John Lutz Bundle (16 page)

“You see the problem, Romulus,” said Victory Wallace, who was decorating a brownstone on West Eighty-ninth Street. His clients were a wealthy oil wholesaler and his wife, who were relocating from Turkey. The old building would never have dreamed this could happen.

They were in the bathroom off the master bedroom on the second floor, a spacious cubicle of beige tile, with veined marble flooring and vanity tops. The shower stall, large enough to accommodate half a dozen, and with myriad gold-plated spray heads aimed in all directions, had doors with what looked like handwritten love letters pressed between layers of etched glass. Overhead was a gold chandelier that looked as if it belonged in a palatial grand hall in Saudi Arabia rather than in a West Side bathroom. Oddly, Victory Wallace (whose real name was Victor Padilla) had made it all seem right. But then, that was his talent.

Another of his talents was the grande-dame act he’d made part of his professional personality. Romulus was used to it and ignored it, though he did appreciate its marketability and Marlene Dietrich shadings.

“I mean, Romulus, my clients are under extreme pressure and determined to move in next week, and I
must
make everything tight and right. You
do
see the problem, dear man?”

Romulus flicked lint from the sleeve of his black Armani suit and nodded.

Victory, who affected the startled gaze of a deer reminded of hunting season, stared at him as if he’d expected more response. “My clients want something done with this awful steel support pole. They
insist.
And it’s load bearing. It simply can’t be moved!” He was a slender man, with a wasp waist, wearing tight designer jeans and a charcoal shirt with bloused sleeves. Sometimes he wore a red beret. Costume was part of the extreme shtick that was often necessary for clients at this stratospheric price level. “I mean, a big steel supporting pole in the middle of the bathroom! It looks like a drainpipe from upstairs, something human refuse gurgles through!” He made a gargoyle face, momentarily sticking out his tongue. “You
do
see what we’re dealing with here?”

“Box it in,” Romulus suggested.

Victory pressed a palm to his forehead as if stricken with a migraine. “No, no, we’re way beyond the plaster-dust stage, Romulus. There’s simply no going back. No time.”

Romulus looked at the gold-plated faucets and the deliberately exposed gold plumbing beneath the marble basin.
Vulgar. Garish.
“You said the pole looks like plumbing. So don’t try to hide it. Flaunt it. Make it gold-plated like the other plumbing. It would show well, but I warn you it would be expensive.”

Victory waved his long right arm out to the side as if trying to flick away pesky cellophane that had stuck to his fingers. “We’re way,
way
beyond expensive. Money isn’t the issue at all. Simply
not
part of the equation. The problem is that the pole’s surface isn’t the sort of alloy that will accept gold plating.” He grinned in a way he no doubt thought fetchingly at Romulus. “That’s why I called you for advice, dear man. Everyone in the trade says that in a dilemma like this, call Romulus and call him first. He’ll ride to the rescue like the cavalry in one of those Cinemascope Westerns, where all the colors look like they’ve dripped off Gauguin’s palette. Well, you have
gotten
the call.” Victory cupped a hand to his ear as if listening. “Do I hear a bugle playing charge?”

“I can paint the pipe and make it look like gold plating. But it will be every bit as expensive as real gold.”

“Not an issue!” Victory reassured Romulus. “Now here’s another request that would save my life and give my clients sheer bliss: can you, extra please, do the job
rush
rush?”

“Three days from now okay?”

Victory shook his head and brushed away the words as if they were bees swarming about him. “Two? Could you possibly make it two days? Put a rush charge on your bill. Twenty percent.” He made a backhand motion. “Thirty.”

“Two days,” Romulus said.

“You are the
best
, dear man!”

“Of course I am.”

Romulus left the brownstone and walked half a block to where his black Cadillac was parked. He knew precisely what to use on the steel pole: a special paint he’d concocted utilizing gold leaf and an off-brand primer. Neither ingredient was easy to find on short notice, but he was sure he had some among the wide array of supplies he maintained just for this kind of request. The paint had to be applied expertly in three or four coats, but the finished product looked amazingly like genuine gold plating.

