Ladykiller Read online

  “One word about counseling cocaine addicts,”Tim said. Reuben looked at him with great expectation.

  Tim giggled. “It’s not what it’s cracked up to be.” He fell apart

  laughing, rocking back and forth.

  Reuben, after a moment, joined him with a huge belly laugh.

  Rose looked bewildered.

  Tim said to Rose, “It’s not what it’s cracked up to be.” Rose finally got it.

  Dr. Solomon, the tired and aging head of the center, came in and

  stopped. He looked vaguely about, ever the academic surprised by the

  real world. Tim got up to pour a cup of coffee. Reuben assumed a

  blank expression. Rose was now laughing alone.

  “Rose?” Dr. Solomon said. “Are you all right?”

  Flustered, Rose took a moment to recover. She glanced at

  Reuben, who faced ostentatiously away. “Reuben,” she said, “you crazy

  old coot.” Reuben relented and chuckled at her.

  “Megan,” Nita called, “let me show you something.”

  Happy to be rescued and pleased that Nita wanted to see her,

  Megan rose from the sofa and crossed the room to kneel at Nita’s side

  as she pointed to a line in the file.

  “Look, it’s Gloria Steinem and Susan Faludi,” Tim said. He and

  Reuben howled some more.

  Nita murmured to Megan, “To think I’ve got the overnight shift

  tonight with Tim.”

  “I can come in to keep you company,” Megan offered. “No, thanks. You have schoolwork to do.” She shook her head.

  “God, Reuben last night and Tim tonight. I don’t know which is worse

  professionally. A burn-out like Reuben or a dilettante like Tim.” “Nita, my dear,” Rose called across the room, “I do need to have

  another little talk with you, if I may. My homeless ladies are all upset

  about this serial killer. I don’t know what to tell them.”

  “Fine, Rose,” Nita said. “Any time.”

  Megan said softly to Nita, “Do you always solve everyone’s

  problems?”

  Nita said to her, equally softly, “It’s my curse.”

  As the staff members settled down for the meeting to start,

  Megan stayed kneeling next to Nita. Dr. Solomon smiled distractedly

  and poured a cup of coffee. As Megan looked around the room, she

  saw Reuben. He was staring fixedly at Nita.

  Weeks ago, Reuben had taken snapshots of the two women at

  work, much to their annoyance.

  He had the Polaroids stuck on the dresser mirror of his

  shadow-haunted apartment. Nita and Megan.

  Now that his wife was dead and his two daughters had escaped to

  the suburbs with their husbands, Nita and Megan were the only

  women in his life.

  FIVE

  Nita’s small studio apartment bespoke the scholarly life. Bookshelves laden with weighty tomes filled most of the wall space, drinking in the scant light from the two windows. Her desk, from its spot in the exact center of the floor, dominated the apartment. Her computer dominated the desk. Books and papers were neatly piled next to it.

  A narrow bed, meant for one, occupied a corner of the room. Beside it, a small clock radio played moody, nocturnal jazz.

  “We’ll be back with more soothing sounds for all you city folk in need of soothing,” the announcer said in a mellifluous baritone that echoed Miles Davis’ saxophone. “But first the news.”

  Nita stood next to the room’s only bright spot, a large aquarium. She stared at its colorful, darting denizens, their eyes blank, their beautiful tails idly swishing through the glowing water. Carefully, Nita sprinkled fish food upon the smooth skin of water. Never too much or too little. Her fish were robust, happy, at peace. And so pretty.

  “The death toll mounted to more than one thousand in the Peruvian earthquake...”

  The fish tank was a perfect society. Regulated. Idyllic.There were no surprises.

  “A presidential commission declared that a cure for cancer lies many decades away, if ever . . .”

  Once, one of the fish at the crisis center’s similar tank had taken ill and started attacking the other fish. With ruthless dispatch, Nita had destroyed them all and started anew. She watched in delight as her fish swallowed their crumbs, grateful.

