Jack of Spades

by James Hankins

  “That’s fine. You did great. You were saying that you woke up in the chair and you saw him standing there. Right in front of you?” Pendleton nodded. “What happened next?”

  “Right. Okay. So the creep starts talking. Oh, my mouth’s taped up, by the way. Anyway, he starts talking, and his voice is weird. I mean really weird. It’s like…like…”

  “Like the alien on TV?” Spader asked.

  “Yeah, almost exactly like that. Really creepy.”

  “Could you tell whether it was a man or a woman behind the mask?”

  The question seemed to surprise Pendleton. “I don’t know. I guess I just assumed it was a man. Plus he was built kind of solid, you know?”

  “But the voice, you couldn’t tell from the voice? I mean, inside the mask, could you get a sense of whether the person had a deep voice, or a high one. Or spoke with a lisp, maybe. Anything like that?”

  “No lisp, I don’t think. And as for the rest, well, I couldn’t hear anything. Like I said, he sounded just like that alien on TV. But I’m pretty sure it was a man.”

  “And how did he speak? I mean, did he sound educated to you? Like someone with a college or graduate degree? Or maybe he sounded like someone who never got out of the fifth grade? You notice anything along those lines?”

  “Uh, not really. I had to guess, I’d say he was educated. Spoke well enough, I think.”

  “Okay,” Spader said, “that’s good. So what did he say to you?”

  “Well, right away he tells me there are ground rules.”

  “Such as?”

  “First, he won’t kill me unless he has to. Second, I’m not allowed to scream for help when he takes the tape off my mouth. That made me happy right then, you know? Knowing he was going to take the tape off. At the time I’m thinking, well, shit, it can’t be too bad what he’s going to do to me, right, if he’s going to take the tape off. Man, was I wrong.” He fell silent for a moment and Spader waited patiently. Pendleton took a breath and continued, saying that his attacker gave him two choices and that if he didn’t choose one within one minute the guy would treat it as though he’d chosen both options.

  Spader nodded. “Okay. Were you worried about your mother?”

  “Huh? Well, yeah, sure I was. Since the cancer she seems to be a little more frail.” That explained the wig, Spader thought. “But I forgot to tell you. One of the first things the guy says to me is that my mother’s okay. She’s locked in a closet, and he swears he didn’t hurt her, and he won’t if I behave myself.”

  Spader nodded again and asked a few clarifying questions, probing for a little more detail on the story up to that point. Dunbar came into the room and took an empty chair at the table. He told Pendleton his mother was resting in her room. Good job, Dunbar, Spader thought, keeping her out of the kitchen even after her interview ended. Spader asked Pendleton to continue.

  “Okay, so he stands there,” Pendleton said, “scratching his weird plastic head, looking like he’s thinking it over, then he gives me two choices. It’s either have my nose sliced off or my ear. Can you believe it? I couldn’t. It was crazy. It just didn’t compute. And he reaches for the tape on my mouth and my mind’s spinning, right, wondering how the heck I’m supposed to choose between my nose or my ear. Then the guy stops before he pulls off the tape. He seems to think it over a little more, and he changes my choices. I don’t why. One of my choices is still my ear—obviously,” and he turned his head slightly to show Spader the bandage on the side of his head, “but instead of having my nose sliced off, my other option is all my teeth pulled out of my head, one by one, with a pair of pliers. And if they won’t come out with pliers, he’ll use a hammer, he says. Then, real quick, he rips off the tape. Suddenly I notice the timer’s going and I can barely think. And there’s this freaky alien standing there with his crazy smile and his huge happy eyes and I’m trying to think and the whole time he’s talking to me, talking in that high-pitched cartoon voice, telling me I’d better choose or else he’ll yank out all my teeth and cut off my ear. And he never stops talking and I’m trying like crazy to think what I should do, because I believed every word he said, you know? I just knew he’d do exactly like he said. And seeing how I wasn’t gonna get out of that situation before the timer went off, I knew I’d better choose one of the options, no matter how bad it was. So I chose to have my ear cut off. I mean, you probably didn’t notice, but I don’t exactly break the ladies’ hearts, you know, not with this face, so I figured losing the ear wouldn’t be that big a deal, ’cause they probably have fake ones they can put on—and I was right, by the way, the ambulance guy told me they have…I forget what he called them—”

  “Prosthetic ears?” Spader offered.

