The Shadow Man (56 page)

‘No, you go. I’ll stay here with the rabbi and Frieda.’

The policeman turned around. ‘Don’t be crazy,’ he said.

‘Go!’ she answered. ‘I’m staying.’

The young policeman hesitated, then thrust open the door and disappeared down the now vacant corridor toward a nearby stairway.

At first the two men did not speak as the unmarked car, headlights flashing, siren wailing, hurtled through the diffuse city lights. Simon Winter gripped the door until his knuckles whitened with the strain. The city seemed to race past them, like a film in accelerated motion.

Walter Robinson steered the car with death in his heart.

As the engine surged and the wheels squealed in complaint, as the force of motion pinned him to his seat, he realized that he was in real trouble. Everything that meant anything to him seemed suddenly to be threatened by the Shadow Man: his love, his career, his future. This knowledge drove him to desperate fury. He threw the car down the street with an urgency beyond anything he’d ever known, gasping for air as the speed seemed to rob him of wind.

Winter spoke first, groaning as the car spun briefly out of control, then righted itself with an anguished machine complaint.

‘Hurry,’ he shouted.

‘I am,’ Robinson replied between gritted teeth. He shouted out an obscenity as some red-flash sports car started to pull out in front of them. There was a blaring of horns as they swept past.

‘Two blocks, hurry,’ Winter urged.

Walter Robinson could see the building looming ahead.

He saw the beat of the police and fire strobe lights twisting and turning in the night. He slammed both feet on the brake pedal, and the cruiser swerved to the curb.

The two men thrust themselves out of the vehicle. Robinson stood by the door, peering toward a melee of people in nightgowns, bathrobes, and pajamas, milling about in front of the apartment building, dodging out of the way as firemen started to string hoses to a nearby hydrant, while others lurched into air tanks and seized axes.

‘Espy!’ he shouted. ‘Espy!’ He turned to Winter. ‘She’s not there,’ he yelled. ‘I’m going up after them.’

‘Go!’ Winter replied. He waved the young detective forward with a sweep of his hand.

But in that second, as Robinson turned, Winter had another idea, a cold-steel thought that took no affection or devotion into its equation. He did not follow Robinson, as the frantic policeman dashed across the street and, ignoring the cries of protest and danger that suddenly rose from the fire department personnel, burst forward into the building. Instead, Winter slid slowly to the side of the street, stepping back into a shadow of his own, in the lee of a building, only a few feet away from where the Shadow Man had stood himself a short time earlier, although he did not know this. He searched out a vantage point from where he knew he could see almost everything. The panorama of firemen and trucks, policemen and rescue workers, spread out before him. But he kept his eyes on the clutch of people who’d emerged from the condominium and who were standing about nervously, frightened, pushed by the equipment and fear just off to the side of the building, wearing bathrobes and worry.

The ringing in the hallways continued. Espy Martinez

turned toward the old people. But Frieda Kroner rose.

‘We must get ready,’ she said.

But before she was able to move, the lights in the apartment abruptly quit, throwing the room into complete darkness.

Espy Martinez gasped, and both old people cried out.

‘Stay calm!’ the rabbi shouted. ‘Where are you, Frieda?’

‘I am here,’ she said. ‘Here, Rabbi, at your side.’

‘Miss Martinez?’

‘I’m here, Rabbi. Oh, my God, I hate it! Where are the lights?’

‘All right,’ the old man said evenly, ‘this is what he will do. He is a man of darkness. We know that. He will be here any second. Frieda?’

‘I’m ready, Rabbi.’

The three of them stayed in the center of the room, listening for sounds other than the ringing of the alarm bell. Then, after a few moments, penetrating behind that noise, they heard the distant wail of sirens heading toward them. But these were overcome by a pungent, frightening odor that began to seep around them like the fear they all felt.

‘Smoke!’ Espy Martinez choked.

‘Stay calm!’ the rabbi insisted.

‘I am calm,’ Frieda Kroner said. ‘But we need to get ready.’ Her voice seemed to trail across the room, and Espy Martinez heard her disappear into the kitchen. There was the sound of drawers opening and closing, and then steps as she returned. At almost the same time, the rabbi seemed to move about the living room, and Espy Martinez heard a desk drawer open and then slam shut.

