Don’t Look Now

by Richard Montanari

  He shook his head, amazed at the perverse nature of his thoughts sometimes, and knocked on the door to number 206.

  ‘Are you with the police?’ The voice was nicotine-raspy, frightened.

  Having given up on Samantha Jaeger ever answering the door, Paris was nearly through the doorway to the stairwell when the woman opened her door and spoke. He spun around to see a short, frail woman in her seventies, bunching the top of her robe together at her throat. She held a rhinestone-encrusted cigarette holder in the other hand.

  ‘Yes ma’am,’ Paris said, producing his shield. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘There were two of them, you know,’ she said soberly, as if passing along a government secret.

  Paris walked toward the woman, who took a cautious step backward as he approached.

  ‘Two of who?’ He stopped short, not wanting to spook her. ‘Two of what?’

  ‘Two people, of course. A man and a woman.’

  Paris could see a half-dozen cats perched in various positions through the slightly ajar door to the woman’s apartment. He smelled the aroma of simmering onions and tomatoes.

  ‘What two people would that be?’ Paris asked, sensing a crackpot answer coming. Ben and Jerry, maybe.

  ‘Two of them,’ she repeated. ‘They came for her last night.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘And now they’ve found her at the bottom of the basement steps, her neck snapped in two.’

  ‘Who?’ Paris said, straining to keep his temper in check.

  ‘Why, Sam, of course,’ the woman said matter-of-factly. ‘Sammy Jaeger. She’s dead, you know.’

  The words were like a roundhouse blow to Paris’s gut. He heard dead. He heard a man and a woman. He turned on his heels and headed for the stairwell, hoping to catch the paramedics before they moved the body. He glanced over his shoulder. ‘I’ll be back up here in a few minutes,’ he said, feeling winded, shaken. ‘Please don’t go anywhere, Mrs …’

  She wasn’t getting it.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Estelle,’ she said. ‘Estelle Estabrook.’

  ‘Please don’t leave the building, Estelle,’ Paris said, feeling lousy about barking at an elderly woman. His father, rest his soul, would have gone upside his head.

  ‘Yes sir, sergeant,’ she answered, saluting.

  Paris headed down the steps toward the basement, wondering how much of what Estelle Estabrook had told him, or would tell him, was born of this planet.

  As for Samantha Jaeger, and her relationship to this life, he would soon find out.

  Samantha Jaeger’s apartment was small and uncluttered, haphazardly furnished with a worn camelback sofa of indefinable color and a matching, overstuffed chair. The chair was draped with a green and white afghan and sported a sleepy, long-haired cat. The other pieces of furniture in the living room – a wobbly blond coffee table, a tatty ottoman, a braided oval rug – were all Salvation Army specials.

  The only warm touch in the room – indeed the only real clue that any human lived there, besides the stack of Domino’s Pizza boxes – were the bookshelves that contained row after row of brightly hued paperbacks. All romances, all dog-eared, many boasting covers with windblown muscular men and busty raven-haired women. There had to be hundreds.

  He sat down at a small short-legged desk by the front door and surveyed the room. A woman’s place, but only barely and then, perhaps, by default. The room had a palpable scent of loneliness.

  Had she entertained men in this room? Paris wondered. Had she had parties and Christmas gatherings and birthdays and baby showers with her friends and family?

  Paris thought about his own small apartment across town, with its mismatched furniture and its noisome smells of disinfectant and long-boiled coffee. Is this how his life would look to someone else? If he was taken out on the job one day, not given the chance to clean up the detritus of his existence, would some cop sit at his dining table and pity him like this?

  During his formal interview with Estelle Estabrook, she had told Paris that a man and woman had knocked on Samantha’s door at exactly 7.30 p.m. the previous night. She told him that she knew the precise time because it was just at that commercial break after America’s Funniest Home Videos.

