Fear the Night n-5

by John Lutz

  “My, you are observant.”

  “I’ll stay on the phone,” Bobby said. “I’m gonna keep following him and talk you guys to him.”

  “No, Mr. . ”

  “Mays. Bobby Mays.”

  “Right. Ex-cop, Philly. Don’t follow him, Mr. Mays. You understand me? That’s our job.”

  “Damn it, you don’t believe me! I can tell.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “This time he’s real! I know it. He’s real!”

  “This time? Real?”

  “I told you there was another time. I even went to the police and tried to get them to listen.”

  “Ah.”

  Bobby didn’t like his tone. “Britain. Sergeant Britain. Please, listen, I-”

  “You listen, Mr. Mays. I don’t want you hurt. I’ll see a car is sent. The police’ll take care of this matter. Stop following this man, whether he’s real or not. Don’t interfere in any way. I’m. . ’elling you for. .”

  Britain’s voice was fading. Breaking up.

  “Sergeant? You gotta take this seriously.”

  “I. . ’sure you I am. .”

  The tone of Britain’s voice changed; then the silence in the phone was no longer alive. Bobby lowered it from his ear and looked at the dimming screen. No rabbit. No power. Nothing but a tiny battery icon indicating that the phone needed charging.

  The phone was dead.

  At the other end of the connection, Sergeant Roland Britain realized he was now talking to himself.

  “Don’t interfere in any way,” he said again into the phone, just in case the caller might hear.

  He’s real this time.

  There was no way Britain could recommend sending a car on the information he’d just been given. And from such a source.

  He hung up and forgot about the call.

  Disgusted, Bobby wiped his fingerprints from the dead cell phone and dropped it down a sewer grate.

  For another two blocks he followed the homeless man who was walking too fast, who didn’t quite belong. Then he lost him.

  He was like a shadow moving into another shadow, and he didn’t emerge.

  Bobby retreated into a dark building nook and watched the street for a while, thinking maybe Britain would actually see to it that a car was sent to investigate his phone call.

  But a car never came.

  Not that Bobby saw.

  58

  It was almost three hours before the end of his shift, but Sergeant Roland Britain was leaving early to visit his wife, Junie, in the hospital. She’d just had her gall bladder removed by that new kind of surgery where they deflate the thing and pull it out somehow and leave only three or four little puncture holes in her belly. She’d be coming home tomorrow after only one night in the hospital. The insurance company wasn’t out so much money that way. Insurance, Britain thought. Everything these days was for the insurance companies. Or the big oil companies.

  The deal was, Britain was going to take off for the hospital and buy some flowers on the way, and the sergeant for the next shift was coming in early to cover for him.

  Nice guy, Dan O’Day, to agree to the arrangement. Someday Britain would return the favor.

  There was O’Day now, coming in through the precinct house door, looking neatly turned out as usual, one of those smooth-skinned, florid Irishmen who aged well and always seemed to dress smartly. Even in uniform, like tonight, creases in his pants and sleeves, shoes shined, even a badge that glittered, O’Day stood out among the other cops in the precinct. When he spoke, especially at muster, people listened. Britain figured most of it was Irish bullshit, but they listened.

  “Quiet night, Roland?” O’Day asked, as he came around behind the desk.

  “So far. Nothing shaking on the Night Sniper asshole looking to shoot Repetto’s daughter.”

  “Maybe he’ll choose another night for his sick games,” O’Day said. He stood beside Britain and scanned the shift log. Two mugging suspects, an alleged rapist, two drunks, a guy on a domestic violence charge who’d been in at least twice before, three prostitutes (apparently working as a team), and a smash-and-grab suspect in a jewelry store robbery. Quiet enough, O’Day thought.

  “All these sterling citizens in the holdover or Central Booking?” he asked, setting aside the activity log.

  “Yep. And I already fed the info into the computer. Our wife beater’s waiting for his attorney, who’s supposed to be driving in from Long Island.”

