The Night Watcher

by Lutz, John

  Or like a blazing eye high above the city, gazing back at the watcher.

  “You Stack?” The tall guy in the FDNY uniform looked at Stack with a mixture of awe and curiosity, as if he’d recognized a movie star on the street but couldn’t be sure.

  Stack said he was Stack.

  “Lieutenant Ernest Fagin, FDNY Arson.” Fagin stuck out his hand.

  “This is my partner, Sergeant Lopez,” Stack said, causing Fagin to look at Rica for the first time. He shook her hand and smiled at her, trying to make up for bad manners. Give him that. He was young and gangly and looked like Abe Lincoln might have as a teenager without the beard.

  They were standing in the middle of Dr. Ronald Lucette’s living room on the fortieth floor of the Bennick Tower. The place was a blackened, waterlogged mess except for near the door where the flames hadn’t reached. The stench of burned carpet, wood, upholstery, and flesh was acrid and overpowering.

  “Was the fire confined to this apartment?” Stack asked.

  “This apartment and part of the adjacent one on the other side of the east wall,” Fagin said. “This could have been one hell of a fire. Traffic wasn’t bad for a change, and we got to it in a hurry.”

  “I thought you guys didn’t have the equipment to fight fires this high,” Rica said.

  “We don’t have enough to do it from the outside. That’s why response time’s so important. We get to a high-rise early enough to use the elevator or stairs, and we blitz it and get it under control. We don’t manage that, we can still sometimes outsmart the fire and contain the damage.”

  “Outsmart the fire?”

  “Yeah, we hook up to a standpipe. Should be one on each landing, along with a coiled two-and-a-half-inch-diameter hose, sometimes in a cabinet. Then we pay out the hose and at least manage to contain the fire. But it’s a battle of wits, because there’s only so much pressure that way, so much water, and sometimes the standpipe systems fail. A bad fire, we sometimes direct streams of water from nearby windows of other buildings, using their standpipe systems. But if the flames get a chance to take hold and find plenty of fuel, they block fire exits and short out electrical lines so elevators are inoperable. Then the fire has us pretty much at its mercy.”

  It interested Rica that this guy talked about fire as if it had a mind, and an evil one at that. She had heard only that pyromaniacs talked that way.

  “There’s only one victim?” Stack asked.

  Fagin nodded. “A Dr. Ronald Lucette. Lived here with his wife, Sharon. She was down off the lobby getting her feet worked on or something.”

  Stack looked at him. “Her feet? There a doctor’s office down there?”

  “Naw, a beauty salon. You know, getting her nails painted, her toes depilatoried, maybe. Hell, I don’t know.”

  “A pedicure,” Rica explained to the two of them. “Some women, they got the time and money, they get their feet looking good, calluses filed away, nails enameled by a pro, that kinda thing.”

  Both men stared at her. “You ever had one?” Stack asked.

  “No.”

  “The doctor is in,” Fagin said, “if you want to go see him.”

  Rica was starting to like Fagin.

  He led the way into the kitchen. Almost everything there was soot-darkened or charred, and there was about an inch of black water on the floor. Some techs were still there, wearing rubber boots and exchanging notes. The ME was packing up to leave. Dr. Ronald Lucette, who Stack knew had been the recent center of attention, was a blackened mess on the floor. He was lying on his right side with his knees drawn up, his arms behind him, reminding Stack of those photographs of the remains of long-ago volcano victims in Pompeii. His grotesque, darkened head was thrown back, mouth gaping, as if he still might be able to draw some cool fresh air and reverse the process that had left him in such a state.

  “The fire started right where he is,” Fagin told Stack and Rica. “Some sort of liquid accelerant was poured over and around him when he was on the floor tied up with something. Looks like cloth rather than rope or tape, but I couldn’t tell you what kind. As you can see, it was a nasty, greedy fire. These prewar buildings are what everyone wants to live in, but some of them, with their solid walls and floors, aren’t set up to support universal sprinkler systems.”

  “Was there a smoke alarm in here?” Rica asked.

