More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II

THE VOYEUR

He had no serious chance for her, of course.

She was way out of his league.

Still, Rodney Pullman, forty-four both in age and in waistband, couldn’t help being seduced by the sight of the Resident in 10B when she’d moved into his Santa Monica apartment complex six months ago. After all, a man can dream, can’t he?

With focused hopes but diffuse energy, Pullman had moved to LA from Des Moines two years ago to become a movie producer and spent months papering Tinseltown with his résumés. The results were unremarkable and he finally concluded that success at selling Saturns and industrial air conditioners in the Midwest would never open doors at companies whose products included TomKat, George Clooney and J-Lo.

But, despite the rejection, Pullman got into the Southern California groove, as he’d write to his parents. Sure, maybe folks out here were a little more superficial than in Iowa and occasionally he felt like he was coasting. But what a place to be adrift! This was a promised land — wide highways, silky fog on the beach, sand between your toes, gigaplex movie theaters, all-night noodle restaurants and a January low that matched the temperature of a typical May Day in Des Moines.

Pullman shrugged off his failure to become a mogul, took a job as a manager at a chain bookstore in Westwood and settled into a pleasant life.

He was content.

Well, almost. There was the love life situation…

Oh, that.

Pullman was divorced, ten years, from a woman he’d married just after they’d graduated from State. After the breakup he’d dated some but had found that it was hard to connect on a serious level. None of the women he went out with, mostly blind dates, knew much at all about movies, his true passion in life. (Oh, that is so weird, Rod, I love the classics too. Like, I’ve seen Titanic a hundred times. I mean, I own it…. Now, tell me about this Orbison Welles guy you mentioned.) Generally conversation settled into boring bragging about their kids and rants about how bad their ex-husbands had treated them. His dates also tended to dress themselves at the unglamorous places like Gap or L.L. Bean and were generally of — how could he put it? — solid Midwestern builds.

Oh, he met a few attractive women — like Sally Vaughn, the runner-up for Miss Iowa 2002, no less — but that relationship never went anywhere and after her he found himself longing for greener pastures in the girl department.

Which perfectly described LA. Here was a massive inventory of the most gorgeous creatures on earth. But they weren’t just pretty. No, these lasses also had substance. He’d overhear them in the coffee bar of the bookstore, sitting over skim lattés and talking art and politics, brilliant, animated, funny. Just yesterday he’d listened to a couple of twenty-somethings in tight-fitting workout clothes arguing about the odd-sounding instrument on the soundtrack of The Third Man. A dulcimer, no, it was an accordion, no, it was—

A zither! Pullman had wanted to shout, but sensed an intrusion wouldn’t be welcome (and sensed too that the one who’d been wrong would be royally pissed, putting the kibosh on any chance to hang out with either of them).

Your typical LA girl’s DVD collection surely wouldn’t include any sappy tearjerkers. They’d have The Bicycle Thief, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Battleship Potemkin, Wings of Desire, The Manchurian Candidate.

Ah, but how to meet one… That was the problem. How he hated the cold leap, the Hi-My-Name’s-Rod-What’s-Yours stage. Pudgy, clumsy, shy, he always clutched.

He’d hoped his job at the bookstore would connect him with glamorous Hollywoodians. Put him in a situation where he had a purpose — like being a salesman — or where somebody came up to him, then he could charm a woman with the best of them. But at the store, the instant he answered a customer’s question, she had no more use for him. As for his fellow workers, they were either middle-aged losers or youngsters obsessed with their own careers (trying to, guess what, write, act in or direct movies, of course).

Out of sheer exhaustion, Pullman had given up on romance.

But then the Resident in 10B moved in.

Tammy Hudson — he’d asked the super her name the next morning — was a bit older than the stunning young things you’d see at Ivy or the back bar at the Beverly Wilshire. Pullman put her at thirty-three or thirty-four, which was good, a manageable age gap. She was gorgeous. Long hair, black as a raven’s wings, often tied up in a jaunty ponytail or pinned into a flirtatious bun. She was tall and, as her yellow-and-black spandex jogging outfit proved, slim and muscular. She ran every day, and sometimes on his way to open the bookstore in the morning he’d see her in the backyard of the complex, standing in the cool, foggy air, practicing some kind of martial art.

