The Eye: A Novel of Suspense

by Bill Pronzini

  “Hey, man, you know I always pay.”

  “Sure you do,” Freddie said. “That’s why I like you. I’m going to the John, take a leak. You know what I mean?”

  Freddie slid out of the booth and ambled through the door into the men’s can. Marco lit a Salem, wishing it was a joint instead; he felt spooked, all right. Up half the night, blowing over in Brooklyn, come home, cops all over the street, guy lying there dead on the sidewalk with a blanket over him. Christ, who wouldn’t be spooked? Freddie was right about it being a twitch bin out there. As soon as he could afford it, he’d get the hell out of the city, find a pad on Long Island or over in Jersey. Or maybe head south for New Orleans, if he could talk Leon and the other guys into a change of scenery.

  He jabbed out his cigarette after two drags, eased a look around the room. Nobody was paying any attention to him. He picked up his horn case, walked across to the can and went inside. Freddie was in one of the stalls, with the stuff arranged on the greasy top of the toilet tank. Marco locked the door, moved over to lean against the edge of the stall.

  “Half-ounce of coke, one kilo of Mexican grass,” Freddie said. “Good shit, you won’t be disappointed.”

  “Looks sweet, man.”

  “Like candy. You want a taste?”

  “No. Bad vibes in here. I’ll wait until I get home.”

  Marco had the cash in the pocket of his Levi’s; he slid it out, slipped off his gold money clip, and handed over the bills. Freddie thumbed through them, quick and easy, like a teller in a bank. Then he nodded and grinned.

  “Twelve hundred,” he said. “Right. It’s all yours, baby.”

  Marco opened his horn case. The case was empty; he’d left the trumpet back in his pad on West Ninety-eighth. He put the bags of coke and grass into the velvet-lined depression inside, closed the case and flipped the catches. Nothing like a horn case for carrying shit on the streets. Leon had taught him that, among other things.

  “You go out first,” Freddie said. “I want to comb my hair.”

  “Sure. Thanks, Freddie.”

  “Any time. Listen, maybe I’ll drop down to Jazz Heaven tomorrow night, catch your gig.”

  “Do that, man. We’re blowing sweet and pretty these days.”

  “Nothing like those high notes to mellow you out,” Freddie said. “You know what I mean?”

  There were only five drinkers left in the bar when Marco came out of the can. Big Ollie gave him a two-fingered salute as he made for the door; none of the other dudes looked at him. Clean buy. All right.

  Marco went down Broadway to West End Avenue, down West End to Ninety-eighth. He started walking faster. Sunshine, good air, plenty of people around, but he still felt spooked. He needed a snort of coke to lift him up, set him free of the jangles.

  Nothing much was happening on the block. Couple of old ladies sitting on the stoop of the corner brownstone, chattering about the murder last night; no sign of the pigs. Marco cut across the street, went into 1276, took the elevator up to the second floor.

  When he stepped out, a middle-aged black dude was coming down the hallway. Marco didn’t know him; no black dudes in the building. Cop? Visitor? Or—Christ—a crazy with a piece in his pocket? For all he knew, it was a black cat from Harlem who was wasting people on the block.

  Marco eased on past the guy, stopped in front of his door. The black dude stopped too, and was looking at him. Marco dragged out his keys, sweating a little now. Just as he shoved the right key into the lock, the guy came toward him.

  “Marco Pollosetti?”

  “Yeah?” He had a tight grip on the horn case; if the guy tried anything, he’d get the case shoved down his frigging throat.

  “Detective Tobin, Twenty-fourth Precinct,” the dude said, and hauled out his shield to prove it.

  Marco didn’t know whether to feel relieved or even more spooked. Here he was with twelve hundred bucks worth of coke and grass in his hand, eyeball to eyeball with a cop. That much shit meant a possession charge; they could even nail him for dealing if they felt like it.

  He licked his lips, tried to make himself look friendly and cooperative. “What can I do for you, officer?”

  “Like to ask you a few questions about the homicide last night.”

  “The shooting, yeah. Hell of a thing. But I don’t know nothin’ about it; I was over in Brooklyn when the guy got blown away, didn’t get home until about three.”

