by phuc
Almost, almost. Alm Here.
Kathleen blinked the mirage away and drove on. Sleepytime, Sammy had always called his visits to her childhood bedroom. It's Sleepytime, Kathy. It was always from behind, so she couldn't see him, nor his genitals. This struck her oddly now: in the innumerable ways he'd penetrated her, she'd never fully seen his erection. She'd glimpsed it only once; when she was little she'd had a stuffed toy rabbit named Horace, and she remembered seeing Uncle Sammy wipe his penis off with it one night when he thought she'd fallen asleep.
Heat hung in the air; she could see it. Spence's distractions had made her forget all about Maxwell. Is it over already? she wondered. Somehow the question seemed coldly objective. He'd left this morning without waking her, without even leaving a note. She hated to think how uncomfortable things must've been for him last night. Yet he'd seemed so caring, so interested in helping her. I freaked out right in front of him, she reminded herself. How could she expect Maxwell to be at ease with all the baggage of her past?
The phone began to ring when she stepped into her apartment; she rushed to it. Maxwell! she thought. "Kathleen?" came a familiar female voice. It was her editor at '90s Woman. "Oh, hi,"
Kathleen said.
"Is there a problem?"
"Well, no."
"You're usually a week early with your column," the editor told her. "The next issue goes to press in three days. It's in the mail, right? Please say it's in the mail."
The phone felt numb against her ear. Oh, no, she realized. "It's not in the mail," she confessed.
"I'm sorry. I forgot."
The long silence revealed her boss' disappointment. "We pride ourselves here at '90s Woman on being a very professional publication. I realize your column is quite popular but that does us little good if your miss your deadline."
Quit harping, she thought. I haven't missed my goddamn deadline. "I'll Express Mail it to you in the morning, okay? It's all done, I just kind of forgot. I've had a lot going on the past week."
"I see. Please make sure it's on my desk by deadline."
The connection severed. Your magazine would be squat without me, Kathleen told herself, or at least tried to. She didn't blame herself, she blamed Spence, Uncle Sammy, the killer every negative distraction. She kicked off her shoes, shrugged out of the hot dress, and went to her desk to get the submission together. She looked down, then, and noticed the index card in her typewriter.
Maxwell left a note after all. The thought elated her, until she reeled it out of the platen and read it.
I LOVE YOU
The three words terrified her.
| |
Chapter 14
(I)
Kathleen deliberated for hours. Men had said they'd loved her in the past, and she knew they were lying. In bra and panties she sat baking in the hot apartment. Her typewriter hummed. She couldn't figure it. Why am I mad? she asked herself. Just because all those other men lied doesn't mean Maxwell is. This was a fair judgment. How come I don't feel fair?
She knew she'd have to call him, to talk, but she pursued any excuse not to. Work on the book for a little while. She wasn't fooling herself, she was only trying to. Not calling Maxwell was an escape, an exit.
Unbidden, she pushed the REPRINT code on the typewriter. He'd typed the note perhaps he'd typed something else. The $1000 typewriter had a small memory for making line corrections. As suspected, the machine typed out by itself:
EXIT by Maxwell Platt
Resplendence is truth, yet it's escaped me somehow,
and I don't even remember what you look like now.
But in the trees, in the clouds, in the heavens above
even the angels are burning up with all my love.
Another poem entitled "Exit." Kathleen read it over and over. It's not about me, she thought. That much was clear. It's about someone else, or a lot of people. It was about the love in his past. A moment ago she'd been thinking about escapes, about exits. Is this his escape? Yes, she thought it must be. Was Maxwell, through his poetry, making an exit from his past so that he could proceed into the future?
Why can't I do that? she wondered.
She picked up the phone, dialed at once. "Maxwell, this is Kathleen."
"Hi," he said. "How was your day?"
"All right."
"I hope you're feeling better."
At first she didn't know what he meant, but then she remembered the debacle of last night. "Yes,"
she said. Her thoughts hovered. "I read your poem."
The pause gaped. "That's impossible," he claimed. "I burned it on your balcony."
She glanced out the slider and noted ashes on the cement. She frowned. "My typewriter has a memory for corrections."
"Oh," he said.
Another gaping pause. "It's not about me, is it?"
"No."
I guess I know him better than I thought. "I also read your note."
This third pause seemed to drip. "You don't sound very happy."
"We need to talk," was all she said.
"Okay, we can do that. I'd like to."
"Not on the phone. We'll go out to dinner or something, and we'll talk. I'll pick you up at 7:30."
"Okay," Maxwell said.
"‘Bye."
The driest phone conversation of my life, she concluded. And how must he feel? She felt even drier showering and then getting dressed, her arms and legs like putty as she put on her underthings. The sun blazed in the slider, a face of fire. How could she possibly nail down her feelings? I don't even know what my feelings are.