Romulus settled back in the Cadillac’s cool interior and pulled away from the curb. He smiled as he drove along narrow side streets, watching New York slide past outside the car’s tinted windows, the tiny restaurants pretending to be sidewalk cafés, the cars double parked, the lovers walking close to each other, the life-worn and weary seated on concrete stoops, the lost wandering in slow confusion.

Life was good for Romulus and getting better. Everything was under control. For now, at least. There was order and satisfaction in this world of his own making.

He’d invented his job description: specialty painter. That was what it said on his gilded white business cards, along with his professional name: Romulus.

It hadn’t been easy for him to gain the respect and admiration of those who at first regarded him as merely another subcontractor, a spreader of paint who was particularly neat in his work.

But they soon learned he wasn’t an ordinary painter, which was why he now commanded such an exorbitant price from the top decorators who hired him, and who then passed on an even more exorbitant price to their wealthy clients. He matched colors precisely, shaded beveled edges and moldings so door panels appeared shadowed and deeper even in direct light, calculated colors so they best complemented furnishings. He altered texture, tinted to make rooms appear larger or smaller, created light and shadow where none really existed.

He was an artist. An original. That was what his clients wanted, just as they wanted original gowns and one-of-a-kind everything else.

He would arrive at the job in his black Cadillac, wearing an Armani suit and carrying all his supplies in a single large black suitcase. Romulus did final work after the common wall painters had left, usually letting himself in with a key provided by the decorator. He preferred to work alone, without anyone observing or interrupting him. He didn’t like suggestions, or having to answer stupid questions.

Romulus wasted no time after returning to his condo, which had been refurbished to suit his professional needs. He gathered his materials, then stood at his workbench and began to tint cautiously, adding drops at a time, stopping to clamp the gallon paint can in the electric mixer bolted to the bench. The mixer perfectly imitated the hand motion of an expert bartender shaking a martini, only with much more speed and force, churning the can’s contents thoroughly. He added gold leaf, using thin latex gloves and flaking it gently and expertly with his fingertips so it drifted down like metallic snow. After each test mix he would spread a few strokes of paint on a length of pipe he was sure was the same composition as the steel support pole in the brownstone, then lay the pipe on a wooden block before a small fan that would dry it within minutes.

It took him almost three hours to find the precise formula, but the result was magical.

Romulus would bail out Victory on this job, and Victory would assume the persona that served him so well and strut and brag about the brownstone’s interior to his fellow decorators—among the most sought after and expensive in New York. It would be good for Romulus’ business.

For his art.

His work was done painstakingly, with tools mostly of his own making and with small, fine brushes, and it gave him the kind of visceral elation and soul-deep satisfaction da Vinci himself must have enjoyed.

It was the second highest level of elation Romulus could achieve.

Lars Svenson sat at his table in Munchen’s and studied the brunette at the end of the bar. She was junkie thin and her dark eyes burned in the back-bar mirror whenever they caught him staring at her.

There were several things besides her gauntness and eyes that he liked about the woman. Like the way she sat with her legs wrapped around each other on the high stool, one black pump about to fall off her foot. The way she gazed from time to time with such hopelessness into her drink, knowing he was watching her,
had to know.
The dark bruises on her bare arms, and on the sides of her neck.

He was especially intrigued by the neck bruises.

When he carried his drink over and sat on the stool next to her, she didn’t seem surprised. And why would she be? This was why she came here. Why every woman in the place came.

Losers’ lounge.

“You a regular customer here?” he asked, giving her his smile at half wattage. Not coming on too strong too fast.

“I don’t know if that’s precisely the word,” she said, not looking over at him.

“I’m Lars.”

“I’m strung out, Lars.”

“Hard night?”

“Not so far. I’m still looking.”

“Maybe I can help you.”

“You really think you have what I need?”

He turned her on the stool so she had to look at him, then gave her the whole smile. “I know exactly what you need, and I can supply.” He signaled the bartender for fresh drinks.

Her dark eyes were steady on him now.
Pools of need.
“We gonna have a few drinks now, get to know each other before we go to my place?”

“We should get to know each other,” Lars said. Terribly sincere, terribly concerned Lars. “You should be careful. You might take somebody home who might really hurt you.”

“I keep trying.”

By midnight Lars had her tied spread-eagle and whipped to a rag. She’d never stopped liking it.