‘All right,’ the rabbi said. ‘Let’s wait for the policeman to return.’ ,

The smell of smoke, not strong, but still insistent, swirled around them.

‘Patience,’ the rabbi said.

‘Strength,’ Frieda Kroner replied.

Espy Martinez felt the darkness seep over her and through her, wrapping itself around her like some graveyard mist. She tried to tell herself to remain calm, but slowly she felt the tug and twist of panic searching around within her, seeking a handhold. She could hear her breath coming in short, sharp bursts, almost as if each intake of wind wasn’t enough to fill her lungs, and like some drowning person, she wanted to thrash for the surface. She did not know, in that moment, what she feared the most: the night, the fire that lurked somewhere in the building, or the man the old people were certain was moving toward them steadily. All these things became tangled in Espy Martinez’s imagination, along with ancient and unresolved fears, and she stood stock-still in the black room, feeling as though she was spinning in some terrible centrifuge.

She coughed and choked.

Then she heard another sound, muffled, close yet not too close, an urgent pounding.

‘What’s that?’ she whispered. Her voice was cracked.

‘I don’t know,’ the rabbi said. ‘Listen!’

The pounding sound seemed to vibrate in the room. And then they heard a loud, demanding voice: ‘Miami Beach Fire Department! Anyone in there!’

The pounding continued, and then the voice and the sound came closer. Espy Martinez realized instantly that it was a fireman, moving down the apartment corridor, knocking on every door, searching for anyone who might have stayed behind.

‘It’s a fireman,’ she said loudly. ‘He’ll get us out! He’s looking for us!’

And before either of the old people could react to this,

she jumped across the living room, half stumbling in the darkness over some wayward piece of furniture. She seized the door and pulled it open as behind her both the rabbi and Frieda Kroner shouted: ‘No! Don’t open up!’

She did not hear them, instead flinging the door wide and calling out: ‘Here! Here! We need help!’

She heard a man’s voice from close by in the darkness and could just make out a shape heading toward her.

‘Who is it?’ the voice asked.

‘It’s me,’ she said, ‘and the rabbi and—’

The blow caught her around the shoulder and across the jaw, knocking her almost senseless and spinning her around. She fell back into the apartment with a half scream and groan. She did not black out, though she could feel her grip on her consciousness loosened, and she was suddenly aware that she was on the floor and that there was a shape hovering over her. A shaft of light sliced across the room, and in her dizziness she saw the rabbi had a flashlight in his hand. She saw too that the figure looming above her had a knife and he was slashing down at her, just as the rabbi hit him in the face with the beam of light. The glare seemed to cause him to alter his swing, and she felt the blade carve through the air just above her.

The Shadow Man straightened up, lifting his arm as if to block the light that coursed from the rabbi’s hand, and he did not see Frieda Kroner, who had jumped to where Espy Martinez lay on the floor and who was swinging an odd black shape toward him with a great grunt of exertion. The shape thudded fiercely into his arm with a dull, iron noise, and he screamed in unfamiliar pain.

The old woman was shouting then, in her native tongue: ‘Neinf Nein! Nicht dieses Mai!’ Not this time! And she swung the weapon again, and again it found flesh. The light in the rabbi’s hand wavered, flashing about the

room as he too sprung toward the Shadow Man from the opposite side, so that the attacker was bracketed as he straddled the fallen young woman. In the rabbi’s free hand he held a large brass menorah, which whistled as it cut the air. His first blow smashed the Shadow Man’s shoulder, and the rabbi roared a deep wordless battle cry with his effort. The flashlight fell to the floor, and for just a second Espy Martinez saw the rabbi standing like a baseball batter in the hitter’s box, readying a second swing. Her head pivoted dizzily and she tried to push herself up, only to be knocked down by the force of the Shadow Man’s leg as it passed by her. His foot caught her chest, and for an instant she thought she’d been stabbed.

She wondered in that moment whether she’d been killed, then realized she hadn’t. She pushed herself up again, straining to hear past the guttural cries coming from Frieda Kroner, until she heard the rabbi say, quietly, breathlessly, like a man who had won a hard race: ‘He’s gone!’

And she realized this was true.

She felt as if the world was suddenly quiet, although in reality the room around her was still being riveted by the continuing sounds of sirens and alarm bells.

