by John Lutz
Skeppy kneeled there with his arms limp at his sides as traffic streamed around him. A few drivers glanced over at him as they passed and their expressions changed slightly. Inside their cars they’d heard the report of a rifle and knowledge was beginning to sink in.
Onlookers up on the curb saw the blood on Skeppy’s chest and the growing puddle of scarlet at his knees. They saw the police whistle drop from his lips and dangle on its cord slung around his neck. Then they saw him pitch forward and his chest and face strike the concrete hard. He hadn’t moved his limp arms or turned his head to avoid contact with the pavement. There was a collective gasp when he fell, because the way he fell, everyone somehow knew he was already dead.
Traffic began moving disjointedly on Lexington, and a scattering of blasting horns became a chorus, then became a crescendo and filled the warm evening.
Within minutes traffic had stopped. Three men on the sidewalk took advantage of the stalled traffic to run out in the street to see if they could help Skeppy, but when they reached him they saw that was impossible and simply stood staring. Sirens screamed and yodeled, making their way toward the dead man lying facedown in the middle of the intersection. Since traffic was stalled up and down Lexington, as if it might never move again, a few drivers got out of their cars and stood a respectful ten feet or so from Skeppy and his would-be saviors.
There were noticeably fewer people on the sidewalks, and a growing number of drivers and passengers were abandoning their stalled vehicles now and entering buildings. Some of them were walking swiftly, glancing uneasily around as they made their way to shelter. Word was spreading fast about how the dead cop had gotten that way.
By the time the first radio car arrived, after a twenty-minute journey through nightmare traffic, cops from the surrounding blocks had made their way on foot to Fifty-fifth and Lexington, and were standing in a circle around Skeppy, guarding his body and preserving the crime scene. They appeared angry, many of them looking around at surrounding tall buildings as if daring whoever had killed Skeppy to show himself, to take a shot at them.
It took another twenty minutes for the crime scene unit to arrive, and for the ME to reach the scene and pronounce Skeppy dead. While they worked, traffic was rerouted and began to flow again.
Shortly thereafter, Skeppy had been removed, and vehicular traffic streamed down Lexington and across the Fifty-fifth Street intersection. The river of traffic parted to avoid a small area in the center of the intersection, marked with yellow crime scene tape, and with NYPD sawhorses ten feet on either side of the cordoned-off square of pavement where Skeppy’s blood was still soaking into the concrete.
Repetto stood with Meg on East Fifty-fifth Street and looked out at the intersection where Skeppy had lain. There wasn’t much to say, because most of it was beyond words. The investigation had become intermittent, tragic routine. Melbourne had no trouble procuring uniformed officers, who were already canvassing neighboring buildings. Eventually they’d find where the Night Sniper had concealed himself while aiming at Skeppy and squeezing the trigger. It would tell them nothing. Perhaps there would be a smeared print from a latex glove, or faint evidence of someone kneeling or standing. They might even figure out where the Sniper had rested the barrel of his rifle to steady it. None of this would lead anywhere they hadn’t been.
“We learn only what he wants us to learn,” Repetto said.
Meg looked at him, not liking the expression on his face. “He’s controlling the game.”
“We have to figure out how to get control away from him.”
“We’ll find a way,” she said.
“It’s reached the point where he tells us what he’s going to do, and we still can’t stop him.”
“The rich man, poor man nursery rhyme … maybe we shouldn’t have given that to the media.”
“They’d have it anyway,” Repetto said. “What the NYPD does world-class is leak.”
Meg had to agree. It had even leaked her phone number and e-mail address to Alex.
Repetto’s cell phone chirped, and he pulled it out of his pocket and answered. The flip-up phone seemed toylike in his big hand as he pressed it to his ear.
As he spoke, he absently drifted away from Meg, not as if he didn’t want her to overhear, more because of an impetus to walk and talk at the same time, as if one made the other easier.
Within a few minutes, he broke the connection and she saw him slip the phone back in his pocket. He looked around as if he’d just awakened and found himself ten feet away from her.
