The Night Watcher

by Lutz, John

  “Call a fucking meeting with experts! How are you supposed to know off the bat what’s needed here? Fighting fires isn’t your field. You don’t want to go off half-cocked and shoot your dick off. Find out what the experts say about this situation before you act and maybe do more harm than good.”

  “The mayor was talking about appointing a committee as well as combining departments.”

  “Doesn’t mean squat. There are already so many committees a committee is needed to figure out how to tell one from the other.”

  “Still, committees work even if they don’t work. They give the impression something’s being done.”

  “The plan is,” Etta forged ahead patiently, “the mayor will pretend you’re ahead of the curve on this issue and agree with you once you’ve established your position as the new commissioner. That way the public remembers and gives you credit in the voting booth. You’ll still be the Department of Public Well-being commissioner. If things are going crappy, we convince them they can’t switch horses now. Too dangerous. If things are going smoothly, you’re the reason. Win, win.”

  “You really think voters are still that gullible?”

  “They’re dumber than they ever were, especially if they think they’re sophisticates.”

  Etta slouched over to a credenza near the window and poured herself a bourbon straight up, then sampled it. She had no idea what kind it was, since it was in a crystal decanter, but it was smooth.

  When she turned, taking a second sip, she saw that Brand was standing there looking mildly confused.

  “I’m hired only to advise,” Etta said. “It’s ultimately your call, Leland. But if the mayor appoints you the new commissioner and his obvious heir apparent—and he will—I do advise you to make this high-rise fire thing your issue. It’s a sure winner. This Torcher creep will start a few more fires, cause some more Sturm und Drang while you go up in the polls as his adversary. Then he’ll get caught like they all do, and you can claim some of the credit for that, too.”

  “And if he isn’t caught right away? If he keeps setting fires and real panic sets in and more people die?”

  Etta smiled. “Then it’s I told you so time. You were the one who jumped on this problem early and demanded something be done. If only people had listened! There’s always a silver lining, or one you can paint that color.”

  Brand shook his head. “Pathetic, but probably sound reasoning.”

  “I’ve gotta talk freely, Leland, in order that we can work together. You came up through the ranks in New York politics, so you’re no cherry. But in the past few years, while you’ve been doing a damned good job in City Hall, the game of getting to City Hall or anywhere else has gotten rougher. If somebody doesn’t have the stomach for today’s politics, or tomorrow’s, he better grow one.”

  Brand walked over to the window and looked out at Lower Manhattan, at the bundled pedestrians and clogged traffic, at the city he really did love. He’d never had any illusions about political life; if he hadn’t known how the game was played, he wouldn’t be an aide to one of the most successful mayors in New York’s history. And he knew Etta was right about how much lower the gutter had slipped in recent years. “What if my opponent, whoever he or she turns out to be, takes the line that I shamelessly worked a human tragedy to my advantage? That my ambition exceeds my morality?”

  “You remind your opponent—and the voters—that you goddamn did something about the situation. Or at least you tried. Which, if you stop to think about it, will be true.” She noticed he was nodding slightly in agreement, maybe not even aware of the abbreviated little bobbing movements. “You start talking it up now and the mayor won’t have any choice but to appoint you. And the cops’ll feel the pressure—I’ll help see to that. Then whoever’s going around burning people in their apartments will feel the pressure, too. And the thing is, you might really be contributing to ending the city’s latest nightmare.”

  Brand grinned at her with something like admiration. “You’re definitely persuasive, Etta.”

  She smiled. “No, Leland, you’re persuasive!”

  “And persuaded,” he said, and walked over and poured a bourbon of his own.

  “There’s gotta be something linking these victims to each other besides their killer,” O’Reilly was saying. He plopped back down in his desk chair and stared at Stack and Rica, seated across the desk from him. It took a while for his chair cushion to stop hissing. “There must be something you two are overlooking.”

  Stack said, “Maybe that something is Larry Chips.”

