John Lutz Bundle

by John Lutz

  “She’s in a coma, Palmer. The doctors say they don’t know how long it will last, or even”—Victor’s voice broke—“if she’ll ever come out of it.”

  Stone was surprised to find his own throat tightening. The three of them had been together in one scam or another for a lot of years. He did feel for Victor. And for Gloria. Emotions were doing that more and more lately, catching Palmer by surprise.

  “Is there anything I can do, Victor?”

  “I don’t think so, Palmer. I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do.”

  “I’m sorry, Victor. I really am.”

  “I know that, Palmer.”

  After hanging up the phone, Stone sat back and assessed the situation. Gloria was obviously out of commission. Judging by what Victor had said, she wasn’t about to say anything that might attract suspicion as to what she…did for a living. And someone being struck and seriously injured by a vehicle was a common occurrence in New York. There was nothing about Gloria’s accident that would attract undue attention.

  Stone sighed and smiled.

  Any danger to the company had been narrowly averted.

  The question now was, how would what happened to Gloria affect Victor? Stone had been suffering doubts about him before Gloria’s accident. Gloria had gone a long way toward assuaging those doubts, but not all the way.

  Now this.

  Palmer wondered, could Victor still do his job?

  58

  Jill watched Tony’s eyes follow Jewel as she wove her way through a maze of red-clothed tables toward the restroom. He wasn’t the only one watching. Half the men in the restaurant at least sneaked a glance at Jewel. She was quite the temptress when she wasn’t dressed like a cop.

  She wasn’t dressed like one now, in her tight black dress with the low neckline, her three-inch heels. Jill knew that Jewel wanted to look like anything but a cop.

  They were in Dominick’s Italiano, a new gourmet restaurant on the West Side. Tony had raved about the extensive wine list in order to talk Jill into going there with him, and naturally Jewel had invited herself along. Jill, of course, hadn’t resisted and had given Tony the evil eye when he had begun to voice his objections.

  “Did you ever think,” Tony now asked Jill, as he still watched Jewel, “that she’s a little too friendly with you?”

  Jill saw Jewel veer left and disappear into a hallway, walking none too steadily, as if maybe she’d had too much wine with her dinner. But then, Jewel—or Pearl—was a pretty good actress.

  “What do you mean?” Jill asked. “Too friendly?” He was giving her a crooked little smile.

  Then she realized what Tony meant. “Jesus, Tony! Jewel and me? Are you kidding?”

  The crooked smile turned sad, as if gravity had suddenly claimed it. “Not Jewel and you. Just Jewel. I mean, the way she looks at you sometimes.”

  “Get off it, Tony. Jewel’s no lesbian.”

  He shrugged.

  Jill started to take a sip of her coffee, then changed her mind and sipped from the half-full wineglass the waiter had left. “Tony, neither one of us is in romantic love with the other.”

  “I’m in love with you.”

  “You know what I mean. Jewel and me in some kind of sexual relationship. It’s absurd.”

  “Not absurd at all.”

  “Well, I think so.”

  “It happens,” he said.

  “Of course it does. That’s the way the world works. I’m not homophobic or passing any kind of moral judgment.”

  Tony reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I know you’re not, hon. I know you better than that. But do me a favor, will you, and just pay closer attention. I mean, the way she hangs around you all the time doesn’t seem to me like the usual platonic relationship.”

  Jill felt her face flush with embarrassment and anger.

  Tony had gone too far. He seemed to know it. He sat back abruptly in his chair, which was on rollers, and the force carried him a few feet from the table. When he tried a smile it didn’t quite work. He rolled back to the table. Most of the dishes had been cleared and they were waiting for dessert, some kind of chocolate-iced cream puffs the Post food editor had raved about.

  Jewel arrived at the same time as the cream puffs. She looked neater than when she’d left the table. Her hair had been combed and her freshened makeup made her features even more vivid. She sat down with some difficulty in the tight dress and replaced her napkin in her lap. “Some restroom,” she said. “You oughta see how clean and modern it is. Everything automatic.” She smiled at Jill. “You should’ve come with me.”

