John Lutz Bundle

by John Lutz

  He said, “Lauri?”

  Still smiling, she came in and dropped an overstuffed backpack he somehow hadn’t noticed on the floor, then glanced around. “Your place is nice.”

  “You’re…here,” he said, still stunned. She was so much older, grown-up. A full-sized…person.

  “Sure am.” She came to him, wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed his cheek, and was gone before he’d had a chance to hug her back.

  “May…Your mother…”

  “I decided to leave California. Saved up some money. Rode buses all the way. That Port Authority place is like wild. Got anything to eat?”

  “Sure.” He led the way into the kitchen, his mind atilt. “You’re supposed to be in school.”

  “Summertime, Dad. Graduated anyway. High B average. Coulda done better.” She opened the refrigerator. “Hey! New York stuff! That fatty red meat.”

  “Pastrami,” Quinn said. “They have it in California, too.”

  “Not where I been. You like it?”

  “Sure. You graduated from high school?” His guess would have been that she was a junior, maybe a sophomore. Time working its malicious magic.

  “Yep.”

  Drawers opened, twisties were untwisted, jars unlidded; the refrigerator door was worked, and a squeeze bottle of mustard squeeched! A pastrami sandwich with pickles on rye appeared incredibly fast before Quinn. The fridge door opened and closed again. Hisssss! Lauri was seated at the table with a fizzy cold can of Pepsi, attacking the sandwich.

  “Does your mother know you’re here?” Quinn asked, embarrassed to sound like a character in an old TV family sitcom.

  “I think not.” Through a huge bite of sandwich.

  “What about Elliott?”

  “He’s a dork.”

  Quinn remembered her calling him a dork not that many years ago. It had stung. “Elliott’s not such a bad guy.”

  Which was true. Quinn had himself at first thought Elliott a dork, but eventually, when he finally accepted that it was over forever with May, he came to appreciate the home and consistency that real-estate attorney Elliott provided for his family—that used to be Quinn’s family. Quinn, who any day or night at work might have been shot, had never been able to provide that kind of security at home. A cop’s wife leaves him—who doesn’t understand and sympathize?

  “Does Elliott know you traveled to New York?” Quinn asked, amazed by how quickly the sandwich was disappearing.

  “Nobody but you knows I’m here, Dad. This stuff is great. I’m looking forward to New York. Don’t worry. I’m gonna get a place of my own soon as I find work.”

  “Huh? Place? Work?”

  “You got a spare bedroom, Dad, right? Place to crash. Extra bed? I don’t snore, most of the time.”

  “Listen, Lauri…”

  She stopped chewing pastrami and looked up at him with those green eyes. Smiled big. Ah, God…May.

  Memory was physical pain.

  “There’s a spare bedroom,” he said. “I’ll have to move out a few things I’ve got stored in there.”

  She took a big bite of sandwich and stood up. “Let’s go. I’ll help you.”

  “Doesn’t have to be right now,” he said. “Finish your sandwich. Make another one if you’re hungry.”

  She settled back down and began eating in earnest again. She said, “I don’t have any tattoos.”

  He smiled. “Fine.”

  “Do you mind if I get one?”

  “Does it matter what I think?”

  “Sure. I asked, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah. Will you not get a tattoo if I say I mind?”

  “Wouldn’t go that far.”

  “I’ve gotta say I don’t have an opinion on you getting tattooed,” Quinn said honestly. “I never gave it much thought. I mean, I never figured it was a question I’d have to wrestle with.”

  “I’ll wait, then. Till you get it straightened out in your mind.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Wouldn’t be right away anyway. Your place. Your rules.”

  “Really?”

  She grinned. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  He stared at her, befuddled.

  “Make yourself another sandwich if you want,” he said. “And there’s more soda in there. I’ll be right back.”

  He left her and returned to his den. His cigar had gone out. He relit it, then walked over and shut the door and called May and Elliott Franzine’s number in California.

  Elliott picked up almost immediately.

