Without Mercy

by Len Levinson

  A tall black man walked down the aisle between the rows of seats and climbed onto the stage. ‘He wore blue jeans, a brown tee-shirt, and appeared embarrassed. His hair was short as though he’d shaved his head two weeks ago, and he had the nose and features of an American Indian. He took off his tee-shirt, and his chest wasn’t very big, dotted with little swirls of black hair. He kicked off his sandals and pulled down his pants, showing brown briefs that matched his tee-shirt. Stepping out of his briefs, you could see his big dong. It was considerably bigger than Kowalchuk’s, who squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. And it wasn’t even hard yet.

  The black man was unable to look at the audience. He moved to the bed, the black girl making room for him. He lay on his back, his scrotum drooping between his legs, and she took his flaccid penis in hand, bent over him, and sucked it vigorously while the sound system blared “Love is a Many Splendored Thing”.

  So this is what a live sex show is like, Kowalchuk thought. The black guy isn’t even horny and the girl is blowing him as if she’s siphoning a gas tank. Kowalchuk crossed his arms and fidgeted in his seat. He was disappointed, for he’d expected attractive young enthusiastic people like in the pictures pasted on the front of the theater.

  The girl raised her head, and the man had become half hard. She went to work on him again and the theater was so still you could hear her suck sounds and the occasional beep of a car out on Forty-second Street. The black guy rolled his hips and held one arm over his face to shield his eyes from the overhead floodlights, while his other hand caressed the girl’s breasts. She raised herself up again, and this time he was a little harder. She rolled onto her back and the guy crawled onto her, still not looking at the audience. Kowalchuk felt sorry for him. The poor bastard probably wanted to disappear into the woodwork, but the girl didn’t care at all. In fact, she probably was having fun.

  The guy mounted her and she inserted him inside her the same as she’d inserted the swizzle sticks, chain, and silk handkerchiefs. She pointed her toes at the ceiling and wiggled them as the black guy screwed her awkwardly, burying his face in her shoulder as if trying to block out what was going on all around him.

  Kowalchuk watched, feeling sick and uneasy. The poor black guy is so nervous he can hardly fuck, but the girl is enjoying it. The guy must be doing it for the money, but she’s having a good time, getting fucked in front of all us men. That’s a woman for you. Sick and depraved. And for that she shall die.

  Part Three – Trackdown

  Chapter One

  It was nine o’clock at night at the Crandon Hotel on the Bowery, On the second floor, the guests were getting ready for bed. They were a raggedy bunch, most hadn’t shaved lately, and many stank of alcohol.

  Jackie Doolan sat on his cot, his bare knobby feet on the linoleum. He had on his filthy brown pants and gray tee-shirt, and was looking at the front page of the Daily News. “The Slasher Claims Third Victim, Times Square Porno Queen Found in Alley.’’

  Two photographs were on the front page. The one on the left showed the victim lying bloody and twisted against a stone wall, and the one on the right was a head shot of a man. Doolan squinted his eyes and read that the man was Frank Kowalchuk of East Ninth Street, and that he was believed to be the Slasher. If anyone spotted him they were to notify the nearest policeman. The photograph was taken of Kowalchuk when he was a cab-driver.

  “Well whataya know about that!” said Doolan.

  “Whataya know about what?” said the man in the bunk behind Doolan, trying to read over his shoulder.

  “They got a picture of the Slasher here,” Doolan said, turning around and pointing at the picture. “Ugly fucker, ain’t he?”

  “He ain’t no uglier than you,” replied the man, who had a scar on his right cheek and no teeth in his mouth.

  Doolan squared his shoulders and raised his chin a few inches. “I been workin’ with the police on this case, y’know.”

  “Yeah sure.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “You’re fuckin’ right I don’t believe you.”

  “They probably wouldn’t even know who the guy is if it wasn’t for me.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “I helped ‘em find out where the guy lived.”

  “How’d you do that?” asked the man as others bent their ears toward the conversation.