She turned in the darkness to Frieda Kroner, who was speaking to her in German. ‘Horen Sie mich? Sind Sie verletzt? Haben Sie Schmerzen?’ Are you all right? Are you hurt? Are you in pain?

And oddly, she thought she understood every word, and replied: ‘No, no, I’m fine, Mrs Kroner. I’m fine. What did you hit him with?’

The old woman laughed suddenly. ‘With the rabbi’s

iron teakettle.’

The rabbi picked up his flashlight and shone it into their faces. Espy Martinez thought they all must look pale, as if

death standing so close to them had left a bit of his color behind, but Frieda Kroner, at least, had a wild, Valkyrie look of triumph in her eyes.

‘He ran! The coward!’ Then she stopped, and said in a much quieter voice: ‘I suppose no one ever fought back before….’

The rabbi, however, was direct: ‘We must get him! Now! It is our chance!’

Espy Martinez gathered herself, nodding her head. She reached out and seized the flashlight. ‘That’s right, Rabbi. Follow me.’

And grabbing them both, she led them out into the corridor, like a pilot flying through a thick fog, pushing through the darkness for the stairwell.

Walter Robinson, battling an unfamiliar panic, unable to see, trying to feel his way in the blackness and run at the same time, raced up the emergency stairs, his feet making a drumroll of urgency against the concrete steps. He could hear his breathing, forced, harsh, punctuated by the distant sirens and the continual ringing of the alarm system.

He did not see the body until he tripped over it.

Like a blind-side block, it sent him spinning forward, pitched out of control, smashing his hands against the stairs as he fell. He shouted out in surprise and fought to regain his composure. He gathered himself and reached down, almost seized by some emotion beyond fear at the thought that his hand would find the wizened skin of either the rabbi or Frieda Kroner, or worse, the soft touch of Espy Martinez. When he felt the bulk of the body, he was initially confused. Then, as he groped in the darkness, he touched the policeman’s badge. He drew his hand back sharply and realized that it was covered with blood.

He bellowed then, as loud as he could, ‘Espy! I’m coming!’ anything, he hoped, that might distract the man he was certain was ahead of him. Anything that might make him hesitate in his deadly task.

He still could see nothing, and anything he might have heard was obscured by the inner cacophony of fear. He seized hold of the stair railing and bounded ahead, racing again for the sixth floor.

He called out again: ‘Espy!’

And then from within the darkness, he saw a shaft of light, and heard a reply: ‘Walter!’

He cried a third time: ‘Espy!’

And then he saw the three of them as they flashed the light toward him.

‘Are you okay?’ he called out.

‘Yes, yes,’ she shouted. ‘But he’s here!’

Walter Robinson reached out and grasped hold of Espy Martinez, who wrapped her arms around him, and whispered, ‘Jesus, Walter, he was here! He was here and tried to kill me. The rabbi and Mrs Kroner, they saved me, and he ran. He ran away when she hit him. But he’s here still, somewhere.’

Robinson pushed her back and looked at the old couple. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘We must find him,’ the rabbi replied.

The detective removed his weapon.

‘He’s here somewhere, right in this darkness,’ the rabbi said. ‘In the building somewhere.’

But Frieda Kroner shook her head. ‘No, I think he ran. Maybe down the other stairwell, at the other end of the building. Quickly, quickly, we must go!’

Trying to hurry their pace, Espy Martinez clinging to Walter Robinson, and the rabbi and Frieda Kroner walking with the gingerness of age but the urgency of need, the

four of them began their retreat down the stairwell. Robinson took the flashlight and led the way, pausing only at the third floor to briefly examine the body of the policeman. The old woman gasped when the flashlight’s beam caught the red stain of blood across the man’s throat. But what she said, was: ‘Faster, faster, we cannot let him getaway!’

Simon Winter clung to his spot of darkness, watching the scene in front of the apartment building. There is a moment when one is fishing in shallow waters that one spots just the slightest ripple of motion, as an unseen shape beneath the surface pushes water in a direction different from the wind and the currents and the tides, and one recognizes the closeness of their quarry. It was that subtle shift in the hurried movements outside the rabbi’s home that Winter searched for. He thought: there will be one person here whose presence has nothing to do with fire and alarm and being forced from the comfort of one’s bed in the early morning hours, and everything to do with killing.