The Eye: A Novel of Suspense

by Bill Pronzini

  He was on his third cup of coffee when Roberts entered the office and told him, “We’ve got it, Ox.”

  Oxman felt his heart pump adrenaline as he jumped to his feet and followed Roberts into the printing room. But what the photographer had to show him was not one but two grainy blowups, not one but two telescopes. In one blowup, the telescope’s step-tapered tubular shape was shadowed but clearly visible behind window drapes open part way; in the other blowup, equally grainy because of its enlargement, the telescope was on the balcony, mounted on a metal tripod and tilted back awkwardly to point skyward.

  “Christ,” Oxman said. “Two of them?”

  “Yeah. We should have thought of that possibility. Astronomy, and just plain neighbor-watching, are common enough pastimes. But it’s not as much of a problem as it might seem.”

  “No? Why not?”

  Roberts stepped over to the table where the composite aerial view was displayed. His chemical-stained forefinger touched one of the Jersey high rises. “This is the building where the inside telescope is located,” he said. “It stands roughly opposite the Seventy-ninth Street Boat Basin.” His forefinger moved again. “Look at the angle from that window to West Ninety-eighth. It’s possible someone watching through that scope could see into the windows of the Ninety-eighth buildings, but not very likely. The angle is too sharp. And the apartment is on the thirty-eighth floor; that’s too high up.”

  “What about the balcony telescope?”

  “That’s the one the chopper spotted.” Roberts pointed. “And that’s the high rise it’s in: directly across the river from West Ninety-eighth, in Cliffside Park. That apartment is on the twentieth floor, south corner—not too high at all.”

  Oxman was aware of the subtle quickening of his senses, the primal elation of a hunter closing on his prey. “What’s the address on the building?”

  “According to the information we got from the Jersey State Police, it’s the Crestview Towers.” Roberts told him the address. “It shouldn’t take long to get a directory check on the identity of the apartment’s occupant.”

  “We’d better check the other one out too, just in case,” Oxman said.

  “Right. You want to make the calls?”

  “Yeah, I’ll take care of it—”

  The telephone in the office began to ring. Roberts went through the open print room door, with Oxman behind him, and plucked up the receiver. He listened, said, “Yeah, he is,” then handed the instrument to Oxman. “Lieutenant Manders.”

  Oxman cocked a hip against one corner of the desk as Roberts returned to the print room. “Oxman here.”

  Manders’s voice said grimly, “Art Tobin’s been shot, Ox.”

  Oxman’s stomach lurched; he stood bolt upright, his hand white around the receiver. “Oh Jesus!” he said. “How bad?”

  “Bad enough. He’s still alive, but … I don’t know, Ox. It’s a belly wound.”

  “Where? Ninety-eighth again?”

  “Yeah. In the basement of twelve seventy-six. The super, Corales, heard the shot and notified us.”

  “How’d it happen?”

  “We don’t know yet. Artie’s still unconscious at the scene.”

  “The psycho again, the goddamn psycho.”

  “It looks that way. He got away clean, too, just like the other times. The son of a bitch’s luck is incredible.”

  Not anymore, it isn’t, Oxman thought; his luck just ran out.

  There was a rage boiling in him, a white-hot rage that threatened to deprive him or reason and judgment. But he didn’t care. A man could only take so much, and the news about Artie was the final straw. The carnage was intensely personal now. That madman over in Jersey had murdered six people, one of them a cop, and put a seventh in the hospital; he had threatened Oxman’s life, threatened Jennifer’s life; and now he had shot Artie Tobin, a man Oxman didn’t really know well but a man he respected, a man he called his friend. Enough was enough. It had become more than simply law enforcement to Oxman the book cop, Oxman the plodder; to hell with rules and regulations, to hell with the consequences. It had been his baby all along, and by God he was going to deliver it.

  “You still there, Ox?” Manders asked.

  “I’m here.”

  “What’s happening with the photographs? Roberts and his boys come up with anything yet?”

  “No,” Oxman said, “not yet.”

  “Tell them to hurry it up. I’ll call you back as soon as I hear anything on Artie’s condition.”

