Twist

by John Lutz

  When the heat became almost intolerable, Mildred would strip until she wore only her baggy shorts and a red sweatband. Her shirt she would use as a rag to sop sweat from her broad face. The boy worked only in his white Jockey shorts, which had long ago turned gray. He worked . . . worked . . . worked until his fingers bled.

  When the rocker seat was finished, Mildred stood with her hands on her hips and surveyed it. The boy watched her intently, trying to read something in her features.

  As usual, her expression gave him no clue.

  “Here, here, and here,” she said, pointing three times with a blunt finger. “It ain’t for shit!” She gripped Squeaky’s shoulders and shook him. “Can you do better?”

  His head felt as if it might snap off his neck.

  “I can do better!” he squeaked.

  She dabbed at her forehead with her wadded shirt, then got pruning shears from where they lay next to the jug on the wooden shelf.

  In a fury she snipped and struck and bent and snapped the recently woven cane until the chair was in worse condition than when they’d started working on it.

  “There’s plenty more cane in there,” she said, pointing to a long cardboard box set against a wall. “See what you can do with it. I’m gonna check at lunch time, you hear?” She slapped him on the cheek to emphasize her words.

  “I hear,” he said softly, then again, louder, to be sure that she’d heard.

  “You don’t do it good enough, you’re gonna sit in the shit house till dark, you understand?”

  “Understand.”

  He hated it when she locked him in the wooden outhouse, especially if it was still daylight. He could see out through the spaces between the vertical slats, but the cracks also let the wasps in. There were also plenty of flies, the big ones people called horseflies. They could bite you, and it hurt. But he feared the wasps more than anything, and it seemed he was always recovering from a bad sting somewhere on his body.

  He would sit on the wooden bench with its circular hole and try not to breathe the foul odor from below, or to hear the ceaseless buzzing of the flies, and the more militant drone of the wasps. It was the stench, along with the heat, that attracted the wasps, he was sure.

  They weren’t so bad once it got dark, around the time he’d see the woman coming to release him, wearing her flowing nightgown so white in the night, lifting her Coleman gas lamp high in one hand so she wouldn’t trip over the paving stones that were laid unevenly on her way to unlock the outhouse door.

  Usually a beating with her leather belt followed his release from the outhouse, but it was so much better than the wasps that Squeaky almost welcomed it.

  But right now it was a long time till evening.

  “Take a swig of water,” she told him.

  He did.

  “Chore time.” Mildred hefted herself up the wooden stairs, into the light of high morning. Against the clear blue sky she looked as huge as a storybook goddess, towering above him.

  Then the storm cellar doors clanged closed and he was in dimness.

  Mildred hoisted one of the steel-clad doors back up part way and stuck a block of wood under it so it would stay open about six inches, letting in light and air. The heavy chain clattered as she fed it through the handles, then fastened it with the padlock.

  There was no way out for the boy, and he knew that.

  There was no way out.

  Patiently, he used the back of his thumb to rub sweat from his eyes, then he began working again with the cane.

  He did know he was becoming more skillful, and he took a certain pride in that.

  One of his mother’s favorite homilies stuck at the fore of his mind. A job worth doing . . .

  14

  New York City, the present

  It was odd the way she met the guy.

  Connie Mason was drinking alone in Jill’s Joint, a Village club with a sixties theme. Jefferson Airplane was doing background music from the big Bose speakers angled downward around the walls where they met the ceiling. Grace Slick, singing her heart out. Not loudly, though, which was a shame. Grace was made for loud.

  The fact was that many of Jill’s Joint patrons had actually lived the sixties and now were in the country of the old, where softer music often prevailed.

  As for Connie, she was twenty-six and barely noticed the music, and thought Grace Slick was some kind of television sitcom or reality star who was branching out.

  A man at the bar, younger than many of the drinkers, caught Connie’s attention. She was mildly interested. Not that he looked like a winner. It was more that he didn’t look like an obvious loser. At best he was average looking.

  She reassessed with a mind dulled by vodka.

  Well, no, he was better than average looking. Why was that?

  She openly scrutinized the man, which didn’t seem to affect him. He returned her stare with a sort of neutral one of his own.

  There was nothing you could say was wrong with him. He had regular features, was average height and weight. He had brown hair with a part on the left, and was dressed well enough in gray slacks and a black blazer. Not a memorable-looking guy, but one you didn’t immediately look away from. If he were a tune he’d be Muzak.

  But there was something else about him that had snagged Connie’s attention. The woman he was with at the bar was blond, like Connie, and not overweight but kind of on the plump side. Plump in the right places, that is. Connie automatically compared: she, Connie, had a better turn of ankle than the woman at the bar, a slimmer waist, lusher hair—and she wouldn’t have been caught dead in the green dress the woman was wearing. Green did nothing for her color other than make her look like a zombie.

  All of this in a glance.

  Connie decided she and the woman might be the same type, but it was Connie who won every comparison. The other woman looked like her frumpy country cousin.

  Not that Connie actually had a frumpy country—or city—cousin.

  As she watched, the man smiled at the woman he was with, touched the back of her hand, then seemed to excuse himself.

