The Eye: A Novel of Suspense (17 page)

“Which narrows the list of suspects down to several million people,” Tobin said.

“Yeah.”

“What about the serial number?”

“Filed off. The lab used acid to bring it out again, but it’s not going to do us much good. In the first place, it’s an old piece; Harrington and Richardson quit making that model years back. And in the second place, the serial number was filed off a long time ago, not recently. The perp probably bought it hot; he sure as hell didn’t get it off a reputable dealer. So how are we going to trace it?”

“Damn,” Oxman said. “Right back to square one.”

“Well, we do have a clear set of prints and the psycho doesn’t know we’ve got ’em. Neither do the cranks.” It was standard police procedure in homicide cases to withhold some vital piece of evidence from the media, not only so it could be used to throw the perpetrator off guard, but as a means of eliminating from suspicion the legion of weirdos who routinely confessed to well-publicized crimes. Five cranks that Oxman knew about had already confessed to the West Ninety-eighth Street shootings. “If we could just get a handle on who he
might
be, we can use the prints to nail him down.”

“It’s not much, lieutenant.”

“It’s something,” Manders said. “Don’t run it down.”

Tobin asked, “What’s Kennebank’s condition?”

“Still critical.”

“How about the detail working over on West Ninety-eighth?”

“Gaines phoned in a little while ago,” Manders said. “The close search of the Wilson woman’s apartment turned up something, but I don’t think it’ll lead us anyplace we want to go. Wally Singer’s name and telephone number was in her address book, and there was also a painting signed by Singer. And some men’s underwear monogrammed with W.S., would you believe it?”

“I’ve met Wally Singer,” Oxman said. “I believe it.”

“He’s also married, right?”

“Right.”

“Never trust a guy with his hair in a ponytail,” Tobin muttered.

“Gaines talk to him about Cindy Wilson?” Oxman asked.

“No. I told him not to. I want you or Artie to take care of that. Let him sweat for a while.”

“I’ll do it,” Tobin said.

“Okay. Ox, you go over to Brooklyn and talk to the victim’s ex-husband, Vernon Wilson. The word is he still wanted her and hung around bothering her.”

Oxman said he would.

“It could be the old game of making the intended victim part of a series of killings to divert suspicion,” Manders speculated. “It doesn’t smell that way, but we’ve got to check it out. If Wilson and Singer have alibis for the time of the shooting, make sure they’re tight before you back off.”

One of the Lucite buttons on his telephone began to blink. He picked up the receiver and punched the button. As he listened, his hound-dog features went pale; tobacco-yellowed fingers tightened around the receiver. After a time he thanked the caller and replaced the receiver. His mouth was a blanched thin line between sagging jowls.

“What is it, Lieutenant?”

“That was Carletti at Saint Luke’s Hospital,” Manders said. “Kennebank died five minutes ago without regaining consciousness.”

THE COLLIER TAPES

Oh, I will admit that when I heard on the radio this morning that Jack Kennebank, the undercover policeman I shot, still lives, I felt fear again. And still feel it. He looked upon my face and might identify me. I could go to the hospital and attempt to end his life once and for all, but he will be closely guarded, untouchable in a labyrinth of danger. Oh yes, they’re waiting for me there.

I am pacing as I dictate, five steps east, five west, digging my fingernails into my palms hard enough to feel the warmth of my blood. Martyr’s blood, as from the nails of the crucifixion.

Must it come to this always? Must mortals drag the gods down to their own base level?

As I pace, there is a cold tightness in my stomach that draws me forward like a bow, an ache so deep and attuned to the subtle currents of my body that it goes beyond mere physical suffering. My anguish is more than human, and it has, to a lesser degree, been with me always. Does nothing begin or end that isn’t paid for in pain?

Nothing?

And yet, as Euripides said, “The divine power moves with difficulty, but at the same time surely.” I must console myself with such thoughts. I must reaffirm my strength and my purpose.

For I am the power and the glory, and vengeance is mine. Detective Oxman will find that out. They will all find that out soon enough.

Vengeance is mine!

