The Night Watcher

by Lutz, John

  O’Reilly snorted. “Shit, I don’t even know if it was a man or woman, the voice is so fuckin’ disguised.”

  “Maybe the techs’ll be able to tell,” Rica suggested, though she knew it wasn’t likely. Whoever had made the call—and she was sure it was the Torcher—knew how to disguise a voice. Hell, these days there were devices you could buy at an electronics store that would make you somebody else on the phone.

  “Lab can do wonders,” Stack said.

  O’Reilly tossed a cheap ball point pen down on the desk hard enough that it bounced onto the floor. “Damn! I thought this was gonna lead to something.”

  Fagin looked at Stack, then over to O’Reilly. “Sorry. We do what we can with what we have to work with.” Back at Stack. Maybe a smile. Bureaucracy was bureaucracy, in the FDNY or NYPD. It was all the same. What it took to be in charge was sometimes quite different from what it took to do the job.

  “Then of course we got this dis-fuckin’-aster!” O’Reilly said, punching a forefinger into the folded Times on his desk. “Thirty-two dead, over a hundred hospitalized, six in critical condition.” He glowered at Fagin. “Why didn’t you guys get there sooner? Hell, you had a goddamn phone call, maybe from the guy that set the fire.”

  In the corner of his vision Stack saw Fagin stiffen. Fagin’s right hand with its long, piano player’s fingers clenched into a white-knuckled fist.

  Briefly Stack thought Fagin might throw a punch at O’Reilly and was ready to grab his arm, but the lanky arson investigator drew a deep breath and relaxed. “I explained to Detective Stack the problems we have with high-rise fires and response times.”

  “Like you explained it to the media vultures,” O’Reilly said. “Still, we got all those people dead, and explaining won’t bring them back to life.” He wiped a hand straight down his face, pulling at flesh and momentarily making him look mournful.

  “It’s politics,” Fagin said. “We need more of the right kind of equipment, better inspection, and building codes that take into account high-rise fires. We got a city here that keeps growing straight up. Fire fighting’s gotta catch up with it.”

  “Speaking of politics,” O’Reilly said, “this Leland Brand jack-off is killing us.”

  “He does want to spend money on high-rise fire prevention,” Fagin said.

  “Wants to be goddamn commissioner, mayor someday, is all. Meanwhile, he’s slamming the police department for not catching this Torcher nightmare prick! He actually gets himself elected mayor, then see if the FDNY gets its money and shiny new play toys. What you’ll get is what we get, and it’ll be up your ass!”

  Fagin sat back, not about to argue with what he knew was probably true.

  “The pressure is on to catch this firebug sicko,” O’Reilly said, “and Channel One asks us what goes on, we ain’t got diddly-squat! Anybody got any ideas?”

  “Larry Chips,” Stack said.

  O’Reilly looked at him in disbelief, working his eyebrows. “Chips again? I told you, this guy’s not our firebug. What do we know about him that leads you to keep coming back to Chips as our prime suspect?”

  “He’s our only suspect. We know he’s a firebug, and he’s not in California, and he’s probably still in the New York area.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Stack said.

  “Doesn’t goddamn matter?”

  “Give him to the media.”

  “Ah…” Another tug at slack flesh; another brief and mournful hound. Here was something worth a thought. “Like tossing meat to following wolves, eh?”

  Stack pressed on. “Exactly. Let them chew on it while we do our work without them breathing down our necks. Relieve that pressure. There’s an LA murder-one warrant out on Chips anyway. The heat might bring him in.”

  O’Reilly grunted. “Heat’s something Chips understands all too well.”

  “Bastard deserves to be meat for the wolves,” Rica said. Not that she particularly cared one way or the other about Chips. Doing her part for Stack, helping her man make his case. Her man someday.

  Stack seemed to shrug without actually moving his shoulders. Neat. All in the attitude. “You wanted a suggestion.”

  “What I suggest,” O’Reilly said, “is the whole lot of you clear outta my office and start doing your jobs.” He stood up and walked to the window, then turned his back on them as they filed out, probably already figuring a way to make using Chips as a diversion for the media his own idea.

