by John Roeburt
He’d used a razor blade, a knife couldn’t have cut so cleanly and sharp. Her soft, plump body was insanely mutilated from the torn, blood-splattered breasts to the long, jagged slashes on her thighs. The final, life-ending slash had been made at her neck, from which blood puddled over her chest and caked. It had been an ear to ear cut.
Slowly, I took the sheet at the bottom of the bed and covered her body. Then I sat down on the chair next to the bed and stared numbly. One soft, curving calf was still exposed, sticking out from under the sheet. My eyes traced the gentle curve down to the trim ankle where the cord bruised her skin.
I didn’t feel good. I had promised to help her. This had been help?
I watched the still, butchered body of what had been a young, attractive girl a few hours before, and vaguely heard Paul using the phone in the next room.
When he returned to the bedroom he stopped beside me and put a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“It’s not your fault, Cole. Don’t start thinking it is.”
I looked up at him and something in my eyes must have told him to shut up. He went over to the bed and looked under the sheet again.
“What’re you going to do?” I asked.
He turned around, puzzled.
“Huh?”
“What are you going to do?”
“Cole, you know as well as I what we do. Prints, pictures, lab crew, canvass the area for witnesses.”
I got up and joined him at the side of the bed. My hand was steady as it pulled back the sheet. I looked down at her pitiful body for a long time before I covered it.
“Listen,” I said, grabbing Paul’s arm. “You do that, you hear? Make your tests and take your pictures. Do everything in the book, and do it ten times if you have to. But you do it right. Do it like the girl under that sheet was your own daughter!”
I let go of his arm and headed for the door. I had just made another promise. To myself.
“Where’re you going?” Paul asked when I reached the door. I looked at him. I felt like screaming but it came out a whisper.
“To kill me an animal.”
* * * *
I took a cab back to Broome Street and picked up the T-bird. It was early afternoon by then. I hadn’t eaten since the night before, but my guts were too full of hate to be thinking of food. I drove to a bar in the Village and killed two double shots before my hands felt steady enough to handle a phone. Using the public booth at the rear of the bar, I dialed China’s number and waited. It was a long time before she answered.
“Hello?”
“China?” I asked.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Cole Winters. I’ve got to see you. Can I come up?”
There was a pause and I heard her breathing over the wire. She sounded strange. Like she was out of breath.
“Cole, do me a favor first? It’s terribly important.”
“Shoot”
“I-I’m sick. I need a fix bad. If I call my connection, will you pick it up for me on your way? Please?”
“Will he give it to me?”
“Sure. Please, Cole. I’m too sick to go.”
I agreed. She gave me the address. Told me the street and number of her pad. I had to get the fix at a tobacco shop on Fourth Street.
Picking up China’s dope wasn’t so difficult as I’d imagined. Apparently her phone call had paved the way. I had no trouble at all finding the shop or getting the stuff. Her connection was an old Negro behind the counter in the shop.
A half hour after our phone call I pulled up in front of China’s apartment building. It was a nondescript place in a junk-infested neighborhood by the river.
She lived on the second floor at the end of a long, dark corridor that stretched in front of me in a maze of shadows. When I remembered whose company she’d been in the last time I’d seen her, the hairs tingled a little at the back of my neck. I walked through the shadows.
One short knock got me in. She had been standing on the other side, waiting. The black pony tail bounced crazily as she stepped back and motioned me in.
“Got it?” she asked, looking hungrily at me.
“I got it,” I said.
As she closed the door I looked at her. She was wearing a yellow terrycloth robe that hung to her calves and belted tightly at her waist. Even the robe’s rough material couldn’t hide the provocative curves inside, but it was her face that got my attention.
Unlike the glowing, healthy color of the night before, it was ashen. Her high cheekbones seemed sharp and bony under the hungry intensity of her eyes. She was sick, and shaking like a leaf.
“Please,” she said. “Give it to me!”
