At least Gage had already met the handyman. He had a feeling he’d be able to manipulate this guy in order to get all the information he needed. There was something odd about Luis’s relationship with the so-called handyman that Gage couldn’t quite figure out. But he had a feeling the guy would do anything Luis asked.
But first Gage had to deal with Luis, who was still locked up in the third-floor apartment in Brooklyn. Though it was tempting to let him stay there all weekend without food or any kind of entertainment, Gage wasn’t sure he could do that to his twin brother. So he came up with a much better plan, a plan that would torture Luis far more than starvation.
Gage found out where Luis parked his car in New York by looking at his checkbook in the desk drawer. Evidently, Luis didn’t pay his bills online. Luis wrote checks and sent everything through the post office the old-fashioned way; he kept a detailed ledger. At the parking garage not far from Luis’s house, a rough-looking young parking attendant in baggy jeans didn’t ask Gage any questions at all. The young guy simply assumed Gage was Luis and pulled Luis’s black Cadillac sports sedan right up to the front entrance. He even handed Gage Luis’s keys and sent him an unusual glance, as if he and Luis shared a secret. Gage smiled and handed the young guy a twenty-dollar tip from the cash he’d found in Luis’s pocket the night before. Then he slid into the front seat and pulled away, with his chest pounding and his face warm. When he was out of the parking garage and on the street he took a deep breath and exhaled. The parking attendant, who must have known Luis fairly well, didn’t give him a second glance.
From there, Jase drove to Brooklyn, where he was more familiar with the shops. He stopped at a discount clothing store first and picked up a few outfits so his brother wouldn’t have to walk around in a short black bathrobe all weekend. Then he stopped at a grocery store where they sold prepared foods, a small appliance store, and one of those big bookstores where they sold all kinds of things. He paid for everything with a credit card he’d found in the wallet Luis had left in his other pocket. Gage and Luis both had deplorable handwriting and Gage was certain no one would question him about his signature. And if anyone did, he had Luis’s driver’s license to prove he was Luis Fortune.
He loaded the trunk of the Cadillac until he had trouble shutting the lid, then drove back to his building in Brooklyn to set his twin brother up for the weekend in the soundproof apartment on the third floor. He parked a few buildings away so no one on the street would recognize him. He didn’t know many of the neighbors because he worked nights and kept to himself. But he didn’t want to take any chances, so he put on a pair of dark glasses and a dark red baseball cap he’d found in Luis’s closet earlier that morning while he’d been choosing which one of Luis’s many outfits he’d wear that day. Gage had never seen so many clothes and such an elaborate closet in his life. It was like walking into an expensive department store, with the dark walnut shelves and handcrafted nooks. Everything was color coordinated and all the wooden hangers were lined neatly and spaced an inch apart.
The entire block was so quiet Gage could have rolled a bowling ball down the street and no one would have noticed. It was a Friday morning, which meant everyone was working. He knew Billy, his neighbor downstairs, would be up front in the grocery store, nowhere near the back storage room. Billy didn’t run any specials on Fridays and he spent most of the day either slicing deli meat, making sandwiches, or waiting on customers in the front of the store. If Gage slipped down the narrow side alleyway, which he’d always hated doing, he knew Billy wouldn’t hear him walking up the back steps to the third-floor apartment. Billy, though he was the sweetest guy Gage had ever known, was one of those large, overweight men who didn’t move beyond where he had to move unless he had a serious reason to exert himself.
When Gage unfolded from the car, he pulled the baseball cap down as far as it would go and adjusted the dark glasses. He was wearing the same jeans Luis had been wearing the day before, but he’d put on a different shirt that morning. This shirt was a slim-fitted black polo that hugged his chest muscles and made them pop out. He’d always wanted a shirt just like this, but he’d never been able to afford one. He’d also found an expensive rust-colored suede jacket to put on over that. Even if anyone Gage knew just in passing happened to walk by, they wouldn’t have recognized him as Gage getting out of a brand-new black Cadillac, wearing clothes like that. Most people knew Gage for his bleached blond hair and the white shirts he wore all the time because he couldn’t afford anything else. No one on that street had ever seen him drive a car. But more than that, no one who knew him had ever seen him wear a baseball cap in public.
He filled his arms with groceries and large plastic bags and slammed the trunk lid. He’d have to make two trips upstairs, because he’d bought so many wonderful little goodies for his twin brother. In the alleyway, he held his breath, praying he wouldn’t run into a rat. When he reached the back staircase, he carried the bags up, left them on the third-floor porch, and went back down for the rest of the things. He wound up making four trips instead of two. Two of the items he’d bought for Luis required him to carry them up one at a time, and they weren’t as light as he thought they’d be.
On the last trip up the wooden steps, he unlocked the door to the third floor apartment and stepped inside with a large box in his arms. He set the box down in the kitchen and brought everything else inside and closed the door. After that, he walked back to see Luis and found him right where he’d left him the night before, still inside the kinky sex cage, wearing the same short bathrobe Gage had dressed him in when he’d carried him up the stairs.
Gage set the car keys down on a small black table and smiled. He removed the sunglasses, looked around the room at all the kinky sex gadgets, and rubbed his jaw. In broad daylight, with sun streaming through dingy white sheers hanging on the living room windows, the kinky playroom looked even more dismal than it had looked the night before. The glum, black sling hanging from thick metal chains wasn’t as shiny as it had been. And the narrow bed with the black rubber sheets had cracks he hadn’t noticed beneath the red spotlight. He could see now that the walls had been painted a flat black, and not very well. There were images of the old floral wallpaper showing through the black paint in certain areas, and there were spots of dried black paint dotting the hardwood floor. Mr. Bousum’s deceased partner must have been a sloppy painter. Though Gage had never actually seen a kinky sexy playroom before, he had a feeling this one had been pulled together by amateurs who didn’t know what they were doing.