One other thing he liked: Tammy had a great joy of life. She traveled often and — based on what he’d overheard — had a place down in Baja, or knew someone who did; she often spent weekends there. She rode a bright-red Vespa motor scooter, reminding him of Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. Her auto was an old MG and she drove it lightning fast.

He hadn’t been surprised to find that nearly every day she’d leave her apartment with her portfolio; of course she’d be involved in films. With her expressive face, she’d make a great character actor. Had he seen her in anything? he wondered. There were not many films Rodney Pullman hadn’t seen.

He debated, and decided it wasn’t completely out of the question that they could go out and that something serious might develop between them. He wasn’t really bad looking. Too much gut, sure, but that was true of a lot of successful businessmen; women didn’t mind, if you had the charm to offset it. He had a full head of brown hair, not a trace of gray, and a solid jaw that largely covered his double chin. He didn’t smoke and drank only wine, and that in moderation. He always picked up the check at dinner.

But instantly, as always, the doubts swarmed like bees. How could the shy man meet her some way other than simply walking up and introducing himself? And once you’ve blown your initial chance, he knew all too well, you can’t go back and start over again, not with a beautiful woman like Tammy.

So for months Pullman worshiped her from afar, struggling to come up with some way to break the ice and not make a fool of himself.

Then, this cool April evening, he got a break.

Around seven, Pullman was standing by his window, looking down into the courtyard, when he noticed motion from the bushes across the sidewalk from Tammy’s bedroom. It was repeated a moment later and this time he saw a faint flash of light, like a reflection off glass.

Pullman shut his lights out and pulled the blinds down. Dropping to his knees, he peered outside and saw that a man was crouching in the bushes. He seemed to be staring into Tammy’s window. He wore one of the gray uniforms of the apartment complex’s groundskeepers. Pullman rose and slipped into his bedroom, where he’d have a better view of the courtyard. Yes, there was no doubt. The skinny young guy was peeping. He had a small pair of binoculars. Goddamn pervert!

Pullman’s initial reaction was to call 9–1–1 and he grabbed the phone.

But he hit only the first digit, then thought, hold on… maybe he could use this somehow. He set the phone down.

Tammy’s curtains closed. He focused on the voyeur and he felt a chill as the maintenance guy’s shoulders slumped in disappointment — like he’d been hoping to get a look at her stripping for the shower. Still, the man stayed in position, waiting for a chance to resume his spying. But then Tammy’s door opened and she stepped outside. She was wearing her pink top and tight floral pants. Her blue leather Coach purse was over her shoulder and sunglasses rode high on her head, stuck into her hair, which was loose tonight.

The voyeur crouched down into the bushes, out of sight.

Tammy locked her door and walked down the sidewalk toward the parking lot. Where was the maintenance man? Pullman wondered in alarm. Was he crawling closer to her? But just as Pullman snatched up the phone and started to push 9, he saw the stalker rise. He hadn’t been about to pounce; he’d only been gathering up his tools. Carrying them, he turned away from Tammy and walked in the opposite direction, toward the back of the building.

Tammy disappeared into the lot and a moment later the rattle of her MG engine and the whine of the gears filled the night as she sped away in the little green car.

That evening Pullman stayed close to home, ordering in a pizza and keeping a close eye on the courtyard. Hours passed without any sign of Tammy or her stalker. He nearly fell asleep, but he made some coffee, drank it down black and hot, and forced himself to stay awake so he could scope out the courtyard. Reflecting, with a shiver of excitement, that this was just like the Hitchcock thriller, Rear Window, where Jimmy Stewart, housebound in a wheelchair, spends his time peering through his neighbors’ windows. It was Pullman’s favorite movie; he wondered if Tammy had ever seen it. He had a feeling she had.

At nine p.m., still seeing no sign of Tammy or the skinny voyeur, Pullman went downstairs and around the back of his building, where he found the superintendent. He asked the man, “Who’s that young maintenance guy? The blond?”

“Blond?” the heavyset janitor asked, pulling a strand of greasy hair off his forehead. He smelled of beer.

“Yeah, the short guy.”

“You said ‘blond.’”

