Lightning

by Ed McBain

“No, this is something Mary contributed to three times this year. Total of two hundred bucks, all of them marked in her checkbook as contributions. I was thinking…if it’s some kind of nutty handgun organization…”

  “Yeah, I follow. Let me run it through the computer, okay?”

  “They’ve got an office right here in the city,” Eileen said. “Get back to me, will you? I’m curious.”

  Annie got back to her at a little before one o’clock.

  “Well,” she said, “you want to hear this list?”

  “Shoot.”

  “It’s a long one.”

  “I don’t have anyplace to go till six-thirty.”

  “Oh? What’d you decide?”

  “Dinner at a place called Ocho Rios, three blocks from here. Mexican joint.”

  “You like Mexican food?”

  “I like the idea that it’s only three blocks from here. That means I can walk it. A taxi might scare him off. I’ll tell you, Annie, I hope he makes his play on the street, I don’t want him coming here to the apartment. More room to swing outside, you follow me?”

  “However you want it.”

  “I’ll pace out the terrain this afternoon, get the feel of it. I don’t want him jumping out of some alley I don’t know exists.”

  “Good,” Annie said. “Here’s this AIM stuff, the list is as long as my arm, don’t bother to write it down. What we have… Are you listening? We have an organization called Accuracy In Media, and another one called Advance in Medicine. We’ve got the American Institute for Microminiaturization, and the Asian Institute of Management. We’ve got the American Indian Movement, the American Institute of Musicology, the Association for the Integration of Management, the Australian Institute of Management…”

  “These are all real?”

  “Honest to God. Plus the Australian Institute of Metals, the American Institute of Man, and an organization called Adventure In Movement for the Handicapped.”

  “Which of them is on Hall Avenue?” Eileen asked.

  “I was saving that for last. 832 Hall, is that the address you have?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, it’s something called Against Infant Murder.”

  “Against Infant Murder, huh?”

  “Yep. 832 Hall Avenue.”

  “What is it? Some kind of antiabortion group?”

  “They didn’t define it as such when I called them. They said they were simply pro-life.”

  “Uh-huh. Any connection with Right to Life?”

  “None that I can see. They’re strictly local.”

  There was a long silence on the line.

  “You think any of the other victims made contributions to this group?” Eileen asked.

  “I’ll be talking to all of them this afternoon, either on the phone or in person. If it turns out they did…”

  “Yeah, it may be a thread.”

  “It may be more than that. All the victims were Catholics, you know.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah. And Catholics aren’t supposed to use artificial means of birth control.”

  “Only the rhythm method, right. Some Catholics.”

  “Most, I thought. Are you Catholic?”

  “You have to ask? With a name like Burke?”

  “What do you use?”

  “I’m on the pill.”

  “So am I.”

  “What is it you’re thinking, Annie?”

  “I don’t know yet, I want to see how this checks out with the victims. But if all of them did contribute to AIM…”

  “Uh-huh,” Eileen said.

  There was another long silence on the line.

  “I almost hope…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I hope they didn’t,” Annie said. “I hope Mary Hollings was the only one, a wild card.”

  “Why?”

  “Because otherwise it’s too damn ghoulish,” Annie said.

  Teddy’s appointment at the law offices was for 3:00 that afternoon. She arrived at twenty minutes to, and waited downstairs until 2:50, not wanting to seem too eager by arriving early. She really wanted the job; the job sounded perfect to her. She was dressed in what she considered a sedate but not drab manner, wearing a smart suit over a blouse with a stock tie, pantyhose color-coordinated with the nubby brown fabric of the suit, brown shoes with French heels. The lobby of the building was suffocatingly hot after the dank drizzle outdoors, and so she took off her raincoat before she got on the elevator. At precisely 3:00 p.m. sharp, she presented herself to the receptionist at Franklin, Logan, Gibson and Knowles and showed her the letter she had received from Phillip Logan. The receptionist told her Mr. Logan would see her in a few moments. At ten minutes past 3:00, the receptionist picked up the phone receiver—it must have buzzed, but Teddy had not heard it—and then said Mr. Logan would see her now. Reading the girl’s lips, Teddy nodded.

