The Lion-Man
By Midnight Rose 1993
Author’s note: In my BATB world, after Vincent’s illness, the other tunnel dwellers decided it was time that they learned to defend themselves and take the sole burden of security and protection out of Vincent’s hands. Archery was introduced and knives were carried for practical purposes and for defense. Catherine presented Vincent with a pair of matching hunting knives, one of which she carries. Vincent gave a black cape with a hood to Catherine for Christmas. However, these are other stories. MR
Part 1
The vacant lot was a collision of shapes and shadows, engulfed in a dozen gray hues that not even the light of the full moon overhead could pierce. Flanked on three sides by tall brick sweatbox buildings, boarded up and condemned to be torn down, the tiny gap could be easily overlooked by a quick and nervous eye. It was the perfect hidden cove to launch crimes against the unsuspecting. A single meager street lamp provided a dim halo of light that did little to illuminate the entire forgotten area. An uncomfortable quiet surrounded the tiny void, the night air charged with tension.
From his vantage point in a green Ford sedan parked across the street from the lot, the distant grassless area was a black hole to the naked eye. But when the middle-aged man looked through his high-tech binoculars, the narrow gap was illuminated to daylight red-lensed clarity. The zoom-lensed, low-light equipment brought out every sharp detail of the cluttered junk-filled lot. The rusting hull of an ancient Cadillac, riddled with bullet holes, sat to the left side of the lot; its tireless rims sunk deep into the sod. A family of rats scampered around the tire wells, forging for food in the discarded trash and general filth that collected in neglected city plots. Wooden crates and loading pallets were stacked haphazardly beside the crumbling brick building to the right, illegally dumped there by owners too lazy to dispose of them properly. Obscene graffiti was scrawled over every surface not able to move out of the way of "colorful urban artists."
A stray night breeze snaked over the paper trash, toyed with a crumpled newspaper and sent it cart-wheeling like a tumbleweed across the lot. Out of the darker shadows created by the derelict building and the stack of leaning, rotting crates a copper head snapped to attention. Cathy Chandler was still standing there waiting for the arrival of her street contact.
The rumpled man sat back to flex stiffening muscles and run a hand through tumbled curls of dark hair. He was tired from a full day at the office and the thought of the even longer night ahead.
Joe Maxwell, you should not be doing this. He chided himself for the hundredth time. He should not be spying on Chandler. But he was not spying---sort of. He was backing her up---sort of.
***
Six weeks ago, Joe Maxwell had put Cathy Chandler on a case involving a gang clash that resulted in a murder. Chandler was his best investigator; although at her request, he did not use her unless he knew she could get results when others had failed. Chandler was relentless in her pursuit of witnesses unwilling to come forward to testify and she had a wonderful way of persuasion---which was also successfully used against one A.D.A. Joe Maxwell.
Gang wars threatened to erupt on the Lower East Side in response to the gang-related incident. Chandler was treading in some very dangerous territory and Joe was becoming increasingly concerned. The DA’s investigation was not worth risking the life of one of his best. Joe had tried to remove Chandler from the assignment twice but she persuaded him out of it. She told him she was so close to learning the truth about the murder and finding the witness, that if she quit now the case would be lost.
Joe determined this time, that if Chandler would not give up the investigation, he was going to back her up. Two people would be safer out on the mean streets then just one. Joe ran right into a Chandler brick wall on this point---
"The witness insists that I come alone." Chandler had been adamant about it.
Joe countered, he would observe from a distance.
No! No! No! Chandler flatly refused. "I work the streets alone, Joe. When I am out there the only backside I want to be responsible for is my own. I do not want to have to worry about someone else; nor do I need the distraction. There is no room for mistakes or good intentions out there. On the street you have to play by their rules or you get nothing."
Joe could hear Radcliffe say it now, her argument and tone of voice still fresh in his head and just as plain as she had said it to him the day before. Chandler worked the streets alone; she insisted upon it and was stubborn about it. That was that.
