by John Lutz
Joel Vanya was a small man and had been a small child in a tough neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey. His father had deserted Joel and his mother when Joel was ten. The mean drunk wasn’t much of a loss. Joel’s mother repeated that often as he was growing up. Joel agreed. His father had beaten his mother severely before leaving, and permanently injured Joel’s right leg when he’d tried to interrupt the violence. In this weather, Joel’s artificial kneecap hurt almost as badly as when his father had struck his knee with a beer bottle. Joel still walked with the same limp that had drawn bullies to him as a child.
Every day, Joel hurt inside and out.
He swung a heavy black plastic trash bag into the back of the truck, turned to pick up another, and almost slipped and fell when he stepped on a patch of ice.
“We got no time for you to dance, short shit!” Sal yelled. “You wanna move that fast, do it with a load of trash.”
Joel didn’t answer. He was used to swallowing his hate.
Sal was already back in the cab and gunning the engine by the time Joel had returned with a cardboard box full of trash and another black plastic bag.
The crusher was coming down as he tossed the box in, then the bag. The steel lip of the compactor smashed the box and ruptured the bag, then began scooping the trash back toward the front of the truck’s hold, making room for more.
The truck lurched forward, then braked to a quick halt. Sal up to his tricks again.
“Better jump on board!” Sal shouted back at Joel, locking gazes with him in the rearview mirror.
Joel thought about flipping him the bird, but he didn’t want any trouble. He’d already complained to the boss, Frank Dugan, about Sal harassing him and had gotten nowhere. In fact, Sal had sold the idea that Joel was paranoid; then he’d stepped up his campaign of terror.
The truck roared and jumped forward again just as Joel clutched the grab bar and began swinging his body back on board. He lost his grip and stumbled backward, knowing the truck’s sudden acceleration, then stop had been deliberate. Sal would be laughing his ass off in the warm—or at least warmer—cab.
Joel walked toward the grab bar, determined to be more careful, and noticed a brown paper sack that had been in the plastic bag ruptured by the compactor. The sack had torn open. Something dark that it contained caught his eye.
He looked more closely as he prepared to get back up on the truck. The dark object was the barrel and cylinder of a blue steel revolver. With a glance up and down the deserted street, Joel plucked the gun from the litter of trash and stuck it in his belt beneath his jacket.
After the next stop, near the corner, he made sure Sal couldn’t see him in the rearview mirror and took the gun out for a closer look. It had a checked wooden grip and a snub barrel and looked to be in pretty good shape, the kind of gun that was easy to conceal and perfect for committing a crime. Most likely the owner had thrown it away for a reason, probably in someone else’s curbside pile of trash. A gun with a history that might interest the cops.
If the cops ever got their hands on it.
The truck’s motor roared, and the steel compactor screeched and bit down. Sal was yelling something unintelligible over the din.
Before slipping the gun back beneath his coat, Joel flipped the cylinder out and looked at it.
The gun was loaded.
Dugan the boss called Joel into the office when the truck had returned to the shed. Joel always felt inferior around Dugan, who was a tall, barrel-chested Irishman whose family had always worked for the city. Dugan had come to the sanitation department with certain advantages.
Twelve years ago, he’d started on one of the collection trucks, in a job much like Joel’s present one, but he hadn’t remained there long. From day one, Dugan had pull. Joel knew that was what it took to get ahead in a city job, pull. And that was what it took to get the assholes off you, once they settled on you as a target for their sick, cruel jokes.
Not only didn’t Joel have pull, but Dugan and Sal had turned many of their fellow employees against Joel, spreading lies, making sure Joel was passed over for any promotion. Joel considered himself a realist and saw the situation as something he had to endure. In some matters there was no choice.
