More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II

Shelby, the tourist they’d scammed a few days ago. The woman with him seemed familiar too. But he couldn’t place her.

“Detective,” the man said with a cold smile.

The woman’s gaze was chilly too, but no smile was involved.

“Whatta you want?” the cop snapped to the private eye.

“I’ll let them explain that.” He took a large bite of scone.

Shelby’s eyes locked onto Schaeffer’s face with a ballsy confidence that was a lot different from the timid, defeated look he’d had in the cheap hotel, sitting next to Darla, the used-to-be-a-guy hooker. “Detective, here’s the deal: A few months ago my son was on vacation here with some friends from college. He was dancing in a club near Broadway and your associates T.G. Reilly and Ricky Kelleher slipped some drugs into his pocket. Then you came in and busted him for possession. Just like with me, you set him up and told him you’d let him go if he paid you off. Only Michael decided you weren’t going to get away with it. He took a swing at you and was going to call nine-one-one. But you and T.G. Reilly dragged him into the alley and beat him so badly he’s got permanent brain damage and is going to be in therapy for years.”

Schaeffer remembered the college kid, yeah. It’d been a bad beating. But he said, “I don’t know what you’re—”

“Shhhhh,” the private eye said. “The Shelbys hired me to find out what happened to their son. I’ve spent two months in Hell’s Kitchen, learning everything there is to know about you and those two pricks you worked with.” A nod toward the tourist. “Back to you.” The PI ate some more scone.

The husband said, “We decided you were going to pay for what you did. Only we couldn’t go to the police — who knew how many of them were working with you? So my wife and I and our other son — Michael’s brother — came up with an idea. We decided to let you assholes do the work for us; you were going to double-cross each other.”

“This is bullshit. You—”

The woman snapped, “Shut up and listen.” She explained: They set up a sting in Hanny’s bar. The private eye pretended to be a scam artist from Florida selling stolen boats and their older son played a young guy from Jersey who’d been duped out of his money. This got Ricky’s attention, and he talked his way into the phony boat scam. Staring at Schaeffer, she said, “We knew you liked boats, so it made sense that Ricky’d try to set you up.”

The husband added, “Only we needed some serious cash on the table, a bunch of it — to give you losers some real incentive to betray each other.”

So he went to T.G.’s hangout and asked about a hooker, figuring that the three of them would set up an extortion scam.

He chuckled. “I kept hoping you’d keep raising the bidding when you were blackmailing me. I wanted at least six figures in the pot.”

T.G. was their first target. That afternoon the private eye pretended to be a hit man hired by T.G. to kill Schaeffer so he’d get all the money.

“You!” the detective whispered, staring at the wife. “You’re the woman who screamed.”

Shelby said, “We needed to give you the chance to escape — so you’d go straight to T.G.’s place and take care of him.”

Oh, Lord. The hit, the fake Internal Affairs cop… It was all a setup!

“Then Ricky took you to Hanrahan’s, where he was going to introduce you to the boat dealer from Florida.”

The private eye wiped his mouth and leaned forward. “Hello,” he said in a deeper voice. “This’s Malone from Homicide.”

“Oh, fuck,” Schaeffer spat out. “You let me know that Ricky’d set me up. So…” His voice faded.

The PI whispered, “You’d take care of him too.”

The cold smile on his face again, Shelby said, “Two perps down. Now, we just have the last one. You.”

“What’re you going to do?” the cop whispered.

The wife said, “Our son’s got to have years of therapy. He’ll never recover completely.”

Schaeffer shook his head. “You’ve got evidence, right?”

“Oh, you bet. Our older son was outside of Mack’s waiting for you when you went there to get T.G. We’ve got real nice footage of you shooting him. Two in the head. Real nasty.”

“And the sequel,” the private eye said. “In the alley behind Hanrahan’s. Where you strangled Ricky.” He added, “Oh, and we’ve got the license number of the truck that came to get Ricky’s body in the Dumpster. We followed it to Jersey. We can implicate a bunch of very unpleasant people, who aren’t going to be happy they’ve been fingered because of you.”

“And, in case you haven’t guessed, “Shelby said, “we made three copies of the tape and they’re sitting in three different lawyers’ office safes. Anything happens to any one of us, and off they go to Police Plaza.”

“You’re as good as murderers yourself,” Schaeffer muttered. “You used me to kill two people.”

Shelby laughed. “Semper Fi… I’m a former Marine and I’ve been in two wars. Killing vermin like you doesn’t bother me one bit.”

“All right,” the cop said in a disgusted grumble, “what do you want?”

“You’ve got the vacation house on Fire Island, you’ve got two boats moored in Oyster Bay, you’ve got—”

“I don’t need a fucking inventory. I need a number.”

“Basically your entire net worth. Eight hundred sixty thousand dollars. Plus my hundred fifty back…. And I want it in the next week. Oh, and you pay his bill too.” Shelby nodded toward the private eye.

“I’m good,” the man said. “But very expensive.” He finished the scone and brushed the crumbs onto the sidewalk.

Shelby leaned forward. “One more thing: my watch.”

Schaeffer stripped off the Rolex and tossed it to Shelby.

The couple rose. “So long, Detective,” the tourist said.

“Love to stay and talk,” Mrs. Shelby said, “but we’re going to see some sights. And then we’re going for a carriage ride in Central Park before dinner.” She paused and looked down at the cop. “I just love it here. It’s true what they say, you know. New York really is a nice place to visit.”

AFTERWORD TO “AFRAID”

I’d like to put on my professor’s tweed jacket for a moment and welcome you to Fear 101, also known as “How to scare the socks off your readers in a few easy lessons.” I’m going to offer some brief comments on how I incorporate fear into my writing.

I’m a suspense writer, not a philosopher or a psychiatrist. I’m concerned with fear only as it relates to storytelling. I’ve written “Afraid” to illustrate five essential fears that I regularly work into my writing. I’ll also share several rules that enhance the effects of those fears in my audience.

The first of the five is our fear of the unknown. Throughout the story “Afraid” Marissa never knows exactly what’s going to happen (and neither do we readers). At the beginning Antonio says, “It’s a surprise,” and I sustain the uncertainty established by that sentence for as long as I can. Marissa didn’t know where they were going, what the old woman meant, who Lucia really was, what Antonio was doing at the house in Florence, what was in the wine cellar…. In fact, she realizes — too late — that she didn’t really know Antonio at all.

Second is the fear we experience when others are in control of our lives — that is, we fear being vulnerable. Marissa is a shrewd businesswoman, intelligent and strong, and yet I’ve taken away all her resources. In “Afraid” Antonio is the driver and Marissa is solely a passenger, both literally and figuratively. At the end of the story, she’s nearly naked, in a remote country home, without a cell phone or weapon, trapped in a sealed cell, at the complete mercy of a madman with a knife, and nobody even knows where she is. Can you be any more vulnerable than that?

The third fear is others’ lacking control of themselves. When people play by society’s rules, we are less afraid of them. When they don’t, we are more. Psychopaths like Antonio have no control over their behavior so we can’t reason with them, and they’re not governed by laws and ethics. The fear is greatest when the lack of control is