From Out of the Outlands
Part Four
Police file:
I usually didn't let people come into the bar with animals -- considering the disease and how easily it got transmitted around, especailly through unprotected vermin. I told the dude as much, but the dog didn't look threatening, or ill, and with the rotten weather outside, I figured to cut the son-of-a-bitch a break.
He didn't look mean either, an unusual feature for this neighborhood that stirred up my curiousity and drew some questioning glances from my clientel, all of them wondering if maybe there was a story behind all this.
The dude told the dog to sit, then pulled himself up onto one of the stools at the bar. He was a little too clean cut for my kind of place, something that hinted of the protected life, yet didn't look like an Insider, nor had the bad attitude I got from spoiled kids raised behind the walls of one neighborhood or the other.
But he did have cash, new bills, from the reissue that no Outsider saw short of wealthy merchant -- and putting that bill down on the bar drew more eyes than I ever wanted looking at me, and manufacturer more mugging schemes that anyone like this fellow would ever survive.
In my business, however, you don't ask questions. You take the money, you give him his beer, and you let him face his own fate once he's back on the street.
He must have read some of my thoughts on my face, chuckling as he sipped his beer.
“You worried about me, mister” he asked.
“I don't worry about anybody” I said. “But I do question some people's habits -- and yours seem particularly self distructive, if you ask me.”
The man grinned, lifted his glass to salute me, then finished the beer and nodded for me.
“I guess I had that coming,” he said.
“You've got a lot more coming once you're out of here,” I said, glancing around at the bar full of vultures, each watching the man's every move, waiting to rise up when he did to follow him out. “Unless, of course, you got body armor I can't see.”
“No armour, no shield,” the man said. “Only my dog.”
I glanced down at the beast -- though beast was the wrong word. The dog hardly resembled any of the packs of wild dogs that roamed the streets at night, nor any of the more refined breeds used by the wall guards in their patrols. I'd seen pictures of house dogs from the old days, when people could still afford to have them outside the neighborhood walls, and this beast looked as much like one of those pictures as I could make out.
“Maybe the dog as body armor?” I said.
“No,” he said. “He's just a dog. But I take him with me when I can.”
“You must be a regular animal lover,” I said, meaning something else that amounted to ‘crazy,’ but in this business, you don't insult the help either.
“No, I love animals nor hate them,” the man said. “But out here in the Outlands, you need something to keep the bikers and the bullies off your back. A bark through the door when someone knocks, and those bastards outside know you're not totally helpless.”
“I hear some neighborhoods keep whole kennels of dogs, hungry dogs to let loose in case the walls get breached or some wandering gypsy manages to get inside with a gun,” said Mario, one of my regular patrons -- a disability man who had lost one arm, part of one leg and his right eye to the wars in L.A.”
“How those folks managed to feed the beasts in times like these, I can't imagine,” I said. “It's hard enough putting meat on the family table, let alone some in the dog dish, too.”
“That's what I thought when my kids brought this beast home,” the clean cut man said. “No point in feeding something we didn't need. I didn't even see a point of insiders owning a dog when they paid hard cash for wall guards. Out here, without walls or guns, dogs made more sense, an extra pair of growling teeth to keep the human kind of beasts away.
“But seeing the mutt lick the faces of my giggling kids, didn't inspire a great deal of confidence either. This was the beast that would keep the creeps from kicking down our door? He looked about as mean slug and nearly as greasy, looking at me with that sly side ward stare, knowing I couldn't refuse my kids if they had their hearts set on keeping him.
“`Where did you get him?’ I asked, imagining just what kind of disease the dog brought home with him, his ratty coat needing a few weeks soaking in the tub to get the oil stains out. I figured he'd hidden under a car somewhere to keep the roving street kids from cooking him up for beef.
“`We just found him, Dad,’ the kids said. ‘Can we keep him, huh? Can we, please? Can we?’
“You know the routine. We've all heard our kids ranting the same way, whenever they see something they want, whether its the fancy and expensive three-D reality games they see at the toy stores in the mall, or the fashionable, non-bullet-proof sports wear they see the stars wearing on TV. In those cases, it's easy to say no. With my salary at the power plant, I'm lucky to pay rent, let alone putting out the kind of money stores want for that stuff, money many of the Insiders have, but we don't.
“But the ranting had a more desperate pitch when it came to the dog. After all, I couldn't prove our inability to feed the creature as easy I could by pointing to a price tag. The expense of feeding and caring came over time, paying for the beast on the installment plan rather than cash up front. All the kids saw was the initial investment, and it seemed reasonable, especially considering the emotional reward.
“I guess this last thing convinced me to take it in. How can you deny a kid a thing so small with a world so vicious around them. I mean things have changed since I went to school. The most I had to worry about was crossing a busy street. They have to worry about muggings and rape, not only on the way to school, but in school, fearing the guards, teachers and maintenance crew nearly as much as the other students. You never knew what would set a man off. Two days ago, a teacher from a Chicago school reacted to razzing from one gang of kids, and took their heads off -- one at a time -- with a machete.
“I try to provide the kids with those necessary things to assure their safety, bullet proof vests and shields, miniature mace projectors, and in the case of my eldest daughter, an anti-rape system complete with alarm, poison darts, and a complete body shield. But in the rat race, you often leave out those psychological things that make kids happy like three d-video games or fancy clothing, or in this case, something as simple as a dog.