  Tony and Jill exchanged glances. Jewel gave no indication that she’d noticed. She smiled at the waiter and asked for two of the miniature cream puffs from the pyramidal display on a tray.

  No one spoke until the waiter was finished serving dessert and had poured the coffee and departed.

  “You okay, Tony?” Jewel asked. “You seem kind of…I don’t know, out of sorts.”

  He frowned. “‘Out of sorts.’ What’s that mean?”

  “On the edge of being grouchy,” Jill cut in, tempering her words with a smile.

  Tony sighed. “I guess I am on edge. I’m sorry. Somebody at work I like a lot had an accident and he’s badly injured.”

  “That’s too bad,” Jill said, wondering why Tony hadn’t mentioned this to her earlier.

  “Hospitalized?” Jewel asked.

  “Yeah. Poor guy was hit by a car.”

  “Damned shame,” Jewel said.

  “He’s going to be okay, isn’t he?” Jill asked.

  “I sure hope so. He’s one of those guys everybody likes.”

  “Things like that always happen to the wrong people,” Jewel said.

  Tony might not have heard her. He was twisting his red cloth napkin, staring hard at it.

  But Jewel knew he had heard.

  “These cream puffs are delicious,” Jill said. She swallowed a bite and licked chocolate icing from her finger.

  “They sure are, hon,” Tony said, though he hadn’t yet taken a bite of his. He came out of his distraction for a few seconds to glare at Jewel.

  Jill finished her second cream puff. “Mmmm! These are sinful.”

  “Dangerous,” Jewel agreed, thinking things couldn’t go on much longer as they were. Tony was one of the sharper knives in the drawer. He was getting suspicious and might make some kind of move.

  She made a mental note to get on the Internet, check and see how many double murders occurred every year in New York City.

  A lot, she bet.

  59

  Both of them knew the other was awake.

  Quinn lay beside Linda in his bed, listening to the nearness of her breathing. He knew the breathing of complete relaxation from the breathing of sleep. So did she, he was sure.

  He watched the morning sun brighten the rectangular outline around the tightly closed blinds, then send lances of light to lie in narrow rhomboids on the rug and the sheets near the foot of the bed. Faint traffic sounds were building up outside, in another world. Jackhammers, the urban equivalent of woodpeckers, clattered away in the far, far distance.

  “What are you thinking?” Linda asked. Her words seemed to linger with effort in the still room.

  “Honestly?”

  “Sure. What else? Even if it’s something as prosaic as wishing you didn’t have to get up and relieve the pressure on your bladder.”

  “You talk a lot like a doctor,” Quinn said.

  “Act like one, too, I’m sure.” The sheets rustled and a bedspring poinged as she shifted position beside him. “Is that a turnoff?”

  “Turn-on.”

  “Really?” She sounded genuinely amazed.

  “Men pay money to have women dress up as nurses and have sex with them,” Quinn said. “So why not doctors?”

  “Some of the men probably are doctors.”

  “You know what I mean.” He tried to give her bottom a gentle slap, but she wasn’t wh
ere he’d thought.

  “Doctors like Nift,” she said.

  “Nift’s got a wife.”

  Linda made a slight huffing sound. “Like that stops men from paying prostitutes.”

  Quinn looked over at her. “You know something about Nift?”

  “More than I’d like.”

  “Most anyone who knows him would say that.”

  “He isn’t normal, the way he moons over female corpses.”

  “I guess it is out of the ordinary.” Quinn sat up in bed and worked himself sideways, feeling the cool hardwood floor on the bare soles of his feet where the carpet ended. “I thought he might only do that at crime scenes. He acts the same way at the morgue?”

  “He’s almost always good for an insensitive remark or two.”

  “Could be he’s just like the rest of us, trying to stay sane.”

  “Or it could be he’s just got a nasty mind and can’t help expressing himself.”

  “What about during the actual autopsies?”

