Fear the Night n-5

by John Lutz

  “It was registered as a single,” Meg told her.

  The maid stared at her as if she were unbelievably naive. “Uh-huh. Single male, what I was told. Sometimes they find company, y’know?”

  “You clean the entire suite?” Repetto asked.

  “Sure. Even though most of it didn’t need it. Did my usual thorough job. Only room that was really a mess was the large bedroom. Bedsheets all tangled like there’d been some heavy action there.”

  “You sure he wasn’t alone?”

  “Not ’less he tossed an’ turned all night an’ used two pillows. Sheets had a certain kinda stain and smell about ’em, too, if you know what I mean.”

  “You change the sheets?” Meg asked.

  “Now whaddya you think?”

  “They been laundered yet?” Repetto asked.

  “Long time ago. Just like them towels.”

  “Towels?”

  “There was a lotta damp towels piled in the bathtub. Like somebody took a bath or shower every couple hours.”

  Repetto and Meg looked at each other. Both understood the towels might have been used to wipe the suite clean of prints.

  “You happen to see the suite’s occupant at any time?” Repetto asked the maid.

  “Never. He had the do-not-disturb sign out mosta the time. The kinda guests we get, we gotta pay attention to those signs.”

  They thanked the maid and let her return to work. She pushed her linen cart along the hall, appearing to be leaning hard on it and deliberately making one of the wheels squeak.

  “Woman’s got a burr up her ass,” Meg said.

  “Some do,” Repetto said, giving her a look. “Let’s check at the desk and see if anyone remembers the suite’s occupant.”

  Meg felt her heartbeat quicken. Repetto suddenly seemed to be taking seriously the possibility that the Sniper was a registered guest. He was making Meg a believer. She had to walk fast to keep up with him on the way to the elevator.

  They got lucky. The same desk clerk was on duty who’d checked in the suite’s occupant.

  “Here’s where he signed in,” the clerk said. He was a small man with dark hair combed straight back and shiny as patent leather, a narrow nose too long for his face. He swiveled a large black registration book for Repetto and Meg to read.

  “Not many hotels still use those,” Meg said.

  “We don’t usually, because most of our guests pay with plastic and that creates its own record. But some still use old-fashioned cash.”

  Meg and Repetto glanced at each other. “He paid cash?”

  “Certainly did.”

  Repetto and Meg looked at the registration book as the clerk touched a manicured finger to the correct line. The man’s name was neatly printed: Ott Eperrepinsi.

  “Sounds foreign,” Meg said. “Maybe Ott’s a nickname for Otto. Maybe he’s from one of those Balkan countries that’re so hard to pronounce.”

  “Or his German mother married an Italian,” Repetto said. To the desk clerk: “Do you recall what he looked like?”

  “Vaguely. About average size. Dark hair. Well groomed and very fashionably dressed in suit and tie. He was rich, I’d say. Not to be crass, but we develop a feel for that here, being able to guess at net worth. We can come pretty close.”

  “I’ll bet. Anything unusual about his appearance other than his wealth?”

  “Wealth isn’t unusual here at the Marimont. He was a handsome man, women would say. Had a bold bearing about him. Something else about him that isn’t that unusual here. He was wearing a topper.”

  “Topper?”

  “A toupee. I can spot them easily because I used to wear one myself, before I got my hair transplant.” He absently touched his luxurious dark hair.

  “That’s really something,” Meg said, genuinely impressed.

  “Science,” said the desk clerk.

  “Did you happen to see him with a woman?” Repetto asked.

  The desk clerk stroked the bridge of his narrow nose, giving that one some thought. “No. I only noticed him once or twice more after he checked in, going or coming. He didn’t check out. Not that it was necessary, since we use electronic card keys and he paid in advance and with cash. But usually our guests stop by the desk.”

  “You’re sure he didn’t?”

  “Oh yes. I was on duty that morning from early morning until past checkout time.”

  A man and woman arrived at the desk with a flurry of luggage wielded by an eagerly helpful bellhop. Repetto nodded to the clerk so he could move to the opposite end of the desk and check them in.