Just as he always did, big Frank Dugan glanced up at Joel over the frames of his glasses and made the smaller man wait while he finished what he was writing. He sat behind a wide, cluttered desk. On the wall behind him was a large cork bulletin board with schedules and notices pinned to it. Alongside the corkboard was a bank of battered filing cabinets that were the same gray metal as the desk. A space heater was glowing over in a corner. There was a pair of wet leather boots on the floor in front of it, smelling up the place.
Starting to sweat in his heavy coat, even though it was unbuttoned, Joel waited.
“I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you, Joel,” Dugan said, when he finally put down his pen and looked up. His blue eyes were rheumy and his face flushed. He looked as if he’d been drinking before Joel arrived, not doing paperwork.
Then it suddenly struck Joel that when he had the revolver out, Sal might have caught a glimpse of it in the truck’s outside mirror. A gun in New York, concealed on the person of a city employee, was a serious matter. It was especially serious now, because the gun was in Joel’s black metal lunch pail, which was in Joel’s right hand.
Joel began to perspire even more. He could feel beads of sweat running down his right side beneath his waffled winter underwear. This was just the kind of thing Dugan and Sal must pray for every night, a chance to rid themselves of Joel and at the same time humiliate him and make it impossible for him to find any kind of city job.
But it wasn’t about the gun.
Dugan shrugged his bulky shoulders and said, “I got some bad news. We’re going to have to lay you off, Joel. I’m sorry.”
“Lay me off?” Joel was astounded. “With my seniority? You’d have to lay off a dozen men to get to me!”
Dugan nodded somberly. “The department’s laying off twenty.”
Joel could only stare at him. He’d been working for the Department of Sanitation for nine years. Getting flat-out fired for some lie cooked up against him was one thing, but the thought of a layoff had never occurred to him. His heart turned cold and dropped.
“It isn’t the best of times for the city,” Dugan said.
“I heard we were doing okay, with the new municipal bonds.”
“Yeah, it sounds like a lotta money, but it’s not.” Dugan stood up, looming even larger in the small, warm office. “Not enough, anyway.”
Joel nodded, swallowing loudly.
Dugan extended his hand. “I wish you luck, Joel.”
Joel shook his boss’s hand, feeling the powerful grip. Christ! What’s Doris going to say? And Dante? How are we all going to get by?
Dugan must have known what he was thinking. “You have union benefits, Joel. And there’s always unemployment. I’d like to tell you it looks like you’ll be called back soon, but in all honesty I can’t.”
Joel couldn’t get the words out—not the ones he wanted to say, that this was a crock of shit, that Dugan was a phony, that he and Sal probably got together to shaft him, that this was goddamn unfair! Joel should get the gun out of his lunch pail and tell Dugan what he really thought. Tell Dugan he was gonna fuckin’ die. Not that Joel would actually squeeze the trigger. But Dugan wouldn’t know that.
What Joel said was, “Yeah . . . Yes. I understand.”
Dugan nodded, then sat back down at his desk and picked up his pen. He began to write. Joel was no longer a city employee. Joel wasn’t there.
Goddamn unfair!
Joel left the office. He felt empty inside. His life felt empty. Sal and Dugan had fucked him over, just as he’d been getting fucked over all his life. He should have expected it. In a way, he had expected it.
As he trudged toward the lot where his ten-year-old Ford was parked, the gun in his lunch pail was heavy. He recalled the gun’s cold he
ft in his hand when he’d plucked it from the trash, how heavy it felt for its size. How deadly efficient it looked. How serious. How . . . important.
It was the only substantial thing in his world. It was his only source of comfort, though why it comforted him escaped him.
As he drove home he thought about the gun, what he might have done with it in Dugan’s office, what he should have done. Guns made a difference, right when they appeared. They changed the game entirely. Power shifted. The magic changed hands.
Not that he really would have used the gun.
But it was something to think about as he negotiated the bumper-to-bumper New York traffic that he’d come to hate.
When his father walked into the apartment, twelve-year-old Dante Vanya saw the look on his face and knew something was wrong. Something he’d done? He couldn’t be sure.
“School was okay today,” Dante said.