  “Right,” Oxman said, and hung up before Manders could say anything else.

  He was staring down at the floor, his hands fisted at his sides, when Roberts reappeared in the print room doorway. “You all right, Ox? You look pale.”

  Oxman glanced over at him, saw the photographer catch something in that glance and unconsciously back up half a step. “I’m all right,” he said. He nodded once, not to Roberts but to himself, in confirmation of what he was about to do, and then turned toward the door.

  “Where’re you going?” Roberts called after him. There was a vibrato of alarm in his voice; he sensed the change and purpose in Oxman. “What about the calls to Jersey?”

  “Lieutenant Manders will make them,” Oxman said. “I’ve got something else to take care of.”

  He left the photo lab and headed for his car. He passed people on the way, but he couldn’t have said what they looked like, whether they were male or female. There was only one thing on his mind.

  When he reached his car he pointed it toward the Holland Tunnel, toward New Jersey.

  Toward the psycho.

  8:45 P.M. — LEWIS COLLIER

  There were splotches of scarlet on Collier’s wide forehead, bloodless patches of white at the corners of his drawn lips, as he whipped his Toyota to the outside lane of the George Washington Bridge, blasted his horn and screamed curses at the cab that impeded his progress. He was furious, not at the cab driver but at the recent whim of fate that by rights he should have controlled.

  He had been stalking Oxman, not the black policeman, Tobin. Oxman’s partner did not deserve to die in his stead; Tobin was not a sinner in God’s kingdom, the Eye had not revealed him to be one of the evil ones. But he fervently hoped that he had killed Tobin. The black man had seen his face in the lighted basement, could identify God if he lived.

  I should have shot him again, Collier thought. But he had not been thinking clearly; the sudden appearance of Tobin, the exchange of shots, had unnerved him. He was still unnerved. It should have been Oxman who died tonight. Oxman, Oxman, Oxman!

  He struck the dashboard with his fist hard enough to cause the glove compartment to fly open and its contents to drop onto the floor. The driver of a van in the next lane honked his horn and yelled something through his open window, raised his middle finger with a violent upward twist of the hand. Collier had to restrain himself from jerking the wheel to the right and smashing his car into the van, sending the blasphemous swine onto eternity’s highway.

  Stay calm, stay calm, he told himself, tapping the brake to slack his speed and allow the van to move ahead. This was not the time for rash action; this was a time for control, for analyzing and regrouping. Detective Oxman was still a dead sinner; his time was almost expired, the confluence of will and actuality almost at hand. At a chosen time, in a chosen place, the Angel of Death had only to twitch his right index finger on the trigger of his weapon of justice and for Oxman, Oxman, Oxman the mouth of hell would open and the fire would devour him.

  There was a soothing quality in the thought. I am God, Collier reminded himself. Why should God worry? I am the right and the might and the Glory.

  He relaxed somewhat as he reached the end of the bridge and took the exit for Skyline Drive and Cliffside Park. He was no longer driving erratically.

  He was almost home.

  9:20 P.M. — E.L. OXMAN

  The Crestview Towers was an imposing stone-and-glass apartment building in Cliffside Park, some forty stories hig
h. Beneath its canopy stood an equally imposing doorman in a medal-adorned uniform that would have made General Patton’s appear shabby. The doorman touched the shiny visor of his cap in appropriately military fashion as a gaunt woman walking two small poodles strutted past in review.

  Oxman parked his car a short distance away and walked back to the entrance. When he got there he drew his shield from his inside pocket and flashed it at the doorman, gambling that he wouldn’t look closely and see it was an NYPD badge and not a local. There was no problem; the doorman gave the badge a cursory glance and looked away. He had already made Oxman as a cop and was busy wondering what was going on.

  “I’m looking for the tenant of the apartment on the south corner, twentieth floor,” Oxman said. “Who would that be?”

  The doorman frowned. “You don’t know who you’re looking for?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  The doorman read the expression on Oxman’s face correctly and it made him uneasy. He was a big man, paunchy beneath the ornate uniform, with an ex-jock’s solid bulk to his neck and the slope of his shoulders. “South corner, twentieth floor,” he said. “Let’s see … that’d be Mr. Collier. Twenty-E.”

