by Mark McNease
D’s father began sending him letters a year after he moved to Brooklyn. He wanted to make amends, he said. He wanted to reconnect. He was living happily in San Francisco with Samuel and they had started a card shop together. A card shop! Rainbow Spirit was the name of the store. D hated it immediately. He also hated that the letters arrived in a variety of custom cards that Samuel made and sold at their store. It was quite a change from working in a Boeing factory.
His uncle Leo would hand him the cards using just his thumb and index finger, as if the cards might carry something nasty on their envelopes. Leo was on his sister Marta’s side, even if he would never, ever, consider moving back to Germany. He was an American now, with citizenship and a thriving tailor business. D found out that Leo had offered to take them both in, but Marta had refused. She said America was a cruel and lonely place for cruel and lonely people. D came to believe her, at least about the cruelty.
D’s father also had the temerity to include photos. There was his father and Samuel at the wharf. There was his father and Samuel in front of the card shop. There was his father, Samuel and a half dozen friends at a Pride parade. A Pride parade? What, D wondered, was there to be proud of in leaving your wife and young son in a wasteland? What was there to be proud of in opening a pitiful card shop with rainbows, triangles and pink shit all over the place? Pink shit. Pride shit. Rainbow shit. It was all shit to D, and the more he stared at the photos of his father and Samuel, the more he wanted to kill them both. You did this to me, he thought. I’m living with an old man in Brooklyn, sewing suits for men who would wipe us from the bottoms of their shoes if they found a better tailor, a better clothier. I have no friends. The only thing good to come out of it for D was that he loved New York City. He loved the vastness of it, its famed anonymity. He loved the tides of people swelling its streets. He loved the variety, the diversity, and, as time passed, its great opportunity. You could kill someone here and, depending on who it was, they would never be missed. You could set up shop with the most select customers imaginable and when the bodies were found no one would ever come around asking questions. That is, if you were cunning, careful and meticulous. If you were D himself.
He became aware of his sexuality in high school. He’d known much younger that other boys caught his eye, but at first he experienced it as a fascination rather than an attraction. He was fascinated by all things male. He liked the shape of men, the sound of men, the smell of men. By the time he was thirteen he was not interested in anyone his own age. He preferred to spend time at the barbershop, and he would purposely go when it was busiest, at lunch time or at the end of the work day. He would get in the back of the line and sit, pretending to read a newspaper, just so he could prolong his stay. He would sit and breathe the men in, the smell of the aftershave and many times their sweat.
He continued his visits to barber shops after he moved to Brooklyn. Some people liked libraries, some people liked restaurants. D liked the barber shop. By the time he was eighteen he was aware that some of the men looked at him with more than passing glances. He was a handsome teenager and looked a few years older than he was. Ripe, he thought. Ripe for the picking. But in his private thoughts (aren’t all thoughts private?), he knew they were the ripe ones and he would someday do the picking.
He did not consider himself gay. Gay to D was an identity, and it was not his. He was instead same-sex attracted. That is how he had always defined it for himself. His father was gay. Samuel was gay. Parades and card shops and mannerisms and magazines were gay. D had no use for any of those things … yet.
Then, when he was thirty-two years old, he killed his uncle. It wasn’t very gratifying. His uncle was a good man. His uncle had been kind and offered D a place to live. His uncle had taught him the business and opened a store with both their names on it. But his uncle was in the way. He’d also begun asking D why there were no women in his life. Because I’m not interested in killing women, he’d wanted to say. Instead he offered the well-worn excuse that he hadn’t met the right woman. He did not want to end up in a bad relationship or, worse, divorced like his parents. And besides, Uncle, we have too much work to do, too many things to accomplish together. Then the stairs and the broken neck, and he could finally set about making the life he wanted.
