The Eye: A Novel of Suspense

by Bill Pronzini

  Oxman didn’t say anything. He knew it, all right.

  “You must have seen a great deal of death in your job,” Jennifer said. “You’ve probably killed someone yourself—haven’t you?”

  “Yes. Once in the line of duty.”

  “How do you deal with death? Do you grieve for the person you killed, all the dead people you’ve seen? Or do you wall it off, view it as a simple fact of life?”

  “I wall it off. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot of sleepless nights.”

  “Perhaps I’ll have a sleepless night or two myself. Does it matter to you either way?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Life goes on,” she said. “And I have to live mine my way; everybody does, including you.”

  “Tell me something else, then.”

  “If I can.”

  “Are you afraid, Jennifer?” It was the first time he had used her name and he tasted it as he said it; the taste was bittersweet. “Three murders on this block in the space of two weeks—does that frighten you?”

  “Yes, it frightens me.”

  “You don’t act frightened. You only act cold.”

  “Is that what you think? That I’m cold, that I don’t have feelings?”

  “I don’t know what to think about you.”

  “Then don’t try, E.L. You don’t know me and I’m sure you never will.”

  “Does anybody know you? Do you know yourself?”

  She laughed with what he took to be wry humor. “Good Lord,” she said, “psychology? I didn’t know policemen were trained in that these days.”

  “All right,” he said, “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.” He got to his feet. “I’d better move along.”

  “No more questions?”

  “I guess not.”

  “But you might have more later?”

  “Maybe. Probably not, though.”

  He took a step away from the couch. Jennifer made no move to get up from the chair; he could find his own way out this time. He crossed to the door, opened the locks. His hand was on the knob when she spoke again behind him.

  “I’ll be at the Tavern on the Green tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “Sketching for a magazine layout. I should be there from twelve o’clock on.”

  Oxman turned. “Why tell me that?”

  “I thought you’d want to know. In case you need to see me again.”

  Unmistakable invitation; he saw it in her eyes and in her ice queen smile. The palms of his hands were suddenly damp. But he said, “I don’t think I will.”

  “Suit yourself. I’ll be there, though, in any case.”

  “You’d better lock your door after I go,” he said gruffly. “It’s always better to play it safe.”

  “Is it?” she said. “All right, E.L. Good-bye for now.”

  Oxman went out, shut the door harder than was necessary, and took the stairs down to the lobby. The sweat on him when he stepped outside had nothing to do with the heat.

  3:45 P.M. — WILLIE LORSEC

  In the basement of 1276 West Ninety-eighth, Lorsec stood rummaging through the big fifty-gallon receptacles under the garbage chute. Richard Corales had given him permission to do that any time he cared to, and he was grateful. He liked Richard. Slow-witted, yes, but gentle and kind and forever willing to help a friend. Richard’s passion for gin rummy was a little wearying, particularly now that this morning’s two-hour session had extended his winning streak to a phenomenal thirty-seven hands. But that was a minor flaw. All in all, he was a good man and a good friend.

  Lorsec fished up a black trash bag tied with white twine. That would belong to the Singers, he thought, and there would probably be little of interest inside. People packaged and disposed of their trash in different and distinctive ways; he could tell just by looking at a bag who it belonged to. Trash, he reflected, as he often did, was endlessly fascinating. One could find all sorts of valuable and revealing items hidden away in it.

  With dexterous fingers he opened the Singers’ bag and sifted through the contents. As he had anticipated, there was little of interest. More beer cans than usual; Wally Singer appeared to be consuming large quantities of beer lately. An obnoxious man, Singer. Too bad. His wife seemed a decent sort and deserved better. There was something a little sad about her portion of the garbage: empty chocolate boxes, tear- and mucus-stained tissues, other evidence of an unhappy woman.

  Lorsec dropped the Singers’ bag into another receptacle and reached again into the one under the chute. The bag he came up with this time was cheap and dark green, tied with a notched plastic fastener. Michele Butler’s trash. He opened the fastener and started to search among the sparse contents.