  “The latest in a series of brutal slayings in Manhattan has stepped up the pressure on the police department for action.The police admit they have no clues in the seemingly random series of killings.The latest victim of the .45-caliber killer was found early this morning—”

  Nita turned abruptly and snapped off the radio. She grabbed her coat and purse, and marched off to work, into the unforgiving night.

  Ace strutted along the deserted overpass beside Grand Central Station. Below on Park Avenue, bright-eyed stampedes of cars swished, moving to the rhythms of the city, rhythms that trilled inside Ace’s head. He shouted.

  “Evelyn Hernandez.”

  He knew every one of their names. He knew everything about them. He could see their faces. The dumb friendliness of Evelyn, a tentative smile that slid very easily into fear.

  Ace climbed onto the balustrade, spread his arms like a tightrope walker, and took a step. The air from the speeding cars below whooshed past him.

  “Lucy Cristides,” he shouted. Lucy, sweet, pathetic, entirely out of control. She might have even liked him.

  Another step. Hard to maintain his balance. He swayed in the air currents pushing up from Park Avenue.

  “Kimberly Worth.”What a snotty bitch. She had looked at Ace as if he were dog shit smeared on the sidewalk. Of them all, she deserved to die the most.

  Two more steps. Getting the hang of this now. He smirked in triumph.You only win by taking chances. The taillights of the speeding cars shone like cinders.

  “Lydia Daniels.” Ace actually had liked the hooker. Until he scraped together the fifty bucks she charged for street trade, a brief session in her room. He remembered how she had laughed as she pushed him off her, laughed at his forlorn look, laughed at his mumbled apology. “I wish they were all like you. I’d have a lot more time, wouldn’t I, darling?” she said as she got into her clothes and left to meet Jackie Why. He should have done something to her then.

  Women. They felt great, smelled great, moved great. And yet they always ended up making him feel miserable.

  And then came the ultimate woman. The ultimate ballbreaker, the icicle queen, the number one dispenser of disapproval. He shouted her name loud enough to shake his lungs, leaning his head back and bellowing at the silver-pulsing sky.

  “Nita.”

  The sky shook.Ace realized he was teetering over the edge of the balustrade, tilting dangerously above the relentless whiz of traffic below. He spun his arms like propellers. And then . . . and then . . . righted himself.

  He hopped jerkily down from the balustrade, onto the firm concrete safety of the overpass sidewalk. And he laughed maniacally, as though hearing every obscene joke in the world for the first time.

  Tonight, he knew, was Nita’s night.The next time he uttered her name would be in person.Tonight.

  The night outside Megan’s apartment had come to noisy life at this late hour. She idly thumbed through the course catalog, circling possible classes to take, sitting on her large bed in her bikini underpants and an “I Love New York” T-shirt, drinking a Diet Coke, her menagerie of stuffed animals around her.A car alarm on the street was whooping like Curly in an old Three Stooges movie. No one, to be sure, was stealing the rusty jalopy that contained the alarm.The pavement-shaking vibration of a passing truck had set it off. But for ten minutes, the Stoogemobile would torment the neighborhood. The wail of a police siren sounded out on the avenue, completing the symphony.

  In the ideal society, alarms and sirens would be unnecessary. Megan, weary of the polysyllabic course de
scriptions in the catalog, closed her eyes. Megan could see Nita describing the best way to reorder urban society, watch the white-hot dedication transform her lovely face as she talked. Nita’s words had an intense ring to them: “People wring their hands and say,‘Nothing can be done.’ Nonsense. It can be done.You’re doing it. I’m doing it, right here, right now.”

  The couple in the apartment above began to make love. Megan opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling.Their bed, directly over her own, bumped and creaked like a ship in a hurricane. Megan had gone to a party once in their apartment and had wandered into their bedroom, placing her coat on their noisy bed.

  Megan sighed and tried to get back into the course catalog. She turned the page. There was his name — Robin Tolner — attached to the course on clinical methodology. A course she should take, and soon. She would wait until the following semester when someone else taught it.Why was Robin listed as teaching it now? He was supposed to be taking his sabbatical this year, going to Peru to study the culture of Third World crime and poverty. Maybe he had postponed it until fall.

