Fear the Night

11

Zoe Brady watched the balding guy in the produce department as he fingered some arugula. He was in his late thirties, a little overweight, nice clothes and an expensive-looking ring that wasn’t a wedding band on his left hand. He’d be fairly good looking without his glasses-if he ever was without them.

Maybe a keeper.

As he examined a pyramid of apples, he glanced her way. He was aware she’d been staring at him.

Zoe had picked up men before in her neighborhood grocery store. What better place to troll for men, to snare them unaware while they were thinking about food? Of course, they thought they’d picked up her. It was a game she knew and played very well.

She went to the zucchinis and touched one, then another, leaning forward so her skirt rose slightly in back. Give the guy a leg show. When she straightened up, she shook her head helplessly and approached him.

“I’m really sorry I have to ask,” she said, “but do you know what arugula is? I think it’s like a lettuce.”

He smiled, a little shy, and not quite believing his luck. “Sure. It’s right over there.” He pointed. “The ruffly-looking stuff.”

“Ruffly. That’s just what it looks like. Are you a writer?”

He laughed. Nice teeth. “No, I’m an accountant.”

“Oh. I thought, the way you knew about and described arugula, maybe you wrote advertising.” She gave him her best hesitant smile. She could play shy, too. “Thanks.”

“Thanks?”

“I mean, for knowing about the arrugla. I’ve got to buy this stuff to take to a dinner party where we’re all supposed to bring something. I’m bringing salad, and the host asked specifically for arugula.”

“She can keep it. It’s kind of bitter.”

“Really? Maybe she wants it because of her religion or something. Or for her health.” Zoe doing naive now. “I don’t know her well.”

“I don’t know you well, either,” he said, “but I’d like to.”

“You don’t know me at all.”

“True, but I want to change that.” He reached into a wallet he carried inside his sport jacket instead of on his hip-sometimes a sign of wealth-and handed her his business card. It said he was Herb Closeman and confirmed that he was an accountant, for a firm Zoe had never heard of.

“Mr. Closeman-”

“It’s Herb.”

“Okay, Herb.” She slid his card into a pocket. “It’s funny,” she said, “your name’s Herb and we met when I asked you about a herb.”

“Clearly it’s fate.”

“Clearly. I wouldn’t want you to think-”

“I’m not even going to ask for your name and phone number,” he said. “You have mine. Think about it, and if you’re at all interested, call me.”

She grinned and shrugged. “Well, that’s a safe enough proposition.”

“I’m a safe enough guy. Really.”

She held out her hand and they shook. “I’m Zoe.”

“A nice name for a nice woman.” He seemed to catch himself; nice hadn’t been strong enough. “And a beautiful woman.”

“So now we know each other,” Zoe said, “however slightly. But I have to buy my arugula and get out of here or I’ll be late for that dinner party.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” Closeman said. “Take a chance and call me, Zoe.”

“Okay, Zoe,” she said with a big grin.

Herb appeared confused for a moment, then grinned back.

She favored him with her brightest smile, chose a plastic container of arugala, and left the store.

On the way to her apartment, she tossed the stuff in a trash receptacle.

An hour later she sat, brushing her hair and getting ready to meet some friends at a restaurant for dinner and drinks. She was proud of her long red hair, so thick and slightly wavy, what some men might call luxurious. Some, in fact, had called it that. Herb Closeman was right, she thought, observing her reflection in the mirror. Beautiful wasn’t too strong a word for her.

Neither was smart. And ambitious certainly applied.

She forgot about Closeman as she continued to brush, absently counting toward a hundred. Her mind drifted to Lora Repetto’s discovery of the theater stub in the pocket of Repetto’s suit. The seat number hadn’t been a wild coincidence.

The Night Sniper must have been shadowing Repetto, studying him, and followed him into the theater, maybe even sat near him. Repetto had been in seat 7-F in the Bernhardt Theatre, and now there was no doubt as to the reference in the Night Sniper’s message. This, Zoe thought as she brushed, was definitely creepy.

Taped unobtrusively on the bottom of the seat, where Repetto had sat a week ago to see War Bond Babes, a musical about New York debutantes during World War Two, police had found a small, folded note. Its typed message was simple and cryptic: Detective Repetto, perhaps this will help you find rhyme and reason.

The lab had matched the typeface with that of the Night Sniper’s previous message. The typewriter used was the Night Sniper’s. The meaning of the note had yet to be figured out.

The killer playing his game.

She closely examined her image in the mirror. There were crow’s-feet at the corners of her blue-green eyes, if she looked closely enough. The beginnings of bags beneath her eyes.

Is it age or booze? Am I drinking too much lately?

She pushed such a notion from her mind and thought not of Herb Closing but of Repetto. Maybe he intrigued her because he held a certain contempt for her. Men who disdained her for some reason attracted her. They frightened her, too, which was also an attraction.

Zoe had heard about Repetto, of course. Everybody in the NYPD had heard of him. She’d even been introduced to him once, at a police awards dinner about a year ago, and had struck up an acquaintance with his wife, Lora. Now, during her lunches with Lora, she tried to learn about Repetto while Lora tried to learn about the Night Sniper.

But like a cop’s good wife, Lora didn’t reveal much about her husband.

Zoe continued using the brush beyond a hundred, maybe because she was preoccupied thinking about Repetto.