“Right, the one with blond hair,” Pullman said, frowning in frustration. “You understand who I mean?” The janitor was Anglo; there was no language barrier. Maybe he was just stupid.

“I thought, you called somebody ‘the blonde,’ that meant a girl. Like ‘Look at the blonde.’ Nobody says that about a man. You don’t call a man ‘the blond.’”

“Yeah? Well, I don’t know about that. But he’s blond. And short. He was trimming the hedges and raking today. You know who I mean?”

“Yeah, yeah. Him.”

“What’s his name?”

“I dunno. I didn’t hire him. I don’t do the grounds work. The board hired him.”

“What’s his story?”

“Story? He sweeps up, he rakes, he cuts the grass. That’s the story. Why?”

“He works for a service?”

“Yeah, a service. I guess.”

“Is the company bonded?” Pullman asked.

“He works for?”

“Yeah, that company.”

“I guess. I told you it was the board—”

“Hired him. I know. So you don’t know anything about him.”

“Why?”

“Just curious.”

The super waddled back to his apartment, frowning as if he’d been wrongly accused of something, and Pullman hurried back upstairs.

At one a.m. Tammy returned. Looking as vibrant and sexy as when she’d left, she walked to her door and unlocked it. With a look over her shoulder, she stepped inside and slammed the door shut.

She’d seemed a bit uneasy at the doorstep, Pullman decided, as if she’d seen or heard an intruder, and so he grabbed some binoculars and scanned the bushes. It didn’t seem that the peeper was back but he wasn’t going to take any chances. He stepped into the hallway and padded downstairs. He stood in the shadows near the stand of bushes where the voyeur had perched earlier to play his sick game.

Flies buzzed, lights flickered through the bushes and Pullman could hear the distant howl of coyotes in the hills on the way to Malibu. But the scene was otherwise quiet and still.

No sign of the maintenance man.

After Tammy’s lights went out, Pullman waited a half hour and, seeing nothing but the resident tomcat prowl past, returned to his apartment, vaguely aware that this situation could be a gold mine for his love life, but wondering how best to exploit it.

Well, the first thing to consider: was the guy a serious threat? Pullman’d heard that voyeurs were like people with foot fetishes and exhibitionists. They weren’t generally dangerous. They substitute the emotionally distant — and to them safer — act of watching men or women and fantasizing about them for normal sexual relationships, even though they think they want the latter.

It was true, of course, that rapists would sometimes spy on their victims to learn their habits and patterns before assaulting them but the vast majority of voyeurs would never even think of speaking to their victims, much less assaulting them. The odds were that the groundskeeper was harmless. Besides, he was a slim, meek-looking little punk. With her karate training, Tammy could deck him with a single jab. No, Pullman decided, there was little risk to the woman if he didn’t blow the whistle on the stalker just yet.

He fell into bed and closed his eyes but was unable to fall asleep; his overheated brain continued to wrestle with the problem of how to parlay the stalking into a chance to ask Tammy out. Tossing uncomfortably, he beat the alarm to sleep by half an hour. When it blared on at seven he stumbled out of bed and looked outside. The lights were on in Tammy’s apartment. He pictured her doing her morning workout or enjoying a breakfast of yogurt and berries and herbal tea, content in her ignorance of the stalker.

And of him, Pullman saw nothing.

This was troubling. Had this apartment complex been just a one-day assignment for the guy? What if he never returned? That would ruin all of the plans.

He remained at the window for as long as he could, hoping for the maintenance man’s return. But at eight, he could wait no longer; he had to be at work in fifteen minutes.

Pullman showered fast and staggered outside to the parking lot, head aching from the lack of sleep, eyes stinging in the fierce sunlight. He was just about to get into his battered Saturn when a Pacific Landscaping Services pickup truck pulled into the lot.

He held his breath.

Yes, it was the stalker! He climbed out, collected his tools and a drink cooler and headed toward the courtyard. Pullman stepped behind his car and crouched down. The voyeur slipped into the same bushes where he’d kept his vigil yesterday and started to clip a hedge that was already perfectly trimmed. His hungry eyes didn’t even glance at the clippers; they were focused on Tammy’s bedroom window.

