by John Lutz
A curious boy, Jasmine Farr thought. Her seamed face broke into a smile.
In those days they had both been curious.
Maybe they both still were.
The newspaper had been a door-opener. Jasmine had fallen low and fallen again and again, and she had contacts, if not friends, in low places.
It hadn’t taken her long to learn who in New York she could contact if she knew the identity, and even the whereabouts, of the Gremlin. Maybe the Gremlin was back in St. Louis. That was where they’d departed the train, and near where they had left, sprawled alongside the dark tracks, the body of a railroad dick.
Surely the man had died. Jasmine could still remember how the knife had felt when she slid it into his side, the surprised and frightened cry that he couldn’t suppress. Had she really heard the knife’s sharp blade scrape a rib? That was how it was in her memory.
Whatever the reality, Jasmine and Jordan had known that after the man died, the sooner they got out of St. Louis, the safer they’d be.
The wisdom of that had been confirmed by the next day’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper. Railroad detective Ellson Ponder had been stabbed to death and was found alongside a train car. Police theorized that Ponder had discovered his killer or killers hiding in what was thought to be was an empty boxcar. A struggle ensued. Ponder had tried to fight off his attackers, but he was beaten, stabbed, and apparently had then been left to die. Ponder had lived with his wife, Charlotte, and their ten-year-old son, Ivan, in the St. Louis suburbs.
While Jordan and Jasmine had known they’d be safer somewhere other than St. Louis, they’d also known the police had most likely tracked them as far as St. Louis. From the police’s point of view, the two of them might still be in the city, made to lie low so they couldn’t run. They were pinned down.
At least for a while.
Two people running from murder could attract a lot of attention in ways they couldn’t guess at.
It was just a matter of time.
57
New York, the present
It was easier to find Jordan than she’d thought it would be. Jasmine knew where people who didn’t want to be found might be located. The invisibles who took form only when worlds overlapped.
Past and present worlds overlapped here, as Jasmine and Jordan stood on opposite sides of Canal Street. While he was unaware of her presence, she studied him.
He seemed even smaller than she remembered. His light jacket was wrinkled, as were his brown slacks. There was no shine on his shoes, and he was wearing a shabby fedora that looked too large for his head. Jasmine noted his dark hair was tufted beneath his hat brim, and that he needed a shave. The stubble on his chin and along his jawline was also dark.
He raised both hands and held his palms pressed to his ears, as if a loud noise that no one else could hear was torturing him.
The traffic signal changed to walk and he dropped his arms, stepped down off the curb, and came toward her.
As they passed each other, their eyes met only briefly, but it was enough to make her breath catch in her throat.
He looked older (of course he did). And he was slightly bent forward as he walked. He was the shorter of the two, even with the fedora.
After five steps she turned around and followed him. That was when she noticed that something didn’t ring true about him. It took her a while to figure it out. His forward bend was more a matter of posture than of age and hard luck. His clothes were those of a homeless person, but they didn’t match his attitude.
She said something not usually heard in New York City: “You finish shuckin’ that corn?”
Jordan took a few more steps, slowed, and turned around.
He looked at her, and a smile slowly formed. She wasn’t surprised to find that she couldn’t look away from him. She had already felt the attraction.
He said, “Jasmine?”
“’Fraid so.” She was trembling. Could he see that? Could he not?
He reached forward and touched her shoulder, as if assuring himself that she was real. She laid her hand on top of his.
They realized, at the same time, that the past had bound them, and now they shared the future.
“Come with me,” he said through a smile. “We’ll have some coffee.”
She looked at him, then bowed her head and surveyed herself. “Will they let us in? I mean, we can’t go someplace where I usually check the Dumpster for leftovers.”
The traffic signal had changed again. Now a horde of cars was moving toward them. He held her elbow and escorted her up on the curb and safety. She felt like a parody of royalty. “I don’t know about this, Jordan.” Saying his name felt good.
“Don’t worry about how we’re dressed. I have money. I wear these clothes to walk around the city without drawing a lot of attention. It works if I stay in the right neighborhoods.”
“Clever,” she said. “You always were clever.”
They were walking now, him leading her slightly, toward the coffee shop.
“Had breakfast?” he asked.
She shook her head no, and was astonished when he drew a fat roll of bills from his jacket pocket. The top bill was a twenty.
“This’ll fix that,” he said.
“Are you always in disguise?” she asked.
“Not all the time. But I’ve found it’s the best way to take advantage of the city’s gift of anonymity.”
“I can vouch for the invisibility,” Jasmine said. “Sometimes I think I could walk right in and rob a bank and nobody’d notice.”
“That would be a crime.”
They exchanged a secret smile.
Both were aware they were exploring the bond between them. It was powerful. Binding in a way that neither of them quite understood. After all, this was the man who had claimed her virginity. The man with whom she had murdered.
Jasmine found herself wondering, Is murder an aphrodisiac?
She remembered the Gremlin, and decided it wasn’t time yet to bring up that subject.
