"I was trying to help."
"So you decided not to inform me about Liam stranded up in Ettie's house next to this creep? Why didn't you let me know immediately?"
"You were at work."
Renee stepped toward her daughter who was sitting on the couch with her head down. "Try again," she sneered, towering over Mandy like a monster. "Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you call me at work? Why didn't you tell me when I got home from work that night?"
Mandy trembled. "Because—"
"Because why?"
"You know," she stammered. "You—you'd get mad. I tried to handle it."
Renee screamed: "You call letting a murderer come to our house over and over again handling it!"
Mandy began to weep. "I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry. I didn't know he was a murderer."
Abruptly and ferociously, Renee smacked her daughter. Within seconds, Mandy's cheek stung like a terrible burn. Renee stalked away, marching across the living room and through the kitchen. Mandy heard the slider door open and shut, and she guessed her mother was going out to confront Ettie.
Liam began to cry and apologize. "I'm sorry Mandy. I didn't mean for you to get into trouble."
Mandy told him to go up to his room, which he did. Then she went to the kitchen, opened the slider, listened to the screaming up in the apartment for a few seconds, and then closed the slider.
Eventually, Renee returned to the kitchen. She stormed by her daughter without a word, jerked the whiskey out of the Tupperware cabinet, pulled the bottle from the Christmas stocking, and poured herself two drinks before putting it away. "I'm calling the cops."
The same older cop that had come in August arrived at the house within a half-hour. Renee told him the story. He sent two guys out to the camp but Pete Donner had left the tent city. They couldn't do much, anyway, the cop said. "Not if he did nothing."
Later, Mandy found her mom at the table with the whiskey again. Renee apologized. "I never should've hit you." Then she added, "I just hate your Aunt Ettie. I just fucking hate her."
* * *
Ettie remained quietly holed up in her apartment for the next two weeks, not even joining the family for dinner when Mandy's father was home. When she did emerge, it was in the middle of October. November 15th was approaching and the homeless were yelling more and more, especially at night, louder than a strong wind sometimes. On several occasions, Mandy noticed Ettie standing outside, smoking her cigarette and drinking her beer, staring into nowhere.
* * *
One night, about ten, while Mandy watched TV in the living room, Liam asleep upstairs, Renee on her hospital shift, someone pounded on the slider door.
Mandy's heart jumped and she raced to the kitchen. It was Ettie. Mandy let her in.
"It's coming! It's coming tonight!" Ettie screamed.
Mandy sat her down at the kitchen table. Ettie shook and her teeth rattled and she stunk of cigarettes. "You watch, hon. You watch."
After some time, Ettie calmed and she sat quietly, staring. Then, unexpectedly, she let out a breath and rasped: "Your mom has some whiskey around here, doesn't she?"
Mandy shrugged and tried to lie. "No, she doesn't drink that."
Ettie leaned forward, her wild eyes ticking back and forth. "I've run out, you see. They took my beer, them tent people. Just a little. Get me just a taste, sweetie. You know where it is."
The air seemed to fizz out of Mandy's body. Ettie was scaring her. "Don't you have beer?"
Her aunt sucked her teeth. "The Regulator ain't give me my money lately. She's holding it." Suddenly, she seized her niece's wrist. "The bottle is in one of these cabinets, ain't it?"
Mandy swallowed. "I don't know."
Ettie gripped Mandy's arm tightly, squeezing like a clamp. Mandy was shocked by her boney aunt's strength. "You go get it, sweetie."
Mandy went to the Tupperware cabinet. She wrenched out the bottle in the Christmas stocking. Ettie had gotten up and taken a glass out of the dish rack.
Ettie drank three glasses and then she slipped through the slider, into the dark night but not before turning around to whisper, "It's coming."
Mandy closed the door and locked it. Even though most of the whiskey was gone, she dropped the bottle into the Christmas stocking and returned it the Tupperware cabinet. She turned the TV off and went upstairs. Before she went to bed, she stopped in her parents' bedroom and looked through the window. She saw the white glows of the tents and trees rocking in the wind, but she saw no one.
