Single White Female

by John Lutz

  “That’s so sick.”

  “Oh, it is.”

  “And another thing, he called me by name.”

  “Ah!” Kennedy seemed to make a special mental note of that.

  “There’s something else,” she said, leaning forward. And she told him about stopping to eat at Goya’s, the walk with Graham Knox, and the disappearance of her expired driver’s license and credit cards.

  He tapped the pen several times on the gray metal desk, leaving tiny dark slashes, then noticed what he was doing and rubbed the desk clean with the heel of his hand. There was cigar ash on the desk; he brushed that away. “And did you notify the credit people of the loss of your cards?”

  “Of course. Soon as I realized they were gone. It’s the phone calls and the cards being stolen that I guess has me spooked.”

  “You sure the cards were stolen, not misplaced?”

  “Almost certain.”

  “Almost?”

  “I’m almost certain the sun will set tonight, Sergeant Kennedy.”

  He smiled. “Now, now, no need to get testy.”

  She nodded and tried a return smile that barely broke the surface. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “The city’s full of sick and tortured people who use the telephone for reasons not dreamed about by Alexander Graham Bell. It’s probably nothing that should cause you undue concern.”

  “But what about him calling me by name?”

  “Well, I’m assuming you’re listed in the directory.”

  “Yes. My full name, since I have such a common last name. But he didn’t say Allison, he said Allie. And that’s what I’m called, Allie.”

  “Could be he guessed that. It must be the most popular nickname for Allison.”

  “But what if he does know me?”

  Kennedy put down the pen and leaned back in his chair. The buttons on his shirt threatened to pop. “Well, that’s possible, but I’ll tell you, Miss Jones, it’s been my experience that men who talk dirty to women on the phone usually don’t carry the matter any further. The psychiatrists could tell you why. I can only tell you the pyschiatrists are right. These men are often sexual and social misfits who are too afraid of women to talk to them face-to-face. That’s why the miserable wretches use the phone.”

  “That’s what Graham said.”

  “The Graham who was with you when you noticed your credit cards were missing?”

  “Yes, and he’s my neighbor. He’s also a playwright. And as I told you, a waiter at a restaurant near my apartment.”

  “Well, Graham’s right about obscene callers.” Kennedy sat forward slowly and placed his elbows on the desk, rested one hand on top the other. “Tell you what. If it happens again, we can have the phone company put a tap on your phone.”

  “Tap?”

  “It’s a tracer, actually. It would enable us to find out what telephone any future obscene calls came from. But again, in my experience, these men usually call from public pay phones. And they don’t often use the same phone twice.”

  “Then a tracer probably wouldn’t do much good.”

  “To be candid, no good at all, most likely.”

  “What about my stolen credit cards?”

  “You should make a complaint on that one. At least give us the account numbers. But I need to be honest with you, there isn’t much chance they’ll be recovered. People who steal credit cards, if they’re pros, either sell the cards immediately or charge everything they can on them before they might be reported stolen. On the street, stolen credit cards depreciate by the hour. Whatever’s going to be done with them is done fast, then they’re often destroyed.” He clucked his tongue. “Some sad society we live in, isn’t it?”

  Allie Jones smiled and shook her head in futility. “Have I wasted my time coming here, Sergeant Kennedy?”

  “Maybe not. You never know. I’d advise you to fill out the forms, report the credit card theft. The cards might turn up on somebody we bring in. It’s happened.”

  “All right, then,” she said. “I’ll do that.”

  Kennedy ran the appropriate form into his typewriter and one-fingered out the information as she answered his questions. She was alert and efficient. From working with computers, Kennedy thought. He was uncomfortable around computers, didn’t understand them. What were microchips, miniature potato chips?

  When he was finished he read over what he’d typed. After making a few sloppy corrections with Wite-Out, he ratcheted the form from the typewriter and had Allison Jones sign it.

  He said, “I promise we’ll call you right away if there’s any progress on this.”

