Shadowtown

by Lutz, John

  “Either of you see his face?”

  Both nodded. “Yeah,” the youth with the portfolio said, “but I never paid much attention to it. I remember he had gray or white hair. That’s what caught my eye.”

  “It was white,” the woman said. “I think.”

  “His face was kinda like white, too,” the boy said. “Eerie-lookin’, ya know?”

  “It was, now you mention it,” the woman agreed. “Real pale.”

  “Could either of you identify him if you saw him again?”

  “Not me,” the youth said.

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to, either,” the woman told Oxman. “You know how it is when someone brushes past you in a rush.”

  Oxman knew. Eyewitnesses were unreliable even in favorable circumstances.

  “I need your names,” he said.

  “How come, man?” the youth asked, suddenly very alert.

  “It involves a murder case.”

  The woman reached into her purse and handed Oxman a white business card with her name, Molly Sanderson, and a Soho address. The Latin youth scribbled his name and address on the back of another card supplied by the woman.

  An elevator arrived and they looked at Oxman questioningly. “Go ahead,” he told them. “And thanks for your help.”

  “I think we oughta get on the elevator, too,” Overbeck said beside Oxman. “I’d like to check on this with Brokton, see if the guy in the cape was one of his clients.”

  “Exactly what I had in mind,” Oxman said. He moved into the elevator, which had become crowded. Overbeck squeezed in on the other side and contorted an arm to jab the button for the twentieth floor. Oxman noticed that the Latin youth was going to the fifteenth floor, the Sanderson woman to the thirty-second.

  On the twentieth floor, Overbeck led the way down a carpeted hall to Brokton’s office and opened the door.

  A receptionist looked up from whatever she was reading on her desk and smiled. “Back again, Mr. Overbeck?”

  The answer to that one seemed obvious to Oxman. He showed the woman his badge. “Someone leave here about five minutes ago?”

  “He means besides me, Louella,” Overbeck said, unnecessarily.

  Louella, a pleasant-featured woman in her sixties, began to suspect something might be wrong. She puckered her lips and frowned like a concerned grandmother. “Nobody’s come or gone since you have, Mr. Overbeck.”

  “Is Brokton in his office?” Oxman asked.

  “Well, yes, he is. He left me orders not to let anyone in for the next half hour.”

  “I’m sorry,” Oxman said, “but you’ll have to make an exception. Mr. Brokton will understand after I explain.”

  “It’s police business, Louella,” Overbeck said gently, as if to reassure her she wouldn’t incur Brokton’s anger.

  Louella nodded silently and punched an intercom button. She waited but got no reply.

  “I know he’s in there,” she said. “He was a little while ago.”

  “I just left him,” Overbeck added. These two liked to state the obvious.

  “There another exit?” Oxman asked.

  “Yes,” Louella said. “It opens to a hall that leads the other way around the building to the elevators.”

  Oxman moved quickly to the light-oak door to the main office. “Hey, wait!” he heard Louella say breathlessly. He sensed Overbeck close behind him. He rattled the doorknob.

  Locked.

  “He never locks that door,” Louella said. She was confused now a little frightened.

  “Something might be wrong,” Overbeck told her, as if she weren’t on to that notion already.

  Oxman kicked the door open. It banged hard against the wall but didn’t spring back.

  “Oh, shit!” Overbeck said. “My God, my God, my God! …”

  Louella drew in a breath that sounded like a file rasping on steel. But she didn’t scream. Oxman moved into the office and stepped over a brass lamp that was lying on the floor.

  Manny Brokton was seated behind his wide desk, bent over, with the right side of his face scrunched down on his green desk pad. He was a small man, and, except for his horrified expression, he resembled a tiny, pale schoolchild at nap time.

  Blood was still worming sluggishly out of two ugly puncture wounds on the left side of his neck. There was so much of it on the desk and floor, Oxman knew he was dead.

  Scene 5

  Jennifer Crane—8:30 A.M.

