Slaughter (15 page)

L
ittle Louie, as his fellow workers called Louis Farrato, was working the jackhammer today, breaking up already cracked concrete in front of the Taggart Building, the area that was to become the driveway of a portico. Louie, who was a few inches over six feet tall and built like an NFL linebacker, handled the jackhammer like a toy. He was following a yellow chalk line, where a concrete saw would neaten and emphasize the driveway, where it was projected it would encircle a fountain.

It took skill to use a jackhammer, alternating heavy and light touches, and it was a tool that had to be guided carefully. That was why Louie so diligently followed the curved yellow chalk line.

Louie had paused in his work with the other hard hats as the women they'd heard were Broadway dancers crossed the street and entered the Liner Diner. On a scale of one through ten, they were all tens, on the basis of their bodies alone. The little blond one they called Betty was particularly appealing to Louie. For whatever reason, he preferred small women. His wife, Madge, was only a little over five feet tall.

Not that she wasn't a fireball. More of one than the blond dancer, actually.

Thinking of Madge, Louie smiled.

Which was why he almost missed seeing the guy in the battered yellow hard hat.

At first Louie thought he was looking at a kid roaming through the debris of the building. Then he saw that the guy had the bearing if not the stature of a man. He had on faded jeans and a tan shirt with a tie and was carrying a clipboard.

Louie looked around, and didn't see Jack Feldman, the job foreman, or anybody else. Then he realized everyone was on lunch break. He hadn't worn his wristwatch today because he didn't want it subjected to the jackhammer vibrations.

He leaned the jackhammer at an easy angle against a pile of debris. Then he pulled a handkerchief stuffed in a back pocket and used it to wipe sweat from his face and the back of his neck.

Louie put on his own hard hat, with the company logo on it, and made his way toward the little guy.

He could see, as he drew closer, that the man was smaller and older than he'd seemed from across the jumble of debris, and the steel stacked near where the crane was systematically lifting it to be eased into position. Those involved in this delicate operation worked while the others were at lunch or otherwise off-site. Everything was done with extreme care. People had died working with high steel. People Louie had known. But he figured the pay warranted the risk, so here he was.

The crane, affixed to the twentieth floor, was preparing to lift a steel beam that looked small from this angle, up to where it would straighten its long, jointed arm and steel would be fixed to steel with rivets. The welders would follow close behind, making all but permanent what the riveters had done. And another piece of an empire's giant toy would be fitted in place.

Some of the other workers were coming back to work now, after leaving the Liner Diner. The Broadway-star types were hanging around in front of the diner, the women casually bending and doing light exercises, well aware they were being watched.

 

 

The little guy in the hard hat looked over at Louie, looked back at his clipboard, and made a check mark. Then back at Louie. He smiled and said, “Safety.”

Louie noticed a line of faded black letters on the scuffed and dented yellow hard hat. So the twerp was here in some official capacity.

“I think we're up to code here,” Louie said, though he had no idea. This guy, in washed-out jeans and a tan shirt with a tie, looked like management to him. A dress shirt and tie and a clipboard could add up to trouble.

“You want me to call the boss over for you?” Louie asked. Pass-the-buck time.

The little guy looked up at him, smiling. “I already talked with him. Give me a few minutes and I'll get outta your hair.”

“Okay.” Louie gave a little wave and started back to where he'd left the jackhammer, along with half a sandwich from his lunch bag. Pastrami and mustard, with just the right amount of horseradish. He wondered, could any of those Broadway babes with the boobs and swinging behinds put together a pastrami sandwich like his wife Madge could?

He doubted it.

As he picked his way toward where he'd broken off work, he noticed the guy with the hard hat and clipboard over where the street had been torn up. He was making his way through piles of debris, stepping carefully, still making notations on his clipboard.

Louie heard his name called.

He looked over and saw Feldman, his boss, standing across the intersection, near the Liner Diner.

Feldman saw that he had Louie's attention and waved him over.

Jack Feldman was a reasonable guy, but when he was mad he was a son of a bitch. Mistakes couldn't be made here. There were few second chances, and no third. Louie had no idea what Feldman wanted. He started walking toward Feldman. There was a large lump in Louie's throat, but he couldn't figure out if he'd screwed up, or if Feldman was simply going to ask for a progress report on the removal of the portico concrete. Louie couldn't think of any reason why he should endure an ass-chewing. He told himself that maybe he was going to get a promotion, and smiled at that one.

The sun had moved enough so that there was a stark shadow lying across the intersection where the Liner Diner was located. Louie realized the shadow was from the crane.

Feldman was standing in the shadow, which extended from the diner to beyond Louie.

Louie found it a few degrees cooler in the shadow of the crane, and walked toward Feldman, who stood with his fists on his hips, watching Louie.

There was a sharp, cracking sound from overhead.

Lightning strike was Louie's first, alarmed thought. But the sky was a cloudless blue.

