by John Lutz
Did he glance at the casually dressed couple—the man with a camera slung on a strap around his neck—as they entered D’Agostino’s? Did they glance back?
A green Ford Taurus slowed, stopped, then parked in a miraculously available space near the grocery store. It contained only the driver, and he didn’t get out.
The police had quite an operation going. They were covering Nell very efficiently. Justice approved.
Fifteen minutes later, Nell emerged from the store with her wire cart unfolded and loaded with two tan plastic bags stuffed with groceries. The green of celery tops or leaf lettuce protruded from the top bag. There was a six-pack of something beneath the bottom one. Looked like Diet Pepsi. Justice was learning more and more about Nell.
She pushed rather than pulled the cart as she walked back the way she’d come. As it passed over seams in the sidewalk, the flimsy little cart bounced, and Nell had to use both hands to control it.
The young tourist with the backpack folded his map and stuffed it back in his hip pocket, then continued his stroll. The car whose driver had never gotten out pulled away from the curb. The middle-aged couple with the camera came out of D’Agostino’s. Nothing in their hands. No paper-or-plastic dilemma for them. They began strolling side by side behind the youth with the backpack, who was behind Nell.
Nell walked leisurely along the crowded sidewalk, pushing the two-wheeled cart ahead of her. It looked as if there might be a wire attached to something in her right ear. Listening to music? Well, she was supposed to be unconcerned. To have assumed that the Justice Killer had put her out of his mind, out of the game, and she was safe.
She’s turning in a pretty good performance, acting the unknowing bait. Even swishing her hips more than usual in case I might be watching. Those tight jeans are for me. That ass—
Nell stopped and raised a hand to adjust her earpiece. Probably not listening to music at all.
Justice watched her smile slightly, then bob her head as if in time to music. Nice touch.
She placed both hands on the cart again and resumed walking.
On the other side of the street, he followed.
Beam screwed the lid back on his nearly empty thermos and laid it on the seat next to him. He was parked near Nell’s apartment in the white minivan. The evening was warm, so the motor was running and the air conditioner working away. He was parked on the other side of the street, facing away from Nell’s building, but had its entrance under observation in the van’s oversized left outside mirror.
Nell should be back soon.
A siren yodeled several times a few blocks away, making Beam squirm in the van’s scuffed leather seat. The confiscated vehicle didn’t have a police radio; Beam used his two-way: “This is Beam. What was the siren?”
“Ten fifty-three on Eighth Avenue,” a voice said. Police code for a vehicle accident. Could be a simple fender bender.
More sirens. Sounded like emergency vehicles.
“Code ten forty-five,” explained the voice, before Beam could ask. An accident with injuries. An ambulance was needed.
“’Kay,” said Beam, and got off the two-way.
New York being New York, he thought. Nothing to do with Nell.
He knew that officers Havers and Broome, borrowed from an SNE, a street narcotics enforcement unit, were posing as a tourist couple with a camera, keeping a tight tail on Nell. They had two-ways and backup mobile phones and would notify Beam if anything out of the ordinary was happening.
Beam sat up straighter. There was Nell in the van mirror, pushing a wire cart along the sidewalk.
He watched as she turned around and, moving backward, pulled the overloaded cart up the three steps to her building’s foyer. The wide door, flanked by stone columns, opened, closed, and she was inside.
Safe at home.
Beam knew better, but he breathed easier.
A car’s headlights flared in the mirror and momentarily blinded him. When the lights went out, he saw that a drab brown Chevy sedan had parked behind him, a vehicle as inconspicuous as the van.
Looper, here to take over until Beam returned at midnight. Excellent. Beam couldn’t get the coffee taste from his mouth, and he had to take a piss.
He went back to the two-way: “All yours, Loop.”
“She in?”
“Tucked away and secure, probably for the evening.”
“No hot date?”
“Not unless it’s the one we’re trying to arrange.”
Beam decided to take a turn around the block before driving to his apartment, brushing his teeth, and trying to get some sleep. Looper would call him if anything developed.
He twisted the key in the ignition, and the starter grated, startling him. Jesus! He’d forgotten the van’s old engine was already running.
His back ached as he put the transmission in drive and the vehicle jerked away from the curb, leaving Looper in the parked Chevy behind. Beam realized his legs were stiff from sitting in one position for almost two hours.
He was ready to be relieved.
The changing of the guard down in the street hadn’t escaped his attention. He watched the white minivan turn the corner and disappear. From up here, the brown Chevy looked unoccupied, like any other parked car.
The police were good at their job.
Three o’clock in the morning. That would be entry time. Most of the cops he knew agreed that three a.m. was the optimum time for housebreaking if anyone was home and sleeping. That was when sleep was deepest, when dreams were firmly in charge, when things tended to happen.
He knew how to get on the roof of Nell’s building from the fire escape of the taller building beside it. The top two floors of that building were vacant and being rehabbed. He’d scouted them, gained entry, and found a sturdy two-by-eight plank, part of a painter’s scaffold, that would act as a bridge from fire escape to roof. In his dark clothing, he’d be difficult to spot from below even if someone happened to be looking directly at him. A shadow that moved. That would be him—a shadow that moved in the night.
