The Eye: A Novel of Suspense

by Bill Pronzini

  First victim: Charles Unger. Retired grocer, Caucasian, age sixty-five, widower, native of Manhattan, resident of apartment building at 1250 West Ninety-eighth. Found near the mouth of an alley between 1250 and 1252 by a passing patrol car, at eight A.M., September 7. Shot once in the chest at close range with a .32 caliber weapon. No witnesses, nothing in the way of evidence on the scene. Neighbors and relatives of the deceased stated that he was well-liked, had no apparent enemies. Robbery ruled out as a motive; Unger’s wallet, containing fourteen dollars and three major credit cards, untouched in his pocket.

  Second victim: Peter Cheng. Import-export dealer, Chinese, age forty-three, unmarried, native of Hong Kong (no relatives in New York metropolitan area), resident of apartment building at 1279 West Ninety-eighth. Found in a doorway on Riverside Drive, just around the corner from Ninety-eighth, by the driver of a newspaper delivery truck at six forty-five A.M., September 15. Shot once between the eyes at close range with the same .32 caliber weapon. No witnesses, nothing in the way of evidence on the scene. Friends and business associates of the deceased stated that he was a hard-nosed businessman but had no apparent enemies. Suggestion that Cheng was a homosexual, but no verification. Check into his business dealings negative; his import-export firm was respectable and moderately profitable. No apparent connection with Charles Unger, no indication that the two men even knew each other.

  Zero. No common denominator except for the fact that the two victims lived on the same block of West Ninety-eighth Street.

  And now, with victim number three, that commonality no longer existed: Simmons hadn’t lived on West Ninety-eighth or anywhere else in the neighborhood. The only evident factor linking the three homicides was that the victims had all died on that same city block.

  Tobin said the same thing Oxman was thinking: “There’s just nothing here, Elliot Leroy. A retired grocer, a Chinese import-export dealer. Throw in Simmons and it makes even less sense.”

  “Unless Gaines and Holroyd have turned up a connection. Or we do.”

  “Want to bet that won’t happen?”

  “No. But there’s got to be some reason for the killings, some reason why even a madman would start blowing people away on one particular block.”

  “Yeah,” Tobin agreed dryly.

  “We’ll find it. And we’d better do it fast, because if it is a psycho he’ll go after number four sooner or later.”

  “Motive isn’t the only thing we’d better find fast.”

  “You mean the psycho himself?”

  “I mean,” Tobin said, “it’s our baby. We’d better find a way to deliver it.”

  THE COLLIER TAPES

  He didn’t live on the block.

  Martin Simmons did not live on the block!

  I should have been more careful. But what was Simmons doing there? He should not have been there at that time of night. Closed community, very stable for the West Side, not many late visitors. How was I to know when I saw him come out of the building that he was a stranger, an interloper? Martin Simmons, 112 West Seventy-third Street, advertising copywriter—it was all there on the radio this morning. How was I to know?

  But I should have been more careful. Jennifer Crane, the harlot who lives in 1276, has brought home men before; she picks them up in singles bars and brings them to her apartment. The Eye has seen her stepping out of taxis with half a dozen different men. Martin Simmons was probably one of her conquests. Of course: That explains what he was doing on the block at three A.M.

  Poor Martin. My apologies and regrets, and I promise for your sake that I will not make the same mistake again with someone else. I will be much more circumspect, I will not make any more random choices. If I began to act indiscriminately, if I do not limit myself to residents of my little universe, if I bring down my wrath upon visitors, guests, passersby, then I will have fallen from grace and descended to the level of psychopathology. That must not happen.

  Lewis B. Collier, former adjunct Associate Professor of English, Keeper of the Eye, Lord and Conscience of West Ninety-eighth Street, is not a psychopath.

  I am not a psychopath.

  I am a deeply and righteously angered Avenger; I am the Angel of Death. Be sure your sin will find you out. And the wages of sin is death. Order, structure, motive, discipline. I will be justified unto the grave and vindicated in the Hereafter.