  “Right,” Pendleton said, “that’s right. Anyway, I figured I’d either have a fake ear or fake teeth, and it didn’t matter which as far as my looks went, but it’d probably hurt a lot more to have each tooth taken out one by one—maybe with a hammer—than to have my ear cut off. You know, one quick slice might do it, and then it would be over. That’s what I thought, anyway. Instead, the bastard took his time sawing it off.” He shivered involuntarily. “I don’t know, I still figure I made the right decision. What would you have done?”

  The question surprised Spader. “I honestly don’t know. I’d have to think about it.”

  “I would have liked some time to think about it, too, but he only gave me a minute. Anyway, I picked the ear. I guess I made it by a few seconds, because a little after I made my choice the timer went off. Galaxo tells me I did good and slaps another piece of tape over my mouth. Then he opens this little gym bag and takes out a little saw, grabs my ear with his free hand, pulls it out from my head, and begins sawing away. It hurt like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I think I passed out. Next thing I know my mother’s waking me up—and wow, you should have seen her looking at me, at all the blood—and Galaxo is gone. Then the cops show up and the ambulance guys come.”

  “And your mother called nine-one-one?” Spader asked, though he knew the answer.

  “No, that’s another weird thing. Galaxo did, they think, ’cause the phone was off the hook when my mother came into my room and apparently nine-one-one was already on the line.”

  Spader asked several more questions, queries formulated to fill in any holes Pendleton had left, to coax out additional details. Then he covered new ground, asking whether Pendleton knew of anyone who would want to hurt him, had he had any serious arguments with anyone lately, had he met anyone new recently who might be worth looking into. Finally, he said, “We’re almost finished here, Mr. Pendleton. Now, can you tell me, does the name Andrew Yasovich mean anything to you?”

  Pendleton thought about it, then shook his head. “No, should it?”

  “How about Peter Lisbon?”

  He frowned this time. “I might have seen that name in the paper. I don’t know.”

  “Does either name mean anything to you, other than what you may have seen on the news or in the paper? Some connection in your own life? Take your time. This could be very important.”

  Pendleton blew out a breath and appeared to be concentrating hard. Then he shook his head again. “I’m sorry, no.”

  “Okay, Mr. Pendleton, we’re just about finished now. Is there anything else you can tell me? Anything at all you can think of about tonight that might help?”

  Pendleton seemed to give it some thought, then shook his head. “No, sorry.”

  “That’s okay. You did really well.” He handed the man one of his cards. “Don’t hesitate to call me if you think of anything else. You never know when something might come to you. Just before you fall asleep, when you’re watching TV, you never know. Call me anytime.”

  “I will.”

  Spader closed his notebook and stood. “I really think you should get to a hospital soon. The paramedics who were here are undoubtedly good, but you’ll want proper treatment as soon as possible.�
��

  “Yeah, I just wanted to wait for you, that’s all. I wanted to make sure I talked to you before I forgot anything. And the paramedics told me there wasn’t all that much left to do for me, at least right away.”

  “Still, you should go. Your mother should be seen, too. I’ll see that your wheelchair is brought to you soon and I’ll ask one of the officers to drive you both to the hospital, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Spader looked at the cop standing by the doorway to the hall, then glanced down at her nametag. “Officer Davis? How about it? Want to take the Pendletons to the hospital?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  Spader was about to leave when Pendleton said, “You gonna catch the guy who did this to us, Detective Spader?” It sounded like there was some hope in his voice, but Spader thought he heard a little doubt, too. It was the same way a lot of people had reacted to him over the past year or so.

  “We’ll sure as hell try, Mr. Pendleton,” he said. “I promise you that.”

  Pendleton nodded and Spader followed Dunbar out of the room and straight out of the house.