Thank you, Pullman offered to the god his Midwest upbringing suggested might exist and hurried back to his apartment, taking the back path to stay out of the stalker’s view. He was supposed to open the bookstore but he wasn’t going to pass up this chance. He pulled out his cell phone and called the Human Resources director of the store. He faked a raspy voice and told her that he was sick; he wouldn’t be coming in.

“Oh,” she said uncertainly. Pullman remembered that the other assistant manager was scheduled to start vacation today, which meant the HR woman’d have a hell of time finding somebody who could open the store. Pullman coughed hard but the woman offered no sympathy. She said coolly, “Let me know if you’ll be in tomorrow. Give me a little more warning next time.”

“I—”

Click.

Pullman shrugged. He had more important things to worry about. As he walked to his apartment he was running through some of the plans he’d been thinking of as he lay in bed last night.

“Hi, you don’t know me but I live across the way. I just thought you should know… “

Or maybe: “Hi, I’m your neighbor. Don’t think we’ve met. Don’t want to alarm you but there’s a man in those bushes who’s been staring at you for two days.”

No, don’t say two days. She’d wondered why he didn’t say anything earlier.

“Listen, miss, you don’t know me, but don’t look around. There’s a man in those bushes across the walk. He’s been staring at your apartment with some binoculars. I think he’s a stalker or something.”

But after some debate he decided he didn’t like any of those approaches. She might just respond by saying, “Oh, thanks.” Then closing the door on him and calling the cops.

End of Rodney Pullman.

No, he needed to do something dramatic — something that would impress a woman as sleek and cool and, well, unimpressible as Tammy Hudson surely was.

Squinting into the courtyard, Pullman saw that the voyeur had moved closer to her apartment, eyes still focused obsessively on her window. The sunlight glinted off the blades of the clippers, which gave an ominous swick, swick. The tool was long and seemed well-honed. He wondered if his earlier assessment had been wrong. Maybe this guy was dangerous.

Which finally gave him the idea — how to best orchestrate an introduction to the beautiful Resident in 10B.

Pullman rose and walked to his closet, rummaged through it and finally found his old baseball bat. He’d never been much for sports but he’d bought a bat and glove when he’d been hired at the bookstore and learned that they had a team. He’d thought it would be a good way to meet some of the girl clerks. As it turned out, though, the only players were guys and he soon dropped off the team.

A glance outside — no sign of Tammy, though the voyeur was still there, clipping away fervently with the shears.

Swick, swick…

Gripping the bat, Pullman left his apartment and slipped downstairs to the first-floor walkway then edged quietly to the shadows behind the stalker.

His plan was to wait until Tammy left for her regular morning auditions. As soon as she passed the voyeur, Pullman would jog up to the man, brandish the bat and shout to her to call the police, this man was stalking her.

He’d make the guy lie on his belly until the cops arrived; he and Tammy would have a good ten minutes to talk.

No, no, it was nothing… My name’s Rod Pullman, by the way. And you’re?… Nice to meet you, Tammy…. No, really, just beinga good citizen…. Well, okay then, tell you what, if you really want to repay me, you can let me take you out to dinner.

Wiping his sweating hand on his slacks, he got a firmer grip on the taped bat handle.

Sure, Saturday’d work for me. Maybe—

The opening front door of Tammy’s apartment interrupted the fantasy.

She stepped outside and pulled her expensive shades down over her eyes. Today, her black hair sported a bright-red headband, which matched her finger- and toenail polish. She had her blue purse over her shoulder and was carrying her portfolio. She started down the walk.

The voyeur tensed. The clipping ceased.

Pullman gripped the bat harder yet. He took a deep breath, rehearsed his lines once more.

Ready, set…

But then the voyeur stepped back. He set down the clippers and began fumbling with the front of his overalls.

What—?

Oh, Jesus, he was unzipping himself and reaching inside.

He is going to rape her!

“No!” Pullman shouted and ran forward, waving the bat over his head.

“Hey!” The rapist blinked in panic and stumbled back, tripping over a small wicket fence around a mulch bed. He landed hard and cried out in pain, his breath knocked out of his lungs, gasping.

Tammy stopped, turning toward the commotion, frowning.

