After Midnight (18 page)

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A Killer in the Street

It was a Tuesday night in November, 1962. Rain fell slow and steady in Manhattan, slanting hard on near-deserted sidewalks and streets pocked by the occasional twin circles of approaching headlamps. Taxis spawned out from Times Square like predatory bugs in search of new feeding grounds, and here and there a truck rolled heavily past sleeping skyscrapers where spotty clusters of bright windows indicated janitors were toiling late on nocturnal rounds. Nature had a conspiracy against Kyle Walker. Tuesday was the night for his extension course at the university, and it had rained every Tuesday since the course began. Kyle Walker was 30, a civil engineer on the city payroll, and a man of ambition far above his present status. Tall, angular, a bit shaggy in his waterproof and fedora, he hunched awkwardly over the steering wheel of the eight-year-old sedan that was taking him home.

Home was the Cecil Arms apartment hotel—an unimaginative brick structure providing what was known, wryly, as low-cost housing and holding in residence a collection of the young and ambitious on their way to glory, and the old and embittered on their way to nowhere. It housed, in particular, a lovely young sociology major who had been named Diedre by doting parents and called nothing more elegant than “Dee” since the christening ceremony. Dee with her solemn brown eyes, her scholar’s mind and nymph’s body. Dee, who could leave her text and tortoise-shell glasses on the bedside table and become as primitive as Eve in his arms, or who, on a wet and miserable night such as this, would have dry slippers at the door and a pot of hot chocolate waiting on the back of the kitchen stove like any dutiful
Haus-frau
. With such thoughts to keep him warm, Kyle Walker felt extraordinarily good—in spite of the warped wiper that flapped ineffectually against the windshield of his old sedan—because he was young and alive and had yet to know the meaning of terror.

The mouth of the lower level garage was deserted. Bernie, the night attendant, wasn’t in his office, but his radio was blaring a percussion beat that was Bernie’s signature, and it meant that he had gone for coffee or tumbled into the back seat of one of the parked cars to sleep off a dull evening. Kyle nosed the old sedan into his own slot and switched off the ignition and the lights. Gathering up an armload of textbooks from the seat beside him, he stepped out of the car into an unusual darkness. The overhead lights were out. The only light in the garage came from the small office at the entrance and the indicator over an automatic elevator on the opposite wall. He slammed the car door behind him. Darkness seemed to intensify sound. The thud reverberated hollowly and then faded behind a wild temple-block obbligato rising from the radio. Even his footsteps on the floor traced a sharp, staccato pattern all the way to the elevator. Kyle pushed the down button and waited. A high-pitched wail concluded the radio offering and in the subsequent silence he became aware of an annoying scratching or scuffling sound emanating from behind a stack of empty packing cases a few feet away. He made a mental note to speak to Bernie about rats in the garage and then, as the doors under the indicator opened, stepped inside the bright box of the elevator. Entering, he pushed the button for the fourth floor. When he faced front the doors were closed and the elevator was in motion. Passing the first-floor level he began to grope through his pockets for his key ring. At the second-floor level he remembered they were still in the ignition of the sedan. Halfway to the third he reversed direction and started down. At basement level the doors opened and light from the elevator spilled over a scene that held Kyle magnetized.

Now he faced the empty packing cases. Beyond them the scuffling sound had developed into a full-fledged battle. Two men were doing something violent to Bernie. The boy was gagged and bound with rope, but had managed to pull loose from his captors long enough to hobble a few feet toward the entrance of the garage. His face was a flash of white terror—his mouth opened in a scream that never reached sound. He writhed in the light as they fell on him. The larger man held his arms while the other, in a gesture so swift it seemed trivial, dropped a wire about his throat and completed a quick, brutal strangulation. Kyle was dumb. Not until the murder was accomplished did the man with the wire become aware of the light spilling over him. As Bernie’s body slumped to the floor, the strangler turned quickly and stared at the open elevator. He was a man of ordinary appearance—conservatively dressed, clean-shaven, with intense eyes magnified by steel-rimmed glasses. His face was devoid of expression, and Kyle stared at it for a full twenty seconds before he was able to raise his free hand and depress the fourth-floor button. As the elevator doors closed, he slumped back against the steel wall and fought nausea.