* * *
In the morning, Mandy found there was no milk again. On the counter, she saw her mom's purse—strange, Renee hadn't left it there in two years. Mandy removed five dollars and walked to the 7-Eleven. She was worried she'd see Pete Donner and his dog on the rope, but she didn't. At home, Mandy found her brother Liam in front of the television. He said. "Juice, please." Mandy used the last of the apple juice and when she went to throw the bottle in the recyclable can in the closet, she saw the bottle of whiskey resting at the top, empty.
Mandy gave her brother his juice, then went outside, crossing the patio and making her way to the garage. She tried Ettie's door. It was unlocked but something was blocking it. Mandy pushed and pushed until she got through and there lay Ettie, twisted and bruised, her head matted with dried blood.
Mandy winced from the gore, staring at the body for a long moment, feeling like she should scream or cry, but didn't. Instead, she bent down and placed her hand in front of Ettie's mouth and nose. No breathing.
* * *
The same cop arrived, and although an investigation occurred, it was concluded that Ettie had gotten drunk and tripped down the stairs. A younger police officer wanted to investigate more because he thought maybe someone may had broken in and pushed Ettie down the stairs, but the older cop said, no, it looked about right.
Renee only spent a week cleaning the apartment before she rented it to a nice nurse who worked at the hospital. Mandy noticed her mother was happier than she'd seen her in years. Sometimes Renee even sang along with the radio.
* * *
On November 15th, the homeless and their tent city were moved off township land and no one heard screaming again.
Jen Conley's stories have been published in Thuglit, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, BEAT to a PULP, Shotgun Honey, Out of the Gutter, Big Pulp, Talking River Review, SNM Horror, Shotgun Honey Presents, Protectors, and others. Forthcoming stories will be in Plots With Guns, Thuglit, and Yellow Mama. She's been nominated for a Best of the Web Spinetingler Award, and is one of the new editors at Shotgun Honey. Born and raised in New Jersey, Jen lives in Ocean County where she teaches middle school and writes in her spare time. Visit her at jen-conley.blogspot.com or follow her on twitter, @jenconley45.
TOUGH COP
Charles Boeckman
Ross Grimm was the kind of guy who could bring out a cold sweat all over you by looking at you. I've seen punks get down on their knees and start babbling before he even took his hands out of his pockets. The hoods, big and small, were afraid of Ross. The department was afraid of him because one day he was going to work a suspect over and the guy was going to pass out for keeps and then there'd be hell to pay.
I had been afraid of Ross all my life—and more than ever now, because soon he was going to find out the truth about me and kill me. But that's another story.
He wasn't the right kind of cop. There was something twisted and wrong inside of him. A man shouldn't get such an unholy pleasure out of torturing other men. I looked into his eyes one night when he was giving a punk his treatment. I had to go somewhere and throw up.
This particular little punk hadn't done much. Swiped a portable radio from a shop by cutting the plate glass show window. It wasn't a big, important crime. I couldn't see why Ross was doing that to him just to find where he'd hidden a twenty-nine-fifty portable radio. I got my answer when I looked into Ross's eyes. It wasn't the radio at all. It wasn't the crime. It was the pleasure Ross was getting out of it. Every time t
he little guy screamed a look of sadistic delight crossed Grimm's face.
I was new in the police department then. It was about the time I met Ross's wife, Moira. I often saw that look in Grimm's eyes in the following months and it never failed to nauseate me.
I'd been on the force about a year when we were assigned to clean up Bragg Street, a particularly tough district. It was down by the tracks. A skid row of honky-tonk joints and bars, it was a happy hunting ground for dope peddlers, pimps and their dolls, undercover gambling, and vice in general.
Not a Saturday night passed without a knifing or holdup. We weren't supposed to eliminate the vice, which was an attraction for tourists, but to clean out the tough characters. We were picking them up on street corners, out of poolrooms, on any charge we could make stick—vagrancy to peddling marijuana.
Ross brought in one of the punks one night and took him in the back room. I knew before they came out the guy would have signed a confession to some petty crime or he'd be dead.
