Body Language

by James W. Hall

  “How big were they?”

  “How big were what?”

  “The money bags?”

  “What? You don’t have any response to my cockroach speech? I thought I was pretty eloquent. You’re just going to ignore that? Subsocial. Omnivorous scavengers. The metaphorical connections I was making. Jesus.”

  “How big were they?”

  “Okay, okay,” Emma said. “The bags were big. Very big. Huge. Stuffed tight. This big.”

  Emma spread her arms out wide enough to embrace a potato sack.

  “Good,” said Norman. “Big is good.”

  Emma had to laugh.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Big is very good. In this case, I think it’s safe to say, big is fucking great.”

  NINE

  From the one working pay phone in the emergency room, Alexandra called in to work and got Sylvia Rigali, one of the senior administrators. They’d seen the news and had called somebody to take Alexandra’s shift that night. Everybody was worried about how Stan was doing.

  Alex told her Stan was going to be fine and thanked her for being concerned.

  “Something else, Sylvia.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Anybody we know work that scene?”

  “Matter of fact, your buddy Dan Romano was driving past, coming into work. He was one of the first ones who called it in.”

  “He say anything about it?”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything strange. About the accident, how it happened.”

  Sylvia paused a moment, then said, “The whole thing was strange, Alex. Start to finish. Money everywhere. People going nuts. A riot.”

  “Yeah, I saw that part on TV. But I mean the technicals. The crash itself, skid marks, how fast the truck was going. Those things.”

  “It was pretty straightforward. Dan didn’t say anything looked strange. Why? You got something we should know about?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m just in shock. Letting my imagination race. Forget I mentioned it.”

  “Forgotten,” Sylvia said. There was a voice in the background and Sylvia told Alex to hold on. When she came back, she said, “That was Shonberger. He said to take the rest of the week off if you need it. We’ll get by. You got a ton of vacation time stored up.”

  “Tell him thanks, Sylvia. I appreciate it. I’ll check in tomorrow, let you know how it’s going with Stan. I don’t think I’ll need the whole week, but maybe a day or two till things settle down.”

  Next, she called Gabriella’s cell phone. Her oldest and dearest friend.

  Their high school friendship had deepened when they found themselves in several of the same courses at the local state university. Even in high school, Gabbie had known she wanted to be the first woman governor of Florida. And she’d worked tirelessly in that direction for the last fifteen years. But Alex knew two Gabriellas, the one who showed up in front of the TV cameras, the tough, outspoken politician, defender of the disenfranchised, a woman willing to take on unpopular crusades even if they hurt her at the polls, and the other Gabbie, a vulnerable, sensitive woman driven by a desolate childhood, an alcoholic father, a mother crippled by depression.

  “I knew you’d see it on TV and be worried,” Alexandra said.

  “How bad is it? Will he walk again?”

  “Oh, it’s not that bad. Broken leg,” Alex told her. “Supposed to be up and around before the end of the week. Crutches, that’s all.”

  There was a roar in the background on Gabriella’s end. It lasted twenty or thirty seconds.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “This new place,” Gabriella said. “I’m in the flight path of Miami International. It’s like that all day, every few minutes. It was the only house I could find on such short notice.”

  They waited till another jet roared away.

  “How about Lawton? You want me to pick him up, bring him over here for a few days? I can kick Hugo and Felix out of their room.”

  She said, “No, but thanks.”

  A young black man in jeans and a torn T-shirt came over to the pay phone and stared at Alex and jingled some coins in his fist.

  “Is everything okay with you, Gabbie? You sound terrible.”

  While another jet took off over Gabriella’s house, Alexandra looked past the black man. Her dad was immersed in one of the Hollywood tabloid shows, a handsome young actor smiling, jabbering on about his new movie. A security guard stood nearby, and the two of them seemed to be sharing jokes.

  “I hear it in your voice, Gabbie. Something’s wrong. Are you safe?”

  Alex heard her draw a long breath.

