by Len Levinson
“You mean they can’t get along without you?”
“They can get along fine without me, but I ought to be there because I’m working on the case.” He rinsed out his mouth. “In fact, I blew the case wide open yesterday.”
“How’d you do that?”
“I found out who the Slasher is.”
“Who is he?”
“Some crazy cabdriver.”
“Why doesn’t somebody arrest him?”
“Because nobody knows where he is.”
“Oh shit,” she said, annoyed. “This would have to happen on the one night we were going to spend together.”
“Don’t be so sentimental. We can sleep just as well alone.”
“Maybe you can, but I can’t.”
Rackman dried his face and returned to the bedroom to get dressed. Francie took his bathrobe off the bedpost and put it on, then lit a cigarette and sat cross-legged on the bed. Rackman took his gray slacks and blue blazer combination out of the closet.
“You have to get all dressed up to go to the morgue?’’ Francie asked.
“Shut up, will you?” he said, pulling on the pants. “I’m trying to think.”
He saw the hurt on her face and regretted telling her to shut up. Women can drive you crazy. “I didn’t mean that,” he said.
“I’m used to remarks like that from you,” she replied.
They make you mad, then make you feel guilty for getting mad. Rackman took a fresh shirt out of the drawer and put it on.
“I really shouldn’t see you anymore,” she said.
“I don’t know what to tell you Francie.”
“You really don’t give me very much.”
“Maybe I don’t have very much to give.”
“Maybe you don’t.”
Rackman tied his necktie and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked like a nice clean-cut detective, the kind the Commissioner liked.
“I guess you’ll stay here,” he said to her reflection in the mirror.
“Do you mind?”
“No. Help yourself to anything in the refrigerator.” He put on his blue blazer and put a fresh pack of Luckies in the inner pocket. “Well, I’m sorry that I’ve got to go, but I’ve got to go.” He bent and kissed her cheek. “I’ll call you.”
“’Bye Danny,” she said.
Chapter Fourteen
She was a black girl in her mid-twenties and she lay very still on the slab in the morgue, her eyes closed. Her windpipe was sliced in two and another big cut was on the side of her neck. She had a nice figure, somewhat on the heavy side, and had bruises on her face.
Rackman looked at her and felt helpless because the Slasher still was on the loose and probably would kill another woman before they caught him. He might even kill a few more. In the Forties, a killer in Buffalo had decapitated twenty-two victims and hadn’t been caught.
Rackman stood between Jenkins and Johnny Olivero. On the other side of the slab was Police Commissioner Hurley, who had a pointed nose and wavy black hair, and First Deputy Harnick, who wore a vested suit that made him look like a banker. The medical examiner had told them that the victim had been cut first from the side, and then from the front. She’d been dragged from the sidewalk down the stairs beside a brownstone to the basement entrance. The Slasher had kicked and punched her, and also urinated on her. She’d been found by a musician returning home from a gig.
So far they knew her name was Barbara Collins and that she lived with another girl in an apartment farther down the block. She worked as a performer in a live sex show establishment near Times Square and had given three performances that night. The Slasher had left his fingerprints on her pocketbook. The fingerprints matched those of Frank Kowalchuk’s on his hack license application.
Commissioner Hurley looked at Jenkins. “I want you to put everybody you’ve got on this case.”
“Yes sir,” replied Jenkins.
“The Chief of Detectives is on his way here now. I’m putting him directly in charge, and hereafter it will be the first priority of this department. This thing is going to be all over the papers tomorrow, and the people of New York will want results. We’ve got to get this guy, and that’s all there is to it.”
“We know who he is,” Jenkins said. “It’s just a matter of time before we track him down.”
“It’d better not be too much time,” Commissioner Hurley said.
“We’ll do our best, sir.”
“You’d better.”
Commissioner Hurley looked at the first deputy, and both of them walked out of the room. Jenkins, Rackman, and Olivero relaxed, shuffling their feet and putting their hands in their pockets.
“This is going to be a big thing in the press tomorrow,” Jenkins said grimly. “The shit will really hit the fan. One murder like this is an isolated incident, two are a problem, but three are a fucking epidemic.”
Rackman nodded. “When you talk to the chief of detectives, maybe you should suggest saturating the Times Square area with plainclothes cops who have Kowalchuk’s picture with them.”
“I already thought of that. Tell me something new.”
“He might be living in one of those hotels around lower Madison Avenue where a lot of cabdrivers stay. We should check them out.”
“I thought of that too. Midtown South will take care of it, and we’ll go through the hotels up our way. We’ll check cafeterias and sleazy bars, even the YMCA. The Chief of Patrol will comb the sidewalks for the fucker. If he stays in New York, we’ll get him.”
Olivero cleared his throat. “We should check every taxi garage in the city because he might change garages.”
“Don’t worry about it. From now until we catch him, cabdrivers won’t be able to move without bumping into cops.”
Rackman left the morgue and got into his car, driving uptown. He puffed a cigarette as he passed the quiet nighttime sidewalks and isolated drunks staggering along. Everything was closed for the night except for a sandwich shop or deli every several blocks. Rackman wondered where Kowalchuk was and what he was doing.
