Twist

by John Lutz

  Quinn stirred. He knew someone had entered the living room. Jody Jason, Pearl’s daughter, and Quinn’s ersatz daughter, who lived upstairs. He didn’t move his arm or open his eyes. “ ’Lo, Jody.”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “Your perfume.”

  “I’m not wearing any.”

  “The distinctive sound of your shoes on the stairs.”

  “I’m in my stocking feet.”

  “Okay,” Quinn said, opening his eyes and scooting up to a sitting position. “You and I are the only ones in the house, so it had to be you.”

  “Not exactly a Sherlock moment,” she said.

  Jody, skinny, large-breasted like her mother, with springy red hair unlike her mother’s raven black hair, grinned at him. Pearl was in the grin, all right. “Occam’s razor,” she said. She was kind of a smart-ass.

  That attitude could help her in her work. She was an associate attorney with a small law firm, Prather and Pierce, that fought the good fight against big business, big government, big anything that had deep pockets. The average age of the attorneys at Prather and Pierce was about twenty-five.

  “I didn’t know Occam needed a shave.”

  “Always.” She headed for the kitchen. “Want some coffee?”

  “No, it might make me vibrate.”

  “Something cool?”

  “Makes more sense.”

  He heard her fidget around in the kitchen, then she reappeared with a mug in each hand. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Yours is orange juice.”

  If it moves, sue it, was lettered on the mugs. She handed him his orange juice and then settled down across from him in a chair, tucking her jeans-clad legs beneath her slender body. “Business will pick up,” she said.

  “Not if some guy’s car stops getting stolen.”

  “Huh?”

  Quinn tilted back his head and downed half his orange juice. It was cold and tasted great. “This case Fedderman’s on. Guy’s a graffiti artist, uses spray paint, dolled up his car so good it keeps getting stolen.”

  “He should take some color photos of the car, leave them stuck under a wiper blade. Maybe the thieves will be satisfied with a picture and leave the real thing at the curb.”

  “I’ll suggest that to Fedderman.”

  “Feds will understand.”

  “Like Occam.”

  Jody looked off to the side and thought for a moment. “No,” she said, “like Feds.”

  “Sometimes,” Quinn said, “you are eerily like your mother.”

  “That a compliment?”

  “A warning.”

  She took a long sip of her coffee. “Business will pick up,” she assured Quinn. “In this city, with all the dealing and stealing that has to be set right, Q&A will get its share. Maybe something by way of your friend Renz.”

  “I’d rather Renz not be involved. He complicates things.”

  “Still,” Jody said, “he’s the police commissioner.”

  “Occam with a beard,” Quinn said. “And unshaven scruples.”

  “Yeah,” Jody replied. “That’s more like normal life.”

  “If there is such a thing,” Quinn said, finishing off his orange juice. He licked his lips. “Any more of this in the fridge?”

  “Nope. Nothing cold except beer and bottled water.”

  “Let me think,” Quinn said.

  3

  Medford County, 1984

  Umph!That couldn’t have been good for the baby. Abbey held onto the armrest and console so she wouldn’t bump around so much.

  Mildred turned the dusty white van onto a narrow dirt road, then hard left onto a gravel driveway that wound uphill through the trees. Clumps of dirt and stones clunked off the insides of the wheel wells.

  The driveway leveled off, and the van jounced over a yard that was mostly weeds and bare earth. Mildred parked in the shade near a ramshackle house with sagging gutters and a plank front porch. It needed paint so badly it was impossible to know what color it had been. Nearby, at the end of a curved walkway set with uneven stepping stones, was a wooden outhouse.

  “Don’t believe what ya see,” Mildred said. “We’ve had indoor plumbing a good while.”

  Abbey could only nod.

  “I’ll leave the motor running and the AC on so you’ll be comfortable,” Mildred said. She struggled down out of the van and slammed the door behind her.

  Abbey saw her go into the house, then emerge a few minutes later with a large cardboard box. The van’s rear doors opened. One of them squeaked loudly. Abbey craned her neck to glance back and see what was going on, only to find that the back of the van was sealed off by unpainted plywood, blocking her view. She could hear Mildred moving around back there, loading the box, or whatever it held, into the vehicle.