  “Damn it, Alex. A car’s been driving up and down the street all day, dark windows, going very slowly. I think they found me again.”

  Until early last month, Gabriella Hernandez had been running fifteen percentage points ahead of the other candidate for Miami mayor. Then a photograph of her surfaced, a snapshot taken a year earlier on a trade mission to Cuba. The photo caught her in the act of giving the island dictator a kiss on the cheek. The Herald put the photograph on the front page, and all the TV stations led with it, too. Gabriella claimed it was just a diplomatic air-kiss of greeting. But on the evening news, one of the TV stations used computer-enhanced graphics to show that Gabriella Hernandez’s lips indeed had come into actual contact with the tyrant’s bushy beard. Cuban exile leaders were enraged, calling the kiss an act of treason and demanding her immediate withdrawal from public life. Later that night, despite a police car parked down the block from her house, bullets blasted out Gabriella’s front windows.

  After her campaign headquarters were firebombed and she endured a week of death threats, she withdrew from the election. But the fanatics kept hounding her, and in the next month she changed residences twice more, and now she was in hiding. Not even her ex-husband knew where she was.

  “I gotta make a fucking call.”

  The young man was leaning in close. He had a bandage across his right cheek and a halo of marijuana clung to his clothes.

  “When I’m finished.” Alex turned her back on him.

  “I could go down there right now,” Gabriella said. “Bring your dad back here. Say the word.”

  The surgeon Alexandra had spoken with earlier was standing out in the middle of the waiting room, scanning the area.

  Alex sighed and waved over at the doctor, catching his eye.

  “Look, Gabbie, I’ve got to run. I’ll call you later tonight.”

  “If you need the name of an attorney, Alex, I know a few excellent ones.”

  “Why would I need an attorney?”

  “To sue Stan’s company, of course. Good God, Alex, the TV people are saying the tires on the truck were bald. It wasn’t Stan’s fault there was an accident.”

  Alex felt the sudden dampness on her leg and swung around. The tall man had his penis out and was pissing on her jeans.

  “Gabbie, I’ll call you later.”

  She clapped the phone down and, swiveling quickly, shot out her right hand, seized the black man’s left wrist, gripped his thumb, bent it hard against the joint, and twisted. As the man gasped, she lowered her shoulder into his chest and slammed him up against the wall, got her left forearm against his throat.

  Through watery eyes, the man stared at his paralyzed hand.

  “Now reach down with your free hand and put your pathetic dick back in your pants.”

  The man gasped.

  “You’re fucking killing me. I can’t breathe.”

  “Do it. Put that thing away before I tear it off.”

  She backed off the pressure slightly. He took a raspy breath and managed to snake his hand down to his zipper and put himself right.

  “Okay, okay, you can let go.”

  From across the lobby, the security guard came jogging over. Alexandra wrenched the young man away from the wall. Something in his wrist popped and he yelped.

  Stepping in, the security guard got a hammerlock on the man’s free arm. Al
ex let go and moved away.

  “You want me to call one of the cops outside, lady?”

  Alex looked down at the spreading darkness on her jeans.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll survive.”

  “She broke my fucking thumb, man. Arrest that bitch.”

  Alexandra summoned a pleasant smile, turned it on the man.

  “You’re free to use the phone now, sir.”

  The man leaned against the wall and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. Apparently, he’d lost his urge to communicate.

  When she got back to her father, Dr. Satawana was sitting in the chair beside him, the doctor mopping his face with a handkerchief. He was in his blue scrubs. He couldn’t have been more than thirty, but there was a lot of gray in his hair.

  “Stan’s been hurt,” Lawton said. “I saw it on the television.”

  “He’s going to be fine, Mrs. Rafferty,” the doctor said. “He’s a very strong man. Very fit. And that helped a great deal.”

  “Stan plays football,” her dad said. “Defensive end. He was MVP for Ohio State. Or maybe it was Florida. I’m not sure.”

  “Can I see him now?” Alex asked.