  And no, she added, she didn’t actually see the couple. But after forty-four years in the same apartment, she confessed, her ears had become rather highly attuned to the comings and goings and family disputes and midnight lamentations of the people in 206 and the people in 210, the apartments with which she shared walls.

  She was certain there were three distinct voices. Samantha’s, a voice she’d know anywhere. A man, whose baritone was deep and spooky. And another woman, who more than once had shouted something unintelligible at Sam.

  Something, Estelle Estabrook believed in her Christian soul, that contained the f-word.

  Paris rose, tried to plug Samantha Jaeger into this picture. She certainly wasn’t the attractive career woman who fitted the killer’s profile. But she had called and left a message on his voice mail. What had she wanted to tell him about the mustache? On the other hand, maybe the man and woman had nothing to do with anything. Maybe they were bill collectors. Maybe it was simply an accident. Happened all the time. He decided to head back into town, maybe send a lab team to work the hallway and the basement stairwell.

  But what he saw when he glanced into the apartment’s tiny bedroom nearly took his legs away.

  Samantha Jaeger had built a shrine to a madman.

  23

  ANDIE DIDN’T TELL Matt about the cop. She knew that the very idea of police and courts and the very suggestion of trouble would have spooked her husband, and she wasn’t done playing yet. After all, the detective’s questions had nothing to do with their little game, right? They weren’t involved with the murders, were they? So why rock the boat?

  Matt wouldn’t have liked the idea of her being questioned by the police, so he didn’t have to know. She didn’t like lying to him, but it was the only way she could think of to maintain the status quo.

  The cop who called himself Jack Partridge, then Jack Paris, had looked a lot more ordinary at her office than he had at the bar, but he was still rather sexy in a rumpled kind of way. A little rough around the edges, maybe, but he had great hair, big hands. Wise, confident eyes.

  Matt was out of town for two days. Ashland Oil had him on the road, a scenario that seemed to be unfolding more and more frequently at this point in their marriage. Their childless marriage, Andie amended, a little annoyed at her husband but not knowing why. He was working hard, wasn’t he? So that they could live in Shaker and maintain their one luxury car and their one all-American colonial on a hill.

  She was just about to open a bottle of sauvignon blanc, put her feet up and see what was on HBO, when the phone rang.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi.’

  She didn’t recognize the voice. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Who is this? You know who this is.’

  ‘No I don’t. That’s why I asked, see? It’s what we in the profession call a question.’

  ‘Don’t play games.’

  ‘I’m playing games?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Five … four … three …’

  ‘Don’t hang up, either.’

  She was sure that she didn’t know the voice. Clearly it was a man, and it wasn’t Matt. Unless of course Matt had a bad cold and had put a pair of Huggies over the mouthpiece. The voice had a strange electronic sound to it.

  ‘Last chance, Sparky.’

  Silence. Light breathing.

  ‘Bye.’

  She hung up.

  The movie wasn’t very good, something with Will Farrell. But she actually sat and watched two-thirds of it. Matt would have been proud of her.

  She missed him, thought about calling him in Ashland, but it was late.

  She left a few lights on downstairs, brushed her teeth and was halfway under the covers when the phone rang
again. ‘Hello?’ Andie said, fully expecting to hear Matt’s voice.

  It was the breather. She had almost forgotten.

  ‘Oh it’s you,’ she said. ‘How’ve you been?’

  ‘Why do you show me this disrespect?’

  The voice was clearer than before. Softer, somehow. Like a breezy whisper. It actually could have been Matt. There was some hissing behind the voice. It sounded like long-distance static.

  ‘Matt?’

  Pause. ‘I saw you at the nightclub.’

  Andie wasn’t sure, but she decided to play along for a little while, not wanting to kill the game if it was Matt, but not wanting to play along with some pervert, either. The sauvignon blanc put in its two cents, and it voted for the game.

  ‘Yeah?’ she said. ‘Which one?’

  ‘The hotel bar. Beachwood.’

