Body Rides

  ‘That isn’t the main thing about it,’ Neal said.

  ‘Just give it a kiss,’ Sue suggested.

  ‘Kiss it?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s how ya get it to work.’

  ‘It works? What do you mean, “works”?’

  ‘It’s magic.’

  Marta frowned at Neal. ‘Is she nuts?’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s beside the point.’

  ‘Hey!’ Sue blurted.

  ‘She’s right about the bracelet,’ Neal said.

  ‘It’s magic,’ Marta stated, staring him in the eyes.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Right,’ she said.

  ‘Go on and kiss it,’ Sue suggested.

  ‘Some kind of a Blarney Stone thing?’ Marta asked.

  ‘More of a mind-reading thing,’ Neal said. ‘When you kiss it, you . . . sort of take a trip out of your own body and into someone else.’

  ‘Right,’ Marta said.

  ‘Try it,’ Sue urged her.

  Marta cast her a smirk. ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘Sue did it by mistake,’ Neal explained. ‘That’s how she found out about it. I never would’ve told her. Or anyone. It’s supposed to be a complete secret.’

  ‘It came with instructions?’ Marta asked.

  ‘It came from Elise Waters.’

  Marta’s face suddenly turned solemn.

  ‘She gave it to me as a reward for saving her life,’ Neal said.

  And then he told her about it: how Elise had presented him with the bracelet, allowed him to experiment with it by entering her, shared the little she knew of its history, and given him the warnings about its dangers.

  He told how he’d used the bracelet later to learn that Rasputin’s body had vanished from the place below the freeway embankment where he’d left it for dead. And he told of his return to Elise – how he’d been inside her when she was attacked in her house, but could do nothing to help her.

  ‘You can’t do anything while you’re in there,’ he explained. ‘That’s the problem. You can’t even warn a person . . . You’re helpless. You’re just an observer.’

  ‘Ya feel everything, too,’ Sue added.

  ‘Yeah,’ Neal said. ‘It’s as if you become the person, except that you can’t have any effect. You’re a passenger taking a ride in someone else’s body.’

  ‘It’s really somethin else,’ Sue said. ‘Ya gotta try it.’

  Leaning forward, Marta placed the bracelet on the table. Then she settled back in the sofa, shaking her head. ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’

  ‘Yer not gonna?’ Sue asked.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘A, I think it’s hogwash. B, it’s nonsense. C, it’s bullshit.’

  ‘Yer gonna change yer tune if ya try it.’

  ‘I’m not going to try it.’

  ‘It don’t hurt or nothin,’ Sue assured her.

  ‘Neither does taking a spin around the galaxy in a flying saucer. Or chit-chatting with the ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt. That doesn’t mean I’m going to do it.’

  Sue made an odd face at Neal and said, ‘She don’t believe us.’

  ‘I wouldn’t, either,’ he said.

  ‘Well, we ain’t lyin.’

  ‘I’m not accusing anyone of lying,’ Marta said. ‘I’m just not interested in fooling around with some bracelet that’s supposed to transport me into someone else. I mean, give me a break. It’s impossible, for one thing. But if it did work, I’d really want to stay away from it. The last thing I’d like to do is go floating off into someone else and eavesdrop on all their private thoughts and feelings. I wouldn’t do it if I could. And nobody’d better do it to me, either.’

  ‘Too late,’ Sue said.

  Marta’s eyes went wide. ‘What?’

  ‘I paid a little visit to ya.’

  Marta stared at her. ‘Bull,’ she said.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘With the bracelet?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘You . . . got in me.’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘Yeah, I did.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘If you wanta say so.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘After ya got here.’

  ‘This morning?’

  Sue nodded.

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  Sue shrugged.

  ‘Maybe we’d better try to figure out what to do about Rasputin,’ Neal said, hoping to change the direction of the conversation.

  Marta ignored him. ‘Where were you?’ she asked Sue.

  ‘Out here.’

  ‘Where was I?’

  ‘In yer bedroom.’

  ‘With Neal?’

  ‘Well, ya were in there with him pretty near the whole day.’

  ‘What were we doing?’

  Sue wiggled her eyebrows up and down.

