Fear the Night

by John Lutz

  He looked at Dante and said, “Holy Christ!”

  All the boys froze. They had never before heard Strong utter a profanity.

  “Eighteen out of twenty in the target, four in the bull’s-eye,” Strong said. “Holy . . . Toledo. Have you shot before, Dante?”

  Dante shook his head no.

  Strong stared at him for a long time, silently, with something like doubt and with something like wonder.

  Then he said, “Okay, let’s go back to the barracks. Remember to be neat. Pick up your shell casings.”

  It was an instruction Dante never forgot.

  34

  The present

  There was a small savings and loan on the ground floor of the Maigret Building on West Twenty-third Street. Repetto entered through a door alongside it, which led to an unadorned foyer lined with mailboxes. A narrow stairway led to offices above, which were identified by a directory that had yellowed over the years beneath the clear plastic plate protecting it from theft and graffiti. The directory informed him that B. Grams, Inc., was on the second floor.

  That was fine with Repetto. There were six floors and no elevator in the building, and he didn’t feel like climbing stairs. Also, he didn’t feel like being reminded of how he was getting older.

  Last week Repetto had happened across one of his longtime snitches, a burglar and sometime fence named Artie Silver. Artie was smart enough to fence stolen goods of all sorts without leaving a trace, so, if there was going to be an actual prosecution, it was necessary to nail him while he still had the loot in his possession. It had never happened. Another way Artie had of insuring himself against a conviction if he did get caught was to sparingly provide police with information about some of his clients, both buyers and sellers. He was a discreet snitch, and through the years Repetto had been discreet with his information.

  Repetto actually liked Artie, and had been talking with him about things in general, while both men stood in the sunlight and ate knishes from a sidewalk vendor on the corner of Third and Fifty-fourth Street. This was New York at its best: vendor food, warm sun, and an endless variety of people streaming past, as if it could all last forever for everyone.

  So why not do a little business, Repetto thought, for old times’ sake? He asked Artie if he knew any gun dealers or collectors specializing in rifles.

  “Almost always it’s handguns or automatic assault weapons,” Artie said, with an exaggerated shrug that was pure Artie. “Rifles are something else altogether, more for hunting than the kinda thing that’d interest you.” He wouldn’t cheapen what he had by giving it away too quickly.

  Repetto chewed a bite of knish and waited in the warm sunlight.

  Then, as in the past, Artie smiled thinly and gave Repetto a name: “Boniface Grams.”

  “Dealer,” Repetto asked, “or collector?”

  “Facilitator. If he can’t help you, he might be able to tell you more than I know. Guns wouldn’t be my specialty, if I had a specialty. I don’t like the things around. I’m all for the Brady Bunch Bill.”

  Repetto wasn’t sure if Artie was joking, so decided to let that one pass.

  Artie put on a pious expression. “Like everybody else in this town, I’d like to see you collar the Night Sniper.”

  “Are guns this Bonepart guy’s—”

  “Boniface.”

  “—guy’s specialty?”

  “Are they ever!” Artie took a big bite of knish and chewed enthusiastically with his mouth open. “And I tell you,” he said around the knish, “he’s mostly legal. His expertise is in obtaining valuable pieces for serious gun collectors.”

  “Sounds all the way legal.”

  “Well, sometimes the guns aren’t legal, or maybe they’re from a museum or who knows where. Maybe the collector doesn’t have a permit. I don’t know, mind you. I’m speculating.”

  “So speculate as to where I might find Boniface Grams.”

  Artie gave Repetto the Twenty-third Street address.

  “I have to level, Artie, I’m not sure if I can do you any good if you’re angling for payback. I’m not with the NYPD anymore on a permanent basis.”

  “I know. I read the papers. Which is why I wanna help, so you can stop this Sniper prick and the city can get back to normal. It was after dark, I wouldn’t be standing here eating this knish.”

  “Boniface,” Repetto said, folding his paper napkin so he could write on it. He unclipped a pen from his pocket. “How do you spell that?”

  Artie told him.