I handed her the fix.
“Sit down,” she said. “I’ll be back shortly.”
Abruptly, she ran into the bedroom and closed the door. I was counting on the dope to pull her together without overdoing it. China and I were due for a talk.
I glanced at the room. It was the living room; apparently one of the only two complete rooms comprising the apartment. There was a door on each side of the room. The one she’d gone through and one opposite it, leading to a closet-sized kitchenette. Her bathroom probably adjoined the bedroom. Which figured; she’d need water for the fix.
I looked around the room but it was strictly an accessory to the bedroom. I doubted whether she even used it, much less left anything lying around.
A telephone stood on an end table by the couch and I walked over and picked it up. I dialed Javitts’ office number and waited. It was answered almost immediately by a gruff voice.
“Is Lieutenant Javitts there, Sergeant?”
“Just a moment, sir.”
I worried my lip and waited.
“Javitts here,” he said.
“Paul, this is Cole.”
“Yeah, Cole. You all right?”
“Why? Shouldn’t I be?”
“Well, you stormed out with blood in your eye. I thought—”
“I know it’s early, Paul,” I cut in, “but—anything yet?”
“You must be psychic. We’ve got a warrant out for Bradley Neal. A woman in the apartment house saw him leaving shortly after the M.E. figures the girl was killed.”
I frowned at the receiver. “How’d you get a positive finger so soon?”
“A hunch. You told me he was the girl’s fiancé when the brother was killed. When we checked for possible witnesses I brought his picture with me.”
“Damn,” I said.
“Oh, and I got a make on your last night’s playmates. The driver was a yegg named Cookie Decarlo, a small time strong-arm boy. The guy you shot it out with was Juan Moreles. It looks like you were right about Zato.”
“Why?”
“Moreles was a runner of his. He pushed to the beats in the Village.”
“Does his record show a nickname, Paul?”
“Yeah. They called him Chico.”
“Thanks, Paul. I’ll keep in touch.”
I hung up and stood there. I had been wrong about Chico’s elimination. Apparently his boss had given him one last assignment to square himself.
The cop-scream for Bradley bothered me none. He wasn’t our killer, but it wouldn’t hurt him to stay in stir until I proved who was.
There were no sounds coming from China’s bedroom when I walked to the door and listened. I turned the knob and opened it.
She was sitting on the bed with the left sleeve of the robe pushed up to her armpit. Her robe belt was tied around her upper arm. Her dull eyes looked up at me as she pressed the rubber nipple of the eye-dropper attached to the needle in her vein.
I watched her while she pressed the rubber and released it, over and over again, almost hypnotically. The heroin was already in her system working it’s magic. Now she was cleaning the dropper of all possible dregs of the dope—with her own blood.
Finally, she stopped and pulled the needle. She untied the belt and worked her arm a little before tying it around the robe again. But not before I’d s
een the clean, round curve of a bare breast where the robe parted.
“I’m okay, now,” she said, getting up. “Just let me get rid of this stuff, huh?”
I nodded and lit a cigarette while she cleared the bed of her “works”; the eyedropper outfit, a burnt spoon, a piece of cotton, and her cigarette lighter.
After she’d stashed the articles in the bathroom, she came back looking more like last night’s China.
“I’m bent,” she said. “I think I took too much.” She plopped on the bed and the robe parted at her thigh. “What’s new, pops?”
“Louise Parks was murdered this morning.”
“Murdered?” she said. “How awful.”
I watched her face, looking for reaction. Her condition made it hard. She seemed shocked but the dope wouldn’t let it penetrate very deeply.
“I’ve got questions, China. I want answers.”
She moved her leg and the robe parted farther. She wasn’t wearing anything under it. “What kind of questions?” she asked.
“Two men tried to kill Toni and me after we saw you last night. They didn’t make it, but not because they didn’t try. Do you know who sent them, China?”
Her pupils were brown circles of granite. “Who?” she whispered.
