Loverboy Read online

  Twenty-Third Street and Third Avenue is not exactly what you’d call the garden spot of the city at night. I mean, you didn’t find Donald Trump and Marla hanging out there.

  The people around the newsstand tonight were a pretty typical bunch. A wino urinating against a wall. Someone asleep on the sidewalk who could have been a man or a woman—I wasn’t sure which. And an old guy waving a cane at passersby and muttering something about Jesus and socialism.

  The newsstand guy told me the papers generally showed up about eleven or so. I checked my watch. Ten-thirty. I decided to wait for the half hour.

  Actually, it turned out to be forty-five minutes. During that time, several people asked me for money, one offered me drugs and a man made what I believe was a marriage proposal from a passing car.

  Finally, at 11:15, a blue truck pulled up with the words New York Blade on the side. The driver threw out a bundle of papers. I slid one out of the pile, plopped down two quarters to pay for it and looked at page 1.

  They’d played my story big, with a screaming headline across the top of the page:

  MISSING TEEN, DEPARTMENT STORE HEIR FOUND SLAIN!

  Below that, in fourteen-point type, was my byline:

  Exclusive

  by Lucy Shannon

  I didn’t think that mattered to me anymore, but it did. I still felt that little surge of adrenaline I’d had the first time I saw my name on a story. Nothing was ever going to take that away completely. I was hooked.

  The people behind me in line were getting impatient.

  “That’s me,” I announced, pointing to the byline.

  Nobody said anything.

  “First page-one byline in a long, long time.”

  Still nothing.

  I shrugged, folded up the paper and began trudging down Third Avenue.

  I made it all the way home without anyone asking for my autograph.

  Chapter 9

  “Murphy Brown,” Janet said.

  “Lois Lane,” I told her.

  “Lois Lane couldn’t carry Murphy’s hair spray.”

  “Lois doesn’t use hair spray.”

  “That’s because she’s a goddamned cartoon character, Lucy.”

  Barlow walked over to our desks in the city room.

  “What’s the topic today?”

  “Who’s the better reporter?” Janet said. “Murphy Brown or Lois Lane.”

  “Murphy Brown doesn’t even do real breaking-news stories,” I pointed out. “It’s all yuppie, TV-news-magazine kind of stuff.”

  “And Lois Lane never broke a scoop in her life. She just stood and watched while Superman did all the work.”

  Barlow looked down at my computer screen. It was blank.

  “You got a follow-up on the murders?”

  “I’m working on one.”

  “Doesn’t seem like it.”

  “I’m trying to set up new interviews with Tischler’s widow and the dead girl’s mom.”

  “Gee, there’s an original idea.”

  “Okay, it’s a cliché. But it’s an effective cliché. It’ll make a nice sob story.”

  “See if you can find something better, huh?”

  “Sure.”

  A cheer suddenly went up in the newsroom.

  My face was on a color-TV screen hanging above the city desk. The story was about how my tip had broken the Theresa Anne Vinas case. I stood up and acknowledged the applause from the other reporters.

  “Jesus, I’ve never seen anyone go from the outhouse to the penthouse so fast,” Barlow muttered as he walked away.

  “Speaking of outhouses,” Janet said, “how’s your love life these days?”

  “What love life?”

  “When’s the last time you were out on a date anyway, Lucy?”

  I thought about that for a second.

  “Define ‘date,’” I said finally.

  “You been getting any offers?”

  “Sure. One of the cops at the murder scene asked me out.”

  Janet made a face. “Yuck, another cop . . .”

  “That was my reaction too.”

  Something plopped down on my desk. A white envelope. Norm Malloy was standing there.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Someone left it for you at the front door.”

  I picked up the envelope. There was a return address in the left-hand corner. It said: “Julie Blaumstein. 109 W. 81st Street, #3G.”

  “Who’s Julie Blaumstein?” I asked.

  Malloy shrugged. “I just deliver ’em. You’re the hotshot reporter.”

  “Yeah,” I said as I idly ripped the envelope open. “I’m the hotshot reporter.”

  It’s funny how news works.

  You knock yourself out trying to find a big exclusive. Make a million phone calls. Pound on doors all over town. And nothing comes of it.

  Then, out of nowhere, someone drops the biggest story in the world right in your lap.

  A lot of mail comes into a newspaper’s city room. Most of it is just junk. Press releases, people trying to sell something, letters from crazy readers about men from Venus or neighbors they’re convinced are enemy spies. Ninety-nine percent of it is worthless. But you never know.

  Inside the envelope were two pieces of paper.

  One was a clipping of my front-page article about the Theresa Anne Vinas-Barry Tischler murders. My byline was circled in red Magic Marker.

  The second was another article from the Blade. It was a feature on the movie company that was in town to make a film about the Loverboy killings.

  Written in the same red Magic Marker across this clipping were the words “I LOVE YOU TO DEATH.”

  Below that, it said: “I’m back.”

  Oh, Jesus!

  This can’t be happening.

  Loverboy again.