10:35 A.M. — ART TOBIN

Two minutes after he walked into the Singer apartment, Tobin had Wally Singer pegged. A white nigger. A bumbling, shuffling, honky Stepin Fetchit full of whines and “Yassuhs” that might have been funny some other time, some other place. But Tobin wasn’t laughing today. In the first place, a cop was dead. A bad cop, maybe, a foolish cop, but a cop just the same. And that made this case personal. In the second place, an attractive young woman was lying down in the morgue with a bullet wound in her chest and a tag on her toe. Bad enough that a psychotic killer had wasted three men on this block, but now the crazy bastard was after the women too. And in the third place, Singer was too pathetic to stir any feelings in Tobin beyond dislike and a mild disgust.

Singer sat on the edge of his chair, leaning forward; his jaw kept moving from side to side, spasmodically, so that the whiskers on his chin twitched, rabbitlike. The beard suited him, Tobin thought wryly, except that it should have been white. A white spade beard for a white spade.

“I swear to God I was right here when it happened, officer,” Singer was saying in his whiny voice. “My wife Marian was here with me. Ask her, she’ll tell you.”

Tobin watched the man sweat, watched him wring his hands together like a woman. Singer was scared through and through, and that was all he was. He didn’t seem to feel a damned thing for the dead woman; his own ass was all he cared about. Too bad it wasn’t
him
lying down in the morgue with a tag on his toe.

“Let’s talk about Cindy Wilson,” Tobin said at length. “Do you admit you were having an affair with her?”

“Yes sir, I admit it. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

The hell you wouldn’t
, Tobin thought.
You’d lie your peashooter off if you figured it’d do you some good
. He said, “How long had you been seeing her?”

“A few weeks, that’s all.”

“How often?”

“A couple of times a week.”

“When did you last see her?”

“Yesterday. We … spent the day together.”

“Where?”

“In her apartment.”

“In bed?”

Singer got to his feet, jerkily, and moved around behind the chair. Tobin half-expected him to start tap-dancing—break into some kind of whiteface vaudeville routine. Bo fucking Jangles. Instead he made a sudden appealing gesture and said, “You won’t talk to my wife about this, will you? I mean, she already suspects something was going on, but … well, she doesn’t know for sure. You won’t say anything to her?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On how cooperative you are.”

“I’m being cooperative, aren’t I? I don’t have anything to hide.”

“Everybody’s got something to hide, Mr. Singer.”

“Not me. No sir, not anymore.”

“Answer my question,” Tobin said. “Did you and Mrs. Wilson spend the day in bed?”

“Yes. We … yes.”

“What time did you leave?”

“A little after three. Just before she went to work.”

“She worked from four to eleven, is that right?”

“Yes. At the Little Switzerland restaurant, on Columbus.”

“Did you stop by there at any time last night?”

“No. Why would I do that? I spent all day with her.…”

“Did you call her at the restaurant?”

“No.”

“Did she call you for any reason?”

“No. She knew better than that.”

“You spent the evening where, Mr. Singer?”

“Here. Right here.”

“All evening? You didn’t go out?”

“Not once,” Singer said. “I came straight back here after I left Cindy’s. Marian got home a little after six; she was out in Brooklyn with her sister all day.”

“So your wife was with you from six o’clock on?”

“Yeah. We ate dinner, we watched TV for a while. She went to bed around ten, to do some reading.”

“What did you do?”

“Watched some more TV.”

“What time did you go to bed?”

“Around eleven.”

“You sure it wasn’t later than that? After you got back from across the street?”

Singer looked startled, and then frightened. “Jesus, you don’t think
I
killed Cindy, do you? That’s crazy. Why would I do a thing like that?”

“Maybe you had an argument with her. Maybe she wanted to break off the affair—”

“No! She didn’t want to break it off; she wanted me to leave Marian and marry her. She loved me …”

“But you didn’t love her, right?”

“What difference does that make?”

“Maybe it was you who wanted to break things off, and she wouldn’t let go. Threatened to tell your wife, expose the whole business.”

