The Eye: A Novel of Suspense (26 page)

“… even some talk about evacuating the entire block,” Tobin was saying. “That’s how panicked City Hall is this morning. The media’s got the whole city on the verge of hysteria.”

“If they went ahead with anything like that, it’d screw things up so bad we might never get him. He probably lives on the block himself. And even if he doesn’t, he’d just lie low and wait until things cooled down and everybody moved back.”

“I know. Smiley talked to the commissioner and got him to see it that way. But they’re still talking about cordoning off the block.”

“I don’t like that either.”

“Neither do I. Stepped-up patrols, more undercover men in the buildings—all of that makes sense. But we don’t want to scare the perp off by turning the neighborhood into a fucking war zone.”

“Yeah. He’s out of control as it is, Artie; he’s hit two days running and he thinks he’s invincible. All he is is lucky. He’ll make another try damned soon, and when he does his luck is liable to run out.
If
everybody doesn’t panic.”

“You think he’ll come after you this time?”

“I hope so,” E.L. said. “Jesus, I hope so.”

“Well, if he does make another try, against you or anybody else, we’d better made sure his luck runs out. Heads are gonna roll in the Department if we don’t, yours and mine included.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“It’ll be worse than that, too,” Tobin said. “The media’s got people spooked; everybody’s screaming for protection. If that bastard kills again and gets away with it, the city’s gonna explode. We’ll have armed vigilantes running around, blowing people away on the streets. We’ll have riots. I’m telling you, Elliot Leroy …”

Jennifer shut the door again, shivering, and went to the overflowing ashtray on the nightstand to jab out her cigarette. Immediately, she lit another. The smoke burned her lungs, made her cough and tears come to her eyes.

You think he’ll come after you this time?

I hope so. Jesus, I hope so
.

And I hope not
, she thought.
Jesus, I hope not
.

Her eyes were still wet from the coughing; she could feel the tears warm on the icy surface of her cheeks. She wished suddenly that she could cry, that she was the kind of person who could sit down and let the emotion come spilling out of her. It would be so good to just sit down and—

And she sat down on the bed and began to weep.

8:10 A.M. — WILLIE LORSEC

Corales stared at him across the table. Richard was standing there with a cup of coffee in one hand and the deck of playing cards in the other; his eyes were bright with disappointment and what Lorsec took to be a kind of desperation. “What do you mean no more gin games, Willie? What do you
mean?
”

“Just what I said. You must understand——”

“I
don’t
understand,” Corales said. “Maybe you don’t understand either. I won forty-nine straight hands. One more and I’ll have fifty and I can get into the
Guinness Book of World Records
. I got to do it, Willie. You said last night you’d play this morning; you promised me before you left. It’s only one more hand!”

“Richard, you’re not being practical. Two more people were shot last night, right here in this building. And another of your tenants was killed just up the street. We can’t simply go on playing gin as if nothing had happened.”

“Why can’t we?”

“Because we can’t. You knew each of the victims; don’t you care that they’re dead?”

“Sure I care,” Corales said. “I’m sorry they’re dead. But they weren’t friends of mine, and there’s nothing I can do about it. You and me, we got to go on living, don’t we?”

“Yes, we do. If we can.”

“What do you mean, if we can?”

“Several people have died already,” Lorsec said patiently. “Who’s to say there won’t be more? Who’s to say the next victim won’t be you or me?”

Corales shook his head. “Nobody’d want to kill us.”

“It seemed nobody would want to kill any of the others, either. But they’re dead just the same.”

“You mean you’re afraid, Willie?”

“Of course I am. Aren’t you?”

“No,” Corales said. “I don’t go out at night, and I got locks on my door and a Reggie Jackson baseball bat right alongside my bed. Even if somebody wanted to shoot me, he couldn’t do it.”

Lorsec sighed. Corales was such a child, such an innocent. Mental retardation was a tragedy for the most part, but in a situation like the one which existed here, and in a man such as Corales, it was also a blessing. Unlike everyone else who lived on this block, Richard could sleep nights—the sleep of the untroubled, the unafraid, the guileless.
His
world had not been disrupted. His world, at least as he perceived it, remained as simple and unencumbered as it had always been.

“So I don’t see no reason why we can’t play gin,” Corales said. “Christ, Willie, I only need to win one more hand. Then I’ll be somebody. Don’t you see that? I never been nobody in my whole life and now I can be.”

