Fear the Night (20 page)

33

1990

Strong Ranch was 590 acres of flat, arid land roughly between Phoenix and Tucson in the Arizona desert. It was bisected by an arroyo that ran with water about twice a year during unusually heavy rainstorms. On one side of the arroyo was the main ranch house, the boys’ barracks, and various outbuildings including a tractor shed and hip-roofed barn. On the other side was the smaller, girls’ quarters, a scaled-down version of the boys’ stucco-and-lapboard one-story structure with rooftop air-conditioning units and solar panels.

The barracks were divided into separate cubicles that afforded some privacy, and it was in one of those cubicles that Dante Vanya spent most of his time alone after being transferred to Strong Ranch. Being by himself was what he wanted, or told himself so, and the ranch wasn’t the kind of place where friendships were easily formed.

In the dining area, Dante ate alone at a table away from the other ten boys currently at the ranch, his fellow ... he wasn’t sure if they were prisoners or patients.

With each passing day, Dante became more determined to go it alone at Strong Ranch. The others might have their problems, but none of them had Dante’s disfigurements.

On the third day, a hulking fifteen-year-old named Orvey tried to pick a fight with Dante by perpetrating a shoving match. Instead of shoving back, Dante kicked him hard in the shin, then advanced on him. Dante wasn’t angry, and not at all frightened. He was obviously resigned to taking a beating from the much larger boy, but determined to give back what he could.

The fight didn’t last long, and Dante was saved from a serious trouncing when two of the older boys separated the combatants out of fear the confrontation would draw attention and result in punishment.

From then on the other boys, including Orvey, granted Dante his privacy. They also respected him. They recognized toughness born of hopelessness and knew that whatever they started, the quiet boy with the sparse hair and hideous left profile would match them in meanness.

The week after Dante’s arrival, a commotion outside his cubicle made him curious. The other boys were obviously pleased by something, judging by their loud voices and laughter.

Dante ventured out to see what was going on.

A tall, broad-shouldered man with curly blond hair stood in the center of the main room. He was wearing a western-style tan shirt, cowboy boots, and jeans with a big silver belt buckle.

When he saw Dante he smiled. “Ah! Our newest arrival!” He walked over to stand near Dante, seeming even taller. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to meet you, but I had to be in Europe on business. I’m Adam Strong.” He extended his hand.

Dante took it, and they shook. Strong’s grip was firm but he didn’t squeeze Dante’s hand like some people who tried to establish that they were in charge.

“This is Dante Vanya,” Strong said, releasing Dante’s hand and straightening up. He formally introduced the other boys, one of whom, Kerry, was bald. Dante learned later he’d lost his hair because of some kind of cancer treatment.

“What we do here,” Strong said, “is let you continue to recuperate, if you arrive with physical problems, and we help you find yourselves, no matter how you arrive.” He grinned. It scrunched up his cheeks and made his pale eyes tilt so he looked like a cat. “No doubt you’ve heard that ‘finding yourself’ malarkey before. What it means here at the ranch is that you learn what you like to do, then learn how to do it well.” He looked directly at Dante. “This is a working ranch, so we expect something in return for your stay here. There’ll be chores. You’ll act and talk like gentlemen. And we expect you to take part in activities.” The grin widened. “But don’t let me scare you, Dante. The main idea is for you to learn how to live, and to enjoy living.”

Strong looked at his wristwatch. It was big and seemed to have been made from a gold coin. “I’ve got work to do now. Vic will assign chores for the day.”

Vic was an older boy, about eighteen, who slept in the main house and also dressed like a cowboy. Dante thought he looked something like the gunfighters he’d seen on TV, only without the guns.

Vic read from a wrinkled sheet of paper. Nobody complained when they heard what work they were assigned, whether it was cleaning stables, milking cows, or helping to dig a new well. Dante drew kitchen duty in what everyone called the mess hall. In the biggest kitchen Dante had ever seen, a fat woman named Allen, even though she was a woman, gave him a paring knife and sat him down to peel potatoes for lunch. It would be a month before Dante learned that Allen was her last name and that her first was Lil.

Dante still kept to himself, but after a while he didn’t much mind being at Strong Ranch. The routine was morning chores, then various activities, and in the evenings reading or sometimes movies for both the boys and girls.