  Fagin looked at her, then motioned over his right shoulder with his thumb. The smoke alarm was above the kitchen door, its round plastic lid dangling to reveal that the batteries had been removed.

  “If you find the batteries, let us know,” Stack said. “There might be prints on them.” But he knew there was about as much chance of finding fingerprints on the batteries as there had been of finding prints on the umbrella left at the scene of Hugh Danner’s murder by burning.

  “We already found the batteries,” one of the techs called over. “No prints of any kind.”

  “The killer wear gloves?” Rica asked.

  “That or the batteries were wiped,” the tech said. “We dusted what we could of the rest of the apartment. We’ll have to wait and see what we get other than the occupants’ prints.”

  Stack looked at Fagin. “What about the wife with the neat feet?”

  “She’s in the apartment next door. She just sits and stares.”

  “I wouldn’t want to see what she sees,” Stack said.

  He moved closer to the body and studied it from different angles.

  Rica was peering over his shoulder. “Looks like the victim might have been bound with black cloth,” she said, “but it’s hard to know for sure, with everything in the place blackened.”

  “The lab might be able to tell you the original color,” Fagin said. “Some dyes leave distinctive residues.”

  Stack straightened up.

  The ME had moved closer, a middle-aged woman with ragged blond hair and a lot of loose flesh around her neck. A victim of gravity. Stack didn’t think he’d seen her before.

  “I can give you a preliminary autopsy report,” she said. “Death by burning; soot in his mouth and, I’d be willing to bet, in his lungs. Which means the poor bastard was alive when he was set on fire.”

  “Like the last one,” Rica said.

  The ME nodded. “That’s what I hear.”

  “If somebody makes a habit of this,” Fagin said, “one of these days we won’t be able to get to a high-rise fire and contain it, and that’s everybody’s worst nightmare.”

  “If it isn’t the worst,” Rica said, “it’s in the running. What are the odds of one of these buildings catching fire high up and collapsing like the World Trade Center towers?”

  “Pretty slim,” Fagin said. “The WTC towers were struck by planes; then the fire was from thousands of gallons of jet fuel. And jet fuel burns at temperatures you wouldn’t believe, and for a long time. Nothing like that here. A high-rise fire like this, we generally use a defend-in-place strategy, usually don’t evacuate the whole building, just those people we think might be in some danger.” He got a look on his face Rica had seen before on New York firefighters, and on some cops. “Not like the World Trade Center at all,” he said in a different, softer voice.

  Stack pulled a folded handkerchief from his pocket and wiped perspiration from his face. He wasn’t feeling so good, wondering if he and Rica and the building itself would ever smell like anything other than charred matter. He stuffed the handkerchief back in his pants pocket.

  “Thanks for your input,” he said to everyone in the room. Then to Rica: “Let’s go next door and chat with the new widow.”

  “Cheerful goddamn job,” one of the techs said, as Stack and Rica were leaving.

  In the hall they passed the paramedics on their way to remove the body. Two hefty guys chomping gum and discussing the merits of different Italian restaurants, their emotions and discipline to duty on two different tracks. Doing their job with linguini on their minds; and when the body bag zipper rasped closed, their job was well on its way to
being over for the evening. Stack and Rica, on the other hand, were knocking on an apartment door so they could talk to a woman married to ashes. One body with so many different meanings. Death sure was selective in its impact.

  An expensively groomed woman in her fifties, whose only flaw was that she appeared to have been crying, opened the door. After Stack and Rica identified themselves, she led them to another woman slumped in a corner of a cream-colored brocade sofa that looked as if it cost more than a car.

  Sharon Lucette was a tiny, attractive blonde in her forties. Her blue blouse was stained with tears. Her dark slacks were rolled up at the ankles and there were wads of cotton stuck between her bare toes, the nails of which were a brilliant crimson that Rica would describe as blood-red. She had been wearing sandals, but they were upside down on the carpet. Next to them were two red-stained cotton wads. When the neighbor who’d ushered in Stack and Rica introduced them to Sharon as police detectives, Sharon wailed.

