John Lutz Bundle

by John Lutz

  She gave him another smile that cleaved his heart. “You know, we really oughta!”

  “So what are you in the mood for? Pakistani?”

  She paused, thinking. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I guess you’re gonna find out,” Quinn said. “You’ll learn fast.”

  “Pizza! I noticed a place down the street, right near the corner. Looked neat.”

  He knew the restaurant. About a year ago, he and Pearl thought they might have gotten food poisoning there.

  “Sounds great!” somebody else said.

  No, it had been his voice. Some girl—woman—had him by the arm. He was headed for the door.

  He played it cautiously, waiting almost a week before phoning Marilyn, then dropping by her apartment.

  He wore well-pressed black slacks and a gray pullover golf shirt; not very Rough Country, but he had on the faux-battered semi-cowboy hat with its artfully curved brim.

  When she opened the door, smiling out at him, she was a surprise.

  “Your hair,” he said.

  “You noticed.”

  “Hard not to. You’re blond.” She was also barefoot and wearing a pink silk robe, though he’d called fifteen minutes ago to let her know he was in the neighborhood and would soon be at her door.

  “You don’t like it?” Her smile threatened to fade as her right hand floated up to touch her newly colored hair.

  He instantly slipped into pleased mode. After all, what did it matter? “I do like it. You just surprised me.”

  She did a neat pirouette, flashing bare calf and ankle beneath the robe, and the smile was back at full radiance. The abrupt turn had stirred the air and left it perfumed with the scent of roses. “The new and improved Marilyn Nelson.”

  “I like you blond, Marilyn, but it’ll take a little getting used to. And there’s no way to improve on the basic you.”

  You with the dark roots.

  “Come in, Joe. I didn’t mean to leave you standing in the hall.”

  When he entered, she seemed to notice for the first time the box beneath his arm.

  “You’ve brought something,” she said, using a lilting tone to demonstrate her pleasure.

  “For later, actually.”

  “It’s too big a box for wine. Flowers?”

  “It’ll be a surprise.” He touched her robe with his free hand. The material was so soft and smooth it felt almost like flesh. Definitely more Frederick’s of Hollywood than Rough Country. “Did I interrupt you getting dressed?”

  “No. Getting undressed.” She gave him a look impossible to misinterpret: Marilyn coming around. He could guess what wasn’t beneath the robe.

  “I was about to take a shower,” she said. Her smile went from shy to conspiratorial. “Maybe you’d like to join me.”

  “No, thanks.”

  Just as her features began to register surprise and embarrassment, he kissed her forehead. Then he pulled her close and kissed her mouth, feeling her immediately respond with her tongue. Her breath was sweet and warm. Heat emanated from beneath the robe. Marilyn was ready.

  When they separated, he saw her breasts rising and falling beneath the taut material of the robe. She bit her lower lip, trying not to breathe so noisily.

  “I was going to suggest a bath,” he explained, standing close and smiling down at her.

  She thought for a second. “Sounds wonderful, but maybe kind of cramped.”

  “We’ll work something out.” He kissed her again.

  “Promise no bruises?” she asked, gazing at him with eyes that told him she was his.

  Promise them anything… “You can trust me.”

  Her gaze remained locked with his as she unfastened the sash about her waist. With the slightest whisper, the delicate silk robe dropped to puddle at her feet.

  On the way to the bathroom, he stepped on it.

  18

  Quinn didn’t want to embarrass Lauri, so he’d waited for her night off before visiting the Hungry U.

  It was one of those Village restaurants that tried too hard for bohemian décor, as if the owners were still in the thrall of Kerouac and Ginsberg. There was a small bar near the door, and beyond it round tables surrounded by mismatched chairs. The walls were different colors. On the blue wall was a doorway with beads hanging in it rather than a door. On the mauve wall was an arch, also beaded, that apparently led to another room with more tables. Each of the walls had movie posters mounted on them advertising films that had been set in Hollywood’s idea of exotic places. Sidney Green-street, wearing a fez, smiled jovially behind a pointed gun. Peter Lorre sweated profusely in a desert setting. There was Bogie, suave in a white dinner jacket. Lauren Bacall wore a silky evening gown. Quinn knew most of the films had been shot in and around Los Angeles.

