The Lure

by Felice Picano

  Before The Lure, there were gay mysteries; Vidal’s Edgar Box series and Joseph Hansen’s Dave Brandsetter novels stand out. But after my novel, maybe even because of it, gay mystery became an important subgenre with terrific authors like Michael Nava, Katherine Forrest, and Stephen Saylor.

  Although I’ve been asked numerous times to write a sequel to The Lure, I never truly considered it a possibility. And because of the Cruising debacle, until recently I never entertained film offers (so much for living in style). True, several phone conversations between Rainer Fassbinder and myself a few months before the genius film director’s unexplained suicide were pregnant with potential. He wanted to film the story in Berlin or Hamburg. Today we have many gay film directors, producers, and actors, but The Lure may be both too much, yet not enough of a period piece to interest them.

  I also want to make a sidelight note: The late playwright Alan Bowne got around to handling my other gay-themed film idea, writing about 42nd Street teen hustlers with a passion and authenticity I couldn’t match. I published his play, Forty-Deuce, through the SeaHorse Press in 1986.

  And of course, I never wrote another psychological thriller, although I’ve gone on to write in other genres as well as to adapt other genres to my own perverse requirements. The closest I’ve come was in The Book of Lies, an “academic mystery thriller” with droll echoes and references to the earlier book. Thus, The Book of Lies for a variety of reasons could not possibly have been written without The Lure coming first.

  What the ultimate value of this reissued novel is, I resign to future readers: They’re the only genuine judges anyway.

  Felice Picano

  Los Angeles, 2002

  ONE

  FIXING THE BAIT

  1

  March, 1976

  The serene icy morning was shattered by a scream.

  Noel Cummings swerved his ten-speed bicycle to a stop at the railing and listened. One sneakered foot remained tight in the metal clamp of the bike’s pedal, the other dangled gingerly on the thin concrete abutment.

  Nothing.

  Despite the frigid wind flapping off the Hudson River, he pulled down the hood of his sweatshirt to hear better.

  Still nothing.

  The wind whistling through those loose metal flaps of the crumbling warehouses on his right? Perhaps. Or perhaps an early morning driver screeching his tires as he sped around a corner below, on West Street.

  He peered over the railing of the elevated West Side Highway, closed to traffic south of Thirty-fourth Street since a nearby section had collapsed almost a year before. Closed to car and truck traffic, that is. Still open to pedestrians; or, more common, to bicyclists like Noel, alone this early March morning at a quarter after six. Below him he could make out the back of a crawling Sanitation Department truck.

  It must have been a hallucination, he decided, and put up his hood again.

  Looking east, through lines of building walls sheer as cliffs, the night’s blackness had begun to give way to a pale cobalt at the horizon. Dawn soon.

  Then the scream repeated. Even with his hood up, he knew it was no hallucination. It was so clear, so close, Noel could make out its direction—to the right, in front of him—and even a few terrified words—

  “No…didn’t mean it.”

  A light flickered on in the second-story warehouse window, level with where he stood. With it the scream ended.

  Noel shot across the road to the right-hand railing. Light flickered in the third window; like matchlight, or a cigarette lighter guttering in the wind.

  Then he heard the man’s voice again, lower, pleading, punctuated by what seemed to be gasps.

  Noel leaned far over the metal railing to look in. Debris all over the floor, loose beams hanging half torn from the walls and ceiling. All he could make out were shadowy figures—one shrinking back, two others looming on either side of him. One’s arm was extended; something sharply pointed in his hand jabbed forward again and again, each thrust followed by a gasp, a cry, another “No.”

  “Hey! What’s going on in there?” Noel shouted. “Stop that.”

  The light flickered off.

  Out of the sudden blackness someone shouted, “Help me! Please! They’re killing me!”

  “Finish him off,” someone muttered.

  “Help me!” the man shouted again. “Please!”

  Then Noel heard what sounded like stumbling over broken glass. Was the man escaping in the dark?

