1975 - Night of the Juggler

by William P. McGivern

  He hurled the rocks aside, breathing hard after the first minutes of work, because the stones were large and heavy and packed tightly against the mouth of a tunnel. But when he forced an opening and poured light from his flashlight into a small cave, he found himself staring at a dusty stack of empty wine bottles. He read labels with listless interest, his eyes helpless and despairing, realizing that each passing second might be ticking off his daughter’s life. Wine-Apple, Muscatel. . . . Suddenly, and for reasons he didn’t understand, he was warned and alerted by a leaf on the ground. It was flecked with mud, but beautiful with the autumn colors of yellow and scarlet. His heart began to pound. He knew then he must have made a dreadful error. A mistake of miscalculation. First ponder, then dare. He had dared, in a sense, to outguess the Juggler, but had he pondered, had he thought?

  He had misread signs, he was sure of it. A clue, an arrow pointing to his daughter, had escaped his trained eyes.

  This conviction of failure was a special torture to Luther Boyd because he had failed Kate where he shouldn’t have failed her, in the area of his own professional strengths and skills.

  Boyd picked up the mud-flecked red-and-yellow maple leaf and stared at it, demanding an answer from it.

  From behind the shadows that Manolo was approaching, Gus Soltik was crouched close to the ground, concealed by dense underbrush and the low black limbs of trees. His body was responding with almost agonizing excitement to Manolo’s presence and beauty. But some primal fear warned Gus Soltik against revealing himself. It was the man in black climbing the rocky hill to get him. That was what had been behind him all night. The “coldness.”

  Deflecting that primitive terror was the thought that they would never punish him because they would never find her.

  He was blinded by lust. His eyes saw nothing but Manolo, the black, curly hair and the soft, smoothly vulnerable throat.

  Manolo was only twenty feet from the Juggler now, standing in moonlight, blending with shadows, and Gus Soltik was achingly ready for him.

  In an urgent whisper Samantha said to Tonnelli, “Get him the fuck out of there, Gypsy.”

  “Don’t worry, we got him covered.”

  “But not if you can’t see him.”

  It had amused Manolo to drift at last into the shadows of the big trees.

  It amused and excited him because he thought (or hoped, at least) that it would frighten Samantha. It made him feel important to know he could do that to her. She had some kinky thing going for him, the way she had hugged and patted him in the police car that brought them up to this area of the park.

  He stood shrouded in darkness, laughing and softly calling Gus Soltik’s name.

  When Manolo disappeared from view, Samantha tried to scream a warning at him, but Tonnelli saw the tightening cords of her throat and swiftly clamped a hand across her mouth, stifling the sound into a strangled sob. Several of the police marksmen turned, reflexes instinctively triggered by the silent struggle between Samantha and Lieutenant Tonnelli.

  The Juggler spotted movement in the trees at the east side of the glade. Frowning lines formed on his wide, rounded forehead. At first only a dim curiosity stirred in his mind. Somebody . . . somebody else wanted the boy.

  But after that first jealous thought, which made him wince like the cut of a whip, other thoughts formed in his mind, ugly and dangerous. His animal instincts were suddenly aroused. He listened, and he sniffed the air, and his small, muddy eyes focused on the trees on the other side of the clearing. The shadows there were merging into patterns.

  He saw the shapes of men. While numbers confused him, he singled out four shapes, counting them on the fingers of his massive right hand. He saw more shapes, but trying to count them deepened the texture of his confusion and anger. The shapes stood still, like people waiting. He could smell the essence of cherries in the oil glistening on Manolo’s curly black hair; but the word “wall” had appeared in his mind, and his hands were beginning to tremble with fury.

  He knew why those men were waiting. They were here to hurt him, using the boy to trap him inside walls. His name. Sometimes he forgot his own name. But the boy knew his name. Someone had told him.

  They always said calm down. Stay calm. His mother, Mrs. Schultz, Lanny at the zoo. They said it was the other thing, the anger, that caused the trouble. Always. But Gus Soltik couldn’t fight the rage that gripped him now. It was like an animal inside him, a snarling that roared in his head, claws slashing at his heart and lungs, screaming for release.

