Fear the Night

by John Lutz

  “Warming up,” Birdy said, as if Meg needed explanation. “Like practice golf swings. Now it’s for real.”

  “It was real for the people who got shot before Vito Mestieri,” Meg said.

  Birdy stopped with the knee and nodded. “Yeah, but to our shooter the earlier victims were just a way to get Repetto into the game. Even Bricker. Especially Bricker.”

  Meg gave him a cautioning look, considering Repetto’s expression at the mention of Dal Bricker. Birdy shouldn’t have gone there. He might catch hell now.

  But the hardness in Repetto’s expression had nothing to do with Birdy’s insensitivity; it was about the Night Sniper.

  “He made a mistake when he killed Dal,” Repetto said in a soft, easy voice.

  Which gave Meg more of a chill than if his rage had shown on his face.

  They were back out on the street, walking toward the car, when Birdy grinned over at Meg and said, “Whoopee ti yi yo.”

  When they drove to their precinct basement office to check for any developments, and to pick up another city car so they could split up to check out gun dealers and collectors, they were surprised to find Assistant Chief Melbourne waiting for them.

  Melbourne had arranged for the office, which was cramped and glum. The walls were pale green and the single window was narrow and at ground level, splattered with mud so it was difficult to see out and allowed only dim light in to relieve somewhat the relentless fluorescent glare of the cheap ceiling fixtures. The furniture and file cabinets were dented gray steel. A computer on the desk looked as if it had been upgraded over and over and was a technology basket case. Maps of all five boroughs, departmental notices with curling corners, a case chart, were pinned directly to the soft wallboard that covered concrete. The office was damp and smelled like a swamp. A patch of mold a few inches square grew in a corner of the ceiling. On one wall was a framed photo of former Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik in uniform, looking stolid and sincere and indestructible.

  Melbourne was behind Repetto’s desk, seated in Repetto’s chair. Bulky as he was, he didn’t fill the chair the way Repetto did.

  “You wanna know what we know,” Repetto said.

  “That,” Melbourne said, “and I want you to know about this.”

  Repetto saw that Melbourne was talking about a sheet of white typing paper on the desk.

  “This is a copy,” Melbourne said. “Lab’s got the original and the envelope, but already they’re saying nothing’s coming out of them. Same cheap stationery, same postmark, same typewriter. That’s about it.”

  At first Repetto thought the copy paper was blank, but when he leaned closer he saw the brief message: 7-F.

  “That’s it?” he asked.

  Melbourne nodded. “An apartment number, would be my guess. Our sniper wants you trying to find where he shot from, because he knows all that’ll happen is we’ll get more frustrated. That’s his game.”

  “There’s that word again,” Meg said. “Game.”

  “Here’s something else,” Melbourne said. He reached into a pocket and laid a small cassette on the desk. “Tape of the killer’s phone calls. Voice sounds disguised. None of these calls were traced to any phone that meant anything.”

  “Male or female voice?”

  “Can’t say for sure, but probably male. These calls won’t tell you much more than I told you about them.”

  Repetto picked up the cassette and carried it to a recorder on top of one of the file cabinets. “Does this relic work?”

  “Sure,” Melbourne said. “Sometimes the job calls for relics.”

  Repetto ignored him and inserted the cassette into the old recorder.

  The voice was disguised, as Melbourne had said, and was most likely male. There was something in it that created a cold spot on the back of Meg’s neck. Especially the last thing the killer said:

  “I want Repetto and Repetto only. A man is judged by the quality of his enemies, and Repetto is to be my opponent. Repetto, Repetto, Repetto. I repeato, Repetto.”

  “Jesus!” Meg said. “He has a sense of humor.”

  “Most born killers do,” Melbourne said. “They’d just as soon see somebody die as see them slip on a banana peel. Same thing to them.”

  “He seems to have switched from phone calls to notes now that Repetto’s on the case,” Birdy said.

  Melbourne nodded. “His game, his rules.”

  “So far,” Repetto said.

