by John Lutz
He’d begun to die when the gun his father aimed at him clicked on a bullet that hadn’t fired.
Verna’s letter wasn’t in that afternoon’s mail, but it arrived the next day. Dante didn’t open it. He knew why Verna didn’t want him, the only reason it could be: she’d seen beneath the thin new skin to the old Dante, the real Dante. He’d stared into the mirror last night and seen the real Dante himself, like sharp bones pushing through the flesh of a corpse.
He used both hands to crumple the unopened envelope with Verna’s handwriting on it into as small a damaged object as possible, then dropped it in one of the trash receptacles that were placed around the campus.
Verna was simply something that had happened.
Something in the past.
38
The present
This time when the Night Sniper’s simple typed note bearing a theater seat number arrived in Repetto’s mail, they didn’t have to waste time figuring out which theater.
“This is it,” Repetto said, standing up from his desk chair and showing Meg and Birdy the note. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” Meg asked, replacing the plastic lid she’d just removed from her Styrofoam coffee cup. She’d been prepared to sit at her desk, get her caffeine fix, and work the phones.
“We don’t have to play by his rules this time.” Repetto pointed to the Times on his desk, open to the page with theater listings.
Meg and Birdy looked. A play at the off-off Broadway theater Candle in the Night was circled: Beg, Borrow, or Steal.
“If he stays true to form, the Night Sniper’s next victim’s going to be the beggar man,” Repetto said.
“Big if, with this sicko,” Birdy said.
“Everything is,” Repetto said. “That’s one way he yanks our strings. But this is the only play listed with ‘beg’ in the title. It might not be the only place we have to search, but it should be the first.”
Fast and sure, when he decided it was time to move, Meg thought. It was one reason she respected Repetto.
He was already on his way out.
Meg and Birdy followed, Meg taking a hurried sip from where the tab was bent back on her cup’s plastic lid and scalding her tongue.
Candle in the Night was located in SoHo, in what used to be a restaurant. Repetto remembered having dinner there years ago with Lora and one of her clients, who was writing a book about cops and pumped him for information. There were show posters outside it now, advertising Beg, Borrow, or Steal. One of them featured the play’s stars, a handsome young guy wearing spiked hair and a tuxedo, who was handing a necklace to a beautiful young woman with platinum-blond hair and oversize blue eyes. Repetto noticed her name was Tiffany something. Near the bottom of the poster was a Village Voice review blurb that said, Delightful. . clever. . scintillating.
The theater was larger than it appeared from outside. Stepped wooden platforms had been installed to provide unobstructed seating. The stage was narrow and seemed to be at a slight angle to the audience. There was lots of lighting equipment in shadows overhead, and the set, what appeared to be an English drawing room or club, was surprisingly professional and richly detailed.
The seats on each side of a center aisle were a bit worn looking and had probably been acquired when an older, larger theater uptown had been renovated or demolished. They were bolted to the plywood risers and still clearly numbered.
Repetto led the way to 12-F, the number in the Night Sniper’s note, and raised the seat to check beneath it.
He looked, felt.
“Nothing.”
“I think you better talk to Irv,” a voice said.
Repetto turned and saw Jack Straithorn, the young production manager who’d met them at the theater entrance to admit them. Lurking behind Straithorn was a short, potbellied man in a gray work outfit that was too tight on him everywhere. He had a slightly crooked, smarmy smile that Repetto figured stayed stuck to him even when he slept. Irv, Repetto assumed.
Correctly. “I found this ’bout twenty minutes ago when I was sweepin’ up,” Irv said, holding out a tightly folded scrap of paper. “Had some tape on it, but I tore it off.”
Meg moved out of the way so Repetto could accept the note from Irv. He thought about lecturing the man on tampering with evidence but figured it would serve no purpose.
“I was gonna call you guys,” Irv said, reading Repetto’s mind.
Repetto simply nodded as he unfolded the note and read: The show will go on.
