The Night Watcher (14 page)

June 2000

Myra Raven sat across from Hugh Danner in the coffee shop located on the northeast corner of the Ardmont Arms. They were both having iced tea and pieces of each other. Myra was gripped by a barely controlled fury. Danner was just as acrimonious but even more contained, and parrying insults with what sounded like simple logic. He knew he wasn’t fooling Myra with his slick sophistry, but what did it matter? He had the conniving bitch by the cunt hairs, and there was
nada
she could do about it.

She took a slow sip of tea, failing to prevent her hand from trembling. “We had an arrangement,” she said.

He lifted his glass and sipped. Hands steady.
Notice, Myra?
“Arrangements change, Myra. Everything in life changes sooner or later. Besides, this is business. That’s how you defined it, anyway, when you first approached me.”

“You can bet our business is finished forever. That’s something that sure as hell isn’t going to change.”

“Of course, I see your point. Now please try to see mine. The resident whose application I pushed through the board is, according to my sources, due to receive a very influential judicial appointment.”

Myra glared across the table at him. She hated his smoothness, the pink glow of his skin after a close shave, the primitive jungle of black hairs on his bare forearms, the suave perfection of even his casual clothes, the courtroom manner the bastard probably slept with and no longer even had to practice before a mirror. Whoever he really was—and she was finding out who—he was lost inside the facade he’d built for himself. She understood that about him, probably better than anyone he’d ever met.

“And the judge will owe you a favor,” she said bitterly.

“Oh, more than that. He’ll owe me for not mentioning that he paid someone off to make sure he got the co-op his young wife insisted on having as a city pied-à-terre.”

“And he’ll know what a dishonorable asshole you are.”

“Oh, sure. You might say the future judge and I are now partners in crime. It’s a safe arrangement. It wouldn’t behoove either of us to talk about our relationship. Just as it wouldn’t behoove either of
us.”

“That’s all it is with you, maneuvering to see who can get the other party down and stand with a sword to his heart.”

“That’s well put, Myra. But I prefer to think of it as collaring and leashing the other party. Much more productive that way. And I’m the one holding the leash, because a judge will have much more to lose than I would. He’ll get up and follow when I tug on the leash.”

“You are truly contemptible.”

“As you are, if whoever’s passing judgment doesn’t understand how the world really works, the true business of the world. You do understand, Myra, which is why you’re so disturbed by what’s happened. I’ve bested you in a business deal, beat you at your own game.”

“I don’t live in the same scummy world of blackmail you do. Which is what you’re planning on doing with that judge, blackmailing him.”

“However you choose to define it, he’ll feel secure as long as he cooperates. And he isn’t completely without power. Remember, if I destroy him, he can at least hurt me. I wouldn’t want that. And he won’t hurt me, because I can destroy him. Just as you won’t hurt me, or him, because it would destroy you. Your client, the young cop, how can he step up and complain that the bribe he offered wasn’t productive? And how can you afford to see it made public that you grew your company into the most successful real estate agency in Manhattan by paying off influential co-op board members to ensure that your clients would be approved for residency to the exclusion of all other applicants? It’s in everyone’s best interest that none of us reveals any of this. We have a balance here, Myra. And in the end, we’ll all see that it isn’t disturbed.”

More than Myra’s hand was trembling now. She tried to keep it inside, this developing earthquake of emotion, but she could see that Danning knew she was seriously rattled, and
that
rattled her all the more. She leaned toward him over the table, clasping her hands in her lap. “Listen, you despicable, butt-sucking scum ball, you don’t realize who you’re playing games with here. I swear to you you’ll be sorry if you don’t return that boy’s money.”

Danner smiled. He really enjoyed this, she could tell. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to return his money, Myra. Unless you want to use it to buy more cosmetic surgery. Should I tell you where it would do the most good.”’

She raised her right hand and closed it around her iced tea glass. He saw what she was thinking and merely waited for it to happen, for the cold tea and maybe the glass to follow, striking him in the face. Grounds for litigation, surely. More for him to hold over her head. More control.