  It had to be Matt, she thought. Who else knew?

  ‘Is that right? And what was I wearing?’

  ‘You looked like a vixen. Tight career-girl suit. Underneath that? God only knows.’

  ‘God and me,’ Andie said, starting to sound a bit too eager.

  ‘I can imagine though.’

  Andie heard something in the man’s voice that told her it wasn’t Matt. The voice was too deep and authoritative. Then again, Matt Heller was always the one at the party who did the impressions, told the dialect jokes. The idea that it might not be her husband both excited and frightened her. A bit.

  But not enough to make her hang up, she discovered.

  ‘Can you?’ Andie untied her robe, flicked off the table lamp on the nightstand and lay back on the bed.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what do you imagine?’

  ‘I imagine expensive silk,’ the man said. ‘I imagine the feel of the silk against your nipples.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘That’s why you wear it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Don’t play with me.’

  The voice commanded the truth.

  ‘Yes,’ Andie said. She pulled open her robe and ran her hand over her inner thighs. Her skin was supple, smoothed with lotion.

  ‘Does it happen often?’ the man asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your nipples, standing erect. Does it happen on the elevators at work?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘Sometimes my nipples get hard while I’m at work.’

  The man exhaled. He sounded pleased with the fact that he had gotten her to talk dirty to him.

  ‘Do you think the men notice?’

  Andie licked the tips of her fingers. ‘Oh, I’m certain they do.’

  ‘Do you think they want you? Want to fuck you?’

  ‘Yes, I think they do.’

  ‘Think?’

  ‘I know they do.’

  ‘How does it make you feel?’

  ‘Good,’ Andie whispered, her breath coming in shorter and shorter gasps.

  ‘I know I do.’

  ‘You do what?’

  ‘Want to fuck you.’

  Andie liked the way the man said the word. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Andie said.

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘Tell me what you want to do to me.’

  After Andie was certain that the man had come, that her husband had come, she fell silent; hushed in this strange afterglow of telephone sex.

  Finally, he spoke.

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Okay,’ Andie replied.

  ‘I have work to do.’

  ‘At this hour?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Before I leave you, let me ask you something.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When you see me, will you know me?’

  Andie thought for a moment.

  But before she could answer, the man laughed softly, and hung up the phone.

  24

  LET ME TELL you about women. I know them, love them, adore them, couldn’t imagine myself living without them for one day, one hour, one minute, one second. It is the pursuit of women that makes life endurable.

  I say this because I have always been good with women. ‘Good’ in the seduction sense. Have you ever spent any time in a nightclub, watching a well-dressed man talking to a beautiful woman, making her laugh, getting her to slow-dance, then walking out of the club with her, only to return alone an hour or so later and start all over again?

  That was me.

  And it’s not just about looks, you see, it’s not just about clothes – although I think I might be dead myself without them – it’s about style. And confidence. If you give a beautiful woman the impression that you couldn’t care less if you got between her legs, you’ll drive her crazy with desire. How dare you not fall over yourself to pursue me? she thinks. How dare you not call? Who do you think you are?

  I’ll tell you who I am. I am a most prolific lover of women; the bane of every working husband. Yet, when I give myself over to one woman, I am just another slave.

  Just like every other man.

  I trust my woman with my life.

  25

  THE HOLE IN the center of his forehead was less than a half-inch in diameter. Clean around the edges, except for the ash-white of the powder, the deep violet streak of the burn.

  The back of his head told another story altogether. A story punctuated by the dried clumps of pink and gray tissue that clung to the lampshade and stereo receiver behind the chair.

  The .38 Smith and Wesson Police Special was taped to his hand and wrist with a huge ball of silver duct tape, lest there be any frantic searching for the weapon when the team arrived, lest there be any spasming that might have flung the revolver out the window. At his feet lay an empty fifth of Absolut Citron Vodka and a pair of Gucci slippers, neatly tucked under the base of the couch.