  “Must be a friend, coming all that way instead of waiting for morning. Let’s hope he’s a real estate lawyer.”

  Sergeant Britain slid down from the high-legged, padded stool behind the desk, and O’Day took his place.

  “I ’preciate this, you filling in for me,” Britain said.

  O’Day waved a hand in dismissal. “I’ll give you the chance to return the favor.”

  “Maybe I’ll stand you for drinks sometime at Chargers,” Britain said. Chargers was a small but busy bar where many of the precinct cops hung out off-duty.

  “That’d do it.”

  “Oh yeah,” Britain said, as he picked up his cap and started to leave. “There was this phone call on the Amelia Repetto stakeout, didn’t mean squat.” He walked back to the desk and leaned over to check his notes. “Homeless dude, or so he said. I wrote this down left-handed while I was on the phone and can’t read my fuckin’ handwriting. Can’t make out his name. He said he was an ex-cop from Philly.”

  “Really?” O’Day continued reading the log.

  “Nutcase, though. He claimed he was in Amelia’s neighborhood, on Eighty-ninth Street, tailing some guy he thought was suspicious, and he wanted me to send a car so he could talk us to him with a cell phone.”

  “Homeless dude had a cell phone?”

  “I wondered about that too. He had an explanation like alphabet soup. Anyway, he wasn’t even sure the guy he was following was real.”

  “That’d make a difference.” O’Day turned the page and was glad to find that the next one was blank. He began reading the contents listed in suspect possession envelopes that were stacked in a nearby wire basket. It was good to see that each of the hookers carried condoms. “If Homeless didn’t think the guy was real, why was he following him?”

  “Said he was real this time, not like last time.”

  “Uh-hm. There’s a certain logic in that. Why’d he think the guy was suspicious?”

  “Walking too fast, is what he said. Not like one of the real homeless. Walking with too much haste and purpose.”

  O’Day looked up from what he was reading and stared at Britain. “Those were his words? ‘Too much haste and purpose’?”

  “Those words exactly. Said it twice. Sounds like an ex-cop, don’t he?”

  O’Day was down off the stool now. “Used to be a cop in Philly, you said?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “His name happen to be Billy. . no, Bobby Mays?”

  Britain appeared puzzled. “Yeah, that’s it. You know him?”

  “He was in here before. Not long after a Night Sniper shooting. Mays is homeless, all right, but I gotta say he didn’t strike me as a nutcase. Not used up yet. Something about him.”

  “Still got cop in him, maybe,” Britain said. “That came across despite all the real and unreal bullshit.” He shifted his weight and glanced at the wall clock. “Listen, I gotta go or Junie’ll be after me for missing visiting hours.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Good, good, fine.” Britain had his cap on and was moving toward the door. “I’ll tell her you asked about her.”

  “Do that,” O’Day said. “Give her my best. She’s a fine woman just for putting up with you.”

  “Couldn’t argue with that,” Britain said, and was out into the night.

  O’Day sat for a moment looking at the framed photo of Derek Jeter smiling at him from beneath his NYPD cap.

  Not thinking about Jeter, though. Thinking about Bobby Mays, about what there was in th
e poor young guy that made it impossible for O’Day simply to dismiss him from his mind.

  Should he believe Mays was sane enough to make sense?

  Maybe.

  Buy into what Mays had said to Britain?

  Maybe.

  O’Day was a man who recognized a fork in the road when he came upon one, especially one that might skewer him. He knew he’d be sticking out his neck if he called about Mays’s conversation with Britain and got everyone including God and the NYPD stirred up over nothing. Mays was, after all, a homeless man who apparently hallucinated. But considering his previous contact with Mays, maybe O’Day’s neck would be stuck out even further if he didn’t call and the Sniper took a shot at Amelia Repetto.

  Maybe was reason enough.

  He picked up the phone.

  59

  Repetto listened carefully on his cell phone to what Melbourne was telling him. He found himself gripping the phone too hard and made a conscious effort to loosen the pressure of his thumb.