But she merely sat there, staring at him.

A little more goading, perhaps. “Vulgarity doesn’t become you, Myra. It doesn’t fit with the kind of phony image you created years ago to hide behind. I’ve checked into your background, Myra Ravinski.”

“My background has never been a secret.”

“Not exactly a secret, but something you wouldn’t want emphasized, especially in a highly public trial about real estate fraud. The point is, Myra Ravinski, I understand you and I understand how it is. Now you should understand. Get used to your collar, Myra, and it won’t chafe so much. And don’t be so sure that after you think things over, you and I won’t be doing business as usual.”

Something broke in her, but not in the way Danner had planned. Her hand relaxed on the glass and she raised it and took a sip of tea. No trembling this time. A stillness and a coolness grew in the core of her. There was ice at the pit of her being. If Danner had known about it, understood it, he would have been alarmed.

She sat back and sighed, regarding him without blinking. “I suppose the truth is you’re right, it’s only business.”

“Exactly. So you might as well put it behind you.”

“Yes, I intend to.” She could see he sensed a balance had shifted. Men like Danner could always tell when that happened. She was surprised it had taken him a little longer than most to recognize it. He didn’t like this, didn’t understand the subtle change in her.

“It’s what happens sometimes in business,” he said softly but in a patronizing tone, trying to retain control. “You got fucked, Myra, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

She nodded and stood up, leaving the check for Danner to pay.

“That’s how people get AIDS,” she said, smiling as she walked toward the door.

Ed Marks became an honest cop on the day Myra told him he and Amy weren’t going to get the co-op after all. She repaid their $20,000 loan from her own pocket, he knew. What bothered him was how Amy cried, and how he longed to go see whoever on the board had rejected them and use his nightstick to beat him to death.

But what bothered him most was that a slimeball he didn’t even know had possession of the knowledge that Ed Marks, a cop and a cop’s son, was dirty. This wasn’t free meals at some hash house so he’d hang around and prevent trouble, or a merchant’s key so he could get in out of the cold sometimes. This was the kind of thing—twenty thousand was big enough money—that would kill his career and make him want to kill himself. He knew what it felt like now, and how it would feel if he gave in to the temptations of the Job again. It was all out there on the street for the taking, something beyond a cop’s salary, a cop’s pension; all a cop had to do was nod or look the other way at the right time. Not Ed Marks. Not if this was the way it could feel afterward. Nothing like this would happen to him again—ever.

The Markses had to get out of their apartment within days. Myra Raven helped them to locate a fourth-floor walk-up to live in temporarily while they continued looking for something better and affordable. The place was decrepit, and Marks wished it had an elevator. It was a good thing Amy didn’t have to go out much, a woman carrying twins taking four flights of stairs. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.

Ed Marks found himself thinking more and more often that he’d like to find the bastard who put them in this position and do something about him.

Myra couldn’t shake what had happened between her and Danner. It bothered her all the time she was trying to unwind the deal with the Marks family. She could still see the wife, Amy’s, face, almost like her own younger face, register the despair when she realized the move wasn’t going to happen. Not the move she wanted, anyway.

Instead she was going to a Lower East Side walk-up—only for a while, both Myra and Ed Marks promised. An indefinite while. So far Myra’d had no luck in locating another co-op or condo they could afford and that would suit them.

As the days passed, Myra became more bitter and moody, sometimes snapping at her people in the office. She was on edge, and she was drinking too much, having rediscovered martinis. She wouldn’t have her personal life affecting her business persona. Myra simply would not allow that to happen.

She sat for hours at her desk, later and later into lonely evenings, sometimes simply staring at the paperwork before her, not really seeing it. Finally she made a phone call she’d never dreamed of making. Another mistake? Maybe, but she was willing to take the chance.

The next night, when she buzzed up her visitor from the lobby and later opened her apartment door to his knock, she somehow knew that what she’d done was going to work out okay. The tousled blond hair, the twelve-year-old’s kind of grin, the boyishness that somehow went with the lean handsomeness, all of it was strangely reassuring as she stood there staring at him and thinking,
Sonny, you are in the right business.

