by John Lutz
She felt somewhat ashamed because she didn’t actually know if the condo was a bargain. It must be cheap, if its address was scribbled on a business card pinned to a coffee shop bulletin board, with no price, no photograph. And it was being sold by an independent broker.
But it was precisely, give or take a few blocks, where Lola wanted to live, so she took down the card and called the number.
The sales agent, a man named Charles Langley, picked up after five rings. Lola had heard that they did that, letting the dream dangle enticingly. Still, she felt great relief when he identified himself. She still had her choices. It created the illusion of being in charge.
Langley had the knack of speaking in a way that made interruption almost impossible. He knew she would love the condo, and she would understand the factors that made it such a bargain. The couple who owned it were locked in a nasty divorce and wanted to return to England, where they’d lived previously. The husband could retain his employment in London only if he could report there by a certain date. Time was growing short, and any buyer had to accept that and use it as an advantage. Right now, the owners wanted to get rid of the place, furniture and all, and had priced it so they could stop thinking about it and walk away without looking back on it or anything else American.
“But they will take American dollars,” Lola said.
“Or anything that converts.” Langley smiled again, a kind of devilish, inclusive grin. “If you want to look around again, that’s okay. I have some paperwork for you to sign—nothing final, but it will lock up this place for you.”
Lola pretended to think hard. “We could still back out of the deal?”
“Sure. But you won’t want to.” He glanced around. “Heck, you could probably sell this place for a big profit even if you didn’t want to live in it. Or lease it.” He shrugged. “You can’t lose.”
“I could probably figure a way,” Lola said. “But I’ll sign. I just want to see the expression on my husband’s face.”
“Me, too,” Langley said, and laughed.
He reached down and got a large brown leather briefcase from where she hadn’t seen it alongside a chair. He opened the briefcase and paused. “Oh, before you do sign, there’s something you should see in the main bedroom.”
He strode toward the hall and she fell in behind him. As they passed the open door to the kitchen, she noticed something silver and black on the countertop. It looked familiar but she couldn’t quite place it. Some kind of gadget.
Then they were past it.
When they reached the bedroom door, Langley stepped aside so she could enter first.
“If you’ll concentrate and look up near that light fixture . . .” he said, pointing.
60
Eddie Amos, the doorman at the Whitworth Arms, was conflicted. He’d accepted five hundred dollars to let this friend of the real estate agent, Langley, into the unoccupied condo so he could make a deal. If the friend did land a temporary tenant and make a deal, Eddie had another payment, of a thousand dollars, coming. He knew that if he revealed that arrangement he would lose his job, not to mention the thousand-dollar cut. After all, he wasn’t in real estate, he was a doorman.
What got to Eddie the most was that Lola Bend turned out to be a hotshot designer, on the verge of becoming very, very rich.
Now she was very dead.
And now there was the package. It was small, wrapped in brown paper, with Eddie’s name printed on it in black felt-tip ink. He’d come in from hailing a cab for one of the tenants and found the small, square package on the marble desk where the building’s log was kept, with a record of every visitor coming and going at the Whitworth.
So far, Eddie hadn’t opened the package, knowing that if he did so before talking to the police, he’d be a coconspirator in a murder. If they didn’t already think of him that way.
But then there was the key to the condo. How reliable was Eddie’s story that the condo’s real owners were in England? The police would wonder soon how the killer got into the condo unit without a key. Or with a key. How many people knew that Eddie had a master key that fit all the units?
That was something else Eddie needed to think on. Sooner or later the police were going to find out about the master key anyway, so would his best move be to hand the key to them and explain what it was? Eddie knew they’d find the key anyway, so why not play it like a card first?
He slid the package down into the shadows of the marble pedestal where the black leather logbook lay. Unless someone for some reason reached way in there and felt around, the package would be safe. It also took the pressure off Eddie. He could think more clearly and calmly about his position. He could always tell the police he’d known nothing about the package, if they happened to find it. Or, if he decided to come clean, he could tell them about Langley and then pretend that he’d just found the package.
Almost certainly, Langley had left the package.
Eddie wasn’t sure about all the details yet, but he knew what he had to do.
When finally the police were finished talking to him they would cut him loose.
Loose but not free.
61
The corpse of Lola Bend yielded information but no surprises. She lay on the bed, where apparently she had been dragged after being left to bleed out in the bathtub. The tub itself, and the bathroom, were fairly clean, considering. The killer had dissected the victim, mostly drained of blood, on the bed. She had the now familiar puppetlike look, her torso, head, and limbs laid out in their anatomically correct positions.
“It almost looks like there was a medical seminar here,” Nift the ME said. He broke into song, providing his own lyrics: “Oh, this bone’s connected to that bone . . .”
If the bastard broke into a dance, Pearl was going to slug him.
Out of deference to the CSU techs, who should show up any minute, no one had touched anything,
“Got a time of death?” Quinn asked Nift.
Nift rubbed his chin. “About ten thirty, but I can be more precise when we talk later.” He looked down at the victim. “Some of the injuries are ante mortem.” He smacked his lips. “He tortured her, probably for a long time, before letting her die. Maybe hours.”
