Hosts

by F. Paul Wilson

  Don't attract attention—that was the key here.

  Vibrating like a nitro-fueled hotrod at the start line, Jack stood with half a dozen other pedestrians and waited for the walking green. When it came he crossed and headed east on Seventy-second, which was perfect because, as one of the handful of two-way cross streets in the city, it was busy at this hour. No one else here seemed in a hurry, so he adopted a loose-limbed but steady amble to blend in. He slipped through the shoppers and the locals hanging out on this mild June night, all unaware of the bloody horror in the subway car a few dozen feet below. Two blocks ahead lay Central Park. The anonymity of its cool shadows beckoned to him.

  What a horror show. He'd read about that sort of thing in the papers but never expected to be an eyewitness. What drove someone to that sort of mad carnage?

  Damn good thing he rarely traveled without the Semmerling, but still he raged that he'd been forced to use it in front of all those citizens. Not that he'd had a choice. If he'd waited for someone in that crowd of sheep to save his ass, he and a lot of others would be as dead now as the poor souls splattered all over that subway car.

  Why me, damn it? Why couldn't someone else play hero?

  Hero… no doubt that was what they'd call him if he'd hung around, but that would last only the proverbial New York minute—right up until they escorted him to the cooler for illegal possession of an unregistered weapon and carrying said weapon without a permit. And sure as all hell some shyster would dig up the shooter's family and have them sue him for wrongful death and excessive use of force. And how long before the papers learned that he didn't have a job, or a known address, wasn't registered to vote or licensed to drive—hell, didn't even have a Social Security number? Then the tax boys would want to know why he'd never filed a return. On and on it would go, spinning out of control, engulfing him, ensuring that he never took another free breath for the rest of his life.

  Jack picked up his pace a little once he crossed Columbus, leaving the shops and restaurants behind and walking through the ultra-high-rent district. Almost to Central Park West, he passed the two liveried gatekeepers outside the Dakota who kept watch on the spot where another gun-wielding lunatic had done his bloody work in 1980 and ended an era.

  He crossed CPW and stopped at the mossy, soot-encrusted, rib-high wall of textured brownstone. The park lay just beyond… tempting… but if he entered here he'd have to exit somewhere else; his best bet would be to get out of sight as soon as possible. His apartment was less than half a mile from here. An easy walk. But first…

  He stepped through an opening in the wall and entered the shadowed underbrush. Once out of sight he pulled his shirt from the cap and dropped it in a puddle. A dozen feet farther on he shoved the cap into a tangle of vines, then angled around and made his way back out to the sidewalk.

  Keeping to the park side, he lengthened his stride and headed uptown. To his left, echoing along the concrete canyons, sirens began to wail.

  4

  Sandy Palmer crouched in an uptown corner of the Seventy-second Street subway platform with The Light's editor on the other end of his cell phone. The connection was tenuous from this underground spot, and he feared losing it at any second.

  George Meschke's voice growled in his ear. At first he'd been pissed at being disturbed at home, now he was all ears. "You're sure you've got that number right?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Six dead?"

  "As doornails. Two men and four women—I counted them twice before 1 left the car." Sandy peered through the controlled chaos farther down the platform. "A seventh victim, a black woman, was still alive but with an ugly head wound. The EMTs are just taking her away."

  "You're amazing, kid," Meschke said. "I don't know how you kept your cool. I'd 've lost it after going through what you've just told me."

  "Cool as a cucumber," Sandy said. "That's me."

  He neglected to mention that he'd given up dinner soon after the train had stopped. Even now—what, fifteen minutes later?—his hands were still shaking.

  Those first moments were something of a blur. He remembered seeing the GPM run out, and his abrupt exit had seemed to throw a switch in the crowd. Suddenly everybody wanted out—immediately if not sooner. Sandy had had to pull aside the still sobbing film student from the mass exodus to keep her from being trampled.

  As he'd helped her to her feet he'd realized he had a golden opportunity here: he was a trained journalist who'd witnessed a front-page crime. If he could gather his senses, focus on the details, and make the most of the fact that he was his own primary source, he could accomplish something here, something big.

