by Lutz, John
He had to park almost a block away from the precinct house and was in an even gloomier mood as he walked into the squad room. He shook water off the undersized umbrella that hadn’t done much to shield him from the rain. “What you get when you buy something from one of them outlaw street venders,” he mumbled. “Unlicensed fuckin’ crooks!”
Sergeant Felstein, who was working the desk, grinned and said with exaggerated concern, “I got a real umbrella I’ll sell you if it’s still raining when you want to leave.”
Tobin didn’t answer. Murray Felstein was the kind of guy who strove to be personally responsible for anti-Semitism.
“Galoshes, too, if your feet are wet,” Felstein said. He didn’t like being ignored. “But for you, they won’t be cheap.”
“How come you’re such a fuckin’ stereotype?” Tobin asked, peeling off his coat and tossing it onto a brass hook.
“How come you are, Uncle?”
Tobin stopped short and glared at Felstein. Felstein was smiling. Good thing.
“Too bad you couldn’t have been a doctor like all your brothers,” Tobin said. He moved down the row of green steel desks toward his own.
“I coulda been a doctor,” Felstein said, “like you coulda been a real basketball player instead of just dribbling when you piss or drink coffee.”
Tobin was getting tired of this bullshit, even from Felstein, with whom denigrating banter had become a subtly supportive routine. “Listen, Murray—”
“You listen, Art. There’s somebody here to see you.”
Tobin stopped near his desk, surprised. “See me?”
“He was referred to you. You are an officer in this precinct, aren’t you? You are on the ‘Shadowtown’ case, as I recall.”
Tobin looked around and for the first time noticed the man slumped on the bench beneath the wall clock. He had on a threadbare coat that looked as if the Salvation Army had given it away at least twice. His hair was long and ragged, his eyes were bloodshot, and he was a week past needing a shave.
“This is Mr. Ernest Dickerson,” Felstein said. “Mr. Dickerson, meet Detective Art Tobin. He’s the fella I suggested you should talk to.”
Dickerson nodded and tried a grin that shorted out.
“Come on over to my desk, Mr. Dickerson,” Tobin said. This guy looked so deep down and so far out that Tobin couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.
While Tobin sat down and rearranged some papers, pencils, and file folders, as if refamiliarizing himself with his work space after a long absence, Dickerson shuffled across the cork floor and lowered himself into the chair a few feet from the desk. Tobin noticed the man smelled unwashed, but there was no scent of alcohol about him. And he seemed sober enough, which was a condition that probably wouldn’t last long. This wasn’t the sort of guy that usually walked into a police station voluntarily.
“How can I help you, Mr. Dickerson?”
Dickerson blinked, as if the light hurt his eyes, and didn’t answer. Tobin was patient. He knew talking to the police was difficult for a man like this.
“Do you have information pertaining to the McGreery murder?” Tobin asked nonchalantly, as if he lived in the precinct house and had plenty of time.
“I don’t know,” Dickerson said in his low, hoarse voice. “The sergeant there, he seems to think so.” He glanced toward Felstein, then back. “But that’s not why I’m here.”
Tobin was puzzled. “Well, did you come here to report a crime?”
“Uh, yeah. I guess you could say that.”
Tobin glanced over and caught Felstein grinning at him. Oh-oh. “Say what?” Tobin asked Dickerson. “What kind of crime did you want to report?”
“What kind of crimes are there?” Dickerson asked, as if inquiring about ice-cream flavors.
Christ! Tobin thought. “Well, let’s start with murder. Then there’s robbery, rape, assault, embezzlement—” Want that in a cone or a cup?
“Wait a minute,” Dickerson stammered, interrupting Tobin. “That’d be it, I guess. Assault. Assault by a vampire.”
Tobin saw that Felstein was whistling tonelessly now, pretending to read a report like the one Tobin would have to spend the next half hour typing up.
Tobin was in the mood for a little assault himself.
Jennifer Crane—8:40 P.M.
