Wolfman - Art Bourgeau (4 page)

He dropped his hands to his sides and looked in the
mirrors to check the sleeve lengths again. If anything, his
adjustments had made matters worse. Now the sleeves seemed to cover
his hands, leaving only his fingers exposed. He adjusted the coat
again. It seemed far too roomy.

"Claude, I think you’ve made a mistake,"
he said. "This isn't my coat. This one's too large." Not
wanting to cause Claude undue embarrassment he added, "It's the
same kind of suit. You probably picked up the one next to it."

Claude whipped out his glasses and checked the sales
slip with Guido.

"No, Mr. Weatherby," he said, "the
ticket is right. You're a forty-one long. This is the correct suit."
He added, "The trousers were right too."

Loring tugged it together in front. He could see in
the mirrors that there was enough excess material to turn it into a
double-breasted. Any fool could see it. The suit was just too large.

"It doesn't fit," he said.

Claude sighed and looked at the sales slip again. It
made Loring angry. He wanted to shout out, "Don't look at the
paperwork, look at the suit," but he didn’t. Instead he said,
"I'd like to try another suit."

Claude was not pleased and managed to convey it.

"Certainly, sir," and turned to go.

Guido was at the ready with the requested second
suit. He and Claude exchanged looks as he slipped the coat off the
hanger.

Loring stepped off the platform in the lighted mirror
area and into the dimness to exchange the coats. Claude accepted the
offending garment while Guide held the new one open for Loring to
slip on. The way Guido tugged and smoothed reassured Loring that he
had been right and the new coat was going to look much better.

But when he stepped up on the platform surrounded by
the hexagon of mirrors he saw he was wrong. In his reflection the new
coat was worse than the first. Not only did the sleeves appear to
cover his hands, fingers and all, but the coat seemed to reach
halfway to his knees.

"
What's wrong with you people? This one’s
worse than the first. . ."

Claude stepped to the edge of the platform. "Come
here and let me check the sleeve tag."

While Claude checked the tag Loring caught Paul's eye
with a look that seemed to say, "I don't understand what's
happening." Paul smiled. "It looks fine to me. They both
do."

Claude agreed.

Loring stepped back to the center of the platform and
looked at himself in the center mirror, although in doing so he saw
his reflections bouncing back and forth from the other five mirrors.
The coat was still too large. He looked like a teenager wearing
something which belonged to his father — and then he understood. It
all made sense.

It was the mirrors. It was like being in a hall of
mirrors in a sideshow. What did they say about magic tricks . . . all
done with lights and mirrors? Only this time he was the light, and
they were the audience and they were draining him, sucking him dry .
. . and he was shrinking. . .

He saw his eyes widen in his reflection and tried to
calm himself but could not. He felt like a prisoner, held there by
bonds of force. Words from Revelation came to mind: "One woe is
past; and behold there come two woes more hereafter. His heart began
to pound. He could hear it. Holy Michael, the Archangel, he began to
pray, defend us in battle, be our safeguard against the wickedness
and snares of. . . He stopped. No more words would come.

Keeping his eyes on the mirrors he forced himself
toward the edge of the platform, his heart pounding louder and louder
as he stepped carefully off it. He was wrong. To be alone was no
protection. He knew better than that. Then where?

Guido slipped the coat off him, and Paul stepped up
with his old jacket and Burberry. "Are you okay?" he said,
the worry clear in his voice.

Good old Paul. He could have hugged him at that
moment. Even though Paul didn't understand, at least he was there
with his support. But no words would come.

Paul had reached out and touched his arm now. "Loring
. . ." His touch seemed to break the restraint and Loring was
able to speak. But his heart was still pounding, and he had this
awful fear — of death. So strong that it was like a smell, a
noxious enveloping black cloud . . .

The thought of being alone was terrifying. He forced
calm into his voice as he said, "I’m not feeling too well,
Paul. Would you go with me to my doctor’s? He’s just around the
corner."

Paul nodded and helped him on with his coat.

That night the wolf came to Loring in a dream.
 
 

CHAPTER 2

THE WIPERS made a clicking sound as they swept back
and forth across the windshield. The one on the driver's side was
worn, leaving a crescent-shaped smear on the glass with each stroke,
making it difficult to see.

Nate Mercanto looked at his watch, a Seiko, a gift
from his brother. Three-thirty a.m. His shift was not even half over.
Eight o'clock seemed a world away.

The radio in the blue-and-white was quiet. It had
been that way since he had come on duty at midnight. The rain had
helped create that. Not that there was ever much happening in the
vastness of the Wissahickon section of Fairmount Park. It wasn't like
Central Park in New York, he thought. No muggers, no purse snatchers,
no street gangs. No action of any kind. lust peace and quiet. Which
was why the men of the Park Squad were known throughout the
department as "squirrel chasers."

Through the night he had used the slack time to do
his ki exercises, the meditative part of his Aikido training. They
were simple breathing and concentration exercises, Buddhist in
origin, designed to give the fighting spirit a sense of inner peace.
Done correctly they could make even a trip to the dentist bearable by
sharpening and refocusing the practitioner's mental focus away from
the unpleasantness at hand. In the quietness of the third shift they
were the only way he could keep his mind off Rudy Gunther's death.

He pulled into the parking lot near the entrance to
Forbidden Drive. The white limestone gravel of the lot reflected his
headlights upward, making the rain shimmer like a curtain of
Christmas tree icicles. Beyond that all was dark. For a moment he
relaxed his concentration, and that night came back to him, as
always. It had happened near South Street while he was working
undercover and had discovered Gunther breaking into a parked car.
When he identified himself as a police officer Gunther attacked him,
and during the fight Mercanto shot him. It sounded simple but it
wasn’t.

