The Eye: A Novel of Suspense by Pronzini Bill & Lutz John

Author:Pronzini, Bill & Lutz, John [Pronzini, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480485099
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-04-22T04:00:00+00:00

11:45 A.M. — E.L. OXMAN

Oxman found Vernon Wilson painting the outer rear wall of his modest apartment building in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. Wilson worked steadily, in blind mechanical strokes, like a automaton. He didn’t seem to want to stop working even when Oxman introduced himself and flashed the shield.

“I’m here about your ex-wife,” Oxman told him gently. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Figured somebody would be around sooner or later,” Wilson said. He was a big man, not tall but paunchy and barrel-chested, with muscle-corded forearms. The forearms bulged as he began again to stroke the paintbrush over the rough clapboard wall. “Ask what you want.”

Oxman went through the routine questions, using them to size up Wilson’s reactions as well as his answers. The big man’s eyes were red-rimmed and his voice was the dull monotone of sadness and shock. Oxman had seen plenty of grieving people in his career and he could recognize genuine grief when he saw it. Vernon Wilson’s grief was genuine.

And he had a good alibi for last night. He’d been at a special Teamsters Union meeting to discuss the pension fund, then had stopped at a bar on the lower West Side of Manhattan with half a dozen friends from Dillard Trucking, where he worked; Wilson and his buddies had knocked down beers until well past midnight. The friends would swear to his presence, he said, as would the bartender, who had argued baseball with Wilson. Oxman made a note of the friends’ names, the location of the bar. The union meeting didn’t figure into it, having been adjourned before ten P.M.

By the time Oxman was finished with Vernon Wilson, and left him to his grief-induced painting, it was almost noon. Jack Kennebank’s death was on his mind as he drove back across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. A kind of heavy pall had settled in Manders’s office, in the squadroom, in the rest of the precinct house as the news circulated. Oxman had felt it before, been a part of it before. What it was was a hundred men, a hundred cops, thinking the same dark thoughts: It could have been me. Next time it might be me.

It was some job, being a cop, Oxman thought. At least Beth was right about that, even if she didn’t understand what held men to the job. And when something like this happened, when one of your own was killed, it made you think about how short life was, and about how it could be cut even shorter unexpectedly. Time on this earth was something not to be wasted. The more of it you’d spent, the less there was left of it to be squandered.

He took the FDR Drive along the East River to Fifty-ninth Street, and then switched on his turn blinker and listened to it tick away seconds as he exited. He drove straight to Central Park, left his car not far from the Tavern on the Green.

He found Jennifer Crane easily enough.

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