The Safe Word

by Karen Long

  “Ok, where are you going?”

  “Downtown.” Eleanor reached her car and flipping the lock began to climb in.

  “Hang on! Eleanor, we need to talk.”

  She waggled her cell phone pointedly before closing the car door and turning over the engine. Laurence rapped his knuckles on the window.

  “I’d like to buy you a coffee now so we can discuss effective strategy on this,” he said emphatically. She let out an audible sigh and contemplated driving off but didn’t because whatever Eleanor Raven was, she wasn’t stupid. She would have to share the case and if this was to be her new partner till Mo got back on his feet then so be it. Reluctantly, she opened the door and headed for the local coffee shop, noting that Laurence Whitefoot stayed several paces behind her.

  D’Angelo’s coffee shop was frequented by medical technicians, cops and morticians, much to the constant chagrin of the proprietor ‘Big Al’. He had placed a large, hand-written sheet with the legend, ‘Wash your hands before you use the restroom!’ on the wall that divided the ‘Ladies’ from the ‘Gents’. Big Al had established the coffee shop in the days before the new city morgue had been built and his customers had been mostly clerks and accountants from the financial district, a demographic he approved of. Now the daily conversation consisted mainly of horror stories about murders, accidental deaths that defied imagination and natural law and the inevitable consequences of drinking and eating too much, both long term vices of Big Al. So, in a small act of empowerment, Big Al always used butter and lard in all of his cakes including those marked ‘low fat’ because if cholesterol was sending him skyward early, then he was going to take a few of those smug bastards from the county morgue with him. Homicide, he had decided was a nebulous concept.

  Eleanor took a window seat and watched as Whitefoot struggled to pull his wallet out of his pocket and hold onto the huge file of photographs at the same time.

  “Sugar?” he asked. She shook her head. “You seem a little pissed at having to work with me,” he said quietly. Eleanor leaned closer to him.

  “Mmm, a little,” she replied.

  “Why?”

  Eleanor opened her mouth and then closed it abruptly as she realised she wasn’t entirely sure why she was so angry with him. It couldn’t just be because he was sitting here instead of Mo, or maybe it was.

  “Your partner Artie…he’s coming back?” Whitefoot asked.

  “Possibly,” she answered evasively.

  “Well, when he does, they’re probably going to hook me up with Timms, while Wadesky’s on maternity leave,” he smiled at her. “So maybe we could call this a temporary partnership and enjoy the experience?” He smiled encouragingly. “I’ve not been in homicide for very long and you have the best solve rate in the county. It’s a great opportunity for me…” His voice trailed off.

  “I am not won over by flattery Detective Whitefoot, in fact it has a tendency to put me on edge and suspect I’m being manipulated. Is that your intention?”

  Whitefoot hesitated. “Yes. I want to work with you because I want to learn. I need this opportunity and I’m trying out a few approaches to win you over.”

  Eleanor stared at him for a second or two before responding. “Ok, lets run through what we’ve got.” She saw Whitefoot visibly relax. “Our victim is in her twenties, she has no tattoos, no needle marks, her legs are waxed, hair professionally dyed and her teeth whitened and capped. So…” Eleanor looked at him, wanting him to continue.

  “She’s no hooker…”

  “It’s very unlikely she’s a hooker,” Eleanor corrected him.

  “She’s wearing a very expensive ring, which will make it easier to identify her,” he looked down at his notes.

  “You don’t need to follow up the ring to identify her.” Eleanor watched his eyes fasten on her with interest. “What will be important is how long it takes her fiancé or parents to call in her disappearance. This woman comes from money and is marrying into money. Women like that are missed very quickly.”

  Whitefoot’s phone rang, he glanced at the number, “It’s Matt”. Eleanor looked at him with interest as he took the call.

  “Ok, pm’s not finished yet but Matt’s giving me the head’s up…”

  “A head’s up from the ME’s Office? Have you got something nasty on Matt Gains?”

  Whitefoot smiled and shook his head, “We go back a long way.”

  “How?” Eleanor pushed.

  “We went to med school together,” said Whitefoot quietly.

  “Med School? That’s not how I got into policing,” she stated.