“That was Birdy,” he said, when he’d returned to stand in front of her. “Mrs. Michael Skeppy’s been told.”
“Jesus!” was all Meg could think of to say. How must it feel to answer the phone or open your door and know, and then be told? Like drowning, Meg thought. It must feel like drowning.
“She’s in a lot of pain,” Repetto said, “not making much sense.”
“What happened to her doesn’t make much sense. Did Birdy break the news to her?”
“No. Melbourne did. But Birdy accompanied him. She’d already heard on the radio about a cop being shot, and she had a feeling it was her husband.”
Meg wondered if every cop’s spouse or lover who’d heard the news had experienced that feeling.
“Birdy did find out one thing,” Repetto said. “He checked the public record to make sure it was true. The Skeppy family filed for bankruptcy two weeks ago.”
Meg stared out at the yellow crime scene tape flapping in the wind and cordoning off where Michael Skeppy had died. Hallowed ground for another half hour or so, until the sawhorses were picked up and the tape removed. The thought sent a twist of pain through her. “Rich man, poor man. .”
“I’m getting tired of that one,” Repetto said with a quiet anger. “Have you heard the one about how an honest cop is a poor cop?”
“I’ve heard it,” Meg said. “The rest of it is, But he sleeps well.”
“We can hope Michael Skeppy’s sleeping well,” Repetto said, “because it’s going to be forever.”
Bobby Mays had dozed off seated on his coat spread out on the sidewalk, his back against a brick wall. It was early evening. He hadn’t begged enough money to pay for his prescription medicine, but he knew where he could buy a single Ambien to help keep the demons at bay.
The pills had worked well enough before, but they made him sleepy. He’d taken his last one this morning, but its effects were wearing off. Now he was wide awake, with a fierce headache, and with a terrible taste along the edges of his tongue. His legs, his pelvis, were numb. He wished he had a watch so he could know how long he’d slept sitting up against the building.
Bobby observed the people walking past. They didn’t return his gaze. He looked at the streetlights, the sparse traffic. The evening was warm, but hadn’t it been warmer when he sat down? He remembered taking up position on the sidewalk about seven o’clock. Now it felt much later than that.
He shifted his weight slightly to confirm that he was too numb and stiff to stand up right away. The way he was sitting now, though, circulation would return in his lower body and he’d soon have some mobility. The back of his thumb made contact with something, and he looked down to see his coffee mug. There were some crinkled dollar bills in it, and bright loose change visible at the bottom.
That was as good a measure of time as he had, so he picked up the cup and counted the money.
Four dollars and sixty cents, in bills and change. And something else. He felt and traced the familiar contours with his fingers.
An empty shell casing. As sure as he was sitting here.
He glanced down and saw the brass color in his hand.
A shell casing.
Then he looked more closely. The object wasn’t brass at all. It was copper. A copper penny. His fingers, his mind, had played a trick on him again. It was happening more often.
The object even felt different now. It felt exactly like a coin. Why hadn’t it felt like a coin before?
Bob
by threw the penny away in despair, hearing it nick off the sidewalk. A woman striding past glanced down at him in alarm and picked up her pace, unconsciously clutching her purse closer to her side.
Bobby looked past her, across the street, and there was the raggedy man who walked with too much purpose. The homeless man who didn’t belong even in that anguished and desperate society. The man was moving too fast, with his gaze fixed straight ahead-not glancing around, not wary. Not right. He doesn’t fit. Bobby knows. Bobby’s got the eye.
Had the eye.
This time Bobby wouldn’t let himself be taken in. He couldn’t deny the evidence that he hadn’t been thinking straight lately. He’d been losing yesterdays, imagining todays. This wouldn’t be like the shell casing that turned out to be a bullet. No, a penny. A coin that felt like something shaped completely unlike a coin.
How could my mind do that to me?
As he watched, the raggedy man went down the steps of a subway stop and disappeared.
