More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II

by Jeffery Deaver

  “Hi, you don’t know me but I live across the way. I just thought you should know… “

  Or maybe: “Hi, I’m your neighbor. Don’t think we’ve met. Don’t want to alarm you but there’s a man in those bushes who’s been staring at you for two days.”

  No, don’t say two days. She’d wondered why he didn’t say anything earlier.

  “Listen, miss, you don’t know me, but don’t look around. There’s a man in those bushes across the walk. He’s been staring at your apartment with some binoculars. I think he’s a stalker or something.”

  But after some debate he decided he didn’t like any of those approaches. She might just respond by saying, “Oh, thanks.” Then closing the door on him and calling the cops.

  End of Rodney Pullman.

  No, he needed to do something dramatic — something that would impress a woman as sleek and cool and, well, unimpressible as Tammy Hudson surely was.

  Squinting into the courtyard, Pullman saw that the voyeur had moved closer to her apartment, eyes still focused obsessively on her window. The sunlight glinted off the blades of the clippers, which gave an ominous swick, swick. The tool was long and seemed well-honed. He wondered if his earlier assessment had been wrong. Maybe this guy was dangerous.

  Which finally gave him the idea — how to best orchestrate an introduction to the beautiful Resident in 10B.

  Pullman rose and walked to his closet, rummaged through it and finally found his old baseball bat. He’d never been much for sports but he’d bought a bat and glove when he’d been hired at the bookstore and learned that they had a team. He’d thought it would be a good way to meet some of the girl clerks. As it turned out, though, the only players were guys and he soon dropped off the team.

  A glance outside — no sign of Tammy, though the voyeur was still there, clipping away fervently with the shears.

  Swick, swick…

  Gripping the bat, Pullman left his apartment and slipped downstairs to the first-floor walkway then edged quietly to the shadows behind the stalker.

  His plan was to wait until Tammy left for her regular morning auditions. As soon as she passed the voyeur, Pullman would jog up to the man, brandish the bat and shout to her to call the police, this man was stalking her.

  He’d make the guy lie on his belly until the cops arrived; he and Tammy would have a good ten minutes to talk.

  No, no, it was nothing… My name’s Rod Pullman, by the way. And you’re?… Nice to meet you, Tammy…. No, really, just beinga good citizen…. Well, okay then, tell you what, if you really want to repay me, you can let me take you out to dinner.

  Wiping his sweating hand on his slacks, he got a firmer grip on the taped bat handle.

  Sure, Saturday’d work for me. Maybe—

  The opening front door of Tammy’s apartment interrupted the fantasy.

  She stepped outside and pulled her expensive shades down over her eyes. Today, her black hair sported a bright-red headband, which matched her finger- and toenail polish. She had her blue purse over her shoulder and was carrying her portfolio. She started down the walk.

  The voyeur tensed. The clipping ceased.

  Pullman gripped the bat harder yet. He took a deep breath, rehearsed his lines once more.

  Ready, set…

  But then the voyeur stepped back. He set down the clippers and began fumbling with the front of his overalls.

  What—?

  Oh, Jesus, he was unzipping himself and reaching inside.

  He is going to rape her!

  “No!” Pullman shouted and ran forward, waving the bat over his head.

  “Hey!” The rapist blinked in panic and stumbled back, tripping over a small wicket fence around a mulch bed. He landed hard and cried out in pain, his breath knocked out of his lungs, gasping.

  Tammy stopped, turning toward the commotion, frowning.

  Pullman yelled to her, “Call the police! This guy’s been watching you. He’s a rapist!” He turned back to the blond man, waving the bat. “Don’t move! I’ll—”

  His words were cut off by the stunning explosion of gunshots from directly behind him.

  Pullman howled in panic and dropped to his knees as the bullets slammed into the stalker’s head and neck, leaving a bloody mist around him. The man shivered once and slumped to the ground, dead.

