The Night Watcher

by Lutz, John

  “Not to worry,” Burns said.

  He worked the keys again. Stack and Rica stood on either side of him, staring at the illuminated screen, and they began to read.

  After about twenty minutes, everyone’s back was sore, but every message sent or received by Victoria Pike during the past month had been read. Most were uninteresting family chitchat between Pike and her mother in Ohio. Some of the e-mails were gossipy, to and from a woman whose e-mail moniker was peeps252. Peeps’s real name was Corlane, and the e-mails made it obvious that she worked with Victoria Pike at Juppie’s Restaurant, only a few blocks away on West Forty-seventh. The interesting thing about those messages was that they mentioned somebody named Ned who might have been Pike’s lover. It seemed Ned liked to feel up Victoria in public places when no one was looking. In line to get into theaters, he would often move close behind her and snake his hand beneath her coat. Victoria wondered if this was in any way normal behavior. Corlane said what’s the difference? She’d been dating in New York for ten years and there was no normal out there. Normal in New York was if they didn’t rape you, then chop and dice you with a machete.

  “I kinda like peeps252,” Rica said.

  “I’m gonna log off now,” Burns said, “before the battery goes. Everything’ll be saved. If you want, I can disconnect the machine and bag the whole thing for evidence. No trouble at all, with the keyboard and monitor built right in.”

  “Thanks,” Stack said, straightening all the way up and stretching his back. He thought he heard a couple of vertebrae crack.

  “You oughta buy one of these machines,” Burns said, yanking the plug from its dead socket, by the cord, just in case the crime scene techs hadn’t thought to dust the plug. “Communicate more. Join the human race.”

  “I’ve seen enough of the human race. You get this thing bagged and in the trunk of your car. Then Rica and I will buy you a beer across the street before you go back to the precinct.”

  Burns smiled. “Human of you.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Juppie’s was JUPPIE’S JUMPIN’ JOINT, according to the lettering on the sign over its door. But when Stack and Rica entered, they found themselves in a gloomy restaurant with half a dozen senior citizens seated at round tables with red-and-white checked tablecloths. A couple of tired-looking waitresses, plodding their way toward swinging doors that apparently led to the kitchen, glanced back at Stack and Rica, who were removing their coats and hanging them on a rack with coat hangers near the door. Convenient for coat thieves, Stack thought as he and Rica moved over to stand near the defaced HOSTESS WILL EAT YOU sign.

  “Somebody’ll be right there,” one of the waitresses called, before the two of them disappeared through wide swinging doors. Off to the left, Stack saw a dim bar occupied only by a morose-looking man seated on a stool and staring at a TV mounted up near the ceiling. His resigned isolation and the way he was dressed in black slacks and white shirt, a towel tucked in his belt, Stack figured him for the bartender coping with a slow night.

  “Somebody at Juppie’s has a sense of irony,” Rica said.

  A stout woman about forty, with wide, Slavic features and carefully coifed black hair, approached them hurriedly in a whirl of strong perfume scent and a swish of voluminous black jacket and skirt. She walked as if her feet hurt, but her unwavering smile suggested she was used to the pain and could put up with it. “Sorry for the wait. It’s senior citizen night here, but that’s okay despite what the sign says. You’re welcome.”

  I’ll bet, Rica thought. “We didn’t notice a senior citizen sign.”

  “That’s okay. Gonna be just the two of you?”

  “We already had dinner,” Stack lied. He turned his back on the diners and unobtrusively showed the hostess his shield. “What we’d like is to talk to one of your employees, a woman named Corlane.”

  The welcoming smile faded and the hostess turned pale beneath her dark hair. Stack noticed her eyes momentarily widen, imperceptibly unless you were watching closely for it, before she got hold of herself. “I’m Corlane.”

  Something to hide, Stack thought. Most people had something to hide, and it almost always showed when the law introduced itself.

  “Corlane Chadner,” she quickly volunteered, showing she was cooperative, an honest citizen.

  “This isn’t about you, Corlane,” Stack said, making friends. “Our only interest is in what you can tell us about Victoria Pike.” He smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry, dear. We’re very single-minded. Unless you’ve robbed a bank recently, you have nothing to fear from us.”