  “Only so many apartment seven-Fs the killer could have fired from and hit Mestieri,” Melbourne said, turning his attention again to the note. “Thing to do is check them out.”

  Repetto nodded, putting aside for the moment the canvassing of gun dealers and collectors.

  “How many uniforms can you give us?” he asked Melbourne.

  “Five. And they’re already down on the Lower East Side doing their jobs. They need you to supervise them.”

  Repetto doubted it. The hunt for the Night Sniper wasn’t the kind of case that prompted standing around jerking off when there was work to be done.

  Melbourne gave a wheeze and heaved himself up out of Repetto’s chair. “You want your desk?”

  “Not now,” Repetto said, on his way back out the door. “You fly it for a while.”

  Meg and Birdy followed, not glancing back at Melbourne.

  Two apartment 7-Fs were found that provided clear shots to where Vito Mestieri had fallen with a sniper’s bullet in him. One was owned by an eighty-year-old retired woman who needed an oxygen bottle to breathe and hadn’t left the place in months. The other 7-F was in a steel and glass postwar monstrosity that had windows that didn’t open.

  Repetto, Meg, and Birdy had spent another futile day. If this was a game they were playing, the Sniper was winning.

  At dinner that night at Mama Roma, a neighborhood Italian restaurant that was one of their favorites, Repetto watched Lora ignore her favorite pasta and stare idly into the wine she was swirling in her glass. She was taking Dal Bricker’s death hard, as was Repetto. Dal, who had been like a son to them, and if dreams could come true, a son-in-law. For some reason Repetto thought Lora would emerge from her grief sooner than he would. He should have known better; she didn’t have as much opportunity as he to act on her pain and hunger for revenge.

  “Did you see your client about the condo near Gramercy Park?” he asked.

  “Canceled the appointment,” she said. “Somehow coordinating drapes and carpet doesn’t seem so important now.”

  Repetto knew what she meant. “Dal?”

  She stopped the swirling motion with her glass and looked at him. “Of course.”

  “We’ll get his killer.”

  “That sounds like a line from an old B-movie.”

  “Maybe it does, but it’s true.”

  She didn’t insult him by pointing out what they both knew: apprehending the Night Sniper wouldn’t bring back Dal. “Can you promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I know I won’t quit until we do get him.” When she showed no reaction, he said, “How’s Amelia taking Dal’s death?”

  “Not well. But she’s losing herself in her studies. She’s strong and can cope.”

  “Hard work as therapy.” That was something Repetto believed in, so why not his daughter?

  “Maybe she’ll start seeing—”

  “Someone else?” Repetto interrupted, almost angrily.

  “She never did see Dal quite the way we would have liked.”

  “No,” he admitted, “she didn’t.”

  Lora artfully twirled a few strands of angel-hair pasta on her fork into a small tangle, put it in her mouth, and chewed. A sip of wine. “I had lunch today with Zoe Brady.”

  After Zoe’s initial visit, Repetto was surprised when Lora had told him the two women had met, at a police banquet, and through an unexpected encounter in an antique shop when Lora was searching for a particular piece of furniture for a client. He was equally surprised they’d met fo
r lunch. They didn’t exactly strike him as soul sisters.

  “I called her,” Lora said. “I wanted to talk to her about the Night Sniper.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to know what’s going on. I need ... to do something. To help. For Dal.”

  “For you, you mean.”

  “That’s true. Dal’s gone.”

  “You’re a decorator, Lora, not a cop. For that matter, Zoe’s not a cop either.”

  “Zoe can help me understand. She can tell me about the man who killed Dal, the man my husband is trying to kill.”

  “Catch,” Repetto corrected her. “It isn’t my job to kill him.”

  “I wasn’t talking about your job.”

  “I was only talking about my job.” He took a large swallow of wine, dribbling some of it on his tie.

  “Red wine,” Lora said. “It’ll stain.”

  “We changing the subject?” Repetto asked, dabbing at the stain with his napkin.

  She smiled sadly. “Sure.”

  “I don’t want to have to worry about you, Lora.”

