The Shadow Man (38 page)

Robinson nodded. He let his eyes trail into the crowd outside the nightclub. He saw a bouncer muscling a rowdy client, a man dressed in a white suit that cost considerably more than a detective’s weekly paycheck. He saw that Winter had seen the same scuffle.

‘Too much cocaine. The problem with cocaine is it makes you do incredibly stupid things and makes you think you’re incredibly smart to do them.’

Winter laughed. They continued driving, leaving the crowded sidewalk in the rearview mirror. Simon Winter gestured for Robinson to turn.

‘Wrong direction,’ the younger man said as he turned the wheel, obligingly.

‘I just wanted to see something,’ Winter said. In a moment they turned again, so that they were traveling adjacent to the beach, and beyond, to the ocean. ‘Always liked this,’ Winter said slowly. ‘Older I get, the more I like it.’

‘What’s that?’ Robinson was trying to drive and to stare past the older man, out at the great expanse of black sea.

‘No matter how many hotels and nightclubs and condos we put up, the sea is always there. Can’t do anything about it. Can’t fill it in. Can’t pave it over. That’s what I like. Do you like the ocean, Detective?’

‘When I was young, growing up, no, I hated it. But now I’ve changed.’

‘Good.’

Robinson nodded, and turned the car again. Within a few minutes he had located the Sunshine Arms and pulled to a stop by the entranceway. Winter put his hand on the door handle, then hesitated.

‘Do you think about the men you pursue, Detective?’

‘Sometimes. But more often, they’re an object rather than a personality. They’re the culmination of a set of

facts, or a series of observations. They’re more like conclusions than people.’

‘For me, the bad guys would get under the skin, you know? They would stop being a case file number, and become something very different. And then, there were always a couple that became special.’

‘They stay with you?’

‘Forever.’

‘I don’t know if I’ve ever had one like that.’

‘How many open cases do you have?’

‘Lost count, Mr Winter. They seem to pile up rapidly. And my clearance rate is ahead of all the other detectives in the bureau.’

Simon Winter shook his head. ‘In my time, every homicide was something at least a little special.’

‘Not anymore.’

‘What do you think of the Shadow Man?’

‘I don’t know yet. It’s hard to get a feel for him. I’ll say this, though. He’s got me a bit more antsy than any other case I’ve ever worked. You know how it is: usually you have a pretty damn good idea precisely what you’re looking for, even if you don’t have a name and a face to find. You know what sort of person it is. Character traits, psychology -whatever - it fits into the normal scheme of things. No surprises. This guy seems a little different.’

He paused, then corrected himself. ‘No, a lot different.’

‘Why are we hunting him, Walter?’

This was the first time Simon Winter used Robinson’s first name, which the younger detective noted.

‘Because we think he’s killed one, two, maybe three or more times.’

‘Serial killer?’

‘Well, not exactly. He sure as hell doesn’t fit any FBI profile I’ve ever seen. But multiple homicides. Isn’t

that a good enough reason?’

‘It’s a good reason, but the wrong one.’

‘Want to run that by me again?’

‘It’s the wrong reason. You’re here because this is your job. To serve and protect. I’m here because he’s killed my neighbor, and that makes me feel a debt, and because he may kill these other people, whom I cannot even consider friends, but whom I’ve made some promises to. But those aren’t really good reasons, any more than yours are. I don’t think you or I, or your pretty friend in the State Attorney’s Office, will ever grasp the best reason. The rabbi, he knows, and so does Frieda Kroner. You see, we can comprehend one dead body, or two or even twenty and say: there’s a criminal that needs to be stopped. But they see the Shadow Man and they see hundreds, thousands, millions all going to their death. They see their brothers and mothers and fathers and uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, neighbors, friends, acquaintances, and everyone else. You think those deaths will even be anything but numbers to us? But they’re not numbers to those people, are they?’

Simon Winter opened the door and stepped to the sidewalk. He leaned back toward Walter Robinson.

‘Shouldn’t let old men muse on these things. Just muddies the waters, huh?’