By twelve-thirty he’d found her stash in a hollowed-out romance novel.
Crap coke, but it would do.

By three
A.M
. she’d showed him how she got the bruises on her neck.

By six he’d left her sleeping or unconscious or dead.

He never had learned her name.

At a little after seven
A.M
. he was sitting on a bench in Washington Square. Around him the city was waking up and stretching and getting into its mood.

He didn’t feel good. The pressure was gone, but he knew it would return. It kept coming back after each time, sooner and sooner. And there was something odd this time. Different, anyway. He found himself wondering how the woman was. Feeling…what…sorry for her?

Not likely!

A guy across the square, big man but old, dressed in a bunch of rags, pushed himself up from where he’d been sitting on the grass and kicked at a pigeon.
Good luck with that.
He hacked and spat phlegm on the grass, then hitched up his oversize pants and limped away in the direction the pigeon had flapped.

Don’t wanna be like that guy…not ever….

Younger, stronger, employed Lars stood up shakily from the bench. He needed to get home, have some real sleep, then get to New Jersey for an afternoon move. His stomach was knotted and for some reason he felt like sobbing.

Not that he was actually going to sob. He had it under control.

He started walking toward Waverly, deciding it was probably bad drugs making him feel so down.

Where’d she buy the shit?

Maybe he should get rid of the rest of it, that he’d stolen from the woman—
doing her a favor
—and slipped beneath his shirt before letting himself out of her apartment. Throw it down a fucking sewer someplace and forget it.

Maybe he should think about that.

They’d begun meeting sometimes in Quinn’s apartment rather than on the park bench. Pearl’s apartment was too small, and Fedderman lived in a house in Queens with his wife and kids, and wisely tried not to take his work home with him.

Pearl had helped Quinn make the place presentable, even bought some flea-market furniture and moved out the stained and sprung sofa that looked a likely place for something to nest. Some aerosol disinfectant helped, too. The various age-old cooking odors, combined with the lingering scent of the foul cigars Quinn sometimes smoked, were brought under control. The apartment smelled…okay.

The three detectives would sit around drinking beer or soda, Quinn in his big armchair, Pearl and Fedderman on the sofa, a large bowl of chips or pretzels before them on the coffee table. Pearl had tried to get Quinn and Fedderman to show some respect for the marred old table by putting out cork coasters, but they were ignored after the first time. When she objected, Fedderman looked at her as if she were insane. What were a few more damp rings on a table with so much character? Besides, they had much more important matters on their minds.

“What we have,” Quinn said, after washing down a pretzel with a swig of diet Coke, “are two multiple murders, a husband and wife both times. The women were the primary victims, judging by the wounds. A gun was used in the first murder, a knife in the second. Both husbands and wives held jobs. But then, most households have two working partners. They were roughly in the same age group, and the women were attractive. The same could be said of thousands of couples in New York. In fact, there’s nothing distinctive these couples had in common.” He looked at Pearl. “You see any other similarities?”

She put down her Budweiser can. On a coaster. “You’ve only cited one significant difference—the murder weapon.”

Quinn thought about that. It only might be significant. “The killer got rid of the gun during the first murder, planting it in Martin Elzner’s hand to fake a murder-suicide, and probably had to go to a knife for his next murder because he had no second gun. Necessity over compulsion.”

“Or maybe the killer’s still exploring his compulsion,” Fedderman said. “Finding his way by trying things out, deciding which weapon he prefers.” He looked at Quinn and said, “Do you really think we’re getting anywhere?”

“I don’t know,” Quinn said honestly. “We can tick off some common threads, but they’re the kinds of similarities that can be pointed out about most couples.”

“For the most part,” Pearl said. “But here are some other similarities: Both couples were childless and lived in apartments. The killer was either let in or gained entry with a key. There were items that didn’t seem to belong—groceries spread out on the kitchen table, duplicate items in the refrigerator. In the second murder there was a leather jacket the husband tried to return to where it wasn’t bought, and he accused the salesclerk of giving it to his wife.”

“Gifts,” Fedderman said. “The groceries included expensive gourmet stuff the wives liked. And Marcy Graham had admired the jacket shortly before her death.”

“Our guy had to know something about the wives,” Pearl said. “Maybe he was in their circle of acquaintances.”

