John Lutz Bundle

by John Lutz

  He appeared alarmed. “Good Lord, Lauri, I hope you don’t think I’m dangerous that way.”

  Why did I have to tell him that? Hurt him? Why am I acting like such a fool?

  She snuggled closer to him in the rocking, jouncing back of the cab as it took a potholed corner. “There’s dangerous, and then there’s nice dangerous,” she said, looking up at him. “You’re nice dangerous.”

  He kissed her lightly on the lips.

  They held hands.

  56

  “Is a photograph truly necessary?” Myrna asked, not very sincerely.

  She actually seemed enthralled by the idea that her photo was going to be in the papers and on TV news; but at the same time, she was afraid. Pearl didn’t think Myrna was afraid of what she was about to do, of her son Sherman, or what might happen to him. It was more that she’d spent almost her entire life playing down her beauty and avoiding being noticed, and now here she was in New York, wearing the smart gray linen pants suit she’d bought at Bloomingdale’s and posing for a news photographer.

  Well, Quinn had dropped mention that the man was a news photographer. He was actually an NYPD employee who photographed mostly crime scenes. Still, these photos would find their way into the news.

  “You look wonderful, Mom,” Jeb said.

  He’d moved from the Waverton into the Meredith, in a room on the second floor, to be nearer to his mother. It was Myrna who’d negotiated the deal. Apparently, to Myrna, an agreement merely meant the commencement of negotiations. While they were at the Meredith, Jeb’s expenses were also being picked up by the city.

  Myrna continued to warm to the proceedings, seated in the small wooden desk chair, swiveling her body, striking exaggerated poses. The NYPD photographer, an acne-scarred, hard-bitten young man with an emaciated body and shaved head, glanced at Pearl and Quinn, then got into the spirit and shot from a slight crouch, giving Myrna a lot of meaningless patter so he could catch her “off guard.” Quinn had seen him at some of the crime scenes, glumly snapping his body shots, and thought his name was Klausman. Today you’d think the guy was shooting supermodels in Paris.

  Quinn had seen and heard about enough. “I want one taken downstairs on the sidewalk,” he said. “Out in front of the hotel.”

  “A candid shot,” said Klausman. “We can pretend we’ve caught her by surprise as she’s entering the lobby.” This sure beat photographing corpses. It was fun working with a live woman who moved around and smiled when he said say cheese.

  Out on the sidewalk, a few people walking past slowed down and stared, wondering what was going on, thinking Myrna might be some kind of celebrity. Myrna seemed to be thinking the same thing.

  “My hair all right?” she asked, barely touching it.

  “Perfect,” Pearl assured her, not mentioning the strand sticking almost straight up like a horn.

  “You got some sticking straight up,” Klausman said, dancing forward and deftly smoothing back the hair the breeze had mussed.

  Myrna glared at Pearl.

  “Except for that one strand,” Pearl said.

  “I can pretend I just got out of a cab,” Myrna said.

  “Sure,” Quinn said to her and to Klausman. Why not?

  Myrna flagged down a cab and worked her poses, momentarily confusing the cabbie and showing a lot of leg.

  That seemed to disturb Jeb. “Better not overdo it, Mom.”

  She ignored him.

  “Say ‘Kate Moss,’” Klausman told her, evoking a wide grin.

  “Lord Almighty,” Pearl said under her breath.

  “I want one of her going into the lobby,” Quinn said to Klausman, watching the irate cabbie drive away, “but I don’t want the name of the hotel to be in the shot.”

  “Why’s that?” Jeb asked.

  “We don’t want to be sued.”

  In truth they’d decided not to make finding his mother too easy for Sherman Kraft. They didn’t want him to become suspicious. It was better to leave it up to him to figure out which hotel was in the photograph.

  There were two low marble steps leading to a weather-proof carpeted area beneath the marquee. Myrna took them like a young girl.

