Don’t Look Now

by Richard Montanari

  ‘Like I don’t know what’s coming? Jack, I’d like to introduce you to Tommy. Tommy, this is Jack. What, we just met over here?’

  Pause. ‘Just this once.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Jack, please. Be the primary on this one and it’s pastry for a month.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Two months,’ Tommy said, his voice dropping to a whisper. ‘Jack, she’s wearing a garter belt.’

  Paris was quiet for a while, working him. ‘Two months?’

  ‘My mother’s eyes, Jack.’

  ‘Pastry from where?’

  ‘Is Stone Oven okay?’

  ‘Casa Dolce,’ Paris said. He loved doing this. Casa Dolce was all the way up in Mayfield Heights.

  Silence.

  ‘Well, gotta run,’ Paris said.

  ‘All right, suck my blood, Jack.’

  ‘I think you’re the one getting something sucked here, pal. Tough duty, is it? Putting in for hazard pay, are you? Because if you can’t handle it, I’d be glad to relieve you. Code three and I’m there in six minutes.’

  Tommy laughed.

  ‘I want bear claws, starting tomorrow,’ Paris said. ‘I want them fresh, I want them wrapped in one sheet of that wax paper with the serrated edge and I want them delivered with a smile.’

  ‘You’re a prince, Jack.’

  ‘Prince of the city,’ Paris said. ‘Where and who?’

  ‘See the man. Red Valley Inn on Superior. Coroner’s already rolled.’

  ‘Bear claws, Tommy,’ Paris said as he scribbled down the information and the time of the call.

  ‘I love you, Jack,’ Tommy said. ‘And I’m not just talking a summer thing. I love you for the man you are, the man you’ve helped me become. I will call you in the city.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself, Tommy.’

  Paris felt his bacon cheeseburger about to travel north.

  ‘Could be skin,’ Ocasio said. He held the translucent, pinkish strip high into the air, suspended from his large forceps. He turned it around and around. The flap of skin – which measured two inches across and four or five inches in length – slapped together wetly as Ocasio taunted Paris, whipping the pelt from side to side. ‘On the other hand, it could be beef jerky.’

  Morrison and Dolch, the two hyenas from the Special Investigation Unit, let out a snort and a barrage of adolescent cackling. They always thought whatever Ocasio said was hysterical as hell, especially if it caused Jack Paris to grab his ever-rumbling stomach.

  ‘What the hell’s the matter with you, Reuben?’ Paris said. ‘How many times are we going to do this?’

  ‘I don’t know, Jacquito. Maybe as long as you keep throwing up at scenes. You’re too easy, padrone.’

  ‘Jesus, man,’ Paris said, breathing deeply. ‘It’s amazing we have any kind of solve rate at all.’

  Reuben Ocasio smiled and, for Paris, it ruined what little there was to like about his face in the first place. Yellow teeth, bits of tobacco on grayish-brown gums. Paris shook his head and walked out of the oppressive motel room, the late-winter chill helping to calm the mixture of pickles, ketchup and Maalox churning at the base of his throat.

  Ocasio had joined the coroner’s office four years earlier, and from day one he had played with Paris’s better nature, especially during the days, weeks and months following Paris’s full-contact divorce. The two men had nearly come to blows one night at the Black Mountain Tavern, a cop bar on Payne, over something stupid like a crack Reuben had made about Paris’s ex-wife and a small-time doper named Grady Pike. Then, two weeks later, Reuben Ocasio put in twenty hours of overtime to close one of Jack’s cases. Paris found it difficult to hate the man completely.

  But the sick shit – the leaving of spleens in lockers, the intestine-on-a-roll sandwiches wrapped up in Subway sandwich paper – made Paris want to shoot the asshole.

  Hadn’t he known the moment he walked into the room? Hadn’t he known as soon as he rounded the corner and saw her face? That agonized mime face: perfect, beautiful, silent. Paris had seen Emily Reinhardt up close. It was his case and, in almost six months, he hadn’t turned up a single lead. He knew that whoever did that was an artist, a journeyman in the techniques of sexual torture, and wouldn’t strike just once. Paris knew that one day he was going to walk into another crime scene and see that death mask staring up at him again from an ever-widening pool of red.

