by John Lutz
“Hah! Anyway, I enjoy the challenge.”
He raised his left hand, nudged her beneath the shoulder, and guided her into an underarm turn. Ballroom stuff, as if to demonstrate that he had class. That he thought she had class. When she came out of the turn, he was right there to pick up the beat. Maneuvered her toward the edge of the wide dance floor and began a lazy, circling step so they could talk.
He said, “It’s tell-me-about-yourself time, Allie. You from New York?”
“Not originally. From Illinois. But I haven’t been back there in years. Don’t wanna go back ever.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, no solid reason. Just a collection of slightly unpleasant memories, all connected with the Midwest.” She felt a thrust of fury at the base of her mind. “They don’t understand there that the different apple in the barrel isn’t necessarily the rotten one.”
“Hey, I know what you mean. You live in the Village, I’ll bet.”
“Nope. Upper West Side. You?”
“I’m from New Jersey. Teaneck. Too expensive to live in Manhattan for some of us.” He led her through a neat turn to avoid a couple who’d danced too close, then resumed his rhythmic, hypnotic circling step. “How long you lived in your apartment?”
“ ’Bout three years. Did I say I lived in an apartment?”
“I dunno.” He smiled. “Doesn’t everyone in New York live in an apartment?”
“No, sometimes a condo or co-op.”
“Same thing. You go in a door and down a hall before you get to your door.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
“Bet you have a nice place. Maybe I could see it sometime.”
A quick hint of a smile. “Definitely. Sometime.”
“Where’d you live before Manhattan?”
She moved closer and rested her head on his shoulder. A tingle of alarm played up the nape of her neck, like the very tip of a soft feather drawn over flesh. What was going on here? “How ’bout you? Where’d you live before New Jersey?”
He told her, but she barely listened. Someplace in Connecticut. Not that it mattered. No way to know if it was the truth. A thousand voices in Hedra were screaming for her to be careful. She’d heard those warnings before and ignored them, and regretted it later. Alcoholics and gamblers must hear those same unheeded voices.
She and Andy danced until closing time and agreed to meet there the next evening. He kissed her lightly on the forehead as they parted. Nothing pushy, but a promise. Subtle foreplay.
And the next evening she went. She couldn’t stay away.
She waited until almost midnight and he didn’t show up.
After turning down her tenth offer of a drink or a dance, she decided to leave. She threaded her way across the crowded dance floor and past a line of people waiting to get into the main room. A short man with a gray beard and a gold-flecked silk jacket turned away from the woman on his arm and winked at Hedra. She said, “Nice coat, but that’s about it, asshole,” and walked past him and out the door.
Zinging the bearded man had given her a great deal of pleasure, but she wasn’t sure why. Maybe she’d made him a substitute for Andy. He was the same sex; that was close enough.
Midnight was too late for a woman alone to ride safely on the subway.
Alone. Not what she’d planned.
It wasn’t unusual to be stood up, she assured herself, as she hailed a cab to take her back to the Cody Arms. That was how it went in the singles scene in Manhattan, a cruel and devious game, each partner playing with the softest part of the other. Hadn’t she always known it?
Still, she’d liked Andy a lot. She’d wanted desperately for the voices to be wrong, for him to be who he said he was.
But was anybody who they said they were? Really?
During the cab ride through the dark and rain-slick streets, snow began to fall.
At the Cody Arms, she paid the driver and climbed out of the taxi, feeling a few cold flakes on the back of her neck as she bent down and slammed the rear door. The cab pulled away and left a swirling turmoil of blue-gray exhaust that held the glow from the streetlight, then drifted low and disappeared in darkness.
She turned up the collar of her new blue raincoat and hurried across West 74th Street, listening to the clack! clack! clack! of her high heels spiking the pavement. She wanted to be warm. Safe. Home. Soon as possible.
There was no one in the lobby or the elevator. She rode up to the third floor, waited patiently for the elevator to go through its yo-yo act to minimize the step up. As the sliding doors hissed open, she strode out into the hall, already fishing in her purse for her key.