  “It’s Quinn,” Quinn said. “I’ve got Lauri here.”

  “Thank God!” Elliott said. “She’s been gone four days. We thought she was at a girlfriend’s house until yesterday. We called the police, and they’re about to list her as a missing person.”

  “Well, she isn’t missing. She’s here. Said she rode buses in from California.”

  “May’s not here, Quinn. She’s out talking to the girlfriend’s parents. We’ve worried out of our skulls.”

  “I guess so. Lauri get upset about something?”

  “Didn’t seem to. Well, we did have a bit of a tiff about where and when she’d go to college. A few harsh words. But we’ve had those discussions before and everybody’s cooled down. We didn’t think she was mad enough to leave home. Though she’s been talking about not liking California, seeing more of the world. We didn’t think there was anything to the talk, just Lauri venting, but it seems we were wrong.”

  “She’s planning on going to college?”

  “Eventually, she says. After gaining what she calls true life experience, whatever that is.”

  Quinn knew what it was. It could be painful. Even fatal.

  “She intends to stay with me for a while and try to find a job in New York,” he said.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “Like I’ve got no choice.”

  “Well, she is eighteen.”

  “That’s an age when you can get in a lotta trouble,” Quinn said. And be a lot of trouble.

  “May and I both know she’d be safe with you.”

  “If I put her on the red-eye to California, she might bounce right back here,” Quinn said, thinking out loud.

  “Probably would. Or go someplace else altogether. Like Minnesota.”

  “Why Minnesota?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ve always had a bad feeling about Minnesota. It’s a place where you can get in trouble if you’re eighteen.”

  “Like plenty of other places,” Quinn said.

  “If she’s really made up her mind to leave California,” Elliott said, “she’ll go someplace else. Lauri’s awfully stubborn. Once she’s made up her mind, she usually doesn’t change it.”

  “Stubborn, huh?”

  “Very.”

  Quinn picked up his cigar and toyed with it. Studied it. No sign of an ember. He mentally pronounced it dead.

  What a screwed-up world it was.

  “We can try it for a while,” Quinn said. “On a trial basis. Maybe she’ll see how tough it is here and get New York out of her system.”

  “This is great of you, Quinn.”

  “Not really. She’s my daughter.”

  “Yeah, she sure is.”

  “Have May call me when she gets in.”

  “Okay. Tell Lauri we love her out here in California.”

  “You wanna talk to her?”

  “Of course.”

  Quinn went back to the kitchen and returned a few minutes later and picked up the phone.

  “She said she doesn’t want to talk to you,” he told Elliott. “Said you were a dork.”

  “That hurts.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Quinn hung up the phone, smiling around his dead cigar.

  17

  “You drank just the right amount of wine during dinner,” he told Marilyn, as they strolled along the sidewalk toward her apartment. Even though Marilyn was wearing high heels, he was slightly the taller of the two in his Rough
Country boots, and he knew the hat added another three or four inches. They were walking very close together and presented a kind of unassailable front that prompted people approaching to veer around them. Power prevails, thought the Butcher.

  Marilyn laughed. “I’m afraid to think what you might mean by that.”

  “I mean you showed restraint.”

  “And you admire restraint?”

  His turn to laugh. “Up to a point.”

  He rested his right hand lightly on her shoulder as they walked, raising his head slightly and smiling as he let his senses take in the moment. The mingled scents of the city rode on the sultry summer evening. Headlights of approaching traffic starred in the humidity. The slightly sweet smell of curbside trash waiting to be picked up in early morning was like perfume to him. He enjoyed the subtle but persistent wafting of exhaust fumes; the rumble of a bus or truck; a cacophony of blaring horns echoing from far away.

  And something else…a delicate hint of nearby scent.

  Her shampoo.

  “Did you wash your hair just for me?”

  She seemed surprised and pleased. “Of course I did. It’s perceptive of you to notice.”

  “There isn’t much I don’t notice.” He realized at once he’d sounded a note of arrogance and moved to temper it. “I’m afraid my job makes me like that.”

