Searching for Harpies

by Charlie Vogel

  “I wish I knew. I’ve heard rumors about her, but only rumors.” He thought a moment as if assessing us then relaxed back into his seat. “There’s no evidence, but people on the street said she killed a whore by the name of Roxanne.”

  Lori slowly put a cigarette in her mouth drawing the eyes of both us males. She drew in the flame from a cheap, plastic lighter and took a very deep breath, her breasts rising with the inhale. I didn’t know about Moore but I held my breath. Damn, I wished she would quit smoking.

  I forced my attention back to Moore. “Yeah, and we’re convinced she also killed Penny. Both murders have exactly the same stamp. Whore shot in the head when not working. Can we work together or not?”

  “Anyone tell you—maybe your other cop friend—it’s against department policy to work with civilians? Try getting special permission from the Police Chief. I’m not risking my ass and badge on amateurs . . . until my superiors tell me otherwise.”

  “So you don’t want to help?”

  Lori blew a cloud of smoke toward him. “Knowing him, he wants on the payroll, Bob.”

  I looked from her to him. “Is she right?”

  He cracked a lopsided smile. “Maybe. How much you paying?”

  Remembering Lori and Harry lecturing me about the streets and Moore’s own words, I snapped, “What’s the going price?”

  “Four hundred a week until I find Harpies. Then two thousand bucks for me to give you an identity and location.”

  When I looked at Lori, she nodded. I leaned forward to emphasize my sincerity. “If that’s what you want, you’ll get it. I expect to hear from you once a day. You pick the time and don’t miss even one call. Here’s Lori’s cell phone number.”

  “Why can’t I talk to you direct?”

  It was my turn to smile, but let my eyes glare at him. “Because you disgust me. One more thing. Lori will be working the streets for awhile.’

  “Again?” he let the sarcasm roll.

  “Leave her alone.”

  He gave her the down-and-up look again, this time ending on her breasts. “As long as she doesn’t break any laws. Didn’t catch her doing the dirty before. That doesn’t mean I won’t now.”

  * * *

  Movement sounded on the other side of the door. I knocked again, only harder, thinking maybe she didn’t hear me. A moment later the door barely opened to show an eye peering through glasses.

  I cleared my throat and asked, “Mrs. Pierce?”

  “Yes. Who are you?”

  “Bob Norris, and this is Lori Saint. May we have a few words with you?”

  “What about?”

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions about Penny.”

  “I’ve already talked to the cops. Nothing more to say.”

  “We’re not the police.”

  Lori spoke gently as if coaxing a scared dog, “We brought you some chicken. Picked it up at the Gizzard and Wings. Can we bring it in and just sit for a few minutes?”

  The door opened wide enough to reveal the frumpy old lady. Her scraggly white hair fanned out like a waist length, see-through cape. Lines of loose skin made her watery blue eyes behind the glasses look droopy like a hound dog’s.

  Pulling her ratty robe tighter around a stained night grown, she carefully backed a step. “I’m not really dressed for visitors, and my place needs cleaning. I’ve been awful tired lately. But come on in, if you’ve a mind to. Pay no attention to the cats, they’ll sniff you over and then go about their business.”

  Lori lagged behind when I stepped across the Welcome mat. The acrid odor of too many cats and too little cleaning burned my nose. I immediately decided not to take a seat on the couch she waved at. A coating of loose hair covered everything. Glancing around, I thought maybe a hundred small eyes watched me with suspicion. Lori walked forward gingerly and dropped the box of chicken on the cluttered dining table. An instant later three striped, gray cats circled the container, nosing and pawing at the cover. The smell of the unventilated apartment reminded me of the orangutans’ enclosed area at the zoo, but ten times worst. I kept swallowing, but finally decided to breathe through my mouth rather than suffer the stench.

  Lori pulled out two straight-back chairs and pointed me into one. Mrs. Pierce pulled the three cats off the table before collapsing into a nearby over-stuffed chair. Cat hair flew into the air. I shut my mouth and held my breath. I’ll burn my clothes later. She leaned back and sighed as five, six, maybe ten felines converged on her to rub and purr their way into comfortable positions like a living blanket.