  Marta’s face went scarlet. She shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t take any magic bracelet to figure out what we were doing in there.’

  ‘I was in you,’ Sue said. ‘Not for real long – figured to let ya have some privacy. But I was in ya for a spell, there.’

  ‘Bullshit. Nobody can kiss some damn bracelet and go flying into people.’

  ‘Yeah, ya can.’

  ‘Prove it.’

  ‘All ya godda do is kiss the bracelet,’ Sue told her.

  ‘Not me. If you were in me this morning, prove it.’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Ha! That’s because you can’t.’

  ‘Ya don’t want me to blab stuff, do ya? With Neal sittin right there?’

  ‘I’ve got no secrets from Neal.’

  ‘I can think of a couple things,’ Sue said.

  Marta suddenly looked shaken. ‘Like what?’ she murmured.

  ‘I’m not tellin. I wanta be yer friend. I’m not gonna go and tell stuff yer tryin to keep a secret.’

  ‘Now you’ve got me curious,’ Neal said to Sue.

  ‘Well, yer just gonna have to stay that way.’

  ‘I want to know,’ Marta said. ‘What are these big secrets I’m supposed to have?’

  ‘Let’s you and me leave the room for a minute.’

  Nodding, Marta got up from the sofa. Sue climbed out of the chair, and Marta followed her into the hallway. When they were out of sight, Neal heard their bare feet on the carpet. Then a door bumped shut.

  Must be some secrets, Neal thought.

  He felt a little amused at first. Then annoyed.

  Left out.

  He saw the bracelet on the coffee table, within easy reach.

  No.

  Staring at it, he folded his arms.

  Let them have their little secrets. I won’t stoop to spying on them.

  He sighed. He waited.

  What’s taking them so long?

  At last, he heard the door open, then their footsteps. Sue in the lead, they walked into the living room.

  Sue cast an impish smile at him.

  Marta, frowning, sat down on the sofa. She watched Sue climb onto the chair. Then she turned her head toward Neal and said, ‘Okay. She convinced me. I guess maybe the bracelet works, after all. But I’m not going to try it. You two can go around spying on people’s private lives if you’re into that sort of thing, but not me. I think it’s a rotten thing to do. I want nothing to do with it. If you ask me, you oughta get rid of the bracelet – or at least stop using it that way. It’ll get you into nothing but trouble.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ Neal said.

  ‘Looks to me,’ Sue said, ‘like it’s gonna get us into half a million bucks.’

  ‘What?’ Marta asked.

  ‘Tell her ’bout it.’

  Neal nodded. Facing Marta, he said, ‘You know how I was starting to tell about last night? How I’d gone over to my apartment and run into Rasputin? Well, that is what happened, but I wasn’t there in person. I’d kissed the bracelet and left my body here.’

  ‘Here,’ Sue s
aid, and patted the arm of her chair.

  ‘Terrific,’ Marta muttered.

  ‘Sue was asleep, so I took off. And I ran into Rasputin picking my lock. Literally. And found myself in him. He’d come back to look for me again. This made two nights in a row he’d paid a visit, apparently. The first time, he threw his old bandages into the toilet and forgot to flush. This time, he found out I’d been back. And he figured out that I’d been there with a friend. He saw our beer cans on the table. So now he’s planning to return again tonight. He’s hoping he’ll finally get a chance to lay his hands on me.’

  ‘And me,’ Sue added.

  ‘He wants to . . . murder us, basically. To get back at me for shooting him.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Marta muttered.

  ‘Well, it’s pretty much the way we figured.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘The thing is, he has to make a pick-up later tonight. In a parking lot somewhere. Half a million dollars.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘I was in his head. Somebody’s going to pay him half a million bucks, and he gets it tonight. At two in the morning, actually.’

  ‘Who would be paying him half a million dollars?’ Marta asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Has to be Vince Conrad,’ Sue said. ‘Elise’s husband.’

  ‘That’s just a guess,’ Neal pointed out. ‘Sue and I talked about it for a while last night after I got back. It might not be him, but it’d stand to reason. Elise was going to divorce him. If it went through, she would get half his property. The house alone is probably worth a couple of million dollars, at least. And who knows what else he might’ve lost if they’d gotten a divorce.’

