by John Lutz
“In Manhattan?”
“Of course.”
“That’s so great!” Jody said, and meant it. An apartment in Manhattan. Holy shit! This could all work. She had enough left of her student loan to be able to clothe and feed herself. She hoped.
Elaine drew a deep breath, then exhaled loudly and clasped her hands. “So, we’re all set?”
Time to throw shit in the game.
“Professor Pratt, I hate to ask this, but would you mind if I thought about the offer?”
Elaine almost laughed out loud in surprise, but she held a neutral expression. Just like that, dominance had shifted and she was now the one on pins and needles. How would it look if she’d pressed so hard for Jody, and then Jody brushed off the internship? What would Chancellor Schueller think? How would Enders and Coil react? How would this affect Professor Pratt’s career?
“Can you let me know tomorrow?” she asked, careful not to sound anxious.
Jody thought for a long few seconds-in control now and letting Elaine know it-and then nodded. “Sure. No problem there.”
“Here, either,” Elaine said.
When Jody got up, she gave her a big hug.
Jody sat back down and watched the professor’s retreating figure change shapes as it passed through lengthening shadows across the quadrangle.
She didn’t know quite what to think other than WTF? as they said on the social networks.
26
D eena Vess was tired of skating. She was sore mostly in the knees and ankles. Roller Steak, the restaurant where she waited tables, featured all its servers on skates. It did make for fast service, and sometimes spectacular collisions.
She liked her job, and the pay was good enough that she could rent a top-floor unit of a six-story walkup on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Her divorce from douche bag Danny in Chicago had been finalized last month. And on that very same day she got her job at Roller Steak.
New York wasn’t so tough, if you started out with a little luck. She’d been cautioned about moving to the city, but Deena wanted to start over, and here. She stretched her finances a bit getting the apartment; then, just like that, she’d gained employment at the first place she applied.
Deena didn’t kid herself. Maybe it wasn’t all luck. Her looks helped. She was narrow-waisted and had muscular, shapely legs, qualities that were obviously very important to Ramon, the restaurant manager. And her ample breasts didn’t hurt her chances. She might have to fight this guy off sometime in the near future, but if she was diplomatic enough it should pose no threat to her job. Ramon seemed to be a decent enough sort when he wasn’t playing hard-ass to keep the personnel in line.
The third night she’d spent in the apartment, Empress arrived. The small tabby cat had squeezed in through a window Deena had left open a few inches for the breeze. The cat was friendly enough, and was darling and seemed to know it. Deena enjoyed watching it prance and preen.
The animal appeared to be cared for and well fed, but had no collar or tags. Deena had asked around, and nobody in the building recognized it or knew who owned it. So she’d renamed the cat Empress and took it to the vet for its shots, and to have it spayed. Then she’d bought a new red collar at a pet shop on Eighth Avenue and fastened to it the shot tags and a metal tag bearing Empress’s name and new address. Empress, Deena thought, had gone from vagabond royalty to a feline citizen in good standing in a matter of days, and should be grateful.
But of course the cat displayed no sign of gratitude. She was affectionate, but only on her terms. Whenever Deena came home, Empress didn’t appear at first, as if she couldn’t be bothered. After a few minutes the cat would come yawning and stretching, as if she’d been napping, and present herself for holding and petting.
Empress became increasingly territorial and began sleeping with Deena, first making her rounds of the apartment and then curling into a fuzz ball near the foot of the bed.
Tonight, when Deena came home from work and shut and locked the apartment door behind her, there was no sign of Empress.
Deena called the cat’s name (fat chance of that working) as she walked through the small apartment, checking windows. There seemed no way Empress could have gotten out.
“Empress!” Deena called again, knowing now it was useless. “Where the hell are you?”
She suddenly became aware again of how sore her legs were from skating over the hard plank floor at Roller Steak. She plopped down on the sofa and removed her shoes, stretched her legs, and wriggled her toes. Running her fingers through her thick dark hair, she glanced around again for a sign of Empress. She was beginning to get anxious.
Spend a fortune on a cat and this is what it does. Some investment.
But Deena knew it was more than the money. She’d become extremely fond of the haughty yet affectionate animal.
It was possible that someone had stolen the cat. Before Deena had moved in, the apartment had been vacant for a while as it was redecorated. People came and went during that process-painters, plumbers, carpenters, city inspectors. There must have been keys floating around. It would have been easy enough for one of the tradesmen, or even a prospective tenant, to come into possession of one. Deena decided she should have the locks changed. She would call about that tomorrow.
It was hard to imagine someone letting himself in and stealing a cat. And there seemed no way for Empress to have left of her own accord without someone opening a door or window.
Deena picked up the remote from the coffee table, and was about to switch on the TV, when she caught sight of tabby fur beneath the old wing chair across from her.
Empress!
Deena broke into a big grin and forgot her sore legs as she jumped up and crossed the room to scoop up the errant cat.
Empress withdrew from her so she couldn’t be reached. Deena got down on her hands and knees, then lay on the carpet and reached back in the darkness beneath the wing chair and grasped the red leather collar. Empress yowled and scratched her.
