Darker Than Night

by John Lutz

  The Night Prowler waited at least a minute before turning around. Then he went outside and bought a ticket, even though the woman in the booth warned him the movie was well under way.

  Inside the theater he went to the concession stand and bought half a dozen boxes of mints before going into the darkened auditorium and finding a seat.

  He got comfortable, opened one of the mint boxes, and began eating Claire’s favorite candy. He let the chocolate melt on his tongue while he thought about her. On the screen an attractive scuba diver, with long, beautiful legs, was swimming in dark waters. She was obviously afraid even as she stroked deeper, propelled by the screenplay. Danger, death, could suddenly embrace her from any direction in the murky depths. It was much like life outside the movies.

  Someone in the audience tittered. The Night Prowler pressed a fingertip against the back of the unoccupied seat in front of him and thought a sharply pointed knife would penetrate the material easily, then cut through the back of anyone seated there and reach the heart. Bloodred, scarlet blue in the dark. If he acted out what he was thinking, the person, the titterer, would die immediately and the few other patrons in the theater would assume he was simply asleep, while his killer got up and walked out.

  It could be done. It was a thought. People who talked in movies, who rudely intruded in other people’s dreams and diversions, deserved death.

  The volume of the music rose, and so did the swimmer. Wide-eyed and fearful, she was yanked up, just in time, into the boat, where she was safe.

  At least for a while.

  Not very realistic, thought the Night Prowler, forgetting about the titterer.

  It would have been better in color.

  55

  The sun was bright and there were no clouds in the morning sky, but thunder roared like a distant lion in the east. Quinn was sitting on one of the concrete and wooden benches just inside the Eighty-sixth Street entrance to the park, looking out at a gentle slope of ground shaded by mature trees. Beyond the slope a few sunbathers were out on towels or webbed aluminum loungers, though it was still early and the day’s heat was just beginning to build.

  Quinn thought it was a beautiful morning that belied his troubles. He glanced at his watch. Pearl and Fedderman should be along soon.

  “So, this is where you meet,” said a voice behind him.

  Harley Renz walked into view. He was wearing a dark blue suit with a light pinstripe, a blue shirt and patterned red tie fastened with a gold clasp. Somebody had spent a lot of time buffing his shoes to a high gloss. He belonged in the park like Fred Astaire belonged at an Ozark clog dance. Quinn figured there must be a TV interview scheduled for this morning. He could see a shiny black Lincoln at the curb out on Central Park West and thought it was probably Renz’s driver waiting for him.

  “You might get rained on,” Renz said with a smile, as if he didn’t think that would be so bad. “Hear that thunder?”

  “It’s out at sea.”

  “Where you are,” Renz said, still smiling. He lightly hooked a thumb in his belt, so he looked like a catalog clothes model, and glanced around. “Your roach trap apartment’s in the Nineties. There’s an entrance to the park closer to where you live, so why don’t you meet your partners in crime solving there?”

  “This is more central to us.” Which was true. It was also true there was a playground near the Ninety-first Street entrance, and Quinn didn’t want to spend time on a park bench too close to it. The media had enough to work with, as it was.

  “I was on my way to Channel One, then the precinct, and I thought, I bet Quinn has something to report. I knew this was where you and your team met sometimes, so I had my driver stop off here so we could chat.”

  Quinn told him about Pearl’s key-reproduction theory.

  “And?” Renz asked.

  “We’re still checking it out. It makes sense.”

  “Which is your way of saying you don’t have diddly shit.”

  Quinn nodded. “Your way of saying it is better. But we’re not done. Pearl and Fedderman have been on it and might have something when they get here.”

  “On it how?”

  “Checking places where apartment door keys might have been duplicated.”

  “Jesus, Quinn. Do you know how many—”

  “It’s not as long a shot as you might think. There are certain blanks for particular kinds of locks that are usually on apartment doors.”

  “Blanks?”

  “Plain, unnotched keys that haven’t been cut.”

