The Lure

by Felice Picano

  “My mom wants to know if you have a tapeworm.”

  Noel looked up. The slightly overweight teenaged boy who’d been serving him was standing by the edge of the table.

  “Because if you do, she knows a doctor who’ll cure it.”

  Behind the boy, Noel saw his mother—slim, grayhaired, plain-faced, looking back at him with concern. He paid the check. “Tell your mom I was just hungry.”

  “Okay.” The boy disappeared.

  Noel found that he was no longer looking at the brownstones, not outside at all, but at the boy as he went over to his mother, gave her the money to ring up, reported what they’d said, all of it casual, indifferent. The compact adolescent acted like a little man, but Noel envied something in him that wasn’t at all adult. It seemed as though the boy really was indifferent to Noel, to anything but his own interests-his friends, his comic books, who knew what else? Just the way Noel had been as a child: as all children really were. Who would have guessed that the child he had been, fixing his Schwinn Roadmaster in the driveway that morning when Monica Sherman had come by, would now be doing what he was doing, acting as he was acting, being who he was? Waiting for someone. Expecting a call from someone else. Thinking about yet someone else. Fearing, resisting, denying, desiring, avoiding, all the someone elses.

  He was no longer doing anything for himself, because he no longer had any self. Everything was for Loomis, or Eric, or Alana, or Vega, or an idea, or a title, or a career, or some value, a notion of cowardice that had to be overcome, or an entire set of emotions and responses about who he was and what he was supposed to be, do, and not do. He’d been programmed long before Loomis. All the Fisherman had needed to do was a little fine-tuning: because long ago Noel had been set on this very path, never doing for himself, always for someone else. And if that selfishness, that self-interest he’d denied for years, was really what innocence was, he wished he could get it again.

  The boy came back to his table with the change. He was holding a glass of water and a small packet of Alka-Seltzer.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” the boy said.

  Noel wouldn’t wait for Priscilla Vega, or the call, or the cassette, or Loomis’s motivations, none of it another minute more. Not today. Not tomorrow! Not ever again.

  10

  He awoke that day—the last of the AIN memo, he immediately reminded himself—to an unexpected, fierce morning thunderstorm, which caused him to shut off the air-conditioning and throw open both windows. Now that he only slept a few feet away instead of at the far end of the long studio, this was a new luxury.

  Soon enough the thunder stopped, although the rain continued steadily, putting him back to sleep. When he woke again it was eleven o’ clock, a glorious sunny day with only tiny, fast-drying puddles near sewer gratings to corroborate the downpour. But the fresh breeze of early morning had come to stay for a while. He showered, then dried off by the window, enjoying the hot sun and cool air.

  The morning mail did not contain the cassette—he had almost ceased to care about it—but it did include a check from the upstate social research agency for the past month’s work. An unpleasant reminder. When he finally got around to opening it, after breakfast, he had another unpleasant surprise: a piece of onionskin paper was inside. On it, someone had drawn a cartoon of a deep-sea fisher almost capsizing his small yacht to haul in a large and quite dead giant fish. For once Noel was happy to burn one of Loomis’s messages.

  His ten-speed was still in the storage room of the building and apparently in working order. Only when he’d ridden a block or so did he realize one of the gears wasn’t catching properly. The vehicle was as temperamental as a thoroughbred; and like one, didn’t like being unridden over long periods of time.

  He’d just gotten the gear working when he realized he was riding past the pharmacy on Madison Avenue where those two blond toughs had first come up to him. Noel swerved right quickly, crossing the avenue, and found himself in front of the newspaper store where he’d photocopied documents for Whisper, where that man had been run down, killed instantly. What had been his name? Noel couldn’t recall.

  Too many memories. He decided to head across town. But he’d turned onto Twenty-eighth Street, and only a few blocks later, he was directly in front of the Baths, passing the doorway where he’d been jumped. Was the past inescapable?

  He decided not fo fight it, just to keep riding. He continued west, over toward the West Side Highway. Unsurprising—given the ride so far—he had to wait for a light at the corner where the building that housed Le Pissoir stood. Then he rode up onto the highway itself and really took off.

