by John Lutz
Fedderman didn’t know quite what to say. This woman often made him tongue-tied. He used his free hand to reach into a suit coat pocket and withdrew the small velvet-lined box from the jewelers. He held it out to her. It obviously contained a ring, and Penny realized it immediately and her eyes widened. She released his wrist and accepted the tiny box. As she slowly opened it, she peeked inside. She grinned at him.
“Is that a yes?” Fedderman asked. It sounded like someone else’s voice. Am I really doing this?
“It’s a yes, Feds! And this is beautiful!” She slipped the engagement ring on her finger. It looked slightly too large to Fedderman. Penny extended her hand and stiffened all its fingers, the way women do when displaying a ring. “Beautiful!” she repeated.
“So are you,” Fedderman said, sounding as if he had a frog in his throat.
Penny got up from her chair, moved smartly around the table, and kissed his cheek. She sat back down. She had done all that in a crouch, and none of the other diners seemed to have noticed her maneuver. Do women practice that? Penny was still smiling. The Frank Sinatra imitator reappeared in their part of the restaurant. He seemed to sense something and drifted in the direction of their table. He was singing “My Way.” Fedderman’s marriage proposal and ring presentation were now drawing the attention he’d feared.
Penny was still grinning hugely, now in part at Fedderman’s embarrassment.
“It might have been ‘The Lady Is a Tramp,’ ” she whispered.
Fedderman knew that his life had changed forever.
Jock Sanderson stood waiting for the traffic signal to change. He’d wanted a drink badly all day but had made it through without touching a drop. He was proud of himself and dismayed at the same time. It was a weakness, this craving for alcohol, and Jock didn’t like to think of himself as a weak man. Not in any respect. He was the one who was usually in charge of situations. He sensed weaknesses in others and moved in. That was what that prick the Skinner was going to realize one of these days soon—that Jock had moved in on him. He’d provided an alibi for the Skinner and made sure the killer knew that if anything happened to him, to Jock, the cat would be out of the bag. Letters could be left with lawyers, and in safety deposit boxes. The Skinner got the headlines, but Jock was in charge. The Skinner just didn’t know it yet.
The light signaled walk, and he crossed the street with the knot of people who’d been waiting with him at the curb. He was wearing Levi’s and a short-sleeved shirt he’d bought at the Wear it Again, Sam secondhand shop off Canal. There shouldn’t be too many secondhand shops in Jock’s future. Not with what he had in mind. He could go live someplace in South America, where there was no extradition treaty with the United States. Or maybe to someplace in the Caribbean. He’d heard that was where some people dropped out of sight and lived like royalty, on those islands. If he kept a low profile, he’d never be found.
He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t notice the approaching figure that veered slightly so it was headed directly at Jock. When he did notice, he didn’t pay much attention. Only a step or two away, Jock lowered his head, expecting the man to move out of his way, but he didn’t.
Jock pulled up short to avoid a collision, and was about to say something. He found himself looking directly into the eyes of the Skinner. There was something in those eyes, something beyond cruelty and intensity, that froze Jock. The Skinner was smiling faintly, as if something far removed was amusing him.
“Jesus! You gave me a start,” Jock said. They were standing so close to each other that he automatically dropped his gaze to see if the Skinner was brandishing a weapon of some sort. A guy this loony, he might not hesitate to kill someone even on a crowded sidewalk.
The Skinner’s hands weren’t empty. His right one was carrying a small white box.
Jock backed away. Oh, God, not again!
“Take it,” the Skinner said. “Add it to your collection.”
Jock’s hands remained at his sides, pressed tightly against his thighs. “I don’t have a collection. I don’t want one.”
The Skinner shrugged as if that were no concern of his.
“You’re not going to do this . . . every time, are you?” Jock asked.
The Skinner seemed to consider. “Only if I deem it necessary,” he said.
“Necessary for what?”