  “And there are only millions of apartments in Manhattan. If one half of one percent of their occupants had duplicate keys made, it’d mean you only had hundreds of thousands to check out.”

  “Remember, we’re looking for tradesmen who had keys duplicated. That narrows it down.”

  “To only tens of thousands.”

  “Harley, you’ve been spending time trying to trace a silencer that doesn’t have an individual serial number.”

  “And found a guy living on the West Side who threw one out in his trash a few months ago.”

  “If it’s the same silencer.”

  “It might be.”

  “So do you have your troops searching landfills?”

  “No. Too much of a long shot. And I wouldn’t have them going around visiting hundreds of places that duplicate thousands of keys.”

  “Pearl and Fedderman might come up with something. They’ll sense where to go. They have good cop instincts.”

  Renz looked away, up at what might be the only cloud in the sky, then back at Quinn. “Yeah. Pearl’s a hell of a detective. And some parts of Fedderman’s brain are still active.”

  “You assigned them to me.”

  “Shows what I know. Pearl’s a good fuck, would you say?”

  Quinn felt the anger rise hot in him, almost lifting him off the bench.

  “Cool down,” Renz said. “The word is out about you and Pearl, and even you have to admit the relationship isn’t very professional.”

  “It’s not professional at all. It’s personal.”

  “Quinn, there is no personal.”

  Quinn thought he might be right. If you were a cop long enough, groping around in other people’s dirty secrets and desires, your mental fingertips grew calluses. You lost a certain respect and sensitivity for privacy. He leaned back on the bench and crossed his arms, looking up at Renz. “You mentioned you were on your way to do some media this morning. About the Night Prowler?”

  “Sure. What else is New York media interested in?”

  “You said the word was out about Pearl and me. Has it hit print or TV yet?”

  “No, but it will. And when it does, they’ll hammer both of you hard. It’ll be rough, but you’ll still have a little time. Maybe. Depending. Possibly. How can anyone say for sure, other than the participants, what happened behind closed doors?”

  “Somebody must have said,” Quinn pointed out. “How else would the word have gotten around?”

  “Nobody in the NYPD had to be told. All anybody had to do was look at Pearl to know she was in love and in heat.”

  “Dammit, Harley!”

  “Okay, I’ll show some respect. But you know the news wolves in this town. And they’ve already fallen in love with Anna Caruso and are leaning toward lynching you. They probably won’t feel too kindly toward Pearl, either.”

  Thunder rolled again, but it sounded farther away.

  Renz shot his cuff as he glanced at his gold watch. “I gotta stop wasting time talking with you. After Channel One I got another interview with Kay Kemper. If it isn’t one info babe, it’s another.”

  “Careful what you say to Kemper. She likes to rake the muck.”

  Renz laughed. “You, the muck, telling me to be careful. Telling anybody.”

  He turned and gave a dismissive wave as he walked toward his waiting car and driver. Quinn had to admit the suit looked great on him. It was the only thing he liked about Harley Renz.

  Other than
he was better than Vince Egan.

  Ten minutes later, Pearl and Fedderman drove up in the unmarked and parked in the space Renz’s Lincoln had occupied. As they approached the bench, Quinn thought Pearl looked businesslike in a gray jacket and dark slacks, a V of white showing where the coat was buttoned. Fedderman limped along as if his feet hurt; compared to Renz’s nifty attire, Fed’s brown suit hung on him like rags. One of his shirt cuffs protruded from the coat sleeve, unbuttoned and flapping around as he swung his arms. The general effect was that of a portly scarecrow on the move.

  “Traffic,” said Pearl, who’d been driving. She said it by way of explanation, nothing of apology in her tone. Could she apologize? For anything? “Been waiting long?”

  “No, and I’ve had company.” Quinn told them about his conversation with Renz.

  “Guy’s a genuine prick,” Pearl said.

