The Frenzy Way (17 page)

He circled Lower Manhattan: the West Village, the Bowery, Little Italy, and Chinatown. Pulling into a parking lot on the outskirts of Astor Place, he turned on his police band radio and waited.

Mandy Lee lived in a one-bedroom apartment in a four-story walk-up on Eldridge Street owned by her father. She worked as a bank teller on Canal Street, and with her inexpensive rent, managed to survive. Mandy dreamed of moving to San Francisco one day, but that was another expensive city, and she had trouble saving money because she liked to go out. Without a steady boyfriend, that added up.

In her bedroom, she dressed for the night: sheer black stockings, leather miniskirt, satin top, stilettos. She teased her dyed blue hair, then grabbed her keys and headed out for what she hoped would be an exciting night on the town. She avoided the clubs in Chinatown: not her scene.

Instead, she followed Avenue B to her favorite nightspot, Carfax Abbey II. The gothic club occupied a former bank. Maybe that was why she liked it: it represented a perversion of her day job. A group of pasty-faced people in their late teens and early twenties, dressed in uniform black, stood outside smoking. Mounting the granite steps, she swung her hips to the pulsing techno beat coming from inside. At the top, she nodded to the doorman, who never carded her. Good thing; she was still just twenty, two years out of high school. The only reason she’d landed her job was because her father knew the bank manager.

That little toad.
Mr. Chang disgusted her. Despite his relationship with her father—or perhaps because of it—the small man had made several overtures to her. She always turned him down flat, but he continued to pursue her in his own manner: touching her hand, rubbing his hip against hers, breathing down her neck when checking her cash drawer. She hated him and looked forward to the day when she could tell him to fuck off in front of the other tellers.

Inside, darkness washed over her, punctuated by flashing strobes. She scanned the purple-gray interior. Lithe bodies twisted and preened on the dance floor. A good-sized crowd for a weeknight. She crossedthe space to the bar and ordered a Sex on the Beach, shouting to be heard over the music throbbing in her ears.

The bartender, a skinny guy with a purple Mohawk and a chain running from his pierced nose to his right ear, said something she didn’t hear, but she nodded as if she had.

Looking sideways down the bar, she spotted a white guy staring at her. He looked at least twenty-five, maybe even twenty-eight. He might have even been thirty, which would have been gross.

The bartender set her drink on the bar top. As usual, she left a dollar tip and hoped he’d buy her a drink later. Sucking the fruity cocktail through its swizzle stick, she glanced again at her admirer. He wore his short, wavy black hair slightly parted in the middle. Sharp eyebrows sliced his face above dark eyes, and his lips formed a taunting smile.

Mandy had grown accustomed to being stared at in clubs. Hell, that was half the fun of hopping. But this dude stared right through her and made her feel naked. She sensed something dangerous in him. And that appealed to her. It didn’t hurt that she
liked
white guys.

Finishing her drink, Mandy walked onto the dance floor. With her blood warmed by the vodka and peach schnapps, she swayed from side to side, turning in half circles. She loved to dance, which she saw as a spiritual experience, a way to combine the sensual feelings of her body with her existential philosophy. Her body absorbed the music like a sponge. A muscular young man with dark green hair circled her, but she turned her back to him. Her thoughts kept returning to the stranger at the bar, and she hoped he was paying attention to her. Before she knew it, she grew wet between her legs. The song climaxed and she almost did too.

Returning to the bar, her face wilted. Her admirer had vanished. Maybe he had hooked up with someone else while she had been on the floor. She nodded to the bartender, who brought her another Sex on the Beach. As she reached into her wallet for cash, he waved her off and pointed. Following the direction of his finger, she saw her mysteriousadmirer sitting at a small round table near the dance floor. Had he relocated there to watch her? As she sipped her drink, he braced one foot on an empty chair and kicked it. The chair slid across the floor and stopped three feet short of her.

She stood motionless for a moment, tempted to turn her back on the bold man. But she worried that would turn him off, and she wanted to turn him on the same way he turned her on. Ignoring the chair, she approached his table. She stood before him, caressing her drink’s swizzle stick with her small pink tongue. His eyes bored into hers, his tight smile playful and arrogant. She waited for him to get her another chair, and when he remained in his seat, she moved closer to him, swaying to the music, and sat on his lap.

Mandy brought him home an hour later. Not her first one-night stand, to be sure, but she usually moved slower than this. She couldn’t help it: Jerry was magnetic, and she wanted him more than she could remember wanting anyone before. They had made out at the club, and he had slid his fingers inside her, probing her, teasing her, then withdrew them before she could come. They took a cab to her place, and she had practically dragged him into her bedroom.

They peeled away each other’s clothes like the layers of an onion, and she ran her fingers over his taut muscles with hungry appreciation. Crawling into bed together, she fastened her fingers around his erect penis and stroked it. He climbed on top of her, prodding her clitoris, and a low moan escaped her lips. He entered her then, driving himself deep inside her. She uttered a startled cry, and he thrust himself deeper.

