The Eye: A Novel of Suspense Read Free Page B

two miles away across the Hudson River.
    Think of it! Here I am, in my twentieth floor apartment in the Crestview Towers, in Cliffside Park on the New Jersey palisades, and yet with a twist of the Eye’s delicate rack-and-pinion controls I can bring those inhabitants of Manhattan into such sharp focus that I am able to see the color of their eyes, the smallest blemishes on their skin. I can assume their lives more intimately than they: walk with them, live with them, observe and weigh their value and their sins. They are of my universe, and I, high above them, am both their conscience and their avenging deity. As they sow, so shall they reap. The judgment is the Eye’s, not mine.
    I am an avenging deity, yes, but I am not without compassion. It grieves me to have had to mete out punishment to Charles Unger and Peter Cheng. That I was the angel of their deaths only deepens my sadness, makes more wrenching my sense of loss. They are my children. I do not enjoy plucking the life from their bodies; I wish it could be otherwise. I mourn for their sins. But vengeance is mine, sayeth the deity. The judgment is the Eye’s, but the vengeance is mine.
    T.S. Eliot was quite right: The spirit killeth. But the letter giveth life.
    This is why I am so upset over Martin Simmons. He did not live in my universe, I had no right to exact punishment on him for his sins. I must be more careful. I am not a psychopath, I am just a deity. Only mine must reap what they have sown.
    And there will be others who must pay the wages of sin. Sin is rife in my little universe. It must be expunged, the wicked must be destroyed.
    I shall return to the Eye now. It is the noon hour and many of the children are out: the dog-walkers, the grocery shoppers, the artists and writers and musicians coming out for their first breath of the hot late-summer air. The police are there too, have been since poor Simmons was found, and I find their antics amusing. They do not know that the Eye is upon them. They do not know that the Angel of Death observes their every movement. No one on the block will ever know.
    The Eye and I will soon decide which of the sinners will be punished next. Perhaps the evil one from 1272. But there are several evil ones in 1276; perhaps one of them instead. Or perhaps another on the block. The Eye will judge. And the risk does not matter; there are too many and they must all be destroyed before they contaminate the rest.
    God’s Eye remains open. And my vengeance shall be swift and merciless.
    12:30 P.M. — WALLY SINGER
    Singer said, “You’re a stupid woman, the stupidest woman I’ve ever known. I don’t know why the hell I ever married you.”
    “Don’t you?” Marian asked. She was in one of her calm periods—reasonable, icy-voiced, talking to him as if he were a child. He hated her when she was like this; he preferred her angry and yelling, or better yet, off sulking somewhere. “It was because of the ten thousand dollars my father gave me to pursue an art career, remember?”
    “Bullshit.”
    “I don’t think so. You married me for my money.”
    “That goddamn ten thousand was gone years ago.”
    “Yes,” Marian said. “Because you went through most of it. All those painting lessons—what a waste.”
    “Are you going to start that again?”
    “Why shouldn’t I? It’s the truth. You have no talent, Wally, none at all. You simply won’t admit it to yourself. How many paintings have you sold in fifteen years? Exactly three, for a grand total of seven hundred dollars.”
    “I’ve had bad luck—”
    “You’ve had good luck. Somebody as talentless as you should never have sold any paintings.”
    “You think you’ve got talent? Those sculptures of yours are crap. Who buys them except cheap specialty stores? There’s not a gallery in the city that would touch them.”
    “You’re forgetting the Morton Gallery, aren’t you?”
    “That was six years ago. And a fluke, just a fluke.”
    “A five thousand dollar