Darkborn

by Matthew J. Costello

  Slowly, like a helium balloon freely drifting away, higher and higher, into a perfect sky, he lost hold of consciousness in such a blissful, dreamy way . . .

  But the phone rang.

  Shocking, hard, the jangling bell sound tearing through his peace like a knife.

  It rang.

  Becca’s arm slipped away.

  She grunted, turning to the glowing dial of the digital alarm clock. “It’s eleven-fifteen,” she said. Her voice was sleepy. “Who’d call us at eleven-fifteen?”

  She didn’t like getting calls this late. Usually they were drunks who misdialed.

  “Is Joey there? Uh, can I speak to Joey?”

  There’s no Joey here.

  “Where’s Joey?”

  And then — the real dumb ones dialed the same wrong number again.

  “Hello, Joey?”

  Will sat up. The phone rang one last time.

  And even then — somehow — he knew that his life was about to change forever.

  He picked up the receiver.

  * * *

  21

  The voice said, “Hello.”

  There was a pause. Then, again, “Hello, Will.”

  As if I should know who this dingbat is, Will thought. As if it was someone I know . . .

  No one I know calls at 11:15 at night.

  Unless something was very wrong.

  “Who is this?” Will said. “Do you know what time it is?”

  Then the caller said his name.

  He said: “It’s Ted Whalen, Will. Ted. From St. Jerry’s …”

  Will paused. He turned and saw Becca watching him.

  Waiting for a reassuring smile, or for him to slam down the receiver, muttering about late night drunks who don’t know how to touch seven buttons without screwing up.

  But he didn’t smile.

  Who is it? she mouthed.

  “Will?” the voice said again. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes . . .” Then, with some difficulty, “Still here, Ted. Ted . . . it’s kinda late.” Will paused, dumbfounded. He always expected ghosts to rear out of his past. But he hoped some would stay away forever, melted into the woodwork.

  History.

  Ted Whalen was one of them.

  I thought that was understood, Will thought.

  I thought we all knew that.

  “I wouldn’t have called you if I didn’t think it was important. I just got off the phone, Will. I’m in Los Angeles. And . . . I guess I just forgot the time.”

  For a second, Will almost said, How are you doing? How the hell has your life been for the past twenty-five years?

  But he said nothing.

  Maybe he’ll go away, Will thought.

  Whalen’s voice rumbled. He cleared his throat. “I just got off the phone with Jim Kiff.”

  At the name Kiff, Will immediately saw one image.

  Saw it as if he were there — now — standing in the darkness.

  Kiff, standing beside Narrio’s body, laying claim to the blame while freeing the rest of them to run away. Kiff, claiming his heritage, his fucked-up life.

  Tim Hanna once said that he had gone to see Kiff weeks later. Just for a few beers in Germantown. So did Whalen. But Will never did, never wanted to.

  “Kiff . . .” Will said. “Let me put you on hold.”

  He pressed the button down and turned to Becca. She watched, playing their game of guessing who’s on the phone. Playing this time, and losing.

  “I’ll take this downstairs,” Will said, hearing how distracted his voice sounded. “I’ll tell you about it later.” He shook his head.

  As if it were beyond fathoming.

  And he walked out of the bedroom and downstairs to the phone in his small office just off the living room. Fumbling, he turned on the artist’s light that craned over his cluttered desk. He picked up the phone and pressed the button below the blinking light.

  “Still there?”

  “Yes,” Ted said.

  Will thought he should say something, ask something … as if it were a normal call, at a normal hour.

  “How are you?”

  “Good. Not bad. I’m in insurance …annuities . . . tax shelters. That kind of thing. Doing well …”

  “Great,” Will said. “I’m always reading about Tim Hanna.”

  “Yes,” Whalen said.

  Tim Hanna had done better than well for himself. Tim Hanna had done so well that Will couldn’t imagine that he might be the same person that they had gone to school with.