Shocked, Deena drew back her hand.
This was odd. Imperious though she was, Empress wasn’t the sort of cat that would bite or scratch the hand that fed and petted her.
Deena moved more carefully, getting down lower now so she could see and wouldn’t be working by feel. She clutched the cat by the loose flesh on the back of its neck and pulled it out.
Empress seemed docile enough now, and made no further attempt to scratch or bite her.
Deena petted the cat, then felt a quiet chill. She hefted Empress in one hand, and looked closely at the collar and tags. Same collar. Same tags. There was the cat’s name: Empress. With Deena’s address. Everything proper.
But Deena knew this wasn’t Empress.
Not the real Empress, anyway.
Deena stared intently at the pattern of gray-striped fur flecked with brown. She saw now what she was sure were slight variations.
Quickly, she put the cat down and watched it hurry back to the wing chair and scoot beneath it.
Not like the sociable if superior Empress.
Deena swiveled her head, frightened now. Knowing she was alone, yet making sure anyway.
Someone must have been in here. He or she had for some reason switched cats, substituting this one, who looked almost exactly like Empress, for Empress.
But why?
There had to be a reason. This was insane.
It was that last thought that terrified her. Maybe it was insane. Either she was going insane, or some insane person had made this substitution.
A practical joke? Deena didn’t think so. She barely knew anyone in New York, much less someone with this kind of sick sense of humor.
Someone had been in here while she was at work. Doing what? Seeing what? Feeling what?
She realized with a sense of dread that she was more afraid of what must have happened than she was sad about the loss of Empress.
She would probably never again see the real Empress. But at least Empress was the kind of cat that cou
ld take care of herself, a survivor in the jungle of the city.
Deena told herself to stay calm. There might be a reasonable explanation for all this. Even if there wasn’t one, she had to act as if there might be. Whatever was happening, she’d cope with it. Hadn’t she just made it through an ugly divorce in Chicago?
Another jungle, that city.
It was time to be practical. One thing Deena knew for sure was that, though it wasn’t Empress, she had a cat. She went into the kitchen and got a can of liver-flavored cat food from a cabinet. As she used the electric can opener, she automatically looked toward the kitchen door for Empress to come strutting in.
No cat.
She scooped out the entire can of food into the heavy ceramic bowl on the floor. Surely the pungent scent would draw the shy animal from its shelter beneath the chair.
No cat.
She ran a glass of tap water and poured it into the bowl next to the food bowl. Then she moved to the other side of the kitchen and waited.
No cat.
The wall phone in the kitchen jangled and she went to it and snatched the receiver from its cradle on the second ring.
No one was there.
After a few seconds she heard a click, and then the dial tone.
Deena hurried to her small desk in the living room and checked caller ID on her other phone. She pecked out the unfamiliar number and waited.
Her call was answered on the fifth ring with a man’s tentative, “Hello…”
“Who the hell are you?” Deena asked.
“I don’t think you need to know, lady. Who am I talking to?”
“You know damn well.”
“This is a public phone, dumb-ass. It was ringing so I picked it up. Thought maybe somebody might be in trouble. You in trouble?”
Deena didn’t know what to say.
“Listen, are you in trouble?”
Deena hung up.
Someone was deliberately doing this to her.
Definitely, someone is messing with my mind.
For laughs?
Or something else?
Who do you call about a missing cat that isn’t missing?
No one, she decided. There was no one to call for help. No one who’d believe her, anyway.
… Am I in trouble?
Am I?
27
The Q and A office, 9:15 PM.
Sultry despite the rattling air conditioner mounted in the window with the iron bars, illuminated in yellow light from the glowing desk lamps.
They were talking about murder.
Quinn was behind his desk, leaning back in his swivel chair, his fingers laced behind his head, as he listened to Sal and Harold describe the neighboring super’s sighting of a woman emerging from the boarded-up apartment building where Ann Spellman was later murdered. Then the conversation with Spellman’s neighbor in her building, Audrey Ackenheimer.
Quinn said, “Why do they keep doing it?”
“You mean killing people?” Harold asked.
“No. Why do the neighbors only remember later seeing something that might be useful to us, and then never remember seeing the faces of the possible perpetrators?”
“If they saw the faces, they might remember.”
Quinn stared at Harold. The guy looked like a malnourished accountant, with his slightly stooped figure and oversized graying mustache. Quinn could understand why he got on Sal’s nerves. But he knew Harold was smart, and a tough enough cop. It intrigued Quinn, the way sometimes the most unlikely people were the ones who could reach deep inside and find what they needed in a crisis. Quinn knew that one of those people was Harold Mishkin, however he was wrapped.
“The woman was described as older than Spellman,” Sal said. “But then, Spellman was only twenty-four. Most of the three hundred million people in the country are older than her.”
“Narrows it up,” Harold said.
Quinn couldn’t tell if he was joking.
“Any info on whoever might be shadowing Pearl?” Sal asked.
“No. But Pearl’s hardly ever wrong about something like that. If she says she’s got a shadow, there is one.”
“You think she should have two?” Harold asked.
