The Eye: A Novel of Suspense

by Bill Pronzini

  “Then why won’t you play one more hand so I can get into the Guinness Book?”

  “Richard, even if I agreed to play just one hand, there’s no guarantee that you’d win.”

  “I’d win, all right. I’d win.”

  “You can’t be sure of that. Can you even be sure fifty consecutive winning gin rummy hands qualifies you for the Guinness Book?”

  Corales blinked. “What?”

  “Have you checked the Guinness Book, Richard? What is the record for most consecutive winning gin rummy hands?”

  “No, I never checked it,” Corales said. “But it’s got to be the record. Nobody could win more than fifty straight.”

  “Well, then, suppose the record is only forty-eight. Or less. Then you’ve already established a new record, haven’t you?”

  “I never thought of that,” Corales said, frowning. But then the frown deepened and he said, “I don’t care what the old record is. I want to win fifty, I want to see how many hands I can win in a row. Maybe I can make seventy-five, or even a hundred. Maybe I can set a record that nobody’ll ever break.”

  Lorsec sighed again. “I think I’d better go,” he said.

  “Go? You mean you’re really not gonna play anymore?”

  “I’ve already told you I’m not. I couldn’t concentrate with so much going on outside, so many police in the area——”

  “Damn the police! I don’t give a shit about the police!” Corales’s face was splotched now; his oversized hands were fisted at his sides. “What’d you come around here for this morning, anyway, you don’t want to play gin no more?”

  “I wanted to see you, that’s all——”

  “Yeah, sure,” Corales said. “And you want me to let you rummage around in the trash some more, right? That’s all you ever wanted from me.”

  “That isn’t true. You’re my friend.”

  “Well, you ain’t my friend, not anymore,” Corales said angrily. “Go on, get out of here. I don’t never want to see you again.”

  “Richard——”

  “Get out, I said. Get out! And don’t come around no more. Go make friends with some other super if you ain’t done that already, get your goddamn junk from him.”

  Lorsec considered standing his ground, making an effort to pour oil on these troubled waters, but the look in Corales’s eyes changed his mind. He let out another sigh, inaudible this time, and went to the door.

  “No matter what you think now,” he said as he opened it, “I’m your friend and I wish you well.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Willie,” Corales said, and slammed the door behind him.

  Lorsec started across the basement to the alley entrance. Halfway there, he noticed that Corales had left his tool chest on a wooden stool. He shook his head sadly. Poor Richard, he thought. Always leaving things around where someone could steal them. Such a trusting soul. Such a foolish innocent.

  Lorsec picked up the tool chest and took it back and set it in front of Corales’s door. Then he knocked once. He was already on his way back across the basement when Corales looked out.

  8:25 A.M. — WALLY SINGER

  He couldn’t believe it, he just could not believe it.

  “Leaving me?” he said. “Leaving me? What kind of bullshit is this, Marian?”

  “It’s not bullshit,” Marian said. She was still over there at the dresser, methodically taking her clothes out and putting them into her open suitcase on the bed. She hadn’t stopped doing that, had barely even looked at him, since he’d come in and caught her at it a couple of minutes ago.

  “You can’t walk out on me!”

  “Can’t I? You just watch me.”

  “Where the hell are you going to go?”

  “I’m moving in with a friend in the Village.”

  “What friend?”

  “Someone you don’t know. A man.”

  “Man?”

  “A man I’ve been seeing,” she said, neatly folding a skirt. “A man I love and who loves me.”

  It struck him funny. He threw back his head and laughed, but when he did that the sudden motion aggravated the hangover pain in his temples, made him wince, and cut the laugh into a bark. Christ, he must have drunk half a case of beer last night. But who could blame him? Another shooting right here in the building, right across the hall, that snooty little actress and the junkie musician who lived downstairs; cops all over the place, more questions. It had shaken him bad, even worse than when Marian told him Cindy had been killed across the street.

  And now this. Marian calmly packing her suitcase, telling him she was moving out, telling him she was in love with somebody else. Marian? Fat, stupid Marian? It was funny, all right, crazy funny. Nobody in his right mind would want a cow like her.

