by Edward Lee
But where was she?
Several chips crunched underfoot when he walked to the stairs. A glance up showed him her studio lights on. I guess tooting my horn gave her some creative inspiration, he joked. But she often would work spontaneously, sometimes jumping up from bed just to jot down some notes or pen a quick sketch. Artistic people were like that.
He thought of going up to talk but decided not to. Don’t interrupt her. Besides, my jones is taken care of for a while. But when he turned he noticed yet another oddity.
A pair of shoddy old blue jeans and an orange tube-top lay in the hall. Had she just dropped them there? Why not put them in the laundry room ten fucking feet away? he wondered, now a bit testy at her carelessness. I paid a lot of money for this joint and all of a sudden she’s treating it like a trailer. After a few seconds, though, he thought back to the outstanding sex and reconsidered. On second thought… she can mess the place up all she wants. I’ll hire a damn maid.
Next, he squinted at the clothes. Must be old stuff she wears when she works, he reasoned. He couldn’t even recall ever seeing her in the tube-top. I’ll just go back to bed, he decided, but after a glance into the cove at the foyer’s end, he amended, Or maybe I’ll have a drink first. One couldn’t hurt, right? I work damn hard. Quietly as he could, he went to the glass-and-mirror bar, poured two fingers of Dewar’s eighteen-year-old, and snuck back to the darkened kitchen for some ice. It only bothered him a little to sneak around like this; he knew more often than not her objections to his drinking were overreactive. Nevertheless, he went back to the bathroom to sip his drink, in case Cristina came back down unexpectedly.
The expensive scotch filled him with that inexplicable warm buzz, which blossomed in the belly, then crept to the brain. That’s even better than a cigarette after sex. He’d quit several years ago; these days, smoking only tarnished the upscale image he needed to accommodate his success. A Cuban Monte Cristo on the other hand was another story, but Paul only lit one up on special occasions. He kept an ear tuned for the bedroom door in case he had to dump the drink in haste, but all remained nice and very quiet.
As he drank, however, his thoughts had no choice but to drag back…to her. She was so beautiful and, now, so voracious. This house and this city really does suit her. She still had her sullen moods sometimes but what woman didn’t? Probably true for me, too. He repictured the lascivious scene from the handwoven carpet, the sight of her creamy thighs splayed over his hips, her back arched, forcing her desire-gorged breasts out. Damn, he thought next. Just picturing her body had him half-aroused again. He finished his drink. Can’t hurt to try. As kinky as she’s been lately?
He brushed and gargled, then popped three mints in his mouth and headed back to the stairs.
In the hall, he stopped short.
The jeans and halter that had lain crumpled there minutes ago were gone. I didn’t even hear her come down. Frowning, he shrugged, then hiked up the stairs to the studio.
What the hell is going on?
The overhead lights blared but Cristina was nowhere to be seen. Paul scratched his head, duped. “Cristina?” he called down the dark hall. Then to the stairs, upward: “Cristina? Jesus! Where are you?” He thought he heard a creak but knew it was only the house frame. A bellow this time, “CrisTINA!” But only a sterile echo bounced back. There’s no reason for her to go past the second floor, he realized. Nothing there but empty rooms, no fixtures, no lights.
Then he heard—or thought he heard—a voice.
Downstairs.
What is this bullshit? he thought, and thumped down. “Cristina?”
First thing he noticed back downstairs was the basement door in the back of the short hall. It stood open a crack, and he could see an outline of light from the basement’s only bulb. Paul pushed the door right open and proceeded down. “Cristina, why on earth are you—”
The air smelled moldy. He didn’t even have to go halfway down before he could see her lying limp on the cobbled floor. Jesus! He raced down. She lay crumpled, as if she’d collapsed. Her robe was tied shut but strangely parted over her chest to reveal her breasts, and V’d below the sash to reveal her pubic area. She must’ve simply fallen that way. The syrupy dread that poured over his mind dissipated when he felt a strong pulse. “Cristina?” He touched her face, jostled her slightly, until she began to moan a little.
