by John Lutz
He was there; then he was gone.
That was when Bobby was sure the man wasn’t real, because the subway stop was closed.
37
1994
“C’mon, Dante! The girls are waiting!”
Orvey was eager to leave. The ranch was holding what had become its annual mixer, an outdoor dance in the cool December Arizona evening. The girls from across the arroyo would be there, along with a five-piece band trucked in from Tucson. Strong had determined that all his charges on the ranch would learn to dance at least well enough to negotiate a crowded floor. This dance floor wouldn’t be crowded, but there’d be few standing and watching instead of struggling to keep time with the amateur band’s persistent tempo.
Dante didn’t bother answering Orvey. He finished brushing his teeth, then rinsed out his mouth with Listerene to ensure good breath. Wiping his lips with a towel, he smiled at himself in the mirror. A tanned, handsome youth smiled back at him. In fact, dressed as he was in a blazer and tie, his black wig perfectly adjusted to blend with his sideburns, Dante was incredibly handsome. Possibly knowing the pain caused in his young life by circumstances, then by hideous scarring, the surgeons had gone too far, made him somehow too attractive. His were the kind of features that graced movie posters and romantic fantasies of foolish girls.
Verna wasn’t foolish and didn’t think Dante was too attractive. She’d made it clear she’d be waiting for him tonight and expected the first—and the last—dance. This was the closest thing to a date the protective and puritanical Strong would allow.
The other boys were jealous but didn’t act on it. Dante, with his accomplishments and new handsomeness, had reached a place in their estimation where he was untouchable. And if anyone did cause pain or even inconvenience for Dante, they would have to deal with Adam Strong.
Strong made no secret of his favoritism when it came to Dante. He even from time to time slipped and referred to him as his son. He figured Dante, unlike Strong himself, had earned the hard way everything he had.
Dante’s long and often agonizing series of cosmetic surgeries to restore his burned features had been at the Strong Foundation’s expense. The result was the handsome reflection in the mirror. The effect could be ruined only if he removed his wig. Because of his burns, hair grew only over half his skull. Unless he kept his head cleanly shaved, the odd pattern of hair growth was obvious and, along with the unusual smooth texture of his flesh, gave the definite impression that he hadn’t been born with his good looks. Rather than shave his head almost daily, Dante often wore a wig.
Despite the nearly perfect image in the mirror, he sometimes looked more closely and could see beneath the surface of his new flesh and form. If he failed to look away, the old Dante emerged through the thin surface flesh and grinned hideously at him, and sometimes wept.
That was happening less often lately, but still it was happening.
Not tonight, though.
Not tonight.
“C’mon, Dante!”
Orvey again.
Dante switched off the bathroom light and hurried through the barracks and outside to join the other boys.
There were half a dozen of them, lounging around in sloppily knotted ties, and blazers that didn’t quite fit, all waiting for Dante. They seemed oblivious of the moths circling and darting around them in the pool of light cast by the barracks’ outside fixture. Hanley, a skinny six-footer from South Carolina, was smoking a cigarette, keeping it cupped in his hand so the ember wouldn’t be visible, fooling no one.
“You busy jerkin’ off or somethin’?” Orvey asked jokingly. The others laughed. “We’re already late.”
“What’s it matter?” Hanley asked. “Who else they gonna dance with?”
“You guys don’t wanna go, I’ll dance with all of ’em,” someone said.
Dante didn’t bother joining the banter.
With his friends, his admirers, he strolled through the cooling evening toward the distant music, voices, and softly hued light from colored paper lanterns, toward Verna and a dream almost real.
In the years that followed, nothing could stop Dante. Perhaps it was the successful surgery—that certainly had to help. But he grew in confidence and ability every year. He graduated from Nailsville High School with honors, then left the ranch to attend Arizona State University. Weekends he drove home from college in the old Ford pickup Strong had given him and stayed at the ranch.