As soon as she closed the apartment door behind her, she felt much better. Calmer. And she realized she was very tired. Being stood up was a strain. The hell with you, Andy, you inconsiderate bastard. She’d have a cup of hot chocolate and then read herself to sleep.
She didn’t notice them at first. Not until she’d hung her coat in the closet by the door and taken three steps into the living room.
Then her breath became a cold vacuum and she stopped and stood still. Mother of God!
What was going on here? Were they real, sitting so calmly and unmoving on her sofa? Staring at her?
Not real, she decided.
Not possibly real.
An illusion.
She dug her fingers into her palms and laughed nervously, startling herself with the high-pitched rasp that exploded from her constricted throat. When she inhaled she found the air thin and dizzying and felt as if she might suffocate.
The large, tweedy man holding the brown package and the dead cigar said, “Nasty out there, isn’t it, dear?” And she knew he was real.
Real, too, was the figure next to him on the sofa.
Sitting in Hedra’s place.
Allie Jones.
36
Hedra knew she was in a trap but had little idea of its tightness or dimensions. She had to feel this one out. Move carefully.
What could they know about her?
Actually know?
That she’d moved into the apartment under false pretenses. That she wasn’t using her real name.
That was all, really; they couldn’t possibly prove she’d lived here before. They knew nothing about her actions during that time.
They can’t prove anything, she told herself. She’d obscured every track and neatly snipped every loose end. Just like in the mystery novels she read so avidly. They can know but they can’t prove. Don’t let them bluff you.
With an immense effort of will, she calmed herself. The fluttering in her stomach slowed and almost ceased. She managed to stare at Allie questioningly. Who are you? She said, “Whoever you people are, I think you have the wrong apartment. You damn well better have a believable explanation.”
Allie parted her lips to say something, then she decided against it and remained silent. There she sat in the streaming lamplight, staring at Hedra accusingly and as if she couldn’t quite understand her. But it was Hedra who didn’t understand. What was Allie doing here? Why wasn’t she behind bars awaiting trial?
The big man absently holding the snubbed-out cigar uncrossed his weighty legs, then extended them and crossed them again at the ankles. I’m not going anywhere, his actions told her. He was wearing huge wing-tip shoes, scuffed as if he’d been kicking rocks. Sighing like an asthmatic, he reached into a suit coat pocket and dragged out a small leather case and flipped it open. He made a show of extending it toward her. “I’m Detective Sergeant Will Kennedy,” he said, “N.Y.P.D. This is Miss Allison Jones. She used to live here, in this apartment.”
Hedra didn’t bother examining the identification, as if she were uninterested. She wished Allie would stop staring at her and say something. Wished the bitch would stop regarding her with that mixture of cold anger and puzzlement. And something else: pity. Hedra said, “I read in the papers Allison Jones was in jail.”
Sergeant Kennedy smiled with a strange sadness. “And so she was. Miss Jones here pers
isted in telling us an interesting story. One nobody believed.”
“Was it one she could prove?” Hedra asked.
Kennedy ignored the question. He sighed again. “She said a woman named Hedra Carlson had been her secret roommate and had . . . well, gradually taken over her life in a very real sense.”
“Taken over her life? What’s that mean?”
“Become her, you might say.”
The acrid smell of his dead cigar drifted to Hedra and nauseated her. “Well, I’m Hedra Carlson, but I just moved into this apartment a few weeks ago. I never saw it till the rental agent opened the door.”
“But you’re using the name Eilla Jones. We wouldn’t have noticed that on the computer printouts, except for the address. That made it kinda jump off the page at us. It was Miss Jones here who convinced us to get computer printouts on all rental units in Manhattan occupied since the date of her friend’s murder.” Kennedy shook his head in wonder. “All that kinda information’s available these days almost at the press of a button. Amazing, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know anything about her friend’s murder, but I admit I used guile to get this apartment. Of that I plead guilty, Sergeant, but I’m not sorry. You have any idea how difficult it is to get an apartment in New York?”