It took Quinn a few seconds to understand what he meant. “I suggested we should take shifts in watching her back. Pearl said definitely not. Doesn’t wanna spread us thin while we’re on the trail of a serial killer.”
“Maybe we should ignore what she wants,” Sal said.
Harold looked at him and swallowed.
“We should,” Quinn said, “except that if we do put a second tail on her, she’ll know. And she’s right: if this is the killer, we wouldn’t want to spook him before she gets some kind of line on him.”
“Still and all…” Harold said.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Quinn said.
“Jody Jason,” Professor Elaine Pratt said, when Chancellor Schueller asked why she’d come to his office.
Schueller remained seated behind his desk, absently using both hands to play with a yellow number-two pencil. Elaine noticed that it had an extremely sharp point.
“You did say she accepted the Enders and Coil internship,” Schueller said.
“She accepted, then took a train into the city for an interview. When she returned we talked, and she was unsure again.”
Schueller was quiet for a moment, thinking. “Do you suppose the murder of Macy Collins is giving her pause? I mean, we couldn’t blame her for that.” The chancellor shivered as if the office had turned cold. “It must have been like being attacked by an animal.”
“I think she feels like most of the students about that,” Elaine Pratt said. “They regard it in the way they would if Macy had been struck by lightning.”
“An apt comparison. It’s a tragedy they’ll have to put behind them.”
“They’re young enough to do that,” Elaine said.
Schueller touched the tip of the pencil as if testing for sharpness. “So our sticking point is simply that Jody is a fickle one.”
“Not usually,” Elaine said. “Coil wasn’t there, and Jack Enders interviewed her. He didn’t make a good impression.”
“I thought Jody was supposed to worry about impressing them.”
“She seems not to see it that way.”
Schueller smiled. “What did he say or do that turned her off?”
“She knows the firm is representing a client who owns three blocks of property in lower Manhattan. Old warehouses and deserted office buildings. Also a couple of rundown apartment buildings. The client wants to finish clearing the property so work can be started on a new complex of office buildings. Jody knows there’s a holdout tenant who refuses to move, preventing them from razing one of the buildings.”
The chancellor frowned, troubled. “She knows about Meeding Properties already?”
“Yes, but not much. That sort of thing is a matter of record and can’t be kept secret within the confines of the firm. Not telling her would arouse her suspicions later on. And the firm has taken extra steps to hide Waycliffe’s involvement.”
“Those eminent domain cases,” Schueller said, “don’t they always end the same way?”
“Not always. This woman claims her lease has a clause that precludes them from making her move in the event of eminent domain.”
“Doesn’t eminent domain by its nature transcend that kind of lease?”
“Her argument is that it doesn’t. It’s a specious legal position, but not so much that she can’t tie up the project for months if not years.”
“So if she’s got a case, they make her an offer.”
“She’s refused all offers. She and her late husband lived in the apartment for twenty years, so it’s an emotional thing with her.”
“Money can also be very emotional,” Schueller said. He began tapping the sharpened pencil on the desk, making a constant slight ticking sound. When he realized what he was doing, he drew his briar pipe from his pocket, tamped
down the tobacco in its bowl with a forefinger but, as usual, didn’t light it. “So our young idealist has sided with the old lady.”
“I don’t think the tenant is an old lady,” Elaine said. “That’s the problem. She seems to be an attorney in her forties. Sophisticated and eager for the fray.”
“Still, she’s the underdog.”
“Yes, and that’s what’s bothering Jody. Meeding Properties.” The big development company was an Enders and Coil client. “But she knows only so much. What we expected.”
“Davida against Goliath,” Schueller said. “Starring Jody as Davida.”
“Something like that.” Professor Pratt moved closer to Schueller. “I know Jody. She and Enders and Coil are on the same page we’re on. It’s just that sometimes she doesn’t realize it. I understand our students, young girls especially.”
“If you feel that way, Elaine, I wouldn’t worry too much.”
“Enders and Coil need to feel that way. And so do you.”
“There’s no need to have any doubts about how I feel. I’m aware that Jody is wicked smart. The same youthful idealism that’s causing her to hesitate will also cause her to review the fact that everyone deserves legal counsel. That’s the beauty of our system. She’ll realize that Enders and Coil clients are true and deserving citizens being targeted simply because they have money.”
“I hope you’re right,” Elaine said.
“They’ll realize what an asset she can be.”
“Jody’s a stubborn one. And there’s something else. She didn’t like the way Jack Enders looked at her.”
Schueller clamped the unlit pipe between his teeth. “He was coming on to her?”
“She thinks he was. Or that he almost surely will.”
“Well, she’ll have to learn how to handle that.” He sucked on the pipe stem. “You know, Elaine, you were the one who recommended Jody to me to parade for Enders and Coil.”
“I don’t regret it,” Elaine said. “Jody’s an idealist, but she’s also smart, practical, and in some ways cynical.”
“Yet you come to my office because now there are doubts.”
“I thought you should be kept up to date,” Elaine said. Schueller removed the pipe from his mouth and smiled. “And up to date I am,” he said.