  Resisting a compulsion to bellow his rage at this betrayal, Gus Soltik opened the flight bag and removed his heavy hunting knife. Then he ran silently into the shadows behind Manolo, and before Manolo could scream even once, the Juggler’s knife had flashed across his throat, opening an inch-deep furrow in that soft, vulnerable flesh, the flesh he had wanted only to touch, he thought, as he sobbed and lifted Manolo’s body high above him and hurled it like a broken doll into the moonlight of the glade.

  And then, while rifle fire erupted and muzzle blasts glowed in the night like angry, flaming eyes, Gus Soltik fled in terror toward the sanctuary of the trees.

  Luther Boyd threw aside the scarlet-yellow leaf he had been examining and wheeled in the direction of the fusillade of gunfire that was exploding through the dark trees on a line far to the east of him.

  He experienced a sick and savage anger at Tonnelli’s betrayal, for these were not the precise and meticulously squeezed-off shots of marksmen aiming only to wound. No, this was barrage fire, random and reckless and murderous, and he knew from its volume and intensity that it was designed not to disable the Juggler, but to execute him.

  Tonnelli might believe this was a first priority, a cop’s duty, in fact, but if they killed the Juggler, his daughter might also die, because only that psycho knew where in the vastness of this park Kate Boyd was held captive.

  In his anger, Luther Boyd felt in his gut that Gypsy Tonnelli didn’t give a good goddamn about that. He wanted only this dramatic, crowd-pleasing performance, that notch on his gun. . . .

  Gypsy Tonnelli ran across the glade to Manolo’s lifeless body, laboring for breath and feeling despair in the uneven stroke of his heart. Ahead of him the line of marksmen were fanning out through the woods where the Juggler had disappeared, like a figure of myth, vanishing into the mystery of the night after wielding the savage, sacrificial knife.

  Tonnelli was screaming into his two-way radio, “Command! Command!”

  To responses he cried, “Scramble our choppers. The Juggler’s about two hundred yards west of the drive, between Seventy-seventh and Seventy-eighth.” Breathing hard, his mouth open, the Gypsy stopped running and looked down at Manolo’s small, slack body, the white fur jacket stained scarlet with his blood.

  Samantha knelt beside Manolo and put a hand out toward him but didn’t touch him. Then she looked up at Tonnelli with tears glistening in her enormous white-rimmed eyes.

  “I told you I was scared for him,” she said.

  Close to hysteria, she repeated herself, but now her voice was shrill and ugly. “I told you I was scared for him.”

  “We didn’t want this to happen,” Tonnelli said. There was naked anguish in his face. “Jesus, we didn’t want this to happen.”

  “No, you didn’t want it to happen,” Samantha said, “but you made it happen, Gypsy. And if you’d made the bust, you wouldn’t give a shit one way or the other, would you?”

  Gypsy Tonnelli ran the tip of his thumbnail slowly and painfully down the length of his disfiguring scar and looked from her accusing eyes toward the black trees.

  Detectives Carmine Garbalotto and Clem Scott hurried into the clearing where Sergeant Rusty Boyle lay on the ground, hands gripping the wooden lever of the tourniquet fashioned by Luther Boyd.

  The big redhead was pale, and despite the cold wind blowing in eddying gusts across the glade, there were blisters of perspiration on his upper lip and forehead. The helicopters were flying again, and the sound o
f their blades and the powerful lights from their fuselage hurt his ears and eyes.

  Carmine Garbalotto flipped the switch on his two-way radio and called the CP. He gave the approximate grid coordinates of their position and yelled for an ambulance. Clem Scott knelt beside Sergeant Boyle and took over the task of maintaining pressure on his thigh above the wound.

  “You’ll be fine,” Scott said.

  “Sure. Got it stopped in time.”

  “Who’s the dead one?” Scott said, glancing at Ransom’s body.

  “Funny,” Rusty Boyle said, in a voice weary with pain. “I mean, he’s fine, too. Just fine.”

  Out of his skull, Scott thought.

  “They find the girl?” Boyle asked him.

  “Not yet, Sarge.”

  “The Juggler?”

  “No. But some clown who drove in to look at the action was found lying with his head busted in a gutter on the East Drive. Said a guy that could be the Juggler pulled him out of his car about twenty minutes ago.”

  “So the bastard’s on wheels now.”

