The Sandman (17 page)

He looked at the black tape recorder he had brought with him—a little Craig model—maybe tapes weren’t admissible, but he’d get something out of Cross. He would if it killed him. But the thing was, he wasn’t certain how to proceed. Cross wasn’t any pushover … he was sure of that now. He had to take his time. But time was running out. Any day now the Medical Examiner would give his report, and they’d be indicting him. He had to make Cross screw up. The only sign so far was the light. He had seen Cross from the telephone booth across the street, the night before. Cross walking to and fro in front of the pale green curtains. The guy had insomnia. Of course, from a guilty conscience. It was clear. But he had to have more than that to go on. He thought about breaking into his apartment, searching for a clue. Maybe he was like the kooks you read about who kept a scrap-book of their victims—or made notes. He remembered his pinpoint eyes the other day, glaring at him.

It’s
better than banging June Boswell between shifts. A
strange way to phrase it. Yes, it might have looked like it was between shifts to someone who had been hanging out for a while, didn’t know if Harry was on or off.

Harry exhaled the cigarette smoke and watched the window.

Then he felt somebody rubbing his arm.

“What’sa matter, sweetie?”

Harry looked down at the aging bohemian woman and felt sick. She wore a black sweater, a dark black shirt, and her hair was tied back in the mandatory shopping-bag-lady ponytail. Her face was streaked badly with rouge, and her lipstick was on her gums. Her breath smelled like old dead vegetables, and Harry felt a strong urge to gag.

“Hey, there?” she said, “you a poet?”

“No,” Harry said, “I’m not.”

“Come on, stud,” she said, “I’ve seen you in here before. You’re that body-building poet. I know it, honey. You can’t lie to Ruth Ann.”

She hooked her old arm through his and breathed in his face.

“Look, ma,” he said, “I’m busy, so buzz off.”

“Ma?” she said, cackling like a goat. “Ma? Who the hell you talking to? I know e.e.—I know Bill de Kooning … you hear me. Who the hell?”

He pushed her away, and she fell back heavily on the floor. An elderly-looking man with gray hair and a red bandana raced over and picked her up.

“You asshole,” he said to Harry. “We don’t need your kind of crap here. Hold on to me, Ruth Ann.”

Harry opened his hands, trying to be conciliatory. The cops were the last thing he needed now. Quickly he looked back out the window and saw someone coming out of Cross’s building, carrying a black bag. He looked again, pressing his nose up against the glass. The guy was moving fast. Looking to his right and left. Christ, it was Cross, and he was heading for the subway stop … no, a cab. He was getting a cab.

“Excuse me,” Harry said, starting for the door, but the old lady was up now, grabbing onto him.

“Forget what Walter said, honey,” she said. “I like your style.”

He pushed her again, this time into the old man, and both of them tumbled backward into the bar, over a stool, and fell in a heap.

As he got outside, Harry saw Cross getting into a yellow cab and he began to run down the street after it. The bag … It might have evidence. Then it hit him. Cross had a car … Why wouldn’t he take it? Unless he didn’t want to be recognized. Harry raced down the block to Hudson Street, waved at a Checker. The cabbie ground gears and pulled to a stop. Quickly, Harry leaped inside.

“Ten bucks if you follow that cab,” Harry said.

The man turned and looked at Harry, and smiled. “Allen Funt, right?”

“Come on,” Harry said, flashing the ten, “I’m serious.”

Harry leaned up against the wire cage, peered out through it and the glass. This was what it was going to be like, he thought, as Cross’s cab wove ahead of them, going uptown. If he didn’t catch Cross now, he was going to be looking through this steel grating for the rest of his life.

“Where the hell is he?” Harry said, rattling the cage.

“Relax, pal,” the driver said, “just take your time and relax. It’s going to be fine. You see over there … behind that parked truck.”

Harry looked at the street—Times Square with its piles of human garbage. An old woman in a flowered print dress sat in front of him, with her fingers stuck in a black hole that nearly resembled a mouth. Up above her a black whore rattled her necklace and let her pocket-book hit the woman on the head, but the woman seemed not to notice. Everywhere the sounds of screaming sirens, pinballs, blaring music … and just on the other side of the street, a theater with the purple sign live sex acts—margarita and R
OBERTO
with his B
IG
12-inch Just in front he saw the truck, and beyond it, next to the curb, the tail end of the Checker.

