Lark

by Forrest, Richard;

  “I’m almost thirty and I’ve had two children,” she said defensively as the reason for her consumption of countless bowls of dip and other munchies.

  “And he never hits you or the kids?” Lark pressed.

  “Why do you keep asking that?” For the first time her voice bordered on anger. “Maurice just wouldn’t do that. I heard what you said on the phone. Why are you looking for Maurice?”

  “As I said, he has some evidence.”

  “Another one of those tapes?”

  “Yes, another one. So, you met at college?”

  “We were married the day after graduation. I was the first woman he ever had, and he was twenty-one and so grateful. It was really funny. Maurice was such a quiet, thoughtful person, and I always dreamed that he would be a broadcast journalist. You know, one of those guys who does the think pieces. When we were married, I got pregnant right away and he took the first job he could get on a small station in New Hampshire, where he wrote copy and did the news. And then one day, they asked him to fill in for a sick DJ and do the patter. That’s the talk that goes along with the records. He was so shy that he hid behind the name of Johnny Blue Note. Later the Johnny Gross business came along, and that’s sort of taken hold of him.”

  “Took hold in what way?” Lark said softly so as to not break her reverie.

  “Johnny can do or say anything he wants.” She gave a high falsetto laugh. “He does things that Maurice would never think of saying or doing. I don’t think it’s very funny, do you?”

  “I’m of a different generation.”

  “Would you like something to drink? A Coke or Pepsi? And I have some cake I’ve been saving.”

  “Nothing, thank you.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  After she left, Lark walked around the room. It was neat, spotless, and new. Imitation oil paintings were hung in the usual places, and the furniture was heavy French provincial. It was a Maurice Grossman sort of room.

  She returned with a piece of partially consumed chocolate cake in her hand. “I just can’t keep away from sweets,” she said with a wave of the cake. “I know I’m getting as big as a house, but I do love them. Maurice does too, and soon we’ll both be … He’s with another woman, isn’t he?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Do you think he is?”

  “The groupies come down to the station. They listen to Johnny Gross and they think he’s sexy and they want to do him. They wait by the door until he comes out and then they whisper in his ear all the things they will do to him if he goes out with them. You can’t really be mad at a man who’s tempted that way. Any man would go out with those skinny girls the way they throw themselves around and wave their braless boobs at him.”

  “Are they very young girls?” Lark asked.

  “I don’t think Johnny would go out with anyone not of age, but they seem to come in all sizes. I’ve driven down to the station to pick him up and seen them. I’ve seen how they rush up to him when he comes out the door. Sometimes they call on the phone and say all kinds of dirty things. Johnny just doesn’t have the willpower to stay away from them.”

  “Johnny?”

  She stuffed the remaining cake into her mouth and spoke in a muffled tone. “I mean Maurice.”

  The phone rang and Sylvia Grossman snatched the receiver from its cradle. “Is that you, Maurice?” She listened a moment and then lay the receiver on its side. “It’s for you, Lieutenant.”

  “Lark here,” he said as he picked up the phone. “Uh huh. Got it. Thanks.” He hung up and faced her. “I have to go now.”

  “You’ve found him?”

  “No, have some other business to attend to,” Lark lied.

  Lark’s phone call had concerned Maurice, and the dispatcher had informed him that Grossman’s car had been spotted at the Idle Hours Motel on the west side of town. It was a ten-minute drive.

  He knew the Idle Hours Motel well. Countless hours of his time had been spent in raiding, surveilling, and busting numerous harlots, drug dealers, and fleeing felons at the Idle Hours. It was infamous to the locals and profitable to its owners because of its 125 percent occupancy rate.

  The dispatcher had told him that the Grossman Escort was parked in front of Unit 121. Lark knew that was in the rear of the motel, and he killed the truck’s lights as he entered the parking lot. He let the pickup drift around the far end of the building past Unit 121. The Escort with its telltale, G-R-O-S-S vanity plate was parked in front of the unit, and dim light issued through a crack at the bottom of the drawn venetian blinds.

  Jimmy Stix was on duty in the office. He looked up from a girlie magazine in alarm as Lark entered. “Jesus, Lieutenant, what are you doing here? What’s coming down tonight?”

  “Who’s in One-twenty-one?”

  “Just a guy and his chick. She’s of age, no kidding.”

