Chill of Night n-6

by John Lutz

  Da Vinci sat silently and watched as his cup was topped off. He didn’t seem at all out of breath from playing dodge with the traffic. Must still be in pretty good shape.

  “Two words,” da Vinci said, when Ella had left. “Serial killer.”

  “Not my favorite words.”

  “But nobody was ever better at getting inside their sick minds. Especially the vigilante types who think they’re righting some terrible wrong.”

  Beam knew what da Vinci was talking about. Four years ago Beam had hunted down and nailed Reverend Death, the city’s last vigilante serial killer, who had been murdering porn shop owners whose establishments the city seemed unable to shut down.

  “We got one who might be cut from that same sanctimonious cloth,” da Vinci said. Two days ago a woman named Lois Banner was shot and killed in her fabric warehouse. Two weeks before that a tax attorney named B. Eder was whacked.”

  “What’s the B stand for?”

  “Nothing. Like with Harry S. Truman.”

  “Nobody ever called Truman ‘S.’”

  “Doesn’t matter. Two weeks before B. Eder, an exercise equipment salesman named Harry Meyers was murdered.” Da Vinci sipped coffee and looked at Beam. “All of the victims were shot.”

  “With the same gun?”

  “No doubt about it. A serial killer. The media hasn’t tumbled to it yet.”

  “They will soon. The NYPD does nothing better than leak information.”

  “So it won’t be long before they leak the letter J.”

  “Is it something like Truman’s S and the victim’s B?”

  “No, we think it stands for something. At the scene of each murder was a capital letter J. Lois Banner’s employees discovered her body under some kind of fabric, and a red cloth J had been cut out and placed on the corpse.”

  “All the Js cut from red cloth?”

  “No. But they’re all red. The attorney had red marking pen on his forehead. The exercise salesman had a red J torn out of a magazine ad tucked in his breast pocket.”

  “But you don’t know what the Js stand for?”

  “We’re not sure. But Eder was Jewish. Meyers wasn’t, but his name could have suggested in the mind of the killer that he might have been. Same way Banner, though her real name was Banion.”

  “Anti-Semitism. Nasty.”

  “If that’s what’s going on. Some kinda religious or political nut.” Da Vinci stared at his coffee cup, as if he didn’t like its contents, then placed the cup on its saucer and stared across the table at Beam. “I don’t really give a frig about the why of it, Beam. I just want the bastard stopped.”

  “Why not give this knotty problem to a working homicide detective instead of one who’s happily retired?”

  “You’re not happily retired. And you happen to be the best at this kind of investigation. And I’m gonna be honest with you. You break this case, as I know you will, and I’ll get credit for putting you on the scent. I could make chief.”

  “Being nakedly ambitious becomes you.”

  “I also think you’re a certain kind of cop, Beam.”

  “The kind you are?”

  “Yeah, only much more so. What I think of your kind of cop is that they’re Old Testament cops. Now and again, they play God. You got a reputation for bending the rules, even the law, in the interest of seeing justice done. And as you’re already retired and more or less don’t give a shit, you’ll bend whatever you have to in order to nail this letter J scumbag.”

  Beam had to smile. “I’m more used to being called a dinosaur than God.”

  Da Vinci shrugged. “God is a dinosaur.”

  Beam thought he better not ask what da Vinci meant by that. Didn’t want lightning to strike the booth.

  “You do this thing, Beam, and you’ll be on a work-for-hire basis, have a captain’s status, and all the resources of the NYPD at your disposal. And I’ll assign you a team of detectives.”

  Da Vinci bolted down the rest of his coffee, making another sour face, then stood up from the booth.

  “This where you ask me to think about it?” Beam said.

  “Naw. You know I know that you know.”

  “That I’ll do it,” Beam said.

  Da Vinci smiled. “I’ll have Legal draw up a contract.”

  “Nothing in writing,” Beam said.

  “That’s not the way it works.”

  “That’s the way I work.”

  Da Vinci’s grin widened and he shook his head. “Okay. Dinosaurs never had anything in writing.”