  “So everyone says.” Quinn used the back of his hand to wipe sweat off his forehead. Pearl had to be hot in that blazer, and Fedderman in his shoddy suit. “Was Renz right to be skeptical of our search for the literal key to the case?”

  “He was right,” Pearl said. “I never knew there were so many places that duplicated keys every day in the areas of the murders. The locksmiths—and only some of them are—know the blanks and brands common to apartment keys, but lots of their customers pay cash. Records aren’t available, and charge receipts yielded nothing.”

  “Renz has been right so far,” Fedderman said, as if he’d only been half listening to Pearl. Quinn could see now there were crescents of perspiration beneath the arms of his suit coat. Or were those stains from yesterday? “But only so far.”

  Pearl and Quinn both looked at him.

  “Suppose we assume the killer duplicated his own keys. You’ve seen that some of those machines are portable, Pearl, and using them doesn’t take a great deal of skill or training. So let’s work this backward.”

  Pearl didn’t know what he meant. She looked quizzically at Quinn.

  “He means start with tradesmen who worked in any of the murder apartments, and also have their own portable key cutters.”

  “That’d narrow it down,” Fedderman said.

  “Would it ever!” Pearl grinned and kissed him on the cheek.

  Fedderman blushed and glanced almost guiltily at Quinn.

  56

  Jubal rolled off Dalia and sighed, still trying to catch his breath. Dalia liked to go twice sometimes, once on top, then on the bottom. He couldn’t imagine Claire even suggesting such a thing—not since she’d become pregnant.

  They were in Chicago’s venerable and almost shabby Tremontier Hotel, where they were registered under their real names, Dorthea Hartnagle and Arnold Wolfe. It wouldn’t do to let the others in the production of As Thy Love Thyself know they were longtime lovers. Show business could be a small world, and Jubal was married to an actress.

  The room was warm and smelled of sex and the rose fragrance perfume Dalia always wore. Jubal had come to love the combined scent. It almost made him hesitate in lighting a cigarette, but he reached over to the bedside table, carefully avoiding Dalia’s overturned champagne glass, and got his pack of Camels and a hotel book of matches. He fired up a cigarette, then leaned his head back on the damp pillow, took a long drag, and exhaled.

  “Jesus, that’s good!”

  Dalia was staring over at him, grinning. “The sex or the cigarette?”

  “All of it.”

  “Your wife know you’re back smoking?”

  “Somehow that doesn’t seem like the logical question.”

  “I guess it isn’t.”

  “There’s a lot Claire doesn’t know about me.”

  “Yeah, I bet you’re really misunderstood and abused.”

  “You know what I mean, how it is.”

  “Do I ever.” Dalia rolled onto her stomach and felt around for the bottle of Dom Pérignon on the floor. She found it, then righted the champagne glass and poured what little was left of the bottle into it. She sat up cross-legged and nude on the bed and experimentally sipped champagne.

  “Flat?” Jubal asked.

  “Yeah, but so am I now, after the way you’ve been bouncing on me.” Another sip drained the glass and she placed it back on the table. “Does Claire know about your sitcom offer?”

  “Not yet.” The producer of a pilot film for a proposed new cable sitcom, West Side Buddies, about a group of female-obsessed New York pals and neighbors, had called Jubal’s agent and said he might be right for the part of the Mets bachelor shortstop, Eric. There were no guarantees, but Jubal’s agent said he’d gotten word Jubal had a real shot at the role.

  “Then you are going back to New York to audition?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. You want the role, don’t you?”

  “Sure. There are top people involved. But it’s in New York, and you’re here.”

  “And I’ll still be here when you get back. Go! Astin can stand in for you for a couple of days. You won’t be bailing out on us; everyone will understand.” Astin was Astin Jones, Jubal’s handsome and calculating young understudy. There were people in the cast who thought he might be better for Jubal’s part than Jubal. “Hell, everyone will envy you for the opportunity. If they knew about the offer, they’d be urging you to go for it.”

  Especially Astin.

