by John Lutz
“You want me to call the boss over for you?” Louie asked. Pass-the-buck time.
The little guy looked up at him, smiling. “I already talked with him. Give me a few minutes and I’ll get outta your hair.”
“Okay.” Louie gave a little wave and started back to where he’d left the jackhammer, along with half a sandwich from his lunch bag. Pastrami and mustard, with just the right amount of horseradish. He wondered, could any of those Broadway babes with the boobs and swinging behinds put together a pastrami sandwich like his wife Madge could?
He doubted it.
As he picked his way toward where he’d broken off work, he noticed the guy with the hard hat and clipboard over where the street had been torn up. He was making his way through piles of debris, stepping carefully, still making notations on his clipboard.
Louie heard his name called.
He looked over and saw Feldman, his boss, standing across the intersection, near the Liner Diner.
Feldman saw that he had Louie’s attention and waved him over.
Jack Feldman was a reasonable guy, but when he was mad he was a son of a bitch. Mistakes couldn’t be made here. There were few second chances, and no third. Louie had no idea what Feldman wanted. He started walking toward Feldman. There was a large lump in Louie’s throat, but he couldn’t figure out if he’d screwed up, or if Feldman was simply going to ask for a progress report on the removal of the portico concrete. Louie couldn’t think of any reason why he should endure an ass-chewing. He told himself that maybe he was going to get a promotion, and smiled at that one.
The sun had moved enough so that there was a stark shadow lying across the intersection where the Liner Diner was located. Louie realized the shadow was from the crane.
Feldman was standing in the shadow, which extended from the diner to beyond Louie.
Louie found it a few degrees cooler in the shadow of the crane, and walked toward Feldman, who stood with his fists on his hips, watching Louie.
There was a sharp, cracking sound from overhead.
Lightning strike was Louie’s first, alarmed thought. But the sky was a cloudless blue.
When Louie lowered his vision he saw that Jack Feldman was for some reason sitting on the pavement, as if he’d fallen. He was waving and pointing at the sky. Maybe he had been struck by lightning. Louie could feel his own hair standing on end.
Then he noticed there was something different about the deeply shadowed path on which he stood, leading toward Feldman and beyond. The shadow of the crane.
It was moving.
Feldman was struggling to get to his feet, where he had instinctively dived to the ground at the loud noise. Disoriented, he ran to his right, then back left, toward the crane’s looming shadow. The long shadow was moving in a greater arc now, back and forth, like a gigantic scythe trying to break free from whatever held it high.
Feldman waved his arms at Louie. He was shouting something Louie couldn’t understand.
Louie didn’t stop, didn’t think, running toward Feldman.
There was another loud crack! from above as the huge crane pulled away from its moorings. Somewhere a woman was screaming.
Louie put his head down and ran harder.
33
Betty and Macy had left the diner and were about to cross the street to walk beneath the scaffolding where the Taggart Building was being transformed to its larger, more useful self. In the bright sunlight outside the diner, they absently paused to do some stretching and bending after sitting so long. They, like the other dancers, were well aware of the staring eyes of the hard hats across the street. They were prepared for the shouts, whistles, and occasional lewd suggestions. Sometimes smiles were exchanged across the street, but for the most part the construction workers were ignored. They might as well have been calling to the dancers from another dimension.
“If those guys would ever learn their manners—” Betty, who had just been referred to as “the bouncy blond beauty,” began. That was when what sounded like a lightning strike came from above. The shouting from across the street stopped, then became louder. Desperate.
Betty heard a woman scream nearby. There was a subtle change in light and shadow, in the movement of air. She felt Macy grip her shoulder and squeeze it hard enough to hurt.
As he ran toward Feldman, some part of Louie’s mind grasped what was happening around them. It wouldn’t be the first time a construction crane had fallen in Manhattan, but it might be the worst.
He was closing on Feldman when something like the dark shadow of a raven’s wing crossed the ground around them. Louie lowered his head and hunkered down as he ran, prepared to hit Feldman hard enough to carry them both out of harm’s way. Feldman was like a football player who’d forgotten to signal for a fair catch and was about to pay for it.
He turned away just before contact, and 260 pounds of Louie slammed into Feldman’s hip. Louie heard the deafening crash of the crane, felt the ground tilt beneath him so that for a few seconds he and Feldman were airborne.
Before he hit the ground again, Louie was sure his collarbone was broken from hitting Feldman. He knew, too, all in a split second, that he had more injury coming when the two of them landed and slid, with Feldman on top.
Louie thought they might both live, though, as long as more falling debris didn’t hit them.
He was thinking of Madge as consciousness left him.
Quinn said, “What the hell was that?”
Fedderman raised his eyebrows. “Earthquake?”
They were at Q&A, Quinn at his desk, waiting for Pearl to call and say where she wanted to meet for lunch, Fedderman in a chair over by the coffee brewer, going over case notes.
Quinn walked over and looked out a window at West 79th Street. He could hear sirens now, but they were from the south, and not close.
He went outside and stood on the concrete stoop, looking around. No sign of smoke. The sirens were slightly louder, and there were more of them.