  Part 2

  Loverboy

  Chapter 10

  The address where Julie Blaumstein lived turned out to be a brownstone off Columbus Avenue.

  I pushed open the front door and pressed the buzzer for 3G in the lobby. No answer. I tried a few other people in the building until someone finally buzzed me in.

  I trudged up the steps to the third floor, found her apartment and knocked. Still nothing. I listened at the closed door for a minute to see if there was any sound coming from inside. There wasn’t. So I took out a credit card, then jimmied it into the open space between the lock and the doorframe until the door popped open. A trick I learned once while interviewing a burglar for a feature on home break-ins. It was so easy I sometimes wondered why people even bothered with locks.

  The inside of 3G had white walls, brown parquet floors and the feel of a new apartment where the tenant hasn’t really settled in yet. There were only a few pieces of furniture—a couch, a coffee table, an easy chair and a stereo/CD set up by the window. On the wall was a print of the New York skyline that the peddlers down in Washington Square sold by the hundreds. The kitchen had a small stove and a refrigerator that was pretty empty except for a few frozen dinners. A hall led to a bathroom and a bedroom.

  I sat down on the couch. In front of me on the coffee table was a large white envelope. When I read what was written on it, I wished I were a long way away. But it was too late for that now.

  The lettering on the envelope said:

  LUCY SHANNON

  NEW YORK BLADE

  I sat there for a long time staring at that envelope. From outside, the sounds of the traffic on Columbus Avenue floated in through the open window. Finally I picked it up and tore it open.

  Some things you just gotta know.

  It was worse than I expected.

  Dear Lucy,

  Hello again, my lovely.

  I’ve been away. I’ve been quiet. I’ve been good for so long.

  PAUSE FOR JOKE

  Q. How many Jewish-American princesses does it take to change a light bulb?

  A. Three. Two to bring the diet soda and one to call her daddy to come over and do the work.<
br />
  LAUGHTER

  Do you remember those Death-Wish movies with Charles Bronson? If he saw anybody he didn’t like, he just blew them away.

  I used to fantasize about stuff like that.

  I mean, you see some smug girl walking down Fifth Avenue in her miniskirt and heels and you try to talk to her. But she won’t give you the time of day. So you just point at her and—presto!—no more girl. That’ll teach her to ignore you.

  If only life was that easy, right?

  Well, I’ll tell you a secret.

  It really is.

  Here’s a riddle for you:

  What has two arms, two legs, no face—and is red all over?

  Think about that for a second.

  ATTENTION WOMEN OF NEW YORK CITY:

  I love you all. I really do.

  I love you to death.

  Now, due to circumstances beyond my control, I have begun killing again.

  There’s only one person who can stop this bloodbath.

  It isn’t me.

  I’ve missed you, Lucy.

  You and I, we shared something really special a long time ago. And you’re going to be with me every step of the way this time too. I’m going to make you a hero again.

  Just like old times.

  Answer to riddle: If you don’t know, go look in the bedroom.

  Loverboy

  The note was typewritten on white bond stationery. The letters were in pica type. The ribbon seemed to be worn, because some of the letters were not fully formed. I sat there staring at it for a long time. Maybe if I stared at it long enough, I’d find a clue. Maybe I’d find something I could use to help me track down the killer. Maybe I could avoid going into the bedroom.

  Finally I stood up and walked down the hall. The door was closed. I turned the knob and pushed it open.

  The bedroom was as sparsely furnished as the rest of the apartment. Platform bed. Wooden, four-drawer dresser along the wall. Venetian blinds on the windows. And that was it.

  Except for the body on the bed.

  She was young, in her early twenties, and might have been pretty once. I couldn’t tell, though. A gunshot had blown away most of her face. She was wearing a black silk vest, Calvin Klein jeans and some kind of clunky black shoes. The vest had been torn open and the jeans were at her knees. Someone had written “SLUT” in bright red lipstick across her stomach.

  I got out of there as fast as I could. I staggered back into the living room. The note was still on the coffee table, where I’d left it. I wanted to run out of that apartment, slam the door behind me and pretend I’d never been there.

  But I didn’t.

  I walked over to Julie Blaumstein’s telephone, picked up the receiver and did what I should have done in the first place.

  I called the cops.

  Chapter 11

  Lieutenant Masters and Detective Caruso sat with me at the Midtown West Precinct and talked about Julie Blaumstein.

  An army of police had descended on the apartment. They talked to other tenants, shopkeepers in the neighborhood, friends and relatives whose names they’d found in an address book. By the end of the day, they had put together a pretty good picture of her life. And how she had died.

  Masters told me what they’d found out. He didn’t look happy.

  “Her name is Julie Rebecca Blaumstein. She’s from Wisconsin, a little town called Silver Lake. That’s not too far from Chicago. She came here about a year ago to try to be a writer. Took a tiny place on the Lower East Side, and struggled every day behind a keyboard.

  “She didn’t have much luck with that, but about six weeks ago, she landed a job churning out copy for a public relations firm on Madison Avenue. That gave her enough money to move into the spanking new digs off Columbus Avenue.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “Okay, here’s where it gets interesting. She had some money now, but she was still sorely lacking any companionship from the opposite sex.”

