by Robert Ward
“Relax, pal,” the driver said, “just take your time and relax. It’s going to be fine. You see over there … behind that parked truck.”
Harry looked at the street—Times Square with its piles of human garbage. An old woman in a flowered print dress sat in front of him, with her fingers stuck in a black hole that nearly resembled a mouth. Up above her a black whore rattled her necklace and let her pocket-book hit the woman on the head, but the woman seemed not to notice. Everywhere the sounds of screaming sirens, pinballs, blaring music … and just on the other side of the street, a theater with the purple sign live sex acts—margarita and ROBERTO with his B IG 12-inch Just in front he saw the truck, and beyond it, next to the curb, the tail end of the Checker.
Then he had to duck down a little because Cross was getting out and heading inside.
“All right,” the driver said, “we got him.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, barely aware of the driver, barely aware of the midget blowing his nose on the street, of the three Puerto Rican boys with tan slacks, identical powder-blue sports shirts, and golf clubs. He was focused on Cross, who was going up to the window. Yes, Cross, still holding the bag. Harry handed the driver his ten dollars and got out of the cab.
“Good luck,” the cabbie said. “I hope you get him, pal.”
Harry was moving now through the streets, dodging in and out of traffic. A double-decker English bus pulled in front of him as he made it to the island near the theater ticket booth. He dodged in between the crowd and saw aCross enter the theater; then there was a lull in the traffic, and he was by a man who was holding out watches. “New watch, Bro. Check it out!” He made it up to the window and took his ticket from a boy-girl with orange punk hair and rouge.
Harry walked up the ramp, stepped in some caramel candy, and felt it cling to his shoes, pulling him back. He shook it off, then entered the theater. The house lights were off. Only a spotlight shone on the couple on stage. Harry stumbled ahead. Shit! He had to move carefully.
He stood still for a second, letting his eyes accustom themselves to the darkness. In front of him in an acne-red light, the boy stood over the woman, who knelt in front of him, taking his penis into her mouth. Harry blinked and looked around. Slowly, the shapes in front of him became distinguishable. There was an older man in the back row, eating a giant salami. He grunted as he cut off the slices with an old kitchen knife and held them over his mouth as though each one were a bunch of grapes. Then he let them slide in. They looked to Harry like silver dollars. The man was swallowing money.
He looked to his right. Two people in the row—one of them a woman, the other a tall man—could Cross be meeting someone here? He went down the row behind them and sat down in the chair. No, the man wasn’t Cross, but a thin man with a crew cut and wire glasses. Suddenly music began to play the Bee Gee’s hit “Stayin’ Alive,” and Harry saw the girl was swinging back and forth from the end of the man’s cock, in time to the music.
He moved up another row, slowly, methodically … checking out each person. A fat man in a business suit was sitting with the Post over his lap. The newspaper was rising, and the man was making noises as though he were hyperventilating. Harry crawled down the row, moved on. Then he saw Cross clearly … sitting under the red exit sign … the bag sitting next to him. Harry moved forward, slowly, one row at a time. He wanted to come up on Cross from behind. Yes, the maximum surprise. The lights changed, and Harry blinked, saw the boy getting out a long whip, heard the girl’s cries, “No, no.” Then he looked over at Cross. He was up, out of his seat, holding the bag, and moving toward the exit. Harry got up, stumbled over a bottle of MD 2020 wine, and quickly followed him. The creep was heading out into the alley. Sure, he was going to ditch the stuff and then come back in for the show. Oh, clever, very clever. For three nights he had watched Cross, and now, now it had finally paid off. He felt himself gathering together, his muscles bunching tightly, the way he used to feel before a kickoff. It was going to be good to get the Space Cadet.
He reached the cold steel exit door and pulled it back, then walked out into the blue-light dark. He stared at the end of the alley and saw that it went around a corner. There were some trash cans in front of him, but around the corner he could hear a clanging sound. He moved forward down the alley, his fists swinging by his sides, his teeth clenched, his legs moving in short, violent strides. Yes, he had him.