  O’Reilly flushed with anger. “Him again? I told you, he’s a small-timer and a fuckup. Strikes the match in fire insurance scams because he doesn’t want to or can’t turn an honest dollar.”

  “Then why’d he bolt on Rica?’

  “Who knows for sure? Maybe he was planning on burning down the building and thought we somehow found out about it. A guy like that rabbits out of a drug-dive apartment and you got him built up like Oswald. Chips probably had a dozen reasons to run when he saw a cop.”

  “Name Chips as our suspect,” Stack said, “and we relieve some public angst. There’ll be a lot of media play, and maybe somebody’ll actually spot him somewhere.”

  O’Reilly shook his head violently. “This is the NYPD, not America’s Most Wanted. Chips is a nonissue.”

  Rica said, “Maybe so, but it still might help to get his name in the papers and on TV as a prime suspect. Getting a suspect’s photograph plastered all over television has brought results in the past. If Chips isn’t our firebug, it still might shake some information loose out there. He split from that apartment and risked killing a cop or getting shot himself for some reason.”

  O’Reilly sighed and leaned back in his chair, studying Rica. Stack thought of a naturalist observing some kind of animal life that didn’t care one way or the other if he existed, but was nonetheless keeping an eye on him. O’Reilly said, “Has it occurred to you, Rica, that a wacko like Chips is very often not thinking clearly?”

  “Sure. There are times even I don’t think clearly.”

  O’Reilly continued with his analytical gaze, maybe now trying to decide if she was messing with him. She met his stare with admirable neutrality. Stack would have said something to break the tension, only he was becoming amused.

  Rica’s equanimity seemed finally to bother O’Reilly and he shifted his weight forward so the chair tilted with him. He propped his elbows on the desk and assumed a pose of concern, letting his gaze roam now between Rica and Stack. “What you gotta ask yourself, you two, is do you really think Larry Chips is good for these barbecues, or is it that you’ve run through every other possibility you can think of and he’s all that’s left?”

  “If you’re looking for an honest answer,” Rica said, “it’s a combination of both. And it’s not as if we’d be badgering a law-abiding citizen—this guy took a shot at me, remember?”

  Stack wished he could reach over and prod her in the ribs, make her go a little more cautiously here. Who could tell when O’Reilly might look for a scapegoat so he could set right Vandervoort’s poor administrative procedures?

  There was a knock on the door, and a clerk Stack hadn’t seen before walked in and handed O’Reilly a folded sheet of fax paper. She was young, cute, and had an almost impossibly turned up nose. No words were exchanged as she made her way back out of the office without looking at either Stack or Rica, while O’Reilly read whatever was on the paper.

  “Here’s why Larry Chips took a shot at you and ran,” he said, dropping the paper on the desk. “LAPD says there’s an active warrant on him for a homicide out in LA. He shot and killed a man at a fire he set. Outdoor security camera caught him running from the scene.” He stood up behind the desk so he could look down at Stack and Rica, who remained seated. “So, let’s view Chips as a shooter, not a burner of people.”

  “What kind of fire did Chips set out in LA?” Stack asked.

  “Not an apartment fire like the on
es you’re investigating. He torched a house. The victim rented it from whoever owned the building and probably hired Chips. The tenant’s burned corpse had four slugs in it. Any of our apartment fire victims have slugs in them?”

  Stack admitted that none had. Rica said nothing.

  “Okay,” O’Reilly said.

  You think so, asshole? Rica thought.

  Stack stood up, so she figured she’d better also.

  She wasn’t surprised when O’Reilly came up with something else to ask when they were almost out the door. The Columbo syndrome.

  “You two looked into the sex lives of whoever was romantically involved with or married to these victims? You know, kinky stuff, that kinda thing?”

  “Kinky stuff?” Rica asked.

  “Not yet,” Stack said.

  “That one boggles the mind,” Rica said, “considering half these people’s sex lives have gone up in smoke.”