  A woman who looked like an Eastern version of Madonna smiled at Quinn and led him to a table on the other side of the arch. This room was more expensively and tastefully decorated. The chairs around the tables matched, and there were framed landscapes on the walls rather than old movie posters. At the far end of the room was a slightly raised stage, and in front of it a small dance floor. There was a microphone and some sound equipment on the stage—two gigantic speakers—and a taped-up white banner on the wall with THE DEFENDANTS spray-painted on it in red block letters like gang graffiti.

  Most of the tables were occupied. The Eastern Madonna led Quinn to a table toward the end of the room farthest from the stage and supplied him with a tall, narrow menu.

  A small man of indeterminate ethnicity and wearing a pointed dark beard appeared and took Quinn’s order. Soon Quinn was settled in with a glass of Pakistani beer and something called roghni naan, from what he assumed was the appetizer section of the menu.

  It turned out to be bread sprinkled with sesame seeds and was tasty. The beer could have been colder, but it was good, too. The clientele appeared respectable enough and typical of the Village. A democratic mix of ages, races, and sexes, neighborhood people with a few obvious tourists here and there.

  When the server with the pointed beard returned and asked if Quinn wanted dinner, he said the roghni naan would be plenty and it was delicious, but he’d have another beer. The man smiled as if privately amused that Quinn had mispronounced something, and it wasn’t “beer.”

  “You’re here for the band,” the man said.

  Quinn glanced at the stage, where a scroungy-looking young black man in a sleeveless T-shirt—his muscular arms covered with tattoos—was tinkering with the speakers.

  “The Defendants,” the server said.

  “Ah!” Quinn said. “Sure. What time do they start to play?”

  “About ten minutes.”

  Quinn hadn’t quite finished his…bread, and he’d just ordered another beer. He was stuck.

  Halfway through beer number two, there was a smattering of applause, and an older man with graying hair who might have been one of the owners introduced the Defendants with a good-natured flourish, as if they were opening at Vegas for Wayne Newton.

  There were four of them: a drummer, two guitarists, and a guy with some kind of keyboard attached by a strap slung around his neck. Wires ran from the keyboard to the speakers. Wires ran everywhere.

  Then a fifth member of the band arrived, to heightened applause. Apparently this band was having a good run at the Hungry U.

  Quinn figured the new guy must be the front man and singer. At first he appeared almost shy, then he seemed to shake off any inhibitions and took his place at the mike. He grinned, signaling with his skinny right arm to the backup musicians poised behind him.

  Quinn had never seen anyone skinnier. The kid, who probably wasn’t even in his twenties, was about six feet tall and had shoulders and waist of about the same narrow dimension. What there was of his chest was concave beneath his faded red T-shirt, and his torn jeans clung to long, pipe-cleaner legs. He had wide blue eyes and a head of corkscrew red hair that lent him an amiable, startled expression. Quinn thought he resembled an anor
exic Harpo Marx.

  Unlike Harpo, he could talk. He confidently introduced the band’s first piece, something called “Lost in Bonkers.”

  The band tore into it like starving men in a lifeboat, and the skinny kid began to sing.

  Quinn wished he could arrest them for auditory assault.

  The kid shouted incomprehensible lyrics while bounding around the stage as if there were springs in his feet, as if he were a spring, his long, skinny body rhythmically contorting in an undulating S shape. Then he produced a harmonica and began to play, somehow getting the instrument to make wheezing sounds like a damaged bagpipe.

  But “Lost in Bonkers” was getting to the crowd. They were clapping in time and stamping their feet. Quinn caught some of the lyrics:

  Lost in Bonkers on familiar ground.

  Lost in Bonkers an’ I don’t wanna be found.

  Gone pure crazy lookin’ out for you.

  ’Cause I know you’re lost in Bonkers too.

  What the hell did it mean? Quinn wondered, and took a swig of Pakistani beer.

  His shirt pocket came alive.

