The Eye: A Novel of Suspense

Bill Pronzini and John Lutz

PART 1

FRIDAY

SEPTEMBER 20

3 A.M.

MARTIN SIMMONS

At eight o’clock that evening, Simmons didn’t know Jennifer Crane existed. Five hours later he was making love to her. It was funny the way things worked out sometimes. He had been to the East Side singles bar, Dino’s, half a dozen times without making a score; tonight he’d gone there without much hope—Thursdays were only fair action nights—and nothing much happened in the first hour. He’d had a couple of drinks, he was bored and thinking he might as well go home, and bang, Jennifer walked in and sat down next to him at the bar.

She was young and attractive and she had a good body; he liked what he saw. But it hadn’t seemed at first that she was particularly interested in him. She’d let him buy her a brace of vodka gimlets, she’d talked openly enough; still, he had the impression she was looking for somebody else. Not a Mr. Goodbar; she wasn’t the type. Maybe somebody she knew, maybe somebody she wanted to know instead of him. So when he’d suggested that they go to his apartment he had more or less expected a polite rejection. Only she’d surprised him by saying, very quiet and matter-of-fact, “Why don’t we go to my place instead? I’ve got to be up early in the morning.”

Her place turned out to be a brownstone on West Ninety-eighth between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive. There was something about the address that struck a chord in Simmons’ memory—something in the papers recently, a couple of street shootings. But he hadn’t paid much attention to the news stories. New York was full of crime: muggings, burglaries, stabbings, shootings. Everyday occurances in every neighborhood. He didn’t let himself think about it. It was an odds game; you could live a lifetime without violence touching you or anyone you knew. He’d never had any trouble himself, so what was the sense in worrying? You could turn yourself into a bundle of neuroses if you fretted about the goddamn crime rate in Manhattan.

Jennifer’s apartment was large, tastefully decorated, with a lot of framed magazine illustrations on the walls. He supposed they were Jennifer’s work—she’d told him she was a freelance magazine illustrator—but he hadn’t had a chance to look closely at them. Two minutes after she locked the door behind them, they were in a clinch and she had her tongue halfway down his throat. And two minutes after that, they were naked in her bed, humping like cats in a barnyard. New York women knew what they wanted, all right. Which was still a source of wonder to Simmons; that wasn’t the way it was out in Kansas City. He’d been in Manhattan for almost two years now and still its women amazed him.

She came at least three times, mewling and scratching, before he had his own orgasm. Like several of the women he’d known in Manhattan, she cooled off fast as soon as all the passion was spent. No cuddling, no postcoital kissing or caressing. She rolled him off her, pulled up the covers, fluffed her pillow, and reached for the obligatory cigarette from her pack on the nightstand.

“Not bad for the first time,” she said in a satisfied way. “Not bad at all.”

Simmons didn’t say anything. He had a vague feeling of being used, a feeling he’d had before. He’d tried to make himself believe it would be different with Jennifer, that underneath her reserved exterior she was more dependent, more vulnerable than the rest. Not that he was looking for anything permanent; he was only looking to get laid. But still, it would be nice to meet a woman who would take off her mask in bed, show him some human qualities other than lust.

Masks, he thought, that’s the thing. Everyone wore them in this insane city, himself included. It was one big masquerade ball—maskers balling each other blindly in the dark.

Jennifer lit her cigarette and then offered him one; he took it. She seemed to want to talk, but not about anything personal or meaningful, not as though she wanted him to know her better, not as though she felt any closeness to him. Just Manhattan bed talk. One stranger making polite conversation with another. Simmons tried to steer her into discussing her magazine illustrating, but even though she complied briefly, it was in glancing generalities that told him nothing about how she felt, who she was beneath the mask.

He did some talking about himself, the presentation he was working on at the agency, his theory that the real creative talent of the culture, with the arts dead or at least pushed to the borders, was in advertising and public relations. Only the same thing happened: It came out in generalities. He couldn’t bring himself to lower his mask any more than she had been able to lower hers. Rules of the game. He’d only been playing it two years, but already he’d been playing it too long.

They each smoked another cigarette, lingeringly. Then Jennifer rolled toward him, began to fondle him, and he felt himself responding; that was part of the game, too. So he made love to her again—a more relaxed coupling this time. She only came once that he could tell, shuddering, with her nails biting into his hips, and then she seemed to lose interest. Even though she kept on moving, using her hands and her body to bring him to his own climax, he sensed the detachment in her, the withdrawal into her own private world. He tried to make himself hold back for a while, as a kind of punishment, but she was good, she knew all the little tricks, and she made him come within two minutes. Just like a whore, he thought as he slid away from her. Just like a damned whore.

Another cigarette each. No talk this time, though; they had both run out of things to say. The evening was wearing down. He knew what was going to happen next, and he was almost relieved when she switched on the bedside lamp, glanced at her digital clock-radio, and then gave him the Look. He’d seen the Look before; he knew it and he knew what it meant.

“It’s almost three o’clock,” she said.

“Getting late.”

“Yes. And I have to be up fairly early. It’s been nice, Marty … very nice. But I think you’d better go.”

“No chance of my spending the night?”

“I’d rather you didn’t. Maybe another time.”