“So what’s the mess on the sink counter?” Renz asked. Quinn followed him into the kitchen. Pearl and Fedderman stayed in the bedroom with Nift and what was left of Lola Bend. Neither of them trusted Nift to be alone with the dead body. Not that it made any difference. He’d shortly be alone with Lola Bend in the morgue, and doing intimate things to her, if the rumors about Nift and his dead women were by all accounts accurate.
Pearl waited so she’d be among the last to leave the apartment. She could swear that Nift had leaned down and whispered something to the corpse. It sounded like, “We’ll never have Paris . . .”
“Place looks brand new but lived in,” Quinn said.
“It’s fully equipped and furnished, according to the brochure,” Pearl said. “If you’re wealthy enough to afford it, you shouldn’t have to go to the trouble of picking out wallpaper.”
Fedderman said, “The rich they are a funny race.”
Quinn, Renz, and the others were standing in the kitchen, staring at the various Bakelite and metal parts scattered on the countertop.
“Looks like he disassembled a Monsieur Café,” Pearl said, “and couldn’t put it back together.”
“Sounds like our man,” Fedderman said.
Quinn said, “I can see why he couldn’t get it back together. It looks like it’s manufactured so no one can. But what is it?”
Pearl picked up some of the parts and sniffed at them.
“It’s a very expensive gourmet coffee brewer,” she said. “It presses the beans.”
“Why?” Quinn asked.
Pearl shrugged. “Flavor.” She knew Quinn’s favorite cup of coffee was hot, with cream, and in near proximity to pastry.
“Presses the beans,” Fedderman said slowly and thoughtfully, mulling it over
. “Maybe we should test what’s left of that coffee brewer to see if anything other than coffee was pressed in it.”
62
Eddie the doorman waited until the time was right. He’d made a study of the building’s security cameras and knew how to move among them keeping to the blind spots. He stood just so, for only a few seconds, but with his back to the camera that was slowly sweeping across the lobby where the marble podium with the visitor log sat. He stood at the podium and appeared to be checking the logbook. Then, when seconds counted and the slowly rotating camera was turned away, he removed the small, wrapped package he’d stowed in the shadowed space beneath the writing surface.
With smooth, casual motion, he kept the package between himself and the podium as he slid the little rectangular, wrapped box into a side pocket of his uniform jacket.
Squared away again behind the podium, he pretended to scan the logbook idly, sure that within a few seconds he would again be on camera.
An hour later Robert, one of the building’s two other doormen, came on duty and relieved Eddie.
Robert was in his mid-thirties, classically handsome and as well groomed as a film star. He made his rather plain uniform, exactly like Eddie’s, look like a spit-and-polish general’s outfit, complete with epaulets. Though he’d never served anything anywhere, other than restaurant food for a brief stretch, his bearing was military. It was a shame he’d missed the British Empire.
He gave Eddie an appropriate little half salute. “So whadda we got, some excitement here today?” He didn’t talk like a general.
“Woman dead up on the third floor,” Eddie said.
Robert held the street door open for a guy in a wrinkled suit who sure looked like a cop. “The fox that plays her television too loud?” he asked, when the cop was out of earshot.
“No. This one hadn’t closed the deal yet. Too bad. She was kind of a looker. And the sort who flaunted it.”
“You seem to know a lot about her, considering she hadn’t even moved in here.”
Eddie shrugged. “I see them come, I see them go. She looked good from either direction.”
“So what happened?” Robert asked. “She have a heart attack brought on by sexual arousal?”
“Somebody killed her. What I hear, he played with her for quite a while, then he finally killed her.”
“Holy Christ! They know who shot her?”
“She wasn’t shot. The Gremlin got her.”
Robert didn’t seem surprised. “You, uh, see what was left of her?”
“Yeah. I don’t want to look again.”
“Not much bothers me. I seen some shit in Afghanistan. You mind hanging around a few minutes while I take a look?”
“Treat yourself,” Eddie said again. “Just don’t ask me to join you.”
“Back in a jiff,” the general said, and stormed away toward the elevators.
Eddie waited until Robert returned from upstairs. Robert’s face was ashen, and he looked like he might have to vomit. Eddie thought about asking him when he’d served in Afghanistan, then thought better of it.
Eddie gave a quasi-military salute as he left the building, and wasn’t surprised when Robert saluted back.
Eddie followed company rules and didn’t wear his red jacket with its decorative brass nameplate when he was away from work. They didn’t want him looking like a commoner dressed up for some kind of TV commercial. He carried the neatly folded jacket over his right arm, careful to keep the wrapped package where it couldn’t be seen and wouldn’t fall out.
The subway surprised him and wasn’t crowded. He sat near one of the doors, the jacket folded in his lap, his hand resting on it so he could feel the tiny package inside.
63
Eddie’s wife, Kellie, watched Eddie hang up his red uniform jacket and brush it off. He was always careful to hang it neatly in the closet when he was finished with work for the day.
After brushing the jacket, he used a sticky roller to go over it and lift off any dust or hair or dandruff that might have collected during his shift. Satisfied, he started to walk into the living room, when he remembered the package. He got it from his jacket pocket, sighed, and went into the living room.
