by John Lutz
“Months?”
Strong could only swallow. He looked back toward where the buzzard had been circling. There was only empty sky.
“We can’t let that happen, Adam!”
“I wish to God I knew how to prevent it.”
“You’ve taken the first step, Adam. You confided in me.”
Strong smiled. “I always loved your grit, but not everything’s possible. And the last thing I’d do on earth is borrow money from you, Dante. Not that anything other than a financial transfusion from a small country would help.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to know what will help. You’re right, I’m doing well, but much of it’s in options that are locked up for the next few years. I don’t have the kind of money that would bail out the ranch. But I want to see your books, Adam. A financial statement. Everything.”
“Dante—”
“This is what I do, Adam. And nobody’s better at it. I want to help. I owe it to you, and we both know that’s a fact.”
Strong stared hard at the ground, chewing the inside of his cheek. Then he reached out and clutched Dante’s shoulder and squeezed. “All right, Dante. Thank you. I won’t be proud.”
“Bullshit!” Dante snapped. “You can be proud.”
Dante had been prophetic. After months of negative publicity, then indictments and a long series of trials, Global Venue was dismantled. Shareholders of the common stock received nothing.
Dante had reallocated the foundation’s investments, and was beginning to pump financial lifeblood back into the ranch, but no one could have planned for the events of September 11. The terrorist attacks, and the resultant reaction in the markets, devastated the rest of Adam Strong’s holdings.
There was enough remaining to keep the ranch solvent awhile longer, but while most of the market gradually rebounded, Wall Street seemed to have turned against Adam. Even the skills of Dante Vanya couldn’t prevent foreclosure.
Adam Strong was ruined. Dante could only watch, and bear some of the responsibility.
40
The present
Joe DeLong waited until Tiffany and the rest of the Candle in the Night cast members had clambered into two cabs that had arrived outside the diner.
The cab’s taillights flared red, then drew close together and disappeared as the vehicles turned the corner. Joe stepped out of the shadows. The street seemed so silent and empty after the cabs’ departure. It was no surprise. Even Joe, who never watched TV news and seldom read a newspaper or magazine, knew why the streets were less crowded than usual after dark. He’d heard snatches of conversation, and sometimes Tiffany left a folded newspaper with the takeout box, knowing Joe could use it to insulate his thin clothing if the night grew cool. Even if you only used newspaper to wrap fish or help stay warm, it was difficult not to have read at least something about the Night Sniper.
Joe waited for his hip to stop aching from standing so long in the dark doorway; then he shuffled along the sidewalk in the direction the cabs had gone. He’d seen Tiffany leave the group outside the diner and walk down to the corner where the trash receptacle sat near the traffic signal. He knew where she was going; she’d often done this before for him. He’d watched as she placed a takeout container on top of the day’s refuse before hurrying back to the others.
And there was the takeout box, one of the square flat kind, resting right on top of the trash that filled half the wire container. He reached down and lifted the white foam box, surprised by its weight.
When he opened it, he smiled. Inside were two large slices of pizza, the thick-crusted kind with sausage and mushrooms. They were still warm. Joe had been hungry; now the aroma of the pizza made him ravenous.
He moved away from the brightly lit corner, wolfing down the pizza as he walked, then sat on the concrete steps of a boarded-up shop halfway down the block and licked his fingers before starting on the cloverleaf roll that was in the box with the pizza. If only he had something to drink, a cold beer, life would be perfect for a while. That was all other people had, Joe knew, a perfect moment now and then in an imperfect world.
It wasn’t so late that he couldn’t walk to where there were more people, then set up on the sidewalk and wait for contributions. Or maybe he could use the ethnic approach, walk up to someone who was obviously Jewish or Asian or Hispanic and plead for enough money to buy chicken soup or chop suey or a burrito. Of course, what Joe would buy was a bottle. Beer if it was all he could afford, wine if he got lucky.
He was about to stand up and set out for brighter, busier streets when the voices began. They were trying to tell him something, but it was as if they were speaking another language. It was a language Joe knew, if only he could focus his thoughts.
He decided to make his way to the Aal Commerce Building and sit beneath its tower.
Maybe there he could understand the voices.
The Night Sniper decided not to interrupt the beggar’s last meal. Besides, where the Sniper was set up to fire the fatal shot, it would be better if the target came closer. For several nights the Sniper had observed the beggar and knew his habits. When the destitute man had eaten his fill and did get up to go elsewhere, the odds were he’d move in this direction, toward the waiting rifle. And if he did happen to set out in the other direction, the shot would be only slightly more difficult. A second bullet might be necessary.
The beggar set aside the white takeout box and sat with his head bowed, as if listening to something. Then he stood up slowly, as he always did, and waited for the stiffness in his body to abate, as he always did, and began walking.
With the odds. With fate.
Toward death.
The Night Sniper steadied the rifle and sighted through the night scope at the slowly approaching figure on the dark street below. The night was still, and the target was walking so slowly and at such a slight angle, it was almost unnecessary to lead him.
The Sniper was patient. He’d sense when the moment arrived, when his finger should tighten ever so slightly on the trigger, almost of its own volition.