Then he had to duck down a little because Cross was getting out and heading inside.

“All right,” the driver said, “we got him.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, barely aware of the driver, barely aware of the midget blowing his nose on the street, of the three Puerto Rican boys with tan slacks, identical powder-blue sports shirts, and golf clubs. He was focused on Cross, who was going up to the window. Yes, Cross, still holding the bag. Harry handed the driver his ten dollars and got out of the cab.

“Good luck,” the cabbie said. “I hope you get him, pal.”

Harry was moving now through the streets, dodging in and out of traffic. A double-decker English bus pulled in front of him as he made it to the island near the theater ticket booth. He dodged in between the crowd and saw aCross enter the theater; then there was a lull in the traffic, and he was by a man who was holding out watches. “New watch, Bro. Check it out!” He made it up to the window and took his ticket from a boy-girl with orange punk hair and rouge.

Harry walked up the ramp, stepped in some caramel candy, and felt it cling to his shoes, pulling him back. He shook it off, then entered the theater. The house lights were off. Only a spotlight shone on the couple on stage. Harry stumbled ahead. Shit! He had to move carefully.

He stood still for a second, letting his eyes accustom themselves to the darkness. In front of him in an acne-red light, the boy stood over the woman, who knelt in front of him, taking his penis into her mouth. Harry blinked and looked around. Slowly, the shapes in front of him became distinguishable. There was an older man in the back row, eating a giant salami. He grunted as he cut off the slices with an old kitchen knife and held them over his mouth as though each one were a bunch of grapes. Then he let them slide in. They looked to Harry like silver dollars. The man was swallowing money.

He looked to his right. Two people in the row—one of them a woman, the other a tall man—could Cross be meeting someone here? He went down the row behind them and sat down in the chair. No, the man wasn’t Cross, but a thin man with a crew cut and wire glasses. Suddenly music began to play the Bee Gee’s hit “Stayin’ Alive,” and Harry saw the girl was swinging back and forth from the end of the man’s cock, in time to the music.

He moved up another row, slowly, methodically … checking out each person. A fat man in a business suit was sitting with the
Post
over his lap. The newspaper was rising, and the man was making noises as though he were hyperventilating. Harry crawled down the row, moved on. Then he saw Cross clearly … sitting under the red exit sign … the bag sitting next to him. Harry moved forward, slowly, one row at a time. He wanted to come up on Cross from behind. Yes, the maximum surprise. The lights changed, and Harry blinked, saw the boy getting out a long whip, heard the girl’s cries, “No, no.” Then he looked over at Cross. He was up, out of his seat, holding the bag, and moving toward the exit. Harry got up, stumbled over a bottle of MD 2020 wine, and quickly followed him. The creep was heading out into the alley. Sure, he was going to ditch the stuff and then come back in for the show. Oh, clever, very clever. For three nights he had watched Cross, and now, now it had finally paid off. He felt himself gathering together, his muscles bunching tightly, the way he used to feel before a kickoff. It was going to be good to get the Space Cadet.

He reached the cold steel exit door and pulled it back, then walked out into the blue-light dark. He stared at the end of the alley and saw that it went around a corner. There were some trash cans in front of him, but around the corner he could hear a clanging sound. He moved forward down the alley, his fists swinging by his sides, his teeth clenched, his legs moving in short, violent strides. Yes, he had him.

Then suddenly Harry Gardner felt something around his throat, something strong, and before he could turn, something else bashed at his skull. He heard the sound like a pineapple being whacked and he tried to turn, but the blue light was going out fast. In one last burst of adrenaline, he managed to make the turn and claw at Cross, who stood in front of him now, holding a lead pipe.

Harry tried to grab at it but missed; it seemed to be everywhere at once, smashing him, and he fell down to his knees, saying, “Cross, you bastard … Cross …” But when he looked up again, there was a syringe coming down toward his neck, and he screamed as Cross pulled him by the hair and injected the needle into the carotid artery.

Cross stood above him, smiling now, nodding and saying, “You wouldn’t leave me alone would you? You’d hound me, wouldn’t you? And then you’d try the hard stuff. Isn’t that right Harry? Guys like you always get around to the hard stuff, twisting arms and breaking faces.”