  The next time he slowed down was when he recognized the configuration of the blocks below him. This is where he’d first heard that scream. Where it had begun. He stopped the bike, expecting some sort of revelation to make everything clear.

  On one side of the highway, the Hudson River rippled like shot silk. A white luxury liner was gliding by, graceful as a large swan, tugboats in advance guard pulling it. On the road itself, two joggers passed him, their bouncing backs sweat-skinnned, their brightly colored shorts rippling. More bicyclists passed him. He heard an outcry from below and leaned over the railing to see where it came from. Another shout greeted him: young, excited, then disappointed voices. Twenty-five or thirty people stood in a shallow circle at the far edge of the parking area. A wide, thin wood sheet, curved in almost to a letter C, had been placed against the wall of an abandoned warehouse. Skateboarding kids were racing toward it, up its concavity, trying to turn around at the apex, holding on until they were almost parallel to the ground, sometimes slipping so that the skateboard slid out from under them and they tumbled down the sheet of wood, sometimes making the turn successfully, and shooting down again to a cheer, until the next boy—and one girl, too—came skating at the plank.

  Watching them calmed and cheered him. So he had to force himself to pass slowly by the warehouse itself, to look into the window where he had first been drawn into the spider’s web that now held him entangled. It was easy to find. The green door was placed up again, its lower portion rusted with red. But behind it, amid all the litter, two men were in a clutch, kissing, caressing each other. Love in the afternoon. If they only knew!

  He rode to the other railing, looked at the abandoned Federal House of Detention, then took off again, riding down the ramp at Charlton Street, then turning around and taking the West Street tour, until he’d passed the Grip, before he backtracked to Christopher Street—as ever the most strolled blocks in the city.

  Skimming Sheridan Square, he saw the familiar leather vest, belted denims, shirt hanging out, worn-down boot heels, and mostly the all-too-familiar walk of Little Larry Vitale. Noel waved a greeting as he passed, surprising the kid, who tried waving Noel down. Not today: Noel wanted to keep moving. He was done here for the day.

  At St. Mark’s Place, he turned uptown. The long ride to the town house was fatiguing. He was more out of shape then he thought. He’d have to do more bicycling again.

  Noel let himself into the side gate, dropped the bike on the lawn, and went in. No one home.

  Then he spotted Okku on the back terrace, drinking coffee and talking to a freshly tanned Dorrance, in from California for the reopening, Noel supposed.

  “Eric’s sleeping,” Dorrance relayed. Okku immediately left his seat, went in for coffee: the perfect manservant; lucky Eric.

  “It seems he got home this morning at nine, after working all night,” Dorrance said. “He wants to sleep until early evening. To be in shape for the party.”

  “Understandably.”

  “And Alana—” Dorrance began.

  “Is in Europe,” Noel finished for him.

  “No. She’s here somewhere. Was last night, at least.”

  “She’s early then,” Noel said, hiding his surprise.

  “She had something she wanted you to see. A package. Ah, look, Okku’s bringing it.”

  The brown paper parcel was opened. Within
were several heavy, glossy-papered, expensive European magazines. Noel went for the cream-colored envelope that sat on top and read the note she’d written:

  “Look inside. You’re coming tonight, yes? I must talk to you. In private. It’s very important.”

  “Here,” Dorrance offered to show him, “she’s marked the pages with paper clips.” He opened the magazine at the designated spot. It was a two-page spread—Noel saw the stairway descending from the open French doors of a château wing, leading through a formal garden, where, against fireworks in the night sky, a man and a woman were leaning toward each other in a tentative embrace and a barely restrained kiss that was almost palpable. Alana! And himself!

  “The others are variations,” Dorrance said, opening the other magazines for Noel to see. Some were single pages, others cropped to half-page size, all of them mysterious, inviting, filled with chiaroscuro: her white skin against his dark suit, the depths of the garden shadows against the bright, silvered paving stones, the fireworks display against the black night.

  “It’s a lovely ad campaign,” Dorrance said. Then, in a more concerned tone of voice, “Don’t you think so?”