  “You didn’t notice anything on the street when you came in?”

  “Not a thing. But I wasn’t looking.”

  The pig had hard eyes; he kept looking at Marco as if trying to see inside his skull. “Mind if we talk inside?”

  Marco tried to remember if there was anything in the pad he didn’t want the pig to see. No, it was cool; the only shit he had was in the horn case. And the pig wasn’t a narc. “Sure,” he said, “no problem. Only like I said, I don’t know nothing about what happened.”

  He keyed open the door, led the way inside. The pig took in the black-painted walls, the blow-up covers of the two albums the combo had cut, the rock and jazz posters, the funky lamps and decorations, the rabbit-fur coverings on the furniture. His mouth twitched into a half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Nice place,” he said, but he didn’t mean it. It was wise-ass cop sarcasm. “You a musician, Mr. Pollosetti?”

  “Yeah. Leon Davis combo, maybe you heard of us.”

  “I’m afraid not. Jazz doesn’t do much for me.”

  “Soul music’s your bag, right?”

  “Classical music,” the pig said in his wise-ass way. “Brahms, Mozart, Khachaturian.”

  “Good people,” Marco said, thinking: Fuck you, man.

  The pig nodded at his horn case, which suddenly seemed ten pounds heavier. “Trumpet?”

  “Right, trumpet.” The jangles were like cymbals clanging away inside Marco. What if the pig wanted him to open the case so he could take a look at the horn? “That’s what I blow. That’s what I was doing over in Brooklyn last night—blowing with the combo.”

  “You have a gig this morning too?”

  “No. Not until tomorrow night. Why?”

  “You came in with the horn. Or do you always carry it around with you?”

  “Oh. No, I needed a new mouthpiece; I took it over to a place on Fifth to have it fitted.”

  The pig kept on looking at him. Then he said, “Suppose we sit down and talk.”

  “About the shootings, you mean?”

  “That’s what I’m here for.”

  Marco felt a relieved giggle slide up into his throat; stifled it. It was going to be okay. The pig hadn’t tumbled, hadn’t made a connection. Close call. He’d been sweating bricks there for a minute.

  “Sure,” he said. “Sure thing.”

  He went over to the bar cabinet and laid the horn case down on its top. When he came back the pig was sitting on one of the chairs, legs crossed, notebook open on his knee. Marco sat down facing him. The jangles were gone now; he felt a little high with the release of tension, as if he’d taken a few tokes off a good joint. It was a kind of kick sitting here talking to a cop with all that shit safe and sound a few feet away. A sweet little joke. Leon would bust a gut when he told him; Leon had a terrific sense of humor.

  “Ask away,” Marco said to the pig, chuckling inside, thinking of Leon’s reaction. “Anything you want to know.”

  1:45 P.M. — MICHELE BUTLER

  As always on Friday afternoons, Bloomingdale’s was jammed with shoppers. In most sections of the store, harried salespeople were faced with long lines and short tempers; they were too busy to pay much attention to individuals who seemed more interested in browsing than buying.

  Michele had been standing at the Fine Watches and Jewelry counter for the past five minutes, pretending to be just another browser. She felt very nervous, much more nervous than she had at the audition this morning. She had given a good reading—the play was an off-Broadway revival of Elmer Rice’s Street Scen
e and she’d read for the role of Anna Maurrant—but she hadn’t got the part. It should have gone to her, she had delivered her lines more professionally than the woman the director finally picked; she had broken down and cried in the dressing room afterward. No part. No other prospects, either. And that was why she had come here to Bloomingdale’s.

  The heavyset woman on her left kept studying a velvet-lined tray full of twenty-four-carat gold rings, all of them with expensive jeweled settings. The saleswoman behind the counter was trying not to look impatient; her attention was on the heavyset woman. Michele feigned interest in a modest cameo locket, but what she was really looking at was the pigeon’s-blood ruby ring in the nearest corner of the tray. The ruby had been cut cabochon—in convex form and not faceted—and in its deep purplish-red depths she could see a six-rayed star. It was a valuable stone. It made her palms moist just to look at it.