He handed the note to Meg, who read it with Birdy peering over her shoulder.
“So what’s it mean?” Birdy asked.
“Irv looked at the note earlier,” Straithorn said in a voice spiked with irony. He made a theatrical motion toward Irv, who was smirking.
“Means he’s gonna kill again,” Irv said. “There’s gonna be another act, and ain’t nothin’ nobody can do to stop it.”
The Night Sniper stood at a bus stop down the block, watching the entrance to Candle in the Night, with its makeshift marquee and movielike glassed show-poster frames. He was wearing a black beret and the Madre Verdi sunglasses he’d bought last year on the Costa del Sol. The glass’s lenses were dark green mirrors on the outside, but he could see out quite clearly.
Meg Doyle emerged from the theater first. Then Repetto and Birdy Bellman. The opposition. The Night Sniper smiled. They thought they were taking control, having figured out early this time which theater to go to and find his message. They didn’t know he’d been waiting for them here.
A bus rumbled up and he moved back, making it clear to the driver that there was no need to stop.
But there had been a need. The bus’s air brakes hissed, and it pulled up to the curb. Its rear door opened and a large woman laden with plastic shopping bags stepped down onto the sidewalk. The woman stood with her feet far apart and looked around, as if trying to orient herself, then walked swiftly away in the opposite direction from where the Night Sniper stood. She’d only glanced over toward where he stood and paid him little attention. The bus roared and belched foul exhaust fumes, then lumbered away.
Repetto and his team were still standing in front of the theater. It looked as if they were studying the message that had been taped beneath the theater seat. Repetto was holding what appeared to be a slip of paper while Meg was pointing to it and talking. When she was finished, Birdy Bellman began to speak. Repetto was the listener. It amused the Night Sniper to see them standing there discussing his message. If they only knew, they could simply walk half a block down and discuss it with the man in the dark beret and sunglasses. If they only knew.
Repetto refolded the message, then slipped it into what looked like a plastic folder-an evidence bag-and slid it into an inside pocket of his sport coat. When the coat flapped open, the Night Sniper got a brief view of a handgun in a tan leather shoulder holster.
The three detectives crossed the street toward a white Ford sedan, their unmarked car for the day. Detective Meg got in behind the steering wheel. Repetto sat up front on the passenger side, Bellman in the rear.
The Night Sniper watched as the car’s tailpipe emitted faint dancing fumes. A few seconds later it pulled away from the curb.
He had his own car parked nearby, but he made no attempt to follow. He’d come here to make sure they’d figured out the correct theater, that they were moving along the tracks he’d laid. Mission accomplished. Anyway, he knew where all three of the detectives lived, knew more about them than they dreamed. If he wanted them, he could find them.
Right now, he didn’t want to find them. He had other things to do.
He glanced at his watch and began walking down the block at a brisk pace. He had a luncheon engagement, and he didn’t want to be late.
Zoe’s apartment this time. Her new lover wasn’t only handsome, he somehow knew precisely what she wanted, and how much and when and where. She lay on her back, her bare legs clamped around his sweating body as he thrust into her again and again. Her arms were twisted
over her head and somehow he managed to clasp both her wrists together with one powerful hand as he skillfully altered his rhythm and force so she remained on the edge of her third orgasm. Each time she almost climaxed he tightened his grip on her arms so the brief pain brought her back; then he slowly began to take her up again. The bedsprings sang as if in accompaniment to the internal crescendos of her body. Even as she lay there suffering so wonderfully, a part of her thought that he must have a lot of experience to be so good at this.
He drove into her harder and more determinedly, relentlessly, and she knew that this time he would let her reach the peak.
Afterward she was too exhausted to move. He released her limp arms, kissed her perspiring forehead, then unwound her legs from around him and rolled off to lie beside her. The ceiling fan played cool air over the length of her sweat-damp body. She felt empty. Spent. When she tried to speak, she was unable to find words. She turned to him, and as if expecting it, he kissed her lips, then the tip of her nose, and lay back. It was like a routine he’d practiced.