Patience . . . patience ...
Once he sighted in, the moment always arrived.
The voices were louder, urgent, a cacophony so frantic it was almost a buzzing. Joe still couldn’t make out what they were saying, but somehow he knew it was important. The pizza and bread had made him dry, and he tried not to think about how thirsty he was as he listened to the voices. The message, the answer, was so nearly understandable beneath the buzzing.
There! Something . . .
He paused and bowed his head, listening, listening . . .
Tiffany was in the back of the cab that stopped five blocks from Candle in the Night to drop off Yancy, where he lived with his uncle who wasn’t really his uncle. John Straithorn, the producer and theater manager, actually lived closer to the theater than Yancy, but he’d arranged for the cab’s route so he’d be alone with Tiffany. Tiffany had listened to his circuitous instructions to the driver and pretended not to notice.
As soon as Yancy was inside his building, and the cab made a sharp U-turn to drive back the way it had come, Straithorn kissed Tiffany on the ear. As she turned her head away, she smiled. She knew what was in his mind. He had only a short time to convince her she shouldn’t go home, but should spend the night with him in his apartment. While the cab was bouncing over potholes and accelerating to make traffic lights, he’d be working desperately to make the deadline.
She knew he’d make it.
The cab was only a block away from Straithorn’s loft, and Tiffany was locked in a frantic kiss with Straithorn, when the lovers heard a sharp, echoing report over the roar and rattle of the cab.
Neither paid it the slightest attention.
On the cruel streets of New York, Joe DeLong had somehow survived frostbite, beatings, near starvation, the voices of madness, and episodes of violence with real or imagined enemies.
The beggar man didn’t survive the bullet fired by the Night Sniper.
41
Meg watched the ambulance make its way to the end of the block and turn the corner. Driving slowly through the gray dawn, with emergency lights and siren muted, the vehicle was a somber sight. Across the street from the crime scene, a group of onlookers stood quietly like mourners. The police hadn’t yet identified the homeless man found shot to death on the sidewalk, but he was almost certainly a victim of the Night Sniper.
“The beggar man,” Birdy said next to Meg.
“Down on his luck as far as he could go,” Meg said.
A ten-year-old but immaculate black Buick rounded the corner and parked in a loading zone. Repetto’s personal car that Lora usually drove. As Meg and Birdy watched, Repetto climbed out of the hulking car and straightened up as if his back hurt, then walked toward them. He had a long raincoat on today to guard against the forecast of showers, and with the gray light behind him he reminded Meg of one of those western movie gunfighters wearing a duster.
“Looks like he just rode in on a horse,” Meg said.
Birdy glanced at her. “Huh?”
When Repetto got closer and his shirt and tie were visible, the effect was lost. Meg decided not to explain it to Birdy.
Repetto nodded to them and looked over at the techs and ME departing the scene, then at the bloody concrete where the body had lain. A radio car was parked at the curb and a uniform was still standing guard near the crime scene tape that would soon be removed so the sidewalk could be hosed down.
“Our beggar man?” Repetto asked. He’d been rousted out of bed and his hair was recklessly combed.
“’Fraid so,” Birdy said. “He didn’t have a dime on him, and the Salvation Army woulda turned away his clothes. We don’t have an ID yet. Died sometime between ten and midnight last night. He was shot once in the chest, dead center through the heart.”
“The ME said he was dead when he fell,” Meg said.
Repetto squinted and peered up and down the block. It was early, and people were still asleep. The scene reminded him of a stage set before the actors appeared, other than the mournful supporting cast of onlookers on the opposite sidewalk. “Nobody called this in until this morning?”
“That’s how it went,” Meg said. “A woman in an apartment at the end of the block’s the one who broke the ice. She said she heard what sounded like a shot a little before midnight. Didn’t think much of it and went back to sleep, then got to worrying this morning when she was taking a shower. About the time she called it in, a cleaning woman going to work early found the body and used her cell phone to call the police.”
“The midnight shot dovetails with the approximate time of death,” Repetto said.
“When we talk to people in the buildings around here that have apartments, we’ll find more who heard the shot,” Birdy said confidently. “They don’t like getting involved, but when they learn they weren’t the first to talk to the police, and won’t have to make a statement or testify, they’ll open up some. Like always.”
Repetto simply grunted his agreement. The neighborhood was still waking up. The knot of people that had gathered on the other side of the street had finally dispersed, now that the body had been removed. The last of them, a woman walking a small, poodlike dog on a short leash, disappeared into a building diagonal from where the body had lain. An occasional car passed, headlights still glowing even though it was light out. Half a dozen pedestrians were visible down the block, near the intersection. A tall woman wearing incredibly high-heeled boots and low-cut jeans strode past across the street, staring straight ahead and moving fast, as if she had to be some place soon.
“How do women get into jeans that fit like that?” Birdy asked, watching the woman. He was shaking his head in disapproval at the same time he was making his habitual pecking motion. It made him look like one of those wobbling dashboard dolls that didn’t stop motion until after the car had been parked awhile.
“Last time I heard that question,” Meg said, “I was sixteen.”
