Len Levinson - Without Mercy

Rackman nodded. “When you talk to the chief of detectives, maybe you should suggest saturating the Times Square area with plainclothes cops who have Kowalchuk’s picture with them.”

“I already thought of that. Tell me something new.”

“He might be living in one of those hotels around lower Madison Avenue where a lot of cabdrivers stay. We should check them out.”

“I thought of that too. Midtown South will take care of it, and we’ll go through the hotels up our way. We’ll check cafeterias and sleazy bars, even the YMCA. The Chief of Patrol will comb the sidewalks for the fucker. If he stays in New York, we’ll get him.”

Olivero cleared his throat. “We should check every taxi garage in the city because he might change garages.”

“Don’t worry about it. From now until we catch him, cabdrivers won’t be able to move without bumping into cops.”

Rackman left the morgue and got into his car, driving uptown. He puffed a cigarette as he passed the quiet nighttime sidewalks and isolated drunks staggering along. Everything was closed for the night except for a sandwich shop or deli every several blocks. Rackman wondered where Kowalchuk was and what he was doing.

He knew that Kowalchuk was somewhere out there right now, maybe asleep or even walking the streets. He might be that drunk sprawled in the doorway over there. No, that drunk was too skinny. Kowalchuk was a big fat guy.

Rackman remembered Kowalchuk’s face on his hack license application. That face, an average face, was the face of a killer. What kind of man was he? What was driving the sick son of a bitch?

Rackman figured Kowalchuk must hate women a lot, that that must be his principal motivation. Maybe a woman had shit on him, or maybe he was sexually frustrated and that had turned to resentment, hatred, and finally murder. Certainly sexual craziness must have something to do with it, in view of all the porno stuff in his apartment and the fact that his victims were porno girls. The poor bastard couldn’t deal with women and was freaking out.

He sounds a little like me, Rackman thought, and then a chill passed over him as that insight wormed through his brain. He realized that he and Kowalchuk both had difficulties with women, and that Kowalchuk was only a more extreme version of himself. But they were brothers under the skin. If I’d been pushed a little harder, Rackman thought, maybe I would have become a Slasher and the police would be looking for me, who knows?

Rackman chewed his lower lip as he realized that in pursuing the Slasher he also was pursuing the dark side of his own nature. The part that was irrational and wild. The part that could kill if it ever was squeezed hard enough.

“I’ve got to get him,” Rackman whispered through his clenched teeth as he drove toward Midtown North.

It was eleven o’clock at night on Times Square. The gaunt-faced hawker on the street corner rustled the small leaflets in his hands. “Beautiful girls—check ‘em out!” he said, thrusting a leaflet toward the gut of the fat man.

The fat man took the leaflet and looked at it as crowds of pedestrians passed him by:

The fat man had wiry black hair and tiny eyes. His nose was pugged and his mouth was large and fleshy. He wore a red and black wool shirt jacket hanging out of his baggy, olive green pants. Under his arm were three sex magazines he’d bought in a porno bookstore around the corner on Forty-second Street.

He stopped in the doorway of a store closed for the night, read the leaflet again, and looked at the photo of a naked young blonde squeezing her breasts ecstatically. He wondered if they really had girls like that in the massage parlor. He wouldn’t mind paying ten dollars for one of them if they did.

He headed uptown. For some time he’d been tempted to go to a massage parlor, but he’d never gotten around to it. Tonight he thought he’d check one out. He had a knife in his pants pocket, and if there was any trouble he knew how to take care of himself.

Beneath neon lights and movie marquees he made his way through black thugs, Puerto Rican gangs, college kids on a lark, the after-theater crowd, and frail young girls with the eyes of harlots. The fat man’s head bobbed around as he looked everywhere, catching every detail, not missing anything. He loved to come to Times Square at night. You could do just about anything, and nobody cared.

“Loose joints,” murmured a black man standing in front of a shoe store window.

The fat man kept walking. At Forty-fifth Street he turned left and crossed Broadway.

He walked erect, his haunch like shoulders rolling and his big round stomach far in front of him. He looked strong and mean, something like a bear, and not the kind of fat man a wise guy would pick on.

It was darker on Forty-fifth Street and there were fewer people. The theaters had closed for the night and old derelicts were bedding down on doorsteps. The breeze sent a newspaper flying over the sidewalk like the ghost of a giant butterfly. The fat man looked at the numbers on the buildings, then spotted the sign hanging over the sidewalk toward the end of the block. The sign said Crown Club in black on white and was lit by a single bulb. As he drew closer he saw a jive black man in a big apple hat standing in front of the door. The black man slapped his leaflets together three times and held one out.

“Beautiful girls upstairs!” he said.

The fat man stopped and looked at the open door. He saw a brightly lit flight of wooden stairs covered with an old worn rug. Rock and roll music could be heard from the second floor.

The black man sidled up to him. “Check ‘em out,” he said softly. “Only ten bucks.”

“What do you get for ten bucks?”

“Anything you want.”

“Anything?”

“Anything. And they’s real nice girls.”

The fat man wanted to screw a nice young girl, and ten bucks would be cheaper than a date, not that he ever went on dates. He entered the doorway and climbed the creaking stairs. The sound of rock and roll grew louder. As he neared the top of the stairs he saw two big white guys on the landing. They were leaning against the wall and talking in low tones. Evidently they were the bouncers, and they had jailhouse written all over them. As the fat man approached them, he wondered if he wanted to go into a place where they had bouncers like that.

“Step right in, sir!” said a booming voice.

The fat man looked to the left through a doorway and saw another big white guy with red hair sitting behind a small table in a squalid room. He wore a blue blazer and red striped shirt.

“Don’t be shy!” the redhead called out, motioning with his hand. “Come on in!”

The fat man didn’t like the looks of the place and didn’t feel like going in, but if he’d come that far he might as well go all the way. Squaring his massive shoulders, he walked into the room, and was dispirited further by what he saw.

A motley group of black and Latin whores were seated to the left on broken-down sofas and chairs. Most were overweight and over thirty. They smiled garishly at him, and he thought they were hideous.