Becoming the Pride Killer was an accident of timing, really. He hadn’t planned or anticipated making himself one of the most successful serial killers in New York City history at the same time all the gay people were celebrating. It had just been an auspicious day. He’d met the man named Oscar at a bar that catered to older gentlemen who liked younger ones. D was the younger one in the crowd that night, and within a few hours he had convinced the man to go home with him. His apartment was just a few blocks way. They could have another drink there in privacy. Sure, said Oscar, and fifteen minutes later they were in the townhouse D had purchased with his uncle’s life insurance. It had given him enough for a down payment at a time before real estate reached the stratosphere. It was a fixer-upper, and D had fixed it up nicely, especially the basement.
He invited Oscar in and quickly offered him a cocktail. Oscar, having already consumed several drinks, gladly acquiesced. And then, finally, it was a trip to the basement to show Oscar his wine collection. Such a refined man to have a wine collection, and so young! Oscar was impressed and followed him down the stairs. He came back up in a large duffel bag.
The next day D realized, as he waited for news of the floater in the East River, that it was Pride weekend. Talk about perfect timing! He quickly formulated his plan and by the time of the festivities that always followed the parade he was known as the Pride Killer. Some clever reporter at the New York Herald had deemed him that. He thought it was appropriately tawdry, given his low opinion of all things Pride. He might have thought of a better name for himself but it stuck and he’d become fond of it. It was also when he decided on killing in threes.
He’d had to move quickly after Oscar. He found another victim on Thursday night, and a final on Saturday. No more from the bars. The internet made risks much easier to take, provided you had the sense to cover your tracks—and D had always been a man of uncommon sense.
That was seven years ago. He had not been caught, not even close. Some of his success he attributed to having been older when he started, in his mid-thirties. He was not youthfully impulsive. He planned carefully and executed (pun intended) his plan to the T. Or to the D, depending on how you look at it.
He was as professional at killing as he was at providing top-flight suits to top-flight men who had no idea the tailor measuring their inseams could kill them in sixty seconds. He had taken three years off to watch his mother disintegrate in a dreary Berlin apartment, two Pride weekends without their namesake’s killer, and now he was back. His mother was dead. His father still sent him letters he left unanswered and immediately shredded—though both the card shop and Samuel were gone. He had a thriving men’s store, a townhouse, and above all a career as the Pride Killer. He’d thought of retiring, especially since he had not been caught and wanted it to stay that way. But not yet. Maybe next year, or the year after that. For now he had two more victims to select and set free into oblivion. He saw himself as doing them a favor. Life was grief, anger and tears, for those weak enough to cry. D had never cried in his life.
Chapter 11
The Stopwatch Diner was a Manhattan landmark specific to the area of Penn Station, where it had been in business since the mid-1940s. A gaudy neon stopwatch graced the front entrance, forever frozen at the ten-second mark above the front door. Inside it was much like a thousand other diners across America, but done in a racing motif: checkered flags on the walls, giant framed photos of famous race car drivers spewing champagne into the air.
Linda and Kyle had eaten here before, on her last trip to the city to see Kyle’s photography exhibit. It was also where Danny had confronted his nemesis, Linus Hern, the restaurateur who’d hated him for years and who had conspired to secretly buy, through interme
diaries, Margaret Bowman’s building and the restaurant that bore her name. Danny had thwarted that scheme, found himself owning Margaret’s Passion, and finally discovered why Linus was set on revenge: Danny had been hired by Margaret to replace Hern’s young boyfriend ten years earlier. Sal was his name, and he took the loss of his position hard. He’d slipped back into addiction and finally gotten sober with a plunge off the 59th Street Bridge. Linus Hern blamed Danny, who’d had no part in it or knowledge of it, and set his sights on vengeance he almost achieved.
“Whatever happened to Linus Hern?” Linda asked as she and Kyle settled into a booth. The diner was full to capacity—it always was. A steady stream of customers came through the doors fresh off their trains, joining tourists who read about the Stopwatch on travel websites, and not a few locals who liked the moderate prices and the atmosphere.
“I don’t know,” said Kyle. “After the situation with Margaret’s Passion he vanished. The last I heard he’d moved to Philadelphia.”