  “He have a first name?”

  “Sure. Lewis.”

  “Lewis Collier,” Oxman said. The name tasted bitter in his mouth. “He’s got a telescope set up on his balcony, right?”

  “That’s right. A stargazer.”

  “Yeah. You know if he’s home?”

  “He’s home,” the doorman said. “He came in not five minutes ago.”

  There was a tightness in Oxman’s groin; the palms of his hands were faintly damp. Lewis Collier, he thought. He’d better be the one. As wired up as Oxman felt right now, he didn’t know what he’d do if they’d miscalculated somehow and Collier really was nothing more than a stargazer.

  “I’m going up to talk to Collier,” he said. “Don’t get any ideas about announcing me before I get there.”

  “Not me, officer.” The doorman still looked uneasy. “We got a lot of elderly people in the building; nothing rough is going to happen, is it?”

  “I hope not,” Oxman told him. It was at least half a lie.

  He pushed in through the double doors, crossed the plush lobby to the elevators. They were almost invisible because their doors were walnut-paneled like the walls. When he pressed the Up button a door slid open and he stepped inside the elevator, punched the numeral twenty on a flat sheet of back-lighted plastic. The door hissed shut and the car launched itself upward.

  The twentieth floor hallway was deserted. Oxman went along a thick maroon carpet to the end of the hall on the south side, to the door marked 20-E. There was no peephole in the door; that made things a little easier. He drew his service revolver, clamped his teeth together, and used the knuckles of his left hand to knock.

  Several seconds passed in silence; Oxman could feel himself sweating. He was about to knock again when a voice called from inside, “Who is it?” The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Doorman, Mr. Collier,” he said, disguising his own voice to approximate that of the ex-jock’s downstairs. “Can I see you for a minute?”

  “What about?”

  “Your car, sir. There’s a problem with it.”

  “Problem?” the voice said. Then Oxman heard the sound of the locks being thrown, the chain being slid free of its slot; the brass doorknob rotated and the door opened inward.

  “What sort of——”

  The man inside stopped speaking when he saw Oxman; an expression of recognition, of frightened astonishment crossed his heavy features. But there was also an expression of surprise on Oxman’s face, because the man wasn’t a stranger to him; he knew Lewis Collier, but not by that name.

  He knew him as Willie Lorsec.

  9:20 P.M. — ART TOBIN

  Tobin regained consciousness in the ambulance taking him to St. Luke’s Hospital. He knew that was where he was because he could hear the warbling sound of the siren, see the two white-coated attendants hovering above him in the familiar jouncing confines; and he knew that was where he was going because St. Luke’s had been the emergency destination of the other West Ninety-eighth shooting victims, Jack Kennebank and Michele Butler.

  But even though he realized those facts, his mind was still full of fuzziness; and the pain in his belly was almost unbearable. Gut-shot, he thought. That motherfucker got me good. He got me good and I didn’t get him at all.

  “We better pick up some time, Mel,” one of the attendants yelled up to the driver. “We can’t stop the bleeding; this guy’s taking plasma like he figured there was a shortage.”

  “For him there is a shortage,” the other attendant, a huge black man, said as he leaned over Tobin and applied a fresh compress. The man’s white coat was stained with crimson streaks, Tobin saw. My blood, he thought, awed. My blood.

  “That prick up ahead won’t let me pass,” the driver said. He gave the siren a series of short, urgent blasts. Seconds later, the ambulance gained speed; one of its tires bounced over something as the machine roared into a turn.

  “You think we’ll make it in time?” the white attendant asked the black one.

  “I don’t know, man. It’s gonna be touch and go.”

  Yeah, Tobin thought, clenching his teeth against the pain, but we’ll make it, all right. I’m not going to die like this. That bastard won’t kill me too. I am not going to die like this!

  Yowling like something itself wounded, the ambulance raced onward through the night.