Joe gave in---like he always did. Worried and hoped ---like he always did---that Cathy would walk through the office door the next day. He prayed that he would not get that dreaded telephone call in the middle of the night from a hospital morgue. Sometimes, Cathy would disappear for twenty-four hours or more without explanation, but she always returned in triumph with information gathered or witnesses found.
Witnesses. Chandler could find witnesses where everyone else had failed or simply given up. Joe often mused she must pull them from a magic hat. She could find out information or would just know things about a case for which she could give no explanation of how or why. Chandler never divulged her sources nor could he wiggle them out of her.
But every so often she would slip and say: "I have eyes and ears on every street corner." Or "Don’t worry, Joe, they are watching out for me." Then Cathy would flash that shy secret smile of hers, her eyes and expression ever changing because of her mysterious secrets. Joe never let on that he noticed because he was determined not to pry into the way she conducted her investigations. He simply accepted all information on the ground of mutual trust. Radcliffe had never let him down.
Where was the mutual trust now as he sat in a borrowed car in the middle of the night, in the midst of the crime-infested, gun-happy Lower East Side, spying on Chandler? He was not spying. Joe justified this action---he was keeping an eye on Radcliffe for her own safety. She did not need to be out alone in this part of town. Joe remembered a case Cathy had been on five years ago when she had nearly been blown up in a pipe-bomb explosion. It had happened only a few blocks from where she was now. When Chandler announced her intentions to meet her witness ‘on his turf, on his terms,’ Joe was determined to back her up, whether or not she liked it---or knew it.
Joe had tried to follow her once before on foot but had gotten scarcely two blocks before Chandler vanished into the night. Last night, Joe followed her movements in his car, from the taxi pick-up in front of her building to where she got out blocks away to walk to the agreed upon location. Joe tried to keep her in sight, but in that long, black cape of hers, Chandler was nearly invisible against the play of dim street lamps and shadows. Chandler turned into an alley and disappeared. Joe drove in circles for an hour, criss-crossing the area trying to pick up her trail, but Chandler was long gone.
All morning, Joe had worried and paced and cursed at himself for letting Radcliffe persuade him into letting her out on the streets alone. Chandler did not cheer him up with the news her witness had been a "no show" and that her contact had set up another meeting for tonight. Joe went around and around with her in a repeat discussion over going alone, but to no avail. She broke down his best arguments once again and if he went ahead and assigned her a partner, he knew the poor fellow would be left in the dust. What choice did he have but to trust Radcliffe unconditionally? But did he not also have an obligation to her---and to himself---to keep her safe when he knew she was walking into potential danger?
"I am going alone, Joe. I work alone." She had stated, her jaw set. This only hardened Joe’s resolve this time. He did manage to get Chandler to reveal something about her intended location with his remark, "I want to know where to start looking if you do not come back."
Cathy rolled her green eyes and shook her honey-brown head in disbelief that Joe would not give up, but finally, "East 4th Street." She did smile then, her eyes warming and she thanked him for worrying. "Big Brother."
Big brother? Well, he had thought, Someone had to look out for her.
Calling one of his detective pals, Joe borrowed his friend’s car and surveillance binoculars. With a late night, fast-food dinner of burger, fries, and a tall cup of coffee, Joe set up his surveillance at what looked like a good place for a rendezvous---the vacant lot on East 4th Street. Even if this was not the spot, Joe could see both ends of the street and would be able to pick up Chandler’s elusive trail---hopefully.
The street had remained quiet for most of the late evening. Pairs of cautious pedestrians hurrying along, a taxi, and a few cars were the only signs of life, everyone already in the safety of their homes. Now, it was well past midnight and an unsettled stillness and a foreboding sense of doom hung in the air of the abandoned street.
Joe was beginning to think Chandler had pulled a fast one; having told Joe what he wanted to know---told him something---in order to put the subject of being out on the streets alone to rest. Or was she putting Joe on a cold trail on purpose---Did she know he was trying to follow her?
These thoughts did not have time to take root because, at that moment, he spotted a familiar black silhouette in the rear view mirror and let out a big sigh of relief. He raised the night-sighted binoculars to look; cranking his body around in his seat and bruising his knee on the steering wheel in the process.