  “How are they registered?”

  Jimmy searched through a box of cards a moment. “Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Hamilton.”

  “Funny.”

  “I got to take what they give me. You want me to ask for a passport or something?”

  “Is One-twenty-three vacant?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Give me the key.”

  “You got to sign the registration card for …” Lark glared. “Only kidding, Lieutenant. Here’s the key.”

  He left the pickup at the office and walked around the corner of the motel and quietly let himself into Unit 123, which was next door to the room Gross occupied. Once inside, he walked through the darkened room to the bathroom and opened the medicine chest and began to listen.

  It had worked a dozen times before and would again. The acoustics through the thin partition were nearly perfect. He may as well have been standing in the bathroom of Gross’s room listening through the cracked door.

  As he heard them, he was convinced that he had arrived just in time for the second showing.

  “You wanna do it again, Johnny? Are you ready to go again?” There was a clicking, slurring sound between the syllables of each word the woman spoke, which puzzled Lark until he realized she was talking through a maze of chewing gum.

  Maurice Grossman must have fled the scene, because it was without question Johnny Gross who answered. “Do it in reverse, baby. Put the costume back on slow and sexy like.”

  “You mean like last things first and all?”

  “You got it, love pot.”

  “You want me to talk dirty again?”

  “Gross me out, honey pot. Make me writhe in passion.”

  She giggled. “You turn me on when you talk like on the radio, Johnny. You really give me goose pimples all over when you talk radio talk like that.”

  “It’s Gross Out time, boys and girls, brought to you by Johnny Gross. And today’s guest, beautiful in her nudity and big tits, is … What’s your name again, honey pot?”

  “Bambi.” She giggled.

  “Bambi, boys and girls. And we got a rutting stag here ready to shove his antler right into old Bambi.”

  “Stop it, Johnny. You’re disgusting.” More giggles.

  “Put the costume back on, honey pot. The panties, the short skirt, and then the top. Pick up your pom-poms and go through the cheerleading routine again.”

  “Here I go, Johnny.”

  Lark heard a series of thumps and bumps from the unit next door. Bambi was going through her routine. “Groupies yet,” he mumbled.

  “Oh, Johnny, you’re getting ready again.”

  Heavy breathing. “Keep it up, so to speak, baby.”

  “It isn’t big, but you can sure do it a lot.”

  Johnny Gross’s voice immediately lost its lilt and its pitch sank to menacing tones. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I don’t like remarks about my size.”

  “I didn’t mean anything.”

  “Time to break it up,” Lark said to himself as he left the unit and walked next door. He brushed his hand across his body for the weapon th
at wasn’t there. “Oh, shit.”

  The girl inside the room screamed.

  Lark’s right foot lashed out and slammed into the motel door inches below its handle. The frame around the lock splintered and the door bounced open a few inches. It was still restrained by the security chain. He thudded his foot into the door a second time, snapped the hasp, and knocked the door back against the wall.

  Bambi, surrounded by her shredded cheerleading costume, was huddled against the headboard of the queen-size bed. Maurice Grossman, aka Johnny Gross, was straddling her legs as he slapped her face.

  Lark’s shoulder hit Johnny’s with the full force of his forward momentum and knocked the disc jockey across the bed and into the narrow space between the frame and the wall. He pulled the girl erect. “Do you have anything to wear?”

  “Who are you?”

  Lark reached toward his rear pocket for a badge that wasn’t there. “Police. He knows me.” He gestured to the cowering Johnny Gross. “Do you have any other clothes?”

  She sniffed. “I sure didn’t come in that thing.” She waved at the torn costume.

  “Then out, and make it snappy.”

  She began to struggle into a pair of tight jeans and a halter top. “If you’re a cop, I want that freak in jail. I want him arrested for rape.”

  Lark gestured to the door. “Out!”

  “He forced me.”

  “Uh huh. Out.” He pointed a finger at Gross. “Get some clothes on.” He turned back to the girl, who had finished dressing. “I heard it all from next door, honey. Do you want a replay?”

  “No.” She tightened her belt and knelt on the bed to lean over Johnny Gross. “And you ain’t so special, Mr. Radio Man. You hit the girls and you got a wingding like a little kid.”

  Johnny Gross threw himself across the bed and began to crawl on his hands and knees after her. She gave a loud laugh and ran from the room.