“’Okay,’ I said, thinking about how the dog might walk the kids to and from school or my wife to the store, or even me from time to time to work. I suppose I could have bought a gun. I had hundreds of offers weekly. But the whole issue scared me. People who carried guns in this Outland called attention to themselves, making themselves targets for the wandering spike-haired gangs or the overly aggressive wall guards shooting before they think, or even for the variety of police patrols that float through the crumbling streets in armored vehicles, often questioning the reason you believed you needed a weapon when you could always call on the police. (As if the two hour wait after a 911 call was a reasonable response time.)
“But as I said the dog looked ratty. I didn't find the creature repulsive the way I did many of the beasts that scrambled in and out of the buildings around us. In the city Outlands, people mostly worry about mice and rats, out where I live, in what once might have been called the suburbs, we got everything from moose to water moccasins, a thriving wild life as dangerous as it is diverse, some of the creatures driven crazy by the nearly nightly gang hunts, gun blasting the landscape from dusk till dawn, wounding as often as killing, making some of these beast wary and wise and likely to attack without provocation, though in most instances, the creatures that crawl up from abandoned sewers and basements looked more pathetic than pathological, sad, scummy creatures hunting food.
“The dog, while dirty, was not disgusting. Someone had taken care of him at some distant time in the past, letting him loose in a gesture of kindness when many Outland homeowners killed them for meat. His coat, was greasy, however, I could have squeeze out of court of oil from it.
“’First thing is we clean him up,’ I told the kids. ‘Then we'll figure out how to get him to the vet.’
“From the sour look the pooch gave me as the kids led him away, you would have thought I'd ordered his execution. Indeed, he let out such a fuss from the bathtub that I turned up the radio to keep the neighbors from calling the police. The struggle sounded more we were murdering something than trying to make it presentable. Yet after the accusing stares and the nearly constant howling, the dog looked little better when he was done. Wetted down, he looked more like a large rat than anything I thought might keep the burglars and rapists away.
“’Maybe he could use with a little grooming, too,’ I said as I picked up the telephone and discovered it still had a dial tone. Most days the phones died just before noon, and did not come alive again until near morning -- repair crews tracing down the latest break, usually as the result of a bombing or a fire fight near one of the neighborhood walls, the desperado’s always making the mistake in believing that the Insiders depended upon service from outside. Most did not. Most had their own electric generators and used cellular phone systems. Only the Outlands depended upon anything so conventional as copper wire.
“Getting a veterinarian, however, proved far less simple. Most had gone out of business or taken up whole Insider neighborhoods as clients, signing a contract that sent them to this walled citadel or that once or twice a month. Outsiders with pets were such a rare species that a vet could starve depending upon them for business. After about a dozen phone calls, I found one vet willing to look at the dog and give him shots, but at such an exorbitant fee that a three-D video game would have seemed a bargain.
“`The license is extra,’ the vet said when I finally got the pooch to his office, my stationwagon overheating from a huge detour, sewer and water lines exploding along our chosen route in the same mistaken belief that the Glen Ridge walled neighborhood used them. We had to circle the city to get around the punctures, and the road blocks, and the exacerbated gangs smashing car windows to vent their added frustration.
“`Okay,’ I said, cursing my kids and the increased regulations that would double the cost of the dog before the beast even settled in. `I can understand that.’
“`And you have to go to the county building to fill out the forms.’
“`The county building? Are you crazy? That's a war zone down there. Can't you fax it in or something?’
“The vet shook his head as he plunged the needle into the dog, drawing a slight yelp, but no violent reprisal.
“`They have to have the original downtown. It's the gangs. They've been training packs of pittbulls. God knows why? Do they think the dogs can storm the walls any better than they can themselves?’
“So we took the drive downtown, over the pitted roadways left by the metal tracks of the police tanks and armored vehicles, the park across from the county building still smoldering from the latest clash between gangs and police. I left the kids and the dog in the station wagon, confident that the steel plates and commercial grade bullet proof glass would keep them safer than the halls of the county seat, where TV reported at least one death a day to machine gun fire and small explosives.
“Even in broad daylight, the place scared me, the two dozen steps up to its columnar facade, thick with concrete barriers, and mounted machine guns, and police swat teams in full combat armor, perched behind firing posts, squinting at me through their thick plastic face protectors, the snouts of their heavy caliber weapons moving with me as I climbed.
“For a dog, I was doing this, I thought as I reached the top, and faced another small army of well-armed men and women, each of them glaring at me as two more lightly armed clerk type cops frisked me then asked me for identification. Even they disbelieved me when I told them I'd come to get a dog license, eyeing me as if I needed serious psychological attention. But they let me pass, letting some other bureaucrat inside worry about me.
“Several searches, banks of metal detectors and bands of security guards later, I finally reached the deck which could issue me the license. Unfortunately, they wanted to know more than I could tell them, about blood type and family history, and what kind of training the dog had had. Had it or any of its sires served as attack dogs for the army.
“’How the hell am I supposed to know,’ I yelled in frustration. ‘I found the dog on the street.’
“I don't know why they gave me the license, but they did, perhaps only to get rid of me and my outrageous screeching protests over their insistence on registering a dog more thoroughly than a pistol. I could have bought a rocket launcher with less trouble, and launched it with less suspicious stares. Something registered in their eyes when I said this, making them stamp my papers and shoo me away.
“When I got back to the car, I found it surrounded by blue and purple haired motorcycle freaks, their gang distinguished from the hundred other local gangs merely by the fact they rode motorcycles rather than Jeeps or ambulances or Wells Fargo-style armored cars. Their faces had the same dread expressions I encountered daily on my way to and from work, almost bored in their attempts to be outrageous, like workers on an assembly plant seeking some new and original way to get their kicks. Each held a gun. Each grinned in at my kids like a savage. But each kept from hammering at the glass or twisting open the metal by a set of snarling teeth on the other side, furious teeth that seemed determined to set themselves on the gang member's throats.