She heard Oxman fumbling with his key in the door. Not like him; from only that sound Jennifer could tell he was tired.
He took the burdens of his work too seriously sometimes, she knew, and this was one of those times. An ex-cop, a member of the fraternity, had been murdered. Ox hadn’t said much about it, but she knew how it bothered him that a cop-killer he was supposed to catch was still free, how it burned in him.
She drew in her breath as the door opened.
Ox saw her, nodded, then closed the door and locked it. He didn’t look weary, but then his exterior seldom revealed how he felt.
“You act as if you were expecting me,” he said. He walked over to her, leaned down, and kissed her forehead.
She wanted to clutch him, cling to him, and tell him everything in a rushing relief of words. She’d felt that way as a little girl, with her father. Too long ago.
Ox had crossed to the phone on the table near the door when he stood still and looked curiously at her. “Something wrong, Jennifer?”
“I need to talk to you.” She felt her breath catch in her throat, making her voice strained. “It’ll keep till after you make your phone call.”
He came back to stand near her. “The call can wait.” She touched the back of his hand, and he sat down next to her on the sofa.
She sensed, and heard, his arm move around behind her, but he didn’t encircle her shoulders, didn’t press her to talk. Instead he rested his arm on the back of the sofa, letting her know he was ready to comfort her if she needed it. Jennifer suddenly loved him almost overwhelmingly. She had to take a few seconds to compose herself. Her throat was tightening.
“I hadn’t read any of the details about the ‘Shadowtown’ murder until this afternoon,” she said.
“Quite an assortment of elements, isn’t it? Vampires and soap-opera stars and a dead watchman. But we can talk about all that later, if you want to.” He must have thought she was changing the subject.
“What I want to say has to do with ‘Shadowtown.’” She felt the cushions shift as his body got rigid. His forearm was now lightly touching her shoulder. “When I was reading about the murder a name caught my attention,” she said. “Zachary Denton, the set designer who found the body.”
Ox sighed and leaned back, causing the sofa to groan. She knew he’d made the connection. Just like that. He hadn’t been aware of it, she was sure, but it must have been on the edge of his consciousness. The air in the room got heavier and harder to breathe.
“Zach Denton’s my ex-husband,” she said.
Ox’s arm did go around her now, but almost absently. She could tell he didn’t know quite how to react, how to feel about this. She wasn’t sure herself how she wanted him to react.
“Should you take yourself off the case?” she asked.
He thought about it for a moment. “No, I think I can be objective.” He didn’t sound sure.
“Is Zach a …”
“A suspect? No more than anyone else is, at this point.” He shifted on the sofa so he was facing her. “Lana Spence told me she’d had an affair with him,” he said. “When she broke it off, he didn’t like it. They argued and he punched her, in front of most of the production crew.”
Jennifer felt an old anger well up in her and tried to force it back into the past where it belonged. “I’m not surprised; same old Zach. He doesn’t mind at all beating up on women.” She was aware of the subdued rage in her tone.
Ox stood up, obviously feeling his own anger. “The bastard!” he said.
“I knew he was a set designer,” Jennifer told him, “but I’d heard he’d gone to California. I assumed he was still there, working in Hollywood.”
Jennifer stood up and he moved to her and held her. The past had come after her and she needed him, needed him badly. And he was there, obviously yearning to help.
She pressed her head gently against his chest, then began to sob, worming closer and digging the point of her chin into him. He held her tight and made soothing sounds in her ear, not really saying anything intelligible, but stroking her where she was injured nonetheless.
Finally she stopped crying. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat as she leaned back away from him. He kissed her on the mouth, then he rested his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her. Down into her.
“It doesn’t matter, Jennifer. The past is dead and over; it no longer exists in any way that can hurt us unless we let it.”
She smiled somberly. “Very philosophical. Very true. Also very true that I love you.”
The telephone rang shrilly, startling her and causing her body to jerk.
Ox grinned and exerted a brief, reassuring squeeze with both hands.
