John Lutz - Fear the Night

Repetto was alone with Meg, driving along Park, Meg at the wheel, when he decided to bring up the subject.

“Do you know who Dwayne Easterbrook is?”

Meg skillfully passed a slow-moving van and slipped back into the stream of traffic. She smiled faintly, pleased by her driving ability. “Sounds familiar.”

“He’s a detective out of Homicide. Melbourne assigned him to help out with the disgruntled former city employee list.”

“And?” Traffic was slowing for the light at the Fifty-third Street intersection.

“He interviewed Alex Reyals yesterday. The former NYPD sharpshooter.”

They were approaching the intersection too fast. Meg braked hard and barely avoided missing the bumper of a cab in front of them that had already stopped for the red light.

“I already talked to Reyals,” she said.

“More than once, according to Easterbrook.”

“Reyals is a suspect.”

“Easterbrook said you talked to him several times.”

Meg stared straight ahead. “Fuck Easterbrook. Where’s he getting his information?”

“From Reyals.”

Meg knew what must have happened. Easterbrook was a good cop and had picked up vibes from Alex. Vibes that suggested there was something more than a cop-suspect relationship between Alex and Meg.

What really annoyed Meg was that part of her was pleased there was something in Alex for Easterbrook to home in on.

She turned her head so she was looking directly at Repetto. “I’ll say it once. There was nothing improper about my interviews with Alex Reyals.”

“You visited him three times in his apartment.”

“He lives in his apartment.”

“Meg-”

“There’s nothing improper going on.”

Horns began to blare. Engines raced.

“Light,” Repetto said.

“Huh?”

“The light changed.”

Meg goosed the car and it jerked away from a dead stop and almost ran up the back of the cab again. The cabby noticed this time. She saw him glaring at her in his rearview mirror as he increased the distance between the two vehicles.

After a couple of silent blocks: “You believe me?”

“Of course,” Repetto said.

And he did believe her, she was sure.

But this didn’t bode well. Damn it, this didn’t bode well!

“Captain-”

“Enough said, Meg.”

Repetto hadn’t asked her to stay away from Alex.

Here was Meg again, pressing the paint-clogged intercom button for Alex’s apartment, taking the elevator to Alex’s floor. Meg where she shouldn’t be. Meg sticking her neck out again. It was the kind of thing that often got Meg in trouble, and that she couldn’t stop doing.

Nothing improper. That was true. That was goddamn true, and still her ass was in a sling. Or sure felt like it was.

Alex was waiting for her with the door open, smiling when she walked toward him. He was in jeans and a blue Yankees T-shirt, and had a sharp-looking chisel in his right hand. There were tiny wood chips trapped in the hair on his muscular forearms. His smile faded when he noticed the expression on her face.

He stepped back and let her enter. “You okay?”

“Question is, are you ?”

He was smiling again, amused by her anger even though he didn’t know what caused it. That was really annoying.

“You here to arrest me?” he asked.

“Just maybe. Why did you tell Easterbrook I’d been here to visit you three times?”

“Because he asked me how many times you’d been here. I couldn’t lie to him, Meg. I’m a suspect in a series of homicides.” A serious look crossed his face. “Easterbrook giving you trouble?”

“He mentioned his talk with you to Repetto.”

Alex thought about that for a few seconds. “He had no choice, Meg. Like I had no choice but to be honest with him. You know how lies are, like cockroaches. When there’s one, it always seems there are more.”

He was right and she knew it. And it was she who’d decided to keep coming here to his apartment. At least he hadn’t pointed that out to her. Lucky for him.

“I don’t blame you for being angry,” he said. “In fact. .”

Don’t say it.

He tucked the chisel in his belt and gently placed both his hands on her shoulders, probably getting wood chips on her blazer. She didn’t move when he bent down and kissed her lightly on the lips.

This visit wasn’t turning out anything like she’d planned.

She kissed him back.

Hadn’t planned that, either.

She stepped away from him, and he lowered his arms in a way that suggested hopelessness.

“I’ve been working,” he said, smiling a certain way. “Want to come see what I’m doing?”

She stared at him for a long time, into his eyes.

“I’m getting the hell out of here,” she said.

He nodded. “I have to admit it’s the smart thing to do.”

She turned away from him and moved toward the door and opened it. Turned back. “Thanks.”

“For understanding your position?”

“For not telling me I’m beautiful when I’m angry.”

“I was thinking it.”

She slammed the door on the way out, thinking her visit had accomplished absolutely nothing.

Still, she was glad she’d come.

That was the problem.

A neatly folded fifty-dollar bill got the Night Sniper into the exclusive Club Cleo on the Upper West Side. He sat alone now at a small round table by a wooden rail separating seating from the spacious dance floor. The walls were oak paneled. The music was soft rock, sometimes even romantic ballads. Sinatra would have dug it. Long red drapes hung from the high ceiling, lending the illusion there were windows behind them. The lighting was soft and there were more tables in a gallery upstairs, from which customers could look down at the dance floor. Drug transactions and usage were discreet and not done in the restrooms, where there were attendants.

Club Cleo wasn’t exactly for people on the way up. It was more for those who were clinging near the summit, a very private way station on the way up, or down, the steep mountain of success.

Connections could be made here. More than once, the Night Sniper had made them.

An exotically beautiful woman, dressed as a jockey in silks that were the brown and red colors of Club Cleo, took his drink order, and he watched the rhythmic switch of her hips beneath taut silk as she walked away. A riding crop was tucked in her belt.

The band was playing something by Duke Ellington. A raven-haired woman in an emerald-green dress was dancing with a short balding man in an expensive-looking suit. When the dance partners separated for a few seconds, the Night Sniper saw that the man’s dark maroon tie matched the handkerchief barely peeking from his suit coat’s breast pocket. Subdued elegance. The Night Sniper approved.

He was wearing his blue Armani suit, Gambino Italian loafers, and sipping sixteen-year-old Lagavulin scotch. On his wrist was an antique Patek Philippe watch that kept precise time. His neatly knotted blue tie was pure silk and cost 120 dollars. His dark hair was medium-length and impeccably styled. Only the most discerning eye would notice it was a wig.

The Ellington number was over. The Night Sniper saw the woman with the lustrous black hair talk briefly to the balding man, then turn smiling and walk away. The man seemed disappointed as he returned to a table on the far side of the dance floor and sat down with three other men. They all glanced over at the woman, who sat alone at a small table not far from the Night Sniper’s.

The black-haired woman, Mary Maureen Kopler, recently of Atlanta, had just finished her third martini. Maybe that was why she didn’t notice anything special about the man seated at the nearby table, watching her, other than that he was flawlessly groomed and almost too handsome, with kind dark eyes and smooth, tanned skin. When he turned away from her, he displayed a profile that belonged in a museum of Roman artifacts.