Darker Than Night fq-1

by John Lutz

  Such were Quinn’s thoughts as he waited for the traffic signal to change, then crossed East Fifty-sixth and continued strolling along First Avenue toward the diner. He wasn’t in any hurry. He was only a short block away from his meeting with Pearl and was fifteen minutes early.

  It was a warm evening but cooling down. Good weather for walking in the city he loved despite its warts. As usual there was plenty of traffic on First, all heading north at a fast clip. He breathed in diesel exhaust as a truck pulled away from a loading area. The lumbering vehicle drew angry horn blasts as it edged into a convoy of taxis cruising the curb lane for fares.

  Quinn didn’t mind the mingled exhaust fumes, maybe because they reminded him of the city and cars. He liked cars, though owning one in Manhattan hadn’t made sense to him even when he could afford it. But he felt good standing near the rush of traffic and hearing its constant, growling din.

  Later, if he could afford it again, maybe a car.

  A photo clipped from the newspaper and taped to the inside of a florist’s shop window caught his eye. The shop was closed and dim inside, so the rectangle of newsprint on white was particularly noticeable. He walked closer to examine it.

  What he’d thought at first glance turned out to be true. The photo in the clipping was that of Luther Lunt, along with a rendition of a projected older Luther with less hair and heavier features. The present Luther. Approximately.

  The city was spooked, Quinn thought, standing and staring at the clipping. Then he noticed the decal or etching just above it, a spiderweb of what looked like cracks in the glass.

  As he watched, another web appeared, along with a white-edged hole in its center.

  Not decals or etchings at all.

  There was no sound of shots over the noise of the traffic, so it took Quinn a few seconds to realize the significance of what he was looking at-bullet holes!

  Someone’s shooting at me!

  He crouched low and ran for the cover of a parked car, peering through its windows at the people on the opposite sidewalk. No one seemed to have noticed anything unusual. Had the shots come from a window?

  He was about to look up when he caught movement in a passageway between two buildings across the street. A dark shape moving fast. The flit of a sneaker sole, rising, disappearing. Running!

  Getting away!

  Like hell!

  Quinn was out from behind the car and dashing across the street. Horns blared and someone shouted; he heard the screech of brakes an instant after a front bumper brushed his pants leg. He zigzagged to avoid another oncoming car, stopped cold to let another pass, then was up on the sidewalk and running hard toward the passageway where he’d seen the dark figure disappear. The Night Prowler-he could feel it!

  He bumped someone walking along the sidewalk and heard the man’s expulsion of breath. Then he was in the darkness of the passageway, running toward faint light at the opposite end.

  For an instant he glimpsed movement and was sure the Night Prowler was still in the passageway, moving as if picking up speed. Perhaps he’d paused halfway and begun to walk, thinking he hadn’t been seen, that he was safe.

  Quinn ran faster, seeing movement again, this time to the left, as his quarry reached the next block. All right, he knew which way the figure had turned; he had direction. His side ached and he was breathing in fire, but he kept his legs pumping, lifting his knees higher.

  At the end of the passageway Quinn slowed, gripped rough brick wall, and half ran, half swung around the corner.

  Gasping for breath, he smelled the East River. He was on a street running parallel to its bank. Sutton Place. Again he saw movement, ahead of him, more than one figure.

  No one behind him.

  Then up ahead, faster movement, and he saw the figure he’d been pursuing turn onto East Fifty-seventh Street.

  Good! As he approached the corner, Quinn saw the sign at East Fifty-seventh: DEAD END.

  Thank God!

  He ran down the short block to a concrete ramp with a black iron handrail. In the corner of his vision he saw NO DOGS ALLOWED as he negotiated the ramp and found himself in a small parklike area where neighborhood pet owners walked their dogs, despite the sign, or wandered down to the river’s edge and stared at the listless slide of gray water.

  There was a brick surface lined with benches, some large trees in grassy rectangles, a sandbox where the kids could play, and a statue of a wild boar to disturb their dreams. On his right was a raised brick walkway. A low concrete wall topped with a curved iron rail faced the murky water.