Quinn went back inside and called Renz at One Police Plaza, and was told that Renz couldn’t be reached right now.
“Is he dead?” Quinn asked the duty sergeant.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Then he can be reached. Is this Sergeant Ed Rutler?”
“It is. And who might I be talking to?”
“Captain Frank Quinn. How are you, Ed?”
“Still locomoting, Cap’n. Sorry I didn’t recognize your voice.”
“I’m smoking fewer cigars, Ed. I felt and heard a big boom, and now I hear sirens. What’s going on?”
“We’re still trying to figure it out. Could be a building collapse. The Taggart Building, that they been screwing around with for months. But it’s too early in the game to know.”
“Any dead or injured?”
“Not as many as you’d think, is what I hear. They’re saying one of those big construction cranes let go and fell about twenty floors, but it’s too early to confirm. I hope that’s what happened. Fewer killed and injured than there’d be in a building collapse.”
“Probably, Ed.” Then, “I got confirmation now in a TV news crawl. It’s the Taggart Building, all right. A big crane fell. It did bring down some of the building with it.”
“Jeez! Casualties?”
“Still counting, Ed. The building was unoccupied at the time, but there were some people killed or injured by the crane itself. And there were people in the vicinity of the building that were too close and got hit by falling debris. I’ve deduced a lot of that from early reports and what I could see on television They’re still fitting it all together. You know how it goes.”
Ed did.
Harley Renz called then and got patched through. Sergeant Rutler knew it wasn’t going to become a conference call and said his good-byes.
Renz listened while Quinn brought him up to speed with what he knew, mostly gleaned from what he’d seen on TV and what Sergeant Rutler had said.
Renz didn’t have anything solid to contribu
te, even though he’d been among the first to reach the site after the crane fell. Now he was running around, probably in full dress uniform, trying to leave a lasting impression that he was in charge.
A sigh came over the phone. “It isn’t pretty here, Quinn.”
“Does it look like a crime scene?”
“The way things are these days, I’d have to say yes.”
“Has the crane been examined?”
“Not yet. But it doesn’t seem there’s anything wrong with it. There was an operator in the crane when it fell. Or until just before. We’re still interrogating him. We’ll keep you informed, Quinn.”
“Do that, Harley. This is almost surely part of the Gremlin case.”
“Fire, an elevator, a crane, what’s this madman thinking?”
“They’re all different,” Quinn said. “In most ways, they’re just like the rest of us. That’s why they’re difficult to recognize.”
“That’s why we have you on the case, Quinn. You’re just like the rest of us, only different.”
“Those are important differences,” Quinn said.
Renz said, “That’s what all you guys say.”
34
The killer sat in his favorite armchair, with a view of nighttime Manhattan out the window that was slightly to his left. He liked to enjoy the spectacular view, shifting eyes and interest back and forth between that and big-screen TV news coverage of the crane collapse. He was in his stocking feet, legs extended and ankles crossed, sipping two fingers of single-malt scotch over ice. A dash of water to help bring out the flavor.
Using a variety of aliases and forged identities, he had, like a rat in a pack, joined the fringes of serious crime. He maneuvered, he thought brilliantly, befriending certain criminal types, ingratiating himself with them, and at a certain point letting them know he was . . . well, head rat.
He was impossible to apprehend, because he wasn’t greedy—at least not on the surface. He was financially secure from a year ago, when he’d spent a week of sex and pain with a crooked investment manager and his wife.
The killer knew enough to result in the man losing everything and going to prison. Probably his wife, keeper of the secret books, would also do time. But the killer had broken both of them, spiritually and physically, in the investment manager’s secluded cabin that was more like a full-fledged house.
The wife, Glenda, in her forties, was not particularly attractive, more of a greyhound than a cougar. She didn’t know it yet, but the divorce papers were about to be served when, during a drug-enhanced night, the killer taught the money manager, Hubby, how to induce and manage someone else’s pain.
Hubby was better at that than managing wealth. Under his tutelage, Glenda learned how soundproof the cabin was when she screamed and screamed and no one came to her rescue.
Within a few hours she was eager to turn over to her husband and the killer the secret set of books that she kept, complete with numbers and names, and sometimes photographs.
This was just the sort of thing the killer sought. It would have been silly, at this point, to set the wife free. Besides, a plan was growing in his mind like a disease.
After a few days Wifey was trembling so that she had to be spoon-fed so she wouldn’t make such a mess. Hubby the money man led her to a wall, made her lean against it, and beat her with a beaded leather strap. By now she automatically obeyed his instructions and made no sound while she was being whipped. A gag was no longer necessary.
When the husband’s arm was almost too tired to lift, the killer walked over, took the whip from his hand, and laid the whip hard along the back of the wife’s thighs.
Wifey was sobbing now, her head bowed in submission.
“Take her to the basement and hose her off,” the killer said.
Hubby looked confused. “Hose her . . . ?”
The killer grinned. “With water. If you want to beat her with the hose, maybe we can arrange that later.”
He could barely stop smiling. These two were perfect.