Then suddenly Harry Gardner felt something around his throat, something strong, and before he could turn, something else bashed at his skull. He heard the sound like a pineapple being whacked and he tried to turn, but the blue light was going out fast. In one last burst of adrenaline, he managed to make the turn and claw at Cross, who stood in front of him now, holding a lead pipe.
Harry tried to grab at it but missed; it seemed to be everywhere at once, smashing him, and he fell down to his knees, saying, “Cross, you bastard … Cross …” But when he looked up again, there was a syringe coming down toward his neck, and he screamed as Cross pulled him by the hair and injected the needle into the carotid artery.
Cross stood above him, smiling now, nodding and saying, “You wouldn’t leave me alone would you? You’d hound me, wouldn’t you? And then you’d try the hard stuff. Isn’t that right Harry? Guys like you always get around to the hard stuff, twisting arms and breaking faces.”
Peter thought of the phone call, of Harry waiting and watching for two days outside his apartment. He knew Harry would put the pieces together eventually, but there’d be no Harry to put them together for the cops.
Harry tried to grab the needle, but the potassium had hit him full force, and he fell over on his back like an injured insect, his arms and legs jerking in spasms.
“You thought you were following me here, didn’t you Harry? What a stupid bastard you are. You thought it was Spaceman Cross on the run.”
Cross knelt down beside the now inert Gardner, injecting the rest of the potassium into his neck, and then Peter felt his hands relaxing, his whole body flooded with warmth. His heart felt filled up, free of the hollow space, and he felt his face flush, his loins jerking, and he was a little embarrassed like that, to appear that way in front of Harry, but it felt good to feel so in control of things. Then he picked up Harry’s body, carried it to the end of the alley where his own car was parked. He had left it there this morning. Of course, it was risky. Harry seemed the perfect patsy, but he knew the Harry’s of the world. They would just keep coming, unless you stopped them. Besides, he had to do it. It was a score he had to settle with all the Harrys who had humiliated him his entire life. He was seized then with a momentary flash of panic. Maybe he had let himself get out of hand. Christ, they would have convicted Harry … but no. No, it would be just as he had said. He would get rid of him. They’d assume he was guilty and had jumped bail, fled. It was going to be all right.
Quickly, he opened the car door and began dragging Harry inside. He was heavy, terribly heavy, but Cross felt his own arms were suddenly those of a man twice his size. God, he was strong, stronger than this ape. No matter what happened it was worth it. He wished his father could see him now. In a few minutes he had Harry Gardner propped up. He spent a few seconds looking into the large, terrified eyes. There was such pain there, such hatred and stupidity. To think Gardner thought he could outwit Peter. The ape … the presumptuous ape.
Cross went around to the driver’s side, and checked out his face in the rear view. A nasty scrape down the cheek. The one thing he hadn’t counted on. He pulled out a Kleenex, and dabbed at it. Not too bad really. It could pass as a shaving cut. He started the engine of the car, and suddenly Harry slumped over on him, making Cross gasp. Gently, he moved Harry back to the passenger’s seat. Time for a trip old friend, down the West Side Highway. The Apeman and the Space Cadet go for a midnight spin. Like an old serial on a faded Baltimore screen. The final frame of which would see Harry slowly, beautifully, falling off the rotting pier into the dark waiting waters below.
22
She sat at the bar, slumping over like a manikin, sipping her fourth vodka and tonic. Behind her on the jukebox she could hear the Bee Gee’s chirping away about staying alive, and she began to giggle a bit. She was acting like a goddamned adolescent, not at all the liberated woman she had intended to become when she moved to New York.
She looked down the bar and saw a man with the John Travolta look—his hair coiffed straight back, his tan Italian pants, so tight she could see the outline of his briefs, and the open-necked silk shirt. He was turning now, bobbing his head to the music, and she started to giggle again. He was sexy, she supposed, but he looked to her like a clone … the kind you read about in the Post. There was nothing about him that turned her on. He was simply a product of the media. Jesus, it seemed the whole world was getting that way.