  Half a dozen people were in the park. All were walking dogs, except for a couple leaning on the iron rail and watching the river while they held hands. No Night Prowler…

  A tall woman wearing a ball cap, tank top, and jeans was standing off by herself, but her animal, a large black Lab, was off leash and bounding around. The woman had a clear plastic bag over her hand like a glove and was calling, “Jeb! Jeb!” Presumably the Lab. The dog skidded to a halt, then stood gazing back at her in a calculating way, then in the direction it had been running. It yearned to go but was frozen by command. “Jeb! C’mere, baby!”

  The conflicted Jeb reluctantly turned around and began slouching toward his owner.

  Had Jeb been chasing someone?

  It was possible to scale a fence and escape from the park through the grounds of the building next to it.

  Quinn sucked in air and began running again, in the direction the dog had strained to go.

  As he passed the crouching, resigned dog, he saw it glance up at him.

  A few seconds later he heard the scratching and clatter of paws. Jeb, running behind him, gaining ground.

  “Jeb! You get back here!”

  Quinn saw a low dark streak flash past him. Jeb, rocketing out on four good legs and with sound canine lungs. Jeb with a solid sense of purpose at last.

  He’s chasing something, all right! He’s-

  Everything heavy on earth slammed into Quinn’s chest.

  He stumbled, stopped running, and stood bent over, trying to endure the pain that was tightening around him. His left arm was stiff, aching.

  Heart attack!

  “You okay, bud?” A man’s voice.

  Quinn tried to say he wasn’t, but he couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even croak. He sank to his knees, then went all the way down. A small brindled dachshund stared at him in watery brown-eyed sympathy.

  “Is he all right, you think?” A woman. Jeb’s owner.

  Quinn saw lower legs, shoes, men’s and women’s, a pair of dark pants with cuffs. Lying doubled up on the ground, he couldn’t lift his head to see higher.

  “Guy looks plenty sick.” The man. The dachshund was yanked back on its leash, as if its owner feared Quinn might be contagious. “Anybody got a cell phone to call nine-eleven?”

  “I do!” answered several voices.

  Shit! An ambulance…emergency room. Well, maybe not a bad idea. Steel bands contracting around my chest…that’s how it’s supposed to feel and it does…

  “There you are, you bad dog!”

  Something pink and wet and warm was suddenly on Quinn’s cheek and nose, then all over his face.

  Don’t ever be a police dog, Jeb.

  The Night Prowler stood in the steel and Plexiglas bus stop shelter, but he didn’t board either of the buses that pulled to the curb near him to take on or let off passengers. He was able to lean in a corner of the kiosk and gaze through the clear plastic over the top of an advertising poster touting a Broadway play about marriage and infidelity. Apropos, thought the Night Prowler.

  What he could see over the top of the poster were the twin wooden green doors of the small brick church that had been in the Village for years. There were more than the usual number of cars parked nearby, and half a block down from the church a white limo sat at the curb, its uniformed chauffeur waiting patiently behind the steering wheel. But those were the only signs that a wedding was taking place inside. The chauffeur was
busy studying a newspaper, and the Night Prowler was certain the man hadn’t noticed anyone letting buses pass by at the stop half a block away on the other side of the street.

  It was a beautiful morning for a wedding. A gold-and-blue day. The sun was no captive of clouds, and its pure light illuminated the white wooden cross on the church’s roof as if to shout, She’s here! She’s here! Claire Briggs in white, with eyes like the blue mystery of oceans, so alluring, so deep, about life, about death…the old knowledge…blue and deep unto darkness…

  Both church doors opened at the same time, and tuxedoed ushers leaned down and fixed kick-plates so they wouldn’t swing closed. Claire would be coming out! The Night Prowler swallowed his breath, a bubble of life.