  9:35 P.M. — E.L. OXMAN

  Collier, or Lorsec—whatever the hell his name was—let out a frightened bleating sound and tried to jam the door closed again. But Oxman hit it with his right shoulder, putting his full weight behind the thrust. Collier cried out a second time as the door slammed into him, sent him reeling backward into the room.

  With the resistance of Collier’s bulk gone, the door crashed against the inside wall. Oxman staggered, regained his balance, and saw that the psycho had been thrown to the floor. Collier scrambled onto all fours, started to shove upward to his feet.

  “Hold it right there!” Oxman snapped at him. He had his .38 leveled and his finger tight on the trigger; it took an effort of will not to squeeze off a shot. “Don’t move; don’t even breathe.”

  Collier froze in position. He was wearing dark slacks and a Navy blue pullover; behind him, on the couch, was a dark-colored windbreaker. Oxman backed up, caught hold of the door with his free hand, and threw it closed; his eyes never left Collier’s face. Then he moved over to within five feet of the man, gestured with his .38.

  “Down on your belly,” he commanded. “Hands behind you. Do it!”

  Collier obeyed. Oxman’s breathing was labored and he was still sweating; his finger kept wanting to twitch on the revolver’s trigger as he approached the man. He knelt with one knee in the middle of Collier’s back, the muzzle of the .38 pressed tight to Collier’s skull, and with his left hand he unhooked the handcuffs from his belt. It took him ten seconds to get the cuffs locked tight around the thick wrists, another five to slap at the dark clothing and verify that Collier was unarmed. The big man lay motionless through all of that, his face buried in the carpet.

  Oxman straightened finally, breathing easier. He moved to where the windbreaker lay on the couch. One of the pockets bulged, and the bulge turned out to be the Smith & Wesson .38 that had no doubt killed Jack Kennebank and Marco Pollosetti, that had maybe killed Artie Tobin. He picked it up by the trigger guard, dropped it into his jacket pocket.

  He stood over Collier and read him his rights in a thick voice. When he said, “Do you understand all of that?” Collier rolled over onto his back and stared up at him. The man’s ego, his mental equilibrium, had returned and gained dominance. Collier seemed to swell with it. The fear on his face had been replaced by a kind of defiant cunning that Oxman had seen before and knew was dangerous.

  Oxman mo
ved away a few steps; just being near Collier made him tremble with rage. He watched Collier twist himself onto all fours, then straighten up on his knees. The hatred he felt for this diseased lump of human flesh was itself like a tumor inside him.

  “I feel the same for you, Detective Oxman,” Collier said.

  “What?”

  “Hatred. I can see it in your eyes. But mine is the pure and the just, the hatred of good for evil, of God for one fallen from grace.”

  “Yeah,” Oxman said.

  “I seem to have underestimated you. The forces of evil are greater than even I anticipated. How did you find me?”

  “Your goddamned telescope.” Oxman could see it through the closed glass door to the balcony, like a giant finger pointing at the sky. “All those calls you made to me, all that crap about the Eye—that’s where you made your mistake, Collier. Once I tumbled to the telescope, the rest was simple enough. Just a matter of police work.”

  “And the other policemen? Where are they?”

  “They’ll be along pretty soon.”

  “Indeed?” A faint, superior smile touched Collier’s mouth. “I shot your partner tonight. Did you know that?”

  “I know it, you bastard.”

  “Blasphemy. Evil from the mouth of evil. It should have been you, Detective Oxman. It was your life, your wickedness, I sought to end. An unfortunate accident that I encountered Detective Tobin instead.”

  Oxman had been concentrating so heavily on Collier that he hadn’t really been aware of his surroundings. But now they intruded on his mind. He glanced around. The luxury apartment was filled with a mixture of expensive furniture and junk, further testimony to Collier’s madness. Alongside the fancy brocade couch was a rusty old washtub turned upsidedown and supporting a shadeless, broken lamp. On the mahogany sideboard was an array of small junk items: clipless pens, a torn rubber dildo, an open ring box, dozens of other, less easily identifiable objects. Bulging burlap sacks and plastic trash bags littered the plush beige carpet. And on one wall was a crumbling corkboard with a dozen or so keys attached to it with pushpins.