  “They’re moving him to the west wing, room three twelve. Give him an hour to wake up. He’ll still be groggy, though.”

  The doctor smiled, and as he was about to say something else, his name boomed from the overhead speakers. Wanted immediately in ICU. He rose, patted Alex on the shoulder, gave her an exhausted smile, and left.

  While Lawton dozed, Alexandra settled back in the red plastic chair and watched as the ambulances arrived every few minutes, causing a momentary stir as the next victim and the family members swarmed into the room. Several children were playing tag, running around the perimeter of the room, squealing. There was a teenage girl alone on a seat two rows away, cradling her pregnant belly and singing a lullaby. Up and down the rows, a young black man in a white uniform swished his mop, rapping aloud to the music in his headset.

  Alex nudged her father and Lawton jerked awake and looked around at the room.

  “Was I snoring?”

  “No, Dad. We need to go.”

  “You used to wake me when I snored, put a hand on me until I woke, and then I’d lie there and try to stay awake until you went back to sleep, so I wouldn’t bother you again. But sometimes I couldn’t do it and I’d go right back to snoring and you’d have to wake me again.”

  “That was Mother, not me.”

  “Mother?”

  “Yes, your wife. Grace.”

  “Has Grace been hurt? Is she in the hospital?” He was staring around at the noisy waiting room.

  “No, it was Stan. Stan was in an accident.”

  “Stan, yeah, sure. I saw him on television. He robbed an armored truck.”

  “It was an accident, Dad. His truck ran off the highway and Stan was injured. Now we’re going up to his room, duck in and see if he’s awake; then we’re going home.”

  “Good,” her father said, standing up. “I need my beauty rest.”

  Outside in the emergency driveway, the full moon rustled behind the fronds of a royal palm. In the grass beneath the flagpole, a half dozen egrets poked listlessly for beetles. The October air was balmy and rich, carrying the aroma of fermented fruits and the sugary vapors of jasmine, that alluring musk of sexual promise.

  It was a night in this same season eleven years before that Stan Rafferty had bestowed his first fumbling kiss on her eager lips. And every October since, catching that same tropical scent in the air, Alexandra found herself replaying those awkward hours with the muscular football star, the swoon, the aching desperation she’d felt. He was the first and only man she’d allowed to touch her body. A man she’d once believed was as strong and protective as her father.

  Out in the hospital parking lot, it took her a moment to get her bearings, but finally she spotted the west wing, and Alex led Lawton over to the building, marched past the nurses’ station, and took an elevator to the third floor.

  “You’re not going to lock me away in this place, are you? I don’t want to stay here. Their cheese crackers are stale. And it stinks around here. Smells as bad as a hospital.”

  Alex was counting down the rooms to 312 when a young blond woman backed out a nearby doorway, kissed her fingertips, and blew the kiss into the room. As she turned to leave, she caught sight of Alex, swung around, and rushed off down the hall in the opposite direction. She had a schoolgirl freshness, late teens, early twenties, with the elastic walk of a woman who’d had considerable practice being watched. Alex felt a low, hollow space open inside her. A cold clamor in her heart.

  Two steps more and she could see that the door the young woman had exited was 312.

  For a moment, she hesitated outside the room, staring after the retreating figure; then she budged the door open and peered inside. It was a single room. Stan was propped up against pillows, his eyes closed.

  Alex eased the door shut.

  “Where now?”

  She took a long breath and blew it out, then led her father by the arm down the hallway to the gray doors that were still rocking from the young woman’s passage. There was an elevator beyond them and the illuminated numbers were counting down, until they stopped at the basement level.

  “Come on, Dad, we need to hurry.”

  They took the stairs and, mercifully, her father didn’t lag, didn’t question. He seemed thrilled to be leaving the building so quickly. Alex chided herself for such impulsive behavior. Racing after some young woman she’d barely glimpsed coming out of her husband’s room. It was lunacy. The woman had probably stepped into the room mistakenly and no doubt had ducked away in embarrassment, the little finger-kiss only a gesture of apology.