Kellie went into the kitchen. “Want a beer?” she called.
Eddie called back that he did and carried the package to the secretary desk, where unpaid bills were stacked in chronological order. He sat down at the desk and dropped the writing surface.
Kellie came in from the kitchen, carrying two bottles of Heineken. She placed one of the bottles on the desk, on a square cork coaster advertising Guinness stout. Held the other bottle by its neck.
“A cop left here a little while ago,” she said.
Eddie wasn’t surprised. “Figures,” he said. “Some woman in an upper floor got herself badly hurt today.”
“Killed, is what the cop said. He was a big guy, tough-looking in a nice way, if you know what I mean.”
Eddie didn’t.
He looked seriously at her, but calmly. Letting her know that, just in case, he, the alpha male, had everything under control. “Accidental?”
“From what I heard, it’s murder,” Kellie said. “I guess that’s why they’ll want to talk to us, you working there and all. He left his card.”
“Thoughtful of him,” Eddie said.
Seated at the desk, he quickly began filing those news articles he wouldn’t want Kellie or a few other people seeing. When Kellie finally understood what was going on, she was certain to be all for it. It was time for a fresh adventure. Even if she didn’t yet realize it, she was about to have a brush with good fortune.
When Eddie was done with his filing, he went to his wallet and removed the half dozen or so business cards he’d collected during the day. After placing them in a drawer with others, he cleared the desktop and slowly began unwrapping the package. Kellie stood up from the chair she’d been sitting in and wandered over to look over his shoulder.
The package contained a small music box that looked like an antique. On its porcelain top was the painted figure of a beautiful woman in a white gown, seated on the lap of a prosperous-looking Edwardian gentleman with a long beard.
There was a small key taped to the bottom of the music box. Eddie found the edge of the cellophane tape and turned it back with his thumbnail. He sat with the key in one hand, the miniature music box in the other.
His wife Kellie hadn’t moved. She remained staring curiously at the music box. It looked genuinely old. And harmless enough. And valuable in an Antiques Roadshow sort of way.
“That filigree around the edges looks like real gold,” she said.
“Maybe it is,” Eddie said.
“Wind it,” she said. “See if it still works.”
Eddie didn’t need much encouragement. He was the curious sort.
Kellie watched as he inserted the tarnished key in its slot in the side of the box, then gave it a few tentative turns. The box ticked and whirred, and then began playing some song she didn’t recognize. The kind of simple, chime-like notes shared by most of the music boxes ever made. It was faint. Couldn’t be heard unless you held it close to your ear. Even then, Eddie couldn’t place the tune.
Tired of standing, Kellie took a sip of Heineken and went over and sat down on the sofa.
Eddie looked over at her and shook his head. She watched silently as he held the music box even closer to his ear, so he could try to identify the haunting and familiar tune.
It remained faint and unidentifiable.
The tune was nothing she’d associate with what happened next. The small block of Semtex concealed in the music box, and ignited by a watch battery, sent its spark to the detonator. Eddie was holding the box close to his ear so he could hear the tune when it exploded.
It wasn’t a large or loud enough explosion to destroy everything in the room. Still, it was more than efficient, and narrowly targeted. Half of Eddie’s head was blown away, and landed halfway across the room, in Kellie’s lap.
<
br /> She stood up immediately, brushing the thing onto the floor. There was no sound other than a high-pitched, constant scream, and she seemed to be moving in slow motion as she made her way to the secretary where Eddie was slumped dead and bloody. At least the ruined side of his face was turned away. Thank God for that.
She moved her right hand carefully around Eddie, not looking at him, and opened one of the secretary desk’s small drawers.
With a trembling hand she delicately reached into the drawer and withdrew Quinn’s card that he’d pressed into her hand before leaving.
She wondered if the screaming in her head would ever stop.
64
They were in the Q&A office—Quinn, Pearl, Fedderman, Lido, Helen, Sal, and Harold—engaging in what had come to be known to them as a confab of the fab. Nobody knew where the terminology had come from, but everyone assumed it had started with Harold. No one regarded such a description as totally self-effacing humor. It smacked of the truth.
“He’s going to kill again,” Helen the profiler said. “And soon.”
Quinn said, “We need to use our resources.”
“You mean Jerry and his tech genius?” Helen asked.
Jerry Lido looked at her, wondering if she was being sarcastic. He decided he didn’t give a shit.
“That might be part of it,” Quinn said. “We need to get that refined photo of the Gremlin out to every site on the Internet where it’ll be Facebooked, tweeted, and retweeted.”
“And LinkedIn,” Harold added.
Lido, slouched on a chair near the coffee brewer, said, “Sounds as if you don’t need me.”
“Just sounds that way,” Quinn said. “When I hear the word blog I think Hound of the Baskervilles. And I don’t know a sound bite from a mosquito bite.”
“So what resource are we talking about?” Helen asked. She knew about Quinn and his resources. They scared her, though she realized that sometimes she loved the thrill they provided. “Is this resource of yours legal?”