  “You afraid somebody’s gonna take your place permanently while you’re away?”

  Jubal knew what she meant but played dumb. “We’ve been meeting each other for a long time and nobody’s taken my place.”

  Dalia let him get away with it and didn’t say anything. She pretended to check the empty champagne bottle to see if anything more could be coaxed from it.

  Jubal drew again on his cigarette, then leaned to the side and snuffed out the butt in the glass ashtray near the base of the lamp. The scent of tobacco smoke now dominated the room.

  “Maybe I will go,” he said.

  Dalia dropped to her side, then scooted over on the mattress, snaked an arm around Jubal’s neck, and kissed him on the mouth.

  “I’ll show you maybe,” she said, smiling down at him.

  At the airport Jubal checked in and passed through security faster than expected. Before the flight to Chicago he’d had to remove his shoes at LaGuardia, but apparently what might have been exploding wing tips aroused no suspicion on this end. He went into a gift shop and browsed to kill time.

  He wasn’t all that eager to see Claire.

  He was going to miss Dalia.

  Claire was in another city and he’d mentally pushed her aside; it was difficult now to readjust to her. He was still in a Dalia frame of mind.

  Jubal knew he’d done a good job of pretending with Claire. Well, not at first. Initially he’d been shocked, and he supposed glad, when she told him she was pregnant. Then came the marriage, and reality began setting in. Marriage, an infant realer by the hour, genuine commitment, a mutual checking account, mutual everything; it was stifling. None of it correlated with Jubal’s plans.

  At first he told himself people had to make concessions in life, that he should grow up. But he wasn’t good at convincing himself. He wanted. He needed. Very badly. And not what he already had. Even he hadn’t realized how selfish he was about his future, his career.

  Not that he felt he should apologize for his selfishness. Or feel guilty about it. He and Claire were both in show business, and they knew the kinds of sacrifices that had to be made. It was like a religious cult, acting; esoteric, demanding, unforgiving to those who betrayed it. He’d kept his religion, but Claire was losing hers.

  So he’d begun seeing Dalia again. Dalia ran in his blood and had done so long before Claire. Their on-again, off-again romance had survived for almost seven years, mainly because of the sex, which seemed only to get better and more imaginative with time.

  During an off period with Dalia, while she was away working on the West Coast, Claire had become a force in Jubal’s li
fe. She’d spun a web that enthralled and hypnotized him, occupying all his thoughts.

  But lately, not only because of his deteriorating relationship with Claire, but also probably because of his marriage making Dalia forbidden fruit, and only more desirable, Jubal thought more and more about Dalia. Even making love to Claire, he thought about Dalia.

  Dalia was the woman he thought of when he saw the ruby necklace in the airport gift shop showcase.

  Dalia loved rubies. She had several ruby rings, a ruby bracelet, and at least one ruby pin that Jubal knew of. He couldn’t recall her wearing a ruby necklace.

  This one held a single large stone in a silver setting on a unique silver chain. It reminded the already-lonely Jubal painfully of Dalia. He longed to make her a present of it.

  The necklace was overpriced, like almost everything else in the shop. Jubal stood staring at it, considering.

  Every addiction is expensive. Even Dalia.

  He knew if he didn’t buy the necklace now, it might not be there when he returned from New York, so he decided to purchase it, then conceal it someplace for a while.

  “Can I help you?” a voice asked. The graying, matronly woman behind the counter had been observing him in his reverie. “Help you?” she asked again.

  Jubal didn’t think she could. Not really. He’d have to figure out a way to help himself.

  “That necklace…” He pointed. “The ruby one. Would you show it to me?”

  Every addiction…

  57

  Hubby was home.

  The Night Prowler had left the apartment after observing Claire sleep. He’d known Jubal was gone, and that he wouldn’t be away for very long. Chicago wasn’t all that far from New York.

  But he hadn’t expected him tonight. Not at this hour.

  Close! This had been close! And I’m not ready for it yet. I don’t want it to happen.