Twist

by John Lutz

  Quinn considered lighting one of his Cubans, to help him think this over. If he opened one of the tall dining room windows looking out on West Seventy-fifth Street, and sat near it so the smoke would escape outside, would Pearl still know?

  Probably.

  Quinn sat cigarless, staring at the clutter of the files’ contents, wondering what Renz knew. Renz was tight with the feds, in his Machiavellian way.

  His cell phone chirped and he dug it out of a pocket. He saw that it was Sal calling. The Sal and Harold team was keeping a loose watch on Carlie.

  Quinn switched on the phone. “Whaddya got, Sal?”

  “Carlie and Jody are in a place called Twiggy’s on Varick, kind of a pick-up health-drink bar.” Sal’s voice was made even raspier by the tiny cell phone.

  “A pick-me-up health—like a juice bar?” Quinn was trying to understand that.

  “Literally, I guess yes. It’s part of a pilot project. The mayor wants there eventually to be at least one every ten blocks or so. Keep New Yorkers healthy. They seem to be popping up all over the place. You haven’t noticed?”

  “No.”

  “Anyway, the two girls have been here a while, sipping drinks that look like they’re mostly fruit juice.”

  “A health-drink bar? Really?” This city, this mayor, had the capacity to keep surprising Quinn.

  “Health-drink pick-up. That’s the word on it with folks who wanna—you know, hook up romantically and physically.”

  “Jesus! Sex and asparagus.”

  “Well, I thought you oughta know. Carlie and Jody don’t seem to be here looking for romantic possibilities. They’re minding their own business. They chased away a couple of nerdy-looking guys, ten, fifteen minutes ago, who had drinks with what looked like sprigs of vine dangling from them. Seems to me the girls are just relaxing with a couple of sprout drinks. On their second round, is all.”

  “I don’t like it,” Quinn said.

  “It’s just another one of the mayor’s pilot programs. Like the fire hydrant taxi stop thing. Probably nothing’ll come of it. You know what I mean.”

  “I was thinking about Jody and Carlie.”

  “Yeah. Thing is, the place isn’t an opium den. And the girls act like old friends gabbing at each other. That’s all that’s going on here, Quinn.” Sal waited a beat. “ ’Course, I can do something about it, if that’s what you want.”

  “I don’t know that you could do much, Sal. They’re both adults. They’d probably both be pissed off if you interfered with them.”

  “That’s what I figured you’d say. How about I don’t do anything overt, but I keep an eye on the situation? I’ll turn it over to Harold when he shows?”

  “Do that, Sal. And let me know if either one of them . . . hooks up.”

  “Sure. I’ll call you right off.”

  Quinn broke the connection. Girls! Women! He had to remind himself that Jody and Carlie weren’t a couple of kids. He saw them that way sometimes, but he knew he was wrong. One was a retail designer, the other an attorney. He was lucky they listened to him at all. Or to Pearl.

  Sometimes all of life seemed to be a goddamned conundrum.

  He told himself that Jody and Carlie would be okay with Sal and Harold looking after them. Then he sat at the table, staring at the Dred Gant files’ contents, trying to determine what information he might put to use. It could help if he located an auctioneer who’d dealt with either Mildred or Dred, or both. He remembered a name in the file, and started shuffling papers looking for it. An auctioneer in Missouri. Vernon something . . .

  Vernon Casey.

  That was it. He soon found the folded flyer, printed in the nineties, advertising the auctioning off of a farm house and barn’s contents in Missouri. Vernon Casey had been the auctioneer. There was a black and white photograph of him, a man with cherubic features, grinning with his mouth open wide as if emitting a loud volume. He was wielding a gavel like a judge about to adjourn court. He didn’t look like a young man. Quinn hoped he was still alive, and that he knew something about Mildred or Dred.

  He checked on Facebook and Twitter and found nothing on Casey. That would have been too easy.