Robinson nodded slowly. ‘I think,’ he said carefully, ‘that you and I should catch this man, and then consider what he’s done.’ Again he paused, then added: ‘Everything he’s done.’

‘Yes,’ Simon Winter said. ‘We should catch him.’

He straightened up and closed the door. He gave the detective a small wave as the cruiser pulled away. He watched the taillights disappear into the darkness down the street, blinking once and then turning aside, leaving him

alone on the sidewalk. There was a richness to the air, as if the tropical night somehow was concocted with a small portion of molasses or maple syrup. He thought this a deceptive thing; the warmth made one ignore the dangers after the sun had set. He suddenly started talking inwardly with his anonymous quarry: Did you do your best worst work after dark? Is that when you became truly dangerous? People are more vulnerable in the nighttime; is that when you came for them? A night like this one?

He thought to himself: yes.

Simon Winter listened to the distant street noises blending with the inevitable sounds from the apartments on his block, television sets, music, voices raised in an anonymous argument. No children crying, he realized. Not in his part of the city. We are all old here, he said to himself, and the noises we make are old noises.

Winter took a step toward his apartment, then stopped and stared over at the empty fountain and the dancing cherub in the center.

‘So,’ he said out loud, ‘what tune do you have for me this evening? Something lively, I suppose? Something to cheer me up?’

The cherub continued to play soundlessly.

‘Well then,’ Winter asked abruptly, ‘what have you seen tonight? Anything different? Anything unusual?’

He stared at the statue, meeting the cherub’s dead eyes, as if waiting for a reply. He stayed like this for a few seconds, then swung about abruptly, surveying the entire courtyard. The murdered Sophie’s apartment remained dark, and above her, only the blue-gray glow of the television illuminated the Kadoshes. As he watched, a single light in old Finkel’s apartment switched off. He pivoted, fixing on the windows of his own place. The darkness within seemed liquid, shifting like the ocean he’d

gone out of his way to see only a few minutes earlier. Slowly, he moved his gaze around the courtyard, turning a full circle as he examined the shadows and shapes, inspecting each corner, probing each angle.

There is nothing here, he told himself.

Have you gone crazy?

You are alone and tired, and you should get to bed.

He took a step forward, then stopped.

A night like this one, he repeated to himself.

For a moment he breathed in hard.

But he doesn’t know me, Simon Winter insisted. He doesn’t know I’m out here, and he doesn’t know I’m looking for him. He thinks his enemies are old, frail survivors, with fragile recollections and shaky memories that may have endured through the decades. Those are his targets. Not you. He doesn’t know about you.

Or does he?

He realized, in that moment, that he’d unconsciously raised his right hand to his left breast, as if he was wearing the shoulder holster with his old revolver, as he had for so many years.

There is nothing here, and you are alone, he insisted, and you are being foolish. Then he corrected himself: being cautious is never foolish. You may embarrass yourself by trusting your instincts, but that is all you will do, and the alternative is far worse.

He took several steps forward, hating instantly the sound that his shoes made on the sidewalk. Like a drumroll, he complained. Move quietly. He gingerly stepped onto the grass strip next to the walkway, muffling the sound as he approached the building.

He paused outside the front door, his hand a few inches away from the door handle. Slowly, he pulled his fingers back.

If you open that door, he will hear it, he told himself. He will know the sound, and he will gather himself and be ready.

He will be expecting you to arrive home like any tired old man, hurrying to bed and a few hours of fitful sleep. He will expect you to jerk the front door open, fumble about impatiently in the vestibule until you find the key to your apartment, and then barrel ahead, right in.

Simon Winter retreated from the doorway, sliding into a shadow of his own.

He leaned against the side of the building and listened, but could only hear the normal night sounds that he expected. He searched through these noises, trying to find something out of the ordinary, which would tell him something other than the fear that he felt easing through his body like some infectious disease.

All right, he said. Where would he be?

In the vestibule? No. The light is on and he doesn’t know the habits of the other tenants. There’s no place to hide there, not like Herman Stein’s building.

Then inside?

Yes. Inside.

How?