  ‘So you think he hired Rasputin to murder her?’

  Neal nodded. ‘While he was off in Hawaii getting himself a suntan and a perfect alibi. Probably instructed Rasputin not to kill her in the house: he didn’t want it turned into a crime scene . . .’

  ‘Didn’t want his nice home to get all mucked up with blood,’ Sue suggested.

  ‘He probably told Rasputin to take her somewhere and really work her over – torture her, rape her, make it look like she was grabbed by a serial killer.’

  ‘Which he is,’ Sue pointed out.

  ‘Huh?’ Marta asked.

  ‘Looks like he really is a serial killer,’ Neal said. ‘Rasputin.’

  ‘Leslie Glitt,’ Sue said. ‘That’s his real name. Ya believe it?’

  Marta cast an amazed look at Neal. ‘You found out his name?’

  ‘Yeah. Sure did. At one point, he thought about himself in the third person – by name.’

  ‘Leslie Glitt,’ Sue repeated. ‘With a G.’

  ‘Have you tried looking him up?’ Marta asked.

  Neal and Sue glanced at each other.

  ‘Not yet,’ Neal said. ‘I can’t imagine he’d be listed, though.’

  ‘Never know till you try.’

  ‘And I know for a fact that he isn’t staying at his own place,’ Neal added. ‘He took over a house. I was there. I went . . . back with him after he left my place. He had a man and woman . . . the woman wasn’t dead yet. But they were in the garage. He’d been torturing them.’

  Marta met his eyes. ‘Where? Where’s the house?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head, grimacing. ‘I just don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention to directions on the way over. And neither was he. All of a sudden, he swung into this driveway. I didn’t even get a good look at the house before he pulled into the garage. I don’t even know what street it’s on, much less the address. If I had any idea, I would’ve gone back to the place with my gun last night and . . . put an end to it there and then.’

  Marta reached over and gently rubbed the back of his neck. She said nothing. Sue watched, a slight smile on her face.

  ‘I just don’t know where he is,’ Neal muttered.

  ‘But we know where he’s gonna be tonight,’ Sue said. ‘We’ll get him then, and we’ll grab us half a million bucks, too.’

  ‘Let’s just see if he is in the phone directory,’ Marta said. She stopped rubbing Neal’s neck, stood up and left the room. A couple of minutes later, she returned with the hefty book. She sat down beside Neal, spread it open on her lap, and started leafing through its pages. ‘That’s G-L-I-T?’ she asked.

  ‘Two t’s,’ Neal said. A moment later, he said, ‘Actually, I’m not sure. I haven’t seen it spelled out. But when he said it to himself, I got the impression that it was G-L-I-T-T.’

  ‘And here it is,’ Marta said. ‘L. Glitt.’

  ‘His address there?’ Sue asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Holy smoke. Let’s go and visit.’

  ‘He won’t be there,’ Neal said.

  ‘Let’s go anyhow!’

  ‘Might be a waste of time,’ Marta said. ‘Let’s call first and see what happens.’ She hunched over the book for a few moments, then put it on the table, stood up and walked over to her telephone. After tapping in the number, she said, ‘We’ll just see who answers.’

  Sue whispered at Neal, ‘Told ya she’s smart.’

  Marta, raising a hand for silence, said, ‘Hello. This is Doctor Irma Klein, calling from the emergency room of Westside Medical Center. We have a Mr Leslie Glitt who was just brought in for treatment following a motor vehicle accident.’ She listened briefly, then said, ‘Leslie Glitt.’ She listened again, this time nodding and frowning. ‘No, he didn’t have any identification. He told me . . . I really can’t describe him very well – he was heavily bandaged. But I would say that he’s approximately six feet tall, very thin, with black hair . . . Hard to say. Just from his voice, I’d guess maybe thirty, forty? . . . Uh, huh . . . No, I looked it up in the phone directory . . . In surgery . . . Why do you say that?’

  A few seconds later, Marta made a face as if she’d just sat down in something wet and sticky.