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Lucette,” Stack said soothingly. “We won’t bedevil you at a time like this. Believe me, we know it isn’t easy.” He moved closer and touched her quaking shoulder. “It’s one hell of a world sometimes, the things it can throw at you when you least expect it. An old cop knows that if he knows nothing else.”

  When the grief-tortured woman stopped sobbing and looked up at Stack, Rica saw that half her hairdo was perfectly sculpted, and the other half was wildly mussed and flattened to her head where she must have had her face buried sideways in a throw pillow. Her smeared mascara made her look like a stricken raccoon.

  She seemed to draw strength from Stack. She sniffed and swiped at her nose with the back of her bare wrist. “I can talk. I’ll try…I want that bitch arrested and punished!”

  Stack and Rica exchanged glances. “You have some idea who did this to your husband?” Rica asked.

  “I have exactly an idea,” Sharon Lucette said. “Her name is Lillian Tuchman. She was suing Ron and his partners because of her navel.”

  Rica touched the point of her pencil to her tongue and began writing in her notepad.

  Stack sat down next to Sharon on the sofa and patted her ever so softly on the back, a father calming a desperate child. “Her navel, is it, dear?” he asked gently.

  “Yes. She claimed it wasn’t where it should be.”

  “Ah,” Stack said.

  Sharon Lucette began to talk and couldn’t stop talking. Stack spoke to her encouragingly now and then, guiding her in her grief and obviously feeling genuinely sorry for the distraught woman. These were the only sounds in the hushed apartment: Sharon’s disbelief and pain set to words; Stack’s solicitous, soothing voice; and the sharp point of Rica’s pencil scratching paper.

  Rica tried to write as fast as Sharon talked, making sure she wasn’t missing anything pertinent, noticing that the smell from next door had permeated this apartment, too.

  Probably it had permeated Sharon Lucette’s mind and would never leave her, awake or asleep.

  Rica wished Stack would talk to her sometime the way he was talking to Sharon Lucette.

  FOURTEEN

  Dinner was at Four Seasons, and on Myra. Billy Watkins accepted her generosity with solicitous charm. He was thirty-one, blond, looked like a college quarterback, and was getting tired of his job, though he liked Myra all right. She was one of the service’s richest and least-demanding clients, and as far as he knew he was the only escort she ever requested. And though she was a bit old, she wasn’t all that unattractive. Her body was still young enough.

  Billy knew Myra liked him, too, but that she didn’t love him. He’d learned a great deal about women, and this one was tough and vulnerable at the same time, and wary of love. They understood each other without having expressed it in words—neither of them would ever really love again. It made Myra sad. It made Billy strong.

  In her soft bed in her expensively furnished apartment, she was as usual almost insatiable. She’d started out on top, as she often did, then let him turn her onto her back and thrust deeper and harder. She would beg him to be rough with her, biting his bare chest and shoulder hard in an effort to urge him on. Her nails would dig into his back, and her heels would batter his thighs and buttocks. Myra could be hard work, but Billy didn’t mind. He’d dealt with more desperate and physical clients. Like the woman on East Fifty-fourth who would only fuck in the tile shower with the water almost hot enough to boil lobsters. Or the one—

  “Ah, Christ, Billy!…”

  Beneath him, Myra had climaxed again. He’d spent himself almost completely the first time, an hour ago, and hadn’t completely recovered enough to give her his best. But it had been good enough, which pleased Billy, though not as much as it had pleased Myra.

  Raising his weight so it was supported on his knees and extended arms, he withdrew from her, careful not to hurt her as he rolled off her and onto his back. He lay there catching his breath. The ceiling fan above the bed was turning, the light fixture attached to it set on low. He bet the fixture, with its opaque delicate pink shade, cost a fortune.

  It didn’t surprise him to hear Myra begin to cry. Sobbing softly, she came to him and he put his arm around her and held her close. Her bare body was cool against his, though they were both perspiring.

  She was the only woman he’d ever known who cried almost every time after sex, as if the act brought forth memories or a reality too painful to confront. Someday maybe he’d ask her what it was all about, what it all meant.