  “First doorway down the hall on your right,” the girl said.

  Teddy went down the hallway and knocked on the door.

  She waited a few seconds, allowing time for Logan inside to have said, “Come in,” and then turned the doorknob and went into the office. The office was spacious, furnished with a large desk, several easy chairs, a coffee table, and banks of bookcases on three walls. The fourth wall was fashioned almost entirely of glass that offered a splendid view of the city’s towering buildings. Rain slithered down the glass panels. A shaded lamp cast a glow of yellow illumination on the desktop.

  Logan rose from behind the desk the moment she entered the room. He was a tall man wearing a dark blue suit, a white shirt, and a striped tie. His eyes were a shade lighter than the suit. His hair was graying. Teddy guessed he was somewhere in his early fifties.

  “Ah, Miss Carella,” he said, “how kind of you to come. Please sit down.”

  She sat in one of the easy chairs facing his desk. He sat behind the desk again and smiled at her. His eyes looked warm and friendly.

  “I assume you can…uh…read my lips,” he said. “Your letter…”

  She nodded.

  “It was very straightforward of you to describe your disability in advance,” Logan said. “In your letter, I mean. Very frank and honest.”

  Teddy nodded again, although the word disability rankled.

  “You are…uh…you do understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”

  She nodded, and then motioned to the pad and pencil on his desk.

  “What?” he said. “Oh. Yes, of course, how silly of me.”

  He handed the pad and pencil across to her.

  On the pad, she wrote: I can understand you completely.

  He took the pad again, read what she’d written, and said, “Wonderful, good.” He hesitated. “Uh…Perhaps we should move that chair around here,” he said, “don’t you think? So we won’t have to be passing this thing back and forth.”

  He rose quickly and came to where she was sitting. Teddy got up, and he shoved the easy chair closer to the desk and to the side of it. She sat again, folding her raincoat over her lap.

  “There, that’s better,” he said. “Now we can talk a bit more easily. Oh, excuse me, was my back to you? Did you get all of that?”

  Teddy nodded, and smiled.

  “This is all very new to me, you see,” he said. “So. Where shall we begin? You understand, don’t you, that the job calls for an expert typist…I see in your letter that you can do sixty words a minute…”

  I may be a little rusty just now, Teddy wrote on the pad.

  “Well, that all comes back to you, doesn’t it? It’s like roller skating, I would guess.”

  Teddy nodded, although she did not think typing was like roller skating.

  “And you do take steno…”

  She nodded again.

  “And, of course, the filing is a routine matter, so I’m sure you can handle that.”

  She looked at him expectantly.

  “We like attractive people in our offices, Miss Carella,” Logan said, a
nd smiled. “You’re a very beautiful woman.”

  She nodded her thanks—modestly, she hoped—and then wrote: It’s Mrs. Carella.

  “Of course, forgive me,” he said. “Theodora, is it?”

  She wrote: Most people call me Teddy.

  “Teddy? That’s charming. Teddy. It suits you. You’re extraordinarily beautiful, Teddy. I suppose you’ve heard that a thousand times…”

  She shook her head.

  “…but I find that most compliments bear repeating, don’t you? Extraordinarily beautiful,” he said, and his eyes met hers. He held contact for longer than was comfortable. She lowered her eyes to the pad. When she looked up again, he was still staring at her. She shifted her weight in the chair. He was still watching her.

  “So,” he said. “Hours are nine to five, the job pays two and a quarter to start, can you begin Monday morning? Or will you need a little time to get your affairs in order?”

  Her eyes opened wide. She had not for a moment believed it would be this simple. She was speechless, literally so, but speechless beyond that—as if her mind had suddenly gone blank, her ability to communicate frozen somewhere inside her head.

  “You do want the job, don’t you?” he said, and smiled again.

  Oh, yes, she thought, oh God, yes! She nodded, her eyes flashing happiness, her hands unconsciously starting to convey her appreciation, and then falling empty of words into her lap when she realized he could not possibly read them.

  “Will Monday morning be all right?” he asked.

  She nodded yes.

