John Lutz Bundle (140 page)

“So the doctor says, ‘Not only have I never seen anyone get pregnant that way, I don’t understand how it could happen.’”

Jackie Jameson’s delivery was spot on the beat, and the punch line drew a good laugh from the Say What? audience. But Jameson’s mind wasn’t completely on his work. It used to be that New York comedy clubs were hazy with tobacco smoke, but not anymore, so from where Jackie stood onstage it was easy to read the expression on the face of the man trying to bore holes in Mitzi Lewis with his eyes.

Mitzi was a looker who attracted lots of the wrong kind of attention, with her spiky white blond hair, childlike features, and compact, curvaceous body. She was used to the attention, and her fellow comic Jackie was used to seeing it, but this guy seemed different. Much more intense. Like he wanted to have her right now with his Coke and fries.

Mitzi was scheduled to do the set after Jackie, so she was standing just offstage waiting to be introduced, visible only to a small part of the audience seated off to the side. The guy with the laser eyes and his tongue hanging out was alone at his table and had a perfect view.

Jackie took him in again with a sidelong glance while laying the groundwork for his final joke, the one about the man who thought he was a violin. The man at the table was handsome in a dark, predatory way, about average height and build, but there was something about him that suggested great physical strength. Though he wasn’t the only guy in the club wearing a dark blue suit and white shirt with a tie, he was the only one who looked like he’d just stepped off the cover of
GQ.
And the only one who for some reason looked flat-ass rich. He had the high cheekbones, well-defined features, and thick black hair of a male model.

If I looked like that,
Jackie thought,
I wouldn’t be funny.

But Jackie was funny, and headed for his own Comedy Channel special.

He continued his routine onstage without seeming to pay any attention to the man staring at Mitzi. But Jackie was still watching the guy. He was seated at one of the tiny tables that had been jammed in at the edges to accommodate maximum audiences. There was barely room on the thing for his elbows. The glass before him was empty. When a waiter approached and tried to push another drink on him, he made a flicking motion with his hand that somehow was a threat. The waiter retreated.

The longer Jackie watched the guy, the more he figured the handsome gawker was trouble and might want to do more than just look at Mitzi. Considering what was happening around town, with those women getting their throats sliced and their guts cut out, Jackie thought it might be wise to warn Mitzi about the guy.

Not that Jackie, who had his own plans for Mitzi, was the jealous type, but he did know that next to the dude in the blue business suit he looked like a troll. And a dumb one at that. Something else about the guy was that he looked intelligent even when sex starved which was when Jackie looked his dumbest.

“I thought you meant sex and
violins
!” Jackie heard himself say.

He got his expected big laugh, told the audience they’d been great and that he loved them, and then strode off stage. Ted Tack, who owned and managed Say What?, passed him going the other way and gave him a big grin and a mock salute. The mood was on.

“Don’t be obvious about it,” Jackie said to Mitzi, “but check out the guy in the blue suit, sitting alone right of stage and eating you up with his eyes.”

Mitzi leaned forward to peek as she was being introduced. “Yummy.”

“If you like raw sewage.”

“That’s harsh,” Mitizi said. “When I go on I’m gonna blow him a kiss.”

“Don’t be craz—”

But her intro was finished and she was gone, prancing toward the microphone and waving her arms.

Jackie wasn’t surprised when she didn’t blow the creep a kiss. She was too much of a pro for that, already into the moment, where the laughs were to be found.

“You guys are great! Anybody out there got a crazy uncle?”

Mitzi avoided looking at the man as she worked her way through her set. The folks out there grinning at her, already softened up by alcohol and Jackie Jameson, soon warmed to her. Then they were with her; then she was with them. Then she had them.
God, what a great feeling!
She deliberately avoided looking at Mr. Handsome in the blue suit, not letting anything get in the way of her timing and delivery.

But a part of her mind did wonder what Jackie was all worked up about. She didn’t see anything wrong with the guy, and he sure wasn’t the first to look at her with a hungry expression. She could recall catching Jackie himself staring at her in that cat-and-canary way, so what was the big deal?

She was halfway through her Seinfeld imitation, enjoying a big laugh, when she looked directly at Mr. Handsome.

Mistake.

Their eyes met, and she felt as if she’d been Tasered.
Whoa!
His hooded dark gaze took her breath away and made her legs rubbery. When she inhaled, her hot breath seemed to go straight to her stomach, making her weak.

Definitely something there.

She understood now what Jackie meant. There wasn’t the slightest doubt in her mind what this man was thinking, what he was doing with her in
his
mind. And they both knew she was a willing participant.

Best of all, everything about him suggested he was thinking exclusively of her. Intensely.

Mitizi liked intensity. There was too little of it around these days.