  When he phoned the Missouri State Police he had better luck. Casey was still alive, and still auctioneering. He lived and worked in and around Columbia, Missouri, a city of about a hundred thousand in central Missouri. Quinn thought that was where the state university was located.

  He got Casey’s home and work phone numbers. Then he glanced at the kitchen wall clock. Missouri was an hour behind New York. It was still early enough to try to get in touch with Vernon Casey.

  He used his cell to call Casey’s home number.

  Harold had relieved a weary Sal. Now he sat almost out of sight at the far end of the bar in Twiggy’s Health Drinks and watched Jody and Carlie. They amazed Harold. These two barely knew each other, yet they found endless things to talk about. Even from where he sat he could see that they were interrupting each other, so eager were they to trade information and viewpoints.

  They seemed to be having a good time, and Harold could be sure they weren’t the slightest bit tipsy. Judging by their drinks, they were mostly in danger of imbibing too much vitamin D.

  At least Harold wouldn’t have to call Quinn and report that his sort-of daughter and his niece were inebriated. They wouldn’t be driving anyway. They’d met here after taking the subway to the stop three blocks away, and then walked. Harold presumed they’d go home the same way in reverse.

  It occurred to Harold that the subway must have saved a lot of lives. Imagine thousands of DUIs behind private car steering wheels, jousting with all those taxis. Pure chaos. Maybe the mayor had something, with his fruit-and-veggie juice bar project. Harold sipped the strawberry-avocado-almond drink he’d been nursing, thinking about the ratio of people who’d avoided fatal car crashes to the people who’d fallen or were pushed beneath the wheels of subway trains.

  While he was considering this and trying with his tongue to force a morsel of almond from between his teeth, he noticed in the corner of his vision a figure approaching Jody and Carlie’s table. An average kind of guy, not bad looking but not a matinee idol. Conservative haircut. Dressed well enough—gray slacks, white shirt with no tie, and the top button unfastened, blue blazer. Average size. Nice smile. He was casually holding a half-full glass of something green in his right hand. The thing about him was, there was nothing off-putting about him. He was too average to be threatening.

  Harold stopped thinking about subways and car crashes.

  41

  Quinn sat at his desk, his chair eased over so there was a direct breeze on him from the air conditioner, and worked the landline phone. The struggling window unit was picking up a scent from out on the street, sweet, occasionally cloying. Probably some overripe trash that hadn’t yet been collected by the city. Garbage and commerce. New York.

  He couldn’t reach Vernon Casey at either his home or work number. He assumed the work number was a cell phone.

  He tried the home number again, and this time a woman answered.

  “I’m trying to get in touch with Vernon Casey, the auctioneer,” Quinn said, after the woman had said hello.

  “You’ve gotten in touch with his wife,” the woman said. “I can give you his work number.”

  “I tried there and got voice mail.”

  “What’s this about? If it’s business, I should be able to help you whether you’re wanting to buy or to sell. Been working in those capacities for Vernon for years.”

  “Neither,” Quinn said. “I’m a detective in New York, and some information was given to me by Harlan Wilcoxen.”

  There was a long silence.

  “New York?”

  “The one on the Hudson.”

  “Where everything’s expensive.”

  Quinn smiled. “Do you or your husband, Vernon, know Harlan?” He thought it best to proceed on a first-name basis.

  “ ’Course we do. Have for years. I
’m Wanda, incidentally. I ain’t seen Harlan Wilcoxen in a coon’s age. How is he?”

  “How well did you know him, Wanda?”

  “I don’t much like that question, nor the tense nor tone you asked it in. Has something happened to Harlan?”

  “I’m afraid so. He—”

  “Hold up,” Wanda Casey said. She sounded apprehensive. “Jus’ hold up, please. I’m gonna let you converse with my husband.”

  Quinn listened to them talking in the background but couldn’t make out what they were saying. There was the sound of movement, of paper rattling.

  A deep male voice said, “I’m Vernon Casey, Detective . . . Quinn, is it?”

  “It is,” Quinn said.

  “You with the NYPD?”