  “Or a third,” O’Reilly said meaningfully.

  Rica was formulating a reply when she felt Stack actually push her out the door.

  In the squad room they saw the new young clerk busy at an open file drawer. Stack and Rica walked over to her.

  Stack introduced himself and Rica to the young woman, called her dear, melted her heart with his smile. Made Rica sick, but the girl didn’t seem to see through him.

  “Did the commander ask you to bring that form into his office as soon as it came in?” Stack asked.

  “No,” said the clerk. “It came in by fax over two hours ago. He told me to wait twenty minutes after you entered his office, then bring the information in to him.”

  “Thank you, dear,” Stack said.

  As he and Rica strode from the building, Rica could hear him breathing hard with his anger.

  She thought she might even be able to feel heat emanating from him.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Stack knew Gideon Fine didn’t like it, but what else was there to do? Stack and Laura were trying to end their marriage with as little stress as possible and without lasting animosity, but the system kept getting in the way. Caution became distrust became betrayal.

  And why in God’s name shouldn’t he simply stand in front of a co-op board and tell them the truth about Laura? She would be financially okay and could afford the co-op; she had no felony convictions or destructive addictions and had never been evicted for whatever reason from anywhere.

  “Well and good,” Fine had said, “but as your attorney I have to inform you that you can’t get in trouble if you don’t say anything one way or the other about Laura. If you go on the record—any record—what you say might be taken out of context, misrepresented, misinterpreted, and be used to do you harm.”

  But Stack would have none of these intricacies and intrigues. With the people you loved, used to love, and trusted, you hung the truth out on the line. There was too much damned subterfuge in the world, and nobody knew it better than an old cop.

  He stood on the cold street corner and through the fog of his breath studied the building and block where his former wife was going to live, feeling proprietary, feeling protective, feeling like a husband. The co-op Laura was trying to buy was in a prewar brick building in the lower Fifties near First Avenue. It was a fair neighborhood almost on the edge of upscale. A safe enough neighborhood, Stack decided. He withdrew his hands from his coat pockets and crossed the street.

  The Norwood, as the building was called, didn’t have a doorman, and the outer lobby was veined gray marble that could use polishing and mirrors that could use resilvering. There was a cluster of new-looking but mismatched upholstered chairs around a table with a fanned arrangement of outdated magazines on it next to a lamp. Several of the magazines were Spanish issues, one French.

  Stack pressed an intercom button, identified himself, and was buzzed into the main building. He rode an elevator to the second floor and went to a door marked 2B, where he’d been told the Norwood co-op board was meeting.

  A short, balding man in a white shirt with his tie loosened opened the door before Stack had a chance to knock, then smiled and invited him in. Shaking hands with Stack, he said his name was Hank Upman and that he was president of the board.

  Stack found himself in a vacant unit without furnishings except for a long folding table with a white cloth over it, two new-looking mismatched chairs that expanded the decorating motif of the lobby, and a row of wooden folding chairs behind the table. On the folding chairs sat six board members—three men and three women. The chair in the center was empty, obviously Upman’s. It was cool in what was apparently the unit’s living room, and smelled faintly of cleaning fluid or insecticide. Stack unbuttoned his coat but left it on.

  Quickly Upman introduced the rest of the board members in a flurry of names, only a few of which Stack could remember, then told Stack he knew his time was valuable and thanks for coming and would he please sit in one of the upholstered chairs facing the table. And would Stack like a cup of coffee? Stack said no, and Upman walked around the long table and sat down in his chair. He was a jittery kind of guy but it seemed not so much inner-driven as for show, as if he might be trying to convince himself and anyone watching that he was busy and important. Inside, he might be perfectly composed. His intense dark eyes were steady, and his broad features were calm, even as his body motion was a series of shifts and twitches and his hands were never still.

  “We’ve talked briefly to your former wife, Mr. Stack, and—”

  “Present wife,” Stack corrected. “The divorce isn’t yet final. And it’s Detective Stack.”