“Maybe he got it out of his system, that whole business with Danny.”
“I don’t think Linus ever gets anything out of his system. I think he just moved on. I’d guess there were opportunities in Philly and he headed that way. He could smell an opportunity the way a predator smells blood.”
A waiter came over to them to take their order. They’d been handed menus by the maître d’ when she seated them. It was lunch time and both ordered club sandwiches, Linda getting tuna and Kyle the turkey. The waiter nodded and hurried off. Everything moved very quickly at the Stopwatch; meals were served and tables turned over in record time, and Kyle wondered if the staff were all being timed. It was the Stopwatch Diner, after all.
“Your boss is something else,” Linda said. “It has to be a challenge working for her.”
“It has been, and it’s a challenge I’ll miss.”
“She’s leaving?”
“Eventually. And I can’t blame her. She was just about on the career skids when she covered the Pride Lodge murders. That made her a star of sorts. Then the bosses in Tokyo moved her into covering the city, and now she’s a B-list reporter in a very niche market. She wants out of the niche before she’s too old to make another move.”
“What will you do if she leaves New York?”
“Stay,” said Kyle, looking down at the checkered placemat. He did not want to talk about his boss’s future, which would mean talking about his own. “How’s Kirsten’s mother?”
Dot McClellan had been hit by her third bout with cancer and this one she was rapidly losing. Linda was amazed that Dot had made it nine months, but neither she, Kirsten, nor Dot’s oncologist expected Dot to see August.
“It’s been very hard on Kirsten,” Linda said. “Sometimes I think it was too much change for one person. She sold her interest in McClellan and Powers, she moved into the house with me, and her mother’s dying.”
McClellan and Powers Real Estate, the successful Bucks County business Kirsten had established with Madeleine Powers twenty years ago, was now just Powers Real Estate. The house they lived in was Linda’s in Kingwood Township, five wooded acres just a mile away from the Delaware River but a world away from New Hope, where Kirsten had owned a condominium. Kirsten had not looked for another profession; she was consumed with her mother’s care and her frequent trips to Phoenix, where Linda would be joining them Monday.
“The wedding was lovely,” Kyle said, wanting to brighten things if he could. He and Danny had gone to New Jersey for the women’s intimate ceremony and met Dot McClellan on the last trip she would ever take.
“Nothing like yours,” Linda replied.
“Well … we had more in-laws, and a lot more people locally who had to be invited. If it had been up to me and Danny we would have just gone to City Hall.”
“But it was up to you.”
“Tell that to our mothers.”
The food arrived and they began eating, both of them welcoming a break in the conversation. The topics had been difficult ones, and Kyle was hoping to steer things back to Linda’s visit to the city, the things she wanted to see this time and the places Kyle never went to unless they had company.
“We could take the ferry to the Statue of Liberty,” Kyle said, picking just a handful of french fries from the plate and separating most of them into a pile he would not eat.
“I hear there’s a sex museum,” Linda said, smiling.
“Really? You want to see the sex museum?”
“It’s a thought.”
The waiter returned with a pot of coffee and Kyle placed his hand over his cup—he’d had three cups already today and was feeling jittery. The waiter dashed away to the next table.
“I was thinking …” said Linda.
“Yes?” Kyle knew where this was going and wished they’d stayed on the topic of their weddings, or even Linda’s mother-in-law.
“If this Pride Killer strikes every week this time of year …”
“Yes.”
“And the first victim was found in the river Tuesday morning …”
“Yes.”
“Then there’s a second victim coming. Probably one he hasn’t killed yet, or maybe not even identified.”
Kyle sighed. It was a sigh of surrender. He knew as well as Linda did they had to do something. The police had never caught the Pride Killer and hadn’t even had a suspect as far as Kyle knew.
“Where would we start?” he said, not looking up from his plate. His mind was working, trying to map out a strategy.
“He dumps the bodies in the river on the Upper East Side.”
“Maybe he owns a car and drives them there from Long Island.”
