John Lutz Bundle

by John Lutz

  It has to stop….

  As she took possession of the elevator and pressed the button for the twelfth floor, Mary swore to herself again that she was going on a diet. Maybe try the Atkins. Her favorite meal was steak with a salad, rolls, and a baked potato, all washed down with a strong martini. She should be able to give up the potato, maybe a roll.

  On twelve, the elevator slowed and stopped, then settled slightly as it found its proper level, and the door slid open.

  As Mary stepped out into the hall, she was aware of the adjacent elevator’s door sliding closed.

  In the apartment she paused inside the door as she often did and admired the spaciousness and tasteful decor, reminding herself again that it was all hers and Donald’s.

  It wasn’t until she went to the kitchen for a glass of water that she noticed the two shrink-wrapped steak filets on a corner of the kitchen table. They were prime cuts, thick and lightly marbled, the way she liked them.

  She stared at the steaks, puzzled. How on earth…?

  When she’d gotten a glass of orange juice this morning, had she accidentally removed the steaks from the refrigerator and forgotten them?

  But she doubted that. She was sure she hadn’t even opened the refrigerator’s meat compartment. She’d had no reason. Besides, she didn’t remember the steaks even being in the refrigerator. Maybe Donald had bought them and planned for a romantic dinner at home this evening. Maybe he wanted to surprise her because they had something to celebrate. That would explain everything.

  “Donald?” Her voice surprised her. It was higher than normal. Frightened.

  “Donald!” Better.

  She went into the living room and called his name again. Kept calling it as she roamed the apartment, peering into all the rooms.

  She was alone.

  As she walked back through the living room, she noticed one of the blinds was raised.

  Something else that doesn’t belong.

  But she made no further connection between the blind and the steaks in the kitchen. After all, she might have raised the blind and forgotten. Or maybe Donald had done so.

  Mary lowered the blind, restoring—in her mind, anyway—elegance and balance to the room. She only absently took note of the smudges on the windowpane, as if someone had leaned against it in order to peer out and down.

  She went back to the kitchen and gingerly touched the shrink-wrapped steaks with the backs of her knuckles.

  They were cool.

  Can’t have been here long.

  Mary sat at the table and stared at the expensive cuts of meat she was sure she hadn’t seen before.

  Donald again? Playing his games?

  She knew he’d deny it.

  This is strange. This is goddamned strange.

  She recalled stepping out of the elevator into the hall, the hiss of the adjacent elevator’s door closing, what she’d felt, how the hair on the nape of her neck seemed to stir. She hadn’t thought much about it at the time. And maybe she shouldn’t think about it now.

  Nothing…it means nothing…. Imagination…I am not afraid…

  But maybe I should be!

  Mary put the steaks in the refrigerator’s meat compartment and left the apartment immediately. In the lobby she realized she’d forgotten her umbrella, but she decided not to go back for it.

  She’d kill time down the street at Starbucks, sip a café mocha while she browsed through this morning’s paper, and return to the apartment later, when she was sure Donald was home.

  Definitely, they needed to talk.

  The Night Prowler had stood in the elevator on the twelfth floor and waited for her, his fingertip on the button marked open so the door wouldn’t close and the elevator would remain where it was.

  When he heard the adjacent elevator arrive, he removed his finger from open and pressed lobby. The door slid closed just as the door next to it was opening. He actually caught a buzzing glimpse of her gray skirt—its hem, for only an instant—as she emerged into the hall.

  As the elevator plunged, he leaned against its back wall and breathed in deeply. For an instant she’d been so near. The scent of her! Not of her perfume, but of her!

  The scent of her flesh, of her color and movement and smile and glance!

  She knows!

  She might not realize it yet, but she knows. Somehow, on some dark level of consciousness in the ancient country of her mind, she has to be aware of what fate plans for us, of the inevitability and momentum of desire, to know how close we are, united, merged, cleaved unto each other, almost as one.

  Original sin. Original betrayal.