  People began filing out of the church. Some were dressed in suits with ties, others more informally, a few even in jeans. Friends from the theater world. Most of the women were dressed up. Everyone was smiling as they tried to obey the frenetic, arm-waving instructions of a skeletal-thin man in a gray suit. They milled about, then formed lines down each side of the dozen or so concrete steps. The steps didn’t allow enough room, so the lines extended along the sidewalk. Several people not connected to the wedding stopped on the Night Prowler’s side of the street and stood waiting to see what was happening. Wedding? Or funeral?

  There she is!

  Claire in a wedding white dress, standing next to her new and not-so-handsome husband Jubal Day! Putting on a little weight around the middle lately, Jubal?

  The Night Prowler stood transfixed, his breathing shallow, as bride and groom made their way down the church steps beneath a shower of birdseed (rice being prohibited at the church, as it was harmful to the birds as well as a waste of human sustenance), running a gauntlet of grins and good lucks.

  Claire smiled and gracefully used her left hand to brush the shower of airborne well wishes out of her hair, then adjusted her turned-back veil. Over the distance the Night Prowler could smell the fresh white shampoo scent of her hair, could hear the music of her happiness. It was amazing, the force and foresight of his mind!

  Astounding! I’m with her, seeing her from here and beside her! Now and later. Two places at once? Why not? It’s called objectivity. It’s called destiny. And it’s there to see, if you can see it. What’s the future but the present roaring toward us?

  He realized the doctor would have a medical term for what he was thinking, the priest a religious term, yet they wouldn’t believe, not really. It distressed him sometimes, the failure of imagination in the highly educated.

  They’re fools hamstrung by their torrent of facts and fears, their comforting black-and-white delusions. Like… Well, never mind that now.

  Claire!

  She tossed her bouquet high into the air, and a girl about twelve who would never be pretty caught it and hugged it to her spindly body as if a prince might spring from it.

  Claire laughing…mouth wide, throwing her head back the way she does…

  Into the limo…new car smell, slick leather seats…slide, slide…the door shuts; then the chauffeur’s door up front…the smooth vibrant power of the engine, the engine, the faces at the windows, all smiling in, shouting silently…our wedding guests… The wedding, the engine, the blue-gold day beyond the tinted glass, running figures like the palest of shadows, life, sliding, sliding away outside the window as the limo gains speed…

  The kiss to the clean white future! Lips, teeth touch…the cleaving unto the husband…white and flesh…

  Happy Wedding Day, Claire!

  Yours and mine.

  48

  They were in the doctor’s antiseptically clean, neatly arranged office in Roosevelt Hospital. Quinn sat in an uncomfortable wooden chair with upholstered arms, facing the desk at an angle. There were no windows, but the room was so bright from fluorescent lighting set behind frosted panels that there was an impression of natural light. On a shelf along with some medical reference books sat a small glass vase with a rose in it, which Quinn was sure was plastic. In the air was a faint scent of peppermint.

  The doctor’s name was Liran. He was a small, effeminate man, with dark eyes, thick black hair, and the kind of slender, long-fingered hands Quinn thought a surgeon should possess. On the wall behind him hung an improbable number of framed diplomas and certifications. Before him on his desk were spread various black-and-white images and printed-out results of tests done on Quinn.

  Quinn was optimistic. The pain in his chest had receded in the ambulance and was almost gone completely by the time they’d arrived at the hospital’s emergency entrance. He’d wanted to leave, and it was only reluctantly that he agreed to undergo a series of diagnostic procedures and spend the night. When the nurse had asked him who they might contact about his condition, he’d thought about giving them Pearl’s name and phone number, then decided against it. He could imagine Pearl barging in and taking charge, possibly irritating the staff to the extent that they might recommend a transplant.

  “We’ll wait to see how I am in the morning before we call anyone,” Quinn told the nurses.

  They made it clear they didn’t like that idea, even if they had to go along with it.

  He heard them talking about him out in the hall when they left. “So let him die alone,” one of them said. He liked a nurse with a sense of humor.

