1975 - Night of the Juggler (21 page)

Gus Soltik took the gun away from Stegg’s limp hand and beat him across the head with it until splinters of bone pierced Joe Stegg’s brain, ending forever his errant and mortal thoughts of a sheltered trailer camp and the best ways to teach youngsters about currents and winds and weather. . . .

Gus Soltik lifted Stegg’s lifeless body high above his head and hurled him with all his strength over a link-chain fence into the shallow water near the pier flanking the boathouse. Then, trembling with fear, his mind in a turmoil of terror, he ran to Kate, who lay dazed on the ground, scooped her up in his arms, and ran north toward his sanctuary, the jungles above the immense reservoir.

The echoes of the shot which Joe Stegg had fired at Gus Soltik reverberated south to where Luther Boyd had been traveling in wide circles to pick up a sign of the Wellingtons. Boyd estimated the sound due north of them, and within a minute or so, running hard, he and Tonnelli arrived at the boathouse, where the Gypsy’s flashlight after a rapid, circular probe, found and focused on the lifeless body of Joe Stegg, drifting with the sluggish current against the pilings of the pier.

While Boyd circled the area in front of the boathouse, bending to inspect the ground, Lieutenant Tonnelli spoke rapidly into his two-way radio.

“Tonnelli here, Sokolsky. I want Garbalotto.”

Within seconds, the detective’s miniature voice was sounding from Tonnelli’s speaker.

“Ten-four, Lieutenant.”

“Garb, we got a dead one, male Caucasian at the Loeb boathouse. That’s where I am. Here’s what I want, and fast. Scramble our helicopters in Brooklyn, tell them to fly north-south patterns at treetop height, with ground beams at full power, starting at Seventy-third Street and crisscrossing the park all the way up to Harlem. I want Patrolman Branch and his crew to bring their dogs up to the boathouse. Make sure everybody snaps ass, Garb. We got him in the cross hairs now.”

Luther Boyd spun around and stared with cold anger at Tonnelli.

“Lieutenant, are you out of your goddamn mind? Countermand those orders and countermand them
now.
”

Tonnelli shook his head with hard finality. “This is police business from now on in, Mr. Boyd.”

“You will countermand those orders, Lieutenant,” Boyd said quietly, and with the words, the Browning automatic came smoothly into his hand in one fluid, disciplined gesture.

Tonnelli looked at the gun, then stared steadily into Boyd’s eyes.

“That’s real stupid, Mr. Boyd,” he said.

“My daughter and that psycho can’t be more than a block or two north of here. You churn the air with choppers, set packs of dogs howling through these woods, he’ll panic. He’ll break my daughter’s neck like a stalk of celery and run for it.”

“I’ll say it once more,” Tonnelli said, his voice rising angrily. “This is a police show, and I’m running it.”

“Then you’ll become a statistic, Lieutenant. One more backfire in Central Park.”

“You’d waste me?” Tonnelli was trembling with fury. “Because I’m doing my job?”

“Countermand those orders, Lieutenant.”

Tonnelli’s heart was pounding like a hammer against his massive rib cage, but there was confusion mingling and tempering his rage because his Sicilian instincts warned him there was logic in Boyd’s thinking. And he had to buy that thinking for another reason because he realized that his grip on life was at this instant slippery and tentative. It wasn’t the gun alone that swayed him, but something in Boyd’s eyes and the way he handled that gun.

The gun appeared to be an extension of Luther Boyd’s character, and Tonnelli knew that no one developed that identity with a weapon, that projection of functional authority, by firing for scores on pistol ranges.

You acquired it by drawing guns and pointing them at people and killing them, not once or twice, but so often that it became as reflexive as breathing.

“You know I’m right, Lieutenant,” Boyd said. “I’ll settle for one half hour. On my own. And I want your word on it. But not at gunpoint.”

To Tonnelli’s total surprise Boyd replaced the Browning beneath the waistband of his slacks, then turned his palms upward in a gesture of powerful supplication.

Gypsy Tonnelli drew a fingernail slowly down the scar that cut across his cheek. “Jesus Christ, you are something else,” he said.

“Just remember, she’s our only child. Do I have your word?”

“Deal,” Tonnelli said, and spoke again into his two-way radio.

“Garbalotto?”

“Right here, Lieutenant.”

“Cancel those last orders. Hold the choppers and dogs.”

“Any reason? In case the chiefs ask?”

