21 Tales (22 page)

The phone rang. No one should’ve known I was in Boston. I picked up the receiver and listened.

There was a pause. Then, “Hello, Hugh?”

“Hello, Lewis,” I answered. My throat began to feel dry. “How’d you find me?”

There was a slight laugh that could’ve been confused for static. “You should know better than that, brother,” he said.

I did know better. There was a connection between us. I forced myself to concentrate. I pushed harder until I could hear the blood rushing through my head, and at last I knew that Lewis was in New York. It had been two years since I’d last seen him and the connection was as strong as ever. “What’d you call for?” I asked.

“The same as usual. How does twenty grand sound?”

My throat became so dry I could barely talk. I wanted to hang up. I knew I should. Instead, I told him it sounded fine.

“Good. Check in tomorrow at the TowerPlaza. I’ll see you at six.” There was a hesitation. “Have you heard from Dwight?” he asked at last.

“Not in years. And yourself?”

“The same. Good night, brother.” And the phone went dead.

Hugh, Lewis, and Dwight. Huey, Luey, and Dewey. We were our Mother’s identical triplets. Her three peas in a pod. Her three pieces to a puzzle. There were other things, but it all amounted to the same. We were an oddity to her. Things to be held up as trophies, to be bragged about, but never to be considered as individuals. In her eyes, we were only parts to a whole.

Of course, later, after she caught us with the Hennesy girl, we became something else to her. Monsters. Sickos. Filth. That was what she called us, and kept calling us up until the moment she fell down the cellar steps and broke her neck.

Dear old mother.

The next morning I packed a suitcase, carefully placing a thirty-two caliber revolver between shirts, and then took a bus to New York City. After checking in at the TowerPlaza, I called room service and had them deliver a bottle of Dewar’s scotch and a bucket of ice.

A minute or so before six there was a soft knock on my door. I opened it and let Lewis in. I could’ve been looking in a mirror. We were forty years old, but we were still physically identical. Slim, baby-faced, with golden brown hair, and almond-shaped cat’s eyes. Lewis was dressed better than me though, wearing a cashmere coat that matched his hair, and a brown silk suit matching a pair of Italian shoes.

“You’re looking good, brother,” he said, more as a compliment to himself than to me.

“Thanks.” I walked over to the service tray and poured myself some scotch. “You want one?” I asked, showing him the glass.

He shook his head. “Not quite my cup of tea.”

“You should learn to enjoy the finer things in life, brother.”

“Maybe someday I will,” he said, chuckling. “My latest girlfriend.” He handed me a picture of a small moon-faced girl with an almost deathly pale complexion.

Lewis moved across the room to an easy chair, brushed off any possible dirt, and sat down crossing his legs. “Her name’s Gloria Carlson,” he said. “Her address is on the back. You’ll be meeting her at nine o’clock at her place. I’ll be setting up an alibi at ten, so wait til after midnight before dealing with her. That will give us a two-hour window with whatever forensics comes up with.”

I nodded, still studying Gloria Carlson’s photograph. “And what about the twenty grand?”

“She has over a hundred grand in jewelry, stuff she inherited. It’s hidden on the top shelf of her bedroom closet. I’ve already lined up a fence who’ll pay forty cents on the dollar.”

“Why don’t we swap?” I offered weakly. “I’ll set up the alibi.”

Amusement sparkled in Lewis’s eyes. “Now brother,” he scolded me. “You know we take turns. You don’t want to be unfair, do you?”

“No, of course not.” I turned over the photograph and saw Gloria Carlson had a Greenwich Village address. “How long should it take to walk there?”

“No more than twenty minutes.” Lewis stood up, took off his coat, and folded it on the easy chair. “She gave it to me as a birthday present,” he said, “might be a good idea if you were to wear it.” He walked over to the door and stopped. “Remember, wait until after midnight. And try to do the job quietly.”

I laid down on the bed and thought about the moon-faced girl who was going to die.

# #

I met Gloria at her door. She was as moon-faced in person as she was in her photograph, but she had nice curves and a narrow waist. She greeted me with an uneasy, jerky smile.

“Hello, sweetheart,” I said.

She took a step back as if she’d been slapped. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Nothing,” she said, her voice tight and brittle. “It’s just that you never called me that before. It surprised me.”

