Richard Montanari Read online

  The Echo Man

  Richard Montanari

  Published by William Heinemann 2011

  2468 10 97531

  Copyright © Richard Montanari 2011

  Richard Montanari has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs

  and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the

  author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is

  entirely coincidental.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or

  otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the

  publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in

  which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition,

  being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  First published in Great Britain in 2011 by

  William Heinemann

  Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

  London SW1V 2SA

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be

  found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  HB ISBN 9780434018918

  TPB ISBN 9780434018925

  MAN

  All seems evil until I

  Sleepless would lie down and die.

  ECHO

  Lie down and die.

  - William Butler Yeats

  Man and the Echo

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  For every light there is shadow. For every sound, silence.

  From the moment he got the call Detective Kevin Francis Byrne had a premonition this night would forever change his life, that he was headed to a place marked by a profound evil, leaving only darkness in its wake.

  'You ready?'

  Byrne glanced at Jimmy. Detective Jimmy Purify, sitting in the passenger seat of the bashed and battered department-issue Ford, was just a few years older than Byrne, but something in the man's eyes held deep wisdom, a hard-won experience that transcended time spent on the job and spoke instead of time earned. They'd known each other a long time, but this was their first full tour as partners.

  'I'm ready,' Byrne said.

  He wasn't.

  They got out of the car and walked to the front entrance of the sprawling, well-tended Chestnut Hill mansion. Here, in this exclusive section of the northwest part of the city, there was history at every turn, a neighborhood designed at a time when Philadelphia was second only to London as the largest English-speaking city in the world.

  The first officer on the scene, a rookie named Timothy Meehan, stood inside the foyer, cloistered by coats and hats and scarves perfumed with age, just beyond the reach of the cold autumn wind cutting across the grounds.

  Byrne had been in Officer Meehan's shoes a handful of years earlier and remembered well how he'd felt when detectives arrived, the tangle of envy and relief and admiration. Chances were slight that Meehan would one day do the job Byrne was about to do. It took a certain breed to stay in the trenches, especially in a city like Philly, and most uniformed cops, at least the smart ones, moved on.

  Byrne signed the crime-scene log and stepped into the warmth of the atrium, taking in the sights, the sounds, the smells. He would never again enter this scene for the first time, never again breathe an air so red with violence. Looking into the kitchen, he saw a blood-splattered killing room, scarlet murals on pebbled white tile, the torn flesh of the victim jigsawed on the floor.

  While Jimmy called for the medical examiner and crime-scene unit, Byrne walked to the end of the entrance hall. The officer standing there was a veteran patrolman, a man of fifty, a man content to live without ambition. At that moment Byrne envied him. The cop nodded toward the room on the other side of the corridor.

  And that was when Kevin Byrne heard the music.

  She sat in a chair on the opposite side of the room. The walls were covered with a forest-green silk; the floor with an exquisite burgundy Persian. The furniture was sturdy, in the Queen Anne style. The air smelled of jasmine and leather.

  Byrne knew the room had been cleared, but he scanned every inch of it anyway. In one corner stood an antique curio case with beveled glass doors, its shelves arrayed with small porcelain figurines. In another corner leaned a beautiful cello. Candlelight shimmered on its golden surface.

  The woman was slender and elegant, in her late twenties. She had burnished russet hair down to her shoulders, eyes the color of soft copper. She wore a long black gown, sling-back heels,
pearls. Her makeup was a bit garish - theatrical, some might say - but it flattered her delicate features, her lucent skin.

  When Byrne stepped fully into the room the woman looked his way, as if she had been expecting him, as if he might be a guest for Thanksgiving dinner, some discomfited cousin just in from Allentown or Ashtabula. But he was neither. He was there to arrest her.

  'Can you hear it?' the woman asked. Her voice was almost adolescent in its pitch and resonance.

  Byrne glanced at the crystal CD case resting on a small wooden easel atop the expensive stereo component. Chopin: Nocturne in G Major. Then he looked more closely at the cello. There was fresh blood on the strings and fingerboard, as well as on the bow lying on the floor. Afterwards, she had played.

  The woman closed her eyes. 'Listen,' she said. 'The blue notes.'

