The Night Watcher

by Lutz, John

  She nodded solemnly. Stack had to admire her.

  O’Reilly stood up.

  Stack and Rica glanced at each other and also stood. “That it?” Stack asked.

  “No,” O’Reilly said, “you bring me the goddamn Torcher, and that’ll be it!”

  In the hall outside the office, Rica said, “I guess that’s what you’d call getting our asses reamed.”

  “Felt like it,” Stack said, walking slowly beside her. “Why do you suppose he hasn’t fed Chips to the media yet?”

  “Easy. Because it was your idea and not his.”

  Stack stopped walking and she stopped beside him, turned so they were looking squarely at each other. “You think so, Rica?”

  “I said so, didn’t I?”

  “Why would he do that? It’s still my idea and not his today. Putting it off wasn’t reasonable.”

  “He’s acting on emotion,” Rica said.

  “Fear for his career?”

  “Jealousy.”

  Stack looked hard at her, trying to figure if she was kidding. “You’re serious?”

  “Sure. He thinks you’re balling me and he resents it because he’d love to trade places with you and can’t. He knows I won’t let him.”

  “Rica, are you sure you know what you’re saying?”

  “Of course.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “It would be obvious to any astute woman in my position.”

  Stack thought about that as they continued walking.

  “Notice he didn’t say anything else about you and me?” Rica said.

  “I noticed,” Stack said. “He knew he damn well better not.”

  “At least we escaped with some dignity.”

  “You bet,” Stack said, and patted her on the rump.

  Astounding her.

  Back at the desk, he said, “Something occurred to me while we were in O’Reilly’s office.”

  She smiled. “Apparently.”

  “Not that,” Stack said. “At first I couldn’t get hold of it, but now I have.”

  “I’d say,” she told him, still smiling.

  “Business, Rica.”

  “Monkey?”

  “Police. Co-op. We need to go through all the Torcher files and make sure, but I think all the victims were previously, or at the time of death, members of their co-op boards.”

  Rica sat on the edge of the desk, in no way suggestive this time. She was all cop now. “I don’t have to go through the files. You’re right.” She picked up Stack’s cup and sipped some cold coffee. He didn’t complain. “But I dunno, Stack. O’Reilly’s also right about tenants taking turns serving on those co-op boards. In fact, most of the boards have rules saying you can serve only so long.”

  “True. Most of the time. But people like Danner and Kreiger know how to get around rules. And even if they’re off the board, they might still have a lot of unofficial influence.”

  Rica chewed on her tongue for a moment and stared at Stack. “Where you going with this?”

  “You ever been interviewed by a co-op board? Lots of people could be pissed off at co-op boards. They have too much power. Some of them run their buildings like little fiefdoms.”

  “But one killer with a mad-on over all those boards?”

  “That’s a problem,” Stack admitted. “But there are all sorts of other possible motives involving co-op boards.”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know right now. But I might after we get the minutes of all those co-op board meetings in the buildings where victims burned to death, going back as far as we can, even if we have to subpoena them. There might be a motive buried somewhere in them. Maybe some guy kept getting kicked off co-op boards because he’s a nutcase.”

  “Nutty enough to set people on fire?”

  “Somebody’s that nutty,” Stack pointed out. “At least co-op board membership is a common denominator among the victims.

  “So’s having arms and legs. A dick was even enough until Bruni L’Farceur and Victoria Pike.”

  “Jesus, Rica!”

  She stood up from the desk and smoothed her skirt. “Okay, Stack, maybe you’ve got something.”

  “We’ve got something,” Stack corrected her. “You said you’ve.”

  Rica laughed. “Don’t make too much of that, Stack.”

  “And you don’t make too much of that pat on the posterior,” he grumbled, getting back to shuffling the papers on his desk.

  “What I think’s really significant,” Rica said, “is you’re the only cop I ever heard say fiefdom.”

  “I figured you’d understand what it meant.”