  Uh-oh.

  He was walking directly toward Connie.

  Connie wished she were somewhere else.

  I was too obvious. Made an ass of myself.

  She was glad she’d had enough vodka to dull her embarrassment somewhat.

  While she stared, he sat down easily across from her at her table, as if she’d invited him. She resisted smiling back at him. It wasn’t easy. This was such an obvious trade-up from the woman at the bar, who now was pointedly facing away and paying no attention to either of them.

  “You invited me over,” he said.

  Connie kept a straight face. “I don’t remember that.”

  He gave her the same smile he’d given the woman at the bar just before leaving her. It was a smile that said he could do pretty much what he pleased, and she wouldn’t mind. He leaned slightly toward Connie. “When two people like us meet, we should discuss it.”

  “Discuss what?”

  “Why we’re meeting.”

  She grinned. “That would be because you’ve got the chutzpah to walk over here and pretend fate has drawn us to each other.”

  “If fate hasn’t provided us with each other, what am I doing here?”

  “I would say it’s because I appeal to you more than the woman you were chatting up at the bar.”

  He laughed. “Talk about chutzpah! She happens to be my sister.”

  “Is that the truth?”

  “Of course not. What are you drinking?”

  “Vodka and water on the rocks.”

  “Enjoy it while you can. I hear this place is soon going to become a health drink oasis.”

  “You gotta be kidding.”

  “Nope. A lot of bars are going to convert. They’ll get a big tax rebate. It’s part of some pet project of the mayor’s. He wants New Yorkers to be healthier.”

  “Than who?”

  “I don’t know. The Russians? The Chines
e? Texans? It’s not a bad idea. For the public good. Your glass is almost empty. May I buy you another?”

  “My glass is one quarter full.”

  “Such incredible optimism.” He signaled to the bartender for another round. Connie saw that he was drinking what looked like scotch or bourbon on the rocks.

  “I didn’t say you may,” Connie told him.

  “I read your mind.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to embarrass you.”

  The bartender came out from behind the bar and delivered their fresh drinks. She left his half-full glass and removed Connie’s nearly empty one.

  He raised his drink as if in toast and said, “My name is Brad.”

  “Your name is bullshit,” Connie said. But she touched her glass to his. “I’m Connie.”

  He smiled at her. “Nice name. And mine really is Brad. I won’t tell you my last name, though. It’s too early in our relationship for that.”

  “True,” Connie said. “We wouldn’t want to be able to look each other up in the phone book.”

  “Or on Facebook.”

  They both sipped. He looked at her with eyes she’d thought were blue but in the reflected light of an illuminated beer sign might be brown.

  Connie didn’t look away.

  “Chutzpah and fate,” she said. “They’re pretty much the same thing.”

  “Very often,” Brad said.

  They stared at each other for a few minutes more in frank appraisal.

  “Yours,” he said, finally. “Mine’s a mess.”

  “We talking places?”

  “Places.”

  “Mine’s a mess, too.”

  “I knew that. I was too polite to mention it. We thinking of the same solution to our problem?”

  “Yes.”

  “That would involve leaving here together,” he said.

  “We just got fresh drinks.”

  “Two sips, then we’ll go.”

  So obvious. “Will the lady at the bar who isn’t your sister be miffed?” she asked.

  “I see no lady. I see no bar. I see only you.”

  “Do I look . . . healthy?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  She let him register them at the Barrington Hotel. It was a decent enough place, not far off Times Square. There were lots of potted palms in the lobby, and a huge chandelier that looked like the one in Phantom of the Opera.

  Connie, who had finished her third only slightly watered down vodka at Jill’s Joint, stood silently nearby and let him register at the desk. She watched and listened. One night. Brad Wilson and wife. Connie had to smile. Brad Wilson. She hoped he’d have a better imagination than that when they got upstairs. She watched as he filled in his “wife’s” name on the registration card. Mildred. That made her think of the famous bitch in that old movie, Mildred Pierce.

  As they ascended in the elevator, she thought he could have at least made it “Millie.”

  15

  Fedderman had a boring assignment, but he knew from experience that he’d better not be bored.

  He had no trouble staying close to Carlie Clark when she left her apartment and subwayed and walked to work. But he was careful. He didn’t want Quinn’s niece—or whatever she was—to glance back, not recognize him, and suspect that he, Fedderman, might be stalking her. Also, if she didn’t know he was watching over her, she’d be less likely to give him away and prevent him from latching on to the real stalker. If there was a real stalker.

  Fedderman watched Carlie enter an office building near the Flatiron Building. It was an old building with a red granite face. Two white marble steps led to a tinted glass entry beneath an art deco fresco. The building had a clean, ordered look, as if it had just been rehabbed but had chosen to return to the thirties rather than be up to date. Inside the building was Carlie’s employer, Bold Designs Ltd.

  In the increasing heat, Fedderman stood on the sunlit sidewalk across the street for a while and watched to see if anyone else was hanging around who might have tailed Carlie to work. He tried to pinpoint someone average looking. It seemed that all the years he’d been a cop he’d been searching for suspects who were “average” in every respect, because that’s the way witnesses often described them. Fedderman had long ago come to the conclusion that your average person didn’t appear at all average.

