk.”
Jamal could hear the knocking clearly now. Whoever or whatever was inside the trunk must have heard them on the outside. “Somethin’s alive in there, bro.”
“Let’s open it,” Lucky said.
“Can’t. No handle. And we ain’t got no key.”
The cabdriver had figured things out, a car parked in a godforsaken place, its lights blinking erratically, two curious young guys, trying to get the trunk open. He got a pry bar from the tool box he carried in the cab’s trunk and went over to them. He could go either way with the pry bar, if he had to. But these two didn’t seem dangerous. Couple of kids.
“There’s something or someone trapped in there,” Lucky said, pointing.
“I’d bet on someone,” the cabbie said, leaning close with his ear to the trunk lid. “Unless something’s learned to holler for help.” He jammed the iron pry bar’s edge beneath the lip of the trunk lid. The metal made a squealing sound.
“That’s a BMW,” Lucky noted.