  When Melbourne was finished, Repetto waited a few seconds, then said, “To sum it up, we’ve got a homeless man who admittedly hallucinates telling us the Night Sniper is in the neighborhood, might be carrying a rifle, and might be moving toward Amelia.”

  Melbourne had known Repetto too long to be surprised by this note of skepticism. “We both know it’s something more than that.”

  “Do we?”

  “I know what you’re doing,” Melbourne said. “You’re trying to play devil’s advocate. Okay, I’ll go along. Our homeless man’s an ex-cop-”

  “Says he is.”

  “Okay, says so. This is the second time he’s reported seeing this guy who doesn’t set right with him as one of the homeless, thinks he might be a phony. Both sightings were when the Night Sniper might have been in the area.”

  “Might.”

  “Always,” Melbourne said. “Something else. We both know what it takes to prompt somebody like this Bobby Mays to contact the police. We’re the people who roust him for loitering or panhandling, make his life even harder. Still, he did his ex-cop citizen’s duty.”

  “All kinds of psychos,” Repetto said, “imagining and doing all kinds of things.”

  “All kinds, yes. But Mays isn’t imagining he was a cop. Philadelphia P.D. says he was one of theirs, and a good one till a family tragedy put him on the skids.”

  Repetto’s mind was working furiously, listening to Melbourne while unconsciously shuffling facts, priorities, and nuances, trying to synthesize what he knew with what he felt, which was often simply knowing on a deeper level.

  “That all we got?” he asked.

  “’Bout it.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Repetto said, switching positions with Melbourne. “We’ve got what Sergeant Dan O’Day’s gut tells him.”

  “That make it enough?” Melbourne asked. “What a veteran cop senses is the ore in the rock?”

  “I know O’Day slightly. Times I’ve seen him, he struck me as the type who lives the Job.”

  “I know him more than slightly,” Melbourne said. “He’s what you’re talking about. He’s a good cop. A good man. Ground smooth but not down.” Melbourne was silent for a couple of beats. “He’s not so unlike you, Vin. I’m gonna let this be your call.”

  “I’m calling it,” Repetto said. “We’re going on the assumption the Sniper’s in the trap. Let’s spring it. Send what we have. We’ll cordon off the neighborhood and tighten the perimeter while we search the surrounded area.”

  “Done,” Melbourne said. “Call Amelia and whoever you have posted there and alert them to what’s going on.”

  “Soon as this conversation’s finished,” Repetto said, and broke the connection.

  His blood was racing but his mind was calm. This was what he used to live for, this moment when the balance might be shifting, when he could feel it shifting. Everything was suddenly gaining momentum in the same direction, rushing toward the telling instant, like a narrowing focus that would achieve laser intensity. The grueling teamwork of the past long weeks, the breakthroughs and revelations large and small, were all converging.

  O’Day’s gut instinct had become Repetto’s.

  As he pecked out Amelia’s number on his cell phone, Repetto knew that if it weren’t for the danger to Amelia, he’d be loving this.

  The Night Sniper was confident as he walked the dark streets of the West Eighties. His opponents knew now where he’d fired from when the mayor was shot, and had his general, useless description, compliments of the Marimont desk clerk. All the better, that description. The contrast between the Marimont shooting and what was about to happen to Amelia Repetto would be too much of a gap for them to leap. As would the contrast between the perceived shooters. Homeless people didn’t take suites at the Marimont Hotel. The police knew how wealthy he really was, and their mental image of him would be that of a cultured, influential man in a tailored suit, not one of the helpless and homeless wandering the avenues.

  Tonight, in his worn-out clothes, his tattered long raincoat concealing his rifle, he was treading the stage in costume perfect for the role. Beneath the darkened faux stubble that would wipe off easily, he couldn’t contain a thin smile. He feared his pursuers, feared the psychotically resolute Repetto especially, but he did love the game.

  When he reached a dark passageway, he glanced about, then entered the shadows and became one. The narrow passageway would take him to the next block, where he knew he could enter an apartment building through a side door whose lock he’d already neutralized.