  “Go ahead and laugh,” she said. She didn’t sound angry; she didn’t sound anything except determined. “It happens to be the truth.”

  “Sure it is. You think crap like that is going to bother me, hurt me?”

  “I don’t care if it does or doesn’t. You’ve hurt me plenty, Wally, and I don’t want to live with you anymore or be your wife anymore. That’s what matters right now.”

  He put it into words this time: “Who’d want a cow like you?”

  That got to her; pain flickered across her dumpy face. But only for an instant. She still didn’t stop stuffing clothes into her suitcase. And she didn’t answer his question.

  Singer felt a little tug of desperation. Maybe it was true; maybe she had found somebody to have an affair with. And maybe she really was going to leave him. He still couldn’t believe it, but what if it was true? What the hell would he do then?

  “You’re not walking out of here,” he said.

  “How are you going to stop me? By force? The building is crawling with police, Wally; all I have to do is scream once and they’ll be at the door in ten seconds.”

  “I’m your husband, goddamn it!”

  “Not for long,” she said. “I’m going to file for divorce as soon as I can find a lawyer.”

  “You’re crazy,” he said. “You’ve gone off your rocker, you know that?”

  “You can keep the apartment and the furniture. I’ll send for the rest of my things in a few days.”

  “Keep the apartment? For Christ’s sake, how am I going to pay the rent?”

  “It’s paid through the end of the month. You’ll have to get a job, that’s all. It’s your problem, Wally, not mine—not any longer.”

  “You bitch, you can’t do this to me!”

  “I should have done it a long time ago,” she said.

  “He talked you into this, didn’t he? This bastard you’ve been sleeping with.”

  “No, he didn’t. I’ve been thinking about it for days and what happened last night made up my mind. And he’s not a bastard. He’s kind and gentle; he’s everything you’re not.”

  “Who is he? What’s his name?”

  “I don’t think I want to tell you that.”

  “I got a right to know who you think you’re running off with!”

  “I’m not running off with him.”

  “Damn you, Marian, who is he?”

  “No,” she said. She finished putting the last of her clothes into the suitcase, pulled the lid down, leaned on it, and fastened the catches. “There’s fifty dollars in the jar in the kitchen. You’ll have to make do with that until you get a job.”

  He wanted to hit her. God, he wanted to rush over there and smash her fat cow face until it was slick with blood. But he couldn’t move; his legs wouldn’t work. He just stood there in the doorway with his head pounding, pounding. He couldn’t even move when she brushed past him, carrying the suitcase, and walked into the front room.

  “I’ll get you for this, Marian!” he shouted after her. “I won’t let you do this to me!”

  “Good-bye, Wally,” she said.

  Fifteen seconds later she was gone, actually gone.

  He moved then, as soon as he heard the front door close. But not
far, just into the middle of the studio; he didn’t have anywhere else to go. He knew that now, believed it all now, and it was like a hole had opened up and he was being sucked down into it. His hands were shaking; he felt sick to his stomach. And wild inside, trapped. Marian’s sculptures seemed to leer at him from across the room, mocking. He tried to make himself go over there and smash them, but he couldn’t do that either. All he could do was stand there shaking, screaming at her inside his head.

  He couldn’t do anything at all.

  8:30 A.M. — E.L. OXMAN

  Questions kept flashing around inside Oxman’s mind like the lighted images in a video game.

  He paced the front room of Jennifer’s apartment, from the door to the sunlit windows and back again in frustrated movements. He was alone in the room now. The policewoman, Carla Ullman, had arrived a few minutes earlier and was in the bedroom with Jennifer, making the switch of their clothing. Tobin had gone off to continue taking the statements of building residents—a probably futile activity because nobody seemed to have seen or heard the killer last night, as if he were some kind of phantom who could appear and disappear at will. Oxman would do the same as soon as Jennifer left with the uniformed officers waiting out in the hall—and he would take the questions with him, because he couldn’t seem to score an answer with any of them.