I walked down the headquarters corridor, smoking a cigarette jerkily. There was the cold, slimy feeling of sweat on my face.
Aleck Dickerson, one of the D.A's assistants, came in with a brief case. He saw the look on my face.
"Grimm questioning Meenie Jackson?"
I inhaled what must have been a pound of smoke. "You might call it that."
"We've got a damn writ of habeas corpus. Stirmska's lawyer got it through. Well have to let Jackson go."
Stirmska was the crime and vice boss of Bragg Street. He ran the punks and looked out for their interests. It used to be he could pay off the right people and be let alone, but we had a new city administration now and he had to fight tooth and nail to hold on to his crime domain.
"You haven't gotten here yet," I told Dickerson. "You were held up by traffic. It will take you at least ten minutes. By then it won't make any difference to Jackson."
Dickerson took out his handkerchief, patted his face. He went over to the water cooler and sucked up some ice water. Then he came back nervously. "Grimm has me worried. I don't like his tactics."
"Who does?" I lit another cigarette off the butt of the one I'd sucked down. My hand was shaking. "But he's cleaning up Bragg Street. That's what the D.A. wants, isn't it?"
"I know. But one of these days he's going to go too far. He's going to hit somebody or mark them up and they'll raise a stink."
"He never marks them up," I said through the smoke. "He's an artist. Even a doctor wouldn't know what he's done to them." The sweat on me felt cold.
From the other side of the closed door we heard a couple of muffled thuds and a man's gargled scream. The perspiration came out thicker on my face. My cigarette tasted like scorched paper.
"God," Dickerson murmured. It wasn't blasphemy the way he said it. It was more like a prayer.
I looked at that closed door and I thought that some day Ross Grimm is going to work me over like that and a tortured confession wrung from my lips wasn't going to stop him. Nothing would until I was dead. And then he'd go on pounding me into an unrecognizable pulp. My stomach became a hard knot.
After a few minutes the door opened. Ross came out, rolling his shirt sleeves down over hairy arms. He was breathing hard and his shirt was stained with sweat. He grinned at Dickerson as he buttoned his cuffs. "I've got another one for you to send up the river. A signed confession to possession of marijuana and taking part in an armed robbery. Let's see Stirmska get him out of that." He looked at me with the open contempt and hatred of a strong man for a weakling. "Street, go on home and get some sleep. You look sick."
I glanced past his thick, chunky figure, into the room. The skinny little suspect, Jackson, was lying on the floor where he'd rolled off the chair. Ross was right. I didn't feel so good.
I drove my battered coupe across town to my three room flat. It hadn't taken Ross long to figure out how it was with me. Even before he'd checked back into my Army service record and found out about my dishonorable discharge for cowardice, he knew ...
I had gone through school with Ross Grimm before the war. He knew a lot about me. He remembered the fights I'd run away from—the tales I'd carried to the teachers. He remembered the time I walked off the field in the middle of a football game in a blue funk. He knew about that morning on Okinawa when I huddled cowering and bawling in a foxhole and let a Jap machine gun cut a wounded buddy to little bloody shreds only a few feet away.
Yeah, Ross Grimm knew about me. And knowing, he liked to spread it around to the other guys on the force. I hated him for that, but then I'd hated Ross Grimm for many years for knowing about the weakness in me.
When I walked down the dark hallway to my apartment on the second floor I saw an edge of light around my door. A slow, gathering excitement spread through me. My heart began picking up speed and my breath came harder.
She always affected me like this. After six months the feeling was the same. She was a sickness that tortured and frightened me, but never failed to bring me achingly alive inside. My hand trembled like a man's fingers unbuttoning a woman's blouse as I unlocked the door.
I stood in the doorway, looking at the woman in my apartment. She was sitting in an easy chair, turning the pages of a magazine while she waited for me. She had a drink in one hand and she was sitting cross-wise in the chair with her long, nylon-sheathed legs swinging idly over its arm.
She was Ross Grimm's wife.