  “She wasn’t getting laid,” Caruso said.

  Masters gave him a dirty look. “To put it crudely, yes.”

  He turned back to me. “Anyway, she signed up with a computer outfit called LifeMates. Know what that is?”

  “Some kind of dating service?”

  “Yeah. They’re all the rage in these days of AIDS. You don’t have to hang out in bars and get hit on by a lot of creepy guys. Instead you just sit at home and call up pictures and bios on your CD-ROM or whatever until you hit on someone you’d like to meet. It’s really respectable too. They advertise in places like New York magazine.”

  “I’ve seen the ads,” I said. “‘Harvard Ph.D., a hundred fifty thousand a year, summer house in Montauk—likes traveling, beautiful poetry, long walks on the beach, French-kissing and bondage.’”

  “We found stuff for LifeMates in her apartment. She’d made a date for last night. The guy who offed her probably used the service to set it up.”

  “Does the company—”

  “Have records of everyone—so we can find his name, address and what time he’ll be home for us to pick him up for murder? No, it doesn’t work that way. Everybody pays a fee to go on-line. But who you hook up with is your own business. Besides, most of those people use aliases and phony addresses.”

  “What about the gun?” I asked.

  “We don’t have the ballistics report yet, but it was a big one—maybe a forty-four.”

  “Does it look like the same gun that was used to kill Tischler and the Vinas girl?”

  “Probably.”

  And the same kind of gun that Loverboy used to use.

  I looked over at Caruso. “How do you think it went down?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “She invited the guy in for their date. He pulled out a gun. He shot her. End of story.”

  “It happened in the bedroom,” I pointed out.

  “Maybe they were having sex. Maybe they went out to dinner, had a great time and he got her in the sack. There was no evidence of that. But when the crime-lab report comes back . . .”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think they ever went out on the date. I think she went into the bedroom for something—maybe to check her makeup or change her earrings—and he followed her in with the gun. I just wonder what came first.”

  “Huh?”

  “Did he shoot her and then pull off her clothes and write on her with the lipstick? Or did he do that stuff when she was still alive?”

  “Does it matter?” Masters asked.

  “Only for Julie Blaumstein. Can you imagine the terror she must have been feeling if she knew what was happening? But maybe her last thoughts were just about how great she hoped that night would be and how her life seemed to be turning around. Maybe she never even knew what hit her when the gunshot blew her face away. I hope it was that way for her.”

  I’d called in the facts of the story to the city desk a while ago. But I needed to get down to the office to write a first-person sidebar to go with it. Caruso offered to give me a ride.

  I started to say no, but then changed my mind. I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to catch a taxi. Besides, he might tell me something new about the case.

  “Do you think this Loverboy is the same killer as before?” Caruso asked as we drove downtown.

  “The guy who wrote that note is crazy,” I said, not exactly answering his question.

  “It must make you feel kinda creepy—the way he wrote to you like you were old friends or something.”

  “As a matter of fact, it does.”

  “But kind of exciting too, huh?”

  I looked out the window and didn’t say anything. This wasn’t going as I’d expected. I was supposed to be asking the questions.

  “So is he?” Caruso asked.

  “Is he what?”

  “The same guy?”

  “No,” I blurted out.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “There hasn’t been a Loverboy murder in a long time.”
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br />   “So?”

  “That means the real Loverboy is dead.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because otherwise he never would have stopped killing.”

  “Maybe he was just lying low.”

  “Not Loverboy.”

  “So you think this is just a copycat? Someone who saw they were making a TV movie on the murders and decides it’s such a good idea, he’ll do it too?”

  I nodded.

  “I hope you’re right,” he said. “If not, it means that the worst mass killer in the history of New York City is still out there. And ready to start murdering people again.”

  We pulled up in front of the Blade Building.

  “Let’s talk again soon,” he said.

  “Officially?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I started to get out of the car.

  “Look, I’m sorry if I came on too strong when we met. I just want to get to know you better, Lucy.”

  “Why? Do you think I’m that attractive? I’d figure a hip, happening cop like you could pick up all sorts of pretty young women.”

  “I think you’re attractive, yes. But that’s not the only reason. I think you’re a fascinating person. But you’ve got all these barriers up. I’d like to strip them away sometime and see what the real Lucy Shannon is like. I’ll bet she’s pretty nice.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t do shrink sessions with horny cops.”

  Caruso shook his head.

  “Are you ever not in your attack mode?” he asked.

  I sighed. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

  He took out a card with his name on it and wrote something on the bottom. Then he handed it to me.

  “That’s my home phone number. Call me sometime. We’ll just talk. Nothing more. Hey, maybe we can be friends.”

  “Doubtful,” I told him. “Men friends generally don’t work out for me.”

  “How come?”

  “Sexual tension.”

  “You mean they want to go to bed with you.”

  “Or sometimes I want to go to bed with them.”

  I got out of the car without saying good-bye, entered the Blade Building and went upstairs to write my story.