  “I’ll work this case my way, out of my apartment.”

  “Why?”

  Beam shrugged. “I’m retired. But I do want access by computer to NYPD data bases.”

  “Easy enough. But you’re gonna need those investigators.”

  “A couple of good ones,” Beam said. “And some added uniform help if and when I need it.”

  “You mean you’re not gonna wrestle this guy to the ground yourself?”

  “Let me think on that one,” Beam said.

  “Okay, we’ll meet again and I can give you more details.”

  Da Vinci grinned, saluted, then turned and strode from the diner. Beam watched him cross the street the other way, toward his illegally parked car. There wasn’t much traffic just then. Da Vinci seemed to wish there were some.

  “What was that all about?” Ella asked, standing by the booth and clearing away dishes.

  “Extinction,” Beam said.

  Beam’s bedside phone that night was insistent, piercing his sleep with its shrill summons, not letting him sink back each time he rose toward the real world.

  He reached out in the darkness, noticing that the luminous hands of his wristwatch had edged past midnight, and found the receiver. He drew it to him and mumbled hello. Terrible taste in his mouth.

  “Cassie, bro,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “Just thought I’d call and tell you about this dream I had.”

  “I wasn’t dreaming,” Beam said, annoyed, “which is rare for me.”

  “It was about you.”

  “Great.” He wasn’t in the mood for one of Cassie’s hazy prognostications.

  “I think it was about you, anyway. Had to do with biblical figures. In a place with tall stone columns, like a temple. I could make out faces. One of them was yours. The dream was about betrayal.”

  Beam waited, exhausted. “That’s it?”

  “It was vague. Piecemeal. Like most of my dreams. But you were in it. You and someone close to you-I’m not sure who, or if it was a man or woman.”

  “Tall stone columns. Maybe Julius Caesar. Brutus is gonna stab me in the back. Kinda thing happens to me all the time.”

  “You weren’t Julius Caesar, bro. Biblical, but not Roman.”

  “And I’m gonna be betrayed by someone close to me? Like Jesus?”

  “No. You were Judas.”

  “Terrific.”

  “Hey, you know how dreams are, all mixed up. Probably means nothing.”

  “Thanks for calling.”

  “No problem.”

  Try getting back to sleep after that.

  5

  1987

  New York had been leaden-skied, cold, and gloomy all week, and the man who entered the Waldemeyer Hotel looked like a product of the weather.

  He was medium height, wearing a dark raincoat spotted from the cool drizzle that had just begun outside. Ignoring the bellhop’s half-hearted attempt to relieve him of the single small suitcase he was carrying, he paused just inside the revolving glass doors, glanced around, then trudged across the lobby toward the desk.

  A whiff of mold made everything seem damp. Though small, the Waldemeyer had once been one of New York’s better hotels. It had been in decline for years. People wanted to stay closer to the theater district now, or to upscale shopping or Central Park. Fewer wanted to stay in Tribeca, in a fading small hotel that had once housed celebrities who wanted to visit town incognito. Tribeca was becoming mo
re desirable, but not for the Waldemeyer. The rehabbing and construction in the area would soon catch up with demand, and the struggling hotel would fall even further victim to commerce and skyrocketing real estate prices. The ancient, ten-story Waldemeyer was in too valuable a location to be saved. It would doubtless be razed to make room for something that would generate higher taxes.

  Grayer and almost as old as the Waldemeyer, Franklin, behind the desk, watched the man approach, sizing him up. An average looking guy, but there was something about him that drew and held the eye. He hadn’t bothered to unbutton his raincoat, and he seemed oblivious of the faded red carpet, oak paneling that needed waxing, potted palms that had seen better days, marble surfaces that were stained and cracked. His face was composed, his eyes unblinking and sad. He was here, in the Waldemeyer, but his mind seemed to be somewhere else.

  It occurred to Franklin that more and more of the hotel’s guests wore distracted looks. Sad was the word that persisted in Franklin’s mind, as the man did a slight dip and put down his suitcase out of sight on the other side of the desk.

  “I’ve got a reservation,” he said. “Justice.”