“The couples didn’t seem to know each other,” Fedderman said, “and they moved in different circles.”

Quinn swallowed a slug of Coke. “Let’s stick to similarities. Pattern.”

“The victims were fairly well off financially.”

“You have to be, to live in Manhattan these days,” Pearl said, then glanced around. “At least in the kinds of apartments they had.” She stretched and reached for a pretzel. “Maybe the killer was leaving gifts for the wives, even though he didn’t know them.”

“A secret admirer,” Fedderman said.

“Something like that. It’s kinda like he was courting them, plying them with presents.”

“Not many serial killers are romantics,” Quinn pointed out. “If that’s what we’re dealing with.”

“And the husbands woulda put a stop to it,” Fedderman said.

“One of them tried,” Pearl said. “He went to a shop where she’d admired the jacket but didn’t buy it, and he raised hell trying to return it.”

“So the killer at some point learned she wanted the jacket.”

“Yeah, the salesclerk said she wanted it bad, but Hubby said no.”

“Our killer must have seen her try on the jacket.”

“Or overheard her and her husband talking about the incident,” Quinn said. “Maybe even days later.”

“More likely he was watching her in the shop,” Fedderman said.

Quinn nodded. “Or worked there.”

“The clerk, that Ira guy, is a creep,” Pearl said, “but he’s got an alibi you couldn’t budge with dynamite.” She finished her beer and placed the can back on its coaster. “The gifts—if that’s what they were—are about the only pattern we have that might mean something. And the kitchens.”

Quinn recalled her supposition that the killer had suffered some kind of childhood trauma involving a woman in a kitchen. The kind of speculation that was usually Freudian bullshit, but not always.

“Maybe his mother was a terrible cook,” Fedderman said.

No one acknowledged him. He shrugged.

“We do know our killer has an affinity with kitchens,” Pearl said.

“Like me,” Fedderman said, patting his ample stomach.

Pearl ignored him. “The rest could be coincidence. We need more pattern. More commonality that looks and smells like evidence.”

“We all know what we need,” Fedderman said in his cop’s flat voice.

At first Pearl was irked, thinking he was ragging her; then she realized what he meant. The more they learned about the Night Prowler, the sooner they’d nail him.

There was one sure way to learn more.

Quinn went ahead and said it. “We need another victim.”

“Another pair of openers,” Fedderman said. “When he kills, it’s like dealing us more cards to play.”

“And it increases the pressure on us to stop him, making our job harder. It’s a trade-off and he has to know it. That’s the kind of game we’re playing.”

Pearl gave Quinn a look he’d learned to interpret. The frustration was getting to her. She was heating up like a teakettle that bitched instead of whistled.

“Our guy’s under pressure, too,” Fedderman said. “He’s gotta go for another double dip soon.”

Pearl said, “This is becoming a crock of shit, Quinn.”

“It was that from the beginning.”

“This is the pressure we were talking about,” Fedderman said. “Egan and the killer want us talking like you two.”

Pearl said, “Feds, shut up about pressure. And kitchens and card games.”

Fedderman ate a pretzel.

Pearl turned her attention back to Quinn. “So this is gonna be our strategy? We sit around like ghouls waiting for another slaughter so we can pick through the entrails?”

“Like cops,” Quinn corrected her. “And we don’t sit around.”

Fedderman stood up and tucked his shirt in tighter, where his suspenders buttoned to his waistband.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Pearl snapped at him, surprised by his sudden movement.

“Not sitting around. Getting up to go fetch another beer. You want one?”

“I’ll tell you what you can do with your can of beer—”

“Don’t!” Quinn interrupted her, but he was grinning.

That made Pearl really mad.

David Blank was, as usual, punctual. But he seemed less at ease this visit as he settled into the deep leather recliner. He smiled, but not with his usual smugness, and glanced sideways expectantly at Dr. Rita Maxwell. His look said that they both knew the clock was running, time was money.

Rita decided to play on his unease, perhaps draw him out. She maintained her silence.

After almost a full minute Blank said, “Ticktock, Dr. Rita.”

“That’s what bombs do, David.”

“Clocks too. But it’s funny you should mention bombs. Time bombs.”