He was there; then he was gone.
That was when Bobby was sure the man wasn’t real, because the subway stop was closed.
37
1994
“C’mon, Dante! The girls are waiting!”
Orvey was eager to leave. The ranch was holding what had become its annual mixer, an outdoor dance in the cool December Arizona evening. The girls from across the arroyo would be there, along with a five-piece band trucked in from Tucson. Strong had determined that all his charges on the ranch would learn to dance at least well enough to negotiate a crowded floor. This dance floor wouldn’t be crowded, but there’d be few standing and watching instead of struggling to keep time with the amateur band’s persistent tempo.
Dante didn’t bother answering Orvey. He finished brushing his teeth, then rinsed out his mouth with Listerene to ensure good breath. Wiping his lips with a towel, he smiled at himself in the mirror. A tanned, handsome youth smiled back at him. In fact, dressed as he was in a blazer and tie, his black wig perfectly adjusted to blend with his sideburns, Dante was incredibly handsome. Possibly knowing the pain caused in his young life by circumstances, then by hideous scarring, the surgeons had gone too far, made him somehow too attractive. His were the kind of features that graced movie posters and romantic fantasies of foolish girls.
Verna wasn’t foolish and didn’t think Dante was too attractive. She’d made it clear she’d be waiting for him tonight and expected the first-and the last-dance. This was the closest thing to a date the protective and puritanical Strong would allow.
The other boys were jealous but didn’t act on it. Dante, with his accomplishments and new handsomeness, had reached a place in their estimation where he was untouchable. And if anyone did cause pain or even inconvenience for Dante, they would have to deal with Adam Strong.
Strong made no secret of his favoritism when it came to Dante. He even from time to time slipped and referred to him as his son. He figured Dante, unlike Strong himself, had earned the hard way everything he had.
Dante’s long and often agonizing series of cosmetic surgeries to restore his burned features had been at the Strong Foundation’s expense. The result was the handsome reflection in the mirror. The effect could be ruined only if he removed his wig. Because of his burns, hair grew only over half his skull. Unless he kept his head cleanly shaved, the odd pattern of hair growth was obvious and, along with the unusual smooth texture of his flesh, gave the definite impression that he hadn’t been born with his good looks. Rather than shave his head almost daily, Dante often wore a wig.
Despite the nearly perfect image in the mirror, he sometimes looked more closely and could see beneath the surface of his new flesh and form. If he failed to look away, the old Dante emerged through the thin surface flesh and grinned hideously at him, and sometimes wept.
That was happening less often lately, but still it was happening.
Not tonight, though.
Not tonight.
“C’mon, Dante!”
Orvey again.
Dante switched off the bathroom light and hurried through the barracks and outside to join the other boys.
There were half a dozen of them, lounging around in sloppily knotted ties, and blazers that didn’t quite fit, all waiting for Dante. They seemed oblivious of the moths circling and darting around them in the pool of light cast by the barracks’ outside fixture. Hanley, a skinny six-footer from South Carolina, was smoking a cigarette, keeping it cupped in his hand so the ember wouldn’t be visible, fooling no one.
“You busy jerkin’ off or somethin’?” Orvey asked jokingly. The others laughed. “We’re already late.”
“What’s it matter?” Hanley asked. “Who else they gonna dance with?”
“You guys don’t wanna go, I’ll dance with all of ’em,” someone said.
Dante didn’t bother joining the banter.
With his friends, his admirers, he strolled through the cooling evening toward the distant music, voices, and softly hued light from colored paper lanterns, toward Verna and a dream almost real.
In the years that followed, nothing could stop Dante. Perhaps it was the successful surgery-that certainly had to help. But he grew in confidence and ability every year. He graduated from Nailsville High School with honors, then left the ranch to attend Arizona State University. Weekends he drove home from college in the old Ford pickup Strong had given him and stayed at the ranch.