  The upper basement door clicked open just then and he heard descending footfalls on the stairs. He looked up. A lithe, muscular man appeared, carrying a bulky trash bag that would be, Lorsec thought immediately, too full to have fit inside the chute. He recognized the man as Benny Hiller, apartment 3-A.

  Hiller didn’t see him until he reached the bottom of the stairs. Then he paused in a startled way, frowned, and crossed the cement floor warily, holding the trash bag out at his side as though prepared to use it as a weapon.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “I have permission,” Lorsec said.

  “Yeah? To do what?”

  “Hunt for redeemable used merchandise. That’s my business.”

  Hiller’s narrowed eyes took in Lorsec’s shabby clothing, his unkempt hair, the burlap sack slung over his shoulder. “A goddamn junk collector,” he said. “Who gave you the permission? That numbhead Corales?”

  “Yes. He’s my friend.”

  “I’ll bet. Where is he? In his apartment?”

  “No. He had an errand to run over on Broadway.”

  “And you took the opportunity to start pawing through the garbage. You been here before, doing that?”

  “Would it bother you if I have, Mr. Hiller?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “I’ve seen you from time to time. Richard told me who you are.”

  “He did, did he? Well, who the hell are you?”

  “My name is Willie Lorsec.”

  “You live around here?”

  “In the next block.”

  “Yeah? I never saw you before.”

  “I’ve lived in the neighborhood quite some time, Mr. Hiller. Perhaps you haven’t looked closely enough. Or perhaps it’s because you sleep days and work nights.”

  Hiller’s alert eyes got even narrower. “Corales tell you that too?”

  “He did.”

  “What else did he tell you about me?”

  “Just that you’re employed as a cook at an all-night café.”

  “Corales talks too much. He ought to mind his own business. So should you.”

  “I was minding my business,” Lorsec said. “That, as I told you, is why I’m here.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t like it. You don’t live in this building; you got no right to be in here alone.”

  “I’m not bothering anyone, Mr. Hiller.”

  “You’re bothering me,” Hiller said. “There’s too much crazy shit going on on this block as it is.”

  “You mean the homicides?”

  “That’s just what I mean. Now suppose you go crawl into the garbage in your own building. And stay there; don’t come back.”

  Lorsec managed to curb his temper. He said evenly, “I don’t see that you’re in a position of authority here, Mr. Hiller. Richard Corales is the superintendent of this building—”

  “Corales is a half-wit and I don’t care if he gave you permission in writing. You won’t have it again, I’ll see to that.” He took a step closer. “Go on, get out of here. I mean it, Lorsec—move.”

  “And if I choose not to?”

  Hiller made a threatening gesture with his trash bag. “Try me,” he said. There was no bluff in his voice, only a kind of controlled savagery.

  Lors
ec shrugged. “All right, Mr. Hiller, I’ll go. But not because I’m afraid of you. Only because I dislike trouble.”

  He turned, walked across to the stairs that led up to the alley door. There were dead-bolt locks on the door; he slid them back, went out, and shut the door behind him. Inside, he heard Hiller come over and jam the dead-bolts back into place, then the sound of his footsteps retreating.

  He stood for a time in the sticky heat of the alleyway, thinking about Hiller. What was in that bulky trash bag? he wondered. Something interesting, he was certain of that, or Hiller would not have acted as he had. The fact that he didn’t want anyone rummaging through the contents had been written plainly on his face.

  Lorsec decided he would have to have a quiet talk with Richard. Whether Hiller liked it or not, he intended to pay another visit to the basement and the waste receptacles. And to learn what was in that trash bag.

  Perhaps it would turn out to be something very interesting, indeed.