  Why had the psycho gone after Michele Butler and Marco Pollosetti, instead of Jennifer and him? Maybe the telephone call, the threats, of two nights ago had been a smokescreen; maybe the Butler girl and Pollosetti had been the targets all along. Or maybe it was some sort of cat-and-mouse ploy—taunting Oxman again, trying to show him and the police that he could strike whenever and wherever he felt like it, right under their noses. Or maybe it was part of some complex plan his madman’s brain had cooked up.

  How had he got into the building last night? None of the ground-floor doors or windows had been forced; the lab crew had already established that. And preliminary questioning of the residents had established that none of them had admitted anyone at any time prior to the shootings. Did he live in the building himself? Did he have a key to the main entrance? Court orders had been obtained and searches were being conducted now of each apartment; but even if he did live here, he was too cunning to keep his weapon or anything else incriminating on the premises, and it was a longshot at best that the searches would turn up anything.

  How had he got into Butler’s apartment? The lab boys had also examined her door and found no signs of forcible entry. Had she left it unlocked for some reason, or forgotten to lock it? Was it possible the psycho was somebody she knew well enough to give a key to?

  Had Butler recognized the assailant, either as a friend or neighbor? Or if he was a stranger, could she describe him? Surgery to remove the bullet from her chest had been successful, and the doctors thought her chances for survival were good, but as of fifteen minutes ago, when Oxman had called the hospital to check on her condition, she still hadn’t regained consciousness. There was no estimate as to when she would.

  How had the psycho known Oxman had been to bed with Jennifer on Sunday night? If he was a resident of the building, it might explain how he’d been aware that Oxman had entered her apartment, but that didn’t explain how he’d been aware that Oxman had entered her body. He couldn’t see through walls, for Christ’s sake. Lucky guess? No, the voice on the phone had sounded confident, righteously offended; he’d known. And yet how the hell could he have known?

  Was there a connection between the psycho and the shooting of Benny Hiller? Tobin had ruled out the possibility that the man who’d shot Hiller, Herb Blocker, could be the psycho; Blocker was just a man protecting his home and property against an intruder. Tobin had figured Hiller for a professional burglar, and evidence found later in Hiller’s apartment had pretty much confirmed the fact. It could be that Hiller’s death had been a coincidence, with no relation to the other shootings; that he’d just gone out on a B and E job and picked the wrong place to burglarize. The only thing wrong with that theory was, professional burglars didn’t shit where they lived. The last place any of them would pick to hit would be a building on the same block they called home. But what other reason could Hiller have had for wanting to break into the Blocker apartment? Could it have something to do with the psycho, and if so, what?

  The constant clamor of questions, the frustration, had given Oxman a headache and wired him up so tight he felt a little crazy himself. What Tobin had said earlier, about the city exploding if there were any more killings on West Ninety-eighth, might be true; they had to get the psycho and they had to get him fast. There was some sort of pattern in the answers to all those questions, in everything that had happened so far, Oxman was sure of it. If only he could fit just a few of the pieces together, enough to give him an idea of what that pattern was.…

  The bedroom door opened and Jennifer and Carla Ullman came out. Oxman stopped pacing to look at them. He didn’t have to look twice to see that a switch had been made, but he might have if he hadn’t known about it; nobody was going to tell it from a distance. Ullman bore a superficial resemblance to Jennifer—that was why she’d been picked—and with the wigs both of them now wore, and Jennifer in the police uniform and Ullman in one of Jennifer’s dresses, they passed well enough for each other.

  “All set, Ox,” Ullman said. “How do we look?”

  “Okay. I think it’ll work.”

  Jennifer came over to him. She had put on some of Ullman’s dark red lipstick, and it made her pale face look even whiter, as if it had been drained of blood. Her eyes were puffy; he wondered if she had been crying, and the thought wrenched at him. He had an impulse to take her into his arms, but he didn’t want to do that with Ullman watching. He stood still with his hands at his sides, watching her, stroking her with his eyes.

