Darkborn (26 page)

More doodles, circles, and pointy things inside the circles.

He flipped over the sheet of paper. Exposing another clean piece.

“Then he came back to New York. He called me. He tried calling Tim. He said he tried to reach you.”

Will’s number was unlisted, a necessity in his line of work. But the St. Jerome’s directory had it, an option which he was glad hadn’t occurred to Kiff.

“He sounded crazy, Will. He babbled on about someone following him, that he was being watched. That something was going to
happen
to him, to
all
of us soon. All because of that night —”

Will shook his head and moved the receiver to his other ear. “He’s crazy, Ted. Crazy. Don’t worry about him. Get a new phone number, keep it —”

“No. You’re not listening, Will. He came
back
. He went to Brooklyn. I know where he is.”

“So?” Will sighed, trying to keep this insanity as distant as possible.

“He sent me clippings .
 
.
 
. from the paper …”

“Clippings?”

“About those murders, those girls …”

“What girls?”

“Didn’t you see them?” Whalen asked. “Don’t you read the paper?”

Will laughed nervously. He was beginning to think that maybe Whalen was crazy too. “All the time. But what are you talking about?”

Whalen continued. “He sent me clippings, articles about the murders in the city, the girls being cut up in the streets .
 
.
 
. God, you must know about it. You’re right there, for Christ’s sake. I’m in California. But you’re right there.”

Will looked up. He was staring at photos of his family.

Beth dressed as a bunny holding her Easter basket. And Sharon, a princess dressed in white from last Halloween. And a photo by the beach with Becca wearing a two-piece suit and looking beautiful, full of life.

Now he knew what Whalen was talking about.

Of course, everyone knew about those murders.

What was the body count? It was run as a banner headline by the
Daily News
. Nine dead since the summer began? Or was it up to ten?

And there were all these lively descriptions of how they were killed.

With surgical precision, the tabloids said, slavering over the detailed prose that let the readers imagine just how each woman was killed.

Slowly. That seemed to be the murderer’s first concern. The women were cut laterally and vertically, from the chest to the abdomen, and the skin was peeled back. There was evidence that things were done to their insides, tiny tears, probes, and cuts to exacerbate the pain.

Their throats were cut, rendering screams or any cries for help impossible.

The
News
called him “The Madman.”

The
Post
dubbed him “The New Age Ripper.”

Calvin Thomas, the New York police chief, was trapped in a cycle of holding a news conference every few days, saying the same hopeless words, while the mayor looked discomfited, embarrassed, standing in the background.

We have nothing to report in our investigations .
 
.
 
.

Week after week .
 
.
 
.

The street hookers reported that business seemed to be off.
Live at Five
interviewed three of them, a titillating coup. They said that they weren’t scared. They had — smirk, smirk — protection.

Now for a look at the weather.

“He sent me all the clippings, the photos …”

Will heard Becca walking upstairs, maybe concerned because he had disappeared, summoned by this strange late night phone call.

She knew nothing of Whalen, or Kiff or Tim Hanna or poor Mike Narrio. None of it.

Nobody did.

Will stood up. He held the phone, standing, wearing his pajama bottoms and no shirt. He felt cold, then colder, as he started to flash on what Whalen was suggesting.

“Wait a second. Hold on. What is this? Are you saying that Kiff has something to do with these murders?”

Will felt trapped in his office, in his room. His pen slashed at the yellow paper, jabbing at it, filling it with pointillist dots.

“God, Will, no. He sounded too .
 
.
 
. scared. I just don’t know. I got real worried for the poor bastard. Maybe he’s gone nuts. He told me that he has to talk to someone, someone he can trust. He says he
knows
what’s happening.”

“I doubt that .
 
.
 
. But he wouldn’t tell you?”

“No. He said he couldn’t talk over the phone. That he’d find out .
 
.
 
.”

“Who ‘he’?” Will smirked.

“I don’t fucking know.”

“Sounds like class-A paranoia, Ted. Why don’t you call the NYPD. Call them, tell them about Kiff, the clippings. Let them deal with it.”

“Could you wait a second?” Whalen said. And Will said sure. He heard Whalen get up. He heard the ice tumble into Whalen’s glass, three thousand miles away. Whalen .
 
.
 
. getting more fortitude for his call. He came back, breathless.

“I thought of that. Don’t you think that I thought of that? But what if he has nothing? What if it’s all crazy Vietnam whammer-jammer, and I send the cops to whatever creepy place he’s living? It wouldn’t be right.”

Will suspected that Whalen was lying. That wasn’t the reason.

Nobody develops that much kindness late in life.

There’s something else. Something he’s holding back.

“And there’s this. Shit, Will, what if the cops get him talking about Coney Island, and Narrio? The whole thing will come out again. There might even be hearings or something. I — I couldn’t afford that.”

Will looked at the photos of his kids. He wouldn’t want them hearing the story either. In the tabloids, the newspapers.
Live at Five
. Dead at Six. Newscenter Nowhere.

Because the story — the scandal — would be big news. Real big.