  After about fifteen minutes, gravel and leaves crunched and Mildred appeared outside the door on Abbey’s side. She opened the door.

  “C’mon down outta there, sweetheart. I wanna show you something.”

  “Is it important?” Abbey asked, remembering how difficult it had been to climb into the van.

  “I would sure say so.” Mildred smiled.

  Abbey didn’t have her seat belt fastened, because of the baby, so she swiveled her body awkwardly and controlled her breathing while Mildred’s strong hands helped her to back down out of the van.

  When she gained her balance, Mildred held her by the elbow and supported her while they walked to the back of the van. Both doors were hanging wide open.

  Mildred turned her so she could see into the back of the van.

  Abbey didn’t know quite what to think. The rear seats had been removed and there was black plastic covering the van’s floor. Clouded white plastic was stuck with duct tape to the sides of the van and to the plywood panel separating the rear of the vehicle from the driver and passenger seats. There was nothing else in the van except for a medium-sized cardboard box up front by the plastic and plywood.

  “Get in,” Mildred said.

  Abbey thought she must have misheard. “I beg your—”

  “In!”

  Mildred shoved Abbey forward so her knees were against the edge of the van floor, then placed a hand on the back of her neck and bent her forward so Abbey’s palms were on the black plastic.

  “Now listen here—”Abbey began. Her words were cut short by a hard blow to the back of her head.

  “Crawl on up there!” Mildred said. “And mind you don’t harm the baby.”

  “I don’t—”

  Another slap to the back of the head. “Get goin’, you fat sow, and make sure your belly don’t drag.”

  When Abbey had crawled painfully up into the back of the van, Mildred scrambled in beside her, looming over her, smelling of stale sweat.

  “Wanna scream and get it over with?” Mildred asked. “Ain’t nobody out here to hear you.”

  “I wanna know what the hell—”

  A wide rectangle of duct tape was slapped across Abbey’s mouth. She was pushed forward so all her weight was on her stomach. “Can’t be helped, sweetheart,” Mildred said by way of apology. There were ripping sounds—more tape being stripped from the roll. Mildred bent Abbey’s arms behind her and taped her wrists together. “Now let’s turn you over.”

  With practiced ease, Mildred crossed Abbey’s ankles and wrestled her onto her back. The pain in Abbey’s arms bound behind her was severe as the weight of her pregnancy settled. Mildred forced Abbey’s left leg over and taped her ankle to a steel loop screwed into the van floor. Did the same with her right leg.

  Abbey was lying with her legs spread now, unable to move, with Mildred between her knees. She had never felt so vulnerable.

  Mildred, breathing hard from her effort, reached forward beyond Abbey, grunting as part of her weight came down on the bound woman. Abbey caught a whiff of her foul breath as Mildred strained to drag the cardboard box across the plastic on the floor, closer so she could reach inside.

  Abbey was almost bursting w
ith rage. If she could only get her hands around Mildred’s fat throat she’d kill her!

  She really felt that she could kill this woman!

  More fetid breath as Mildred forced words through clenched teeth. “Careless bitch like you, in your delicate condition, take off in a rattletrap truck that overheats, don’t deserve no baby. Oughta be a law.”

  Abbey stared at her. What the hell does all that mean?

  Fear began to edge through Abbey’s rage. Real fear. It had been in the background of her mind, waiting, as if primping to play its biggest role ever. Now it came to occupy every molecule of her bound body. Abbey understood that kind of fear. It meant she was aware of something she didn’t yet fully comprehend, that she couldn’t yet face.

  But that she must face.

  Mildred lifted a small folded white blanket from the box and laid it against the side of the van. She arranged it gently. Then she drew from the box a knife with a sharp point and a long, serrated blade.

  Abbey thought her lungs might rupture as she screamed into the duct tape so hard that the muffled sound almost made it out of the van.

  Mildred held up the knife so Abbey could see it.

  “Know what happens now?”

