Ah, God, the poor unfortunates of this world.
He unscrewed the top of the second bottle of wine.
It was going to be another cold night.
Maybe on Christmas Day he’d wander over to the Salvation Army soup kitchen.
Well, he’d see. No sense making plans in advance.
He had the bottle tilted to his mouth when the man appeared suddenly out of the darkness. The street light was behind the man; Doug couldn’t see his face too clearly. Only the blond hair whipping in the wind. And what looked like a hearing aid in his right ear.
‘Good evening,’ the man said pleasantly.
Doug figured he was a downtown John up here looking for a little poontang.
‘Good evening,’ he answered, and then—in the season’s spirit of generosity—he extended the bottle of wine and said, ‘Would you like some wine, sir?’
‘No, thank you,’ the man said. ‘I’d like your ear.’
At first Doug thought the man wanted to talk. Friends, Romans., countrymen, lend me your ears. But then, suddenly and chillingly, he saw a switchblade knife snap open in the man’s hand, the blade catching the reflection of the traffic light on the corner, the steel flashing red and then green as the light changed, little twinkly Christmas pin-points of light, and all at once the man’s left hand was at Doug’s throat, forcing him onto his back in the doorway. The wine bottle crashed to the sidewalk—a dollar and forty cents!—splintered into a thousand shards of green glass as the man rolled him over onto his left side, the knife flashing yellow and then red as the traffic light changed again.
Doug felt a searing line of fire just above his right ear.
And then the fire trailed downward, spreading, the pain so sharp that Doug screamed aloud and instantly cupped his hand to his right ear.
His right ear was gone.
His hand came away covered with blood.
He screamed again.
The blond man with the hearing aid disappeared as suddenly as he had materialized.
Doug kept screaming.
A hooker swishing by in red Christmas satin and fake fur, heading for the bar up the street, her stiletto heels clattering on the sidewalk, looked into the doorway and shook her head and clucked her tongue.
* * * *
CHAPTER TEN
Christmas Eve dawned bright and clear and sparklingly cold. The Deaf Man was pleased. Snow would not have upset his plans at all, but he preferred this kind of weather. It made the blood hum.
He loved Christmastime. Loved all the Santa Clauses jingling their bells on virtually every corner. Loved the horse-drawn carriages in the streets. Loved the big Christmas tree in Andovcr Square. Loved all the little runny-nosed toddlers ooohing and ahhhing at the sights and sounds. Loved the thought of all that money waiting to be stolen.
The streets were thronged with holiday shoppers.
That was good.
More cash in the till.
The Deaf Man smiled.
He had put Charlie Henkins up in a hotel some ten blocks from the 87th Precinct station house. Nothing to write home about, and probably a place frequented by a great many prostitutes, but the best to be found in the area. He himself had rented a brownstone miles from the precinct. Charlie had never been there. It was important that he not know where the Deaf Man lived. After the job, when Charlie realized nobody was going to come to the hotel with all that hard-earned cash, the Deaf Man didn’t want him paying an unexpected visit. But even if Charlie went snooping, he would never find the brownstone.
The Deaf Man had rented it as Dr. Pierre Sourd. In lower case pierre meant stone in French. Sourd meant deaf. Together and with a little license-—the actual idiom would have been completement sourd or, more familiarly, sourd comme un pot—the words meant ‘stone deaf.’
Elizabeth had moved into the brownstone with him at the beginning of October. He’d met her in September at the Isola Modern Art Museum, which the natives of this city affectionately called IMAM. In Moslem countries an imam was an Islamic prayer leader, but in this city it was a museum and a good place to meet impressionable young women. Chat them up over the Matisses and the Chagalls—would you care for some tea in the garden? Shy, she was, Elizabeth. A virgin, he’d thought at first—but there were surprises. There are always surprises.
Learned she’d been working as a cashier since sometime in August. Well, now. Learned she handled large sums of money. Really, Elizabeth? Called her Elizabeth, which she loved. Hated people calling her Lizzie or Liz. Three, four hundred thousand dollars a day, she said. Oh my, he said. Fucked her that very night. A screamer. The quiet ones were always screamers.
The hotel Charlie was staying at was called the Excelsior, a prime example of hyperbole, perhaps, in that the word derived from the Latin excelsus, from the past participle of excellere, which meant ‘to excel.’ Perhaps the Excelsior had once, in a past too long ago to remember, indeed excelled—but the Deaf Man doubted it. On the other hand, ‘excelsior’ was the word used to describe the slender, curved wooden shavings used for packing and also—in the hands of an arsonist—for starting fires. So perhaps the building had been appropriately named, after all, in that it was most certainly an excellent fire trap. The word ‘excellent’ also derived from the Latin—excellens, which was the present participle of the same word excellere, ‘to excel.’
The Deaf Man loved words.
The Deaf Man also loved to excel.
He sometimes felt he would have excelled as a novelist, though why anyone would wish to pursue such a trivial occupation was far beyond his ken.
Charlie Henkins was studying the combinations when the Deaf Man came into the room.
‘I was going over the combinations again,’ he said.
‘Let me hear them,’ the Deaf Man said. ‘Outer door.’
‘Seven-six-one, two-three-eight.’
‘And the inner door?’
‘Nine-two-four, three-eight-five.’
‘Good. And the safe itself?’
‘Two-four-seven, four-six-three.’
‘Good. Again.’
‘Outer door, pad to the right, seven-six-one, two-three-eight. Inner door, pad to the right again, nine-two-four, three-eight-five. Opens into the vault itself, the cashier and her assistant at two desks, the money in the safe. Pad to the right, two-four-seven, four-six-three.’