wardrobe zipped up the dress’s back. Repetto returned the smile, thinking Tiffany was one beautiful young woman.
When Straithorn and the woman from wardrobe left, and they were alone in Tiffany’s small dressing room, Tiffany sat on a bench in front of a vanity with a many-lightbulbed makeup mirror that looked like something out of
“I happen to be a theater buff,” Repetto said, “and I think on looks alone, you’ll go far.”
Again the incandescent smile. “That’s so nice of you, Detective. .? ”
“Repetto.”
“But it takes acting talent, too.”
“I’m sure you have it.”
“You’re very kind.”
“You might not think so after I show you these.” He handed her the morgue photos.
“These are of the homeless man who was shot last night?” she said, accepting them.
“I’m afraid so.”
When she looked at the top photo, she gasped.
Repetto studied her eyes and knew she’d recognized the dead man. He waited.
“I don’t know his name,” Tiffany said. She seemed genuinely moved by the man’s death. Repetto reminded himself that she was an actress.
“It’s Joseph DeLong,” he said. “He was identified by his fingerprints.”
“He was a criminal?”
“No, he was in the military. His prints were on file.” Repetto didn’t mention the two pandering convictions.
“Joseph. .” Tiffany looked at herself in the mirror, then in the mirror at Repetto. “I never asked his name. I should have.”
“You knew him?”
“Only as a homeless person who hung out in the neighborhood. After curtain, some of us usually go to a restaurant over on Twelfth Street and have a late snack. I usually left something for. . Joseph. . in a carryout box.”
“You talked to him?”
“No, I left it on top of the trash basket on the corner. He often rooted through its contents. I put the box right where he could reach it. He was almost always outside the restaurant when we came out. He stayed away until we were gone, like he was afraid to talk to us. Or like he was. . ”
“Too proud?”
“Maybe.”
“And you never attempted to speak to him?”
“No. Never.” She sounded defensive.
Repetto smiled at her. “You showed him kindness. There’s no reason to think you should have done more. I’m sure he was grateful.”
She bent down and put on her other shoe.
Repetto wanted to make sure of what she was saying. “So Joseph was a fixture in the neighborhood, especially around the restaurant. And he regarded you as a benefactor.”
“I guess he could count on me for food, if that’s what you mean.”
“I do mean that, and it’s something.” Repetto had the information he wanted confirmed. The beggar man was a neighborhood fixture, and was usually outside the restaurant where Tiffany dined. Repetto wondered if the late and un-mourned Joseph DeLong had been in love with Tiffany. Probably, he thought.
He stood up. “I’ll leave you to concentrate on your performance. It’s been a real pleasure, and I’m sure I’ll see you uptown onstage sometime in the near future.”
She handed him back the morgue photos, having looked at only the top one, and with her smile melted him in a way he’d have thought unlikely. “I hope you’re right,” she said. “And I hope whoever killed Joseph … you find him.”
“We will,” Repetto told her. “You can be sure of it.”
He didn’t tell her she and her beauty and generosity had been the magnetism that had kept Joseph near, and made him predictable prey.
“Good-bye, Detective Repetto.”
He told her good-bye, then almost gave her the traditional Broadway
She looked puzzled, then grinned. “Oh, that!”
“Your legs are too beautiful.”
Another breathtaking smile. This time with a touch of shyness.
Joseph DeLong hadn’t had a chance.
42
The view from the brick passageway between the leather goods shop and the closed Zippy Dog fast food restaurant remained the same. People passed without glancing into the shadowed passage, and if they did chance a look, all they saw were a few rubber trash containers and a pile of black plastic trash bags that had evaded months of pickup. The bags were old enough to be beyond odor, though a few rats that had scurried away must have scented something of value in them.
What the Night Sniper saw from where he sat, with his back resting against the mound of plastic bags, was the view across the street, into a similar but wider and well-lit passageway. Opening into that passageway was the unmarked steel door that he knew was the stage door of the Bellam Theater. Right now the door was closed flush with the building’s brick side wall. Its flat gray surface was unbroken. It had no knob and could be opened only with a key or from the inside.
Truly, no one sees the homeless, the Sniper reflected, slumped against the pile of trash bags. No one had so much as glanced at him as he’d shuffled down the street and entered the dark and dangerous access.
Before he’d discovered the passageway, he had taken a position on the sidewalk, seated on his folded thin coat, his chipped ceramic cup set out for donations. He had his feebly scrawled AIDS sign out, which not only elicited sympathy but also seemed to repel the police, but hours on the sidewalk had garnered him only a few dollars in his cup.
Not that he cared, sitting there watching New York stream past. His clothes were ragged and artfully stained, but clean against his flesh. They were the only part of his wardrobe he didn’t send out to be cleaned, but washed and dried in his condo’s laundry room off the main bedroom’s bath. He carefully maintained the garments’ threadbare, quasi-soiled condition and was sure they’d pass muster as throwaways even if someone with a trained eye looked closely at him.
Of course, in the evenings he’d spent on the sidewalk across the street from the Bellam Theater, no one had looked closely at him. That was the genius of his disguise. That and the fact that no one who knew him would ever dream he’d be sitting on the sidewalk in such a subservient position, begging.
Seeming to beg.
During the day he worked out of his condo or his Wall Street office, where he’d become one of the most highly regarded money managers in Manhattan. In only a few years he’d made dozens of clients rich, and himself even richer. Now he led the life of an Epicurean in the city made for dissolution, enjoying women, clothes, fine liquors, art collecting, and his secretly acquired gun collection, the basis of which had come to him by way of Adam Strong. He was now a model man, leading a model life of urban sophistication.
But occasionally he glimpsed his younger self on the street, and when he looked in the mirror he sometimes saw the scars and felt the unhealed wounds of the past. And felt the rage.
For a moment he considered using his vantage point as his sniper’s nest. A victim taken from street level.