  Abbey knew.

  4

  New York City, the present

  He was real.

  There he was again. He must know she got off work at Gowns ’n’ Gifts at five o’clock, because shortly thereafter she would see him.

  Though he kept his distance, he didn’t seem to mind that she saw him.

  Bonnie Anderson was sure she was being stalked. It had been going on for over a week. Each time she saw him she’d be more afraid. She wasn’t imagining him. Though in truth she’d never gotten a clear look at him. Often his head was bowed so the bill of the cap he usually wore blocked or shadowed his face. But there was something about him, in his movements. A resoluteness. A man with something on his mind.

  With me on his mind.

  Bonnie shuddered and crossed the street.

  He followed, of course.

  She stopped.

  He stopped.

  Bonnie was a beauty, with long blond hair, a slender, shapely body, and a face whose planes and angles had intrigued a college art class almost as much as the rest of her. That was all too apparent with the male students, which always amused Bonnie.

  No doubt the man following her was similarly aroused, but he didn’t amuse her. He scared her in a subtle way that made her body seem drugged.

  She was sure he wanted her to see him, wanted her fear to grow. For some reason, he was nurturing her dread.

  She glanced back over her shoulder, and there he was.

  He stood now about a hundred feet behind her on the crowded sidewalk, statue still, and stared from beneath the shadowed arc of his ball-cap bill. It was odd how she couldn’t see his eyes but felt them on her.

  Her fear expanded, and with it her anger.

  You want me to be afraid, you bastard!

  She spun on her heel and walked directly toward him. Cope with your fears by facing them. He seemed to smile—she couldn’t be sure—as he leisurely entered a nearby deli.

  Without hesitation she followed him into the deli.

  It wasn’t much cooler in there than outside.

  A gondola with steel trays of heated food ran down the middle of the deli. Shelves of packaged food were along one side wall. A series of glass-door coolers ran along the opposite wall, stacked with bottled and canned drinks and dairy products. Beyond the coolers, more shelves of groceries. People were milling about at the counter and among the shelves and coolers. A few of them were carrying wire baskets.

  Bonnie looked around for the blue ball cap and didn’t see it. Didn’t see the bastard. She went to the back of the deli and walked along the heads of the aisles, pausing to stare down each one.

  He was gone. Somehow he was gone.

  Had he been the product of her imagination? A mirage, maybe, from the heat.

  Probably he wanted her to think that. Actually, he might have slipped back outside when she had her back momentarily turned and she was striding along the cooler aisle. He’d had time to manage that. Just.

  Charging back out onto the sidewalk, Bonnie bumped into a woman hard enough to make her stagger.

  “I’m sorry, too,” the woman snarled

  Everybody was irritable. The weather.

  A male voice behind Bonnie said, “Bump into me, sweetheart.”

  She turned and saw a boy about sixteen leering at her. He wilted and backed away as she glared at him; then he walked past her and over by the curb without glancing back at her.

  If only they were all so easy to discourage.

  A dry breeze was blowing, turning the city into a convection oven. Bonnie wished to hell it would rain at least enough to cool down all the damned steel and concrete in the city. She looked up at the sky, not expecting to see a cloud. There were two small ones. They looked as dry as cotton.

  Bonnie was only a few blocks from her apartment. She walked them uneasily, unable to keep her head still, trying to catch another glimpse of the man who’d been dogging her.

  But she knew she wouldn’t see him. He was through with her for now. She hoped.

  Sal Vitali and Harold Mishkin sat in Sal’s car and watched for Joan Plunket to emerge with her not-so-secret lover, Foster Oaks, from their room at the Blue Sparrow Motel in New Jersey. They both knew the couple would emerge soon. They must.

  The detectives knew that Bob Plunket, Joan’s husband, was right now in a Manhattan hotel room with his own not-so-secret lover, his fellow accountant Laura Loodner. Laura Loodner’s husband, a jeweler named Marty, knew nothing and loved only his cat.

  It was Bob Plunket who’d hired Q&A to get the goods on his wife, Joan.

