The Manhattan Hunt Club
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Authors: John Saul
THE MANHATTAN HUNT CLUB
John Saul
BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK
Table of Contents
For Ralph and Paulette
—with thanks for twenty-five
years of friendship
PROLOGUE
T
ime had finally lost its meaning.
Weeks could have passed. Or months.
Not days, though, for the memories of what his life had once been were fading into the fog that filled his mind. Not years, either, for the memories still had shape and texture and color and smell.
A tree.
Not just any tree, but the walnut tree behind the house in which he grew up. When he was little, the tree was huge, its lowest limbs branching off so far up the trunk that his daddy had to hold him up to touch them. When he got big enough, he climbed up the rough-barked trunk into its spreading canopy—even built a tree house once, where he could hide on a lazy summer afternoon. The sun filtered through the dome of leaves, and the whole world seemed to glow with the faintest tinge of pale green.
In the cypress hedge that surrounded the yard, hundreds of sparrows roosted at sunset, their rustling almost inaudible until his dog—a little black mutt named Cinder—went racing up and down, shattering the quiet with her high-pitched yap. The birds would explode from the hedge in a rush that sounded like wind and looked like a swirl of autumn leaves. The sparrows would wheel in the sky, etched against its darkening blue, and slowly settle back to the hedge, only to be flushed again a moment later.
Those were the memories that were still brightest in his mind, for they were the oldest, and though he himself wasn’t old, his mind was already playing the tricks of the aged. Why could he clearly remember that tree from nearly twenty years ago, but barely recall the last room he’d lived in?
Was it because he didn’t want to remember that room?
As he paused in the gloom that surrounded him now, vague outlines re-created themselves in his mind. A tiny space almost filled by a single sagging bed, a metal table with a chipped enameled surface. The stairs leading to it reeked of piss, partially masked by the stink of stale cigarette smoke. Not that he’d worried much about it—he had lived in rooms like that before. Then one day he left the room and never went back. He didn’t care—he couldn’t pay the rent anyway, and the bastard landlord who lived in the crummy apartment in the basement probably would have changed the locks in a couple of days.
Not much to remember after that.
He’d wandered around the streets for a while, and that hadn’t been too bad. At least he didn’t have to waste any money on rent. But then it started getting cold, and once or twice he’d gone to one of the shelters. Not the one out on the island—what the fuck was the name of it? Like some department store from a long time ago.
Wards. That was it—Wards Island.
He hadn’t been about to go out there. Not that he figured it would be any worse than the places he’d seen since he followed Big Ted down into Grand Central.
They’d been hanging around the food joints on the lower level when a couple of transit cops started looking at them funny. “Come on,” Big Ted muttered, and he’d followed him to the platform down by Track 42.
On the other side of the track there was a weird jumble of walls and pipes and ladders. Half the walls seemed to be falling down, and most of the ladders didn’t look like they led anywhere. Big Ted jumped off the platform, crossed the track, and scaled a ladder on the opposite side. He hesitated, then heard someone yelling, and didn’t wait to find out what they wanted. He quickly followed Ted across the track and up the ladder and was just able to keep up as the other man ducked through a door.
Ted led him through a couple of rooms, then climbed up on some pipes and started working his way into the darkness. He still heard shouting behind them, and it drove him on, following Big Ted.
At first it was kind of fun—sort of like an adventure. He figured he’d hang with Big Ted for a couple of days, then maybe go somewhere else. Maybe even get out of the city. But a couple of days later it started snowing, and at least it was warm down in the tunnels.
Well, at least it wasn’t freezing cold down there.
If you were careful, you could use the men’s room around the corner from the Oyster Bar, if you didn’t stay too long and the transit cops weren’t feeling too mean. But after he barely got away when they busted Big Ted, he spent more time in the tunnels than upstairs.