“I’m sorry. I really am.…”

“You’re not sorry at all,” Corales said, and there was anger in his voice for the first time. “If you were sorry, you’d sit down and play so I can win one more hand.”

“Richard, listen to me——”

“You’re afraid of losing any more. That’s it, isn’t it? You lost forty-nine times straight and you don’t want to lose no more.”

“That’s not so,” Lorsec said. Which was not quite the truth. Actually, he
had
become annoyed at losing so many consecutive hands; he was not a man who cared to lose at anything. At first, Corales’s phenomenal winning streak had amused him—and he had continued to put up with it because he was genuinely fond of the man. But enough was enough. He had too many things on his mind to want to put up with it any longer.

“Then why won’t you play one more hand so I can get into the Guinness Book?”

“Richard, even if I agreed to play just one hand, there’s no guarantee that you’d win.”

“I’d win, all right. I’d win.”

“You can’t be sure of that. Can you even be sure fifty consecutive winning gin rummy hands qualifies you for the Guinness Book?”

Corales blinked. “What?”

“Have you checked the Guinness Book, Richard? What
is
the record for most consecutive winning gin rummy hands?”

“No, I never checked it,” Corales said. “But it’s got to be the record. Nobody could win more than fifty straight.”

“Well, then, suppose the record is only forty-eight. Or less. Then you’ve already established a new record, haven’t you?”

“I never thought of that,” Corales said, frowning. But then the frown deepened and he said, “I don’t care what the old record is. I want to win fifty, I want to see how many hands I can win in a row. Maybe I can make seventy-five, or even a hundred. Maybe I can set a record that nobody’ll
ever
break.”

Lorsec sighed again. “I think I’d better go,” he said.

“Go? You mean you’re really not gonna play anymore?”

“I’ve already told you I’m not. I couldn’t concentrate with so much going on outside, so many police in the area——”

“Damn the police! I don’t give a shit about the police!” Corales’s face was splotched now; his oversized hands were fisted at his sides. “What’d you come around here for this morning, anyway, you don’t want to play gin no more?”

“I wanted to see you, that’s all——”

“Yeah, sure,” Corales said. “And you want me to let you rummage around in the trash some more, right? That’s all you ever wanted from me.”

“That isn’t true. You’re my friend.”

“Well, you ain’t
my
friend, not anymore,” Corales said angrily. “Go on, get out of here. I don’t never want to see you again.”

“Richard——”

“Get out, I said. Get out! And don’t come around no more. Go make friends with some other super if you ain’t done that already, get your goddamn junk from
him
.”

Lorsec considered standing his ground, making an effort to pour oil on these troubled waters, but the look in Corales’s eyes changed his mind. He let out another sigh, inaudible this time, and went to the door.

“No matter what you think now,” he said as he opened it, “I’m your friend and I wish you well.”

“Go fuck yourself, Willie,” Corales said, and slammed the door behind him.

Lorsec started across the basement to the alley entrance. Halfway there, he noticed that Corales had left his tool chest on a wooden stool. He shook his head sadly.
Poor Richard
, he thought.
Always leaving things around where someone could steal them. Such a trusting soul. Such a foolish innocent
.

Lorsec picked up the tool chest and took it back and set it in front of Corales’s door. Then he knocked once. He was already on his way back across the basement when Corales looked out.

8:25 A.M. — WALLY SINGER

He couldn’t believe it, he just could not believe it.

“Leaving me?” he said. “Leaving me? What kind of bullshit is this, Marian?”

“It’s not bullshit,” Marian said. She was still over there at the dresser, methodically taking her clothes out and putting them into her open suitcase on the bed. She hadn’t stopped doing that, had barely even looked at him, since he’d come in and caught her at it a couple of minutes ago.

“You can’t walk out on me!”

“Can’t I? You just watch me.”

“Where the hell are you going to go?”

“I’m moving in with a friend in the Village.”

“What friend?”

“Someone you don’t know. A man.”

“Man?”

“A man I’ve been seeing,” she said, neatly folding a skirt. “A man I love and who loves me.”

