She hadn’t died, though; the real Michele Butler was still alive. And she wasn’t going to die. That was the first thing she’d asked the doctor: “Am I going to die?” And he’d said no, she was going to be all right. It had eased her, because she was terrified of death. She had never really realized that before. And maybe that hidden fear was why she had wanted so desperately to be an actress: It was a form of immortality. Except that it wasn’t. When you died you were dead. What difference did it make to you if your image lived on in films or people’s memories? Death was death, and life was life. Reality was everything.
The images of last night’s reality kept rising, rising; she felt the terror again, tasted it. She couldn’t drive it away by pretending, not ever again.
Now the police were there.
She didn’t hear the door open, but she felt their presence and turned her head, and saw them standing just inside the room. There were two of them. They came over to the bed, and the taller one with the sad face said, “I’m Lieutenant Manders, Miss Butler. I’d like to ask you some questions about last night.”
“Yes.”
He leaned down toward her. “The first question is the most important. Did you recognize the man who shot you and Marco Pollosetti?”
“No,” Michele said.
“You never saw him before?”
“I didn’t see his face very well. It was dark.”
“Can you describe him?”
“No. I’m sorry … no.”
Lieutenant Manders said, “Damn,” under his breath, and glanced at the other policeman. Then he said to her, “Try to remember, Miss Butler. Isn’t there anything at all you can tell us about him?”
“He was just a dark shape. It all happened so fast …”
“Was he a big man? Tall? Fat? Thin?”
“Big, I think. Just a man, just … a man.”
“Did he say anything before he started shooting?”
“He said … I think it was ‘The wages of sin is death.’”
“That’s all?”
“Yes. Then he shot Marco. Oh God, he just …”
“Easy, now. Did Pollosetti say anything. Did he seem to recognize the man?”
The images were vivid in her mind, now—Marco’s head exploding, and the blood, all the blood, and the gun turning to her, and the second flash …
“Miss Butler?”
“No,” she said. “No.”
“All right.” There was a look on Mander’s sad face approaching desperation. “Tell me this: Was your apartment door locked?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I locked it myself, after Marco came.”
“Then how did the killer get in?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t hear anything from the bedroom?”
“Nothing. He was just … there.”
“Who else has a key to your apartment?”
“No one.”
“Not even Pollosetti?”
“No. I’d never have given Marco a key.”
“He was your boyfriend, wasn’t he?”
“God, no. I hardly knew him.”
“Miss Butler, you were in bed with the man.”
“Yes. I … yes, I was in bed with him.”
“A man you hardly knew?”
She averted her eyes. “It was … it was just …”
“Just what?”
She wanted to say, “It was just a casual affair.” The lie, the actress’s line, was on her tongue, hot and bitter, and yet she couldn’t put it into words. Something seemed to be happening inside her, something critical, a sudden overpowering desire to take a step the old Michele Butler, the one who lived in dreams, could never have even considered. And before she could stop herself, she said, “He forced me to go to bed with him.”
Manders narrowed his eyes. “Forced you?”
“He would have gone to the police if I hadn’t slept with him. He would have exposed me.”
“Miss Butler, what are you saying?”
Don’t tell him, she thought. Don’t say any more! He’ll arrest you, you’ll go to jail, Mom and Dad will find out, everyone will know, you can’t just confess like this …
“I’m a thief,” she said. And the images went away and so did the terror, and it was as if something heavy had been lifted from her; she felt weak with relief, she felt utterly real. “I’ve been stealing jewelry from department stores and selling it to support my acting career.”
11:45 A.M. — RICHARD CORALES
He opened the door of his apartment and another cop was standing out there in the basement, the big black one who’d been around a couple of times before.
Corales cussed inside himself. He was sick of cops. He was sick of getting up in the middle of the night and answering questions and having cops stick a piece of paper in his face that said they could come into his apartment, come right into his home, and poke around like he was a crook or something. He was sick of murders and people rubbernecking on the streets and television cameras. He wanted to be left alone so he could do his job. That was all he had now, all he’d ever had and ever would have—just a big half-Puerto Rican building superintendent, nothing special even though he’d won forty-nine straight hands of gin rummy, because that damned Willie Lorsec wouldn’t let him win fifty straight and get into the Guinness Book. He was sick of guys like Willie too, who pretended to be your friend so they could get something for themselves. Why couldn’t they all just go away and leave him the hell alone?
“Detective Tobin,” the black cop said, showing his badge. “I’ve got a few questions, Mr. Corales, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind,” Corales said. “I got to go out. I got to go to the hardware store for some faucet washers.”
“This won’t take very long.”
“Listen, I already told you people. I don’t know nothing about what happened upstairs last night. I was sleeping. How many times you gonna come around bothering me?”
“I’m not here about the shooting upstairs,” Tobin said. “I’m here about the one up the block.”
