The Eye: A Novel of Suspense

by Bill Pronzini

  Calder grunted, adjusted the throttle. The tempo of the engines decreased and the boat lost speed, began to settle into a more even motion.

  “Good,” Roberts said. “Keep her just as she is.” He was kneeling with his eye fitted to the viewfinder, tripping the shutter with a cord and hand control. The SLR shutter gave a loud but smooth snick, and the automatic winder whirred and advanced the film to the next frame. There were three more snicks and whirs in quick succession, then several farther apart.

  Listening tensely to the intermittent sound of the camera, to the counterpoint beat of the helicopter as it passed overhead, Oxman parted the curtains on the Manhattan side of the pilothouse and stared out at the city. It appeared symmetrical and clean and beautiful from this distance. How deceptive that was, an illusion, like so many things in his life.

  Except Jennifer. She wasn’t an illusion; she was real, perhaps the most real thing now in the world for him. And she was still in the city, at the Haverton Hotel. A pang of doubt stabbed at him. Maybe he should have moved her all the way out of Manhattan, where he could be absolutely certain she was safe.

  Snick-whir!

  But there was no way the psycho could know where she was. She hadn’t been seen leaving her apartment, and she was registered at the Haverton under an assumed name. She was also under twenty-four-hour police guard. How much safer could she be?

  Snick-whir!

  And yet the doubt still nagged at him. From the beginning he had underestimated this madman with unsettling consistency; and people had kept on dying. It was almost as if he were in a macabre game, pitted against an opponent with vastly superior skills.

  Snick-whir!

  Oxman turned away from the postcard view of Manhattan. He could no longer hear the chopper over the pulse of the boat’s engines, but through the windshield he had a glimpse of it just up ahead, shining silver against the hazy sky. He ran his tongue over dry lips, fixed his eyes on Roberts’s bent back. There was some comfort in the photographer’s dedication and skill, in the knowledge that Roberts and Niebauer and Calder, and all the people like them, were on his side. And on Jennifer’s.

  Snick-whir! Snick-whir!

  He sat back and tried to will his stomach to settle itself, tried to relax his tensed back muscles. He could do neither. There was still so damned much to be done. Finish the photographing, return to Battery Basin, drive to the Photo Lab, process the film and make the blowups. Even if he was right about the telescope, there was no guarantee that the photos would pick it up or pinpoint the proper apartment. And even if they did find it and pinpoint it, by that time the perp could already be on his way back to West Ninety-eighth for more carnage.…

  The marine radio gave its metallic sputter. Calder answered, said to Oxman, “Niebauer in the chopper,” and handed the microphone to him.

  “Oxman. Go ahead, Niebauer.”

  He couldn’t understand what the pilot said; static and the pound of the rotors made the words unintelligible. Oxman pushed the transmit button and asked Niebauer to repeat. This time, he got the gist of the pilot’s message—not every word, but enough of them. Christ yes, just three were enough.

  “… spotted a telescope,” Niebauer said.

  THE COLLIER TAPES

  Since my telephone call to Detective Oxman—and how amusing the memory of that call, of the consternation on his face revealed by the Eye!—I have spent the afternoon reading and thinking about evil.

  The destruction of evil has become my life’s work; know thy enemy in all his forms and guises. Thus, a quiet afternoon studying that which God is bound to defeat on the battlefield, the miniature Argmageddon of West Ninety-eighth Street. Conroy’s metaphysical, if somewhat dry study, The Nature of Evil, proved particularly illuminating. It gave me much food for thought, much insight into how sin and wickedness are manifested among the more cunning members of society.

  Two more aphorisms quoted by Conroy also remain in my mind. The first, from the writings of Aristophanes: “Evil events from evil causes spring.” And the second, by Cicero: “Evil in the bud is easily crushed.”

  So true, these aphorisms. The latter in particular. I have crushed much evil in the bud already, before it could bloom wild and beget more evil; I will continue to do so, as easily as I might flick a piece of lint from my shirt sleeve. Or as I might pluck a mosquito from the air and squeeze it to pulp between my fingers.