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘You’re sure about that? . . . Uh-huh. Well, then this must be someone else.’ She shook her head. ‘I have no idea why he might be using your brother’s name . . . I will. I’ll look into it . . . Really? Why the police?’

  She listened for a long time, nodding and saying very little, often shaking her head, glancing from Neal to Sue.

  Finally, she said, ‘Don’t worry about anything, Lois. I’m sure this can’t be your brother. But I will notify the police, and have them look into the matter.’ Marta made a frustrated face. ‘Let me just ask you one thing. I did notice something else about this man. Did your brother have webbed feet? . . . Webbed feet . . . No, it’s a somewhat rare anomaly – what we used to call a birth defect. I happened to notice because this patient was brought in barefoot. He has a cutaneous membrane between the toes of both feet . . . He didn’t?’

  Marta beamed a smile at Neal and Sue.

  ‘Well, then the man we have here is obviously not your brother. This really does confirm it. All I can figure is that the name must be a coincidence . . . It is a very unusual name, but there’s no way that your brother could’ve developed webbed feet later in life. A person is either born with the condition, or not . . . Right, still dead. I’m sorry for disturbing you over this situation. I didn’t mean to ruin your day . . . Well, thank you. And thanks so much for your help, Lois. Bye, now.’

  Marta hung up, tilted back her head, took a deep breath, and blew air at the ceiling from her pursed lips.

  ‘Wow,’ Sue said.

  ‘You ought to be a detective,’ Neal said.

  Marta returned to the sofa, flopped on it, and swung her feet up onto the coffee table. ‘I feel like a jerk for lying to the poor woman. Not to mention, I scared the crap out of her.’

  ‘She’s Leslie’s sister?’ Neal asked.

  ‘Yeah. Lois. According to her, Leslie’s dead. And she wants him to stay that way.’

  Neal had guessed as much from Marta’s side of the telephone conversation. He could hardly believe it, though. ‘His sister thinks he’s dead?’

/>   ‘He is officially among the deceased. He shot it out with the cops in San Francisco seven years ago.’

  ‘Then how could this guy be him?’

  ‘They lost his body. Apparently, he was struck by gunfire as he was climbing over the rail of the Golden Gate Bridge. And down he went.’

  ‘Off the Golden Gate?’

  ‘Yeah. And into San Francisco Bay, where he was never seen again.’

  ‘Maybe this isn’t the same guy,’ Neal said.

  ‘Name’s the same. And her brother had the same build.’

  ‘Did her brother have the web feet?’ Sue asked.

  Marta stared at her, eyebrows rising. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Well, then . . .’

  ‘I made it up about the webbed feet.’

  ‘Did ya?’

  ‘I didn’t want Lois to know her brother’s still alive. She’s terrified of him. She didn’t tell me what, but I got the impression that he used to do some pretty horrible things to her. On top of which, the cops thought he was this guy called “The Beast of Belvedere.”’

  ‘My God,’ Neal muttered. ‘You’re kidding. The Beast of Belvedere?’

  ‘You’ve heard of him?’

  ‘Sure. He was breaking into homes on Belvedere Island . . . It’s one of those very exclusive neighborhoods . . . Up in Marin County, just across the bridge from San Francisco. Woodsy hills, narrow little streets, a lagoon, houses that cost a small fortune . . . This guy got into four or five of these places and murdered anyone he found in them. Whole families, in a few cases. Tortured the people. Mutilated them. Raped them. Never left any survivors. The press started calling him the Beast of Belvedere. I knew all about it at the time, but . . . it was seven or eight years ago, I guess. From what I remember, they never had a suspect. And I don’t recall anything about a police shootout on the Golden Gate. The killings just ended, suddenly.’

  ‘Apparently when Leslie got shot off the Golden Gate.’

  ‘I can’t believe anyone could survive a thing like that,’ Neal said.

  Sue met his eyes. ‘Yer the guy that calls him Rasputin.’

  Forty-Five

  ‘It’s about four-thirty now,’ Marta said after a glance at the clock on her VCR. ‘The money pick-up isn’t till two tonight, so we’ve got plenty of time to figure things out.’

  ‘You do have tonight off?’ Neal asked.