  The day outside the window was warm and bright, beckoning to Jennifer to forget work for the morning and leave the apartment. The Stick-and-Forget dentifrice artwork she was laboring over could wait. The deadline was a week away, and she was tired of painting false teeth biting into previously inedible food such as corn-on-the-cob and apples. She’d brushed her own teeth a lot since accepting this commission.

  Ox was out on the job, engrossed again in the “Shadowtown” case. In dangerously close proximity to Lana Spence, and in the same orbit again as Zach Denton. Which meant that, by association, Jennifer was again in Zach’s orbit.

  And that, she realized, was what made her itch to leave the apartment. It wasn’t going to be as easy to ignore Zach’s existence here in New York as she’d thought. Not now, when every time she glimpsed a newspaper or turned on TV she was reminded of him. “Shadowtown” was everywhere. Especially now, after that theatrical agent’s odd murder.

  Damn Zach! He’d set himself up as a kind of authoritarian god, and it had worked! And was still working. Whatever he did or was suspected of doing, she was ready to find extenuating circumstances where none existed. Ready to forgive him, not because he deserved forgiveness but because he defied understanding. It was difficult to condemn someone you loved or had loved and whose violent side you didn’t understand. Disorientation was anathema to hate. People like Zach knew that and took advantage of it.

  But she had condemned Zach until she’d made the mistake of going to see him. Then had come the dislodging and whirling of selective pieces of the past, and the rebirth of compulsion.

  Jennifer needed to explore those feelings further. The dark attraction was exerting increasing magnetism. It was a force she couldn’t ignore, so she had no choice but to fight it. And right now, she wasn’t confident of victory.

  What would Ox think about her going again to talk with Zach? He hadn’t really understood her reasons for the first visit, so she’d be wise to keep this visit a secret from him.

  It made her feel guilty, dirty, sneaking behind Ox’s back. He didn’t deserve that kind of treatment.

  But these emotions were associated with Zach Denton. Along with deeper, pleasurable emotions. And so, in an odd way, they were acceptable to her and didn’t detract from her feeling that what she was doing was, in the long run, not only right but inevitable.

  Life with Zach hadn’t been one-hundred-percent miserable. In fact, the periods of agony were relatively brief.

  Jennifer had thought she’d reasoned all of this out years ago, but apparently she hadn’t. Or was it that reason didn’t apply? It was impossible to awaken the pain without also awakening the pleasure, the curious but undeniable bonding. Punishment and twisted ecstasy. This was the sort of thing one read about, but that was only supposed to happen to other women, women who were masochistic fools and eager victims.

  It was confusing. Love and hate and a rabbit hole to unreality, waiting for her.

  The telephone rang. Again and again and again. She didn’t answer it. Her mind’s focus was fixed and not easily diverted.

  She put away her air brush, slipped into slacks and a new purple blouse that set off her dark hair and her eyes, and looked over her reflection in the mirror. Didn’t she look nice, the woman in the looking glass?

  She left the apartment.

  On her way to see Zach.

  E. L. Oxman—10:00 A.M.

  Oxman lounged in a high-backed wooden chair in a corner of Manders’s office. The door was open about a foot, and the bustle and buzzing voices of the precin
ct house wafted in like toneless background music. Someone laughed, someone cursed, someone coughed as if he were in the last stages of consumption. Footfalls clattered past the open door; the walker was whistling a country-western hit about a girl who’d gone wrong and been sent to prison and married the warden.

  Manders was standing at the grimy window with his hands stuffed into his back pockets, staring out at nothing; he was developing quite a large bald spot on the crown of his head, Oxman noticed. Half-dollar size. He wondered if Manders’s middle-age hair loss was actually more severe than his own. He sure hoped so.

  Tobin was perched on the only clear corner of Manders’s desk. He’d just finished telling Manders about following Phil from Jardeen’s place to the building where Marv Egan lived. Oxman had just finished telling Manders about the Manny Brokton murder. Manders had had about enough and probably wished he were someplace where there were no dead bodies or telephones or newspapers within miles. Everybody was on his ass again.

  “Any thoughts on Brokton?” Manders asked, still staring out the window. Oxman felt like telling him there wasn’t much chance of anything useful turning up out there.

  “I don’t think a vampire killed him,” Oxman said.