  A half hour has passed since I began dictating this entry. I spent those thirty minutes on the balcony with the Eye.

  God’s Eye.

  Have I discussed the Eye in any detail? No, I don’t believe I have. It is a powerful six-inch reflecting telescope, a much-refined version of the type first constructed by Sir Isaac Newton in 1668. It weighs approximately fifty pounds. It has several eyepieces, including a high-magnification six millimeter piece which I had specially ground some months ago by an expert who works for the local astronomy clubs. The polished concave mirror at the Eye’s base, which gathers light and forms the image, has also been specially ground.

  I purchased the Eye a year ago, when I imagined myself interested in astronomy. Contemplation of the heavens, however, did not amuse me as much as I had anticipated. It was only when I realized that it could be used to observe people, stars in a different and far more flawed firmament, that I began to appreciate its true worth. Now it has become the Eye of God, through which I can follow the petty, sometimes sinful lives of the inhabitants of the West Ninety-eighth Street block, two miles away across the Hudson River.

  Think of it! Here I am, in my twentieth floor apartment in the Crestview Towers, in Cliffside Park on the New Jersey palisades, and yet with a twist of the Eye’s delicate rack-and-pinion controls I can bring those inhabitants of Manhattan into such sharp focus that I am able to see the color of their eyes, the smallest blemishes on their skin. I can assume their lives more intimately than they: walk with them, live with them, observe and weigh their value and their sins. They are of my universe, and I, high above them, am both their conscience and their avenging deity. As they sow, so shall they reap. The judgment is the Eye’s, not mine.

  I am an avenging deity, yes, but I am not without compassion. It grieves me to have had to mete out punishment to Charles Unger and Peter Cheng. That I was the angel of their deaths only deepens my sadness, makes more wrenching my sense of loss. They are my children. I do not enjoy plucking the life from their bodies; I wish it could be otherwise. I mourn for their sins. But vengeance is mine, sayeth the deity. The judgment is the Eye’s, but the vengeance is mine.

  T.S. Eliot was quite right: The spirit killeth. But the letter giveth life.

  This is why I am so upset over Martin Simmons. He did not live in my universe, I had no right to exact punishment on him for his sins. I must be more careful. I am not a psychopath, I am just a deity. Only mine must reap what they have sown.

  And there will be others who must pay the wages of sin. Sin is rife in my little universe. It must be expunged, the wicked must be destroyed.

  I shall return to the Eye now. It is the noon hour and many of the children are out: the dog-walkers, the grocery shoppers, the artists and writers and musicians coming out for their first breath of the hot late-summer air. The police are there too, have been since poor Simmons was found, and I find their antics amusing. They do not know that the Eye is upon them. They do not know that the Angel of Death observes their every movement. No one on the block will ever know.

  The Eye and I will soon decide which of the sinners will be punished next. Perhaps the evil one from 1272. But there are several evil ones in 1276; perhaps one of them instead. Or perhaps another on the block. The Eye will judge. And the risk does not matter; there are too many and they must all be destroyed before they contaminate the rest.

  God’s Eye remains open. And my vengeance shall be swift and merciless.

  12:30 P.M. — WALLY SINGER

  Singer said, “You’re a stupid woman, the stupidest woman I’ve ever known. I don’t know why the hell I ever married you.”


  “Don’t you?” Marian asked. She was in one of her calm periods—reasonable, icy-voiced, talking to him as if he were a child. He hated her when she was like this; he preferred her angry and yelling, or better yet, off sulking somewhere. “It was because of the ten thousand dollars my father gave me to pursue an art career, remember?”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I don’t think so. You married me for my money.”

  “That goddamn ten thousand was gone years ago.”

  “Yes,” Marian said. “Because you went through most of it. All those painting lessons—what a waste.”

  “Are you going to start that again?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? It’s the truth. You have no talent, Wally, none at all. You simply won’t admit it to yourself. How many paintings have you sold in fifteen years? Exactly three, for a grand total of seven hundred dollars.”