  “This isn’t 1890, and I’m not some wilting flower who’s going to swoon under stress.”

  “I know that. It’s the twenty-first century, and life is cheaper.”

  “Are you going to forbid me to help?”

  He had to grin. “I wouldn’t do that. It wouldn’t work anyway. The thing is, I don’t know any way you can help.”

  “Maybe there isn’t one, but I can at least help myself. It makes me feel better to talk with Zoe.”

  “Not me,” Repetto said. “I don’t have as much faith as you do in profilers.”

  “Still, she’s making the killer real to me.”

  “Somebody to disturb your sleep.”

  “Somebody I can hate.”

  Repetto understood how hate could supplant grief. He poured some more Chianti and took a sip, being more careful this time.

  “I’ll take the tie to the cleaners,” Lora said. “We’ve got some other things that need to go.”

  They didn’t talk about Dal or the Night Sniper the rest of the evening.

  Everything but.

  The next morning, after Repetto left the house, Lora was gathering clothes to take to the dry cleaner. She checked one of Repetto’s suits to make sure the pockets were empty.

  Deep in one of his suit coat’s inside pockets, she found a ticket stub from a week ago, when they’d last attended a play.

  No surprise; Repetto was forgetful.

  As she set the ticket aside to be thrown away later, she saw that it was for an orchestra seat, six rows back and seven off the aisle.

  Seat 7-F.

  10

  Ralph Evans moved aside and let his wife, Venus, enter the elevator first. They both stood against the elevator walls so the bellhop would have room with their luggage. They’d just checked into the Melrose Plaza Hotel on the edge of Times Square. Pattie and George Neverton, also from Columbus, Ohio, had checked in minutes before. The Evanses had known the Nevertons for almost twenty years. Venus had gone to high school with Pattie. The two girls had dated the same boys, made the same mistakes, fallen into the same resignation they’d decided was happiness.

  Ralph, a buyer for Adcock’s, an upscale men’s clothing store chain, was in New York on business, but his appointments weren’t scheduled till tomorrow. Plenty of time for talking with designer reps and feeling bolts of fabrics. Tonight the four Ohioans were going to have dinner at a good restaurant, then take in a show. That was why Ralph and Venus had invited their old friends the Nevertons to come along and play in fun city.

  As soon as Ralph had tipped the bellhop and they were settled in their room, he called the Nevertons, who were also on the thirty-first floor. George and Pattie said they were right down the hall and would come over; they wanted to compare rooms, see if Ralph and Venus had a phone in the bathroom.

  Venus, a plump former cheerleader, wandered over to the window and looked out at the city. “It’s so big and busy. More so even than you said.”

  Ralph looked at her framed by the light, twenty pounds overweight (but so was he), still with the bright blue eyes and wild mop of blond hair. Somehow they came to be in their midforties, he a middle-aged cloth and clothing buyer, she a stereotypical housewife in Ohio. Both of them were stereotypes, Ralph thought. It wasn’t so bad.

  “Why are you smiling?” Venus asked.

  “I still love you more than I can express.”

  She smiled back and started toward him, the fading light from the window catching a glint of tears in her eyes.

  There was a knock on the door. Venus went to it and opened it.

  “Hey, your room’s bigger’n ours!” Pattie exclaimed in mock outrage, as soon as she and George were inside.

  Ralph and Venus glanced at each other. Ralph knew what her look meant: we’ll take up later where we left off.

  “No phone in the bathroom, though,” Ralph said, though he wasn’t sure about that.

  “Ah!” George said. “It’s all fair then.” He was a big man with sandy hair and horsey yellowed teeth that showed too much when he smiled.

  Pattie had gone to the window and was looking out. “Where’s that place where you can line up and get cheap play tickets, Ralph?”

  “Just a few blocks away. TKTS.”

  “Why don’t we walk over there and see what we can get for tonight?”

  Ralph would have preferred going to a theater box office, or calling Telecharge, but he knew Pattie and George were watching their pennies. “Tell you what, why don’t Venus and I walk over while you two unpack? Then we can meet downstairs for a drink.”