  "What's your name?" he'd asked the shaken young woman. "Your real name?"

  "Beth." Her voice was barely audible, her skin so white she looked almost blue.

  "Come on. Let's get you out of here."

  As he'd moved behind her, guiding her, half supporting her, he turned and checked out the front end of the car… the sprawled bodies of the victims… the killer, whose upper half had fallen through the doors when they opened, lying half in and half out of the car… the OR tech still tending to the wounded woman… and the blood, good Christ, the blood—the whole end of the car was awash in pools of it. Who'd have thought people could hold so much blood? And the smell—books always described the smell of blood as coppery, but Sandy had no idea what the hell copper smelled like, only that the whole car reeked of death and unimaginable violence and suddenly he couldn't breathe and the hot dog and Mountain Dew he'd wolfed down on the run after work couldn't stay where they were, wanted out of him as urgently as he'd wanted out of that charnel house on wheels.

  And so as he propelled Beth ahead of him and stepped into the marginally fresher air of the station, his stomach heaved and ejected its contents in a sour, burning arc that disappeared into the dark chasm between the train and the edge of the platform.

  Wiping his mouth Sandy looked around and hoped that no one had noticed. No one seemed to. After what they'd all been through, vomiting was a nonevent.

  He'd then become aware of the noise that filled the station—the cries, the moans, the wails of the survivors who'd just escaped mixing with the screams of the waiting would-be passengers as they got a look inside and turned away with wide eyes and slack jaws. He noticed some getting sick just as he had, or collapsing onto benches and weeping, or simply slumping to the concrete platform.

  He'd also noticed others hightailing it up the stairs, those who either didn't want to be questioned by the police, or didn't want to get involved in any way.

  Sandy very much wanted to be involved—up to his eyeballs.

  He'd found an empty spot on an initial-gouged wooden bench and eased Beth into it. Behind him he heard the automatic doors hiss closed after their programmed interval. He whirled, afraid the train would leave, but no chance of that: the killer's body was blocking one set of doors from closing—they kept pincering his corpse, then rebounding, closing again, and rebounding…

  A conductor trotted down, his annoyed expression melting to horror, his forward charge stuttering to a halt when he saw the carnage, reversing to a wobbly-kneed retreat as he staggered away for help.

  Sandy noticed a woman nearby sobbing into her cell phone. "Nine-one-one?" he asked.

  She nodded.

  Good. That meant the cops would be here in minutes. Scanner-equipped stringers and reporters wouldn't be far behind. He didn't have much time to get ahead of them.

  "You'll be okay if I leave you here for a bit?" he'd said to Beth.

  She'd nodded but said nothing. She was sobbing again. He felt bad leaving her but…

  "I'll only be a couple of minutes."

  Sandy had hurried then down to the far end of the platform where he could have some privacy and hear himself think. He wondered why he wasn't coming apart like so many of the others. He had no illusions about his inner toughness—he'd had lessons in piano, tennis, even karate, but none in machismo. Maybe it was because he had a job
to do, and when he'd finished he too would fall apart. He hoped not.

  That was when he'd got hold of George Meschke. He hadn't been sure what he'd accomplish. The Light was a weekly, published on Wednesdays, and tomorrow's issue had already been put to bed. But Meschke was the editor, this was news, and he seemed to be the one to call.

  Cops and emergency teams had flooded into the station and he related everything as he'd seen it.

  "This is great stuff, Palmer. Amazing stuff."

  "Yeah, but what can we do with it? This week's issue is set." Never before had Sandy wished so fiercely that he worked for a daily.

  "Not anymore. As soon as I hang up with you I'm calling everyone in and we're going to scrap the first three pages. Redo them top to bottom. I'm going to rough this out pretty much as you told it to me. It'll be your story—your first-person account—under your byline with a front page go-to."

  "My byline—front page? My byline?" Sandy resisted the urge to jump up and do an arm-pumping victory dance. This was not the time or place. "You mean that?"

