by John Lutz
“That’s the problem. They have adapted. They don’t type; they keyboard. They’ve made keyboard a verb, Penny. They’ve made text a verb. They don’t read text in books, and hardly ever do on a computer screen. Not for pleasure, anyway. It’s distressing.”
Returning to her job at the library might have been a mistake, Penny thought. She’d sought solace and security here, a shelter from the world of worry about all the things that could happen to Feds and to her, to their marriage. Maybe Feds was right and there was no real security. If you lived, you risked. Even if you weren’t a cop. Feds’s enemies were the bad guys. Ms. Culver’s enemies were e-books.
“You know how the French say the more things change the more they stay the same,” Penny said, trying to brighten Ms. Culver’s mood. “Books are books, even if they’re electronic books.”
“All the books in this library could be stored on one chip,” Ms. Culver said. “And I’m not French. Now I suggest you go straighten up the magazines.”
Penny did, but she was thinking about this evening, when Feds would be working late. She’d told him she didn’t mind, that she wasn’t worried about him. But she was. Only now she was doing something about her worries. Something for others but, ultimately, something for Feds and herself and their marriage. He wouldn’t approve.
But then, he didn’t know.
34
S he liked imagining herself in the old movie she’d watched last night, Rear Window, but she’d rather have been Grace Kelly. Instead she was James Stewart, sitting at a window with his leg propped up, helplessly watching the world go by.
Deena Vess’s ankle had stopped aching, but it itched like crazy under the plaster cast. Day after tomorrow she was supposed to go back to the doctor and get the cast removed, to be replaced by a plastic one that could be taken off occasionally and was sure to be more comfortable.
From where she sat, she could look out her apartment window at the street below if she strained herself. A fly buzzed frantically and futilely against the lower pane, trying to get on the other side of the invisible glass barrier. She knew how it felt.
It was a hot day, and there were fewer people than normal down there on the baking sidewalks. Traffic wasn’t very heavy, either.
But there was the foreshortened figure of Jeff the postman, crossing the street to his mail truck. He stepped up into the truck and drove away.
Okay, something to do! Get the mail. A chore that required her attention.
It would hurt slightly, but it was worth the pain. And worth it to escape daytime television. Or roaming Facebook or Twitter. She’d tired of sending out messages about her aching ankle. The social network didn’t want to hear you bitch any more than people standing right next to you.
She used one of the metal crutches she’d bought at Duane Reade to brace herself as she stood up from her chair. Then she hobbled toward the door. From the corner of her eye she saw the cat that wasn’t Empress stretch and edge toward the kitchen door as if stalking something. She still couldn’t work up any fondness for the cat, and how it had taken Empress’s place was still a mystery that sometimes kept her up at night, wondering. The longer she and the cat shared the apartment, the less the animal looked like the real Empress.
But what you couldn’t understand you at last got tired of thinking about. She’d posted a status on Facebook asking if anyone could explain the bizarre cat substitution. The answers from her “friends” strongly implied that she might be insane and should seek help. Sure, Deena should hobble into a psychoanalyst’s office with a cat under her arm and say it was impersonating another cat.
She reached the door to the hall, opened it, and clattered out into the tiled hall on her crutches. After closing the door, she used the crutches to make her way to the elevator. There was some pain, but it was bearable. And going down to the foyer and getting her mail was one of the few things she looked forward to these days. She needed to get off these damn crutches and back on her skates, if she was still employed at Roller Steak. The boss had assured her the job would be there for her, but what was that worth?
Deena hobbled out of the elevator and over to the bank of brass mailboxes. She glimpsed white through the slot in her box. Mail!
A disappointed Deena discovered that her mail consisted of an ad for Viagra.
She returned to the elevator, pressed the up button, and momentarily got one of her crutches caught in the crack between elevator and floor. Finally safe inside the elevator and leaning on the wall near the control panel, she pressed the button for her floor.
By the time she was back in her chair, facing the muted TV playing Sex and the City reruns, her ankle was throbbing. Probably these mail-fetching missions every day weren’t the best thing for the ankle, but she had to do something to get out.
She’d been sitting there for almost an hour when it occurred to her that she hadn’t seen the Empress imposter since returning from her mail pickup. She knew she’d closed the door behind her and—
Someone knocked on her apartment door hard enough to startle her, then continued to knock, softer but insistently.
Deena cursed, snatched up her clattering crutches, and hobbled over to look out the peephole.
An eye was staring right back at her. She hated it when people did that.
A male voice in the hall said, “I have a cat somebody told me was yours.”
Deena peered through the peephole again. This time a guy was standing back, farther from the door. He was holding up a cat that, even distorted by the peephole glass, looked more like Empress than the imposter.
Deena worked the dead bolt, then opened the door, leaving it on the chain.
The man looked in at her and held the cat up again for her inspection. Definitely the real Empress.
But then-
“I ran some found cat ads in the paper,” the man said. He was a good-looking guy, storybook handsome but not effeminate. “I’m a cat person, and I knew this one was loved and had an owner in the neighborhood who must be worried stiff about her.”