  Corlane looked relieved. What was it? Stack wondered. Outstanding traffic tickets? A previous drug conviction? Maybe just a long-ago bad experience with a cop.

  Corlane led them to one of the tables out of earshot of the customers who retained sound hearing, and motioned for them to sit down. When they were seated in uncomfortable bentwood chairs, she asked if they wanted some coffee. Both declined, and she didn’t summon the waitress she was keeping in sight. Instead, she sighed and said, “So what’s with Victoria?”

  “Not Vicky?” Stack asked.

  “Naw. She doesn’t like being called anything but Victoria. That’s one of the first things I learned about her when she started here last year.”

  “You were close friends?” Stack asked.

  Corlane caught the past tense and blanched again in the dimness. “Something’s happened to her, hasn’t it? You said—”

  “I’m afraid your friend is dead,” Stack said. “I’m truly sorry, Corlane.”

  Corlane stared at Stack, then at Rica. Her eyes were tearing up. Genuine shock, Stack thought. She was wrestling hard with what she’d just learned. She licked her lips. Her broad brow wrinkled, and her surprisingly small hands knotted into fists. “That fucking Ned!”

  “Why Ned?” Stack asked.

  “You know about Ned?”

  “Sure. A little. We’d like to know more.”

  “He bruised her up. She showed me. Until then I thought he was okay, maybe a little quirky. But when he turned physical I advised Victoria to dump him like dog shit. They don’t change. Once they start knocking a woman around, it never gets any better.”

  “I’ve never known it to,” Stack agreed.

  “You’ve had a bad time like that?” Rica asked Corlane in a sympathetic voice.

  “Long time ago. When I was slender and young and vulnerable.” And very attractive, Stack figured.

  “You looking for Ned?” Corlane asked. She sounded hopeful.

  “Not really,” Rica said.

  Corlane looked confused.

  “What made you think Victoria was murdered?” Stack asked. “We never mentioned it. Only that she was dead.”

  Corlane glared warily at him. “I wouldn’t have been so cooperative if I knew you were gonna play games like some kinda TV cop.”

  “We’re not playing games, Corlane. And please, try to understand we’re only doing our job.”

  Corlane motioned for one of the waitresses to come to the table. “Have Eddie pour a Walker Red for me,” Corlane said. “A double, straight up.” Then she turned her attention back to Stack and Rica. “A couple of cops come here at my place of work and tell me one of my friends and fellow workers is dead. And after what I learned about Ned, who’s always had a screw loose, what would you figure I’d think?”

  “Exactly what you did think,” Stack said. “We just needed it for the record.”

  Corlane frowned. “Is this conversation being recorded?”

  “Heavens no!” Stack said, holding up both his hands as if that proved his denial. “But if you really distrust us that much, I’m saying that this is an illegal recording and anything that comes out of it is entrapment.” Another smile. “Over and out.”

  Corlane sighed. “Okay…sorry. I guess I’m shook-up.”

  “Naturally,” Stack said.

  “So what happened to Victoria?”

  “She died in a fire in her apartment.”
/>   “Ah, an accident!”

  “Oh, no. Someone set the fire deliberately, I’m afraid. Set her on fire, actually. Even held an umbrella over Victoria so she’d burn for a while after the sprinkler system came on. People will burn that way, you know, like meat that catches fire in a frying pan.” Stack brutally painting her a picture, trying to flick her even more off balance. In case she was hiding something significant.

  “Jesus!…”

  “I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to—”

  “That’s okay.” Corlane swallowed hard and brushed his apologies away with a wave of her pale hand.

  “I know it must be difficult,” Stack said. “We should have broken it to you easier, I guess. We grow mental calluses in this job and sometimes forget ourselves.”

  “Still think it was Ned?” Rica asked, playing the mean cop. Insensitive, anyway. Those mental calluses.