“Oddly enough, the gang parted as I walked up to the car, each glaring at me, as I drew the ordinary metal key from my pocket and inserted it into the ordinary lock, backing away from me when the lock clicked and the door opened and the howling of teeth snarled at the crack seeking blood.
“`Hey man,’ one particularly ugly gang member said with green spike eyebrows to match his green spiked hair. `That your dog?’
“`Yes,' I said, staring at the man. `Why?’
“`That's a dangerous beast, man. You shouldn't go around driving with a beast like that. Somebody could get hurt.’
“`I know,' I said, with a grin nearly as nasty as the dogs. I slid into the driver's seat, pushing the beast back with the heal of my hand. No teeth touched me. Then, closing and locking the door again, I started the engine, continuing my grin to match the grin the dog gave the intruders, no longer begrudging the beast his share of the food, no longer thinking the trip here wasted.
“I wiggled my fingers and drove away, our newest family member howling up a storm.”
The man reached down and patted the head of the patient dog. Everybody in the bar stared at the dog, including me. And when the man drained his drink and made his way towards the door, the dog padded along behind him. No one else in the room made a move to follow, though a heavy sigh of relief sounded when the door closed and the man with his dog was gone.
***********
“What happened to you?” Hudson asked when Vincent barged through the front door.
“A little accident,” Vincent said, regretting instantly that he hadn’t bothered to stop home first, clean himself up before coming to the station. He could see the startled look on Hudson’s and the other officers’ faces, the kind of look a clan had just before a feud. That “my gang’s bigger than your gang mentality” that Vincent has been struggling to change here in New York. He wanted professionals, not avengers.
“What kind of accident?” Hudson demanded. “Did some bastard in Chelsea do this to you?”
“Yes and no,” Vincent said, grabbing Hudson’s arm, propelling him into the elevator where the outraged tone wouldn’t infect any more of the crew. “They tossed me out. Get somebody to go look for my car. They’re probably dumped it up somewhere near Harlem.”
“Son of a bitches,” Hudson said. “I’ll...”
“You’ll do what I’m telling you,” Vincent said. “I don’t want a raid on that neighborhood. We’ll only lose. Those boys there paid a price throwing me out.”
“But you could have been killed.”
“But I’m not. Even if I was, I wouldn’t want no vengeance raid. We’ll do this by the book.”
“You mean you’re not pissed off about this?”Hudson said.
“Of course I’m pissed off,” Vincent said as the elevator opened onto the appropriate floor and he charged out of it and towards his office, trying to ignore more startled glances from the secretarial staff. His head raced with images of that murdered girl on the street, and his wife, and couldn’t help but feel the connection, though he logic told him there wasn’t any – except for Bosk. But Cromwell’s smug face haunted him more than the wall guard, that usual rich look of a man immune to justice, flaunting his ability to skirt the law. It was a look Vincent had imagined on the face of his wife’s killer – though he knew that side of him had too much imagination. “But I want this guy, Lucas, and I’m convinced its him.”
Vincent swept into his office, and circled around his desk, falling into his chair, breathing harder than he should have for such a simple task. The blood had clotted around his nose and mouth and he could see the mocking image of his face reflected in the computer screen just before he activated the computer.
“I want everything we have on this case – finger prints, images of wounds, and I want every bit of information we can get on Cromwell. I want to know everything he’s done and everywhere he’s been since the day he was born.”
Hudson grinned. “You got it, chief,” he said and moved to leave, pausing at the door. “I’ll send the doc up to look at your face.”
“Fuck that, I’m too busy,” Vincent said, already engrossed in the data, spilling on the screen. He was still preoccupied with it, when the woman in white rushed in.
“What the hell have you done to yourself now?” the doctor scolded, pushing Vincent back from the console to study the damage.
“Nothing more than I deserved,” Vincent said as the woman pressed close to him, the smell of antiseptic flowing off her white uniform like perfume, her full breasts pressing out of a shirt too small to contain them. “I got careless.”
“With whom?” she asked, sharply, her fingers working over the wound, more roughly than need dictated, as if she wanted to cause him a little discomfort.
“A gang of dikes.”
“You fought a street gang?” the doctor asked. “What the hell were you doing out on the street anyway? You’re the police chief now. You have other people to do patrols.”
“I wasn’t out there by choice, Laura,” Vincent said, pulling away from her fingers before they did more damage. “Someone dumped me out there.”
“On purpose?” Laura said, her anger rapidly shifting to concern. “But you could have died.”
“I think that was the intent,” Vincent said.
“What have you done about it? Did you send a squad to arrest the men?”
“No,” Vincent said. “It’s not that easy.”
“But you’re the police chief...”
“That’s only another title. I’m a cop down deep, and all cops have to operate under the same basic restrictions. I know the bastards tried to kill me, but knowing is different from proving it. My word, as chief, would no more hold up in a court of law than theirs would if they accused me. Besides, they’re the small fish in this barrel. I’m looking to bust a rapist and murderer. He’s the big fish. He’s the one that matters right now.”
“Are you talking about the one who killed that girl on the street?”
“And others,” Vincent said.
“Can you get him?”
“I’m waiting on the reports now,” Vincent said, indicating the screen, which was updating information from other sources on the network, details of different investigations feeding into this one report. Vincent flicked a switch and a map showed, a map with numerous red dots. He whistled softly.