  It was hard to imagine that one of New York’s most powerful businessmen and his old friend from school were the same person. Tim Hanna owned real estate in three cities, primo office complexes, shopping developments, and a small, upscale movie theater chain. He owned a piece of the Palace, in Atlantic City.

  He had powerful friends. He hung out with the glitterati. At least once a week his face was in the paper. A fundraiser. A social occasion. Politics was rumored to be the next step.

  Good for him, Will thought.

  Will never heard from him.

  And he never called Tim.

  “And you, Will?” Whalen said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m good, Wh —” He paused, about to call Whalen by his last name, the pull of adolescence still strong . . . powerful. But instead he said, “Ted.”

  Another pause. Will heard the bed of static on the line. Not a great connection.

  He waited for Whalen to tell him what led him to call. Will waited, growing more nervous, more upset at the way the past can suddenly become the present, at the way a wall of decades could just melt away.

  As if it were yesterday . . .

  “I tried calling Tim, but you know how things are with him. Left a couple of messages. He was in Boston, maybe Washington. They didn’t know. But, well . . . Then I had your number from the alumni directory.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Whalen cleared his throat again. “It’s about Kiff, Will. I stayed in touch with him. A call now and then, just to see what he was up to. Which wasn’t much. I guess I felt a bit guilty . . . responsible . . .”

  Will noted that this man on the phone didn’t sound much like the Ted Whalen that he knew. Guilt? Responsibility?

  Strange words coming from the cynical Ted Whalen.

  Time does make for odd sea changes.

  “He had a real bad time of it, Will. Real bad. He went to Fordham for a year, dropped out, and then Uncle Sam grabbed him.”

  “Vietnam?”

  “Yeah. He had twenty-twenty vision and he was more educated than most of the ghetto kids that they were feeding into the meat grinder. So he made lieutenant and got to take everyone out into the rice paddies looking for the enemy.”

  “Poor bastard.”

  There was one sorry platoon to be in . . .

  “Yeah. Then he came to see me when he got out. He came, and stayed for a week, then two, until finally I had to, like, just tell him to leave. He was a mess. You know, a vet. Hell, when he looked at me with those eyes — shit, Will, they were like pie plates. I was scared. I didn’t know. I thought he’d kill me.”

  But the point? Ted Whalen. What’s the point? Why are you calling me?

  “But he left?”

  “Yes. And then I’d get these cards, scribbled postcards from Tempe, Arizona . . . then Mexico City . . . a donkey wearing a big sombrero. I thought he was into drugs, dealing stuff. But he wasn’t . . .”

  Will heard a sound upstairs. Becca walking around. Or maybe one of the kids getting up to pee. Good night, Mommy, Beth always trooped in to say. G’night, Daddy.

  Except I’m down here now. Down here, listening to this . . .

  Then, on the phone, Will heard Whalen take a drink. The clink of ice cubes, a rattle followed by a slurp. Whalen cleared his throat again.

  A nervous tic. A habit. Or is Whalen scared?

  And where is all this leading?

  “The postcards stopped. And I was glad. I didn’t want him in
my life. I was married at the time. I had a kid.”

  From the tone of Whalen’s voice, Will suspected that those things were in Whalen’s past.

  “Then — about three years ago — I got another postcard. It was a scrawl. Two sentences, barely decipherable. No address, but the postmark was clear enough. It was Peru. Fucking Peru! Can you imagine? And it said, ‘I’m coming home. Because there’s no getting away, no running . . .”

  “What?” Will laughed. He was losing interest in the adventures of Kiff.

  Crazy men lead crazy lives.

  “Running from what?”

  Another clink, ice in the glass, and then, “I didn’t know. But I started thinking, and thinking, and I got kind of worried.”

  Will doodled on a yellow pad in front of him. Mindless scribble, circles, and arrows, and —

  “Shit, I thought about that night, Will. And Kiff taking it on the chin. And — I didn’t know what the hell he was going to do. God, he was a fritzed-out vet at this point. He was capable of anything.”

  “And he had your address. I see what you mean.”