When Louie lowered his vision he saw that Jack Feldman was for some reason sitting on the pavement, as if he'd fallen. He was waving and pointing at the sky. Maybe he had been struck by lightning. Louie could feel his own hair standing on end.

Then he noticed there was something different about the deeply shadowed path on which he stood, leading toward Feldman and beyond. The shadow of the crane.

It was moving.

Feldman was struggling to get to his feet, where he had instinctively dived to the ground at the loud noise. Disoriented, he ran to his right, then back left, toward the crane's looming shadow. The long shadow was moving in a greater arc now, back and forth, like a gigantic scythe trying to break free from whatever held it high.

Feldman waved his arms at Louie. He was shouting something Louie couldn't understand.

Louie didn't stop, didn't think, running toward Feldman.

There was another loud
crack!
from above as the huge crane pulled away from its moorings. Somewhere a woman was screaming.

Louie put his head down and ran harder.

B
etty and Macy had left the diner and were about to cross the street to walk beneath the scaffolding where the Taggart Building was being transformed to its larger, more useful self. In the bright sunlight outside the diner, they absently paused to do some stretching and bending after sitting so long. They, like the other dancers, were well aware of the staring eyes of the hard hats across the street. They were prepared for the shouts, whistles, and occasional lewd suggestions. Sometimes smiles were exchanged across the street, but for the most part the construction workers were ignored. They might as well have been calling to the dancers from another dimension.

“If those guys would ever learn their manners—” Betty, who had just been referred to as “the bouncy blond beauty,” began. That was when what sounded like a lightning strike came from above. The shouting from across the street stopped, then became louder. Desperate.

Betty heard a woman scream nearby. There was a subtle change in light and shadow, in the movement of air. She felt Macy grip her shoulder and squeeze it hard enough to hurt.

 

 

As he ran toward Feldman, some part of Louie's mind grasped what was happening around them. It wouldn't be the first time a construction crane had fallen in Manhattan, but it might be the worst.

He was closing on Feldman when something like the dark shadow of a raven's wing crossed the ground around them. Louie lowered his head and hunkered down as he ran, prepared to hit Feldman hard enough to carry them both out of harm's way. Feldman was like a football player who'd forgotten to signal for a fair catch and was about to pay for it.

He turned away just before contact, and 260 pounds of Louie slammed into Feldman's hip. Louie heard the deafening crash of the crane, felt the ground tilt beneath him so that for a few seconds he and Feldman were airborne.

Before he hit the ground again, Louie was sure his collarbone was broken from hitting Feldman. He knew, too, all in a split second, that he had more injury coming when the two of them landed and slid, with Feldman on top.

Louie thought they might both live, though, as long as more falling debris didn't hit them.

He was thinking of Madge as consciousness left him.

 

 

Quinn said, “What the hell was that?”

Fedderman raised his eyebrows. “Earthquake?”

They were at Q&A, Quinn at his desk, waiting for Pearl to call and say where she wanted to meet for lunch, Fedderman in a chair over by the coffee brewer, going over case notes.

Quinn walked over and looked out a window at West 79th Street. He could hear sirens now, but they were from the south, and not close.

He went outside and stood on the concrete stoop, looking around. No sign of smoke. The sirens were slightly louder, and there were more of them.

Quinn went back inside and called Renz at One Police Plaza, and was told that Renz couldn't be reached right now.

“Is he dead?” Quinn asked the duty sergeant.

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Then he can be reached. Is this Sergeant Ed Rutler?”

“It is. And who might I be talking to?”

“Captain Frank Quinn. How are you, Ed?”

“Still locomoting, Cap'n. Sorry I didn't recognize your voice.”

“I'm smoking fewer cigars, Ed. I felt and heard a big boom, and now I hear sirens. What's going on?”

“We're still trying to figure it out. Could be a building collapse. The Taggart Building, that they been screwing around with for months. But it's too early in the game to know.”

“Any dead or injured?”

“Not as many as you'd think, is what I hear. They're saying one of those big construction cranes let go and fell about twenty floors, but it's too early to confirm. I hope that's what happened. Fewer killed and injured than there'd be in a building collapse.”

“Probably, Ed.” Then, “I got confirmation now in a TV news crawl. It's the Taggart Building, all right. A big crane fell. It did bring down some of the building with it.”

“Jeez! Casualties?”

“Still counting, Ed. The building was unoccupied at the time, but there were some people killed or injured by the crane itself. And there were people in the vicinity of the building that were too close and got hit by falling debris. I've deduced a lot of that from early reports and what I could see on television They're still fitting it all together. You know how it goes.”

Ed did.

Harley Renz called then and got patched through. Sergeant Rutler knew it wasn't going to become a conference call and said his good-byes.

Renz listened while Quinn brought him up to speed with what he knew, mostly gleaned from what he'd seen on TV and what Sergeant Rutler had said.