He got used to it. It wasn’t nearly as dark as it seemed at first. There were more lights than he’d thought, and after a while he even grew accustomed to the noise. “Like the gentle rolling of ocean surf,” Annie Thompson had called it in her gentle drawl that two years on the streets of New York hadn’t hardened. “Puts you to sleep just like you were on the beach at Hilton Head.” He didn’t believe she’d ever lived in Hilton Head, but then, she probably wouldn’t have believed he’d grown up in California. It didn’t matter.
All that mattered was that they were both still alive.
Or what passed for alive. Most of the time there wasn’t much difference between night and day, unless you were under one of the grates that opened up into a park or something, and for the last couple of days—maybe even a week—he’d been staying away from the grates.
The grates, and the subway stations, and the train stations, and the culverts, and the mouths of the tunnels. None of it was safe anymore.
None of it.
Not any friends anymore, either.
A few days ago, maybe a week, he’d had friends. Annie Thompson, and Ike, and that girl—the one whose name he couldn’t remember. Didn’t matter no more anyway, once they started coming after him.
“They.”
The thing was, he didn’t know who “they” were. Up until the craziness started, he’d thought “they” were his friends.
But then one day when he left the tunnels, he snatched a purse. It was real easy—he’d watched Big Ted do it lots of times. The woman he’d snatched it from hadn’t even tried to hang on to it.
She didn’t even yell for help.
A couple of hours later, still on the outside, he ran into Annie Thompson. She’d been right there in the subway station where he made the snatch, and saw it all. But instead of asking him how much money he’d gotten or to split it with her, which he might even have done, she told him off. “You crazy? What did you want to do that for?” She kept on talking, but he didn’t listen—he was too busy looking at a girl who’d just come out of the big church on Amsterdam Avenue, and wondering what it would be like to talk to her. Not touch her or anything like that. Just talk to her. So he’d pretty much ignored Annie until he ran into her later—he couldn’t remember exactly when—and she’d warned him. “Better get out,” she said. “You really think you could get away with that? Now they’re comin’ after you.”
He hadn’t believed her until the next time he tried to get to the surface through one of the subway stations and some of Ike’s friends had shown him their knives.
He could tell by the look in their eyes they weren’t kidding.
He’d been on the run ever since.
And he’d been going deeper and deeper, climbing down ladders whenever he found them, crawling through drainpipes he could barely fit into, creeping on his belly through slimy passages so tight that if they hadn’t been slick with scum, he wouldn’t have been able to make it at all.
Now he lay on a ledge above a passageway that was so dark, if he shut off his flashlight he couldn’t see his hand in front of his eyes. The batteries were dying, and even if they hadn’t been, he couldn’t risk the dimming glow of the flashlight giving him away.
He heard something moving in the dark, then felt whatever it was skitter across his hand.
In the distance, a train rumbling.
In the darkness, a flash of red.
The rumbling of the train grew louder.
He shrank back against the wall behind him, instinctively holding his breath. The whole passage trembled as somewhere above him the train roared over. As the rumbling tremor faded away, the passage grew still.
He let himself relax.
He took a breath, and the fetid odor of decay filled his nostrils.
Again a glimmer of red, this time from the other direction.
Now he could see two spots of red, creeping along the floor like glowing insects. They came together and seemed confused for a moment. Then both glowing red spots began moving toward him.
He tried to squirm back deeper on the shelf, but the cold, dank hardness of solid concrete stopped him.
He lost sight of the glowing dots for a moment, then looked down.
They were both on his chest, close together.
He never heard the shots. Long before the reports of the exploding shells reached his ears, one of the bullets tore into his heart, while the other smashed his spine.
Even in that last split second before he died, he still didn’t know why it had to happen.
He only knew there was no way to stop it.
CHAPTER 1
K
ill him,
Cindy Allen silently prayed.
Kill him, and let me know that this is over
.
Sensing her tension, Bill reached over and took her hand. “They’ll lock him up forever,” he said softly. “They’ll lock him up and you’ll never have to be afraid again.”