  As Dunbar drove them back toward their detective unit in Salem, the town immediately to the south of Beverly, they went over what they’d each learned. Dunbar reported that the mother had told him essentially the same thing she’d told Matthews.

  “She tell you how the son ended up in a wheelchair?” Spader asked.

  “You didn’t ask the son?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “She said he fell off a cliff walking in the woods. Broke his back.”

  “He told me it was a steep hill.”

  “Yeah, well, when I was a kid I was bitten by a beagle,” Dunbar said. “You hear my mother tell that story now, it was rabid Saint Bernard.”

  Spader recalled for Dunbar what Pendleton had said before Dunbar came into the room. Then they drove in silence for several minutes.

  “Sick bastard,” Dunbar finally said.

  “Pendleton? He seemed all right to me.”

  “Very funny. Like he doesn’t have enough problems. He has to lose his ear, too? Shit, John, I’m starting to think this Galaxo asshole has no conscience.”

  “You didn’t get that impression after he sliced out Andrew Yasovich’s tongue and the old man’s heart just popped? Or how about when he cut off Peter Lisbon’s feet and the poor guy bled to death?”

  “Well, yeah, but…shit, I mean, a cripple. With those scars on his face, no less. I’m just saying, you know?”

  Spader nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

  Another couple of miles slid by in the dark, then Dunbar said quietly, “John?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I really wanna catch this guy.”

  “Me, too.”

  They were almost back at Ten Fed before either of them spoke again. “John?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you’re really gonna break up with Hannah, you wanna give me her number?”

  THREE

  Spader closed the door to his apartment and engaged both deadbolts. It had been a long day and he was glad it was over. At that moment, most people would think, “It’s good to be home,” but Spader still couldn’t bring himself to think of his apartment as home. Home was where he’d lived with Olivia, in the three-bedroom Victorian in the seaside town of Swampscott, the house where they’d made love, eaten dinners, watched movies on the couch, debated when to start trying to have children, disagreed about the color of the wallpaper in the foyer, and where they’d made plans for the rest of their lives, plans that hadn’t worked out very well at all. Home definitely wasn’t this sterile two-bedroom apartment in a relatively seedy corner of Salem, a largely blue-collar town next to Swampscott, fifteen or so miles north of Boston.

  Salem, once one of the most important seaports in the country, is most famous for an ugly episode in its distant past, an episode of ignorance and hysteria. In 1692, three young women claimed they’d been afflicted by witches. Soon the jail cells in the little Puritan village were crammed with men and women accused by their neighbors of witchcraft. In less than four months, nineteen men and women were hanged as witches, and one man over eighty was “pressed” to death, meaning large stones were placed on him, one after another, until he died. Spader still felt oddly uncomfortable driving through this town, seeing how it capitalized on its infamous past. Everywhere you looked was a novelty store with a witch on its sign, a wicked play of words in its name, skulls and gargoyles and other creepy things in their windows. Restaurants might sell a beverage concoction called a “Witch’s Brew.” Weekend tourists took graveyard tours or visited wax museums or life-sized dioramas depicting the trials of the witches, and, of course, their hangings. And Halloween was a nightmare. If you found a public parking space in town in late October, you’d be smart to find the nearest lottery-ticket seller and bet your paycheck, because you’d be having a damned lucky day. Spader sighed, realizing that Halloween was only three months away.

  Spader shrugged out of his shoulder holster and draped it, Glock and all, over the back of a chair in the living room. He lifted his pant leg and unsnapped the ankle holster for his snub-nosed .38 Colt Detective Special and laid that on the chair as well. The message light on his answering machine was blinking. The first call was from a telemarketer. Because Spader didn’t want a free weekend in Atlantic City in exchange for his attendance at a short informational meeting about time-shares, he didn’t bother to write down the toll-free number the robotic voice left for him. The second call was from his son, David, not even trying to hide the sullenness in his voice as he said that he wanted to talk about school again. Spader was glad it was far too late to call him back. The kid was screwing up in college, so they were pulling him out. End of story. He loved his son dearly, as did Olivia, but they weren’t going to budge on the school issue, and David wasn’t going to see their side of it any time soon. Spader didn’t feel like fighting with the boy about it yet again tonight. He made a mental note to call David tomorrow and deleted the message. The third message was from Hannah. Because he didn’t want to hear what she had to say about his disappearing act, at least not tonight, he skipped to the fourth and final message.