“What is it, Bill?” Laura asked, pressing close again, though this time not by accident, her breasts easing into Vincent’s shoulder.
“A map of crime,”Vincent said. “I had the computer map out all similar kinds of crime we’ve had in the area around Chelsea, the five murders and any others that might have some of the same elements. This is what we got. Each red spot is the scene of a crime.”
“But there’s over 30 of them,” Laura said, unable to keep the horror out of her voice.
“Thirty three,” Vincent said. “If they all check out, then our boy has been a busy little monster over the last year.”
“You have to stop him, Bill,” Laura said. “I know a lot of the men downstairs don’t feel too bad about these crimes, the women mostly being prostitutes and all. But it’s still a terrible thing no matter who the victims are.”
“I agree,” Vincent said. “Though I think better of the boys than you do. They’re good men on this force. I’ve seen their faces when we’ve discovered a body. Most of the men want this bastard as much as I do.”
“Then you’re going to arrest him?”
“If I can.”
“But what more do you need?”
“Proof,” Vincent said. “All we have here are lights on a screen.”
“What about that old woman?” Laura said. “I heard she saw the last victim die.”
“It was dark. She’s old. Her testimony would seem weak before a jury.”
“Then what do you intend to do?”
“A little sting, maybe,” Vincent mumbled. “If we can predict a time pattern with this man. That’s what the computer’s working on now – trying to see how often it happens and when it might happen next time.”
“I want to be in on it,” Laura said.
Vincent’s head jerked up and studied the dark haired woman. “What?”
“You heard me,” she said, her dark eyes stern, and her wide mouth grim.
“But this could be dangerous. The man has killed...’’
“So who would you send? Another woman? A uniformed police woman?”
“Most likely.”
“Well, I’m a fully trained officer, too – although I might not look it at this moment, and I want to be in on this arrest.”
“Damn it, Laura...”
“Officer Simpson, if you don’t mind.”
“Please, don’t do this. I’ve enough to worry about without worrying about you, too.”
“No one’s asking you to worry,” Laura said. “And no one is asking special treatment from you. I want to be in on the sting if one is organized. I can make my request to the mayor.”
“I don’t take orders from the mayor,” Vincent said. “This is my department. I run it as I see fit.”
“No, but you’ll listen to him if he asks. You always do. Need I go over your head?”
Vincent sagged a little, his head dropping, his gaze studying the screen again and its thirty three little red spots. They looked like a disease and he could fully imagine them spreading across the city. He could see his dead wife’s face among them, though statistically, she was not included. He did not want to see Laura’s face there instead. Yet, she was right, and he admired her spunk for volunteering.
“All right,” he said finally. “If there is a sting, you’re in on it.”
“Thank you, Bill,” Laura said. “Now let me fix that nose of yours.”
***********
“Mayor’s office on the tube, chief,” Hudson said, his voice coming over the screen though the images remained fixed on the growing statistics – growing circumstantial evidence that Vincent prayed would add up to a conviction. He didn’t want to have to organize the sting, didn’t want to have to send Laura out into danger.
“What does he want?” Vincent said, floating out of his haze.
“I don’t know, chief,” Hudson said. “But he isn’t happy.”
Vincent let out a long breath through his teeth, then clicked on the computer icon that allowed the mayor’s face to materialize on his screen, a face that showed up so red and furious it might have served as a cartoonist’s caricature rather than anything real. Only the thin upper lip twitching defined it absolutely as the mayor’s.
“What the hell did you do over in Chelsea?” the Mayor roared, the moment the voice element clicked into place.
“I don’t understand what you mean?” Vincent said, keeping his own voice even.
“Don’t hand me that! I sent you over there to apologize, not cause a major intercity squabble.”
“Do you mean Cromwell called you again?”
“Not Cromwell, but his attorneys. They issued a complaint against you, saying you harassed their client.”
“I think the harassment was the other way around,” Vincent said. “Cromwell tried to have me killed.”
“Are you serious? You can prove that?”
“Of course I can’t prove it,” Vincent said. “Otherwise he would be sitting in a downtown jail cell. But that’s what happened?”
“How?”
“He ordered his guards to have me put into the Outlands, without gun or vehicle.”
An expression of horror replaced the one of rage on the Mayor’s face.
“And you survived?”
Vincent laughed. “It takes more than a boot in the ass to kill me,” he said. “But the Chelsea guards didn’t know that. They thought they were getting rid of me once and for all. They’ve probably got their eyes glued to the news station looking for a report of my demise.”
“You haven’t arrested them?”
“Not yet,” Vincent said. “I want the man who ordered me expelled.”
“But if you can’t prove anything, what can you do?”
“We want to set up a sting.”
“I don’t understand?”
“This murder thing is nothing new. His MO fits five other killings in the area, and a computer trace shows he may have been involved in many more attempts. We’ve got the computers looking for a time pattern, something we can use to predict his next attempt. We want to be there when it happens.”
“Will that work now that he knows you’re on to him?”
“I don’t know,” Vincent admitted. “But if he thinks I’m missing – and presumed dead – he may feel safe enough to continue with his old habits. Indeed, I’m not sure this isn’t some display of compulsive behavior, like a sex or drug addiction. If there is a pattern, it might be because he needs to do it.”
“I’m not sure I like this,” the mayor said, staring at his own hands, his upper lip twitching a little. “He already has his lawyers on us.”
“If we catch him red-handed in this, his lawyer won’t be able to do much more than represent him at a multiple murder trial.”