  “I know…I know…Tell me, you ever said fiefdom to any other cop?”

  Stack thought about it. “Not to any other living human being.”

  She winked at him.

  Stack went that evening to Laura’s new building, successfully avoiding co-op board members, and knocked on her apartment door.

  Her blue eyes widened with surprise when she saw him, but her facial muscles gave nothing away. He was glad to see she was getting better at concealing her emotions. That would come in handy in her new independence. “Ben!”

  “You recognized me,” Stack said, immediately kicking himself for being sarcastic. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wise off, Laura. I just wanted to come by and see where you were living.”

  She smiled, suddenly making it 1983 again, herself a compact, sandy-haired young woman with freckles and an extra ration of sex appeal. The smile hit him like a punch in the stomach. She was his again, and life was theirs again.

  “Come on in,” she said, stepping back. “I haven’t got the mess under control yet.”

  “You haven’t had time yet,” Stack said, following her into the apartment. It was small but clean and freshly painted, with what looked like new blue carpet. What used to be her chair at home was in a corner. What used to be his chair was nowhere in sight. Only a few other pieces of furniture were familiar, a coffee table, a lamp. There were still cardboard boxes stacked in a corner, and a vacuum cleaner stood near them like a sentinel on alert.

  “You want something to drink, Ben?”

  “No, Laura. No, thanks.” He was trying not to feel possessive of her, protective, but he didn’t like the thought of her living here by herself. Being with her still seemed to carry a responsibility. At the same time, he knew there was no going back to what they’d had before everything went sour.

  “Want to see the kitchen?”

  “No,” he said, “I actually just came to see you, to make sure you were okay. I guess I missed you.”

  “You’re going to have to get over that, Ben.”

  “I know. I’m scaling back. I can’t be here long.” He’d deliberately left his coat on, hadn’t even unbuttoned it.

  “I don’t want to talk about old times,” she said.

  “Me either.”

  Especially about Robert, she’d meant. Neither of them had talked about Bobby for years, their three-month-old son who’d died of sudden infant death syndrome, so long ago. They had talked about him at first, when they both felt guilty, or thought the other might be guilty, of something, anything. It seemed there must be some responsibility. Three-month-old children didn’t simply die that way, healthy and happy one hour, lifeless the next.

  But they did die that way. And no one so far had been able to explain why adequately. It simply happened. And this time it had happened to Bobby, to them. No one was guilty, but could everyone involved feel blameless?

  So they’d stopped talking about Bobby, placed the subject in the basements of their minds where they seldom ventured.

  “I want to thank you again for what you did for me,” Laura said. “I mean, with the co-op board. Speaking up for me.”

  “You’re worth speaking up for.” Maybe he shouldn’t have phrased it that way. “It wasn’t that much trouble.” He glanced around, seeing nothing. “You gonna like it here?”

  She nodded thoughtfully,
as if seriously considering the question. “I think I will eventually. That’s how it has to be.”

  “I guess so,” he said. He shifted his weight to the other leg. “Well…” he said.

  “Well…” she said back, again with the smile.

  “I better get back, Laura.” Back to where? To my crummy, too-small apartment?

  She didn’t ask him back to where. They told each other to take care of themselves, and Stack left. He thought about kissing her good-bye, a peck on the cheek, but decided against it.

  He realized, walking down the hall, that he was clenching his fists. They hadn’t talked about Bobby, and probably never would again. Probably no one would talk about Bobby ever again. But they both knew that in some strange way his death had been largely responsible for how they felt about each other. Then how they hadn’t felt about each other. Stack didn’t know how it could have been any other way.

  Some things you didn’t talk about because they were beyond words.

  Some things you put away in the dark.

  Some things grew in the dark.

  Most of the co-op boards had willingly handed over their minutes. Two refused, only to have the minutes seized on court orders.

  By the next afternoon, Stack and Rica were back at Stack’s desk, poring over the reams of minutes.

