by Edward Lee
Britt.
Cristina felt ashamed in the recollection. She’d been sitting there suddenly remembering Britt erasing the magic marker from her skin but eventually Cristina’s mind appended the memory. Next, she imagined not Britt’s fingers on her skin but Britt’s lips. Cristina cringed as wet lines were licked and sucked from nipples to navel, all the while Britt’s fingers sliding behind to knead Cristina’s rump and tease the bottom of her sex. Eventually she was urged to the bathroom floor, then Britt straddled her stomach, shouldered out of the scarlet shearling vest, and forced Cristina’s hands to her breasts. Britt sighed, her face upturned. Then she leaned, propped by her arms, to slowly offer her own nipples to Cristina’s mouth, a hot whisper pleading, “Suck them. Hard. Like when—”
Like when …
Cristina did so without reservation, in spite of the awfulness of the reference. Her sex moistened as if on cue, her own nipples suddenly gorged to aching.
“Yes, yes,” Britt breathed through her teeth. “Just like…so long ago…”
The fantasy, however jaded, only stoked Cristina further. Her mouth continued to tend to her foster sister’s areolae while her fingers fumbled frantically at the buttons of the jeans. “Take these off,” she whined in a hot swivet. “Take them off right now and…”
The fantasy snapped and once again Cristina found herself standing open-robed before her sunny studio window—
Masturbating, she finished. Jeez.
After the shower, she sat at her table, ashamed. Should she tell Britt? God, no. I’ve already hassled her enough. Why can’t I be strong, like her? Cristina knew she overreacted to things, perceived her insecurities with far more cruciality than they warranted. This had happened before on rare occasions, and Britt’s therapeutic analyses were always dismissively similar. Erotic latency, the forbidden made enticing by social strictures, she would say. It’s nothing. We’re not even really sisters; it’s just more Goldfarb mental backwash that your mind manipulates into a false fantasy, trying to get rid of it. But sometimes it takes a while. When Cristina reminded herself of that, she felt better.
But just a little.
It seemed that her inability to shed the past was stealing from her. Stealing my joy, my new life here. Again, she knew what Britt would say:
Don’t let it.
Among the demented abuses of her foster parents was the forced couplings. It was the only way Cristina could think of it. While Andre Goldfarb was busy molesting Scott, their foster brother, Helga worked on Cristina and Britt. She drugged them with God knew what and then coerced them into sexual scenarios in which Helga herself would eventually join in. Scott, too, was often forced to participate…
Scott hadn’t fared well in the aftermath, while Cristina and Britt were able to adjust via therapy after the authorities had rescued them. Goddamn the Goldfarbs, she thought all too often. “They’ll probably die in prison,” Britt had said once. “Child molesters are anathema on any cell block. It’s the worst thing to be.”
I hope so …Cristina wasn’t one for ill will but here, certainly, was an understandable exception.
Early evening approached, her studio window growing dim. I’m still a little out of whack from last night’s booze, she reasoned. Just like Britt said. Minor alcohol poisoning and dehydration. She looked back at her latest precursory sketch, and found she liked it even more. The Vampirical Vicar. She smiled at the playful sketch. At first she thought of drawing a modern-day priest—like Father Rollin, perhaps—but drew this instead, a stuffy parson that appeared more English, in pompous red vestments denoting the clergy of hundreds of years ago. Large doll-like eyes were bloodshot, and like much of the line the face was more cherubic than scary. She wasn’t sure if the long, straight mustache worked or not but she found she liked the image. The vicar’s crooked smile showed long thin fangs, just like the Noxious Nun.
I wonder …
An unbeckoned thought caused her to amend the sketch. Where her Noxious Nun bore a three-jeweled bowl of blood, the Vampirical Vicar held a curious decanter—from her dream, of course—which suggested a vessel for Communion wine.
Now she liked the sketch even more.
I can’t wait to show this to Bruno. Enthused, then, Cristina focused at her table, to begin a more refined draft.