“Consider it a reminder.” The Skinner moved the box closer to Jock, and something changed in his eyes in a way that scared the holy hell out of Jock. “People who wag their tongues out of turn risk the damndest things happening to them.” He smiled broadly. “Not by coincidence, you understand.”
“I understand,” Jock said, and accepted the box.
“Maybe you’ll become a collector, after all.”
“I told you—no! There’s no reason to keep doing this.”
The Skinner ignored Jock’s protests. “Keep that in a cool place so it stays fresh. The poor woman it belonged to was trying so hard to use it right up to the end that it might still have plenty to say.” The Skinner put on an amused expression, toying with Jock. Sadistic prick! “Do you believe in life after death, Jock?”
“I’m not sure I even believe in life before death.”
“Whatever you choose to do with those unfortunate appendages, maybe they’ll talk to you in your dreams, or even sometimes during the day, when you least expect it. Especially Judith Blaney’s tongue. I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“I would,” Jock said.
“Ah, think where that tongue might have been when she was alive. Its many talents. She wasn’t a chaste woman, our Judith.”
Some of his initial fear had left Jock. He felt himself getting angry, or maybe frustrated. He couldn’t tell which. He was the one who was supposed to have the whip hand here, and yet this asshole had the nerve to stop him on the sidewalk and give him somebody’s severed tongue. Sick bastard!
Jock decided to try taking control of the situation. “Listen, you!” he said. “If you think . . .”
He let his voice trail off as the Skinner simply turned and walked away, glancing back for a final, smiling look at Jock, as if fixing him firmly in his mind.
Jock considered following him, laying a hand on his shoulder, and spinning him around, then handing him back his goddamned box. But he was paralyzed by what he’d seen in the Skinner’s eyes.
He began walking, faster and faster, gripping the small white box in his right hand, digging his heels into the pavement with each step. He might be late for work now. He couldn’t afford to screw up and get fired, all because of some psycho bastard who cut out people’s tongues.
People’s tongues!
The papers and TV news speculated about the tongues being removed because the Skinner was a cannibal and might consider them a delicacy. Jock might be the only one who knew better.
Of course, some other parts of the victims could have been removed and the police weren’t telling the public. They did that sometimes, to weed out the screwballs that made false confessions. Maybe there was something to the cannibal angle. After dealing with the Skinner, Jock could easily believe it. Lord, right now he could believe almost anything!
Noticing a wire trash basket at the next corner, he veered toward it and dropped the small box in it as he strode past. There! Maybe it would wind up in the same landfill as the first tongue.
He regained some of his confidence by reminding himself that he knew more about the Skinner than the pathetic psychopath imagined. The next time they met, that might be worth mentioning. It might keep the nutcase from giving him somebody else’s tongue. Or maybe something more personal.
He reached his subway stop, and almost without slowing took the concrete steps down into dimness and dampness. Now and then he stole a glance behind him.
Maybe I should have wiped my prints from the box. Both boxes!
He wished he had a drink.
65
Vitali and Mishkin had been driving most of the day. Telephone checking could do
only so much. They needed to drive to various retail and wholesale outlets and show people the drawing of the carpet-tucking knife, close cousin to the lower-class linoleum knife.
They had worked their way through Queens, then returned to the office and played with the phones some more to get some addresses, and had spent much of the afternoon in Brooklyn.
When they reported their wasted day to Quinn, he instructed them to widen their search to New Jersey. Which was where they were now, cruising along the highway in the Garden State toward a place called Underfoot Carpet Supplies, where maybe they sold carpet-tucking knives. Ordinary hardware stores sometimes had no idea what Vitali and Mishkin were talking about.
The car’s interior seemed to be getting smaller and smaller, and Vitali was finding it more and more difficult to be cooped up and have to listen to Harold. Mishkin, in the way of people who could get under the skin of even a patient person like Vitali, seemed blissfully unaware that he was in the least bit irritating.