Peter thought of the phone call, of Harry waiting and watching for two days outside his apartment. He knew Harry would put the pieces together eventually, but there’d be no Harry to put them together for the cops.

Harry tried to grab the needle, but the potassium had hit him full force, and he fell over on his back like an injured insect, his arms and legs jerking in spasms.

“You thought you were following me here, didn’t you Harry? What a stupid bastard you are. You thought it was Spaceman Cross on the run.”

Cross knelt down beside the now inert Gardner, injecting the rest of the potassium into his neck, and then Peter felt his hands relaxing, his whole body flooded with warmth. His heart felt filled up, free of the hollow space, and he felt his face flush, his loins jerking, and he was a little embarrassed like that, to appear that way in front of Harry, but it felt good to feel so in control of things. Then he picked up Harry’s body, carried it to the end of the alley where his own car was parked. He had left it there this morning. Of course, it was risky. Harry seemed the perfect patsy, but he knew the Harry’s of the world. They would just keep coming, unless you stopped them. Besides, he had to do it. It was a score he had to settle with all the Harrys who had humiliated him his entire life. He was seized then with a momentary flash of panic. Maybe he had let himself get out of hand. Christ, they would have convicted Harry … but no. No, it would be just as he had said. He would get rid of him. They’d assume he was guilty and had jumped bail, fled. It was going to be all right.

Quickly, he opened the car door and began dragging Harry inside. He was heavy, terribly heavy, but Cross felt his own arms were suddenly those of a man twice his size. God, he was strong, stronger than this ape. No matter what happened it was worth it. He wished his father could see him now. In a few minutes he had Harry Gardner propped up. He spent a few seconds looking into the large, terrified eyes. There was such pain there, such hatred and stupidity. To think Gardner thought he could outwit Peter. The ape … the presumptuous ape.

Cross went around to the driver’s side, and checked out his face in the rear view. A nasty scrape down the cheek. The one thing he hadn’t counted on. He pulled out a Kleenex, and dabbed at it. Not too bad really. It could pass as a shaving cut. He started the engine of the car, and suddenly Harry slumped over on him, making Cross gasp. Gently, he moved Harry back to the passenger’s seat. Time for a trip old friend, down the West Side Highway. The Apeman and the Space Cadet go for a midnight spin. Like an old serial on a faded Baltimore screen. The final frame of which would see Harry slowly, beautifully, falling off the rotting pier into the dark waiting waters below.

She sat at the bar, slumping over like a manikin, sipping her fourth vodka and tonic. Behind her on the jukebox she could hear the Bee Gee’s chirping away about staying alive, and she began to giggle a bit. She was acting like a goddamned adolescent, not at all the liberated woman she had intended to become when she moved to New York.

She looked down the bar and saw a man with the John Travolta look—his hair coiffed straight back, his tan Italian pants, so tight she could see the outline of his briefs, and the open-necked silk shirt. He was turning now, bobbing his head to the music, and she started to giggle again. He was sexy, she supposed, but he looked to her like a clone … the kind you read about in the
Post.
There was nothing about him that turned her on. He was simply a product of the media. Jesus, it seemed the whole world was getting that way.

She turned away from him in disgust and thought of Peter. He would laugh at her sitting here, slurping this drink, staring at the bottles behind the bar like they were old friends. But she couldn’t sleep … she couldn’t bear to spend another night in her bed, knowing she could be with him. She looked at her watch … two thirty. Then she got up and almost slipped at the bar, caught herself, and wandered to the back booth, shutting the door and getting a dime from her purse. She dialed his number slowly, thickly, and felt dizzy, the cheap flat tonic water coming up in her throat. There was a long wait and then the phone rang, and she felt herself tighten up—she was going to make a goddamned fool of herself again. She thought of the consciousness-raising sessions she had attended in Rochester, how brave she had felt then … without a man to lean on for the first time in years. She had been strong, good, and felt the heroine in her coming alive, which is why she risked coming to New York. But now that she was in love again (and there was no doubt about it), she was weak, thin, barely human. She felt a sudden savage urge to slam the phone down and cancel out on the whole damned thing, but there was that room, the huge, empty bed waiting for her, and she thought of the vastness of the sheets, the terror of their crisp whiteness … lying there night after night was almost like death. Last night she had dreamed the bed was closing in on her. Oh, Christ, it was ridiculous.