Paul picked her up and carried her back upstairs.
CHAPTER TEN
(I)
Slouch had just brought her in from the unit’s temporary lockup. “The lady says she doesn’t want an attorney.”
“That’s all right,” Vernon replied from his desk. “We’re not going to be asking her anything anyway.”
The woman had been cleaned up and dressed in a blue cotton smock and drawstring pants. Slouch sat her down, her wrists cuffed in her lap. Vernon gulped at the condition of her scalp.
“Says her name is Scab,” Slouch said. “Won’t tell us her real name.”
“Fine.” Vernon studied her. The woman sat in silent adamance. “Scab’s fine. She must know that her prints and DNA aren’t on file.” He made eye contact. “Scab? You’re going to be transported to the jail wing of the hospital in a little while, for an evaluation, a thing called the blue paper. We’re not going to ask you any questions but we will tell you some things just so you understand what’s going on. Is that all right with you?”
She pursed her lips. “That’s a question.”
“What?”
“You just said you wouldn’t ask me questions but you asked one.”
“Sharp lady,” Slouch said.
“Doesn’t look crazy to me,” Taylor said from the other corner. He was pouring coffee that looked like blackstrap molasses.
“You’re absolutely right, Scab,” Vernon said.
“But you can ask me anything you want, I still won’t tell you anything. I don’t have to. I’m saved.”
“That’s cool.” Vernon tried to sound hip. “Religious girl.”
“No, I’m no Holy Roller—shit, I hate them. One tried to rape me once,” she babbled, looking around. “I’ve been saved by the New Mother. I’m in her convent. She saved us from drugs. We’re all in the convent.”
Vernon nodded. “Right. The girls you ripped off the hardware store with a few nights ago and last December. We know all about them. By the way, we have photographic evidence against you on the December job, and an eyewitness when you stole those whittling knives.”
The woman rolled her eyes, muttering. “That ho who looks like a little girl, the shit.”
Vernon smiled. Taylor said from across the room, “Scab, the reason Inspector Vernon is talking to you right now is because he wants you to understand the seriousness of these crimes.”
Scab’s large, sloppy bosom rocked when she laughed. “Christmas tree stands. Yeah, that’s real serious.”
“No, but murder is,” Vernon remarked. “One of those stands was used in a murder. You know…Virginia Fleming. And her body was written on in black, red, and green magic markers, just like the ones we found in your pocket when we brought you in yesterday.”
Scab fidgeted in her seat.
Vernon continued, “And just so you know, we haven’t found Ambrose Alston.”
“Who?” Scab asked, fuddled.
“Nickname’s Doke, a petty drug dealer. We did this thing called a Five-Probe Match from the blood on your hands. The blood belonged to him.”
“But we’ll find him,” Taylor assured. “We won’t ask you where he is.”
Scab shrugged. “I have to pee.”
“She already went to the bathroom, How,” Slouch said. “Before she left the lockup.”
“You’ll have ample chance soon,” Vernon told her. “It’s funny, though. A minute ago you mentioned being saved. Another eyewitness saw you and your friends at the Sisters of the Heavenly Spring Catholic school—when you and your friends vandalized the chapel there with—wouldn’t you know it?—black, red, and green
magic markers.”
“Don’t forget taking care of their munchies with the Communion wafers,” Slouch added.
“And a bunch of bizarre words,” Vernon tacked on. “Interesting. It must be hard squatting, though, in this part of town.”
Scab was rocking in her seat, barely listening. “I’m not gonna tell you where we live but we used to live in the shelters down where all the numbered streets end. They’re no good, though,’ cos you can get raped in those places sometimes. We’re sick of guys raping us. We used to squat in the old buildings in the Meatpacking District, and we stayed for three months in one place that used to be a sex club but got closed down. It’s no good there now because there’s workmen everywhere. And we used to hop around the Upper West Side whenever a place would get sold—the flower shop on Seventy-second, and the Irish bar—but you could usually never stay more than a couple of weeks because workmen came and turned it into something else.” She looked to the window, clasping her hands. “We just take the subway a lot now, from other places. It’s worth the trouble ’cos the panhandling’s great here.”