There were ways to enter Nell’s building from the roof. And there were ways to leave, to reverse his procedure, get clear of the area, and not be seen. This was a game he understood and was good at.
While the police were watching Nell’s building, they weren’t as careful about watching this one. He’d gained entrance in late morning, made his way to the uninhabited floor where construction had been halted until inspections were made and permits were issued, and made himself comfortable amid plastic paint buckets and plaster dust. Lots of plaster dust. One of his biggest problems was not to sneeze and possibly draw attention to himself.
Seated on a folded tarpaulin, his back against a sheet of wall board, he occasionally nibbled a stale sandwich and sipped warm bottled water. He waited.
Patiently.
Three o’clock. That was what most cops said. He’d even heard one say it recently on a TV cop show. Called it magic time.
Truth and fiction…Weren’t they running together these days?
Three o’clock in the morning.
When things happened.
71
Nell knew that the streets below, succumbing to the slower tempo of the night, were virtually crawling with NYPD. Beam was watching from somewhere outside, directing the operation. Uniformed cops were in the building, one stationed at the end of the hall outside her door. They came and went with some regularity. Undercovers were stationed around the block. Be they homeless, or drunken late-night revelers, or lovestruck couples strolling holding hands, they were out there, ready to become cops. A uniform was stationed in the super’s apartment, off the lobby. Looper was nearby, cruising the neighborhood in an unmarked car. They all knew who and what they were hunting. They knew the danger.
As did Nell. She kept her nine-millimeter Glock in the nightstand drawer within easy reach, a round in the chamber, safety on.
After brushing her teeth and changing into her sleep shirt, she watched the lat
e news on TV, then checked to make sure the apartment’s door and windows were locked, the drapes closed.
Bedtime. Part of her regular life. Just like a normal person not worried about a madman bent on killing her at the earliest opportunity.
But she didn’t switch on the bedroom air conditioner. The night wasn’t so warm that she couldn’t do without it, and she didn’t want its background noise covering some other, more ominous sound.
She climbed into bed and read a New Yorker for a while, hoping for some help from the cartoons. But her sense of humor had deserted her.
A crossword puzzle in this morning’s paper was a valuable distraction. It managed to frustrate her, which was better than being terrified. And when finally she did figure out a ten-letter word for hypnotized, she was tired enough to sleep.
Deliberately keeping her movements economical and balanced, so as not to jar herself all the way awake, she put down the folded paper, then her pencil, and managed to switch off the lamp and fall back onto the bed.
The dreams came, as she knew they would. The thin wire slicing deep into her throat, leaving her suddenly breathing blood; the silent bullet from nowhere, tumbling though her flesh, splintering bone.
Dark dreams from the darkest corners of her soul.
She slept with fear, but she slept.
At two minutes after three, beneath a moonless black sky, he worked the two-by-eight board out through the kitchen window of the soon-to-be-demolished apartment and wrestled with it until it was balanced on the fire escape rail. He squeezed between board and window frame, so he was outside, then maneuvered the plank so one end was still supported on the rail, and the other on the roof parapet of the building next door—Nell’s building.
Mustn’t waste time.
Switching off his fear, he stood up on the plank, fixed his eyes on the tile-capped parapet across the passageway, and began to walk.
A few seconds later, he dropped almost silently on the roof of Nell’s apartment building.
He left the plank, knowing it was barely visible from below even if someone did happen to be in the dark passageway and glanced up.
The service door was unlocked, open about half an inch and blocked by a bent beer can. Apparently the super or maintenance crew didn’t like the idea of possibly being stranded on the roof. Or perhaps kids playing, or lovers seeking a private, quiet place had left the door blocked. It wasn’t uncommon in New York, to neutralize the lock on a roof door.
Odd, though, that the police hadn’t spotted it.
He’d been prepared to pick the lock, had the equipment in his pocket. Much easier—and faster—this way.
He opened the small, heavy door, then ducked inside and switched on his small flashlight. It had masking tape over half its lens, making its narrow yellow beam even more precise. He was on a tiny landing, with wooden stairs leading down to an access panel that provided entry into a closet he knew held cleaning supplies.
In the closet, he had to be careful. He knew there were two plastic buckets, a mop and broom leaning against a wall, an ancient upright vacuum cleaner, cans and bottles of cleaning solvents and powders on a wire shelf. Mustn’t make noise here. There was an acrid smell in the closet, some kind of disinfectant or insecticide. Very deliberately, he slowed down, slowed everything, even his heartbeat.
Quiet, quiet…keep movements small.
He opened the door gradually, stuck his head out, and peered up and down the dimly lit hall. It had a tiled floor but a wide rubber runner. He could move along it silently.
As he started to leave the storage closet, he saw motion at the far end of the hall. A uniformed cop, pacing almost lazily, pausing to gaze out a small window into the blackness of the night.