One of the girls, a redhead named Verna, was pretty in a storybook princess way, and Dante wished he knew her better, but after one look at his burned face she didn’t seem interested. He heard that her father was dead and her mother had sold her for crack money when she was six years old, to a man who’d kept her prisoner in a trailer court until she was nine. “Poor Verna can’t ever love anyone,” Dante overheard Lil Allen say one day, “’cause she can’t trust anyone. Not all the way.”

Dante could understand that. What he didn’t understand was that Verna must also betray everyone.

After the first month at the ranch, the school year began, and boys and girls together rode a bus every day into Nailsville, a small town about twenty miles away. There, with a lot of other kids, they attended school in a long, flat-roofed brick building with narrow, horizontal windows.

Despite having missed a grade, Dante found school easy enough, especially math. One day his math teacher handed him an envelope with instructions to give it to Adam Strong. Dante thought he might be in some kind of trouble, and since the envelope was unsealed, he opened it and read the note inside. His gaze fixed on the word
amazing.
The teacher thought he might be some kind of genius at mathematics.

Genius.
Dante didn’t know what to make of that. All he knew was that he comprehended what he was taught, especially in his math class. It made sense, so why didn’t everyone comprehend it?

Early one evening, instead of the usual softball or soccer exercises, or track and field competition, Adam Strong had something different in mind. He drove up in his dusty white Ford pickup to where the boys were assembled, then lowered the tailgate and stood there with his fists on his hips. In the truck’s bed was a folded blue blanket. When the boys had all walked over to him, Strong unfolded the blanket to reveal a dozen rifles.

“We’re going to target shoot,” Strong announced. “Shooting’s a sport I used to be good at, and I know it’s a fine sport, no matter what you might think of guns, or what other people have told you.”

“I’m gonna join the army!” a tall, skinny kid named Charley announced loudly. Not meaning it. Smarting off in a way that had gotten him in trouble with Strong before.

“Not a bad choice,” Strong said. “They’ll know just what to do with you.”

When the other boys were finished snickering, Strong continued. “These are not new weapons. In fact, they are quite old. They are army surplus M1 rifles, and you need to understand them before you use them. Before we actually shoot, I want to show you how these rifles work, how to take them apart and put them together, and most of all, how not to accidentally shoot yourself or anyone else.”

“The girls gonna shoot?” one of the boys asked.

“They were told they had the opportunity,” Strong said. “They all chose other activities. That’s okay. They don’t like guns.”

More snickering.

Strong ignored it. He picked up the nearest rifle and handed it to Charley, then gave out the other rifles. When he handed one to Dante, Dante hesitated, remembering the gun his father had used.

But this wasn’t like that. This was another kind of gun. A rifle. And Adam Strong wasn’t his father. He accepted the rifle but knew Strong had noted his reluctance.

When everyone was armed with unloaded rifles, Strong sat down on the truck’s open tailgate, a rifle across his lap, and said, “Gather round.”

They spent the next three days learning about the rifles, how they were different from shotguns or handguns, and how to aim them, allowing for wind and distance. They learned how to lead a moving target. It struck Dante that shooting a gun wasn’t so complicated. It was mathematical, a matter of angle, speed, time, and distance. And variables like wind and the rhythms of motion and momentum.

He also learned from Kelly that Adam Strong had been an alternate small-bore rifle shooter on the 1976 U.S. Olympic team that went to Montreal. He hadn’t actually shot in competition there, but he’d been ready.

On the fourth day, Strong gathered the boys around the back of the pickup and said, “Today we shoot bullets. I have targets set up beyond the barracks, against a safe backdrop. Vic will lead the way, and I’ll follow in the truck, where we’ll leave the rifles for now.”

When they reached the new target range ten minutes later, Dante saw that the tractor sat nearby and now had a scoop on it like a bulldozer’s. It had been used to create a bank of earth about eight feet high. In front of the banked earth were bales of straw, and on each bale was a sheet of paper with a target on it, a series of circles around a red bull’s-eye. At intervals Dante later learned were twenty, fifty, and a hundred yards were low stakes in the ground with twine strung tautly between them, marking lines for the boys to shoot from.

They shot first from a distance of twenty yards, using the standing position Strong had taught them. Dante sighted carefully, squeezed the trigger gently as instructed, and felt the rifle’s stock buck against his shoulder. He winced, and his ears buzzed from the explosive bark of all the rifles firing almost at once.