It struck him funny. He threw back his head and laughed, but when he did that the sudden motion aggravated the hangover pain in his temples, made him wince, and cut the laugh into a bark. Christ, he must have drunk half a case of beer last night. But who could blame him? Another shooting right here in the building, right across the hall, that snooty little actress and the junkie musician who lived downstairs; cops all over the place, more questions. It had shaken him bad, even worse than when Marian told him Cindy had been killed across the street.

And now this. Marian calmly packing her suitcase, telling him she was moving out, telling him she was in love with somebody else. Marian? Fat, stupid Marian? It was funny, all right, crazy funny. Nobody in his right mind would want a cow like her.

“Go ahead and laugh,” she said. She didn’t sound angry; she didn’t sound anything except determined. “It happens to be the truth.”

“Sure it is. You think crap like that is going to bother me, hurt me?”

“I don’t care if it does or doesn’t. You’ve hurt
me
plenty, Wally, and I don’t want to live with you anymore or be your wife anymore. That’s what matters right now.”

He put it into words this time: “Who’d want a cow like you?”

That got to her; pain flickered across her dumpy face. But only for an instant. She still didn’t stop stuffing clothes into her suitcase. And she didn’t answer his question.

Singer felt a little tug of desperation. Maybe it
was
true; maybe she
had
found somebody to have an affair with. And maybe she really was going to leave him. He still couldn’t believe it, but what if it was true? What the hell would he do then?

“You’re not walking out of here,” he said.

“How are you going to stop me? By force? The building is crawling with police, Wally; all I have to do is scream once and they’ll be at the door in ten seconds.”

“I’m your husband, goddamn it!”

“Not for long,” she said. “I’m going to file for divorce as soon as I can find a lawyer.”

“You’re crazy,” he said. “You’ve gone off your rocker, you know that?”

“You can keep the apartment and the furniture. I’ll send for the rest of my things in a few days.”

“Keep the apartment? For Christ’s sake, how am I going to pay the rent?”

“It’s paid through the end of the month. You’ll have to get a job, that’s all. It’s your problem, Wally, not mine—not any longer.”

“You bitch, you can’t do this to me!”

“I should have done it a long time ago,” she said.

“He talked you into this, didn’t he? This bastard you’ve been sleeping with.”

“No, he didn’t. I’ve been thinking about it for days and what happened last night made up my mind. And he’s not a bastard. He’s kind and gentle; he’s everything you’re not.”

“Who is he? What’s his name?”

“I don’t think I want to tell you that.”

“I got a right to know who you think you’re running off with!”

“I’m not running off with him.”

“Damn you, Marian, who is he?”

“No,” she said. She finished putting the last of her clothes into the suitcase, pulled the lid down, leaned on it, and fastened the catches. “There’s fifty dollars in the jar in the kitchen. You’ll have to make do with that until you get a job.”

He wanted to hit her. God, he wanted to rush over there and smash her fat cow face until it was slick with blood. But he couldn’t move; his legs wouldn’t work. He just stood there in the doorway with his head pounding, pounding. He couldn’t even move when she brushed past him, carrying the suitcase, and walked into the front room.

“I’ll get you for this, Marian!” he shouted after her. “I won’t let you do this to me!”

“Good-bye, Wally,” she said.

Fifteen seconds later she was gone, actually gone.

He moved then, as soon as he heard the front door close. But not far, just into the middle of the studio; he didn’t have anywhere else to go. He knew that now, believed it all now, and it was like a hole had opened up and he was being sucked down into it. His hands were shaking; he felt sick to his stomach. And wild inside, trapped. Marian’s sculptures seemed to leer at him from across the room, mocking. He tried to make himself go over there and smash them, but he couldn’t do that either. All he could do was stand there shaking, screaming at her inside his head.

He couldn’t do anything at all.

8:30 A.M. — E.L. OXMAN

Questions kept flashing around inside Oxman’s mind like the lighted images in a video game.

He paced the front room of Jennifer’s apartment, from the door to the sunlit windows and back again in frustrated movements. He was alone in the room now. The policewoman, Carla Ullman, had arrived a few minutes earlier and was in the bedroom with Jennifer, making the switch of their clothing. Tobin had gone off to continue taking the statements of building residents—a probably futile activity because nobody seemed to have seen or heard the killer last night, as if he were some kind of phantom who could appear and disappear at will. Oxman would do the same as soon as Jennifer left with the uniformed officers waiting out in the hall—and he would take the questions with him, because he couldn’t seem to score an answer with any of them.