by John Lutz
Greeve looked doubtful. “I don’t know, sir. Pearl’s different. Way I got it, she’s the one who broke it off with Quinn. He’s been trying to get back in and she wants none of it.”
“She’ll feel different when she realizes Quinn’s suddenly no longer available to her. Women. What they can’t have is what they want, and why they want it.”
It took Greeve a few seconds to work that one out in his mind. “I’ve seen Pearl Kasner work. She’s not women. She’s different.”
“Yeah. From what I hear, she’s a goddamned alley cat. She’ll fight for any morsel just because it’s hers. Even if it’s Quinn. Then she’ll spit that morsel out.”
Greeve wasn’t so sure. If only from a distance, he knew Pearl. She was a hardhead but smart in a weird way. He chose silence as the wisest course.
“Quinn’s also a problem,” Nobbler said.
“That’s for damned sure.”
“But starting today, I want you to get off Quinn and start shadowing Pearl.”
“Quinn’s the one in charge,” Greeve reminded Nobbler. “And we just agreed he’s a problem.”
“He’s the problem,” Nobbler said, “and Pearl’s his vulnerability.”
Greeve stuck out his lower lip and slowly nodded. Nobbler could, at times, be smart in a weird way, too. “Woman scorned, hell hath no fury, that kinda stuff?”
“Exactly,” Nobbler said.
“Pearl will feel the way you say. Get distracted and screw up some way. Maybe even sabotage Quinn.”
“She will if she’s female,” Nobbler said. “And she’s definitely that.”
He began carefully arranging the papers on his desk, letting Greeve know their meeting was at an end.
“I suppose it makes sense,” Greeve said.
“I’m glad you think so,” Nobbler said, looking up.
But Greeve was gone.
Jill Clark fought her way between a man with a duffel bag and a woman with a purse the size of a house and made her way onto the crowded subway. Getting mobbed and sometimes groped or pinched on the subway wasn’t Jill’s idea of recreation, and she wished she didn’t have to go through the ordeal. But riding the subway was the cheapest way to move around New York other than walking, and the offices of Tucker, Simpson, and King, where she’d filled in for a second vacationing employee, were too far away for her to walk.
When she transferred after two stops to an uptown line, the train wasn’t so crowded. In fact, she was one of about twenty passengers. They were the usual mix, business commuters, solemn readers of books and newspapers, dozing night-shift workers on their way home, a few of the homeless, a few truly dangerous-looking men whose dress and manner suggested aggressive mental derangement.
Jill had entered the end door. Immediately to her left there were facing smaller seats with chipped decals on them saying they were priority seating for persons with disabilities. That didn’t mean Jill couldn’t sit in one and get up if somebody with a disability got on the train. Besides, there were plenty of empty seats. Both of the disability-designated seats accommodated two passengers and were unoccupied. Jill settled into one.
The train accelerated into darkness with a roar and a squeal of steel on steel. Jill sat back and watched her wavering reflection facing her in the dirt-streaked window. A corner of the window was smeared with a gooey substance that might be anything.
She remembered reading about a study concerning germs on subway cars—they were everywhere on everything. She rubbed her fingertips on her slacks.
The roar of the train grew suddenly louder, and cooler air swirled around Jill’s ankles. The sliding door at the end of the car, leading to and from the next car, had opened. Someone was moving from one car to another. Teenagers did that a lot. So did panhandlers, as well as gang members looking for trouble. Jill told herself this was probably just someone looking for someone else and kept her gaze focused on the floor.
She saw movement in the periphery of her vision; then the door swung shut. There was sudden silence, and the air around Jill’s ankles became still. She waited for whoever had entered the car to move past her, possibly toward the door at the opposite end.
Instead she saw a pair of worn-out, scuffed black shoes protruding from wrinkled brown slacks, and a body dropped with a sigh next to hers on the small seat so that their thighs were warmly touching.
Jill saw dirty hands, chipped fingernails, and recoiled at the stench of stale perspiration and perhaps urine.
She turned her head and was looking into the desperate bloodshot eyes of the woman who’d been following her.
Jill’s throat constricted with fear.
A viselike grip closed on her right bicep, squeezing so hard that it hurt.
“We’ve gotta talk,” the woman said in a raspy voice. “Whether you want to or not.”
“I don’t want to!” Jill managed to force the words through her tightened throat as she tried to yank her arm away. She couldn’t break the iron grip. “We have nothing to say!”
“What you need to do is listen. I’m warning you.”
“Warning me?” Jill tried harder to escape the fingers digging into her arm. The woman’s grip got even tighter.
“Something bad could happen to you,” the woman said. Her breath was foul enough to turn Jill’s stomach.
“Damn it! Let me go!” Jill began working her arm back and forth, desperate to get away. “Stop following me! Leave me alone!”
“You’d better watch out.”
Jill stood up this time, pulling her arm away and twisting it violently, causing it to flare with pain.
Suddenly she was free.
She took two wobbling steps and bumped into one of the vertical bars for standing riders to grip when the car was crowded. Her forehead hit the hard steel, momentarily disorienting her. She almost fell.