  Next to the chair’s armrest, a metal tray on thin legs stood covered in newspapers, a TV remote, and a large, circular ashtray, filled almost to the brim with ashes and cigarette butts. I knew the kitty litter box or boxes must look similar.

  She lit a thin cigarette. Her deep inhale wasn’t as entertaining as Lori’s always was. She crossed her ankles dislodging two cats and asked, “Now, what do you people want?”

  “Mrs. Pierce—” I began.

  She interrupted, “Jesus Christ, call me Harriet. No one ever uses my last name in this damn place.”

  “Father Manning talked to you shortly after he left Penny’s.”

  A cloud of exhaled smoke rose before she answered. “The priest. A real nice guy, a looker and thoughtful, to boot. He gave me a bunch of canned stuff last week. Good thing, too. My check was late and I had to eat canned cat food. Yep, food right out of my babies’ mouths. Goddamn government. Always late, but they’d raise hell, if you’re just one day behind on taxes.” She waved the cigarette in the air and ashes drifted over the cats below. They didn’t move. “I shouldn’t complain, I ain’t paid nothing to the feds in many a year now.”

  Lori squeezed my knee under the table. “Harriet, can we ask you about Penny? Did you see her after you visited with Father Manning?”

  “Nope.” Cigarette puff. “Her place was upstairs. I can’t climb them steps, so didn’t see much of her. Up ‘til a few years ago, she’d stop in here about once a week or so, just to say hi. Several of my babies had babies by then. She didn’t like them much, I guess. But she’d wave and call out if she saw me.”

  I leaned forward. “Harriet, have you heard about this person who calls herself Harpies?”

  “Jesus, yeah.” Her hacking cigarette cough disturbed some of the cats. She stroked them back into place. “Satan’s child, that one. Even came a visiting once, but I guess she decided I wasn’t ready for the fires of hell.”

  Lori and I exchanged excited glances.

  “When? When did you see her?”

  “Years ago. Back in the fifties. I walked them streets then, ya know. Didn’t have to worry about that Aids shit back then. I’d catch the men from the late shift at the packinghouses. Most a’ those guys were married with wives sound asleep at home.” She straighten as if in pride. “I was probably one of the reason the men on Pollock Hill had small families. It was like me doing my civic duty to keep the population controlled, don’t ya think?”

  Lori giggled but nodded enthusiastically making Harriet grin She took over the nudging. “Maybe you’re a little confused, though. Harpies couldn’t have been around then. I worked the streets not that long ago and never heard of the bitch until Roxanne was murdered.”

  “Well, sister, you still got a lot to learn. Hm, I thought I recognized you. You and Penny were mighty close, eh?”

  The light left Lori’s eyes. “Yeah. I loved her, closer than a sister.” She leaned forward, so intent she didn’t notice her forearms pressed on the sticky table. “Please tell me, have you seen Harpies recently?”

  “Of course, girl. The night she killed Penny. She carried away her soul. I seen her walk right pass my door.”

  I quickly spoke up, “Wait, Harriet, how do you know she killed Penny?”

  “Well, you ain’t thinking the priest had anything to do with it, are ya? I told them cops about her. All those bastards did was laugh at me.”

  “We aren’t laughing, are we? What did
she look like?”

  “Young.” She lit another cigarette. “Satan loves them young ones. She wore one of them hankies around her head, you know like that black woman on the pancake syrup? Well anyway, she walks by my door and gives me one of them stares. Like ‘What’re you looking at, bitch’ stares. Made me shiver. I woulda hissed like one of my kitties, if I’d had the guts.”

  “Did you give the police a description of her?”

  “Awk, tried to. The goddamn cops only hear what they want. Talked to Sgt. Slominski. Ya know, he could have been my grandson.” She frowned and flicked ash onto her cats. “Hell, he probably was. You-“She pointed at Lori.”-probably know I gave away a few kids to that Saint James Orphanage. Except my daughter. Tried raising her myself.”

  “Harriet, let’s get back to Sgt. Slominski. Did you tell him anything about the woman in the kerchief?”