  “Gotcha! Good! Perfect!” Klausman kept saying, as Myrna struck one pose after another, moving only slightly for each shot, like a figure on a film skipping frames. “You should be a model. Gotcha! Okay, that’s it. Nope, gotcha one more time—that’ll be the best one, most natural. Really, you should be a—there, one more—model.”

  “It did cross my mind when I was much younger,” Myrna said.

  Jeb silently turned away.

  He’s embarrassed, Pearl thought. She’s embarrassed him.

  Myrna didn’t seem to notice. “How long will it take before they’re developed?” she asked.

  Klausman was surprised. “No time at all. They’re digital.” He went over to stand near her. “Here. You can review them.”

  Quinn let her Ooh! and Aah! over the camera’s tiny digital display for a few minutes, then decided it was time to retake charge of this operation from Klausman.

  “Take those back and make sure Renz gets them,” he said to the photographer. “Ask him to call me so I know he has them.” He turned his attention to Myrna. “Let’s get back up to the room, and I’ll give you final instructions.”

  Myrna nodded. “I like that third one,” she said to Klausman.

  But Klausman had caught something in Quinn’s tone and was already hurrying to his double-parked car. The E-mailed photos should be in the hands of Mary Mulanphy and Cindy Sellers within the hour.

  No one spoke as they rode up in the elevator. Jeb went with them, passing the floor where his room was located.

  Quinn wondered what Jeb thought of the police using his mother for bait. Did he know what Quinn knew, that a psychosexual killer like Sherman probably wouldn’t be able to resist not simply the type of woman who was his usual victim, but the archetype. Mom herself. Every serial killer’s dream. A Freudian, or police profiler, might say “wet dream.”

  Something like this had never happened before in Quinn’s career, and it would surely never happen again.

  The elevator door slid open and they all strode down the carpeted hall toward Myrna’s room. The hall was comfortable but noticeably warmer than the lobby.

  Quinn fell back a few steps, watching mother and son. These two, Jeb and Myrna, were tricky. They were both intelligent and used to playing a double game. And they both came from a hard place.

  Nothing they said could be trusted to mean or suggest anything. They might be smarter than the police and certainly were more desperate. They were not what they seemed and could misdirect or lull you.

  They came to room 620 and Myrna used her key card dexterously to unlock the door on the first swipe.

  Quinn rested a restraining hand on her shoulder and moved ahead of her to enter first while Pearl held the door open.

  Nobody joked or made a crack about being overcautious.

  As soon as they closed the room’s door behind them, Myrna went to the window and gazed down at the street, as if to watch Klausman the police photographer drive away.

  She absently raised a hand to make sure her hair wasn’t too mussed.

  “We should have had him take one of all of us together.”

  57

  Killing could stimulate the appetite. The Butcher had finished his breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast at a diner over on East Fifty-first Street. He was walking along Third Avenue, using the tip of his tongue to try working a stubborn morsel of bacon from between his molars, when he stopped suddenly in front of a news kiosk.

  A brick anchored a stack of New York Posts from the morning breeze. The brick, which had a red ribbon tied around it in a bow so that it resembled a wrapped gift, was slightly off center, revealing a color photograph beneath the large caption “BUTCHER’S MOM.”

  He stood motionless, ignoring people bumping into him, some of them glaring or cursing at him as they hurried
on. It took all his effort to move closer to the kiosk and slide the top paper out from beneath the brick.

  She looked so young! So beautiful! As he remembered her, only more so. She’d aged as did most truly beautiful women, in a way that made them look simply more the way they’d appeared as young girls, a way that preserved the magic.

  The black magic.

  Very much more themselves. Every artifice stripped away by time. Very much more themselves.

  The ancient magic.

  Mom.

  Not in grimy jeans or a housedress with her hair a tangle. Not barefoot. Not bloody.

  Not nude and bloody and screaming my name. Not dragging a black plastic trash bag across a wooden floor…thumping black trash bag. Reaching into it…into it…

  Sam!

  Oh, Christ! Sam!

  “You gonna buy that or just memorize it?”

  Jarred from the swamp of the past, the Butcher stared at the old man in the kiosk in a way that made the man blink behind his thick glasses and back up a step.

