Hosts

by F. Paul Wilson

  "Sounds like he's been trained."

  "Damn straight. Taking his brass with him says he's a pro. But trained by who? With both arms messed up, the crazy wasn't going to do any more shooting. Could've left him like that. But he finished him off."

  "But good."

  "Probably didn't want to hear about 'yellow rage' for the next two years."

  "Like I said—a fucking execution."

  "You got complaints about that, McCann?"

  "Maybe. Maybe I don't like executioners running around loose."

  "Which is probably just why he took off. He—"

  The black plainclothesman speaking caught sight of Sandy over the big guy's shoulder and pointed at him. "You are in a restricted area."

  "Press," Sandy forced himself to exclaim, holding up his card.

  Suddenly he found himself the object of an array of outraged expressions.

  "How the hell—?"

  "And an eyewitness," he quickly added.

  That mollified them somewhat, until the big detective, the one they'd called McCann, florid faced with thinning gray brush-cut hair, looking a little like Brian Dennehy, stepped in for a closer look at his press card. His breath reeked of a recent cigar.

  "The Light? Christ, he's from the fucking Light! Aliens and pierced eyeballs! Oh, shit, are you guys gonna have a ball with this!"

  "That was the old days. We're different now."

  It was true. The new owner had moved The Light away from the shock-schlock format that had made it notorious decades ago—every issue with an eye injury on page three, with photo if possible, and an alien story on page five—into a kinder, gentler scandal sheet, concentrating on celebrity foibles.

  "Yeah? I wouldn't know."

  "Of course not," Sandy said, feeling braver now. "Nobody but nobody reads The Light. Yet somehow the issues keep disappearing from the newsstands."

  "Probably those aliens," McCann said. "Tell me, did your journalist's powers of observation happen to register a description of the second shooter's face?"

  Sandy had already settled on how to play this. He shook his head. "No. But I know someone who did."

  He was suddenly the center of attention, all four of the cops who-ing like a chorus of owls.

  Sandy pointed to the killer. "Him."

  "A wise-ass," McCann said. "Just what we need." He gave Sandy a dismissive wave. "Get back on the other side of the tape with the other useless witnesses."

  Sandy managed not to move. He couldn't let this happen. What could he say? One of his therapist's remarks about every relationship being a negotiation of sorts filtered back to him. Negotiate… what did he have to offer?

  The gun. They'd been talking about the gun, wondering what kind, and Sandy'd had the best look at it.

  "Okay," Sandy said, turning and staring to move away. "I came over here because I got a good look at his gun. But if you're not interested—"

  "Hold it," said McCann. "You better not be playing any games here, newsboy, or you're gonna find your ass in a sling."

  Again he had their attention. Now he had to play this just right. Negotiate. Give them something they needed, something real, and in return get to hang here where the action was. But he sensed that a direct quid-pro-quo offer would only land him in hot water. Damn, he wished he had more experience at this.

  Okay, just wing it and hope they're grateful.

  "He pulled it out of an ankle holster."

  The detectives glanced at each other. The black one nodded. "Go on. You know the difference between a revolver and an automatic?"

  "It looked like an automatic. I saw him pull back the slide before he started toward the killer, but…"

  "But what?"

  "Maybe it wasn't working right because he pulled the slide back before every shot."

  "I'll be damned!" said the lone uniform. "Could be a Semmerling."

  "A what?" McCann said.

  "Semmerling LM-4. Supposedly the world's smallest .45. Saw one at a gun show once. Would have picked it up if I'd had the dough. Looks like a semi-auto—has the slide and all—but it's really just a repeater."

  "How small?" McCann wanted to know. He was looking Sandy's way.

  Sandy tried to remember. "Everything happened so fast… but I think"—he straightened his fingers and placed his palm against his hip—"I think I could cover it with my hand."

  McCann looked back to the uniform. "That about right?"

  A nod. "I'd say so."

  "Sounds like a stupid piece to me," the black detective said.

  "Not if you want maximum stopping power in a little package."