  “I thought that maybe he just wanted to tell the whole story, everything that happened back then.” Will noticed that Whalen didn’t mention Narrio’s name. “They’d open the records, our names would be brought up again — a lot of hassle.”

  “That’s ancient history,” Will said, none too confidently. “No one’s interested.”

  “I thought — I thought that maybe Kiff would want to get back at us.”

  More doodles, circles, and pointy things inside the circles.

  He flipped over the sheet of paper. Exposing another clean piece.

  “Then he came back to New York. He called me. He tried calling Tim. He said he tried to reach you.”

  Will’s number was unlisted, a necessity in his line of work. But the St. Jerome’s directory had it, an option which he was glad hadn’t occurred to Kiff.

  “He sounded crazy, Will. He babbled on about someone following him, that he was being watched. That something was going to happen to him, to all of us soon. All because of that night —”

  Will shook his head and moved the receiver to his other ear. “He’s crazy, Ted. Crazy. Don’t worry about him. Get a new phone number, keep it —”

  “No. You’re not listening, Will. He came back. He went to Brooklyn. I know where he is.”

  “So?” Will sighed, trying to keep this insanity as distant as possible.

  “He sent me clippings . . . from the paper …”

  “Clippings?”

  “About those murders, those girls …”

  “What girls?”

  “Didn’t you see them?” Whalen asked. “Don’t you read the paper?”

  Will laughed nervously. He was beginning to think that maybe Whalen was crazy too. “All the time. But what are you talking about?”

  Whalen continued. “He sent me clippings, articles about the murders in the city, the girls being cut up in the streets . . . God, you must know about it. You’re right there, for Christ’s sake. I’m in California. But you’re right there.”

  Will looked up. He was staring at photos of his family.

  Beth dressed as a bunny holding her Easter basket. And Sharon, a princess dressed in white from last Halloween. And a photo by the beach with Becca wearing a two-piece suit and looking beautiful, full of life.

  Now he knew what Whalen was talking about.

  Of course, everyone knew about those murders.

  What was the body count? It was run as a banner headline by the Daily News. Nine dead since the summer began? Or was it up to ten?

  And there were all these lively descriptions of how they were killed.

  With surgical precision, the tabloids said, slavering over the detailed prose that let the readers imagine just how each woman was killed.

  Slowly. That seemed to be the murderer’s first concern. The women were cut laterally and vertically, from the chest to the abdomen, and the skin was peeled back. There was evidence that things were done to their insides, tiny tears, probes, and cuts to exacerbate the pain.

  Their throats were cut, rendering screams or any cries for help impossible.

  The News called him “The Madman.”

  The Post dubbed him “The New Age Ripper.”

  Calvin Thomas, the New York police chief, was trapped in a cycle of holding a news conference every few days, saying the same hopeless words, while the mayor looked discomfited, embarrassed, standing in the background.

  We have nothing to report in our investigations . . .

  Week after week . . .

  The street hookers reported that business seemed to be off. Live at Five interviewed three of them, a titillating coup. They said that they weren’t scared. They had — smirk, smirk — protection.

  Now for a look at the weather.

  “He sent me all the clippings, the photos …”

  Will heard Becca walking upstairs, maybe concerned because he had disappeared, summoned by this strange late night phone call.

  She knew nothing of Whalen, or Kiff or Tim Hanna or poor Mike Narrio. None of it.

  Nobody did.

  Will stood up. He held the phone, standing, wearing his pajama bottoms and no shirt. He felt cold, then colder, as he started to flash on what Whalen was suggesting.

  “Wait a second. Hold on. What is this? Are you saying that Kiff has something to do with these murders?”

  Will felt trapped in his office, in his room. His pen slashed at the yellow paper, jabbing at it, filling it with pointillist dots.

  “God, Will, no. He sounded too . . . scared. I just don’t know. I got real worried for the poor bastard. Maybe he’s gone nuts. He told me that he has to talk to someone, someone he can trust. He says he knows what’s happening.”

  “I doubt that . . . But he wouldn’t tell you?”

  “No. He said he couldn’t talk over the phone. That he’d find out . . .”