  His cell phone was there, the ringer set to vibrate so it wouldn’t make noise and disturb anyone in the restaurant. Hah!

  He drew the phone from his pocket and flipped it open. Said hello. Didn’t even hear himself.

  “Quinn, that you?” Renz’s voice.

  “Me.”

  “Where the hell are you? What’s that racket?”

  “Lost in Bonkers.”

  “Yonkers?”

  Quinn turned his face toward the wall and talked louder. Still didn’t make much of a dent in the din. “I’ll explain later, Harley.”

  “I want you outta Yonkers and on the Upper West Side. I got a call…”

  “Hold the line,” Quinn said. He laid down enough money to cover his check and tip, then stood up and edged his way between tables and off-key notes toward the beaded arch. After getting slightly tangled in the strings of colorful beads, he freed himself and avoided the crowded bar to make a circuitous detour to the door. The smiling, exotic-looking woman who’d led him to his table nodded a good night to him and Quinn nodded back, the phone still pressed to his ear, and made his way outside into the quiet night.

  “Harley?”

  “Yeah. Wherever you are, get your team here.” He gave Quinn a West Side address. “Uniforms are there already, got the scene frozen.”

  “The Butcher?”

  “’Fraid so. Another victim. An anonymous call came in twenty minutes ago.”

  “Sure it was our guy?”

  “Take a barf bag.”

  “I’m beyond that, Harley. And I’m on my way.”

  “Where are you? What was all that goddamn noise?”

  “I’m not sure myself,” Quinn said, and broke the connection.

  On familiar ground but in Lauri’s new world, feeling lost.

  19

  Bocanne, Florida, 1980

  “Sherman, is it? You got a great name, so you got a responsibility to live up to it. Know that, boy?”

  “I guess,” Sherman said. He’d had some history and remembered the name, but even though it was his name, he couldn’t quite recall who it was the new boarder, Sam Pickett, was talking about.

  They were sitting in cane-backed chairs out on the plank porch, leaning almost too far back with their feet up on the rail. Sherman had his ankles crossed and was sipping a warm pop. Pickett was messing around with the big, dirty briar pipe he smoked. Before them the swamp loomed green and lush, buzzing with life and smelling of rot. Something moved out there, causing dozens of blackbirds to rise screaming in a panic, and then settle down near their point of takeoff.

  “My feelin’ is he was the greatest Civil War general of ’em all,” Pickett said, using his yellowed thumb to tamp tobacco firmly into the bowl of the odorous briar. “Ol’William Tecumseh Sherman.”

  That was why he hadn’t stuck in Sherman’s memory. Sherman was his last name. Would Pickett remember everybody famous named Sam?

  But Sherman liked it that Pickett must have realized Sherman didn’t know who they were talking about, yet he hadn’t pointed out Sherman’s ignorance or made fun of him, just went on talking as if they both knew.

  “Marched through the south tearin’ up Ned all the way, burned an’ killed an’ left nothin’ to eat neither on nor in the miles of scorched earth left behind him.” He glanced over and gave Sherman a slight smile and a look that might have meant anything. “You think that was great?”

  “Dunno,” Sherman said. “Maybe. He was a general, so that was his job.” He was choosing his words carefully, wary of Pickett, who seemed smarter and more interested in Sherman than any of the other boarders. Pickett was always doing this when they talked, asking questions right out of the blue, as if testing to see if Sherman was paying attention. Sherman didn’t mind. Even kind of liked it.

  “You got the truth of it,” Pickett said, grinning at Sherman as if proud of him. “Ol’ Sherman’s hated—that’s the general, not you—’cause of all the death an’ destruction he created, but the fact is, if people’d just read their history, his march to the sea shortened the Civil War by months or years and saved a lot more lives than it cost.”

  “He kill women and kids, too?”

  Pickett stopped in the process of raising his pipe to his mouth and looked over at Sherman, his bushy gray eyebrows raised in curiosity and surprise. “That’s a damn—a darned good question, Sherman. Let’s just say he did what he had to do. You could make the argument that the southerners started the war ’cause the people wanted it, so it was the southern people—not just the soldiers—to blame, an’ it was only in the way of justice that they should have to pay the price of their lives.”

