“I can understand that. Do you have a pet?”
“A pet?”
“You keep looking around as though…” The Fisherman interrupted himself with a laugh. “I’m alone. Don’t worry. By the way, have you had breakfast yet?”
Noel had been out riding this Sunday morning, enjoying the crisp, almost-spring, late March weather. He’d completed his route—on the East Side since that dawn—then had circled through Central Park, taking advantage of the winding roads closed to vehicular traffic every weekend. AIl the way home he’d been thinking about his growling stomach.
“Because if you haven’t,” the Fisherman went on, “I brought a few things. You like delicatessen?”
He opened a white paper bag he’d left on the table. Inside were fresh bagels, pungent lox, some smaller wrapped parcels.
“There is also fresh squeezed orange juice. And coffee. I have a special roast at Zabar’s.”
Noel was drawn by the food and by curiosity.
“Why did you tell the doorman you were my uncle?”
“What was I supposed to tell him? That I was a police officer?”
Noel didn’t answer.
“Is this the kitchen?” the Fisherman said, going into the tiny room and spreading the packages of food on the counter. “Where are your dishes?”
“I’ll get them,” Noel said, taking off his jacket.
“I got the Sunday Times, too. It’s over there.” He pointed to its thick bulk on the lamp table next to the rocker. “You’ll need a sharp knife to cut these bagels. They’re fresh. They tear otherwise. Heat some water. I got cream cheese with chives. Do you like it?” He unwrapped the packages.
The small table seated two comfortably. Noel’s initial panic had passed quickly, but not his curiosity. The man probably wanted to ask more questions. Or the same ones over again: a small enough price for breakfast and the Times.
“I’m here for a reason,” the Fisherman said once they were seated.
“I didn’t think you’d come to apologize again for my mistreatment.”
“You’re an intelligent man, Mr. Cummings. University professor and all.”
“Not so smart. I still haven’t figured out your name.”
“Excuse me. Loomis,” he said, putting out a hand for Noel to shake across the table. “Anton Loomis.”
“Anton Loomis, New York City Department of Police. A detective, right? Some high rank? In which division? Homicide?”
“I used to be captain. I don’t hold any rank now.”
“Not because you were demoted. You’re working for some special group, correct?”
“Close enough.”
“That’s all the questions I have,” Noel said, and got up to cut another bagel. “You, too?”
“I’m overweight already. Mr. Cummings, I came to tell you something about what you stumbled into that morning.”
Noel didn’t completely believe him.
“I don’t blame you for wanting to forget it. It was very unpleasant. But not the first unpleasant matter we’ve dealt with. And, not the worst. There has been a series of such murders. All of them related. Do you know who that man was you tried to help?”
“One of your men called him Kansas.”
“Kansas. A code name. Operative number five. A police detective. Twenty-six years old. Just promoted. A wife. A child. A promising career in the department.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. But isn’t death an occupational hazard in your work?” Exactly what was he driving at?
“It is. It is. Not like that, though—blinded, bleeding, butchered in a rotting warehouse.”
“I agree,” Noel said. “I was there. Remember?”
“I remember. But as I was saying, Mr. Cummings, he was not the first of my operatives to be murdered. About a month ago another was found facedown in a snowbank, not four blocks away. His hands were bound, his throat cut, his body mutilated. And it isn’t only policemen who are being killed.”
“Are you trying to tell me there’s a crime wave in the city? I do read the papers, Mr. Loomis.”
“This isn’t any general outbreak of crime. This is one group or one man. We don’t know who. We aren’t even sure why. But we can guess.”
“Maybe they’re ritual slayings,” Noel suggested, recalling what Boyle had told him. “Don’t homosexuals consort in that area?”
“Exactly. See, I said you were an intelliegent man. From below Christopher Street all the way up to the twenties, there are dozens of bars and clubs.”
“Well, that’s who’s doing it. Some homosexual-hating psychopath who took your men for what they were decoyed to be.”
