Creepers (10 page)

"I don't give a shit what Miguel likes. Arrange for me to meet him--this afternoon--in the subway would be easiest. But if he doesn't want to be seen with me, wherever he suggests. But I want to meet him later today, got that?"

"I'll see what I can do." Willie got up and pulled his Dogs of Hell jacket closer to his body. "Corelli, now I got a question for you: What's your stake in this? My man ain't the only dude ever to buy the farm in the subway. You out for a promotion, or what?"

"Just doing my job, Willie, that's all." Inwardly Corelli smiled at the thought of promotion. Once he'd considered working his way up into mass-transit administration, but after working in the system awhile he rejected the idea totally. Getting fat behind a desk out in Brooklyn or on Madison Avenue wasn't Frank Corelli's idea of advancement--it was a one-way ticket to an early grave. He'd stay put until he had no choice or until he finally caught the ghost he'd been chasing for the past five years.

Willie didn't accept Corelli's evasive answer. "Look, man, you want any real help from me, you've got to level with me. Don't go handing me none o' this 'it's my job' bullshit. It's ten-thirty in the morning and you're way off your turf interrogating someone you have no business talking to."

"Okay," Corelli sighed, "I've got a feeling about your friend Slade. I've got a feeling he's just another victim in a long line of victims that nobody has bothered to connect before."

"And you got the connection?"

"Let's say I may see a pattern."

"And people disappearing-like is part of this pattern?"

"Yup." Corelli nodded. Willie was smart; he'd remembered the questions about the Penny Comstock disappearance on Labor Day. Not everyone would have.

"And you think all the rest ended up like Slade?"

"I really don't know. Your friend is the only one who's turned up at all. The rest are plain gone...statistics."

Willie shook his head sadly. "This is some goddamned city we live in, Corelli."

"So, let's see if we can do something about it." He pulled out his wallet and removed a business card. "Here's my number at work. Call me before one and tell me where to meet Miguel."

"I didn't know the TA sprang for no callin' cards," Willie mused while turning the card over in his hands.

"Let's call it a personal service." Corelli smirked.

"Nice to see someone in the TA's got some class." Willie slipped the card into his jacket. "You'll be hearing from me." He pulled himself up a little straighter and headed off toward Chambers Street and the subway entrance.

Miguel Esperanza was exactly what Corelli had expected him to be--a tough, street-wise kid who viewed everyone in authority as a potential enemy and a threat to his safety. The city was full of kids like Esperanza, conscripted soldiers in a ragged army of the poor, downtrodden by the middle classes, who wished to close their eyes, snap their fingers, and have all minorities disappear from New York, and ignored by the rich, who swept through the city with gold American Express cards in limousines with tinted windows. Worst of all, they were exploited by their own, by their peers, the con men and ripoff artists who preyed on the ignorance and fear of their neighbors. The melting pot of New York was boiling over, and kids like Miguel Esperanza were dripping into the fire before anyone had a chance to save them.

But Miguel was lucky. He'd met Willie Hoyte and had had enough sense to see that being a member of Dogs of Hell might be the beginning of another life. Not that Esperanza wanted to make it big in the white man's world. Still, being a Dog of Hell was a stab at self-respect, and in the Spanish barrio, if you didn't have respect, you might as well be dead. In the past year Miguel had developed enough machismo for five white guys, and the neighborhood girls were more than ready to be the proving grounds for his budding masculinity. To the world at large, Miguel Esperanza was a tough kid.

But at night, alone in his bed, Miguel prayed to his God to show him the right way. To the teeming public of Spanish Harlem he was untouchable. But naked at night, he was no more than a child--willing to learn, often scared, lonely sometimes to the point of pain. But he knew he was lucky. He'd met Willie, and every day he was taking more steps away from the pointless life of the street that surrounded him. And he was toying with the idea of returning to school or maybe getting his high-school-equivalency diploma. Serving as a Dog of Hell had rounded the sharp corners of his life. And for that Miguel was grateful.