  “Very nice. Alana looks terrific.”

  “So do you. You photograph beautifully.”

  “It’s odd seeing myself. And yet, that’s not me.”

  “You’ll get used to it. Alana never even looks. If you weren’t in these, she’d never have brought them with her from Paris. She thought you’d like to see how you came out.”

  “But that isn’t me,” Noel protested. “Look at him! He’s suave, confident, romantic, untroubled. Look at me! I’m supposed to be devastating to all sexes. Hell, I can’t even get laid.”

  “It’s all make believe,” Dorrance agreed sadly.

  Noel spent another few minutes looking at the photos, just to say he’d seen them. Then he went inside. Alana wasn’t home, he discovered, checking her rooms. Passing back through the corridor toward the living room balcony he touched one of the other doors. Eric’s—open. That was odd!

  Inside Eric’s sitting room it was shadowy daylight, drawn shades dim. Noel crossed to the bedroom door. It, too, was open.

  Eric was in bed, sleeping. Overhead a planter’s fan spun with a loud hum. Noel had seldom come into those rooms before. Now he felt he simply had to look in. He told himself he wanted to be certain that everything was all right. Closing the bedroom door behind him, he quietly approached the bed.

  Eric was on his back, the pale-colored oversheet was twisted around one shoulder and down to one leg as though he were dressed in a toga. Noel watched him sleeping for a minute, then backed up and sat down a few feet away in a large, comfortable chair.

  Here it was, the last possible date. Here were the supposed victim and the supposed assassin together in a room, alone. Eric was totally vulnerable, Noel clearly in charge. The timing was perfect, wonderful. But nothing else was.

  Watching Eric sleeping, Noel knew that even if it were incontrovertibly proven to him that Eric was responsible for Randy’s death—or Kansas’s, or any of the others he was supposed to have slain so heartlessly—that even then he would never be able to hurt this man. How could he? Only a few nights ago, for the first time in his life, Noel had sought a man’s physical love: this man’s love. And understood when it had been rejected. Accepted that, too. As he would accept just about anything Eric did. Because that had happened, too—he’d fallen in love with Eric as he had with Alana, expecting nothing back, not even desiring a return from either of them now, only that they continue to be themselves and allow him to be with them. The programming so shrewdly put together by psychiatric engineers and computer banks could never get beyond that fact. Never.

  He suddenly became aware of a change in the room. At first he looked up at the ceiling fan to see if it had stopped. On the bed, Eric lay as before. No. Not as before. His breathing was more rapid, more irregular. He was awake: playing possum, pretending still to sleep. Noel was about to leave, then froze. Don’t move, he told himself. Eric doesn’t know it’s you. Remember his paranoia, his fear. He thinks it might be anyone, anyone ! And if you move, he is going to assume you are moving toward him, not away from him, to kill him, not to leave him alone. The minute you move, the programming, the super-subtle programming, is in effect. This is exactly the unexpected, unprepared-for freak occurrence that Loomis was hoping for. He wakes up, jumps you. You struggle…don’t mover

  Noel was trembling. Softly, remaining as still as possible, he whispered, “Eric? Are you awake? It’s me, Noel.”

  Eric’s eyes opened, looked all around the room. He had been awake, scared, too.

  “You left your hall door unlocked. The bedroom door, too,” Noel explained, trying to speak in a more normal tone of voice. “Pretty bad security for someone so concerned about protection.”

  Eric was still checking out the room.

  “There’s no one else here. Only me.”

  “What are you doing in here?” Asked sharply. Annoying Noel.

  “What do you think? I didn’t like being rejected. I came to rape you.”

  Eric didn’t take the joke. “Be serious, Noel.”

  “I am being serious.”

  “Not serious enough,” Eric warned. Under the sheet, his right hand lifted, then the sheet fell away. Taped to the inside of his hand was a tiny, wicked-looking Derringer.

  “Jesus!” Noel said, getting up out of the chair. “Does that thing work?”

  “Of course it works.”

  “How long have you been wearing that?”

  “Why did you come in here?” Eric asked

  “To see you. To wish you luck tonight.”