  Her sobs were contained and quiet, as if she was ashamed of them. Billy knew they would build to a soft crescendo, then trail off, and she would mutter things he couldn’t understand before she embraced her dreams and her breathing evened out. The same pattern, every time. People were captives of their pasts. He began stroking her damp hair and forehead softly, assuring her over and over that everything would be all right, that whatever they’d held at bay with their frantic coupling wasn’t worth their fear. They both knew he didn’t mean it, but they both wanted so much to believe.

  Half an hour later, when Myra was asleep and snoring softly, he gently extricated himself from her and pulled the sheet up over her bare body so she wouldn’t catch a chill from the fan’s faint breeze. Then he worked his way over to the edge of the mattress and sat up, his toes digging into the plush carpet. From the street below, the sound of a car repeatedly blasting its horn was muffled and barely audible. This was one of Manhattan’s more desirable prewar high-rises, and the quietest apartment Billy had ever been in.

  Almost silently, nude, he padded barefoot into the white-and-lavender-tile bathroom that was nearly as large as his bedroom. He stood before the commode and rolled and peeled a condom off himself, dropping it into the toilet’s blue-tinted water. Then he relieved himself, watching the color of the water change to something ugly. Like my life.

  He turned away as he flushed the toilet. It made a sound little louder than a whisper.

  Maybe it was telling him in a hushed tone that life could change, would change, if you made it.

  Myra had drunk quite a lot of wine at dinner, so she was sleeping soundly. Billy enjoyed these times after sex with her. It was almost as if they were a genuine devoted or resigned couple and he lived here and owned everything around him. As he had last time he’d been here, he decided that before showering he’d walk around and take inventory of his possessions—what might be his possessions, if he possessed Myra. He could pretend, couldn’t he? That was all life was, anyway, pretend. Anyone in his business would tell you.

  He noticed Myra had rolled onto her right side, wrapping herself in the white sheet, and was still sleeping deeply as he left the bedroom.

  The apartment’s living room was vast, carpeted in pale rose with a cream-colored soft leather sofa and matching chairs. There were steel or chromium-framed, modern oil paintings on the walls. Billy neither understood nor liked art that didn’t look like identifiable objects. These things were all splotches of color and irregular shapes. One of the
m was simply three different-sized dots on a solid gray background. There was one painting that wasn’t so bad, though. It looked like a nude woman seen from a lot of angles at once. He bet all the paintings were expensive, but if he owned them, he’d sell them, have them auctioned off at Sotheby’s or someplace. The furniture was obviously quality stuff, though some of it was old. Why the hell, if Myra could afford that massive glass and gold coffee table that looked like the continent of Australia, would she own something like that rickety wooden chair with the curlicued wood back? Well, if this were his place he’d keep the table and ditch the chair. The big whitewashed-looking cabinet that held the TV and stereo, he’d keep that. Maybe get it refinished, though.

  He walked over and glanced into the kitchen. Lots of white wood cabinets, big sink with a gray marble countertop, steel refrigerator and stove that looked like they came out of some restaurant. Well, piss on the kitchen. Who needed it? He and Myra would eat out every meal.

  It wouldn’t be so bad actually being married to old Myra. Billy might even have angled for it if she weren’t so damned smart. Only when she was asleep, like now, did he hold any real advantage over her. Women were wily and indirect and usually doing more than one thing and thinking more than one thing at a time. And if it came right down to it, they wouldn’t play fair. They were more difficult to read and deal with than men, who were usually pretty much transparent and direct, more honest. Still, Billy liked women even though they could be tricky. Especially Myra could be tricky. Not for the first time, Billy cautioned himself to be careful.

  He took another turn around the living room, then the second bedroom, running his fingertips lightly over objects that could be or should be his own if only life were more fair. The third bedroom, Myra’s home office, he didn’t go into. Didn’t even try the knob. He knew the door would be locked.

  Billy glanced at the polished mahogany clock with its gold dial on the mantel. It was way past midnight.