John Lutz Bundle

by John Lutz

  At first there was no emotional reaction to using the sharpened broomstick stakes. But soon he’d become fascinated by the homemade stakes and began taking great care in their selection and transformation in his skillful hands. The sharpening, sanding, and oiling became tremendously important to him. Somehow extremely personal. It made using the broomstick stakes easier.

  It made doing business easier. That part of the business.

  Then slowly, without him being aware of it, he began to enjoy more than the preparation. He began to enjoy using the stakes.

  That wasn’t like him. Not at all. He was Victor the businessman, not Victor the Impaler.

  He glanced over at his bookshelves, at the Vlad the Impaler books. When he’d seen them in the biography section at Barnes & Noble he had to have them. That really was when he first suspected the presence of a demon in him, a sickness, and his uneasy suspicions were confirmed when he read more and more eagerly about the sadistic despot and warlord.

  Good Christ! He and the long-dead Vlad had something in common.

  They were kindred spirits.

  Victor wasn’t pleased by this. He went into the kitchen and poured some Johnnie Walker Black into a water glass. The liquor felt hot going down; maybe it would jolt him out of his depression, his reluctance to accept what he’d done, what he was.

  It was Gloria who’d suggested using the broomstick stakes. Maybe she was the one who’d infected him. And she was the one who’d suggested that Charlotte’s penetration be anal, like that of the man. Victor remembered what he’d immediately thought when she’d suggested that. It was the way Vlad had impaled his victims. He’d agreed to Gloria’s suggestion without argument, as if it was all business with him so it made no difference. But he knew by the smile in her hard, dark eyes that she was aware of this new side of him, or old side that had always been there as a secret even from himself. He and Gloria could have few secrets from each other.

  Victor continued to pace. He simply couldn’t sit down and be still.

  He knew why he couldn’t sit and be still, the real reason. What had happened wasn’t Vlad the Impaler’s fault, or Gloria’s. The decision had been his.

  He’d make the same decision again.

  He took another generous swallow of scotch, nailing down the admission that hadn’t come easily, and that somehow made him feel marginally better.

  This time when his mind began replaying Charlotte’s squirming and soft screaming on the hood of the car, he didn’t immediately deflect his thoughts, the muted pleas for mercy and the violent images. He found his courage and welcomed them into his consciousness, into his new being.

  Victor the Impaler.

  Another swig of scotch.

  I enjoy my work. Why shouldn’t I?

  33

  “Why are we going the wrong way up a one-way street?” Jill asked.

  Quinn steered the big Lincoln to swerve around a bus stopped for passengers and smiled over at her. “The pesky press, dear. They want to know what’s going on all the time.”

  Jill winced as the Lincoln’s right front fender barely missed the bus. “Isn’t that their job?”

  “Sure is. Right now, it’s my job to see that they don’t know about you. Because if they know, the killer will know.” If he doesn’t already.

  Quinn figured that if Jill’s story was accurate it was possible that the phony Madeline had related the elevator encounter to E-Bliss.org. Jill might already be in danger. A lot depended on whether the woman who’d been found dead in the subway tunnel was the woman in her story.

  Of course, if Jill didn’t identify the woman in the morgue as the real Madeline, that was no guarantee the real Madeline was still alive. At any given time, there was more than one undiscovered corpse somewhere in New York.

  Horns blasted as Quinn steered the Lincoln onto Second Avenue, headed the right direction now with the flow of traffic.

  “I think we shook them,” he said.

  “Driving with you is an adventure,” Jill told him. There was a curious elation in her voice, as if motion and risk had temporarily taken her mind off her more ominous troubles.

  “Life’s an adventure, dear.”

  “Sometimes a fatal one,” Jill said gloomily.

  Back in her doomsday mood.

  Maria Sanchez thought she might be going crazy. She had no money problems, but three years ago she’d made a mistake Jorge didn’t know about. She’d violated his strict rule of dealing drugs, not using them, and become a user. Now she was trying to quit.