“I’ll go first,” he finally said, widening the grin and extending his hand. “Hi, I’m Billy Watkins.”

February 2002

Sometimes cracks were barely visible, and only in the right light.

Like the yellow lamplight from the other room, angling in through the half-opened door. What the cracks might mean, that was something else.

Mirabella lay beside Larry Chips and stared at the cracks in the bedroom ceiling of her house in New Jersey, trying to read some message in them, like with her horoscope. Chips had picked her up from work, where they’d had a few drinks before leaving; then they’d driven straight here with Chips behind the wheel. He’d told her to call him Chips, said everyone did, like it was some kind of gambler’s nickname and glamorous. Mirabella hadn’t seen Larry Chips as glamorous from the beginning, only a little better than average looking with a pathetic line of bullshit. He didn’t even realize she was the one who’d picked him up.

Sex the first night had been great. And the second and third. Chips had moved out of his rat trap apartment he’d probably rented by the hour and into her house, promising to pay half the rent when he got some money. Mirabella knew better than to plan on how to spend her windfall.

As they’d settled into a routine, the sex became less passionate and inventive, and less frequent. Chips continued to talk a good game, but when it came time to do the deed, he often preferred to sleep off all the alcohol he’d consumed beforehand. She was sure he sometimes only pretended to fall asleep, rather than have sex with her.

She knew he still found her attractive. He wasn’t simply using her so he could live in her house, eat her food, and use her car. Mirabella understood men. She had known enough of them to learn plenty. Chips was brighter than he seemed and was preoccupied with something. After only their first few nights together she realized he wasn’t standard issue. He came across as a small-timer, and in many ways he was one. But she had a hunch that in some ways he wasn’t small time at all. There were depths and dark sides to this one. She wondered if she really wanted to know what preoccupied him.

Of course, that he was different was what made her curious about him, and all the more attracted to him. She’d drawn so many losers that she thought this one, just because he was different, might be better. How could she not be intrigued? It was the usual beer and football male shit, like with all the others, and then suddenly his behavior would change and confuse her.

Like the night she couldn’t find him and finally went out onto the porch, and there he was, sitting in the dark on the top step, lighting match after match from a book of paper matches from the Claybar. He was staring at each of them as if hypnotized until they almost burned his fingers, before flipping them out into the dark. They looked like miniature shooting stars arcing out toward the concrete walk leading to the driveway.

When she tried to talk to him, he seemed barely aware she was there. Preoccupation again, she thought. He’d mentioned without realizing it one time that he was from California, so maybe he needed his space. Mirabella didn’t know how long he’d been sitting out there, but in the morning she found at least a hundred bent and burned matches lying there on the cracked walk like lifeless cremated worms.

That was her Chips, unpredictable. He sure made life interesting and sometimes a little scary, like unknown territory. That was what got her more involved with him than she’d first planned, and what kept her interested. Always something to make you wonder.

Tonight was another example. She got up after he was asleep and walked into the kitchen to get a drink of water, because there was no glass in the bathroom. And there was something orange-colored splashed around and dried on the bottom of the sink.

She touched it with her finger and tasted it. Orange juice. But she was sure there was none in the refrigerator.

She opened the refrigerator to make sure. No orange juice. So where did he get the juice and where was the rest of it? And why had he poured some of it in the sink, probably down the drain deliberately? What was going on here? Was this guy with the CIA or something, or maybe just a secret screwdriver drinker?

She drank her water, then turned the faucet back on and used the stream of water and her glass to wash the residue of orange juice down the drain. Then she went back to bed and decided not to ask Chips about the orange juice. This was partly because she was for some reason afraid to ask, and partly because she somehow knew she wasn’t ready for the answer. She grinned into the darkness.
What the fuck was he doing with orange juice?

It would be interesting to bide her time and find out. He was good at sex and games when he wanted to be, and he didn’t put her down or beat her, and he had that unsolved puzzle quality about him. The only other man she’d known with that same kind of quiet, unreadable way about him had been a good guy and steady; then one night he’d snapped and beaten two men to death with a Derek Jeter model baseball bat.