  “Good then,” he said, “I’ll look forward to seeing you then.”

  He leaned toward her.

  “I’m sure we’ll get along fine,” he said, and suddenly, without warning, he slid his hand under her skirt. She sat bolt upright, her eyes opening wide, too shocked to move for an instant. His fingers tightened on her thigh.

  “Don’t you think so, Miss Car—?”

  She slapped him hard, as hard as she could, and then rose at once from her chair, and moved toward him, her teeth bared, her hand drawn back to hit him again. He was nursing his jaw, his blue eyes looking hurt and a trifle bewildered. Words welled up inside her, words she could not speak. She stood there trembling with fury, her hand still poised to strike.

  “That’s it, you know,” he said, and smiled.

  She was turning away from him, tears welling into her eyes, when she saw more words forming on his lips.

  “You just blew it, dummy.”

  And the last word pained her more than he possibly could have known, the last word went through her like a knife.

  She was still crying when she came out of the building into the falling rain.

  Annie had been unable to reach three of the victims by telephone, but the five she did manage to contact told her they had been contributors to AIM. She spent the rest of the afternoon trying the addresses she had for the remaining three victims. Two of them were still out when she got there, but Angela Ferrari informed her that she was a pro-life supporter and had contributed not only to AIM but to Right to Life as well. It was almost 6:00 when she rang Janet Reilly’s doorbell. Janet was the most recent of the serial rape victims, and—at only nineteen—the youngest of them. A college student, she lived at home with her parents, and had just got there from a meeting of the Newman Club when Annie arrived.

  Her parents were not happy to see Annie. They were both working people, and they’d got home just before their daughter, only to answer the door a few minutes later on the Rape Squad again. Their daughter had been raped for the first time on September 13. They thought she’d gone through enough horror then to have lasted her a lifetime, but it had happened to her again on October 11, the horror escalating, the terror a constant thing now. They did not want her to answer any further questions from the police. All they wanted was to be left alone. They all but closed the door in Annie’s face until she promised this would be the very last question.

  Janet Reilly answered the question positively.

  She had indeed made a small contribution to a pro-life organization called AIM.

  Annie left the apartment at ten minutes past 6:00. From a pay phone on the corner, she tried to reach Vivienne Chabrun, the only victim she had not yet spoken to. Again, there was no answer at her apartment. She now knew for certain, however, that eight of the nine victims had made contributions in varying amounts to AIM, and it seemed to her that this information would be valuable to Eileen. She deposited the coin again, and dialed the number at Mary Hollings’s apartment. She let the phone ring ten times. There was no answer.

  Eileen was already on her way to dinner.

  A musician roamed from table to table, strumming his guitar and singing Mexican songs. When he got to Eileen’s table, he played “Cielito Lindo” for her, optimistically, she thought; the sky outside had been bloated with threatening black clouds when she’d entered the restaurant. The rain had stopped entirely at about 4:00 in the afternoon, but the clouds had begun building again at dusk, piling up massively and ominously overhead. By 6:15, when she’d left the apartment to walk here, she could already hear the sound of distant thunder in the next state, beyond the river.

  She was having her coffee—the wall clock read twenty minutes past 7:00—when the first lightning flash came, illuminating the curtained window facing the street. The following boom of thunder was ear-shattering; she hunched her shoulders in anticipation, and even so its volume shocked her. The rain came then, unleashed in fury, enforced by a keening wind, battering the window and pelting the sidewalk outside. She lighted a cigarette and smoked it while she finished her coffee. It was almost 7:30 when she paid her bill and went to the checkroom for the raincoat and umbrella she’d left there.

  The raincoat was Mary’s. It fit her a bit too snugly, but she thought it might be recognizable to him, and if the rain came—as it most certainly had—visibility might be poor; she did not want to lose him because he couldn’t see her. The umbrella was Mary’s, too, a delicate little red plaid thing that was more stylish than protective, especially against what was raging outside just now. The rain boots were Eileen’s. Rubber with floppy tops. She had chosen them exactly because the tops were floppy. Strapped to her ankle inside the right boot was a holster containing a lightweight Browning .380 automatic pistol, her spare. Her regulation pistol was a .38 Detective’s Special, and she was carrying that in a shoulder bag slung over her left shoulder for an easy cross-body draw.