  Franklin gave him a smile and checked on the computer. “Yes sir, we’ve got you down for one night.” Something in the man’s eyes kind of spooked Franklin, so what he heard next was no surprise.

  “I’m not carrying credit cards, but I can pay cash.”

  “Cash is still good here, sir.” Franklin couldn’t help glancing across the lobby, out to the street, thinking maybe there was a woman lurking out there who would soon enter the hotel and nonchalantly make her way upstairs. Justice had the earmarks of a guy on a guilty pleasure trip with the baby sitter or his wife’s best friend. Or maybe it would be a guy. The world had changed since Franklin started as a car parker at the Waldemeyer thirty-five years ago.

  “It’ll be in advance,” the man said, pulling an untidy wad of bills from his pocket and peeling off the exact amount of the room rate.

  “Best way, sir.” Franklin had him sign a registration card. “Room five-oh-six,” he said, forgetting the man’s name and glancing at the card as he handed over a key, “Mr. Justice.”

  “There should be a package for me,” Justice said.

  Franklin checked beneath the desk, and sure enough there was a small box wrapped in plain brown paper, hand addressed to the hotel in care of a Mr. I. Justice.

  “Came in today’s delivery,” Franklin said, and handed over the package, which was heavy for its size. He saw that it was marked book rate. Guy might be a writer. They stayed at the Waldemeyer sometimes.

  Justice thanked Franklin, tucked the package under an arm, then hoisted his suitcase and walked toward the elevators. A cheap vinyl suitcase, Franklin figured, and the way Justice was carrying it, moving so balanced, it couldn’t be very heavy.

  Okay, Franklin thought, whatever the guy’s game, it was fine with him. Whatever was making Justice edgy in a deadpan sort of way, it was none of Franklin’s business. In fact, it didn’t really interest him. Didn’t interest him much what might be in the package, either-could be pornography, or not a book at all but a vibrator, or one of those blow-up dolls. No matter. In Franklin’s job, you learned to submerge your curiosity.

  As soon as Justice had stepped into an elevator, and the tarnished brass arrow above its sliding door started its hesitant journey toward the numeral five, Franklin turned his attention back to the newspaper he’d been reading.

  More shit in the Middle East. Always.

  After a while he forgot about watching for a woman entering the lobby and going straight to the stairs or elevators.

  After a while, he pretty much forgot about Justice.

  The guest in the raincoat had decided on traveling under the name Justice because it seemed apropos, though “Vengeance” might have done as well.

  He laid the half-packed suitcase on one side of the queen-sized bed, then removed his coat and his sport jacket and stretched out on his back on the other side.

  But he couldn’t relax.

  Suddenly unable to lie still, he sat up on the edge of the mattress and reached for the phone directories in the nightstand drawer. It took him only a few minutes to find what he was looking for in the Queens directory. Davison’s Dent and Paint, an auto body shop on Filmont Avenue.

  He sat with the directory spread open on his lap, staring at the phone number. He could call the repair shop now and probably talk to Elvis Davison, who owned and operated the dent removal and paint business. Who a year ago had sexually molested and murdered Justice’s four-year-old son, Will. Davison, who, acquitted despite overwhelming evidence, had walked smiling from the courtroom. Who’d returned to his family and business and life as usual after an unpleasant but brief interval, while Justice and his wife April walked from the courtroom into hell.

  Elvis Davison, who was right now, since it wasn’t quite closing time, probably concerned mostly with pounding out dents and matching paint colors. Davison, the child molester and murderer, free because the police had searched his apartment with a faulty warrant.

  Davison, who had killed what was bright and pure in a dismal, cruel world.

  Davison, the man Justice was here to kill.

  After the trial, Justice and April had thought the tragedy might somehow make them closer. Couples who shared grief at least shared something. Perhaps they might lessen each other’s burden of pain.

  They’d instead discovered that grief was a thing you could almost reach out and touch and feel grow, if it weren’t for your terror. Even though two people rather than one desperately wanted it to leave, it didn’t go away any sooner. Instead it loomed larger, feeding off the agony of two rather than one. It did drive Justice closer to April. It drove April further and further away.