  “You never told me what you did for a living,” she said.

  I can tell her anything now, on this, her last night.

  “I’m a historian.”

  “You teach?”

  “Not now. I’m writing a book on the Civil War.”

  “About your ancestor.”

  “General Grant wasn’t exactly an ancestor.”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then maybe you and he are related. Or maybe not. You drank just the right amount of wine for dinner, too. Showed restraint. I don’t think General Grant often did that.”

  They’d reached the entrance to Marilyn’s building and stopped walking at the base of the concrete steps up to the stoop.

  “You know your history,” he said. “The general did enjoy his liquor. Lincoln once said—”

  He fell silent as he noticed a woman approaching. As she passed from shadow into brighter light, his glance took her in quickly—medium height, slightly overweight, short blond hair, white joggers, dark slacks, untucked sleeveless blouse, a purse of glittering green sequins slung by a strap over her right shoulder. When she got closer, he saw that she was in her thirties, had protruding teeth, was moderately pretty, and was wearing half a dozen jangling silver bracelets on her left wrist. A necklace. Rings. In love with jewelry. Presents to herself.

  The woman smiled. “Marilyn?”

  Beside him, Marilyn took a step toward the woman. “Ella? Is that actually you?”

  “Of course it’s me!” Smiling with her toothy mouth wide open, the woman hobbled toward Marilyn on her high heels, her arms spread like inadequate wings. She reminded him of one of those birds that couldn’t fly but because of Darwinian memory still ran and flapped about as if they might take off.

  The two women hugged while he stood by awkwardly, making himself smile, putting on the amused and tolerant expression that he thought appropriate. Play their game.

  “You did something to your hair,” Marilyn was saying. She stood back, hands on hips, and looked perplexed.

  “Made it blond,” the woman said. “It’s something I always wanted to do, and since I lived in New York, I thought it’d be a smart time to do it.”

  “Oh, you mean because of that Butcher creep.”

  His smile stayed firm. Only a matter of time. Destiny is on rails, and gaining speed and momentum. Sixty miles an hour. No whistle. No stopping it. No avoiding it. He was the engineer and he knew.

  “I thought I saw you on the street a few days ago,” the woman said, “only I couldn’t be sure. But I decided to try and find you.”

  “How did you?”

  “Called Rough Country. I’d heard some time ago you worked there. They gave me your address.”

  “If I’d known you lived here—“Marilyn suddenly gave a start. “Excuse my bad manners, I was so excited to see you. This is my friend Joe Grant.” She made a sweeping motion toward him with her hand. “This is Ella Oaklie, Joe. She’s an old college friend from Ohio State.”

  He shook the woman’s damp hand, feeling the pain of a sharp ring. “Any relation to Annie Oakley?”

  “Not hardly,” Ella said, grinning. “Spelled differently. And about the only thing I shoot off is my mouth.” She cocked her head to the side, appraising him. “Hey, I like your hat. Not to mention the boots. Kinda cowboy, but also big city. Sexy. Must be the Marilyn influence.”

  He suddenly felt ridiculous in his new outfit. “It sure is. She’s good for me, and having a startling effect on my wardrobe.”

  “Well, you look right at home in New York, wrangler.”

  “We were just on our way out to have some drinks,” Marilyn lied. Her way of letting Ella know Joe was hers. He liked that. “Join us, why don’t you? Joe won’t mind.”

  “Sounds great,” he said, trying to show adequate enthusiasm.

  Ella shrugged. “I really can’t…”

  Good. Why don’t you mosey along.

  “Then come on upstairs. I know you’d like to see the place,” Marilyn insisted. “And I’d like to show it off. Really.”

  Damn it! This is going to happen.

  Roll with it. Social ju-jitsu.

  “Listen,” he said, “why don’t you two go up without me?”

  “Joe—”

  “I really don’t mind, Marilyn. You’re obviously good friends and haven’t seen each other for a long time. You’ll have plenty of news for each other. You don’t need a third party around who doesn’t recall old times.”