“I always wondered,” he said, “why you left me in St. Louis with no explanation.”
“I was young, afraid, and I was going to go home. But then I didn’t.”
After they’d gotten doughnuts and coffee, he said, “I’ve been thinking about going where I can be even more unnoticeable.”
Jasmine added cream to her coffee and sipped. She had been beautiful, in her way, and still was, even though time and events had worked their way with her. Hers was an indestructible kind of beauty. The crow’s feet, the mottled complexion, the crazy hairdo that was all curls. It was as if wear could change her, but she was impervious to time.
“What city would we go to?” she asked.
“Where we’d be least likely to go. St. Louis.”
58
St. Louis, the present
Now here they were, back near the banks of the Mississippi and its muddy secrets. Jordan had a friend in St. Louis, name of Christopher, who would lend them a vacant apartment he often subleased while he was away on business trips in Mexico. There would be no paperwork. The rent money had to be fast and up front, and beyond the attention of the IRS.
Jordan didn’t ask Christopher what kind of business he tended to in Mexico. And Christopher didn’t ask Jordan why he wanted to keep a low profile in St. Louis. Jasmine didn’t ask where the money came from. Or how.
If pressed hard enough, she would have to guess it involved gunrunning. Or perhaps people smuggling. There were a fair number of illegals in and around the city, and trafficking in them was said to be wildly profitable. She deliberately didn’t think too much about it.
Everyone profited by not knowing too much.
Jasmine and Jordan had finally stopped running, in body and spirit, the first time since they’d originally arrived in St. Louis.
The landlord Christopher, from whom they’d subleased the condo unit, was short but hefty in a muscular way, built like an offensive lineman. He had a nervous air about him. Jordan
and Jasmine were sure he was wanted by the police. That would explain why he was so eager to leave St. Louis.
Four days after Jordan introduced Christopher to Jasmine, Christopher left for Mexico.
He didn’t say where in Mexico.
“Can we trust him?” Jasmine asked. After living on the streets in New York, the St. Louis apartment, which was actually barely adequate, seemed luxurious to her. And it was their sanctuary.
“We won’t stay here any longer than we have to,” Jordan said.
“How long are we going to have to be on the run?”
“For the foreseeable future.”
Jasmine lowered her head, said, “God!”
Jordan looked at her and smiled. “We can survive anywhere, and for as long as it takes.”
As long as what takes? Jasmine wondered.
Jordan paced to the window of the small living room and looked out toward the neighborhood beyond Grand Avenue. So many cities took on another identity at night. Outlined and punctuated by lights.
He felt the throbbing, heard the thrashing noise, growing louder, and massaged his temples with his fingertips.
Jordan actually didn’t mind staying here for a while. Now and then he would buy a Southwest Airlines ticket and fly to New York to check the condo he had on the Upper West Side. He wasn’t prepared to share that information yet with Jasmine. He was reasonably sure she was loyal and dependable, but that person might be the old Jasmine. People changed. To know that, you had only to look at the haggard and worn Jasmine and compare her with her younger self.
He smiled thinly. Did we all finally have to live in the clothes that we disdained, with the faces we deserved?
They might have left St. Louis for the larger, more anonymous city of New York. But they felt safe there, and a Midwest apartment was a hell of a lot better than the New York streets. That was where he would be, along with Jasmine, because he didn’t like the thought of her knowing about the New York apartment.
Stay, do nothing noticeable, and keep a low profile. Let time wash some more of the past away. That was Jordan’s plan. He couldn’t figure out Jasmine’s plan, but was sure she had one. The longer she lived in St. Louis, the safer she seemed to feel, and that scared Jordan. She would follow his lead for a while, but not forever. How could he totally trust her?
Totally.
Life for Jordan and Jasmine flowed easily enough for a while in St. Louis. They really did feel separate from the rest of humanity. Detached and reasonably safe in their isolation.
They seldom went out, but each morning Jasmine would walk to a corner bakery and get two toasted bagels and two coffees to go. No one paid any attention to her. She was simply another creature of the city, scraping to get by like others in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in a lousy economy.
So, too, seemed Jordan, but in two neighborhoods half a continent from each other. He didn’t have to explain to Jasmine that he had another apartment in another city, or where he got his money. She didn’t know he was moderately wealthy, and didn’t need to know. She only now and then brought up the past, as she had this morning when they were seated at the small kitchen table having their breakfast. She had learned early that they both ate lightly for breakfast, and shared a liking for bagels and orange juice with coffee.
She also knew that this man she was living with killed. And he knew that she knew. That she also had killed.
They pretended otherwise.
The reason why was, to Jordan, irrelevant, though not all that hard to understand. If these kinds of very private arrangements didn’t take place, a functioning modern society wouldn’t be possible.
One thing Jordan couldn’t get Jasmine to do was to stop collecting news items from Web sites and newspapers. What bothered Jordan was that the items she seemed to be saving were mostly about the Gremlin.
Days passed, Jasmine shed some of her street-person habits and mannerisms, and regained some of her belief in herself. She looked people in the eye now, and carried herself differently, with a straighter back and a bolder stride.