“Everything’s difficult in New York,” he said, as if commiserating with her.
“I’d read about this woman in the papers”—a glance at Allie—“just after she killed that poor man in the hotel. One of the news items mentioned her address. The Upper West Side was exactly the area I wanted. I knew that, unless she was tried and acquitted in record time, her apartment would be available as soon as her rent wasn’t paid, so I kept an eye on the place and was first to apply. I was prepared to wait. Justice seldom moves swiftly, does it, Sergeant?”
“No, but it moves.”
For an instant he reminded Hedra of Justice itself, a force as inexorable as the swing of planets. She reassured herself he was nothing more than a very human, overweight cop. Nothing for her to fear if only she kept her head. Did he know how she’d convinced Myra Klinger to accept her for the apartment? Aging, ugly Myra, so grateful for someone like Hedra. “I did what was necessary in order to get the lease, Sergeant. I took advantage of Allison Jones’s predicament. That kind of thing’s done all the time to get an apartment in this city. One person’s misfortune is another’s good luck.” She stood very straight. “I’m not ashamed.”
He studied his snubbed-out cigar intently, as if at any second it might be the beneficiary of spontaneous combustion. “No, I expect you’re not.”
“I’ve never before laid eyes on Allison Jones.”
“Well, I can’t agree with that,” he said in a level, amiable tone, as if he were differing with her about the Mets’ chances to make the play-offs. “She’s here to positively identify you, which she’s done. And she says you and she lived here together for several months. That little by little you stole her life, her lover, her identity. That only two other people knew about you. One was murdered. The other died, maybe in an accident, though I suspect not. And you disappeared, leaving behind a mutilated corpse and a murder charge that appeared to belong to her.”
Hedra didn’t bother feigning surprise. “And now I’ve come back here?”
“You thought the real Allie Jones was in prison, possibly for life. No murder had been committed in the apartment. No one suspected a woman fitting your general description ever lived here. So it figured you’d return. There was no reason for you not to, this time. You’d almost have to, wouldn’t you, if you were Allie Jones?”
“‘This time’?”
“You’ve assumed other identities, other personalities, before Allie Jones.”
“But I told you, I only did what was needed to get the apartment. I never told anyone I was Allie Jones. I’m not Allie Jones.”
He rolled the cigar between his fingers. “Aren’t you?”
It was time for positions to be made clear. Hedra said, “This is all very serious. For you, if you can’t prove any of it. Which you can’t, because it isn’t true. If this woman says it is, I think you better have her sanity tested. Or maybe she’s sane as they come and she’s cooked up a story to give her the best possible deal in court. And anyone who can corroborate it, or prove to you it isn’t true, is conveniently dead. Doesn’t that make sense? If she’s under indictment for murder, what’s she got to lose?”
“The indictment’s been dropped,” Kennedy said. “Her story’s been corroborated.”
Hedra felt her heartbeat quicken, the blood pulse in her temples. She should have anticipated this. Don’t let them bluff you. “You said the only two people who could corroborate it were dead.”
“And they are.” Kennedy leisurely unwrapped the plain brown package he was holding. Peeled away the thick paper with maddening slowness, crinkling it noisily. He had fingers the size of sausages, with blunt, tobacco-yellowed tips and almost nonexistent nails. Allie sat quietly with her eyes fixed on Hedra. She was even thinner than before. There was a worn resignation in the limpness of her hands resting palms-up in her lap, the slope of her shoulders. But her eyes were bright, almost as if glowing with fever.
Inside the brown wrapping paper was a thin cardboard box that had contained typewriter paper. Kennedy set the crumpled wrapping aside and lifted the lid slowly, as if something alive were inside.
He said, “Miss Jones was convincing enough for me to do what you might call some exploratory police work. A woman was killed and mutilated with a knife six months ago in her apartment on the Lower East Side. Her name was Meredith Hedra Carlson. That prompted us to look a bit further into what Miss Jones had told us. It turns out the Times does have a record of Allison Jones placing a classified ad in their ‘Apartment to Share’ section. So we examined Graham Knox’s possessions and found this.” He nodded toward the box. “It contained notes, an outline, and the first several scenes of what was to be Knox’s next play, based on material he acquired by listening through the ductwork at his vent in the apartment above this one. He titled it SWF Seeks Same. It’s about a Manhattan apartment dweller and her secret roommate.”