“Too risky.”
“So maybe he has an accomplice, and the accomplice drives them there from Long Island.”
“You’re not keeping it simple,” Linda said. “I think he feels invincible. He’s gotten away with this for years, from what you told me. I think he stays close to home.”
“Well the cops must think it, too, and look what they’ve come up with! Zero.”
“We don’t have much time.”
Kyle thought another moment. “We have to talk to Vinnie.”
“Your doorman? You said he was out on leave.”
“I didn’t say we had to talk to him at our building.”
“You want to go where he lives. Is that information you have?”
“It’s information I can get,” Kyle said. “I’ll just say I want to send a food basket. Joseph will give me his address.” Joseph was the day-shift doorman and had been on the job for twenty-five years.
“So let’s go,” Linda said. “The stopwatch is running.”
Kyle waved at the waiter and made the sign of a pencil in the air, the universal gesture of asking for a check.
Two minutes later they’d left the Stopwatch, walking quickly west on 32nd Street. Kyle thought of grabbing a taxi but decided they could use the time to think, plan, and work through the questions they would pose to a grieving, fragile Vincent Campagna. It was a delicate situation. Vinnie’s brother had just been found bloated and floating in the East River. They would have to be gentle. At the same time, they needed answers quickly. Victor Campagna was the first of three as far as they knew. They hoped they were right, that Victor had not been the second while the first was still undiscovered somewhere.
Chapter 12
The slowing of time is a phenomenon D was familiar with. Just as time can seem to pass ever more quickly, especially with age, it can also seem to drag, slower and slower, when one wants to be where one is not. Coming home from a trip, watching the clock as the workday passes, or waiting to meet someone who promises to fulfill your dreams. D dreamed of his next victim. He dreamed of the dance, the delicate charade as he pretended to be the man everyone thought he was while his true self slowly emerged. A conversation, a drink, a visit to the basement, and all would be revealed.
He had returned to his store after the long walk back from the Arlington. He’d b
een disappointed—not crushingly so, but enough that he wanted time to think and clear his head. It had happened before over the course of his career and his life. He’d had to wait for years while he grew into manhood, years more for the opportunity to be rid of his uncle. And the worst waiting of all, in a dreadful Berlin, waiting for his mother to surrender her bitterness and her regret and finally free him. He’d had to wait, too, for a replacement victim when his first choice didn’t work out, twice that he could remember. But it always fell into place. It always came together, and it would this time, too.
“How did it go?” Jarrod asked. It was a slow afternoon. Keller and Whitman was never overly busy. It wasn’t that kind of store and did not cater to that kind of customer. This was not the Gap.
“Pardon?” D asked. He was going through the racks of suits, making sure none were wrinkled, the price tags were pristine.
“With your client.”
“Oh. You mean prospective client. Well, Jarrod, we win some and we lose some. He wasn’t for us.”
Jarrod knew not to question his boss further on the matter. Diedrich Keller did not like losing customers, even ones who never bought anything.
“I suggested he try Men’s Warehouse.” That said it all. The man had likely balked at the prices at Keller and Whitman. It was not a store for those who could not truly afford it. Sometimes they thought they could. They put on airs, they wasted Mr. K’s time with meetings at hotels. They’d seen some celebrity wearing a suit from the store and imagined having a closet full of them. Then they realized it would set them back two months’ rent or a trip to Disneyworld and they tried to bargain. Mr. K did not bargain.
“Easy come, easy go,” Jarrod said.
“Indeed,” D said.
He looked at his watch—there was no clock in the store. It was now 2:30 p.m. and he had another three hours before meeting Scott. He’d suggested drinks at a piano bar in the Theater District that was always filled with tourists—just the kind of witnesses he liked if there were any at all. Tourists did not stay around long and were scattered to the wind by the time the police came around asking questions. He’d never been to this bar and would not go again after interviewing Scott. He’d been careful all these years never to be seen in the same establishment twice. Fortunately, Manhattan had enough places to go that this was not a problem.