For the fifth time in five minutes, Mishkin mentioned to Vitali that he was hungry. Like a mirage summoned by desperation, five hundred feet or so ahead loomed a sign advertising Doughnut Heaven.
“I guess that’s where you go if you take your eye off the road to look at their sign,” Mishkin said.
“It’s where we’re going to get some doughnuts,” Vitali said, staring straight ahead and already starting to slow the car so he could pull into the doughnut shop lot.
Doughnut Heaven turned out to be not much more than a shack. It served only drive-through customers. There was a menu nailed to the wall near the serving window. It featured about a hundred kinds of doughnuts.
There were no other cars in line, which seemed ominous to Vitali.
“They make it almost impossible to make up your mind, Sal,” Mishkin said, as he studied the menu.
“Give me a dozen assorted. Whatever’s fresh,” Vitali said to the skinny kid in the serving window. He was wearing a chef’s cap that was cocked at an angle suggesting it might fall off any second. “And two coffees with cream,” Vitali added.
It didn’t take the kid long to exchange two foam cups and a greasy white bag for Vitali’s money. “I added some doughnut holes as a bonus,” he said with a snaggletoothed grin.
“Much obliged,” Vitali said.
“We got a special,” the kid explained.
As they pulled back out onto the highway, Mishkin added off-brand sweetener from one of the little green envelopes he always carried in one of his pockets. The cups didn’t have lids, and coffee was starting to slosh over their rims in the car’s plastic holders. Vitali took a careful sip and then replaced his cup quickly because the coffee was close to boiling temperature. He had burned his tongue. That didn’t lighten his mood.
“What we oughta do is check the Internet for places that sell carpet-tucking knives,” Mishkin said, opening the doughnut bag.
“I don’t know how much good that would do, Harold. I mean, carpet knives aren’t registered like guns.”
“But I bet a lot fewer of them are sold than guns,” Mishkin said. “Somebody might remember a fairly recent sale.”
“Somebody in Bangadel, India,” Vitali said, thinking how difficult it was to contact Internet-based companies on the phone. He saw that Mishkin already had powdered sugar on his bushy mustache.
“Where exactly is that?” Mishkin asked.
“India?” Give him a little of his own medicine, Vitali thought.
“C’mon, Sal, you know where I meant. Bangadel.”
“I don’t know, Harold. I made it up.”
“Hmm.”
They could hit this Underfoot Carpet place, Vitali thought, then maybe a few more, and head back to the city. Beside him, Mishkin stirred and the doughnut bag made rattling noises. This was the part of police work that drove Vitali nuts. He felt like pulling over and bolting from the car.
He saw a service station up ahead, glanced down at the dashboard, and found the car had less than a quarter tank of gas.
Even though they were hardly doing twenty miles an hour when Vitali steered off the highway and into the gas station, the tires squealed as if they were in a Grand Prix racer.
“You fill the tank, Harold. I’m going to walk over where I might be able to get a good signal and see if I can get in touch with Quinn.”
Vitali strolled about a hundred feet away, near a rack of used tires.
Quinn answered his cell phone on the second ring.
“We’re not getting anywhere driving around looking for places that sell those tucking knives,” Vitali told Quinn. “I think our time would be better spent just using the phone and the Internet. Calling carpet installers, seeing where they get them, if they even use them.”
“I’ve got Jerry Lido prowling the Internet,” Quinn said. “Pearl’s been working the phone.”
“Any luck?”
“Not so far. And some of the newer carpet-tucking knives look like straight razors, not the kind of blades that match the wounds.”
“It’s not a common item.”
“No,” Quinn said. “That’s why it might mean something when we find places that sell them and keep a record. It’s possible on the Internet, but not many are sold, and so far none in this area to anyone who could be a suspect.”
“Internet, phone, and legwork,” Vitali said. “Yeah, I guess that’s the way to work it. And I’m in no way gonna underestimate Lido and his computer. If the guy didn’t drink he’d be another Bill Gates.”