She sat and waited for time to pass. She smoked her hourly Now 100, listening to the radio shrink's show. More parity, she realized. She and the radio shrink had essentially the same jobs: counseling the desperate, the confused and the disillusioned. Yet Kathleen could only relate as a listener. "...I've been dating him for over three years," another listener was saying. Their voices always sounded distant, despairing. "I've always loved him, and I've always wanted to be married to him."
"Yes, go on," said the radio shrink.
"But in all the time we've been seeing each other, he's never said he loved me. He's never said anything that would indicate he wants a real future with me."
"And that depresses you," asserted the radio shrink.
"No!" the caller exclaimed. "Because this morning he finally did. He finally did say that he loved me. He asked me to marry him."
"And let me guess," the shrink postulated. "Now you don't know how you feel."
"Right. Exactly. When he finally told me what I've wanted to hear all these years, I turned into a block of ice. I don't even know if I want to see him anymore." The caller sobbed. "None of it makes any sense."
"Your dilemma is a common one, believe it or not," the response drifted frailly through static.
"It's much more than the contrived case of cyclic desire, that when we get what we want, we don't want it anymore. In your instance, though I don't know you, I'd say that you've been hurt, misled, or deceived so thoroughly in the past that your psychological makeup has erected a subconscious defense mechanism. Your psyche sets off an alarm technically it's called a ‘biogenic amine fulfillment shift' when a romantic situation approaches a commitment phase. Consciously you want love, you want marriage. Unconsciously, however, your psyche throws in a mental monkey wrench, so to speak, to ruin a situation which could lead to further heartbreak and turmoil..."
Kathleen stared limply at the radio.
(II)
"...but I was able to get a rundown on the suture material," Kohls was saying as the sun went down. Spence drove. Kohls rode shotgun. "PMMA it's called, synthetic micronic twine. Brand name's Vicryl, or I should say the stock name. Took me all day to find that out."
Spence looked at him. "Did you call the manufacturer, find out which "
"To find out which hospitals buy that brand?" Kohls finished. "Of course I did. And you know what? You know how many hospitals buy that brand?"
&n
bsp; Spence frowned. "Every "
"That's right," Kohls laughed. "Every fucking hospital in the country. Bummer, ain't it?"
Spence rounded St. Thomas Circle in the unmarked. Two 3rd District plainclothes followed him in another unmarked, and behind them came a TSD van full of bad boys. "You may have busted the whole case," Spence informed his companion. "How long it take you to find the print on Weston's body?"
"About a minute and a half. Tell me about our girl."
Spence slipped him the girl's booking photo: fiery perfectly straight red hair, deep green eyes, and a pretty face were it not for a tiny harelip. "Willet, Heather, B., four busts for soliciting. High school dropout. She's an orphan. Worked the Starlight Inn, Good Guys, Dawn Rose, and some of the other P.G. County strip clubs before she decided to peddle her ass."
"Sounds like she got a monkey on her back in the clubs," Kohls hypothesized. "You get the r.i.a.
back yet on the hair?"
"Yeah, but just PCP and pot. No crack, no skag, nothing pharmaceutical. Simmons was right.
Nutritionally depleted, typical pross. Probably eats one Big Mac and fries a day at the 14th and K
Micky D's."
"Place of residence on the rap sheet says College Park," Kohls observed. "How come we're heading lower Northwest?"
"That address is phony. We're going to go have a little chat with her pimp."
"There's something, though..." Kohls hesitated. He lit a cigarette off the one he'd just smoked down. All evidence techs chained smoked one their way to a possible workup scene. Once they got there, smoking was forbidden. "Something..."
"I know," Spence agreed. "The medical angle. What's a streetwalker doing with acute medical knowledge, and access to hospital supplies?"
"Maybe she's got funny friends. Maybe her pimp's a kink."
"Maybe," Spence said. He eyed the big gothic church just off the circle, and the great steepled cross. The Cross, he recalled from the killer's passages. It seemed to be a point of reference, an obsessional one. Simmons had said she had monomanic symbol obsessions. The Cross. What did it mean?
Is it this cross? Spence wondered. This cross right here, on this church?
"Who's her pimp by the way?"
"Tyrone Chaplin," Spence said.
"Ah, ‘Rome," Kohls recognized, snorting smoke. "The guys at POU say he's a pretty nice guy as far as pimps go. Say he kicks girls out who rip off johns."
Spence didn't care. "I don't care if he's the nicest guy in the world," he said. "One of his hookers might be a serial killer. I want her."
Nightfall came like a slow bleed. Dented and stripped cars lined the sodium lit street. The rowhouses looked like abandoned fortresses: boarded up, bricks streaked by age and decay. The few that were occupied had barred doors and windows. That mystical entity known as "The Mob"
owned all these blocks and domiciles. There really was still a mob. Phony real estate companies hidden by financial "pyramids" worked integrally with the prostitution networks and the fading heroin trade. Soon crack cocaine and crystal meth would push everything out, but until then...