“Up the block?”
“Benny Hiller. You know about that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I been told. I don’t know nothing about that, either.”
“You knew Hiller, though, didn’t you?”
“Sure I knew him. He lived right here in this building.”
“Did you know he was a burglar?”
Corales blinked at him. “What?”
“A burglar,” Tobin said. “Did you have any idea that was what he did for a living?”
“Chrissake, no, I didn’t have no idea. Was Mr. Hiller really a burglar? No kidding?”
“No kidding. Did you have much contact with him?”
“Contact?”
“See him often, talk to him.”
“I’d see him around sometimes during the day, while I was working,” Corales said. “He was mostly home during the day. He said he worked nights in some café.”
“When was the last time you talked to him?”
“Sunday, I guess.”
“Where was that?”
“Down here in the basement. He come down to talk to me.”
“What about?”
“He didn’t like me letting Willie Lorsec come in and go through the trash.”
“Who’s Willie Lorsec?”
He’s a snake-in-the-grass, Corales thought, that’s who he is. But he said, “A junk collector.”
“Does he live on this street?”
“Yeah. Between West End and Broadway.”
“Are you a friend of his?”
“Not no more.”
“How come?”
Corales didn’t feel like telling Tobin about the forty-nine straight winning hands; he didn’t want to think about it anymore, because it just made him angry. “He wasn’t really my friend. He just come around so I’d let him go through the trash.”
“To collect junk, is th
at it?”
“Yeah.”
“And Benny Hiller didn’t like Lorsec doing that?”
“No, he didn’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“He said Willie stole some things from his trash.”
“That was the word he used, ‘stole’?”
Corales nodded. “I told him it wasn’t stealing to take things a person has thrown away. But he got mad and called me a dummy. I don’t like that. I’m not a dummy.”
“Did Hiller tell you what these things were that Lorsec took?”
“No. He never said.”
“Do you have any idea what they were?”
“No. Willie took all kinds of stuff; I never watched to see what most of it was.”
“What did Hiller want you to do? Get these things of his back from Lorsec?”
“No. He just said he didn’t want me to let Willie into the basement no more.”
“Did he indicate he was going to try to get the stuff back from Lorsec himself?”
“I guess so. He asked me where Willie lived.”
“Did you tell him?”
“No. I don’t know where he lives.”
“You just told me Lorsec lives in the next block.”
“I never been to his place,” Corales said. “He always come here to see me.”
“Then how do you know where he lives?”
“He told me. And I see him around, collecting his junk.”
“What else can you tell me about Lorsec?”
“I don’t know too much. Willie told me once he’d traveled a lot and worked at a bunch of jobs, but the onlt thing made him happy was collecting and selling junk.”
“Did he tell you where he was from?”
“Someplace up in New England. He never said where.”
“Any other personal things he might have told you?”
“I guess not.”
“Well, what did you talk about when he came to see you?”
“We didn’t talk much about nothing. Sometimes he helped me do some things, carrying boxes and things; the rest of the time he rummaged in the trash or we played gin rummy.” Corales pursed his lips. “I’m a better gin rummy player than Willie is. I’m a lot better than he is.”
“Good for you,” Tobin said. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Lorsec is now, would you?”
“No. He come around earlier this morning, around eight, but I told him to get out. I don’t know where he went after that, and I don’t care.”
“All right, Mr. Corales. Thanks for your help. I may need to talk to you again later on, so I’d appreciate it if you’d stick close to the building.”
“Yeah,” Corales said. Christ, weren’t they ever going to leave him alone?
When the black cop was gone Corales went out through the alley door and up Ninety-eighth toward Amsterdam, where the hardware store was. He didn’t look at the people and the police cars and the television cameras; the hell with all of them. And as he walked, he wondered if he’d got Willie in trouble with the cops. He hoped he had. It would serve Willie right for keeping him out of the Guinness Book of World Records.
THE COLLIER TAPES
I have come out onto the balcony to dictate. Down below and across the river, my little universe swelters and writhes under the lash of heat. But up here, there is a cooling breeze and I am quite comfortable. The difference, if I may be permitted a small joke, is as between heaven and earth.
The Eye sits before me, waiting. How beautiful it is in the sunlight! How its brass fittings shine! Sometimes, as now, I am struck by the awesome power it represents, and I feel toward it—perhaps oddly, perhaps not—as I felt toward women in the days before my apotheosis. To touch it is to experience a feeling akin to ecstasy. To blend my eye with its Eye is to know rapture of the purest sort.
Soon I will go to it, and together we shall learn what my flock and what the police are doing this afternoon. But there is no hurry. Nothing those foolish minions of the law can do will affect me in any way. The power that is mine expands within me. I can wreak my vengeance daily if I choose, from now until forever, and they can do nothing except to sit in awe far greater than my own for the Eye.