It was indeed Cathy Chandler walking along the street. She kept close to the abandoned factory buildings, the full shapeless fabric of her long, black cape blending her tiny form into the shadows.
"Gotcha, Radcliffe." Joe whispered in triumph, she had not eluded him this time.
Her face was pale in the black hood, her porcelain features etched with intense concentration, her eyes darted cautiously scanning her surroundings. Chandler paused at the edge of the vacant lot peering around the corner of the building where the car hull sat. She eyed the area carefully before moving around the car and across the bare, open space.
Joe was glad to see Chandler was being extra careful. She was not going to let anything catch her unaware. She moved with an air of confidence and if she was afraid, Chandler did not show it; she was wary but not nervous. For a high society girl raised among debutantes and champagne, Cathy Chandler had a keen sense of Harlem street wisdom. Joe was sure there was no "Street Survival 101" taught at Radcliffe College. It had to be instinct, some people had it, and others did not.
Apparently satisfied with her surroundings and checking the back alley feeding into the back of the lot and the sidewalk one last time, Chandler sought the protective shadow of the crates to await the arrival of her contact. Here she had stood out of sight from Joe’s angle of vision until she stepped in view to investigate the rolling newspaper.
***
Time dragged by slowly as the two parties patiently waited. Finally, out of the gloom appeared a group of young men. They entered from the back alley across the vacant lot from where Chandler was hidden in the shadows. Three…four…five street punks spread out in the tiny void, nervously looking about and moving around. Unwashed and dressed in the rumpled jeans and decorated jackets that marked them as a particular gang, none of them looked older then eighteen, perhaps twenty. Their lit cigarettes were tiny beacons of light in the night-sighted binocular lenses.
Four men formed a semi-circle around their leader and Chandler, who had stepped up to meet them. Five angry men against one tiny Cathy Chandler; she looked small and vulnerable in her dark suede jacket over a collared shirt and jeans tucked smartly in her calf-high flat boots. Joe noted she had abandoned her concealing black cape but did not dwell on the omission. Here was his Radcliffe at work…facing danger tall, proud, and defiant. Joe was proud; he had to admire Cathy’s unshakable courage.
Too far away to hear any conversation, Joe had no trouble reading the body language of the six players. At first, the mood was tense but light, the gang leader quipping about something that made his companions laugh and jeer. Chandler was unamused; she was not here to be jerked around and was just as willing to walk away. The police could haul them all in as suspects if they were not willing to deal.
The tone of the conversation turned gravely serious. Tempers flared; the potential witness and the gang leader both pointed accusing fingers in Chandler’s face. One of the four flanking the leader became agitated rushing forward with switchblade drawn. The leader stopped him. Radcliffe did not give up an inch of ground, she did not even flinch---her nerve was incredible.
Out of the corner of his eye, Joe saw movement. A figure had appeared behind the stacks of leaning crates, materializing out of nowhere. The shape was nothing more then a huge moving shadow even in the low-light lenses. As the minutest light hit the silhouette, it became a person in a hooded garment. Gloved hands appeared holding something, which it lifted level to its concealed face bringing the object just over the top edge of the crates.
The glint of steel flashed in the magnified light of the night-sighted binoculars. A gun? ---It had to be a rifle---No, the shape was wrong---An arrowhead! Joe was disconcerted, what manner of person used an arrow…? Whatever it was, it was aimed at Cathy!
Joe’s heart leaped into his throat. Cathy’s attention was on the five very irritated and uncooperative men in front of her, the heated situation becoming more and more dangerous every moment. Those punks had brought themselves some insurance, Joe concluded. With a sixth man at Cathy’s back and his presence unknown to her, she was in a trap.
Joe could not sit by and watch any longer. The binoculars were thrown on the passenger seat as he fumbled for his own service revolver he had stashed in the glove compartment. Joe threw open the car door and hit the ground running.
"Cathy! Behind you!" Joe screamed.
To be continued….