  The helicopter flying past my building at this moment reminds me of a mosquito—delicate, tiny at a distance, spindly in its concessions to the aerodynamics of maneuverable flight. No doubt the drone of it became audible on the tape as I was quoting Cicero, and it has drawn me to the window. Outside and far below, the river stretches like a division between the heavens and the mortal world; small boats, barges, other craft I cannot identify, inch along the silvery boundary that the Eye has bridged. The helicopter, sunlight glinting off its rotary blades, flies above this boundary in its aproximate center. Be it a traffic-reporting or sightseeing helicopter, do its pilot and passengers know their craft hovers in the dividing zone of life and death? That it flits as a mere shadow on an easily pierced veil?

  I feel that I can, if I so choose, open the balcony door and extend my hand, the hand of God, and pluck it from the air. Or that from my rigid fingers will crackle the lightning of my will and obliterate the machine and its occupants.

  That is illusion, of course, a flight of divine fancy; my power is not as great as that. Nor would I commit such an act even if it were. After all, I have no reason to destroy the helicopter or those in it.

  I do nothing, even on a whim, which is not a part of the cosmic mosaic of my creation.

  6:40 P.M. — JENNIFER CRANE

  She awoke and sat up in bed, gradually remembering where she was. She stared around her at the faded blue wallpaper with its matching drapes that didn’t quite meet in the center of the window, the dresser with its ornate-framed mirror, the six-bulbed chandelier that hung suspended in the middle of the room like a wary spider.

  She was in the Haverton Hotel, in the bedroom of the two-room suite she had been given. She had gone to bed not long ago to try to sleep her way through some of her claustrophobic anxiety, the numbing sameness of her confinement. More tired than she knew, she’d slept almost immediately. And now, something had awakened her; she wasn’t sure what, but she was shivering and covered with perspiration.

  There was a knock on the connecting door. That must have been what roused her, she thought, the knocking. Her heart hammering, she got slowly out of bed and crossed the stiff-napped carpet.

  “Officer Callahan?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I didn’t disturb you, did I?”

  Jennifer sighed, relaxed tensed muscles. Callahan was the policeman assigned to stay with her in the suite. He was a stout and capable man nearing retirement age, the sort who combined experience with a worn but still capable physical prowess. He inspired trust and confidence, which was why, she supposed, the police department had assigned him to this kind of duty.

  “No, it’s all right,” she said. She opened the door, looked out at Callahan’s florid, concerned face. “What is it?”

  “I thought you might be hungry,” he said. “It’s getting late; I could call room service for some supper.”

  “I’m not hungry. But you go ahead.”

  “You ought to eat something, Miss Crane.”

  He was right; she ought to eat something. She hadn’t had any food all day. “I guess so,” she said. “A sandwich, then—I don’t care what kind. And a drink; I could use a drink. Is that permitted?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Make it a gin and tonic. A double.”

  “You’ve got it,” Callahan said. He gave her a solicitous look. “You okay, Miss Crane?”

  “Yes, thanks. Just a little tired.”

  “Sure, I can understand that. But don’t you worry. Everything’s going to be fine, you just wait and see.” He smiled at her, turned and went over to the telep
hone.

  Jennifer shut the door and entered the bathroom. She was surprised at how haggard she appeared in the mirror above the sink. It wasn’t food she needed, or a drink; it was sleep. She drank half a glass of water and returned to the bed.

  She lay with a blanket pulled up to her chin, thinking about E.L. He had called a half hour ago, before she’d gone into the bedroom to lie down; he was at the Police Photo Lab, but he hadn’t wanted to tell her what he was doing there. All he’d said was that he finally had a lead, and that if things worked out the way he hoped, the end was in sight.

  Was that false reassurance? Or had he really meant it? She thought it was the truth; E.L. wasn’t the sort to make meaningless statements, especially not at this stage of things. But the fact that he might be close to finding the killer worried her as much as it relieved her. When she’d dozed off those few minutes ago she’d had a bad dream about him. Its details were vague, just beyond memory; all she could recall was that it had been ugly and frightening, as if somehow in her sleep she had had a premonition that a deadly danger awaited him.