  Noel calculated the distance from the railing to the open window: a good ten feet. Too far to jump. Debris and broken glass to land on if he did. Glass that twinkled and cracked in the reflected streetlight as the shadows moved over it. He had to help him. But how?

  “I’m coming in,” Noel shouted. He detached the heavy flashlight he carried clamped to his handlebars, flung it into the corner he thought the attackers were in. It smashed against something, thudded to the floor.

  “…getting out of here,” he heard one voice say.

  “Are you finished?” another asked.

  Broken glass crunched under several pairs of feet. Then the man’s cries, his gasps again.

  How could Noel get in there? “Leave him alone!” he yelled.

  It was a quarter mile to the nearest exit. He’d have to chance it. They were scared by now. They’d leave.

  He shouted once more that he was coming in, then spun around on the Atala Grand Prix and shot off north toward Eighteenth Street, adjusting his gears for the highest speed. In seconds he was moving so fast he almost missed the turnoff. He swerved right, swept over the broken concrete exitway like a ski jumper going off a lift, then down the ramp so suddenly the breath was whipped out of him. Lines of white and gray at the bottom of the ramp caught his eye—wooden police horses, obstacles. He had only an instant to avoid them. He jerked left, felt his right trouser leg brush one, leaned over almost horizontal to the road, regained his balance, then turned sharply and was skimming along West Street, over cobblestones, in and out of the steel pylons that supported the highway. One row of warehouses flashed by. Then the open space opposite Westbeth, telephone labs turned into artists’ housing. The second line of warehouses began, glimmering ominously in the yellow light of the mercury streetlamps.

  He swung the Atala to a soundless stop. Now what? He’d expected to see fleeing figures, a car taking off.

  Instead the street was empty, the cobblestones gleaming with ice. Jesus! and he’d gone over this road at forty miles an hour. What now? There was a man hurt somewhere upstairs. More than likely the men who attacked him, too. What am I doing here?

  He had to go in, find the man, help him. But first park the bike where they would not see it when they came out. The other side of the building.

  He spotted one doorway at street level, the door knocked in, hanging on a hinge, so black inside it might be completely enclosed. This can’t lead upstairs, he thought. Too much of a trap anyway. Farther along?

  He jumped onto the concrete loading platform. Graffiti scrawled on the outside wall in large wavering letters: Keep Away. Pickpockets Inside.

  There were more than pickpockets inside.

  One wide garage door was opened just high enough to crawl under. Noel edged over and peered in.

  It was lighter inside. Huge. These warehouses had been used for loading and receiving from ships; the piers they were built on extended hundreds of feet out into the river. The far end of this one was sagging, as though crushed by a giant hand. The dark western sky looked lighter against the building’s darker jagged-metal bulwarks. At least he’d be able to make out someone coming at him.

  He slipped in and crouched, accustoming his eyes to the gloom. No one. A jumble of fallen beams. The frosty glitter of glass—or was it ice?—everywhere. Good thing he was wearing his Adidas. He’d hear them before they heard him.

  A dozen or so feet inside, he saw that the place was even more immense than it seemed at first: two football fields long, he guessed, from the street to
the river end. Concrete floors. Safe for walking, except for the glass. This must have been a driveway. An inner loading platform to his right. Beyond it, darkness. To his left what seemed to be another, smaller building within the larger one: a half dozen windows, half that many doors, all the glass smashed out of them of course, all the doors off their hinges. What was that darker double-sized doorway? A stairway. The way up to the hurt man. And to the other men, waiting for him.

  This is insane, Noel told himself, then started up. The stairs were remarkably clear of litter and glass, as though much used. At the first landing, he stopped. Anyone might get at him from around the corner. He waited, poised to leap aside or back down the stairs. Not a sound. Could this little corridor be the way to the man?