  “I found the Slasher’s jacket in a trashcan. ‘Course I didn’t know it was the Slasher’s jacket at the time, but it had blood on it and the cops must’ve been lookin’ for it because when they saw it on me they picked it up. I told them where I found it, and that’s how they figgered out where he lived.”

  An old bum on another bunk pshawed.

  “Take that shit on down the line, buddy.”

  “It’s the truth!” Doolan insisted. “You just ask any of the detectives workin’ on the case. They’ll tell you.”

  “Sure they will.”

  “They will!”

  “I think you’re fulla shit.”

  “Aw, fuck you guys,” Doolan said, turning the page of the Daily News.

  He brought his face close to the page, because his eyes were bad, and read about Barbara Collins, the Slasher’s third victim. Bums streamed back and forth from the communal toilet and shower stall at the end of the room, and the lights would go out in about a half-hour.

  In a cot against the wall, a heavyset man in a beard glared ferociously at Jackie Doolan.

  Chapter Two

  Rackman sat in a chair in his darkened apartment, smoking a Lucky and sipping bourbon. He wore jeans and a tee-shirt and had the television set on, although he wasn’t watching it. It was eight o’clock in the morning and he’d just come off duty. He and Olivero had spent the night rousting people out of their beds in the cheap Times Square hotels, hoping to find Kowalchuk. They hadn’t.

  Now Rackman was trying to wind down so he could go to sleep. His insomnia had worsened, and when he found time he intended to see a doctor and get a prescription for some sleeping pills. He was tense and anxious about the Slasher case, because he knew the longer the Slasher was on the loose, the more victims he’d claim.

  There was a knock at the door. He got up and looked through the peephole. A man in a sport jacket was standing in the hall. Rackman opened the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Daniel Rackman?” the man asked.

  “That’s me.”

  The man took out a shield. “I’m a New York city detective and I’d like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.”

  Rackman stared at the shield and wondered if he was dreaming.

  “Sorry to wake you up,” the detective said apologetically.

  “I wasn’t asleep,” Rackman said, “and by the way, I’m a detective too. I’m with Midtown North.” He took out his wallet and showed his shield.

  The man looked at it, surprised. “I’m Tommy Randazzo from the Ninth Precinct.”

  “Come on in.”

  Rackman led Randazzo into the living room and motioned for him to have a seat. He turned off the television set and turned on a light, then sat opposite him.

  “What’s the problem?” Rackman asked.

  Randazzo reached into his jacket pocket and came out with a folded crumpled piece of paper. “Gee, I feel strange asking you about this because you’re a detective too,” he said with a self-conscious smile.

  “Just do your job and don’t worry about me.”

  Randazzo unfolded the paper. “This is a Master Charge receipt. It was found in the jacket pocket of a man who was killed in a Bowery hotel early this morning, and it’s got your name and Master Charge number on it.” He handed the receipt to Rackman. “Do you remember it?”

  Rackman looked at the receipt and recognized the address of the men’s store on the Bowery. “I remember it,” he said, his voice a few octaves lower. “It’s for a wool jacket I bought for a bum named Jackie Doolan. He gave me some information in the Slasher case.”

  Randazzo
blinked his eyes twice and thought for a few moments. “That’s very interesting,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because the victim was found in the toilet with his throat cut just like the Slasher’s victims.”

  “Did you see the victim yourself?”

  “Yes I did.”

  “Was he about five-four, real skinny, in his late fifties, sandy hair turning gray?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Let me get dressed,” Rackman said. “I’ll go downtown with you.”

  Chapter Three

  Kowalchuk awoke under a bush in Central Park near the Seventy-second Street Transverse Road. His hair and beard had become quite long, effectively obscuring his features, and he’d lost thirty pounds since he’d moved out of East Ninth Street. He wore sneakers, jeans, and his blue bomber jacket, all filthy. Standing and stretching, yawning softly so as not to attract attention, he put on his gray cap and walked toward the path that led out of the park.

  He took out a cigarette and lit it with a match. Passing two joggers on the Seventy-second Street road, he felt a rumble of hunger in his stomach. He headed west, toward the cheap restaurants on Broadway, where he could get the most for the four dollars he had in his pocket.