I laughed, I couldn’t help it with the way she was looking, and the laugh triggered something in her. A shadow fell over her eyes.

She turned from me and walked into the living room and I followed her, neither of us saying a word. There was a tension between us which indicated the state of her and Lewis’s relationship. Finally, she broke the silence by asking if I wanted a drink.

“Not right now, sweetheart,” I said, trying to smile warmly. “Maybe later.”

“It would be no problem. Let me go make you one.” She started to get up, but I stopped her. “I’m not thirsty now,” I told her.

We sat some more, neither of us talking. Maybe because of the boredom, or maybe because she did have nice curves, I reached over and made a play for her. She let me go on a little and then stopped me dead. “I’m too uptight right now,” she offered as an excuse, her face reddening. “Maybe after I have a drink and relax a bit. Let me get you one too?”

She gave me an anxious look. I shrugged and she got up and hurried out of the room. She was gone for at least ten minutes, and when she came back she was carrying a highball glass.

“I brought you your favorite,” she said, handing me a glass, “Dewar’s scotch.”

I had the scotch warming my lips; all ready to drink it when a thought stopped me. Lewis couldn’t stand the stuff.

A nervous smile wrecked Gloria’s face. Her eyes jumped from me to the glass. I shifted the glass away from my mouth and sniffed it. Nothing, at least nothing I could smell. “Alright,” I asked, “what did you put in this?”

“What a-are you talking about?” Her smile was pulled apart by a facial twitch. “What’s wrong?”

I tossed the drink in her face. Then, low and mean so she knew I meant business, I demanded again what she put in it. She didn’t move. Her face became one big massive tic, jerking her mouth this way and that but not a damn sound came out of it. I slapped her hard on the side of her face, leaving a redness on her skin and a sharp crack resonating through the room. Still nothing. I took her pocketbook and emptied it on the floor and scattered the contents with my toe, but didn’t find anything.

I walked into the kitchen. It didn’t take me long to find the bottle of sulfur tablets hidden in the sugar bowl. I have a violent allergic reaction to sulfur, the one thing that physically separates me from Dwight and Lewis. Two tablets crushed and mixed into a glass of scotch would kill me. There were enough tablets missing from the bottle to do the job several times over. I took the bottle back to the living room and tossed it at Gloria, catching her flush on her nose. She reacted to that, her head snapping up and her mouth twisting into violent rage. I showed her my gun and it calmed her down.

“So what’s the story?” I asked, as nicely and politely as I could.

She stared at me and then back at the gun. The blood had drained from her face. She didn’t say anything, she didn’t have to. I had smelled the setup when Lewis called me in Boston. I didn’t have any idea what it was about, but it didn’t really matter.

I sat down across from Gloria, letting the gun rest on my knee. There were several ways to play the hand out and I studied each one before making up my mind. Finally, I looked up at Gloria and told her to get out.

She didn’t move. Her soft pale face was queered in a look of befuddlement. “Look,” I said, waving my gun lazily at her. “I’m going to count to ten and if I see you after that I’m going to kick your face in. Get the hell out of here! One .. Two ..”

All of a sudden she came to life. In a flurry of tears and bitterness words poured out of her, damning me to the worst kinds of hell. But by the time I reached ten, the door was closed and she was on the other side of it.

I searched the bedroom where the jewelry was supposed to be. There was nothing. I turned off the lights in the apartment and waited in the dark by the front door.

Eventually, a key sounded in the outside lock. I held my breath and pushed myself flat against the wall. As the door opened, I shifted my gun from my jacket pocket to my right hand. Light from the hallway filtered in, outlining Lewis as he stepped into the room. The door closed behind him, and in one motion I flicked the lights on and pushed the barrel of the thirty-two into the small of his back. At once I could sense his body tightening and then relaxing.

“Hello, brother,” he said, his voice controlled, his tone soft and lyrical. “The job successfully completed? Gloria cold and stiff and the loot all accounted for?”

He had started to turn around and I pushed the barrel harder into his back, freezing him. “Don’t move, brother,” I ordered. “Why am I honored with your presence?”

“I thought I’d drop by in case you needed any help,” he answered with only a slight hesitation.

“That wasn’t what we planned. And there’s nothing of value in her bedroom.”

