Laughing Man (6 page)

Smalley savored the moment before answering. "Yes," he said, and smiled again. "As far as I'm concerned, you are."

"And, as a suspect, am I being removed from active duty?"

"That's up to the captain. I'm recommending that you be put on unpaid leave."

"Am I going to be arrested?" Another smile.

"It's likely."

"On what evidence?"

"There is no direct evidence. You know that. We're talking to you because of your behavior at these crime scenes. I think you knew these women. Shit, I'm positive you knew these women."

"Prove it. You can't."

"Goddammit, you knew them and you killed them. That's what I believe. It's what I
know
!"

Erthmun stood, withdrew his .38, put it on the desk, followed that with his badge. He looked at Smalley, who glanced confusedly at the badge and the .38 for a moment, then, just as confusedly, into Erthmun's eyes. "What's this?" he said.

Erthmun left the room without answering.

H
e got into his bed before dark, while the pale light of late afternoon was on him. He could feel the light on his face. Usually, it was warm, and forgiving, and maternal. Now, it wasn't, and he didn't know why.

He was more exhausted than he had ever been. Surely, he thought, it was the kind of exhaustion that was like the quick approach of death, overwhelming and inescapable.

But sleep eluded him. Perhaps because it was still daylight, or perhaps because he was simply too exhausted to sleep (a complaint he had heard from others, but which he did not understand).

He lay with his eyes open under his cocoon of blankets. He lay stiff and tense, as if expecting some deadly surprise. This made him feel like an animal in hiding from predators. It was a feeling he could not remember having experienced before, and he didn't like it. It made him want to lash out at random noises—the radiators clicking, horns blaring, the rushing noise of the refrigerator springing to life.

After an hour, he threw his blankets off, went to his window, and looked out at the street below. Dusk, now, and the street lamps had winked on. People walked quickly, coat collars turned up, heads down, shoulders hunched. He guessed that it was cold beyond his window, and he wondered why he—naked—didn't feel it. He decided that his tension and anger were making him warm.

He saw his dim reflection in the window—square face, barrel chest, short, well-muscled thighs, and his great erection, too, which came to him whenever he was naked.

(This fact had caused him endless trouble in situations where he had found himself naked among other men, because erections equaled arousal, of course, and if he was with other naked men, then, ipso facto, it was they who were causing his arousal. But this was not so, and he had tried, as a teenager, to convince other young men that it wasn't so. "I'm simply . . .
ready
!"
he declared, which was the truth, as he saw it, but it elicited gales of hooting laughter.)

His reflection in the window started a moment's impulse to violence, as it usually did, but the impulse dissipated almost at once.

No one this night looked up at him as he stood naked at his window. New Yorkers did not usually look up as they walked. They held their heads at a slightly downward angle and walked quickly, with purpose; it was a statement to any who might want to bother them—
Keep
your distance!

But Erthmun wasn't interested in this, and he wasn't interested in the briskly moving passersby four stories below, or in the glowering Manhattan sky. He was interested in the creature who had come to live in his city. The creature who killed with sweet and sick gusto, and who left her victims looking foolish.

She was there, in the night, where he was so unwilling to follow. She was there, in those buildings, with those people. She joked with them and laughed with them and slept with them. But she was not one with them.

She was one with
him.

He lurched away from the window, as if he had been dealt a physical blow.

One with him?
What was he thinking? He didn't even know her name. He had never seen her. He wasn't even certain that she
was
a she.

He sat on his bed, bent forward, cupped his hands on either side of his face.

He knew her. She was murderous and predatory, and she lived only to bring herself pleasure, and others pain.

And she came from the same place that he had come from.

"I
s he a blood relative?" Mark Smalley asked Sylvia Grant.

"Is the answer to that question germane to your investigation?" she shot back.

Smalley shrugged, grinned. "Sure, it's germane."

"I don't see how."

"Can't you simply give me a straight answer?"

"Yes, certainly."

"Can I assume, then, that he is
not
a blood relative?"

"You may assume whatever you like, Mr. Smalley. I am obviously not in control of your assumptions." She smiled. It was comely and confrontational at the same time.

Smalley's grin became a smirk. "I should tell you that your responses reveal more than you might believe."

"I doubt, Mr. Smalley, that I am so open a book that you can say from one moment to the next what I might or might not believe." She was still smiling. She had a cup of tea in front of her on a coffee table. She picked it up, brought it to her lips, tipped it very slightly—not enough, Smalley guessed, to drink—then put the cup down.

He was seated opposite her on the uncomfortable Queen Anne settee. He had perched himself on the edge of the settee, as if ready to leap from it at any second. He thought that it made people nervous to look like he was going to leap up at any second. It was one of several poses he employed. Sometimes, depending upon the person he was talking to, he chose to look very relaxed. He guessed that this made people believe he was a friend, or a confidant. But he had sensed that Sylvia Grant was very smart—nearly as smart as he was—and that such a pose wouldn't work. It was best, with smart people, simply to put them on edge, to appeal to their fear and paranoia, to play with their emotions. This dulled their intelligence and caused them to slip up.

He said, "Your brother looks nothing like you, Mrs. Grant. There seems to be absolutely no family resemblance. So my assumption is—"

"Again, Detective, your assumptions are of little consequence. Jack is indeed my brother, and I am his sister, and we do indeed share the same mother"—she hesitated—"and father. Now if that is the extent of your inquiry—"

"No, of course it isn't!" He heard the edge in his voice and it surprised him. He shook his head. "It's not nearly the extent of my inquiry, Mrs. Grant."