  It was Sal and Harold’s job to keep track of this marital mess. The case involved a lot of staking out, spending time in the car as they were doing now, watching and waiting. Sal hated this part of detective work. He usually drove the car. Harold usually drove him crazy.

  Like this evening, as the two men sat in Sal’s old Taurus in the Blue Sparrow parking lot and watched and watched the door to room 256. It was a maroon door, like all the others, on a catwalk that looked down on a swimming pool where four or five teenagers were frolicking. Sal had only a quarter tank of gas, so they didn’t want to roll the windows up and idle the engine so they could use the air conditioner. They sat with the windows down and were grateful for a slight, hot breeze moving through the car.

  A short man but powerfully built, Sal had been Harold’s partner in the NYPD for twelve years, where he’d fallen into the habit of looking out for the weak-stomached, sensitive Harold. The other thing about Harold was that he could be obtuse as well as brilliant, and damned aggravating. But the two men were close, like dogs that had for years gotten each other’s backs in a kennel full of biters. They were stuck with each other. Harold didn’t mind. Sal did, but he was resigned.

  The teenagers, along with Harold, were making the bored and jumpy Sal nervous with their noise. That was why Sal had parked the Taurus here, under a shade tree, still with an unbroken view of room 256, but with greatly reduced noise from the pool area. Now Sal had only Harold to endure. That was enough.

  They’d both gotten tired of listening to music on the radio, and besides, that was running down the battery, so Sal switched off the radio and they simply sat and watched and prayed for the door to 256 to open.

  “Whaddya suppose they’re doing in there?” Harold asked.

  Sal sighed. “Scrabble, most likely.” He had a voice like stones rattling around in a drum.

  “I think our client’s nuts,” Harold said. “His wife is twice the looker of that accountant chick.”

  “They work together,” Sal said. “Office romance.”

  “Both accountants.”

  “Go figure.”

  “Figure what?

  “Never mind.”

  Sal thought th
at might be the end of conversation for a while, but he heard a loud ripping sound.

  “Thought I might show you this,” Harold said. “My cousin Sedge, the one in advertising, gave me a tip, and I’m passing it on to you.”

  Sal looked over to see that Harold was wearing what looked like a black Velcro glove.

  “New product,” Harold said. “Sticky Hand. Sedge has the advertising account, and they’re going to do the stigma act on this and sell millions of them.”

  Sal said, “What in the hell is it? And what’s the stigma act?” He looked hopefully at 256. It didn’t move.

  “Sticky hand is for people with HSS.”

  Sal yawned. “Which is?”

  “Hair-shedding syndrome.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “You will soon. After the stigma campaign.”

  Sal had to admit this sort of interested him. “There’s going to be an HSS campaign?”

  “Certainly is. TV, radio, newspapers. Attractive women won’t get dates because men will notice the hair on their shoulders or arms. Hair from their own heads. They’re shedding. The guy says to his guy friend, ‘I like her, but she doesn’t turn me on. Not with that HSS.’ ”

  “Then what?”

  “Then somebody tells her about Sticky Hand and her troubles are over.”

  “My God,” Sal said.

  “But Sticky Hand has other uses. Like with Larry.”

  “Who is?”

  “Sedge’s dog. He’s a collie. Now, Larry sheds—”

  “They’re out,” Sal said. He handed the camera to Harold, who had the better angle. Joan Plunket was standing on the catwalk outside 256, which was still open. Joan made sure her blouse was tucked in, smoothed her slacks. “Get that shot,” Sal said, “when she’s rearranging her clothes.”

  “That dog sheds all over everything—”

  Foster Oaks appeared and closed the door to 256 behind him. His suit coat was tossed over his shoulder, like he was Frank Sinatra. He impulsively leaned down and kissed Joan Plunket on the lips. Used his free hand to caress her breast.

  “Get that!” Sal said. “Get that one, Harold!”

  “The average person sheds eighty hairs per day,” Harold said. “Everyone will be ashamed to have HSS. Everyone will shed approximately eighty hairs per day. Approximately everyone will buy a Sticky Hand.”