The Eye: A Novel of Suspense (31 page)

Roberts nodded, turned and got to work.

Oxman went out through the printing room to Roberts’ small, cluttered office. There was a Mr. Coffee on a table in the corner, its glass pot half full, a stack of styrofoam cups alongside. He poured himself a cup of coffee, added powdered creamer and sugar.

He remembered seeing a candy vending machine outside in the hall. He knew he should eat something while he had the chance, even if he was too keyed up to be hungry; he hadn’t had any food all day, and a candy bar would provide more energy than the sugar in his coffee.

He lost a quarter in the ancient machine, then managed to wrestle out a Clark Bar; he carried it back into Roberts’ office. It was cooler in there; the old window air conditioner behind the desk labored mightily, shooting out an occasional fleck of ice. Roberts had probably forgotten to turn it off this morning and it had frozen up in the heat and high humidity.

Oxman sat in a vinyl-upholstered Danish chair to one side of the desk, took a sip of his coffee. Jennifer was on his mind as he peeled off the wrapper on the Clark Bar. He was glad he’d called her after arriving at the photo lab; just hearing her voice had reassured him. Somehow, in only a few short days, she had become a pivotal factor in his life. After so many years with Beth, he’d thought he was too old to feel like this, that he’d been slowly dying cell by cell. Jennifer was both a reprieve and a new purpose.

He bit into the candy bar. And was not at all surprised to find that it was stale. He ate it anyway, washing it down with sips of the strong coffee.

He waited.

8:15 P.M. — ART TOBIN

Tobin stepped out of the elevator and crossed the lobby of 1276, toward the door that led down into the basement. He was in a foul humor, tired and royally pissed off. He hadn’t been able to find Willie Lorsec. He hadn’t been able to find Elliot Leroy; the policewoman, Ullman, had told him just now, when he’d gone up to see her, that she hadn’t heard from Oxman and that nobody else had called to tell her where he was. And Lieutenant Smiley was still missing from the Two-four. And as if all of that wasn’t enough, the cheeseburger and fries he’d eaten for supper a little while ago had given him indigestion.

Nobody tells me anything
, he thought.
Keep the darkie in the dark, by God. If I was white, instead of a big old nigger cop, I’d sure as hell get better treatment than this
.

What he ought to do was go back to the Five-three, sign out, and pack it in for the day; the hell with all of ’em. That was what he was
going
to do, but first he wanted a few more words with the super, Corales. For all he knew, Corales had lied to him earlier about knowing where Lorsec lived, or where Lorsec could be found. If that was the case, God help him. Tobin just wasn’t going to take any more shit today.

He opened the basement door, stepped through, and let it close silently behind him on its pneumatic stop. He paused on the landing. In the dim light from the hanging bulb at the foot of the stairs, he could make out the closed door to Corales’s apartment, the shadowy rows of wooden storage lockers, shelves of tools and paint cans, stacks of cardboard boxes near enough to the boiler to give a fire inspector fits. There was nothing to hear but the soft ticking buzz of an electric meter.

He wrinkled his nose at the musty smell of the basement, reached out to the switch on the landing wall. When he flicked it, three more hanging bulbs came on and chased away the shadows.

And let him see a man in a lightweight windbreaker, a big man he didn’t recognize, just coming away from the boiler room toward the stairs.

Tobin blinked in surprise, stopped dead with one foot on the landing and the other on the first of the rubber-treaded risers. The big man also stopped, staring at him. They stood frozen like that for maybe an instant, and Tobin thought with sudden savage intuition:
It’s him, it’s the goddamn psycho!

What happened then, crazily, was like a climactic scene in a Western movie: Tobin swept the tail of his jacket back, jerked his service revolver out of its belt holster; the big man had his hand in the pocket of his windbreaker, and the hand came out filled with a weapon of his own. The roar of the guns was almost simultaneous——

Tobin felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach, just under the breastbone. The .38 fell out of his hand; his legs buckled, his vision blurred, a thought flashed across his mind:
Jesus no, not like this!
And then he was falling, and there was pain and noise and fear, and the next thing he knew he was crumpled sideways on the stairs near the bottom, head downward, gasping for breath, blood singing in his ears.

At the tilted angle, as if he were watching something happen underwater, he saw the big man come running toward him. Another thought:
I missed him
. He tried to move, couldn’t. A part of his mind cringed, waiting for the second shot, the coup de grâce, but it didn’t come; the psycho ran by him, up the stairs.

The last things Tobin heard before he lost consciousness were the lobby door being flung open and the diminishing pound of footsteps in the lobby.

8:15 P.M. — E.L. OXMAN

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 high. 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.”