  “Christ!” Pullman whispered in shock and slowly rose to his feet. He turned toward Tammy and frowned in astonishment to see her holding a large black pistol, which she’d pulled out of her Coach purse. She was crouching and looking around like a soldier in an ambush.

  So she didn’t just study karate for self-protection; she had a license to carry a gun too. Well, a lot of women in LA did, he’d heard. On the other hand, Pullman wasn’t sure you could just shoot a man who was lying harmlessly on the ground, when he hadn’t actually attacked you.

  “Hey, you,” Tammy called, stepping closer.

  Pullman turned. He got a good look at the woman’s beautiful blue eyes and her diamond earrings sparkling in the sun, and he smelled a flowery perfume mixed with the acrid firecracker smell of smoke from the gun.

  “Me?” he asked.

  “Yeah, here.” She handed the portfolio to him.

  “This’s for me?”

  But she didn’t answer. She turned away and sprinted into the alley behind the apartment complex, a flash of vivacious color that vanished an instant later.

  As Pullman was staring in confusion at the portfolio, he heard a rustle of feet behind him and an instant later was grabbed by a half-dozen massive hands. The next thing he knew he was being slammed face-first into a patch of extremely well-raked lawn.

  * * *

  Tammy Hudson, Rodney Pullman learned from his lawyer, was one of Southern California’s most successful, and most elusive, drug dealers.

  It seemed that she’d been responsible for importing thousands of pounds of high-quality cocaine from Mexico over the past year. (Hence, her frequent trips south of the border.) Driving a beat-up old sports car and living in a pathetic place like the Pacific Arms Apartments kept her off the radar screen of DEA and police officials, who found it easier to find and track the high-living kingpins in Beverly Hills and Palm Springs.

  Sitting in the LA detention center across from Pullman, the lawyer now delivered the bad news that the D.A. had no intention of dropping any of the charges against him.

  “But I didn’t do anything,” Pullman whined.

  The lawyer, a tanned forty-year-old with a fringe of curly hair, gave a chuckle, as if he’d heard that line ten thousand times. He continued, explaining that the prosecutor was out for blood. For one thing, a cop had been killed; the blond man, the apparent voyeur, had actually been an undercover LAPD officer pretending to work for the landscape maintenance company. His job was to report whenever Tammy left the apartment. Other officers or DEA agents would then take over surveillance and follow her in unmarked cars or vans. (When Pullman thought that he was reaching into his pants in preparation for a rape, the officer was in fact merely fishing his radio out of an inside pocket to tell the other surveillance team that she was leaving.)

  “But—”

  “Let me finish.” The lawyer added that the cops were also outraged that, because of Pullman, Tammy had successfully escaped. She’d disappeared completely and the FBI and DEA believed she was probably out of the country by now.

  “But they can’t think I was working with her! Is that what they think?”

  “In a word, yeah.” He went on to say that Pullman’s explanation for the past several days’ events raised eyebrows. “To put it mildly.” For instance, the police were curious why, if he’d noticed the supposed voyeur the day before, he hadn’t told her then. If his concern, as he claimed, was for an innocent woman’s safety, why didn’t he tell her she was in danger when he’d first found out about it?

  His red-faced explanation that he wanted to use the voyeur as an excuse to introduce himself to Tammy was greeted with an expression in the
lawyer’s eyes that could be read as either skepticism or embarrassment for a pathetic client. The man recorded this explanation in a few anemic notes.

  And why would he lie to his employer about being sick today? To the police, that made sense only if he was serving as Tammy’s lookout. Today’s was to be a big drug transfer and they reasoned that Pullman had stayed home to make sure Tammy got away safely to deliver the goods. Their theory was that he had figured the maintenance worker for law and attacked him to give Tammy the chance to flee.

  Physical evidence too: both his fingerprints and hers were on the portfolio, which happened to contain no headshot photos or audition tapes but rather a kilo of very pure cocaine. “She gave it to me,” he’d said weakly. “To create a diversion, I’ll bet. So she could escape.”

