The Lure (6 page)

“No problem.” Brewster was only an hour and a half by train, a pretty ride along the Hudson River. Noel enjoyed being out in open country in cold weather. He hated the city in winter.

She was armed with train schedules, and they agreed to meet by eleven on Saturday morning.

“Peter is so much looking forward to seeing you,” she said. “He made sure to ask if you were coming. We hardly see you.”

“I’ll be there,” Noel said. But the minute he put down the receiver he knew he would do it this year only out of duty. Something was wrong. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but it was there, gnawing away at him, not the usual flood of memories, but something else, something different.

He put on a record, one of Monica’s favorites—the last Beatles album—and tried to remember her. Nothing happened.

He went to the closet, pulled out a box of photo albums they had collected for years and opened it randomly. The snapshots he peered at had been taken some eight years ago. They were still in college then, living together in a small basement off campus. She’d tried to be a lighter blond that year and had dyed her hair platinum, and cut it quite short. As usual, she had pulled it off. She had looked like a golden retriever, glossy, smooth, tanned, long-legged.

From that album it was easy to get into the others. Noel sat in the curved-back rocking chair he and Monica had bought on the spot one morning after an all-night party, and went through album after album of photographs: a dozen of them, beginning when they were children living next door to each other in Mamaroneck. Many photos through junior high, she always a few inches taller, always a bit more mature—as in that snapshot of them at the Shermans’ lakeside house in Connecticut, Monica staring right out at you, Noel squinting—a slim, curly-haired boy of thirteen. The next album covered high school, when he finally passed her in height and weight, and Monica had grown radiant in her fair beauty, indomitably high-spirited, so securely the most popular girl in school that one could almost overlook the serious, gawky young man who inevitably appeared next to her—Noel, the obligatory chaperon. Monica was always the main attraction, looking seductive at seventeen in her first bikini (Noel to one side, holding a surfboard); or ravishing in a cocktail sheath, strand of pearls and pearl earrings, which he (in white jacket and black tie with tartan cumberbund) had given her for her twentieth birthday; or fresh and cheerful in her short white cheerleader’s skirt with the tight-fitting bodice, her hair long and sun-streaked (Noel half in shadow, wearing basketball shorts and a shirt with the major letter he had gotten that year); Monica smiling, in every conceivable pose and outfit, and always next to her, Noel.

That was how it ought to appear, if photography conveyed truth. It was always Monica for Noel. If not from the day she stepped into his driveway where he was patching a flat tire on his Schwinn and introduced herself as the new neighbor, then from only a month or two after that. She was always first, through high school and college, work and marriage, right up to that afternoon on the lake.

He didn’t have to look at those last snapshots taken the day she died. He recalled that day well enough, even after three years: how much of the margaritas he’d drunk from the Thermos. How she’d awakened him after he declared himself drunk and sleepy. How they’d made love in the little skiff, sloshing around in a half inch of water, their limbs slithery with it. The soft undulation, the sun shimmering on the lake. Her splash afterward as she dove into the water. Her taunts for him to join her. How she had left him alone to nap. Then the vague cries, his slow awakening, and the sudden clear sight of her arm and hand straight out of the water, gripping at air. His frozen terror the instant before he snapped fully awake and dove in. How he had grabbed her crumpled form, slowly sinking downward. How he had dragged her up and into the boat, thrown her over on her stomach, pumped her lungs. How he thought he had succeeded, and got the engine going, shooting back to the dock, praying, cold-faced, with her inert body. How he had listened to the doctor later, watched the old locals shrug, heard that of course cramps were common after intercourse, it happened all the time. And how that night he’d sat in the tiny, freezing cabin with Monica’s corpse and slowly realized that after eighteen years of knowing her, being with her, living for her, everything had changed.

As the years passed, that day alone stood out clearly for Noel—the others became vague, even with the photo albums—the day he had failed to save her life. This recalled, he always felt a catharsis. The ritual finished, the records and the photo albums would be replaced in a back corner of the closet, the ghost relaid.