  Outside O’Reilly’s office, Fagin looked over at Stack and Rica. “What an asshole!”

  “Temporary asshole, anyway,” Rica said, wondering if it was true, if the cancer would ever allow them to see Vandervoort again in the office they’d just left. Savvy and soft-spoken Vandervoort, the former ferocious street cop who had survived and understood it all.

  They moved aside and stood in a knot to let two plainclothes detectives past where the file cabinets narrowed the hall. One of them had on cologne that reminded Rica of a Dumpster on a hot day.

  “Let me know, will you,” Fagin said, “if the lab brings up anything useful on the 911 tape?”

  “Sure,” Stack said, “but believe me, there isn’t a chance in hell that tape will give us anything more. Whoever made that call knew what they were doing. I’ve worked with the lab before on phone tapes; the conversation’s too brief and they’ve got nothing there to grab hold of anyway.”

  “That wasn’t what you told—”

  “He just said that to appease O’Reilly,” Rica explained.

  Fagin nodded and gave Stack a fresh look, thinking that over, along with the rest of what had gone on in O’Reilly’s office. “You’re something of a politician.”

  “A survivor,” Stack said, not showing his anger unless you knew him well.

  “Like in the fire department,” Rica added.

  Oh, sweet Jesus!

  The Torcher almost squirmed in agony. Thirty-two dead! And more suffering. How the fuck had it happened? How had it gone so wrong? The 911 call. Even that precaution hadn’t helped to contain the fire.

  Over and over the flashbacks, reliving last night, step by step by step. The kitchen floor had been ceramic tile. The sprinkler system had been going full blast. Smoke would soon set off alarms in the hall, even if other tenants failed to smell it. So how had the fire spread? The towel that Kreiger had wrapped around his fat body?

  The Torcher’s mind tried to recall the precise pattern of the towel on the floor, whether it provided a path for the fire to follow to something else combustible. If there was a way to more fuel, the fire would find it. Fire could do that, would do that. Intelligence was in the fire, along with craftiness, maliciousness. A cruel friend in a cruel life, not to turn your back on.

  The accelerant! When the umbrella was tossed, might some more accelerant have somehow spilled from the bottle onto the floor? More sustenance for the fire?

  No, the bottle was empty and safely in its pocket. The bottle was always empty before the flames. Had been last night. Had been…

  But there was no way to recreate last night. Not for sure.

  Sweet Jesus!

  Liquor didn’t help. Booze didn’t help. Pills didn’t help. The flashbacks kept coming, all day long, since the morning news.

  Whose fault was this, really? Where did the blame actually lie? The Torcher’s mind darted this way and that, explored, drew back, explored again, trying to find a way around the guilt, beyond it, trying to escape it. What was the sequence of events here? Who bore the guilt? Who should bear the guilt? The guilt that was like fire.

  The answer was of course in the beginning. Always. To really understand, to affix blame with any certainty, you had to go back to the beginning. Always. To the spark. Always. Always the beginning.

  One thing for sure—you couldn’t place your trust in a 911 operator, or in the fire department. Ahhh, God!…

  The detective, Stack! He was a goddamn grown-up, someone with judgment and conscience. The most
dangerous kind of cop, a plodder with brains. Relentless bastard who would take it to the wall. Who would be cool and deadly in an emergency. But steady, steady…a man who always knew what to do and then did it. Next time maybe he should be the early warning system.

  Leland Brand fired up an illegal sixty-dollar Cuban cigar, courtesy of a UN friend with diplomatic privileges, and stood on the balcony of his East Side apartment, surveying the city. His gaze slid from the Queensboro Bridge’s ornate steel beauty to the UN Building, to the slanted roof of the Citigroup Building. Near the Citigroup skyscraper towered the Lipstick Building, one of his favorite architectural accomplishments. Damned thing looked just like a giant, oval-based cylindrical tube of lipstick some whore might have dropped there on the sidewalk and stepped on; then it somehow got vertical and grew. He found himself wondering how it would burn.