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  Noel wanted to say no, he couldn’t. Something had come up. An emergency. But the disappointment was already too apparent on Eric’s face.

  “Sure I’m coming. I’ll be here by eight. As planned.”

  “You really came in to wish me luck?”

  “And to see you. How long have you been wearing that gun?”

  “Since I’m sleeping alone.”

  “You mean after McWhitter…?” Noel began.

  “Long before that,” Eric said bitterly. “Since Robby Landau was killed. That’s almost two years ago.”

  Noel flashed back on the last time he’d been in this room, the night he’d taken the Mercedes to follow Dorrance, and had fought with Eric in the garage. Redfern had said then that he’d only trusted one man and lost him. It had to have been Landau—Eric’s lover. Mr. X’s first victim. Noel was still staring at the tiny gun.

  “What if it goes off?”

  “What if I don’t wake up in time? It’s the chances. I’m lucky.”

  “A better idea would be to lock your door. Go back to sleep.”

  “Noel, do me a favor.”

  “Sure. What?”

  “I’ll be all over the place tonight. Stay with Alana. Be her date. Be nice to her. She needs some attention. Do you mind?”

  “No. Not at all,” Noel said, enjoying it.

  “You tripping tonight? Everyone else will be.”

  “In the punch?” Noel asked.

  “Through the ventilation ducts. The finest stuff. Pure. Clean. Very up. Light. Nothing heavy. Tonight everything’s going to be fine. Nothing heavy at all!” Eric repeated with such emphasis that Noel wondered what he knew—and what Eric thought he could do to prevent it when it came.

  11

  The reopening party at Window Wall that season had been planned with infinitesimal care to make the largest possible splash. It succeeded. Long after the daily tabloids had finished writing about its immense success and the early morning sidelight tragedy that almost no one present knew about until much later on, the weeklies and monthlies took up the party. Magazines that ostensibly dealt with fashion, or high society or film or finance or music, had sent reporters and photographers, and each of them returned to his editor with scores of glossy, colored photos and nearly identical st
ories—that money, talent, beauty, style, the exotic, the sordid, and the wild had all come together that early September night, two thousand strong, to affirm the fact that glamour wasn’t dead at all—it was alive and kicking downtown at the Window Wall.

  Heiresses danced with Christopher Street dropouts who were just scraping by on welfare payments. Heavyset, aging Californian real-estate moguls and paper-thin, lion-maned British rock stars shared drinks and small talk with muscled hairdressers. A well-known Hollywood ladies’ man was seen at dawn crawling out of a three-hour orgy in a lower-floor room consisting of seventeen other men and the transsexual he had unknowingly followed inside. A six-and-a-half-million-dollar transaction between a Wall Street brokerage firm and a West German bank was initiated while all six partners were sniffing cocaine in a lower lounge. A peer of France, whose family had helped crown Charlemagne, broke up with his seventeen-year-old boyfriend in Mirror City, so amicably that the young surfer/swimmer found himself settled the following day with one of his ex’s houses in royal Palm Beach.

  Approximately $17,000 worth of liquor and at least that much in various drugs were consumed during the party. The upstairs dinner, for a scant, select two hundred, cost only half that. More than four hundred partygoers had sex of one sort or another with at least one partner somewhere in the precincts of the club. Two DJs on double shifts from midnight to noon played 840 cuts of music, repeating only once—deliberately. Two lighting men—also doubled up—punched out 11,313 different light combinations on their five-paneled digital computers.

  Naturally, attitudes changed. Two Seventh Avenue designers broke up their profitable five-year partnership and were eighty-sixed from the club after their brawl over a sixteen-year-old tart (a well-known hooker since she was eleven, seen fixing her face in the mirror during their fracas). Another designer dropped his favorite mannequin when she passed out from an overinhalation of ethyl choride, and selected a new star for his spring line from the chorus of frenetic dancers gyrating precariously atop one curved-glass brick wall. Three interior designers—agreeing for once—decided built-ins and industrial carpeting were “out,” posh fabrics and a return to the Biedermeier style “in.”