  Byrne listened. He has never forgotten the melody, the way it both lifted and shattered his heart.

  Moments later the music stopped. Byrne waited for the last note to feather into silence. 'I'm going to need you to stand up now, ma'am,' he said.

  When the woman opened her eyes Byrne felt something flicker in his chest. In his time on the streets of Philadelphia he had met all types of people, from soulless drug dealers, to oily con men, to smash-and-grab artists, to hopped-up joyriding kids. But never before had he encountered anyone so detached from the crime they had just committed. In her light brown eyes Byrne saw demons caper from shadow to shadow.

  The woman rose, turned to the side, put her hands behind her back. Byrne took out his handcuffs, slipped them over her slender white wrists, and clicked them shut.

  She turned to face him. They stood in silence now, just a few inches apart, strangers not only to each other, but to this grim pageant and all that was to come.

  'I'm scared,' she said.

  Byrne wanted to tell her that he understood. He wanted to say that we all have moments of rage, moments when the walls of sanity tremble and crack. He wanted to tell her that she would pay for her crime, probably for the rest of her life - perhaps even -with her life - but that while she was in his care she would be treated with dignity and respect.

  He did not say these things.

  'My name is Detective Kevin Byrne,' he said. 'It's going to be all right.'

  It was November 1, 1990. Nothing has been right since.

  Chapter 1

  Sunday, October 24

  Can you hear it?

  Listen closely. There, beneath the clatter of the lane, beneath the ceaseless hum of man and machine, you will hear the sound of the slaughter, the screaming of peasants in the moment before death, the plea of an emperor with a sword at his throat.

  Can you hear it?

  Step onto hallowed ground, where madness has made the soil luxuriant with blood, and you will hear it: Nanjing, Thessaloniki, Warsaw.

  If you listen closely you will realize it is always there, never fully silenced, not by prayer, by law, by time. The history of the world, and its annals of crime, is the slow, sepulchral music of the dead.

  There.

  Can you hear it?

  I hear it. I am the one who walks in shadow, ears tuned to the night. I am the one who hides in rooms where murder is done, rooms that will never again be quieted, each corner now and forever sheltering a whispering ghost. I hear fingernails scratching granite walls, the drip of blood onto scarred tile, the hiss of air drawn into a mortal chest wound. Sometimes it all becomes too much, too loud, and I must let it out.

  I am the Echo Man.

  I hear it all.

  On Sunday morning I rise early, shower, take my breakfast at home. I step onto the street. It is a glorious fall day. The sky is clear and crystalline blue, the air holds the faint smell of decaying leaves.

  As I walk down Pine Street I feel the weight of the three killing instruments at the small of my back. I study the eyes of passersby, or at least those who will meet my gaze. Every so often I pause, eavesdrop, gathering the sounds of the past. In Philadelphia Death has lingered in so many places. I collect its spectral sounds the way some men collect fine art, or war souvenirs, or lovers.

  Like many who have toiled in the arts over the centuries my work has gone largely unnoticed. That is about to change. This will be my magnum opus, that by which all such works are judged forever. It has already begun.

  I turn up my collar and continue down the lane.

  Zig, zig, zig.

  I rattle through the crowded streets like a white skeleton.

  At just after eight a.m. I enter Fitler Square, finding the expected gathering - bikers, joggers, the homeless who have dragged themselves here from a nearby passageway. Some of these homeless creatures will not live through the winter. Soon I will hear their last breaths.

  I stand near the ram sculpture at the eastern end of the square, watching, waiting. Within minutes I see them., mother and daughter.

  They are just what I need.

  Iwalk across the square, sit on a bench, take out my newspaper, halve and quarter it. The killing instruments are uncomfortable at my back. I shift my weight as the sounds amass: the flap and squawk of pigeons congregating around a man eating a bagel, a taxi's rude horn, the hard thump of a bass speaker. Looking at my watch, I see that time is short. Soon my mind will be full of screams and I will be unable to do what is necessary.

  I glance at the young mother and her baby, catch the woman's eye, smile.

  'Good morning,' I say.

  The woman smiles back. 'Hi.'