  "Damn right. Now get off the phone and nose around there. Pick up as much as you can. The Times, the Post, and the News will be stuck up on street level. You're the only one down below, Palmer, so milk this dry. Then rush down here and we'll see about doing a box feature. Hell, with an eyewitness on staff, we're going to be the paper on this story."

  "You got it, George. But listen. I've thought of a headline."

  "Give it to me."

  "'Underground Galahad.'"

  "I don't think so."

  "How about 'Nightmare on the Nine'?"

  "Better. But let's leave the headline for later. Concentrate on your first-person opportunity down there."

  "Sure. Talk to you soon."

  Sandy snapped the phone shut and leaped up from his crouch. His nerve endings sang. Front page… his own byline… on a major story—the story of the year! This was better than sex!

  As he started back toward the chaos, he realized he was probably grinning like a nerd who'd just lost his virginity. He wiped it off. And slowed his bounding pace. Had to be professional here. This was a monster leg up for his career and he'd better not blow it.

  The NYPD had swarmed in and taken command. Plainclothes detectives and uniforms were everywhere, sectioning off the platform with yellow crime scene tape, stretching more between columns and across stairways.

  They'd herded the survivors into one area. As Sandy approached he noticed some looking dazed, some still sobbing, one hysterical, a few trying to hide the large wet spots on their pants, all coming down from the adrenaline overload of fearing for their lives as cops tried to take statements from the more coherent ones.

  Sandy wove slowly through the crowd, pausing to listen whenever and wherever he could.

  "… and then out of nowhere, this savior appeared," said a stooped old woman in a wrinkled blue dress.

  "What did he look like, ma'am?" said the female officer bending over her with notebook in hand.

  "Like Jesus."

  "You mean he had long hair?"

  "No."

  "Short, then?"

  "Not exactly."

  "Can you tell me what he looked like?"

  "We were not to look upon his face…"

  Sandy moved on, pausing again by the tall ministerial black man he recognized from the death car.

  "… and so then I spoke to him."

  "Spoke to who? The second shooter?"

  "We think of him as the Savior."

  "'We'?"

  "We who were blessed enough to survive. When we were freed from the train, someone said, 'Who was he? Who was our savior?' And that's how we now refer to him."

  "Can you give me a description of this 'savior,' sir?"

  "Medium build, brown hair… I can't tell you much about his face because I didn't see it. He had this hat, you see, and he pulled it down to hide his face."

  "How tall was he?"

  "I'd say average height. Shorter than me, anyway."

  Sandy kept moving, taking a circuitous route back to Beth, and along the way he kept hearing his fellow survivors trying and failing to describe this man they were calling 'the Savior.' He understood their problem: a guy so unremarkable seemed virtually invisible. Sandy had tagged him GPM for that very reason: he was a paradigm of the generic pale male.

  He found Beth again but now she wasn't alone. A plainclothesman was seated next to her, his notebook held at the ready. Beth had her hands stuffed stiff-armed between her knees and was still shaking. Sandy knelt beside her. She jumped when he laid a hand on her shoulder.

  "Oh, it's you," she said with a nervous flicker of a smile.

  "And you are…?" said the detective.

  "Sandy Palmer. I was on the train with Beth."

  "Have you given a statement yet?"

  The word no was approaching his lips when a subliminal warning from somewhere in his subconscious made him pull it back.

  "Who's that policewoman back there?" he said, trying to avoid getting caught in a lie later. "I forget her name."

  The detective nodded. "Were you able to get a look at the second shooter?"

  "You mean the Savior?" Sandy replied.

  "Whatever."

  To avoid a direct answer Sandy turned to Beth. "You saw him, didn't you, Beth?"

  She shook her head.

  "But you were right there, just a couple of feet from him."

  "But I wasn't looking at him. I barely looked at you, if you remember."

  Sandy smiled. "I remember."

  "I mean, I saw his back when he went after the killer—wait! He had a name on the back of his shirt!"

