by John Lutz
It was a matter of respect.
It wouldn’t make a bad rap song.
As he coaxed the big Lincoln through noisy and maddening Manhattan traffic, Beam wished the car were equipped with an emergency light and siren. Maybe he should put in a request to da Vinci, really get him ticked off.
Instead of double-parking near the antique shop, he saw a space about a block away from Things Past and impulsively swung the big car into it. He locked the car, then began walking along the rain-puddled sidewalk toward the shop.
Beam didn’t have a jacket or umbrella. After an initial downpour, the rain had decreased to a soft drizzle and mere inconvenience. Everything smelled fresh. Even the trash at the curb, with rainwater pooled in the creases and folds of black plastic bags, smelled okay. Or maybe it was all due to Nola’s increasing presence in Beam’s life.
He glanced at his watch. Almost six o’clock. She’d be closing the shop now, checking the bolt on the back door, getting the Closed sign to hang on the front. Or maybe an uncertain customer would be delaying her, pondering whether to buy some treasure that might be underpriced, or some overpriced junk that evoked some memory of childhood.
Beam was half a block from the shop when he noticed the man in a gray slouch hat and long, pale green raincoat standing in the doorway of the locksmith’s shop across the street. The man seemed to notice him at the same time, then turned and moved to enter the shop. Beam knew the locksmith closed at five.
As he got closer, he gained the angle to see that the man had simply retreated deeper into the doorway and was standing motionless. Though he couldn’t make out his face, Beam was sure he’d seen him before in the area of Things Past. And seen him somewhere else recently. An old cop’s mind shuffles through memory, makes connections. It might have been in the subway, or on a crowded sidewalk, or in some restaurant, but the way the guy stood, maybe the ankle-length raincoat…something, the total package, struck a chord.
There was one way to find out if he’d been following Beam: ask him.
Beam began crossing the street at an angle, obviously moving toward the man in the doorway.
That’s when the man surprised him. Emerged from the doorway then bolted and ran without a backward glance. Shot away like a scalded animal and gained ground before Beam could grasp the fact he was fleeing.
Has reason to run.
Beam took up the chase, doing a neat half turn and barely avoiding a car that slid on wet pavement. Up on the sidewalk, he hit his stride. He bumped people, sploshed through puddles, and felt his right sock become saturated, but he kept the man in the long coat in sight.
Feeling it. Getting rough now. Beam’s breath was becoming ragged, but his bad leg felt okay. He was keeping pace with the man. The Justice Killer.
Must be. Who else?
The man ahead raised an arm bent at the elbow and held his gray slouch cap on so it wouldn’t fly off as he rounded the corner onto Sixth Avenue. Busier there. He was out of sight.
Beam lengthened his stride and ran for the corner, ignoring the swish of tires on wet pavement and the horn blasts he left in his wake. His right leg was beginning to ache now. Serious pain.
Hell with it!
He almost fell as he slid and stumbled around the corner. Lots of people on the sidewalk, but the man in the long coat had disa–
No! There, crossing against the light at the next corner!
Beam gathered his strength and began running again. He was sure he’d gained some ground. If he could keep him in sight, he’d catch this bastard. He knew it!
It began raining harder again, a steady drizzle. Umbrellas blossomed, obstructing Beam’s view up the block. An umbrella spoke jabbed his cheek beneath his right eye as he veered around a woman who herself was striding fast in the opposite direction.
The eye began to tear up, causing everything to blur, but there was the man in the long coat, farther away.
Beam sucked in more breath, wincing at the sharp tightness in his chest, and ran harder. The leg was hurting badly now, beginning to pulse with pain. Ahead of him, the long pale coat moved like a graceful ghost along the crowded sidewalk, seeming to pick up speed as it passed people.
Damn, he can run!
So can this old bastard!
Beam stretched out his stride, feeling it in his groin as his muscles strained for distance. He was picking up speed. He was goddamned flying. Whatever he chased, he’d catch.
The clunky soles of his black regulation shoes beat a regular, sloshy rhythm on the wet pavement. He was running like a machine.
Then the machine began to malfunction. The rhythm of his footfalls broke, and one of his leather soles dragged on the sidewalk.
Beam was wobbling now, unable to suck in enough oxygen. His chest hurt and felt constricted. He couldn’t control his aching leg. His right knee went rubbery, and he almost fell.
He staggered to a stop, then leaned his back against the side of a parked car, knowing one foot was in the gutter and getting wet.
A fat man carrying an umbrella at a low angle stopped and stared at him. “You okay?”
“I’ll live,” Beam gasped.
“You sure?”
“Who the hell is?”
The man walked on. But several more people had stopped now and were staring at Beam. An old woman with scraggly gray hair sticking out from beneath a plastic rain cap was studying him with an expression of infinite pity.
Beam placed his palms against the cool wet steel of the car and pushed away.
There. He was standing up straight, his foot out of the gutter.
“Somebody chasing you, buddy?” a man in a hooded sweatshirt asked. He was jogging in place as he spoke, as if one word from Beam and he’d take off after whoever was bothering him.