  “Yes.” The short answer.

  “Now what’s this about Harlan?”

  Quinn told him.

  Vernon Casey didn’t say anything for a while, then said, “Lord almighty!”

  “How well did you know Harlan?” Quinn asked.

  “Well enough. He was a U.S. marshal where we lived in Bland County some years back. Pretty much the law there. If you knew Harlan, then you know what I mean. Haven’t seen him in years.”

  “What about Mildred Gant or her son, Dred?”

  “Now them I recall real well. Dred never said much. Acted kinda withdrawn. Smart as a whip, though, you could tell.”

  “So how did you know Mildred?”

  “She bought and sold antiques. Got real good at it, too. Made some money ’cause she was no dummy. She knew real antiques from the merely collectible or plain junk. Real aggressive bidder. I liked that about her, but that was the only thing I liked.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She didn’t treat her boy real well. He had bruises sometimes that came from more than falling off his bicycle. I wasn’t the only one that thought that. Marshal Wilcoxen did, too. But he couldn’t do a thing about it without proof. And most everybody knew Mildred wasn’t the sort who’d leave proof lying around. Harlan didn’t like doing nothing about it, but that was all he could do—nothing. Nobody else would help. Wasn’t nobody in the county wanted to lock horns with Mildred Gant. She’s a real spitfire. Last I heard, she was in prison. That in New York?”

  “Chillicothe,” Quinn said. “She cheated some people having to do with antiques, then ran over a state trooper and damn near killed him.”

  “Yeah, we heard about that. Antiquers talk amongst themselves. She was bold as brass when it came to going after a piece she really wanted. Say . . . you said was. She ain’t—”

  “She is,” Quinn said. “She hanged herself in her cell.” He didn’t explain how.

  “Now ain’t that something!” Casey seemed astounded. ‘Maybe the estate’ll finally auction off that old house and all the junk inside it.”

  “Old house?”

  “Mildred’s house. Over in Bland County. Nothing in it’s worth much, and the house itself is rundown, partly because of weather and lack of care, and because people been sneaking in and out of it for well over a decade now.”

  “Trespassing?”

  “You betcha! They figure it’s worth the risk. Place has been trampled inside and out, some of the walls knocked clear in to studwork, holes dug all over the yard. Time passes, and just when you think folks have forgotten, somebody shows up with a shovel or a pickaxe and starts searching again.”

  “Searching for the lottery money?”

  “So you know about that.”

  “Sure,” Quinn said. But I can always learn more.

  “You betcha, that’s what they’re searching for. I think they’re wasting their time. If they knew Mildred they’d believe she could spend and gamble away all that money in the short time before she went to trial. Any gambling addict would tell you that. She wasn’t used to having so much money, and she didn’t know how to handle it. She could squeeze dimes till they bled, but paper money was for burning.”

  “So she was a compulsive gambler.”

  “Yep. That’s the reason she bought all those lottery tickets. Won all that money weeks afore she went to prison. Just in time to spend big on legal expenses. Hell, being Mildred, she’d hurry to spend it all afore she had to start doing time.”

  “Was she always a risk taker?”

  “Long as I knew her. Horses, fights, cards, slots, wherever she could place any kinda bet, she laid it down. Spent a fair amount of time in Vegas, I know.”

  “I thought you said she was smart.”

  “Smart’s got nothing to do with gambling. For somebody like Mildred, it was a sickness. She had to keep at it even though the odds were against her. She thought she was special and that somehow she’d win. She always thought she could quit at the right time, only there was never a right time, and there was never gonna be.”

  Quinn decided it might be best not to identify Dred to Vernon Casey as a suspected serial killer, but he wanted to probe to see what Vernon knew.

  “What about her son, Dred? Did he ever look for the money?”

  “I doubt that. Hell, he was just a teenage kid at the time. Said about three words a year. Real withdrawn. Wrapped up in his own little world. And I can’t see Mildred telling him about the money. She wasn’t one to share. Also, ’bout the time of the trial, he was hustled outta the area and put in a foster home. Heard he ran away after a week.”