  “Doesn’t feel right,” Meg said.

  Repetto got out his wallet and removed one of his cards. “I wanna write down this guy’s name before I forget it.”

  He leaned over the open registration book and used one of the hotel’s ballpoint pens to copy the guest’s name on the back of the card, then suddenly stopped writing, staring at what he’d done.

  “Get some uniforms and freeze that suite,” he said. His features had become hard.

  Meg was too surprised to move right away.

  “Asshole and his games,” Repetto muttered. He finished writing on the card and looked up at her. “Zoe was right about this guy.” He handed her the card.

  Meg stared at it and felt a chill ripple up her back. Beneath his first writing of Ott Eperrepinsi’s name, Repetto had written it again, only backward, adding comas:

  I, Sniper, Repetto.

  52

  “My professional opinion,” Meg said to Amelia, “is that you should get out of the city until we catch this guy.”

  They were in the Amelia’s West Side apartment. Meg had caught a few hours of sleep earlier and come in to spell a haggard-looking Birdy. Though it was still light out, the blinds were closed and lamps and fixtures supplied most of the illumination. The cheaply furnished living room, with its mismatched furniture, museum posters, and shelves and stacks of books, mostly paperback, seemed smaller to Meg than when she’d first entered, more a trap than a refuge. Along one wall was a narrow table with an Apple computer on it. There was a stereo on one of the sagging bookshelves, with speakers so large they were unsettling. At least Amelia didn’t have the damned things on.

  “I’ve been informed of the dangers,” Amelia said, “and my dad and I agreed to the precautions.” She was sitting in a gray wing chair, her face sidelighted by a reading lamp so she was even more beautiful than usual. Her hair looked like the spun gold of fairy tales. What a shame, Meg thought, for somebody so young, vital, and attractive to die when it wasn’t necessary.

  It kind of irritated Meg, the way people who decided to place themselves in this kind of danger always seemed to agree only grudgingly to protection, as if they were being put out, as if a few cops or more weren’t laying their lives on the line to keep the intended target alive. Still, this was a kid, too young to have developed good survival skills.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Amelia said, “that I’m a lot of unnecessary trouble. But I’ve got a right to live where I choose.” Something in her voice was like her father’s.

  “So you’re sticking,” Meg said. “You know what that makes you?”

  Amelia smiled sadly. “Stubborn?”

  “Well, that too. It also makes you an easy target.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Amelia said. She knew the neighborhood was flooded with cops, in uniform and plainclothes, and of course there was protection right here, inside the apartment. “I feel safe, Meg, with what’s outside, and with you inside.”

  “I know how your dad feels about this,” Meg said. “What about your mom?”

  “She hates it, but she knows it’s my decision.”

  “She try talking you out of it?”

  “Only until she went hoarse.”

  Meg gave her a level look. “You really understand what’s at stake here?”

  “Yes, but I’m also skeptical of the notion that with all this obvious protection, the Night Sniper would da
re come anywhere near here.”

  “You don’t understand him,” Meg said. “It’s the difficulty that would attract him. The challenge. He’s a risk taker.”

  “You sound as if you admire him. I’ve picked up the same thing sometimes in my dad’s voice. And in Birdy’s.”

  “If we admire him,” Meg said, “it’s only as an adversary, not as a human being.”

  “Whatever he is, I feel safe enough from him.” Amelia curled her legs beneath her in the chair and yawned. Her long braided hair was arranged now on the back of the chair and on one shoulder. What Meg wouldn’t do for hair like that.

  “Not been sleeping well?” Meg asked.

  “All right. I think your friend Birdy is nervous enough for both of us.”

  Both women jumped when the doorbell rang.

  “Almost nervous enough,” Amelia added.

  “Bedroom,” Meg said.

  Amelia immediately rose from the wing chair and disappeared down the hall.

  Meg went to the door, stood to the side, and knocked three times on the inside.

  There was an answering knock. “It’s Knickerbocker,” came the voice from the other side of the door. “Mr. Chicken.”