His father nodded, as if he’d barely heard. “Where’s your mother?”
“Walked down to the store. She needed something for whatever she’s cooking on the stove.”
For the first time, Joel noticed the pungent scents wafting from the kitchen. His nostrils actually twitched as he sniffed at the air.
“She’s making some kinda stew,” Dante said.
His father didn’t answer. He simply trudged toward the bedroom he shared with Dante’s mother. His shoulders were hunched and his head gave the impression of being bowed though really it wasn’t. What he looked like, Dante thought, was somebody with about a thousand pounds of lead stacked on his shoulders.
After his father had disappeared down the hall to the apartment’s small bedrooms, Dante stood up and pretended he was going to his room. It was the last door at the end of the hall, and it had one of the apartment’s few windows that didn’t look out on the brick air shaft.
He actually did go to his room, but first he paused in the hall and peered into his mother and father’s bedroom.
The closet door was open and his father was standing on his toes with one arm raised. His back was to Dante. Dante saw that his father was placing his black metal lunch pail, which he usually set on the kitchen table when he returned home from work, on the top closet shelf. He was pushing the lunch pail back as if trying to make it as unnoticeable as possible, toward the rear of the shelf where shadows were dark and light didn’t play.
An odd thing for him to do, Dante thought.
An odd way for his father to act.
He didn’t know his father’s unusual behavior had only begun.
16
The present
The initial information on the Ralph Evans murder was mostly complete. Repetto could almost feel the case beginning to cool.
He knew that from the Sniper’s point of view, that was how it was supposed to work. There would be nothing of substance for the police to grab hold of, no lead or clue of any sort. If they searched for a connection between killer and killed, they would find none until that fateful day of sudden, violent death. There would be no physical clues leading anywhere other than to a dead end. Normal activity on a busy New York street, then a thunderclap echoing among tall buildings, and almost simultaneous to the report of the rifle, someone would be dead. A clean kill. A clean getaway. Repetto didn’t like any of it.
“Random murder,” Birdy remarked. “The hardest kind to solve.”
“They only seem random,” Meg said.
They were in the basement office the local precinct house had provided. It was a large enough room, with three green steel desks, a metal four-drawer file cabinet, and a table with an ancient but upgraded computer and printer on it. The printer was the kind that was also a copier and a fax machine and, for all Repetto knew, maybe ran out for coffee and gave massages. He had little idea of how to work the damned thing. There was a phone on each desk with buttons so people could listen in or talk on the same line. In the file cabinet drawers were the Night Sniper murder files, along with phone and cross directories, fresh folders, and whatever other office paraphernalia the detectives might need. On the wall behind the desk that Repetto used was a large city map with red-capped pins stuck where the Night Sniper murders had occurred. Like the murders themselves, the pins seemed to have been placed on the map randomly.
Repetto was at the desk now, leaning back in his chair with his fingers laced behind his neck. Meg was at her desk, where she’d been working the phone. Birdy, with his tie loosely knotted and his shirtsleeves rolled up, was perched on the corner of Meg’s desk, absently pumping his right leg. He was staring past Repetto at the city map.
“No murders in any of the other boroughs so far,” he said.
“True,” Repetto said. “Manhattan seems to be his beat.”
“It’s ours too,” Meg said, sounding proprietary. How dare a killer trespass in their territory? She knew she’d used the wrong tone. Very uncoplike. “One thing we can be sure of is he knows how to shoot,” she added.
Repetto knew where she was going but said nothing, rocking slightly in his swivel chair and watching her. The chair made soft squeaking noises.
“Maybe ex-military,” Birdy said. “A trained sniper.”
Repetto continued watching Meg.
“Maybe an ex-cop,” she said.
Repetto smiled slightly.
Birdy became still.
“Maybe,” Repetto said, rocking forward in his chair so he was sitting up straight behind the desk. “Let’s run a check on our SWAT snipers, present and past, and see if they all have alibis for one or more of the Night Sniper hits.”