  Almost as one…

  She knows!

  28

  God, this is awful!

  Pearl had a terrible taste in her mouth and her teeth felt mossy. She’d fallen asleep on her sofa watching cable news, and the precarious state of just about everything seemed to have taken over her mind. She couldn’t quite recall her dreams, but they’d left a residue of gloom.

  She’d had dinner alone at home—a small steak, French fries, deli slaw, and a glass of cheap red wine. Satisfying. After doing the dishes at the sink, she’d put on some old jeans and a worn-out shirt and painted in the living room until she got tired. Then she did a hurried cleanup and decided to drink a soda while she watched television before going to bed.

  A new reality TV show was on. Several men and women had been living together for weeks in isolation in a lighthouse on a small island. One of the women had finished last in a round-robin tennis match, and viewers were calling in to vote on which of the men should marry her.

  Huh?

  Pearl had dozed.

  Now it was past one A.M., and on television a man in a blue suit with a red tie was arguing with another man in a blue suit with a red tie about abortion.

  Pearl blinked and sat up. The TV was pulled out toward the middle of the room. Behind it, the wall was almost completely painted. This visual affirmation of accomplishment didn’t afford the satisfaction Pearl had imagined. In her depressed state she wondered why she’d felt the surge of optimism and energy that prompted her to drag painting materials from the hall closet and begin rolling the wall.

  She thought it might have had something to do with Quinn, but when she looked at it another way, that seemed preposterous. Quinn was old enough to be her father—biologically, anyway. Theirs would be the kind of romance you saw in old Humphrey Bogart–Lauren Bacall movies, where nobody noticed or cared that Bacall was young and Bogart was closing in on senility. Or like Fred and Ethel on I Love Lucy. What the hell was Ethel doing with a fossil like Fred?

  On the other hand, Pearl thought, it might not be so bad to be the celluloid Lauren Bacall. Or, for that matter, Ethel. Instead of a woman on the verge of unemployment, and getting hooked on an aged ex-cop everyone thought was a child molester.

  Almost everyone, anyway.

  The talking heads on TV had switched subjects and were discussing the federal deficit. Pearl heard something about “sacrificing future generations.”

  The truth was, the future didn’t look so good for Pearl, Quinn, and Fedderman. They were way out on a limb that some very important people were trying to saw off. Egan was a total asshole, and even Quinn didn’t trust Renz. The local media were starting to get nasty, and Quinn was the only one who thought there’d been any actual progress on the case.

  Pearl decided she’d call Quinn’s sister tomorrow, maybe try to meet her someplace for coffee, and get a renewal of optimism. Michelle Quinn seemed constantly buoyed by whatever magic she worked on her computer to suggest her brother was innocent of the rape accusation. There was always the possibility she’d somehow fit together cyber pieces and make progress on the Night Prowler puzzle.

  The Night Prowler. Pearl didn’t want to think about that sicko tonight. She wouldn’t be able to sleep. Quinn, innocent, was suffering like some poor schmuck in the Bible who’d been exiled to a far land to do penance, while the Night Prowler, a killer, took his sa
distic satisfaction with impunity.

  Pearl decided not to let herself get riled up. She noticed she hadn’t put the lid on one of the paint cans. Oh, well. By now there was probably a skin of dried paint over the surface. As good as a lid. No need to bother with it tonight, tired as she was. In the morning she’d stuff the paint and other materials back in the closet and try to forget about them.

  One of the TV pundits was waving his arms and trying to outshout the other guy, assuring everyone the future was secure. Pearl used the remote to switch him off in midsentence and went to bed.

  Even in her life there were small satisfactions.

  There she was. He was almost certain.

  New York was big, but people still unexpectedly saw someone they knew.

  She wasn’t wearing the fuck-me oufit she’d had on when they first met. This morning she was dressed like a rich-bitch business broad and walking out of a building that looked like it cost a fortune every month to live there. By her actions he knew she lived there and hadn’t been visiting.