"I tole you, man, that's all I know," Miguel repeated slowly with an edge of bitter sarcasm. He'd already been with this damned cop for fifteen minutes and there was no sign he was ready to let up; fucking Corelli wanted to hear the same story over and over again. "Slade kept looking out the window sayin' he'd seen somethin', somethin' gray like a bag of rags. I thought maybe it was a workman or--"

"Just gray? Nothing more?" Corelli interrupted.

"Gray. Like rags. Creeping along the tracks, that's all."

"Are you sure he said creeping?" Miguel nodded. No one who belonged down in the subway crept anywhere; it was too dangerous. The first rule of working in the subway was to make yourself as visible as possible.

"Look, Corelli, I've got somewhere special to go. How about giving me a break?" Miguel was getting really pissed now. He had a hot afternoon date with Marylu, and shit, here it was three o'clock and he was still sitting in the waiting room of Grand Central Station. It just didn't figure, Willie playing cozy with a cop. The whole deal was beginning to smell like Hoyte was selling out to the municipal authorities. Next thing, he'd take an official job and dump Dogs of Hell like so much shit in a sack. Well, that was no skin off Miguel's nose. He had to do what was right for Miguel Esperanza. And right now that meant getting into Marylu's pants.

"Can I go now, or what?" he asked sullenly. "Yeah, sure," Corelli reluctantly agreed. The kid wasn't much help anyway. "But if you come up with anything else, let Willie know. Hell pass the message on to me."

"Willie's getting real good at passing messages," Miguel said bitterly.

"Don't underestimate him, Miguel. He's a good man." Ten minutes later Corelli still sat in the waiting room, idly watching a few stray passengers find their way to early commuter trains. He hadn't moved because he needed to think. Before talking to Miguel, Corelli had pictured the kind of misfit who'd take pleasure in a mutilation such as Slade's. New York was full of sick people, both men and women. People poured from state institutions into the uncaring city, where they found neither the medical attention promised them nor the homes even stray animals usually managed. It wouldn't have surprised Frank if any of these poor creatures took out their frustration in crimes like Slade's murder.

But Corelli was forced to discard the notion. Those people acted irrationally; Slade's death was calculated. The method was precise--except for the damage to his lower torso. That was insane, all right, but to Corelli right then it smacked more of impatience than insanity. Impatience? He turned the word over in his mind. Why had he chosen that word? The surgical wounds on Slade's upper body had taken time; the others were done quickly, without thought. Maybe someone was coming and time was running out. Maybe a train was bearing down on the killers. That would explain the impatience. They'd have to be in a hurry to remove the flesh before taking it away and . . . What?

Crazy people, like those who roamed the city streets screaming at imagined devils during the day, and who slept in doorways at night, weren't crafty, they were crazy. Since talking to Miguel, Corelli had begun to suspect that his adversary was something else, something low and hulking, creeping furtively along the tracks, close to the wall, lying low to avoid detection. It might be mistaken for a bag of rags or a swirling mass of newspapers. That was the idea--to be seen as one thing but to be another. But what? There was a cunning intelligence at work, a mind crafty enough to play on the frailties of human observation. And that meant that whoever was killing people down in the subways was far more dangerous than the average loony tune, for he killed intentionally, for a reason. And Corelli was beginning to think he'd stumbled onto that reason...and he prayed to God he was wrong.

He left the waiting room, heading toward the Lexington Avenue exit. Louise Hill, too, had mentioned seeing something gray she thought was newspapers. It was just possible that under a little friendly pressure she might remember something more about her daughter's disappearance. After all, so far she was the only witness who'd actually been in the vicinity during the crime. Corelli checked his watch: three-fifteen. He quickly crossed the station's cavernous lobby to a double bank of telephones.

As the dime clanged down into the phone's belly and Frank began to dial, he smiled. So, calling Louise Hill was police business, huh? Just who the hell did he think he was kidding?

