Mister X. John Lutz

      “Can’t.”

      “Why is that?”

      “Can’t find my client.”

      “You mean she’s lost? Like missing keys?”

      “Like a missing client.”

      After a long silence, Renz said in a soft but strained voice. “Just stop your investigation, Quinn. As of now, this phone call. I don’t care if you never find your client. Never, never, never. Do I make myself clear?”

      “Never,” Quinn said, and hung up.

      Mary Bakehouse had gotten over most of the uneasiness about the time she’d come home and found her computer on. She simply must have left it on that morning and not realized it. There was no point in looking for things to make herself afraid.

      On the surface, her situation was getting better. A couple of job interviews had left her with the impression the human resource directors might actually call her. And the tobacco smoke smell was finally out of her apartment. Or was she simply getting used to it?

      She couldn’t be sure sometimes that after being away for a while and entering the apartment, she didn’t for just a second catch a whiff of the awful scent. Mary hated smoking. Her favorite teacher in primary school, a heavy smoker, had died of lung cancer when Mary was ten. It had left quite an impression on her, as well as a loathing for the tobacco industry and smoking in general. Maybe that was all she was smelling, her hate.

      The city itself seemed harder for her now, more dangerous. She hadn’t felt that way until she’d been accosted last week by a homeless man who’d politely asked for any loose change she might have. Mary hadn’t had any change, but the man wouldn’t take no for an answer. His attitude quickly changed, and he’d grabbed the sleeve of her raincoat and yanked her back toward him when she tried to walk away.

      She couldn’t forget the look in his faded blue eyes. There was raw hatred there, and when he began raving incomprehensibly about her “selfishness,” spraying her face with spittle, she felt herself returning that hatred. How could she not?

      That day the city became in her mind a more menacing place. Dark doorways suggested danger. As did heavy traffic, street vendors of questionable goods, panhandlers, men who stared vaguely but knowingly at her in the subway train as it raced rocking and squealing toward its destination.

      In the subway, it was one man in particular. She saw him almost every time she rode, as if they were on the same timetable, though Mary had no particular schedule. She supposed he might be one of the homeless who virtually lived belowground in the subway system. He was unshaven, and his clothes were threadbare. He wore a gray baseball hat with its bill pulled low, so that he observed her from shadow and with half-eyes that never blinked. Once—quite deliberately, she was sure—he slowly licked his lips and then smiled at her. It was a message she loathed and feared. He seemed to feed on her fear, as if he were drawing it across the swaying subway car to his inner evil self. He was hungry for her fear.

      She’d tried not to work herself into a dither. After all, wearing beard stubble was the current style among male movie and TV stars, and some new clothes were doctored to look faded and threadbare. Even unwashed. This was an era when celebrities looked like bums.

      But this man smelled like one of the dispossessed. A rank odor of stale perspiration and urine emanated from him. The stench of the desperate and dangerous.

      Mary almost collapsed with relief when the man remained seated and unmoving and didn’t get off at her stop.

      Thank God! Let him pick on some other woman now. Let some other woman feel her carefully nurtured armor drop to her feet with her heart.

      After the unsteadiness of the subway car, the concrete platform felt firm and safe beneath her feet.

      She glanced back and saw that the man was watching her through the train’s smeared and scratched window as she joined the crowd moving along the platform toward the steps to the street. She’d tried to show no reaction, but she knew she had, and he’d seen it.

      That was what infuriated her, that they could do this to her and enjoy her fear.

      Mary was a strong woman—she knew she was. Yet lately she’d been afraid almost all the time, even unconsciously. Sitting in warm sunlight she’d become aware that she had her shoulders hunched and feel chilled, and she’d realize it was because of her fear.

      In the beginning she was certain she’d never return to South Dakota except to visit, but now she wasn’t so sure. There was nothing to be afraid of in South Dakota. No buildings crowded together and blocking the light; no teeming sea of uninterested faces; no daily news accounts of unspeakable horrors; no brick corners she was afraid to turn.

      That was what, if anything, might drive her from the city. Her fear.

      She would never have believed it of herself.

      11

      After entering her apartment, Mary Bakehouse engaged the dead-bolt lock and fastened the chain. She draped the gray blazer she’d been wearing (an essential part of her interview outfit) over a hanger in the closet, then stepped out of her high-heeled pumps.

      Mary was returning from three fruitless job interviews. She’d been told after each that they might call her, but she knew better. She had received no callbacks. Nothing had panned out. The economy. That was her problem, she was assured by well-fed men and annoyingly lean, suited women. The bad economy was making jobs scarce and competition for those jobs fierce. “You almost have to sleep with someone,” a greyhound of a woman who’d been waiting with Mary to be interviewed had confided to her in a whisper.

      Not that, Mary thought. She’d return to small-town life and small ambitions before engaging in thinly disguised prostitution.

      She changed into jeans and a loose-fitting blue T-shirt lettered DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE, advertising one of the group’s concerts from two years ago in Tulsa. She’d bought it cheap and on impulse from a street vendor, figuring it matched her mood.

      Mary poured herself a glass of iced tea from the plastic pitcher she kept in the refrigerator. She carried the glass into the living room and slumped on the sofa, automatically reaching for the remote.

      She watched cable news for a while and didn’t in the slightest feel buoyed by it. Switched it off.

      Misery doesn’t really love company.

      After staring at the opposite wall for a few minutes, she got up and went back into the kitchen and placed her half-empty glass on the sink counter. Her thirst was slaked, but now she was hungry. Lunch had been a street vendor’s pretzel and diet soda, so an early supper was in order.

      There’s nothing in the fridge.

      The deli again.

      A glance out the window told her that dusk had moved in, and the drizzle that had started just as she’d arrived at her apartment building had stopped. Playing it safe, she got an umbrella with a telescoping handle from the closet and carried it as she left the apartment. It had rained once today; it could rain again.

      The deli was only two blocks away and around the corner. As she walked she decided to have the orange chicken again. It was the best thing they had for takeout, so why not eat it two evenings in a row?

      She picked up her pace. She could almost smell the narrow takeout buffet that ran down the center of the diner.

      Nose like a beagle.

      When she was in the brightly lit deli she felt better. She spooned some of the orange chicken from its heated metal pot into a white foam takeout container, then some white rice. She thought about buying a Daily News when she checked out at the register, then decided she shouldn’t spend the money and left the newspaper lying in its rack. Next to it was the last City Beat, one of several smaller New York papers that competed in a city hooked on information. It was a giveaway that made money from advertising space, including personal ads. Mary scanned