  “They’re for sale, you know,” he said in a more moderate tone.

  The Butcher tucked the folded paper beneath his arm, then worked a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and stuffed it into the man’s hand. He then picked up a Times and Daily News. They also made note of the fact that Mom was in New York. They also featured at least one photograph and promised more on the inside pages.

  What was he feeling, staring at her Post photograph? He didn’t understand. This beautiful woman who’d given him life…

  Pride? An insane pride?

  Hate?

  Rage?

  He turned away abruptly and strode toward the intersection, where it would be easiest to hail a cab. He needed to get back inside the protection of his four walls, safe inside the womb, to recline in his chair, almost in the fetal position, with a Jack Daniel’s over ice, back to where he could read.

  No, to where he could look at the photographs, stare at them, etch them with fire into his memory.

  Mom…

  “You want your change?”

  He ignored the voice calling from the kiosk behind him.

  Too late for change.

  He understood now that he hadn’t escaped the swamp. He never would.

  He walked faster and faster, elbowing people out of his way, and finally broke into a run.

  Quinn and Pearl were in room 624, two rooms down the hall from Myrna Kraft’s. From there Quinn could observe the street and at the same time stay close to Myrna. Fedderman was outside running things at ground level according to Quinn’s instructions. He was in an unmarked car, from time to time changing parking spots, while he kept in touch with Quinn or the undercover cop posing as a bellhop and hanging around the hotel entrance with the real bellhop. The undercover cop’s name was Neeson and he hadn’t liked climbing into a bellhop uniform. On the other hand, he’d garnered some tips just holding the door open for arriving and departing guests. The last time Fedderman had checked on him, Neeson said he was considering changing occupations.

  The bearded homeless man across the street, seated on a folded blanket in the shadow of a building recess and holding a cup, was also NYPD undercover. Probably making a little extra money today, too, Fedderman thought, as he sat in the car half a block down and waited for the overheated engine to cool enough so he could restart it and turn the air conditioner back on.

  Two more undercovers were in the lobby, looking like a tourist couple, and another—Officer Nancy Weaver—was hanging around Myrna’s floor in a maid’s uniform. Quinn had requested Weaver. Pearl thought it was maybe to aggravate her, Pearl, because of her short-lived affair with Jeb Kraft. He’d even mentioned he thought Weaver looked cute in her maid’s outfit. Pearl told him Weaver should change linens and scrub toilets as part of her cover. (And maybe fasten another button on her maid uniform blouse.)

  Fueled by three cups of coffee, Pearl was pacing, while Quinn sat in a comfortable chair he’d dragged across the carpet so he could sit by the window. A set of earphones was draped over the back of the desk chair. Myrna’s room was bugged, but she was out now, probably shopping, and being tailed by the rest of the unit Renz had assigned the task of protecting her.

  As Pearl paced, she thought she smelled stale tobacco smoke. Every hotel room she’d been in lately smelled as if someone had been smoking in it. Had New Yorkers been driven to skulk like addicts or adulterers and appease their filthy vice in hotel rooms?

  “I’m sorry about that Weaver remark,” Quinn said. “About her looking cute. I was trying to make you jealous.” He was addressing Pearl but continued gazing out the window as he talked.

  “You only made it to annoyed,” Pearl said. “Does it smell to you like somebody’s been smoking in here?”

  “No. You’re always thinking you smell tobacco smoke where there is none.”

  “Maybe I do smell smoke, and you can’t because you’ve burned out your sense of smell with those illegal Cuban cigars you suck on.”

  “You’re testy. Is it the coffee?”

  “It’s you.”

  “What you should do,” he said, “is only have relationships with other cops.”

  We’re back on that, are we? “I’m no longer a cop, except temporarily.”

  “Bank guard, then. More or less the same thing.”

  “No,” Pearl said. “If I were a bank guard I wouldn’t be here.”

  Quinn continued to stare out the window, silently.

  Pearl figured she’d better set things straight. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel something for Quinn. It was more that she knew something about herself. It wouldn’t work for them.

