Night Victims

by John Lutz

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  “Rugby injury. I was playing in a league. Stepped on a tent peg somebody had driven into the practice field in the park, and forgot when they broke camp. I wrenched my knee and messed it up permanently. Dumb thing to do.”

  “Forgetting a tent peg?”

  “No. Tripping over one.”

  Paula lowered her notepad and pencil to her lap and looked at him.

  He gave her his handsome white grin set off by tanned features. “If you don’t believe me, you can talk to my surgeon at Kincaid Memorial Hospital. He’ll verify what I’ve said, tell you it was a classic tent-peg injury. He might even attest to my good character, as I’ve paid him what I owe.”

  “You know I will talk to him.”

  “Of course.” He braced himself with a hand on one of the chair arms, then stood up with some difficulty. Paula watched as he limped to an antique kneehole desk and wrote something on a white card. His business card, which he handed to her before sitting back down. Paula thought the limp looked genuine enough.

  So did the business card, with the address of the apartment across the hall. On the back he’d written the name of a doctor at Kincaid Memorial.

  Paula slipped the card into her purse next to her gun. “I do have a few questions about your SSF unit,” she said.

  “Nothing that would cause you to reveal any state secrets.” The tooth-whitener-commercial smile again. “I don’t know many of those. Our operations were always narrowly defined.”

  “What did you think of your commander, Colonel Gray?”

  “Kray. With a K. Hell of a soldier.” Blue eyes hard now.

  Something wild and willful in them. “I’d disagree with anyone who said otherwise.”

  “Nobody has so far,” Paula told him, thinking he might be a dangerous man in a serious disagreement. “Kray seems to have had the respect of his men.”

  “He earned it.”

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  Paula glanced down at the notepad and papers in her lap.

  “I have another name on my list, without an address. Maybe you can help me with it. Aaron Mandle.” Linnert sat back and looked . . . Paula wasn’t sure of his expression, but it certainly made his blue eyes darker.

  “I couldn’t tell you where to find Mandle,” he said. “Haven’t thought of him in a long while.”

  “So maybe you can tell me something about him. Anything that might help me locate him.”

  “He was a peculiar guy. But then we all were, I guess. It takes a certain type, in that kind of unit.” He looked at her and seemed to be considering what he’d just said. “But Mandle was an oddball even in our outfit. Damned good soldier. Knew how to . . . Knew his work and did it well. I guess you know we were primarily a mountain combat unit.

  Climbing was almost as important as fighting, and we moved every which way on mountainsides—or, for that matter, on building faces in urban settings—as if we were born to it. In a way, you had to be. It’s gotta run in your blood.

  Mandle always removed his right boot and sock before an operation that entailed climbing. He climbed barefoot, and better than any of us. Had this weird extra-long big toe that allowed him to gain grip and leverage.” Paula remained outwardly calm. “Barefoot, huh?”

  “Just one foot. He’d sit down on the ground and whip off that right boot and sock, stuff the sock down in the boot, then sling the boot from his belt by its laces. Carry it that way all through whatever happened next.” Paula was having a hard time breathing. “He ever explain the freaky toe?”

  “Nope. Wouldn’t talk about it. But he could extend that toe out to the side, almost like a thumb; he really knew how to use it. Used that foot like a hand, if he had to.”

  “Odd, all right.”

  “You sure you don’t want a cup of hot chocolate?

  Detective . . . Paula?”

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  “Paula,” she confirmed. “Paula Ramboquette.”

  “French. Cajun. Ah, that explains your accent!”

  “Cajun,” she confirmed. “And thanks anyway but no to the hot chocolate. Listen, Mr. Linnert—”

  “Harry.”

  “Harry, was there anything else peculiar about Aaron Mandle?”

  “Well, he wasn’t easy to talk to. Kept his thoughts to himself. A loner, I guess you’d call him. But when it came to teamwork, he was there. There was no other way. We had to trust each other.”