When the killer went down to the basement, he saw that things were in order. Wifey’s arms were tied over her head and she was hanging from a rafter with her toes barely touching the concrete. Quite a stretch. She tried to shift position now and then to relieve the pain when her stretched muscles cramped. Sheer agony. A hard rubber ball was jammed between her upper and lower teeth so her jaws were strained wide open. Her hair was soaked, pulled back, and fastened with a rubber band. She knew the rubber band was so they could see her face. Her expressions. That was great for photographs that could be sold and resold on the Internet. Her husband and their houseguest had taught her that.
The faint, rhythmic thrashing sound began, more vibration than noise. The killer was ready for it, knew that it would stop, knew how to stop it.
He stood with his hands pressed to his ears, his eyes clenched shut. Waiting.
Finally the thrashing noise reached a crescendo then subsided, and he was calm. The air that he breathed was like nectar.
The killer tested the strength of the ropes, felt the warm wetness of her body, then unnecessarily told Hubby the fund manager to stay where he was and went upstairs.
Ten minutes later the killer came back down the basement’s wooden stairs with something obviously heavy beneath a blanket.
“What’s that?” the husband asked. He hadn’t so much as budged.
The killer smiled. “My equipment. Car battery. Cables. Alligator clips.”
Terror paralyzed the wife. She emitted a lot of gagging and gurgling, and then lost consciousness.
The killer knew that unconsciousness was where they often went to escape. A country of painlessness and peace.
He had brought smelling salts.
35
Four people had been killed, seven injured, in the fall of the construction crane at the Taggart Building. Two of the dead were off-Broadway chorus line dancers, Betty Lincoln and Macy Adams. Their names and faces were known only to avid playgoers.
Not enough time had passed that Quinn and his detectives were done talking to the few witnesses who’d actually seen the crane come down, observed the panic, heard the screams. Then almost instantly the impact of the crane, followed by the landslide rumble and crashing of concrete, marble, and brick.
Quinn and Fedderman were doing the last of the interviews of witnesses, which didn’t make for a long list. Usually they weren’t technically witnesses, as it was the bomb-like crash of the crane that first drew their attention. It also scrambled their senses so that much of what they saw and said was wrong, forgotten, or irrelevant.
Now Quinn and Fedderman were in a modest apartment on the East Side, interviewing a giant of a man the others in SBL Properties called Little Louie. He had a bandage on the bridge of his nose and an arm in a sling. Quinn knew they were injuries from the crane accident. Next to Little Louie, on a faded but comfortable-looking sofa, sat Louie’s wife, Madge.
Louie Farrato looked like what he was, a solid type who worked with his hands, simple but not stupid. He would have made a great Indiana Jones in the movies. Madge was a sloe-eyed beauty of the sort who would abide no nonsense.
Quinn glanced at the preliminary notes made within hours of the crane incident.
“Would you like some iced tea or lemonade?” Madge Farrato asked.
Quinn declined. Fedderman gave it some thought and settled for iced tea.
They both waited patiently, along with Little Louie, until Madge returned with a tray on which were four glasses of what looked like iced tea. “Just in case,” she said with a smile that made her look like Sophia Loren. (Had Loren and Harrison Ford, who owned the Indiana Jones role, ever been in the same movie? Fedderman wondered.) “There’s real sugar and some artificial on the tray.” She set the tea on a glass-topped coffee table, and they all settled in as if they were going to watch a movie on television instead of talk about murder.
Quinn, who had changed his mind, sprinkled the contents of a pink artificial sweete
ner package in his tea and twirled the ice cubes with his forefinger. “We don’t mean to irritate anyone by asking them to repeat what they’ve already probably said over and over. It’s just that sometimes, after a traumatic event, people don’t remember things until some time has passed.”
Madge said, “Tell him, Louie.”
Louie squirmed a bit, ill at ease. He had on buffed leather boots, a many-pocketed tan shirt, and faded Levi’s, and sure enough looked as if he should be on an archeological dig.
He said, “Not long before the crane fell—say, about twenty minutes—I was working a jackhammer and I looked up and saw this guy in a yellow hard hat, carrying a clipboard and taking notes or something. I got a good look at him when I let up on the jackhammer and he became more than a blur. Still, he was some distance away. I got curious and walked over there.”
“So you saw him close up,” Quinn said, as if just to keep the conversational ball rolling. They might have a genuine close-up eyewitness here.
“Yeah,” Louie said. “There wasn’t anything really memorable about him. He was short. Built about average. Little, nimble type, but strong. Like a good flyweight boxer. Even had a cauliflower ear. That’s what I remembered later, when I saw that drawing or something of him on TV.”
“What did you say to him?”
“Asked him if I could help him. He kind of tugged his hard hat down like he didn’t want it to blow off his head.”
“What did he say?”
“Kept kind of doing his job, making notes, checking off stuff, like he was on a schedule. Said, ‘Safety.’ Like it was the one word that should explain it all. So I figured he was an inspector from one of the city agencies. We get ’em all the time, checking for workplace danger, long-term issues, lead-based paint, asbestos . . . that kinda thing.”
“Did you talk about safety?” Fedderman asked.
“Naw. We didn’t gab. We both had things to do.”
“Then?”
“Then he left.”