  Manders turned and glared at him.

  “We gotta be crazy not to think there’s some connection between Brokton getting zapped and what’s happened at Shadowtown Productions,” Tobin said.

  Manders snorted. “On that we agree. On that the press agrees. As does the chief and the mayor and every sonavabitch that can make my life miserable.” He ran his tobacco-stained hand down his long, lined face. “Christ, I gotta take it easy.” He tapped his chest.

  “Heartburn?” Tobin asked.

  “I hope,” Manders said. “Someday, if we don’t get to the bottom of this vampire bullshit, it’s gonna be a fuckin’ heart attack and a fatal one.”

  Oxman wished the lieutenant would ease up. They weren’t getting anywhere this way, and Manders might be right about that heart attack. “We’ve got enough witnesses who saw a guy dressed like a vampire running from the building,” he said.

  Manders fixed a houndish, bloodshot eye on him. “Which means?”

  “I think the guy wanted to be seen.”

  “Or didn’t mind one way or the other,” Tobin said. “Vampires don’t give a fuck if they’re seen or not. They’re dead. What do they care?”

  Oxman flashed his partner a warning glance. Manders was in no mood for jokes—if Tobin was joking. Oxman was beginning to wonder about Tobin.

  “Vampires don’t go dashing around in the daytime, either,” Manders said. “You don’t have to do a lot of research to know that.”

  “Whoever killed Brokton did it so he wouldn’t tell us something pertinent,” Oxman said. “The killer made a point of being seen so the murder would add to the ‘Shadowtown’ hubbub and get play in the press. He wanted to make sure Brokton’s murder was linked to the show, on and off the TV screen.”

  “Hubbub,” Tobin said. “That’s a neat word, E.L. Haven’t heard it in years, even from you.”

  Manders wet his flaccid lips with his tongue and paced a few steps toward the window, then back. He put on his somber smile. “Okay, that all figures neatly. Now tell me why the killer thought that way, Ox.” Liquid brown eyes fixed on Oxman. “Why?”

  Oxman shrugged. He had some ideas but he didn’t know exactly the answer to Manders’s “why,” and he didn’t want to speculate and get moving in the wrong direction.

  “Ratings,” Tobin suggested. “The murders and the vampire publicity make for lots of media coverage and improved ratings for ‘Shadowtown.’”

  Manders shook his head. “People don’t kill to improve a TV show’s ratings, Art.”

  “They kill for money,” Tobin said. “Every day. And in television, ratings translate into money.”

  Here was something hard to argue against. “Whad’ya think, Ox?” Manders asked. The whistler walked past the office again, blowing an old Hank Williams tune now. “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”

  “It’s possible,” Oxman said. “It’s more likely Brokton knew something about what’s going on at ‘Shadowtown’ and was killed to shut him up. He was a greedy little bastard, from what we know of him, and if he had useful information he’d divulge it to anyone for a high enough price. Or to us if we threatened him enough. He was dangerous to whoever didn’t want him to talk, so they killed him.”

  “Maybe he was even more dangerous than his greed and lack of moral fiber made him,” Tobin suggested. “Maybe he knew something damaging and didn’t realize its importance, might have dropped it in conversation anytime. Let a cat out of a bag. Cat that’d eat a lotta mice. So the mice killed him.”

  “Or mouse, singular,” Manders said.

  Could be, Oxman thought. He looked at Tobin and nodded. Tobin was plenty sharp, all right, when he took time out from playing the bitter black.

  “I got men working the building where Brokton bought it,” Manders said. “Questioning all the other tenants, as well as the eyeball witnesses to our daylight vampire fleeing from the scene.”

  “How come he didn’t dissolve,” Tobin asked, “exposed to the light like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Manders said. “I never read the vampire rule book.”

  “Same vampire we been chasing,” Tobin said. “It’s gotta be. I mean, white hair and all.”

  “You live a couple of centuries,” Manders said, “your hair might go white, too.”

  Oxman smiled. Manders glared. Oxman stopped smiling. On the outside.

  “So we come to this guy Phil,” Manders said, shifting gears with all the smoothness of a ’50 Studebaker. “What do you figure he was doing going between Jardeen and Egan?”