  “That wouldn’t be right,” Pattie said. “We can all go.”

  “You two oughta unpack,” Ralph said. He couldn’t think of why they should unpack first; he simply wanted to be alone with Venus, so they could choose the play. Pattie would want to see something serious and sappy that would put them all in a somber mood, and he knew Venus would prefer a big musical. Then, tonight when they returned from the theater ...

  “You two unpack,” Pattie said. “We’ll go get the tickets.”

  “Ralph’s the only one knows right where the place is,” George reminded her.

  “So let’s flip a coin,” Venus said.

  Pattie was thinking it over, but Ralph already had a quarter out of his pocket.

  “Heads we go,” George said.

  Wishing there were some way he could cheat, Ralph flipped the coin high so it would land on the bed. It bounced twice before settling on the taut spread.

  Ah! Tails.

  “Good,” he said. “We’ll go. That’s how it should be. You’re sort of our guests. You two unpack and we’ll phone up to you from the lobby when we get back with the tickets.”

  The Nevertons agreed, Pattie reluctantly, and went back to their room.

  When the door was shut, Venus kissed Ralph on the lips and stroked his chest. “Our lucky night,” she said.

  He smiled down at her and kissed her forehead. Lucky life.

  They left the suitcases where the bellhop had placed them; then they left to get play tickets.

  For a musical, Ralph hoped. They’d enjoy a good dinner, then a loud, colorful musical with lots of dancing; then they’d have drinks with their best friends and talk about the show. Then it would be back to the hotel and to bed.

  He followed Venus out and made sure the door was locked behind them.

  Lucky life.

  11

  Zoe Brady watched the balding guy in the produce department as he fingered some arugula. He was in his late thirties, a little overweight, nice clothes and an expensive-looking ring that wasn’t a wedding band on his left hand. He’d be fairly good looking without his glasses—if he ever was without them.

  Maybe a keeper.

  As he examined a pyramid of apples, he glanced her way. He was aware she’d been staring at him.

  Zoe had picked up men before in her neighborhood grocery store. W
hat better place to troll for men, to snare them unaware while they were thinking about food? Of course, they thought they’d picked up her. It was a game she knew and played very well.

  She went to the zucchinis and touched one, then another, leaning forward so her skirt rose slightly in back. Give the guy a leg show. When she straightened up, she shook her head helplessly and approached him.

  “I’m really sorry I have to ask,” she said, “but do you know what arugula is? I think it’s like a lettuce.”

  He smiled, a little shy, and not quite believing his luck. “Sure. It’s right over there.” He pointed. “The ruffly-looking stuff.”

  “Ruffly. That’s just what it looks like. Are you a writer?”

  He laughed. Nice teeth. “No, I’m an accountant.”

  “Oh. I thought, the way you knew about and described arugula, maybe you wrote advertising.” She gave him her best hesitant smile. She could play shy, too. “Thanks.”

  “Thanks?”

  “I mean, for knowing about the arrugla. I’ve got to buy this stuff to take to a dinner party where we’re all supposed to bring something. I’m bringing salad, and the host asked specifically for arugula.”

  “She can keep it. It’s kind of bitter.”

  “Really? Maybe she wants it because of her religion or something. Or for her health.” Zoe doing naive now. “I don’t know her well.”

  “I don’t know you well, either,” he said, “but I’d like to.”

  “You don’t know me at all.”

  “True, but I want to change that.” He reached into a wallet he carried inside his sport jacket instead of on his hip—sometimes a sign of wealth—and handed her his business card. It said he was Herb Closeman and confirmed that he was an accountant, for a firm Zoe had never heard of.

  “Mr. Closeman—”

  “It’s Herb.”

  “Okay, Herb.” She slid his card into a pocket. “It’s funny,” she said, “your name’s Herb and we met when I asked you about a herb.”

  “Clearly it’s fate.”

  “Clearly. I wouldn’t want you to think—”

  “I’m not even going to ask for your name and phone number,” he said. “You have mine. Think about it, and if you’re at all interested, call me.”