“Did I read your mind?”
Time bombs?

“A paragraph or two,” Blank said.

“Do you feel something’s ticking inside you, David?”

“As if I swallowed my watch or something?”

“You know what I mean. Something, some complex feeling, or a set of emotions that might lead to a kind of explosion.”

“Explosion? No, I don’t think so.” He was silent for a moment. “But what if there were a certain pressure building? How would a person relieve that pressure by means other than an explosion?”

“The pressure comes from conflict, David. You share your conflict. You tell someone like me, and I can possibly help you to help yourself.”

“Help me stop the ticking?”

“In a sense, yes.”

“But what if the explosion’s already taken place?”

“Has it?”

“What if?”

“Then it might be guilt causing your conflict and pressure. I might be able to help you there, too.”

“My, aren’t you versatile.”

Sarcasm. I’m losing him.
“You know how it works, David: confess your guilt and it lessens because it’s shared.”

“That isn’t logical.”

“I know, but it’s human. That’s how it works with people. Always has. Have you ever gone to confession?”

“You mean in a church? No, I’m not Catholic.”

“That’s what confession is for, alleviating guilt. It’s a cathartic act, to unburden yourself to another. The church learned that centuries ago, and it still holds true. For Catholics, a priest might be sufficient. For others, perhaps someone like me would do.”

“And I fall into the category of others.”

“You said you weren’t Catholic.”

“The church believes confession leads to salvation,” Blank said. “I’m not interested in salvation.”

“Oh, David, I think we all are.”

He seemed to consider that carefully. “Not all of us. Not the ones who are already lost.”

“Do you consider yourself one of the irretrievably lost?”

“I must be, if I’m not interested in salvation.”

“Then what is your interest? Your reason for coming to me? You must have one, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“I’m interested in relief. Simple relief. Because of what I might do if I don’t find it.”

“Then we have two questions. What do you need relief from? And what might you do if you don’t find relief? I suspect if we answer the first, we can take care of the second.”

Blank didn’t speak or change expression.

“Are drugs involved?” Rita asked. “If so, I can—”

“Not exactly drugs.”

Rita waited. She sensed Blank was on the edge, finally about to open up to her. She remained silent. Knowing when not to speak had been the hardest thing to learn in her profession. At this point there was nothing to say; Blank had to make up his own mind.

The muffled sounds of traffic below and far away filtered through the double-pane windows and heavy drapes. Faint noises from another world. They only made the office seem more quiet and isolated.

Like a confessional.

“I’m sure something is about to happen,” Blank said.

Rita waited.

“It always happens sooner or later. They find out. I always know that from the beginning, but it doesn’t change anything. It’s part of the reason. They learn about me. And then…”

Rita waited.

“There are lots of reasons why people confess, Dr. Rita.”

Rita waited.

“I was sixteen, living in Colorado. It was summer at a ski resort where I worked part-time. An older woman, about thirty, was a waitress at the lodge. She was a blonde and sexy. Bridget Olson was her name, but she wasn’t foreign or anything; she didn’t speak with a Swedish accent. I think she was from Iowa. She’d been divorced and drank too much, and she was always extra nice to me. The guy who ran the lodge made movies, but I didn’t know what kind then. Bridget did, though. She asked me one night…”

Blank talked on while Rita sat pretending to take notes, listening to the familiar cadence of her mysterious patient’s voice. There was no need to pay attention. The recorder was preserving it all on tape.

Not that it mattered.

She knew it was all lies.

I’ll find out,
she thought confidently, letting him talk on and on, trying to shock and divert her. She idly watched her pencil move almost of its own accord and create obscure scrawling, like messages in another language. It was as if she were making note of David Blank’s earlier words that nibbled at truth and might be more prophetic than he imagined:

It always happens sooner or later. They find out. I always know that from the beginning, but it doesn’t change anything. It’s part of the reason….

They learn about me.

Rita knew that eventually she’d learn.

If David Blank—or whatever his name was—wanted an opponent to outwit in a game of his own making, he should have gone elsewhere.

He was smart; she was learning that about him. And he was confident.

What he needed to learn was that no matter how smart he was, there was somebody who could best him. In order to reach him, to understand him, his confidence in his superiority had to be shattered.

Rita’s job.