  “John, it’s me.” Olivia. Spader hated himself for the way his wife’s voice—his ex-wife’s voice—still made his breath catch just a little, as it had ever since they separated. “We need to meet sometime.” He hated himself even more for the ridiculous feeling of hope those few words gave him the second he heard them. “I hope you’re doing all right. Anyway, I, uh, I think you have a couple of my photo albums. I’d like to get them back sometime, okay?” He knew the photo albums she was referring to. There were two. The first contained pictures from her life before him, the second held photos from their life together. Spader wondered if she didn’t care quite as much about getting the second album back but simply was too kind to say, “I’d like the pictures from my life before you, but you can keep all the others.”

  Spader realized he’d missed part of the phone message, so he rewound it.

  “I don’t know, I thought maybe you packed the albums by accident, with your stuff. You must have seen them. I hope we can meet sometime. I’d really like to get those photos back. And see how you’re doing,” she added, just a second too late, it seemed to him.

  He erased the message and picked up the phone and called her cell number. He knew she didn’t keep it turned on at night, when she was home. When her voice mail picked up, he said, “Olivia, it’s John. I got your message. I haven’t seen those photo albums you want, but they could be in one of the boxes I still haven’t gotten around to unpacking yet. I’ll try to look tomorrow.” He closed out with “See you” and was able, just in time, to avoid adding “sweetheart” at the end.

  He went to the fridge, grabbed a Budweiser, and went to into his second bedroom, which he used as an office of sorts. He slid into the chair behind his desk, opened the bottom drawer, and pulled out two photo albums with burgundy faux-lea
ther binding. He took a sip of beer, opened the first album, and started flipping through the pictures. Black-and-whites and faded color shots from Olivia’s youth. There she was as a smiling infant, less than a year old, her eyes sparkling with the unbridled joy that can only be found on the face of a child. And in the next one she was maybe two years old, up to her chubby calves in a kiddie pool, a floppy hat on her head, a lopsided grin on her face. Spader saw her blowing out birthday candles, in Halloween costumes, in school plays, hugging one or the other of her parents, posing with Cookie the cocker spaniel, opening Christmas presents, grinning with a group of other kids at some camp by a lake, playing junior-varsity basketball, standing with her arm looped through that of her nervous-looking prom date, graduating from high school, going off to college. He sipped his beer and turned the pages and the years and watched his ex-wife grow from a beautiful child into a beautiful young woman.

  He got himself a second beer and returned to his desk. He replaced the first photo album in the drawer, took a sip of Bud, then another, and opened the second album. A shot of Olivia with her arms around him, from when they were first dating. Pictures of them dancing, smiling, standing in front of various landmarks, laughing. Photos from their wedding and their intentionally cheesy honeymoon in the Poconos—complete with heart-shaped bathtub. Pictures of their first house, then their second, of their first brand-new car. Shots of them with their son, David, as the boy grew over the years. Spader smiled now in spite of himself. There he and Olivia were, a happy, carefree, never-suspecting-that-all-this-was-fleeting couple. She seemed to be smiling in every picture. He wondered when she’d stopped smiling. He downed a little more Bud and realized that he didn’t really wonder at all. He knew.

  He wanted to be angry at Olivia. For a while he had been. Angry that she hadn’t stuck by him through his darkest time like she was supposed to do, at least according to the spiel the priest gave before pronouncing them husband and wife. But after she’d been gone a few months he thought about things, about the way he’d acted throughout his ordeal, and he saw things a little more clearly. Maybe she hadn’t really walked away from their marriage. Maybe he’d shoved her out the door. He certainly couldn’t have been a bushel of laughs in the months after Eddie Rivers came into his life.