Lady Killer

CHAPTER SEVEN

Meyer Meyer had raised the shade covering the grilled window facing the park, so that sunshine splashed on to the desk near the window where the men were having lunch.

From where Carella sat at the end of the desk facing the window and the park, he could see out across the street, could see the greenery rolling away from the stone wall that divided the park from the pavement.

'Suppose this isn't a specific lady?' Meyer asked. 'Suppose we're on the wrong track?'

'What do you mean?' Carella asked, biting into a sandwich. The sandwich had been ordered at Charlie's Delicatessen, around the corner. It nowhere compared with the sandwiches Carella's wife, Teddy, made.

'We're assuming this nut has a particular dame on his mind,' Meyer said. 'A dame called The Lady. This may not be so.'

'Go ahead,' Hawes said.

'This is a terrible sandwich,' Carella said.

'They get worse all the time,' Meyer agreed. 'There's a new place, Steve. The Golden Pot. Did you see it? It's on Fifth, just off Culver Avenue. Willis ate there. Says it's pretty good.'

'Does he deliver?' Carella asked.

'If he doesn't, he's passing up a gold mine,' Meyer said. 'With all the fressers in this precinct.'

'What about The Lady?' Hawes asked.

'On my lunch hour he wants me to think, yet,' Meyer said.

'Do we need that shade up?' Carella asked.

'Why not?' Meyer said. 'Let the sunshine in.'

'Something's blinking in my eyes,' Carella said.

'So move your chair.'

Carella shoved back his chair.

'What about—' Hawes started.

'All right, all right,' Meyer said. 'This one is eager. He's bucking for commissioner.'

'He's liable to make it,' Carella said.

'Suppose you were pasting up this damn letter?' Meyer asked. 'Suppose you were looking through the New York Times for words? Suppose all you wanted to say was, "I'm going to kill a woman tonight at eight. Try and stop me." Do you follow me so far?'

'I follow you,' Hawes said.

'Okay. You start looking. You can't find the word eight, so you improvise. You cut out a Ballantine-beer thing, and you use that for a figure eight. You can't find the words I'm going, but you do find I will, so you use those instead. Okay, why can't the same thing apply to The Lady?'

'What do you mean?'

'You want to say a woman. You search through the damn paper, and you can't find those words. You're looking through the book section, and you spot the ad for the Conrad Richter novel. Why not? you say to yourself. Woman, lady, the same thing. So you cut out The Lady. It happens to be capitalized because it's the title of a novel. That doesn't bother you because it conveys the meaning you want. But it can set the cops off on a wild-goose chase looking for a capitalized Lady when she doesn't really exist.'

'If this guy had the patience to cut out and paste up every letter in the word tonight,' Carella said,'then he knew exactly what he wanted to say, and if he couldn't find the exact word he created it.'

'Maybe, maybe not,' Hawes said.

'There are only so many ways to say tonight,' Meyer said.

'He could have said this evening,' Carella said. 'I mean, using your theory. But he wanted to say tonight, so he clipped out every letter he needed to form the word. I don't buy your theory, Meyer.' He moved his chair again. 'That damn thing is still blinking in the park.'

'Okay, don't buy it,' Meyer said. 'I'm just saying this nut may be ready to kill any woman, and not a specific woman called The Lady.'

Carella was pensive.

'If that's the case,' Hawes said, 'we've got nothing to go on. The victim could be any woman in the city. Where do we start?'

'I don't know,' Meyer said. He shrugged and sipped at his coffee. 'I don't know.'

'In the Army,' Carella said slowly, 'we were always warned about…'

Meyer turned to him. 'Huh?' he asked.

'Binoculars,' Carella said. 'Those are binoculars.'

'What do you mean?'

'In the park,' he said. 'The bunking. Somebody's using binoculars.'

'Okay,' Meyer said, shrugging it off. 'But if the victim is any woman, we've got about a chance in five million of stopping—'

'Who'd be training binoculars on the precinct?' Hawes asked slowly.

The men fell suddenly silent.

'Can he see into this room?' Hawes asked.

'Probably,' Carella said. Unconsciously, their voices had dropped to whispers, as if their unseen observer could also hear them.

'Just keep sitting and talking,' Hawes whispered. 'I'll go out and down the back way.'

'I'll go with you,' Carella said.

'No. He may run if he sees too many of us leaving.'

'Do you think—?' Meyer started.

'I don't know,' Hawes said, rising slowly.

'You can save us a lot of time,' Carella whispered. 'Good luck, Cotton.'

Hawes emerged into the alley that ran behind the precinct just outside the detention cells on the ground floor. He slammed the heavy steel door shut behind him, and then started through the alley. Idiotically, his heart was pounding.

