by John Lutz
“Jubal, did you hear?”
The caller was Don Henson, the director of As Thy Love Thyself, in Chicago.
“Yeah, Don, so what’s going on?”
“Astin’s come down with some kind of bug that’s got him flat on his back with a hundred and three temperature. We’re lucky the theater’s black tonight, but we have to have you back here.”
“How soon?”
“Yesterday. Tonight. Early tomorrow morning at the latest. We’ve made some revisions, and you’re going to have to run through them before going on tomorrow evening.”
Jubal’s mind was bouncing around in his skull. Would it hurt his chances for the TV series if he cut and ran out of New York? Probably not. He’d already read for the part, and it was doubtful they’d want him back for another reading.
Unless one of the other two candidates for the role came through big and made the decision difficult.
“Jubal, you’re all we’ve got, my man. No troops in reserve. You’ve gotta do this!”
“I will, Don. Don’t sweat it. I still have time to catch a flight out tonight.”
“You’re a prince, Jubal. I owe you a piece of the kingdom.”
“Careful, Don, I might claim it one of these days.”
“Hey, that’s how it works.”
“When it works. I’ll be at the theater tomorrow morning, I promise.”
“Early?”
“Before you get there, Don.”
“I doubt it. I don’t do much sleeping lately.”
“You can sleep well tonight,” Jubal said, and hung up.
Now what?
Claire was in the kitchen puttering around, trying to decide if she was hungry. She wasn’t going to like Jubal dropping in for a few days, then streaking back to Chicago. Jubal didn’t like it himself.
But then there was Dalia.
Jubal realized he had something to do before he told Claire he was packing and leaving within an hour. While she was busy in the kitchen, he went into the bedroom so he could retrieve the necklace he’d bought for Dalia. He’d concealed it well by taping it to the outside of the back of one of the dresser drawers. The drawer would have to be completely removed before the necklace was visible.
He was reaching to remove the drawer when—
“Jubal.”
Claire’s voice spun him around.
She was standing in the doorway, smiling. “Scare you?”
Almost to death. “No, not at all.” He grinned. “I was just about to start packing.”
Her smile disappeared. “For what?”
He told her about Henson’s phone call.
“What about West Side Buddies?”
“I don’t think it should make any difference.”
Claire looked disappointed, even for some reason afraid.
He tried to lighten the mood. “I don’t feel like cabbing back to the airport and jumping on a plane again, but it’s nice to be needed.”
She came to him, moving more heavily in her pregnancy, and kissed him on the lips. “Now more than ever.” When she pulled away, she said, “How soon do you have to leave?”
“Within an hour at most. I’ll grab something to eat at the airport.” He extended his hands, palms out, a gesture he’d practiced before a mirror: Nothing I can do about this, and I’d move heaven and earth if I could change it. “I’m really and deeply sorry about this, hon.”
“I know,” she said, biting her lower lip but not crying, not crying. “I’ll help you pack.”
Jubal decided Dalia would have to wait for her necklace.
There was no choice, as with so much else in this world. Women. The way they got beneath your skin and into your blood; they ran like a chemical in your veins.
Women were a problem.
“You’re telling me,” Harley Renz said the next evening on the phone to Quinn, “that you’ve got nada times nada.”
“So far,” Quinn admitted. He was sitting in the heat on the bench inside the Eighty-sixth Street entrance to the park, waiting for Pearl and Fedderman. The bench was in the shade, but that didn’t help much, hot and muggy as it was today. “We’re not a helluva lot closer than we were last week.”
“Last week when you were shot at?”
Renz rubbing it in. “That week,” Quinn said. He’d been there awhile and wondered if his rear end might be welded to the hard slats of the bench.
“Listen, Quinn, my sources tell me there’s another TV feature on Anna Caruso in the works, this one by Kay Kemper. She’s making this her story.”
“Anna Caruso’s?”