  The detective leaned forward, his pencil poised over his pad. "What did it say?"

  Beth squeezed her eyes shut. "It was all such a blur, but I think it said 'Sherbert' or something like that that."

  "Sherbert?" the detective said, scribbling. "You're sure?"

  Sandy rubbed a hand over his mouth to hide a smile. "Chrebet," he offered. "I remember now. He was wearing a green-on-white Jets jersey. Number eighty."

  "Christ," the detective muttered, shaking his head as he scratched out a line on his pad with hard, annoyed strokes. "I think we can figure it wasn't Wayne Chrebet."

  "You know him?" Beth said.

  "Wide receiver for the Jets," Sandy replied, then added, "That's a football team."

  "Oh." She seemed to shrink a little. "I hate football."

  "You didn't see his face?" the detective said.

  "No. He had it covered when he turned around." She turned to Sandy. "You didn't see him either?"

  Sandy wet his lips. An idea was forming. Its boldness tied his gut into knots but its potential made him giddy. It meant going out on a limb—far out on a very slim limb. But then, nothing ventured, nothing gained…

  "I saw what you saw," he said.

  "Shit," the detective muttered and slapped his notebook against his thigh. "What was this guy—invisible?"

  "When can we leave?" Beth said. "I want to go home."

  "Soon, miss," the detective said, softening. "Soon as we get names and addresses and statements from all you witnesses, we'll see that you all get home safely."

  As the cop moved off, Sandy leaned close to Beth and whispered, "I'm getting stir crazy. I've got to move around. You'll be okay for a few minutes?" He didn't know why but somehow he felt responsible for her.

  "Sure," she said. "Not like there aren't any cops around."

  "Good point."

  He left her and edged back toward the death car where flashes from the forensic team's cameras kept lighting the interior like welders' arcs. He noticed a cluster of three plainclothesmen and one uniform gathered outside one of the open sets of doors. Farther on, a man wearing latex gloves—from the forensics team, no doubt—examined the killer where he'd fallen through the doorway.

  Sandy needed to be over there, needed to hear what these cops were saying, but he couldn't get his feet to move. One step past that ta
pe and he'd be sent scurrying back with his tail between his legs to stay put with the rest of the survivors. But he wasn't just a survivor, he was the press too, damn it—the people's right to know and all that.

  He tried to remember techniques from that assertiveness training course he'd taken last year but came up blank except for the old bromide about how the worst that could happen was that someone simply would say No.

  But fearing rejection, of all things, seemed more than silly after what he'd just been through.

  Sandy pulled his press card from his wallet and palmed it. A quick glance around showed no one looking his way. He noticed that one of the plainclothes cops was pretty big. Huge, in fact. Choosing an angle of approach that used the big guy's bulk as a shield, Sandy ducked under the yellow tape and sidled up to the foursome, listening, taking mental notes.

  "… like the second shooter knew what he was doing."

  "How you mean?"

  "According to what we're hearing he got the crazy in the shoulders first, then blew him away."

  "Fucking executed him's more like it. But what was he carrying? Nobody can tell us anything about his gun except it was real small."

  "And holds at least four rounds."

  "Not a .22, I can tell you that. Not a .32 either from the size of the crazy's wounds. Guy took his brass with him so we can't use that."

  "The whole thing's weird—including the way he blew away the crazy. I mean, why not just do the head shot and have it done with?"

  "'Cause if you miss that first head shot—and if we're talking about a tiny little barrel, there's a damn good chance you will—you're a goner because this Colin Ferguson wannabe's got a pair of nines and he's going to blow you away. So if you're smart you do what our guy does: you go for an arm and—"

  "Seems low percentage to me. I'd go for center of mass."

  "Fine—unless he's wearing a vest. And witnesses say the crazy was turned sideways when he took the first hit. An arm's bigger than a head, and even a miss has got a good chance at the torso, vested or not. So our guy goes for an arm and makes the shot. Now there's one less gun to deal with, and he's also a few steps closer. So now it's easier to take out the other arm."