Renz didn't have anything solid to contribute, even though he'd been among the first to reach the site after the crane fell. Now he was running around, probably in full dress uniform, trying to leave a lasting impression that he was in charge.

A sigh came over the phone. “It isn't pretty here, Quinn.”

“Does it look like a crime scene?”

“The way things are these days, I'd have to say yes.”

“Has the crane been examined?”

“Not yet. But it doesn't seem there's anything wrong with it. There was an operator in the crane when it fell. Or until just before. We're still interrogating him. We'll keep you informed, Quinn.”

“Do that, Harley. This is almost surely part of the Gremlin case.”

“Fire, an elevator, a crane, what's this madman thinking?”

“They're all different,” Quinn said. “In most ways, they're just like the rest of us. That's why they're difficult to recognize.”

“That's why we have you on the case, Quinn. You're just like the rest of us, only different.”

“Those are important differences,” Quinn said.

Renz said, “That's what all you guys say.”

T
he killer sat in his favorite armchair, with a view of nighttime Manhattan out the window that was slightly to his left. He liked to enjoy the spectacular view, shifting eyes and interest back and forth between that and big-screen TV news coverage of the crane collapse. He was in his stocking feet, legs extended and ankles crossed, sipping two fingers of single-malt scotch over ice. A dash of water to help bring out the flavor.

Using a variety of aliases and forged identities, he had, like a rat in a pack, joined the fringes of serious crime. He maneuvered, he thought brilliantly, befriending certain criminal types, ingratiating himself with them, and at a certain point letting them know he was . . . well, head rat.

He was impossible to apprehend, because he wasn't greedy—at least not on the surface. He was financially secure from a year ago, when he'd spent a week of sex and pain with a crooked investment manager and his wife.

The killer knew enough to result in the man losing everything and going to prison. Probably his wife, keeper of the secret books, would also do time. But the killer had broken both of them, spiritually and physically, in the investment manager's secluded cabin that was more like a full-fledged house.

The wife, Glenda, in her forties, was not particularly attractive, more of a greyhound than a cougar. She didn't know it yet, but the divorce papers were about to be served when, during a drug-enhanced night, the killer taught the money manager, Hubby, how to induce and manage someone else's pain.

Hubby was better at that than managing wealth. Under his tutelage, Glenda learned how soundproof the cabin was when she screamed and screamed and no one came to her rescue.

Within a few hours she was eager to turn over to her husband and the killer the secret set of books that she kept, complete with numbers and names, and sometimes photographs.

This was just the sort of thing the killer sought. It would have been silly, at this point, to set the wife free. Besides, a plan was growing in his mind like a disease.

After a few days Wifey was trembling so that she had to be spoon-fed so she wouldn't make such a mess. Hubby the money man led her to a wall, made her lean against it, and beat her with a beaded leather strap. By now she automatically obeyed his instructions and made no sound while she was being whipped. A gag was no longer necessary.

When the husband's arm was almost too tired to lift, the killer walked over, took the whip from his hand, and laid the whip hard along the back of the wife's thighs.

Wifey was sobbing now, her head bowed in submission.

“Take her to the basement and hose her off,” the killer said.

Hubby looked confused. “Hose her . . . ?”

The killer grinned. “With water. If you want to beat her with the hose, maybe we can arrange that later.”

He could barely stop smiling. These two were perfect.

 

 

When the killer went down to the basement, he saw that things were in order. Wifey's arms were tied over her head and she was hanging from a rafter with her toes barely touching the concrete. Quite a stretch. She tried to shift position now and then to relieve the pain when her stretched muscles cramped. Sheer agony. A hard rubber ball was jammed between her upper and lower teeth so her jaws were strained wide open. Her hair was soaked, pulled back, and fastened with a rubber band. She knew the rubber band was so they could see her face. Her expressions. That was great for photographs that could be sold and resold on the Internet. Her husband and their houseguest had taught her that.

The faint, rhythmic thrashing sound began, more vibration than noise. The killer was ready for it, knew that it would stop, knew how to stop it.

He stood with his hands pressed to his ears, his eyes clenched shut. Waiting.

Finally the thrashing noise reached a crescendo then subsided, and he was calm. The air that he breathed was like nectar.

The killer tested the strength of the ropes, felt the warm wetness of her body, then unnecessarily told Hubby the fund manager to stay where he was and went upstairs.

Ten minutes later the killer came back down the basement's wooden stairs with something obviously heavy beneath a blanket.

“What's that?” the husband asked. He hadn't so much as budged.

The killer smiled. “My equipment. Car battery. Cables. Alligator clips.”

Terror paralyzed the wife. She emitted a lot of gagging and gurgling, and then lost consciousness.

The killer knew that unconsciousness was where they often went to escape. A country of painlessness and peace.

He had brought smelling salts.