Fear the Night

41

Meg watched the ambulance make its way to the end of the block and turn the corner. Driving slowly through the gray dawn, with emergency lights and siren muted, the vehicle was a somber sight. Across the street from the crime scene, a group of onlookers stood quietly like mourners. The police hadn’t yet identified the homeless man found shot to death on the sidewalk, but he was almost certainly a victim of the Night Sniper.

“The beggar man,” Birdy said next to Meg.

“Down on his luck as far as he could go,” Meg said.

A ten-year-old but immaculate black Buick rounded the corner and parked in a loading zone. Repetto’s personal car that Lora usually drove. As Meg and Birdy watched, Repetto climbed out of the hulking car and straightened up as if his back hurt, then walked toward them. He had a long raincoat on today to guard against the forecast of showers, and with the gray light behind him he reminded Meg of one of those western movie gunfighters wearing a duster.

“Looks like he just rode in on a horse,” Meg said.

Birdy glanced at her. “Huh?”

When Repetto got closer and his shirt and tie were visible, the effect was lost. Meg decided not to explain it to Birdy.

Repetto nodded to them and looked over at the techs and ME departing the scene, then at the bloody concrete where the body had lain. A radio car was parked at the curb and a uniform was still standing guard near the crime scene tape that would soon be removed so the sidewalk could be hosed down.

“Our beggar man?” Repetto asked. He’d been rousted out of bed and his hair was recklessly combed.

“’Fraid so,” Birdy said. “He didn’t have a dime on him, and the Salvation Army woulda turned away his clothes. We don’t have an ID yet. Died sometime between ten and midnight last night. He was shot once in the chest, dead center through the heart.”

“The ME said he was dead when he fell,” Meg said.

Repetto squinted and peered up and down the block. It was early, and people were still asleep. The scene reminded him of a stage set before the actors appeared, other than the mournful supporting cast of onlookers on the opposite sidewalk. “Nobody called this in until this morning?”

“That’s how it went,” Meg said. “A woman in an apartment at the end of the block’s the one who broke the ice. She said she heard what sounded like a shot a little before midnight. Didn’t think much of it and went back to sleep, then got to worrying this morning when she was taking a shower. About the time she called it in, a cleaning woman going to work early found the body and used her cell phone to call the police.”

“The midnight shot dovetails with the approximate time of death,” Repetto said.

“When we talk to people in the buildings around here that have apartments, we’ll find more who heard the shot,” Birdy said confidently. “They don’t like getting involved, but when they learn they weren’t the first to talk to the police, and won’t have to make a statement or testify, they’ll open up some. Like always.”

Repetto simply grunted his agreement. The neighborhood was still waking up. The knot of people that had gathered on the other side of the street had finally dispersed, now that the body had been removed. The last of them, a woman walking a small, poodlike dog on a short leash, disappeared into a building diagonal from where the body had lain. An occasional car passed, headlights still glowing even though it was light out. Half a dozen pedestrians were visible down the block, near the intersection. A tall woman wearing incredibly high-heeled boots and low-cut jeans strode past across the street, staring straight ahead and moving fast, as if she had to be some place soon.

“How do women get into jeans that fit like that?” Birdy asked, watching the woman. He was shaking his head in disapproval at the same time he was making his habitual pecking motion. It made him look like one of those wobbling dashboard dolls that didn’t stop motion until after the car had been parked awhile.

“Last time I heard that question,” Meg said, “I was sixteen.”

A patrol car slid into a parking space behind Repetto’s Buick, and four uniformed cops climbed out. They walked toward the three detectives. Meg noted that the sun was high enough to have ruined the silhouetted gunfighter effect.

One of the uniforms was Nancy Weaver. Meg thought she looked pretty good for such an early hour. Or maybe she hadn’t slept at all last night. A woman like Weaver, who knew where she’d been, what she’d touched?

Meg looked over and saw that Birdy was smiling at her, watching her watching Weaver.

The smile widened. “Thinking catty thoughts?”

“Like maybe I’ll claw your throat out,” Meg said.

Weaver nodded good morning to Repetto and gave him a big grin.

“I’m glad you’re on this,” Repetto told her.

The bastard!

“Fill Weaver in so she can instruct the others,” Repetto told Birdy.

Birdy winked at Meg and moved about twenty feet away so he could talk privately with Weaver.

“Familiar neighborhood,” Repetto said to Meg, who’d been watching Birdy and Weaver.

Meg realized what Repetto had said and refocused her attention. “We’re only a few blocks from the Candle in the Night Theater.”

“In this city,” Repetto said, “the Sniper had plenty of beggar man targets to choose from.”

“You think there’s a connection between our dead beggar and where the Sniper left his last theater seat message?” Meg asked. Repetto was going somewhere with this, and she was intrigued.

“Could be.”

Waiting. Letting me run with it. “Possibly the Sniper lives in the neighborhood,” she suggested. “This particular beggar was convenient.”

“I doubt it,” Repetto said. “Bad guys of all sorts tend not to foul their own nests. It’s human nature, even with the inhumane.”

“Then maybe it was like you said. There are plenty of beggars to shoot. The Sniper was in the neighborhood to see the play and plant his message, and he didn’t have to go far to settle on his next victim.”