“But if you don’t, he could make things bad for us – me in particular. Cromwell is an influential man. If he spreads the word that I’ve allowed a prominent neighborhood dweller to be harassed, I could get voted out of office.”
“Which means I would lose my job under the next administration,” Vincent said. “I’m well aware of the risks. But I’m well aware of what might happen if the killings continue. You’ll look bad in either case, and I’ll wind up walking a beat in Queens.”
“All right,” the mayor said. “Do what you need to do. Just be careful.”
“I’m always careful, Mayor,” Vincent said. “That’s how I’ve survived so long.”
***********
Laura looked good. Too good to fit the part of a party girl. The role just wasn’t in her face, despite the piled on makeup and the bottle of blonde dye. Her eyes lacked the stone coldness party girls had, too open and honest – and yet in some ways, open and honest enough for someone looking for a victim.
“`Is the body micphone working?” Vincent asked, drawing his gaze away from her for the first time since she’d walked in the room. “Can you hear what I’m saying out there?”
Hudson lifted up his thumb from the other side of the sound proof glass, mouthing off the words: “loud and clear.”
“What about you?’“ Vincent asked Laura. “You can still back out of this.”
“I don’t want to back out of this,” she said, her cool voice making up for the lack of coldness in her eyes. “I want this bastard as much as you do.”
The word “bastard” didn’t sound right coming from her mouth, but Vincent only shrugged.
“All right, then, let’s get to it. The computer profile says Cromwell will begin his hunt around 7 p.m. It’s 7 p.m. now. I want everything in place hours before he starts stalking.”
Vincent waved at Hudson, and Hudson nodded, barking out orders Vincent couldn’t hear. Yet men and women on that side of the glass began to move quickly, gathering equipment and existing into the garage. Vincent and Laura Kline moved less quickly towards the door this side of the glass, a door that led out into the same area where three armored vehicles waited as did a crack swat team, men and women nodding as the police chief came in.
“You all have it down,” Vincent told them. “We’ll go according script. I don’t want Cromwell killed unless he poses a risk to Officer Kline. We’ll do everything in our power to trap him, short of risking her life. Is that understood?”
Each officer nodded with the confident nod Vincent had come to expect from his team, their gazes free of rage or vengeance. They were all professionals, all aquatinted with the law, all willing to operate within fixed rules. Yet each officer was a competent out there in the Outlands as Vincent, trained to kill, trained to survive, trained to think as an individual when the situation arose.
“Fine,” Vincent said. “Let’s get on the road.”
************
The computer profile didn’t pin point any specific club, but gave an geographical area in which Cromwell might operate. Vincent knew the motif neighborhood playboys used when out on the town, going from club to club, getting drunk in the process of travel. Vincent hoped Cromwell stuck to this pattern, seeking his victims as a matter of choosing from among a variety of candidates. If something physical set off his compulsion, then Laura would captivate him. Using the computer descriptions of each victim, Laura had made herself up to resembled them all, taking the common element of each. She was the best bait the department could devise. Vincent only hoped it was enough, and that in his wanderings, Cromwell would not find another candidate before stumbling into Laura.
***********
“What’s she doing now?” Vincent asked, seated in the front passenger seat of the van parked at the curb, club lights blinking off and off from across the street, a glittering mockery of mirrors and flesh, boasting of wealth when people literally sometimes starved to death on its door step. From time to time, armored limousines pulled up to the curb, armed doormen charging out to greet the guests with all the professional air of a swat team, glancing one way, then the other before letting people exit their vehicles. Even this was a primitive technique, a holdover from the days when such clubs had risen out of the warehouses and factories. Now, more modern places had replaced such antiques, built specifically to meet the needs of upperly mobile, with drive through entrances and metal gates and security systems better than most of the high brow neighborhoods. Half the reason the team had chosen this place was its lax security. Cromwell rarely struck in truly protected places.
“She just walked in for God’s sake,” Hudson said from the rear of the van, hovering over the shoulders of the seated police officers, who monitored the video and sound equipment. “Let her hang up her coat, will you?”
“I only asked,” Vincent said. “What’s the report on Cromwell?”
“No movement from any of the gates,” said a third officer seated directly behind the driver, a computer screen quartered, each small section showing a video of the four main Chelsea gates. “Are you sure he’ll come out by the main way?”
“I would,” Vincent said. “Especially if I had murder in mind. I’d want everything to appear as normal as possible. If someone saw him sneaking out, they might suspect some truth to our allegation.”
“If he comes out at all,” Hudson muttered. “He must have gotten word by now that you’re still alive.”
“I think he will,” Vincent said.
“Even when we knows we might be waiting for him?”
“More so,” Vincent said. “It’ll peak his excitement, thinking he can get away with it right under our noses. Some part of him may even believe he is invulnerable. He certainly believes himself immune to justice inside the wall. I suspect he needs to prove he can come and go as he pleases.”
“And you intend to prove him wrong.”
“Isn’t that was this is all about?” Vincent asked, shifting in his seat, waiting for one of the members of his small team to announce contact. He didn’t enjoy waiting, even though most of his life in the Outlands had always been hours of boredom and minutes of terror.
“Something happening here, chief,” the man said from behind the driver’s seat. “We’ve got a vehicle coming out the west gate.”
“Get a chopper over there,” Vincent said. “I want a readout on its broadcast registration. I want to know who the vehicle belongs to, who is inside of it, and if possible, where it is headed.”
Suddenly the air sizzled with the shift from the mode of waiting into a mode of activity, Hudson whispered into his radio, fingers on three sets of keyboards tapping out requests for more detailed information. Only Vincent remained motionless, his head filled with images of the crime scene, his fingers aching for an activity, activity his position as commander would not allow him to have.