  “Yes, sure.” Upman began picking at the flesh of one hand with nervous fingers of the other. “What we’d like from you is a character reference. Since you, uh, expressed hesitancy about writing a letter of reference, I…we all want to assure you that what you tell us won’t go beyond these walls.”

  “It wouldn’t matter if it did,” Stack said. “There’s nothing secret or sinister about Laura. She’s simply a cop’s wife who’s finally had too much of irregular hours, regular worry, and a husband married to his work.”

  “You make it sound as if the divorce is all your fault,” a middle-aged woman at the end of the table said. She wore violet-framed glasses with a woven cord dangling from their sidebars and draped behind her neck. Stack thought her last name was Hart but decided not to risk it.

  “It is,” he said simply, almost hearing Gideon Fine groan. Better get control of that, quit shooting off your mouth. The truth can kill you in court. “What I mean is, there’s no dislike or trouble between us. It’s just that our marriage is over. I’m confident that if I tell you about Laura you’ll be more than glad to accept her as a resident here. There’s simply no reason not to.”

  “That’s very reassuring,” Upman said, not sounding at all reassured.

  “It’s refreshing to hear a husband who’s being divorced talk that way,” said the woman whose name might be Hart.

  “What about unusual friends?” A slender blond man, quite old and seated on the other side of Upman, had spoken. He had a downturned mouth and dewlaps blemished with liver spots.

  “Unusual how?’ Stack asked.

  The man shrugged. “Habits, associations, creeds—”

  “Not creeds,” Upman cut in. “Affiliations, more like.”

  Colors, more like, Stack thought, noticing that everyone on the board was white. “If I’m not mistaken, she’s in a garden club. She likes to grow geraniums.”

  The board stared at him as if he’d gone insane.

  “There are strict rules about plants and containers on the balconies,” a dark-haired man wearing a gray knit sweater said. Warren, Stack was pretty sure was his first name.

  “I’m sure Laura will conform to the rules. She’ll probably even resign from the garden club if you ask.”

  “Hardly necessary,” snapped a tall woman seated on Upman’s right. She was tuned in and knew sarcasm when she heard it. She was wearing a brilliant silk scarf wrapped around her head a
nd had on the largest gold hoop earrings Stack had ever seen. “Does your wife subscribe to the Times or the Post?”

  “We always got the Times delivered,” Stack said, “but we used to read both.”

  “The New Yorker?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Does she read the New Yorker?”

  “No.”

  “Would she understand the cartoons?”

  “Very well, I’d imagine.”

  “These kinds of questions might seem strange to you, Detective Stack,” Upman said, “but their purpose is for us to get a feel for what kind of person your wife really is. I’m sure you ask the same kinds of questions in your interrogations.”

  “No,” Stack said. He had never inquired if a suspect understood New Yorker cartoons. But maybe it wasn’t a bad idea.

  “There are various reasons for divorce,” Warren said. “What can you tell us about your wife’s lifestyle?”

  Stack wasn’t sure quite how to answer. “She’s quiet,” he said. “Doesn’t keep late hours or play the stereo at top volume.”

  Warren sat back and seemed to be carefully composing his next question. “I mean, what are the chances of her ever remarrying another man?”

  “Or going out with…dating another man?” asked the old blond guy who’d inquired about unusual friends. Something about the emphasis on man.

  “I’m not sure how to answer that one,” Stack said.

  “You can answer generally,” Warren said. “That’s all we ask of you.”

  It took Stack a moment; then he was astounded. “Are you asking me if she’s a lesbian?”

  No one on the board looked surprised by his response.

  “That wasn’t the question,” Upman put in quickly. Stack understood why he was board president. It took somebody with sense to steer these people away from trouble.

  He stared hard at Warren. “Was that your question?”

  “Of course not,” Warren said.

  “Laura isn’t leaving me for another man or woman,” Stack said. “Since you haven’t asked.”