Surprise Party

by Katz, William

  Lynne was surprised by the question. "Why?" she asked.

  "I was bothered outside this morning."

  "The guy with the lumberjack shirt?"

  "Uh…no. He didn't have a lumberjack shirt. He had a black leather jacket and a green sweater underneath. I thought of filing a complaint, but I've never been in a police station."

  "It's not sin city," Lynne laughed. "I've been there." Then she sensed how serious Samantha was. "Hey, did this dude really do something?"

  "Oh no, just some comments. I think he was drunk. But he kind of scared me."

  "Look, they're very nice there. If you want to go, I'll go with you."

  "Let me think about it," Samantha said.

  7

  One man was waiting for Samantha Shaw to decide to come to the police, but neither he nor she knew it.

  Spencer Cross-Wade glanced up at his calendar at New York's main police headquarters and felt a surge of disgust, coupled with the intense frustration he had felt since taking on the case. Only three weeks remained until December fifth. Three weeks to piece together a horrendous puzzle. Three weeks to prevent another tragedy. Three weeks to cap a career approaching its end. He had circled the date with a black Magic Marker, and the blackness itself seemed to capture the moment. What chance was there? What lightning bolt had to strike? He wanted to solve the mysteries, but now he saw no realistic chance.

  Small, balding, pushing sixty, Spencer Cross-Wade was more Scotland Yard than New York Police Department. His father had been with the Yard, and his grandfather before him. But Spencer had come to America while in the Royal Navy during World War II, married an American and stayed. She died in 1955. They had no children. He never remarried. He lived alone in a small Brooklyn apartment overlooking the East River, seemingly content with his memories, with his recollections of England, and with plans to travel once he retired in a few months.

  His detective's office was simple—a steel desk, gray walls, some visitors' chairs and, for cheerfulness, an assortment of flowers that he kept replacing. "A man should have a garden," he was fond of telling associates with the familiar twinkle in his eye. It was very British, very much a part of his quiet campaign to bring a bit of British gentility to the gruff New York department.

  His intercom buzzed. He reached over, pressed the red button, and heard Sally, the homicide bureau's receptionist.

  "Sir, Detective Loggins to see you."

  "Ah," Cross-Wade replied. "I've been expecting. Let me fetch him."

  Arthur Loggins was waiting in the reception area, sitting on a metal guest chair, reading over the sports pages of the New York Post.

  "Arthur," Cross-Wade exclaimed, refusing to use the more familiar "Arty," by which Loggins had been known for all of his forty-two years. "Come in. I need you."

  Loggins, heavy-set, awkward, plodding, dull-looking, but with a detective's eye for detail and subtlety, followed Cross-Wade back to his office.

  "Sorry I'm late, sir," Loggins said in a maddening monotone, "but I had to finish a case."

  "Always finish," Cross-Wade admonished. "A policeman must always finish. I admire that. In the Yard an inspector takes the case from start to end. Never excuse yourself for finishing—not around here."

  "Yes, sir," Loggins replied, not having expected such an avalanche of police wisdom. He hurried along as Cross-Wade disappeared into his office, leaving him still walking down the hall. He finally entered and sat down.

  "Do you have a green thumb?" Cross-Wade asked.

  "No, sir," Loggins replied. "The little woman, she does some putterin' around the house. Petunias and stuff. Me? I watch football."

  "I see. Gardening gives a man a sense of creating," Cross-Wade asserted. "But, I suppose there's merit in watching twenty-two grown men push each other down." He winked. He always wanted to make sure his men knew when he was kidding. "Now," he said, "you've been transferred to my command for a single case. This is not to be discussed outside this area, and not with the press. Am I clear?"

  "Yes, sir," Loggins replied, impressed that he would be called for something so hush-hush.

  "We don't want it discussed because we don't want a public panic. Nothing like Son of Sam. That was a rodeo. You've been selected because you're a dogged investigator, a detail man. And God knows, I need details."

  "Thank you for the nice words," Loggins said.