  4:10 P.M. — BETH OXMAN

  As she walked down the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, Beth could almost feel the evil emanating from the city. The juxtaposition of great wealth and abject poverty in Manhattan always fascinated her. It was the whole world jammed into one seething, fermenting mass. The harried-looking business types who passed her barely glanced in her direction and would step around or over her if suddenly she dropped dead of a heart attack. The tourists were too busy gawking to notice anything but the traditional sights. The cheap hustlers running three-card monte games or hawking inferior clothing with expensive labels sewn in, the street vendors selling their poisonous food, the panhandlers—these were the only individuals in the crowd who actually saw Beth, and then only as a potential sucker.

  The city was what had made E.L. what he was—though God knew he’d had a choice—and what had ruined their marriage. If only years ago he had listened to her and decided not to go on being a policeman, to study law instead, everything would be different, and so much better.

  Beth stopped on the corner of Fifth and Forty-seventh Street and glanced at her watch. More than fifteen minutes remained before her appointment with Dr. Hardin. A man in a blue business suit callously brushed her aside with his shoulder as he hurried to cross the street against the traffic light. A lanky youth lugging a huge blaring radio on a shoulder strap bumped her with his elbow as he turned the corner. She pursed her lips, controlling her annoyance, and began walking again, moving with the masses across Fifth Avenue.

  On impulse she decided to stop in a stylish little ice cream parlor for a chocolate sundae before seeing Dr. Hardin. To hell with the calories: This was something she deserved.

  It was crowded. Beth walked to the small tables beyond the counter and sat down, prudently placing her purse in the chair next to her where she could watch it from the corner of her eye as she scanned the people in the restaurant. They were like the people on the street, only perhaps generally better dressed. She didn’t like them any better indoors than out.

  While she was waiting for the sundae to arrive, one of her headaches flared up. She reached into her purse for the small vial of pills Dr. Hardin had given her, and, contrary to his instructions for the days she was to visit him, shook out one of the capsules and washed it down with a sip of the water the waitress had left on the table.

  Her vision wavered with the pain that seemed to pull apart the flesh of her forehead and expose a split and throbbing skull. She lifted the glass to her lips again, sipped, then pressed its chilled roundness to her forehead. That didn’t seem to help; nothing helped, not even the pills. A migraine headache wasn’t like an ordinary headache; it had to do with the swelling of blood vessels in the head, the building of pressure on raw nerves. Only a person who had experienced such a headache could imagine the pain.

  E.L. couldn’t, that was certain. More than anything else he was the cause of her headaches, her nervous condition. He had never even pretended to consider yielding to her wishes that he take up another profession. During the past nineteen years she had spent most of her nights alone, worrying about who would take care of her if anything happened to him, wishing that she could leave the apartment and go to a nice restaurant, or maybe to the theater, like other men’s wives. But a policeman’s hours, and salary, prevented her from enjoying the pleasures of life that by all reason should have been hers. Too many nights of sitting and moping, a phone call away from widowhood, had done this to her. E.L. had done this to her. Why should she give him pleasure, grant him her body for his use whenever he wanted it? No, she obtained her own most intense pleasure another way now, a more subtle way.

  The waitress returned with her sundae. And miraculously, with Beth’s first spoonful of ice cream and rich chocolate sauce, her headache disappeared.

  E.L. didn’t believe the headaches were of physical origin. She knew that; he’d as much as told her so, trying to get her to see a shrink, as if he thought she was a mental case. Well, let him think it. What did it matter? She was the only one who understood just how physical her headaches were. You could certainly tell the difference between physical and imagined pain if it were occurring in your own body.

  Well, she wasn’t quite the only person who understood. Dr. Hardin knew her pain was real. He wasn’t like the other physicians who had recommended seeing another sort of doctor. Dr. Hardin was expensive, but that was because he knew his business. Instead of solitude and lies, he prescribed medicine. Wasn’t that what a doctor was for, to heal the sick by administering to the body? The very suggestion that her sick spells were not actually migraine headaches was infuriating as well as false.