“Sure,” Simmons said. “No problem.”

“You can get a cab on West End Avenue.”

“Sure,” he said again.

He climbed out of bed and began to dress. A certain moody cynicism took hold of him. He was thirty years old, he was getting laid regularly, and yet the swinging singles scene no longer had the appeal that it had five years ago when he was getting nothing much in Kansas City and hoping to make it to New York. Nothing wrong with casual sex, even with a masked stranger; but it was demeaning, somehow, to have the woman you’d just been intimate with throw you out as if you were an electrician or a plumber: service rendered. Women were changing these days, the traditional roles and mores had shifted—he understood that and accepted it. And enjoyed its advantages. Still, it bothered him that Jennifer had been in complete control all along, that he’d penetrated her body without being able to touch her soul.

While he finished dressing she got up and slipped into a nightgown that had been folded on a nearby chair. She did it quickly, so that he only had a glimpse of her breasts, the dark triangle of her pubic hair. He smiled without humor. She wasn’t being demure; she was being impersonal. Let him have her body, let him screw her twice, but she didn’t want him to see her naked. She would never let any man see her naked, he thought, at least not in the truly intimate sense. No matter who she was with, the mask she wore would always be in place.

He ran a comb through his hair, looking at her. In the lamplight, with her auburn hair tousled and most of her makeup rubbed off, she looked younger than the thirty-one she’d told him she was. She looked about nineteen—and hard, not soft. Cold and finely chiseled, like something fashioned from white marble.

He said, “I’ll give you a call tomorrow,” just to see how she would respond.

“Tomorrow is now today,” she pointed out.

“Okay, I’ll give you a call today. Tonight.”

“I’m going to be busy tonight.”

“So I’ll call you tomorrow after all.”

“Well … if you like.”

Which meant she was willing to screw him again. It had been pretty good, she was satisfied, an encore performance was all right with her. Maybe two or three. But then it would be over, and she would throw him out for good. Well, maybe he’d call her and maybe he wouldn’t. It all depended on how he felt tomorrow, how horny he was, whether or not he felt like playing stud for her again. It never hurt to keep your options open. He could use her the same way she wanted to use him.

She gave him her phone number and he wrote it down in his address book. Then he went over to kiss her. Her lips were cool and stiff; she gave him nothing, not even a promise. He let his hand wander to the softness of her breast, under the thin nightgown, but she caught his wrist and pulled it away. Her smile was as impersonal as her lips, her eyes.

“We don’t want to start again, do we,” she said.

“No,” Simmons said. “No, we don’t.”

She ushered him to the front door, let him kiss her again, briefly, and eased him out into the hallway, saying, “It
was
nice, Marty, I’m glad we met. Call me. Good night.” Then the door closed between them and he heard the rattling of the chain and the Fox lock as she slid them into place.

He rode the elevator downstairs, went out through the empty lobby to the street, all the while thinking that he’d changed too, accommodated himself to the New York lifestyle with more ease then he’d ever believed possible. Sometimes, such as right now, he didn’t much like the new Marty Simmons; but at the same time, he had never felt more alive. New York did that to you: It created a paradox. The life-style, while frivolous, was also highly charged; the relationships were self-contained and yet they were also intense. That was life in Manhattan in the 1980’s—intense but superficial. Glitter, excitement, one big endless masquerade ball.

It was still warm outside, muggy; he could smell the faint, unpleasant odor of the nearby river. The street and sidewalks were deserted. Clouds roiled overhead, hiding the moon, and the night seemed darker than it should have been, even with the streetlamps. Hushed, too. The only sounds were the whispery passage of a car on West End Avenue, the distant tired shouts of some late revelers, the just audible pulse of the city as it drifted toward sleep.

Simmons started toward West End, walking rapidly, his footfalls making hollow clicks in the stillness. This was the one really bad aspect of the singles game, going home on these dark streets in the middle of the night. He wasn’t afraid, but he still didn’t like being out this late. It unnerved him a little. He hoped he wouldn’t have any trouble finding a cab. Just the thought of having to walk all the way to his apartment at Seventy-third and Columbus made him nervous.

The black mouth of an alley loomed ahead. Simmons glanced into it as he passed; there was nothing to see except the vague, huddled shapes of a pair of garbage cans. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, started to walk faster.

Something made a scraping sound behind him.

A coldness brushed Simmons’ neck; he looked over his shoulder. A man was coming out of the alley, walking toward him. Instinctively, feeling a cut of fear, he veered toward the street. His city reflexes were already well-developed; you
moved
at the unexpected and you moved fast.

But he didn’t move fast enough.

The man was only a few steps away, and when Simmons heard him say in a sharp voice, “Stop right there,” he looked back again. And that was when he saw the gun outlined in the man’s hand.

No
, he thought,
Jesus no!
He wanted to run but the gun was pointed at him, he could see the cruel black eye of it glaring in the spill of light from a streetlamp. He froze. The man came toward him purposefully—a big man wearing a dark windbreaker, holding the gun steady in his hand.

Stay calm
, Simmons told himself.
People get mugged all the time, it’s no big deal, it’s just an odds game and this time you lost
. “I don’t have much money,” he managed as the man reached him. “Just thirty or forty dollars, that’s all—”