  The lawyer didn’t even bother to write that one down.

  But the most damning of all was the problem with his claim that he didn’t know her. “See,” his lawyer said, “if you really didn’t know her or have any connection with her, we might get a jury to believe everything else you’re claiming.”

  “But I don’t know her. I swear.”

  The attorney gave a faint wince. “See, Rodney, there’s a problem with that.”

  “I prefer ‘Rod.’ Like I’ve said.”

  “A problem.”

  “What?” Pullman scratched his head; the cuffs jingled like dull bells.

  “They searched your apartment.”

  “Oh. They did? They can do that?”

  A laugh. “You were arrested on felony murder, assault, aiding and abetting and drug charges. Yes, Rod, they can do that.”

  “Oh.”

  “And you know what they found?”

  He knew perfectly well what they found. He sat back, stared at the floor and played absently with the handcuffs as the lawyer read from a sheet of paper.

  “Some old Yoplait containers with Tammy’s fingerprints on them, ditto, two wine bottles, a box of herbal tea and empty strawberry cartons. Magazines with her name on the address label. A charge card receipt of hers from a store in the Beverly Center. A Starbucks cup with her lipstick and DNA on the rim.”

  “DNA? They checked that, did they?”

  “That’s what cops do.”

  “I swear, she was never in my apartment. All that stuff… I just… I kind of… picked it up in her trash.”

  “Her trash?”

  “I just saw some things out behind her apartment. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

  “You had two dozen snapshots of her on your dresser.”

  “I just took a few candids is all. She wasn’t looking at the camera — you can tell the cops that. If I knew her, she’d be looking at the camera, wouldn’t she?”

  “Rod.”

  “No, listen! If we had been together somewhere she’d be looking at me, looking into the lens.” Pullman’s voice broke in desperation. “Like, ‘Say, cheese,’ you know? But she wasn’t. That means we weren’t together. It’s just logic. Doesn’t that make sense?” He fell silent. After a moment he added, “I just wanted to meet her. I didn’t know how.”

  “They found some binoculars too. They figured you used those to keep an eye on her door to warn her if anybody was going to raid her place.”

  “That was just so I could… so I could look at her. She’s really pretty.” Pullman shrugged. His eyes returned to the floor.

  “I think the only thing we can do is talk to the DA about a plea bargain. We don’t want to go to trial on this one, believe me. I may be able to get you a deal for fifteen, twenty years…”

  “Twenty years?”

  “I’ll talk to them. See what they say.”

  The lawyer stepped to the door of the interview room and rapped on it to summon the guard. A moment later it opened.

  “One thing,” Pullman said.

  His attorney turned and lifted an eyebrow.

  “Sally Vaughn.”

  “Who?”

  “A runner-up for Miss Iowa. Few years ago.”

  “What about her?”

  “I sold her a car and we went out once but she wasn’t interested in seeing me anymore. The same thing sort of happened with her.”

  “Same thing?”

  “Like with Tammy. I was kind of watching her more than I should have.”

  “Peeping?”

  He started to object to the word but then nodded. “I got arrested. That’s why I moved here. I wanted to start over. Meet somebody for real.”

  “What was your sentence in Iowa?”

  “Six months suspended, counseling for a year.”

  “It didn’t take, the counseling.”

  “Didn’t take, no.”

  “I’ll get the records. The DA might buy it. But he lost a prime perp because of you, so he’s going to want something. Probably stalking and privacy charges. You’d have to do a year, eighteen months, I’d guess.”

  “Better than twenty.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” The lawyer stepped through the door.

  “One other question?” Pullman asked, looking up.

  “What?”

  The prisoner said, “Will the police use all of those things they found? For evidence?”

  “From your apartment?”

  “Right.”

  “Probably not. They usually pick the best ones.”

  “Then you think I could have a couple of the pictures of Tammy to put up on my wall here? There’s no window. There’s nothing to look at.”