  It wasn’t. The corridor nearly circled the inside building, going three-quarters around, ending in a pile of stacked beams and one ghostly white urinal stinking to high heaven, graffiti chalked on the walls around it, indecipherable in the darkness. But from here, he could look down on the open warehouse floor below. He saw no one.

  He made his way back to the stairway, ascended warily, a step at a time, hugging the railing, until his eyes reached floor level. A huge room. Empty. To his left a bare wall some fifty feet away. Much closer on his right a series of doorways: some closed, some open. These must have been warehouse offices.

  He sidled to the nearest doorway. He could see the elevated highway out the window, about chest high. It was the right floor. Now where was the man?

  It was lighter in the room now: he could see a robin’s-egg blue at the horizon. Couldn’t he wait here a few minutes until dawn?

  No. Go on. Go in.

  A tiny room opened off this doorway. Some newspapers bunched up in a corner he took at first for a crouching man. On one wall were the stenciled words: Dressing Room.

  Why was it so quiet? Where was the man? And the others, where were they? Waiting for him behind any doorway. Their shadows thrusting, deadly. The man’s cries and gasps. Noel had to find him, not let him die. Insane or not, he had to help him.

  He crept forward, edging into first one doorway, then another. At each he waited, slid quietly inside, waited again, poised to jump aside, alert for a movement, an attack. He peered into each darkness, made certain no one was in the shadows, checked the outer room again, slipped out, moved to the next.

  At the fifth one he saw the flashlight. The dull burnished shine of its cylinder made him shudder. This was the room.

  He paused, looked for a long time at the flashlight’s dented side, then slipped into the room and stood still. No one. Just a sign, Smoking Lounge, on the wall opposite the windows. Several discarded doors were thrown into the far corner. The flashlight sat on a pile of debris.

  Here I am. Now where the hell are you!

  Expecting at any moment to be pounced upon, he retrieved the flashlight, grabbing it as if it were a hot potato, though it felt cold through the lightweight racing gloves he wore. Heavy, substantial: real. What about the rest of it—the man stabbing, the victim’s scream, his pleading? Was that real? There was nothing to prove it. Nothing but the flashlight.

  He wondered if the flashlight still worked, and switched it on. Its glare was blinding, and he swung it down.

  The circle of light rested on the doors stacked in the corner. The top one was pale green, speckled darker from top to bottom as though someone had begun to paint it and stopped halfway. The dark layer gleamed wet, looked freshly painted.

  Cautiously, he touched the door. It was wet, sticky. Christ, it must be blood! He wiped it off on a pants leg and swung the flashlight in a slow, low arc, half dreading to see what it would show him. At the bottom of the pile, he made out some material, and coming closer, one trousered leg that extended out from behind the doors. It, too, gleamed from the knee to the socks, which—once white—were now dyed dark. A wetly brown loafer was twisted half off a foot.

  Noel stood back, holding the flashlight on the leg, unable to move.

  Then he went to the door and began to move it. As he did, the leg pulled slowly in. What was that sound? Like a small dog whimpering. Noel heard a dry wheezing. The man was still alive! He’d come in time.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Noel said quietly. “It’s me. The guy from the highway. They’re gone now. I threw the flashlight to scare them off. I’ll get you out.”

  The wheezing continued, louder now. Noel wedged the flashlight between some loose boards on the right wall, aiming it at the corner to see better. Then, using both hands, he lifted off first one, then another, setting them quietly flat down on the floor.

  When the last door was aside, he saw the man.

  He lay like refuse thrown in a corner. Both legs were extended, both arms dangled on the floor. His head was fallen forward so that Noel could see only the top of his lank, light hair. He sat in a dark puddle. His sleeves and trouser legs were dappled with dark spreading stains. He’d been stabbed everywhere, over and over.

  The man raised his head slightly and Noel heard the sharp intake of breath, the fluttery wheezing, and, barely audible, the muttered words, “Didn’t mean it. Didn’t.”