“Not bad,” Strong said. “We’ll examine the targets later.”

Beginning with his second shot, Dante tried to factor in all the conditions he was shooting under. It wasn’t difficult, since it was a calm day and wind had little effect. That left the simple geometry of sending a predictable moving object toward a stationary one. He held his breath and felt an unexpected connection with the target, as if a wire were strung between it and the gun barrel, and squeezed the trigger, ready this time for the bark and buck of the old M1.

He felt a rush of excitement. He
knew
that this time he’d hit the target. And could do it again.

Every boy fired from standing, sitting, and prone positions at varying distances, a total of twenty rounds of ammunition.

Strong walked out and collected the targets while Vic and the boys stood and watched.

When Strong returned, he held all the targets but one in his right hand. In his left hand was Dante’s target.

He looked at Dante and said, “Holy Christ!”

All the boys froze. They had never before heard Strong utter a profanity.

“Eighteen out of twenty in the target, four in the bull’s-eye,” Strong said. “Holy . . . Toledo. Have you shot before, Dante?”

Dante shook his head no.

Strong stared at him for a long time, silently, with something like doubt and with something like wonder.

Then he said, “Okay, let’s go back to the barracks. Remember to be neat. Pick up your shell casings.”

It was an instruction Dante never forgot.

34

The present

There was a small savings and loan on the ground floor of the Maigret Building on West Twenty-third Street. Repetto entered through a door alongside it, which led to an unadorned foyer lined with mailboxes. A narrow stairway led to offices above, which were identified by a directory that had yellowed over the years beneath the clear plastic plate protecting it from theft and graffiti. The directory informed him that B. Grams, Inc., was on the second floor.

That was fine with Repetto. There were six floors and no elevator in the building, and he didn’t feel like climbing stairs. Also, he didn’t feel like being reminded of how he was getting older.

Last week Repetto had happened across one of his longtime snitches, a burglar and sometime fence named Artie Silver. Artie was smart enough to fence stolen goods of all sorts without leaving a trace, so, if there was going to be an actual prosecution, it was necessary to nail him while he still had the loot in his possession. It had never happened. Another way Artie had of insuring himself against a conviction if he did get caught was to sparingly provide police with information about some of his clients, both buyers and sellers. He was a discreet snitch, and through the years Repetto had been discreet with his information.

Repetto actually liked Artie, and had been talking with him about things in general, while both men stood in the sunlight and ate knishes from a sidewalk vendor on the corner of Third and Fifty-fourth Street. This was New York at its best: vendor food, warm sun, and an endless variety of people streaming past, as if it could all last forever for everyone.

So why not do a little business, Repetto thought, for old times’ sake? He asked Artie if he knew any gun dealers or collectors specializing in rifles.

“Almost always it’s handguns or automatic assault weapons,” Artie said, with an exaggerated shrug that was pure Artie. “Rifles are something else altogether, more for hunting than the kinda thing that’d interest you.” He wouldn’t cheapen what he had by giving it away too quickly.

Repetto chewed a bite of knish and waited in the warm sunlight.

Then, as in the past, Artie smiled thinly and gave Repetto a name: “Boniface Grams.”

“Dealer,” Repetto asked, “or collector?”

“Facilitator. If he can’t help you, he might be able to tell you more than I know. Guns wouldn’t be my specialty, if I had a specialty. I don’t like the things around. I’m all for the Brady Bunch Bill.”

Repetto wasn’t sure if Artie was joking, so decided to let that one pass.

Artie put on a pious expression. “Like everybody else in this town, I’d like to see you collar the Night Sniper.”

“Are guns this Bonepart guy’s—”

“Boniface.”

“—guy’s specialty?”

“Are they ever!” Artie took a big bite of knish and chewed enthusiastically with his mouth open. “And I tell you,” he said around the knish, “he’s mostly legal. His expertise is in obtaining valuable pieces for serious gun collectors.”

“Sounds all the way legal.”

“Well, sometimes the guns aren’t legal, or maybe they’re from a museum or who knows where. Maybe the collector doesn’t have a permit. I don’t know, mind you. I’m speculating.”

“So speculate as to where I might find Boniface Grams.”

Artie gave Repetto the Twenty-third Street address.

“I have to level, Artie, I’m not sure if I can do you any good if you’re angling for payback. I’m not with the NYPD anymore on a permanent basis.”