Maintaining a 4 . 0 grade point average was no problem, and Dante dated as often as he chose. But it was still Verna he thought of and saw most often. She planned on remaining at the ranch until she began college next year, when she thought she’d be psychologically strong enough to go out on her own, attending the same school as Dante. He’d already made up his mind that if she weren’t accepted, he’d go to school elsewhere, so they could be together.
It was a rainy weeknight, and Dante was stretched out on his bunk in his dorm room, reading Ecce Romani, when he took Adam Strong’s phone call.
As soon as he heard the tone of Strong’s voice, Dante sat up and the book hit the floor. He suspected something was wrong, but he would never have guessed what. He was afraid to guess.
“Verna has left the ranch, Dante.”
Dante lay back, stunned. “Left? Why?”
“She went to live with relatives.”
“She doesn’t have any living relatives.”
“Apparently she does.”
“Where?” Dante’s questions were automatic; he was still trying to digest this.
“She’d rather keep it a secret.”
Relatives. Verna had never talked about relatives. None she cared about, anyway, or who cared about her. “So where were these relatives when she needed them?”
“Not helping her as they should have. But that’s beside the point. They want to help her now.”
“When she doesn’t need their help.”
“She needs it, Dante. She’s going to have a baby.”
Dante’s mind whirled. Each time he’d made love with Verna he’d used a condom. She’d also taken birth control pills. They both knew how an early, unwanted pregnancy could alter their lives. Neither wanted to take the chance.
But nothing was perfect. God! A baby! Maybe one of the condoms—”
“Orvey’s left the ranch, too, Dante.”
It took Dante a few seconds to grasp what Strong had told him. “You mean with Verna?”
“No. Maybe that’s what he should have done. He said he didn’t have it in him, that he was afraid and couldn’t make it. And Verna didn’t want him. I think probably they were both right.”
“Damn it!” Dante said. He kept repeating it, slamming his fist into his pillow.
Strong must have heard the softened blows over the phone. “You want to come back to the ranch for a few days, Dante? Your grades can take it.”
“You sure Orvey isn’t with Verna?”
“He went the opposite direction.” There was disdain in Strong’s voice.
“Then Verna’s all alone with this.”
“It’s how she wants it. And she’s got family, Dante.”
“I oughta . . . God, I don’t know!”
“She doesn’t want to see you again. She’s thought it out. You’ve gotta respect her wishes, Dante. She . . . left a letter for you. I mailed it yesterday, figuring once I did that, I’d get up the courage to call you rather than have you read it cold. It should be in today’s mail.”
“Damn it, Adam!” Dante couldn’t hold back the sobs any longer.
“C’mon home, son. Come home to the ranch.”
Dante didn’t answer until he got his gasping sobs under control. He felt cold, but he noticed with surprise that his hands were sweating, slippery on the phone. “This weekend,” he said. “I can’t get there till this weekend. I’ve got a big calculus test.”
“Whatever you want,” Strong said. He sounded as if he might start sobbing himself.
“Goddamn that Orvey! Why
the fuck—”
“You’ve gotta get used to it, Dante. It’s something that happened. A part of life you’ve got no choice but to learn to live with.”
“Don’t I know it?”
“You gonna be okay there by yourself?”
“I’ve always been okay by myself.”
“Dante, that’s not right. You don’t have to think like that anymore.”
“I know, Adam.” Dante wiped his nose with the back of his wrist. “Thanks for calling and letting me know.”
“I wish it hadn’t been necessary. I sure as hell do.”
Though his eyes brimmed with tears, Dante had to smile. Adam Strong using profanity. It didn’t happen very often. That touched Dante more than anything.
Verna, Orvey, they didn’t just mess themselves up; even if they didn’t mean to, they hurt a lot of people, caused so much pain. It might go on for years.
A part of life . . .
“Thanks again,” Dante said softly, and hung up.
He felt so much older lying there. Like an old man who’d somehow found himself in a young man’s room. He realized he’d been old the first day he arrived at the ranch. Too much of him had died after his father killed his mother.