She turned away from him in disgust and thought of Peter. He would laugh at her sitting here, slurping this drink, staring at the bottles behind the bar like they were old friends. But she couldn’t sleep … she couldn’t bear to spend another night in her bed, knowing she could be with him. She looked at her watch … two thirty. Then she got up and almost slipped at the bar, caught herself, and wandered to the back booth, shutting the door and getting a dime from her purse. She dialed his number slowly, thickly, and felt dizzy, the cheap flat tonic water coming up in her throat. There was a long wait and then the phone rang, and she felt herself tighten up—she was going to make a goddamned fool of herself again. She thought of the consciousness-raising sessions she had attended in Rochester, how brave she had felt then … without a man to lean on for the first time in years. She had been strong, good, and felt the heroine in her coming alive, which is why she risked coming to New York. But now that she was in love again (and there was no doubt about it), she was weak, thin, barely human. She felt a sudden savage urge to slam the phone down and cancel out on the whole damned thing, but there was that room, the huge, empty bed waiting for her, and she thought of the vastness of the sheets, the terror of their crisp whiteness … lying there night after night was almost like death. Last night she had dreamed the bed was closing in on her. Oh, Christ, it was ridiculous.
He didn’t answer. He wasn’t home. But where could he be? Out with another woman? No … don’t start that. She hung up and started out of the booth. The Travolta clone was moving toward her. The Bee Gee’s were still playing, and the idiot was even strutting like he was in the damned movie.
“Hey,” he said, “like, don’t I know you?”
“Buzz off,” Debby said. “I don’t dig guys.”
He moved away, holding his hands up, and she walked by him, tossing her head and pretending to chew gum. It relieved her tension, putting him down—it felt good.
Outside on the street, she looked up at the moon, cursed softly, and hurried down the block. All the way back to her apartment house, she could feel the huge yellow eye staring down at her, the bright rays lancing her back.
23
“Harry’s disappeared,” Beauregard said, not for the first time. He paced up and down in front of the big double bed, rubbing his hand over his muscular chest. Propped up on a pillow, Heather watched him, enjoyed his catlike pacings back and forth across the room. She noticed the way his back curved, how flat his stomach still was … how trim his hips. She wondered how she could have ever stopped noticing before she had left for Paris.
“It’s unbelievable,” Beauregard said. “They just let him go. I gave Lombardi hell. He should have at least kept him there on some pretext. Christ knows where he is.”
He reached down to the blue quilt and picked up his black silk pajama top and put it on. Then he looked down at Heather, who was smiling at him.
“I don’t know,” she said, putting her copy of The Magus down. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If he had committed the murders, he would never have gone down to talk with you and Lombardi without a lawyer.”
“Yeah,” Beauregard said, “unless he was supremely confident he could pull it off.”
“Right,” Heather said. “Did he seem supremely confident?”
“No.”
“And on top of that, trying to run out … that doesn’t make much more sense either. It only makes him look worse. He must know they are going to catch him.”
Beauregard nodded and leaned back so that his shoulders and head rested on Heather’s legs.
“I know,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense at all. Nothing does.”
Suddenly, he tensed up and pounded his fist into his palm.
“Beau,” Heather said, “it’s not your fault those patients died.”
“It’s not acceptable,” Beauregard said. “Unnecessary deaths are unacceptable, and this … I’ve worked my ass off to make that place the best … so many of us have. And it’s all being undone by some goddamned crazy force. It’s enough to make me sick.”
She looked at him with alarm. She had seen him like this only twice before … When two patients had died in spite of all he had tried to do.
There had been that girl, Kathy, who had leukemia … just a teen-ager, and Beau had been a resident. She had been so very sick, so very, very sick, and Beau had become friends with her … lost his distance from the case. He hadn’t slept for months, worrying about her … the long talks about the unfairness of it, the absurdity of his job. In the end she had died, and Beau had been crushed, but finally he had seemed relieved.