“Or still with the NYPD. If you get no results today by driving, we won’t waste any more time on it, Sal.”
“Makes sense. Anyplace we can drive to, it probably has a phone.”
“Yeah. And if the Skinner paid cash for the knife, it will probably be impossible to trace. And for all we know, he might’ve been in a hardware store looking for something else and simply bought the thing and there’s no record of it because it isn’t itemized, even if it was paid for with a credit or debit card.”
“That’s how I see it, too. But you never know; the information we need might be right on top and we’d kick ourselves if we found out later and hadn’t touched that particular base. We can hit it tomorrow using national directories and the phone, if you want. Widen what Pearl’s doing.”
“Thanks, Sal. I gotta go now. Other phone’s ringing. Anything else?”
“I might decide to murder Harold.”
“Fight the impulse, Sal.” Quinn broke the connection.
Vitali returned to the car. Mishkin had used a company card to pay for the gas at the pump and was already ensconced in the passenger seat. The car’s windows were up and the air conditioner was laboring.
Vitali steeled himself and got in behind the steering wheel. He looked both ways, pulled back out into traffic, and accelerated fast so they could beat a tractor-trailer angling onto the highway from a cloverleaf ramp.
Mishkin looked over at him. “Anything, Sal?”
“Quinn says they hit a few places on the Internet that sell the knife we’re looking for, but there’s no record of any going to someone who’d be a suspect.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me, Sal, if we might be hitting the same places. Duplication of effort.”
“Taxpayers would be pissed off,” Vitali said.
“Like being back in the NYPD,” Mishkin said.
They drove for a while.
“Doughnut holes, Sal. That make sense to you?”
“Not to me, Harold.”
“A hole is like . . . nothing.”
“Yeah.”
“How’s something like that get started?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s an oxymoron. Like jumbo—”
“Pass me one of those doughnut holes, Harold.”
66
Tanya Moody emerged like a casual queen from the Breaverson Arms on East Fifty-fourth Street, wearing her navy blue shorts, armless blue T-shirt, blue and white sneakers, and carrying her sky-blue gym bag. She
began perspiring as soon as she stepped from the cool lobby into the morning heat. She squinted and brushed a lock of her long brown hair back from her face. Today, she decided, was going to be even hotter than yesterday. After drawing a pair of Gucci knockoff sunglasses from an outside pocket of the gym bag, she began walking toward her subway stop at Fifty-third and Lex.
As she strode along the shaded side of the street, Tanya drew attention. She was five-foot-ten and lean and muscular. With each step her powerful thigh and calf muscles flexed. Her breasts were large, but too firm to bounce as she took the curbs. She was covering ground fast with her long, graceful strides.
Down the stairs to the subway platform she went, causing a man looking back at her to stub his toe painfully on a concrete step. Tanya heard the guy yelp and glanced back, amused by what had happened. He was gripping the tip of his shoe and glaring at her as if his mishap was her fault.
Tanya ignored him, fished her MetroCard from her pocket, and headed for the turnstiles. She was well aware of the effect her appearance had on men and on some women, and was pleased by it. In her business, as a self-employed personal trainer, she was her own best advertisement.
She’d just left a fifty-year-old wealthy widow who still flaunted a fashionably trim figure. The woman had lost ten pounds and firmed up wonderfully since employing Tanya two months ago, and was especially pleased because Tanya planned and instructed physical workouts at her clients’ homes. Most clients, encouraged by their initial progress, purchased their own exercise equipment—at a discount—from a company that gave Tanya a generous commission. All in all, Tanya was pleased by how her business had grown during the past few years.
She’d left the trim widow preparing herself for the dating scene, now that her husband had been dead over six months. She was doing wide-armed bench presses on a home weight machine, an exercise that built up the pectoral muscles that supported the breasts. Three sets of ten with moderate weights, every third day, had already added an inch to the widow’s bustline.