  Maybe nothing would work for her with anyone. It was easy to think that way after Jeb Jones—Kraft. Her psyche was still bruised and confused. She did know she could no longer trust her emotions. Build a wall around your heart…

  “We’re friends,” she said. “Colleagues. That’s all, Quinn.”

  “I don’t want to leave it at that. Not with you.”

  If it was supposed to be a compliment, it hadn’t worked. “You’ve got a hell of a nerve,” Pearl said.

  “I won’t give up.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to concentrate on the stalker outside the hotel.”

  Quinn turned away from the window just long enough to smile at her. “I meant I won’t give up hope.”

  “That’s your concern,” Pearl said, “and none of mine.”

  “At this point,” Quinn said, “I know you’re not seeing anyone else.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  He smiled again. Didn’t turn his head, but she saw his cheek crinkle up just beneath the corner of his eye. She’d seen that enough times to know he was grinning. Anger rose in her.

  “Milton Kahn,” she said venomously, as if casting a spell.

  Quinn looked over at her curiously. “Who?”

  “Never mind. He’s nobody you’re ever going to meet.”

  Me, either, with any luck.

  “I happen to like my life the way it is,” Pearl said. “Once I get back to the status quo.”

  Did that lie even make sense?

  Quinn was silent for a while. “I don’t think he’ll come tonight,” he said. “He’s more the sort to take his time.”

  Pearl knew he wasn’t talking about Milton Kahn. “He’s also the sort to spring surprises. We seem to have everything taken into account, Quinn, but I still can’t shake the notion that this killer might figure a way around us. You ever get that feeling about him?

  “Yeah.”

  Quinn’s cell phone, lying on the windowsill, beeped the first few notes of “Lara’s Theme” before he snatched it up, pressed it to his ear, and said, “Yeah,” again. “Okay, Feds.”

  He cut the connection and laid the phone back on the sill.

  “Myrna’s back.”

  Pearl instantly stopped pacing, sat down at the desk, and slipped the headphones back on.

  “I happen to like being a
bank guard,” she said, with a sideways glance at Quinn.

  “Probably the uniform,” Quinn said.

  No mercy.

  58

  “You have other things to do all the time,” Wormy told Lauri.

  They were in the kitchen of the Hungry U, a busy place full of spicy aromas, the blur of motion, the clink and clatter of dishes and flatware.

  “Not all the time, but tonight,” Lauri said. She was checking on a customer’s order of shahi korma, wondering what the delay was. She had to have something to tell the man, who was a valued regular, meaning he’d been in the restaurant at least twice.

  “Be ready jus’ about three minutes,” said Jamal, the African American–Pakistani chef.

  “Lauri—”

  “Really, Wormy, you don’t have a title proving ownership of me. Women aren’t chattel any longer.”

  “Cattle?”

  “Chattel. It means we don’t have to spend every minute together you want to spend, but not a single moment you don’t.”

  Wormy seemed puzzled by her phrasing. Or indignant. Maybe he was still thinking about chattel. Lauri didn’t have time to sort it all out.

  “Damn it, Lauri. Ain’t any call to be so hard-ass. You know you’re my woman.”

  Jamal, racketing a whisk around in a metal bowl to whip up a sauce, gave him a look.

  Not half so withering as Lauri’s. “I’m nobody’s woman. And you don’t have any business in the kitchen, Wormy.”

  “She be right on that one,” Jamal said. “Them two.”

  “I know what you’re doin’,” Wormy said, ignoring Jamal. “You’re goin’ out with somebody else.”

  “Whee-ooh!” Jamal said.

  “If I were seeing someone else,” Lauri said coldly, “it’d be none of your concern. You think I don’t know about you and your friends, and what goes on at those clubs when I’m not around?”

  Jamal stopped with the whisk and looked from Lauri to Wormy.

  “That kinda thing’s nothin’, Lauri. Nothin’! I don’t feel about any of those girls the way I feel about you. You’re everything in the world to me.”