  “He French?”

  “If France is in Africa.”

  The steps hadn’t been too bad. Not breathing noticeably harder, Repetto found himself at the end of the hall on the second floor. The door to B. Grams, Inc., had cheap brass numbers on it and fancy black lettering spelling out the name of the company. Repetto opened the door and stepped inside, expecting some kind of anteroom, maybe even a receptionist.

  Instead, a tall, spiffily dressed black man not yet thirty was seated on the corner of a desk, reading a newspaper. He was wearing pleated gray slacks, a white shirt, and colorful blue and yellow suspenders. His black, cap-toed shoes were shined to a blinding gloss. A suit coat that matched the pants was draped over a hanger dangling from a brass coatrack.

  He looked up in mild surprise and removed dark-rimmed reading glasses as Repetto entered. “You got an appointment?”

  “Does anyone?” Repetto asked.

  The man grinned handsomely with perfect white teeth. He had a trimmed little brush mustache that made him look something like Errol Flynn. A guy his age, Repetto bet he’d never heard of Errol Flynn. “Cop?” he asked Repetto. As if he didn’t know.

  Repetto nodded. “Boniface?”

  The man placed the newspaper on the desk and stood up all the way. Repetto took that for a yes.

  “I got a soft spot for cops,” Boniface said. “My brother was one in L.A. and got shot to death by some drug-freaked asshole. Mom never got over it.”

  “Too bad,” Repetto said, doubting if any of it was true.

  “Had a helluva funeral. VIPs and LAPD brass and bagpipes and everything. What can I help you with, Detective Repetto?”

  Repetto hadn’t given Boniface his name. “Want to see some ID first?”

  “Don’t need that. I seen your photo in the papers and on TV. Knew you was the dude soon as you walked in. Anyways, you got cop stamped on your forehead.”

  Repetto believed him there. “You strike me as a smart guy.”

  “Course.”

  “You know why I’m here?”

  “’Cause you think for some reason I might be able to help you.”

  “Why would I think that?”

  Boniface smiled and shook his head. “Never did like to dance. So let’s say somebody told you my company sometimes deals in firearms, and you think I might know something about where the Night Sniper dude’s getting his arsenal.”

  “We think he might be a collector.”

  “Well, I ain’t no collector.”

  “But you supply them. You’re a buyer for them.”

  “Well . . . sometimes. They’re looking for something rare, I locate it for them. That’s not illegal, though.”

  “Not if the guns are legal. And the sale is legal. And the transportation of the guns is legal. And there’s no hard-ass homicide cop who might get on your case in a major way if you don’t tell him what he asks.”

  Boniface leaned back so his haunches were against the desk, then crossed his arms over his colorful suspenders and floral-pattern tie. “Point taken.”

  “You supply any illegal collectors? I’m not asking names. Not yet. It’s the Night Sniper I’m interested in, not some redneck who likes to collect guns.”

  “I don’t supply any collectors like you’re talking about,” Boniface said. “Some secret collectors, yeah. But there’s nothing about them I know’s illegal. They just wanna keep their collection a secret ’cause of the bias against guns in this country. Don’t want their
pansy-ass friends to know, you follow?”

  Repetto didn’t answer. The river was flowing.

  “And I deal mostly in handguns. Some long guns, though. Sometimes. But I ain’t dealt long guns in over a year. Year at least. That’s God’s truth, dude.”

  Repetto thought you seldom heard God and dude in the same sentence. He fixed Boniface with a stare that obviously made him uncomfortable. “Talk some more. On your own. Tell me something that’ll brighten my day. Your day, too.”

  “Kinda collector you’re looking for, I don’t know,” Boniface said. “Truth is, most of my customers are legal, got permits, licenses, the whole shebang. Also, the kinda collector you’re talking about don’t figure to be a serial killer. Ones I met, they’re so interested in guns they wouldn’t have time to go on a killing spree. Some of the really expensive collector pieces come from Europe, too. Dueling sets, blunderbusses, that kinda thing.”