Pullman yelled to her, “Call the police! This guy’s been watching you. He’s a rapist!” He turned back to the blond man, waving the bat. “Don’t move! I’ll—”

His words were cut off by the stunning explosion of gunshots from directly behind him.

Pullman howled in panic and dropped to his knees as the bullets slammed into the stalker’s head and neck, leaving a bloody mist around him. The man shivered once and slumped to the ground, dead.

“Christ!” Pullman whispered in shock and slowly rose to his feet. He turned toward Tammy and frowned in astonishment to see her holding a large black pistol, which she’d pulled out of her Coach purse. She was crouching and looking around like a soldier in an ambush.

So she didn’t just study karate for self-protection; she had a license to carry a gun too. Well, a lot of women in LA did, he’d heard. On the other hand, Pullman wasn’t sure you could just shoot a man who was lying harmlessly on the ground, when he hadn’t actually attacked you.

“Hey, you,” Tammy called, stepping closer.

Pullman turned. He got a good look at the woman’s beautiful blue eyes and her diamond earrings sparkling in the sun, and he smelled a flowery perfume mixed with the acrid firecracker smell of smoke from the gun.

“Me?” he asked.

“Yeah, here.” She handed the portfolio to him.

“This’s for me?”

But she didn’t answer. She turned away and sprinted into the alley behind the apartment complex, a flash of vivacious color that vanished an instant later.

As Pullman was staring in confusion at the portfolio, he heard a rustle of feet behind him and an instant later was grabbed by a half-dozen massive hands. The next thing he knew he was being slammed face-first into a patch of extremely well-raked lawn.

Tammy Hudson, Rodney Pullman learned from his lawyer, was one of Southern California’s most successful, and most elusive, drug dealers.

It seemed that she’d been responsible for importing thousands of pounds of high-quality cocaine from Mexico over the past year. (Hence, her frequent trips south of the border.) Driving a beat-up old sports car and living in a pathetic place like the Pacific Arms Apartments kept her off the radar screen of DEA and police officials, who found it easier to find and track the high-living kingpins in Beverly Hills and Palm Springs.

Sitting in the LA detention center across from Pullman, the lawyer now delivered the bad news that the D.A. had no intention of dropping any of the charges against him.

“But I didn’t do anything,” Pullman whined.

The lawyer, a tanned forty-year-old with a fringe of curly hair, gave a chuckle, as if he’d heard that line ten thousand times. He continued, explaining that the prosecutor was out for blood. For one thing, a cop had been killed; the blond man, the apparent voyeur, had actually been an undercover LAPD officer pretending to work for the landscape maintenance company. His job was to report whenever Tammy left the apartment. Other officers or DEA agents would then take over surveillance and follow her in unmarked cars or vans. (When Pullman thought that he was reaching into his pants in preparation for a rape, the officer was in fact merely fishing his radio out of an inside pocket to tell the other surveillance team that she was leaving.)

“But—”

“Let me finish.” The lawyer added that the cops were also outraged that, because of Pullman, Tammy had successfully escaped. She’d disappeared completely and the FBI and DEA believed she was probably out of the country by now.

“But they can’t think I was working with her! Is that what they think?”

“In a word, yeah.” He went on to say that Pullman’s explanation for the past several days’ events raised eyebrows. “To put it mildly.” For instance, the police were curious why, if he’d noticed the supposed voyeur the day before, he hadn’t told her then. If his concern, as he claimed, was for an innocent woman’s safety, why didn’t he tell her she was in danger when he’d first found out about it?

His red-faced explanation that he wanted to use the voyeur as an excuse to introduce himself to Tammy was greeted with an expression in the lawyer’s eyes that could be read as either skepticism or embarrassment for a pathetic client. The man recorded this explanation in a few anemic notes.

And why would he lie to his employer about being sick today? To the police, that made sense only if he was serving as Tammy’s lookout. Today’s was to be a big drug transfer and they reasoned that Pullman had stayed home to make sure Tammy got away safely to deliver the goods. Their theory was that he had figured the maintenance worker for law and attacked him to give Tammy the chance to flee.

Physical evidence too: both his fingerprints and hers were on the portfolio, which happened to contain no headshot photos or audition tapes but rather a kilo of very pure cocaine. “She gave it to me,” he’d said weakly. “To create a diversion, I’ll bet. So she could escape.”