  She shivered—she still felt as cold as she had that morning, even though she had long ago shut off the air conditioner—and she drew another blanket over her. He’ll be all right, she thought. He’ll be all right.

  She remembered, then, what he’d said to her on the phone when she’d tried to tell him about Zach and her aborted pregnancy, things she had begun to wish she’d told him before. “I don’t want to hear about your past, not now,” he’d said. “The future is enough to worry about, the only thing that should concern us now. The past is dead; there’s no point in resurrecting it and walking it through our lives. Only you and I matter. Only now, only tomorrow.”

  And he was right, she’d realized. The past was merely time, nothing more, nothing at all. It didn’t, in the true sense of the word, exist. You couldn’t see it or hear it or touch it anymore; it was gone.

  Only you and I matter. Only now, only tomorrow.

  Please, God, she thought, let him be all right.…

  7:30 P.M. — E.L. OXMAN

  The Police Photo Lab’s darkroom was bathed in a reddish glow from the overhead safelight. Oxman sat impatiently on a high stool, watching Roberts and two technicians develop the rolls of film taken from the patrol boat and the helicopter. He didn’t speak. These were professionals at work who knew what was demanded of them; it would have been pointless for him to bother them with questions. So he sat with his impatience in check, trying to get used to the acrid chemical smell of the place. The odor made him a little light-headed and played hell with his empty stomach.

  Roberts finally handed over the last batch of developed film to one of the technicians, who then went with the other technician through a door into another room. “So much for this part of it,” Roberts said to Oxman.

  “Good.”

  Roberts looked tired as he walked over and switched off the safelight, switched on the standard fluorescents. He removed his black rubber apron, folded it and placed it in a drawer. Then he motioned to Oxman, led him though the door where the two technicians had disappeared.

  Oxman found himself in another dim room. The smell of chemicals wasn’t nearly as strong here. The technicians were busy using enlargers to blow up the frames of film that had been developed for peak sharpness. Two of the rolls already were printed in drastic enlargement on eight-by-ten paper. Roberts led Oxman to several of these photos lying flat on what looked like an easel. They were held down and kept from curling by clips, and pieced together to form a composite—a vivid black-and-white aerial view of the Hudson shorelines taken from the helicopter. The river had been reduced to a mere few inches between the opposite banks.

  “The banks are juxtaposed precisely as they line up,” Roberts explained. He pointed to some angled lines penned in blurred red ink. “These were used to compute distance and angle so we could narrow down all the Jersey high rises from which it’d be possible to see into the windows of the buildings on West Ninety-eighth and Riverside Drive, just in case.” He pointed to several other wet prints clipped down on a long work bench along the far wall. “Those are blowups of individual windows and balconies in the high rise where the chopper spotted the telescope. More are being printed. The ones Rudy is setting aside are those that reveal no sign of any long-range viewing device.”

  As Oxman watched, the long-haired technician named Rudy quickly but thoroughly studied print after print and placed each in a steadily growing pile.

  “We should have all of the blowups ready within the next half hour,” Roberts said. “You can wait here if you like, or you can sit out in my office and have a cup of coffee.”

  Oxman considered waiting in there, watching the process of blowing up and examining each photograph. But he decided a cup of coffee would do him more good. “I guess I’ll wait outside.”

  Roberts nodded, turned and got to work.

  Oxman went out through the printing room to Roberts’ small, cluttered office. There was a Mr. Coffee on a table in the corner, its glass pot half full, a stack of styrofoam cups alongside. He poured himself a cup of coffee, added powdered creamer and sugar.

  He remembered seeing a candy vending machine outside in the hall. He knew he should eat something while he had the chance, even if he was too keyed up to be hungry; he hadn’t had any food all day, and a candy bar would provide more energy than the sugar in his coffee.