“Kay Kemper’s. She cares not at all about Anna except that the kid means ratings. You mighta noticed, local news in this city is a competitive business. The thing is, whenever Anna’s sweet young face appears on television, you look more and more like the villain in the piece. Especially with your rugged bad looks. Especially now that the rumor is you’re a serial child molester. There are voices telling me to yank you off the streets, Quinn.”
“Arrest me?”
“Of course not. Not without proof. But lots of people in the department and at City Hall would like to see you run over by a cab and no longer be a problem. Pressure keeps building, Quinn, on me, on you—”
“And on the Night Prowler. He’d love to see you take me off the case. He’s probably the one who planted the child molestation story with Kay Kemper.”
“Maybe. But don’t bet against Egan.”
“Point. Where we going with this, Harley?”
“Nowhere, faster and faster. That’s the fucking problem. It’s a matter of days, and you’re gonna be gone. I’ve got no choice, Quinn. I talk to you and you keep coming up blank.”
“Speaking of blank,” Quinn said, “did you ever get a lead on Dr. Maxwell’s patient David Blank?”
“Nothing. The guy doesn’t exist.”
“You’ve come up blank.”
“That’s cute, but—”
“You’d think the Night Prowler would have broken under pressure by now, wouldn’t you? He’s been at it a long time with us on his heels.”
“He’s one of the toughest,” Renz said.
“Suppose he had a way of relieving that pressure. Like seeing a good psychoanalyst. Somebody he could talk to about these killings.”
“Confess to, you mean?”
“Maybe even that.”
“The analyst is obligated to tell us about criminal activity, especially murder.”
“Unless the analyst becomes a victim herself.”
Renz didn’t answer for a while, his breath hissing into the phone. “David Blank and Dr. Maxwell, huh? It’s a stretch, but possible. Sick fucks like that do suffer from a growing need to confess. That’s why we got the Miranda law. But even if true, it doesn’t help us. If the Night Prowler and David Blank are the same person, his charade worked. We got us a dead analyst who served her purpose, and David Blank is still nowhere to be found.”
“It gives us more insight into the Night Prowler. And that’s what this is all about, figuring how he thinks.”
“It doesn’t help us,” Renz repeated. Not as much as you being a serial molester.
Quinn couldn’t deny it. All he could muster was “But it might.”
“There’s only a few grains of sand left in the hourglass, Quinn. This is something I can’t control. Keep that in mind.” Renz hung up without saying good-bye.
Quinn sat in the shade with the dead phone and watched the unmarked pull to the curb out on Central Park West. He watched Pearl and Fedderman climb out of the car and make their way toward the park entrance and bench. They looked tired again. Pearl was plodding and Fedderman seemed as if he could barely drag his cheap suit along with him. His pants had worked themselves so low he looked like a prison gang-banger; they puddled around his feet and would have dragged the ground if not for his big clunky shoes. These two did not look like the NYPD’s finest.
Unsurprisingly, they reported no progress.
Quinn rel
ated the conversation he’d just had with Harley Renz.
“Sounds like we’re royally fucked,” Fedderman said, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief that looked as if it had been used to change oil.
“I can’t think of a better way to put it,” Pearl said.
“We’re all in a lousy mood,” Quinn said. “Let’s get outta here. Get into some air-conditioning.”
“I gotta get back to the precinct house and pick up my car,” Fedderman said. “I’m going out to dinner with the wife. We got reservations.”
I’ll bet she does about you. “Take the unmarked,” Pearl said.
“Thanks. Drop you two at Quinn’s place?”
They both nodded, and the three of them trudged glumly toward the car. Nobody spoke because there wasn’t anything to say. That was the problem. They were headed toward a wall and they all knew it, and talking about it wouldn’t change a thing.
Pearl was driving, Fedderman in front with her, Quinn in the backseat.
The car had just pulled out into traffic and was starting to accelerate when gunfire came at them from the park.