  “To be honest, he’s very professional then. Despite what I say about the guy, he’s a skilled physician. But if we have an attractive dead female not yet on the table, he can’t seem to control himself. Other than that, he’s all business.”

  “Other than that.”

  “When he’s not ratting somebody out.”

  “That’s business, too,” Quinn said. He stood up.

  “Where you going?”

  “What I’m thinking right now is—”

  “Never mind,” Linda said.

  Victor watched the nurse outside Gloria’s critical care unit trade whispers with a doctor so they wouldn’t be overheard. With a backward glance at Victor, the nurse scurried away down the hall. The doctor, a tall, blond, shambling man in baggy green scrubs, headed in the general direction of where Victor sat in the furnished alcove that served as one of the hospital’s waiting areas. He was one of those very tall men with a perpetual forward lean, as if he’d adapted to low ceilings.

  In the waiting area, there were a sofa, a couple of matching black herringbone wing chairs, and a wall-mounted TV playing a rerun of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Regis was blue on blue on blue in this one. Victor thought, who wants to be monochromatic?

  Victor had assumed the doctor was going to walk past; he seemed preoccupied. Then he appeared to snap back to reality and made a sudden turn toward Victor, holding out his hand.

  Victor stood up from the sofa and shook the cool, dry hand.

  “You’re the patient’s brother?” he asked Victor, with a concerned expression. He had a pale complexion, red-rimmed blue eyes.

  Victor said he was.

  “I’m Dr. Polanski. The nurse said you’ve been asking for an update on your sister’s condition.”

  “Nobody wants to tell me anything,” Victor said.

  Dr. Polanski nodded, as if he’d heard the complaint many times before. “She’s still in a coma,” he said. “Her hip and leg injuries are serious but under control and pose her no danger. It’s the head injury we have to keep an eye on.”

  “But she’s going to be okay?”

  Dr. Polanski took a deep breath. “She should be. It’s difficult to know for sure with this kind of head injury. There’s still significant hemorrhaging, causing blood seepage between the skull and the membrane covering the brain. This is causing pressure that has to be relieved. As of now, there’s no way to know for sure whether that pressure’s done damage to the brain itself.”

  “She looks calm. Is she suffering?”

  “No, she’s sedated, and we’re going to keep her in an induced coma for at least another few days.”

  “Induced? You mean you’ve deliberately put her in a coma?”

  “It’s what we do in cases like this, Mr….?”

  “Lamping. Victor Lamping.”

  “Your sister has no other family?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “I’ll tell the nurses to keep you informed,” Dr. Polanski said. “And to notify you when your sister is conscious and you can visit her.”

  He extended his hand again, and Victor shook it.

  “With a little luck,” Dr. Polanski said, “your sister’s going to be okay.”

  Victor watched the doctor stride swiftly down the hall and disappear through two wide swinging doors that parted for him automatically, seeming to hurry themselves because they knew he wasn’t going to slow down. They leisurely closed behind him so that their NO ADMITTANCE message was again on display.

  After checking the nurses’ station to make sure they had his cell number, Victor left the hospital and took a cab to the offices of E-Bliss.org.

  Seated behind his desk, wearing flower-patterned suspenders over a white shirt today, Palmer Stone looked properly concerned as Victor filled him in on Gloria’s condition.

  “So the coma’s induced,” he said thoughtfully when Victor was finished.

  “I’ve told the nurses I want to be there when they bring her out of it,” Victor said. He let himself fall back into the leather sofa, making air swish from the cushions like a sympathetic sigh. “I’ve never trusted nurses.”

  “Nor I,” Stone said. The air from the cushions caused a stirring that brought a whiff of Stone’s expensive cologne to Victor. Stone laced his fingers on the desktop. “How are things progressing in the Jill Clark matter?”

  “Not well,” Victor said. “Her upstairs neighbor and new best friend—that bitch Jewel—is complicating things. She’s on Jill like a spandex suit. Sometimes I think she’s hot for her; other times I think she wants a ménage à trois.”

