Lights Out Summer

by Rich Zahradnik

  Searing pain.

  Moore slugged him in the stomach.

  “That’s for embarrassing me with my lieutenant by demanding a patrolman over here. He doesn’t think I know what’s going on around this place. Guy who never leaves his desk.”

  Taylor crumpled to the ground, his breathing whistling over his teeth, his stomach muscles tightening.

  “Oh God, no violence in here.” Mrs. DeVries’ voice climbed in pitch and lost its strength at the same time, sounding like wind in the trees. “Please.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. He should never have bothered you. Do you want to press charges?

  “No, just leave me alone.”

  “Get him out of here.”

  The junior partner pulled Taylor to his feet, shoved him down the hallway, and pushed the elevator button. The door opened. The detective threw him at the back wall.

  Taylor hit with his injured shoulder, yelled and dropped to the floor.

  “Take out the trash,” the detective said to the operator.

  “Wrong elevator,” the operator said dryly. He closed the doors. “I thought you were a friend of the family.

  “Depends on who you ask.” Taylor gasped for another breath.

  The operator and the doorman got him into a chair in the lobby.

  “That detective doesn’t have the lightest touch,” said the doorman, “does he?”

  “That detective doesn’t know what’s going on, and it’s pissing him off.”

  “Do you?”

  “Not as much as I should. At least I know that much.”

  In the empty offices of the City News Bureau, Taylor swallowed two aspirin with a paper cone of water from the cooler. He rotated his shoulder, groaned, rotated again, winced. A look under his shirt showed blue-black bruising on his stomach. The pain would be with him for a long while, but he’d gotten lucky. He wasn’t going to have to spend the better part of a Saturday in a New York City hospital emergency room, purgatory’s location here on earth.

  The next two hours were spent dialing anyone he thought could help, often at home, scoring him few points with cops, ex-cops, prosecutors, and their wives. When he ran out of people to call, he still had nothing. The Concierge was a ghost. The clock moved past one in the afternoon. Taylor had covered kidnappings before. If a call didn’t come soon, it wasn’t a kidnapping. He hoped Carol had the presence of mind to let him know if that call did come.

  He couldn’t find a sitting position where his shoulder didn’t burn. His pulse thumped in his temples. The harder he thought, the less there was to focus on. Smoke blown by the wind. The straining turned into an ache above his eyes. The aspirin was having no effect.

  He stared at his desk. Out of ideas. The stack of the Amenia Times still sat there. He’d read a couple. Coverage of the Grange and a 4-H meeting. A police blotter with a lost cow and a one-car accident involving a fence post. The story on the monthly town board meeting covered two full pages in the old-fashioned eight-column layout. His vision blurred reading that one.

  He read another copy, hoping the distraction would help.

  Didn’t.

  The phone rang. It was the muffled, high-pitched voice from the first call. “Do you want the third Son of Sam letter?”

  Now, of all times?

  “How do I know it’s real?”

  “Same weird handwriting. You can check it out with your sources. He wrote this. Meet me at the Blarney Rock on Eighth.”

  “Which? There are three.”

  “Forty-Eighth Street. Be there at eight thirty.”

  “How’d you know I’d be in the office?”

  “I saw you come in.”

  Taylor worked to keep any reaction out of his voice. “Eight thirty then.”

  Prickling along the back of his neck. He was being watched. Worse, he was actually considering chasing the letter with Audrey missing and his story pretty much a lost cause.

  Taylor walked to one of the office’s two windows. Below was the roof of the New York Times building, which sat behind the Paramount Building on 43rd Street. It was Templeton’s favorite joke. “City News looks down on the Times.” It wasn’t funny the first time. The haze was a feverish yellow and the sun a smear far larger than its usual disc. No sign of a thunderstorm from the west yet. Meant nothing. The sky over New Jersey could turn Armageddon in minutes.