  Beth realized that she was devouring the sundae as if she were in an eating contest. Already it was three-fourths consumed. She forced herself to place her spoon in the dish between bites, to make her self-indulgent treat last as long as possible. She still had time, and even if she were late, Dr. Hardin would understand. He always did.

  Later that evening, when she returned home, E.L. was waiting for her, sitting at the kitchen table eating a roast beef TV dinner—the kind with the watery mashed potatoes and dyed bright green peas. Trying to make her feel guilty for not being there when he got home, no doubt; he was always trying to do that to her, after ruining her life.

  “What did Dr. Hardin say?” he asked, feigning interest, hunched like a weary vulture over his dinner.

  Beth tossed her light blazer onto a chair near the kitchen door, walked all the way into the kitchen and opened the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. “He said I was about the same,” she told him. “He gave me some more medicine.”

  “What kind of medicine?”

  “How should I know?” Beth snapped. “I don’t read Latin.”

  “You don’t have to read Latin, Beth; all you have to do is ask what’s in the prescription and what it’s for.”

  “It’s for my headaches.”

  He put down the roll he was about to tear in half. “Hardin has the reputation of a Doctor Feelgood,” he said.

  “And what is that?”

  “A doctor more interested in getting you to come back than in making you well.”

  “That’s nonsense,” Beth said. “I should know, if anyone does.”

  E.L. nodded, which meant that he was refusing to continue the discussion. It was one of his more infuriating traits, leading her into an argument and then abruptly withdrawing after he had angered her. Once she had been tolerant of that in him, but no more.

  “I’d have put a dinner in for you,” he said, “only I wasn’t sure what time you’d be home.”

  She decided not to answer him. She placed a turkey dinner in the oven, adjusted the thermostat to 350 degrees, and then went into the bedroom to change into slacks and a blouse.

  E.L. followed her, stood close behind her and watched in the dresser mirror as she slipped off her skirt and panty hose. “I thought about waking you last night when I got home,” he said.

  “I’m glad you didn’t. I wasn’t feeling well.”


  He touched his fingertips to the back of her neck, caressed lightly. “How do you feel tonight?”

  “I don’t have a headache.” She watched him smile, saw the look she knew too well come into his eyes. “But the medicine I took at Dr. Hardin’s office made me a little sick to my stomach. I think I might have diarrhea.”

  “Beth …”

  “I don’t want to talk right now,” she said.

  He withdrew his hand, nodding. She saw the change in his eyes, the fading of desire. And something else this time, a curious kind of resolve, as if he’d just reached some sort of decision. He left the bedroom, not in anger but with a sort of resigned purpose.

  The hell with him, she thought as she stepped into her slacks and worked them up over her ample hips. Let him suffer for a change. It’s his turn now.

  11:15 P.M. — CINDY WILSON

  She was exhausted when she left the restaurant. Saturday nights were always the busiest and tonight it had been a madhouse, all the tables full from seven o’clock on, customers demanding attention every second. The muscles in her legs felt knotted; it was going to be so good to sit down in a taxi, and even better to crawl into bed. She was too tired to spend another sleepless night worrying about the murders. She’d fall asleep right away tonight.

  And she could sleep late in the morning too, stay in bed all day if she felt like it. Sunday was her day off. Never on Sunday, she thought, and smiled, and then giggled as she remembered that she had spent most of this day in bed with Wally. That Wally, he was insatiable. She had never known a man who liked sex as much as he did. He was really good, much better than Vern, much better than any of the other men she’d been with before and after her marriage. He knew how to arouse a woman, saying fuck all the time, getting her so hot she thought she would burn up sometimes.

  She wondered if she really loved Wally. She told him she did when they were in bed, and she felt she did at other times too, but the rest of the time she wasn’t sure. Maybe it was just sex. He was attractive and such a good artist and he treated her well enough, but he had that frump of a wife. It made her a little uneasy to be seeing a married man, particularly because there didn’t seem to be much future in it.