“Want me to answer it?” he asked.
“Unless you want to let it ring,” she told him. “I don’t feel like talking to anyone.”
“Me, either.” He took her hand and led her into the dark bedroom.
Before they were undressed and in bed, whoever was on the line had given up and the phone was silent.
He made love to her gently but insistently, sensing the urgency of her need and entering her almost immediately. He caressed her face lovingly as he lunged in and out of her. Jennifer heard herself sigh, heard Ox’s deeper breathing and felt his heightening tension. There was reassurance in their lovemaking.
Then something found its way free in her. She began thrusting her hips up at him in violent rhythm. The rush of her desire was new but familiar and overwhelming. “Grind it!” she moaned. “Grind me into the goddamn mattress!”
He increased the pressure of each downward thrust. Again and again. The headboard slammed into the wall; who cared if the neighbors heard? She was aware that she’d screamed, and her orgasm carried her far out into an endless warm sea. A roar of receding tide. A low groaning in her ear.
Ox had gripped her hair and had her head pulled back at an unnatural angle. He seemed to realize it at the same time she did and released her.
He pulled out of her, rolled to the side, and gasped for breath. After a while, he looked over at her, a little puzzled by her ferocity and desperation. By his own, perhaps.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded and reached for the box of tissues by the bed.
He stroked her cheek, her breasts, then kissed her stomach, flicking lightly with his tongue, and climbed out of bed. As he padded barefoot into the bathroom she saw for a moment, in the wash of light when he clicked the wall switch and closed the door behind him, deep scratches on his back. The shower began to run.
Jennifer didn’t have to worry about pregnancy; Zach had taken care of that. She lay alone with a wad of Kleenex pressed between her thighs and stared terrified into the darkness, as if something might be hiding there, staring back.
Ox switched on the lamp and got dressed, but Jennifer elected to wear only her robe and slippers. He touched her hair gently, smiled his slow smile. “Sure you’re okay?”
“Sure.”
They’d returned to the living room when the phone interrupted them again; the outside world refusing to be ignored.
She watched Ox reluctantly leave her, walk to the phone, and lift the receiver.
She could tell by the expression on his face that it was his partner Tobin on the phone. She’d been able to do that within a few months after Ox had moved in with her, able to read the all-business, intense expression on his features, the paleness at the corners of his mouth, the fine parallel vertical lines above the bridge of his nose. He could never be sure what Tobin was going to tell him, and always there was that first second or two of tension when he answered the phone and learned who was on the other end of the line. And when the call was routine, as it usually was, Jennifer would watch Ox relax.
But the tension didn’t go away this time as Ox listened to what Tobin had to say, and Jennifer knew the call was serious, that it was about “Shadowtown.”
E. L. Oxman—9:30 P.M.
Oxman stood holding the phone to his ear and listening. Though he was still a bit thrown by what Jennifer had told him about Zach Denton, he’d sensed immediately that Tobin’s call meant trouble.
“I was about to phone you, Art,” he said, glancing over at Jennifer, “tell you I’d meet you tomorrow morning instead of tonight.”
Tobin said, “Thought I’d better get in touch with you as soon as possible. Got a Mr. Ernest Dickerson here with me at the Two-Four. He’s a man you’re gonna want to talk to tonight, Ox.”
“Why tonight?”
“Because he’s here now. And he’s the type who, uh, might not be available tomorrow.”
Oxman got the impression Ernest Dickerson, whoever he was, must be sitting next to Tobin listening to the conversation. “So what’s this about, Art?”
“Seems Mr. Dickerson saw a vampire.”
Oxman felt suddenly very, very tired. “He the sort who might see one?”
“He is,” Tobin said.
“Did you check his neck for puncture marks, Artie? To make sure he’s not one of the walking dead?”
“That’s the first thing I did, Elliot Leroy.”
“I’ll just bet. Where’d he see this vampire?”
“In an alley around Third and Broadway.”