  “Who ‘he’?” Will smirked.

  “I don’t fucking know.”

  “Sounds like class-A paranoia, Ted. Why don’t you call the NYPD. Call them, tell them about Kiff, the clippings. Let them deal with it.”

  “Could you wait a second?” Whalen said. And Will said sure. He heard Whalen get up. He heard the ice tumble into Whalen’s glass, three thousand miles away. Whalen . . . getting more fortitude for his call. He came back, breathless.

  “I thought of that. Don’t you think that I thought of that? But what if he has nothing? What if it’s all crazy Vietnam whammer-jammer, and I send the cops to whatever creepy place he’s living? It wouldn’t be right.”

  Will suspected that Whalen was lying. That wasn’t the reason.

  Nobody develops that much kindness late in life.

  There’s something else. Something he’s holding back.

  “And there’s this. Shit, Will, what if the cops get him talking about Coney Island, and Narrio? The whole thing will come out again. There might even be hearings or something. I — I couldn’t afford that.”

  Will looked at the photos of his kids. He wouldn’t want them hearing the story either. In the tabloids, the newspapers. Live at Five. Dead at Six. Newscenter Nowhere.

  Because the story — the scandal — would be big news. Real big.

  Because Tim Hanna is big. A giant. What was the phrase natty Tom Wolfe used?

  He’s a Master of the Universe.

  Boozy Ted Whalen was right.

  It wouldn’t be good for anyone.

  And then Will had a creepy thought. Kiff could be a real embarrassment to Tim Hanna.

  Maybe crazy Kiff has a good reason to be paranoid.

  Will sat down. He shivered. It was cold, and he had had enough of this catching-up with Ted Whalen.

  Enough . . .

  “Ted, I think —”

  “Will, I’d really like you to do something . . . I think that you gotta do it.”

  A car passed by the house, moving slowly, deliberately. A patrol ca
r, Will guessed. On the hour, every hour. Keeping suburbia safe . . .

  “Someone has to talk to Kiff. He needs help.”

  Will laughed. “And what if he’s the killer, this madman? You know how to ask the big one, Ted.”

  “Listen!” Whalen ordered. “You can see him. And if you get any strange vibes, you’ don’t even go inside his place. But shit, Will, he’s the one that sounds scared. He babbles about these murders as if he’s fucking terrified. He begged me for help. He pleaded with me to —”

  A gulp. Will imagined Whalen drinking Stoli straight. A nice mellow drink for a quiet California evening.

  “I — I can’t do it. I would. If I was there. But you could. You owe it to him, Will. We all do. Christ, I wouldn’t ask you if I was there. You got a family . . . kids . . . ?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Great. But we owe a chunk of our lives to Kiff. He took it all, Will. He took it all. And if he’s flipped now, we can try to help him.”

  Definitely hiding something, Will thought. I haven’t spent two decades with slimeballs without my antennae going up. All the cards aren’t on the table.

  But he pictured Kiff, holed up in his apartment, scared out of his mind, needing an old face from the past.

  And somehow, for some reason that he couldn’t remember later, Will said, “Okay.”

  Whalen gave him the address. It was in Brooklyn near Livingston Street. It was near part of the Williamsburg section that hadn’t been gentrified yet . . . maybe never would be.

  Kiff lived over a bar.

  Whalen gave Will his own phone number. His number at John Hancock. Whalen thanked Will.

  And he hung up.

  Will looked at the pad of yellow paper.

  He looked at the circle, and the star inside it, and everywhere dots, tiny dots and larger dots, clustered together like spatters of paint.

  Will crumpled up the sheet and tossed it into the trash basket.

  * * *

  22

  She wanted to know all about the phone call, who it was, why the heck they called so late, talking until midnight, past midnight. Who could have called? What was the emergency?

  Will was drinking from a cup featuring Minnie Mouse in a bathing suit playing with a frisky Pluto.

  Half the glass was rum, left over from a party months ago, when summer began and everyone had too many daiquiris.