The Crime Writer

I stole across the street to the parking lot, keeping a nervous eye out to see if the commotion would draw Frankel from his apartment. Ducking through the Volvo's open window, I scoured the headrest. Not a single hair. The interior looked freshly vacuumed. Of course they'd given it a cleaning at the body shop. I reached down and popped the trunk, taking a deep breath before lifting it open.

No blood puddles. No remnants of plastic drop cloth. No stainless-steel boning knife. The worn carpet bore lines from the industrial vacuum.

I slammed the trunk and turned for my car when I looked up and saw Mort filling his doorway, staring at me over the second-floor railing. I jerked back, startled, the soles of my sneakers scraping asphalt.

Whether he'd caught a clear look at my face or seen me at his open trunk, I couldn't tell. He came off his step, moving toward the stairs. I walked a few paces up the sidewalk away from him as if continuing on course, pretending to talk on the cell phone. The adrenaline surge left my senses heightened. I listened for his approach, waited to feel the vibration of his charging footsteps rising from the sidewalk. I sensed him behind, shadowing me maybe twenty yards back.

You're in the real world now. Watch that you don't get yourself killed.

When I risked a glance back, he'd turned off down another street. Keeping a full block between us, I followed. He got to the corner and paused, looking in the window of a clothing store. He took a pen from a slit by his breast, tugged something from his back pocket, and jotted on it. I crossed the street so I could make out the window display while keeping my reflection out of view. Mannequins draped with sequined dresses and cheap suits, a few broken down into inhuman segments and left floating in a mound of uncut fabric to the side. Mort gazed back up through the window, transfixed. A few of the mannequins were bare-chested or naked, stiff and pale like the dead. Was he admiring the smooth, waxy skin?

Whatever he was holding slipped from his hands. He took a step back, still admiring the contorted human forms, then vanished around the corner.

I waited a few minutes before approaching. He'd dropped a matchbook, the creased cover sporting a skull and bones. I crouched, picked it up, thumbed up the flap.

Jagged writing on the underside.

I SEE YOU.

I rose sharply, breath firing in my throat. A movement in the window snared my attention. Standing among the posed plastic bodies, his leering face a few inches from the glass, was Morton Frankel.

Chapter 28

Mort pulled back from the window, knocking aside a mannequin, and jumped off the display ledge, running for the door. I bolted.

Dodging honking cars, I sprinted across the street, tangling up with a pissed-off biker on the far side. Mort was at the curb, waiting for a break in traffic. I yanked my cuff free from the bike chain and ran up the street. A bus was just starting to pull out from a stop. I drew beside it, banging the side and yelling. It stopped with an angry hiss, rear doors yawning. Mort hurdled the biker and kept coming.

Afternoon commuters overloaded the bus. I shoved through them, tripping over paper bags and knees, waiting to hear the doors suck closed, but they held open on a lethargically timed delay. Horns bleated; the bus was nosed out into the slow lane.

I stumbled up to the front, the bus driver now joining the protests. Through five or six arms dangling from straps, I saw the rear doors begin to slide closed.

A thick hand snaked into the gap, blocking the rubber bumpers.

As Mort pried the rear doors apart, the front ones opened in unison.

I ducked down, slid off the front stairs on my ass, spitting out onto the curb in time to see Mort's boot vanish up into the bus. The doors snapped shut with a pneumatic wheeze, and the bus veered out into a stream of traffic.

Standing, I dusted myself off. The bus passed, Mort's face a blur through the smudged side window. He caught sight of me and moved to the rear, bucking like a dog in shallow water. He cleared the people on the back bench as if parting curtains, leaning forward menacingly, breath fogging the glass.

I stepped out into the now-empty lane, meeting his gaze as the bus accelerated through the intersection.

His lips moved. I see you.

"I see you, too," I said.

As I jogged back to the Highlander, my phone vibrated in my pocket.

Junior said, "I'm at the corner of Daly and Main. Gas station."

I was more relieved than I would have thought possible.

"How'd you get this number?"

"Ms. Caroline."

"What'd you tell her?"

"That you leave me to get chased by a buncha black guys so you could break into a murderer's Volvo." He laughed. "Juss kidding, homes. I say I wandered off to get me some eats."