  Her hair was different, though. More fluffy or something.

  He was across the street and tried to get nearer to confirm her identity, but the uniformed doorman, who acted like he knew her, hailed her a cab and she was gone before he could get close.

  Not that it mattered. He was sure enough, and a closer look wouldn’t have revealed all that much. The lash welts he’d laid on her were carefully applied where they’d be concealed by clothes. Same with the bruises, except maybe where he’d grabbed her by the ankles and dragged her back from the door.

  She loves games, doesn’t she? And doesn’t it figure?

  He knew how it worked with a bitch this wealthy; she had this swanky apartment, where she lived the straight life, and another apartment down in the Village, where she was the kind of woman who’d let herself be picked up by somebody who’d dish her what she needed. Someplace where she could really be herself.

  He watched her cab disappear in traffic, then looked again at the tall, modern building behind the brightly uniformed doorman. He’d like to see this one again, but he’d never be able to get into her apartment here, with the kind of security this luxury fortress must have. And she probably wouldn’t visit her Village apartment all that often. She must have a good job, a great one, and she’d need to be careful, so he’d have to get lucky and catch her outside. Or maybe he’d see her again in one of the clubs.

  He was sure they could be happy together in their misery, at least for a while.

  She could afford him and his bad habits. She had what he wanted. She’d want to give it to him.

  He’d see to it.

  29

  “You see the problem, Romulus,” said Victory Wallace, who was decorating a brownstone on West Eighty-ninth Street. His clients were a wealthy oil wholesaler and his wife, who were relocating from Turkey. The old building would never have dreamed this could happen.

  They were in the bathroom off the master bedroom on the second floor, a spacious cubicle of beige tile, with veined marble flooring and vanity tops. The shower stall, large enough to accommodate half a dozen, and with myriad gold-plated spray heads aimed in all directions, had doors with what looked like handwritten love letters pressed between layers of etched glass. Overhead was a gold chandelier that looked as if it belonged in a palatial grand hall in Saudi Arabia rather than in a West Side bathroom. Oddly, Victory Wallace (whose real name was Victor Padilla) had made it all seem right. But then, that was his talent.

  Another of his talents was the grande-dame act he’d made part of his professional personality. Romulus was used to it and ignored it, though he did appreciate its marketability and Marlene Dietrich shadings.

  “I mean, Romulus, my clients are under extreme pressure and determined to move in next week, and I must make everything tight and right. You do see the problem, dear man?”

  Romulus flicked lint from the sleeve of his black Armani suit and nodded.

  Victory, who affected the startled gaze of a deer reminded of hunting season, stared at him as if he’d expected more response. “My clients want something done with this awful steel support pole. They insist. And it’s load bearing. It simply can’t be moved!” He was a slender man, with a wasp waist, wearing tight designer jeans and a charcoal shirt with bloused sleeves. Sometimes he wore a red beret. Costume was part of the extreme shtick that was often necessary for clients at this stratospheric price level. “I mean, a big steel supporting pole in the middle of the bathroom! It looks like a drainpipe from upstairs, something human refuse gurgles through!” He made a gargoyle face, momentarily sticking out his tongue. “You do see what we’re dealing with here?”

  “Box it in,” Romulus suggested.

  Victory pressed a palm to his forehead as if stricken with a migraine. “No, no, we’re way beyond the plaster-dust stage, Romulus. There’s simply no going back. No time.”

  Romulus looked at the gold-plated faucets and the deliberately exposed gold plumbing beneath the marble basin. Vulgar. Garish. “You said the pole looks like plumbing. So don’t try to hide it. Flaunt it. Make it gold-plated like the other plumbing. It would show well, but I warn you it would be expensive.”