“I know. I read the papers. Which is why I wanna help, so you can stop this Sniper prick and the city can get back to normal. It was after dark, I wouldn’t be standing here eating this knish.”

“Boniface,” Repetto said, folding his paper napkin so he could write on it. He unclipped a pen from his pocket. “How do you spell that?”

Artie told him.

“He French?”

“If France is in Africa.”

The steps hadn’t been too bad. Not breathing noticeably harder, Repetto found himself at the end of the hall on the second floor. The door to B. Grams, Inc., had cheap brass numbers on it and fancy black lettering spelling out the name of the company. Repetto opened the door and stepped inside, expecting some kind of anteroom, maybe even a receptionist.

Instead, a tall, spiffily dressed black man not yet thirty was seated on the corner of a desk, reading a newspaper. He was wearing pleated gray slacks, a white shirt, and colorful blue and yellow suspenders. His black, cap-toed shoes were shined to a blinding gloss. A suit coat that matched the pants was draped over a hanger dangling from a brass coatrack.

He looked up in mild surprise and removed dark-rimmed reading glasses as Repetto entered. “You got an appointment?”

“Does anyone?” Repetto asked.

The man grinned handsomely with perfect white teeth. He had a trimmed little brush mustache that made him look something like Errol Flynn. A guy his age, Repetto bet he’d never heard of Errol Flynn. “Cop?” he asked Repetto. As if he didn’t know.

Repetto nodded. “Boniface?”

The man placed the newspaper on the desk and stood up all the way. Repetto took that for a yes.

“I got a soft spot for cops,” Boniface said. “My brother was one in L.A. and got shot to death by some drug-freaked asshole. Mom never got over it.”

“Too bad,” Repetto said, doubting if any of it was true.

“Had a helluva funeral. VIPs and LAPD brass and bagpipes and everything. What can I help you with, Detective Repetto?”

Repetto hadn’t given Boniface his name. “Want to see some ID first?”

“Don’t need that. I seen your photo in the papers and on TV. Knew you was the dude soon as you walked in. Anyways, you got cop stamped on your forehead.”

Repetto believed him there. “You strike me as a smart guy.”

“Course.”

“You know why I’m here?”

“’Cause you think for some reason I might be able to help you.”

“Why would I think that?”

Boniface smiled and shook his head. “Never did like to dance. So let’s say somebody told you my company sometimes deals in firearms, and you think I might know something about where the Night Sniper dude’s getting his arsenal.”

“We think he might be a collector.”

“Well, I ain’t no collector.”

“But you supply them. You’re a buyer for them.”

“Well . . . sometimes. They’re looking for something rare, I locate it for them. That’s not illegal, though.”

“Not if the guns are legal. And the sale is legal. And the transportation of the guns is legal. And there’s no hard-ass homicide cop who might get on your case in a major way if you don’t tell him what he asks.”

Boniface leaned back so his haunches were against the desk, then crossed his arms over his colorful suspenders and floral-pattern tie. “Point taken.”

“You supply any illegal collectors? I’m not asking names. Not yet. It’s the Night Sniper I’m interested in, not some redneck who likes to collect guns.”

“I don’t supply any collectors like you’re talking about,” Boniface said. “Some secret collectors, yeah. But there’s nothing about them I know’s illegal. They just wanna keep their collection a secret ’cause of the bias against guns in this country. Don’t want their pansy-ass friends to know, you follow?”

Repetto didn’t answer. The river was flowing.

“And I deal mostly in handguns. Some long guns, though. Sometimes. But I ain’t dealt long guns in over a year. Year at least. That’s God’s truth, dude.”

Repetto thought you seldom heard
God
and
dude
in the same sentence. He fixed Boniface with a stare that obviously made him uncomfortable. “Talk some more. On your own. Tell me something that’ll brighten my day. Your day, too.”

“Kinda collector you’re looking for, I don’t know,” Boniface said. “Truth is, most of my customers are legal, got permits, licenses, the whole shebang. Also, the kinda collector you’re talking about don’t figure to be a serial killer. Ones I met, they’re so interested in guns they wouldn’t have time to go on a killing spree. Some of the really expensive collector pieces come from Europe, too. Dueling sets, blunderbusses, that kinda thing.”

“I’m not looking for blunderbusses, Boniface. You aren’t helping me.”