  The baby is in an expensive jogging stroller, the kind with a rainproof hood and mesh shopping basket beneath. I rise, cross the path, glance inside the pram. It's a girl, dressed in a pink flannel one-piece and matching hat, swaddled in a snow-white blanket. Bright plastic stars dangle overhead.

  'And who is this little movie star?' I ask.

  The woman beams. 'This is Ashley.'

  'Ashley. She is beautiful.'

  'Thank you.'

  I am careful not to get too close. Not yet. 'How old is she?'

  'She's four months.'

  'Four months is a great age,' I reply with a wink. '

  I may have peaked around four months.'

  The woman laughs.

  I'm in.

  I glance at the stroller. The baby smiles at me. In her angelic face I see so much. But sight does not drive me. The world is crammed full of beautiful images, breathtaking vistas, all mostly forgotten by the time the next vista presents itself I have stood before the Taj Mahal, Westminster Abbey, the Grand Canyon. I once spent an afternoon in front of Picasso's Guernica. All these glorious images faded into the dim corners of memory within a relatively short period of time. Yet I recall with exquisite clarity the first time I heard someone scream in anguish, the yelp of a dog struck by a car, the dying breath of a young police officer bleeding out on a hot sidewalk.

  'Is she sleeping through the night yet?'

  'Not quite,' the woman says.

  'My daughter slept through the night at two months. Never had a problem with her at all.'

  'Lucky.'

  I reach slowly into my right coat pocket, palm what I need, draw it out. The mother stands just a few feet away, on my left. She does not see what I have in my hand.

  The baby kicks her feet, bunching her blanket. I wait. I am nothing if not patient. I need the little one to be tranquil and still. Soon she calms, her bright blue eyes scanning the sky.

  With my right hand I reach out, slowly, not wanting to alarm the mother. I place a finger into the center of the baby's left palm. She closes her tiny fist around my finger and gurgles. Then, as I had hoped, she begins to coo.

  All other sounds cease. In that moment it is just the baby, and this sacred respite from the dissonance that fills my waking hours.

  I touch the Record button, keeping the microphone near the little girl's mouth for a few seconds, gathering the sounds, collecting a moment which would otherwise be gone in an instant.

  Time slows, lengthens, like a lingering coda.<
br />
  I withdraw my hand. I do not want to stay too long, nor alert the mother to any danger. I have a full day ahead of me, and cannot be deterred.

  'She has your eyes,' I say.

  The little girl does not, and it is obvious. But no mother ever refuses such a compliment.

  'Thank you.'

  I glance at the sky, at the buildings that surround Fitler Square. It is time. Well, it was lovely talking to you.'

  You, too,' replies the woman. ''Enjoy your day.'

  'Thank you,' I say. I'm sure I will.'

  I reach out, take one of the baby's tiny hands in mine, give it a little shake. 'It was nice meeting you, little Ashley.'

  Mother and daughter giggle.

  I am safe.

  A few moments later, as I walk up Twenty-third Street, toward Delancey, I pull out the digital recorder, insert the mini-plug for the earbuds, play back the recording. Good quality, a minimum of background noise. The baby's voice is precious and clear.

  As I slip into the van and head to South Philadelphia I think about this morning, how everything is falling into place.

  Harmony and melody live inside me, side by side, violent storms on a sun-blessed shore.

  I have captured the beginning of life.

  Now I will record its end.

  Chapter 2

  'My name is Paulette, and I'm an alcoholic.'

  'Hi, Paulette.'

  She looked out over the group. The meeting was larger than it had been the previous week, nearly doubled in size from the first time she attended the Second Verse group at the Trinity United Methodist Church nearly a month earlier. Before that she had been to three meetings at three different places - North Philly, West Philly, South Philly - but, as she soon learned, most people who attend AA meetings regularly find a group, and a vibe, with which they are comfortable, and stay with it.

  There were twenty or so people sitting in a loose circle, equally divided between men and women, young and old, nervous and calm. The youngest person was a woman around twenty; the oldest, a man in his seventies, sitting in a wheelchair. It was also a diverse group - black, white, Hispanic, Asian. Addiction, of course, had no prejudice, no gender or age issues. The size of the group indicated that the holidays were rapidly approaching, and if anything pressed the glowing red buttons of inadequacy, resentment, and rage, it was the holidays.