  With that, the man’s head fell back all the way against one corner wall. Was it only a trick of the dim light that Noel could not make out a single feature of his face? No, the flashlight shone fully on him. And Noel saw that where the man’s nose and eyes and mouth ought to have been was just a dark wetness that seethed and bubbled and welled up. And he realized why he could not see the man’s face: they had cut it to ribbons.

  “Oh, my God!” Noel whispered it under his breath, feeling his stomach knot and constrict, feeling his throat begin to contract. “Christ, help me.”

  The words helped, and he clenched his eyes shut, feeling the flashlight’s dented side, found the button and flicked it off.

  Better in the dark. Better not seeing what ought not be seen. He felt a little better already.

  He bent down and talked quietly, fast.

  “Listen. You’re hurt very badly. I’ve got to get a doctor. You’re bleeding. I’ve got to get help.”

  Noel felt wetness seep under one knee as he talked. He jerked it up and hunkered.

  “They’re gone. They won’t be back. Just stay still. I’ve got a bike. I’ll ride and get help. I’ll only be a few minutes, I promise. Stay still, very still.”

  “Ssszzz,” Noel heard among the wheezing, then he felt a hand brush against his ankle. It made him shudder.

  Then, the hissing sound again: “Ssszzz.”

  “I can’t understand you.”

  The man held Noel’s ankle in a loose grip. He reached down and took the hand, holding it in his own. It, too, was wet, bleeding.

  “Listen,” the man managed to say in a sharply asthmatic voice, very low. “Go…cross…street.”

  “I’ll get help. Don’t worry.”

  “Cross…street…” the man repeated slowly, with great effort. “Cross…street.”

  “Across the street?”

  The fingers tightened in his hand.

  “Across West Street?”

  Yes, the fingers replied, tightening again.

  “Directly across?”

  “Yes,” the man said now.

  “Why? What’s there? Not the police station? That’s on Tenth Street, isn’t it?”

  “Cross…street.” The man’s fingers tightened once more in Noel’s. He was wheezing badly again, unable to talk.

  Noel looked at him. Then, remembering, and afraid he might see his eyes or what remained of them, he looked away, toward the dull gleam of the flashlight he’d hung on the wall.

  “All right. I’ll go across the street. Don’t worry. Just stay still. Don’t move. All right?”

  The man’s fingers relaxed, and Noel thought he must have lost consciousness, but the wheezing continued. He laid the man’s hand gently on the soaked trouser leg, and stood up.

  He was shaking so badly, he had to hold on to the doorjamb.

  “I’ll be
right back,” he promised, not sure whether the man heard him or not. The room was getting lighter: the sun was about to rise.

  Noel half staggered out the doorway, and ran heedlessly down the stairs. Only at the first landing did he come to his senses and remember to be wary. There was no proof the other men had left the building. So he edged along the lower offices, then crawled under the barely open garage door onto West Street.

  It was still night below the elevated highway, the cobblestone road lighted yellow.

  Across West Street, the man had said. Noel strode across, looking back as he did, to make certain no light went on again in the upper-story window. The man’s whimpering rang in his head. His wheezing breath. No face. He had no face left. Stop it, Noel told himself. Concentrate on getting help.

  Opposite the warehouse, on the other side of the highway, were two buildings, neither very likely to contain help. On Noel’s left was a whitewashed warehouse, seven stories high, the windows painted closed black. One black garage door, locked. One doorway, up four steps, locked, too. Deserted.

  The other building was red brick aged with layers of soot. Cages covered the high, deeply set, opaque glass windows from the ground floor all the way up to the fifth level, which appeared to be a huge wire mesh tent, like a gymnasium atop a public school. There was one deeply set doorway with a heavy-looking metal door labeled, Danger: Moving Door. Even the bulky, greenish air-conditioning unit was enclosed in a meshwork cage.

  Then Noel remembered: this was the Federal House of Detention where men awaiting federal trials in New York City were held. Hadn’t it been closed a while ago? Sure: he’d read about it in the Times four or five months before.