As it was this early evening. Relieved, he threw himself into two dozen impromptu sit-ups, his stockinged toes wedged under the crossbar of the kitchen table. He followed that with more exercises, showered, had dinner, studied, watched a few hours of TV, and went to sleep early.

Lying in bed, he felt exhausted. Somehow Monica seemed further away than ever before. Now school, his career, Boyle’s ultimatum, clouded her image. Just before he fell asleep, Noel briefly saw that bloody man with no face.

“Someone’s waiting for you,” the old man Gerdes, the doorman, said.

Noel lifted the Atala over the threshold and rolled it into the storage closet next to the mailroom.

“Well,” he asked, when he had locked the bike away, “where is he?”

“I let him in.”

“Into my apartment?”

“He said he was your uncle.”

“My uncle? What uncle?” Noel demanded, jabbing the elevator button.

“Don’t know. He said he was tired. Not all old men are like me, you know, on my feet all day.”

The floor arrow above the elevator pointed to five.

“Why couldn’t he sit down here?”

“He said he was your uncle.”

It was coming down slowly. At three, now, stopped. Probably Mrs. Davies, holding the door open to get her menagerie in.

“When did you ever meet any uncle of mine? Imagine letting a stranger into my apartment! If anything’s missing—”

He withheld the remainder of the threat, as the elevator landed with a thump and sure enough, Mrs. Davies and a half dozen dogs of various sizes and colors exited in a rushing barrage of fur and barking, their elderly owner spinning about, trying to hold on to their leashes.

Whatever could have been in Gerdes’s mind to do such a thing? Noel wondered as he ascended. Had his Uncle Al come to visit him? Why hadn’t Aunt Antonia called beforehand? Was there trouble in the family?

His apartment door was slightly ajar. Music from the radio seeped out into the hallway: Mozart. Noel stood still, took a breath, and slowly opened the door all the way.

Only when it was fully open did he see the man sitting in the rocking chair, bathed in morning sunlight from the tall windows. At first, Noel didn’t recognize him. When, a second later, he did, it was with a sudden rush of fear. It was he, the chief of those men in the abandoned Federal House of Detention, the man they had called the Fisherman.

“Come in! Come in!” he said cheerily. At Noel’s baffled, apprehensive look the Fisherman got up from the rocker and came to meet him. “I didn’t know when you’d be back, so I asked the doorman…”

“I know.” What did he want?

“You don’t seem too pleased to see me.”

“I hoped I’d never see you again. I’ve tried to forget that morning.” Noel closed the door, wondering whether anyone else was in the apartment. The bathroom door was open, no one could hide in the kitchen. In the closets?

“I can understand that. Do you have a pet?”

“A pet?”

“You keep looking around as though…” The Fisherman interrupted himself with a laugh. “I’m alone. Don’t worry. By the way, have you had breakfast yet?”

Noel had been out riding this Sunday morning, enjoying the crisp, almost-spring, late March weather. He’d completed his route—on the East Side since that dawn—then had circled through Central Park, taking advantage of the winding roads closed to vehicular traffic every weekend. AIl the way home he’d been thinking about his growling stomach.

“Because if you haven’t,” the Fisherman went on, “I brought a few things. You like delicatessen?”

He opened a white paper bag he’d left on the table. Inside were fresh bagels, pungent lox, some smaller wrapped parcels.

“There is also fresh squeezed orange juice. And coffee. I have a special roast at Zabar’s.”

Noel was drawn by the food and by curiosity.

“Why did you tell the doorman you were my uncle?”

“What was I supposed to tell him? That I was a police officer?”

Noel didn’t answer.

“Is this the kitchen?” the Fisherman said, going into the tiny room and spreading the packages of food on the counter. “Where are your dishes?”

“I’ll get them,” Noel said, taking off his jacket.