  Cross-Wade squirmed out of his desk chair, got up and tapped the circled December fifth on his calendar. "That's the key to the whole blitz," he told Loggins. "That date is our target and our nightmare. If it passes without an arrest, a woman will die. I hope you regard that as serious."

  "Very, Mr. Cross-Wade. I just got off a murder case."

  "This is multiple murder," Cross-Wade continued. "It seems that each December fifth, for the last six years, a woman has been murdered in the same way somewhere in North America. All have been struck on the head with a blunt instrument, then choked with a chain-like device."

  "Did the victims have anything in common?" Loggins asked.

  "Yes," Cross-Wade replied. "Each had long, free-falling auburn hair."

  "Nothing else?"

  "Nothing that we can tell."

  "Witnesses, sir?"

  "There were some scattered witnesses from a few of the killings. They saw a large man in the vicinity of the murders, but none could give a clear physical description. The departments involved tried hypnosis, lie detection, all the usual that we and the Yard would use. Nothing developed."

  "You said North America, sir. I wonder…"

  "I was getting to that, Arthur. The last three killings occurred in or near New York, which is why we're on the case. We fully expect another woman to die December fifth."

  "No suspects?"

  "Not one. But we do know something about the killer. The date itself seems to be the key to the puzzle, so, I've had my staff check each December fifth for fifty years." Cross-Wade reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a green folder. "The results are quite remarkable. They're here for you to read." He handed the file to Loggins.

  "I also had our psychologists look at the case. A question, Arthur. Have you ever heard of the term 'anniversary excitement schizophrenia'?"

  "No, sir."

  "Well, you'll be hearing it a lot. I call it 'calendar schizophrenia.' It's all in the folder. Read what's there, then report back to me."

  Loggins left the office. Cross-Wade stared ahead, knowing that the assignment of still another man, no matter how capable, would probably bring him no closer to his target. To know the probable motive, to know the date of the next killing, to know the physical characteristics of the victim, yet not to know the identity of the killer—that was the greatest frustration of his police career.

  Samantha blundered.

  It was serious, in some ways inexcusable.

  She'd forgotten that all the calls she'd made checking Marty's past would appear on the phone bill. The bill came on a Saturday, Marty was home, and, as Samantha's fortune would have it, it was he who went down to the lobby to get the mail.

  He noticed immediately. The calls to Northwestern, to Elkhart, to Washington. What the hell was she doing? Why was she calling these places? Marty stood against a marble wall in the mailroom, just staring at the bill, as if it were some Chinese puzzle. Did Samantha suspect something? Had she been tipped?

  He couldn't ask her about those calls. The question itself would be suspicious. He simply paid the bill without showing it to her, hoping she'd never notice that a phone bill was missing.

  But he was apprehensive, and he wasn't used to it. He'd always been in exquisite control, never felt any real risk of detection. But now Samantha was making these calls, and this was something he couldn't control. It was the most important year of all, and something might be screwed up.

  He went on another secret mission the next Monday—to Wall Street, not to a brokerage firm or a bank, but to one of the biggest greeting-card stores in Manhattan. The store thrived on the Wall
Street trade, the owner calculating that the striped-suit crowd was always sending cards to customers and potentials. Since each "target" required a card on holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries, the shop could boom year 'round. The owner took home six figures and lived in Greenwich, Connecticut.

  Marty eyed an older saleswoman in a polka-dot dress and knew in his gut that this was a lady who'd memorized the entire stock.

  "Help you?" she asked.

  "Yes," Marty replied. "I need cards for special customers. Specific cards."

  "We probably have them."

  Marty took a list from his inside jacket pocket. "I need a birthday card for a boy, with a horse on the front."

  "Plenty of horse cards," the woman said. She wore glasses on a chain around her neck and put them on, anticipating the search.

  "A brown horse if you can."

  The woman was unperturbed. "We have brown."

  "And I need an anniversary card with a picture of a sailboat."

  "Any particular anniversary?"

  "No, a general card."

  "That won't be difficult. Sailboats are always popular. In fact, I have one where the sail is actually made of fabric. Canvas, I think. Would you like to see that? It's three dollars."