While Jordan had come to trust and admire her more and more, he still didn’t trust Jasmine enough to reveal how he’d nurtured a sub-rosa stock portfolio, though he was aware that she knew he was the Gremlin. He always established an escape hatch in life. He could, if need be, disappear quickly and without a trace. From time to time, he did.
Once Jasmine had found a playbill from a Broadway theater in his suit coat pocket. Another time, a receipt from a New York restaurant.
All right, Jasmine thought. We can still lead our private lives. Better that right now, Jordan was leading some of his in New York and not in St. Louis.
What Jordan did that sometimes irked Jasmine was to bring home gifts that she considered to be mostly junk. It was never a surprise to get up early, or in the middle of the night, to find some gadget, either whole or dissected for analysis, laid out on the kitchen table.
The man simply loved gadgets, and delighted in disassembling them so he could better understand them. It was a sort of obsessive-compulsive behavior, Jasmine knew, and not the only obsession he had. That was okay with Jasmine. She understood and could accept addictions.
At times, these gadgets, or renderings of them, would appear in the media along with explanations or further description. Everyone seemed to know who was responsible. What was obviously the work of the Gremlin dominated the news and the online speculation at the fringes of news. Jasmine was saving just about everything in print. Sometimes photographs or video. Crime in the time of tech.
Jasmine clipped most of the horrific news items describing how a riverboat had sunk with six of its passengers. It was thought at first that the boat had struck some flotsam. Later it was learned that the stern near the paddle wheels had been damaged by a small, homemade underwater mine.
Jordan knew that at a certain point, he would destroy this potentially incriminating information.
As for Jasmine, as much as she trusted Jordan, which was more than she could trust anyone else, it was getting to be not enough.
59
New York, the present
The Mary Contrary line of clothing was taking off. If sales figures continued to climb at their present rate, it would make Lola Bend independently wealthy.
That word, independently, was important to her. It was one of the reasons she used her maiden name in the world of fashion. It also meant that at times there were people who referred to her style of clothing as the Lola Bend line. She tried to stamp this usage out with the determination and grim enthusiasm of a gardener stamping out weeds.
It was this new line that was selling like crazy. Anything with Mary Contrary on it seemed to be flying off the shelves and transforming itself to profit.
Lola was getting rich.
She herself was rather plump to be wearing Mary Contrary, especially the new luxury line, Effin’ Right! It hadn’t sold well at first. A long, raked hemline and a pinch at the waist had done the trick. Now it was selling so well that Lola took a giant step she would have only dreamed of six months ago.
Lola and her husband, Roland, had discussed buying a Manhattan condo so she could be close to her work—what he called “her venture.” Lola had bought the expensive unit with a down payment of fifty percent. Had agreed to, anyway. Not only that, it was fully furnished. Lola wasn’t crazy about the antique French provincial in the largest bedroom, but the hell with that. She could change things over time, eventually make the condo hers. That, in fact, would be the most enjoyable part of this transaction.
She had an appointment now to meet with the real estate broker and make arrangements so the only thing left to do was for Roland to sign on the dotted line. She knew Roland well enough to be sure he would do that.
She hoped.
After a long lunch, Lola took a short cab ride across town, back to the Whitworth Arms. A uniformed doorman opened the cab’s door for her. Lola gave the driver a backhanded wave rather than accept change for the twenty-d
ollar bill she gave him, thanked the doorman, and entered the lobby.
It was as sumptuous as she remembered it. Acres of red-grained marble, rich brown leather furniture, and two elevators. A chandelier straight out of Phantom of the Opera graced a vaulted ceiling.
The doorman had followed her in and gone behind a marble counter. Lola stopped gawking and walked over to him.
“I’m here to meet Charles Langley in 303,” she said.
The name, which had been on the business card Lola had taken from the coffee shop bulletin board, seemed familiar to the doorman. “Third floor.” He motioned toward the elevators.
Lola thanked him and could feel him watching her as she walked toward the elevators. She gave a little hip switch but didn’t glance back, thinking, Soon you’ll be working for me, pal. As long as the condo board okays Roland and me as unit owners. Lola didn’t have the slightest doubt about their approval. She thought about the latest sales figures on the Effin’ Right! Line. This was one of those times when it was okay to be rich. Plenty of designers would love trading places with her.
The elevator made not a sound and seemed to take about three seconds to rise three floors. The door slid open silently.
Her footfalls in her high-heeled shoes were as hushed as the rest of the building. Was she dreaming? Floating?
The doorman must have called up to Langley, because the real estate agent was standing waiting for her with the door to 303 open. He was a small man in a well-tailored gray suit. His hair was long and combed down in back, puffed up in spikes on top. Despite his diminutive stature, the hairdo didn’t make him look feminine.
He beamed. “Lola!” Like an old friend greeting her after a long absence.
She smiled back at him. “Were you afraid I wasn’t coming?”
“I never for a second doubted it. Such a bargain this is!”