“Um-hmm.” Vernon stewed on her words. She’s probably not lying but…why do I think that she is? Her body language and eye movement had changed rapidly when she’d mentioned the subway.
“It don’t matter. I’m saved,” she said. “I could die right now and I’d be saved.”
“Oh, right. You’d be saved by the nun who was with you when you broke into the school.”
Her eyes snapped right to Vernon’s.
Yes. Very interesting.
“I told you, I gotta pee.”
“In a minute, Scab.” Vernon tapped an eraser against his blotter. “It must be hard being homeless, though—”
Scab laughed.
“That’a girl!” Taylor exclaimed.
“No, it’s peachy,” she came back. “I hope you get to do it yourself someday.”
“Honey?” Slouch said, “if the inspector doesn’t solve this case, he will, and we’ll be right there with him. We might even be panhandling with your friends by the hot dog vendor.”
Scab’s eyes narrowed.
Slouch clapped. “We’ll all be one big happy family.”
“You guys are assholes,” Scab muttered.
“You got that right, lady!”
“Slouch,” Vernon said. “Shut up.” He turned back to the woman, who wasn’t sounding terribly incompetent right now. “I could never hack being homeless in the city. The winters? No way. That’s got to be the worst part.”
“No,” she groaned. “The worst part is never having food and watching so many rich stuck-up assholes walking into restaurants where steaks cost fifty dollars and they won’t even give you a fuckin’ quarter.”
“Where’s Marx when you need him?” Slouch asked.
“But the cold wasn’t bad this winter,” she went on, “ ’cos we found one of those kerosene heaters last fall in a Dumpster near that Greek restaurant that closed. We’d go there a lot to dive.”
“Dive?” Taylor asked.
“Dumpster dive. The guys working the kitchen would never give us a hard time. But anyway, just before they closed, we found the heater and it still works.”
Proximity, Vernon thought. Maybe she jived me about taking the subway so I’d think she wasn’t cooping in our neck of the woods. He made a mental note. Greek restaurant, closed last fall …“Scab. I’m going to break my promise just a little, and ask you one question.”
The woman stared at him.
“Nothing you might say will likely be admissible anyway, so what’s the harm, right?”
Slouch hooted. “Now that’s what I call conscientious police work!”
Vernon nodded through a frown. “You don’t have to answer it, but I’ll ask just the same. So level with me? What’s with this nun?”
Suddenly the woman looked uncomfortable.
“You said something about a convent. This nun is from a convent? Is she the New Mother you mentioned? Explain it to me.”
“It doesn’t matter, except she saved us.” She gazed off. “Ask me something else. I can’t talk about her.”
I love this job, Vernon thought with a rising sourness. “Okay. What can you tell me…about this?” And then he placed the small figurine on the desk. “It’s some kind of novelty toy, I suppose.” The cherubic doll smiled through its morgue-blue pallor, the exploded stomach gaping red. “We found it in Virginia’s pocket—you know. The girl you impaled on the wooden rod mounted in the Christmas tree stand.”
Scab seemed to vaguely recognize the toy figure. “Oh, Virginia must’ve stole it—she was a shit anyway.” Her hollow eyes flicked to Vernon. “I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re trying to worm out of me. But we just do what the New Mother says.” She looked again to the macabre figure. “Virginia stole it from Sandrine,’ cos I think it was Sandrine’s. She had a couple of ’em.”
At least he was getting something. Mental Note Number Two, Vernon registered. Sandrine must be the name of one of the other girls on the video. “So it was Sandrine who killed Virginia,” he stated rather than asked. “We know you were all there, though. The magic markers.”
Scab made her eyes go cockeyed at Vernon. “The fish people are coming to get you—they told me so on the TV that doesn’t work. You can smell them when they get close—they smell like the Fulton Market. Oh, the government put cameras in my fillings.” And she snapped her mouth open.