  His wisdom and learning had nourished her for six delirious months,introduced her to starry vistas beyond anything she had imagined. His passion for the mental gymnastics of academe had bedazzled her. Robin Tolner had been everywhere and knew everything: the best Thai restaurant in London, the best wine from Australia, the best chamber ensemble in Vienna. He could ski like a champion. He played Debussey on the piano with a master’s touch. And he had told her that he loved her.

  The plan had been for Megan to accompany him to Peru. She would even have gotten credit as his research assistant. His wife and two kids, certainly, would not go along.The dungheaps of South America were no place for a family. But a wonderful place for Megan and Robin. “Everything’s cheap,” he had told Megan. “We’ll have servants. They’ll bring us meals in bed.” She had laughed in naked delight.

  Then, a few weeks later, Professor Robin Tolner told Megan that seeing each other anymore wasn’t a good idea.After all, he was a married man. Robin had spoken and acted so coldly, as if he were a loan officer come to foreclose on her home.

  Several weeks later, Megan heard that he had taken up with another student, a long-legged blonde named Lisa. Maybe Lisa would be going to Peru.

  Megan had cried for a long time. She couldn’t expel Robin from her mind.The loss of him was visceral.

  The rhythm of the bed upstairs changed, got faster, more urgent. Megan often wondered whether her neighbors had heard her and Robin. Not that Robin ever made any noise. She remembered how clinically composed he looked, in the middle of the wildest lovemaking, how he watched her appraisingly as she came.

  Closing the course catalog and pressing it to her chest, Megan lay back and listened. She could almost feel Robin, deep inside her.

  “No.” Megan tossed the memories out of her head. She reached for the phone and quickly stabbed out the number she knew as well as her own name.

  Nita’s voice answered, low and controlled, but it was only her machine. Megan listened to the message but hung up without a word. She had forgotten that Nita was working tonight. If she left a message, Nita would think she was scatterbrained. And of course, she wouldn’t disturb Nita at work.

  Once, after two glasses of wine, Megan had made the mistake of confiding in Nita her affair with her married professor. Nita slashed Megan’s psyche with two searingly accurate comments: “He probably wears leather patches on his elbows.” He did. And: “If it were me, I’d have killed him.” She wished she had.

  The bed upstairs bucked so much it threatened to crash through Megan’s ceiling. A siren went screaming past her window. Who knows? Maybe another Ladykiller murder? Megan held the catalog tightly against her and brought her knees up. At least her neighbors had each other to hold against the terrors of the night. Megan worried about Nita, out in it alone.

  Reuben was there already when Nita arrived at work. With the desk lamp shining across his face, he looked like a gargoyle, his enormous nose casting a misshapen shadow on the wall.

  “What are you doing here, Reuben?” Nita asked as she hung up her coat.

  “Tim needed to switch,” Reuben rumbled. He hadn’t taken his gaze from her from the second she had entered the cavernous room.

  “How nice of you.” Nita sprinkled fish food into the tank and studied the creatures’ movements.

  Reuben pulled himself to his feet and lumbered toward her.

  She left the tank before he got there and sat at her desk. She busied herself with the in-box.

  After a moment, Reuben turned to her, “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  Her answer came before he finished his final syllable: “No.”

  Reuben nodded dumbly and his fleshy face drooped. He shuffled back to his desk, where he sat mulling what to say next. “I’m really glad you’re here. Good thing they put two people on duty. These phone calls.” He shook his head and chuckled. “Some nights, you need somebody sane to talk to.”

  “Just some nights?”

  Reuben roared with laughter, as if this were the world’s best punchline.

  “You know,” Reuben said, still chortling, “sometimes I wonder if I’m on the wrong end of the phone. I guess it takes one to help one, huh?”

  “Whatever,” Nita said absently.

  But Reuben, convinced he was getting through to her, warmed up his best material. “Hey, do you know the difference between an oral and an anal thermometer?”