  She didn’t think of it quite that way. Maria regarded herself as being in the process of quitting. She still had part of the stash she’d brought with her when she’d flown in to LaGuardia. Smuggling it in had been easy enough; arrangements had been made. Even if anyone had found the drugs in her possession, it probably wouldn’t have proved a problem. Money had been laid down. People who counted knew who she was.

  Who she wasn’t anymore.

  She scratched at her bare arms, stood up from the sofa, and paced back and forth across the living room of the apartment that was feeling more and more like a prison cell. Over the past several months she’d shortened up on her daily lines of cocaine, cut her usage almost in half. It wasn’t as if she had any choice. Maria had always been the exception to the rule. What others were afraid or unable to do, she could accomplish. Her drug usage wouldn’t be any different. Other people got hooked for life—not Maria.

  Cutting back had been difficult at times, was difficult now, but well within the scope of her will and physical ability to deny herself. Confidence was bred in her. She’d been sure she’d be able to quit entirely when the time came.

  Now she was beginning to wonder.

  So far, the trip to the morgue wasn’t as bad as Jill had imagined. She was told she didn’t have to view the actual body. They sat her down in a red plastic chair in an anteroom and would show her close-ups of the dead woman on a television monitor.

  Quinn stood behind her and to the side with his hand resting gently on her shoulder. “There are worse things on cable television,” he said. “The medical channel.”

  Jill didn’t know if there actually was a medical channel, but his words did lend her courage.

  Still, she drew in her breath as the first image took form on the monitor.

  Quinn said nothing, but tightened his grip almost imperceptibly on her shoulder.

  “Madeline,” she said simply, her voice almost too soft to hear.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Jill turned her head to the side, away from the monitor. One photograph was enough. She knew it was Madeline and knew that was how she’d always remember Madeline. “Can we get out of here now?”

  “Of course.” As Quinn removed his hand he patted her shoulder, letting her know she’d done well and he was still concerned about her, looking out for her. “Are you all right?”

  Jill nodded as she stood up. “Fine.”

  Outside in the warm sunlight, she felt slightly nauseous and swallowed. She felt better after drawing a few deep breaths through her mouth.

  “Tummy okay?”

  He must have known exactly how she felt. “It’s all right now. The most awful thing is the smell. It doesn’t want to go away.”

  “Usually after a visit to the morgue, I smoke a cigar,” he said.

  “Feel free.”

  He drew a stubby, almost black cigar from his shirt pocket. Jill was surprised to see that it was half smoked. It wasn’t badly damaged where it had been snuffed out. The charred tobacco had been evened out and tamped with care.

  “It’s Cuban,” Quinn explained, seeing her staring at the cigar. “They’re kind of precious.” He dug into a pants pocket for paper matches, then struck one and fired up the cigar. “Would you like one?”

  “No, thank you. Aren’t Cuban cigars illegal?”

  “No Cuban cigar has ever been convicted of anything,” Quinn said. He drew on the cigar, rolled the s
moke around in his mouth, then exhaled. He grinned at her. “Want a puff?”

  “No. Smelling the secondhand smoke instead of the inside of the morgue is enough for me.”

  They walked on to where the Lincoln was illegally parked in a loading zone, an NYPD placard visible on its dash.

  “For you,” Quinn said, “I’ll smoke in the car.”

  There was no reason to avoid the press as they drove away from the morgue. But just in case, Quinn ran a red light to make sure they weren’t being followed.

  “Still sure of the identification?” he asked when they were stopped in stalled traffic on First Avenue.

  “It—she’s Madeline. The real one.”

  Quinn unbuckled his safety belt so he could work his cell phone from his pocket and pecked out a number.

  “Isn’t that illegal, too?” Jill asked. “Driving in New York City while using a cell phone?”

  “Not if you’re also smoking a cigar,” Quinn said.

  When Quinn was finished telling Fedderman he had a lunch date, he called to set up his own lunch with Renz.