  And then there was Maryann Milius. Greg Ebersole’s case.

  Three women now. Bodies torn, faces made up like cat-walk models. Eyeshadow, blush, mascara, powder, lipstick.

  Conclusion, Inspector Paris?

  Cleveland had a serial on its hands.

  And who was going to put it together? Tommy Raposo? Too busy with his tailor and his stockbroker and his harem. Greg Ebersole? Maybe. Except Greg had been shutting down the Caprice quite a bit himself these days and he was getting sloppy.

  Paris lit his last cigarette.

  Reuben already knew. Or he would soon. Then, of course, the Plain Dealer would have it. Then Channel 5 and their Crime Watch or Cop Watch or whatever the hell it was.

  But in the end, and probably within the next forty-eight hours, the task of setting a trap for this psycho was going to fall to one man: Jack Paris.

  The woman’s face, like the others, was free of blood: white and wooden against the navy-blue carpeting. Her lipstick was fresh, deep red, glistening in response to the flashbulbs exploding around the room. All she wore was the remains of a black-lace camisole which had been cut clean away at the shoulder blades, and a pair of high heels, now flecked with red. The patch of skin had come from the woman’s right calf. It bore a tattoo.

  A pair of roses.

  The comforter lay on the floor to the right of the bed, unstained and folded, as if set carefully aside. It looked incongruously pristine, as if it were on sale at JCPenney’s amidst a display of blood and flesh. The sheets were gathered at the foot of the bed as witness to a session of violent sex. Bloody sex. The killer was either monstrously large or had used an object on the woman. The blood from the wound that had most likely caused her death – the deep razor cut to the top of her spine – had spread to a diameter of four or five feet and looked black against the dark blue of the carpet. Paris noted that the death blow could have easily been dealt from behind in the throes of passion.

  He slipped on a rubber glove and began to look through the woman’s purse as the forensic activity in the room died down and the lab boys and the team from the coroner’s office wrapped up, taking the body with them. Paris pulled out a small, red leather wallet, bulging with plastic, the snap all but torn off. He looked at the driver’s license and was once again taken aback by the woman’s face. She was striking, even in the blurry little picture laminated in clear plastic.

  The dead woman was Karen Schallert, twenty-three, five six, one-twenty. Lived in Lakewood on Bunts Road. Paris pulled out a small stack of business cards. All belonged to men. Andy Sipari, attorney-at-law. Robert Hammer, theatrical management. Joe Najfach, Prestidigitator Deluxe! Marty Jevnikar, Lakeside Lexus.

  Paris searched her purse further. A half-finished bag of peanut M&Ms, a pair of matching combs, different widths. There were a few cosmetic basics like lipstick and a perfume atomizer. Paris found no mascara, no blush, no powder.

  Because, he thought, the killer carries his own, doesn’t he? And he is putting it on these women after he cuts them.

  Paris made a note about funeral parlors, and drove back to the Caprice.

  Drunk. Staring at the side of the Red Valley Inn. Had to be four, four-thirty. Long after the crime scene techs had left, long after the yellow tape had secured the crime scene until morning. This one, it appeared, even rated a cop at the door, stationed there to protect all the juicy evidence that wasn’t going to add up to shit. Paris parked his car alongside the motel, cut the engine, dimmed the lights, unscrewed the cap on his fresh pint of Windsor. He flashed his badge to the uniform, who nodded in deference to Paris’s gol
d shield, his seniority.

  Paris stared at the door to 127 and tried to imagine the scene from earlier in the night. According to the desk clerk, a tall white man had rented the room. Thirtyish, mustache, tinted glasses. He wore an Irish tweed walking-hat that covered most of the upper part of his face. There was, of course, no register to sign at a place like the Red Valley Inn. The Valley was strictly pay and play, no questions, no paper. The night clerk had gone to the room after receiving a number of complaints about the TV being on full blast. He knocked on the door and found the body a few minutes later.

  Paris sipped from the bottle. The liquor warmed him. He closed his eyes, imagined the man opening the door, all charm and compliments and cologne, letting Karen Schallert, twenty-three, late of Lakewood, Ohio, into the room. His abattoir. Paris imagined them making love, Karen Schallert a bit nervous at first, but soon becoming aroused.