The lawyer didn’t even bother to write that one down.

But the most damning of all was the problem with his claim that he didn’t know her. “See,” his lawyer said, “if you really didn’t know her or have any connection with her, we might get a jury to believe everything else you’re claiming.”

“But I don’t know her. I swear.”

The attorney gave a faint wince. “See, Rodney, there’s a problem with that.”

“I prefer ‘Rod.’ Like I’ve said.”

“A problem.”

“What?” Pullman scratched his head; the cuffs jingled like dull bells.

“They searched your apartment.”

“Oh. They did? They can do that?”

A laugh. “You were arrested on felony murder, assault, aiding and abetting and drug charges. Yes, Rod, they can do that.”

“Oh.”

“And you know what they found?”

He knew perfectly well what they found. He sat back, stared at the floor and played absently with the handcuffs as the lawyer read from a sheet of paper.

“Some old Yoplait containers with Tammy’s fingerprints on them, ditto, two wine bottles, a box of herbal tea and empty strawberry cartons. Magazines with her name on the address label. A charge card receipt of hers from a store in the Beverly Center. A Starbucks cup with her lipstick and DNA on the rim.”

“DNA? They checked that, did they?”

“That’s what cops do.”

“I swear, she was never in my apartment. All that stuff… I just… I kind of… picked it up in her trash.”

“Her trash?”

“I just saw some things out behind her apartment. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

“You had two dozen snapshots of her on your dresser.”

“I just took a few candids is all. She wasn’t looking at the camera — you can tell the cops that. If I knew her, she’d be looking at the camera, wouldn’t she?”

“Rod.”

“No, listen! If we had been together somewhere she’d be looking at me, looking into the lens.” Pullman’s voice broke in desperation. “Like, ‘Say, cheese,’ you know? But she wasn’t. That means we weren’t together. It’s just logic. Doesn’t that make sense?” He fell silent. After a moment he added, “I just wanted to meet her. I didn’t know how.”

“They found some binoculars too. They figured you used those to keep an eye on her door to warn her if anybody was going to raid her place.”

“That was just so I could… so I could look at her. She’s really pretty.” Pullman shrugged. His eyes returned to the floor.

“I think the only thing we can do is talk to the DA about a plea bargain. We don’t want to go to trial on this one, believe me. I may be able to get you a deal for fifteen, twenty years…”

“Twenty years?”

“I’ll talk to them. See what they say.”

The lawyer stepped to the door of the interview room and rapped on it to summon the guard. A moment later it opened.

“One thing,” Pullman said.

His attorney turned and lifted an eyebrow.

“Sally Vaughn.”

“Who?”

“A runner-up for Miss Iowa. Few years ago.”

“What about her?”

“I sold her a car and we went out once but she wasn’t interested in seeing me anymore. The same thing sort of happened with her.”

“Same thing?”

“Like with Tammy. I was kind of watching her more than I should have.”

“Peeping?”

He started to object to the word but then nodded. “I got arrested. That’s why I moved here. I wanted to start over. Meet somebody for real.”

“What was your sentence in Iowa?”

“Six months suspended, counseling for a year.”

“It didn’t take, the counseling.”

“Didn’t take, no.”

“I’ll get the records. The DA might buy it. But he lost a prime perp because of you, so he’s going to want something. Probably stalking and privacy charges. You’d have to do a year, eighteen months, I’d guess.”

“Better than twenty.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” The lawyer stepped through the door.

“One other question?” Pullman asked, looking up.

“What?”

The prisoner said, “Will the police use all of those things they found? For evidence?”

“From your apartment?”

“Right.”

“Probably not. They usually pick the best ones.”

“Then you think I could have a couple of the pictures of Tammy to put up on my wall here? There’s no window. There’s nothing to look at.”

The lawyer hesitated, as if Pullman were joking. When he concluded that apparently the prisoner wasn’t, he said, “You know, Rodney, that’s probably not the best idea in the world.”

“Just a thought.”

The attorney left and a large guard stepped inside. He took Rodney Pullman by the arm and led him to the corridor that would take him back to his cell.