  He made up his mind and turned from the window. When you didn’t have a sure thing, or even decent odds, you played the long shot. He’d go get the letter because of what it was worth in information that might lead to Audrey—and save his story. If the letter were real, the cops would have to deal with him. Cooperation from the 19th Precinct on the Concierge and the DeVries murder. Everything they had on Audrey. Jersey Stein had already told him there was an investigation into a gang on the Upper East Side. Had to be the Concierge’s operations.

  Worst case, the walk would clear his head and maybe give him a new idea to work on. Because he was coming up with shit sitting here and couldn’t stand sitting anymore.

  He’d be tromping all over the tenets of his profession. A reporter who got that letter should write the story as fast as possible and slam it on the wire. Taylor didn’t give a crap about the Son of Sam circus. He wanted to find Audrey before she was another body. He wanted to report who killed the DeVrieses, father and son. He wanted to tell Martha Gibson’s story, how the gears of villains ground her up because she’d had the bad fortune to stand outside the wrong room in a rich family’s apartment.

  All a fair trade.

  Chapter 33

  He left the office and headed for Sardi’s, right around the corner on 44th Street. He wanted to kill the time waiting for his 8:30 meeting in a New York place that represented the time before the blackout, psycho killers, the Concierge, and the destruction of the DeVries family. Sardi’s was that.

  In the same location since 1927, the restaurant—white tablecloths standing out against the red booths, with hundreds of caricatures of celebrities on the walls—had been serving dinner before and after the theater through all the decades when New York was the capital of everything. Rather than a national joke. Old New York all around him, Taylor took a seat at the bar and ordered the pork chops. He limited himself to a couple of beers, paid, walked west to Eighth and turned north toward 48th Street for this meeting he didn’t expect much out of but prayed would give him everything. Going made him feel like he was doing something, an empty gesture that had the advantage of being a gesture.

  From a corner phone, he called Samantha at home and told her he didn’t want her to come along and spook whoever had the letter—if they had the letter. Samantha said she’d go to the office and wait to hear from him there.

  The blue neon light of the Blarney Rock sign bled into the haze—much like the sun, though on a smaller scale. The name of the place always made Taylor wonder if the owner of the chain was really Irish, since the object in question in Ireland was the Blarney Stone, not the Blarney Rock. On the other hand, could be an inside joke. Blarney itself was jokey conversation usually used to deceive. A con. Below the neon were the words “Great Beer, Excellent Food, and Fine Company.” Now that was blarney.

  The sickly haze transformed to a gray and somehow more pleasant cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke. He approached the bar, which was populated by a handful of the usual lushes in this sort of dive, and took a seat with empty stools on either side of him. He didn’t want a drunk laying into his ear now—or anyone listening in on whatever transaction was about to take place.

  He ordered a Fresca. A shimmer of white in the corner of his eye. Not a color he’d expect on a regular patron; they were all in grays and browns. The shimmer sat down next to him as he was putting money on the bar. He turned to find the frightened eyes of Audrey DeVries, dark circles under those eyes.

  “Audrey.” He might have yelled it but kept his voice as quiet as possible for fear she would panic and run. Or do a shimmery vanish. “How’d you get here?”

 
She grabbed his forearm.

  “It’s all gotten so terribly desperate.” Not Audrey, but a deep voice on the other side of Taylor. “None of us really knows what to do.”

  Taylor turned slowly. Doing anything fast right now seemed a bad idea. Bobby Livingston straddled a barstool, back straight as a board. For the first time, Taylor realized how deep Livingston’s voice was. Next to him stood Mrs. DeVries, who though sad, didn’t look scared like her daughter.

  “What the hell is going on?” Taylor said. “You have the letter.”

  “Let’s not get all rushie. Welcome to our what’s-left-of-the-family meeting.” Livingston pulled his hand out of a tan silk jacket to display the grip of a pistol. “Nothing rushie at all. Things have gotten too messy. We need to clean them up tonight. Drinks first. Evangeline?”

  “Something strong.”

  “I’m afraid what’s strong in here may not be up to the standards you’re used to. I so hate coming to the West Side. All grubby and cheapsided. It’s why I quit going to the theater years ago. Audrey?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh, you must have something, dear.” Menace in his voice.

