Twist

by John Lutz

  After eating, they had coffee, neither mentioning the apple pie.

  She studied him. “You’re not one of the homeless.”

  “Didn’t say I was. But matter of fact, right now, I am.”

  “Oh?”

  “I was subletting. Well, borrowing, actually. An old friend let me stay in his apartment while he was in London on business. He unexpectedly returned yesterday, with a British lady love.”

  “And you were a third wheel.”

  “ ’Fraid so. It was sickening to be around them, anyway.”

  Dora drummed with her fingernails on the side of her coffee cup, thinking. The prospect of dying wasn’t so appealing now. Sometimes things were meant not to happen.

  Not to say there was a God, necessarily.

  But something.

  24

  Chillicothe, Missouri, 2000

  Things could happen, if you were patient and waited for the opportunity. Dreams as well as nightmares could be real.

  Sixteen-year-old Dred “Squeaky” Gant sat alone in a ten-by-ten-foot visiting room and waited. He was in a plain oak chair, facing the table, also oak, and an identical chair, now empty. Both chairs and the table were bolted to the concrete beneath the gray tile floor. Overhead was a fluorescent light fixture encased in heavy wire. There was a single window in the room, but it faced out on another room that appeared slightly distorted because of the thick, shatter-proof glass. The walls were painted institutional pale green. The institution was the Chillicothe Correctional Center, a state prison for women in Chillicothe, Missouri. The room was uncomfortably warm. Dred was especially warm because he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt even though it was well into May.

  Dred’s mother, Mildred Gant, had stolen nine hundred dollars cash from an auctioneer. It was money he’d received for an antique knock-down wardrobe. He’d made the mistake of leaving his office with the roll of bills exposed on his desk. He’d called the police immediately, and the money had been found beneath the seat of Mildred’s parked van. It had still been tucked into an envelope with the auctioneer’s name and address on it.

  That would have been serious enough, but Mildred had jumped into the van and tried to drive it away, seriously injuring a highway patrolman in the process. It appeared that she’d swerved deliberately and tried to run him down.

  A pubic defender in Jefferson City had helped Mildred plea bargain her sentence down to twenty years.

  Though Mildred retained custody of Dred, he was now living in a foster home, along with four other foster children. The farm couple who ran things there worked the five foster children, but not unduly hard. Dred was becoming used to the place at last, and had even begun to speak, though in abbreviated sentences that were mostly mumbled.

  The problem was that he’d become restless there. Nothing ever really happened, unless you counted the corn growing. He’d been considering running away, but that wasn’t a practical solution. While in the foster home before this one, he’d been accidentally shot in the thigh while he was stealing eggs to sell to a pig farmer’s wife down the road. He thought the egg farmer, a man he’d lived with and worked for, had shot him on purpose. It was only a .22 long rifle bullet, but it had lodged in his thigh, been removed by a doctor who was usually drunk, and left him with a slight limp.

  When Mildred had been told about the “accident,” she’d said not to bother her with such news unless the wound was fatal.

  Today was the third time Dred had come to the prison for a visit with his mother. The pig farmer’s wife, a wiry, hard-eyed little woman named Irma, had driven him in the family pickup truck and now waited in the prison’s main building for the visit to be ended.

  A slight sound made Dred look up.

  The door opened and Mildred entered. She had on a drab prison outfit that looked like it should be on a man. Her straight dark hair was stiff and slicked back, but dangled down over one ear. She wore no makeup. None had ever worked an improvement, anyway.

  A large uniformed guard with massive hands accompanied her. He watched in that detached way of guards everywhere while she slid into the chair opposite Dred’s. The guard fastened and locked the handcuffs on her wrists to an iron ring bolted into the table, so she could barely move her hands and could stand up only halfway. She posed no danger now.

  The guard left the room, closing the door behind him. He almost immediately reappeared outside the window and stood watching the room’s two occupants.

  Mildred sat staring at Dred, noticing the way he was looking at her.

  “Ain’t I pretty?” she said, with a gap-toothed grin. She’d lost a front tooth two weeks ago in a scuffle with another prisoner.

  Dred said nothing.

  Mildred sneered at him. “Heard you was shot. You okay?”

  “Healed up, mostly.”

  “You been behavin’, after that, I trust,” said Mildred.

  “Been trying,” Dred said.

  “I suspect it learned you a lesson.”

  Beneath the table, he began fidgeting with his left shirt cuff, using the fingers of his right hand.

  “How those folks you’re livin’ with been treatin’ you?” Mildred asked. “Other than shootin’ at your sorry ass?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “Social workers or the like ever come around?”

  “They do. I don’t talk to them unless they ask a question, then I don’t say much. Like you told me.”

  He could smell his mother’s stale perspiration, feel the heat emanating from her bulky, sweaty body.

  She tucked in her chin and hunched a shoulder to absorb perspiration from around her eye.

  She gave him another grin. “You miss your old mom?”

  “Time to time, I do.”

  Dred continued kneading his shirt cuff with his right hand. Visitors had to endure a body search when they arrived at the prison. It was feared that they might slip something dangerous or illegal to the prisoners.