He’d begun to die when the gun his father aimed at him clicked on a bullet that hadn’t fired.
Verna’s letter wasn’t in that afternoon’s mail, but it arrived the next day. Dante didn’t open it. He knew why Verna didn’t want him, the only reason it could be: she’d seen beneath the thin new skin to the old Dante, the real Dante. He’d stared into the mirror last night and seen the real Dante himself, like sharp bones pushing through the flesh of a corpse.
He used both hands to crumple the unopened envelope with Verna’s handwriting on it into as small a damaged object as possible, then dropped it in one of the trash receptacles that were placed around the campus.
Verna was simply something that had happened.
Something in the past.
38
The present
This time when the Night Sniper’s simple typed note bearing a theater seat number arrived in Repetto’s mail, they didn’t have to waste time figuring out which theater.
“This is it,” Repetto said, standing up from his desk chair and showing Meg and Birdy the note. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” Meg asked, replacing the plastic lid she’d just removed from her Styrofoam coffee cup. She’d been prepared to sit at her desk, get her caffeine fix, and work the phones.
“We don’t have to play by his rules this time.” Repetto pointed to the Times on his desk, open to the page with theater listings.
Meg and Birdy looked. A play at the off-off Broadway theater Candle in the Night was circled: Beg, Borrow, or Steal.
“If he stays true to form, the Night Sniper’s next victim’s going to be the beggar man,” Repetto said.
“Big if, with this sicko,” Birdy said.
“Everything is,” Repetto said. “That’s one way he yanks our strings. But this is the only play listed with ‘beg’ in the title. It might not be the only place we have to search, but it should be the first.”
Fast and sure, when he decided it was time to move, Meg thought. It was one reason she respected Repetto.
He was already on his way out.
Meg and Birdy followed, Meg taking a hurried sip from where the tab was bent back on her cup’s plastic lid and scalding her tongue.
Candle in the Night was located in SoHo, in what used to be a restaurant. Repetto remembered having dinner there years ago with Lora and one of her clients, who was writing a book about cops and pumped him for information. There were show posters outside it now, advertising Beg, Borrow, or Steal. One of them featured the play’s stars, a handsome young guy wearing spiked hair and a tuxedo, who was handing a necklace to a beautiful young woman with platinum-blond hair and oversize blue eyes. Repetto noticed her name was Tiffany something. Near the bottom of the poster was a Village Voice review blurb that said, Delightful . . . clever . . . scintillating.
The theater was larger than it appeared from outside. Stepped wooden platforms had been installed to provide unobstructed seating. The stage was narrow and seemed to be at a slight angle to the audience. There was lots of lighting equipment in shadows overhead, and the set, what appeared to be an English drawing room or club, was surprisingly professional and richly detailed.
The seats on each side of a center aisle were a bit worn looking and had probably been acquired when an older, larger theater uptown had been renovated or demolished. They were bolted to the plywood risers and still clearly numbered.
Repetto led the way to 12-F, the number in the Night Sniper’s note, and raised the seat to check beneath it.
He looked, felt.
“Nothing.”
“I think you better talk to Irv,” a voice said.
Repetto turned and saw Jack Straithorn, the young production manager who’d met them at the theater entrance to admit them. Lurking behind Straithorn was a short, potbellied man in a gray work outfit that was too tight on him everywhere. He had a slightly crooked, smarmy smile that Repetto figured stayed stuck to him even when he slept. Irv, Repetto assumed.
Correctly. “I found this ’bout twenty minutes ago when I was sweepin’ up,” Irv said, holding out a tightly folded scrap of paper. “Had some tape on it, but I tore it off.”
Meg moved out of the way so Repetto could accept the note from Irv. He thought about lecturing the man on tampering with evidence but figured it would serve no purpose.
“I was gonna call you guys,” Irv said, reading Repetto’s mind.
Repetto simply nodded as he unfolded the note and read: The show will go on.
He handed the note to Meg, who read it with Birdy peering over her shoulder.