  The lawyer hesitated, as if Pullman were joking. When he concluded that apparently the prisoner wasn’t, he said, “You know, Rodney, that’s probably not the best idea in the world.”

  “Just a thought.”

  The attorney left and a large guard stepped inside. He took Rodney Pullman by the arm and led him to the corridor that would take him back to his cell.

  THE POKER LESSON

  Poker is a game in which each man plays his own hand as he elects. No consideration should be expected by one player from another.

  — JOHN SCARNE

  “I want into one of your games,” the boy said.

  Sitting hunched over a hamburger in Angela’s Diner, Keller looked up at the blond kid, who stood with his hip cocked and arms crossed, trying to be cool but looking like an animal awkwardly trying to stand on its hind legs. Handsome enough even though he wore black-rimmed nerd glasses and was pale and skinny.

  Keller decided not to ask the kid to sit down. “What games?” He ate more of his burger and glanced at his watch.

  The kid noticed the move and said, “Well, the one that’s starting at eight tonight, for instance.”

  Keller grunted a laugh.

  He heard the rumble of one of the freight trains that bisected this neighborhood on the north side of town. He had a fond memory of a diesel rattling bar glasses six months ago just as he lay down a flush to take a $56,320 pot away from three businessmen who were from the south of France. He’d won that pot twenty minutes after the first ante. The men had scowled French scowls but continued to lose another seventy thousand over the course of the rainy night.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tony Stigler.”

  “How old’re you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Even if there was a game, which there isn’t, you couldn’t play. You’re a kid. You couldn’t get into a bar.”

  “It’s in Sal’s back room. It’s not in the bar.”

  “How do you know that?” Keller muttered. In his late forties, the dark-complected man was as strong and solid as he’d been twenty years ago. When he asked questions in this tone you stopped being cute and answered straight.

  “My buddy works at Marconi Pizza. He hears things.”

  “Well, your buddy oughta watch out what he hears. And he really oughta watch who he tells what he hears.” He returned to his lunch.

  “Look.” The kid dug into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. Hundreds mostly. Keller’d been gambling since
he was younger than this boy and he knew how to size up a roll. The kid was holding close to five thousand. Tony said, “I’m serious, man. I want to play with you.”

  “Where’d you get that?”

  A shrug. “I got it.”

  “Don’t give any Sopranos crap. You gonna play poker, you play by the rules. And one of the rules is you play with your own money. If that’s stolen you can hike your ass outta here right now.”

  “It’s not stolen,” the kid said, lowering his voice. “I won it.”

  “At cards,” Keller asked wryly, “or the lottery?”

  “Draw and stud.”

  Keller enjoyed a particularly good bite of hamburger and studied the boy again. “Why my game? You got dozens you could pick.”

  The fading city of Ellridge, population 200,000 or so, squatted in steel-mill territory on the flat, gray Indiana River. What it lacked in class, though, the city more than made up for in sin. Hookers and lap dance bars, of course. But the town’s big business was underground gambling — for a very practical reason: Atlantic City and Nevada weren’t within a day’s drive and the few Indian casinos with licensed poker tables were filled with low-stakes amateurs.

  “Why you?” Tony answered, “’Cause you’re the best player in town and I want to play against the best.”

  “What’s this, some John Wayne gunfighter bullshit?”

  “Who’s John Wayne?”

  “Christ… you’re way outta our league, kid.”

  “There’s more where this came from.” Hefting the wad. “A lot more.”

  Keller gestured at the cash and looked around. “Put that away.”

  The kid did.

  Keller ate more burger, thinking of the times when, not much older than this boy, he’d blustered and lied his way into plenty of poker games. The only way to learn the game poker is to play — for money — against the best players you can find, day after day after day. Losing and winning.

  “How long you played?”

  “Since I was twelve.”

  “Whatta your parents think about what you’re doing?”

  “They’re dead,” he said unemotionally. “I live with my uncle. When he’s around. Which he isn’t much.”