  Sherman looked out at the swamp, thinking of all the death out there. “Seems like you know a lot about that kinda thing.”

  “I’m a student of the Civil War, all self-learned but well-learned. I understand what Sherman had to do, an’ I think he was a good man. Now an’ again you gotta do what ordinarily would turn your stomach. That’s what life comes down to sometimes, Sherman.”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  The sun was going down. They listened to the crickets trilling away for a while. Pickett struck a book match and got his pipe fired up. The burning tobacco smelled good to Sherman. Better than the swamp.

  Sherman liked Sam Pickett. Though he looked almost as old as the previous boarders, maybe in his fifties, there was a kind of energy about him. It was like he was younger even though he had a lot of lines in his face, and gray hair and a gray mustache. He wore his long hair in a ponytail, but Sherman never thought he looked womanish at all. In fact, if he didn’t have such a big belly, Sherman could imagine Sam Pickett in a Civil War Union blue uniform, maybe even an officer’s.

  Pickett was the first boarder who didn’t have his own room. Maybe because it was full of all the books he’d brought in his big trunk and some cardboard boxes. Or maybe it was because he was the first boarder who didn’t have to pay. Sherman had heard Pickett and his mother talking about that one night when they were in the kitchen and didn’t know he was listening. And what surprised Sherman was when his mother flat-out told Pickett he shouldn’t have to pay any board. Pickett had said they’d work out something, that he’d pay for the groceries and whatever the boy might need. Sherman figured he was “the boy.”

  So books were piled on the bed where the other boarders had slept, and Pickett slept with Sherman’s mother. Sometimes he and Myrna, Sherman’s mom, would argue, and Sherman would hear them other nights making noises as if they were fighting in the bedroom. Now and then there were bruises on Myrna, but Sherman never heard her complain.

  Though he never dared call his mother anything other than “Mom,” Sherman began to think of her and Sam as a pair, thinking of how they called each other—Myrna and Sam.

  Sherman guessed Pickett did pay for things, but it was Myrna who took the truck into town most of the time and
bought them. She said she was the only one who knew how to drive the balky old pickup, and Pickett seemed happy enough to stay behind and read, then help her unload groceries, beer, or firewood and carry the heavy stuff in when she returned.

  Pickett read more often than anybody Sherman had ever met. It was how he passed the long hours, just sitting there concentrating, like he was breathing in information. Sherman thought of Sam always with a book in his hands, and his pipe clenched between his teeth. Which was how he almost always was. There was even a notch in his stained teeth worn there by the briar’s pipe stem over the years. And Sherman guessed Pickett might have calluses on his fingers from turning pages.

  “Ever fished?” Pickett asked, sucking and puffing noisily on the pipe to get the bowl glowing bright red.

  “Sure. Some. Got a good bamboo pole.”

  “Know how to use a rod and reel?”

  “Never had the chance.”

  “You got it now. I got one broke down in one of my boxes.”

  “You mean someday we can go fishing?” Sherman asked.

  “Someday hell! Excuse my French. Don’t wait for someday, Sherman. Let’s get up outta these chairs an’ go fishin’ now. Unless you got somethin’ better to do.”

  Sherman was grinning wide. “Can’t think of a thing better.”

  The removed their feet from the porch rail, and the front legs of their chairs thumped on the plank floor in unison.

  Over the next several weeks Pickett taught Sherman how to find where the fish might be biting, the bluegill around the weeds near banks where insects bred, and the big catfish that were bottom-feeders out farther from the banks and twisted banyan and cypress roots. He taught him how to cast sidearm so as not to hook low branches or Spanish moss, and drop the bait or fly within inches of where he aimed. After the first few times fishing, Sam always used the bamboo pole and let Sherman use the rod and reel.

  It was a great summer for Sherman. When he wasn’t fishing or talking with Sam Pickett, he was reading some of Pickett’s books. Sam told him he could read any or all of them without asking, only had to put them back when he was finished.