  Luther Boyd now knew that the Juggler was alive. On Babe Fritzel’s radio he had monitored Lieutenant Tonnelli’s screamed orders to the command post, and while he knew that Rusty Boyle was also alive, he didn’t as yet know the Juggler was on wheels, for that exchange between Scott and Sergeant Boyle hadn’t been on the police channel.

  Boyd felt a stir of hope. He had, in a sense, infiltrated the police positions and had access to their movements and intelligence reports through Babe Fritzel’s two-way radio.

  Boyd felt secure behind enemy lines; in classic guerrilla tactics, attack from the rear inevitably offered the promise of ferocity and surprise.

  But there was a dreadful irony in the fact that now Boyd must save the Juggler before Tonnelli’s units could trap and destroy him.

  Checking his watch and with the radio an aural spy at his ear, Boyd ran east. . . .

  Chapter 24

  The Arsenal is situated at Sixty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, south and east of the Mall. Constructed in the middle of the nineteenth century for the function its name suggests, at various times in its existence it has also been used as a police station and a weather laboratory. Presently this four-story edifice with crenellated towers is the headquarters for Central Park’s recreation and cultural affairs administration. Its rear abuts on a quad formed by the animal and bird houses, the rows of bear caves, and the park’s cafeteria. In the middle of the quad is the seal pond, guarded or decorated on all four corners by the figures of giant stone eagles.

  There are no guards or attendants inside the animal and bird houses at night. There is no external security, except for random checks by pairs of policemen on bicycles and the occasional cruising squad car from the 22nd Precinct on Transverse Three.

  The Arsenal is locked at the close of the business day, and only one man remains on duty, a night watchman whose presence is required by insurance regulations.

  Lanny Gruber, on duty that particular night, sat in his small office on the first floor just off the main entrance preparing to enjoy his supper.

  Lanny, a middle-aged man with kind and thoughtful eyes, had poured coffee from a thermos and was in the act of unwrapping a ham sandwich when something made him pause and glance toward the open door of his office. Was it a sound or simply his nerves? Glass breaking in the basement? Couldn’t be. . . . It had been a dreadful and disturbing night for him because he had seen the police artist’s sketch of Gus Soltik on television and had recognized it. He had called the 22nd Precinct, but they already had his name. And there had been another brutal and senseless tragedy in the park. A young Puerto Rican boy, to judge from his name.

  But Lanny felt a reluctant compassion for Gus Soltik. In Lanny’s view, Gus had made a pathetic attempt to understand a world that for the most part ridiculed and despised him.

  Then he heard another sound, a footstep in the corridor. He felt his heart lurch with fear. There was a gun in the locker across the room, but before he could rise, Gus Soltik, his face haggard with confusion and pain, limped into his office. He stopped at Lanny’s desk, blood dripping from the fingers of his left hand. The single word he spoke came with a gasp of anguish.

  “Help,” he said to Lanny Gruber.

  “Yes, I’ll help you, Gus,” Gruber said, speaking slowly and quietly, using the warmth of his voice as he might use a gentle hand to stroke a frightened animal. He was a realistic man and was keenly aware of his own danger. He fully understood that whether he lived or died would depend on whether or not he could exert a calming effect on Gus Soltik and make him understand that he must call the police.

  “Help,” Gus Soltik said, and extended his right hand to Lanny.

  Then he spoke again, another single word which Lanny didn’t understand. “Cage.”

  A certain expectancy in Gus Soltik’s manner gave Lanny confidence.

  “There is only one way I can help you, Gus,” Lanny said, again slowly and quietly. “We’ve been friends, and you can trust me.”

  Gus Soltik continued to stare dumbly and hopefully at Lanny.

  He’s always done everything I’ve asked him to, Lanny was thinking, and encouraged by the expression on Gus Soltik’s face, he decided to chance it. He casually lifted the phone from its cradle and smiled at Gus as he began to dial the police emergency number.

  “Since you need help, Gus, we might as well get it. It’s the best way, believe me.”

  But Lanny Gruber had fatally misjudged the hope and expectation in Gus Soltik’s muddy eyes and twisted features. He couldn’t know what powerful elements had been churning in Gus Soltik’s psyche tonight.