Easy does it, he told himself. We've got to play this easy or the bird will fly, and we'll be left with The Lady again, or maybe Anywoman, Anywoman in a city teeming with women of all shapes and sizes. So, easy. Play it easy. Sprinkle the salt on to the bird's tail, and if the bastard tries to run, clobber him or shoot him, but play it easy, slow and easy, play it like a 'Dragnet' cop, with all the tune in the world, about to interrogate the slowest talker in the United States.

He ran to the alley mouth and then cut into the street. The sidewalk was packed with people sucking in fetid air. A stickball game was in progress up the street, and farther down toward the end of the block, a bunch of kids had turned on a fire hydrant and were romping in the released lunge of water, many of them fully clothed. Some of the kids, Hawes noticed, were wearing dungarees and striped tee shirts. He turned right, putting the stickball game and the fire hydrant behind him. What does a good cop do on the hottest day of the year? he wondered. Allow the kids to waste the city's water supply and cause possible danger should the fire department need that hydrant? Or use a Stillson wrench on the hydrant and force the kids back into a sweltering, hot inactivity, an inactivity that causes street gangs and street rumbles and possibly more danger than a fire would cause?

What does the good cop do? Side with the madam of a whorehouse, or side with the good citizen trying to cheat her?

Why should cops have to worry about philosophy, Hawes wondered, worrying about philosophy all the while.

He was running.

He was running, and he was sweating like a basement cold-water pipe—but the park was dead ahead, and the man with the binoculars was in that park somewhere.

'Is he still there?' Meyer asked.

'Yes,' Carella said.

'Jesus, I'm afraid to move. Do you think he tipped to Hawes?'

'I don't think so.'

'One good thing,' Meyer said.

'What's that?'

'With all this action, my sandwich tastes better.'

The man in the park sat cross-legged on the huge rock, the binoculars pointed at the precinct. There were two cops seated at the desk now, eating sandwiches and talking. The big red-headed one had got up a few minutes ago and leisurely walked away from the desk. Perhaps he'd gone for a glass of water, or maybe a cup of coffee? Did they make coffee inside a precinct? Were they allowed to do that? In any case, he had not come out of the building, so he was still inside somewhere.

Maybe he'd been called by the captain or the lieutenant or whoever was his superior. Maybe the captain was all in a dither about the letter and wanted action instead of men sitting around having lunch.

In a way, their having lunch annoyed him. He knew they had to eat, of course—everybody has to eat, even cops—but hadn't they taken his letter seriously? Didn't they know he was going to kill? Wasn't it their job to stop someone from killing? For Christ's sake, hadn't he warned them? Hadn't he given them every possible chance to stop him? So why the hell were they sitting around eating sandwiches and chatting? Was this what the city paid cops for?

Disgustedly, he put down the binoculars.

He wiped sweat from his upper lip. His lip felt funny, swollen. Cursing the heat, he pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket.

'It's gone,' Carella said.

'What! What!'

'The bunking. It's gone.'

'Can Hawes be there already?' Meyer asked.

'No, it's too soon. Maybe the guy's leaving. Goddamnit, why didn't we—'

'There it is! The bunking, Steve. He's still there!'

Carella sighed heavily. His hands were clenched on the desk top. He forced himself to pick up his coffee container and sip at it.

Come on, Cotton, he thought. Move!

He ran along the park's paths, wondering where the man with the binoculars was. People turned to look at him as he hurried by. It was strange to see a man running at any time, but especially strange on a day as hot as this one. Invariably the passers-by looked behind Hawes to see who was chasing him, fully expecting a uniformed cop with a drawn gun in hot pursuit.

A high spot, he figured. If he's able to see the second floor of the precinct, it has to be from a high spot. The brow of a hill, or a big rock, but something high, something close to the street where the park ground slopes up to meet the pavement.

Is he armed?

If he's going to kill someone tonight, he's probably armed right now, too. Unconsciously, Hawes touched his back, hip pocket, felt the reassuring bulge of his .38. Should he take the gun out now? No. Too many people on the paths. A gun might panic them. One of them might think Hawes was on the opposite side of the law and get heroic, try to stop an escaping thief. No. The gun stayed where it was for now.

He began climbing into the bushes, feeling the slope of the ground beneath his feet. Somewhere high, he thought. It has to be high, or the man can't see. The ground was sharply sloping now, gently rolling grass and earth giving way to a steeply pitched outcropping of rock. Is this the rock? Hawes wondered. Is this the right rock? Is my bird up here?

He drew his .38.

He was breathing hard from the climb. Sweat stained his armpits and the back of his shirt. Small pebbles had found their way into his shoes.