Had it not been for Corelli's call, Louise would have gone to bed with a book and then quickly fallen asleep. She found lately she was sleeping a lot, catching little unexpected naps in the afternoon, dozing off after breakfast, or, worst of all, during work in her studio. She understood that the mind's defenses are powerful, self-activated shields, and as the days since Lisa's "accident" dragged on, Louise began to understand how terribly affected she was by her loss. It seemed there wasn't a waking moment when she was not thinking about Lisa--the way she looked, laughed, told her mommy how much she loved her. And when the images of her daughter momentarily relented, the specter of her own guilt took their place. If only she hadn't been so abrupt with the child. If only she'd been more watchful. If only she'd seen something. If only...

Louise was glad Frank--that was his first name, wasn't it?--had called. She needed company, if only for a few minutes. Even if the policeman's presence reminded her of how and why they had met, Corelli was sympathetic, and right now Louise needed that more than anything. Since the day Lisa disappeared, her friends seemed to have followed suit. Not that they weren't solicitous--at first. In fact, the night the story broke, the phone never stopped ringing with condolence calls. A few friends even brought food. It was all different now. Louise only heard from the police, and that was only when she called. The news was always the same: no news. She'd called a few friends, but they were "too busy" to talk. The women with children were the worst. It was almost as if Louise had contracted a dread infection that might spread to them if they weren't careful. She wanted to empathize, to understand their fears, their insensitivity, but every snub made her realize just how alone she was in all this. She had to think of other things.

But there were no other things. Nothing other than her lost baby, whose picture she carried with her throughout the apartment. It was a constant companion during the lost, lonely waking hours that punctuated her spells of sleeping. Even now, as she sat at her bedroom's vanity table while drawing a brush lazily through her hair, Louise's vague pleasure at hearing Corelli's voice was overshadowed by Lisa's haunting smile. She'd heard stories like her own before, dreaded them in some deep recess of her mind which she never admitted existed--until Labor Day. And now Lisa was gone. Taken from her. In the hands of a stranger. Or worse.

An ennui so seductive she had to stand to fight it engulfed Louise. The call to sleep was not to be denied, but she must! Frank Corelli wanted to question her some more. He hadn't been specific on the phone, but she guessed from his voice that Lisa wasn't his sole reason for wanting to see her. Louise hadn't done much dating since David walked out, but she doubted if the male animal had changed all that much in only a year. Behind his earlier questions was a healthy male curiosity about Louise Hill, about what type of woman she was, apart from her tragic situation. Corelli's attention had momentarily taken her mind off Lisa, and for that blessing she would gladly talk to him for hours.

The doorman's buzzing signaled Corelli's arrival. Startled, Louise took a last fleeting look at herself in the mirror and fled the bedroom to answer the intercom. Two minutes later she opened the door to Frank Corelli. He looked exactly as she'd remembered--a tough, overgrown kid with a quick smile and devastating blue eyes. But be was obviously no kid. His manner was authoritative and direct. He was a man who knew what he wanted and was used to getting it.

"Sorry to bust in on you like this, Mrs. Hill." The smile showed he was actually happy to be there.

"Not at all." She led him down the hall to the living room. "To tell the truth, I could use the company. I've just made coffee. I'll get us some."

While she was gone, Corelli unbuttoned his jacket and leaned back against the soft cushions of the couch. He liked this apartment. He felt like he'd drifted into a country house far from the city. During their first interview Louise Hill had mentioned being a textile designer; that explained the proliferation of floral patterns and prints. Corelli wasn't much interested in furniture and decorating--as long as there was a comfortable place to sit, he was happy--but in this room you'd have to be blind not to see the time and taste that had gone into decorating it. Almost against his will, Frank began to wonder what kind of a jerk would divorce someone with as many attributes as Louise Hill.

"This time I promise to keep the coffee off the floor," Louise joked as she returned with a full tray. "I'm not usually so all-thumbs, but under the circumstances..."

"How do you feel?"

"Numb. Like I'd been shot full of novocaine." She settled in a wing chair opposite him and poured the coffee. "You take cream, no sugar, right?" He nodded. "I feel these past two days have really been years."