It was the beginning of the fear.

Kyle left the elevator at the fourth floor. The corridor was empty—that was good. He went directly to his apartment and rang the bell. Dee always stayed up for him, and they hadn’t lived at the Cecil Arms long enough to make neighbors she could visit. Impatiently, he rang a second time. Dee opened the door.

“I thought you had your key,” she said.

“I did,” Kyle answered. “I left my key ring in the car. My feet are wet. I don’t want to go back down for them tonight.”

He handed Dee the textbooks and crossed quickly to the street-side windows of the small living room. The apartment was equipped with steel Venetian blinds assembled on sagging tapes that never gave complete privacy. Tonight it seemed they must be transparent. He lifted one slat and peered out at the street. He had been too intent on outwitting the ailing windshield wiper to notice what, if anything, was parked on the street as he approached the garage. Four stories below, the rain was still pounding hard on black asphalt and silver cement, but opposite the Cecil Arms, just outside the arc of a street lamp, a dark VW van nosed slowly away from the curb. The headlights came on as a man sprinted across the shiny street. Reaching the curb, he paused and peered up at the apartment building. Kyle caught the glint of light on steel-rimmed spectacles, and then the far door of the van opened, the man leaped into the cab, and the van disappeared in the darkness.

Kyle lowered the slat.

“What is it?” Dee queried anxiously. “An accident?”

He remembered that he hadn’t kissed her when he came in. He took the texts from her hands, tossed them into a lounge chair and took her in his arms. She was soft and warm and smelled of drugstore cologne and cocoa. He didn’t know how tightly he held her until she said, “Kyle—please! I can’t breathe!”

Kyle let her go. She looked at him strangely—not certain if it was the proper time to smile.

“Wet feet—warm heart,” she said. “What were you studying in class tonight? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

He brushed a dark lock of hair away from her forehead. Shock created peculiar reactions. He could see the strangler’s hands fixing a wire about Bernie Chapman’s neck, and then it became Dee’s neck and Dee’s dark eyes widening in pain and horror.

“Dee,” he said, “I’m quitting the class.”

“Quiting?” she echoed. “Why?”

“I must. We’re not getting anywhere, Dee, and it’s so late …”

“Late?”

“I mean that life passes so quickly. We’re in a rut, Dee. I want to leave New York.”

She listened but the words didn’t take hold.

“Get your shoes off,” she ordered. “I’ve got chocolate on the back of the stove—”

“Dee, I’m serious,” Kyle persisted. “This isn’t a new thing. I’ve been thinking about it for months, and now I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to quit my job and take one of those overseas assignments—”

“With mosquitoes and tsetse flies and deadly snakes crawling through the sleeping bags? Ugh!”

“You can live in Rome or Paris.”

“I live with you!” Dee declared. “Now you get out of those wet shoes right now. And out of the socks, too, do you hear? You know how easily you catch cold!”

Kyle couldn’t tell her what he had seen in the garage. It was too soon and he was too frightened. He had to let her pour the chocolate while he removed his shoes and socks, and then he had to sit on a chair in the kitchen with his feet placed in a tub of hot water and choke down the sweet liquid while Dee gave a full report of the day’s news: Mrs. Leonardi, the vegetable man’s wife, was expecting in May; the gardener’s son was at the top of his class in law school; the garbage hadn’t been collected again and there was a leak in the shower head. Event after event stunted the imagination while the water in the tub turned tepid and the recitation of daily minutiae took away the edge of tension. Kyle hoped she would talk all night even if he never heard a word.

“You aren’t listening,” she scolded.