  “I’m not looking for blunderbusses, Boniface. You aren’t helping me.”

  “Well, the kinda help you want, I can’t give, ’cause I don’t know the answers to your questions.” He uncrossed one arm and stood like Jack Benny, thumb and forefinger cupping his chin. He was thinking deeply, and just for Repetto. “Lemme put it this way. You ever do any hunting?”

  Repetto stared at him. “You mean birds and animals?”

  “Whatever. Things you’d use a rifle on.”

  “Not in a long time.”

  “If you were an avis hunter—”

  “You mean avid? Avid hunter?”

  “Yeah. You’d know from the bullets, the Sniper dude ain’t using hunting rifles. They’re target rifles.”

  “Target . . . hunting ... what’s the difference?”

  “Mostly the caliber or millimeter. The bore. Target rifles use those offbeat, smaller-size rounds, nothing like most hunting rifles. Plinker size but powered by large loads so they got muzzle velocity. Foreign make bullets, too.”

  “You saying the Sniper collects target rifles? The shooting-for-sport kind?”

  “Maybe not only target rifles. There are rifles made specifically for sniping, too, with some of the same characteristics, and he might have a few of them. But mostly from the bullet sizes the papers are saying, my guess is the rifles are manufactured for target shooting and are expensive.”

  “What do you mean by expensive?”

  “Four, five figures almost certainly. Up from there. What I’m saying, Detective Repetto, is the Sniper dude, if he’s a collector—and he probably is—he’s one rich mother to own the kinda guns he’s been killing with so far.”

  “Where would he obtain them?”

  “Oh, there’s all kinds of bad, bad people in the arms business, and all over the world. And I can tell you there’s some rich collectors avis enough to buy stolen collectibles and keep ’em just so they can get ’em out once in a while and play with ’em.”

  “Avid.”

  “What you say.”

  “So we’re looking for a rich gun collector who specializes in target rifles.”

  “Way I see it. I’m talkin’ about rifles that are rare, and they’re legal—not assault rifles or anything. But like I said, the way some gun buffs are, they don’t wanna advertise. ’Nother thing they’re afraid of is attracting thieves.”

  “Thieves who might steal their guns and sell them to other collectors.”

  “Why, yes, that could happen. Then those other collectors ’specially wouldn’t want anyone to know they owned those particular guns.”

  Repetto reached into his coat pocket. Boniface drew back as if he thought a gun might emerge. Instead, out came a business card.

  “I’m gonna give you my number,” Repetto said. “Two of them. Cell phone’s in pencil. You come across anything else I should know, you call me.”

  “Course.”

  When Repetto was at the door, Boniface said, “One thing I’d like to know, who told you about me?”

  “One of those secret collectors,” Repetto said. He glanced at the open door. “You really incorporated?”

  Boniface laughed. “Hell no! Don’t even know what it means.”

  Repetto doubted that.

  NYPD Patrolman Michael Skeppy woke up sweating.

  Damned air-conditioning was falling behind again. The bedroom was way too warm, and beams of light angling in along the edges of the black shades hurt Skeppy’s eyes.

  He squinted and looked at the clock on the nightstand.

  Damn!

  He’d overslept again. Gonna catch hell from the sergeant, never get off traffic detail.

  Where the hell is Maggie?

  He sat up on the edge of the mattress, a fleshy but powerful man in his thirties, with pleasant but homely features reminiscent of an amiable bulldog’s. Sitting there in only his jockey shorts, he knew he’d never get to the precinct on time. He needed a shower, a shave, something to eat.

  Maggie.

  He called her name, then stood up and plodded to the door and opened it.

  She was asleep on the sofa, in the middle of the afternoon.

  Irritated, he called her name again, louder, and her dark eyes opened wide and she sat up. She looked at her watch. “Oh, damn! I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I’m sorry.”

  “Doesn’t help,” he mumbled, and plodded toward the bathroom to shower.

  “I’ll fix you something to eat,” his wife said behind him. “You’re gonna need your energy.”