“Yes. The girl’s safety.” Tonnelli said, and broke the connection.

“Thank you,” Boyd said.

“I hope to God you’re as good as you think you are,” Tonnelli said.

“We just turned off a ton of professional help.”

“Come over here,” Boyd said, and walked north along the path. When he stopped and pointed at the ground, Tonnelli saw imprints in the soggy ground of the Juggler’s Wellingtons and near them, like rubies in moonlight, drops of blood in stark relief against hoarfrost gleaming on the grass. Boyd bent over and picked from the ground a tuft of brown woolen shreds, darkened with blood.

“There was only one shot fired,” Boyd said. He looked at the bloody twist of wool in his hand, then threw it aside. “He’s wounded, which could slow him down,” he said. “And since I haven’t been able to find the gun, we can assume he’s armed.”

“Two things,” Tonnelli said, speaking rapidly and insistently because he knew that Boyd was tensed to run. “You got my word for that half hour. But we got two borough commanders, two-star cops at the command post. They’re in charge; they could countermand me with a finger snap. This is a chance to show taxpayers how their money’s spent. Helicopters, Dobermans, squads racing in and out of CP with dome lights flashing. So you may not get that full half hour, Colonel.

“And the last thing. We don’t take prisoners tonight. That’s my side of the deal. Whoever finds that bastard wastes him. I don’t have your word on that, you don’t have
my
word on anything.”

Boyd bitterly remembered Isaiah: “We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement.”

“You have my word,” Luther Boyd said.

“Then let’s go,” Tonnelli said.

Boyd was off immediately with long, smooth strides, his body merging and disappearing in the shadows of big trees, but before the Gypsy had covered a dozen yards, the growling voice of Deputy Chief of Detectives Walter Greene sounded from his radio, jerking him to a stop like a dog on a taut leash.

“Tonnelli?”

“Ten-four, Chief.”

“Why did you countermand those orders to Garbalotto?”

Tonnelli swallowed a dryness in his throat. “Colonel Luther Boyd, the girl’s father, believes the Juggler is only a couple of minutes ahead of us.”

“And since when the fuck is Colonel Luther Boyd running the New York police department!” The chief’s voice was rising in a blend of exasperation and anger. “We got a skirmish line moving north past Seventy-second. We got guys in blue stretched all across Transverse Three. I told you once before I don’t like my lieutenants out on these Dick Tracy hero bullshit deals. We got a hairy night, Gypsy. So get your ass back to the command post. I want you to take the chiefs off my back and run this show you put your neck on the line for. That’s an order. You got it?”

Tonnelli felt that his heart might literally explode with frustration. He said bitterly, “Yes, Chief. Tell Garb to send a car for me at Seventy-second Street and the Bethesda Fountain.”

“One more thing. Bring that goddamn Luther Boyd in with you. I want him out of the park, permanent.”

“Too late, sir. He’s gone.”

Retired Detective Samuel “Babe” Fritzel stood in shadows on a serpentine pathway that followed a curving course through Central Park’s forty-odd-acre bird and animal sanctuary. Babe Fritzel had entered the park on Central Park West between Seventy-first and Seventy-second streets. After striking up a pointedly casual conversation with a veteran patrolman named John Moody, Fritzel had shown him his gold badge and mentioned that Lieutenant Tonnelli had asked to meet him at the PD command post.

It had been that simple. Moody hadn’t known anything about Howard Unruh, and it had been the Babe’s pleasure to brief him on that particular case. (“You guys’ll probably never see anything like it. Man walking down a street with a rifle, blasting people every which way. Thirteen of them in all. Just as cool as if he was in a shooting gallery. Even got an old lady parked at a stoplight. It was an honor, I tell you, like a medal, to be the cop that put the cuffs on Unruh that day.”) Now Babe Fritzel stood with a hand on the butt of his gun, eyes narrowed to catch anything moving in the shadows. He could still show them a thing or two. These young cops thought a guy of seventy-four should be in a cemetery or on display like a freak. He might not make the kill tonight, but he’d be close to it. And that would be like another medal. Babe Fritzel was thinking, and would add a luster to fresh stories he could tell while working the bar in the Elks’ Club.

At the intersection of Eighth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street, Tonnelli told Prima to stop and pull over to the curb; he had spotted Coke Roosevelt standing on a corner talking with a group of young black studs.