“So what’s it mean?” Birdy asked.
“Irv looked at the note earlier,” Straithorn said in a voice spiked with irony. He made a theatrical motion toward Irv, who was smirking.
“Means he’s gonna kill again,” Irv said. “There’s gonna be another act, and ain’t nothin’ nobody can do to stop it.”
The Night Sniper stood at a bus stop down the block, watching the entrance to Candle in the Night, with its makeshift marquee and movielike glassed show-poster frames. He was wearing a black beret and the Madre Verdi sunglasses he’d bought last year on the Costa del Sol. The glass’s lenses were dark green mirrors on the outside, but he could see out quite clearly.
Meg Doyle emerged from the theater first. Then Repetto and Birdy Bellman. The opposition. The Night Sniper smiled. They thought they were taking control, having figured out early this time which theater to go to and find his message. They didn’t know he’d been waiting for them here.
A bus rumbled up and he moved back, making it clear to the driver that there was no need to stop.
But there had been a need. The bus’s air brakes hissed, and it pulled up to the curb. Its rear door opened and a large woman laden with plastic shopping bags stepped down onto the sidewalk. The woman stood with her feet far apart and looked around, as if trying to orient herself, then walked swiftly away in the opposite direction from where the Night Sniper stood. She’d only glanced over toward where he stood and paid him little attention. The bus roared and belched foul exhaust fumes, then lumbered away.
Repetto and his team were still standing in front of the theater. It looked as if they were studying the message that had been taped beneath the theater seat. Repetto was holding what appeared to be a slip of paper while Meg was pointing to it and talking. When she was finished, Birdy Bellman began to speak. Repetto was the listener. It amused the Night Sniper to see them standing there discussing his message. If they only knew, they could simply walk half a block down and discuss it with the man in the dark beret and sunglasses. If they only knew.
Repetto refolded the message, then slipped it into what looked like a plastic folder—an evidence bag—and slid it into an inside pocket of his sport coat. When the coat fl
apped open, the Night Sniper got a brief view of a handgun in a tan leather shoulder holster.
The three detectives crossed the street toward a white Ford sedan, their unmarked car for the day. Detective Meg got in behind the steering wheel. Repetto sat up front on the passenger side, Bellman in the rear.
The Night Sniper watched as the car’s tailpipe emitted faint dancing fumes. A few seconds later it pulled away from the curb.
He had his own car parked nearby, but he made no attempt to follow. He’d come here to make sure they’d figured out the correct theater, that they were moving along the tracks he’d laid. Mission accomplished. Anyway, he knew where all three of the detectives lived, knew more about them than they dreamed. If he wanted them, he could find them.
Right now, he didn’t want to find them. He had other things to do.
He glanced at his watch and began walking down the block at a brisk pace. He had a luncheon engagement, and he didn’t want to be late.
Zoe’s apartment this time. Her new lover wasn’t only handsome, he somehow knew precisely what she wanted, and how much and when and where. She lay on her back, her bare legs clamped around his sweating body as he thrust into her again and again. Her arms were twisted over her head and somehow he managed to clasp both her wrists together with one powerful hand as he skillfully altered his rhythm and force so she remained on the edge of her third orgasm. Each time she almost climaxed he tightened his grip on her arms so the brief pain brought her back; then he slowly began to take her up again. The bedsprings sang as if in accompaniment to the internal crescendos of her body. Even as she lay there suffering so wonderfully, a part of her thought that he must have a lot of experience to be so good at this.
He drove into her harder and more determinedly, relentlessly, and she knew that this time he would let her reach the peak.
Afterward she was too exhausted to move. He released her limp arms, kissed her perspiring forehead, then unwound her legs from around him and rolled off to lie beside her. The ceiling fan played cool air over the length of her sweat-damp body. She felt empty. Spent. When she tried to speak, she was unable to find words. She turned to him, and as if expecting it, he kissed her lips, then the tip of her nose, and lay back. It was like a routine he’d practiced.