  He bought a Daily News near the subway stop on Seventy-second Street and Central Park West and stopped beside an apartment building to glance through it. On page four near the bottom he found what he was looking for. “Derelict Found Stabbed in Bowery Hotel.”

  He read the item and was pleased that the police hadn’t linked the killing of the bum to the Slasher, because he wanted to make his reputation for killing women, not bums. Tucking the newspaper under his arm, he whistled a tune and made his way through the early morning crowds to Broadway, and decided to have breakfast at the McDonalds on Seventy-first Street. He passed two cops on their beat but they didn’t take any special notice of him. He didn’t look like the picture of Kowalchuk that they’d put in the paper. They’d never get him now.

  Entering the McDonald’s, he walked to the counter and got in line. People looked at his filthy clothes and he realized he smelled a little bad, but to hell with them. If they didn’t like it they could kiss his ass. He came to the head of the line and ordered his breakfast from a skinny little black girl, and he thought that this was a decent girl who worked for her living in a decent way, unlike the Times Square porno girls who were disgusting. He paid her three dollars and a quarter for the meal and carried his tray to an empty table, sitting down and digging in.

  He had to do something about his money situation, he realized as he chewed on sausage. He didn’t even have enough for a pack of cigarettes. He couldn’t drive a cab or get any other kind of job because they had his Social Security number. This meant he’d have to steal some money, and he didn’t have a gun for a hold-up. Besides, he didn’t like the idea of a hold-up. He was the Slasher and he was at war against women. The best thing would be to kill another porno girl and take whatever money she had with her.

  But what porno girl? He didn’t want to go to Times Square because it was crawling with cops looking for him, and he didn’t have any money to go in peep shows and places like that. He couldn’t even afford to buy a copy of the New York Review of Sex to find out what the whores were doing. He was in a tight spot, that was for sure. But he’d get out of it somehow. If he’d outsmarted the whole New York Police Department for as long as he had, he should be able to get together a few hundred bucks from some filthy bitch someplace.

  He thought about the famous porno girls who acted in hardcore movies, but didn’t know how to go about finding where one lived. He didn’t dare to try and pick up one of the street corner whores because he was too famous for that now. His victim would have to be somebody easy to get to who deserved to be killed and robbed. Some really rotten bitch. Someone who deserved to die.

  Shoveling scrambled eggs into his mouth he racked his brain but could only come up with famous porno actresses or faceless whores, all of whom were too dangerous for him to go near. He’d have to think of somebody in a different walk of life, someone completely unexpected.

  And then her face materialized out of the remaining bits of food on his plate, and he wondered why he hadn’t thought of her right off. He’d given her thousands of dollars in gifts and cash, and she never gave him any pussy. He found out she was sleeping with a sanitation worker. Kowalchuk had been in love with Evelyn Ditchik and she’d taken advantage of him like all the others, only worse.

  He smiled as he sipped his coffee. He thought he’d enjoy killing her more than any of the others, because of what she’d done to him. His heart beat faster and he felt lightheaded. Evelyn Ditchik, are you gonna be surprised when you see me again.

  Chapter Four

  Rackman walked into Jenkins’ office, a newspaper folded under his arm. “Anything new?” he asked.

  Jenkins glanced up from some correspondence. “Relative to what?”

  “The Slasher.”

  “Some bums at the Crandon Hotel told detectives that Jackie Doolan was bragging about helping the cops identify the Slasher on the night he was killed.”

  Rackman sat down slowly. “Wow.”

  Jenkins nodded. “Looks like the Slasher was a guest in the Crandon that night, but the Crandon had eighty-four guests and none of the ones we talked to saw anybody who looked like our picture of Kowalchuk.”

  “He must have changed his appearance somehow.”

  “Yeah. Downtown detectives have combed the Bowery for him but haven’t come up with anything. Looks like he got away with another one.”

  Rackman pinched his lips together. “That poor fucking Jackie Doolan.”

  “He should’ve kept his mouth shut.”