  “Really—” Ella began, flapping her arms. She really did resemble an awkward, overweight bird.

  “So go ahead. I’ll leave you two to catch up, long as you don’t talk about me.”

  “It’ll all be complimentary, Joe,” Marilyn said.

  “I’ll try to believe that.”

  “Call me?”

  “Speed dial.”

  “I can see you’ve made a good impression,” Ella said, aiming her indomitable toothy grin at him. “And I can see why.”

  Interested? He gave her a shy smile. “I try.”

  “Not enough men do.”

  “Amen,” Marilyn said.

  He kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Night.” He smiled and backed away.

  “Night, Joe.”

  He assured Ella it had been a pleasure meeting her, then deftly touched the brim of his Glenn Ford hat before turning and making his way down the sidewalk.

  Near the corner, he glanced back and saw the two women entering the building.

  For a second he considered following them inside, then he told himself that wouldn’t be right. That wasn’t part of the game.

  Maybe someday he’d make it part. Two victims in the same tub. Mix and match. Wouldn’t Quinn be confused.

  He laughed out loud, then noticed several people on the street staring at him and immediately arranged his features in a solemn expression.

  Laughing on the inside, though.

  “Your daughter is living with you?” Fedderman seemed unable to comprehend this.

  “Temporarily,” Quinn told him.

  They were in their office, drinking morning coffee from their initialed mugs. Quinn was seated behind his desk. Pearl and Fedderman were perched on theirs. The coffee was aromatic this morning, strong and slightly bitter. From the dental clinic next door, seeping faintly through the wall, came the faint but unmistakable shrill sound of drilling.

  “Lauri,” Pearl said thoughtfully. They’d never met, but he’d told Pearl about Lauri, not all of it good. “She’d be eighteen now, right?”

  Quinn took a sip of coffee, noticing that his hand was shaking. The Laur
i factor? “Eighteen,” he confirmed. “Graduated from high school. She’s in New York looking for a job.”

  “What kinda job?” Fedderman asked.

  “She isn’t sure.”

  The drilling next door paused, then resumed louder and shriller.

  “She on the outs with mom and stepdad?”

  “Only mildly. She mostly just wanted to head out on her own. You know kids.”

  Fedderman did. He had two of his own, grown and gone. Pearl didn’t know kids.

  “Lauri must be a young woman now,” she said, then looked at Quinn. “She could have struck out on her own in any direction, you know.”

  “Meaning?”

  Pearl smiled. “She wanted to be with you. She missed you.”

  “She wouldn’t say so.”

  “Of course not. But that’s why she’s here.”

  “Maybe partly,” Quinn said.

  Fedderman looked thoughtful. Pearl was grinning.

  Quinn said, “Let’s think about murder.”

  But by that evening, when he entered the apartment a little after six and saw how excited Lauri was, all thoughts of the Butcher murders case fled his mind, something just a few days ago he would have thought impossible.

  “Got a job!” she practically yelled, bouncing around the living room. “Doesn’t pay much, but it pays. Starts tomorrow.” She sat down on the sofa, sprang out of it, stalked to the window, hitched up her low-riding jeans. Her smile hit him in the heart.

  “Doing what?” he asked.

  “Waiting tables, mostly. Bussing them sometimes. Helping out in the kitchen. Cleaning up after closing. That kinda stuff.”

  “This would be at a restaurant?”

  “Sure is. Down in the Village, on Fourteenth Street. The Hungry U.”

  Quinn had never heard of the place but thought he’d better not say so.

  “They serve Pakistani food. And there’s live music there sometimes at night. Not open for breakfast, so I can sleep late.”

  “Very important.” Fourteenth Street in the Village. He made up his mind to check out the Hungry U tomorrow.

  “I go in at eleven,” Lauri said. “Help get set up for lunch.”

  “What about dinner?”

  “I told you, Dad. I just—”

  He grinned. “I mean us. This evening. We should celebrate.”