  “Male bonding.”

  Linnert nodded somberly. “You can joke about it, Paula, but it kept us alive. The ones of us that stayed alive.”

  “I wasn’t joking,” she assured him sincerely. Why am I so damned concerned if I hurt his feelings? Why am I so . . .

  what?

  She stood up. She knew she’d better get out of there or she’d be curled up on the sofa and sipping hot chocolate before she knew what happened.

  “Thanks for your time and cooperation, Mr. Linnert—

  Harry.”

  “Want me to phone my surgeon and tell him you’ll be coming by? Doctor-patient confidentiality and all that.”

  “No, no. I’ll take care of it. I won’t have to know any details about the injury. Just his general opinion on how it would incapacitate you. You’ve been helpful.”

  “Have I?”

  “Well, maybe. We never know for sure until later.” Horn’s line. She moved toward the door and Linnert stood up. Too fast. So smooth.

  She felt a mild jolt of alarm.

  But he was smiling and merely escorting her to the door.

  He opened it for her and stood at an angle to let her pass. She felt uneasy with him so close and wasn’t sure why.

  “I wouldn’t mind being interrogated by you again,” he said.

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  “Harry—Mr. Linnert. I appreciate the sentiment, but this isn’t the time for it.”

  “Oh, probably not. Would you leave me your phone number. In case I remember something important?” She had to grin. “I’m with the NYPD, if you need me.”

  “And I might need you.”

  “Harry, Harry . . .”

  “Okay, Paula. I give up for now.” He shifted position a bit so she’d have more room to get by, giving off a faint cologne scent. She liked it, which surprised her after spending months cooped up in the car with Bickerstaff and his bargain-basement odor.

  She stepped past Linnert onto the landing.

  “One more thing I recall,” he said. “About Mandle. It was strange. There were these big karakurt spiders where we were in Afghanistan, kind of like black widows only larger.

  They were poisonous, but Mandle didn’t mind handling them.

  And when they stung him, it didn’t seem to affect him.”

  “Strange, all right,” Paula agreed.

  She thanked Linnert again for his cooperation.

  He didn’t shut the door. Instead, he stood leaning against the door frame so he could watch her leave. She knew he wanted to keep her in sight as long as possible.

  As she took the stairs to the foyer and street door, trying not to run, she was trembling and was afraid Linnert might notice and misunderstand.

  So uncontrollable was the trembling that she fumbled for and almost dropped her cell phone even before she got across the street to where the unmarked was parked. She collected her thoughts and climbed into the car before trying to use the phone.

  Once seated behind the steering wheel in the fogged sanctuary of the vehicle, she was calmer. As she pecked out Horn’s phone number, a lock of wet hair dropped over one eye, momentarily blocking her vision before she brushed it back with her free hand. She realized she was soaked. She’d forgotten her umbrella.

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  Damn it! She knew Harry Linnert would think she’d done so on purpose.

  While the phone chirped on the other end of the connection, she wondered if he might be right.

  Will Lincoln finished brazi
ng the last of a dozen narrow copper strips. He was going to use these to create a miniature picket fence that gave the illusion it diminished with distance. Alongside the fence was a foot-tall tree with delicate, shimmering copper leaves that caught light from every angle.

  He glanced at his watch, then rotated a dial on the compression tank and watched the vibrant flame of his blowtorch sink to a flicker and disappear. He removed his dark safety glasses and laid them on his workbench next to his half-finished New Hampshire Lane, a piece he had high hopes of selling to a wealthy buyer in Florida who had roots in the Northeast.

  It was past ten o’clock. The rain had finally stopped, and, according to the latest weather report, was gusting out of the area. Next to the workbench, the window unit air conditioner he’d mounted in the garage wall was humming away, keeping the studio comfortable and dehumidified.

  His wife, Kim, had taken her meds and would be sleeping soundly by now. He’d given her the white Ativan tablet along with her 500-milligram blue tablet and knew she’d remain asleep until late morning.