The officer who headed the investigation for Internal
Affairs had recommended suspension. "A hothead," was what
he had called Mercanto. The suspension was granted, and it was months
until the FOP lawyers could plead his case before the American
Arbitration Association. He was found blameless and restored to duty,
but those intervening months had changed him. As the suspension time
dragged by he had been forced to admit there was some truth in the
allegations against him. He had not contained the situation, not
called for backup.

He had violated
procedures, let his ego rule his head. A man was dead, and he was at
least in some measure to blame.

* * *

He drove slowly, peering through the rain. There was
no need to hurry. It was not until he was about halfway down the
parking lot and beginning to make his turn that he saw the car — a
black BMW. It was parked in the lower corner of the lot and was
facing the Wissahickon Creek.

"Probably just some folks making out," he
muttered to himself. He drove closer, stopping the blue-and-white a
discreet distance away to give whomever was in the car a chance to
rearrange any clothing, and get themselves together.

He got out, shoving his nightstick into the ring on
his belt, and picked up the five-cell flashlight from the front seat.
He looked back at the walkie-talkie lying on the seat. Should he
bring it? No, he could handle it. If there was trouble, this time he
would back away . . .

The chill of the rain felt good. Bracing. He pulled
his cap lower on his face and switched on the flashlight. As he
started toward the car he turned up the collar of his leather coat to
keep the water from running down his neck.

The heavy double-breasted coat with its two rows of
silver buttons always made him feel a little like a movie version of
a Nazi U-boat commander. In fact, with his dark looks and perpetual
five o’clock shadow, at thirty-three he looked more like the
swarthy captain of a Greek freighter.

Under his feet he heard the crunch of the gravel as
he closed the distance to the BMW. To his left he heard the sound of
Wissahickon Creek bubbling over the rocks. He could not see it. It
was about fifty yards lower than the parking lot and in darkness. Up
ahead he sensed rather than saw the entrance to Forbidden Drive, a
dirt lane cut through the forest that  paralleled the creek and
was closed to cars. The Park Squad patrolled its length on horseback
from here in the Valley Green section all the way to Lincoln Drive.
To his right, about halfway up a steep and wooded hillside, he could
make out the bare outlines of a white farmhouse that was a French
restaurant called Maison Catherine. There was no light inside, it had
long since closed for the night.

When he made the same rounds on the other two shifts
Catherine Poydras, the owner, would often bring down coffee for him
and they would chat for a few minutes. She had owned the restaurant
for over twenty years and knew everything that went on in the
Wissahickon section of Fairmount Park.

A noise to his left startled him. He turned and
flashed his light, holding it well away from his body. The light
showed a garbage can. It was full. On the ground, next to a rock, he
saw an empty Miller Lite bottle. He shined the light back up the can
and saw several others heaped loosely at the top. Probably it just
rolled off from there and hit the rock — then he heard the second
noise.

It also came from the area of the garbage can but
further back. In the woods where his flashlight beam would not reach.
It was not a single noise like the first but a series of shuffling,
scuffling sounds, as if someone or something was headed down the hill
toward the creek. As he walked toward the can he figured that it was
probably nothing more than someone's dog all set to have a little
sport with the can until he had been disturbed. A far cry from the
kind of noises he’d known when he worked undercover.

He bent down and picked up the bottle, placing it
back in the can and directed his light into the woods behind. The
noise stopped. He moved the light from left to right but couldn't see
anything. The darkness and woods were too thick.

"Go on home, boy. You’ve got no business out
here in the rain on a night like this." From the way he said it,
it wasn’t clear whether he was talking to the dog he imagined out
there in the darkness or to himself, but suddenly the rain didn’t
feel good to him anymore.

He wondered why the presence of the police car hadn't
caused some activity in the BMW. Maybe asleep. He started back toward
it.

About fifteen feet from the car his light picked up a
dark shiny stain on the ground, roughly circular in shape and two
inches in diameter. A couple of feet closer he saw another one, this
one slightly larger, then a third still larger. Someone’s car has a
bad oil leak, he thought.

He raised his flashlight to play on the black BMW.
Still no sign of movement inside its dark, rain-streaked windows. He 
moved to the right so he could come up on the driver’s side from
the rear, transferring the flashlight to his left hand as he did. His
right hand touched the snap on his holster. As he did he thought of
Rudy Gunther and pulled his hand back.

"
Don't be so jittery," he muttered to
himself.

He approached the car and shined his light at the
back window but couldn't see through the window’s dark tint. He let
the light play up the side of the car. The other windows were
similarly tinted. No wonder he didn’t see any movement inside the
car. He shook his head. Most cities had ordinances against windows
tinted this dark. Why didn’t Philly? He stepped closer and tapped
the window on the driver’s side with his flashlight.

"Hello in the car," he called out.

No response.

He thought for a moment about moving up and shining
his light through the windshield, decided that was stupid, he'd be
giving someone a clear head-and-chest shot.

"Hello in the car, this is the police," he
called out and rapped the window harder with his flashlight.

Still nothing.

Mercanto shrugged his shoulders to relieve the
tightness. It was a movement like a fighter would make. Maybe the
car’s empty, he thought, but who would park a BMW in a deserted
spot like this? That was just asking for someone to steal it or trash
it.

Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly ki
style, he transferred the flashlight back to his right hand and
reached for the doorhandle with his left. If there was a problem
behind those windows he was going to be in trouble with both hands
occupied like that. Might as well be holding two bags of groceries.