  Stone calmly regarded Victor. “That hardly seems likely.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s just that the two women have become so close I can never get Jill alone. And when and if we are out of Jill’s apartment, we can’t get our client in without worrying about Jewel showing up. I think Jill gave her a key to the place.”

  “Hmm. They are close friends. That could be problematic.”

  “One thing’s for sure,” Victor said. “Jewel’s never gonna buy into a new Jill. No way to fool her when they’re like sisters. And we can’t delete both of them without making the cops suspicious.”

  “There might come a time,” Stone said, “when we simply might have to take the risk.”

  “If it weren’t such a risk,” Victor said, “it would be a pleasure.”

  “We’re not in this for pleasure, Victor. We’re in it for profit.”

  “Yeah. You’re right, Palmer. I was just ruminating. No harm in that.”

  “None,” Stone agreed. “I do it myself.” He sat back and opened a drawer, then laid some file folders on his desk. “I hate to cut our visit short, Victor, but I’ve got to get to these.” He picked up a ballpoint pen from where it lay on the desk. “Keep me apprised of Gloria’s condition.”

  “Of course I will,” Victor said, standing up from the sofa. He shook his head. “Problems always come in bunches.”

  “They can be solved in bunches, too,” Stone said.

  “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

  Stone wasn’t sure if Victor was being sarcastic. That was what made Stone uneasy about him, the recent unevenness that seemed to have seeped into his personality. It made him unpredictable.

  Stone watched him walk from the office and softly close the door behind him. Victor had missed a patch of stubble when he shaved this morning, and his expensive dress boots didn’t glisten with the usual shine. It was difficult for Stone not to be concerned. Maybe the changes in Victor could be attributed to Gloria’s condition. On the other hand, Victor had begun to worry Stone well before Gloria was struck by a cab.

  Stone laid the pen back on the desk and leaned back in his chair. He ruminated.

  It seemed that things were coming unraveled. Maybe it was time for him to disappear. He had an exit plan that Gloria and Victor didn’t know about. He thought of it simply as Plan B. Gloria and Victor were friends as well as business associates
, and he owed them some loyalty, but a man had to take care of himself. He wasn’t quite ready to act on his plan, but he’d continue giving it some thought.

  After a few minutes, he went over and picked up the morning Times from where it lay on a table near the sofa. The paper was still folded. Stone hadn’t so much as glanced at it.

  When he opened the paper and saw the headline, he had to smile: TORSO MURDERER FOUND DEAD IN LOUISIANA.

  This would certainly reduce the pressure. However it figured in the mix, it was a plus for the company and a minus for the police.

  Stone felt relief move through him, easing a tension in his stomach he hadn’t even realized was there. For now, all thoughts of Plan B faded away.

  Still smiling, he carried the paper over to his desk and sat back down to read the details.

  Making sure the devil wasn’t in them.

  60

  “We’ve lost our decoy,” Renz said, in a voice that suggested a close relative had died.

  Quinn and Renz were in Renz’s office. Renz looked terrible in the harsh morning sunlight. His bloodhound eyes were encircled by saggy flesh that was even darker than usual. Before him on his desk lay this morning’s Times. Quinn thought that was enough to explain Renz’s appearance.

  “Not quite yet,” Quinn said. He’d read the paper over breakfast and given the Coulter story some thought. “As far as the media are concerned, Coulter’s still the Torso Murderer.”

  “Until another torso turns up and the shit hits the fan again, and then us.”

  Quinn knew that by “us” Renz meant “me.”

  “Look at the bright side, Harley.”

  “I am. I see a fire about to consume us.”

  “You have a point about the real killer taking another victim, and establishing that Coulter wasn’t our man. But the killer’s probably thinking right along with you. He stays pretty much in the clear until he murders again. That might make him wait a while. Meanwhile, Coulter’s dead and can’t provide alibis for the times of some of the Torso Murders.”

  That last seemed to cheer Renz somewhat. His bleary eyes opened wider and he looked thoughtful. “That’s true enough.”