  It was safe to leave the garage. As usual, he’d leave the light on and the air conditioner running, so if Kim did happen to awaken and look out the window, she’d assume he was still out there working. Will knew she wouldn’t venture outside. She would have to cross puddled, cracked concrete and then a stretch of rain-soaked grass to reach the garage.

  She wouldn’t put on her flimsy house slippers and go out so soon after a soaking rain.

  Besides, she wouldn’t want to see him. Kim always avoided 216

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  him for days after the kind of argument they’d had last night.

  He’d get the sullen, silent treatment, and that was fine with Will. For the next three or four days, whenever he’d enter a room, she’d find an excuse to leave it. And she sure wouldn’t come looking for him.

  The thick wooden molding above the air conditioner concealed the hinges mounted on the inside of the garage wall.

  Will put on the light windbreaker he kept in the garage, then took a last look around to make sure everything was in proper disorder; his tools not put away but still scattered on the workbench, and the tiny portable radio still on and tuned to an all-night classical music station. If he did happen to be caught out, he’d simply say he’d gone for cigarettes and locked the garage door behind him. He kept a fresh pack of Winstons in the jacket pocket just for that possibility. Will Lincoln was nothing if not careful. Caution and stealth were a part of his training that had stayed with him. The daring, he’d always had.

  He tilted the still-running air conditioner up and away from the garage’s back wall, then supported it with his strong left arm while he crouched low and exited through the opening the humming unit had occupied. When he lowered the air conditioner back into place, there was no sign that there was a way in and out of the garage other than the overhead and front doors, both of which were locked from the inside.

  Will cut around the side of the garage, then walked down the driveway keeping well to the right of the old Dodge pickup parked there, where he knew he wouldn’t be visible from the house. When he reached the sidewalk, he turned to the right and strode about ten yards to where his car was parked, also out of sight in case Kim were to glance out a front window.

  Outside Minnie’s Place, Will parked his old Pontiac across the street, noticing that the weather report about the NIGHT VICTIMS

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  rain stopping was wrong and a light mist had begun to fall.

  Zipping his windbreaker, he jogged to Minnie’s entrance, pushed inside, and stood at the bar even though half the stools were available.

  “Fifth of Southern Comfort to go,” he said, when Bobby, behind the bar, looked his way. Bobby had already been reaching for the Budweiser tap.

  “Not your usual drink,” Bobby said, reaching instead to a low shelf and coming up with the Southern Comfort bottle.

  “If everybody drank their usual drink,” Will said, “we’d all still be drinking water.”

  “Fuckin’ arteests!” Bobby said with a grin, and accepted Will’s money.

  Will told him to keep the change, which wasn’t all that much anyway, then gave a little parting wave to Bobby and whoever else he might know in the dim bar, and went back outside into the misty night. It was actually getting a little cool. He was glad for the jacket.

  After getting into his car, he drove only about three blocks and parked two houses down from a small brown bungalow of the sort built in the twenties and thirties: narrow with a steeply pitched roof, a front porch that ran the front of the house, and slits of windows above the porch roof that had been attic vents before the upstairs was converted to bedrooms decades ago. One of the shutters on the front windows was hanging crookedly, and the grass needed mowing, if for no other reason than to make it uniform. It grew in uneven clumps as if a goat had been at it.

  Without looking around him, Will climbed out of the Pontiac and strode quickly along the sidewalk, then through the scraggly patch of front yard and up onto the porch.

  He rapped lightly on the front door with the knuckle of his forefinger, and the door opened.

  “Seen you drive up,” said the smiling woman looking out at him. She was about five feet tall, barefoot and wearing a gray robe sashed tight at the waist. As she opened the door wider and moved back and to the side to let Will enter, he 218

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  saw that the robe was gapped at the top to reveal a lot of cleavage. “You brought us something,” she said, noticing the brown paper bag in his right hand.