  She turned a page in a diagnostic report.

  “The taste,” Reuben brayed. His guffawing echoed throughout the large room. His merriment subsided when he realized she was ignoring him. Chastened again, he tried another tack: “Say, how’s the thesis coming?”

  “It’s coming.” She still was absorbed in the paperwork.

  “Good, good. I was figuring that some night when you weren’t working and you didn’t have to write the thesis, you and I . . . uh, well. Do you like movies?”

  She finally met his eyes. “I used to. Bergman, mostly. But I don’t have time any more.”

  “Well, uh, maybe when you did . . .”

  “I never have time,” she said.

  “Sure, sure.We wouldn’t have to go to a movie. Maybe a cup of —”

  “I don’t have time for much of anything lately, Reuben. Excuse me, but I want to finish this report.”

  “Oh.” His face hung in folds of misery.

  The phone rang and he snatched it quickly, eager for a distraction. “Crisis center. Can I help you?” As he talked, he furtively watched Nita. “Okay . . . Yes, those could be some of the early symptoms. Are you still using intravenous drugs?”

  Another phone sounded. Nita sighed, straightened some papers, and gracefully picked up the receiver. “Crisis center. Can I help you?” She knew the caller’s identity even before he spoke, knew from his breathing.

  “I’ve been waiting to talk to you,” Ace said softly. “You know who this is, don’t you?”

  Nita tensed. “Of course I do.What can I do for you tonight?”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “Couldn’t it wait until morning? Aren’t you scheduled for a counseling session?”

  “I don’t need counseling,” Ace said angrily. “I need you. I need you to talk to me.”

  “Well, you understand we’re all professionals here to help you. Any one of us could —”

  “Bullshit,” Ace shouted. “I need you. I love you.You know I do.” He slid into anguish.“If it wasn’t for you, I’d ... I don’t know . . . Explode or something.”

  “Look, I could get you in to see a therapist right now. Someone at the free clinic who is open at this hour.You —”

  “No. I don’t need to see anyone else. I need you. Can’t you understand that?”

  Nita gripped the phone hard. “I’m trying to help. I just don’t seem to be doing you any good.”

  “Why can’t we be friends?” Ace exclaimed with growing excitement.“That’s what
I want.That’s what I need.That’s all. Just friends.” “Certainly. I am your friend. Don’t I talk to you like a friend?” Reuben, muttering into his own phone, watched Nita.

  “I know, I know,” Ace said. “But I want to see you.That’s all. Just to be with you for a minute. Right now.”

  “You can’t.” Nita’s voice was hard. “That’s not possible. I’m sorry, but you can’t.There are rules that —”

  Ace interrupted her, intense, almost whispering, maniacal: “I can, too. I can get in there. I’m close to you.Very close.”

  There was a pause. Nita replied slowly, with authority: “Listen. You get hold of yourself. The center’s closed except for the hotline. I’m not going to talk to you if you say things like that.You know the rules.”

  “Okay, okay,” Ace said softly, suddenly contrite. “I’m sorry.”

  Nita licked her lips, the tension within her contained. “That’s better.”

  “I’ll do whatever you say,” Ace said, miserable. “I’m sorry.”

  “Now, why don’t you get some sleep. Come by for the session tomorrow and —”

  But Ace hung up on her, smashing the receiver violently into its cradle.

  Nita winced at the noise. Carefully, her mind a jumble of thoughts, she hung up. Then she stood and grabbed her purse. As she turned, she almost bumped into Reuben, who held out a cup of coffee for her. She was startled.

  “God, the nuts in this city,” Reuben said. “Why didn’t you give him to me? I’d get rid of him for you.”

  “He hangs up on everyone else but me.”

  Nita took the coffee, but her hands were shaking. Some of the coffee slopped onto the floor. She started past Reuben.

  “Hey, are you all right?” Reuben, concerned, followed her as she walked.

  “Listen, I’m a bit shaken up. I’m going home. I’ve never done this before, but I suspect this will be a quiet night. I’ll spell you for another shift, whenever you want.”