I need not even wield the sword of justice myself to destroy a sinner, as has been proven by the death of Benny Hiller. God’s will is all that is necessary; the hand of a mortal can carry out the deed. I must confess that I laughed when I learned, via the television, of Hiller’s demise. How confused the police must be! They cannot comprehend the scope of my power to eliminate evil. Hiller was evil, a common burglar, a predator preying on the just, and I decreed that he must die, and so he died. It is as simple and as awesome as that.
Tonight I will go down among my children again, and when the time is right I will end another iniquitous life. Tomorrow night, perhaps, I will strike yet again. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, while the world continues to creep at its petty pace. For God is in his heaven, and he will see to it that all is right with his world.
The time, according to my watch, is twelve-oh-six P.M. Let it be noted.
Detective Oxman has less than twelve hours to live.
12:50 P.M. — E.L. OXMAN
He was on his way back to 1276, after a session with the media and more frustrating interviews with block residents, when he saw Artie Tobin come out through the front entrance. He waited on the sidewalk for Tobin to descend the stairs. The street was deserted, baking under a white-hazed noonday sun that had the look of a boiled egg. Headquarters had decided not to cordon off the area just yet, but they had installed teams of patrolmen on Riverside Drive and West End Avenue to keep curious citizens and the media wolves from clogging the block. What was it Artie had said this morning? Something about the area being turned into a war zone. Yeah. It felt like one already; all that was missing was flak-jacketed troops and barbed-wire bunkers.
“Been looking for you, Elliot Leroy,” Tobin said. He squinted up from beneath his bushy brows at the milky haze overhead. “Christ, it’s hot.”
“And getting hotter.”
“Yeah. Anything new?”
“Not a damned thing. The searches of the apartments in there”—he nodded toward 1276—“were negative; another dead end. You heard about the Butler woman, I guess?”
Tobin inclined his head. “I checked in with Smiley a little while ago. Good news she’s gonna be okay; bad news otherwise.”
“That’s what I meant about it getting hotter,” Oxman said. “You turn up anything?”
“Well, I got something worth checking out. Too early to tell if it’ll lead anywhere. You know a guy named Willie Lorsec, friend of the super’s here, Corales?”
“Lorsec. The junk dealer?”
“That’s the one.”
“I talked to him briefly a few days ago. What about him?”
“Corales told me Benny Hiller was on Lorsec’s case about some things missing from Hiller’s trash. Seems Hiller was hot to get the stuff back.”
“What stuff?”
“Corales didn’t know.”
“Did he know why Hiller was so hot to get it back?”
“He says not. You get an address for Lorsec?”
“Doesn’t Corales know where he lives?”
“Just that it’s someplace in the next block. He’s never been to Lorsec’s place.”
Oxman fished out his notebook, scanned through it. “Here we go. Eleven-oh-seven West Ninety-eighth. One of the rooming houses near Broadway, probably.”
“You haven’t been there either, huh?”
“No. I talked to Lorsec in Corales’s apartment and I didn’t get around to checking him out again. Maybe I should have.”
“Well, eleven-oh-seven’s not the building Hiller got himself shot in, that’s for sure. I figured there might be some connection between Lorsec and Hiller being in that building last night, but now I don’t see how that’s possible. I’ll go have a talk with Lorsec anyway.”
“I’ll be back in the Crane apartment if
you need me.”
“Right.”
Oxman entered 1276. Upstairs, he knocked on the door to Jennifer’s apartment, identified himself, and added Jennifer’s name for the benefit of any listening ears. Ullman let him in.
“Any calls?” he asked her.
“None. It’s been quiet, Ox.”
“You eat yet?”
“Not yet. I can fix something, if you want.”
“I’ll do it. It’s better than pacing.”
He went into the kitchen, found some salami and cheese in the refrigerator, some bread and a packet of potato chips in a cupboard, and set everything on the table. He was getting utensils out of the drawer next to the sink when the telephone rang.
Ullman had already picked up by the time he shoved open the swing door. He watched her listen, frown, and then cover the mouthpiece with her hand and turn toward him. “It’s for you,” she said.
“Manders?”
“No. He didn’t give his name.”
Premonition touched Oxman. He moved quickly across the room, took the receiver. “Oxman here.”
“This is the voice of God, Detective Oxman.”
Rage boiled inside him. In all the years he had been a cop, he had never hated any of the criminals he’d had to deal with, not even the drug dealers and the child pornographers, as much as he hated this cold-blooded purveyor of death. He didn’t trust himself to speak for a moment, until he had himself under control. Then he said, “What do you want this time?”
“Did you really believe you could deceive the Eye?”
“What does that mean?”
“You know what it means, Detective Oxman. The Eye is all-seeing; nothing can escape the Eye. Certainly not the fact that Jennifer Crane is no longer there.”
The Eye: A Novel of Suspense Page 22