The Cold Moon

with a calm way about him. He was gazing past Vincent into the alley.
    “What?”
    “Wait.”
    “Who’re you?” Vincent wasn’t afraid, exactly—he was two inches taller, fifty pounds heavier—but the odd look in the man’s shockingly blue eyes spooked him.
    “That doesn’t matter. Pretend we’re just friends, talking.”
    “Fuck that.” Heart pounding, hands shaking, Vincent started to walk away.
    “Wait,” the man said softly once more. His voice was almost hypnotic.
    The rapist waited.
    A minute later he saw a door open in a building across the alley from the back of the restaurant. The waitress walked to the doorway and spoke to two men. One was in a suit, the other was in a police uniform.
    “Jesus,” Vincent whispered.
    “It’s a sting,” the man said. “She’s a cop. The owner’s running numbers out of the restaurant, I think. They’re setting him up.”
    Vincent recovered fast. “So? That doesn’t matter to me.”
    “If you’d done what you had in mind you’d be in cuffs now. Or shot dead.”
    “Had in mind?” Vincent asked, trying to sound innocent. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    The stranger only smiled, motioning Vincent up the street. “Do you live here?”
    A pause then Vincent answered, “New Jersey.”
    “You work in the city?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You know Manhattan well?”
    “Pretty good.”
    The man nodded, looking Vincent up and down. He identified himself as Gerald Duncan and suggested they go someplace warm to talk. They walked three blocks to a diner and Duncan had coffee and Vincent had another piece of cake and a soda.
    They talked about the weather, the city budget, downtown Manhattan at midnight.
    Then Duncan said, “Just a thought, Vincent. If you’re interested in a little work I could use somebody who isn’t overly concerned with the law. And it might let you practice your . . . hobby.” He nodded back in the direction of the alley.
    “Collecting sitcoms from the seventies?” asked Clever Vincent.
    Duncan smiled again and Vincent decided he liked the man.
    “What do you want me to do?”
    “I’ve only been to New York a few times. I need a man who knows the streets, the subways, traffic patterns, neighborhoods . . . who knows something about the way police work. The details, I’ll save for later.”
    Hmm.
    “What line are you in?” Vincent had asked.
    “Businessman. We’ll let it go at that.”
    Hmm.
    Vincent told himself to leave. But he felt the lure of the man’s comment—about practicing his hobby. Anything that might help him feed the hunger was worth considering, even if it was risky. They continued to talk for a half hour, sharing some information, withholding some. Duncan explained that his hobby was collecting antique watches, which he repaired himself. He’d even built a few from scratch.
    As he’d finished his fourth dessert of the day Vincent asked, “How did you know she was a cop?”
    Duncan seemed to debate for a moment. Then he said. “I’ve been checking out somebody at the diner. The man at the end of the counter. Remember him? He was in the dark suit.”
    Vincent nodded.
    “I’ve been following him for the past month. I’m going to kill him.”
    Vincent smiled. “You’re kidding.”
    “I don’t really kid.”
    And Vincent had learned that was true. There was no Clever Gerald. Or Hungry Gerald. There was just one: Calm and Meticulous Gerald, who expressed his intention that night to kill the man in the diner—Walter somebody—in the same matter-of-fact way that he’d made good on that promise by cutting the son of a bitch’s wrists and watching him struggle until he fell from a pier into the freezing brown water of the Hudson River.
    The Watchmaker had gone on to tell Vincent that he was in town to kill other people too. Among them were some women. As long as Vincent was careful and didn’t spend more than twenty or thirty minutes, he could have their bodies after they were dead—to do what he wished. In exchange, Vincent would help him—as a guide to the city and its roads and transportation system, and to stand guard and sometimes drive the getaway car.
    “So. You interested?”
    “I guess,” Vincent said, though his private response was a lot more enthusiastic than that.
    And Vincent was now hard at work on this job, following the third victim: Joanne Harper, their flower girl, Clever Vincent had dubbed her. He watched her take out a key and disappear through the service