That’s obvious: the patio door. Just like Sophie’s. Same shabby lock that will break at the mere insinuation of a screwdriver.

Once inside, where?

Simon Winter searched the memory of his own small apartment like a general poring over a map. Not the kitchen; the streetlight reflects off the white linoleum, making it bright. Not the bathroom either; not enough room to maneuver in that small space. The living room, then, or the bedroom? One or the other. He continued to think hard, then told himself: not the bedroom. He would

expect me to flick on the lights as I enter, and other than the narrow, small closet jammed with clothes and boxes and otherwise useless junk, the lights would destroy any hiding place. So it has to be the living room. Maximum surprise.

Winter began snaking his way around the side of the building, heading carefully, noiselessly, to the back. He heard a small dog yapping from another apartment, down the block. As he moved around the corner, he picked up some speed. He can’t hear me now, Winter told himself. He slid up against the back fence, dodging the wan light coming from the neighboring apartment complex, homing in on the small tile patio in the rear of his apartment. Something rattled about in a garbage can, near the back alley. A cat, he thought. Or a rat.

As he moved he carried on an imaginary conversation with his quarry: What will you be carrying? A gun? Perhaps. Something small and efficient. Twenty-two or .25 caliber, an assassin’s weapon. But you still wouldn’t like the noise it would make, would you? Draw attention rapidly, no matter how silent you thought it was. That’s always a problem in Miami and on the Beach. People know the sound a gun makes. No one says: ‘What was that?’ or ‘Was that a car backfiring?’ Not in South Florida. They know gunshots. So maybe you’d carry the gun just for show. Just for the threat. But you wouldn’t want to use it, would you? You’d rather use your hands, like you did with Sophie. That’s what you like, isn’t it? To be close when they die, isn’t that right? You like the sounds of life departing, the smells of death. You like that feeling that comes over you when you steal that final breath, don’t you? It wasn’t the same thing when you watched them packed shoulder to shoulder, tears to tears in a cattle car, that mustn’t have been nearly as satisfying, but you were

younger then, and probably only beginning to understand the marriage you’d made with murder. Back then, you were still experimenting with what you liked, weren’t you?

He stopped.

But I’m too big, he thought. If you’ve come hunting for me, then you know that I’m not small, like a child, like Sophie was, or wizened, nervous, and filled with fear, like Herman Stein and Irving Silver. No, I’m not somebody you quite know, am I? And this has made you wary, and so you will move quickly and efficiently when you have the opportunity, won’t you? You will want to know why I’m hunting you, you will have a dozen, a hundred questions, but given the choice between information and just removing the threat, you will take the easier course, right?

A knife.

Simon Winter nodded to himself.

He is probably a knife man. That would be quiet enough for him. He would not like the blood, not like the struggle, because he would know that every second we’re together and he’s searching with that blade for my heart, he could be leaving some bit of incriminating evidence behind. But he would accept this worry, just to remove the threat he feels.

Winter felt his pulse accelerate, then slow, as he grew cold within himself.

So, it will be a knife. Delivered without hesitation.

He continued to move closer to the patio.

But you won’t expect this, will you? You won’t expect me to come in the same way you did. You’ll be waiting in the living room, near the front door. It swings to the right, so there’s a large dead spot to the left, which remains dark, blocked off from the vestibule light by the solid wood door as it opens. You will have seen that spot,

won’t you? You will have seen that right from the first minute you were inside, and that’s where you’ll be, because you will think that I will step inside, right into your path unawares, not seeing you until I shut the door right on my own death and not seeing the knife until it bites through my solar plexus, thrusting upward just as you were taught once, weren’t you? That’s what you think will happen, that’s what they showed you, didn’t they? All those men in black uniforms so many years ago. Make a single thrust and make it work. Draw the victim in on top of you, pulling him off balance, so that his own weight against the blade kills him.

He was only a few feet from the sliding glass door, and he crouched down.

The gun is in the drawer of the bedside table. Did he go in there and search for it? You damn old fool, he berated himself. Leaving the weapon precisely where any two-bit crook or breakin artist would look first. But did he do that? Or is he simply waiting for you now?