  “I’m a doctor… was a doctor,” he said.

  “And now you’re a cop? That’s quite a sidestep Detective Whitefoot. How qualified are, sorry, were you?”

  “Qualified enough, just in the wrong thing. Now do you want to hear what Matt has to say?” Eleanor nodded and made a mental note to investigate his strange and intriguing past later on. “There were no traces of semen or obvious sign of recent penetration.”

  Eleanor’s brow furrowed. “So we’ve got a dead woman with obvious signs of healed strap marks at least a week old and then a collection of injuries that appear to have been received over the past twenty-four to thirty-six hours,” she said slowly. “Are there any injuries that fall outside those two periods?”

  “Not that they’ve seen, according to Matt,” he replied. “Oh, and she does have a tattoo,”

  “She does?” Eleanor was interested.

  “Yeah, a yin and yang circle apparently.” Eleanor grabbed her bag, stood up and began to leave. “What’s happening?” Whitefoot grabbed the photographs and notebooks and swung his coat over his left shoulder. “Am I coming?”

  Eleanor turned round and looked at him, puzzled. “I don’t know. Are you?”

  “So what’s the relevance of the tattoo?” Whitefoot asked as Eleanor drove slowly through the building traffic. “Doesn’t it mean him and hers? Opposites together?” Eleanor was thinking and had pretty much pushed his presence from her mind. “Opposites attract?” Whitefoot cleared his throat noisily making her turn. “Are we going to check out tattoo parlors?”

  “Do you want one?”

  “What?”

  “A tattoo?”

  “No, I just want to know what the hell we’re doing and what the relevance of the yin yang thing is?” he said with growing irritation.

  “It symbolises complimentary opposites. Two people with opposite needs and desires combine to form a dynamic whole.”

  Whitefoot tried to piece together the implications of this information but it was eluding him so far. As Eleanor parked the car outside a dingy building, surrounded with litter and broken paving slabs, Whitefoot was still struggling to make the connection and then one glance at the torn poster adorning the entrance made it clear. The As You Like It club was a two-storey building with matte black painted walls and windows. The entrance was a large washroom door with an old-fashioned vacant/occupied lock, which was presently in the ‘occupied’ position. The poster, which rippled aggressively in the cold wind showed an image of a young woman, hogtied on a wooden frame, which resembled a mid-eighteenth-century weaving loom. The woman, her long red hair dragged tightly into a high pony tail, was rolling her eyes in apparent ecstasy, though the leather gag and ball made this difficult to ascertain. Eleanor took out her badge and held it up to the discreet camera positioned above the door, while staring at him.

  “Why here?” whispered Whitefoot.

  “Somewhere’s gotta be first,” she replied as she hammered again on the door with her fist.

  “Police Gary; open the door!” she yelled. Ten seconds later a bolt was pulled and the door opened to reveal a tousled, grey-haired man in his late fifties, sporting an unlit cigarette in a long 1920s holder and wearing a stained and frayed silk dressing gown of the variety adopted by Hugh Hefner. “Gary Le Douce is proprietor of this salubrious establishment and this,” she gestured to Whitefoot, “Is Detective Laurence Whitefoot.�
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  “I heard about Mo, how is he?” asked Gary in an affected British accent, which he seemed to have acquired from old Noel Coward movies.

  “He’s good, let’s talk,” she said walking past him.

  Gary nodded soberly, turned round and began to limp his way along the gloomy corridor that opened out onto a gloomier bar and dance floor, lapped by a low level mezzanine.

  “I’m taking tea, care to join me?” asked Gary as his slippered feet flapped noisily across the beer-sticky floor.

  Gary brushed the seat of a red velvet sofa, with his hand indicating that they should sit down. He gestured to the teapot but both Eleanor and Whitefoot declined. “Now my dears how can I help?”

  “Someone’s not playing nice Gary,” said Eleanor emphatically.

  “Oh dear. Have you received a complaint?”

  “From the pathologist yes. She feels that someone who doesn’t understand the rules is a danger to everyone and anyone with ideas as to who that might be would be performing a service both to their city and mankind in general.”

  “Hmm. Well I would help if I could,” said Gary cautiously sipping his tea. “But all my girls and boys just have fun and no-one really gets hurt.” He smiled encouragingly at them.