  “That young smart ass wouldn’t stick around to listen to shit. He kept sneezing. Sneezed so hard, he almost fell over. The uppity bastard said it was something to do with my cats. After that crack I wouldn’t a‘ told him shit if he begged.”

  Lori asked, “But what were you going to tell him?”

  “Harpies was carrying her soul bag in one hand and a gun in the other.”

  * * *

  I placed the charcoal pencil on the table, leaned back, and studied my favorite model. After comparing the thin, shaded lines to the reclining nude, I molded a kneaded eraser into a point. Using the tapered end and the edge of my little finger, I blended in the shadows under the chin. Sunshine filled the room from the skylight. Direct rays penetrated through the glass from the patio’s sliding door, casting a highlight at the tip of her nose, rendering the projected flesh almost invisible under her dark eyes. The straight, brown hair fell to her right side, shadowing her round shoulder. So beautiful, so perfect in body. And soul . . . .

  “You about done? The goddamn air-conditioning’s turning my bare ass into one big goose bump.”

  I tossed the eraser into the pencil box. “Sure. Take five.”

  Lori sat up on the Ozark hook rug. She pivoted on her butt and faced me, her large breasts high and nipples pebbled in the cold. She showed no modesty. Keeping her legs spread, she reached out for the white, terrycloth robe hanging on a nearby chair. Totally attuned to my close attention, she stood slowly, pushing one shapely arm into a sleeve then twisting just a little to find the other sleeve. Leaving the robe untied, she stretched and shoved her fingers into her silky hair. I tried to swallow but had no spit.

  “So what did Roy say?”

  I heard her question but no response came to mind as the light made one body part vivid and left another in shadow. She straddled the straight back chair as if it were a horse’s saddle. Folding her arms over the top, she rested her chin on her overlapping hands. The wooden spindles didn’t hide much between the robe’s open flaps. My mind exploded with images of endless sex. A cloud moving across the sunlight jerked me back to the present’s reality. As if hidden by a dropping stage curtain, the erotic and acrobatic images slid to the back of my mind.

  Eileen would be disappointed in me having sex with someone young enough to be our daughter. The subject of having children had been a sore point—

  Lori clearing her throat jerked me out of my morbid thoughts. I shifted my attention from her lower body to her wide mouth and recently corrected perfect teeth. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “Bob, are you feeling okay?”

  I shifted and lowered the sketch pad to my lap. “Yeah. I was just thinking about something . . . in the past. Why don’t we just call it a day? You want a beer?”

  “I thought you needed to get some drawings done for your one-man show? Isn’t it in a couple of weeks?”

  I turned away from her as I stood and worked on arranging my pencil box that didn’t need it. “I’ve probably done enough. I’m not really interested in selling anything. The show’s just a formality. An art critic will be there. He has a column in the local newspaper and talked me into doing it. I’ve already selected and sent enough to the gallery. I’ll get us the beer.”

  Returning to the living room with opened brews, I found Lori hadn’t moved. She still rested her chin on her hands atop chair back, her dark eyes now staring toward but not seeing the glass patio door. I waved the beer in front of her face to bring her back to the here and now.

  She took it from me. “Thanks. Now you ready to tell me what Roy said?”

  “He talked to Sgt. Slominski. It seems the homicide detective is considered one of the department’s best. Claude informed—”

  “Wait, wait. Who are you talking about?”

  “Slominski’s first name is Claude.”

  “With a name like that, I can imagine how this goddamn investigation will turn out.”

  I knew Lori’s first impressions sometimes hindered her opinions of people. “He has solved some of Nebraska’s biggest murder cases.”

  “Where was he when Eileen was killed?”

  I sat down to nurse my beer. “I don’t know. Roy didn’t say.”

  She raised the bottom of the long neck bottle to toast her point. Protruding her bottom lip around the opened end seemed erotic to the point of perversion, at least from my point of view. . Finishing a long draw, she held the bottle’s neck with her thumb and forefinger. “So is this Claude going back to visit Harriet Pierce?”