  Good! He was sure no one had seen him entering the building. There was a laundry room in the basement, and he had to get past its door without being noticed. An obvious vagrant in the building would inspire curiosity if not immediate alarm.

  His luck held like an omen. Caution wasn’t necessary here. No one was washing or drying tonight.

  With a small pair of wire cutters from a coat pocket, he disabled the fire alarm system. He entered the interior fire escape stairwell without an alarm sounding and made his way to the third floor. Already in his hand was the key to the sparsely furnished apartment a handsome young executive about to be transferred to New York had subleased for a year. Of course, the information given to the apartment’s primary lessee, who’d placed an ad in the Times, was false, but that didn’t matter now. The information was backed up by competently forged identification, and a deposit check the Sniper knew had cleared a Los Angeles bank. The useless rental agreement would become known within a matter of weeks, but that was okay.

  The Sniper had required use of the apartment for only a short time. For the few visits he’d made in order to prepare.

  And for tonight.

  The apartment was in a vine-covered four-story brownstone diagonally across the street from Amelia Repetto’s apartment, three buildings down the block. Though it was on the third floor, observation had convinced the Sniper he could have a clear shot into Amelia’s lower-level living room, and into one of the bedrooms.

  He went to the window overlooking the street and raised it about six inches, adjusted the blinds, and sat down in a small but comfortable wing chair he’d pulled close. From where he sat he could peer down the street at Amelia’s apartment and calculate his shot if the opportunity arose. The angle was acute, but his field of fire would cover approximately a third of both rooms. The challenge was certainly easier than that which he’d faced when he made the mayor a target.

  He settled into the softly upholstered chair and propped the Webb-Blakesmith rifle against one of its arms, where he could easily snatch it up.

  Though he was relaxed, he was alert, listening to the faint sounds of the city he’d slowed, and the subtle noises of the old building.

  He was confident Amelia Repetto was in her apartment across the street. She would be closely guarded, not only by cops on the street, but probably by someone in the apartment with her.

  But nobody was careful all the time. The Sniper had tonight and several mor
e nights before the risk of occupying the subleased apartment would become too great to justify. Plenty of time.

  Patience …

  A shooter’s patience was usually rewarded.

  It was merely a matter of waiting.

  Parked across the street from Dante Vanya’s apartment, Officer Nancy Weaver glanced at her unmarked’s dashboard clock and decided this had gone far enough. She could afford to wait no longer. She had to cover her ass and make the best of what she had.

  She’d actually realized this fifteen minutes ago and had been reasoning it out. She’d go back into the Elliott Arms, as a cop this time, and bullshit the doorman and whoever else needed bullshitting to give her access to Vanya’s apartment. Once inside, she could maybe find what she needed in order to contact Repetto, who could then obtain a warrant and prompt a wider search.

  Not quite legal, Weaver knew. If she found nothing suspicious in Vanya’s apartment, she’d politely thank everyone involved, make her exit, and hope for the best. Which would be that an infuriated honest citizen named Dante Vanya wouldn’t complain to the department.

  If she did find something definitive and incriminating, it might save Amelia Repetto’s young life; then Repetto, with Melbourne’s help, could smooth out any problems she might have with improper entry.

  Like hell he could.

  But being responsible for nailing the Night Sniper could overwhelm a lot of mistakes and make a lot of things right.

  What she was about to do was risky and Weaver knew it. She also knew she was at a point in her career where it was time to take a risk.

  And she knew this bastard was the Night Sniper.

  Taking a chance, though. Hell of a chance. .

  Weaver glanced across the street at the grandly uniformed doorman standing like a sentinel at the building entrance, looking intimidating, or trying to. He’d be good at his job, but Weaver figured she could get around him, win him over, bully him if she had to do it that way. Who’d he think he was, anyway? Big jerk-off standing there like the president of some country with weapons of mass destruction. She had the entire force of the NYPD behind her. Fuck him!