Fear the Night

Murchison waved an arm in an encompassing gesture. “We’ll have the area around the Plaza flooded with uniformed and undercover cops. Spotters and SWAT snipers will be stationed strategically in, and on, surrounding buildings.”

“The Sniper will be expecting that,” Repetto said.

Murchison nodded agreement. “That’s why the subway information and your assignment are so important.”

Repetto knew what Murchison meant, but Murchison went ahead and said it: “It’d be nice if we nailed the Sniper before he kills the mayor.”

The object of the game, Repetto thought.

The game.

46

The Night Sniper sat back from his typewriter and checked his letter to the New York Times. In it he complimented the mayor for his wisdom and fortitude in speaking at the upcoming TBTC rally. It was a time for strong leadership and the mayor was providing it. The city couldn’t let itself be held hostage by fear, and only someone with courage could break the chains of that fear through bold and definitive action. The mayor made the letter writer proud to be a New Yorker.

The letter was unsigned.

The Night Sniper doubted the Times would print such a letter from an anonymous source, but they’d count it in their pro and con survey. It would add weight, however slight, to the mayor’s political responsibility.

It would contribute to maneuvering the mayor closer to the point of his death.

The morning before the TBTC rally, the Night Sniper made his way on foot across town toward Rockefeller Center. He’d noticed a uniformed policeman stationed near the closed subway stop that provided access to a tunnel leading downtown. The subway tunnel was the route the Night Sniper had intended taking.

He stood looking at the policeman, a young man with a seriousness and tenseness about him. As if he expected trouble and perhaps wanted it.

Not willing to take a chance, the Night Sniper walked to his secondary entry point.

No uniformed cop there, but a decidedly suspicious businessman seated on a nearby bench and pretending to read a magazine while sipping water from a plastic bottle. He looked, he felt, like an undercover cop. And if he wasn’t, what about the homeless man with the good haircut slouching near the corner?

No problem, the Night Sniper told himself.

But as he walked toward Midtown, he saw that other subway stops were staked out by the police. No mistaking it now; they must at least suspect he was using the subways for shelter and to move about, especially the deserted tunnels and stations.

This shouldn’t be a complete surprise. Repetto wasn’t a fool. That was why he’d been chosen.

The Night Sniper walked on.

He finally found a long-deserted stop his pursuers had overlooked, on East Fifty-ninth Street. The surface structure leading to the stairwell was razed, its rubble piled nearby. The entry to underground was shielded from sight by a raised plywood walkway, the access to the stairwell covered by a square steel plate. The construction walkway was flanked by four-by-eight plywood sheets propped on their sides and nailed tight to upright supports, so that only the upper bodies of passersby were visible.

When no one was on the angled walkway, the homeless man with the backpack dropped down out of sight. The steel plate was screwed down, but was easy to pry up from the weathered wood walkway. He quickly slid the plate to the side, then lowered himself into the darkness beneath. Just as quickly, but with considerably more effort, he slid the plate back into place from below so it could be walked upon. In darkness, he began descending rusty steel rungs protruding from an old concrete wall that curved to remind him of a well.

The last ten feet of the ladder was smooth steel, as the entry widened to twice its diameter. The ground below was muddy but with a firmness just below the surface.

Standing at the base of the ladder, the Night Sniper could hear the muffled roar of subway trains. He got his small mag light from his backpack and shone the thin beam about.

He knew where he was. In a tunnel with unused tracks leading to a stop near West Fifty-first Street-not far from Rockefeller Center.

This was his world. He felt safer here. Heartened, he strode confidently into darkness, playing the flashlight beam ahead of him so he wouldn’t trip over something or twist an ankle on a piece of debris. The tunnel smelled musty and faintly of something rotting. A familiar and comforting smell.

After a while, the unused tunnel veered left into the operational tunnel leading to the subway stop. Trains ran regularly along this route, so he had to stay alert.

Minutes later the Night Sniper stopped and stood with his back pressed against the tile walls of the Fifty-first Street subway stop. He was on the shadowed edge of light from above, waiting for the opportunity to emerge from the tunnel and climb onto the concrete platform. He knew he’d be seen by at least a few people, but they’d quickly looked away from his shabby clothes and threatening demeanor and put him out of their minds. It was no secret that many of the homeless spent their days in the subway stops, and perhaps he’d dropped something near the tracks, or spotted a coin, and had pocketed it and was climbing back up onto the platform. It was no concern of theirs, not in the real world where they lived their lives of relationships, appointments, and responsibilities, the world that mattered.

The time came and the Night Sniper moved smoothly to the steel maintenance ladder near the end of the platform and began climbing it. He was noticed by another of the homeless, a large African-American man preparing to panhandle on the next train, and an older white couple who looked like tourists. The woman had a camera slung around her neck. The Night Sniper hoped she wouldn’t attempt to use it. He’d been photographed before, as part of the flora and fauna of the city, and he’d gone to some trouble to steal the camera, a digital one, so he could destroy the image. Cameras could see deeply, beyond flesh and posture and into the real self.

Everyone who noticed the ragged figure climbing onto the platform quickly turned away with the same curiously wooden features that routinely rejected him as a fellow human. Only a blond girl about ten, standing behind the tourist couple, continued staring curiously at the Sniper.

She stared until a train rolled in and she boarded with a man who was probably her father.

The Night Sniper joined the throng of passengers who left the train and made their way toward the Fifty-first Street exit.

A few minutes later he was in sunlight on the surface, sure he’d drawn no undue attention. He’d scouted the neighborhood and knew where he was going, to a private spot behind a Dumpster where he could quickly change clothes and his homeless persona.

For now, though, he was one of the untouchable and unseen. He felt safest this way. The police knew the various rifles he used were expensive, so they were searching for a man of wealth. That deliberate misdirection was part of the game. The Sniper hardly appeared wealthy now, shuffling along the sidewalk with his thirty-thousand- dollar J.G. Anschutz target rifle-once owned by a member of Saddam Hussein’s cabinet-broken down and fitted into his worn backpack.

He was only blocks from Rockefeller Center.

Deputy Mayor Marcus Pelegrimas stood watching the mayor stand erectly to his full height before the mirror in the room adjacent to his office, where he often rehearsed his speeches.

“Night must not be synonymous with fright!” the mayor proclaimed, raising a finger.

He turned to Pelegrimas, a much taller man with a shaved head and a studied expression of impartiality. “Should I do that, Marcus? With the finger?”

“Never wise to give the voters the finger,” Pelegrimas said, deadpan.