John Lutz - Urge to Kill

This wasn’t good. The dead plants, unpacked suitcases, closet full of clothes, and the obviously old contents of the refrigerator. Something was very wrong.

Pru went back into the living room and noticed the phone with its answering machine blinking red, signaling there were messages. She thought about playing the messages and then decided against it. Maybe she shouldn’t touch anything in the apartment.

When she returned to the hall she watched as the super relocked the apartment.

“Satisfied?” he asked.

“Yes,” Pru said. “She isn’t in there.”

But where is she?

She decided that her next stop would be the nearest NYPD precinct house.

Pearl stood staring at herself in the restroom mirror. She didn’t like admitting that they were getting to her. At odd times of the day or night, she found herself wondering and had to check.

She leaned toward her mirror image and with her right hand bent her right ear forward, tilting her elbow in as she rotated her body to the left.

There, on the right side of her neck, was the mole, usually invisible behind her ear from this angle.

She leaned in closer, turning her head left at an extreme angle while looking right, so she might have a better view.

Larger.

The mole, or brown spot, or whatever it was, was definitely larger than it had been the last time she’d checked.

No. Not definitely.

She realized she was hurting her ear and released it and leaned back away from the mirror.

This was stupid, this constant self-examination. Her mother and Milton Kahn had driven her to this state of mind with their idiotic harping on the mole. Or spot. Or whatever it was. If she was going to keep examining it, she should wait at least a few days so it had time to become larger and she could actually see a difference.

As she started to turn away from the mirror, she couldn’t help herself. She folded her right ear forward and looked again at the mole. Or spot. Or whatever it was.

Not larger.

Not definitely.

What is it?

Something to worry about. That was for sure. You go around day after day and think you’re healthy and secure, and all the time something’s working on you, against you, without you even suspecting it. It could appear harmless, simply a part of you that you’ve gotten used to, but it could kill you as surely as a safe falling on your head, and almost as suddenly. Like your own body deciding it had lived long enough so it was time to turn on you. On itself.

Pearl let her ear flop back in place.

Don ’t be so morose. Don’t think that way.

But she knew it was true. Life could be like that, end like that.

In a boarded-up imported dry goods warehouse in the East Village, Vera Doaks’s hollowed-out corpse dangled motionless in the darkness. Her internal organs were reduced to a coagulated hardened mass an inch thick on the concrete floor, inedible now even to the rats and insects. Other than considerable damage to the feet and hands, the corpse itself was only moderately eaten on, as it was a tricky task even for a resourceful New York rat to traverse the crossbeam and make its way down the rope that bound the ankles. What was left of Vera Doaks was beginning to take on the look of dry mummification.

Some rich men have a certain subtle sheen, as if over time gilt had rubbed off on them. Thomas Rhodes was such a man. He was accustomed to the best, and it showed. He looked like a component of the wealth and luxury surrounding him.

He drew a small white card from his pocket and checked again on the room number that had been given him, then rode the elevator to the thirtieth floor of the Eastin Hotel in Times Square. After decades of reversal, the Eastin had been recently renovated and brought up to its present high-end luxury standards. In fact, the decor was almost decadent. Gold-flocked wallpaper, wide crown molding, veined marble, and ornate chandeliers seemed to crowd one another even in the hotel’s vast spaces. On one of the elevator walls was a Rubens print in what appeared to be a museum-quality gilded frame.

Now in his mid-fifties, Rhodes was still lean and fit, his graying hair combed straight back from a widow’s peak, his tailored suit a black chalk-stripe material set off by his gold and black striped tie and the flash of white cuffs and gold cufflinks when he moved his arms. He looked exactly like what he was, a very successful banker.

There was another passenger in the elevator, a small man in a gray business suit, who obviously found himself in awe of Thomas Rhodes’s near presence. Rhodes was used to such reaction and barely glanced at the man. The fellow’s shoes were cheap imports, his watch a gold-plated imitation. He hardly mattered.

Rhodes set his wingtip Barker Black shoes in a wide stance and waited for the high-speed elevator to settle before striding from it out into the plushly carpeted hall. He looked neither left nor right.

Finding the room number he’d been given, he checked his Patek Philippe watch to make sure he was on time to the minute, then knocked.

The man who almost immediately opened the door was slightly shorter than Rhodes, slightly leaner, and had dark hair neatly trimmed and combed to the side from a perfect part. He was wearing a well-cut dark blue suit, a white shirt, and a blue and gray silk tie with a perfect Windsor knot. His face was as lean as his body-hawklike-even with hooded brown eyes. Despite his rather predatory features, there was a professorial aura about him. Even a courtliness.

The one thing, the pertinent thing that Thomas Rhodes noticed about him, was the way his eyes took in Rhodes standing in the doorway. They were unimpressed and unafraid.

Even standing out in the hall it was obvious to Rhodes that the room was very cool. The man ushered him in, smiling slightly and offering his hand. “Martin Hawk,” he said.

“And you know who I am,” Rhodes said. Might as well get on top of this conversation from the start.

“Oh, indeed I do,” said Hawk in his softly modulated voice. “Thomas Rhodes, Stanford honor student, Harvard MBA, successful career at Cartner-Whimer, inventor of the bottom-up leveraged buyout, now president emeritus of Rhodes and Finkman Finance.”

“Not so emeritus,” Rhodes said pleasantly, careful not to show his surprise at this man knowing so much about him.

“Yes,” Hawk said, “you’re still quite active in the business, when you’re not away on safari or stalking game in Canada or Alaska. No children. Married Gail Cromartie in nineteen ninety-two, divorced in ninety-nine. Presently Gail is living in London, while you reside here in New York in a condo in Benton Towers on the Upper East Side. You have homes in the Hamptons and in Sarasota, Florida, where your boat, Striver II, is docked.”

“Yacht,” Rhodes said.

Hawk smiled, his hooded eyes steady. “I stand corrected. The yacht is outfitted for deep-sea fishing as well as luxury. You hold the record for largest ocean pike, I believe.”

“Have for twelve years.” Rhodes felt his composure slip a notch. “You’ve done your research.”

“I hope you’re not offended.”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Please sit down, and we’ll discuss the reason you’re here.”

Soon Rhodes was seated in a satin-upholstered wing chair across from Hawk, who sat relaxed with his legs crossed in a brown leather easy chair. His wristwatch was visible, an undoubtedly genuine Rolex. Rhodes was sure his shoes were Savile Row. Both men were sipping twenty-year-aged Macallan single-malt scotch whiskey that Hawk had already poured.

“You’ve been recommended by a former client of my company, Quest and Quarry, Mr. Rhodes,” Martin Hawk said, in his level and cultivated voice-not an English accent but almost. The voice went with the man’s obvious polish.