“You want a cop?” the gray-haired woman asked.
Beam made a conscious effort to even out his breathing. “It’s okay,” he said, “I’m a cop.”
No one seemed to believe him. He thought about flashing his shield, then decided what the hell? He fastened the buttons of his suit coat, turned up its collar to keep the rain from trickling down his neck, and started walking. He was limping, but the leg felt better.
He made his way to the next intersection and looked both ways. There was plenty of pedestrian traffic, but no long green raincoat among it. And people on the sidewalks gave no indication that someone had just rushed through them, rudely and roughly elbowing them aside. At the end of the block to Beam’s right, a cop was calmly directing traffic in the middle of the intersection.
Beam turned around and walked back the way he’d come, but hadn’t gone far when he noticed that, as when he’d passed, there were no empty parking spaces on the street—except for one. And the pavement beneath the car that had obviously parked there for some time was barely marked by the steady drizzle. It must have driven away recently, minutes, even seconds ago.
The rain had started before Beam parked, spotted the Justice Killer, and began the chase. Then it had become a bare drizzle, almost a mist. It became a steadier, more persistent drizzle about ten minutes ago.
Beam stood staring at the speckled pavement. For the Justice Killer, the chase might have ended right here, where he’d scrambled into his car, hunkered down and waited for Beam to pass, then driven away.
Of course, this was busy Manhattan; somebody else—anybody—might have gotten into a car here and driven off just after Beam limped past.
But something inside Beam believed otherwise. It was the man he’d been chasing.
As he watched, the dry rectangle of pavement turned as wet and dark as the concrete around it. A dented Pontiac with a NO RADIO sign in its side window braked to a halt in the street and backed into the parking space, the driver no doubt thankful for his luck.
Beam stood and stared. This wasn’t a section of street that would be covered by security cameras. All the more reason JK might park here. There was nothing he could do now. He jammed his fists in his suit coat pockets and continued walking.
Twenty years ago…
Even ten…
But not today.
52
By the time he reached Things Past, Beam’s leg felt okay. He dabbed at his eye. It was sore, but not bleeding. He was wet, and somehow or other had torn the knee of his pants.
When he entered the shop and the little bell tinkled above his head, Nola looked at him from where she was standing behind the counter. He watched her deadpan glance travel up and down. He might have to bleed from every artery and pore to impress this woman. With a slight surprise, he realized that might be one of the things that so attracted him to her.
“What happened, Beam?”
He told her about his futile pursuit of the man in the long raincoat.
“And you’ve seen him before?” she asked.
“I think so. Somewhere.”
She disappeared for a moment from behind the counter, then reappeared with a folded white towel. She tossed the towel to him, and he caught it and began rubbing his hair dry.
“He’s been following us?” Beam heard her ask, his head beneath the towel.
“I think so. That’s no surprise.” He rubbed harder with the towel. “Twenty years ago—ten—I could have nailed the bastard.”
“It’s not ten years ago.”
“No.” He raked back his wet hair with his fingers, then used the towel to dry his hands.
“You saw him watching us,” she said, as if trying to fix the notion in her mind.
He tossed the towel back to her. She caught it absently and dropped it on the floor behind the counter. “Watching you,” he said.
Her dark eyes didn’t change expression. She didn’t seem at all frightened or even perturbed.
Beam thought that someday he might be so accepting and unafraid. It seemed a long way off.
It was a small thing, but it was something.
Street sounds found their way into Nell’s bedroom. She’d just arrived home, just turned on the window air conditioner, and the stillness and stuffiness hadn’t been chased. It smelled almost as if someone had been smoking in the bedroom, but that couldn’t be.
She opened her dresser’s second drawer to see if she had clean panties or would have to do a wash before Terry picked her up.
Nell stood before the drawer and studied its contents. Her panties and bras seemed to have been rearranged, but only slightly. And the nine-millimeter Glock handgun she kept there unloaded seemed to be pointed more toward the window rather than the wall. Seemed.
A faint scent, a subtle shifting of symmetry. Of course, it could always be her imagination. Probably was her imagination. She knew that lately she’d been irritable, uneasy, perhaps looking for something to spoil what was otherwise beautiful. Her mother had told her some people refused to be happy, and if they didn’t learn to change, they’d be unhappy all through life. The message was clear. If only her mother had told her how to change, life to this point would have been a lot easier.
Nell knew that two things kept her from trusting someone enough to fall completely and unreservedly in love—her job, and her recent divorce. Those were the reasons she was standing here sweaty, skeptical, and maybe paranoid, trying to find a reason to distrust Terry and tell him to return the key to her apartment.
The truth was, she hadn’t felt completely at ease since she’d given him the key. It was supposed to be an act symbolizing her love and the seriousness of their relationship. If a guy had your key, he had it all.
What had also come with Nell’s key was her subtle distrust.
Terry deserved better. She understood that now. She told herself she understood.
The person Nell distrusted was herself.
She shut the dresser drawer and pressed it firm. Then she drew a deep breath and made herself smile.
Terry had her key. He had her. It was going to stay that way.