Though she squeezed Bill’s hand as if his words had comforted her, Cindy knew they weren’t true. She would be afraid for the rest of her life.
Afraid to walk by herself in the streets—if she could ever walk again.
Afraid to look at the faces of strangers, fearful of what she would see in their eyes: pity and revulsion and embarrassment.
Afraid even to look at Bill, of seeing shades of those emotions in his eyes.
And all because of the man whose face now filled the screen of the television set at the foot of her bed.
She tried to put aside her anger and her fear for a moment, tried to look dispassionately at the face of Jeff Converse. It was a handsome face—she had to admit that. Clean-cut, even features.
Not the kind of face you’d expect to see on a monster. Indeed, nothing about Jeff Converse’s pleasing appearance hinted at the cruelty that lay within. Not the dark, wavy hair, not the warm brown eyes, not the expression on his face. In the image on the television screen of the man she’d testified against in court, Jeff Converse looked as frightened as Cindy Allen felt. Except that she knew her fear was real.
His was just another lie, like all the lies he’d told in court.
“What if the judge believes him?” she whispered, not quite aware that she’d spoken aloud.
“He won’t believe him,” Bill replied. “The jury didn’t believe him, and neither will the judge. He’ll give Converse everything he’s got coming to him.”
But he won’t, Cindy thought. He might put Jeff Converse in jail, but he won’t do to him what he did to me.
As the image of Jeff Converse vanished from the television screen, replaced by the smiling visage of the pretty blonde who anchored the morning news, Cindy looked away, her gaze shifting to the mirror over the dresser that she’d made Bill hang low on the wall so she could see herself as others saw her.
“It will be all right,” Bill had said, trying to reassure her the first time she’d looked into the mirror after the bandages were removed. “I’ve talked to the doctor, and he says he can repair almost all the damage. It will just take time.”
Time, and five surgeries, and more money than she and Bill earned in a year.
And even then, even if they found the money and she went through all the procedures, the plastic surgeon had explained to her, she wouldn’t be well. Her features might once again bear some resemblance to the face that had been hers until that horrible night six months ago. But even if they could repair the scars on the outside—rebuild her crushed cheekbone and shattered jaw, repair the lower lip that had been nearly torn away when he’d slammed her face into the concrete, breaking five teeth in her lower jaw and four in her upper—they’d never be able to repair the scars on the inside. Even if they could find a way to mend the damage to her spine that had made it impossible for her to walk, they’d never be able to make her feel safe on the streets again.
That was what Jeff Converse had taken from her. She had been on her way to meet Bill. It was late, but not that late. He’d had to work, and so had she, and they were going to meet for dinner at ten.
The subway was almost empty—only one seat was taken on the car she got on at Rector Street—and that passenger got off at Forty-second. Then she had the car to herself, which was just the way she liked it. Alone, she was able to concentrate on the IPO she was analyzing before making her final recommendation on Monday morning. By the time she got to 110th Street, she’d marked half a dozen sections to go over with Bill during dinner.
The station was nearly as deserted as Rector Street had been, and she barely noticed the solitary man standing on the platform, waiting for a downtown train.
She was just starting up the stairs when she felt the arm snake around her neck, felt the hand clamp over her mouth. She was yanked backward, then dragged down the deserted platform until they were at its northernmost end.
That’s when her face was smashed the first time, slammed so hard into the tile wall that her nose shattered and blood started streaming down. Stunned, she had no strength to resist as the man shoved her to the platform and began tearing at her clothes. Finally, she started fighting back. She struggled to roll over so she was facing him, but he was too strong for her. He slammed her face into the concrete platform as though trying to break the head of a doll, and for a second she blacked out. When she came to an instant later, she was lying on her back, and though her eyes were already swelling and swimming with her own blood, she could see his face clearly.
The brown eyes looking down at her.
The shock of dark hair.