“The same guy you left The Purple Pit with this morning. Manny Zato.”
She jumped off the bed and crossed the room in long, nervous strides. Shaking a cigarette from the pack on the dresser, she lit it savagely and turned around. Her pupils sparkled with fire.
“What do you want from me?” she yelled. “So Manny Zato sent somebody to kill you. Look, pops, I’m just a tired junkie minding my own business. Why lean on me?”
“Zato,” I said.
She laughed bitterly.
“What about Zato?”
“Last night looked pretty convincing. You two seemed cozy from practice.”
She strode to the bed and sat.
“So you saw us last night and you think we’re cozy.” She smiled sardonically. “Pops, you need an education. Yes, we were together last night. And do you know where we were going when you saw us? Right here, pops. Right here on this bed. Just like we’ve been doing for the past two weeks. That’s right—since before Ricky was killed.”
I had to stop myself from grabbing her hopped-up, little head and shaking it.
“I think he killed Ricky,” I said.
She watched me and her lips quivered, but she didn’t cry.
“You want to know something, pops? I couldn’t care less!”
I crossed to the bed with the rotten bile of three days of death choking me. I grabbed the front of her robe and backhanded her across the mouth. She fell against the pillows and lay still. A little trickle of blood slid down the corner of her lips.
“You little tramp!” I choked.
She smiled at me. She lay there against the pillows and smiled up at me with pity, like I was a nut or something that just had to be humored.
“It’s okay, pops, hit me. Take it out of my hide if it’ll make you feel better. I know what I am and it looks like you’re just finding out.”
I stepped back and leaned against the wall. Already, I was sorry I’d hit her. She watched me steadily as she moved over to the edge of the bed again.
“I’m an addict, pops. Do you really know what an addict is? An addict will sell his own mother to get a shot. Or anything else that somebody wants to buy.
“I told you I loved Ricky, and I did. But Ricky’s dead and I’m not. Sure I sleep with Manny Zato. And I did it even when Ricky was alive. Manny Zato has more dope at his fingertips than I’ll ever use in two lifetimes. And if he likes what I give him enough to give me what I like—that’s how it’s going to be.”
She rose and began walking up and down in front of me. Her eyes were fierce now, and defiant.
“You think he’s the first?” she yelled. “I can’t remember the first! I’ve got a commodity, pops. A commodity that men dig. I don’t sell it on the street. I’m not a whore. But I use it, man. I use it because it’s all I’ve got to use.” She stopped in front of me and laughed. “What is it, anyway? Some kind of precious gift that only gets delivered with a marriage license like the book says?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’ll tell you something, pops. The only thing that’s precious to me is the shiny little .26 I stick in my arm.
“How do you think you were able to cop for me this afternoon? You think that’s kosher, that delivery service I got? Manny Zato, man. That’s why I got it. And that’s why he can crawl in that bed any goddamned time he wants to.”
I looked at her and I didn’t want to hit her any more. The only emotion left in me for China McCoy was a very big pity. I dropped the cigarette in an ashtray on the dresser and walked past her to the door.
“Cole, wait!”
I stopped in the doorway and faced her. She was standing by the bed watching me, fright in her eyes.
“What are you going to do?”
I shrugged. She wouldn’t understand. She was beyond that.
“Get him,” I said. “Get him for Ricky and his sister.”
Her eyes moistened and she started to cry. Not blinking; just crying, with the tears rolling down her cheeks, unheeded.
“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Please, Cole, don’t. I know you. You’ll do it and he’ll be dead and I’ll be sick. Please, Cole. I’m begging you!” It was hard to watch.
“Good-bye, China,” I said.
“No!” she cried. “Wait!”
She was panting now as her hands flew to the belt and jerked it from her waist. The robe fell open, exposing her soft, naked body through the gap.
“Wait,” she said, again. “I’ll be good to you, Cole. I promise. I know things.”