  Victory waved his long right arm out to the side as if trying to flick away pesky cellophane that had stuck to his fingers. “We’re way, way beyond expensive. Money isn’t the issue at all. Simply not part of the equation. The problem is that the pole’s surface isn’t the sort of alloy that will accept gold plating.” He grinned in a way he no doubt thought fetchingly at Romulus. “That’s why I called you for advice, dear man. Everyone in the trade says that in a dilemma like this, call Romulus and call him first. He’ll ride to the rescue like the cavalry in one of those Cinemascope Westerns, where all the colors look like they’ve dripped off Gauguin’s palette. Well, you have gotten the call.” Victory cupped a hand to his ear as if listening. “Do I hear a bugle playing charge?”

  “I can paint the pipe and make it look like gold plating. But it will be every bit as expensive as real gold.”

  “Not an issue!” Victory reassured Romulus. “Now here’s another request that would save my life and give my clients sheer bliss: can you, extra please, do the job rush rush?”

  “Three days from now okay?”

  Victory shook his head and brushed away the words as if they were bees swarming about him. “Two? Could you possibly make it two days? Put a rush charge on your bill. Twenty percent.” He made a backhand motion. “Thirty.”

  “Two days,” Romulus said.

  “You are the best, dear man!”

  “Of course I am.”

  Romulus left the brownstone and walked half a block to where his black Cadillac was parked. He knew precisely what to use on the steel pole: a special paint he’d concocted utilizing gold leaf and an off-brand primer. Neither ingredient was easy to find on short notice, but he was sure he had some among the wide array of supplies he maintained just for this kind of request. The paint had to be applied expertly in three or four coats, but the finished product looked amazingly like genuine gold plating.

  Romulus settled back in the Cadillac’s cool interior and pulled away from the curb. He smiled as he drove along narrow side streets, watching New York slide past outside the car’s tinted windows, the tiny restaurants pretending to be sidewalk cafés, the cars double parked, the lovers walking close to each other, the life-worn and weary seated on concrete stoops, the lost wandering in slow confusion.

  Life was good for Romulus and getting better. Everything was under control. For now, at least. There was order and satisfaction in this world of his own making.

  He’d invented his job description: specialty painter. That was what it said on his gilded white business cards, along with his professional name: Romulus.

  It hadn’t been easy for him to gain the respect and admiration of those who at first regarded him as merely another subcontractor, a spreader of paint who was particularly neat in his work.

  But they
soon learned he wasn’t an ordinary painter, which was why he now commanded such an exorbitant price from the top decorators who hired him, and who then passed on an even more exorbitant price to their wealthy clients. He matched colors precisely, shaded beveled edges and moldings so door panels appeared shadowed and deeper even in direct light, calculated colors so they best complemented furnishings. He altered texture, tinted to make rooms appear larger or smaller, created light and shadow where none really existed.

  He was an artist. An original. That was what his clients wanted, just as they wanted original gowns and one-of-a-kind everything else.

  He would arrive at the job in his black Cadillac, wearing an Armani suit and carrying all his supplies in a single large black suitcase. Romulus did final work after the common wall painters had left, usually letting himself in with a key provided by the decorator. He preferred to work alone, without anyone observing or interrupting him. He didn’t like suggestions, or having to answer stupid questions.

  Romulus wasted no time after returning to his condo, which had been refurbished to suit his professional needs. He gathered his materials, then stood at his workbench and began to tint cautiously, adding drops at a time, stopping to clamp the gallon paint can in the electric mixer bolted to the bench. The mixer perfectly imitated the hand motion of an expert bartender shaking a martini, only with much more speed and force, churning the can’s contents thoroughly. He added gold leaf, using thin latex gloves and flaking it gently and expertly with his fingertips so it drifted down like metallic snow. After each test mix he would spread a few strokes of paint on a length of pipe he was sure was the same composition as the steel support pole in the brownstone, then lay the pipe on a wooden block before a small fan that would dry it within minutes.

  It took him almost three hours to find the precise formula, but the result was magical.

  Romulus would bail out Victory on this job, and Victory would assume the persona that served him so well and strut and brag about the brownstone’s interior to his fellow decorators—among the most sought after and expensive in New York. It would be good for Romulus’ business.