Minutes later, the first reports from the helicopter confirmed the sighting, and the identify of the vehicle.
“It’s registered to one of Cromwell’s companies,” Hudson said. “As for the rider, that’s been screened, though the destination report has it headed in our general direction.”
“Let’s assume our man is aboard,” Vincent said. “But we’ll keep watch on the gates anyway, in case of a ruse. So assuming our man is bold enough to come south like this, we’d better have every block of his programmed route covered. But keep the watch vehicles off on side streets, and get people onto the street.”
“On foot?” Hudson said sounding surprised. “You really think our bird will make a run for it?”
“I don’t think he’d allow himself to wander the Outlands unprotected, but I don’t want to put anything past him,” Vincent said. “And I don’t want to lose him because I didn’t cover this possibility.”
A map of the city appeared on one of the screens, and Vincent forced himself around, staring at the blue background and the yellow line showing the route the car’s onboard computer had logged with the city. Slowly, from the gate of Chelsea, the line began to turn green as the vehicle followed the route. Vincent’s arms prickled with rising goose bumps, though he sat in the full blast of the van’s heater.
“Tell Laura to expect company,’“Vincent told the man monitoring her scene.
“Right, chief,” the man said, then mumbled into the microphone.
“Tell the men on scene not to shoot Cromwell unless Laura’s life is in danger,” Vincent said, repeating the order, and wondering about the ridiculousness of it. Certainly her life was in danger. Vincent and the police department insisted upon it, edging her towards Cromwell’s ringed fingers like live bait. Then, unable to resist, Vincent turned.
“Make room for me back there,” he said. “I’m sick of sitting here blind, letting you boys tell me what’s up.”
Hudson grinned and winked at one of the other men as they made room for him in the rear of the van. The multiple screens showing three different views of the action – or inaction. Only the changing color of the line said anything was happening at all, like a river turning from blue to green, undeviating from his purpose. Vincent reached over the shoulder of the officer seated before this screen and punched in a command. At the bottom of the screen, soft yellow letters appeared noting the intended destination: Arthur’s Imports, a warehouse on Broom Street. The route indented weaved through the complex maze of Outlands, following the broken streets between the University and the West Village, and then around the edge of SOHO. It was a route that made sense for ordinary truckers, going from one neighborhood to one more distant without wishing the hassle of weapons checks or fees of passage. But for a man like Cromwell with his obvious connections, this route seemed unduly dangerous, when he could have passed through each neighborhood with all the regal reception of an ambassador. Only if the man had another destination in mind, did this route make sense, a destination off the beaten track.
Vincent punched in another command. And overlay of club locations slid onto of the moving map, each club glowing purple except those most accessible to Cromwell’s route. Vincent punched in a third code. Some of the clubs vanished from the screen, leaving only those of the old fashioned kind, clubs without walls or indoor access. Now only six showed from the previous two dozen. With a fourth command, the club containing Laura changed from purple to red. It was the club closest to the changing green line. Then, the line changed to bright orange.
“He’s off route,” the officers at the controls yelped, as apparently excited as Vincent himself.
“He’s turning right towards Laura, Chief,’“Hudson said.
“Notify the team,” Vincent mumbled, staring hard at the screen, then away from the screen as the old visions came, the bloody visions of his wife’s body and the bodies of those women in the street. He could not help transposing Laura’s face to them and it make him sick. “But I don’t want any of them giving themselves away. No one moves in on him until I give the command or unless it is absolutely clear he’s going to hurt Laura. Is that understood?”
All the men in the van nodded, even the driver.
“Get a verbal confirm from everyone on the team. I want everyone aware of the order.”
“They all know, Chief,” Hudson said.
“Damn it, I know they know. But I want them reminded. Is that too much to ask?” Vincent snapped.
“No,” Hudson said in a very low voice. “I suppose not.”
“Then do it,” Vincent said, then found himself a seat on one of the wall chairs that folded in from the side of the van. Hudson muttered into his mouth piece. Vincent didn’t hear the replies, but knew that one by one those replies came in, each with his own grumbling voice, each with the same “yeah I know” attitude of men who didn’t need to be reminded constantly of their job. Then, all fell quiet. Only the breathing of the men in the van sounded and the occasional click and beep from the computer readout as it announced the arrival of the van at the club. Here, Vincent could see it out the rear window, the flat black bulk of what might have been called a tank in the past, though now served rich men as limousines . Two uniformed guards existed the vehicle, light caliber machine guns at ready in their arms. Out from the club, more armed guards came, also wearing uniforms – red uniforms with gold buttons and braid, the gaudy uniform typical of such places, worn not by the original guards but by Vincent’s men. These hard faced characters looked exactly like the originals, with no sign in their manner or speech to say they’d ever been cops. They looked up and down the street, as did their counter parts from Cromwell’s car, then motioned for the passenger to exit his vehicle.
Cromwell emerged as royally as a king, his dark attire largely hidden by a thick black cloak – a shoulder to ankle cape now so very popular in the upper circles. His face floated above his dark attire like a pale pink globe.
“Give me a close up on one of the roof cameras,” Vincent ordered as he pushed his way to the screen again. The camera view dollied in, focusing and refocusing, the screen pixels shattering and recollecting, adjusting their potency to make up from the sharp contrasts of light. Floodlights from the building bathed half the man’s face in deep crimson. The pixels could not totally adjust. They didn’t have to. Vincent read the expression and then fell back a step, shocked by what he saw. The stern sneer from his study had vanished, replaced by something sour, desperate, hungry. Vincent could almost see the beads of sweat spotting his forehead. But the eyes worried him, eyes not quite in focus as they turned away from the camera, eyes so furious with their own desire, they hardly recognized the danger into which the man walked. Then, sweeping away amid his guards, Cromwell vanished, the door guards lingering for a moment before quickly following. The doors of the club closed with a clang.