“No?” he mused. “That’s odd. The jewelry should be there. It would be a shame to walk away from this with nothing. Let me see what I can find.”

He took a soft gliding step away from me and as he did I pulled the trigger. The bullet sliced his spinal cord, causing his legs to buckle under him and his body to collapse like a sack of bricks. As he fell, his body twisted and his eyes caught mine. Not long after that those eyes became glassy and lifeless. It was disheartening watching him die since it was so much like watching myself die, but it was also exhilarating. No more Huey, Luey, and Dewey. With Lewis’s death part of me had been reclaimed.

A giddiness took me over and I had to sit down to keep from blacking out. My heart felt like it was going to explode. What I had wanted most for so long, at least part of it, had finally happened. I was no longer sharing an identity with two brothers. I was no longer split into three pieces. Now it was just Dwight and myself.

The giddiness faded. It was still Huey and Dewey. I still wasn’t whole.

I got up and searched Lewis’s pockets and had my first real surprise when I found Dwight’s wallet. It had his license, some credit cards and a small amount of cash. I pocketed it, along with a hotel key I found for the Winston.

Before leaving I checked to make sure Lewis was really dead. It may have seemed foolhardy of me to have shot Lewis before trying to talk to him, but I knew my dear brother as well as I knew myself, and I knew I wouldn’t have gotten anything from him. I said a silent prayer over his corpse and nodded farewell.

It was two in the morning before I got to the hotel room that matched Lewis’s key. I stood outside trying to listen for anything useful. Finally, I sucked in my breath and opened the door. The lights were on and sitting facing the door was a round soft-looking man. He nodded at me, “Hello Lewis,” and then squinted and shook his head. “My mistake,” he acknowledged, amused, “how are you, Hugh?”

I moved closer to him. I have a full head of hair and he was practically bald, but other than that he seemed to be almost a caricature of myself. His features were similar to mine, but were bloated and heavy. “Hello Dwight,” I said, “looks like you put on a few pounds.”

“More than a few,” he corrected me. “And what can you tell me about our brother Lewis?”

“I’m afraid he’s no longer with us.”

“I see,” he said. “Could you please give me a minute?” A single tear appeared in his eye and started to snake down his cheek. He brushed it away with a finger.

“Maybe, brother,” I said, “you could tell me what’s going on?”

Dwight had my eyes, but being buried within the extra flesh made them seem dull. A thin smile pulled his lips up. “I’ve run into some trouble,” he began, his hands fluttering in front of him as he talked. Like the rest of him, his hands were bloated and exaggerated. I couldn’t help noticing they were the whitest hands I’d ever seen.

“About a year ago,” he continued. “I had the opportunity to take some money from an associate. Unfortunately, he’s been entirely unreasonable about it.”

“How much money?”

“Six hundred thousand dollars,” he said without any change in expression. “To tell you the truth, brother, I wish I had never taken it.”

“Go on.”

“I was working in Chicago,” he explained. “Laundering money for Manny Vassey. A very nasty individual. I’ve come to believe he’s insane. What I took was only a small chunk of what he had, nothing he should’ve gotten upset about.”

Agitation had pushed his lips into a bitter frown. “He’s been after me ever since, Hugh. I’m really quite worried about it. His boys almost picked me up in Los Angeles and I’m afraid they’re still on my trail.”

“So you’ve been trying to get them off your trail, huh?”

“I’ve been trying, brother,” he sighed. “I’ve had my hair removed with lasers and I’ve been eating myself sick, but I haven’t been able to shake Manny.” He lowered his voice into a tone of confidentiality. “I’m afraid to see a plastic surgeon; word’s out on the street he’s watching for that. The only way to stop him is to give him what he wants.”

I stared at him until he shifted his eyes from me. “Pretty convenient,” I said, “to have identical twin brothers.”

“Very convenient,” he agreed. “You have to look at it from my point of view. I can’t sleep at night. I’ve been getting the most godawful migraines. Have you ever had one?” I shook my head. “Well, you should thank Jesus you haven’t,” he continued, his face shiny with perspiration. “Nothing’s worse in the world, Hugh.”

“So why was I the one chosen to be sacrificed? I’m deeply hurt. You obviously like Lewis more than me.”