Tonnelli climbed from the squad and walked across the sidewalk to Coke, who greeted him by touching his fingers to the wide brim of his digger’s hat, a mocking little salute. In the patrol car Prima unholstered his gun and held it just below the window of the passenger seat.

Tonnelli’s smile was as cold and insincere as Coke’s.

“Got anything for us, gold-nose?”

The soft glow of yellow and green fluorescent lights seemed to intensify a jungle tone in these car-infested Manhattan trails. Soul rock blared from music shops, angry and defiant like tribal drums.

Tonnelli glanced at Coke Roosevelt and the dark, impassive faces of the young men circling him, the odd gold tooth gleaming against red lips and black skins. The city was turning into a nightmare you couldn’t wake up from, he thought, not with rancor but with regret. It was the Gypsy’s city, his fierce Camelot, and he loved it. But the relentless competition for clean space and air and silence was transforming its people into a breed crazed for the simple fundamentals of existence.

“We got a name,” Coke said. “Like Gus Soltik.”

“Got an address to go with it?”

“No, and we ain’t got his Social Security number or his fingerprints,” Coke Roosevelt said dryly.

Tonnelli looked up and down the street. “Don’t press it, gold-nose. Where’d you get the name?”

“Sam spread two big ones in the street. Some dude pinned the description to the name. He seen him once up in the Bronx. Remembered his name.”

“Not that I care, but I’m curious,” Tonnelli said. “Where’d he get the description? It wasn’t on the air, and it’s not in the papers.”

“Maybe one of your boys in blue talked in his sleep.”

“One of the black boys in blue?”

“Now you said that, Lieutenant.” Coke grinned at the young blacks who were watching his performance with wide smiles. “You cats hear me say anything like that?”

They shook their heads, and one of them said, “Naw, no way,” in a soft, drawling voice.

“I told you, it didn’t matter,” Tonnelli said. “Tell Samantha thanks.”

“Why don’t you tell her your own self, Lieutenant?”

As the squad car rolled south again Tonnelli checked his watch, then asked for Garbalotto on his radio.

When Garbalotto came in Tonnelli said, “Garb, I got a name for you. Gus Soltik. Could be the Juggler. Start checking Motors, phone books in all boroughs, the FBI, Social Security, criminal records, everything we’ve got.”

“Right, Lieutenant.” Garbalotto lowered his voice. “Something you should know, Gypsy. Your last orders to me got tipped over by the chiefs. They’ve scrambled the choppers and sent dog teams up to Seventy-fifth Street.”

“All right,” Tonnelli said, and with a weary sigh broke the connection.

Glancing at his watch, he saw that Luther Boyd hadn’t got his half hour after all. Just seventeen minutes to be exact, and if Boyd was right, the little girl didn’t have a prayer in hell now.

Chapter 19

He had been moving slowly and cautiously through a grove of white trees, his big hand tight on the collar of her ski jacket, when he first heard the strange music on the horizon. It confused and hurt him because its rhythm matched the throbbing pain in his left arm. It had made him anxious and fearful because where he expected comforting silence there was instead a relentless barrier of noise.

He stopped and listened, his senses alert to danger. Kate twisted her head to look up at him, trying to learn something from the fear and confusion in his face.

Gus Soltik, still clutching the girl’s collar, made his way west, trying to turn the corner of that sound. Then he retraced his steps, pulling Kate behind him. But there was no break in the wall. The rhythm was relentless, blocking his way and matching the pulsing pain in his arm. The sound made him think, or try to think, which was worse. The security beyond the reservoir, the dark paths, the silent stretch of trees, that was denied to him now, taken from him by the music.

Music frightened and angered Gus Soltik because he didn’t understand it. Even at the Delacorte clock with Lanny he was puzzled and sometimes angered by people who smiled and snapped their fingers to the music of the prancing little animals. He had never known the thrill of a marching band. He had never shared a song with a girl. He had never been sung to sleep. Thus the sounds that other men smiled at were frightening assaults on his senses. At work, pushing refuse into heaps, browned cabbage leaves, bruised and rotting fruit, he would hear noise from the radio, and one clerk might nod to another and say something like, “
Compadre
, remember where we go after that night at Joselita’s?” And the reply would be equally unintelligible to Gus Soltik. Perhaps: “Ah, she was
bonita
, you lucky
pavo
.” Music evoked a world which Gus Soltik had been forbidden to enter.