  Corlane took a deep breath, then shook her head. “Comes right down to it, I don’t know.” The waitress came with her drink, approaching the table tentatively, sensing something was wrong. Corlane thanked her and took a long pull of scotch before setting the glass on the table. “I guess, to tell you the truth, I can’t imagine Ned doing something like that. He wasn’t even to the stage where he was likely to cut skin or break bones, though he would have gotten there eventually. You know how it is; they work up to it over time. Ned and Victoria, the way they are together, were, he mighta got a little too rough with her and left a few bruises on her, like I said. But to set her on fire and stand there and watch her burn…Naw, not our Ned.”

  Our Ned? “Too decent a guy?”

  “Naw. To my way of thinking, he doesn’t have the balls.”

  “Usually they don’t,” Stack said. “Bedroom badasses like Ned.”

  Corlane actually smiled at him, a cop talking her language. Ten minutes and Stack had her. Rica loved it.

  “Victoria have any enemies you know of?” Stack asked. “Other than her love-hate thing with Ned.”

  Corlane didn’t have to think about it more than a few seconds. “She was a sweet, lovable person. You’ll see. Everybody who knew her will tell you the same. Even Ned, prick that he is.”

  “She was a waitress here, right?”

  “Yeah. But you might say the job was beneath her station. She used to be a big-shot investment counselor, then got mixed up with booze and drugs and came down in the world. I might as well tell you about the substance abuse, ’cause you’ll find it out anyway. But I’m also gonna tell you she went through rehab two years ago and she’s been clean ever since. She told me that and I believe her, and I never saw her even smoke or take a drink since I’ve known her.”

  “She might have fallen off the wagon,” Rica said.

  “Naw. She was a convert and a true believer. You know the type. She drove the wagon.”

  “Okay,” Stack said. “Anybody come in the restaurant lately and have words with her? Give her any kind of trouble? Even if it was just over burnt food.”

  “All the food’s burnt here. Honestly, Victoria was a sweetheart.”

  “Our Ned the prick got a last name?” Rica asked.

  “Salerno. Ned Salerno.”

  “We’re gonna want to talk with him. You know his address?”

  “I can get if for you. But it won’t make any difference.”

  “Why? He the kinda guy who might go underground?”

  “That I don’t know.”

  “So where do you think we might find him?” Stack asked.

  “In the kitchen,” Corlane said. “He’s the chef.”

  Ned Salerno didn’t keep a clean kitchen. The grill was littered with onion scraps and crumbs of burned ground beef. There was a slice of bread and some lettuce on the floor that had obviously been stepped on and ground in.

  Ned was a medium-sized guy in his forties with a gut barely contained by a white T-shirt tucked into too-tight jeans. He had a head of wavy black hair and the face of an aging, petulant schoolboy. The only other person in the kitchen was a teenage kid stirring something pretending to be soup in a big steel pot. The kitchen was warm, and the kid had on a T-shirt like Ned’s that showed lots of tattoos on his skinny arms. The tattoos featured artistically rendered knives, snakes, and writhing, tortured nude women, and didn’t go with the kid’s hair net.

  When Stack and Rica identified themselves to Ned, the kid stopped stirring soup. Ned told him to take a break. The kid disappeared like a wisp through a door that must have led outside, because it let in an eddy of cold air as it opened and closed. The stirring of air moved the scent of the soup, which smelled pretty good but was still unidentifiable.

  “So what’s this all about?” Ned asked, wiping his hands on a towel. Whatever this was, he seemed already geared up to deny it. “I don’t remember any parking tickets or walking outta someplace without paying.”

  “Any recollection of murder?” Stack asked.

  That seemed to take Ned back a bit, but it might not have been genuine. Guys like Ned had been acting since they were weaned. “You saying I killed somebody?”

  “Did you?”

  Ned looked as if he might get really angry. Then he gave a cocky grin, shrugged, and shook his head, apparently deciding to take the philosophical line. Cops in his soup again. “I’m afraid I don’t have time for this bullshit from my public servants. I got a busy kitchen here.”

  “Sure,” Rica said. “Senior citizen night.”

  “It’s something we do for the neighborhood,” Ned said. “Charitable stuff. That’s how you build a customer base. Besides, it makes us feel pretty good.” He winked. “You know how it is…it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Are you patronizing us?” Stack asked. “I wouldn’t like it, Ned, if you were talking down to us.”