  There could no longer be times without anger for Gus Soltik.

  Lanny Gruber, smiling and dialing at a deliberate pace, couldn’t know that blazing in Gus Soltik’s mind was the concept “white legs” and a twisted and frenzied compulsion for revenge.

  “Cages,” he said again, but insistently now. What Gus Soltik wanted were the thin metal things that opened doors. In his feverishly tortured mind he believed that if he released a cage, the great, roaring cages that were strong as he was strong but helpless as he was in their barred boxes, when it was free the cage would help. Kill them. All. And the coldness. . . .

  “Twenty-second Precinct, Sergeant Dorman.”

  Lanny Gruber said, “Officer, this is—”

  Gus Soltik’s hand moved with blinding speed, his fist closing on the telephone cord and ripping it from its base in a floorboard wall socket.

  “No, please!” Gruber cried, knowing this was a mistake but unable to control the hysteria in his voice, for Gus Soltik was lunging toward him, his hands forming a loop with the length of plastic telephone cord.

  Gus was thinking dimly as he looked down at Gruher’s body of the time he had brought the week-old produce here and how nice Lanny had been to him, and these memories merged with memories of his mother and Mrs. Schultz and the young boy whose curly hair smelled of cherries, and tears began to well in his eyes.

  Brushing them from his cheek with the back of his hand, he removed three rings of keys from a drawer in Lanny’s desk.

  Male Caucasian, age twenty-nine, name, George Cobb, address, the 300 block of East Fifty-fourth. Street, Manhattan. Approximately 5 feet 9 inches in height, weight 200 pounds. Brown hair, blue eyes. No distinguishing scars. Small mustache.

  That was the police description of the man who had been assaulted by Gus Soltik. George Cobb was presently being interrogated by Lieutenant Tonnelli at the CP. Crews of television and press reporters were gathered in a semicircle about Cobb, their silhouettes thrown into grotesque shadows by batteries of brilliant camera lights backed by huge aluminum reflectors.

  Cobb was speaking hesitantly, almost timorously, avoiding the baleful glare of the powerfully muscled detective with the hideous scar on his left cheek.

  “Well, I was watching it on television, and when I saw the dogs and helicopters, I just decided to come over an
d take a look-see,” Cobb said. “Just for—”

  “All right,” Tonnelli cut him off and glanced at the notes he’d taken. Yellow leather hat, brown turtleneck sweater, six-two or -three. “He say anything to you, anything at all?”

  “Well, he just made some noises,” Cobb said. “They weren’t words.”

  Patrolman Prima pushed his way through the crowd and caught the lieutenant’s eye. “We got the heap, Lieutenant.” Prima looked at George Cobb. “Sixty-nine Pontiac, maroon with black stripes, needs some work on the front fender?”

  “That’s my car,” Cobb said.

  “Where did you find it?” Tonnelli asked Prima.

  “In the woods, east of the Mall, on a line with Sixty-sixth Street,” Prima said.

  Gus Soltik ran with lumbering strides from the Arsenal, past the seal pond, and under the Delacorte clock to the double doors of the animal house. Unlocking them, he pushed them back until metal spring plungers dropped into slots in the tile floor. His nostrils flared, and his senses were aroused by the strong smell of cat urine and disinfectant.

  This narrow wing of the zoo was dark, as were all the others. Some moonlight fell in through the arched and barred windows at the back of the cages, shining on dull yellow brick walls and the black tile flooring.

  Most of the animals were asleep, and at this time of the year all were quartered inside the building. In warmer seasons the big cats were allowed to prowl into the rows of outside cages which faced the greenery of the park.

  Gus Soltik stepped over the wooden barrier that kept visitors a safe distance from the bars and unlocked the door of a cage which confined a black-maned African lion, the great male whose name was Garland.

  The lion was lying on a thick wooden shelf built four feet above the concrete floor of its cage. The big cat was awake, yellow eyes glowing in the darkness, but it indicated no interest in the door which Gus Soltik had opened.

  Gus Soltik made a clucking noise with his tongue. The big cat put its massive head on its paws and closed its eyes.

  Gus stood in the darkness for what seemed a long time, feeling confusion and frustration and feeling too the pain in his left arm and the sluggish flow of blood down his wrist and fingers.