Maintaining a 4. 0 grade point average was no problem, and Dante dated as often as he chose. But it was still Verna he thought of and saw most often. She planned on remaining at the ranch until she began college next year, when she thought she’d be psychologically strong enough to go out on her own, attending the same school as Dante. He’d already made up his mind that if she weren’t accepted, he’d go to school elsewhere, so they could be together.
It was a rainy weeknight, and Dante was stretched out on his bunk in his dorm room, reading Ecce Romani, when he took Adam Strong’s phone call.
As soon as he heard the tone of Strong’s voice, Dante sat up and the book hit the floor. He suspected something was wrong, but he would never have guessed what. He was afraid to guess.
“Verna has left the ranch, Dante.”
Dante lay back, stunned. “Left? Why?”
“She went to live with relatives.”
“She doesn’t have any living relatives.”
“Apparently she does.”
“Where?” Dante’s questions were automatic; he was still trying to digest this.
“She’d rather keep it a secret.”
Relatives. Verna had never talked about relatives. None she cared about, anyway, or who cared about her. “So where were these relatives when she needed them?”
“Not helping her as they should have. But that’s beside the point. They want to help her now.”
“When she doesn’t need their help.”
“She needs it, Dante. She’s going to have a baby.”
Dante’s mind whirled. Each time he’d made love with Verna he’d used a condom. She’d also taken birth control pills. They both knew how an early, unwanted pregnancy could alter their lives. Neither wanted to take the chance.
But nothing was perfect. God! A baby! Maybe one of the condoms-”
“Orvey’s left the ranch, too, Dante.”
It took Dante a few seconds to grasp what Strong had told him. “You mean with Verna?”
“No. Maybe that’s what he should have done. He said he didn’t have it in him, that he was afraid and couldn’t make it. And Verna didn’t want him. I think probably they were both right.”
“Damn it!” Dante said. He kept repeating it, slamming his fist into his pillow.
Strong must have heard the softened blows over the phone. “You want to come back to the ranch for a few days, Dante? Your grades can take it.”
“You sure Orvey isn’t with Verna?”
“He went the opposite direction.” There was disdain in Strong’s voice.
; “Then Verna’s all alone with this.”
“It’s how she wants it. And she’s got family, Dante.”
“I oughta. . God, I don’t know!”
“She doesn’t want to see you again. She’s thought it out. You’ve gotta respect her wishes, Dante. She. . left a letter for you. I mailed it yesterday, figuring once I did that, I’d get up the courage to call you rather than have you read it cold. It should be in today’s mail.”
“Damn it, Adam!” Dante couldn’t hold back the sobs any longer.
“C’mon home, son. Come home to the ranch.”
Dante didn’t answer until he got his gasping sobs under control. He felt cold, but he noticed with surprise that his hands were sweating, slippery on the phone. “This weekend,” he said. “I can’t get there till this weekend. I’ve got a big calculus test.”
“Whatever you want,” Strong said. He sounded as if he might start sobbing himself.
“Goddamn that Orvey! Why the fuck-”
“You’ve gotta get used to it, Dante. It’s something that happened. A part of life you’ve got no choice but to learn to live with.”
“Don’t I know it?”
“You gonna be okay there by yourself?”
“I’ve always been okay by myself.”
“Dante, that’s not right. You don’t have to think like that anymore.”
“I know, Adam.” Dante wiped his nose with the back of his wrist. “Thanks for calling and letting me know.”
“I wish it hadn’t been necessary. I sure as hell do.”
Though his eyes brimmed with tears, Dante had to smile. Adam Strong using profanity. It didn’t happen very often. That touched Dante more than anything.
Verna, Orvey, they didn’t just mess themselves up; even if they didn’t mean to, they hurt a lot of people, caused so much pain. It might go on for years.
A part of life. .
“Thanks again,” Dante said softly, and hung up.
He felt so much older lying there. Like an old man who’d somehow found himself in a young man’s room. He realized he’d been old the first day he arrived at the ranch. Too much of him had died after his father killed his mother.