  Meg squinted through the peephole and recognized the uniform outside. Ben Knickerbocker, with the fried chicken dinners from the corner deli.

  Knickerbocker knew she was looking through the peephole. He made a loud clucking sound.

  She unlocked the dead bolt and chain and opened the door. Cooler air wafted into the apartment, emphasizing how stuffy it had become. Knickerbocker clucked hello.

  Meg accepted the two white takeout boxes from him. He was a young guy, handsome, with too much mouth on him. “Do I get a tip?” he asked through a wide grin. Guy must have fifty, sixty teeth.

  “You would have,” Meg said, “but you put me in a fowl humor. They have everything the targ-Amelia requested?”

  “Roger that. I made sure you’d both be happy.”

  “How is it out there?”

  “Normal enough,” Knickerbocker said. “Not dark yet, so the streets are still fairly crowded. Sniper’ll stand out more if he stays with his after-eight-thirty MO.”

  “I wouldn’t count on anything with this guy.”

  “We aren’t,” Knickerbocker said. “You on the inside can count on us on the outside. The kid holding up okay?”

  “Amelia? Sure. I don’t think she fully recognizes the danger. Thinks she does, but she doesn’t.”

  “Just so she follows the rules,” Knickerbocker said. He touched the bill of his cap in an oddly old-fashioned mannerism. “Enjoy dinner.”

  Meg called Amelia back in from the rear of the apartment.

  “Who was it?” Amelia asked.

  “Mr. Chicken.”

  They went into the kitchen to eat at the table. Amelia unscewed the cap on a bottle of cheap red wine while Meg spread out the chicken, slaw, potatoes, and rolls, placing them on china plates from one of the cabinets.

  Amelia poured the wine and they sat down to eat.

  “Not so bad,” Amelia said, raising her glass. “To safety and freedom from fear.”

  And to an admirable show of bravado, Meg thought, deciding to go easy on the wine.

  She clinked her glass against Amelia’s in a toast, thinking the mayor might have raised a glass after similar words at dinner the evening he was shot.

  53

  The next day, Bobby sat on a bench in a pocket park on East Fifty-third Street, where office workers from nearby buildings went to eat lunch or simply rest in the shade provided by small trees or the buildings bordering the park. There was a flat-surface waterfall at the far end of the park that supplied relaxing burbling and lapping sounds. A very restful atmosphere in the beating concrete heart of the city, and one where people tended to lower their guard.

  Lunchtime seemed to be when these people in suits, blazers, and ties wanted to make personal calls on their cell or satellite phones. Bobby slumped on a bench as if half asleep, watching two women in particular through half-closed eyes.

  The nearest was a lean, high-powered executive type with a pale complexion, startlingly blue eyes, and black hair short and parted on one side. She wore matching blue slacks and blazer and navy high-heeled pumps. All business, at least during working hours.

  She was the first to end her conversation. Flipping the phone’s lid-earphone closed, she replaced the unit in her purse.

  The second woman, young and with her light blond hair combed straight across her forehead and over one eye in a way that made her look like Martha Stewart, wore slacks, a gray blazer, and white jogging shoes. She completed her conversation and absently laid her phone alongside her purse on the bench where she sat. The bench was near the edge of the park, and Bobby thought it would be easy to create some kind of diversion, or simply walk past and scoop up the phone while her attention was elsewhere. If he did happen to be noticed, he’d simply hand the phone over to the woman with a smile and pretend she’d knocked it on the ground and he was retrieving it for her. Even if she didn’t believe him, she probably wouldn’t raise much of a fuss. Something about her made him think she wasn’t the type. And it was almost as if she wanted to have the phone stolen. She even made it easier for him by pulling an envelope from her purse, opening it, and becoming engrossed in a letter.

  Bobby nonchalantly rose to his feet and shuffled at an oblique angle toward the bench. None of the park’s other occupants seemed to be paying much attention to him. He wasn’t the sort whose gaze anyone wanted to meet.