She looked up at me and smiled very slowly. She put the drink down and lazily reached up and slipped her fingers under the mane of golden hair, lifting it from the nape of her neck and squeezing it. That way the soft lamp light spilled along the creamy curve of her arm to the inviting lushness of her breasts. She swung her legs off the arm of the chair and the hem of her dress slipped above her round knees. Looking at me that way, with the insolent smile on her lips, she stood up and began walking toward me. Her mouth was going slack at the corners and her eyelids drooped a little.
She wore a simple black nylon dress. The skirt was pleated all the way around and hugged the full, firm thighs of her long legs when she walked. The bodice was cut in a halter style that bared her smooth, symmetrical back and plunged low in front, deep between her large breasts. She had full, prominent cheekbones that shadowed her cheeks under them, smoldering violet eyes and a wide mouth that was always hungry for kisses.
"I thought," I said, my voice thickening, "you weren't coming any more."
She didn't say anything, just kept moving slowly nearer. Her left eyebrow arched slightly and the corner of her mouth quirked upward. It was a quizzical, questioning expression. She stood inches from me, looking up with that expression. Then, languidly, she reached up. Her blood-red fingertips trailed along her creamy throat to her shoulder and pushed one side of her halter off her left shoulder.
She lifted her gorgeous white arms and waited for me with an impatient gesture, she shrugged her right arm loose. The bodice of the dress fell away, baring her to the waist. She wasn't wearing anything under it.
"Moira," I whispered with a clumsy tongue. i
She lifted her gorgeous white arms and waited for me to claim her ...
Later, I lay on the rumpled bed in the other room, staring up at the ceiling, A neon sign across the street kept blinking on and off. It was blood red. It shone through a fire escape outside the window and made a pattern on the dark ceiling of my bedroom, like drops of blood. In me, there was the old sick fear that lived like a parasite on the fibres of my brain, but with it, a kind of exultation. I was always like that after a session with Moira, scared silly and yet laughing at Ross.
Moira came out of the kitchen with a drink in each hand. She was only wearing long silk stockings and black suede ankle strap shoes. I wondered what there was so damn seductive about silk stockings on a naked woman. She gave me my drink and curled up on the bed, propped on one elbow. Her lipstick was smeared and her blond mane had tumbled over one eye. She was damp with perspiration.
"Why don't you leave me al
one, you blond witch?" I swore, turning away from her.
"How do you spell that, Jimmy?" she chuckled. "Either way. It fits both ways."
"Yeah, it does. Doesn't it?"
"Ross is going to find out about us," I wiped the sweat off my face. "Sooner or later, he'll find out. You know that, don't you?"
She chuckled again, softly. "Always afraid of Ross. You've been afraid of him all your life, haven't you, Jimmy?"
"Yes." I faced her. "He isn't human. I've seen him work."
She put her drink down. "You don't have anything to be scared of, Jimmy," she said huskily. Her eyes got the sleepy, smoldering look. I recognized the symptoms. Hell, wasn't there any satisfying her? I felt myself sicken with revulsion. Never before had I gotten mixed up in a mess like this. I'd never touched another man's wife. The idea had repulsed me. It affected me that way now, and still I was drawn to her in a way I couldn't fight.
The telephone jangled.
"Hell," she whispered, "don't answer it, Jimmy."
I pushed her naked arms away. I got up and went to the telephone.
Ross Grimm said in his harsh voice, "Street?"
I jumped. My heart thundered. Was he looking for Moira? It was a weird experience, talking to a man with his wife in my bed a few feet away.
"Yeah?" I said through a mouthful of cotton.
His voice was like gravel rattling across a tin roof. "Hell's broke loose on Bragg Street. They just had a killing down there. We got the call a minute ago. I'm driving down there and I want you to go with me. I'll pick you up in about five minutes. Can you be ready?"
I told him I could. Then I hung up.
Moira was propped up on an elbow again. The neon sign spilled blood-red light across her face. She looked evil, depraved ... and so beautiful she turned the desire in me into an animal lust. I dragged my clothes on with shaking fingers.
"What are you doing?"
BEAT to a PULP: Hardboiled 2 Page 15