“You’re all right?” he asked.
“Better than,” she said, her breath still ragged.
He propped himself up on an elbow and gazed down at her. “You’re a wonderful creation, Zoe.” She felt his hand slide over her left breast, gently squeezing her nipple, then moving lower.
“I’m a creation that’s going to be late for work,” she told him with a weak smile, grasping his wrist.
He immediately withdrew his hand, knowing when not to pressure her. “Want to shower together?”
“I should say no, but I won’t.”
“That’s my Zoe.”
She was, of course, much later getting back to her office than she’d planned.
She also hadn’t planned on drinking a martini and two glasses of wine at lunch, then going to her apartment and getting her brains fucked out. The drinks they’d taken into the shower hadn’t helped, either. She was sure she no longer smelled of sex, and wasn’t tipsy enough for anyone to notice, but it wouldn’t hurt if she had about an hour alone in her private office to let the effects of the afternoon wear off.
After telling her assistant she wasn’t to be disturbed, especially not for phone calls, she closed her office door and went to her desk. She had to be especially wary of the phone, since she might unintentionally slur a word. Settling back in her leather desk chair, she sighed. Now she was getting sleepy. Great.
Resolution: No more love in the afternoon. It’s all too. . inebriating.
She caught herself smiling and felt a twinge of anger. What was she thinking? It made more sense to chastise herself. She covered her face with her hands, which were unexpectedly cool.
Damn, I didn’t want this to happen today. Where was my vaunted willpower? Am I sorry it happened? Of course not. Okay, then. You’ve been a big girl for a long while. Stop your bitching, Zoe. Self-recrimination is nothing if not self-defeating.
How does he do this to me?
Peeking through her fingertips, she saw a file folder on her desk that hadn’t been there when she left … over two hours ago.
She leaned forward and opened the folder. Repetto had sent her a copy of the latest Night Sniper theater note, as they’d agreed. It had been located in a theater called Candle in the Night. She picked up the note and read. The show will go on.
She smiled. Substitute “game” for “show.” He was taunting them now. The note was the kind of thing that must make Repetto furious. He was like so many of the old-time, hard-ass cops. Dinosaurs. Too proud for their own good.
But one thing about them was, they never gave up. Never. And when it came to focused and applied obsession, Repetto was their leader.
Zoe sat back in her comfortable leather desk chair and wondered if the Night Sniper truly understood that about Repetto. Repetto might seem primal, but he was locked onto his target like a heat-seeking missile, and the Night Sniper was burning hotter and hotter with his own detectable obsession.
She fell asleep wondering.
Some of the actors who played at Candle in the Night ate regularly at the diner on the corner. Like most actors, they’d had their hard times, and they knew homeless Joe DeLong and helped him out whenever they could. Joe had told them he’d been an actor himself long ago. He knew they didn’t believe him. But then they couldn’t completely disbelieve him.
Joe would do his panhandling across the street from the diner, a bit diagonally so the people in the window booths wouldn’t have to look at him whenever they glanced outside. At the same time, he wanted people to know he was there. Often, after the ten o’clock curtain for whatever was playing now at the theater, half a dozen of the actors, including Tiffany Taft, the star, would make their way to the diner for a late-night snack.
Tiffany was in her twenties, with bright blond hair and wide blue eyes to go with a gorgeous figure. Not scrawny like a model, but with lots of curves, the way Joe liked his women. Whenever he thought about women these days. He’d studied her on the blown-up photo on the show poster in front of the theater. He liked the sassy way she stood, with her knees locked and her rear end stuck out. He liked the way she pouted up her little mouth. There wasn’t much he didn’t like about Tiffany.
And she must like him, at least a little. She’d smiled at him once. And when she ate at the diner, he could count on her leaving a white takeout container on top of the trash receptacle on the corner.