  "C'mere," McCann said to Sandy, motioning him to follow.

  Sandy stayed right on the big detective's heels. Oh, yes. This was just what he'd been hoping for.

  But when they came upon the killer's corpse he wasn't so sure. Close up like this he could see that the man's shoulder wounds were worse than he'd thought. And his face… the right eye socket was a bloody hole and the remaining eye was bulging half out of its socket… his face was all swollen… in fact his head seemed half again its normal size.

  Be careful what you wish for, Sandy thought, averting his gaze as stomach acid pushed to the back of his throat.

  He swallowed and looked again at the corpse. What a photo that would make. He felt in his pocket for the mini-Olympus he always carried. Did he dare?

  "Hey, Kastner," McCann said to the gloved man leaning over the killer. "Your best guess on the caliber—and I won't hold you to it."

  "Don't have to guess. If these wounds aren't from a .45, I'm in the wrong biz."

  McCann nodded. "Okay. So our second shooter wanders around with something called a Semmerling LM-4 strapped to his ankle."

  "Not exactly government issue," the black detective grunted. "And hey, if the crazy was hit with a .45, how come his brains aren't splattered all over the car?"

  "Because the second shooter was using frangibles," Kastner the forensics man said.

  "Whoa!" said the uniform.

  "Frangibles?" Sandy asked. "What's a frangible?"

  "A bullet that breaks up into pieces after it hits."

  "Lots of pieces that bounce all over," Kastner commented. "They're going to find puree du brain when they crack this guy's cranium."

  McCann turned to the black detective. "Which brings us back to what I said before, Rawlins: an execution."

  With McCann not looking, Sandy had his chance. Carefully he wormed his camera out of his pocket and pointed it toward the corpse. He couldn't risk a flash but the lights looked bright enough. He covered the flash with a thumb. A quick glance showed Rawlins and the others facing McCann.

  "Doin' a crazy who's just blown away half a dozen good people and on track to do a dozen or two more?" Rawlins said, pursing his lips and shaking his head. "That's not an execution, that's putting down a mad dog. That's steppin' on a cockroach."

  Keeping his face toward the cops, Sandy held the camera at hip level and started shooting.

  "Maybe," McCann was saying. "But I like to know who's doing the stepping."

  After half a dozen quick frames Sandy slipped the camera back into his pocket. He was sweating. He felt as if he'd just done a two-mile sprint.

  "Easy enough in this case," Rawlins said, breaking into a grin. "We just roust all the average-height-medium-built-brown-haired white guys in the five boroughs and check their ankles for holsters."

  "We'll find him," McCann said. "Guy does something like this, saves a carload of lives, he thinks he's a hero. He's gonna tell someone. No way he'll be able to keep his yap shut. And then we'll have him."

  "And then what?" Sandy said, alarmed. They were talking about the man who'd saved his life. "What'll you do to him?"

  McCann squinted at him. "Probably nothing. A lot of people are gonna want to give him a ticker-tape parade—I know you and everyone else on that car sure as shit will—but plenty of others won't be so keen. He may have saved lives, but he's also probably some sort of gun
nut, and as of tonight he's a killer. Not exactly the perfect poster boy for civic responsibility."

  "You want to lock him up?" Sandy said.

  McCann shook his head. "Not particularly. But I do want to know who he is. Anybody who wanders through my precinct carrying that kind of firepower and who's able to use it to such deadly effect, I want to know about."

  "But you have no description beyond average-height-medium-built-brown-haired Caucasian, right?" Sandy asked. The answer was crucial.

  "Don't even have his eye color," Rawlins said.

  Sandy almost blurted brown before he caught himself in the nick of time.

  "Think the survivors could be protecting him?" the uniform said.

  McCann narrowed his eyes and scrutinized Sandy. "How about that, Mr. Newspaperman? You and your friends here wouldn't be obstructing justice now, would you?"

  Sandy's tongue took on a leathery taste and texture. He swallowed and tried to muster some indignation.