  "A plain one will do," Marty replied. "I also need a Christmas card showing Joseph and Mary at prayer."

  "Standard," the woman said.

  "And a retirement card with a farmer."

  The woman paused. "Well," she said, "farmers aren't too big around here. Would something with flowers do?"

  "No."

  Marty realized he'd been too abrupt. "I mean, I'm sure it would be nice, but the man who's retiring just bought this farm and…"

  "What about a landscape, with cattle grazing?"

  Was that adequate? Did it meet the needs of the ritual, and would it have satisfied Uncle Ned? "Yes, I'll take that one," Marty answered, hoping the card would meet the test. He then went through six more requests on his list. The woman satisfied him, or came incredibly close, on each one, the first time Marty recalled that happening with just one visit to one store.

  He took the cards back to his office and quietly locked the door. Now he made out each one, signing them, "Love, Frankie." One went to Jim and Greta Carman, another to Uncle Fred and Aunt Mil. Some were for relatives, others for friends. He addressed the cards, but left the state and zip codes off. They'd wind up in the dead letter box, he knew, but that was fine. It was ritual, all ritual, all important.

  The next day he took a cab to 116th Street and Broadway—Columbia University. This wasn't ritual. This was real life. He'd never be recognized here. None of the midtown bunch had reason to be up at Columbia, and he melted in well with the diverse crowd that circulated through the neighborhood. He crossed Broadway to Radius, a travel agency. It was on the second floor of an old sandstone building, above a camera shop, and had the usual airline posters in the window advertising cut-rate flights to Spain, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and Peru. No doubt about the population trends on the West Side, Marty thought.

  He walked the two short flights of wooden stairs, edging around a derelict clearly stoned on drugs. The door to Radius was ajar, unusual in a neighborhood where double locks were standard issue. Inside, Radius was the traditional agency—rows of desks piled with papers, timetables, phone messages, and letters. Ann Sherman, a tall Columbia graduate student in Chinese history who booked travel part-time, spotted Marty. "Help you?" she asked, gesturing for him to come to her desk.

  "Yeah," Marty answered. Don't act the executive, he told himself. Not in this neighborhood. Just be a guy looking for a trip. "I'd like to buy a ticket to Rome," he said.

  "Sure," Ann replied, as Marty sat down in her guest chair She reached for a thick black book containing the international airline schedules and turned to Rome. "Is this a round trip?" she asked.

  "Yes." It wasn't, but a one-way ticket to Rome might raise suspicions.

  "For yourself?"

  "Yes. One person."

  "Okay, and when would you like to go?"

  "December sixth, in the morning." The date sent an unaccustomed chill up Marty's spine.

  "Has to be morning?" Ann asked.

  "Yes, I've got a tight schedule."

  "And you'll be returning…?"

  "December eighteenth."

  "Too bad you can't stay for Christmas. Christmas in Rome is great."

  "I know," Marty answered, "but I just can't do it this year."

  "If you could return two days later," Ann said, keeping her finger on one line of the book, "I could get you a lower fare."

  "How much lower?"

  "Oh, about two hundred dollars."

  "Well, I don't think so. I'd lose business days here."

  "Okay. You want nonstop, of course."

  "Sure."

  "Alitalia leaves at nine-twenty in the morning and arrives in Rome about eleven-thirty at night."

  "That's fine."

  "Will you be needing a hotel?"

  "No, I'm staying privately."

  "Okay. Let's check your return." She found an acceptable return trip and started taking ticket information. "Your name, sir?"

  "Steele," Marty replied. "Elliot Steele." And he had a fake passport to prove it. Indeed, in his safe he had a complete set of Elliot Steele ID papers, acquired from the same San Francisco counterfeiter who, eighteen years earlier, had made up all the documents he'd needed to become Martin Everett Shaw.

  He gave Ann an answering service as his phone number. He'd engaged it, under the Steele name, just for December.

  The tension was too much for Samantha.

  She was pacing the living room, pondering her next move in penetrating Marty's past, when she suddenly felt dizzy. Nothing much, she thought. Maybe morning sickness. But then something seemed to squeeze her nostrils together. She gasped for breath, felt herself on the verge of panic. Stay in control, she exhorted herself. She stumbled to the phone and called Lynne.