“That wasn’t the way it was! Officer, please, you’ve got to believe me. I didn’t kill her.
I didn’t kill her!
”

Singer was twitching and jerking so badly now that it almost looked as if he were dancing. He was fascinating to watch because he was such a perfect stereotype; Tobin felt like pulling a few more of his strings just to see what else he would do. But he didn’t see much point in it beyond his own amusement. He didn’t like Singer worth a damn and he wished Singer was the perp because nothing would have given him more pleasure than to nail such a classic white nigger—but this boy wasn’t the one they were after. A whiny little coward, yeah, but not a killer and not a psycho. Tobin could feel that deep down in his gut, what the media liked to call a “policeman’s sixth sense.”

Another goddamn dead end.

11:45 A.M. — E.L. OXMAN

Oxman found Vernon Wilson painting the outer rear wall of his modest apartment building in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. Wilson worked steadily, in blind mechanical strokes, like a automaton. He didn’t seem to want to stop working even when Oxman introduced himself and flashed the shield.

“I’m here about your ex-wife,” Oxman told him gently. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Figured somebody would be around sooner or later,” Wilson said. He was a big man, not tall but paunchy and barrel-chested, with muscle-corded forearms. The forearms bulged as he began again to stroke the paintbrush over the rough clapboard wall. “Ask what you want.”

Oxman went through the routine questions, using them to size up Wilson’s reactions as well as his answers. The big man’s eyes were red-rimmed and his voice was the dull monotone of sadness and shock. Oxman had seen plenty of grieving people in his career and he could recognize genuine grief when he saw it. Vernon Wilson’s grief was genuine.

And he had a good alibi for last night. He’d been at a special Teamsters Union meeting to discuss the pension fund, then had stopped at a bar on the lower West Side of Manhattan with half a dozen friends from Dillard Trucking, where he worked; Wilson and his buddies had knocked down beers until well past midnight. The friends would swear to his presence, he said, as would the bartender, who had argued baseball with Wilson. Oxman made a note of the friends’ names, the location of the bar. The union meeting didn’t figure into it, having been adjourned before ten
P.M.

By the time Oxman was finished with Vernon Wilson, and left him to his grief-induced painting, it was almost noon. Jack Kennebank’s death was on his mind as he drove back across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. A kind of heavy pall had settled in Manders’s office, in the squadroom, in the rest of the precinct house as the news circulated. Oxman had felt it before, been a part of it before. What it was was a hundred men, a hundred cops, thinking the same dark thoughts:
It could have been me. Next time it might be me
.

It was some job, being a cop, Oxman thought. At least Beth was right about that, even if she didn’t understand what held men to the job. And when something like this happened, when one of your own was killed, it made you think about how short life was, and about how it could be cut even shorter unexpectedly. Time on this earth was something not to be wasted. The more of it you’d spent, the less there was left of it to be squandered.

He took the FDR Drive along the East River to Fifty-ninth Street, and then switched on his turn blinker and listened to it tick away seconds as he exited. He drove straight to Central Park, left his car not far from the Tavern on the Green.

He found Jennifer Crane easily enough. She was sitting cross-legged on the grass in the sun, sketching the restaurant from an oblique angle. Oxman said hello to her, and she glanced up from the sketchpad on her knees and smiled briefly before she went on working. More an artist’s preoccupation than unfriendliness, he judged.

Oxman walked around behind her and looked over her shoulder. She was working deftly and neatly in charcoal. The elegant glass-enclosed restaurant on the edge of the park had never looked so good.

“Very nice,” he said.

“Thank you, E.L.”

“I wasn’t sure if you’d be here, after what happened last night.”

“I always keep my promises,” she said. “Besides, it’s much more pleasant here than cooped up inside my apartment.”

He watched her silently for a time, mesmerized by the darting, economical movements of her hand that were transformed into imagery.

“Have you had lunch?” he asked her.

“No.” She extended her right elbow, and the hand holding the charcoal made a series of delicate upward sweeps. “Is that an invitation?”

“It is.”

She motioned with her head toward the Tavern on the Green. “In there?”

“No, that’s too expensive for a policeman’s wallet.”

“An illustrator’s too.” Jennifer flipped the cover on her sketchpad and looked up at him. The grass was still slightly damp from a recent watering and had left faint damp spots on her skirt. Her long auburn hair glowed with deep, rich highlights in the sun; her cool green eyes were flecked with brown. Oxman let himself acknowledge the fact that she was beautiful. If she was ice, she was also fire.