  Justice’s wife, the murdered Will’s mother, lived now more on antidepressants than food. When she wasn’t taking pills, she drank. When she wasn’t drinking, she was downing pills. Two psychologists and a psychiatrist had been unable to make her grief bearable. Unable to sleep, she roamed the house at night, and she roamed Justice’s dreams.

  He slid the phone closer to him and punched out the code for an outside line. Then he called, but not the number of Davison’s Dent and Paint. He called his home.

  April picked up on the third ring and said hello. He could tell from the slow slide of her voice that she was heavily medicated.

  At first he said nothing, then simply, “It’s me.”

  “Why aren’t you home?” She sounded disinterested, everything obscured by her fog of medication.

  “I told you I had a business trip. I’m in Cincinnati.”

  “Cinciwhat?”

  “-Nati. In Ohio.”

  “That’s right, a business trip. I forgot.”

  “You okay?”

  “What’s okay? Who the hell’s okay?”

  “April, have you had supper?”

  “Not suppertime,” she slurred.

  She was right, he realized. He was an hour ahead of her in New York. She was in their apartment in St. Louis.

  “I’ll eat somethin’ later,” she said, obviously not meaning it. She’d have a drink later, or take a pill. Or take too many pills, as she had more than once.

  He thought of telling her where he really was, what he was going to do. She would approve, he was sure. At least she wouldn’t disapprove. She was beyond caring, beyond hoping. He wasn’t. Not quite yet. She could pull out of her pain and grief, as he could. Someday. Possibly. It might help them to know that Davison was dead, that he’d paid for what he’d done to their child.

  But would she recover from her grief without Justice-her husband?

  “You still there?” she asked.

  “Always,” he said.

  She didn’t answer. He could hear her breathing into the receiver, maybe sobbing. He wanted to be there to comfort her. Should be there.

  “April?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Promise me something.”


  “Why not?”

  “Make yourself a pizza for supper. We’ve still got some in the freezer. Put one in the microwave. Will you do that? Eat something instead of…Will you put in a pizza?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  Yeah.

  “Whatever we do,” she said, “we can’t bring back Will. It won’t unhappen.”

  Why did she say that? Can she somehow know where I am? What I’m intending to do?

  Her voice, heavy with medication, came over the phone. “Like the prosecutor said, there’s no way to unring a-”

  “I know what he said!” Justice interrupted.

  “The bastard was right.”

  “The bastard was,” he said after a while.

  “I’ll put in the pizza,” she said, and hung up.

  Justice replaced the receiver, stood, and went to the dresser, where he’d placed the package he’d picked up at the desk. He peeled off the brown wrapping paper, opened the box inside, and from wadded newspaper used as packing material he withdrew a. 45 caliber revolver. It had belonged to his father, who’d been an avid hunter, and who had bought the gun at a hardware store in Iowa, before permits were required and firearm sales recorded. Justice didn’t hunt. After his father’s funeral six years ago, he’d left the shotguns and rifles to be disposed of by the estate, and for some reason had kept the revolver.

  Now it seemed like fate, helping him to make up his mind to come here and kill Davison, so he’d mailed the gun, loaded, ahead to the hotel, telling the postal clerk it was a book, hoping it would make it through security. It had. Now it was in Justice’s right hand. Now he could point it at Davison and squeeze the trigger.

  Now it didn’t seem so much like fate that he should be here. The simple fact was, while he might not care what happened to him after shooting Davison, he still very much cared what happened to April.

  And he knew what would happen to her.

  He placed the gun back in the box and stuffed the newspaper around it before closing it and using what was left of the brown paper to rewrap it. Then he put his raincoat back on.

  Outside the hotel, he found a trash receptacle and dropped the box into it. Since rain was falling heavier, the sidewalks were less crowded than when he’d arrived, and he was sure no one had seen him. And even if they had, he was simply a man disposing of some trash, perhaps the small box that had contained a gift he’d received, or simply something he’d purchased down the street and that was now in his pocket.