  Brand often came out to the balcony with an expensive cigar and congratulated himself when things went right. And things had gone right. The fire that had destroyed the upper floors of the Belmire Tower and claimed—so far—thirty-two lives had been a terrible thing. He felt bad about it, maybe even heartsick sometimes. But it had been precisely what he’d warned about. If Brand had been Public Well-being commissioner or even mayor of New York, if proper precautions had been taken, if money had been spent on high-rise innovation and fire-fighting equipment, this tragedy might not have occurred. If Leland Brand became commissioner and then mayor, it was unlikely to occur again. And voters with short memories would be reminded of that fact. Almost any New Yorker, or tourist, might find him-or herself on an upper floor of a high-rise building. Helpless if smoke appeared, if flames appeared. Somebody in public life had to think for them. Think ahead.

  Etta Daggett was right about thinking way ahead. Brand was glad now that he’d hired her; she figured to be the smartest and meanest dog in the fight, and she was on his side.

  He studied the smoothly burning ember of his cigar and marveled at its quality. The ancient pull of the steady red glow, and beyond it the scattered lights of the city stretching for miles, for galaxies, gave him the momentary sensation that he could fly. And he sure as hell would fly—eventually right into the mayor’s office. Etta Daggett would fly with him. They would fly in formation. Now there was an image to bring a smile.

  He took a long drag on the cigar, inhaling slightly, then expelled a dense cloud of white smoke that shredded with the breeze and became part of the night. He held the cigar out over the balcony rail and flicked it with his thumb to displace the precarious cylinder of ash beyond the ember. The breeze snatched the gray particulate matter and sent it chasing wildly after the smoke.

  Ashes to ashes, Brand thought, grinning. An ill wind… Clichés served politicians well. Common denominators of the common man. The voter.

  He didn’t feel the cold in the slightest.

  Ashes to ashes…

  THIRTY-TWO

  June 2000

  Ed Marks had worked the afternoon shift and was exhausted. He’d been attacked by a junkie near Times Square only an hour after he’d hit the street. Later, he’d done crowd control when the plays began to break in the theater district. Now his feet and legs felt numb after climbing four flights of creaking wooden steps to the walk-up apartment he and Amy and the twins had been forced to live in until they could find something better.

  He locked the door behind him, turning the knob lock, keying the dead bolt, then fastening the new brass chain lock he’d bought at a going-out-of-business sale in the next block. He looked at the old wooden door. One kick and it would break off its hinges and fly open.

  This wasn’t the safest neighborhood, but he really wasn’t afraid of a break-in. It would take an ambitious or desperate thief to take four flights of stairs up, then down to rob anyone who lived in one of these rat traps. All to victimize somebody who probably wouldn’t have anything worth stealing.

  After tossing his uniform cap on the sofa, then loosening his tie, he walked quietly to the bedroom door and peeked into the dimness.

  Amy was a shadowed form on the bed, the sheets twisted and tossed aside so she could sleep in the summer heat the apartment’s decrepit window air conditioner couldn’t fend off. He could hear her soft breathing. Or was it one or both of the infant twins, Adie and Allie, sleeping in the wooden crib near the bed? Either way, Marks’s family was peacefully resting, out of harm’s way.

  Since the birth of the twins, the young cop and father had gained a different perspective on life. The bad breaks didn’t seem so tragic, once a man realized what was really important. What really mattered. For Ed Marks, what mattered were the three people in the next room.

  He started over toward the sofa to switch off the table lamp Amy had left on for him, before going in to undress and lie down beside her. Then he swallowed the dry, acrid taste suddenly in his mouth, and realized he was thirsty.

  A cold beer was what he needed, what he deserved, after all the crap he’d taken out on the street. The afternoon temperature in New York had been in the nineties, and it didn’t seem to have cooled down much during the evening. It was the concrete, Marks’s sergeant was fond of saying. All the concrete held the heat in the summer, turning the city into a giant kiln that took a long time to cool down. And that never cooled down all the way even at night during the dog days.

  The enameled wood door to the kitchen was closed. Marks knew the latch didn’t catch, and all he had to do to open the door was to push.

  As soon as the flat of his palm touched the faded green door, he felt the heat.