  She thanked him and stood up. There was something about this troubled young woman that intrigued Kennedy, evoking pity and concern. Did she resemble Jeanie? Maybe. A little. And it was the cruelest of cities out there, a crouching monster that waited patiently for as long as it took and then devoured its victims.

  “Miss Jones,” he said, “is there anything else bothering you?”

  She gave him her slow and appealing smile. “It shows?”

  “Afraid it does.”

  “Not a police matter,” she said. “It’s just that my life hasn’t gone very well lately. My job, my . . . Well, never mind that.”

  “What about your, ah, romantic life?”

  She seemed to consider telling him something, then decide against it. “My love life’s fine, Sergeant, believe me. But that’s irrelevant.”

  “We can’t be sure about that.”

  “We’ll have to be.”

  Testy again.

  “My personal problems are more job-related. Financial.” She straightened and shrugged as if none of it mattered. “It’s how the world works sometimes,” she said.

  “Isn’t that the truth for all of us?” He stood up halfway, leaning on his desk, and shook her hand. It was limp and cool. “Hang on,” he told her, squeezing the narrow fingers reassuringly. “Things’ll take a favorable bounce. They always do, eventually.”

  She said, “I’m sure you’re right. Thanks for reminding me.”

  He watched her walk from the squad room and out the large oak doors to the street. Then he sat back down heavily. The chair groaned beneath him. His hemorrhoids flared. God, his health was deteriorating like the South Bronx.

  “What we got there?” a voice said behind Kennedy. His partner, Hector Vasquez.

  “Obscene phone calls, stolen credit cards.”

  “Nice-looking woman,” Hector said. “The sort that’d attract that kinda call.”

  “Isn’t she, though?” Kennedy picked up the complaint form Allie Jones had signed and considered it. Stolen credit cards were seldom recovered.

  “Better file that so we can get going,” Hector urged. “Lieutenant wants us to drive over to Queens and pick up that prisoner.”

  “My hemorrhoids are on fire,” Kennedy said. “I don’t want to drive to Queens.”

  “I sure feel sorry for you,” Hector said with mock sympathy, “but that’s how the world works sometimes.”

  “Funny,” Kennedy told him, “that’s just what she said, about how the world works sometimes. Her words exactly.”

  “Whose words?”

  “Allie Jones’s. The woman who just left.”

  “Forget her and come on,” Hector said, “unless you wanna receive an obscene phone call from the lieutenant.”

  Kennedy braced with his hands on the arms of his chair and levered himself to a standing position. He tucked in his wrinkled white shirt around his ample stomach and wrestled into his tweed sportcoat. After even that brief effort, he was breathing hard. Better watch the blood pressure, he told himself. Lose some weight. Really lay off the cigars, like the doctor advised, or someday he might be waddling after a suspect and collapse and die from a heart attack.

  But he knew he wouldn’t change the way he lived. Or the way he’d probably die. Suicide by cigar.

  He filed the complaint form and trudged after Hector.

  18


  Allie walked home from the precinct house unsure of how she felt. Around her the wet pavement had a mirrorlike effect. The rain had become a cool, persistent mist that found its way down the back of her collar. She moved through it as if it were the atmosphere of dreams, unconcerned about getting wet or catching cold. The tires of passing cabs shiiished. Windshield wipers thunk, thunked.

  Though she felt better after having told Sergeant Kennedy about the phone calls and missing credit cards, she was sure the police couldn’t help. Reporting a crime was a long way from seeing that crime solved. Kennedy himself had as much as said that. He seemed to see the city as a festering, vile creation out of control. The good guys were overwhelmed.

  When finally she reached the apartment, she found Hedra concerned about her. “For Pete’s sake, Allie, what are you doing out wandering around in the rain?”

  “I went to the police station.”

  “You walked?”

  “Took the subway there, but I decided to walk back.”

  “The doctor’ll be your next stop.” There was a mothering quality to Hedra’s voice; a different Hedra, with Allie in trouble.