  “I never knew these boards had so many meetings,” Rica said, rubbing her tired eyes with her knuckles. “And that the members talked such endless bullshit.”

  “Mostly what boards do,” Stack said.

  After a while, the work wasn’t quite so tedious. They learned to skip over obviously irrelevant subjects, motions to discuss new rules for dog walkers, to change the trash pickup system, to name a panel to discuss revised rules and hours for the swimming pool or exercise room, motions to discuss panel findings, to discuss other motions. It had to turn you into slag, Rica thought, serving on one of these boards.

  “I motion that we take a break from this,” Rica said.

  The phone rang.

  Stack picked it up and wished he hadn’t. It was O’Reilly.

  “Heard the news?” O’Reilly asked.

  “No. We got another fire?”

  “Sort of. Leland Brand’s been appointed City Department of Public Well-being commissioner. Not only that, he’s made it official. He’s forming what he calls an early bird campaign committee and he’s in the hunt for mayor. You know what that means?”

  “Higher taxes?”

  “More pressure, Stack. Brand’s already put in a call to the police commissioner, who put in a call to me.”

  “And now you’ve put in a call to me,” Stack said. “Shit rolling downhill.”

  “It’ll start rolling at us from every direction if you and Rica don’t quit fuckin’ around and make some progress on this case. The media’s not gonna chew on Larry Chips forever.” O’Reilly had finally tossed Chips to the wolves yesterday, timing it for the evening news.

  “Chips is another guy feeling the pressure,” Stack said.

  “It doesn’t matter, remember? He’s not the Torcher. What he is, he’s a diversion.”

  “Probably,” Stack said. “But we can’t rule him out entirely.”

  “Sure we can. He’s a small-time pyromaniac who sets fires for clients who want insurance claims. Half businessman, half fruitcake. Only thing sets him apart is, he screwed up out in LA and shot somebody.”

  “Still—”

  “Don’t give me still, Stack. Give me the Torcher. You understand?”

  “Sure,” Stack said. He was getting tired of putting up with O’Reilly. The problem with establishing authority through intimidation was that intimidation wore off. And when it was gone, so was respect.

  O’Reilly hung up without saying good-bye.

  “Something important?” Rica asked, looking up from the minutes she was reading.

  “O’Reilly.”

  “Oh. What did he want?”

  “Wanted a date with you.”

  “I hope you told him I was busy.”

  “You’ll be busy, all right,” Stack said, and plopped down another stack of bound minutes in front of her.

  Stack waited about fifteen minutes before getting up from his desk chair and wandering toward the lounge as if for a glass of water or some coffee.

  Out of sight of Rica, he sat at an unoccupied desk and used the phone.

  Corlane at Juppie’s told him Ned Salerno had the day off. Stack had his home number in the file, but got it from Corlane.

  Ned answered on the third ring.

  “This is your new close friend Detective Stack,” Stack said. “I hope I made enough of an impression that you remember me.”

  It took Ned about ten seconds to answer, and his voice was high and tight. “I remember you. Why are you calling?”

  “I like it, Ned, that you get right to the point.”

  “I’m in the middle of something,” Ned said, getting a little more bold on the phone, the way they always did, separated as they were by distance. “Something real important.”

  “All I wanted,” Stack said, “was to ask you a question.”

  “Which is?”

  “Do you ever wear a tie, Ned?”

  Stack listened closely for something, anything, in Ned’s voice.

  “Tie? Yeah, sometimes I do. Why would you wanna know that?”

  “How many ties you own, Ned?”

  “I dunno. Well, yeah, I got about half a dozen. Two got stains on ’em and I don’t wear either one anymore. Mostly I wear a red one I got. Then there’s a dark blue one with some kinda design on it. I think that’s about it.”

  “That’s only four, Ned.”

  “Then I only got four. I remember now.”

  “You got any use for them other than dressing up?”

  “Huh? Not that I can think of.”

  “If you’re lying to me, Ned, you know what I’m gonna do with those ties?”