She nodded, gave him another comely and confrontational smile, delicately sipped her tea again. He looked into her cup as she set it on the coffee table. It was less than half full. He pursed his lips, annoyed, looked at her breasts, saw that she was again wearing a bra, looked into her eyes, saw that she was amused.

He leaped from the settee. "Goddamnit, you have sim
ply got
to be more cooperative with me!"

She smiled up at him. "When we were children, Mr. Smalley, I remember that Jack often volunteered to wash the dishes, especially in the winter. He never told me why he did this, but I guessed that he did it because the hot water felt good on his hands."

Smalley stared uncomprehendingly at her.

She continued. "When other children went sledding, Jack stayed inside and read a book, or played a game with our younger sister—checkers and Parcheesi were their favorites—or he listened to the radio. He didn't like TV. He's never liked it. He complains that it confuses him. He says that he can actually see the separate scanning lines, and so the picture itself is lost to him." She shrugged a little, reached for her teacup, touched it, went on. "It all sounds very fanciful, doesn't it?" She picked up the teacup, with the saucer, held it near her chin, and continued. "But in summer, and spring, and in the autumn, you couldn't keep him in the house. He'd stay out for hours and hours. Even in the pouring rain. Actually, he loved the rain. I don't believe that he loves it quite so much now." She smiled ruefully. "I suppose that's all a regrettable part of growing up." She sipped her tea; it made a slurping noise as it passed her lips, which jarred Smalley. She set the cup down. "So you see, we really did grow up together. I know him as well as anyone. He's my brother, after all."

H
elen was watching a movie in a theater on 42nd Street. The movie was a sweeping, romantic saga laced with violence, and lust, pain and forgiveness, heartache, death, and renewal. She loved it. It spoke to her. It was a romance of the earth, a story about people who tilled the land and created children, who built dynasties and amassed great wealth and power, who sought to make of themselves, at any cost, something that the world would long remember. The movie's message was—
We are far more important than that which has created us!
It was a message with which she rabidly agreed. Isn't a great work of art far greater, she maintained, than the artist who creates it? And wasn't she a work of art? Wasn't she the earth's masterpiece! Wasn't she something unique, and fantastic! Wasn't she the only true predator in a world of prey!

Erthmun opened his apartment door and saw a cat in the long hallway. The cat sat facing him, and its large eyes were on him. The cat was licking its chops, as if it had just eaten something tasty. It was a very big gray cat, and Erthmun could hear it purring, even though it was at the end of the long hallway.
Big cat, big purr
, Erthmun thought.

A door opened near the cat and a young woman dressed in a blue satin robe came partway into the hall, bent over, and scooped the cat up. As she straightened, she saw Erthmun and nodded and smiled at him. He nodded back.

"Hello, Mr. Erthmun," she said.

"Hello," he said. He looked quickly down at himself, uncertain that he wasn't naked. He saw that he, too, was wearing a blue robe.

The woman said, "We're both wearing blue robes."

Erthmun nodded. He felt an erection starting. The woman was tall, brunette, and her mouth went a little crooked when she smiled, as if she were remembering some delicious secret. Erthmun said, referring to their blue robes, "We are, aren't we."

She nodded. She stroked the cat's ears as they talked. The cat's purring was very loud. He was so large that his rear end hung to below her waist, and his tail to her knees. Erthmun didn't believe that he had ever before seen such a large cat.

He said, "That's an awfully big cat."

"He's a Maine coon cat," said the young woman, and gave him one of her crooked smiles; he loved her smile—it fired up his erection.

He saw her glance at his crotch; she smiled once more. "It was good talking to you, Mr. Erthmun," she said. "Perhaps we can talk again."

"Talk again," Erthmun echoed her. "Yes." But she had already disappeared into her apartment.

I
n his own apartment, Erthmun thought about mounting the woman in the blue robe. She could even hold her big cat while he did it, he decided. He would mount her from behind, while she cradled the big cat in her arms. He would bend her over the bed and mount her from behind. He'd lift her robe up and enter her, while she cradled her cat in her arms. She would smile her crooked smile, and her big cat would purr while he pushed himself into her. He'd put his hands on her ass while he pushed into her, and he'd knead one cheek of her ass while she smiled her crooked smile.

He ejaculated as these thoughts came to him. And when his erection subsided, and as the pleasure of his ejaculation slowly left him, he looked down at his stained blue robe, and he felt suddenly, completely, and terribly alone.

P
atricia David stared at the body splayed out in the bottom of the empty Dumpster on East 75th Street and said to the detective with her—a heavyset, jowly and, as legend had it, deadly serious middle-aged man named McBride, "This is a copycat killing."

"Is it?" said McBride. "How can you tell?"

"Look at the wounds." She played her flashlight along the length of the naked body. "It's like someone went after her with a lawnmower, for Christ's sake. There's no finesse here."

McBride harrumphed his agreement.

"This is not a good thing," Patricia said.

"It's a terrible thing," said McBride.

"I mean that we have a copycat killer," Patricia said. "One killer was awful, but two is really lousy." McBride gave her a disapproving look.

"You don't agree?" Patricia said.

"With what?"

"That two killers is really lousy."

"I don't think 'lousy' is the word I'd use under these circumstances."

"Oh," Patricia said.

"I think 'tragic' is more the word I'd use."

"Sure, it fits."

"This young woman"—he nodded at the corpse—"was someone's daughter, someone's sweetheart, someone's mother, perhaps."