“So it would appear,” Loomis said. Then, with a penetrating glance: “Or maybe that’s what we’re supposed to believe.”
“You don’t?”
“Do you recall, Mr. Cummings, about a year and a half ago when a man named Robby Landau was found murdered in his apartment? He owned a large and popular discotheque. He’d been stabbed many times, a hundred, more. His underwear was slashed off, the apartment ransacked—things broken, paintings ripped. It appeared to be the work of the type of man you just described.”
Loomis went on: “What the newspapers didn’t say was that Landau was to testify before a grand jury the next day about the South American drug trade. He was a large purchaser of cocaine. If he hadn’t agreed to talk, he would have been indicted.
“While you’re absorbing that,” Loomis said, “try to recall a similar incident a few months later involving Albert Wills, a socially prominent, wealthy, playboy type. Except Wills played with boys, not girls. He was found badly beaten, strangled, stabbed: the works. The assumption was he had picked up a rough hustler, and they had disagreed about money. Except that in Landau’s preliminary brief, he had mentioned Wills as another large purchaser of cocaine. Wills was subpoenaed, too.
“Two other men were found dead in their apartment. One knew Wills. Both were pals of Landau. Neither was mentioned in his brief or known to the grand jury. No drugs were found. But the method of death was the same. Only this time the killer was looking for something and, failing to find it, had set fire to the place. A sharp-nosed neighbor smelled the smoke. Only a few files were found charred next to the bodies. Some of the papers pertained to Landau’s club. Soon after his death, Landau’s parents sold the discotheque to a corporation from Connecticut.
“Others at Landau’s club got threatening phone calls. Other clubs catering to homosexuals were harassed by unknown men. Several bars in the West Street area came in for the same treatment—the owners threatened, beaten up. Sometimes, they just disappeared.”
“The Mafia?” Noel asked.
“Maybe. Probably not. The techniques are classic syndicate methods. But, the Mafia has more or less abandoned penny ante business like bars and clubs. Nowadays they play the stock market, sit on the boards of directors of multinational corporations. More money there. The one bar in the area which we know to have mob connections was subjected to the same treatment. I can’t see them hurting their own people, can you?
“No,” Loomis went on, “whoever is behind this wants us to think it’s the Mafia or that it’s unorganized, merely random. But I think it’s quite shrewdly organized. By one man—the man we call Mr. X. The mystery man. The operative who was cut up that morning was supposed to be linking up with Mr. X. Evidently he was discovered to be a decoy.”
Noel ate his second bagel, drank his third cup of coffee, and listened fascinated. Loomis was like a TV police series come to life, sitting in his kitchen.
“Mr. X wants everything the Mafia has given up. And more, too. Maybe pornography, more than likely a boy prostitution ring up on Forty-second Street. But those are only sidelines compared to really profitable operations—large-scale drug smuggling, wholesale larceny from the ships that dock on the closed piers on the West Side. We don’t know what else. But he seems to be building a little empire right under our noses. And he’s not very nice to anyone he feels is in his
way.
“We still haven’t gotten a shadow of him. Whenever we think we’re coming close, there’s another clubowner beaten or killed, another operative slain, another takeover completed. Like magic. The man must have a sixth sense about us. It would need a sixth sense, because only those directly involved, and now you, Mr. Cummings, even know that Whisper exists.”
“Whisper?”
“That’s what our unit’s been nicknamed. Because it’s so hush-hush. We’re not even directly funded. We’re staffed by members of the U.S. Drug agency, state and city police. Our salaries are all laundered through an innocuous city agency I cannot name.”
“Is that why you were in the abandoned federal jail?” Noel asked, trying to piece it all together.
“Were. We’ve moved again. I’m not free to say where. I’ve been in the intelligence business for thirty-five years, starting with the OSS in the Mediterranean, during World War Two. I’ve never run across anyone so elusive. We’re never left with a clue. His men must be professionals, his organization small enough to deal with information leaks and betrayals, but large enough to operate against three of our men at any one time. Our informers report in every day. That morning they had nothing to report. They never have anything to report. It’s exasperating.
