T. Parker: Summer Of Fear

I pulled back the heavy dining room chair and sat before the typewriter.

"I took the seven o'clock out this morning."

"How did you make that last call register in Brooklyn?'

"I have call forwarding in my little cage in Brooklyn. Your CNI intercept tells you that the call originated there. Actually, made it from your study and routed it through New York."

"Clever."

"All of these gadgets and tricks are in the public realm now. It's part of the peace dividend. Most people don't know ^ that. Most people are idiots. All I used was some very basic electronic know-how. Of course, two years at the central phone office in Laguna didn't hurt me."

As I sat there, I got my first truly good look at the Midnight Eye. He was as tall as we suspected-six three perhaps-and heavily, though softly, built. Even from this distance, it was easy to see that the beard and disheveled red-brown hair were false. But aside from his size and the piecemeal manner of his disguise, little about the man himself commanded the kind of dread we had all felt looking at the things he had done. His eyes were very dark brown. They had a brightness to them, a luminosity that was intensified by the ceiling lamp. They were slow eye deliberate and calm. His skin was pale, and I noted that his fingers, wrapped around the handle of the gun, were plum; with longish nails. His legs were heavy and large, and his feet quite big, which gave him a bottom-heavy, weighted appearance. Magnifying this effect was his slight pigeon-toed stance. A flicker of anger charged his eyes when mine met them again.

"It's not polite to stare."

From what I could judge from Mary Ing's earlier picture I was now looking at a disguised version of William Fredrick Ing. Rather, reverse-disguised, to mimic an earlier manifestation of himself. What did he really look like now, beneath the fake hair and beard? Wald and I had been right-the Midnight Eye had been impersonating an "other" all along, playing a part in his own ritual. As we had suspected, Ing had been able to work, move about in public, and continue his murderous nights because in real life, he looked little like the beast he could become. Now I knew why he had been so nonchalant about our presenting his picture to the public, precisely because it was an image that no one would recognize. Except, of course, his own mother.

"You have one m-m-more article to write," he said. "I'll tell you what to say. Put in the paper."

I scrolled in a sheet and threw back the carriage return. Again I trained my ears for some sound of life in the room above. Nothing. Not so much as a rustle of sheets, a breath.

"Now," he said. "The first two sentences should read, The 'Midnight Eye' is not William Ing, as earlier stories have c-c-claimed. I met him personally just last night and he assured me of this."

I typed the sentences.

"Do you like the lead?" he asked.

"I'd change it a little."

"How?"

"I think I'd say… William Fredrick Ing, the notorious Midnight Eye, visited me last night in my home. First, he killed my wife's nurse, then my wife, and by the time you read this, he will have killed me, too."

"No. Don't get ahead of things. You have some of it right, and some of it wrong. You don't have to worry about Isabella. Sh-sh-sh. And I have only one name-the Midnight Eye. Ing is a person who used to be and is no more. You must remain accurate as a reporter, right?"

"That's right."

"Next sentence: He is a tall and powerful man, who commands respect even with a glance of his dark eyes."

I typed it. "He's a tall and powerful man," I said, "who was picked on when he was a kid and didn't have any friend He didn't have much of a family life, either. Very early, he began a secret life of his own."

"No! If you write one word of that, I'll kill you and finish it myself. I can t-t-type!" He extended the gun toward me, dark barrel a condensed version of the black eternity into which he would certainly blow me.

"I'm just saying it," I said. "I didn't write it. I'm saying you were a kid who got torn up by his own dogs on the Fourth July. You walked in on your parents and got slapped for your concern. You were a miserable kid. You weren't always the Midnight Eye. Why not include that?"

"Because it isn't relevant."

"Can you explain?"

"The Midnight Eye was born. He did not develop. He was. chosen. Your next paragraph goes like this: According to the Eye himself, he has had murderous impulses for almost all life. He began by killing animals. As a young man, he saw the rape of the county by foreigners, people who came to Orange County only to make money. The Midnight Eye then realized his calling."

I typed out the graph and waited, staring into his dark bright eyes.

He continued. "And as the Midnight Eye's body grew lean and strong, his urges became tied to a greater good."

"The good of killing people not like him?"

"The good of killing the parasites and leeches. The good of clean sand and skies. Of earth in balance, and all people their places."

"I'd change that."

"How?"

"I'd say, He looked for God and when he didn't find him, he began to think he was God himself."

"Not true. I am merely a servant. Write that! The Midnight Eye claims he is only a servant."

"Of what?"

"Of… history. Of progress toward the future. Of… redreaming our way out of what has gone wrong here."

I wrote this down.

Ing stood for a long moment, apparently lost for words.

"Can I see your face?" I asked.

"Gaze."

"The one under all the stage stuff."

"You see my face as it is meant to be seen."

"You're going to kill me, right?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then let me see your face. Let me see the Midnight Eye that no one else can see. Give me this… exclusive."

Ing seemed to ponder this. He looked at me, then at his gun, then back to me. "When I saw your wife upstairs, I realized she would suffer more if I left her alive. How could you marry a filthy Mexican?"

"I loved her. I still do."

"You would compromise your sperm with her egg?"

"That won't happen for us."

"Good. Good for the place we call home. Now… next sentences: The Eye told me that the county must be cleansed, and cleansed thoroughly. After a brief sabbatical on the East Coast, the Eye returned here yesterday to continue his work. If possible, the Eye is just as impressive in person as he is through his generous and self-effacing acts."

Generous and self-effacing acts, I thought, like the Fernandez couple. Like the Ellisons and Wynns and Steins. Like a the animals. Like Dee, and probably Izzy, and-shortly-myself.

Something then dawned on me. "You hate couples, don’t you? Married people."

"I loathe you."

"Why?"

"The dependence, the way you cling to one another, the way you are… exclusive and out only for material gain."

"You detest our happiness. Is it because you've never had it? Are you jealous?"

"Man was meant to be alone. Marriage is a necessary aberration for continuing the race. Priests are celibate for good reason."

"You ever had a woman?"

Ing's gaze hardened and I could see his hand stiffen the gun. "Next," he said. "The Eye says that any and all minorities are welcome to leave the county, but this must be done soon. No one offering a home for sale will be harmed; no packing to leave will be stopped. All who stay will live in fear of violent death."

I wrote out the paragraph. The terrible ringing in my ears still had not abated. I was having trouble getting my fingertips to the keys of the typewriter.

Ing was behind me. I could see his reflection in the mirrored wall. He was reading, from a distance, over my shoulder. As he leaned forward, I could see the club hanging over his shoulder, exactly where Chet Singer had predicted it would be. The Eye had not cleaned it. It was clotted with hair and blood, a patina of gore now dried and blackened by time. The combined smells of the club and the Midnight Eye were almost overpowering.