Then there had been the old man, Mr. Robinson. He had so many things wrong with him that he had become the subject of black humor among the staff—they called him a walking plague—but Beau had not found it funny. He had talked to him, learned of his life in the Bronx, his candy store, his children, his courage in the war, and she remembered Beau going through agonizing sleepless nights, staring out the windows at the gas lamp, going over the old man’s life again and again. And finally Robinson had died too, right on the operating table, and Beau had been frantic, upset, and even visited his grave. Since those days, though, he had become a complete professional, keeping his distance from the patients. Until this—this thing had gotten to him.
“Is there anything else, Beau?” Heather asked.
“Oh yeah … there’s quite a few things. Like Peter Cross. I saw him today at the hospital. I started to say something to him and he looked startled, like I was going to jump down his throat. And when I mentioned Harry to him, he got very nervous and then he put his hand up to this scratch on his cheek. I asked him about that and he said he cut himself shaving. That was very strange. Then I saw Debby … and she seemed uptight too. Very antsy … couldn’t talk to me at all.”
“Oh,” said Heather, “that’s odd—I was just wondering about Debby. Wondering if she took my advice. She called the other day—said she and Peter hadn’t been getting along. He seemed mad at her.”
“So they’ve had a fight? I wonder if she gave him the scratch?”
Heather ran her long fingers through Beauregard’s black hair.
“That’s entirely possible,” she said. “I remember some of our early battles. They do tend to be pretty rough.”
“Yes,” Beauregard said, “especially when one of the parties is a little weird … when he lives in his head to the exclusion of everything else.”
“Peter?” Heather said. “Aren’t you being a little unfair.”
“Maybe,” Beauregard said. “I was just thinking out loud. Peter has changed toward us … and Harry is missing … does any of that add up?”
Now Heather sat straight up in bed.
“Beau?” she said. “I’m surprised at you. This, if you’ll pardon me for saying so, darling, sounds like the true old conservative Beauregard of yesteryear.”
Beauregard laughed nervously and sipped his wine.
“Even if I told you that Harry Gardner thinks Peter framed him?”
She gasped.
“You didn’t tell me,” she said.
“I’m not allowed to tell anybody. But that’s what was said down at the p
olice station.”
Suddenly the phone rang, and both of them jumped as though they had been pierced by a needle.
Beauregard picked it up.
“Lombardi,” he said. “What gives me the honor?”
“Be kind,” the nasal voice said. “I’ve had a rough day. They were going to make me technical advisor on a new cop series called Stark, but the networks axed it. It was a very severe blow to my self-esteem.”
“Are you calling for grief counseling?” Beauregard said.
“No,” Lombardi said, “but that’s a good line. I might work that into my new script. You really ought to read it. It’s about a series of murders at a large New York hospital. The police think they have the killer, but he jumps. They comb the city for him, break down doors, and look under the subway. Then we switch to a close-up of the pier around Twelfth Street. We find a body drifting up, his head all bashed in, maybe from where he fell, but more likely from a blunt object.”
“Gardner?” Beauregard said. “You found Harry?”
“That’s not all,” Lombardi said. “Whoever did this was pretty good with a needle. He’s been shot with something. I think we got to talk to some of your people—starting with Dr. Cross.”
“Talk to Peter?” Beauregard said.
“You got any better ideas?” Lombardi said. “If so, turn them over. The boys at the studio are licking their chops. This could be big, real big.”
“Where are you now?” Beauregard said.
“Not Twenty-One,” Lombardi said. He read Beau the number.
“Stay there,” Beauregard said.
He hung up the phone.
24
Two doctors and an attendant waited for the ambulance as it entered the emergency gate. The siren screamed across the roofs of Eastern, and the red light whirled frantically as the driver pulled to a screeching halt. The attendants wasted no time getting the doors open and pulled out the stretcher bearing the young woman. She looked at them, frightened, her eyes wide open in fear, and when one of them went to hold her hand, she grabbed his so powerfully that he could not get away from her.