“Meanwhile,” he said, lowering his voice, “after chasing his shadow for so long, I’ve gotten to know a bit about Mr. X.”
Loomis’s last words recalled the shadows, the stabbing of Kansas in the debris-filled room. Had Mr. X been holding the cigarette lighter?
“He’s smart,” Loomis said; “no half-assed petty crook. He has this intuition about policemen: more than caution. More like true paranoia. And I admit this is a long shot, but I’m willing to defend it—he’s a homosexual himself.”
Noel had followed Loomis’s reasoning right to the end. “But haven’t all his victims been homosexuals?”
“Or decoys. Exactly. Mr. X’s businesses are exploitative. But in order to. exploit a certain group you have to know how they can be exploited. Mr. X has the magic touch: he knows which bars and clubs are most popular, which are only fly-by-night, or financially shaky. And when he moves in, it’s done legally, tight as a drum. My theory is that one day Mr. X just woke up, looked around, saw how much was to be gotten on his own turf and then determined to get it.”
“Which is why he’s been so careful to throw you off the track,” Noel said, “by making it seem as though a psychopath or the mob were behind it. But can’t you locate him through the ownership papers of the bars?”
“He’s a silent partner. The up-front owner is usually some nobody. In half the cases the legal ownership hasn’t changed. But we’re certain Mr. X has taken over anyway. Everything even vaguely connected with this case has been checked out dozens of times.”
“Even me?”
Loomis seemed to be expecting that question. “What do you want to know? You were born October twentieth, 1947, in Alameda, California. Your family moved to Mamaroneck, New York, in 1952. You went to Swarthmore College in 1965, majored in English literature for two years, then switched to social sciences. You studied two years after that, from 1970 to 1972 at Columbia University, worked part-time in a children’s afterschool center on Rivington Street. In 1969 you married Monica Sherman, also of Mamaroneck. You paid two thousand, three hundred and forty-five dollars in income taxes to the federal government last year. You have a savings account and a special checking account at Manufacturers Hanover Trust, its Murray Hill branch. Your health insurance expired three years ago and was picked up by New York University one month later. Your status changed from family plan to individual in a group at that time. Your Social Security number is one four seven, three three, nine eight—”
“All right,” Noel said, “I believe you. That’s pretty impressive. But I thought you believed I had nothing to do with it?”
“I believed you, Mr. Cummings, but I had to check out your story. You were followed for seventeen days. When you went out bicycling in the morning, one car followed you halfway, another the rest of the way. The day after the murder, you changed routes—which didn’t surprise us. You kept to the new route consistently. On Wednesday, two weeks ago, you went to two Fellini movies.”
“Are you still following me?”
“You were dropped four days ago. Even if you were deliberately keeping a low profile, you couldn’t possibly have looked so clean to us.”
“Why shouldn’t I? I’m not a homosexual.”
“That wouldn’t prove a thing.”
Noel had an anxious thought. “Did you tap my phone?”
“We’re not authorized to do that. But—as I said—you were our prime suspect, until you checked out to be exactly what you seemed to be.”
Noel was intrigued—and secretly pleased—that he’d been a suspect. What would Alison say when she heard that? Noel could already see her mouth form an O of surprise. He was surprised, himself.
“Why tell me all this?” he asked.
“To be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Cummings, we’re back to square one. So we try something different. Since Mr. X can smell policemen, we get people to work for us who aren’t policemen. People like you.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, it took a minute for Noel to register astonishment. “Me? You’re kidding?”
“Why not?”
“It’s not my kind of thing,” Noel tried to explain. “Look around you, what does this place look like to you?”
“Like the somewhat sparsely furnished apartment of a New York University sociology professor. That’s why we need you.”
“I’m not trained for it. I’ve never even handled a gun.”