Kyle was listening but not to Dee. The kitchen door was open and his ears had picked up the plaintive wail of a siren searching a destination in the rain-swept streets. He knew why it was coming and where it would stop. He stepped out of the foot tub and walked quickly back to the living-room window with the Venetian blind.

“Kyle—your slippers!” Dee called, but Kyle was already intent on the tableau in the street below. A police car arrived first—seconds later an ambulance whined out of the night and parked in front of the entrance to the garage. In spite of the rain and the late hour—it was now almost midnight—a scattering of the ever-curious began to emerge from the shadows. Kyle snapped shut the blind and intercepted Dee, slippers in hand, halfway in from the bedroom.

“There’s been some kind of accident,” he said. “Always happens on rainy nights. I’m glad I’m home.”

“That makes two of us,” Dee said.

“So, now that I am home, why don’t you get into bed? I’ll wash up the cups and the chocolate pan for you.”

Dee gave an exaggerated gasp. “Why, Mr. Kleen, where’s your earring?”

“In my nose where all good husband’s rings are worn,” Kyle said. “Please, Dee, go to bed. You look tired. I’ll be in soon.”

“You’re trying to get rid of me.”

“Of course I am. I’m trying to protect you from the ugly truth. I haven’t been to class at all. I’ve been going out with a gang of armed hoods on stick-up jobs, and now the jig’s up and the cops are here. Now will you go to bed?”

Sometimes she was like a child; sometimes he was her child. It was a kind of game that two people play, and the name of the game was life. But sometimes the wrong door opened and the game turned dangerous.

He sent her off to the bedroom with a kiss and a sleeping powder, and then returned to the kitchen and tidied up like an Irish maid until the doorbell rang. It rang only once. Kyle opened the door before a big, square-faced detective with a police lieutenant’s badge in his palm could punch the bell button a second time.

“Mr. Kyle Kevin Walker?” he queried. “I’ve been reading your nameplate above the bell.”

“The same,” Kyle said.

“I’m making a routine check of all the tenants in the building, Mr. Walker. Have you left this apartment any time this evening?”

Kyle had forgotten to put on the slippers Dee delivered to him. He felt naked and awkward standing in the doorway in his bare feet. Too naked to attempt to lie.

“I went to night school,” he said. “I have a regular class—”

“At what time did you leave the building, Mr. Walker?”

“At seven-thirty.”

“Did you go out through the garage?”

“Yes, I have a car—”

“And when did you return?”

“It must have been at least ten-thirty. It’s usually ten-thirty, but I may have been later tonight because of the wet streets. Why are you asking these questions, Lieutenant?”

“Do you know Bernie Chapman?”

The carpet was a cheap landlord’s quality semiburlap. Kyle couldn’t even dig his toes into the pile for anchorage.

“He’s the garage attendant,” he answered.

“Did you see him when you came in tonight? Think now. This question is important.”

The lieutenant was right. Kyle wasn’t an expert on organized crime, but he did know that the men who had strangled Bernie weren’t amateurs. At this moment neither of them was running, emotionally or physically. Neither of them would lose a wink of sleep over an easily expendable eyewitness.

And so the answer to the police detective’s question had to be, “No, sir. Bernie wasn’t in the office. His radio was playing and I thought he had gone out for coffee.”

“Did you see
anyone
in the garage, Mr. Walker?”

“I saw no one,” Kyle said.

Lying was easy when the alternative was a length of wire in a killer’s hands. The detective seemed convinced. Kyle wanted to end the interview immediately, but he had to remember what a normally curious man would do next.

“Is Bernie missing?” he asked.

The lieutenant didn’t hide a thing. He explained that Bernie Chapman was dead, that the indications pointed to a gangland slaying. One of the other tenants had driven in half an hour ago and found the body near the elevators. There was talk that Chapman had been operating as a bookie out of his garage office, and talk that he was mixed up in the numbers game. Kyle hadn’t lived in the building long enough to absorb the local gossip and could add nothing to the story.