Empress waved a paw at Deena and mewed.
Deena detached the chain lock and opened the door all the way. “It’s odd,” she said. “There was this other cat-”
The man threw a yowling Empress into Deena’s face and at the same time kicked her injured ankle and pushed her backward. She fell with a sharp intake of breath and a clatter of aluminum.
He was on her while she was too shocked to utter another sound. She saw and then felt the sticky gray rectangle of duct tape slapped over her half-open mouth. He gripped her wrists and kept her hands away from her face while she struggled and tried to scream. He was laughing. That was what for some reason terrified her more than anything, his soft, amused laughter.
He stood up, crouched over her, still squeezing her wrists hard enough that her hands were twisted into claws. She couldn’t stop working her legs, fighting to stand up despite the agonizing pain in her ankle.
Smiling, he waited patiently until he had the opportunity and then kicked her broken ankle again, this time as hard as he could, grunting with the effort.
The pain carried her to a place where she could no longer hear her muffled screams.
To where she melted to nothing and consciousness stole away.
35
I t was done mostly by computer now. The law library in the offices of Enders and Coil was primarily for show, a casualty of LexisNexis. But Jody knew that not everything in the vast body of recorded law was online. There simply hadn’t been enough time and work hours to have scanned it in. Useful precedence could exist in obscure legal tomes, and the library at Enders and Coil was comprehensive and marvelous in its way. There were decisions long forgotten but useful, if someone had the time, patience, and instinct to know where to look.
“It’s six o’clock. You should have gone home an hour ago,” Jack Enders said.
Jody looked up from where she was sitting at a mahogany table stacked with fat law volumes she’d borrowed from the
shelves above and around her. The room was square, with a series of catwalks angling upward toward a high, arched ceiling. Almost every inch of wall space was packed with books. Enders was standing just inside the open wood-paneled door. There were no windows in the room. Light was provided by fixtures dangling at the end of chains of varying lengths strung from the ceiling, and from large reading lamps at each of the three tables.
“I’ve been researching Dash-Meeding,” Jody said.
“Why that one?”
Jody shrugged. “I was browsing, saw it was an eminent domain matter, and thought it might be interesting. Property rights cases have always intrigued me.”
Enders smiled. “That one’s almost automatic.”
“Finding for the defendant? Not actually. There’s a 1912 finding that eminent domain can be nullified contractually if the prospective enacting entity is specified.”
Enders grinned. A handsome man over six feet tall, impeccably tailored and with flowing black hair just beginning to gray, he was an intriguing combination of dignity and virility. “1912,” he said. “That’s the year the Titanic went down. I don’t think a decision in the Edwardian era will in any way influence a multimillion-dollar New York commercial real estate transaction.”
“I don’t know,” Jody said. “The specificity clause. Isn’t there one in the Dash-Meeding case?”
“Not one the former owners of the property authorized. That’s why the first judge brushed the claim away without a second thought.”
“Is it under appeal?” As if I don’t know.
“Yes. But only as a matter of formality.”
“But I don’t see how authorization-”
“Look, Jody, I don’t want to discuss Dash-Meeding. I came here to see if you wanted to go to dinner. You don’t have to starve yourself to work here, especially if it’s work done on your own concerning an action that’s been all but decided.”
“I appreciate the offer,” Jody said, “but I’ve got another dinner date in a few hours.”
Enders gave her his handsome white smile. “A beautiful young woman like you, I should have known.”
Jody smiled. “It was nice of you to ask, sir.”
Still smiling: “Oh, a distancing sir. Are you afraid to socialize with the boss?”
“I’m just remembering he’s the boss,” Jody said. “And I meant it when I said I appreciate the offer.”
Enders reached behind him and gripped the brass doorknob, but he didn’t turn to leave. “You really do have potential, Jody.”
“Thank you.” What kind of potential are we talking about?
He started to open the door, and then hesitated. “A bit of advice?”
“Always.”
“Your time would be better spent dining with the boss than working on an all but decided case.”
Jody smiled at him. “That makes sense.”
He nodded. “I’m not surprised you came to that sensible conclusion.”
He left and closed the door behind him.
Jody knew there was another sensible conclusion to be reached here. There might be a good reason Enders didn’t want her learning more about Dash-Meeding.
Enders had tried to give her advice, but instead given her motivation.
When Jody left Enders and Coil she took a subway uptown and walked to Quinn and Pearl’s brownstone on West Seventy-fifth Street. She liked Quinn a lot; he was like some kind of Bible-illustration Old Testament guy who’d gotten a shave and haircut and looked pretty sexy. Seemed to think like one, too. But at other times he was surprisingly modern in his attitude. Contrast, Jody thought. The world’s full of it.