“That’s priceless!” Slouch exclaimed, his feet up on his desk. “Pretending to be crazy again, huh?” Vernon nodded. So what if there’s no criminal conviction? Even an NGRI solves the case.
But not all of the case.
“Scab?”
She scowled. “I told you, I have to pee!” She spread her legs in the chair. “It’s your floor.”
I just want to retire, Vernon thought. Florida, maybe. Or Texas. “Slouch, get a female officer to take our friend to the head.”
“Right away, boss.”
Scab’s knees were knocking. Maybe she really did have to go. Slouch returned with a tall blonde sergeant in uniform. “Honey, Sergeant Perschy here is going to take you to the tinkler.” He winked to the poker-faced blonde. “Keep an eye out for the fish people.”
Vernon turned the recorder off when Scab and her escort left. “It’s all a bunch of Ganser BS, if you ask me,” Taylor said.
“Probably,” Vernon said, thinking. “They’ll find out at her eval, and so what if the P.D. says we coerced information from her?”
“What’s this we shit, Lone Ranger?” Slouch said in a mock Indian voice.
“Either way, she goes up for a long time,” Taylor noted, smirking at another sip off coffee. “There’s got to be a ringleader, though, and she ain’t it.”
“I agree,” Vernon said. Now he absently fingered the plastic doll. “A woman named Sandrine, and a Greek restaurant that closed sometime after last fall. That part didn’t sound like bullshit.”
“It’s something we can go on,” Slouch observed.
Vernon smiled. “What’s this we shit, Tonto? You need to shag ass out of here and pound some street. Go ask some restaurant managers about the Greek place. I’d love to know how close it is to the crime scenes.”
Slouch shuffled to the door, pointing to Vernon but looking at Taylor. “Got a man here, doesn’t like the Red Sox.”
“I’m punishing you, traitor,” Vernon said. “And bring back some doughnuts before you go off-shift. We’re police. We have clichés to maintain.”
“Got it covered.”
The door shut.
“This is some case,” Taylor proposed with a smirk. “Homeless bum-girls.”
“We’re just bums with pensions and salaries.” Vernon mused, It’s all the same, in a way. The case seemed alien to him. “How long’s it take her to pee?”
“She’s a woman in custody,” Taylor reminded, “who’s acting nuts. It’ll probably take her all day.”
Vernon felt stifled and bore
d at the same time. If she doesn’t come back soon, I’ll fall asleep at my desk. But he had a feeling that something would be livening him up rather soon.
As the homeless woman did her business in the stall, Sergeant Perschy groaned to herself. Damn ulcers. She paced the sterile bathroom, keeping an ear to the stall for any funny business. What a shitty job, in a city full of shitty people…and half of those shitty people I’ve dated. But at last she caught herself smiling in the long mirrors over the sinks. No one had ever wanted to marry her—and now that she was forty, she was all right with that—but at least she’d finally found a decent man who she could come home to every night. Tony was a narc detective in Midtown South. Five years younger than her and still pretty virile. He made her feel like a woman again, and she could tell he wasn’t the cheating type. God knows I’ve had enough of them.
She frowned when the lights fizzed out.
“Hey!” the prisoner exclaimed in the stall. “What’s—”
“Brownout, maybe,” Perschy said. “It happens sometimes in the summer.” Suddenly the foggy wired glass over the bathroom’s only window barely offered any light at all. “Hurry it up in there. You’re due for transport soon.”
“Gimme a minute! Jesus!” the whiny voice echoed.
Sergeant Perschy continued to pace the darkened room.
Tap!
She turned, startled, reflexes sending her gun hand to her holster.
“What was that noise?” asked the girl in the stall.
“I don’t know. It—”
It hadn’t come from the stalls but from another door near the exit. JANITOR, a sign read. Perschy opened the door and leapt back when a broom fell out and clattered on the floor.
“Hey! What are you doing out there?”
“It’s just a broom,” Perschy laughed. “Now hurry it up.” But when the sergeant proceeded to pick up the broom and replace it in the closet…