After they’d all departed, Joe would pick up the takeout boxes left by the actors, but he was always careful to know which one was Tiffany’s. She sometimes left him almost complete portions. Once he’d even found a chocolate after-dinner mint in with some untouched pizza slices.
At times Joe thought that if he weren’t so fucked-up, he’d approach Tiffany, introduce himself properly, and try to get to know her. As it was, he’d probably frighten her to death, and that would be the end of the takeout containers. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t ever going to talk to her unless the voices informed him it was okay to do so.
Every night, or so it seemed to him, Joe would sit on the curb near the Aal Commerce Building, an ornate, iron-fronted structure on Broadway. High on the building was a tall metal antenna with a light on top that blinked red in the darkness. No voices emitted from the antenna during the day, but at night, when Joe sat on the curb leaning his back against the light post, the transmission would be just for him. Some of the voices even referred to him by name. They warned him who to watch out for, who was on the side of his enemies. Tiffany, the voices assured him, was not one of the rude people that made his life, and the lives of countless others, so difficult.
Joe DeLong’s schizophrenia hadn’t presented itself until he was in his early twenties-about the usual age for males, he’d learned later. The disease ran in his family, on his mother’s side, so he shouldn’t have been surprised. His uncle Roger had spent most of his life in a sanitarium in Virginia, and Great-Aunt Vi, whom he’d never met, was rumored to have committed suicide when she ran her car into a bridge abutment on her way to see her psychiatrist. But schizophrenia was a subject seldom discussed in Joe’s family. His wife, Eva, had never heard the word in his presence until three years into their marriage, when Joe became difficult and she had to turn to someone for help. After her phone conversation with his mother came the first visit to the psychiatrist.
When the disease struck, it struck hard. It shook Joe’s life and turned it upside down. Medication helped, the increasing dosages of lithium, but he couldn’t remember to take his medicine every time. You had to do that, take it every time you were supposed to. It said so in the instructions right on the vials or bottles, even though you were too sick to pay much attention, which was why you needed the medicine. Sometimes the voices helped him to remember. They gave him guidance.
The job went first. Who needed a phone solicitor who might say anything at any time, and to anyone? Eva left him; then Joe drove wedge after wedge between himself and the rest of his family. He began delibe
rately refusing his medication. Alcohol was almost as good. Alcohol was more socially acceptable than mental illness. Alcohol temporarily relieved the fear. But alcohol was sneaky, invented by the enemy. Alcohol exacted its price.
After one of the increasingly frequent arguments with his mother, and a fistfight with his father, Joe left home for good with nothing but a suitcase full of clothes and a wallet containing almost a thousand dollars-all the money left in his savings account.
The money lasted less than a month, as Joe sank deeper into alcoholism. Some of it went for booze and rent, and some even went for food. Hamburgers and French fries at first, then canned stew, then watery soup.
When there was no more money, he left the fleabag hotel where he’d been sleeping and began his life on the streets. It wasn’t as if he had a choice. He was broke, and the voices said his family, even if he had wanted to talk to them, were away somewhere on a ship. Eva was married now to a surgeon in Warsaw. The voices spoke of him as “the sawbones in Warsaw.” Joe always smiled when he heard that.
Joe’s luck didn’t last much longer than his money. He was mugged one night in Washington Square and walked thereafter with a slight limp. The pain never left his right hip. Wine helped that, when he had enough money to buy some. The wine dulled the pain and helped to keep his mind from shattering. The food left by the Candle in the Night actors helped to keep his body from destroying itself. The voices said that’s what the body did when it couldn’t get enough to eat: it digested itself. Joe often had bad dreams about that.
When the weather was nice, like this time of year, he didn’t think it was such a terrible life there on the streets. He’d perfected techniques for panhandling, for begging directly to carefully chosen fellow citizens. He could tell by their shoes, sometimes by their aura, if they’d part with some pocket change. Often enough, he was right. He took an odd kind of pride in being an effective beggar. Pride in what he did for money. That was a part of his soul that begging couldn’t smear.