She lashed out, her fingernails raking his cheek as she found her voice and screamed. She tried to twist away from him, but something was wrong with her body—she couldn’t move her legs.
She screamed again and again, and after what seemed an eternity, during which she was certain she was about to die, help appeared.
Abruptly, the figure above her was pulled away, and a moment later she was surrounded by people. Two transit policemen asked her what had happened, but by then the agony was already overwhelming, and as she saw two more cops dragging the man away, she drifted into unconsciousness.
When she woke up again, she was in a hospital.
They brought her pictures of a dozen men when she was well enough.
She recognized him immediately.
She would never forget him.
“I want to be there,” she said now, as another image of Jeff Converse appeared on the television screen. “When the judge sentences him, I want to be there.”
“You don’t have to, Cindy,” Bill replied, but Cindy Allen was determined.
“I want to see him. I want to see the fear in his eyes.” Without waiting for Bill to help her, she began working her broken body out of the bed and into the wheelchair that stood next to it. “He deserves to die,” she said. “And the scariest part is, I wish I could watch them kill him.”
C
arolyn Randall felt the tension in her expensively decorated breakfast room as the newscaster finished her story on the sentencing of Jeff Converse. When Jeff’s face first appeared on the screen, she’d instinctively reached for the remote control, but not quickly enough. The blond newscaster—who Carolyn was almost certain had been flirting with her husband at a Cancer Society benefit two weeks ago—had already spoken Jeff’s name, and both Carolyn’s husband and her stepdaughter had immediately turned to look.
“Why do you two insist on watching every report about this awful thing?” she demanded when the newscast cut to a commercial. “It’s over. You’ve got to let it go.”
“It’s not over,” Heather replied without hesitation, her voice tinged with anger. “It won’t be over until they let Jeff go.”
“ ‘They,’ as you put it, are not going to let him go unless he’s innocent,” Perry Randall said in a condescending tone, which Heather recognized as one he ordinarily reserved for dim witnesses who were ignorant of the facts. “And since he is not innocent, I don’t think that is going to happen.”
“You don’t know—” Heather began, but her father cut her off before she could finish.
“I know the facts of the case,” he reminded her. “I saw the police report after Converse was arrested, and though I recused myself from the case for obvious reasons, that does not mean I didn’t review it carefully.” He saw in the way his daughter’s jaw set that his arguments would be no more persuasive this morning than they had been on any other day since Jeff Converse had been apprehended at the scene of the assault on Cynthia Allen. His own stubborn streak now revealed itself. “I know how you feel, Heather, but if feelings were allowed to rule our courts, our prisons would be empty. There isn’t a man on Rikers Island—or anywhere else, I suspect—who doesn’t have a girlfriend who swears he’s innocent.”
“But Jeff is innocent!” Heather flared. “Daddy, you must know he’s not capable of what he’s accused of doing!”
Perry Randall’s left eyebrow arched. “No, Heather, I really don’t know him.”
Heather felt she was choking on the stream of furious words rising in her throat, but held them in. What was the point of arguing with her father now? His mind was made up—had been made up since the moment she’d called him after Jeff’s arrest.
She had called him in the hope—no, in the
certainty
—that he’d be able to talk to someone and straighten everything out. Now she realized she should have known better. Hadn’t it been her father’s cool, analytical responses to nearly every emotional issue that ever came up that had finally driven her mother away? Still, she hadn’t been prepared for his response to her request for help:
“I want you to come home immediately,” he’d told her. “The last thing I need right now—”
“
You
need?” she’d retorted. “Daddy, Jeff’s in jail!”
“Which in my experience means he’s undoubtedly done something to get himself there,” her father replied. Then, in the face of her anguish, he’d softened. “I’ll look into it in the morning. It’s going to take some time for the precinct to book him, but there should be something in the office by tomorrow morning. I’ll take a look—see what people are thinking. Then I’ll see what I can do.”
So Heather had come home.