After scratching his left ear with violence and abandon, the cop moved on toward the stairs. Another uniformed cop came along, and he heard their voices, though not what they were saying. They were obviously going down the stairs together.
But they might not go all the way down. Or stay together. One or both might return at any moment.
That was all right. It would take almost no time to cover the twenty feet or so to Nell’s apartment and gain entry.
But there was risk here. Undeniably.
His wild heartbeat was telling him that.
If I’m going to do it, the longer I wait before moving, the greater the risk. In this goddamned world there’s risk in everything. So move! Swallow your fear and move!
He moved.
Nell was awake.
She didn’t exactly remember waking up. It had been a smooth transition from sleep to consciousness, as if dimensions overlapped and a dream had somehow slipped into reality. Yet she couldn’t recall her dream.
The clock’s red digital numbers read 3:13 a.m.
She lay on her back, her neck muscles tense and her head barely denting her pillow. She listened.
Listened.
The apartment was quiet.
She realized she was thirsty. The bedroom was sweltering and her throat was parched. Her lips felt cracked. That was what had awakened her, the thirst. She swallowed. It made a sound like tiny bones cracking.
So thirsty.
She rolled to her side, then sat up on the edge of the mattress. Her bare feet found the floor and she stood up.
More tired than I thought. Dizzy.
She licked her lips, but even her tongue felt dry.
The bathroom, a glass of water, was only just down the hall from the bedroom.
But the refrigerator offered filtered cold water, with ice in it.
Definitely the kitchen.
She padded slowly and unsteadily across the bedroom toward the dimly outlined rectangle that was the doorway to the hall, then moved on past the bathroom, toward the darkness of the living room and kitchen.
In the van, parked near the end of Nell’s block, Beam sat hunched low behind the steering wheel. He’d returned at midnight to relieve Looper, who’d taken a break and was again cruising the side streets. Beam was in the half awake yet alert mode of a longtime cop on stakeout. Like a hybrid car running on one system independent of the other, but always a second away from switching to maximum power and the hell with economy.
The van’s dashboard was dark except for the faint green glow of the stock radio, tuned to an all-night FM station that played show tunes. The radio was on low volume, and couldn’t be heard five feet away from the van even though the windows were down. Beam was listening—and not listening—to the orchestral score of Phantom of the Opera.
His slitted eyes took in the dimly lit street, the parked cars, the stunted, silvered trees that bent gently in the breeze, the infrequent headlights and passing of vehicles at the intersection. And Nell’s guardian angels. The bulky bundle on one of the concrete stoops near Nell’s building was actually an armed and ready undercover cop, not a drunk or a street person. Behind the windowed double doors of a brownstone apartment building was a tested and reliable uniform named Sweeney, using the vestibule as an observation post.
A violin solo began, rich even on the van’s economy speakers, as subdued and melancholy as the night.
Light flared in the van’s outside mirror as a car turned the corner twenty feet behind Beam. In the brightness wrought by the headlights, Beam glanced at his watch.
Three-fifteen a.m.
Looper, on schedule, in his turn around the block.
The dented brown five-year-old Chevy rolled past the van and continued down the street. Looper didn’t glance Beam’s way. Beam, barely aware of the violin, watched the Chevy’s taillights, one brighter than the other, recede down the block, then merge and disappear as the car turned the corner. Looper would park not far down the cross street, and in a few minutes would drive another slow, circuitous route along the streets surrounding Nell’s apartment.
The violin again, rich and expressive in tone, yet not much louder than a kitten’s meow. Beam wished for dawn and a larger speaker.
Nell pressed the water glass a
gainst the refrigerator’s ice-maker lever and cubes tumbled down into it. She switched the setting, gave the glass another shove, and purified water streamed over the cubes.
Three cool swallows brought her almost fully awake.
Almost.
She noticed a dim light coming from the living room and thought immediately that she’d gone to bed and forgotten to switch off the TV. She’d done it before. And she had been watching late-night news before going to bed.
Her fear still part of her dreams, she moved automatically into the living room, the glass in her hand.
Took three steps, then realized her mistake.
The light wasn’t from the TV. It was from a flashlight. Held by a dark, unmoving figure standing just inside the door.
Nell’s harsh gasp startled even her.
In the dimness, enough light from outside filtered in for her to recognize the man in her living room.
72
Rooted by astonishment and fear in the dim room, Nell said his name in a choked voice:
“Terry.”
“I had to see you,” he said. “I was so worried about you, Nell. Couldn’t sleep. Wanted to protect you…needed to. I couldn’t forgive myself if something happened to you while I was tossing and turning in my bed, close enough to help but not helping.”
“How did you get in here?”
“I remembered some of the tricks I learned from my days riding with the police, so I knew how to get on the roof from next door. Then I came down through the service door. As for the apartment, I still have the key you gave me.”
All the time he’d been speaking, he hadn’t moved. Her fear was like a wall between them. A wall her love was trying to climb.
Nell wanted to believe him. Wanted to so badly. She knew he was leaving it up to her. Trust and terror. It would have to be one or the other for Nell. One direction or the other.