“I got the Sunday
Times,
too. It’s over there.” He pointed to its thick bulk on the lamp table next to the rocker. “You’ll need a sharp knife to cut these bagels. They’re fresh. They tear otherwise. Heat some water. I got cream cheese with chives. Do you like it?” He unwrapped the packages.

The small table seated two comfortably. Noel’s initial panic had passed quickly, but not his curiosity. The man probably wanted to ask more questions. Or the same ones over again: a small enough price for breakfast and the
Times.

“I’m here for a reason,” the Fisherman said once they were seated.

“I didn’t think you’d come to apologize again for my mistreatment.”

“You’re an intelligent man, Mr. Cummings. University professor and all.”

“Not so smart. I still haven’t figured out your name.”

“Excuse me. Loomis,” he said, putting out a hand for Noel to shake across the table. “Anton Loomis.”

“Anton Loomis, New York City Department of Police. A detective, right? Some high rank? In which division? Homicide?”

“I used to be captain. I don’t hold any rank now.”

“Not because you were demoted. You’re working for some special group, correct?”

“Close enough.”

“That’s all the questions I have,” Noel said, and got up to cut another bagel. “You, too?”

“I’m overweight already. Mr. Cummings, I came to tell you something about what you stumbled into that morning.”

Noel didn’t completely believe him.

“I don’t blame you for wanting to forget it. It was very unpleasant. But not the first unpleasant matter we’ve dealt with. And, not the worst. There has been a series of such murders. All of them related. Do you know who that man was you tried to help?”

“One of your men called him Kansas.”

“Kansas. A code name. Operative number five. A police detective. Twenty-six years old. Just promoted. A wife. A child. A promising career in the department.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. But isn’t death an occupational hazard in your work?” Exactly what was he driving at?

“It is. It is. Not like that, though—blinded, bleeding, butchered in a rotting warehouse.”

“I agree,” Noel said. “I was there. Remember?”

“I remember. But as I was saying, Mr. Cummings, he was not the first of my operatives to be murdered. About a month ago another was found facedown in a snowbank, not four blocks away. His hands were bound, his throat cut, his body mutilated. And it isn’t only policemen who are being killed.”

“Are you trying to tell me there’s a crime wave in the city? I do read the papers, Mr. Loomis.”

“This isn’t any general outbreak of crime. This is one group or one man. We don’t know who. We aren’t even sure why. But we can guess.”

“Maybe they’re ritual slayings,” Noel suggested, recalling what Boyle had told him. “Don’t homosexuals consort in that area?”

“Exactly. See, I said you were an intelliegent man. From below Christopher Street all the way up to the twenties, there are dozens of bars and clubs.”

“Well, that’s who’s doing it. Some homosexual-hating psychopath who took your men for what they were decoyed to be.”

“So it would appear,” Loomis said. Then, with a penetrating glance: “Or maybe that’s what we’re supposed to believe.”

“You don’t?”

“Do you recall, Mr. Cummings, about a year and a half ago when a man named Robby Landau was found murdered in his apartment? He owned a large and popular discotheque. He’d been stabbed many times, a hundred, more. His underwear was slashed off, the apartment ransacked—things broken, paintings ripped. It appeared to be the work of the type of man you just described.”

Loomis went on: “What the newspapers didn’t say was that Landau was to testify before a grand jury the next day about the South American drug trade. He was a large purchaser of cocaine. If he hadn’t agreed to talk, he would have been indicted.

“While you’re absorbing that,” Loomis said, “try to recall a similar incident a few months later involving Albert Wills, a socially prominent, wealthy, playboy type. Except Wills played with boys, not girls. He was found badly beaten, strangled, stabbed: the works. The assumption was he had picked up a rough hustler, and they had disagreed about money. Except that in Landau’s preliminary brief, he had mentioned Wills as another large purchaser of cocaine. Wills was subpoenaed, too.