Then she got her balance and started to stagger toward the front of the car. A man was staring at her. He quickly looked away.
No one looked at her other than briefly and with mild and guarded curiosity as she lurched and stumbled the length of the car. The other passengers seemed not to have noticed anything was wrong. They were studiously reading or gazing up at the advertisements running along the sides of the car above the windows. Or they stared at the dirty and littered floor. They didn’t want to get involved with violence, insanity, the unpredictable. The predictable they faced every day was difficult enough.
Jill gripped another vertical bar and looked back to see if the woman was pursuing her.
The other end of the car was unoccupied. The woman was gone.
Jill fell into an empty seat and hugged herself. She began rocking in the seat, exaggerating the motion of the train. This was insane. Maybe she was insane.
Is my mind slipping?
Was the woman real?
Jesus! Oh, Jesus! This city…This city…
She glanced around, embarrassed and still afraid.
Still, no one looked at her. The train thundered through the darkness.
22
Jill had calmed down by the time she got to work. There was no one at Tucker, Simpson, and King she wanted to tell about the subway incident. She didn’t know anyone there well enough. And they might think she was crazy. They would think she was crazy. The incident now seemed almost as if it hadn’t happened. It was so incongruous to her surroundings aboveground, at work, in the normal world.
But of course it had happened.
Something had happened.
She’d been at work about half an hour and was filing papers concerning a traffic violation appeal when a voice said, “It’s for you.”
Jill turned around. The receptionist, an older woman named Judy, was staring at her. “Line three.”
“Excuse me?”
“You said your name was Jill Clark, right?”
“Right,” Jill said.
“You have a phone call. Line three.”
Jill straightened up. She looked around and then went to a phone on the ot
her side of the office, where she’d have some privacy.
She pressed the glowing line button and said hello.
“Is this Jill Clark?” A woman’s voice. Familiar.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“The woman from the subway.”
Jill’s heart jumped. She told herself the caller was lying. The voice on the phone wasn’t so hoarse, and it was controlled, almost cultured. Not like the subway woman’s. But it carried the same note of desperation.
“Don’t hang up, Jill. Please!”
“Why shouldn’t I? My arm still hurts!”
“I’m sorry about that. You have to understand my state of mind.”
I think I do. Insane.
Behind the receptionist’s desk, Judy glanced at Jill, then looked away.
Jill lowered her voice, not wanting to attract attention. “Leave me the hell alone! Stop following me! Stay away from me! Stay out of my apartment!”
“Don’t hang up!” the woman pleaded again.
“I haven’t, have I?”
“I’ve never been in your apartment,” the woman said. “My name is Madeline Scott, and we have to talk.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“That’s the point, damn it!”
“My arm still hurts,” Jill repeated.
Jill hung up, careful not to bang the receiver.
American Airlines flight 222 out of Mexico City via Atlanta arrived ten minutes early, and the plane touched down gently on LaGuardia Airport’s south runway. When the reverse thrust of the plane’s powerful engines had brought it almost to a halt, it taxied toward its assigned gate.
The plane veered gently and arrived at the mobile enclosed ramp to the concourse. The engines stopped whirring, a faint bell chimed pleasantly, and the clacking of unfastening safety belts rippled through the fuselage.
Maria Sanchez, who’d been sitting in a coach window seat just beyond the wings, wrestled her carry-ons from overhead storage and filed off the plane with the other passengers.
She exchanged a polite and perfunctory “G’bye” with the smiling flight attendant at the plane’s door. Maria’s formerly long dark hair was dyed blond, and she was traveling under forged identification. She’d made it a point not to be at all memorable to the other passengers or the flight crew.
When she emerged from the enclosed walkway into the terminal, she lowered both of her large red carry-ons to the floor and raised their telescoping handles. She followed the stream of passengers along the concourse toward the baggage area, then increased her speed, lengthening her stride and pulling the two rolling suitcases behind her.
She went outside the terminal and waited her turn in line for a taxi. A cabbie finished stuffing a young couple’s tons of luggage into his taxi’s trunk, then got in and drove away with a brief squeal of tires. The cab lying in wait behind his leaped forward to take its place and came to a rocking stop. Maria’s turn.
She watched her driver place her two suitcases in the trunk, then got in the cab and waited for him to join her. When he was settled into his seat and had turned an ear toward her, she gave him an address in Manhattan.
The cab made a squeal like its predecessor’s and shot forward, speeding toward the island like a wolf returning to its lair.
Jill stood in the hall outside her apartment door and used two keys to unlock two dead bolts. She was exhausted from her day of filing and following instructions at Tucker, Simpson, and King. That and her morning’s misadventure had left her weary and uneasy. It would be good to kick off her shoes, get a bottle of water from the refrigerator, and slump onto the sofa. In fact, it would be heaven.
She opened the door and was immediately aware of an unpleasant odor, then a presence close behind her, crowding her. She was abruptly pushed into the apartment and followed. The door clicked shut.
