Blood Music (11 page)

“Oh, but Daddy, wouldn't you need to know? If it were me, Daddy.”

Mr. Levy looked down at his plate for a long moment. He nodded without raising his eyes.

“I turned down Charles Street.” Her voice sounded stronger. “I like Charles Street. Do you know this neighborhood, Mr. Nassent?”

“John.”

“John. It's very pretty. I live really far over, on Bank, near the river. There are some hairy scenes at night. The transvestite hookers come down from the meat-packing district, and there are regular hookers too. Daddy hates it that I live so close to that, but where I am it's really safe.
Was
really safe. And it's pretty, did you see any of the old brownstones on the way over?” John nodded.

“He was waiting for me in a stairwell on Washington Street. I didn't see him. Even when he was—he grabbed me from behind. He was tall, I told the police that. They wanted to know if he smelled like anything. I don't think so. He just—he grabbed my neck. He pulled me down into the stairwell and I hurt the back of my head when he threw me down. I kept my eyes closed. He never took his hands off my neck, I don't know how he did that. Always one hand. He had enormous hands. It was like that was all I could feel, his hand on my throat. Not any of the other.

“He didn't say anything. Even his breathing hardly made a sound. I heard this terrible noise, this wrenching sound like the last breath of something, and I realized it was me. I heard it from a long way away. And then suddenly I heard a jet engine. This is so strange. This is what it sounds like to die. Like a jet engine going over in your brain—I can't explain it. A very, very loud noise, and when I moved it was just reflex. The whole time I hadn't believed it was happening and then I knew it was.

“I kicked him. I wanted to kill him. Not just stop him,
kill
him. I knew a little bit of what he must be feeling: it would have made me very happy to kill him. That's not something anybody should ever have to feel. Anyway, I kicked him and I guess I startled him because suddenly I was running screaming down the street. I don't really remember how I got away. I was just running.”

John was ashamed to be listening to her. “This couple walking their dog helped me. They took me up to their apartment and gave me clothes and called the police. All the lights were on up and down the street but these were the only people who helped me. I wish I could tell you more, I really do. But I knew if I opened my eyes he would kill me.”

“How do you know it was really the Slasher?”

“The police said it fit his M.O. I didn't know about the strangling part. And he had a knife.”

“How do you know?”

Madeleine put her hand on her thigh. “He cut me,” she said. “Nobody knows about that. I think the cops didn't want people to know it was the Slasher. But somebody talked. He cut my leg when I kicked him. I don't know how. I didn't even feel it. I don't know where the knife was while he was choking me. I guess next to him. I guess he reached for it when I kicked him.”

“He's fast, then.”

“He's a monster. He's not real. But that's not the worst thing, is it? The worst thing is that he's not a monster. He's a man, just like you.” She looked down at her plate and a strand of hair fell into her face and she pushed it away with her hand.

“Mr. Nassent,” said Mr. Levy, “I agreed to let my daughter meet with you because I know what you must be going through—my Madeleine is very dear to me. But we can't help you get over the loss of your sister. I don't think you just want to know what happened for sentimental reasons—even though I would want to know too. I think you're looking to turn this into a personal vendetta, Mr. Nassent, and though in my heart I can find a place where I want just what I think you want, I can't be a party to helping you find and harm this man. That's what you want, isn't it?”

“I don't have a chance in hell of finding the man, Mr. Levy,” John said truthfully.

“But you want to try.”

“I don't know what I want. I guess I just wanted to see the woman who'd escaped what my sister couldn't escape.”

“Well, we're happy to help you there. But I won't allow my Madeleine to get involved in a vendetta. If you'll excuse me, Mr. Nassent. Maddy, if you see a waiter, order me a cup of coffee, would you?” Mr. Levy got up and headed toward the men's room.

John sat uncomfortably. He didn't know what to say; there was nothing of Cheryl in this woman.