  Renz already had a luncheon appointment, but when Quinn told him what he wanted to talk to him about, Renz broke it. They were sitting now in Puccini’s, an Italian restaurant that played opera for background music, only a few blocks from where Quinn had hooked Jill up with Fedderman near a good fusion restaurant on Amsterdam. From this point on, Jill would need protection. She was in more danger than she knew.

  When Quinn was finished telling Renz about his visit with Jill Clark, and their subsequent trip to the morgue, Renz sat silently staring at his rigatoni carbonara. He wasn’t listening to La Bohème.

  “This Jill is having lunch right now with Fedderman?” he asked, to make sure, not looking up from his plate.

  “Right up the street,” Quinn said.

  “The woman pretending to be Madeline might have been suspicious of her. We’ve gotta protect her. Gotta keep her away from the media wolves.”

  “You believe her story?”

  “It’s all we’ve got.” Now Renz did look up from his food. “What’s your gut tell you?”

  Quinn didn’t take the question lightly. “Tells me it’s probably true.”

  A soprano warbled up the scale to improbably high notes. Renz sat for a while considering everything Quinn had told him, including political ramifications. Maybe especially political ramifications. Quinn sipped the Heineken he’d ordered and didn’t disturb Renz until what felt like five minutes had passed. Possibly Renz had zoned out with his eyes open.

  “Harley?”

  “Jesus H. Christ!”

  “Leaving him out of it,” Quinn said, “I need for you to check and see who’s obviously disappeared or gone into deep cover the past year or so. People the law might be interested in. It has to be done without raising any curious eyebrows. We can’t afford to spook E-Bliss.”

  “I can do that,” Renz said. “E-Bliss. I hate this high-tech bullshit, especially when it mixes with serial murder.”

  “Clark said it was a New York–based company. We’ll check it out carefully.”

  “What about Clark? We can’t leave her hanging out there. If she goes down with us knowing this and keeping it from the media, I’ll never do anything but pound a beat someplace where I’ll probably get shot, not to mention that poor young woman.”

  “Not to mention,” Quinn said. He took a long pull of beer. “What I think, Harley, is that Jill Clark needs a new friend living right in the same apartment building.”

  Renz smiled, catching right on. “A woman friend. A close one who’ll keep an eye on her, and who’d sure as hell know if one day she was a few inches taller or shorter or her eyes were a different color. Pearl?”

  Quinn nodded. “We’ll call her something else, though. Pearl’s photo’s never been in the papers in connection with this case, but her name has a few times.”

  “Call her what?”

  “I dunno. I’d better ask her about it.”

  “Make sure you do. If we choose something she’s sure to bitch about it.”

  “This is gonna be a dangerous assignment,” Quinn said.

  “Pearl’s a pain in the ass,” Renz said, “but she doesn’t lack for guts.”

  “It isn’t that,” Quinn said. “Pearl will be watching over Jill Clark. I want Pearl watched over, too.”

  Renz began forking in his rigatoni as if he’d just rediscovered it and didn’t want it to get cold.

  “Goesh without shaying,” he said with his mouth full.

  Quinn wasn’t so sure.

  34

  It was easy enough to find the brick-and-mortar address of E-Bliss.org, though it wasn’t on the matchmaking business’s website. Links led to links, and within half an hour on her computer, Pearl had the location of the company’s headquarters. She was fast becoming the computer whiz of the detective team.

  The business name E-Bliss.org was properly registered with the state’s Division of Corporations. The principals were Palmer F. Stone and Victor and Gloria Lamping. Besides the business address, Stone and the Lampings had listed three different New York addresses of residence. When Pearl checked, she found that they had all moved and left no forwarding addresses. The office of E-Bliss.org, on West Forty-fourth Street, had remained constant.