  “Damned straight,” Skeppy muttered to himself, wondering which of Manhattan’s busy intersections were going to demand his services this afternoon and evening.

  Twenty minutes later, showered, shaved, and in uniform, he made it a point to kiss Maggie good-bye before leaving for work on the afternoon shift. They had their problems right now, plenty of them. And he knew how she hated it when he worked this shift. It meant she had to sit alone most of the evening and wait up late if she wanted to see him at all that day.

  A cop’s wife, Skeppy thought. A hard life.

  But not as hard as standing on your feet all day waving your arms at people who’d just as soon run you over.

  Alex made sure the door to his workshop was locked. He wouldn’t want Detective Meg to enter unexpectedly, as she might very well do. It seemed to be her nature. The cop in her.

  The hiss of fine sandpaper on the custom gun stock he was toiling over soothed him as his hands lovingly worked the fine walnut. He’d created the stock out of a single block of prime wood over a yard long. Hours with the saws, the lathe, the sander, and now his hands separated from the wood only by the flimsy, clothlike sandpaper that allowed him almost to feel the grain. The graceful gun stock, of Alex’s own design, was for a .280 Remington rifle with an extended barrel. After the fine sanding, he’d get his wood chisels and spend long hours engraving the stock with exotic, sometimes erotic designs. It would become a work of art that Detective Meg might not comprehend.

  There were plenty of ready customers for his custom stocks. Lots of people understood, like Alex, the fascination and repulsion of long guns that delivered death from a distance. While in a sense he loathed such weapons, he was also drawn to them, and he didn’t want to consider too carefully the depth of satisfaction he got out of creating beautiful wooden stocks for such firearms. Hate and love, fear and love, were sometimes so similar as to be indistinguishable. Like opposite sides of a rapidly spinning coin.

  Detective Meg wouldn’t understand that.

  Or maybe she’d understand it too well.

  He sanded until the muscles in his arms began to cramp, thinking about Meg.

  After a dinner of potatoes, broccoli, and cheese, all mixed in some kind of casserole she’d learned about on one of those half-hour-recipe TV cooking shows, Meg surveyed the mess in the kitchen and vowed never to make the dish again. It hadn’t been bad, but then it hadn’t been good. It had tasted like potatoes, broccoli, and cheese, and so what?

  Well, there was enough of the stuff left over for tomorrow night,
that was what. And these days Meg had a lot on her mind and was mostly eating for fuel rather than pleasure.

  After cleaning up the kitchen and putting the leftover casserole in the refrigerator, she went into the living room.

  She didn’t feel like watching television; she’d had enough of the world outside the apartment and didn’t want to watch news or some idiot’s idea of reality. Instead of sitting down on the sofa, she went to her desk chair, booted up her computer, and was told she had mail.

  E-mail. One message from AR3276@Kno.com.

  Alex.

  She fought against opening the e-mail, then admitted to herself that eventually she was going to read it anyway, so why not soon? She moved the mouse on its Dilbert rubber pad and clicked.

  Alex’s message was brief, like most of his others: Thinking of you.

  Meg deleted it from her e-mail but not from her mind.

  She leaned back in her desk chair, thinking of Alex. Damn him! Why couldn’t he leave her alone? At least until the Night Sniper case was solved? He’d been a cop. He should understand.

  She shut down the computer, went to the sofa, and used the remote to turn on the TV in order to pass the time and not strain her brain. A commercial was playing, a woman sitting on top of a speeding car with her legs down through the open sunroof. A handsome young guy was driving while fondling her bare feet. They were both grinning. Music blared and another, identical car was speeding toward the first, driven by a woman. A handsome man was sitting on that car with his legs down through the open sunroof, and the woman driving was fondling his bare feet. They were smiling, too. Everyone was smiling and speeding. Both men needed to shave. Both women looked as if every hair other than the ones on their heads had been depilatoried out of existence.

  Meg wondered what any of this had to do with cars, then stopped watching and listening, and saw and heard nothing more of it. With so much else to occupy her thoughts, there was no way she could concentrate on television fare.

  Thinking of you . . .