Repetto had earned a rare respect from hard men. She’d expected him to be a macho type, and she supposed he was. But there was something else about him, after Dal Bricker’s death, that touched her. The pain in him was like an aura. So palpable was Repetto’s grief that Zoe felt she might extend a hand and touch it. A man who grieved for a friend so intensely, there must be a certain worth to him. And there was something more in him than pain and grief; there was a quiet rage, tightly sprung and dangerous, that she knew so well.

She’d seen it in some of the killers she interviewed in prison, the ones who, when pressed, would admit that if free they would kill again. They were way past any sort of identity crisis. They knew precisely who they were and what they must and would do. The dark power that drove them was a simple and accepted fact, and a commitment that lent them a terrible calculating strength.

Repetto wasn’t a killer. At least not that kind of killer. Zoe had met enough killers to know that about him. He wasn’t like the sick, delusional animals with pieces of themselves missing, who could freeze other humans with their utter contempt or disregard.

Repetto was simply a good man who had made up his mind to kill. There was a difference.

Zoe listened to the brush’s stiff bristles sigh through her hair and told herself there was a difference.

Meg had dropped in at Kung Foo Go and was going to eat Chinese carryout in her West Side apartment. She didn’t mind living alone or eating alone. It had been two years since her divorce from Chip and she still hated the bastard. Who did he think he was? Swinging on me? Thinking he was going to beat me like the other pitiful women I see every week in my job?

She remembered slipping Chip’s second punch, after the first had broken her nose, then grabbing his arm and jerking him off balance, bending the arm back and back, hearing him scream as his elbow slipped its socket.

Meg could still hear that scream sometimes at night. It made her feel better.

Since Chip, Meg was off men. Couldn’t trust the bastards. It was built into them. Now distrust was built into her. She knew it and couldn’t care less.

She was attractive in a tomboy, scruffy way, so she’d had to get used to rebuffing men who were drawn by her dark eyes, the way her short black hair curled and made her face seem even more elfin despite her now habitual deadpan expression. She knew she looked like a somber leprechaun, but apparently some men liked that.

Like this character, young and fresh-faced, handsome in a naive way, with curly blond hair and a loping way of walking that reminded her of a big friendly puppy. He’d been watching her at the carryout counter in Kung Foo Go, and here he was loping along behind her like some amiable stray hoping for a scrap of food.

Meg turned. “Do we know each other?”

The kid stopped and looked stunned. “No. I, uh, saw you back in the restaurant and I. . I just wanted to talk to you.” He tried a smile but it died in a hurry.

“So talk.”

Hope flared in his wide, puppy eyes and his smile was back. “I-”

“Yeah, you,” Meg said impatiently.

“I found you so pretty I wanted to talk to you.” He raised a hand palm out. “Don’t get the wrong idea.”

“So what’s the right idea?”

“I was-I am-lonely, and there was something about you that made me think you, uh, might wanna talk, is all.”

“What’s your name?” Meg asked.

“Daryl.”

“Listen, Daryl, you’re fucking with a cop here.”

“Cop?” He backed up a step, stunned. “You?”

“Me. You know those big red peppers they put in Chinese food?”

“Yeah.”

“You bother me again and I’m gonna shove one up your ass.”

He looked small enough to dive into a crack in the sidewalk.

Meg turned and stalked away, keeping a tight grip on her carryout bag. She waited for the guy to yell at her, call her a bitch, or something worse. It was New York. That was the way it worked.

But the kid remained silent.

After half a block she turned around to glare at him, but he was gone. She calmed down some and walked on, listening to her heels tapping the pavement.

Nice young guy, really, Daryl. Playing out of his league. All he wanted was … what they all want, and she’d cut him off at the knees and left him bleeding on the sidewalk. Now she felt bad about it.

But not real bad.

After locking herself in her apartment, Meg placed the white carryout containers on the coffee table, then went into the kitchen and returned with a can of Pepsi, a fork, and a paper towel to use as a napkin. She worked her shoes off her tired feet, then sat on the sofa and used the remote to switch on New York 1 news on TV.

She opened the white cartons and used her fork to take a bit of noodles, then sat back against the soft cushions and sipped from the soda can.

It had been a hell of a day, reviewing once again the Night Sniper murder files, interviewing witnesses who were tired of telling their stories, talking on the phone with other witnesses. None of it had gotten them anywhere yet, but it was good, solid police work and might still pay dividends. That was how it worked in the Job-thoroughness, doggedness, eventually paid off. Most of the time, anyway. Something would fit, or wouldn’t fit, and the picture would emerge. Though Meg was exhausted, she was satisfied with the work she and her fellow detectives had done. Her work was the one thing in life that did afford her some measure of satisfaction, a reason to anticipate tomorrow and to climb out of bed in the morning. Right now, it was enough. It gave her purpose and identity. It made her different from the furniture.

She thought about the Night Sniper’s note to Repetto: Perhaps this will help you find rhyme and reason.

The play in the theater where the note was found was War Bond Babes. Meg had read about it in the Post. Rhyme, reason, and debutantes. . Was there any meaning there at all except in the mind of a deranged killer? Maybe the poor schmuck had married a debutante type and gotten what he should have expected.

Meg relaxed and let her subconscious worry at the puzzle. Probably she’d watch TV after supper and fall asleep on the sofa. Hers was a lonely life, and a defensive one. She was comfortable in her tiny apartment, chomping noodles, sipping soda, watching Seinfeld and Law and Order reruns, not unhappy, not exactly happy, passing time without incurring further injury.

It was a life.