  Within a few seconds he was only about ten feet from the bench. The woman continued to sit hunched over her letter, gnawing on a sandwich now, the black and purple cell phone resting near her right hip like a bright piece of fruit ready to be plucked.

  The trouble was, Bobby wasn’t a thief.

  He walked slowly past the bench, unable to act.

  He couldn’t reach for the phone. He thought he’d reasoned it out and decided the end justified the means. But there was still a part of him that he held sacred and protected, that the city in its cruelty and hardships hadn’t claimed, and wasn’t up for compromise.

  He hadn’t backslid that far. He hadn’t gone over to the other side. Not Bobby Mays.

  Try as he might, he goddamn well wasn’t a thief!

  Bobby kept walking, past the unsuspecting woman on the bench, out of the small, narrow park, and into the throngs of people passing on the sunny sidewalk.

  Half a block down, he stood off to the side and with his fingertips counted the change in his pocket. A couple of dollars. If he set up with his sign and cup on a busy corner, like the one across the street, he could raise more.

  Maybe enough for what he had in mind.

  Within a few hours he had a total of fourteen dollars and thirty-five cents. It would have to be enough. After a subway pay-for-ride MetroCard bought from a machine, he was down to slightly over ten dollars. But he was soon uptown, in the 140s near Broadway.

  There was a guy Bobby had come to see, a black man going by the name of Meander. Sometimes, when Bobby couldn’t afford his prescription medicine, Meander sold him pain pills. Only last week Bobby had bought some Darvocet from him, a few weeks before that some cherry cough medicine heavy with codeine that had not only relieved pain but given Bobby a bit of a buzz. Once he’d simply purchased Tylenol that Meander had probably stolen that morning from some retailer’s shelf.

  Meander didn’t only specialize in medicinal aid to the hapless and homeless; he also dealt in stolen cell phones. These phones had a shelf life before they were noticed missing and the provider was alerted. They depreciated accordingly. Some of the phones had been bought cheap by Meander from desperate thieves laying them off for a few dollars for food, booze, or drug money. Others Meander, an accomplished pickpocket, stole himself. Pure profit, those.

  Meander had an assortment of chargers and kept the phones’ batteries up. Usually the buyer could count on a few days of use, sometimes l
onger. Longer was always riskier. It didn’t take much time to run up astoundingly high phone bills, never to be paid by the illicit user.

  Bobby wandered the neighborhood for about half an hour, then spotted Meander at one of his usual places of business, the doorway of a blackened brick building that had been damaged by fire a few years ago and remained unrepaired. The building had housed a small auto supply shop that had been a front for drug dealers. The oil and other petroleum products had made for quite a fire.

  Meander was a short, thin man with heavy-lidded, lazy eyes and a goatee that lent his narrow face a bored yet satanic expression. He was about forty, wearing jeans so baggy they were almost like the gangsta pants worn by the younger thieves and thugs of the neighborhood. He also had on a black T-shirt three sizes too large, and a gray baseball cap worn sideways on his head so that the bill was cocked low over his right ear. The cap wasn’t precisely a baseball cap; it bore the words Shit Kicker instead of a team logo. Bobby couldn’t imagine the mentally active but physically lazy Meander kicking anyone who might kick back, or playing any game that required exertion, unless it was Run From the Cops. A few feet behind him, in the shadow of the deep doorway, was a tattered cardboard box Meander would disavow any connection to if he happened to be rousted by the law. In this box were his wares-phones on one side of a cardboard divider, medicinals on the other.

  Standing slouched against the building near the doorway as if he were glued to it, Meander watched Bobby approach. His heavy-lidded eyes didn’t blink.

  “You hurtin’ agin, my man?” he asked, when Bobby was about twenty feet away and obviously had come to see him.

  “Came for something else,” Bobby said.

  “I axed was you hurtin’?”

  “So you did. I’m always hurting.”

  “Not if you take the medicine I sell you.”

  “That’s some bullshit,” Bobby said.

  Meander grinned. “Tha’s to say, if the expiration dates on the bottles ain’t more’n ten years old.”