  She tipped the checkroom girl a dollar (wondering if this was too much), put on the raincoat, reslung the shoulder bag, and then walked out into the small entry alcove. A pair of glass doors, with the word Ocho engraved on one and Rios on the other, faced the street outside, lashed with rain now. Lightning flashed as she pushed open one of the doors. She backed inside again, waited for the boom of thunder to fade, and then stepped out into the rain, opening the umbrella.

  A gust of wind almost tore the umbrella from her grasp. She turned into the wind, fighting it, refusing to allow it to turn the umbrella inside it. Angling it over her face and shoulders, using it as a shield to bully her way through the driving rain, she started for the corner. The route she had traced out this afternoon would take her one block west on a brightly lighted avenue—deserted now because of the storm—and then two blocks north on less well-lighted streets to Mary’s apartment. She did not expect him to make his move while she was on the avenue. But on that two-block walk to the apartment—

  She suddenly wished she’d asked for a backup.

  Stupid, playing it this way.

  And yet, if she’d planted her backups, say, on the other side of the street, one walking fifty feet ahead of her, the other fifty feet behind, he’d be sure to spot them, wouldn’t he? Three woman walking out here in the rain in the classic triangle pattern? Sure to spot them. Or suppose she’d planted them in any one of the darkened doorways or alleyways along the route she’d walked this afternoon, and suppose he checked out that same route, s
aw two ladies lurking in doorways—not many hookers up here, and certainly none on the side streets where there wasn’t any business—no, he’d tip, he’d run, they’d lose him. Better without any backups. And still, she wished she had one.

  She took a deep breath as she turned the corner off the avenue.

  The blocks would be longer now.

  Your side streets were always longer than your streets on the avenue. Maybe twice as long. Plenty of opportunity for him in there. Two long blocks.

  It was raining inside the floppy tops of the boots. She could feel the backup pistol inside the right boot, the butt cold against the nylon of her pantyhose. She was wearing panties under the pantyhose, great protection against a knife, oh, sure, great big chastity belt he could slash open in a minute. She was holding the umbrella with both hands now, trying to keep it from being carried away by the wind. She wondered suddenly if she shouldn’t just throw the damn thing away, put her right hand onto the butt of the .38 in her bag—He pulls that knife, don’t ask questions, just blow him away. Annie’s advice. Not that she needed it.

  Alley coming up on her right. Narrow space between two of the buildings, stacked with garbage cans when she’d passed it this afternoon. Too narrow for action? The guy wasn’t looking to dance, he was looking to rape, and the width of the alley seemed to preclude the space for that. Ever get raped on top of a garbage can? she asked herself. Don’t ask questions, just blow him away. Dark doorway in the building beyond the alley. Lights in the next building and the one after that. Lamppost on the corner. The sky suddenly split by a streak of lightning. Thunder booming on the night. A gust of wind turned the umbrella inside out. She threw it into the garbage can on the corner and felt the immediate onslaught of the rain on her naked head. Should have worn a hat, she thought. Or one of those plastic things you tie under your chin. Her hand found the butt of the .38 in her shoulder bag.

  She crossed the street.

  Another lamppost on the corner opposite.

  Darkness beyond that.

  An alley coming up, she knew. Wider than the first had been, a car’s width across, at least. Nice place to tango. Plenty of room. Her hand tightened on the gun butt. Nothing. Nobody in the alley that she could see, no footsteps behind her after she passed it. Lighted buildings ahead now, looking potbelly warm in the rain. Another alley way up ahead, two buildings down from Mary’s. What if they’d been wrong? What if he didn’t plan to hit tonight? She kept walking, her hand on the gun butt. She skirted a puddle on the sidewalk. More lightning, she winced; more thunder, she winced again. Passing the only other alley now, dark and wide, but not as wide as the last one had been. Garbage cans. A scraggly wet cat sitting on one of the cans, peering out at the falling rain. Cat would’ve bolted if somebody was in there, no? She was passing the alley when he grabbed her.