  “A glass of wine. Anything.”

  “Taylor?”

  “Fine with what I’ve got. You’re the Concierge.”

  “You see,” he turned to Mrs. DeVries, “I told you he was smart. Surprising for his profession.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t get it. I got the call about the Son of Sam letter back on July Sixth. Charlie hadn’t been murdered yet.”

  “You may be smart for what you do, but you’re in a chess game now. I’m playing moves ahead. Always. You’re a pawn on the board. You were already a bit too uncomfortably close back then. Asking the wrong questions about Martha. Then Charlie, that drunk ass, invited you to the Chapel, and one of those idiot girls mentioned the Concierge to you. Poor thing. I didn’t know then that you’d become a real threat, but I thought I’d set the bait in case I needed to take steps to trap a real threat. If you hadn’t been so pesky, you’d never have heard about the letter again. I knew anything with Son of Sam would be catnip to a reporter. You couldn’t resist, could you?”

  “Martha, Edmond DeVries, Charlie … they were all a threat to you?”

  “Martha was, of course. For what she heard. Her sister’s boyfriend, McGill, took care of her. Convenient that was his business. Bobby Livingston knows a lot of good people. The Concierge knows a lot of bad people. Edmond, I eliminated for the money. Evangeline and I have big plans for it. We’re an item, you see.”

  Livingston reached for her hand, which she offered, slowly, almost unwillingly, then winced from what must have been a hard squeeze.

  “I didn’t want my children harmed,” Mrs. DeVries said. A defensive answer to a question Taylor hadn’t yet asked. She looked at the space between Livingston and Taylor. “We were supposed to take care of Edmond, that boob, and get what I was due. It’s out of control. You need to get this under control, Bobby.”

  Livingston’s knuckles whitened. A cracking as he squeezed her hand harder. Mrs. DeVries uttered a low cry.

  “Let’s keep things civil and quiet.” Livingston picked up the gin and tonic he’d ordered. “Don’t want to make a mess here.” He looked at Taylor. “Charlie was the one who lost his nerve. We brought him in on all our plans. Then he lost it. I’m hoping for a reconciliation with my lover over that incident. We’ll see. That’s business for later, between her and me.”

  “What money can you be getting if Denny Connell embezzled twenty-five million?”

  “That’s why we had to act. The fool DeVries let that little scam artist rip him off. Rip us off. It was all going to be gone.”

  “Wasn’t ever your money.”

  “Let’s not slice things fine. It was Evangeline’s, so it was mine. Between real estate, financial assets, and a trust, there remains sixteen million or so. As for the twenty-five million, the Concierge has his ways and means. Connell’s going to be given some options by a couple folks I’ve contacted in Rikers. The money comes back to us, or embezzlement becomes a capital crime for Mr. Connell. Oh heck, I’ll probably have him killed anyway.” A laugh of real enjoyment. “I despise loose ends.”

  Taylor shook his head and sipped the Fresca. “You’re a Livingston. Why’d you need to become a pusher and a whoremonger? A killer?”

  “Keep your language more respectful.”

  “You’re not going to shoot me in here.”

  A sly smile. “Old money doesn’t age well these days. It fades. Then it’s gone. Like that. I told you I was from a distant twig on that family tree. We were like the DeVrieses, though with even less, and that going faster. In fact, my father made Edmond DeVries look like a financial mastermind. I knew his type when I met Evangeline. I explained how it all was going to go down for her. Neither of us had any interest in a radical change in our lifestyles.”

  “Like getting jobs?”

  Livingston ignored the comment like he’d probably ignored the idea his whole life. “I was already in business when we met. I got started supplying my fellow students at Choate, you see. Got caught. Expelled. I came back to Park Avenue and realized there was a much bigger market here and an incredible advantage in using intermediaries. I called myself ‘The Concierge’ as a joke at first—a joke that became serious. The rest of it was customer demand. Women. After-hours parties. People would call and ask if the Concierge could help. He always could. He couldn’t go on forever, though. Getting caught back at school taught me that. Detectives were nosing around. Evangeline and I were together. We were deeply in love and decided divorce would be wrong for her financially.” He stroked her cheek with his fingernails and she winced as if she’d been struck. “The DeVries fortune would be more than enough funding so the Concierge could retire. Or perhaps bring his exceptional services to some continental city. Your nosing around only confirmed how right I was. Now finish your drinks, and we’ll go for a little walk. Mother and daughter arm in arm in front of Taylor and me.”