  They left him alone until they returned with a young doctor, who began questioning him about his “event” and eventually recommended what needed to be done to gain further information about his symptoms. Through most of the night Quinn was poked, probed, made to drink foul liquids, scanned, X-rayed, and had his molecules jangled by an MRI machine, until finally he was given a sedative that didn’t work very well.

  Morning had been a long time dawning.

  “We detect no damage to the heart,” Dr. Liran said with an Indian accent, “but the images show considerable arterial blockage.”

  Quinn asked what that meant.

  Dr. Liran shrugged behind his desk. “That you’ve lived as long as you have, even though you’ve eaten too much fatty food, and inherited a predisposition for plaque buildup on arterial walls.” He smiled softly. “You’ll be glad to know you’re rather typical in that regard, Mr. Quinn.”

  Quinn decided to drive to the point. “Did I have a heart attack?”

  “A mild one, perhaps, that left no visible damage.”

  “Or it might have been indigestion?”

  Dr. Liran laughed merrily. “Oh, only if you’re an incurable optimist. You are only slightly away from being a prime candidate for angioplasty, Mr. Quinn.” The doctor regarded his test results, drumming his manicured nails on an opened file folder. “I see that you are a police officer. Do you get adequate exercise?”

  “No.”

  “Control your diet?”

  “No.”

  “Smoke or drink?”

  “A cigar or a glass of scotch now and then. Occasionally both at the same time.”

  The doctor gave Quinn a look that might have carried mild disdain, then peered down again at the clutter of material on his desk. “You had been running when you were stricken?”

  “Yes, I was chasing someone.”

  “Uh-hm.” That seemed to satisfy Dr. Liran. He let the subject drop. If he recognized Quinn from newspapers or TV, he gave no indication. Probably he was too busy saving lives to follow the news. He had his own serial killers to deal with.

  “So what happened is nothing to worry about?” Quinn asked hopefully.

  Dr. Liran looked pained. “I would say it’s definitely something to be concerned about. It was your body demonstrating to you the direction in which you’re going, which is toward a severe heart attack if you don’t take proper and reasonable precautions. I would like to impress upon you that despite lack of detectable damage to the heart, what happened to you is in itself quite serious.”

  “A wake-up call,” Quinn said.

  “That’s not the medical term, but it will do. I’m going to prescribe some pills
to help lower both your blood pressure and your cholesterol count, but they won’t lower them enough by themselves. Much of this is up to you, Mr. Quinn. Here with your prescriptions is a suggested diet. Follow it, and avoid strenuous physical activity until we place you on an exercise program. I want to see you again approximately one month from today. When you know your schedule, call and make an appointment. If you don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

  Quinn accepted the papers the doctor was holding out for him, then stood up and thanked him. “Don’t worry, Doctor, I’ll call.”

  Dr. Liran smiled. “They all say that. Either way, I suspect we’ll be seeing each other again.”

  “Acid reflux,” Pearl said later that morning, after Quinn explained to her-with some modification-why he hadn’t appeared for their meeting last night. “That’s acid bullshit, Quinn, and we both know it.”

  They were in the unmarked, Pearl driving, on their way to talk to Abigail Koop. Fedderman was on his way to question Janet Hofer, the other woman who’d had lunch with Lisa Ide shortly before she died. Hofer was still in New York on an extended vacation.

  “The important thing is, I almost caught the bastard,” Quinn said. They’d stopped at Krispy Kreme five minutes ago. He opened the paper sack as Pearl jockeyed the car too fast around a corner.

  “The important thing is, you had a heart attack.”

  “There was no heart attack. I told you, the hospital said I was fine. It could have been simple acid reflux causing chest pains.” He’d heard somewhere of people having acid reflux and thinking it was a heart attack, so why wouldn’t she believe him?

  Pearl said nothing and stared straight ahead as she drove, letting Quinn know she was plenty ticked off and not buying what he was selling.

  “If I’d been ten years younger, I would have worn him down,” Quinn said. “We almost had him.”

  “How can you be so sure it was the Night Prowler?”

  “He shot at me.”