“I know the area. Was he sober?”
“Nope. Seldom is, I suspect.”
That was what Oxman figured. “How come you’re bothering telling me about this, Art?”
“Because he saw the vampire last night.”
Oxman had to admit that could be more than coincidence, even in Manhattan.
“And the description, such as it is, fits in with the missing Edgar Grume costume. White wig and all.”
Oxman looked again at Jennifer, who was sitting limply on the sofa watching him. She seemed okay now, but the knowledge that it was her former husband who’d discovered the “Shadowtown” victim’s body, and the strain she’d felt telling Oxman about it, had worked its effects. Her desperation a while ago in the bedroom gave evidence to that. She hadn’t gotten used to the notion that Zachary Denton was again, through Oxman, a part of her life.
Oxman placed his left palm over the phone’s mouthpiece. “Will you be all right if I leave?” he asked softly.
Jennifer nodded.
He removed his cupped hand and told Tobin he’d be down as soon as possible, and to hold on to Ernest Dickerson.
As soon as Oxman walked into the squad room and saw Dickerson sitting near the desk, he had his doubts. The guy sure looked like the most wasted kind of alky. Looked as if he might see a vampire per night.
“Maybe a pink vampire,” Sergeant Felstein said from behind the booking desk, where he’d been reading Oxman’s thoughts. Irritating bastard.
Oxman nodded to him and walked toward where Dickerson sat near Tobin.
Tobin saw him, said something to Dickerson, then got up to meet Oxman halfway to where Dickerson waited in his chair.
“Jesus, Art,” Oxman said, “the guy looks like he was born a wino.”
“Does at that. But I don’t think you’ll wanna brush off what he has to say.” Tobin was so tired he appeared to have been on a drunk himself. His face was drawn and his dark-brown eyes peered out blearily like half-moons from beneath fatigue-hooded lids.
“Third and Broadway’s a long way from where McGreery was killed,” Oxman said.
“But the times work out about right. And even though Ernie’s a hard drinker, I get the impression he’s telling the truth. I don’t think he could have made himself
walk into a police station otherwise.”
“‘Ernie,’ huh?”
Tobin seemed slightly embarrassed. “You gotta feel Sorry for the poor dumb bastard. And if you listen to him a while, you gotta believe him.”
Oxman trusted Tobin’s instincts about people. And Tobin had a point about a beaten-down alky like Dickerson having to screw up considerable courage just to walk into a police station.
Tobin led the way to where Dickerson sat. As they got near, Oxman picked up the faint, rancid odor of the wino, but he didn’t smell alcohol. Oxman took the desk chair, letting Tobin stand alongside Dickerson. Tobin made the introductions.
“Okay, Ernie,” Oxman said, “tell me what you told Detective Tobin.”
Dickerson ran the back of his hand across his grizzled chin. He seemed sorry he’d come here and started things rolling, but he began his story. His voice was thick, halting, but sober.
“Wait a minute,” Oxman said, when Dickerson had gotten to the part about trying to beg some change from the vampire. “You mean he spoke to you?”
Dickerson nodded and eagerly repeated, word for word, what the vampire had told him before kicking him in the throat.
“Our vampire isn’t very charitable,” Tobin said. “And he has an odd way with words. ‘Garment,’ no less. Talks like somebody outta the nineteenth century.”
“Or like a would-be actor hamming it up.” Oxman stared at Dickerson, wondering if the man actually had such good recall, or if what he was relating was an alcohol-wrought delusion that had taken on the weight of reality. It wasn’t easy to know about these men and women who lived on the streets, who moved in a world that was only on the edges of society’s consciousness. They were, to most people, invisible. But they saw things. Felt things. They were real, all right.
After Dickerson had given a statement, and an address Oxman knew was a roach-ridden flophouse off Broadway, they watched the occult-touched wino make his way out of the precinct house. Oxman figured Ernie Dickerson would head straight for a bout with a bottle, if he could afford one.