“God,” Mandy said in a high pitch as he found his rhythm. “Oh … God!”

She clawed at his back, gyrated her hips, and thrashed her head from side to side so he would not see the tears in her eyes and laugh ather. The streetlight shining through her window cast their shadows on the wall beside them. As she pressed her fists against her cheeks, she saw his shadow arch its back.

That’s so fucking good!

Above her, Jerry grunted like an animal, and she squealed in delight, body shuddering in orgasm after orgasm as he filled her body. On the wall, his shadow elongated, and she thought the streetlight must have grown brighter to cause this to happen. Then she discerned an angular head with what resembled a sharp snout, and she felt long hair tickling her belly. She turned her head back, looking up at her lover, and her heart jumped in her chest. Fierce animal eyes stared down at her. She felt confused more than frightened.

Then the great beast buried its muzzle in her midsection, and her arms shot straight up, her fingers quivering as she screamed in agony.

“All available units in the Oh-Five Precinct report to 517 Eldridge,” said a voice over the police band radio. “A 10-34 in progress, code name Alpha. Repeat, all available units in Oh-Five Precinct report to 517 Eldridge, 10-34 in progress. Over.”

Stalk sat up in the Wrangler’s front seat, started the engine, and shifted into gear. He didn’t know NYPD jargon, but this sounded urgent. As he peeled out of the parking lot, he sketched a map of the Lower East Side in his mind and sped down Grand Street in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, passing Allen. Hearing sirens behind him, he stepped on the gas and lurched toward a congested stretch of small shops, where scores of Chinese carried their bags from the Grand Street subway station on the B and D line. A dozen people clustered on the corner ahead on his right peered up at a granite building across the street with stones blackened by soot.

Stalk twisted the steering wheel to his left, cutting across theoncoming traffic. Horns blared, and he squinted in the glare of scores of headlights. He saw the number 517 posted above the dark building’s entrance, and he steered the Jeep straight onto the sidewalk, sending pedestrians scampering in all directions. Jerking his keys from the ignition, he snatched the Winchester Model 70 rifle from the seat beside him, bolted from the Jeep, and dashed up four concrete steps.

“Oh, shit!” someone on the sidewalk across the street said.

A female scream escaped from a window above Stalk as well as a sound that made him shudder even more: the snarling of a wild animal.

Opening the glass-paned front door, he leapt over the two steps in the vestibule to a landing before the inner door. Beyond the door he saw half a dozen people standing in front of tarnished mailboxes in the lobby and on the stairs, gaping at the floors above. Stalk tugged on the door handle, but it didn’t budge. He pounded on the frame and a few heads turned in his direction, but no one moved to admit him. He couldn’t blame them; after all, he
was
holding a scoped hunting rifle.

Shoving his hand deep into one pocket of his army jacket, he pulled out the fringed and beaded handmade leather case that held his tribal police badge. “Police! Let me in!”

A heavyset Hispanic boy rushed over to the door and opened it.

Stalk ran past him and headed up the stairs. Aiming the barrel of his Winchester straight up, he shouted to no one in particular, “Which floor?”

“Third!” someone said.

Great.
The footfalls of his leather boots echoed on the stairway while outside the sound of sirens grew deafening, and he heard the first squad car screech to a stop. Tenants crowded the second floor: young ethnic couples, bohemian artists, and seniors who refused to abandon their rent-controlled apartments. Stalk waved his weapon for everyone to see.
“Police!”

Tenants scattered out of his way, and he charged up the second flight of stairs. Above him, the screams stopped and the snarling grew louder. He heard several sets of footsteps below. As he reached thethird floor, he saw a heroin chic punk rocker with spiked hair, dressed only in torn jeans, pounding on a green door at the far end of the hall.

“For God’s sake, open up!” the young man said.

Stalk heard a window shatter behind the door. “Get out of the way!”

The punk turned around, a startled expression on his already horrified face. Seeing the Winchester in Stalk’s hands, he flattened his back against the wall perpendicular to the door.

Raising his right knee almost to his chest, Stalk kicked the door just above its knob, and the door burst open with the sound of splintering wood. He staggered into the dark apartment with both hands clutching his rifle. Flashing strobes outside the building reflected red and blue off the two living room windows. He flicked on an overhead light and stepped to the open bedroom door.

The bedroom window faced sideways from the living room windows, reducing the strobes to a dull pulsing that outlined the jagged glass remaining in the shattered window. Feeling cool air on his face, he discerned something glistening on the bed. He flicked a second light switch and gasped. The entire bedroom dripped crimson. For years he had wondered what fate might have befallen him had he chosen to remain in Manhattan, and now he saw it with his own eyes. The remains of a woman’s bottom half remained on the bed, legs spread open and covered in blood, semen dribbling from her vagina. From the waist up, she had ceased to exist. Violent slashes of blood crisscrossed the walls, as if her killer had swung her torso around the room like a mad painter before tearing off her arms. In one corner he saw her trunk, missing its head.