“He didn’t kill on the same night he planted the theater seat note,” Repetto said. “He had to have spent time in the neighborhood, seen the beggar man more than once, or he wouldn’t have known his haunts and habits, where he’d likely be so he could be shot.”

“The victim might have had some connection with somebody in the play,” Meg said.

Repetto didn’t answer. She looked at him. He was still regarding her with a faint, anticipatory smile. Wherever he wanted to go with this conversation, they weren’t yet all the way there.

Meg felt something cold walk up her spine. “The Sniper was hanging around the theater to see us! He’s watching us. The bastard is watching us. Maybe he has been for some time.”

Repetto nodded, and the smile stayed but his eyes changed. “Maybe he’s watching us right now.”

Canvassing the neighborhood where the beggar man had died garnered nothing, other than substantiation of the time when the Sniper squeezed the trigger. Half a dozen apartment dwellers reported hearing the shot, and at the same time-a few minutes before midnight. Because of the acoustics of New York, the echoes and reverberations of the shot made it impossible to home in on its source. By the end of the day, they still hadn’t found it.

That evening Repetto drove to Candle in the Night, arriving an hour before curtain, when most of the cast would be present. He was armed with morgue photos of the dead homeless man. They’d done their usual good work at the morgue of making such photos as bearable to view as possible, and these were more pathetic than gruesome. The dead man appeared shrunken and forlorn, as if he were holding back a lifetime of tears that would never be shed.

Straithorn seemed annoyed by Repetto’s presence, but he made the best of it and took him around to show the morgue photos to cast and crew.

There was no reaction until Repetto was introduced to Tiffany Taft, who was fitting herself into a sequined black dress. Tiffany smiled at Repetto as she took a deep breath, exhaled, and with perfect timing a woman from wardrobe zipped up the dress’s back. Repetto returned the smile, thinking Tiffany was one beautiful young woman.

When Straithorn and the woman from wardrobe left, and they were alone in Tiffany’s small dressing room, Tiffany sat on a bench in front of a vanity with a many-lightbulbed makeup mirror that looked like something out of A Star is Born. She worked her dainty feet into black high-heeled shoes. She had perfectly turned ankles.

“I happen to be a theater buff,” Repetto said, “and I think on looks alone, you’ll go far.”

Again the incandescent smile. “That’s so nice of you, Detective. .? ”

“Repetto.”

“But it takes acting talent, too.”

“I’m sure you have it.”

“You’re very kind.”

“You might not think so after I show you these.” He handed her the morgue photos.

“These are of the homeless man who was shot last night?” she said, accepting them.

“I’m afraid so.”

When she looked at the top photo, she gasped.

Repetto studied her eyes and knew she’d recognized the dead man. He waited.

“I don’t know his name,” Tiffany said. She seemed genuinely moved by the man’s death. Repetto reminded himself that she was an actress.

“It’s Joseph DeLong,” he said. “He was identified by his fingerprints.”

“He was a criminal?”

“No, he was in the military. His prints were on file.” Repetto didn’t mention the two pandering convictions.

“Joseph. .” Tiffany looked at herself in the mirror, then in the mirror at Repetto. “I never asked his name. I should have.”

“You knew him?”

“Only as a homeless person who hung out in the neighborhood. After curtain, some of us usually go to a restaurant over on Twelfth Street and have a late snack. I usually left something for. . Joseph. . in a carryout box.”

“You talked to him?”

“No, I left it on top of the trash basket on the corner. He often rooted through its contents. I put the box right where he could reach it. He was almost always outside the restaurant when we came out. He stayed away until we were gone, like he was afraid to talk to us. Or like he was. . ”

“Too proud?”

“Maybe.”

“And you never attempted to speak to him?”

“No. Never.” She sounded defensive.

Repetto smiled at her. “You showed him kindness. There’s no reason to think you should have done more. I’m sure he was grateful.”

She bent down and put on her other shoe.

Repetto wanted to make sure of what she was saying. “So Joseph was a fixture in the neighborhood, especially around the restaurant. And he regarded you as a benefactor.”

“I guess he could count on me for food, if that’s what you mean.”

“I do mean that, and it’s something.” Repetto had the information he wanted confirmed. The beggar man was a neighborhood fixture, and was usually outside the restaurant where Tiffany dined. Repetto wondered if the late and un-mourned Joseph DeLong had been in love with Tiffany. Probably, he thought.

He stood up. “I’ll leave you to concentrate on your performance. It’s been a real pleasure, and I’m sure I’ll see you uptown onstage sometime in the near future.”

She handed him back the morgue photos, having looked at only the top one, and with her smile melted him in a way he’d have thought unlikely. “I hope you’re right,” she said. “And I hope whoever killed Joseph … you find him.”

“We will,” Repetto told her. “You can be sure of it.”

He didn’t tell her she and her beauty and generosity had been the magnetism that had kept Joseph near, and made him predictable prey.

“Good-bye, Detective Repetto.”

He told her good-bye, then almost gave her the traditional Broadway Good luck. “I won’t say it,” he said, pausing at the dressing room door.

She looked puzzled, then grinned. “Oh, that!”

“Your legs are too beautiful.”

Another breathtaking smile. This time with a touch of shyness.

Joseph DeLong hadn’t had a chance.