She reached up to her neck and slid the robe off. It dropped to the floor in a heap. Slowly, she strode toward me, placing one tiny foot in front of the other, rubbing her thighs together as she moved.
“Wonderful things,” she whispered. “Stay with me, Cole. Forget Manny.”
I watched her come, running my eyes over the flawless perfection of her body for one last time. Then I turned around and left her there.
I felt dirty, somehow, and very tired.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
She followed me to the outside door of the apartment, crying and pleading, indifferent to her nakedness. I opened the door and went out to the hall without looking back.
She stopped pleading but I could still hear her sobs in the doorway behind me as I walked down the hall. I reached the hall intersection at the end of the dark corridor and was about to descend to the first step of the stairs when she screamed.
It saved my life.
I threw myself to the right, landing with a thud against the corridor wall. The shiny glint of steel flashed quickly to my left in a deadly chop that tore the air an inch from my shoulder.
He’d been waiting for me in the darkness, knowing he’d have me cold as I walked to the shadowy staircase. Had China not screamed it would’ve been easy.
As I twisted sideways I jammed my arm against the shoulder rig as hard as I could, almost dropping the .38 as it literally flew into my hand. My attacker regained his balance and lunged at me head-on with the knife low in his fist as the .38 came out. I didn’t have time for a shot; the action came too fast. I dropped my left shoulder and met his lunge with my right hand, whipping the gun in a desperate, upward arc. It clanged with the knife and I pushed with everything I had. He fell back to the top of the stairs. The dim light from the bulb glowed momentarily on his thin, blond features.
It was Zato’s man, the kid called Blade.
He stood panting for a second at the edge of the top step. The blade glinted with tiny stars at the razor-sharp edge. A fine edge, honed to perfection for death.
Or mutilation.
“Drop it, Blade,” I grated. “Drop it, you bastard, or I’ll wash you right where you stand.”
He didn’t drop it. He made a sound somewhere bet
ween a grunt and a moan and hunched his back for another lunge.
At that distance I couldn’t have missed him blindfolded. I squeezed off three shots in succession and watched all three of them tear his chest apart. He dropped the knife and teetered over the top step for a breathless second, a look of unaccountable shame slowly covering his shocked face. Then he fell backward, headfirst, down the stairs.
He landed in a heap on the landing and lay still.
I put the .38 away and turned around. My nerves were screaming inside me. China was standing in the hallway, naked as sin, with her little fists pressed against her lips, in horror. I looked at her and remembered that she’d saved my life.
“Call the police,” I said, as gently as I could. “Ask for Lieutenant Paul Javitts of homicide, and tell him what happened. Tell him I’ll see him later.”
She stood there rigid, her eyes staring at me over her fists.
“Did you hear me, China?”
She nodded, numbly, never taking her eyes from my face.
I left her there and went down the stairs to the landing where Blade was sprawled on his back. His face looked peaceful in the dim light. He might’ve looked asleep had the blood not been on his chest. I stepped over the body and went down the stairs.
It was after three when I got to the office. I had stopped in a diner downtown and forced down a ham sandwich and two cups of black coffee. But the sandwich lay at the bottom of my guts like a wet rock. In the last fifteen hours I’d seen violent death come to four different people, and the juices in my stomach churned too much to go for food.
I rode up in the elevator without even minding its creaking obstinacy. I felt hollow with uselessness. Alistair Neal was waiting for me in the reception room.
He looked up from the lumpy couch when I came in and the pain in his eyes was almost physical. He seemed to have shrunk since the last time I’d seen him.
I closed the door and eyed him coldly.
“Slumming, Mister Neal?” I asked.
He got up and stood with his hands hanging in front of him, playing with his homburg.
“I must talk with you,” he said.
I nodded and unlocked the door to the office.
If he wanted to follow me in, he could. It didn’t make much difference. I was getting tired of the Neals and their unhappy money.