Jackie was right: this man held a power over her that she could no more deny than understand. What passed between them was a dark promise of unexplored pains and pleasures. Creepy? Sure. Mitzi could see how Jackie would read it that way. And maybe he was right. Most definitely he was right. Here was the danger of deep water.

What Jackie didn’t know—and what Mitzi was now discovering—was that she liked it.

God help me. I like it!

Doubt immediately began to creep in.

Is it only me? All in my mind? Is the guy simply stoned and only thinking about his wife and kids? Do I remind him of his sister?

She loused up the joke about the amorous mouse and the hot dog, but the audience was kind to her. They were still on her side and gave her a big hand, even a halfway standing O, as she left the stage.

She glanced back at Mr. Handsome, and he smiled and raised his empty glass in a silent toast. It was a smile and gesture that suggested they would meet again.

And they would.

Quinn was struggling to escape the huge bird that was pecking at his entrails. The gigantic eagle—if that’s what it was—reared back its head and jerked it to the side to glance down at him with one huge and glittering eye, a string of something red oozing from its hooked beak.

As he rose toward full consciousness, Quinn thought he heard a muffled rustling sound, like the powerful beating of vast wings. Still and afraid, he lay in his dark and stifling bedroom while his mind fought to comprehend what was nightmare and what was real.

The illuminated red numerals on the clock near his bed read 1:27
A.M.
Time was a measure of reality that helped to tilt his brain toward the familiar, where things were tangible, quantified, and understood.

Some things, anyway.

The sheets beneath him were soaked. The T-shirt and Jockey shorts he slept in were just as wet. He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead and was amazed by how heavily he was perspiring. The window air conditioner clicked from its low hum to a deeper tone, signaling that the compressor was now engaged and reassuring him that cold air and sanity were on the way.

He felt a wash of cool air across his bare legs.
Wonderful.
He was still breathing hard after his dream. What had brought on the nightmare? The gutting knife used on the Slicer victims? The gigantic bird’s beak was that of a predator, strong and hooked so that it could easily tear flesh, not so unlike the knife the ME had described and then shown the detectives in a hunting supply catalog.

Too restless now even to close his eyes, he sat up in bed, reached into the darkness, and switched on the lamp, half expecting to see the terrible bird perched in a corner, its beak dripping with…

Beak…

Beeker.
Quinn’s conversation with Zoe about Alfred Beeker might have been part of why he’d had his nightmare. Dr. Alfred Beeker was another sort of predator, and a real one.

Quinn stood up from the damp bed and padded barefoot down the hall to the kitchen, which was noticeably warmer than the bedroom but smelled better. He got a carton of milk from the refrigerator, checked the date, then poured some in a glass. Wasn’t drinking milk supposed to relax you and help you sleep?

Immediately after downing the milk, he wished he’d drunk scotch. That worked better, at least in the short run.

The hell with it. If he had to be awake, he might as well be awake all the way.

But what to do with his extra hours?

Do something!

Call Zoe?

He turned toward the phone in the kitchen and remembered the time. There was no point in disturbing Zoe’s sleep just because he, Quinn, had experienced a nightmare. He wondered what Zoe would make of his bad dream. Probably something he wouldn’t like.

Fedderman or Pearl? No, he needed them in top form tomorrow. And Pearl might get so pissed off she’d come over and berate him in person. It didn’t make sense to wake anyone up just because he couldn’t sleep and felt like having some company.

What did make sense was making himself useful, since he was going to be wide awake anyway. He decided to get dressed and go to the Seventy-ninth Street office, reread some murder files, maybe make use of his desk computer.

Do
something!

He splashed cold water on his face and raked back his hair with his fingers. Then he put on a pair of pants, the shirt he’d worn today and dropped into the hamper, and moccasins without socks.

As he was leaving the apartment he paused, ducked back in, and got a cigar. A prop to remind him that reality was so much better than his dream.

Quinn opened the office door and knew immediately that something was wrong. An old cop got to know about dark rooms, to be able to sense whether the air was moving or still, to distinguish the slightest sounds that
weren’t
normal, maybe even detect body temperature.

Quinn
knew
he wasn’t alone.

His hand darted toward the light switch, but didn’t make it.

Something, probably a shoulder, slammed into his midsection, and the air rushed from him as he bounced off the door and wall.

The door had slammed shut from the impact, and Quinn, fighting to breathe, saw the shadowed bulk of a man trying to open it. Quinn tried to get up, tried to stop the dark figure, but the spastic action of his lungs sucking in nothing kept his body curled in on itself; he was helpless.

Not quite.

He wasn’t sure how he did it, but he was aware of his arm extending, his fingers closing on a handful of material. A cuff, the man’s pants leg. He squeezed the wadded material harder, harder…

The leg jerked a few times in an effort to break free, and then the shadowed figure twisted and bent over Quinn.