  It was only when they stood up that Audrey let go of his arm, not before squeezing so hard her fingernails dug in, like he was a life preserver she was being forced to give up.

  Chapter 34

  Taylor glimpsed theater marquees to the east as they crossed streets. Foot traffic on the sidewalk was light. Legitimate visitors to the neighborhood were in those theaters watching Beatlemania, The Gin Game, Your Arms Too Short to Box with God, Godspell, Annie and the other shows that kept Times Square from becoming solely a district of porn and theft. Hookers—most wearing tight, tiny dresses, one in a bikini—were working corners on Eighth, though it was early for that commerce. Their numbers would double as the theater people left and the cops did little.

  The sun had set. For another evening, the heat remained.

  They passed an old-fashioned porn shop—only books and magazines offered. The four of them could be theatergoers themselves, though woefully late for their show and apparently in no hurry.

  Taylor had finally found—stumbled on—his connection. Little good it did him. Shit, more than one connection. Livingston was having an affair with Evangeline DeVries, and he was the Concierge. The deaths were tied together in one murderous knot. Livingston puffed on a cigar and walked behind Taylor, off his shoulder.

  When they’d first met, Taylor had taken Bobby Livingston for a pleasant version of New York’s young and wealthy. Something like Audrey, though she was the most down to earth of all those he’d encountered. He’d gotten Livingston wrong. Completely. The bad call of the year. Of the decade. Taylor had covered murder over money and sex before. But Livingston? Proved the worst could come from the best sort of circumstances. The mask off, Taylor could see the meanness in him, along with tremendous avarice—a cool, sane desire for wealth gained by selling drugs, women, anything clients wanted, and killing.

  Taylor was sweating more than the heat warranted. His stomach turned in on itself. He’d been caught off guard. He didn’t kno
w what exactly Livingston had planned, but giving Taylor all that info meant a bullet at some point.

  He needed a plan. Focus on escape, not on what Bobby might do. So far, they hadn’t come across a cop walking the Eighth Avenue beat. If they did, how would that play out? He could shove Livingston to the ground and scream “Gun!” Bullets would start flying. Whose? The cop might react too slowly. There were no guarantees. It’d be like playing Russian roulette—with people instead of bullets.

  Plan B: Some sort of break and run? Yell at the women to take off. No, that looked worse. They all couldn’t get away. Mrs. DeVries might not want to, could freeze. Livingston didn’t seem the type to hesitate in the least. An even lower odds version of roulette. He didn’t have a move from judo to deal with a gun held behind him inside a coat pocket. Bobby, a smart man, was keeping far enough away.

  Fuck judo. I’d need a bazooka for the shits infesting this city.

  They turned down 54th, the art-deco Studio 54 marquee sticking over the sidewalk.

  “Let’s cross the street, why don’t we,” Bobby said.

  They walked by a couple of small restaurants—one French, one Italian—that were near empty. They’d served the prix fixe dinners before the shows. Waiters stood around waiting for the after-theater crowd.

  They passed a parking lot and reached its ramp.

  “Up.”

  The four of them climbed the steep deck past the first level.

  He’s going to kill us in this garage. Need some kind of move. Might mean roulette.

  The second level.

  Audrey turned her head around.

  “There’s nothing back here, honey,” Livingston said.

  She kept looking, a tear running down the right side of her cheek.

  “Turn around. Or I use this now.”

  At the top of the ramp, parked facing down the steep slope, was a light-blue VW Beetle. The top level was totally packed with cars. Lots of folks drove in for a show so they could get out of Times Square as fast as possible.

  “My car?” Audrey asked, surprised and confused, like it was a vision.