  Ned gave up half of the grin and sighed elaborately. “Okay, I’ll play. Who’d I kill?”

  “We say you killed somebody?” Stack asked.

  “C’mon, now. Quit stringing me out. Am I gonna need a lawyer?”

  “You can certainly call one any time,” Rica said.

  “Which ain’t what I asked.”

  “Victoria Pike,” Stack said in a flat voice.

  Ned stared at him. “What about her?”

  “You kill her?”

  Ned’s jaw dropped and he backed a step toward the hot grill. If he was acting, he had a modicum of talent.

  “Victoria got popped?”

  “Shot, you mean?” Stack asked.

  “Yeah. You said murdered, so I just figured shot. Drive-by or some such shit. Happened to some guy last week right in her neighborhood.”

  “She was burned to death in an apartment fire.”

  “I thought you said murdered.”

  “We did.”

  Ned glared at Stack, ignoring Rica, letting them both know he was losing patience and they could no longer count on him to be nice. “You come into my kitchen, tell me my girlfriend’s dead, give me a lotta crap. Okay, you told me what happened, now let me see if I can get it straight in my mind that my woman’s dead. Quit playing word games with me.”

  “Games?” Stack asked.

  “I said, do I need a lawyer? You didn’t say yes or no, only told me I could call one, which I already fuckin’ knew. Then you tell me about Victoria, jerk me around with that information. Games, you ask? Yeah, fuckin’ games. Dumb cops’ games. Know what I say now?”

  This guy was working up a serious mad, Rica thought, glancing over at Stack, who was gazing calmly at Ned.

  “What do you say now?” Stack asked mildly.

  “I say get outta my fuckin’ kitchen or I’m gonna call my lawyer. Victoria was murdered, you talk to me only if I got an attorney present. I know my rights. Now I said get outta—”

  But Stack had him by the throat. Ned was staring at him, stunned. He instinctively took a swing at Stack, which Stack absently brushed away with his free hand. Neatly and quickly, Stack spun Ned around, had one arm bent behind him, and had shifted his grip so
his big hand clutched the back of Ned’s neck. Rica could see his fingertips digging deep into Ned’s flesh.

  Stack shoved Ned’s head down and held it so his face was inches above the hot grill. He spoke to Ned in a gentle, almost crooning way. “This kitchen of yours isn’t a church and you’re not a priest. You’re a smart-mouth little punk and a woman beater, and if you really want a murder charge hung on you, I can accommodate. We might want to talk to you some more, Ned, and if I hear of you misbehaving in any way with any woman, I’ll come here and shove your head up your ass. You know your rights. I know what I can get away with. You want to file a complaint and start trading trouble, I’ll trade. Maybe it’ll be your last rights you’ll hear. You got that, you miserable piece of shit?”

  “Yessss!”

  “Now here’s our arrangement. You swear in this fucking church-kitchen of yours to cooperate with us in the future, minding your manners, or I fry the side of your face like cheap hamburger. You swear?”

  “I swear!” Ned groaned, as his face edged closer to the sizzling grill.

  “In a holy place like your kitchen,” Stack said, as he released Ned’s bent arm only to clamp his hand around it again, low near the wrist, “is what you swear sacred even if you don’t place your hand on the holy grill?”

  “It’s sacred!” Ned’s voice was hoarse with terror. “Please! It’s sacred!”

  Stack raised Ned’s head, then shoved him halfway across the kitchen into a butcher-block table. Some of the pots and pans hanging above it clanged and clattered to the floor.

  Ned managed to stay on his feet, bent over, rubbing the back of his neck and gaping at Stack. He started to say something, then changed his mind and clamped his lips together to keep the lower one from trembling.

  “Somebody’ll be around to chat with you some more about Victoria Pike,” Stack said. “You gonna remember our agreement and your holy oath?”

  Ned nodded, but Rica saw his eyes dart to where a six-inch paring knife lay next to a tangle of potato peelings on the table.

  Stack picked up a chef’s knife the size of a machete and tossed it over so it landed next to the paring knife, easily within Ned’s reach if he wanted to pick up one of the weapons.