There was a loud grunt, and something hard smashed into the side of Quinn’s head. He felt his grasp on the pants cuff lose its strength. Then his hold on consciousness started to fade.
Lost him….
He could breathe a little now, but he knew he was going to pass out.

He’d been intent on preventing the intruder from escaping, but now there was another possibility.

Is whoever attacked me still here? Ready to strike again?

Fear arrived, something real and palpable that began crushing down on him like a weight. He began to crawl, not even sure of his direction. His left shoulder brushed something hard.
One of the desks?

He tried to stand up, but that only made him dizzy and wobbly. And closer to unconsciousness. It was like the condition brought on by that stuff they gave you intravenously in hospitals to calm you before the big hit of anesthetic in the OR. He became too woozy even to be afraid.

He sought the strength and will to stay conscious, but realized it was a losing battle. It had been from the beginning.

Slipping into darkness, the last thing he thought was that he didn’t want to dream again about the gigantic bird.

Mitzi Lewis knew she was dying.

Perspiration ran down her face and stung the corners of her eyes, but she knew she couldn’t rub them.

“He was so stupid,” she said, “that he thought the
B
on elevator buttons meant
Backward.
”

The audience’s reaction was at best muted. A couple of smiles here and there, but Mitzi knew they were due more to embarrassment than amusement. Embarrassment for her. She hated that strained and polite expression on people’s faces. Right now she hated people in general, her profession, the human race, herself.

“You guys have been great!” she yelled through a frozen smile, her eyes glittering from sweat that might be taken for tears. She could feel waves of pity rolling up from the audience. She loathed pity. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” She blew everyone a big kiss and did her trademark prance off the stage.

Thank God that’s over!

“Don’t take it so hard,” Jackie Jameson told her as she finally made it offstage. It was obvious that the game little girl from Brooklyn was upset. “It wasn’t you.”

“It sure felt like me out there,” Mitzi said, her shoulders slumping.

“It was the crowd. They’ll laugh at those same jokes tomorrow night.”

“You got a lot of laughs during
your
set,” she said, wiping at her eyes.
Real tears now, dammit!

“I pay them a lot of money,” Jackie said, straight-faced.

Mitzi almost, but not quite, smiled at that. One corner of her mouth twitched upward. Jackie pointed at it and grinned.

“Bastard!” Mitizi said. “You won’t even let me feel bad.”

“Against the rules, Mitz.”

She pushed past him and hurried into Say What?’s communal dressing room, where she rinsed off her face and put on some fresh makeup. She yanked up her white blond hair into longer and more defined spikes, then reassessed herself in the mirror.

Okay,
she thought.
You’d never know I was run over by a train.

She left the dressing room and went down the short corridor to the exit. Once she got through that door, she’d have to work her way—unnoticed, she hoped tonight—through the back of the crowd, around the bar, toward the club’s street door.

She wished she were invisible. All she wanted right now was for tonight to be over.

Some loudmouth at the bar was holding court with a drunken story, creating something of a diversion, as she made herself small and edged toward the glowing red
EXIT
sign.

When she was almost at the door, a voice said, “
I
thought you were funny.”

She turned and found herself looking into the dark, dark eyes of Mr. Handsome from last night. He had even more of an effect on her close up. Her throat tightened so she couldn’t speak.

Not like me, to be at a loss for words.

“You must have been the only one who thought so,” she finally said in a choked voice.

“The others were too busy thinking you were beautiful.”

“That’s…uh, very nice of you.”

“Seriously, you were great. It was just a tough crowd.”

“Like when I played Arlington,” she said.

He looked blank for a moment. Blank, but still handsome. Then he smiled. “Oh, the cemetery. Sorry, you’re a bit quicker than I am.”

“I kind of doubt that.” She was finding herself now. The guy was easy to talk to, and smooth enough that she knew she should be careful.

“Since you’re convinced you died up there,” he said, motioning with his head toward the stage, “why don’t we go someplace else where we can have a drink and hold a proper requiem?”

She pretended to think about it, all the time knowing she was going to leave with him.

Gotta put up a front, signal that you ’re resisting. Every mother’s advice, as if we were all born through immaculate conception.

He moved closer to her, as if she had emitted some kind of magnetic field.

Had she?

“I think you’ll find” he said in a gentle voice, “that you didn’t really die onstage. It was only a near-death experience.”

She smiled at him and took the arm he offered. “That was pretty good,” she said.

“Use it in your routine.”

“I would if it was funny enough,” she said honestly. “I have no scruples.”

“Ah, we’re a perfect match.”

He pushed open the street door, and the damp heat of the night dared them to leave.

Mitzi thought she heard someone call her name, but she didn’t look back.