Like with her mom, who had turned out to be not at all what she’d expected. Pearl had a hard surface, but know her for a little while and you realized that beneath that surface she was even harder. The thing was, she hadn’t any real meanness in her; she was simply realistic. Nothing she knew or did was tinged with false hope. That was what Jody liked about Pearl-she was a person who met the truth head-on. It was the way Jody thought of herself, though she knew she wasn’t completely like that. Emotion got in her way. She’d inherited it from Pearl, probably-getting pissed off when somebody you might not even know got the dirty end of the stick. Maybe that was why Pearl was a cop. She’d figured out how to use that emotion for energy and determination. Maybe I should go into criminal law, Jody thought.
Odd the things you think about when you let your mind wander while you walk.
She took the steps up to the brownstone’s stoop and pressed the buzzer button that let her into the foyer. Quinn and Pearl were expecting her, so she didn’t have to use the intercom to be buzzed up.
Pearl was wearing her gray slacks from work, black leather moccasins, and a white blouse. Quinn had on pinstripe brown pants that looked like half of a suit, and a blue pullover golf shirt with a collar. Socks but no shoes. He seemed unconcerned that he was breaking several fashion laws.
Pearl smiled at Jody and kissed her on the cheek. Quinn did the same. Jody thought she might faint.
Where am I going? What am I doing? And is it real?
The dining room table was set for three beneath the gigantic antique crystal gas chandelier that had sometime in the past hundred-plus years been converted to electricity.
Jody realized she was staring at it.
“It won’t fall,” Quinn assured her.
Pearl and Quinn together brought the food in from the kitchen. Some kind of noodle and meat casserole, tossed salad, warm rolls. Quinn brought in a bottle of Australian red wine and filled three glasses with it, then placed it on the table, where all three of them could reach it.
When they were seated, he raised his wine and they clinked glasses and toasted the future.
After they were finished eating, but still drinking wine, Pearl looked across the table at Jody and said, “We have a proposition.”
Quinn cut in before Jody could say anything. “You aren’t crazy about the apartment that the school and law firm provide for your internship.”
True, Jody had bitched about it. The roaches, mainly. Also, Jack Enders had taken to dropping by. He had one thing in mind, and Jody was getting bored with the challenge offending him off without losing her internship.
“The place has pests,” Jody said.
“It seems… right that you should take one of the upstairs bedrooms here,” Pearl said.
“She means live here,” Quinn said. “With us.”
Jody looked at him. There was no way to read this man’s thoughts.
“What do you think about the idea?” she asked him.
“I think you’re family.”
That struck Jody as a wild and wonderful thing to say, considering he wasn’t officially married to her mom.
“It’s only a short subway ride from here to Enders and Coil,” Quinn said.
“I’ll take that ride,” Jody said. “And thank you. Both of you.” She knew her eyes were moist, but she didn’t touch them.
They sat silently like that. Jody’s eyes almost watering, Quinn stone-faced.
Pearl said, “Goddamn it!” and wiped away a tear.
“I do have another favor to ask you,” Jody said, when she’d been shown her room and a date had been designated moving day. “I mean, besides the free room and board.” She had to smile at her own chutzpah.
“You are definitely Pearl’s daughter,” Quinn said.
The three of them were seated in the living room, with its tall, draped windows facing the street, its inlaid hardwood floor, and red carpet. Substitute horses clopping outside for traffic sounds, and it might as well have been 1885. Jody didn’t know when she’d been more comfortable.
“Fire away, Jody,” Pearl said.
“Following you around the way I did, Pearl”-she still vacillated between Pearl and Mom — “I got kind of interested in what you were doing. And since I’ve gotten to know you, and Quinn, I’ve become even more interested. I’d like to shadow you.”
“Didn’
t you do that for several days?” Pearl said.
“Yeah, and not very well. But that’s not what I meant. I want to shadow you when you work, observe you on the job. I want to go to a crime scene with you.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Pearl said.
Jody gave Quinn a smile. “She’s protective of me.”
And you’re working me, Quinn thought. How did I get mixed up with these two females? “She’s right,” he said to Pearl, choosing sides. “Maybe we should let the kid tag along.”
“The kid might see things she’ll dream about the rest of her life.”
“I’m willing to take the chance,” Jody said.
“Of course you are.”
“And I’m not actually a kid,” Jody said to Quinn.
“That was what I was trying to say,” Quinn lied to the kid.
“Do you really want to let her do this?” Pearl asked Quinn. “Do you want her to see what we see? Meet the people we meet?”
“No. But Jody wants to do it, and I think she can handle it. And if she can’t… well, she’ll find out.”
“It might turn all her dreams to nightmares.”
“You’re being overdramatic, Mom.” Huh? It just slipped out.
Pearl studied her for a long time, and then said, “Okay, if that’s what you want.”
“Thanks to both of you again,” Jody said with a wide grin.
“You might change your mind,” Pearl said.
“I’ve done that before,” Jody said.
“So has your mother,” Quinn said.
Pearl gave him a look that Jody decided to imitate and practice in the mirror.
“Don’t expect a lot of excitement,” Pearl said.
The phone rang.
36
T he troops had arrived before Pearl and Quinn-and Jody. There were three radio cars parked at forty-five-degree angles to the curb. Just beyond them was an ambulance, lights out, with two paramedics sitting in it, waiting for the work to be done upstairs.