it through without touching a drop. He was proud of himself and dismayed at the same time. It was a weakness, this craving for alcohol, and Jock didn’t like to think of himself as a weak man. Not in any respect. He was the one who was usually in charge of situations. He sensed weaknesses in others and moved in. That was what that prick the Skinner was going to realize one of these days soon-that Jock had moved in on him. He’d provided an alibi for the Skinner and made sure the killer knew that if anything happened to him, to Jock, the cat would be out of the bag. Letters could be left with lawyers, and in safety deposit boxes. The Skinner got the headlines, but Jock was in charge. The Skinner just didn’t know it yet.
The light signaled walk, and he crossed the street with the knot of people who’d been waiting with him at the curb. He was wearing Levi’s and a short-sleeved shirt he’d bought at the Wear it Again, Sam secondhand shop off Canal. There shouldn’t be too many secondhand shops in Jock’s future. Not with what he had in mind. He could go live someplace in South America, where there was no extradition treaty with the United States. Or maybe to someplace in the Caribbean. He’d heard that was where some people dropped out of sight and lived like royalty, on those islands. If he kept a low profile, he’d never be found.
He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t notice the approaching figure that veered slightly so it was headed directly at Jock. When he did notice, he didn’t pay much attention. Only a step or two away, Jock lowered his head, expecting the man to move out of his way, but he didn’t.
Jock pulled up short to avoid a collision, and was about to say something. He found himself looking directly into the eyes of the Skinner. There was something in those eyes, something beyond cruelty and intensity, that froze Jock. The Skinner was smiling faintly, as if something far removed was amusing him.
“Jesus! You gave me a start,” Jock said. They were standing so close to each other that he automatically dropped his gaze to see if the Skinner was brandishing a weapon of some sort. A guy this loony, he might not hesitate to kill someone even on a crowded sidewalk.
The Skinner’s hands weren’t empty. His right one was carrying a small white box.
Jock backed away. Oh, God, not again!
“Take it,” the Skinner said. “Add it to your collection.”
Jock’s hands remained at his sides, pressed tightly against his thighs. “I don’t have a collection. I don’t want one.”
The Skinner shrugged as if that were no concern of his.
“You’re not going to do this… every time, are you?” Jock asked.
The Skinner seemed to consider. “Only if I deem it necessary,” he said.
“Necessary for what?”
“Consider it a reminder.” The Skinner moved the box closer to Jock, and something changed in his eyes in a way that scared the holy hell out of Jock. “People who wag their tongues out of turn risk the damndest things happening to them.” He smiled broadly. “Not by coincidence, you understand.”
“I understand,” Jock said, and accepted the box.
“Maybe you’ll become a collector, after all.”
“I told you-no! There’s no reason to keep doing this.”
The Skinner ignored Jock’s protests. “Keep that in a cool place so it stays fresh. The poor woman it belonged to was trying so hard to use it right up to the end that it might still have plenty to say.” The Skinner put on an amused expression, toying with Jock. Sadistic prick! “Do you believe in life after death, Jock?”
“I’m not sure I even believe in life before death.”
“Whatever you choose to do with those unfortunate appendages, maybe they’ll talk to you in your dreams, or even sometimes during the day, when you least expect it. Especially Judith Blaney’s tongue. I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“I would,” Jock said.
“Ah, think where that tongue might have been when she was alive. Its many talents. She wasn’t a chaste woman, our Judith.”
Some of his initial fear had left Jock. He felt himself getting angry, or maybe frustrated. He couldn’t tell which. He was the one who was supposed to have the whip hand here, and yet this asshole had the nerve to stop him on the sidewalk and give him somebody’s severed tongue. Sick bastard!
Jock decided to try taking control of the situation. “Listen, you!” he said. “If you think…”
He let his voice trail off as the Skinner simply turned and walked away, glancing back for a final, smiling look at Jock, as if fixing him firmly in his mind.
Jock considered following him, laying a hand on his shoulder, and spinning him around, then handing him back his goddamned box. But he was paralyzed by what he’d seen in the Skinner’s eyes.
He began walking, faster and faster, gripping the small white box in his right hand, digging his heels into the pavement with each step. He might be late for work now. He couldn’t afford to screw up and get fired, all because of some psycho bastard who cut out people’s tongues.
People’s tongues!
The papers and TV news speculated about the tongues being removed because the Skinner was a cannibal and might consider them a delicacy. Jock might be the only one who knew better.
Of course, some other parts of the victims could have been removed and the police weren’t telling the public. They did that sometimes, to weed out the screwballs that made false confessions. Maybe there was something to the cannibal angle. After dealing with the Skinner, Jock could easily believe it. Lord, right now he could believe almost anything!
Noticing a wire trash basket at the next corner, he veered toward it and dropped the small box in it as he strode past. There! Maybe it would wind up in the same landfill as the first tongue.
He regained some of his confidence by reminding himself that he knew more about the Skinner than the pathetic psychopath imagined. The next time they met, that might be worth mentioning. It might keep the nutcase from giving him somebody else’s tongue. Or maybe something more personal.
He reached his subway stop, and almost without slowing took the concrete steps down into dimness and dampness. Now and then he stole a glance behind him.
Maybe I should have wiped my prints from the box. Both boxes!
He wished he had a drink.
65
Vitali and Mishkin had been driving most of the day. Telephone checking could do only so much. They needed to drive to various retail and wholesale outlets and show people the drawing of the carpet-tucking knife, close cousin to the lower-class linoleum knife.
They had worked their way through Queens, then returned to the office and played with the phones some more to get some addresses, and had spent much of the afternoon in Brooklyn.
When they reported their wasted day to Quinn, he instructed them to widen their search to New Jersey. Which was where they were now, cruising along the highway in the Garden State toward a place called Underfoot Carpet Supplies, where maybe they sold carpet-tucking knives. Ordinary hardware stores sometimes had no idea what Vitali and Mishkin were talking about.
The car’s interior seemed to be getting smaller and smaller, and Vitali was finding it more and more difficult to be cooped up and have to listen to Harold. Mishkin, in the way of people who could get under the skin of even a patient person like Vitali, seemed blissfully unaware that he was in the least bit irritating.
For the fifth time in five minutes, Mishkin mentioned to Vitali that he was hungry. Like a mirage summoned by desperation, five hundred feet or so ahead loomed a sign advertising Doughnut Heaven.
“I guess that’s where you go if you take your eye off the road to look at their sign,” Mishkin said.
“It’s where we’re going to get some doughnuts,” Vitali said, staring straight ahead and already starting to slow the car so he could pull into the doughnut shop lot.
Doughnut Heaven turned out to be not much more than a shack. It served only drive-through customers. There was a menu nailed to the wall near the serving window. It featured about a hundred kinds of doughnuts.
There were no other cars in line, which seemed ominous to Vitali.