Except the big apartment overlooking Central Park didn’t feel like home anymore—hadn’t felt like home since her mother had left a dozen years ago, when she was eleven.
“Left.”
There was a nice euphemism. Now that she was twenty-three, Heather knew that “taken away” would better describe what had happened. She hadn’t seen it herself, but over the years, she’d gotten a pretty good idea about what had happened. All she’d known at the time was that she’d come home from school as on any typical day and found her mother gone. “She just needs a good rest,” they told her.
It turned out her mother was “resting” in a hospital.
Not a regular hospital, like Lenox Hill, over near Lexington, or the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital down on Sixty-fourth.
The one her mother was in looked more like a resort than a hospital and was out in the country. But it wasn’t a resort. It was where her father had sent Charlotte Randall to stop her from drinking and taking pills.
At first her mother promised she’d come home soon. “It’ll only be a little while, sweetheart,” she said the first time Heather visited. But her mother never came home again. “I just can’t,” she explained. “When you’re older, you’ll understand.”
The divorce was quiet—her father had seen to that.
And her mother had left New York—her father had seen to that, too.
Charlotte was living in San Francisco now. When Heather turned eighteen, she’d flown out to see her, over her father’s objections. Her mother was sober when Heather arrived that morning, but she had a glass of white wine with lunch. “Don’t look at me that way, darling,” she said as she took the first sip, her voice brittle, her smile too bright. “It’s only one glass. It’s not as if I’m an alcoholic.” But it hadn’t been only one glass; that had been merely the first. By dinner her mother didn’t even try to deny it. “Why shouldn’t I drink? I may live in San Francisco, but your father still controls my life.”
“Why do you let him?” she’d asked.
Her mother only shook her head. “It’s not that easy—when you’re older, you’ll understand.” But all the trip to San Francisco accomplished was to destroy the illusions about her mother that Heather had nurtured during the years they’d been apart.
Now she did understand, as her mother had said she would. In some ways, her father controlled her just as much as he had controlled Charlotte. Heather was still living in the rambling apartment on Fifth Avenue, still going to school at Columbia.
Still being supported by her father, still living in his house. But she knew it would end when Jeff finished architecture school and they got married.
Then that terrible night had come when she’d waited for Jeff at his apartment but he hadn’t returned. Finally, certain something must have happened to him, she’d started calling.
First the hospitals. St. Luke’s, the clinic on Columbus, the Westside Medical Center.
And then the precinct station on West One hundredth Street.
“We got a Jeffrey Converse here,” the desk sergeant told her, but refused to give her any of the details over the phone.
Heather thought it must be some terrible mistake, until she went down to the precinct house. Jeff, his face scratched, his clothes covered with blood, had looked at her helplessly through the bars of the single cell in the detectives’ squad room. “I was trying to help a woman,” he said. “I was just trying to help her.”
And the nightmare had begun.
The nightmare that her father, the Assistant District Attorney, had done nothing to end. “There’s nothing I can do,” he told her the next day. “I’ve looked at the case, and the victim has made a positive identification. She’s sure it was Jeff.”
“There must be something—” Heather began, but was interrupted.
“My job is to prosecute people like Jeff Converse, not defend them. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.”
But Heather knew it was more than that. Her father didn’t want to do anything for Jeff.
He’d never wanted her to date Jeff.
He certainly didn’t want her to marry Jeff.
He did, however, want to be District Attorney, an ambition that might very well be satisfied in the next election. Unless, of course, something embarrassing happened—something like being on the wrong side of a much publicized case.
And because of the violence that had been committed against Cynthia Allen, Jeff’s case had become very high-profile indeed. To Perry Randall, it was bad enough that his daughter had been dating Jeffrey Converse. To appear to be defending him was unthinkable.
“But he didn’t do it,” Heather whispered now. “I know he didn’t do it.” She might as well have said nothing at all, for her father had already turned his attention back to the newspaper.