Read an Excerpt
Prologue
June 1978
The killings started that summer as suddenly as they would again a long time later.
Jimmy Carter was in the White House then. Disco ruled the airwaves. White suits and gold chains were hot. So was the movie Saturday Night Fever. On TV, everyone loved the Fonz and Laverne & Shirley and Charlie's Angels.
On a steamy Saturday night in New York City, a boy and girl were making love inside a 1974 Chevy Nova parked on a ridge in upper Manhattan overlooking the Hudson River.
The boy was muscular, with dark hair and wearing a sleeveless T-shirt. The girl was blond, fresh-faced and dressed in a white blouse, jeans and platform heels.
Neither of them saw the person watching them until the very end.
"Hey, what the hell!" the boy suddenly yelled.
There was a figure standing alongside the car in the dark, near the open passenger window.
"Take a hike, will ya?" the boy said.
The shadowy figure didn't move.
"C'mon, we're busy . . ."
Still no response.
"Who are you anyway?"
Suddenly a hand came up and pointed in their direction.
There was a glint of metal in it. Then the noise of gunshots reverberated in the quiet summer air.
Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom!
Five times the shooter fired.
Inside the Nova, there were screams and chaos. And then, finally, silence.
The girl in the car-who New York City newspaper readers would learn the next day was a twenty-three-year-old nursing student named Linda Malandro-lay dead in the passenger seat. Her boyfriend, whose name was Bobby Fowler, was still alive, but only barely. He told police later he didn't remember anything after the gunshots.
A fewminutes after it happened, the shooter was in another car and driving away from the scene. The car got onto the Henry Hudson Parkway and headed south toward the skyscrapers of Manhattan.
The sound of the Bee Gees singing "Stayin' Alive" blasted from the radio.
The shooter laughed, pounded the steering wheel to the time of the music and sang along with the words.
From somewhere in the distance, police sirens began to wail.
Summertime.
New York City.
1978.
Author Biography: R.G. Belsky lives in New York City.