  Marks knew the rules, how you were never supposed to open a door if it felt warm. There might be a fire, and you might give it a big gulp of oxygen, set up a cross draft. But the motion had already begun, his body leaning forward, his right leg extended, foot a few inches off the floor, to take a step into the kitchen. Weight had shifted. Momentum was in charge. He couldn’t stop himself, and the door swung open.

  Heat rushed him like a solid wall. There wasn’t much smoke yet, most of it hugging the ceiling. But the heat felt as if it were baking his eyes. Flames were leaping from behind the antiquated electric stove and where the tablecloth—the table itself—was burning. Much of the dark smoke was rolling from a melted plastic light-switch plate on the wall near the stove. Probably the source of the fire, the electrical connection inside the wall.

  Frightening though it was, the fire was confined to the kitchen. It wasn’t life-threatening yet; there was plenty of time to get out of the apartment and the building. But Marks knew how quickly these things could spread. He saw the stack of unpacked cardboard boxes in a corner, his and Amy’s coats and winter clothes, their marriage certificate and lease copy, a photo album of the twins, the certificate Marks received when he’d graduated from the academy—their lives.

  Marks remembered a fire in Queens where he’d done crowd control, how he’d glanced into a body bag just before it was zipped closed and seen the burned corpse of a small woman or a child. Blackened flesh had baked away and curled on one side of the face so that all the teeth were visible. It was a smile that made nightmares.

  Marks spun around and rushed into the bedroom. He gathered himself and took a deep breath. There was time. Definitely there was time. Don’t show her panic. Don’t make her afraid!

  He reached out and gently shook his wife’s shoulder, fighting the impulse to scream at her. “Amy…” Stay calm! I’m counting on you. “Better wake up.”

  She stirred and raised her head from the pillow. “Ed?…”

  “Take it easy,” he said in what he hoped was a relaxed tone. “You’ve got to get up now. Fast.”

  “Huh? Now?”

  He reached over to turn on the lamp by the bed. The switch rotated in his hand and clicked without result. The fire inside the walls must have gotten to some wiring, broken the circuit.

  Amy sat up. “What’s going on?” Plenty awake now.

  “There’s a fire in the kitchen. I want you to take the twins and get downstairs no
w. Move calmly, not too fast, just pick them up and carry them downstairs to the street. Remember, there’s plenty of time.”

  “What are you—”

  “I’m going in to phone the FDNY. Then I’m going to grab some stuff from the kitchen and follow you and the twins.”

  “Don’t be crazy! Forget the stuff in the kitchen! Grab one of the girls and come with me. Now, Ed!”

  One of the twins woke at the sound of her voice and started to cry.

  Marks clutched his wife’s shoulder and squeezed. “The fire’s not a big one yet. Just do as I tell you, Amy. There isn’t time to discuss it.”

  “Ed—”

  “Damn it! Do it, Amy!”

  She was on her feet immediately then, her mind made up that he wasn’t going to change his mind and there was danger in arguing. For both of them, and for the girls. Her babies. Nothing was going to harm her babies. Not bothering even to put on shoes or slippers, she snatched up the twins, both crying now, and held them tight against her milk-swollen breasts.

  Marks followed her out of the bedroom and was standing picking up the phone, watching her leave, when it suddenly struck him with a force that almost doubled him over that he might never see her or the girls again.

  At least the phone was still working. After calling in the fire, Marks hurried back into the kitchen. This time when he opened the door a hot rush of air whooshed past him and he saw that there was more smoke.

  He held his hand over his mouth and nose and went to the stack of boxes, thanking God the fire hadn’t yet reached them.

  Quickly he got down the top box, tore open the flaps, and found the small metal box used to hold his and Amy’s important papers. He set it aside, rummaged swiftly through the box, then tossed it behind him. The next box contained only clothes. The one beneath it more clothes, some shoes. Marks felt beneath the clothes and his fingers touched something rough, like cobbled leather. Or vinyl made to look and feel like leather. He tugged the object out and was pleased to see he’d found the photo album. Marriage photos, twins photos, the fire wouldn’t get them.