A patrol car slid into a parking space behind Repetto’s Buick, and four uniformed cops climbed out. They walked toward the three detectives. Meg noted that the sun was high enough to have ruined the silhouetted gunfighter effect.
One of the uniforms was Nancy Weaver. Meg thought she looked pretty good for such an early hour. Or maybe she hadn’t slept at all last night. A woman like Weaver, who knew where she’d been, what she’d touched?
Meg looked over and saw that Birdy was smiling at her, watching her watching Weaver.
The smile widened. “Thinking catty thoughts?”
“Like maybe I’ll claw your throat out,” Meg said.
Weaver nodded good morning to Repetto and gave him a big grin.
“I’m glad you’re on this,” Repetto told her.
The bastard!
“Fill Weaver in so she can instruct the others,” Repetto told Birdy.
Birdy winked at Meg and moved about twenty feet away so he could talk privately with Weaver.
“Familiar neighborhood,” Repetto said to Meg, who’d been watching Birdy and Weaver.
Meg realized what Repetto had said and refocused her attention. “We’re only a few blocks from the Candle in the Night Theater.”
“In this city,” Repetto said, “the Sniper had plenty of beggar man targets to choose from.”
“You think there’s a connection between our dead beggar and where the Sniper left his last theater seat message?” Meg asked. Repetto was going somewhere with this, and she was intrigued.
“Could be.”
Waiting. Letting me run with it. “Possibly the Sniper lives in the neighborhood,” she suggested. “This particular beggar was convenient.”
“I doubt it,” Repetto said. “Bad guys of all sorts tend not to foul their own nests. It’s human nature, even with the inhumane.”
“Then maybe it was like you said. There are plenty of beggars to shoot. The Sniper was in the neighborhood to see the play and plant his message, and he didn’t have to go far to settle on his next victim.”
“He didn’t kill on the same night he planted the theater seat note,” Repetto said. “He had to have spent time in the neighborhood, seen the beggar man more than once, or he wouldn’t have known his haunts and habits, where he’d likely be so he could be shot.”
“The victim might have had some connection with somebody in the play,” Meg said.
Repetto didn’t answer. She looked at him. He was still regarding her with a faint, anticipatory smile. Wherever he wanted to go with this conversation, they weren’t yet all the way there.
Meg felt something cold walk up her spine. “The Sniper was hanging around the theater to see us! He’s watching us. The bastard is watching us. Maybe he has been for some time.”
Repetto nodded, and the smile stayed but his eyes changed. “Maybe he’s watching us right now.”
Canvassing the neighborhood where the beggar man had died garnered nothing, other than substantiation of the time when the Sniper squeezed the trigger. Half a dozen apartment dwellers reported hearing the shot, and at the same time—a few minutes before midnight. Because of the acoustics of New York, the echoes and reverberations of the shot made it impossible to home in on its source. By the end of the day, they still hadn’t found it.
That evening Repetto drove to Candle in the Night, arriving an hour before curtain, when most of the cast would be present. He was armed with morgue photos of the dead homeless man. They’d done their usual good work at the morgue of making such photos as bearable to view as possible, and these were more pathetic than gruesome. The dead man appeared shrunken and forlorn, as if he were holding back a lifetime of tears that would never be shed.
Straithorn seemed annoyed by Repetto’s presence, but he made the best of it and took him around to show the morgue photos to cast and crew.
There was no reaction until Repetto was introduced to Tiffany Taft, who was fitting herself into a sequined black dress. Tiffany smiled at Repetto as she took a deep breath, exhaled, and
with perfect timing a woman from wardrobe zipped up the dress’s back. Repetto returned the smile, thinking Tiffany was one beautiful young woman.
When Straithorn and the woman from wardrobe left, and they were alone in Tiffany’s small dressing room, Tiffany sat on a bench in front of a vanity with a many-lightbulbed makeup mirror that looked like something out of A Star is Born. She worked her dainty feet into black high-heeled shoes. She had perfectly turned ankles.
“I happen to be a theater buff,” Repetto said, “and I think on looks alone, you’ll go far.”
Again the incandescent smile. “That’s so nice of you, Detective . . . ? ”
“Repetto.”
“But it takes acting talent, too.”
“I’m sure you have it.”
“You’re very kind.”
“You might not think so after I show you these.” He handed her the morgue photos.
“These are of the homeless man who was shot last night?” she said, accepting them.
“I’m afraid so.”
When she looked at the top photo, she gasped.
Repetto studied her eyes and knew she’d recognized the dead man. He waited.
“I don’t know his name,” Tiffany said. She seemed genuinely moved by the man’s death. Repetto reminded himself that she was an actress.
“It’s Joseph DeLong,” he said. “He was identified by his fingerprints.”
“He was a criminal?”
“No, he was in the military. His prints were on file.” Repetto didn’t mention the two pandering convictions.
“Joseph . . .” Tiffany looked at herself in the mirror, then in the mirror at Repetto. “I never asked his name. I should have.”
“You knew him?”
“Only as a homeless person who hung out in the neighborhood. After curtain, some of us usually go to a restaurant over on Twelfth Street and have a late snack. I usually left something for . . . Joseph . . . in a carryout box.”