59
There was a muted cracking sound from outside the car, and a louder crack as a small hole appeared low in the passenger-side window. The sounds were so close together it was impossible to know which came first. Fedderman said, “What the fuck?” and held out a bloody hand, then slumped forward.
Pearl figured it out right away but couldn’t accelerate out of trouble because of stopped traffic ahead. The car jerked to a halt. Quinn rammed a thumb down and unbuckled his seat belt. “Get down, Pearl!” He slid low behind the front seats.
Another shot sounded off to their right.
Quinn heard Pearl shouting into the radio, loud but not frantic. “Ten-thirteen, shots fired, officer down! Eighty-sixth and Central Park West!”
She repeated the call for help, which would immediately attract every cop within blocks.
“Feds,” Quinn said, “you hit bad?”
“His arm, I think,” Pearl said.
“Upper arm,” Fedderman said. “I got the bleeding stopped. Can’t you move the fuckin’ car, Pearl?”
“Sure. Other than the motor’s dead and we’re blocked in.” Another shot. “I can’t see him. I can’t see him, dammit!”
Quinn sat up straighter and saw the top of her head above the level of the dashboard as she peered into the park trying to spot the shooter. “Get down, Pearl!”
“I can’t see the motherfucker.”
“Down, Pearl. Goddammit, get down!”
Another shot. The rearview mirror suddenly became detached and whizzed and whirled, clattering around the confines of the car like a gigantic insect trying to escape. The passenger-side window turned milky as the deflected bullet snapped over the slumping Fedderman.
Pearl got down.
It had been quiet but for the shooting. Now sirens were yodeling all around them. There were shouts and blaring horns outside. A siren so near and loud it hurt Quinn’s ears, and the screech of tires as a vehicle braked hard.
The siren growled and grumbled to silence. Quinn cautiously raised his head and saw a police cruiser directly alongside. He pointed toward the park, and the cop riding shotgun nodded. The two uniforms piled out and the near one took shelter behind the cruiser, while the other jogged bent low toward the stone wall that ran along the edge of the park.
“Stay low and call again for an ambulance,” Quinn said to Pearl as he worked the door handle and prepared to slide out of the car.
“Radio’s damaged. They know Fedderman’s shot and should be sending medical.”
“Look after him till they get here.”
“Look after yourself, Quinn. Remember your heart.”
Quinn knew she was right about an ambulance being on the way, but he wanted to make sure, so he used his cell phone to verify the request. Then he was aware of his heart fluttering like a panicked bird in his chest. But what else would you expect? It was the rush of adrenaline. And there was no pain.
He stayed low, opened the door, and eased out of the car to join the uniform hunkered behind the patrol car. Smashed sunglasses lay flat on the pavement near one of the cops’ regulation black shoes. Quinn could see other units that had responded. Sirens were still wailing and an ambulance with lights flashing was picking its way like a broken-field runner through stalled traffic on Central Park West.
Slowly the cop behind the car stood up straight. His partner was still crouching with gun drawn behind the low wall. Beyond him, Quinn could see blue-uniformed figures moving among the trees in the park. The cop next to him, an old-timer with gray tufts of hair sticking out from beneath his cap, looked at Quinn and said, “All the noise we made, the shooter’s shagged ass outta here by now.”
Quinn nodded, feeling a lot of tension flow out of him. It had been a while since the last shot was fired, and a virtual army of blue was on the hunt in the park.
He walked around the unmarked to see how Fedderman was doing. Behind him, he heard the gray-haired cop say, “Stepped on my fuckin’ glasses.”
The paramedics were already moving Fedderman out of the car and working him around so he could lie on a stretcher.
Pearl was also out of the car and had come around to Fedderman’s side. She touched Quinn’s shoulder lightly as if to assure herself he was solid and all right; then he was aware of her moving away.
“It’s just my arm,” Fedderman kept saying, trying to sit up. One of the paramedics, a guy with biceps the size of thighs, gently forced him back down.