She couldn’t imagine Chips doing anything like that. There didn’t seem to be any sort of violent undercurrent about him, as there’d been with the Derek Jeter fan.

She would ride with this guy for a while.

See where it went.

Orange juice.

O’Reilly had wanted to see Stack alone in his office.

So here Stack sat, staring at the backdrop of plaques and photos and commendations that were mostly Vandervoort’s, and waiting for O’Reilly to finish writing whatever it was that was so important on his desk. The office was too warm. And it was dim because the heat caused the window to fog up, blocking the light. The air was still and smelled like O’Reilly’s cologne or aftershave. Stack waited patiently for his boss to finish his busy act and get to what he wanted. Stack had work to do.

Finally O’Reilly capped his ridiculously expensive pen, peeled off his reading glasses, and crossed his arms on the desk as he leaned forward to address Stack. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“I thought maybe crime had taken a holiday.”

“Wouldn’t it be loverly?” O’Reilly said, ignoring the sarcasm. “I called you in here to talk about something personal.”

The hair on the nape of Stack’s neck stirred. He was in no mood for what he knew was coming. He waited for O’Reilly to say it.

“Rica.”

“A top-notch homicide detective,” Stack said, playing hard to get.

“How do you feel about her?” O’Reilly asked.

“I just said.”

O’Reilly uncrossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. Now he rested both hands on the desk as if he were about to drum his fingers. Only he didn’t. “C’mon, Stack, you know what I mean. But if you don’t, I’ll give you some clues. Everybody in Mobile Response and most of the precinct cops know what’s going on, or think they do. Which is that you’re playing the meat trombone with Rica.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Stack trying to believe what he was hearing.

“Simple. That you’re porking Rica.”

Stack felt his face flush in the warm office. The idiot O’Reilly would take it for embarrassment, not knowing Stack was tempted to fly across the desk and grab him by the throat. He said simply, “They’re wrong.”

“Not that most of them wouldn’t blame you.”

“Blame or no blame,” Stack said, “it’s all the same to me.”

O’Reilly flashed a nasty, knowing grin that made Stack even madder. “Aw, don’t get coy with me. You’re going through a divorce, spending all that time with Rica, who’s so obviously wrapped up in you that she might spontaneously combust. You telling me you’ve never noticed?”

“No,” Stack said, “I’m telling you we don’t sleep together.”

O’Reilly looked dumbfounded. “Why not? Oh, maybe the strain of your divorce and all.”

“We don’t sleep together because we’re both professionals,” Stack said. “We do the job instead of each other.”

O’Reilly laughed. “Stack, have you ever
looked
at Rica? The woman is made for recreational sex.”

“You called me in here to ask if I was fucking her,” Stack said, not realizing he’d stood up and was glaring down at O’Reilly. “I’ve answered you.”

“You’ve goddamn lied to me.”

Stack took a step toward O’Reilly, who for the first time seemed to realize he was maybe going too far here. “You can see it any way you want,” Stack said. “You asked your question. You got your answer. Anything else?”

“Yeah. I want you two to quit making it so obvious.”

Stack leaned over with both fists on the desk. “It’s only obvious to some fuckhead who thinks that way because he can’t understand why we wouldn’t be clawing at each other in the backseat of the unmarked. You know why he thinks that way? Because that’s what he’d be doing.”

“This fuckhead,” O’Reilly said, dead-eyed and cool now. “He got a name?”

“You name him.”

Stack started toward the door. It was one direction or the other now, and toward O’Reilly meant a breakdown of self-control; then there’d be an IA investigation, disciplinary action, and possibly the end of Stack’s career. O’Reilly knew that and knew Stack knew it. He was deliberately baiting Stack now.

“Keep in mind,” O’Reilly said, “I won’t have two of my officers hammering each other while on duty. And I won’t have this kind of talk about them, which both of us knows is true, continuing on my watch.”