  "If you mean did we all get together and cook up a useless description, how could we? None of us was in any state of mind for that kind of thinking. If you want to see what I had for dinner, detective, check out the tracks over there. We were all too sick with relief at just being alive."

  "Even if they'd wanted to," Rawlins said, "I doubt they'd 've had time. Let's face it: this second shooter was an average white male who hid his face and took off."

  "Yeah, I guess so," McCann said. "Doesn't matter much anyway. Like I said: he'll turn up. Just a matter of time."

  But I'm going to find him first, Sandy thought, as visions of talk shows and book contracts danced in his head.

  The Savior… the second shooter… the GPM… whatever he was called, only one person in this whole city could identify him. And Sandy Palmer wasn't about to fritter that away. Simply having survived that death train would earn him a moment in the journalistic sun tomorrow. But what about the next day, and the day after that? He'd be—quite literally—yesterday's news.

  But not if he held onto this ace in the hole… and played it right.

  Mama Palmer didn't raise no dummy. A once-in-a-lifetime golden opportunity had been dropped into his lap, a chance to parlay his eyewitness status into an even bigger media coup: he'd find the Savior, wrangle an exclusive to his story, then bring him in.

  He thought of reporters linked for all posterity with the sources of their greatest story: Jimmy Breslin and his Son of Sam letter, Woodward and Bernstein and their Deep Throat.

  How about Sandy Palmer and the Savior?

  5

  Jack sat in the dark, sipping a Corona and watching his TV, terrified of what he might hear and see, but he couldn't turn it off. Started with Channel Five which kicked off its nightly news at ten, but tonight it didn't matter which New York station he chose; they'd all interrupted their regular lineups to cover the subway mass murder.

  But the big hook, the story within the story that made this must-see TV, was the mystery man who had killed the killer and then faded away. Everyone wanted to know who he was.

  Jack chewed his lip, waiting for the eyewitness description, the artist's sketch. Any moment now a likeness of his face would flash onto the screen. He cringed when he saw some of the survivors, people he recognized from the train, snagged by the cameras and microphones. Most hadn't much to say beyond how grateful they were to be alive and how they owed their lives to the mystery man, someone they'd labeled "the Savior." As to what this fellow looked like, none of those on camera had anything to add to the previously broadcast description of a brown-haired white male between twenty-five and fifty years old.

  Relieved, Jack let his head fall back and closed his eyes. So far so good. But he wasn't in the clear yet. Not even close. Someone had to have got a good look at him; that kid trying to pick up the film student, for instance; he'd been sitting only a couple of feet away. Probably pouring his guts out to a police sketch artist right now.

  Finally the newscasters moved on to other stories and Jack found himself up and moving about the apartment, wandering through the rooms. Had a stack of videotapes set up for his Terence Fisher festival. He'd planned to start tonight, opening with Curse of Frankenstein, but knew he wouldn't be able to sit still through it. His two-bedroom place usually was plenty of room for him, but tonight it felt like a noose around his neck. Slowly tightening.

  Got to get out of here.

  And go where? He ached for Gia but she was out of town. As soon as school let out she'd packed up Vicky and flown to Ottumwa, Iowa, for a week-long visit with her folks, part of her ongoing effort to keep Vicky in contact with her extended family. Hated that the two women in his life were so far away, resented sharing them with other people even if they were blood relations, but he never mentioned that to Gia. Who knew how many more years Vicky's grandmother would be around?

  Maybe just wander over to Julio's, stand at the bar, have a beer, and pretend it was just another night. But the TV would be on and instead of the Yanks or the Mets everyone would be watching the special reports about the subway murders and that was all they'd be talking about.

  How about simply going for a walk?

  But what if—he knew this was ridiculous, but the thought stuck with him—what if he passed somebody from the train on the street and they recognized him?

  Possible, yes. The least bit likely, no.

  And let's face it, he thought. Tonight I'm safe. No sketch yet. Tomorrow might be a whole different story.

  Tonight could be his last chance to wander the city at will. Might as well get out there now and take advantage of it.