Suddenly she leaned forward and touched his hand. “I want to kill him, too,” she said. Her voice was low and her touch was cold. “I can help you. I did see his face. Daddy didn't want me to tell you, he knew what you wanted. But I want it too. Listen, the police will be releasing a sketch in a couple of days. The police artists have been wonderful, but it won't be him. I tried and tried, but I can't get out what's in here,” tapping her temple with her cold fingers. “A general description, yes, but not the eyes. Not the mouth. I saw his face and it's trapped inside me and I have to get it out or it will drive me mad. I couldn't make the police artists see him—
really
see him. But I see him all the time, John. I'll help you. I'll help you find him. But you have to promise me something.” Over Madeleine's shoulder John could see Mr. Levy on his way back from the men's room. “Anything,” he said.

“That you'll kill him. I don't want to sit in the witness box in front of the whole world and say my name out loud. I want you to kill him for me.”

T
he van was parked on Hudson Street, down by the park next to the water. He could see the Midtown skyline splayed out and sparkling across the river. From the other side, Hoboken was nothing but a swatch of darkness at night. Across the river everybody was afraid, and nobody knew where he was. It was his city now.

He got out of the van and walked around to the side doors. Tonight there was no tape over the logo. Across the street an old woman was walking an old poodle. She looked into the van and saw nothing. There was no trace of the body that had lain there.

The tarp lay rolled up now at the back of the van. The old lady and her dog had gone away ignorant. He turned on the overhead and looked at the equipment spread out in front of him on the floor: a pile of newspapers, a white bottle of Elmer's glue, scissors, several sheets of heavy construction paper from a multicolored pack, a pair of skin-thin rubber gloves. These things reminded him of school supplies, and how he had always loved school supplies.

He took out his pocket diary. The diary was the week-at-a-glance type; his heavy script ignored the ruled boxes as it crawled down the page. He needed a challenge. He checked the date in his pocket diary: May twenty-sixth. The summer symphony season was about to begin.

He slid the gloves onto his hands; this was awkward, and it would take a long time, but when he slipped the final creation into an envelope (Number 10) and mailed it (Series A stamp) from Staten Island or Bay Ridge in Brooklyn or Riverdale in the Bronx, he would have played the first note of what was surely going to be his greatest part. He reached for the scissors, pulled the stack of newspapers close, and began.

S
tacy Iocca stopped walking. She stood at the corner of Fourth and Hudson streets. She often walked this way in the evenings; the lights of Manhattan looked pretty across the river. Stacy was exhilarated by the spring air, by the big white clouds moving over the river. They made her happy to be alive.

Lately she hadn't been so happy. Her friend Rosalie had been dead for almost three months; their babies had often played together in this park. Rosalie and Stacy had gone out for Japanese food several times, leaving their husbands home to watch the babies. (Her Joey was home now with his father, who thought Stacy was overly moody of late and needed to get out more.) They always sat in the same booth and ate sushi and drank three or four little porcelain cups of warm saki. They had told each other their childhoods. Since Rosalie had been murdered that horrible way—the knife coming out of nowhere, the baby alone on the bright green lawn—Stacy had learned what death was.

She had never thought much about death before. She was twenty-six, healthy. Her husband and the baby were healthy. But now she knew that only the thinnest membrane separates us from death at any moment. The membrane is as thin as a breath. She could look at the clouds and be happy and the next moment she could be dead. Even a heartbeat is not faster than death.

Stacy stopped walking. There was a dark van parked midway down the block. Its doors were not open and she couldn't see any light, but the stereo was blasting music into the night sky: classical.

For some reason, for no reason, the dark van on the dark street blaring classical music suddenly seemed horribly sinister. The van reminded her of a hearse: black for death. Only her breathing separated her from the dead. Abruptly Stacy turned and walked up Fourth Street toward the lights and bustle of Washington Street.

Z
elly sat on the floor in front of the closet looking at the pair of panties in her hands. They weren't hers.

She had been meaning to clean out the small, overstuffed closet for months now. It was June first. Mary lay happily entangled in a heap of pants Zelly had decided really never would fit again. And should she just throw out the blouses she used to wear to work? Would she ever be able to wear anything again without getting applesauce on it?