"There's his wheels," Spence said. A white BMW, four door. Pink Cadillacs and cheetah fur lined seats were a thing of the past. "You got a piece?"
"I'm a forensics tech," Kohls countered, "not Wyatt Earp. What I need a piece for?"
"In case somebody tries to kill you." Spence unlocked his glove box and gave Kohls his department issued Glock 17.
"Where's the safety on this thing?"
"Don't ask me," Spence laughed. "Why do you think I carry a revolver? Just stick it in your pants and hope you can figure it out if someone starts popping caps."
"Great. That's just great."
Vehicle doors chunked behind them when they got out. "You two," Spence directed the plainclothes. "Get your tin in plain sight and go around back in case things get hairy. Grab anyone who comes out." Then he addressed the TSD men; they weren't technicians like Kohls, they were what parlance referred to as Goons, big guys for moving bodies, busting doors, taking parts off cars. "Follow us up," Spence said.
"Nice neighborhood," Kohls remarked. Trash littered scrub front yards, broken glass glittered in dry grass. The street wafted a familiar coalescence of scents: fried food, cooling sun cooked garbage, and, strangely, paint. Tyrone Chaplin's rowhouse stood dilapidated in the yellow street light. Red paint had blistered on its bricks.
Spence and Kohls walked up the steps. When Spence knocked, the door opened against three burglar chains almost at once. Spence stuck his badge and ID in the gap. "I'm Lieutenant Jeffrey Spence, D.C. Police. I'd like to talk to you."
"Talk to who?" asked a defiant black face.
"You," Spence said. "Tyrone Chaplin."
"He's not in."
"Open up, Mr. Chaplin. I have a dated warrant from the D.C. Magistrate to search this premise.
Either open the door, or I'll knock it down."
"You and whose army?"
Spence was glad he'd said that, for at the same time his three bulldogs congregated at the bottom of the steps. They all wore bright red utility shirts emblazoned with METROPOLITAN POLICE
TECHNICAL SERVICES DIVISION. Two carried aluminum field kits in fists the size of croquet balls. The third calmly sported a handled steel bar with a big square steel block at one end a portable door ram.
"Like I said," Chaplin changed his tune. "Come on in. This door cost 1,500 bucks." He took off the chains. Spence and his crew walked into a nice foyer which led to a well furnitured living room. Nice throw rugs, nice half paneled walls, nice framed prints. Outside looked like a typical tenement. Inside looked like typical middle class home.
Chaplin turned off the stereo; Spence recognized Beethoven's Piano Concerto #2. Alfred Brendel, he noted. Chaplin himself was more proof that the average conception of a pimp was largely stereotype. No gold chains, gold rings, no flamboyant clothes. Chaplin wore Gucci's, quality Italian gray slacks, and a hand made shirt, which left Spence a little disillusioned. This pimp wears better clothes than me, Spence realized. I should ask him where he shops.
"You want a beer, Lieutenant?"
"No thank you," Spence said. "Let's be nice about this, all right? I have a warrant, which means my men search your place whether you like it or not."
Chaplin sat down in a plush, buttoned armchair. He opened a can of St. Ide's Malt Liquor. "Go ahead. I keep the machine guns and cocaine in a warehouse on New York Avenue."
At least he's got a sense of humor, Spence thought but did not allow himself to laugh. Kohls and his three goons branched off.
Spence went on, standing, "I want to ask you some specific questions, and I need you to give me specific answers. If you bullshit me, I'll take you to headquarters for more intensive questioning."
Chaplin blinked and rapidly shook his head. "Did I wake up in Iran? Did someone rescind the Constitution?"
"I want to know about one of your prostitutes. Heather B. Willet, Caucasian, red hair, 26 years old."
"She dead? Creamy?"
"Who?"
"We call her Creamy. She'd got gorgeous, creamy white skin, Lieutenant. White as snow and not a pock on her. She's quite beautiful. All my girls are. Would you like to see some of them? I can arrange it."
"Why did you ask if Creamy was dead?"
"Why else would some bad news lookin' white cop like you be here?"
"Just answer the question."
Chaplin had bright, intelligent eyes and an intense face like an activist or something. "First of all, I don't want you to think of me as a pimp. I'm a service manager. I provide a service."
"But the service you provide, Mr. Chaplin, is against the law."
"So is letting your dog poop on the sidewalk. So is jaywalking. You ever jaywalked, Lieutenant?"
"No," Spence said. He probably hadn't.
Chaplin made gestures with his hands. "I got an attrition rate here like about 25%, like most any business. Creamy was typical top drawer. You see it a lot."
"I'm not a slaver, Lieutenant. Some guys out there, sure, but not me. All my girls are clean; they're good girls. If a girl wants to work for me, and she meets my criteria, then I let her work for me. When one of my girls decides she doesn't want to work for me, then I let her go. Like any businessman, I don't want disgruntled employees. You got a girl who's unhappy, she fucks up.