He knew that Kowalchuk was somewhere out there right now, maybe asleep or even walking the streets. He might be that drunk sprawled in the doorway over there. No, that drunk was too skinny. Kowalchuk was a big fat guy.
Rackman remembered Kowalchuk’s face on his hack license application. That face, an average face, was the face of a killer. What kind of man was he? What was driving the sick son of a bitch?
Rackman figured Kowalchuk must hate women a lot, that that must be his principal motivation. Maybe a woman had shit on him, or maybe he was sexually frustrated and that had turned to resentment, hatred, and finally murder. Certainly sexual craziness must have something to do with it, in view of all the porno stuff in his apartment and the fact that his victims were porno girls. The poor bastard couldn’t deal with women and was freaking out.
He sounds a little like me, Rackman thought, and then a chill passed over him as that insight wormed through his brain. He realized that he and Kowalchuk both had difficulties with women, and that Kowalchuk was only a more extreme version of himself. But they were brothers under the skin. If I’d been pushed a little harder, Rackman thought, maybe I would have become a Slasher and the police would be looking for me, who knows?
Rackman chewed his lower lip as he realized that in pursuing the Slasher he also was pursuing the dark side of his own nature. The part that was irrational and wild. The part that could kill if it ever was squeezed hard enough.
“I’ve got to get him,” Rackman whispered through his clenched teeth as he drove toward Midtown North.
Part Two – The Slasher
Chapter One
It was eleven o’clock at night on Times Square. The gaunt-faced hawker on the street corner rustled the small leaflets in his hands. “Beautiful girls—check ‘em out!” he said, thrusting a leaflet toward the gut of the fat man.
The fat man took the leaflet and looked at it as crowds of pedestrians passed him by:
Private Sessions
Dozens of Lovely Girls to Choose From
Complete Satisfaction and
Complete Privacy
Only $10.00
No Tipping Allowed
Stereo Music—Open Seven
Days a Week
Crown Club
43 West Forty-fifth Street
(between Broadway and
Eighth Avenue)
The fat man had wiry black hair and tiny eyes. His nose was pugged and his mouth was large and fleshy. He wore a red and black wool shirt jacket hanging out of his baggy, olive green pants. Under his arm were three sex magazines he’d bought in a porno bookstore around the corner on Forty-second Street.
He stopped in the doorway of a store closed for the night, read the leaflet again, and looked at the photo of a naked young blonde squeezing her breasts ecstatically. He wondered if they really had girls like that in the massage parlor. He wouldn’t mind paying ten dollars for one of them if they did.
He headed uptown. For some time he’d been tempted to go to a massage parlor, but he’d never gotten around to it. Tonight he thought he’d check one out. He had a knife in his pants pocket, and if there was any trouble he knew how to take care of himself.
Beneath neon lights and movie marquees he made his way through black thugs, Puerto Rican gangs, college kids on a lark, the after-theater crowd, and frail young girls with the eyes of harlots. The fat man’s head bobbed around as he looked everywhere, catching every detail, not missing anything. He loved to come to Times Square at night. You could do just about anything, and nobody cared.
‘‘Loose joints,” murmured a black man standing in front of a shoe store window.
The fat man kept walking. At Forty-fifth Street he turned left and crossed Broadway.
He walked erect, his haunch like shoulders rolling and his big round stomach far in front of him. He looked strong and mean, something like a bear, and not the kind of fat man a wise guy would pick on.
It was darker on Forty-fifth Street and there were fewer people. The theaters had closed for the night and old derelicts were bedding down on doorsteps. The breeze sent a newspaper flying over the sidewalk like the ghost of a giant butterfly. The fat man looked at the numbers on the buildings, then spotted the sign hanging over the sidewalk toward the end of the block. The sign said Crown Club in black on white and was lit by a single bulb. As he drew closer he saw a jive black man in a big apple hat standing in front of the door. The black man slapped his leaflets together three times and held one out.
“Beautiful girls upstairs!” he said.
The fat man stopped and looked at the open door. He saw a brightly lit flight of wooden stairs covered with an old worn rug. Rock and roll music could be heard from the second floor.
The black man sidled up to him. “Check ‘em out,” he said softly. “Only ten bucks.”
“What do you get for ten bucks?”
“Anything you want.”
“Anything?”
“Anything. And they’s real nice girls.”
The fat man wanted to screw a nice young girl, and ten bucks would be cheaper than a date, not that he ever went on dates. He entered the doorway and climbed the creaking stairs. The sound of rock and roll grew louder. As he neared the top of the stairs he saw two big white guys on the landing. They were leaning against the wall and talking in low tones. Evidently they were the bouncers, and they had jailhouse written all over them. As the fat man approached them, he wondered if he wanted to go into a place where they had bouncers like that.
“Step right in, sir!” said a booming voice.
The fat man looked to the left through a doorway and saw another big white guy with red hair sitting behind a small table in a squalid room. He wore a blue blazer and red striped shirt.
“Don’t be shy!” the redhead called out, motioning with his hand. “Come on in!”