  She hurried across the living room and helped Allie shrug out of the blue raincoat. After shaking the coat so that hundreds of drops of water caught the light and glittered like scattered diamonds, she hung it in the hall closet, well away from the other coats. Hedra had always liked the blue raincoat and took special care of it, though she hadn’t bought one like it, probably because the coat was four years old and the style was no longer in the stores.

  “I told them about the obscene phone calls and the stolen credit cards,” Allie said.

  “I gathered that. Why don’t you get out of those wet shoes and sit down. I’ll fix you a cup of hot chocolate.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t think I want anything.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous; you’ll catch pneumonia or worse.” She rested a hand on Allie’s shoulder and pushed and guided her to the sofa, like the stern guardian of a recalcitrant child.

  Allie let herself be pushed. She was tired, she missed Sam, and a cup of hot chocolate would taste good and damn the calories.

  While Hedra was clattering around in the kitchen, Allie sat and stared at the rain that was falling hard again and reflecting distorted light as it flowed down the windows. It was a perilous world out there beyond the glass. She’d been blind, preoccupied since she’d come to the city, and hadn’t realized how very hostile and dangerous it was.

  Hedra was back with the cup of hot chocolate for Allie and one for herself. She sat down next to her on the sofa. The steady patter of the rain made the apartment seem smaller, cozier. “So what’d the cops say?”

  “They were nice, but not very helpful.”

  “They’re busy,” Hedra said. “Too much crime in this city. Too much evil.”

  “That’s more or less the impression I got. Obscene phone calls, stolen credit cards—these things happen every hour, so they don’t get excited about them. They concentrate on more important crimes. Until the person who got the phone call becomes one of the important crimes.”

  “Don’t worry so,” Hedra said. “Nothing’s gonna happen to you.” She sipped at her chocolate. She’d put marshmallows in both cups. Thoughtful. “By the way, Allie, I hope you don’t care about me wearing your sweatshirt.” She used her thumb and forefinger to stretch the gray material of the FORDHAM shirt she was wearing. Allie had bought it at a street bazaar two years ago. “I looked through my closet and didn’t have much to lounge around in. I’ll wash it for you when I’m done with it, I promise.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Allie said. She took a long, painful swallow of the scalding chocolate, burning the roof of her mouth. Lowered the cup and wiped melted marshmallow off her upper lip, leaving her hand sticky. She looked up at Hedra. “I opened your closet door, Hedra. I saw how you bought so many clothes exactly like mine.”

  Hedra’s lower lip quaked.

  Allie said, “Don’t do that, Hedra, please. Both of us can’t be basket cases.”

  “You mad?” Hedra asked.

  “Not exactly mad. Puzzled.”

  “Well,” Hedra said, “I saw how good your clothes looked on you, and I figured if they only looked half as good on me, it’d be an improvement.”

  Allie sighed. She didn’t feel like coping with this unabashed admiration, not right now. “Don’t buy any more duplicates, Hedra. Borrow whatever you want from my closet.”

  Hedra beamed as if she’d been pronounced royalty. “Thanks! And you’re welcome to borrow anything in my closet.” Her expression sagged. “ ’Course, you’re not likely to wanna wear any of my stuff.”

  Concerned, mothering Hedra was gone; deferential Hedra was back. Allie didn’t know what to say. She finally mumbled, “Lucky we’re about the same size.”

  “Lucky,” Hedra agreed. “Want some cold milk in that chocolate to cool it down?”

  “No, thanks,” Allie told her. “I’ll wait for it to cool. Then I think I’ll rest awhile.”

  “Sure, rest’ll make everything seem better.”

  Allie seldom went out of the apartment during the next week. Sam phoned several times and sensed her despondency. He tried to cheer her up, told her he loved her and would be back soon. After talking to him she usually felt better, for a while. The few acquaintances who called her soon caught on that she wanted to be left alone. Oily Billy Stothers, probably on the make with Sam out of town, called several times, but he stopped when she made it plain that she preferred loneliness to his company.