  That wasn’t exactly what Dred had had in mind. No one had noticed the flexible, string-thin jigsaw blade inserted out of sight in the rough material of his shirt sleeve and cuff.

  “I get outta here,” Mildred said, “and we can pick up where we left off.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “First thing’ll be to make sure that auctioneer, Larry, is sorry enough he crossed me that he won’t do it again.” She turned her head for a second and spat on the floor. “You be thinkin’ about that.”

  “Sure will.”

  Something narrow and silver appeared below a tiny hole in Dred’s left shirt cuff. The fingers of his right hand continued to manipulate against his thumb, gradually working the jigsaw blade out from between layers of material.

  “You don’t slip back into your lazy habits while I’m gone, you hear?” his mother said.

  “I never been lazy.”

  Mildred blinked, slightly surprised by his positive statement. It wasn’t like Dred to disagree with her even slightly. He should know better. Definitely he would need retraining.

  Beneath the shirt cuff the slender silver jigsaw blade protruded, under the table where the guard couldn’t see it. It was about a foot long, supple, and finely sawtoothed. When drawn taut in the frame of a saw, it could swivel and cut fine patterns in wood. Gripped at the final inch, where Dred held it tightly between thumb and forefinger, it dangled down like a whip, with more spring and flexibility than a hickory switch.

  “I get outta here, you better believe you’re gonna get a talkin’ to,” Mildred said.

  “I don’t believe so, ma’am.”

  “There are such things as parole,” Mildred said.

  “Not for you, ma’am.”

  She looked at him curiously. He stared back at her in a new way, without fear. More like with a deadpan decisiveness, as if he’d flat made up his mind about something. There was a tiny bright glint in his right eye, like a bit of broken glass catching the light.

  “I hope you’re not thinkin’ about—”

/>   Dred drew the supple jigsaw blade up and back as he leaned across the table. He slashed with the blade. Blood flew from Mildred’s face and splattered against the window. On the other side of the thick glass, the guard was standing with his jaw dropped, momentarily frozen by surprise.

  Mildred struggled to get up and defend herself, trying desperately to avoid the whipping, slashing blade. But her wrists were cuffed firmly to the table. She couldn’t even stand all the way up. Couldn’t get her head, her face, out of harm’s way.

  The supple blade continued to slash, back and forth, whipping across mouth, nose, and eyes, leaving horrible, gaping wounds. Dred could see the white glisten of teeth and bone.

  He hardly noticed the door flying open and the guard rushing in. Heard the guard say, “Ow! Goddamn it!” as the blade caught his arm.

  He managed to grab Dred’s wrist, slender but strong, and twist his arm back.

  Dred dropped the whipping, bloody blade.

  Across from him, Mildred was still seated, screaming over and over, her hands cuffed close to the table and stiffened in grotesque claws.

  “Holy Christ!” the guard said.

  A loud alarm bell began to ring.

  “Get a doctor in here!” the guard was yelling.

  Mildred continued to scream, staring with one bulging eye at Dred through a curtain of blood.

  “A doctor!”

  Dred thought that, what with the screams and the clanging bell, it would be a while before anybody heard the guard.

  He wished he hadn’t dropped the flexible steel whip.

  He’d rather be making good use of his time.

  25

  New York City, the present

  “And he became Muhammad Ali,” the forgettable-lookin g guy with the sax said.

  They were still in the diner on Sixth Avenue, the one with the autographed Olympic athlete photographs on the wall. Somebody must have ordered something with fried bacon. The scent of it filled the air.

  Dora made a little Oh with her lips. “Him, I’ve heard of.” She sipped at her third cup of coffee and looked out the window at the increasing pedestrian traffic streaming past. So many people. So many strangers. That’s what made the city so lonely. Right now, her loneliness was like a knife. She knew that was why she was pursuing an acquaintanceship with this man, but she continued anyway. “We never did introduce ourselves. I’m Dora.”

  “We using just first names?”

  “For now, yes.”

  “Okay. I’m Brad.”

  She considered. “Nice name.”

  “So’s yours. It must mean something.”

  “It’s an old Romanian name meaning gift.”

  “I was thinking more like ‘open the Dora.’ ”

  Dora was in sales, so she understood people and had met all kinds. This one was trying to keep her off balance with what, in his mind, passed for wit and charm. The problem was, knowing that about him didn’t keep him from succeeding with his dumb-ass humor.

  He did have a certain heavy-handed wit and charm. Dora couldn’t deny that.

  “You told me you were a saxophone player,” she said. “I never mentioned what I did.”

  “You’re an aviatrix, I’ll bet.”

  “No, I’m a real estate agent here in Manhattan. Do you know what that means?”

  “You’re broke?”

  “I meant what else it means?”

  He sipped and swallowed the last of his coffee. Smiled. “I give up.”

  Like hell you do. “It means you’re not actually homeless. Or dependent on your friend with the new British lover. But all that doesn’t matter.”

  He seemed interested. “How so?”

  “It also means I have a master key to the lockboxes of condo and co-op units all over the city. That’s so I can show the units if the owners are at work, or playing, or out of town.” She smiled. “Some of the units are furnished and unoccupied, and have been for a long time.”

