John Lutz - Serial

“What have I got to do with that?”

“You really don’t remember?”

“I’m lucky if I remember if I got socks on.” They walked on a few steps, more slowly. “Really, how’d you know where to find me?”

“It wasn’t hard.”

“In New York?”

“I’m a cop.” the man said. He flashed a badge inside a thin leather folder. “We can find anyone.”

“That didn’t look like a police badge.”

“It is, though.”

“I don’t understand this,” Verna said uneasily. She trusted nothing and no one, and especially she didn’t trust this man.

She’d seen his name when he flashed his shield, but hazily. She couldn’t recall it. If she remembered it later, maybe she’d check him out tomorrow, phone a precinct house and make sure he was actually a cop.

If he was the real thing, that still didn’t mean Verna would talk to him. Right now, cops represented authority, and authority was what had hammered Verna into her present circumstances.

The man grinned over at her. “Whew! If we don’t slow down I won’t have any breath left to ask my questions.”

“Questions about what?”

They were at the passageway between the cathedral and the adjacent building. “Come in here where it’s quiet and we’re alone together and I’ll tell you,” he said.

“I don’t think so.”

He smiled. Shrugged.

That was when a police car came around the corner.

Miracles do happen.

Not that Verna was in any deep trouble; she could handle this guy.

But she couldn’t be sure.

She realized he was no longer gripping her arm.

When she turned to talk to him, he was gone.

Must have run down the dark passageway alongside the church. She stared into the dimness, but knew that with her eyes she couldn’t see him even if he was back there.

Well, she wasn’t going to follow him.

Verna held her head high and strolled past the oncoming police car. The cop who was driving glanced at her and the car slowed slightly. But it didn’t stop. That was fine with Verna. Maybe the guy who’d had her arm really was a plainclothes cop and the car was on its way to pick him up in the next block. That was how cops usually worked, in pairs.

Verna didn’t want to hang around and figure out any of this. All she’d been looking for was a place to sit down and eat the partial hamburger she’d found. This city was tough. It wouldn’t give her even that much.

Then she remembered the five dollars and figured she wasn’t so unlucky after all.

It required eyes that never quite closed.

Vitali and Mishkin had maintained a loose tail on Jock Sanderson for several days. Sanderson led a dull life. He left his apartment and went in to work about ten o’clock, wearing what looked like gray coveralls. Sometimes he wore regular casual clothes and carried the coveralls in a gym bag. Switching off the task of driving, one of the detectives followed Sanderson as he walked to his subway stop. The other simply drove there and waited, then left the parked car and picked up the tail. The car, and the first detective, would be waiting near the offices of Sweep ’Em Up when Sanderson arrived. Then they would tail the white van that transported Sanderson, along with other members of a cleanup crew, to whatever job they had for the night.

After that came boredom and a long night, with sleeping in shifts. Vitali and Mishkin had done this kind of work plenty of times and were used to it-inasmuch as anyone ever really got used to it. Both had learned the cops’ technique of almost sleeping, yet with part of the mind remaining alert and watchful. The watchfulness was accomplished through eyes that never quite closed.

By morning Vitali usually managed not to have been completely exasperated by Mishkin, and not to have injured Mishkin’s delicate feelings. Or Mishkin himself. As for Mishkin, he would seem unaffected except for being tired.

Then would come the daily routine in reverse, as Sanderson left work for home. Sometimes he’d leave directly from the job, and other times he’d return to Sweep ’Em Up in the white van and then go home from there. A normal, everyday, monotonous life. It was nothing like following a showgirl.

“This isn’t like following a showgirl,” Mishkin said, while watching the unmoving white van in his peripheral vision.

Beside him, Vitali said, “We’ve never followed a showgirl, Harold.”

“I’m imagining,” Mishkin said. “You must do that sometimes, Sal.”

“You’d be surprised, Harold, some of the things I imagine.”

Now and then Sanderson would eat out. Often he’d get takeout from a nearby deli. Sometimes he’d stop in at a small grocery store and stock up on simple food he could prepare in a microwave. He ate a lot of frozen pasta.

Vitali and Mishkin were patient. Varying their routine somewhat, they took advantage of slow-moving traffic that made it easy to follow Sanderson in the air-conditioned, unmarked car, even if he was on foot on his way to his subway stop. That way neither of them had to get out in the hot evening and walk. The traffic was so locked up that sometimes Sanderson, walking, would actually pull ahead of them for a while. They would catch up with him at intersections where he was waiting to cross. This kind of work required patience, as well as ways to counteract the boredom.

Vitali was driving the unmarked blue Ford tonight. He felt tired and irritable and by now doubted that Sanderson was anything but a poor ex-con who’d had his life turned upside down by a mistaken identity. He was on a treadmill of despair, and Vitali and Mishkin were on it right behind him.

Lounging next to Vitali, in the Ford’s passenger seat, Mishkin said, “I been thinking, Sal.” He continued watching the unsuspecting Sanderson through the windshield as he spoke. “Wouldn’t it be nice if this tail surprised us and panned out? Like maybe if Sanderson met a mysterious beautiful woman and they went someplace and talked like they had a big secret, maybe exchanged a brown package wrapped with string.”

“A MacGuffin,” Vitali said.

“Huh?”

“That’s what Hitchcock used to call packages like that, MacGuffins.”

“Who was MacGuffin?”

“Never mind, Harold.”

“What I’m talking about is a romantic assignation.”

“That isn’t going to happen, Harold.”

“It does in books.”

“We’re not in a book, Harold. Try to remember that.”

“How do you know we’re not, Sal?”

“Not what?”

“In a book.”

Vitali said nothing. Had his wrist draped over the top of the steering wheel. His gaze was fixed straight ahead on Sanderson. He knew that as long as the tail lasted, he’d simply have to endure Mishkin’s conversational meandering.

“You know that famous athlete that got in trouble because he was addicted to sex?” Mishkin asked.

“Do I know him?

“Of him?”

“Yeah.”

Vitali came more alert. Sanderson had stopped walking and was looking into the show window of an electronics shop. Only a few seconds passed before he walked on. Boredom again descended on the car.

“That athlete that checked himself into a sexual-addiction clinic, Sal. Ever think about sexual-addiction clinics? I mean, really consider them?”

“For myself, Harold?”

“Don’t try to be funny, Sal.”

Vitali said nothing.

“I been wondering what kind of places those are. I mean, even on the outside.”

“Like hospitals, I guess.”

“What sort of architecture?”

“Lots of towers, I imagine,” Vitali said. He didn’t move his head. His right wrist was still draped over the wheel.

“Yeah. I was thinking about the entrances. And the exits. Don’t forget the exits.”