He reached the top of the rock. There was no one there.

In the distance, he could see the precinct.

And off to the left, sitting on another high rock, he could see a man crouched over a pair of binoculars.

Hawes's heart unexpectedly lurched into his throat.

'What do you see?'Meyer asked.

'Nothing.'

'He's still there?'

'The sun's still on the binoculars.'

'Where the hell is Hawes!'

'It's a big park,' Carella said charitably.

Sitting on the rock, the man with the binoculars thought he heard a sound in the bushes. Slowly he turned, lowering the glasses. Barely breathing, he listened.

He could feel the hackles at the back of his neck rising. Suddenly he was drenched with sweat. He wiped beads of perspiration from the swollen feel of his upper lip.

There was an unmistakable thrashing in the woods.

He listened.

Was it a kid?

Lovers?

Or a cop?

Run, his mind shrieked. The thought ricocheted inside his skull, but he sat riveted to the rock. They'll stop me, he thought.

But so soon? So soon? After all the planning? To be stopped so soon?

The noise in the woods was closer now. He saw the glint of sunlight on metal. Goddamnit, why hadn't he taken the gun with him? Why hadn't he prepared for something like this? His eyes anxiously scanned the barren surface of the rock. There was a high bush at the base of the stone surface. Crawling on his belly, the binoculars clutched in his right hand, he moved toward the bush. The sunlight caught at something bright, something non-metallic this time. Red. Red hair! The cop who'd left the desk! He held his breath. The thrashing in the woods stopped. From where he crouched behind the bush, he could see the red hair and only that. And then the head ducked, and then reappeared. The cop was advancing. He would pass directly in front of the bush.

The man with the binoculars waited. His hand on the metal was sweating. He could see the cop plainly now, advancing slowly, a gun in his right hand.

Patiently he waited. Maybe he wouldn't be seen. Maybe if he stayed right where he was, he wouldn't be discovered. No. No, that was foolish. He had to get out of this. He had to get out of it, or be caught, and it was too soon to be caught, too damned soon.

Hefting the binoculars like a mace, he waited.

From where Hawes advanced through the bushes, he could hear no sound. The park seemed to have gone suddenly still. The birds were no longer chattering in the trees. The sound of muted voices, which hung on the air like a swarm of insects, drifting over the paths and the lake and the trees, had suddenly quieted. There was only the bright sun overhead and the beginnings of the sloping rock, a huge bush on Hawes's left, and the frightening sudden silence.

He could feel danger, could sense it in every nerve ending, could feel it throbbing in every bone marrow. He had felt this way the time he'd been knifed, could remember the startling appearance of the blade, the naked light bulb glinting on metal, the hurried, desperate lunge for his back pocket and his revolver. He could remember the blurred swipe of the blade, the sudden warmth over his left temple, the feel of blood gushing on to his face. And then, unable to reach his gun before the slashing knife was pulled back, he had struck out with his fists, struck repeatedly until the knife had clattered to the hallway floor, until his assailant had been a blubbering quivering hulk against the wall, and still he had hit him, hit him until his knuckles had bled.

This time he had a gun in his hand. This time he was ready. And still, danger prickled his scalp, rushed up his spinal column with tingling ferocity.

Cautiously he advanced.

The blow struck him on his right wrist.

The blow was sharp, the biting impact of metal hitting bone. His hand opened, and the .38 clattered to the rock surface. He whirled in time to see the man raise the binoculars high. He brought his hands up to protect his face. The binoculars descended, the lenses catching sunlight, glittering crazily. For a maniacal, soundless moment he saw the man's frenzied, twisted face, and then the binoculars struck, smashing into Hawes's hands. He felt intense pain. He clenched his fists, threw a punch, and then saw the binoculars go up again and down, and he knew they would strike his face this time. Blindly he clutched at them.

He felt metal strike his palms, and then he closed his hands and wrenched at the glasses with all his strength, pulling at them. He felt them come free. The man stood stock-still for just a moment, surprise stamped on his face. Then he broke into a run.

Hawes dropped the glasses.

The man was in the bushes by the time Hawes retrieved the .38.

He picked up the gun and fired into the air. He fired into the air again, and then he thrashed into the bushes after the man.

When Carella heard the shots in the squad-room, he shoved back his chair and said, 'Let's go, Meyer.'

They found Hawes sitting on a patch of grass in the park. He'd lost their man, he said. They examined his wrist and his hands. There didn't seem to be any broken bones. He led them back to the rock where he'd been ambushed, and again he said, 'I lost him. I lost the bastard.'

'Maybe you didn't,' Carella said.

Spreading a handkerchief over his palm, he picked up the binoculars.