  "Lynne…I'm choking." She collapsed.

  It took six precious minutes for a handyman to let Lynne in. Samantha was unconscious, but breathing. An ambulance lurched up to the building's entrance twelve minutes later.

  Two paramedics charged in with medical bags, an oxygen tank, and a box of instruments.

  "What happened?" one snapped at Lynne.

  "I don't know," she answered, almost intimidated. "She was choking."

  Samantha's color—good. Her breathing—relatively normal. There were no signs of choking. The second paramedic whipped out his stethoscope and checked her heart. Normal

  "History of heart disease?" he asked Lynne.

  "None that I know of. I'm just a friend."

  They brought Samantha around with smelling salts and massage. She opened her eyes, looked about fearfully, finally focusing on Lynne. "I'm sorry," she said.

  "You're sorry? I'm glad you're alive."

  "I guess I just lost my breath." Instinctively, she felt her stomach. "I just hope…"

  "Let's go to the hospital," Lynne said.

  "No," Samantha answered, and she was firm. Lynne was stunned, but Samantha wouldn't budge. "I'll just rest," she said. She wanted no hospital, and she didn't want Marty told. "I'd worry him," she explained, and he'd inevitably find out about the baby. She retained the old warm feelings through all the hurt and mystery. "It was just a fainting spell," she reasoned. "Maybe something I ate."

  She did agree to see Dr. Fromer, who took her immediately. He examined her, then sat her down in a tiny office adjoining his medical room. Lynne waited outside, respecting Samantha's privacy.

  "Look," Fromer said, "I don't see any medical problem. There's no complication with the pregnancy." He could see the relief cross Samantha's face. "But come clean with me. Did you do anything to bring on this fainting?"

  "No," Samantha insisted.

  "Drinking?"

  "No. You know that."

  "No other substances? You know what I mean."

  "I wouldn't t
ouch that stuff!"

  "Of course," Fromer said, with a warm smile. "Not in normal times. But times change. When you were here before I said you seemed under stress. That seems worse now."

  Samantha shrugged. Oh, how she wanted to pour it out, yet keep her secret. "Maybe it's having the baby," she said.

  "I don't think so." He'd seen too many women with personal problems to be fooled. "I'll repeat what I said before. You should consider counseling if there's a personal problem. Another episode like this could affect the baby. I've got to be blunt about that."

  Samantha looked at him, and for a few moments said nothing. Suddenly she realized that the crisis might affect the health—the life—of someone other than herself. It was simply something she hadn't confronted before. "Thank you," she said softly. "I really want this baby."

  8

  "Jesus Christ a-mighty," Loggins said as he walked into Cross-Wade's office carrying a stack of background material on the calendar schizophrenic case. "This is horrible."

  "Yes," Cross-Wade replied, "and nothing new has come in. Have you theories, Arthur?"

  "No, sir. We're dealin' with a loose cannon. Any clues would come from the past murders."

  "Precisely."

  "And there's not much."

  "I've been weighing a change in strategy," Cross-Wade revealed. "Up to now I've resisted going public. The circus would be disgusting. But if we issued a public alert to women with long auburn hair—there're thousands of them—maybe we could frighten the killer. Or maybe one of these women would see something suspicious in a man she knows."

  Loggins shrugged. He didn't think much of the idea.

  "On the other hand," Cross-Wade went on, "if the killer strikes, we look impotent. It would encourage him, maybe even others. A public alert is a dare." Cross-Wade was coming to agree with Loggins. "No," he concluded, "I think I'll hold off."

  December fifth was seventeen days away.

  Samantha rested for only a day after her fainting spell. She'd come to a crushing conclusion: she had to reach out to close friends to solve the mystery of Marty's past. Nothing else was likely to work. The baby inside spurred her on. What if her questions about Marty weren't resolved by the delivery date? What if she were wheeled into that delivery room not really knowing who her husband was, and what was going on in his mind? What if the truth had some tragic impact on the child?