“Call Alice and tell her I’m gonna be okay,” Fedderman said, looking up at Quinn.
Quinn nodded. “Soon as you’re in the ambulance.”
“Get her on the phone now. I can tell her myself.”
The oversize paramedic shook his head no.
“Sorry, Feds,” Quinn said. “He’s bigger’n I am.”
“Bigger’n anybody.”
“You better cooperate and let them stop that bleeding.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Suddenly pale, as if what happened had finally caught up with him, Fedderman settled down flat on the stretcher and remained motionless while they strapped him in and transported him to the ambulance.
There had been a lot of blood, but Quinn didn’t think the bullet wound was life threatening.
Still, you never knew for sure until the doctors got to you.
A uniform came over and handed Quinn a slip of paper. “Number for you to call.”
Quinn thanked him. He didn’t recognize the phone number written on the paper, but he figured the call would be from Renz. He looked over to where Pearl was filling in a couple of plainclothes detectives as to how the shooting occurred. There were people who looked like reporters huddled around them, but, so far, no TV camera crews had arrived. Quinn decided he’d call Renz back and then get out of there before TV did close in and spot him.
It occurred to him that he was the one tracking a killer. The one who’d just been shot at. And he was the one running from the press as if guilty of something.
Quite a world. Upside down.
It wasn’t Renz who answered Quinn’s call; it was Egan. He’d know about the shooting. When a cop was shot anywhere in the city, it didn’t take long for the word to spread.
“Where are you, Quinn?”
“Outside the park on Central Park West. Shooter was inside the park, firing out.”
“I thought maybe you were the one that got shot.”
Hoped, more like it. “Pearl and I are okay. Fedderman took one in the upper arm.”
“You think the Night Prowler was the shooter?”
“Yeah, I think we can be sure of that.”
“Does anybody in that fucked-up situation think he can be nailed before he gets out of the park?”
“No, and there’s not much chance of it. He was probably out of the park before we went in after him. And even if he stayed in the park, he’d be hard to find. It’s gonna be completely dar
k soon.”
“Far as you’re concerned, it already is completely dark. You gonna be there awhile?”
“Not much longer. Soon as Pearl and I are done here, we’ll drive to the hospital to check on Fedderman. I’ve gotta call his wife.”
“Okay. Stick at the hospital till I see you there. I wanna talk. I want you to listen.”
“I’ll be there.”
“You better.”
“And Fedderman’s gonna be okay. Thanks for asking.”
Quinn cut the connection.
The Night Prowler sat on the subway, which was rattling its way downtown. He tried to look relaxed. It wasn’t easy. The risk he’d taken! If he hadn’t been alert, even lucky, and made his way out of the park several blocks away on Central Park West, they might have had him. Quinn might have won.
He concentrated on sitting still and looking at the ghostly reflection of his pale face in the opposite dark window. The man in the window, with the darkness sliding past behind him, appeared calm, but tension was running through his body like a spasmodic electrical current. The gun was an unyielding lump beneath his belt at the small of his back, concealed by his untucked shirt. The gun.
He’d missed! He was sure of it!
He’d assumed the detective in the car’s front passenger seat would be Quinn, but the second he squeezed the trigger and caught a glimpse of the man’s profile, he knew it was the other one—Fedderman.
The trailing shots had gone into the stalled car; he was sure of that but couldn’t know if any of the bullets found their mark.
He could hope they had, but that was all. Soon as he got back to his apartment, he’d check TV news. Surely, Channel One would have something on the Central Park shooting. And the other local channels might break into regular programming.
This fucking city will jump to attention when I make it jump!
The Night Prowler shook his head, causing a woman seated on the other side of the subway car to glance up at him curiously, then quickly look away.
He struck a casual pose, a bored expression, while his mind worked furiously. What am I thinking? That’s not what this is about, making the city jump. That’s not what I’m about.