  But there was no note. No confession.

  Reuben was positive, going on appearance and smell alone, that the corpse was at least seventy-two hours ripe. Which made it Friday night. Which made sense, if everything was as it appeared to be.

  And Paris was far from convinced of that.

  Yet the shock of the scene was still enormous, even to the so-called seasoned veteran. Cops say they get used to it after a while, but there are some things you never get used to. Dead kids. Maimed kids. Mutilated bodies. Brains.

  You can’t be seasoned enough for this, Paris decided as they zipped the plastic body bag around the man’s broad shoulders.

  The police officers walked silently around the living room for the next forty-five minutes, doing their respective duties, sidestepping each other, averting eyes, trying to deflect the anger and guilt they all felt, the sense of shame at not having been able to prevent this.

  Paris knew he was putting it off.

  He walked slowly into the bedroom and began the ritual scavenging of the dead man’s treasures.

  The bedroom furniture was Japanese in design: black lacquer finish, red-tasseled nylon sash cords, silver hardware. The bed was huge, easily a kingsize, probably a special-order job, which looked as if it could sleep four across. To the right of the bed stood a dresser bearing a large collection of expensive colognes, cut-crystal sentries standing guard on a carved wooden tray. Acqua di Parma, Clive Christian, Burberry, Bond No. 9 New York. Paris remembered when there were only three colognes to choose from: Aramis, Obsession, and Old Spice. This was all so foreign to him. Another world.

  He pushed the bottles aside.

  At the back he found a small vial of spirit gum.

  The bathroom was spotless and fragrant, hardly a bachelor’s strong suit, Paris thought as he pushed open the door. Gray curtain, black carpet, white fixtures. He rummaged through the drawers and cabinets and found just what he expected to find, the usual minutiae of an unmarried man: nail clippers, Bic razors, airline soaps, mint-flavored floss. He looked into the wicker wastebasket. A pair of used Band-Aids they would bag for blood type. There was also a
brightly colored box bearing the words ‘EZ Color Fashion Rinse’.

  The closet. A dozen suits, as many brilliant white shirts, all carrying names Paris knew only from the magazines: Armani, Valentino, Hugo Boss, Prada. There were a dozen pairs of shoes all filled to their welts with cedar shoe trees, all reflecting back a funhouse-mirror face at Paris. At least a hundred ties, thirty or so belts.

  Paris stepped back, stood on his tiptoes and, within a few moments, found what he was looking for.

  On the uppermost shelf, perched atop a quartet of meticulously folded Ralph Lauren and Dior Homme sweaters, sat an Irish walking-hat.

  Paris knew where he would find the patches of skin.

  The rose tattoos.

  He just didn’t feel like opening the freezer yet.

  26

  WHEN THE BUZZER rings at one o’clock in the morning at the Candace Apartments, it is never good news. Pick one: some crazyass, some drunk crazyass, or one of Jack Paris’s long list of junkie informants in need of a cure.

  He was a third of the way inside his own evening’s whore, a fifth of Jameson, when he finally marched over to the intercom. He shushed Manny and pressed the button, expecting anything.

  The last person he expected was Diana.

  ‘I heard, Jack,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She took off her coat. She was wearing an oversized white shirt and denim skirt.

  Paris didn’t know what to say. He was so full of rage and sadness and impotence. He felt the same debilitating weariness he had felt the moment he knew his marriage was over.

  Diana took the cue and pulled him to her. She grabbed the bottle from his hand, placed it on the end table and held him close.

  Within a few moments, she kissed him for the very first time.

  * * *

  ‘Cindy Crawford.’

  ‘Okay,’ Paris said. ‘Good one.’ He looked at the ceiling, lost in thought. ‘Okay, how about Dale Bozzio?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dale Bozzio.’

  Diana looked at him sceptically. ‘I thought we were just doing women.’

  ‘Dale Bozzio is a woman.’