  He showered and dressed in a completely different look: khakis, a light blue shirt with a button-down collar under a cranberry V-neck sweater to hide the Glock 19 in his nylon small-of-the-back holster.

  On the way to the door he stopped and looked around the cluttered front room where he kept all his stuff. Old stuff. Neat stuff. Most people would call it junk—premiums, giveaways, and kitschy tie-ins from the pulp magazines, comic strips, and radio shows of the 1930s and '40s displayed on century-old furniture. Another generation's nostalgia.

  What about his own childhood growing up through the seventies?

  He remembered little and cared less. Why keep a Brady Bunch lunch box when you could have one with The Shadow staring at you from under his black slouch hat? A Radio Orphan Annie decoder, an official Doc Savage Club certificate… nothing from his own past was anywhere near as neat as those.

  Gia, perpetually baffled at his attraction to this stuff, had often asked him why—why a lunch box or magic ring or cheap plastic doodad from any era?—and he'd never been able to come up with an answer. Didn't care to try. Some shrink-type could probably fabricate a deep-seated reason for his compulsion to accumulate ephemera with no connection to his own past, but who cared why? He liked it. Enough said.

  But if forced to cut and run he'd have to leave all this behind. Strangely it didn't matter. It was stuff. Neat stuff, but still just stuff. He could walk away with barely an instant's regret. Gia and Vicky, though… being separated from them would be a killer.

  Not going to happen, he told himself as he headed down the stairs for the street.

  He'd do whatever it took to keep this one lousy incident from disrupting his life and his business.

  His business… he hadn't checked his voice mail in a while.

  Walked over to Broadway, found a phone booth, and tapped in his codes. One call. From a woman who said she'd been referred to him as someone who could help her with a problem involving a friend and a cult. Left her cell phone number but didn't say who'd referred her or any details about the cult or her problem with it. Decided she was worth a call back. An indefinable something about her voice appealed to him, made him want to work on her problem.

  Glanced at his watch: 11:20. Might be late to call her, but he needed something to do and this could be it. A new customer with a new fix-it job would occupy his mind and time while waiting for the fallout from tonight's fiasco.


  Dialed her number. When she answered he said. "This is Jack, returning your call."

  "Oh. I didn't expect you to call back so soon." A nice voice; soft and mature. Not too old, not too young.

  Good start, Jack thought.

  "Some problems can wait," he said, "some can't. You didn't say anything about yours. I can meet you tonight if necessary."

  "Gosh, it's late but…"

  "Where do you live?"

  "I… I'd rather not say."

  "Not your street address, your section of the city."

  "Oh. It's called the Flower District. It's—"

  "Know it." Upper Twenties around Sixth, above Chelsea. "I can meet you anywhere you want down there in about fifteen minutes."

  "Tonight? Gee, I don't…"

  "Lady, you called me."

  A pause during which he swore he could hear her chewing her lip.

  "Okay. But someplace public."

  Someplace public… could meet her on Forty-second Street. Few places in the city more public than the Deuce since Disney moved in. Maybe too public. Better to make it closer to where she lived…

  Considered the Seventh Avenue Papaya on the corner of Twenty-third, but that was usually a madhouse this time of night. He grinned. Maybe he should freak her out and suggest La Maison de Sade, the S-and-M supper club next to the Chelsea Hotel. Wait—that was it.

  "How about the Chelsea Hotel?"

  "Where's that?"

  Something not right here. "Thought you said you lived in the Flower District. You live down there and don't know the Chelsea?"

  "I'm visiting. I'm from… from out of town."

  "Okay then. It's right down Seventh from you. On Twenty-third. I'll meet you in the lobby. Is that public enough?"

  "I don't know… this is so strange."

  Hesitant. Jack liked that. He'd take a hesitant customer over a gung-ho out-for-blood type any day.

  "Here's how we'll work it: I'll hang out there until midnight. If you change your mind and don't show, fine. If you see me and don't like what you see, just turn around and go back home and we'll forget the whole thing."