Inside the van, five men breathed heavily, all of three view screens shifting to views of the interior. The screen behind the driver’s seat showed from a tiny camera on Laura’s person, while the other two screens had criss-cross visions from ceiling angled cameras. Vincent looked at neither of those, but stared out at the approaching Cromwell from a view Laura was just having. On that screen, Cromwell exploded, his presence in the room as captivating as any president, his manner and walk, so dignified that even Vincent for a moment forgot this man was a killer. The camera shifted. The read out for Laura’s pulse showed an increase. So did blood pressure and brain activity. As she shifted, the camera angle changed a little, as if she now stood on a slight angle.
“Give me some close-ups,” Vincent demanded, turning away from Laura’s screen to the more objective view from above. One screen showed Cromwell’s face, turning like a turret, his gaze sweeping over the room – then stopped, jolting Vincent, making Vincent turn back to Laura’s screen, where he was jolted again, by the nearly straight on stare of Cromwell.
“Bingo!” Hudson said. “The fucker has taken the bait.”
“Not yet,” Vincent mumbled. “He’s working it out. Whatever it is that attracts him to his victims he’s looking now. Let’s hope Laura has it or we’ll be playing catch up with someone else all night.”
“If he finds someone else,” Hudson said.
Yet Cromwell did not cease his stare. People shuffled around him, they way they might have a pillar of stone, grumbling at him to move, moving on themselves when he ceased to reply. Vincent shivered. So did the screen, saying in directly that Laura noted the same sense of intensity that Vincent did, some aspect of violence already committed inside Cromwell’s mind. Vincent’s fingers closed and tightened around the headrest of the passenger seat, his mouth moving though the words sounded faint.
“Did you say something chief?” Hudson asked.
“Only to myself,” Vincent said, letting his lips shut tightly to avoid repeating the undesired order. He could no more rescue Laura now than let Cromwell leave. For good or bad, they had set things into motion – and then, as if reading Vincent’s mind, Cromwell stirred and began his slow, methodical march across the room, straight at Laura, barging through talking couples, breaking apart dancing couples. He came on the way a tank might, crawling over the landscape with little regard for what he damaged, pausing only when he came so near the hidden microphone pinned to Laura’s dress picked up his heavy breathing.
“Hello,” Cromwell said, sucking in air with a slight whistle. “You here with anybody?”
The other screen, whose camera had turned to follow Cromwell’s advance, showed Laura’s slowly shaking head, and her more than slightly shocked expression. She seemed shocked at Cromwell’s directness. Vincent wasn’t. Vincent had experienced the club scene from his days on the beat. Here, people didn’t waste time on formalities. Here, they came right at it – if not so bluntly obvious as Cromwell, then with little regard for the subtleties generally associated with acquiring sex.
“Good,” Cromwell said. “You’re with me now. Do you want a drink? Or do you want to wander out right away?”
The more distant camera showed Laura swallowing with great difficulty. The hidden microphone picked up the sound of phlegm in her voice as she spoke. “I think I’d like a drink,” she said, contrary to Vincent’s orders, which had commanded her to get the damned thing over as quickly as possible.
“The longer this takes the more chance we have of being discovered,” Vincent had told her earlier during the briefing. “We want him to make his move as soon as possible so we can nab him, put him in a jacket, and lock him away for ever.”
Yet, Vincent watched her body camera turn, its vision of Cromwell shifting to a neck level vision of the room, and the shoulder to shoulder madness of dancing and foreplay these places boasted of, the decadent neighborhood crowd out on the town. The more distant camera now showed Cromwell and Laura from the rear, moving away, Cromwell’s hand closing around Laura’s arm to propel her more directly through the crowd, the big man advancing towards the bar with his conquest the way he had advanced on Laura, showing no mercy for the dancers or lovers in-between.
“What do you drink?” Cromwell asked when they reached their destination and the face of the bartender appeared on the screen of Laura’s camera.
“Vodka tonic,” she said in the same phlegmy voice.
“I’ll have a Jack Daniels, straight, no water, no ice. You hear me? If you bring it on Ice I’ll shove it down your throat.”
The bartender glared, but vanished from the screen. Cromwell’s face reappeared at Laura turned.
“Damned poor help,” Cromwell growled. “Ten to one the son of a bitch brings it back on ice. They all do.”
“They are rather busy,” Laura said. “And it is noisy in here.”
“Busy, hell,” Cromwell growled. “It’s incompetence. Management scrapes these fellows off the streets, puts them in suit and tie, then expects them to perform like human beings. They’re animals. Stupid as animals and as valuable as animals. You might be able to use their kind to unload trucks, but not serve real people.”
Then, the bartender returned, putting Laura’s drink in front of her, and Cromwell’s on the bar in front of him, threw down cash and the bartender vanished again.
“Is your drink all right?” Laura asked.
“Yeah,” Cromwell grumbled. “But only because I hollered.”
Then, in full view of Laura’s camera, Cromwell downed his drink, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his expensive suit.
“Drink up,” he told Laura. “I don’t want to be at this all night.”
“I can’t drink it that quickly,” Laura said. “It’ll go straight to my head.”