  At the bottom of the steps, she paused, debating the silliness of this.

  “You forget where you parked the car?”

  “No, I remember where it is.”

  “Well, what’re you waiting for? Let’s go. I’m so hungry, I could eat a house. Or a horse. Which is it? House or horse?”

  “Horse.”

  “Doesn’t make sense. If you were hungry, you’d rather have the biggest thing around. A house is much bigger than a horse. Am I right?”

  “You’re right.”

  “But then, I guess it would be hard to eat a whole house, no matter how hungry you were. Unless you were a termite.”

  As Alex pushed open the basement door, she heard a nearby car engine turn over and race to life. Spotting the exit arrows pointing to her left, she looped her arm into her father’s and headed that way.

  While Lawton continued to brood over the difficulty of eating a house, Alex heard the car approaching behind them. With the barest turn of her head, she saw it was a blue Honda Accord, half a dozen years old, with a rusted circle missing from the left-rear panel. The windows were tinted dark, and in the weak light of the parking garage, Alex couldn’t tell who was driving.

  Tugging her father’s arm, she angled to the right and timed their pace so she and her dad passed by a dozen feet away as the Honda halted at the cashier’s booth. The driver’s window lowered and, yes, it was the same young blond woman. Alexandra turned away and steered her father behind the car and read its plate. ALP 290.

  “Are we lost?”

  “No,” she said. “We’re not lost.”

  “Stan’s a thief,” her father said. “A killer, too. You’re lucky he’s hurt, because now you can run away while he’s laid up. It’s a damn convenient circumstance, if you ask me.”

  “We’re going home now, Dad. We’ll see Stan in the morning.”

  “I missed my supper entirely,” he said as they climbed the steps back up to the street level. “I’m about to die of hunger. In which case, I could eat a hearse.”

  She stopped and peered at him. His face was blank, and she was about to turn back to the stairs, when a smile surfaced.

  “It’s a joke,” he said. “Play on words. Horse, house, hearse. About to die of h
unger. Die, hearse.”

  She shook her head, frowned.

  “Now you’re mad at me,” he said. “You’re going to blow a casket.”

  She chuckled.

  “You can be really funny sometimes. You know that, Dad?”

  “I know. I’ve always been funny. I was born funny.”

  It was nearly midnight. The one bulb he allowed her glowed dimly in the hallway. He was reclining on the plaid couch with the 16-gauge needle stuck deep in the ante cubital fossa, and into the large artery in his left arm. Tubing ran down to the pouch that lay on the bare floor. Around 300 ccs had already dripped into the clear plastic bag. Another three or four minutes and it would be full.

  She stood in the doorway, gripping the fresh quart of vodka by the throat, a couple of good swallows gone already. When she inched closer, he could see the woozy sway in her step.

  “You killed another girl, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right. You want to hear about it? The gory details?”

  “No.”

  “This one was very sad.”

  “Stop it. I don’t want to hear.”

  “When I entered her, she started weeping like a child. Poor little girl, bawling there on the floor of her nice rented apartment. Pretending to be upset, to be scared, but the truth was in her eyes. They try to fool you with their tears, with their pleading, but I can see through the surface. Behind the sobbing, I saw her rage. I saw her hatred, her murderous desire.”

  “No more.”

  “Oh, come on. You love it, Mother. You know you do. I’m your window on the world. I’m your personal soap opera.”

  She blinked at him, trying to bring her eyes into focus.

  “That blood you’re taking, it’s the blood you leave behind.”

  “Yes, yes. That’s good. Very good, Mom. I leave it behind at the crime scene. Why do I do that, Mom? Do you remember what I told you?”

  “You’re the Bloody Rapist You’ve killed five girls.”

  “Oh, good for you. A regular Miss Marple. You’re not as dotty as you pretend.”

  “You’re going to burn for eternity. You’re going straight to hell.”