Stuart Woods - New York Dead

He had only a moment of consciousness to grasp that Sasha and the other people at the table were immobile; were glassy eyed; were, of course, dead.

Stone came awake slowly. His first sensation was that his ass was on fire; the second was that every joint, every muscle in his body hurt like hell. His vision was cloudy for a moment, and he blinked his eyes rapidly to clear it. He became aware that he could not move.

He was naked. His shoulders lay on a hard table, his hands were bound behind him, and his feet were tied and suspended from a block and tackle above him, which raised him half in the air. Instinctively, he squirmed, tugging at his bonds, but they were too tight. His hands were numb.

He could move only his head, and he craned his neck to see as much as he could. He was in a long, narrow room; the walls and ceiling were covered in white tiles, aged and cracking. Two overhead bulbs were protected with steel screens. The tabletop was made of metal and sloped from head to foot. There was a faint chemical smell, something he couldn’t identify.

He craned his neck farther. Near the other end of the room, just at the edge of his vision, was a vertical object, but he could not swivel his head and eyes far enough to make it out. He tried the bonds again, trying at least to stretch them enough to allow the flow of blood to return to his hands. No luck.

Minutes passed, and he wracked his brain for some other means of escape. He found that by manipulating his shoulders he could creep sideways on the table, but it became apparent to him that, since his feet were elevated, if he slipped over the edge, his head would strike the floor very hard. He stopped moving and waited.

Perhaps twenty minutes passed before he heard a scraping noise somewhere behind him, followed by hollow footsteps striking the cement floor. The chauffeur appeared, upside-down, the collar of his uniform hanging open. He reached up and ripped the mustache from his upper lip.

“There, thatsa better,” he said in his Italian accent. Then he laughed.

“Herbert?” Stone said.

Van Fleet laughed again. “Didn’t recognize me, did you?”

“No, I didn’t. Listen, Herb, could you loosen whatever you’ve got around my wrists? The circulation has stopped.”

“Sure,” Van Fleet said. He grabbed Stone under the arms, lifted him, and flipped him over on his stomach. He fiddled with the bonds.

Stone’s ankles hurt now, but he could feel the blood flowing back into his hands. “Thank you,” he said. “Now, could you turn me back over, please?”

Van Fleet turned him over on his back again. “Are you cold?” he asked solicitously.

“No, it’s quite warm in here. Where am I, exactly?”

“You are in what used to be part of a kosher meat-processing plant. It runs along one side of my loft, and it is accessed by moving the refrigerator in my kitchen, then removing a panel from the wall.” He laughed again. “Neither you nor the FBI were able to figure it out.”

“It’s very clever, Herb. Now, can we talk about what’s going on here?”

Van Fleet stepped forward and began feeling around Stone’s neck.

“Don’t do that,” Stone said, irritably. He didn’t like the man’s hands on him.

Van Fleet took his time at whatever he was doing. “Sorry to disturb you,” he said. “Just to rest your mind, I have no sexual interest in you. I don’t like men that way.”

Stone was relieved to hear that, but not much.

“How much did you take in before I used the stun gun?” Van Fleet asked.

“So that’s what it was.”

“That’s right. Something like fifty thousand volts, but only for a few milliseconds.”

“That was enough.”

“It was, wasn’t it?”

“To answer your question,” Stone said, “I took in a number of corpses sitting at a dining table.”

“Let’s not refer to them that way, please,” Van Fleet said. “They are my friends, and, if they could hear you, they’d be very upset.”

“As you wish. How did you get, uh, meet these people?”

“Oh, here and there. You might say I picked them up around town. They’re all very interesting people who do interesting work. I find that interesting work makes an interesting person, don’t you?”

Stone realized that he had now solved the disappearance of Dino’s yuppies, not that it mattered much. “Sure, I think that’s true. But, somehow, I don’t think they make very interesting conversationalists at the moment.”

“You’re quite wrong,” Van Fleet said. “I know you think of them as dead, but they’re not, you know. In fact, I’ve given them a whole new kind of life. It’s a technique I’ve developed myself, over the years, one I refined both in my work at the funeral parlor and in my previous job, at the Museum of Natural History. They remain as supple as when they were alive, in the usual sense of the word.”

Stone could think of nothing to do but keep the conversation going. Besides, there was more he wanted to know. “Tell me about Sasha, Herb.”

“Ah, Sasha.” Van Fleet sighed. “She is the centerpiece of my little dinner party, of course. Everybody likes a celebrity at the table. Adds spice to the evening.”

“Was she alive when you brought her here?”

“I told you, they’re all alive,” Van Fleet said emphatically. “Please don’t make it necessary for me to mention that again, or I will terminate this conversation immediately.”

“I’m sorry,” Stone said. “I meant alive in the usual sense of the word. What I meant to ask was, after her fall and the ambulance wreck, what sort of condition was she in?”

“Well, when I took her out of the wreck,” Van Fleet said, “she was in very poor condition, indeed. The fall had broken some bones, but, oddly, not the skin. The traffic accident had done somewhat more damage. It took me quite a long time to bring her back to her present condition.”

“Was she… breathing when you took her?”

“Amazingly enough, yes,” Van Fleet said. “In fact, I believe that, if not for the traffic accident, she might have continued to breathe. As it was, she lasted only a few days, in spite of the very excellent medical care she received from me.”

Stone winced at the thought of Sasha alive for days with this creep. His terminal velocity theory, though, had panned out, sort of. “Who wrote me the letter?” Stone asked.

“Oh, Sasha did – with my help, of course. She wrote me two letters, you know, when I first began writing to her, so we had something to help us with her handwriting.”

“Why did she have olive oil on her hands?”

“Oh, you noticed that, did you? Well, I wanted an agent that would make a good fingerprint, and, since I was in the kitchen at the time, the oil was handy.”

“Herb, we have to talk seriously now. We have to get you some help.”

“Help?” Van Fleet sounded surprised. “I don’t need any help. I’ve done all this work on these people alone, without any help at all. And it was pretty good work, don’t you think? Let me explain it to you. I’ll skip the technical parts, but have a look.” Van Fleet took hold of the table and dragged it until Stone was facing down the room, then he put a hand under Stone’s head and raised it, so he could see.

At the other end of the room was the object Stone had not been able to make out before. The body of a young woman hung by its heels, the fingertips just brushing the floor. She had been opened with one long incision from her pubic hair to her sternum, and the abdominal cavity had been emptied. “Oh, God.” Stone breathed. He turned his head away.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,” Van Fleet said, turning Stone back to his original position. “I was going to take you through the process, but if you’d rather not…”