  Other customers milled about in the area, some of them beginning to besiege the saleswoman with demands for attention. Finally, in self-defense, the saleswoman let some of her impatience show through.

  “Madam,” she said, “will you please make up your mind? I have other people waiting.”

  “That is precisely what I’m trying to do,” the heavy set woman said in a snappish voice. “I am not an impulse buyer.”

  “That’s for sure,” an irritable-looking man on her left said. “You’re a selfish buyer, lady. A counter hog.”

  The woman glared at him. “Why don’t you mind your own business?”

  “Why don’t you go fall down the elevator shaft?”

  An indignant squawking sound came out of the woman; she turned her glare on the saleswoman. “I won’t stand for this!” she said. “He has no right to talk to me that way!”

  “I’m sorry, madam—”

  “Well, you ought to be!”

  “Oh, lady, shut up,” the irritable-looking man said.

  “How dare you!”

  None of them was looking at Michele or at the tray. And none of them saw her pluck the ring out, palm it, turn from the counter, and drop the ring into her purse as she started away.

  Without looking back, she hurried through the crowded aisles toward the Lexington Avenue exit. Her heart stammered; there was a fluttery feeling in her legs, as if they might give out at any second. But no one tried to stop her. After what seemed like an hour her legs carried her out through the doors, into the stream of pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk.

  At Forty-ninth Street she stopped and leaned against the wall of a building to catch her breath and collect herself. She could almost feel the presence of the ring in her purse, as though it were generating palpable heat. Hot ring. Stolen ring—

  Thief.

  The word echoed in her mind: an accusation, a brand. But it was not new to her. She had called herself that and worse the first time she’d been forced to shoplift a piece of expensive jewelry, each of the other two times as well. She accepted it now. She was a thief.

  But it wasn’t her fault; she was not immoral, she was not compulsive, she only did it as a means of survival. She had been driven to theft—by life in the city, by a hundred broken promises, by insensitive producers and nasty-minded directors who cared more about raw sex than raw talent; by her unfulfilled dreams.

  I’m not guilty, she thought. I’m a thief but I’m not guilty.

  The pace of her heart gradually slowed; she no longer felt quite so nervous or shaky. It was over. And perhaps she wouldn’t have to do it again, perhaps this was the last time. Perhaps at the next audition she would be given a part she deserved. She didn’t believe it, and yet it was a small hope to cling to, because hope, like dreams, dies hard.

  She walked to Forty-second, turned west and made her way crosstown past the porno movie theaters and the lurid sex shops and the cruising prostitutes of both sexes, until she came to Eighth Avenue. There were several pawnshops in the area; she was careful not to pick one she had gone to before. She settled on a place near Forty-first, steeled herself and went inside.

  A fat man with funny eyes was peering into a glass case full of knives while the proprietor looked on. Michele pretended to examine a shelf lined with small appliances until the fat man made a purchase and hurried out. Then she crossed over to where the proprietor stood.

  He was a middle-aged man, gray-haired, bored-looking; but he had shrewd moneylender’s eyes. He said, “Yes, miss?”

  “I’d like to pawn a ring.”

  “Yes?”

  She took the ruby ring out of her purse, laid it on the counter cushion in front of him. “My boyfriend gave me this two months ago,” she said, “before we broke up. It’s very expensive and I haven’t worn it much. I just don’t want to keep it any longer; it reminds me of David. And I’m afraid I need the money.”

  The pawnbroker picked up the ring, fitted a jeweler’s loupe to one eye, and studied the ruby. “Nice stone,” he said in a noncommittal way.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I can let you have, oh, three hundred for it.”

  “Three hundred? But it must be worth five times that!”

  “Not to me. Why don’t you try to sell it?”

  “I don’t have time. I really do need money; I have to pay my rent …”

  He was appraising her, now, with shrewd eyes. He knows, she thought. He’s seen thieves before, he’s probably seen a hundred or a thousand in here. He’s a thief himself. We’re all thieves.

  “Three hundred,” the pawnbroker said again.

  “Can’t you let me have at least five hundred?”