“You won’t have a gun. You won’t need one. It won’t be that kind of job. Look at yourself, Mr. Cummings, you’re in better shape than most rookies fresh out of the Police Academy. You do two, three hours of exercise a day?”
“Something like that. But…”
“How would you like to come down to the academy? I’ll lay two-to-one odds you outrun, outjump, outreact, and outthink any man there. We’ve watched you, you know.”
“That may be so,” Noel said, trying not to feel too flattered. “But they’re trained to think in certain ways. To be defensive. To be cautious. To know how to handle people.”
“And you aren’t? You’re a sociology professor. Isn’t that the study of people?”
“In groups, yes, but…”
“You’ll be in a group. I just want you to find me the one in the group that stands out—the rotten apple. My men are fumbling around in the dark. They don’t know who or what they’re looking for. You could probably spot him on a dime. You’ve had psychology, too, I know. I read it in your records.”
Noel admitted that.
“So, you know what to look for. For you, this straw in the haystack will be bent a certain, unmistakable way, won’t it?”
“I suppose. Look, I really feel flattered. But I’ve got my teaching and all—”
“It won’t interfere with your teaching. I’m simply asking you to show up at a certain place for several hours a night. A bar off Christopher Street we’re certain Mr. X owns and frequents. All I want is for you to bartend a few nights.”
“But there must be dozens of homosexual bars in the city. Why that one?”
“Because this bar attracts the kind of homosexuals we believe he associates with. And because it’s the most popular one at the moment.”
“That’s still pretty hit or miss, no?”
“Maybe. But without knowing who Mr. X is, we still know a lot about him. We’re certain some of his victims were once his sexual partners. Others he’s set up in the bars as owners or managers fall into the same pattern. Let me show you.”
Loomis produced a manila envelope he’d been carrying in a side pocket of his coat, and pulled out a dozen eight-by-ten-inch photos.
The first seemed to be a typical male beefcake pose. A curly-haired, handsome young man, with a small dark mustache, large,
light-colored eyes, and a muscular though not grotesquely overdeveloped body. He wore only a small bikini. His skin looked oiled.
“Bill Ames,” Loomis said. “One of the two men found in the burning apartment.”
The next photo was of a dancer in midleap, his body in profile, his head turned full face to the camera. His arms were akimbo and his handsomely boyish face was broken in a wide grin. Dark curly hair and light eyes. Not as heavily mustached as the first man, but of distinctly athletic build, highlighted by the closefitting tights.
“Rudy Brill,” Loomis said. “A friend of Landau’s. DOA. It looked like a drug overdose.”
The third man was a bit older. Also in superb physical shape, tanned, mustached, blue eyes, wavy jet hair, handsome. He was leaning against the railing of a beach house, the ocean in the background. “This is Landau,” Loomis said. “Now do you see?”
Noel sorted through the other, similar photos.
“Well, they certainly seem to fit a particular mold.”
“How tall are you,” Loomis said, “six feet?”
“Exactly.”
“Ames was six one. Landau a half inch taller. The others about the same. Care to look in the mirror and see the other similarities?”
“No, I get the idea.”
“You see, Mr. Cummings, you won’t really have to look for Mr. X. He’s going to find you!”
That gave Noel a chill. Trying to dissuade Loomis, he said, “What if he’s changed his type?”
“Unlikely.”
“It’s sort of hard thinking of myself as, well you know, fitting a certain physical description. As so much meat.”
“That’s exactly what you will be. A nice juicy piece of bait for Mr. X. As my grandma used to say, it takes honey, not vinegar to catch a bear. Come on, Noel, say you’ll do it. It won’t take much of your time. You’ll be well paid. You’ll be doing a service to the community. All you have to do is tend bar a few nights a week and wait until Mr. X comes along. Then we pounce on him. You’re perfect. The other operatives were too busy playing Kojak just to wait. You’ll never be suspected. Say you’ll do it.”
The Lure Page 5