“Like chicken soup for a dead man,” Meg said, “it can’t hurt.”
“I’ll get some names,” Birdy said, moving to sit at the computer.
“We won’t forget ex-military,” Repetto told them, “but that’ll take a little longer.”
“I can log in to army and marine records,” Birdy said, already playing the computer keys, “soon as I’m done with the NYPD.” His touch was fast and nimble. The keyboard seemed to provide an outlet for his nervous fingers.
Repetto and Meg exchanged a look. They were both more the street cop type and were glad Birdy was computer savvy.
“Where’d you learn to be so good with one of those?” Meg asked.
Birdy didn’t look away from the screen. “My son.”
A week later Repetto sat in Zoe Brady’s office in One Police Plaza. She’d come out from behind her desk to make the meeting more informal, and sat in one of the matching brown leather armchairs. Repetto was seated in the other.
The office was small but well furnished, and had a window with its vertical blinds pulled so only slits of light showed through. Most of the room’s illumination was from recessed lighting in the ceiling. There must have been a sachet around somewhere, or Zoe was wearing perfume, because there was a faint lilac scent in the office. Repetto found it kind of pleasant. Better than Melbourne’s office, which always smelled of the cheap cigars he secretly smoked in defiance of city law.
Zoe had on a light beige dress and darker brown high-heeled shoes. Repetto heard nylon swish as she settled into the chair opposite him. He wondered idly for a moment if she was giving him a show as she crossed her shapely legs. She flicked a hand at her long red hair; he knew it was an unconscious gesture women made when interested in a man. Sometimes a conscious gesture. Whether she was flirting or it was simply his imagination, Repetto didn’t care. He wasn’t interested that way in Zoe Brady.
“I understand you and my wife have been doing the lunch thing,” he said.
She stared at him. “Lunch thing?”
“Meeting for lunch.”
“Yes. Do you mind?”
“No, except that I don’t want her playing cop.”
“Neither do I, to tell you the truth. But I’m learning Lora can be a very determined woman.”
Repetto sat back, studying Zoe. “Are you using Lora?”
She didn’t seem thrown by the question. “Only in the way I use everything. The Night
Sniper case isn’t the only thing we talk about.”
“Are you using her to learn more about me?”
“Not unless you can get shoes or jewelry wholesale.” She sighed loudly, maybe with mock exasperation, maybe simply because he was, in her mind, exhibiting typical male behavior. “Look, Repetto, your wife and I are simply acquaintances who occasionally meet for lunch. Sure, it seems to help Lora to talk to somebody about Dal Bricker’s death, and the Night Sniper case, but if you think this is all about the case, or about you, I’ve gotta say you flatter yourself.”
“I do that sometimes.”
“I can’t stop Lora from ‘playing cop,’ as you put it, but I promise I won’t encourage her.”
“Good enough,” Repetto said. It had to be. He knew there was no way to persuade Lora to stop meddling in the case. And she had provided the theater seat number key to the Night Sniper’s notes.
“So can we get down to business now?” Zoe asked.
Repetto thought it was a good idea.
“Our checks on the gun collectors and dealers in the area haven’t panned out,” he said.
“If the Sniper collects anything, he’d be doing it in secret, probably illegally,” Zoe said, “even if he doesn’t have to. He’s a secretive type in more ways than one. Secrecy is in his blood. Are there ways to illegally obtain a sizable gun collection?”
“There are countless ways to obtain all sorts of guns illegally,” Repetto said. “If he does have a large collection, he might be using the guns one by one to confuse us, then disposing of them.”
“I doubt if he’d be getting rid of them.”
“Why not? The guns could be used to tie him to the murders.”
“He’d be too arrogant to dispose of his collection. He doesn’t expect to be caught, or even suspected.”
“You seem sure of that.”
“I am. This guy is nothing if not arrogant. And he has the smarts to back up his high opinion of himself.”