  “I think we should ask Jardeen and Egan,” Tobin said.

  Oxman knew where that would lead. Rather, where it wouldn’t. “They’d either dummy up or lie,” he said. “We oughta pick up on Phil again, find out who he is. Make the connection ourselves so we know it’s right. Vice or Narcotics got any men working that neighborhood?”

  “Are you kidding?” Manders said. “There’s enough drugs and ass peddled in that area to keep emergency rooms and AIDS centers working round the clock.”

  “So have some undercovers ask around,” Oxman suggested. “Let’s see if we can find out about this Phil. Meantime, Art or I will do a loose stakeout on Jardeen’s and Egan’s apartments and see if Phil shows up again.”

  “Remember he only entered Egan’s building,” Manders said. “That doesn’t mean he went there to see Egan.”

  “Hell of a coincidence if he didn’t,” Tobin said, getting up off the desk and stretching. Oxman actually heard his spine crackle, like knuckles being popped in quick succession. The sound made Oxman’s back ache.

  “Coincidence won’t get you a conviction in court,” Manders said. “Make the link and make it good. Hear, you two?”

  “Hear, “Oxman said. He stood up and stretched his own limbs, glad his spine didn’t sound off like Tobin’s. Or maybe that was healthy, to loosen the vertebrae that way. No, couldn’t be.

  He and Tobin left Manders’s office and walked outside to the lot where their gray department car was parked between similar cars. It was sunny today, but a cool breeze sprang up and deposited something gritty in Oxman’s right eye. He rubbed with his knuckle, only aggravating the eye.

  “What you figure now?” Tobin said.

  “You watch Jardeen’s place,” Oxman told him, “and I’ll go talk to Zach Denton about Brokton’s murder.”

  Tobin looked concerned. “Oughta be the other way around, E.L.”

  “Won’t be, though,” Oxman said.

  Tobin grinned and shrugged. “Okay. But stay away from gut thinking, you know what I mean?”

  “You mean keep my emotions out of any dealings I might have with Denton.” Oxman rubbed again at the eye, which still stung and had teared up and was watering profusely.

  “That right, man. You str
eet smart.” Tobin was grinning wider, parodying the stereotype black punks he hated.

  “It’s good advice,” Oxman said. “I’ll take it.”

  “More advice, man: Throw a little cold water in that eye before you rub it blind.” Tobin lifted a hand absently in a wave. “I’ll take the department car, you take yours,” he said, and walked away before Oxman had a chance to argue.

  Uppity black dude.

  Art Tobin—10:45 A.M.

  Tobin was pleased. There was a coffee shop right across the street from the Waywind, the fleabag residential hotel where Lance Jardeen lived his miserable life. Tobin waited around until a booth by the window was cleared by a slat-hipped waitress who looked like a wasted junkie. He slid into the booth and smiled when he saw the unobstructed view he had of the hotel entrance.

  There were littered steps leading up to two revolving glass doors beneath a broken neon WAYWIND sign, a regular door off to the left. Even from where he sat, Tobin could see that too much salt had been spread over the steps during recent winters, and the concrete was chipped and marred as if someone had gone at it with a ball peen hammer. He stared at the broken neon in the sunlight and tried to imagine what it might say lighted at night, which letters wouldn’t glow. Or maybe the whole damned sign was shot. Neon was like that: pop! and some kind of gas escaped and that was it. Poisonous gas, Tobin thought.

  “Ready?” the boy-hipped waitress asked, looming over Tobin. She had stringy brown hair and blue eyes with that nobody-home look that confirmed his first impression of her as being drug-ridden. Not so unusual in this neighborhood. His own eyes automatically checked her arms for needle tracks. Long sleeves. Ha! But she’d caught his glance and a change had come over her. She was concentrating harder now behind a studiously blank look that didn’t fool Tobin at all. He’d seen so many junkies retreat behind that look that shouted “Hey, I’m doing my own innocent number, unaware of any wrongdoing anywhere in the universe; ask me about a needle and I’ll think you got a button missing.” Bull shit!