  “Like always.”

  When the door was closed, he bent and kissed the woman’s forehead. She raised both arms and pulled him lower by the back of the neck and they kissed on the lips.

  She didn’t want to let up and he felt the soft play of her tongue and tasted mint toothpaste.

  “You gonna stay awhile tonight?” she asked, finally letting him straighten up.

  “You know I would if I could, Roz.” He was telling her the truth. He liked it here with her, where he’d spent a lot of evenings for the past six months. She never bitched, like his wife. Always did what he told her. Eager to please.

  Goddamned dying to please!

  Still smiling just to be in his presence, she took the paper bag from his hand and set it on the coffee table. He noticed the hurried switch of her broad hips beneath the robe as she went into the kitchen for a couple of glasses.

  Rosanne Turner was an alcoholic. Will liked that. It was her vulnerability that had interested him when he first saw her practically drooling in a liquor store. He’d judged her accurately, picking her up right there using a bottle of scotch for bait. Later he’d found out she wouldn’t drink anything but Southern Comfort, unless there was no Southern Comfort around. Bobby was right; it wasn’t Will’s drink. But he’d made it his drink the second time he’d met Roz.

  The first night, they’d walked and talked and he’d convinced her he was a gentleman and acknowledged she was a lady. He commiserated with her about the lost daughter her bastard of a husband had talked the court into placing in his custody during the divorce. Fucking injustice was everywhere! He agreed with her that her idiot boss at an insurance company had been wrong to fire her and assured her that her infrequent work as an office temp would inevitably lead to steady employment. How could they not hire somebody like NIGHT VICTIMS

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  her? Not everybody in the world was too stupid or blind to see what she had to offer.

  When they’d reached her house, he hadn’t tried to talk his way inside. Instead, he’d left her the bottle they’d both only taken a few sips from, a little nudge to help her tumble off the wagon and onto her back with her legs spread.

  Their next date, about halfway into the Southern Comfort, she was wildly enjoying her second addiction.

  Roz was back with two juice glasses, both full. His had ice in it, the way he liked it, or could stand it, anyway.

  Usually he was
a straight Bud man.

  “Before we drink these,” she said, “I want to show you something.”

  Will followed her into the spare bedroom.

  There on a table in the center of the room was one of his smaller works, Blue Mourning, a surrealistic bronze of a sobbing man seated on a box.

  “I bought it at that gallery in the Village. Three hundred dollars.”

  He didn’t know what to think. Maybe he was angry. He couldn’t be sure. “I’m . . . uh, flattered,” he said. “But you shouldn’t have spent the money.”

  “I wanted to. You’re going to be famous someday, so it’s an investment.”

  Will knew it was an investment she was making in him personally. He didn’t like that. They had an unspoken agreement about their affair, and he intended to keep his part of it.

  She handed him his glass, kissing him again on the lips.

  “You love me?” she asked, backing up a step.

  “You know I don’t,” he said, “and you don’t give a fuck.” She downed half her glass and grinned in a way that showed most of her teeth. “I’m gonna show you how wrong you are about that last part.”

  Fifteen minutes later she was smiling down at him, seated on his bare chest with her thighs spread wide. He could 220

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  smell her sex and feel her heat and wetness against his skin.

  A drop of perspiration clung to her left breast as if reluctant to leave it and then plummeted to land on his neck.

  “Any place you’d rather be?” she asked.

  “Can’t think of one.”

  “You home?”

  “Home,” he said.

  Thinking this was about as far away from home as he could get.

  And when he returned home, it would be as if he’d never left.

  Linnert looked slightly disheveled the morning after Paula had talked to him. He’d still been in bed when Paula, who’d detoured on her way to pick up Bickerstaff, buzzed from downstairs. His hair was flat on one side, and he was wearing a white T-shirt, brown slippers, and the same pleated pants he’d had on yesterday. She thought he didn’t look bad a little messy.