  The thought made him smile. He would have to mention it to his wife, Penny, this evening, see if he could get a yuk out of her. Yuks didn’t come so easy these days.

  When he decided he’d seen enough of the average comings and goings in front of the building entrance, Fedderman walked across the street and pushed through the revolving door into the refreshingly cool lobby. As he did so, he noted a brass plaque informing him that he was entering the Mangor Building.

  The lobby was spacious and high ceilinged, with lots of veined gray marble that probably dated back to the thirties, or maybe the twenties, when the building had been constructed. There were slowly revolving paddle fans here and there, dangling from the ceiling like lazy spiders, not moving much air but adding a lot to the ambience. Off to the left was an office directory beneath glass, in a narrow silver frame. To the right of the directory were three polished steel elevator doors. Above each door was an art deco arrow that indicated what floor the elevator was on. Nothing digitalized here. Fedderman wouldn’t have been surprised if Sam Spade and Kasper Gutman appeared. The elevators were busy, under the heavy usage of men and women in office attire. There was no sign of a doorman or security guard.

  Or Carlie.

  Fedderman checked the directory and saw that Bold Designs Ltd., was on the twelfth floor. He walked over, pressed an already glowing UP button, and waited.

  When the elevator arrived it was empty. Fedderman stepped aside for a woman who’d been waiting close behind him. He seemed to have lost his place in some kind of pecking order. Immediately half a dozen other people, most of them no doubt employed in offices above, stepped around him and filed into the elevator. Fedderman edged back into the herd, sneaked an arm between two fellow elevator passengers, and pressed the twelve button.

  He was the only one who got out on twelve. Another, smaller directory on the wall indicated the offices on that floor. Bold Designs was the third one on his right.

  Here Fedderman got lucky. Visible through a large lettered glass door was Carlie, standing and talking to a man and a woman who were behind the long, curved surface of a reception desk. He was looking at her from behind but was reasonably sure she was Carlie. When she turned slightly, laughing at something the man said, Fedderman got a clear look at her profile and was positive.

  Safe in your nest.

  He returned to the lobby and went back outside. The sidewalks were still crowded, and the morning was heating up robustly, as if trying for some kind of record. Fedderman crossed at the corner and entered a pastry shop he’d noticed. It was reasonably cool in there.

  Though he’d already had breakfast, he went to the counter and ordered a cheese Danish and a cup of coffee. He found a booth by the window from which he could keep an eye on the Mangor Building entrance. The lobby didn’t go through to the next block, so if Carlie left the building he’d see her. Quinn had told him that, once inside, she probably wouldn’t emerge until lunchtime.

  Still, there was always a chance things would change. That the unexpected would happen. He wanted to be ready. So he sat patiently, a cup of coffee before him that he barely sipped, along with an uneaten Danish. Like a hunter intent on his snare.

  At ten-thirty, Fedderman gave up. It had been unlikely anyway that Carlie would leave and be followed by her stalker.

  Yet not all that unlikely, he told himself. If she actually was being stalked, the sicko would most likely latch on to her either leaving her apartment or her place of employment.

  Or he might be waiting and watching somewhere, just like Fedderman.

  Fedderman slid out of the booth and stood up. His body was stiff, his b
ack slightly sore. He reflected that stakeouts were a younger man’s game.

  The suspicion was beginning to sneak in that the same might be said of life in general.

  He left a generous tip, then paid at the register and went back outside to cross the street and enter the Mangor Building.

  It was time to make his presence known to Carlie.

  It would be good to instill some confidence in her, surprising her with the fact that he’d provided security for her from her apartment and had staked out her office building. She hadn’t noticed him, even though they’d briefly met. She would be impressed, and would comply all the easier with any request.

  As before, the Mangor Building lobby was refreshingly cool by contrast. The rush to occupy offices and cubicles was over. There was an elevator waiting at lobby level with open door. Fedderman stepped inside and pressed the button for twelve.

  As he was doing this, the elevator alongside his reached the lobby and three passengers emerged. One of them was a man in a neat gray suit, white shirt, pink and gray tie. His black shoes were buffed to a high gloss. He looked like a mid-level management guy. A typical executive.

  Very average.

  The door to Fedderman’s elevator slid closed before the man became visible to him.

  Oddly, Carlie was back at the reception desk, where she could be seen from the twelfth-floor hall. The same man and woman were behind the desk. The man was African American, beefy, in a sharply tailored chalk-stripe blue suit. The woman was petite, with spectacularly piled brown hair that, with her high-heeled shoes, added about a foot to her height. They were all staring at something on the reception desk. As Fedderman watched, Carlie pointed at the object of their concentration. The woman behind the desk shook her head no. The man placed his fists on his hips.

  Fedderman opened the heavy glass door and entered the anteroom. Behind the curved desk was a doorway open to a hall leading to more offices. On the wall, too high to have been visible from the hall, were neat block letters reading Bold Designs Limited.