  “Not much turnover on an item like this. But you seem like a nice lady. Tell you what I’ll do: three twenty-five, just for you.”

  “But I need more than that—”

  “You could try one of the other shops,” he said. “You won’t find a better deal, though. Not for a ring like this.”

  His meaning was clear: Take it somewhere else and she would run the risk of another pawnbroker realizing it was stolen and calling the police. “All right,” she said bitterly. “Three twenty-five.”

  “Done.”

  He came up with a soiled register book for her to sign. She made up a name and address—Kathryn Newcombe, 411 Houston Street—and he nodded and gave her a pawn ticket. Then he opened his safe, carefully counted out three hundred and twenty-five dollars. When he handed the money to her he smiled, and one of his eyelids twitched in what might have been a wink.

  “Come back any time,” he said.

  Outside, away from him, Michele started back toward Forty-second Street. Three hundred and twenty-five dollars. Coupled with what she had left at her apartment, it was enough to pay next month’s rent and the grocery and utility bills. Which meant that unless a job turned up on or off Broadway, she would have to visit Saks or Bergdorf’s or one of the other big department stores in four weeks. It had been three months since the time before today, five months before that; but then she had been getting a part here, a part there, all turkeys that folded after a few performances. She hadn’t had a part in almost three months now. Nothing but an endless series of headshakes, propositions, sorrys.

  Well, at least she hadn’t succumbed to any of the propositions. Nor would she. She was not promiscuous; she believed sex was an act of love and she had been taught not to cheapen it. She may have become a thief, but at least she had that much of her dignity to hang onto.

  Where to now? she asked herself. She didn’t want to take the subway home to West Ninety-eighth; the apartment was cheerless and barren and she spent enough time in it as it was, waiting for the phone to ring. And there was that shooting last night, the third one now, all right there on her block. She was strong, you had to be strong to survive in Manhattan, in the theater, and she didn’t frighten easily. But those shootings frightened her. There was something inexpressibly evil in an act of senseless violence. And when it happened, kept on happening, where you lived, you could almost feel the evil like something cold and poisonous in the air.

&
nbsp; There was only one thing to do, she decided, only one place for her to go, the place she always went when she was alone and unhappy, the place of escape, the place of dreams.

  She walked up to Broadway and entered one of the movie houses to watch the images of people whose dreams had come true.

  3:25 P.M. — RICHARD CORALES

  Across the table in his basement apartment, Corales watched Willie Lorsec study the fan of cards in his hand. A queen, he thought. Come on, Willie, I need a queen. Discard a queen, Willie. A nice smiling queen of hearts.

  They had been playing for twenty minutes now, ever since Willie stopped by with his junk bag to see if any new throwaways had turned up, and Corales had won nine straight hands. He had never in his life won nine straight hands; it made him feel warm inside, powerful, like one of those Las Vegas gamblers. He wanted it to be ten straight. Nine straight was good but ten straight was something special, ten straight was a major-league winning streak. He’d really have something to brag about if only Willie would discard a pretty little queen of hearts.

  Come on, Willie, he thought. Queen me!

  But Willie was still studying his hand. His big, lined face was scrunched up in concentration—not on the cards, though, Corales could sense that. Willie had something else on his mind today. Usually he played fast and easy; usually he won, too. Which was another reason why Corales wanted to win ten straight from him. They only played for pennies and he’d never lost more than a quarter at a sitting, but he was tired of losing. He wanted to come away the big winner for a change. He wanted to show Willie that he could be smart too, at least when it came to playing gin rummy.

  Corales didn’t understand why somebody as smart as Willie would become a junk collector and dealer and live in a rooming house and play gin rummy all the time with somebody like himself. Willie could have been anything in the world, lived over in one of those fancy buildings on the East Side with a doorman and everything, traveled in Europe and places like that. But no. He was happy being a junkman, he’d told Corales just after he moved into the neighborhood. He made pretty good money at it; all sorts of fascinating and salable things turned up in junk piles and trash cans, he said. Besides, he’d traveled before and didn’t like it much. Worked at a variety of jobs and didn’t like those much either. He was doing what he liked to do and it made him happy. That was what counted, wasn’t it?