  Had she enjoyed it? Did she think she had made the right decision, making it with this guy who was, most likely, a total stranger?

  What did she think when she saw the blade?

  Paris hit the bottle lightly, replaced the cap and stepped out of the car. The night was clear and still, the traffic had diminished to a procession of only the most desperately addicted – food, cigarettes, dope, sex, booze. He walked to the back of the motel parking-lot and ran his flashlight around the base of the two giant Dumpsters parked there. Beer bottles, a few candy wrappers, fast food detritus.

  He directed his light along the crumbling concrete retainer wall at the rear of the motel’s property. Nothing. Nothing moving. A few fifty-gallon drums, a couple of chained-down picnic tables, the remains of an old cast-iron barbecue.

  If I had a brain, Paris thought, I’d pack this in until morning.

  He glanced at his watch. It was morning. He clicked off his flashlight and—

  The sound came from directly behind him. The sound of heavy boots on broken glass. Paris turned quickly, but the tall man in the Irish walking-hat was already upon him. He grabbed Paris by the hair and ran his straight razor across his throat.

  ‘You wanted to fuck her too, didn’t you?’ the man said, his voice gravelly and wet. ‘Admit it, Jack.’

  At first, Paris thought the man had pinched him – the contact seemed so light, so minor – but a scant moment later the blurt of bright red blood that slapped against the side of the rusted Dumpster told him all he needed to know.

  The man had severed his jugular vein.

  Paris fell to his knees and screamed.

  The man came at him again, swinging the razor in broad, muscular arcs, striking Paris’s face and chest, chopping away the flesh in burger-sized chunks. For Paris, the pain soon coalesced into an excruciating red knife in the center of his brain.

  He screamed again.

  Soon, in his mind, his scream became a brain-rattling bell and the bell became the telephone and it was the phone, not the sunlight or his pounding skull or his fear, that brought him raging back to consciousness.

  It rang again. Screamed again.

  Paris looked around, terrified and disoriented, clutching at his neck. He was in his apartment and it was at least noon. He sat up, grabbed the receiver – his heart still racing furiously, his head a violent echo chamber – and brought it to his ear.

  ‘Daddy,’ the young voice said. ‘I knew you’d still be there.’

  Paris tried to speak, but his mouth was thick with wool.

  ‘Dad-eeeeeeeee!’

  It was Melissa, his daughter. And man did she sound pissed. ‘What’s the matter, sweetie?’ Paris sat up, assaulted by the noonday sun streaming through the high jalousie windows. He had to get some fucking drapes.

  ‘You were supposed to be here already,’ she said, clearly on the verge of tears.

  ‘Wait, sweetie,’ Paris said. ‘Wait for Daddy one second. I’ll be right back. Don’t hang up, okay?’

  Not a word.

  ‘Missy?’

  ‘All right.’ Her voice sounded so small, so betrayed, that Paris’s heart clogged with shame. He ran to the bathroom, barking his shin on the coffee table en route, and doused his entire head with ice-cold, rusty water. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the way out and was nearly frightened by the look of the jowly, red-eyed man staring back.

  And then he remembered.

  Today was his birthday.

  He glanced into the kitchen and tried to determine if he could at least get the water on the heat before his daughter disowned him right there on the phone. But he decided that the instant coffee would have to wait. He stumbled back to the couch, the quarter-bottle of Windsor staring up at him in mockery.

  ‘Sweetie?’

  ‘Yes, Daddy.’ This was a very, very solemn Melissa Adelaide Paris.

  ‘Where was Daddy supposed to be, honey?’

  ‘The Olive Garden,’ they said in unison.

  And then everything came flooding back at once. Melissa had saved her money for six months to take her father out to lunch on his birthday at the Olive Garden restaurant on Chagrin Boulevard. Beth had even called to remind him about it three days earlier. The plan was for Beth to drop Melissa off at the restaurant, and for Paris to take her home.

  Paris was going to try and explain everything to Melissa, but the woes of an overworked, boozy Cleveland homicide detective didn’t carry much weight these days, especially with slightly cynical eleven-year-old girls. ‘What time is it now, sweetie?’

  ‘It’s, like, twelve-oh-five already.’