He set the box on the sofa arm and shifted his bulk so he could lever himself to stand. “You must be somebody, dear. Who are you?”
Hedra wasn’t aware of making a decision. No more than a trapped animal consciously decides on a final, desperate burst for freedom. An effort of nerve and heart and muscle that allows for thought later, in sweet and silent safety.
She was at the door, flinging it open, hurling herself into the hall.
In the corner of her vision she saw fat Sergeant Kennedy struggling ponderously up out of the sofa, knocking the box and its contents to the floor. Heard him say, “Dammit, come back here! You trying to kill me, too?”
37
Allie sprang to her feet as she saw Hedra bolt out the door. Not again! Hedra was real! Here! Now! Allie couldn’t bear the thought of her disappearing again. Ceasing to exist.
Kennedy was flailing away, trying to get to his feet; he posed no threat to the swift and panicked Hedra. Allie ran for the open door, banged her hand on the knob as she raced through, and wheeled, almost falling, to dash after Hedra.
As she rounded the final corner in the hall, there was Hedra standing inside the elevator. Her back was pressed to the metal wall and she was watching with strange and dreamy detachment as Allie ran toward her. Fear had rushed her from reality.
When Allie was fifty feet from the elevator, Hedra’s eyes widened in mild alarm.
At twenty feet, the elevator doors began to slide closed. Hedra might have smiled.
Allie dived at the elevator like a ballplayer sliding headfirst into a base. She felt the carpet burning her elbows, her chin, her stomach where her blouse had twisted.
She managed to thrust an arm between the closing doors. Her wrist was clamped by hard steel beneath soft rubber. An animal caught in a spring trap.
She struggled to a kneelin
g position. Something smashed loudly against the inside of the elevator doors. Hedra kicking at the intrusive wrist and hand. Allie could feel the vibrations of each blow. A bolt of pain shot up her arm as Hedra’s foot mashed the back of her hand. Her wrist felt sprained.
Writhing to a crouch, she’d managed to work her other hand into the crack between the doors and was prying them open. Hedra gripped a finger and bent it back. Pain! Oh, God! Through her agony Allie could hear Hedra’s breath hissing fiercely inside the elevator.
Gradually, then all at once, the doors slid open. Allie flung herself inside.
She grabbed Hedra in a wild, brutal hug, feeling an incredible satisfaction.
Hedra was real, all right. Solid and reeking of terror and in her grasp at last. Hissing, “Let go, Allie. Goddamn you, let me go!”
Allie was aware of Kennedy chugging down the hall, running with a bearlike wobble. The blackened dead cigar jutting from his mouth, his thick legs pumping and his arms swinging wide.
The elevator doors were sliding shut.
He’d never make it.
Would he?
When he was ten feet away the doors met and the elevator lurched into its descent. Pain jolted through the right side of Allie’s head as Hedra sank her teeth into her earlobe, whimpering in the ear like a lover in desperate ecstasy.
Allie tried to push her away and Hedra punched her in the stomach. Allie almost doubled over in pain and heard the breath whoosh out of her. She raised her right foot and stamped down hard on Hedra’s instep. Again! The teeth loosened their grip on her burning ear.
Finding strength where she thought there was none, Allie shoved away the feverish, rigid body pressed against hers. Hedra slammed into the corner. Allie grabbed her hair, her blond hair like Allie’s own, and slammed her head against the wall.
Slammed it again and again until Hedra went limp and slumped to the floor.
Hedra curled her arms over her head for protection, drew up her knees and began to sob.
Allie leaned back against the opposite wall, drained of rage. She stood surprised and awed by the sense of profound pity she felt. This must be what a twin feels when its sibling’s in pain.