Jill took two skidding steps on the hardwood floor, almost falling, then whirled and saw the homeless woman from the subway, the one who’d called her at work and identified herself as Madeline Scott. Fury and indignation rose in Jill. She didn’t know any Madeline Scott and didn’t want to know this one.
Then her anger became fear. She was alone with this woman who might be crazy, who might do anything.
Mad Madeline.
The woman’s hair was unkempt and her eyes were wild. Her clothes were wrinkled and frayed. She’d obviously been living on the streets and might be crazy or on drugs. Unnaturally strong. If it came down to it, Jill didn’t think she could subdue her. Didn’t want to touch her.
Her fear must have shown on her face.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Madeline Scott said. Her wild blue eyes paralyzed Jill. “But I’m determined you’re going to hear me out.”
Jill was ashamed of the terror in her own choked voice as she backed on stiff legs into the living room and said, “I’m listening.”
Madeline smiled and said, “That’s all I ever wanted.”
23
Madeline Scott didn’t sit down. Jill didn’t make the offer.
The two women had drifted farther into the living room and stood facing each other, keeping their distance. The odor coming off Madeline seemed to have dissipated, or maybe Jill was simply getting used to it. Some of the wildness had left Madeline’s eyes, leaving Jill at least reassured that the woman wasn’t going to abruptly attack her.
“I only want to talk while you listen,” Madeline said with surprising calm.
Jill swallowed. “All right. So talk.”
Get whatever you have to say over with, and then get out. Get out.
“Not so long ago I was in your position,” Madeline began. “I was from out of town, with no real family, and not very long in New York. Things hadn’t gone as well as I thought they would when I moved here from Illinois.”
Jill began to feel somewhat relieved. Madeline had obviously rehearsed this, or at least given it a lot of thought. This was going to be a sob story, ending, she was sure, in an appeal for money. Okay, maybe she could buy her way out of this. Out of this dread she hated to admit to herself.
“I was working dead-end, impersonal jobs,” Madeline continued, “where they’d hardly miss me if I didn’t show up. I had no real friends to speak of. Dates? Yeah, a few. But you know how that goes. The men I let pick me up wanted the usual and then out. All the acquaintanceship you might want is out there, but not friends, not people who’ll remember you even the next day. So I did what a lot of lonely people in New York do after they’ve wasted time dating enough losers. I contacted a reputable matchmaking service.”
Jill’s mind had been distracted, still trying to figure a way out of this awkward situation, a way to cut it short. What would it cost her? Suddenly she began paying close attention.
“It was the same online matchmaking service you used,” Madeline said. “E-Bliss.org.”
Jill moved to a chair and sat down. Madeline went to the sofa and sat on the very edge of one of the end cushions.
“Everything I just told you about,” Madeline said, “E-Bliss learned about on my personality profile form. That and more.”
“There’s nothing wrong with E-Bliss,” Jill said, wondering as she spoke why she was defending the online dating service.
But she knew why: she wanted desperately for the matchmaking service to be legitimate. So much of her intimate and vulnerable self was invested in it now.
Madeline smiled sadly, as if knowing what Jill was thinking. “I believe they’re mostly a legitimate matchmaking service,” she said, “but they operate another service within that one. It requires women without close family, new to the city, and still mostly without close friends or connections. I fit the profile, and so do you.”
Jill took a deep breath and tried to organize her thoughts. “What does this service within a service do?”
“It searches through all the profiles, probably with some kind of computer software, and settles on the right applicant. Then the company sends someone to gain your trust and learn all ab
out you. Everything from your Social Security and charge account numbers to your favorite candy. Meanwhile, someone else is learning about you, watching you, spending time in your apartment when you’re not there, wearing your clothes, even being glimpsed around the building as you. Practicing to be you. And then…she becomes you.”
Whoa!
“You said, ‘becomes me’? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what it says.”
Madeline stared at her silently.
“Why me in particular?” Jill asked, astounded. And afraid again, but not exactly in the same way. There was something creepy about this that was working its way into her marrow. Something some part of her mind knew that the rest of it hadn’t yet caught up with. “I mean, there are plenty of women like you described living in New York. This is the most anonymous city in the world.”
“Why you?” Madeline said thoughtfully, obviously considering. “I don’t know for sure. But I followed the man you know as Tony Lake from the offices of E-Bliss to you. Only I knew him as Dwayne King. I’ve given this a lot of thought. In fact, it’s all I’ve thought about for weeks. My guess is you resemble someone who wants to disappear, and who’s paid E-Bliss so she can take your place.”
“What about the real me?” Jill asked, dreading the answer even though she wasn’t sure she believed any of this.
“The real you ceases to exist. You’re shot and killed, as they tried to do to me. I managed to break free and run. They kept shooting at me, but I escaped by climbing into an approaching car and urging the driver to get us away. I read in the paper a week later that a man I’m sure was the driver was found dead in Riverside Park from a drug overdose. I don’t think it was suicide or an accident.”
Jill’s mind was still wrestling with what she was hearing. “But why would they do this, substitute people for each other?”
“Money,” Madeline said simply.
“Of course. Money. Like everything else. But what do their clients want? What’s the reason for the substitutions?”
