Fear the Night

Hector Chavez, the mayor’s on-duty bodyguard, glanced at him and smiled. He was a medium-height, blocky man with impeccably combed black hair that matched his impeccably tailored suit. He had about him the air of a man who didn’t move around much, but when he did move, it was fast and with purpose.

There was a slight noise from the office on the other side of the door. Chavez immediately locked the door between the office and the room they were in, then slipped out an opposite door.

Pelegrimas and the mayor stood silently. Then there was a soft knock on the office door and it opened just far enough so that Chavez could squeeze back in.

“It’s the people from the Committee to Revive the Southern Tip,” the bodyguard said.

Pelegrimas nodded to the mayor. “I’ll deal with them, sir.”

“Fine, Marcus. Tell them I can give them ten minutes, starting in a few.”

“Yes, sir.” Chavez stayed with the mayor as Pelegrimas opened the door to the office.

“Do I smell smoke?” the mayor asked. “Is someone smoking out there, Marcus?”

“No, sir,” Pelegrimas said, and closed the door behind him.

When he returned, the mayor was back before the mirror, trying the “Night must not be synonymous with fright” line again, only without the raised forefinger.

“You’re really going to do this, sir?” he asked.

“I didn’t point the finger that time, Marcus,” the mayor said.

“I mean the speech itself. You’re going to take the risk?”

“I didn’t get elected to sit in my office in a flak jacket,” the mayor said.

“Ready for tomorrow?” Melbourne asked Repetto.

They were in Melbourne’s office, along with Lou Murchison. Melbourne was seated behind his big desk, making a tent of his fingers and barely turning this way, then that in his swivel chair. Repetto and Murchison were in the leather chairs angled toward the desk. The swivel chair squeaked. The office smelled faintly of cigar smoke, making Repetto wish he had a cigar. Not one of the ropes Melbourne smoked, though.

“There’s no being all the way ready for something like this,” Murchison said.

Melbourne stopped swiveling and gave him a cautioning look over his tented fingers.

“Our SWAT snipers know their stations and have their instructions,” Murchison said. “The Rockefeller Center area’s flooded with NYPD, in uniform and undercover. We’ve synchronized with the mayor’s security and know the schedule, but you know how these rallies can get out of hand.”

“I don’t care how out of hand this one gets, as long as the mayor survives,” Melbourne said.

“Two of his security men have that special responsibility,” Murchison said.

At first Repetto didn’t know what he meant. By the time he’d caught on, Murchison was explaining.

“One on each side of the mayor is assigned to take the bullet.”

“Jesus!” Melbourne said.

“They’re gung ho,” Murchison said.

“Mostly gung,” Repetto said. “By the time they can react, the bullet’ll be in the mayor.”

“Guts, though,” Melbourne said.

Probably all over the podium, Repetto thought, but knew better than to say.

“Ten minutes before the mayor speaks, we go on high alert,” Murchison said. “We stay that way until he gets his political tail away from the podium.”

“Will he be wearing a protective vest?” Repetto asked.

“No. Says it’d be noticeable under his suit coat and ruin the effect of what he’s trying to do, which is to show the Sniper the city can’t be scared into shutting down.”

“More guts,” Melbourne said.

“Votes,” Murchison said.

“You’re a cynic.”

“I’m a cynic. Maybe it’s the job.”

Melbourne turned to Repetto. “How about the subway system?”

“It’s been staked out the last couple of days, especially the closed stops. If our sniper does travel by abandoned train tunnels, he probably enters and leaves them at closed stops.”

“Are there that many abandoned or temporarily closed subway tunnels?” Melbourne asked.

“Miles of them.”

“And all we’ve got suggesting the Sniper’s using them is that match with the mud.”

“All we’ve got so far. Are any of the names on the disgruntled employee list transit workers?”

“Some. But they’ve been ruled out. And the list goes back ten years.” Melbourne rooted through a file on his desk and leaned forward to hand a copy of the list of names to Repetto.

Repetto’s gaze played down the column of thirty-seven names, complete with last-known addresses. Thirty of them had been lined out. The name Joel Vanya did not appear.

“Why only ten years back?” Repetto asked.

Melbourne made a dismissive motion with both hands, as if flicking away something that was closing in on him from all directions. “Long time to hold a grudge. You gotta figure, more than ten years, the Sniper would’ve struck back at the city a long time ago.”

Repetto didn’t answer. He saw that Alex Reyals’s name hadn’t been lined out. The former cop. Meg had been assigned to that one; Repetto would have to ask her about him.

“Here’s something else both of you should see,” Melbourne said. “An anonymous letter written to the Times. A journalist there with sharp eyes and a curious mind saw that the note was typed rather than done on a computer printer. The newspaper doesn’t get many of those these days. He also noticed the similarity in the typeface with the previous Sniper notes. The lab confirmed the same typewriter was used. Times doesn’t know that yet.”

“Our killer’s actually urging the mayor to speak at the rally,” Murchison said disbelievingly, handing the note back to Melbourne. “The bastard has some gall.”

“Either that or he’s a great admirer of the mayor,” Repetto said.

Melbourne looked at him, doing the tent thing again with his stubby, powerful fingers. “What do you think?”

“I think he’s gonna be there tomorrow,” Repetto said. “He might even have wanted us to figure out this letter’s from him. And if he didn’t want it, he sure as hell doesn’t care about it, or he wouldn’t have sent it.”

“He could be daring us,” Murchison said.

“Oh, with every breath.”

“We gonna be ready for him?” Melbourne asked, looking from one man to the other, and sounding too much like a desperate football coach exhorting his team to overcome a lopsided score.

Murchison nodded and held up crossed fingers on each hand.

Repetto said, “If he shows, we act. He won’t get away via the subway system.”

“And how we gonna know if he shows?” Melbourne asked.

Repetto and Murchison exchanged glances. It was Murchison who said it:

“The only plan with a reasonable chance of getting our man is one that concentrates on what happens after the mayor is shot.”

Not what the coach wanted to hear.

47

At the plush Marimont Hotel on West Forty-eighth Street, a block south of Rockefeller Plaza, a handsome man wearing sunglasses and with a slight foreign accent paid cash for a requested suite on a high floor. He was carrying a large gray Louis Vuitton duffel bag and politely refused a bellhop’s offer to take it to his room.

The hotel was too far from the Plaza to provide opportunity for an accurate rifle shot, made even more difficult because the shooter would have to aim over shorter buildings between rifle and target. This apparent impossibility was exactly why the Night Sniper had chosen the Marimont. That and the fact that a serial killer would