  Rackman took the newspaper from underneath his arm and unfolded it. It was the latest copy of the New York Review of Sex and the headline read, “Balling the Blind”.

  “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “You ever read one of these?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve been reading them lately because I know the Slasher reads them, and I—”

  Jenkins interrupted him. “You’ve been reading them because you want to pull your prick, you bastard.”

  “Not true, and anyway, I got an idea from the damn thing. There are classified ads in the back from people who want to get laid, and I thought maybe we should put an ad in ourselves and hope to hook the Slasher with it.”

  Jenkins thought for a few moments, then held out his hand. “Lemme see.”

  Rackman handed over the paper and Jenkins turned to the “Puerile Personals” in the back. He put on his half-moon reading glasses and bent over the page.

  Foxy Bi Female, 24, will share her lovely body with other bi’s. I’m for real, sincere, and horny.

  Send photo and phone number to P.O.B. 813 Waterbury, CT 06720.

  Swinging Beautician Seeks men for French, Greek, English. New York City area. Write Martha, Box 21, 219 West 42nd Street, New York, N.Y. 10036.

  Smell My Nectar

  I’m a sweet, hot & juicy young surfer girl with love-soaked panties. Guaranteed strong scent. Send $10 check/m.o. to: Cindy, Box 2005, Laguna Beach, CA 92021.

  Nympho Chinese Girl seeks white men for fun and games.

  Send $1 for my photo, name, address, phone no. Cum Ling, Box 4732, NYC, 10019.

  Jenkins looked up over his half-moon reading glasses. “This is some sick shit here.”

  “I know, but we’re dealing with a sick guy. He used to read this paper every week and probably still does. If we put in the right ad, he might respond to it.”

  Jenkins bent over the page again.

  Attractive 19-Year Old Male wants attr. W/F age 18-22 for companionship. No pros. Write: P.O.B. 321, Radio City Station, New York, N.Y. 10019.

  White Male, 44, sincerely wants to meet dominant females that enjoy wearing garters, stockings and high heel shoes. P.O.B. 4379, Bklyn, N.Y. 11201.

  Jenkins took off his eyeglasses and looked at Rack
man. “Does anybody answer these ads?”

  “They must, otherwise there wouldn’t be four full pages of them.”

  “I guess it’s worth a try. Who’s gonna write the ad, you?”

  “I thought I’d get one of those reporters to do it.”

  “Good idea. They’re all a bunch of sex degenerates.”

  Chapter Five

  Kowalchuk returned to the Ukrainian neighborhood in the East Village for the first time since he had left a few weeks before. He walked straight down St. Marks Place, and at the corner of Second Avenue he picked up the receiver of a public telephone attached to the side of the Gem Spa. He dialed a number and listened to it ring a few times. It was seven-thirty in the morning and he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast the morning before.

  The phone was answered on the other end. “Hello?” said a woman’s voice.

  Kowalchuk hung up and turned the corner, walking south on Second Avenue. This was his old stomping ground but he looked different now and didn’t think anybody would recognize him. He had to take the chance because he needed money badly and he was intoxicated by the thought of seeing Evelyn again. He’d just found out she was home. In the old days she used to work in an office uptown and he assumed she still did. She’d be shocked to see him.

  He turned east on Seventh Street, walking along with his hands in his pockets, looking like a typical middle-aged East Village hippie. He passed the little store where his mother used to send him to buy fresh eggs from New Jersey, and looked in the window at old Mister Rabinowitz behind the counter. Crossing First Avenue, he came to the block where Evelyn lived and felt his blood grow hot with anticipation. Evelyn used to humiliate him in front of other people, but still she took his money and gifts. She used to let him kiss her when they were alone, but that was all. He couldn’t understand why he never thought of beating her ass before. It was so easy once you got into the swing of it.

  Walking down the block, he wondered if the police had spoken to Evelyn yet about him. They probably had, but she couldn’t tell them anything. She hadn’t seen him for about five years, but he’d kept track of her. She’d gone out with a few guys but none had ever married her. If she was smart she would have married him, but she wasn’t smart.