  While Pearl did more computer homework on E-Bliss.org, Quinn and Fedderman went to check out the West Forty-fourth Street address. The day had stayed warm and grown more humid as it had turned gray. Now a mist hung in the air, too fine to require a raincoat or umbrella, but thick enough so that the Lincoln’s wipers thwacked intermittently to smear the wide windshield. Quinn realized Pearl was right: in the dense, damp air, the car’s interior did smell too strongly of cigar smoke. The odor did cling. Maybe he should get one of those little deodorizers that looked like miniature pine trees to hang from the rearview mirror. He put it low on his list of to-dos.

  The E-Bliss.org offices turned out to be in an office building not far from the theater district. Letters engraved in stone above the entrance said it was the Western Commerce Building. Quinn guessed that was because it was on the West Side. He and Fedderman left the car parked by a fire hydrant on the opposite side of the street, then crossed over. Quinn’s bum leg, from when he’d been shot in a holdup, was bothering him slightly, maybe because of the rain. He was careful not to slip on the wet pavement. They entered the lobby.

  It smelled musty and had a lot of cracked marble and a yellowed tile floor. The walls had been recently painted a tinted cream color that leaned toward brown. There were pillars ending in a lot of scrollwork at a high ceiling bordered by fancy crown molding that was painted a shade darker than the walls. Light tumbling through a clear leaded-glass window kept the lobby from being depressingly dim. The Western Commerce Building was still respectable and had hung on long enough that it was becoming prime real estate, thanks to the vast improvement that had been made in the nearby theater district.

  Quinn and Fedderman were the only ones in the lobby. They went to a glassed-over directory near the elevators and saw that there were in fact two theatrical agents in the building, along with law offices, a real estate agency, an insurance firm, a dental clinic, and more of the kinds of offices you’d expect to find in such a building. There were also several ambiguously named businesses, among which was E-Bliss.org. It shared the sixth floor with Cagely Imports and E. Rupert Hall, Investments.

  “Think we should go up and have a talk with Palmer F. Stone?” Fedderman asked. “If there is a Palmer F. Stone. Sounds like a name made up by somebody running a con.”

  “With a name like that, you either go into politics or run a con,” Quinn said.

  “There’s a difference?”

  “I don’t think we should show ourselves yet,” Quinn said. “We spook these people and they might be out of here before we can turn around twice. You wait here while I go up to the sixth floor and scope things out. If somebody notices me I’ll duck into E. Rupert Hall and invest som
e money.”

  “Commodities,” Fedderman said. “I saw on the financial channel that commodities are hot.”

  “They won’t be if I invest in them,” Quinn said and headed for the elevators. Their doors were framed with fancy plaster scrollwork that probably matched the clutter around the tops of the pillars, but he didn’t feel like looking up and checking.

  The sixth floor was quiet. Quinn had stepped from the elevator into a small alcove and taken half a dozen steps to where the thinly carpeted hall ran in both directions. A small sign mounted on the wall featured an arrow pointing to the left, where E. Rupert Hall and Cagely Imports had offices. There was no arrow indicating anything was to the right.

  Quinn decided that if anyone asked he was trying to find the dental office on the fifth floor. He turned right and walked down the narrow but well-lighted hall.

  A single new-looking wood door near the end of the hall was lettered E-Bliss.org in fancy painted gold script edged in pink. Very artistic. There was no way to see what was inside. Apparently the dating service’s office was conveniently isolated from the other two businesses on the sixth floor. Quinn smiled. Romance flourished best in privacy.

  He stopped about five feet from the door and briefly thought about opening it.

  Not yet, he told himself.

  But someday soon.

  He turned around and walked back the way he’d come, then passed the elevators and entered the office of E. Rupert Hall. He asked a gray-haired receptionist who’d been reading a book about fingernail art where the dental offices were. Just to cover himself in case someone in E-Bliss.org had somehow been observing him.

  The woman directed him to the fifth floor and went back to her book. Quinn thanked her and left, thinking the book was about five hundred pages and it didn’t seem there’d be that much to write about fingernail art. He guessed it must have a lot of illustrations.