  “I got an idea.”

  Stack hung up without saying good-bye, thinking how much he really disliked Ned Salerno.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Etta Daggett sat on the edge of the bed and neatly snorted a half line of cocaine off the smooth surface of Dani’s hand mirror. It might be true for some people that coke was addictive, but that wasn’t the case for Etta. She’d been using it almost a year now, and with no ill effects.

  She lay back in bed next to Dani and pulled the sheet and thick comforter up beneath her chin. Then she waited awhile, listening to Dani’s even breathing, watching shadows from the swaying curtains move back and forth across the ceiling like night clouds in some kind of planetarium show with rapid-time-lapse film. Etta always felt so relaxed after sex with Dani.

  She’d been doing that since she’d started coming to New York five years ago. Dani wasn’t her first and only girlfriend. There’d been a few adventures in college, but they could be categorized as youthful experimentation. Etta had been strictly with men for years before Dani.

  A friend in Washington, DC, who for some reason must have seen something in Etta (or had she heard something long ago at Smith?), had told her to look up Dani. She hadn’t given Etta a last name for Dani, only a phone number.

  The first night in her hotel, Etta had nervously called the number, and Dani had immediately put her at ease, using only the slightest innuendo to steer the conversation. Nothing was done in a rush. They’d met the next evening over coffee. Later, after going to a discreet club in the Village, they’d returned to Dani’s nearby apartment and their relationship had begun. It was all so natural, the way events flowed in that direction. There had been some conversation about certain preconditions; then there had been no need for words. Etta still thought often about that night. Easily, knowledgeably, Dani had demonstrated to Etta layer by layer who and what she was, what she really wanted and needed.

  Etta had never dreamed it could be this way between two women. Two people. Two of any species. She could tolerate pauses, but she wanted what she and Dani s
hared never to end.

  There was no reason why it should end, as long as they respected each other’s individuality and privacy outside the bedroom.

  Dani, as far as Etta knew, had never revealed to their mutual Washington acquaintance that Etta had used the phone number. In Etta’s business, it was almost universally understood that relationships like this were best kept very private. She was sure Dani realized that. They had to trust each other. And they did. Dani had never objected when Etta returned to her hotel bed rather than spend the night in the apartment. Etta had explained to her how in the political world appearances might be even more important than actuality. Etta’s vulnerabilities were automatically those of her clients.

  “You all right?” Dani asked beside Etta. She was a frail-looking blond woman who wasn’t frail at all. When Etta didn’t answer, Dani reached over and playfully tugged at Etta’s right nipple with her thumb and forefinger. “Hey, you hear me?”

  Etta lolled her head to the left and smiled at her. “I thought you were asleep, the way you were breathing.”

  Dani squinted, staring at her. “You into the shit again?”

  “A little”

  “Fine with me.” Dani sat up, then nimbly rolled out of bed to stand and walk into the bathroom. Etta watched her shadowed nude form, the easy rhythm of her hard, lithe body. Dani had a dagger tattooed high on her right buttock. Shortly after they’d met, Etta had asked her what it meant. “I stabbed my husband to death,” Dani had said.

  Joking, Etta was sure. She had never asked again, but the dagger tattoo intrigued her all the more.

  After a few minutes she heard the toilet flush; then Dani padded across the hardwood floor and got back into bed, under the covers with Etta. When Etta reached over to touch her, she found Dani’s thigh dry and cold. “I don’t see how you can get up and walk around nude like that without freezing to death,” she said. “You keep the apartment so cold.”

  Dani didn’t bother answering her. No surprise. Instead she said, “This new client you’re shilling for, Leland Brand, what’s he really like?”

  Shop talk. Interesting, since Dani usually wasn’t concerned with or involved in politics. Etta didn’t know much about Dani’s occupation, or how she spent her time. She’d told Etta she was an advanced software test pilot. Whatever that was. Now Dani was curious about Brand. “You a foreign spy?” Etta asked.