  ‘Daddy’s on his way, okay?’ Paris said, scrambling for his pants, hoping they weren’t too creased. ‘You just wait right there, okay punkin?’

  More silence. Big, cold, Beth-silence.

  ‘Okay, sweetie?’

  ‘Where am I going to go?’ Melissa said softly. ‘It’s not like I have a car or anything.’

  Eleven going on thirty, Paris thought. She knew how to work him. Just like her mother. ‘Love you. On my way.’

  Manfred, who was every bit the cur Paris felt – and probably the man’s one true friend and over-burdened confidant of late, this being the duty of Jack Russell terriers worldwide – rolled over with an indifferent woof and went back to sleep.

  3

  ‘ANDIE’S ON LINE one,’ came Jennifer’s voice over the intercom.

  Matt Heller took a deep breath, loosened his tie, held his finger over the blinking, clear-plastic button. He closed his eyes for a moment, imagining an outcome, visualizing, hoping. Will she? Would she? He picked up the receiver and hit the button with all the authority he could muster. ‘Hi babe, what’s up?’

  ‘Are you sitting down?’ When Andrea Heller started off with that rhetorical question, it was usually good news. When she started with ‘You’re gonna kill me’, it usually meant a fender bender, a jammed computer printer, or that she had set the entire deck ablaze with the Charmglow. But he knew his wife’s moods as he knew his own, and that underlying fizz of Andie-ebullience in her voice was a good sign for Matt Heller and his naughty little plan for the evening.

  It was serendipity.

  ‘You got L’Etoile,’ he said, heading her off at the giant, career-move pass. L’Etoile was a chain of upscale fragrance mini-boutiques that Andie had been stalking for six months. The account probably meant another $25,000 gross to the Heller annual household coffers.

  ‘I got L’Etoile,’ she echoed.

  ‘Unbelievable!’ Matt’s shout was loud enough to draw a glance and a smile from Jennifer in the outer office.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I mean, I knew you could do it, babe.’ They laughed at their routine. All through Andie’s meteoric rise to regional sales representative for cosmetic giant Cinq, Limited, they’d run that by each other. Often for the mini-plateaus in Matt’s career, as well.

  Couldn’t have been luck, they’d say. Had to be you.

  While Andie’s job kept her on the road four or five days per month, the two had often thought, although never sharing it with each other
, that it was just that time apart – and not some magic formula that their divorced friends kept bugging them for – that kept their marriage alive and electric.

  ‘So, Primo at seven-thirty? Braciole and some ridiculously expensive amarone?’ Matt asked.

  ‘What about somewhere a little more private?’ Her voice dropped a sexy half-octave and sent a ripple of excitement down Matt’s spine.

  ‘We’re feeling private, are we?’

  ‘Ummmmmaybe.’ Andrea sing-songed the word, a girlish ploy she knew her husband found absolutely maddening. Like when she wore her plaid skirts and knee socks. Or a hair ribbon. Or barrettes. Or the strappy shoes, his favorite.

  ‘I see,’ Matt replied. ‘Then how about the Terrace Room? Nobody goes there much anymore. It’s dark and private.’

  ‘That’d be great. Haven’t been there in years.’

  ‘Not too déclassé for a woman of your international reputation?’

  ‘Screw you,’ she whispered.

  ‘You know, if you whisper it, it’s not a curse anymore. If you whisper, it’s more like an invitation.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Let’s make it six-thirty then.’

  ‘You are so bad,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you at seven-thirty. I’ve got a few things to wrap up here and I want to stop at Beachwood Place.’

  ‘What if we …’ He was pushing it. He was going to blow it.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  She knows, Matt thought. But it sounded as if she might be up for anything.

  ‘We’ll see,’ Andie said.

  ‘Can’t wait.’

  ‘And honey?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re going to have fun.’

  She was teasing him. ‘See you tonight.’

  The knock broke his concentration. He was an engineer, a mathematician. He couldn’t afford to lose concentration.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I’m going to lunch.’ It was Jennifer. ‘Do you want something?’

  ‘No thanks,’ Matt said, trying to sound normal. Not easy to do when you’ve been interrupted while masturbating in the executive washroom in the middle of the day. He felt like a bigger pervert than usual.