  Brad touched his fingertips together lightly, as if to check and see if they all matched with their counterparts on the other hand. “Is what I’m thinking you’re thinking legal?”

  “Sure. Long as you’re a prospective buyer and I’m showing you the apartment.”

  “But what if we’re caught . . . making ourselves at home there?”

  “Whoever walked in on us would think I’m trying really hard to sell you the unit.”

  Brad looked thoughtful and absently used one hand to play with his spoon that had been resting on the table, unused near what was left of his black coffee.

  “The honest truth is,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about buying an apartment in Manhattan.”

  She gave him a knowing grin. The honest truth.

  “Have been thinking about it for the last ten minutes,” he said. “I’d like for my real estate agent to show me something.”

  “What are your preferences?”

  “We talking real estate?”

  “For now.”

  “Something vacant and furnished, where we wouldn’t be disturbed.”

  “I think I’ve got exactly what you need.”

  “We still on real estate?”

  “I’ll take you by and show you the apartment,” she said. “Then you can make up your mind.”

  “I think,” he said, “it’s already made up.”

  She paid at the counter while he left a tip, placed his Mets cap back on his head, and slid out of the booth with his saxophone case in one hand, the sack with the apple pie from the farmer’s market in the other.

  She held the pie while he went into a liquor store and bought a bottle of wine.

  The condo was on West Fifty-seventh Street, in a pre-war building that had been completely rebuilt except for an ornate stone entrance. There was a key pad off to the side, near one of the glass double doors that were topped with brass arches.

  Dora had memorized the simple five-number key code. She pressed buttons on the pad, and the door on the right clicked open a few inches. Brad started to open the door all the way for them, but he was holding his sax case and the bag containing the wine. Dora closed her hand around the brushed metal grip and held the door open. She was used to doing that for clients, and on a certain level was pretending that she was showing this apartment to a potential buyer. It helped her to believe there should be no trouble in doing something impulsive and, some would say, outrageous.

  The lobby was done in pink marble and more brass. The elevators were centered in what looked like flat brass ovals overlaid in an open fan design.

  “Swank,” Brad commented. Actually thinking the lobby was overdone.

  Dora was obviously glad he was impressed. “Swank as I could make it when it came to a building without a doorman.”

  He didn’t question her about why they didn’t want a doorman on the premises. It was best if they got upstairs and into the apartment without being seen, if they intended to be secret tenants for a night.

  Possibly more than one night, Dora thought. She was a romantic and a dreamer.

  A man in his sixties, wearing a gray suit and black beret, entered the lobby not far behind them. He nodded to them but other than that didn’t acknowledge them, as the three of them got in an elevator. Dora pressed the six button. The man in the gray suit reached in front of her and pressed the button for the tenth floor. Brad stood at parade rest and fixed his gaze on the floor indicator above the doors sliding.

  The man in the gray suit did likewise, and paid little attention to them as they left the elevator on the sixth floor.

  “It’s a big building,” Dora said, leading Brad along the carpeted hall. “Nobody pays much attention to anyone else. It’s not like it was on Seinfeld.”

  “The real New York,” Brad said.

  “There is no one real New York. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.”

  “Deep,” Brad said.

  Dora laughed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be.”

  “When we get inside, I’ll open the win
e and we can take care of that.”

  “Maybe I get deeper the more I drink,” she said.

  “That would be interesting,” Brad said.

  Dora glanced at him to reassure herself. She saw an ordinary-looking guy, harmless. Even if he did get a little kinky, she was sure she could handle him. Besides, what was wrong with a little kinky?

  She used her master key on the agency lockbox that held a door key and prevented the knob from turning. When she’d removed the metal lockbox, she put it in her purse and opened the door.

  The apartment greeted them with the silence and stillness of a place that had been sealed up for a while.

  “How long’s this unit been on the market?” Brad asked.

  “Too long. The owner won’t come down on price.”

  “I won’t even ask how much it is,” Brad said. He stood a few feet inside the closed door and glanced around. The walls were white, with framed prints of impressionist paintings. Monet’s water lilies calmed the spirit. Van Gogh and Brad exchanged a glance. Both mad.

  “Hardly anyone inquires about this unit anymore,” Dora said, “but the best thing—for us—is that the owner is in London and probably isn’t going to return to New York, ever. Imagine—he doesn’t like this place.” She made a sweeping motion with her arm.

  The furniture was traditional, a low cream-colored sofa, matching chairs with reading lamps on stalks peeking over them, a long walnut coffee table, blue and red cushions stacked before a fireplace containing fake logs.

  “Other than that there are no clothes in the closet, it’s like somebody still lives here,” Dora said. “Dishes, flatware, and glasses are still in the kitchen. Somebody with a lot of money could move right in.”

  “Somebody has,” Brad said, grinning. “At least for a while.”

  “I’ll go wash my face,” Dora said, “while you open the wine.”

  Moving closer, he kissed the tip of her nose. “Good plan.”

  He put down his saxophone case on the floor, and the apple pie on a nearby end table, and watched her walk into a hall that presumably led to a bathroom and at least one bedroom. Carrying the brown bag that contained the wine bottle, he went into the kitchen.