“Well, the kinda help you want, I can’t give, ’cause I don’t know the answers to your questions.” He uncrossed one arm and stood like Jack Benny, thumb and forefinger cupping his chin. He was thinking deeply, and just for Repetto. “Lemme put it this way. You ever do any hunting?”

Repetto stared at him. “You mean birds and animals?”

“Whatever. Things you’d use a rifle on.”

“Not in a long time.”

“If you were an avis hunter—”

“You mean avid? Avid hunter?”

“Yeah. You’d know from the bullets, the Sniper dude ain’t using hunting rifles. They’re target rifles.”

“Target . . . hunting ... what’s the difference?”

“Mostly the caliber or millimeter. The bore. Target rifles use those offbeat, smaller-size rounds, nothing like most hunting rifles. Plinker size but powered by large loads so they got muzzle velocity. Foreign make bullets, too.”

“You saying the Sniper collects target rifles? The shooting-for-sport kind?”

“Maybe not
only
target rifles. There are rifles made specifically for sniping, too, with some of the same characteristics, and he might have a few of them. But mostly from the bullet sizes the papers are saying, my guess is the rifles are manufactured for target shooting and are expensive.”

“What do you mean by expensive?”

“Four, five figures almost certainly. Up from there. What I’m saying, Detective Repetto, is the Sniper dude, if he’s a collector—and he probably is—he’s one rich mother to own the kinda guns he’s been killing with so far.”

“Where would he obtain them?”

“Oh, there’s all kinds of bad, bad people in the arms business, and all over the world. And I can tell you there’s some rich collectors avis enough to buy stolen collectibles and keep ’em just so they can get ’em out once in a while and play with ’em.”

“Avid.”

“What you say.”

“So we’re looking for a rich gun collector who specializes in target rifles.”

“Way I see it. I’m talkin’ about rifles that are rare, and they’re legal—not assault rifles or anything. But like I said, the way some gun buffs are, they don’t wanna advertise. ’Nother thing they’re afraid of is attracting thieves.”

“Thieves who might steal their guns and sell them to other collectors.”

“Why, yes, that could happen. Then those other collectors ’specially wouldn’t want anyone to know they owned those particular guns.”

Repetto reached into his coat pocket. Boniface drew back as if he thought a gun might emerge. Instead, out came a business card.

“I’m gonna give you my number,” Repetto said. “Two of them. Cell phone’s in pencil. You come across anything else I should know, you call me.”

“Course.”

When Repetto was at the door, Boniface said, “One thing
I’d
like to know, who told you about me?”

“One of those secret collectors,” Repetto said. He glanced at the open door. “You really incorporated?”

Boniface laughed. “Hell no! Don’t even know what it means.”

Repetto doubted that.

NYPD Patrolman Michael Skeppy woke up sweating.

Damned air-conditioning was falling behind again. The bedroom was way too warm, and beams of light angling in along the edges of the black shades hurt Skeppy’s eyes.

He squinted and looked at the clock on the nightstand.

Damn!

He’d overslept again.
Gonna catch hell from the sergeant, never get off traffic detail.

Where the hell is Maggie?

He sat up on the edge of the mattress, a fleshy but powerful man in his thirties, with pleasant but homely features reminiscent of an amiable bulldog’s. Sitting there in only his jockey shorts, he knew he’d never get to the precinct on time. He needed a shower, a shave, something to eat.

Maggie.

He called her name, then stood up and plodded to the door and opened it.

She was asleep on the sofa, in the middle of the afternoon.

Irritated, he called her name again, louder, and her dark eyes opened wide and she sat up. She looked at her watch. “Oh, damn! I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I’m sorry.”

“Doesn’t help,” he mumbled, and plodded toward the bathroom to shower.

“I’ll fix you something to eat,” his wife said behind him. “You’re gonna need your energy.”

“Damned straight,” Skeppy muttered to himself, wondering which of Manhattan’s busy intersections were going to demand his services this afternoon and evening.

Twenty minutes later, showered, shaved, and in uniform, he made it a point to kiss Maggie good-bye before leaving for work on the afternoon shift. They had their problems right now, plenty of them. And he knew how she hated it when he worked this shift. It meant she had to sit alone most of the evening and wait up late if she wanted to see him at all that day.

A cop’s wife, Skeppy thought. A hard life.

But not as hard as standing on your feet all day waving your arms at people who’d just as soon run you over.