  “I’ve had bad luck—”

  “You’ve had good luck. Somebody as talentless as you should never have sold any paintings.”

  “You think you’ve got talent? Those sculptures of yours are crap. Who buys them except cheap specialty stores? There’s not a gallery in the city that would touch them.”

  “You’re forgetting the Morton Gallery, aren’t you?”

  “That was six years ago. And a fluke, just a fluke.”

  “A five thousand dollar fluke.”

  Singer didn’t like to be reminded of her one big score; it set his teeth on edge every time she brought it up. “So some stupid Texas oilman who wouldn’t know art from a cow turd walks in and sees a piece of crap and plunks down five grand for it. So what?”

  “Windblown was not a piece of crap.”

  “Windblown. Jesus Christ, what a name for that graceless monstrosity.”

  “You’re jealous, that’s all.”

  “Jealous? Of what? How many other pieces of crap did you sell at that showing? How many pieces of crap have you sold since for more than nickels and dimes?”

  “Those nickels and dimes have kept us eating,” Marian said. “They’ve paid the rent, they’ve given us a home——”

  “You call this a home? Look at this place, it’s a fucking pigsty.” He waved a hand at the cluttered apartment: tools, hunks of metal, pieces of glass, blocks of plastic and wood, dozens of small abstracts that she’d started and then abandoned. At least he kept his corner of it, under the skylight, halfway swept and tidy. “Why don’t you clean up after yourself once in a while?”

  “Why don’t you do it, if it bothers you so much? Better yet, why don’t you go out and get a job?”

  “Here it comes,” Singer said. “The same old tune.”

  “You haven’t contributed one cent to this household in years. All you do is sit around and swill beer and ruin perfectly good canvases. I don’t know why I put up with you.”

  “So don’t put up with me. Throw me out; the lease on this pigsty is in your name.”

  “You’d starve.”

  “Maybe I would and maybe I wouldn’t. There are places I could go.”

  “Oh, no doubt. Right across the street, for instance?”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You know what it means, Wally dear.”

  He wanted to hit her. His hand actually twitched. The urge came on him more and more often lately, but he had never quite worked up enough courage to do it. One of these days, he would. They’d have this argument again, the same damned argument over and over, and she would provoke him once too often and he would slap her chubby face until it glowed. She damned sure deserved it.

  A small wiry man with a spade beard and graying black hair that he still wore long and tied into a ponytail, he stalked away from her, over to one of the windows in the west wall. The view from the window was pretty good: Riverside Park, the West Side Highway, the wide expanse of the river, the apartment buildings on the Jersey shore. Sometimes, when the sun hit them right, all the windows in those high rises looked as though they were on fire. He’d tried to paint that scene once, to capture the burning aspect in oils, but it hadn’t come out right. Like most of his paintings, he thought bitterly. Something always failed between the eye and the hand, and they just wouldn’t come out the way he envisioned them.

  Nice view, nice roomy apartment on the top floor, complete with skylight. They couldn’t have afforded to live here if the building wasn’t rent-controlled. If he did leave Marian, where would he go that was half as comfortable, half as conducive to artistic expression? Not across the street, that was for sure; not with Cindy’s ex-husband always hanging around. Face it, Singer, he told himself, not for the first time, you’re not going anywhere. Like it or not, you’re stuck here with Marian.

  After a time he turned from the window. Marian had put on a lightweight summer jacket and was brushing her dishwater-blond hair. A jacket in this weather! It was stifling in here even with the air conditioner on. The jacket was belted and she looked fat and dumpy in it. She’d put on at least twenty pounds since their marriage, and if she put on any more he wouldn’t be able to get near her in bed. The doughy feel of her body was enough of a turn off as it was.

  He said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Out shopping. You won’t do it; somebody has to.”

  “Go ahead, then. Stay out all day for all I care.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Ah, the hell with it. Bring back some beer; we’re almost out.”