  He lost a quarter in the ancient machine, then managed to wrestle out a Clark Bar; he carried it back into Roberts’ office. It was cooler in there; the old window air conditioner behind the desk labored mightily, shooting out an occasional fleck of ice. Roberts had probably forgotten to turn it off this morning and it had frozen up in the heat and high humidity.

  Oxman sat in a vinyl-upholstered Danish chair to one side of the desk, took a sip of his coffee. Jennifer was on his mind as he peeled off the wrapper on the Clark Bar. He was glad he’d called her after arriving at the photo lab; just hearing her voice had reassured him. Somehow, in only a few short days, she had become a pivotal factor in his life. After so many years with Beth, he’d thought he was too old to feel like this, that he’d been slowly dying cell by cell. Jennifer was both a reprieve and a new purpose.

  He bit into the candy bar. And was not at all surprised to find that it was stale. He ate it anyway, washing it down with sips of the strong coffee.

  He waited.

  8:15 P.M. — ART TOBIN

  Tobin stepped out of the elevator and crossed the lobby of 1276, toward the door that led down into the basement. He was in a foul humor, tired and royally pissed off. He hadn’t been able to find Willie Lorsec. He hadn’t been able to find Elliot Leroy; the policewoman, Ullman, had told him just now, when he’d gone up to see her, that she hadn’t heard from Oxman and that nobody else had called to tell her where he was. And Lieutenant Smiley was still missing from the Two-four. And as if all of that wasn’t enough, the cheeseburger and fries he’d eaten for supper a little while ago had given him indigestion.

  Nobody tells me anything, he thought. Keep the darkie in the dark, by God. If I was white, instead of a big old nigger cop, I’d sure as hell get better treatment than this.

  What he ought to do was go back to the Five-three, sign out, and pack it in for the day; the hell with all of ’em. That was what he was going to do, but first he wanted a few more words with the super, Corales. For all he knew, Corales had lied to him earlier about knowing where Lorsec lived, or where Lorsec could be found. If that was the case, God help him. Tobin just wasn’t going to take any more shit today.

  He opened the basement door, stepped through, and let it close silently behind him on its pneumatic stop. He paused on the landing. In the dim light from the hanging bulb at the foot of the stairs, he could make out the closed door to Corales’s apartment, the shadowy rows of wooden storage lockers, shelves of tools and paint cans, stacks of cardboard boxes near enough to the boiler to give a fire inspector fits. There was nothing to
hear but the soft ticking buzz of an electric meter.

  He wrinkled his nose at the musty smell of the basement, reached out to the switch on the landing wall. When he flicked it, three more hanging bulbs came on and chased away the shadows.

  And let him see a man in a lightweight windbreaker, a big man he didn’t recognize, just coming away from the boiler room toward the stairs.

  Tobin blinked in surprise, stopped dead with one foot on the landing and the other on the first of the rubber-treaded risers. The big man also stopped, staring at him. They stood frozen like that for maybe an instant, and Tobin thought with sudden savage intuition: It’s him, it’s the goddamn psycho!

  What happened then, crazily, was like a climactic scene in a Western movie: Tobin swept the tail of his jacket back, jerked his service revolver out of its belt holster; the big man had his hand in the pocket of his windbreaker, and the hand came out filled with a weapon of his own. The roar of the guns was almost simultaneous——

  Tobin felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach, just under the breastbone. The .38 fell out of his hand; his legs buckled, his vision blurred, a thought flashed across his mind: Jesus no, not like this! And then he was falling, and there was pain and noise and fear, and the next thing he knew he was crumpled sideways on the stairs near the bottom, head downward, gasping for breath, blood singing in his ears.

  At the tilted angle, as if he were watching something happen underwater, he saw the big man come running toward him. Another thought: I missed him. He tried to move, couldn’t. A part of his mind cringed, waiting for the second shot, the coup de grâce, but it didn’t come; the psycho ran by him, up the stairs.

  The last things Tobin heard before he lost consciousness were the lobby door being flung open and the diminishing pound of footsteps in the lobby.

  8:15 P.M. — E.L. OXMAN