Then she found a bag way at the back of the closet. A plastic bag from the QuickChek down the block. The bag had a pair of panties in it. It was on top of a pile of particularly repugnant pornography.

Zelly held up the panties. They definitely weren't hers. Even before the baby her hips had never been that small. She gingerly held the panties up. Lilac satin, white lace. She turned to the inside tag, feeling like a voyeur, feeling horrible: size five. Not Zelly's size. Zelly wore a seven. And not new.

Pat hadn't made love with her in two weeks. He wasn't normally an adventurous lover; even when they made love more often, before the baby, he had seemed content with ordinary touch and gesture, fashioned over the years into their own comfortable ritual. Before he tried to strangle her she would never have expected him to initiate anything kinky, in spite of his pornography. If he wanted spice he had never shown it. If Zelly wanted spice she had never dared tell him. With Pat some silences were inviolable, and his silence surrounding the sexual act was sacrosanct. Zelly never knew whether Pat's silence came from Pat or from Zelly's own sympathetic imaginings—that some woman had hurt him terribly, that he had been duped by tragedy and that sex was for him not a joyous act but a field of intimated betrayal. He seemed almost afraid, even after eight years, to let himself go, to experiment. Some perfunctory cunnilingus, a few missionary thrusts, and Zelly with the wet spot on her side of the bed. The only time she had attempted to perform fellatio on him he had shoved her away brusquely. But there was pornography in the closet, pornography stuffed between the mattress and the box spring. He didn't want her but he wanted those paper women. He didn't buy lingerie for her, but he had lingerie hidden in a bag on top of his filth.

Zelly began to cry as she stuffed the panties back in the bag. She'd heard about things like this. The baby looked at her, startled, and started to cry herself.

“Oh, Mary,” Zelly said, scooping her up and hugging her against her breast. “Daddy's sent away for this stuff in the mail, I'll bet. I've heard about this, honey. Mommy's okay. Sometimes men send away for things like this at the back of girlie magazines.” She pushed angrily at the pile of slick-shiny books. Mary started to really wail. “You don't know what a girlie magazine is, do you, honey? Come to Mama. Mama needs a hug. We won't say anything to Daddy, will we?” Zelly rocked the baby and cried. Mary grew quiet.

“Unless—” She looked inside the bag again. There might have been a reptile in there. She reached in; she didn't know that she closed her eyes when she did it. Lavender silk, a white-lace bow. They could have come from one of those places at the back of the magazines. But they could have come from someplace else, too.

The late nights. Size five—she must be a slim woman. Lavender—a romantic color. The whole scene came to her, like a memory: a slim-hipped woman, half turned away, pulling the lavender panties down her hips, her thighs. Under the garish impersonal light in a motel room.

The emergency calls Pat just had to answer. The slim woman reclining (was she blond? brunet?) on anonymous hotel sheets. Zelly's imagination lent the scene an orange neon sign blinking outside the window. A brunette? Younger than Zelly, slimmer.

He talked in his sleep. What had he said? “I will.” The panties lay in her hand and she couldn't stop looking at them. Lavender silk, white lace. So he had another woman. What else had he said, that night at dinner? Something about the greatest love. He was gone all the time and he had another woman and he had tried to strangle her the day after one of the Slasher victims had escaped, he talked in his sleep he hit the wall, but he had another woman that was why he was never home.

A loner, probably divorced. But Ted Bundy had a girlfriend until she called the police.

Marginally employed. But there was John Wayne Gacy in Chicago.

So busy driving from place to place. But he had another woman.

Has an excessive love of pornography. A slim-hipped brunette.

The late nights. The distance. The odd, disjointed things he sometimes said. I
will.

An adulterer. A murderer. Zelley stared at the panties in her hand.
My God.

M
adeleine expected him to have a plan. “You know that the only way you're going to catch him is if something preposterous happens,” she said over dinner at the same restaurant a few days later. June first, and it was pouring rain outside. “So you're going to have to put yourself into preposterous situations. You don't have any kind of training, do you? As a private investigator or anything?”