(III)
“So we’re here for what reason?” Vernon asked Detective Taylor in the small, computer-filled cubby loudly referred to as the Electronic Evidence Assimilation Unit at Manhattan North Borough Command. Taylor scratched his unkempt mustache and frowned. “It’s what you wanted, and because you didn’t tag a link on the case number from last December, I couldn’t go to the Information Systems Division downtown.”
Vernon’s mind wandered. He was standing behind a civilian employee hunkered over a terminal. “December? Oh, the Christmas tree stand thing.”
“Yeah, that big caper. Ain’t no way it’s not connected to the impalement.”
“I know but it’s hard to push that way.”
“You’re just afraid of being laughed at since making inspector.”
“Tell me about it.” Vernon had to agree. “Christmas tree stands, magic markers, and forty bucks’ worth of whittling knives…”
Taylor smiled wide. “And bum-girls, speaking of which…” The detective pointed to the computer screen.
“There they are,” Vernon said in a hush.
“When I told you the owner of the hardware store couldn’t find the surveillance disk, I was wrong. They never got it back from us. It’s been in the C.E.S. mainframe the whole time. Took this guy here two minutes to pull it up.”
Vernon’s eyes were taken by the screen, which now showed several haggardly dressed females moving in slow-motion down an aisle of the darkened hardware store. The nerdy tech at the desk would freeze the closest image of each perpetrator, hit a key, then slo-mo to the next. A printer below the desk hummed, kicking out four eight-by-ten glossies. The tech handed the photos to Vernon.
“These look great,” Vernon complimented.
The tech smirked like an accountant bothered by something trivial. “You could’ve done it from your precinct house.”
“We don’t have that kind of technology at our house,” Vernon told him.
The tech smirked sharper. “Inspector, it’s ten-year-old technology.”
“Like I said, we don’t have that kind of technology at our house.”
Taylor eyed the slick printouts. “Just like the drugstore.”
Now the tech shook his head. “Where have you guys been? Nobody gets pictures developed at the drugstore anymore. Don’t you have a printer and a digital camera?”
Vernon and Taylor raised their brows. “We’re old-school, but thanks,” Vernon said. Then he took Taylor back out to the parking lot. They studied the printouts more closely, while Taylor verbalized a description of each woman running down the aisle with several boxed Christmas tree stands:
“Ratty-looking blonde with glasses, ratty-looking brunette in pink sweatpants, another ratty-looking brunette in ratty-looking jeans, a ratty-looking redhead, and—”
Vernon completed the summary, “A ratty-looking woman with very short hair and patches of psoriasis—”
“And large breasts…not that I’d want my face between them. She’s probably got boob lice.”
“You sound like Slouch,” Vernon complained.
“No, Slouch would want his face between them. You know Slouch—after a couple beers, anything goes.” Taylor flipped through the photos again. “At least we know what they look like. No way to tell how old they are, but if we spot one on the street we’d probably recognize them.”
“Yeah, but that’s too easy,” Vernon offered cynically. “That’s not the way my luck runs since I turned fifty.”
“Ten-year hard-luck streak, How?”
“That’s Inspector How to you…Patrolman-to-be Taylor.”
Taylor laughed. “I’m just joshin’.”
“Just what I need.” Verno
n threw Taylor the keys to the unmarked. “You drive. I’m too old.”
“Yes, sir, Inspector. Where to?”
“Same area you and Slouch cruised with that twenty-five-year-old hooker who looks thirteen.”
“Cinzia. Right.” Taylor pulled off onto 100th, then darted into traffic on Broadway.
Vernon was thinking as he re examined the hard copies. “The redhead was the one we busted in December, right? Where’s she now, or have you been slacking?”
Taylor’s dark mustache trailed down the sides of his mouth like an Italian actor from the seventies. “She’s long gone. I already did the follow-up this morning.”
Vernon glared. “Then how come you didn’t tell me that this morning?”
“Because I was busting my ass trying to run down the fuckin’ surveillance footage from the hardware store like you told me to do,” Taylor emphasized with a raised voice, knuckling the wheel.