  “No. Roy said the department considers Harriet’s statement unreliable. Did you know she’s in an advanced stage of syphilis, the dementia part? Slominski discovered she forgot some of the important facts of Father Manning’s visit, facts they verified elsewhere. On a hunch, he checked at the Women’s Clinic on 24th Street and learned Harriet waited too long to be treated for tertiary syphilis.”

  “Holy shit! How long has she had it?”

  “Twenty to thirty years of passing it on to her lucky johns. She didn’t have Aids to worry about but didn’t worry about VD, either.”

  “Well, that’s just plain stupid. You gotta stay clean or you’re outta business. She knew that even back then.”

  “And your point is?”

  She flipped me off. “So what are we going to do now?”

  “I still want to talk to Fox. Maybe if we hear the truth about why Nelson wanted to shoot him, it might lead us somewhere.”

  She took another long drink from the bottle before asking, “Did Roy say anything about Daley?”

  “Yeah, he said two .22 caliber rounds into the back of his head that didn’t come out the front. Forensics found the rounds had the same rifling marks as the bullets found in Roxanne.”

  Lori sat straight with a light of excitement on her face. “Doesn’t that prove Tommy’s innocent?”

  “Not just no, but hell no. Those bullets have different markings than the ones found in Penny.”

  “Meaning Roxanne and Penny were killed with different guns. So what! How can they say Tommy murdered Penny when they haven’t found the fucking murder weapon?”

  I leaned back into a cushioned chair and placed the cold bottle between my thighs. Lacing the fingers of both hands behind my head, I starred at the ceiling trying to put the facts in perspective. “It’s the DNA. Father Manning was the last person who visited her. They can’t get beyond that.”

  “But . . . that’s not what Harriet said.”

  The next instant Lori’s bottle hit the floor with a thump, not breaking but spewing beer onto the luxurious flooring. “Shit, shit, shit,” she sputtered.

  I rolled out of the cushions, grabbed the rag I used for the charcoal drawing and dropped to one knee to wipe up the spill. Without getting up, she bent sideways to pick up the bottle, her breasts on display in my face.

  “That’s the first time I ever dropped my drink while sober.” She swung off the chair and knelt to pull at the rag. “My mess. Let me clean it.”

  We faced each other, barely inches apart. Sunlight flashed a sparkle from her teeth as she smiled seductively, almost smug as if she
knew she had me at her mercy. I leaned forward, my dry lips settling over that smile. As warmth surged through me, I pressed closer. Her mouth softened. My hands held her shoulders and I pulled her sideways onto the floor. The fingers of my right hand slid downward through the unshaven, velvety curls above her mound as my left palm supported her head and kept her lips pressed against mine. Her mouth opened. As my tongue slipped inside, my wedding band rubbed against the diamond stud in her right ear lobe. As if a window had shattered, I broke away, stretching onto my back, one arm across my eyes.

  I felt her rise to her knees at my hip, the fabric of the robe sliding over my hip and pooling around her. Softly, gently she asked, “Something wrong?”

  My arm lifted so my eyes could drink her in. Her full and so perfect breasts with their brownish-pink areolas and pointed nipples beckoned to me. “I-I’m . . . I don’t know what I am.”

  “You’re thinking about Eileen again, ain’t you?”

  “Sorry, Lori. I want you, but….”

  She pulled her robe up onto her shoulders as I sat up and clasped my hands around my bent knees.

  “I know you do, Bob. I thought two years . . . Well, I guess it will take more time. You loved Eileen very much, didn’t you?”

  I nodded. “We had a good marriage. A kind of balance. I miss her. Sometimes I think she’s still alive and our separation will only be a short time longer.” I thrust my fingers into my hair. “Other times I think I’m just crazy.”

  I opened my eyes and saw her shimmer of tears. “Why-why don’t you just go? Go and search for your own life. I’m not good enough or young enough for you to keep chasing after me. You’re so goddamn beautiful. Any other man would call me insane for not loving you. Why do you keep coming back for more . . . when I can’t seem to-to give it?”

  She stood up then stepped closer to run one finger down the side of my face. “Not young enough? I’m the one who’s too fucking old, Bob. In life. Why am I sticking around? Because I want to be here when you are ready. And you just proved to me you care for me.”