  And she couldn’t help it; she found herself wondering about Sam, so far from her arms. Was that part of the reason for her depression? The Lisa factor?

  She was alone most of the time. Hedra went out every day to a temporary office job. She had to dress well for it, she’d said, and usually left the apartment wearing a duplicate of something of Allie’s. Allie sometimes lent her clothes. She didn’t care; she had no place to wear her nice clothes now. The ads she’d placed in the classified columns brought her no business, and the résumés she’d sent around garnered no replies. Work was scarce for computer programmers; colleges were churning them out by the thousands. And she was sure Mike Mayfair, his male vanity bruised, had spread stories about her so that prospective clients would be scared away. She should hate Mayfair, but that required effort. The acidity of hate was in her, but not the energy.

  Sometimes she thought she was becoming a hermit, not going out, not concerned about her appearance, not taking care of herself. What made one a recluse by definition? Leaving shelter only once a week? Twice? Did recluses have roommates? From time to time she wondered if she might be lapsing into a clinical depression. Endorphins in decline.

  After watching a Donahue program on agoraphobia, and seeing a woman interviewed who for years had been terrified to leave her apartment, Allie became frightened. She’d never been the type to pull the walls in around herself, yet that was what she was doing. What was happening to her? Come back, Sam!

  She put on her old Nikes, struggled into her jacket, and immediately went out. Breathed deeply. Walked for miles.

  She fell into the habit of walking every day, and every day brought Sam’s return that much closer. He’d phoned and told her the conference would be longer than originally planned, and to expect him when she saw him.

  Surprisingly, money was no worry. Hedra had been assigned a lucrative job filling in for an executive secretary at a catering firm who was on extended maternity leave. It made Allie miserable at times, gave her a feeling of guilt and uselessness, knowing Hedra was paying for rent and groceries. But she told herself that when things got brighter she’d pay Hedra back and add generous interest. What she wouldn’t do—couldn’t do—was borrow from Sam.

  Some days, like this morning, she couldn’t stop thinking about Sam. She had him on her mind from her first moment of wakefulness, and lay staring at the ceiling, slipping in and out of sleep.

  She and Sam were in M
exico, where they’d often talked about going, and were lying on the beach in soft white sand. A huge full moon drifted lazily on the black waves, like a lost and luminous beachball. The breeze off the ocean sighed warm secrets. New York was far away. Sam said he loved her and her only, and loosened the top of her wet bathing suit. Ran his fingertips over her pulsing nipples. Then her stomach and the insides of her thighs. Parted the suit from her crotch, brushing her lightly with a knuckle.

  Whispered, “Lisa . . .”

  She awoke trembling. Her eyes were juiced with tears that threatened to flow any moment. Her legs thrashed of their own accord. She had to get up.

  Out of the bed.

  Walk.

  Outside, in the vibrant and beautiful morning, she felt better. She cut over to Broadway and walked for block after block, taking long strides, as if trying to exhaust something accompanying her so it would eventually give up and turn back.

  But whatever it was, it strode side by side with her and drew its energy from her desperation.

  Finally, when a muted sun had climbed much higher in the lead-gray sky, she began wending her way home.

  On the corner of West 74th and Amsterdam, a man wearing baggy Levi’s faded the exact color of the sky, and a red windbreaker with the sleeves turned up, approached her. At first she thought he was gazing beyond her, at someone else. But no, he was definitely looking at her. She glanced away but knew it hadn’t been in time. Make eye contact on a teeming Manhattan street and anything can happen.

  “Hey! Allie Jones?”

  She stared into his face. A short guy in his mid-thirties, with curly, sandy-colored hair and uptilted green eyes. There was something vague and a little wild about those eyes, a touch of dangerous disorientation. His flesh was freckled and ruddy, and though there was a fullness to his cheeks, his legs and the torso beneath the Windbreaker were very thin, almost emaciated. The wrists protruding from the turned-up sleeves were bony and fragile. Allie knew she’d never seen him before. She said, “Sorry . . .”