The fat man didn’t like the looks of the place and didn’t feel like going in, but if he’d come that far he might as well go all the way. Squaring his massive shoulders, he walked into the room, and was dispirited further by what he saw.
A motley group of black and Latin whores were seated to the left on broken-down sofas and chairs. Most were overweight and over thirty. They smiled garishly at him, and he thought they were hideous.
“Step right this way, sir!” the redhead said, slapping his palm on the table.
The fat man looked at the redhead, then at the women again. He wanted to get out of there, but if he turned around and ran down the stairs, everyone would laugh at him, and he hated people to laugh at him.
“Can I help you, sir?” the redhead asked insistently.
The fat man thought he might as well go through with it, what the hell. He walked to the table where the redhead sat, and felt the girls’ eyes burning into his back. His face and shoulders prickled with heat.
“Ten dollars, please,” the redhead said.
The fat man reached into his pocket and self-consciously took out his roll of bills. Peeling off two fives, he dropped them on the table in front of the redhead, who tore a ticket off a big coil and handed it to him.
“What do I do with this?” the fat man stammered.
“You give it to whatever girl you want, and she’ll take care of the rest.”
The fat man turned around and felt vertiginous. All the girls were looking at him, licking their lips, crossing their legs, caressing their tits, winking and wiggling; all acting very freaky. He was so nervous he didn’t know what to do. They wore brightly colored ballerina tights and were a bunch of slobs.
He wasn’t anxious to screw any one of them: his eyes roved back and forth over their painted faces. His cheeks were hot and perspiration dotted his forehead. He had to do something, but he couldn’t leave because that would be too embarrassing. A blonde head and youthful face was among the older ones. Without giving orders to his feet, he found himself walking toward her, holding the ticket out. The closer he came, the worse she looked. She had pimples, a piggy face, and her body was shapeless, but at least she was young. Stopping in front of her, he gave her the ticket.
“Here,” he said meekly.
She made a little smile of satisfaction that indicated that she was pleased to have beaten out the other girls. Taking the ticket, she tucked it into the bosom of her purple tights, stood, and looked at him scornfully.
“Follow me.” She led him down a narrow corridor lined with doors. The walls of the corridor didn’t reach the ceiling, and he could hear grunts and muttering. He wished he were down on the street heading toward the subway. This was awful and there was nothing he could do about it.
She opened a door. “In here.”
He walked into a tiny cubicle that had a padded table against the wall. Any sound he might make could be heard over the tops of the walls in the other cubicles. He’d thought that at least he’d have some privacy.
“Take all your clothes off,” she said.
“All of them?”
“Yes all of them.”
“What for?”
“Because that’s the way it works here.”
The fat man felt a rise of anger, but he’d already paid his ten dollars; he wasn’t leaving now. He started removing his jacket and she walked out of the cubicle, closing the door behind her. He looked around. Her jeans, a shirt, and a Navy pea coat hung from a peg on the wall. In the corner was a box covered with a towel, and on it were bottles and jars of cosmetics. He took off all his clothes, hung them over the back of a rickety wooden chair, and sat on the massage table, feeling chilly and sick. His pecker was shriveled up and his scrotum was hard as leather.
She returned to the cubicle and closed the door. “What do you want?” she asked.
“I ... uh ... I want you to blow me, and then I want to fuck you.”
She made a thin hard smile. “If you give me a ten dollar tip it’ll be better.”
“The piece of paper the guy on the street gave me said I didn’t
have to give a tip.”
“Like I said, it’ll be better if you give me ten dollars.”
“How about five dollars?”
“What are you—cheap or something?”
“No, but the paper said I didn’t have to tip.”
She shook her ass and forced a smile. “C’mon, it’s only ten dollars.”
“But that makes the whole thing twenty dollars.”
“I’ll make it good for you, baby.”
There was no point in arguing. All the cards were stacked against him up there. He got off the table, picked his pants off the back of the chair, and took ten dollars out of the pocket. “Here.”
Her smile vanished as her hand covered the bill. “I’ll be right back.” She left the cubicle again.
He sat on the table, hugging himself for warmth, feeling gypped. He should have known better than to come here. The cops ought to close these places down and throw all the whores in jail. Or better yet, shoot them.
She returned with a towel and a basin half full of soapy water. “Get up.”
“What’s the water for?”
“I’ve got to wash you. Stand over here.”
He got up. She put the basin on the massage table, reached over, grabbed his penis, looked into its eye, and squeezed. “You got anything wrong with you?”
“You mean like a venereal disease?”
“What else would I mean?”
“No.”
She let his cock go, soaped up her hands, grabbed it again, and washed it. That should have made him horny, but it didn’t. He wanted to get everything over with fast and leave. She dried him with a towel, picked up the basin, and left the room again.
The fat man sat on the table. He was worried that he wouldn’t be able to get an erection. That would be humiliating. The girl was treating him like shit. She probably had a black pimp for a boyfriend. White girls liked to go out with black men because they had big dicks, so he’d been told.
The girl returned to the room and looked at him insolently. She wasn’t trying to be sexy; she didn’t give a damn about him at all. “You got a rubber?”
“No.”