Because Tim Hanna is big. A giant. What was the phrase natty Tom Wolfe used?

He’s a Master of the Universe.

Boozy Ted Whalen was right.

It wouldn’t be good for anyone.

And then Will had a creepy thought. Kiff could be a real embarrassment to Tim Hanna.

Maybe crazy Kiff has a good reason to be paranoid.

Will sat down. He shivered. It was cold, and he had had enough of this catching-up with Ted Whalen.

Enough .
 
.
 
.

“Ted, I think —”

“Will, I’d really like you to do something .
 
.
 
. I think that you gotta do it.”

A car passed by the house, moving slowly, deliberately. A patrol car, Will guessed. On the hour, every hour. Keeping suburbia safe .
 
.
 
.

“Someone has to talk to Kiff. He needs help.”

Will laughed. “And what if
he’s
the killer, this madman? You know how to ask the big one, Ted.”

“Listen!” Whalen ordered. “You can see him. And if you get any strange vibes, you’ don’t even go inside his place. But shit, Will,
he’s
the one that sounds scared. He babbles about these murders as if he’s fucking terrified. He begged me for help. He pleaded with me to —”

A gulp. Will imagined Whalen drinking Stoli straight. A nice mellow drink for a quiet California evening.

“I — I can’t do it. I would. If I was there. But you could. You owe it to him, Will. We all do. Christ, I wouldn’t ask you if I was there. You got a family .
 
.
 
. kids .
 
.
 
. ?”

“Yeah.”

“Great. But we owe a chunk of our lives to Kiff. He took it all, Will. He took it all. And if he’s flipped now, we can try to help him.”

Definitely hiding something, Will thought. I haven’t spent two decades with slimeballs without my antennae going up. All the cards aren’t on the table.

But he pictured Kiff, holed up in his apartment, scared out of his mind, needing an old face from the past.

And somehow, for some reason that he couldn’t remember later, Will said, “Okay.”

Whalen gave him the address. It was in Brooklyn near Livingston Street. It was near part of the Williamsburg section that hadn’t been gentrified yet .
 
.
 
. maybe never would be.

Kiff lived over a bar.

Whalen gave Will his own phone number. His number at John Hancock. Whalen thanked Will.

And he hung up.

Will looked at the pad of yellow paper.

He looked at the circle, and the star inside it, and everywhere dots, tiny dots and larger dots, clustered together like spatters of paint.

Will crumpled up the sheet and tossed it into the trash basket.

* * *

22

She wanted to know all about the phone call, who it was, why the heck they called so late, talking until midnight,
past
midnight. Who could have called? What was the emergency?

Will was drinking from a cup featuring Minnie Mouse in a bathing suit playing with a frisky Pluto.

Half the glass was rum, left over from a party months ago, when summer began and everyone had too many daiquiris.

He thought about lying.

He thought about telling her it was a friend. With problems. An old school friend, getting divorced, needing someone to talk to.

But he looked at Becca, studying her, and he realized that he wanted to tell her, that he wanted to tell someone.

What really happened that night.

Everything about Manhattan Beach, about Steeplechase, and poor Mike Narrio getting killed because Will didn’t stop him in time.

But he just told her about Kiff going crazy from the war, of bouncing around the country, a crazy man with tales to tell. A school friend, like Tim Hanna … Ted Whalen.

An old friend from school, in trouble, whacked out.

He didn’t tell her about Kiff’s clippings, about a connection with the neatly dissected streetwalkers in New York, about Kiff’s jabbering fear, that he knew who was doing it .
 
.
 
. that someone was after him.

That would scare her.

For no reason. It was crazy stuff.

And when he was done, she told him to get in bed. It was late. She shut the light off.

And he lay very still, his face turned away from her, so she didn’t know that his eyes were wide open.

Staring into the darkness.

* * *

23

Will groaned, turned in his bed. He grabbed at the sheet, tight, lighter, holding on to it as if it were a life raft on a churning, icy sea.

He opened his eyes.

In his dream.

Where is was a wonderfully sunny day, where the sun was brilliant and shining so brightly that it sparkled, a yellow diamond set against a rich, blue velvet.

His two daughters held him, one on each hand, tugging on him, pulling him along, squealing, “Oh, Daddy, look!” And, “Can we go there, can we try that?”

He looked up. Becca was beside him, looking at him holding their two girls, smiling, happy at this wonderful day and all this sun.

He looked up.

Yes. He saw where the girls were pointing. It was an amusement park. There were rides. And children in colorful sun suits, pale blue and crisp white. And fathers dressed in baggy, pleated pants eating hot dogs. And women in dresses and hats.

Dresses and hats. Splashy floral prints and white straw hats.

He looked at Becca, and saw that she was dressed the same way.

There was something odd about that style of dress. Odd.

He wasn’t sure why.

He kept walking, his daughters tugging at him, pulling him further into the amusement park. The signs were colorful, bright reds and lime green. A hot-dog stand was just to the left, a ticket booth ahead, and all around the amazing peaceful sounds of the rides and the laughter.