“Oh, right. Good job, by the way. So what happened to the redhead?”
“She was clinically fucked-up so she never stood trial.” Vernon turned on the fireball-light on the dash and whooped his siren, to make an illegal turn past Cleopatra’s Needle, run a red light on 92nd, and shoot a right onto Amsterdam. Other drivers leaned on their horns but Taylor didn’t even hear them. “Chronic abulia and apraxia, they told me, what ever that means. And ‘schizoaffective.’ They let her out of the state hospital after a blue paper and ninety days of therapy; her case doctor said she was not capable of mens rea. Then the OT counselor told me she split town, took the first Greyhound out to DeSmet, South Dakota…Like I’ve heard of that. Give me some time and I’ll try to run her down.”
Vernon shuddered when a bus roared by. “Don’t bother. The minute they’re out of a therapeutic environment, they stop taking their meds and are back to square one. She was nuts and homeless here, you can bet she’s nuts and homeless in South Dakota. We’ll just eyeball the streets where the hooker said to. We’ve got nothing else to do except go home.”
Taylor opened his mouth but then closed it again without a word. They passed Tecumseh Playground and Verdi Square. Post–rush hour was still heavy with vehicles. At every corner, however, panhandlers could be seen sitting down with their empty cups or trudging this way and that amid the throng of the upper crust. “Who says there’s no homeless problem on the Upper West Side?” Taylor remarked.
Vernon reflected. “Like the hooker was telling us, if they don’t foot it all the way up here from the shelters every day, they squat in recently closed buildings. It makes sense.”
“Yeah. If your career is bumming change, you’re better off doing it here than the fuckin’ Bronx. Restaurants, bars, stores, they’re going under or getting bought out every day. You shack up in one place for a week or two, then move on to the next. I’ve just never really noticed so many homeless around here in the past.”
“That’s because this is the first time we’ve actually been looking for them. And that Cinzia girl…Didn’t she say something about the hardware store chicks congregating near a vendor at the corner of Dessorio?”
“Right. Slouch and I talked to the guy. He verified what the hooker told us but—”
“Couldn’t give specifics ’cos he probably sees a hundred different homeless people every damn day,” Vernon reasoned.
“Um-hmm.” Taylor slowed the car, pointing. “There’s the guy now. Wanna go talk to him? Now we’ve got pictures he can look at.”
Vernon eyed the short, stocky vendor at the corner. He wore a New York Islanders shirt and a Mets cap, and had a gnawed cigar between his teeth. “Naw. I told you. My luck doesn’t run that way.”
Taylor pursed his lips. “It’s police work, How. You’re the one who said we’ve got nothing better to do. Come on. And you can buy me a hot dog. I don’t make enough on detective’s pay.”
Vernon shrugged. “All right.”
Taylor pulled into a No Parking zone. The instant they both got on the sidewalk, they froze.
“I don’t believe it,” Vernon muttered into the flow of oncoming pedestrians.
Taylor cut a big grin. “And you said your luck never runs this way.”
“Mine doesn’t but evidently yours does.” Vernon threw the photos back in the car and extracted his handcuffs. “Grab her.”
Taylor immediately latched onto the arm of a shabby, large-breasted woman in cutoff military pants. Her very short dark hair was patched with bald spots and scabs.
“Hey!” she whined. “Take your—”
“Police,” Vernon said. “You’re under arrest.”
“You shits! Help me, somebody! These cops are trying to rape me!” she shrieked.
Vernon chuckled. “Christmas tree stands and woodcarving knives? But relax, you don’t have to tell us anything because you have the right to remain silent.”
Taylor pushed her forward against the car and cuffed her.
“You can’t hold me,” the seedy woman proclaimed. “I can fly anything God can make! I’m gonna lock you up in a cave full of milk bottles and soup!”
Vernon rolled his eyes at Taylor. Taylor said, “Rice Krispies.”
“The government put these cameras in my teeth!” She opened her mouth wide. “Now they can see you two shit-cakes!”
“Get her in the car,” Vernon said, unable to refrain from smiling.