  Eleanor leaned towards Gary, lowering her voice so much that both he and Whitefoot had to strain to hear her. “But someone did get hurt Gary and as a man who makes his living from these little games, I expect you to furnish me with some information. Rapidly.”

  Gary placed his teacup on the saucer carefully and leaned towards Eleanor. She studied the lines around his mouth and eyes, covered patchily with ill-toned foundation. Whitefoot felt the hairs on his neck rise as Gary’s indolent expression began to harden and his back straightened.

  “Tell Daddy about the games… in detail.”

  With snake-like speed, Eleanor leaped from her seat and crushing his windpipe with her right hand, used her left to snatch a set of handcuffs from her back pocket and in a fluid maneuver flipped him over onto his chest and cuffed his hands behind his back. Whitefoot stood up, unsure what his response should be. Gary was making little snuffling barks, as he tried to twist his head away from the suffocating effects of the cushion but Eleanor was pushing him down firmly between his shoulders. “I’m not playing,” she hissed into Gary’s ear.

  “Detective?” whispered Whitefoot but shut up when he saw her eyebrow rise. Eleanor pulled Gary into a sitting position, noting that his make-up had left a greasy smear on the cushion cover.

  “Now we’ve established who’s in charge here Gary, perhaps you’d like to have that conversation that eluded you before? So I repeat, who isn’t playing according to the rules?”

  “No-one here and I aint heard of anyone neither,” snarled Gary, all pretense of English heritage having evaporated.

  “Oh I find it hard to believe that a nasty old tabby like yourself doesn’t know exactly what’s going on,” said Eleanor.

  “I don’t talk from a compromised situation,” he snorted. Eleanor waited for a second or two and then released him. Gary flopped onto the sofa. “I’m telling you the truth when I say that there’s no-one getting out of line here.”

  “Anyone new around?” asked Whitefoot.

  “A few but no alarm bells,” replied Gary, finally lighting his cigarette and inhaling deeply.

  “How about her?” Whitefoot held an enlarged black and white photograph of the murdered woman and noted that Gary showed not a single sign of repulsion or surprise at the image of the dead woman. He shrugged.

  “Recognise this?” said Whitefoot showing him an image of the ring, “She had a small yin-yang tattoo under her armpit,” he added hopefully as Gary stared at the ring. He snorted, blowing a line of smoke out of each nostril. “Yeah, I’ve seen her.”

  “When and who was with her?” asked Eleanor calmly.

  Gary settled back into the sofa. “They’ve been in a couple of times.”

  Eleanor nodded. “Can you id either of them?”

  Gary stared at her silently.

  “When did you last have an inspection Mr Le Douce?” said Whitefoot threateningly.

  “Oh please!” Gary laughed and much to the Detective’s surprise, so did Eleanor.

  She turned to Gary, leaning in closer to him. “Give me something Gary, let me believe you are co-operating, eh?”

  There was silence as Gary seemed to weigh up his options.

  “He drives a black Porsche but I don’t keep tapes and I don’t look at plates.”

  Eleanor nodded and placed her card next to the teapot. “You’ve been a great help, let’s keep it that way.”

  Laurence Whitefoot waited till she had started the engine and pulled into the traffic before speaking. “Why’d you laugh when I threatened him with an investigation? And why didn’t we push him on the car – he said he didn’t keep the tapes but how’d you know for sure?”

  “Ok, have you met Gary Le Douce before?”

  “No,” replied Whitefoot, unsure as to where this was going.

  “You should have,” she said simply.

  “What do you mean I should have met him? When?”

  “You want to learn? Want to be a better cop?” He nodded. “Then you should already have bought drinks for yourself and for patrons in As You Like It and found out who goes there, who owns it, what makes it tick. Then you would have seen which lawyers, politicians, teachers and pros go there. That’s how you become a good cop, you research, remember and then use that knowledge to track down the bad guys, you don’t use it to judge what people do or desire. Remember that next time you curl your fucking nose up at something you don’t like the look of.” Eleanor set her jaw and accelerated through the traffic, there was to be no more conversation for a while.