  “Buy your own beer. I’m not your slave.”

  She picked up her purse, went out without looking at him. He crossed over and locked the door after her, and then stood there for a minute or so, to make sure Marian hadn’t forgotten something and would come back. Then he moved back to where the telephone was.

  Cindy answered on the second ring. “I’ve been waiting and waiting for you to call,” she said. “I’ve been half-frantic all morning.”

  “Why? What’s the matter?”

  “Wally, don’t you know? There was another street shooting last night. Right outside your building.”

  Singer felt a ripple of coldness on his back. “Jesus. Who was it this time?”

  “I don’t know. A stranger, somebody named Simmons. Didn’t you hear all the commotion this morning?”

  “No,” he said. The apartment was in the rear of the building, away from Ninety-eighth, and both he and Marian were heavy sleepers. He had a vague memory of sirens, but he never paid any attention to sirens. Not in Manhattan. Nobody had called, either; they didn’t have any friends in the building or on the block. “Have the police found out anything?”

  “I don’t know that either. Wally, I’m frightened. That’s three murders in two weeks, all right here on this block.”

  “Just take it easy,” he said, as much to himself as to Cindy.

  “It must be a maniac. What if he lives here? What if he lives in my building? Or yours?”

  “Calm down, will you? You’re making it worse than it is.”

  “Can you come over? God, I need to see you. I don’t like being here alone.”

  “All right. But I can’t stay long.”

  “Hurry, Wally. Please hurry.”

  Singer put down the receiver. Another shooting. Three in two weeks. Maybe there was a maniac in the neighborhood; who else would go around killing people at random on this particular block? Jesus!

  He hurried across to the door. The hell with Marian; if she came back and he wasn’t here, let her think what she wanted. She seemed to know about Cindy anyway, or at least suspected, and it couldn’t matter much or she would have sent him packing already. Stupid woman. Goddamn cow. He unlocked the door, pulled it open.

  A man was standing there, tall and lean, with sandy hair and a sandy mustache, wearing a jacket and a tie in spite of the weather. Singer jumped when he saw him, startled; then he recognized the man. A small uneasy knot formed in his stomach.

  “I’m sure you remember me, Mr. Singer,” the sandy guy said. “Detecti
ve Oxman, Twenty-fourth Precinct. I’d like to talk to you again, if you don’t mind.”

  1:15 P.M. — MARCO POLLO

  With his horn case tucked under one arm, Marco walked into the Green Light Tavern at 109th and Broadway and scanned the place. A few noon-hour drinkers and a couple of kids from Columbia University scattered along the bar. Big Ollie behind the plank, slicing lemons and limes into wedges. And Freddie in his favorite booth, in back near the juke box.

  Marco licked his lips, feeling relieved. He hadn’t been sure Freddie would show. Things were tight on the street these days, lots of heat, big cleanup campaign going on.

  He went up to the bar, got a draft from Big Ollie, and took it to Freddie’s booth. Freddie was playing solitaire, cheating like always. He had a new set of threads: fancy black coat, ruffled shirt, designer slacks, a big gold chain around his neck. The crunch wasn’t hurting him much. He was a cat, Freddie was; he landed on his feet no matter what.

  “What’s happening, baby?” Freddie said as Marco slid in across from him, laid his black horn case down on the table. “You look a little wired.”

  “Yeah, well, another dude got wasted on my block last night. Number three. Looks like a psycho, man, and that spooks me.”

  “Bad news,” Freddie said. “It’s a twitch bin out there, you know what I mean? More crazies on the loose every day.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you can’t let it get to you. Make yourself crazy if you do, you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So how was it over in Brooklyn?”

  “Not bad. Last night was the wrap-up. Tomorrow we play Jazz Heaven, down in the Village. Two-week gig.”

  “Nice. You oughta be rolling in it these days.”

  “Doing okay,” Marco said. He took a sip from his draft, then leaned forward and lowered his voice. “You bring the shit?”

  “You bring the dead presidents?”