“These guys aren’t cops!” she wailed. “They got fake badges that the guys who killed Kennedy gave them!”
“Those are some lines, huh?” But Taylor paused before moving her off. “Hey, How. Check it out.”
Vernon stooped to peer. He was looking at the woman’s very dirty hands cuffed behind her back. All of her fingernails appeared to be lined with dried blood.
CHAPTER NINE
(I)
“There he is,” Paul said, looking up from his booth at Harry’s Bar at the Helmsley Hotel. It was their after-work hangout, and seemed to be devoid of other attorneys but chock-full of stockbrokers, whose barside banter always proved more interesting than that of the former. Half of the brokers looked on the verge of suicide. Paul swizzled a Johnny Walker Blue on the rocks, and already had a bottle of Asahi waiting for Jess. Jess sat down as if winded, his hair perpetually disarrayed, and drained a third of the bottle.
“I take it Massacessi’s people didn’t dig your arbitration rebuttal,” Paul suspected of his partner’s more-harried-than-usual look.
“Oh, they loved it, but the traffic on Third sucks. Christ, it’s past seven.”
“I always cut up Eighth, then swing over on Forty-second.”
“Sure, probably to stop and snag some lap dances.”
“Don’t need to.” Paul huffed a chuckle. “Since Cristina’s moved in, she’s turned into a dynamo. She’s wearing me out.”
“There’s always the Big Blue.”
“Yeah. I take ’em in place of One A Days.” Paul sipped his twenty-five-dollar drink. “I tweaked the highlights on the Soledad motion and punted them. It looks good…even for billing five-seventy-five an hour. So what about Massacessi?”
“They want to renew for five years—”
“You’re shitting me?” Paul said, startled. “That’s great. Hell, I ought to let you pocket the whole retainer ’cos you did all the work.”
Jess’s brow shot up over his next chug of fancy beer. “Really?”
“Fuck you…partner.”
Both men laughed. “Don’t know how you can drink those fussy Jap dry beers, but I picked up a case for you anyway, for this weekend.”
Even Jess’s spiked goatee looked sloppy. “This weekend? Oh, yeah. Cookout at your place.”
Paul smiled. “Well, carryout, not cookout. You haven’t seen the house since we got all the furniture in. It looks so sumptuous I almost feel guilty living there…Almost.”
“Once a lawyer, always a lawyer. The Catholic Church has too much property as it is. You’re like Robin Hood but with none of that ‘give to the poor’ jive on the end.”
Paul
shrugged through another sip of scotch. “Just as the Ten Commandments were written in stone so were these words: ‘A buyer’s superior knowledge of property value is NOT actionable.’”
“Amen.”
Through the front window, they both glimpsed a minibus waiting for the light on 3rd. Big letters along the side read: FAMILY SERVICES FOSTER CARE OF NEW YORK.
Both men averted their eyes at once, neither speaking, until the bus pulled off. Eventually Paul broke the silence. “Just when you think you’ve forgotten about something shitty.”
“I hear ya. But I read somewhere than 90 percent of the foster services in the U.S. are right on.”
“Yeah, but we’re both living with two girls who fall into that other 10 percent. It just burns me up, those Goldfarb psychos. Twenty years ain’t enough.”
“They’ll croak in stir, watch.” Jess always took the positive side.
Paul ordered another round. “Ain’t good enough. Sometimes I think about paying someone on the inside to fuck them up.”
Jess lost his joviality fast. He leaned over and whispered, “If you’re going to make yourself liable for premeditation and conspiracy, kindly refrain from doing it in front of me, and think about not talking that kind of shit in a public place.”
Paul waved it off. “You know what I mean. And don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it, too,’ cos if you do…you’re a liar.”
“Can’t argue with ya there. Better way to look at it is Goldfarb’s probably got a size-thirteen asshole by now. That’s good enough for me. And you’re forgetting the only good thing to come out of it.”
“What’s that?”
“Even after a childhood like theirs, Britt and Cristina landed on their feet and both got their shit supremely squared away.”