  On the face of it Xxxstacy was considerably more appealing to the more daring and financially equipped. Where As You Like It had offered tawdry low-key BDSM, this club was awash with subtle lighting, plush furnishings and head height cages sporting naked, leather-bound models gyrating lazily to the steady thump of an electronic beat. Whitefoot followed Eleanor down into the gloom and noted with surprise that not only was the club open and serving in the mid-afternoon, it was busy with young executive types, swilling cocktails and wolfing down sushi. Eleanor went over to the bar and spoke quietly to a woman mixing a complicated drink, who stopped what she was doing and nodded to a colleague to take over while she ushered them both into a small back room behind the bar. Whitefoot handed her the photographs of the dead woman and an image of the ring. “Jesus! What the fuck!” she said with feeling.

  “Do you recognise her Bella?” asked Eleanor.

  Bella shook her head. “What happened to her? She looks like she got run over!”

  “She was tortured to death,” said Whitefoot simply.

  “You know who she is?” asked Bella.

  “Do you?”

  Bella shook her head energetically and looked at the ring. “This left on her?” she asked with astonishment. Eleanor nodded. “Then you are dealing with some seriously fucked up dude. He just likes to kill, huh?”

  “That’s our thinking,” replied Eleanor. Bella paused, her brow knotted.

  “We think her guy may have a black Porsche,” said Whitefoot.

  “Who the fuck doesn’t have one would narrow it down round here,” said Bella. “Guys that use this place don’t think nuthin’ of spending five hundred bucks on champagne and oysters.” She peered at the woman’s face again, her mouth turning down at the corners in disgust. “You know what sort of a place this is,” Eleanor nodded. “But this is just fun stuff, it aint for real.”

  “It was real for her,” Eleanor let this sink in for a moment or two. “You call me, huh?”

  Bella nodded vigorously and took the proffered card. Eleanor turned to go. “You still got the notice boards?”

  “Yeah, but the boss moved ’em down to the restrooms a couple of weeks ago, said it ‘lowered the tone’.”

  The r
estrooms were situated at the bottom of a set of glass stairs, illuminated garishly by green strip lights. Eleanor indicated that Whitefoot should use the ‘Men’s’ while she stepped into the ‘Ladies’. She found a large notice-board, and small business cards with women and men’s names, cell numbers and sexual preferences, were pinned all over it. There were a couple of out-of-date posters advertising burlesque and live sex shows but most bills were aligned neatly and the board seemed to be managed. She scanned the cards, collecting with a latex-gloved hand, several that seemed worth investigating. ‘Need a hard, dangerous fuck! Call Sam’ and ‘Gent seeks submissive woman for mutual pleasure’ seemed fairly typical and Eleanor unpinned them and placed them in an evidence bag. Her hand hesitated over an expensive embossed card: ‘Seeking woman of exquisite need’ and underneath the familiar cell phone number was a small yin-yang symbol. It was identical to the one she had collected for her own use the week before. For a fleeting moment something akin to concern rattled her self-composure.

  Laurence was trying not to be judgmental about any of the cards and posters displayed on the notice-board inside the restroom. Some had photographs and offers from what he assumed to be prostitutes, others had a more amateur appearance, the requests being more specific; ‘Dominatrix, with own dungeon’ seemed more a business proposal than ‘Desperate for man who knows how to dominate and teach willing slave girl’. Laurence wasn’t really sure what he was looking for and was almost tempted to grab the entire board’s worth and work through them later but that would alert anyone using the board to police involvement, so he studied the cards intently. Suddenly the door swung open and a man in his mid-thirties strode in, speaking Italian noisily into a hands-free set. Laurence glanced at the man as he urinated into the trough. Conversation and urination over, the man zipped himself up and walked back to the door. Stopping momentarily next to Laurence he tapped one of the cards with his index finger and smiled, “Very nice lady, very… accommodating,” and with that the man walked out. Laurence unpinned the card and slipped it into his pocket, as he did so he inadvertently released a second card, which fluttered to his feet. It took him several seconds to process the information on the card and turn it into a believable scenario and less than one to leave the restroom and stride down the corridor to where Eleanor was emerging from the ‘Ladies’.