  “You don’t think he came back here to look for the money.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he would’ve if he’d known about it. My guess is he headed east, your territory, maybe. Dred was a bright enough kid to get the hell away from here or anyplace else that reminded him of Mildred. Rumor was he got sort of adopted by this truck driver, put some money Dred’s way, got him an education. A kid like Dred, he could do the rest. Scholarships and such. I heard he’s in the antique business somewhere in the Northeast, but it’s real money antiques, not weather vanes, depression glass, and pie safes. Fancy European stuff, art. Well, I say more power to the kid. He rose up outta the ashes and more power to him.”

  “Would you know anyone who might be able to locate him?”

  “No, no. Like I said, we don’t travel in the same circles. I never even dreamed I was in Sotheby’s.”

  Maybe Dred hadn’t either. Maybe he dealt with a different set of buyers who didn’t mind if all of their collection was illegally obtained.

  “Anything else you might tell me about Mildred Gant?” Quinn asked Vernon Casey.

  “We talking fact or rumor?”

  “Either one. We’re not in court.”

  “Rumor, is all. For what it’s worth.”

  “Pretend we’re chatting over the back fence,” Quinn said.

  “Well, years back, something mighty bad happened to Marshall Wilcoxen’s daughter-in-law that was married to his son, Billy.”

  “What might that have to do with Mildred Gant?”

  “Maybe nothing. The daughter in law was pregnant with her and Billy Wilcoxen’s baby. Then she got murdered and the baby took from her womb before its time, but when it was alive. Somebody killed that poor woman and sliced her right open, probably afore she was all the way dead. The law never did find the killer, nor the baby. A while later, still in his grieving, Billy Wilcoxen ran his car at high speed into a concrete bridge abutment, died instantly. It wasn’t no accident, though it was recorded as such in state records.”

  “So what might Mildred have to do with all that?” Quinn asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it.

  “Rumor was that about the same time all this was going on with Billy Wilcoxen and his wife and baby, Mildred went and gave birth. She was a heavyset woman to begin with, and people didn’t see her all that often, so it was plenty possible. I mean, the times work out with what happened to the Wilcoxen baby, and all. But that could be coincidental.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m like everybody else. I don’t know what to think. People talked and talked about it for a while, then the talk died down.”<
br />
  “So who was the father?”

  “Of Dred? Mildred’s baby? There was speculation, is all. Birth certificate said father unknown. And for sure, nobody with a pecker walked up and claimed the kid.”

  “Dred would be about the missing Wilcoxen baby’s age,” Quinn said.

  Vernon Casey said, “Exactly his age.”

  42

  Jody and Carlie talked for a while with the average-looking guy in Twiggy’s Health Drinks. Harold watched the three of them gab and grin. Then the two women stood up. The average guy seemed to be saying good-bye to both of them, even touched Jody’s upper arm for a moment. She obviously didn’t take to that but didn’t do anything to remove his hand.

  When Jody and Carlie left, the average guy took their table. He looked around, as if maybe they’d forgotten something, then ordered another juice drink.

  Harold knew Sal would fall in behind Jody and Carlie, who would almost surely walk back to their subway stop.

  But maybe not.

  Harold had his choice. He could stay in the fruit drink bar and confront the average-looking guy who was probably just that—an average, innocent guy searching for life-enhancing vitamins. Or he could do what he was supposed to be doing, following and protecting Jody and Carlie.

  Harold belched and went out into the warm night. He jaywalked, quickened his pace for a while, and eventually saw Sal up ahead of him. And ahead of Sal, Jody and Carlie.

  They seemed to be headed back to the subway stop, all right. Harold turned a corner and jogged a short block, then continued half jogging, half walking. He figured he’d make the next cross street before Sal and the girls. Then he could keep up his steady pace, faster than theirs, and reach the subway stop before them.

  There’d be nothing to connect him and Sal when they boarded the same train.