Jack Selig did not have her key.
Of course, he could always buy the building.
53
St. Louis, Christmas, 2001
Time had healed nothing.
A brisk wind whipped across the cemetery, shaking the leafless trees and causing a lone crow to flap sideways into the gray sky and veer toward the shelter of the mausoleum that stood like a small Greek temple on the hill. The gusting wind drove particles of sleet that stung the eyes and anywhere skin was exposed.
Justice was wearing jeans, thick leather boots, a sweatshirt, fur-lined gloves, and a green parka with the hood up, but he was still cold. He bowed his head, staring at the dates on the modest tombstones. Seventeen years since Will died. Thirteen since April died.
The pain was unabated.
There had been no escape from it. The doctors hadn’t helped, the pretending to be other people hadn’t helped, the fierce dedication to his perishable work, the drinking, the medication, the soul-searching, the loss of soul, it all seemed to feed rather than subdue the monster in the basement of his mind. He could restrain the monster no longer.
He’d become obsessed with those who killed, who placed no value on human life other than on their own destructive lives. Over the years he’d seen too many of them go free, or serve brief sentences only to return to the streets to murder again. Killers like the one who murdered Will. Killers who, in their own evil and indirect way, also killed people like April.
April herself. It had taken time, but finally they’d killed her, even if her death had been by her own hand.
There must be a reckoning.
Always one to plan carefully, he knew that if harm came to his son’s killer, or to anyone connected with his acquittal, he, Justice, would be the prime suspect. So he’d decided to exact his revenge by executing those who were involved in the acquittals of other violent criminals who were obviously guilty—starting with the forepersons of the juries that set them free. It was the system that had failed and continued to fail, that bore responsibility, that would be the target of his revenge.
There would be nothing to connect him to those cases or to those victims. And there would be a wide pool of potential victims, making it impossible for the police to protect them all. He would be performing a public service. And because of him, April’s death, and the death of their son, would mean something in the chaos that he now knew life to be.
There would be meaning and purpose to the rest of his own life.
Justice and balance and purpose.
He had access to a gun, and to a silencer, and he’d obtained both. What he needed now, all he needed now, was April’s understanding, her approval.
The wind kicked up again, moaning through the columns of the mausoleum and driving the distant crow back up into the roiling gray sky. Justice was unmoving, his feet spread wide, his head bowed, staring steadily at his wife’s tombstone.
And from the grave she gave him her blessing.
54
New York, the present
Not right…Not right…
Cold Cat sat hunched over the control panel, toying with the equalizer, raising the volume of the second track. He was in his home studio on the Upper East Side. Self-contained in a corner of the vast living room, it was a small room with sound baffles all around to appease complaining neighbors. The apartment was violently furnished, with Chinese red carpet, thick green drapes that puddled on the floor, orange leather chairs, and a fifteen-foot leopard-skin sofa. The walls were festooned with gold-framed oils of nude women in various lewd positions. Such bad taste had to be deliberate. Cold Cat called it In-Your-Face decorating, and had threatened to open a chain of shops. When Edie had been alive, she didn’t like to spend time here.
Cold Cat had both tracks going now. He leaned toward the microphone and jumped in on the one beat:
I be on the hunt.
Gonna waste that cunt.
She say no, no more.
> I say hit the floor.
Something still wasn’t right. He rewound and sat back, removing his earphones. Needed something tight.
He licked his lips. Composing was hard work, and he’d been at it more than two hours. What he needed was a beer. Something. He’d made it a rule: no liquid in the studio. There was too much sensitive electronic crap in there to run the risk of something spilling and shorting the shit out of it.
He looked through the thick, soundproof glass to where his bodyguard Lenny was sitting in an orange easy chair, reading some tit-and-ass magazine or other. Lenny had an opened Miller can on the table beside him. Cold Cat regarded his bodyguard. Fat Lenny. He oughta be told not to put on any more weight. It wasn’t like he was all muscle, the way he’d been when Cold Cat hired him. Lenny looked like he could walk through a wall then. Now he looked like the wall.
Cold Cat contemplated leaving the studio for a few minutes to finish whatever beer was left in Lenny’s Miller can. Show the potato brain who was boss.
But the beer can had given Cold Cat an idea. Taste.
Yeah, that’d work better. He put his ear phones back on and edged his chair up closer to the control panel.
Lenny must have sensed he was being stared at. He looked up from the magazine and glanced toward the studio’s thick rectangular window.
But Cold Cat was already hard at work.
He ran the tape again, this time jumping in over the last lyric line:
I say taste the floor.
Much better.
The phone must have been ringing. He saw through the thick window that Lenny had put down his magazine and was standing near the desk, the receiver pressed to his fat head.
He hung up the phone, looking like something had scared him shitless, the whites showing all around his dark eyes. Then he marched right over and yanked open the studio door.
“What the shit you doin’?” Cold Cat said, peeling off the earphones. “Can’t you see I’m workin’?”
“Building’s on fire, Cold.” Lenny was puffing with excitement, making his cheeks flutter. “Fire down in the garage.”