Stack turned around. “Or?” His voice was tight, and he saw O’Reilly blink, having second thoughts. Maybe professionalism and a regard for regulations wouldn’t restrain Stack. Stack with the bad-ass reputation that O’Reilly
did
know was true because he’d seen the bodies.

“There’s no
or
about it,” O’Reilly said. He had his balls again and was staring hard at Stack.

Stack returned the stare for a while, then slowly turned his back on O’Reilly and went out the door. His throat was dry and his heart was banging away, but he had himself under control.

“If it ain’t true,” O’Reilly said behind him, “what you need’s a shit-pot full of Viagra.”

Stack made a mental note to send Vandervoort a
Get Well Soon
card.

Victoria Pike settled into a sagging, overstuffed chair and propped her aching feet up on a hassock. Her apartment had seemed a great idea when she’d bought it last summer, and now she was pretty much stuck with it. Her financial history was such that it would be all but impossible for her to obtain another mortgage loan, so even if this place was drafty in the winter and sometimes assaulted by what seemed like legions of cockroaches when the weather was warm, here she would stay for the foreseeable future.

She figured at least she wasn’t flat broke. Her job at the restaurant was tolerable, and the way she’d found to receive an occasional windfall wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever done. This wasn’t prostitution, which in her college years she’d once considered. This wasn’t some of the things she’d done for drugs.

She was a graying woman in her forties who looked like one in her fifties. Her figure was still reasonably trim but her eyes were defeated, her features drawn, and her complexion spotty. She’d never figured out what caused the damned brown spots here and there on her face and neck, like liver spots on the very old.

Some life had returned to her legs. She made herself climb up out of the chair, then trudged into the kitchen and removed a frozen chicken teriyaki dinner from the microwave. Carefully, so as not to burn her fingers, she peeled back the cellophane over the plastic tray and examined its contents. The dinner looked done, but when she prodded the chicken breast with her finger it was still cold in the middle. She slid the tray back in the microwave and set the timer for a minute and a half. She could have eaten cheaper at work, and the food was better, but by now she was tired of it.

Victoria hadn’t always been a waitress in a restaurant that couldn’t figure out what kind of food it served. Not too many years ago she’d been a stock analyst at Voss, Bauer and Murray, a large Wall Street brokerage firm. That was before her looks had left her and she’d been a favorite guest on the financial channels, where she’d confidently explained the machinations of the markets and dispensed advice.

But she’d misread her computer model and made a call for the market to rise, just before the tech stock bubble burst. She’d stubbornly continued her buy recommendation for months, even as tech stocks plunged and dragged virtually every kind of stock down with them. Finally Voss, Bauer and Murray had bought out her contract, and she was unemployed.

It wasn’t her first mistake. Back in ’97 she’d misinterpreted the market’s direction and cost another brokerage firm’s clients millions. She’d been fired then, too, just like after the tech stock massacre a few years ago.

The tech wreck caught her at a particularly bad time. She’d just come off a horrible love affair that had turned violent. Again. So many of the men she loved eventually came to abuse her psychologically and physically. Did she know that going in? Was there a pattern? Her analyst had said yes to both questions. Before she could no longer afford to pay him. At which point he said nothing, refusing even to speak with her on the phone.

Victoria had always been a drinker, but after her health coverage lapsed and she could no longer afford analysis, she developed a closer relationship with the bottle. Gin, wine, beer…it made little difference to her. It was the oblivion at the bottom of the bottle that attracted her. If she hadn’t been totally unemployable before on the Street, she was now. Word of her drinking problem had circulated like a major stock split rumor.

This time the rumor was true enough, Victoria had to admit.

With a great deal of willpower and an effort that left her limp and scared, she’d managed to give up alcohol. Only to discover cocaine.

Kicking hard drugs was the toughest thing she’d ever done. But she did it, and hadn’t had a drink, a snort, or a smoke in over a year.

Now she worked hard hours in a job where hardly anyone knew about her past, about how far she’d fallen. After work she spent most of her time in her apartment, sleeping, watching TV, or in a melancholy stupor simply staring off into memory, sorting through the past and searching for something that attracted and frightened her.