“Who cares where it goes?” Cromwell snapped. “All you’ve got to do for the next hour or so is lie on your back. Drink up or leave it. We have things to do.”
“Are you always this rude?” Laura said, drawing a moan from Hudson.
“She’s blowing it, Chief,” he said. “Look at his face. He’s already suspicious. Party girls aren’t supposed to ask questions like that.”
“Maybe she hasn’t blown it yet,” Vincent said, studying Cromwell’s expression more closely, an expression that showed something of delighted surprise rather than annoyance, the way a wolf might find delight in the surprising vigor of a hare. “Let it string out a little. We’ll see where it goes.”
“Rude?” Cromwell said. “I’m not being rude. How can I be rude to a slut?”
The distant camera could not register an expression on Laura’s face. She was turned the wrong way. Vincent had to imagine it, as he imagined the shock inside of her. This shock must have snapped something back in place. Her body camera seemed to rise a little as her shoulders went back. The distant camera showed her throw back her head and gulp her drink. She put the empty glass back down on the bar.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”
But when she turned to move back through the crowd, Cromwell grabbed her arm, his head shaking slowly.
“Not that way,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve made arrangements to leave through the back.”
“Oh no,” Hudson mumbled as the other men in the van stiffened. “We didn’t know there was a back way in and out.”
Vincent glanced sharply up from the screen at the red-faced Hudson. “What do you mean you didn’t know? We had the plans for the building.”
“Yes, but the plans have the rear door coming out in a private passage, one that goes along the whole block. It doesn’t exit the street, except through one of the other buildings.”
“Well, then, get people on it,” Vincent snapped. “Have the block closed if you have to. I don’t want that son of a bitch sneaking off.”
Hudson and one of the other men began shouting orders into the mouth pieces. Vincent could hear the remote answers of panicked men, men from whole control was rapidly slipping. Vincent didn’t feel the loss, yet had a sense of ill foreboding.
“I’m going out,” he said, then pushed open the door, charging across the street to the door of the club, where the officers, disguised as door men, admitted him. The smell struck first, swirling around him as he entered, the smell of hops and perfume, like smells from an orgy in a brewery, many of the faces around him turning up as he barged through, his advance even less gentle than Cromwell’s had been, shoving apart people as he desperately searched the crowd for some sign of Laura, other men – his men – moving along through the other rooms in a similar desperate fashion, some of them waving to him, one of them rushing over to him with a loosened body microphone.
“Hudson needs to talk to you, chief,” he said.
Vincent stuck the receiver in his ear, then breathed the word “What?” into the microphone.
“He’s making his move, chief.”
“Where?”
“We have the trace on, but there’s a lot of metal in those old buildings. I’ve a portable working its way in from the other side. But he’s ducked into one of the buildings.”
“What do you see on the monitor?”
“We don’t see anything, chief.”
“Which means what?”
“Which means he must have found the transmitter when tearing off her dress.”
Vincent didn’t wait to hear more, but bolted through the crowd, shoving them aside with both hands, swimming through the people as if through reeds, until he reached the door, yanking this open with both hands, pushing himself out into the alley, where the filth of a hundred years of human occupation had built itself up in a thick gray clay, layer of layer of trash piled up so that only the surface was any longer recognizable. But the alley stank of trash, of that smell that Vincent had come to recognize as the street itself, mingling of rotting food and rotting flesh, shit, piss and vomit thrown in as a spice. It cooked here, brewing up into a scent that the street’s occupants carried away with them, taking it when they begged, adding to it when they died. It alone made Vincent retch.
He had come face to face with the brick making up one wall of the long alley, a wall that marked the back of the buildings on the far street. To right and left stretched the four foot wide space, all that remained of what had once been back yards, buildings expanded upon until they nearly abutted. In both directions, Vincent saw light, the wobbly lights of approaching officers, officers wearing gear that would tell them where Laura had gone. In that instant, Vincent found himself frozen, unable to make up his mind which was he should turn, in case, turning one way or the other turned him in the wrong direction.
“This way, chief,” one of the officers to the right shouted. “We got a reading on her over here.”
Vincent stumbled over something on the ground, and then saw that it was Laura’s purse. He snatched it up. Red drops dribbled from its side, making him charge that much harder, smashing down the rusted metal trash can that had sat there, useless for God knew how long. Their echo carried up the passage. It rang in his head like an alarm.
“Faster, fool,” he thought. “She’ll be dead like the rest if you don’t hurry.”
Dead? Hurry? Those words lacked substance. He could not make his limbs move any faster than they moved, and they seemed to move so slow he might have been swimming in mud, the gray mud closing around him, burying him again, as it had as a child -- the smell by far the worst part, growing more potent with each step. Ahead, the lights had stopped before a door. Police officers now pressed their backs to the wall on either side, making ready to kick the door in. Vincent reached them before they moved, recklessly shoving at the metal, thrown back by it, shocked at its resistance until he realized it opened outward, not in. Then, clawing at the handle, he pulled, and the door open without even a creak, the silence more disturbing than ripping metal might have been. He plunged into the dark. Behind him, the other officers came, waving guns and flashlights, creating more confusing shadows than they might have less hurried.
“Give me a light,” Vincent snapped, suddenly halting in what felt to be a warehouse sized room. Someone pressed the warm metal into his palm. He pointed the tube so that the beam illuminated the space just ahead of him, illuminated cartons and crates, shelves and drum, illuminated the crumbled broken body of Laura, who neck showed the rippled mark of Cromwell’s ringed fingers.
“Shit!” one of the other cops said.
It was the only sound, one that ricocheted through the room like a bullet.