  “I don’t want to go, E.L.,” she said.

  “I know. But it’s got to be this way.”

  “Do you know where they’re taking me?”

  “Yes. A hotel on the East Side.”

  “The Haverton, Carla said.”

  He nodded. “You’ll be all right.”

  “Will I? I guess I will. But it’ll be a little easier if I can talk to you later, just for a couple of minutes.”

  “I’ll try to call you,” he said.

  “Do that. Try.” She gave him a small smile; he could see the effort it cost her. “I’m ready now.”

  Oxman resisted another impulse to gather her into his arms. Instead he turned and went to the door and unlocked it. When he opened up the two policemen in the hall came to attention. “Policewoman Ullman is leaving now,” Oxman said, just loud enough for his voice to carry; there were people behind the other doors along the hall, and if any of them were listening, the words were for their benefit. “Escort her downstairs, will you?”

  “Yes, sir,” one of the patrolman said, very casually. A natural actor.

  Jennifer came over to the door, gave Oxman one last lingering look, and then stepped out into the hall. He watched her move away with the uniforms, stiff and erect, clutching Ullman’s black bag. A knot of something painful seemed to have formed in his chest.

  When he closed and relocked the door Ullman said, “Well,” with forced cheerfulness. Nobody had told her there was anything between Jennifer and him, of course, but Ullman knew it anyway; the knowledge was in her eyes. “How about a cup of coffee, Ox?”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve had enough.”

  “You mind if I make some for myself?”

  “Go ahead. You’re supposed to live here.”

  She nodded and turned toward the kitchen. And the telephone rang.

  Oxman moved quickly over to it, gesturing to Ullman. “You answer it,” he said. “If it’s somebody for Jennifer, tell him you have a cold or something and can’t talk and hang up.”

  “Right.”

  Ullman picked up the receiver, listened for a moment, and then held it out to Oxman. “It’s Lieutenant Manders.”

&nbs
p; He took the instrument. “Oxman.”

  “I’m over at St. Luke’s, Ox,” Manders said. “Michele Butler just regained consciousness.”

  “Thank Christ. You talked to her yet?”

  “Not yet. Doc’s still with her, but he says he thinks we can go in pretty soon.”

  “Everything still under wraps?”

  “Yeah,” Manders said. The decision had been made, and the cooperation of the media solicited, to keep Michele Butler’s condition a secret; as far as the city-at-large knew, she had presumably died along with Marco Pollosetti last night. If she could identify the man who’d shot her, the Department didn’t want the psycho to know she was still alive. Or that they had his description until they were ready to circulate it. “What’s going on there?”

  “Jennifer Crane just left,” Oxman said. “That’s all.”

  “Any problems?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “All right. Hang tight; I’ll get back to you as soon as I talk to Butler.” Manders paused. “You a religious man, Ox?”

  “Not particularly. Why?”

  “Neither am I,” Manders said. “But if Butler can’t identify the perp, we’d better both start brushing up on how to pray.”

  9:10 A.M. — MICHELE BUTLER

  She lay small and still in the hospital bed, waiting for the police to come in and talk to her. Her thoughts were clear enough, if still a little fuzzy at the edges; she held them in tight check, trying to tell herself that this was just another role she was playing. The bottles and the tubes extending from them into her arm, the bandages across her chest, the sterile white room—these were just props. The scene she was about to play was a scene in a stage production. Or a soap opera. General Hospital. Even the dull pain, she told herself, was something she had created herself to enhance her portrayal of a critically wounded gunshot victim.

  But she couldn’t make herself believe it. The world of acting, of make-believe, the only world she had ever really dwelled in, had been torn asunder; it lay inside her in piles. The real world was where she lived now, and the images of terror that kept rising up in the back of her mind—the dark figure of the intruder, the gun in his hand, the explosion of Marco’s head, the spurts and streaks of blood—were real images. Nothing else mattered, nothing else had any meaning. The other world, the make-believe world, was sham and illusion, a place of ghosts and shattered dreams, and the woman who had lived in it had died when it died.