  Lark secured the door shut as best he could. “Hurry it up, Johnny.”

  “I’ll kill her. That little pig. I’ll cut her to ribbons.”

  “Would you now?”

  Johnny Gross turned his back to Lark as he pulled on his clothes. “I didn’t mean that literally, Lieutenant.” The voice had changed as Gross fled and Maurice returned.

  “Do you like to hurt girls, Johnny? Do you like to see them in pain as they play games for you?”

  “She asked for it. She’s been calling me every day for two weeks and hanging around the station for days. She said she’d do anything I wanted. I told her I had this fantasy about a cheerleader in high school and she said she would love to pretend.”

  “And you hit her.”

  “She didn’t have to talk to me that way.” He finished with a final recalcitrant button and turned to face Lark. His features changed as the slackness in his face hardened and a mischievous glint came into his eyes. “Hey, now. You heard everything we were doing, right? You had this place bugged, right?”

  “I was in the unit next door.”

  “You cops hear a lot of dirty stuff like this. You can have a guest shot on my show and we’ll talk about it. Wow, man. Talk about a Gross Out, you’ll have them puking in the aisles.”

  “I could do that, Johnny,” Lark said casually as the man before him rocked back and forth between the personalities of Johnny Gross and the sedate Maurice Grossman. He was like an actor immersed so long in a specific part that the characterization had begun to seep into his psyche.

  “How about toilets? Do you ever hide in rest rooms and peek out little holes at people?”

  “From time to time.”

  “God, that’s disgusting. Disgusting, but terrific.”

  He would have to be led and shepherded through the abyss between the two personalities until the third—the mad one—stood fully revealed. “I guess you have a lot of girls hanging around the station?”

  “Sure, all the time. But you have to be careful of them, because they are like young, you know? You can’t screw around with the ones under sixteen and sometimes they get all made up and can really fool you. I make them show ID.”

  “That sounds smart. Did the groupies come in Portland and Laconia too?”

  “Hell, yes. They’re always there. Well, not so much in Laconia. I wasn’t Johnny Gross there. I called myself Johnny Blue Note. We plattered elevator music. God-awful stuff that sounded like it should be background music for a funeral parlor. Not many cunts there; I mean, elevator music doesn’t attract them. Now that I’m Johnny Gross I really rack them in.”

  “And sometimes you tie them up to make it more stimulating.”

  “Huh?”

  “You hurt them a little, make them grovel a little.”

  “What the hell? They’re all just sluts.”

  “How many do you figure they’ve been? Thirty, maybe forty or more?”

  “I don’t keep count. Are you really coming on my show with all that dirty-cop stuff?”

  “Johnny, I’m just about ready to do anything you want.”

  13

  Lark knew why he had stayed in the department so many years.

  It was brief moments like this that made it all worthwhile. Fleeting times that could only be compared to the minutes after a combat firefight when the exaltation of survival surged through you, or the seconds of orgasm at the climax of a long-anticipated love affair. He had him, and that knowledge made him feel a kinship toward the other man in the motel room. They would talk and work together until all the pieces were laid in neat, logical rows, and the mesh of evidence fit neatly into place.

  “I can understand how a guy can get his kicks out of such things,” Lark said mildly.

  “The woman I got home is a JAP who puts on more weight while putting out less. A guy’s got to get some, right?”

  “Sure. Tell me about the girl we found on Mark Street. The one you used the wood-burning kit on.”

  His eyes flickered. “What are you talking about?”

  Lark gave a low laugh. “I bet you thought we wouldn’t find out about the wood-burning device. We’re a little bit smarter than you give us credit for, Johnny. Tell me about her. Where did you pick her up and what did you do to her?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He retreated across the room until his back was against the wall. “What are you saying?”

  “I know you want to tell me about them, Johnny. Start with the girl on Mark Street, or if you prefer, the one we found in the state forest yesterday.”

  “You’ve got to be killing—I mean, kidding. This is some kind of joke, right?”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  The man against the wall began to quiver. It was as if Lark’s words were an exorcism that forced Johnny Gross to flee and brought back Maurice Grossman. The facial features sagged and he held to the edge of a bureau for support. Dots of perspiration began to bead his forehead. “I want to go home.” It was more a plaintive cry than a request.

  “We have to talk first.” Lark kept his voice low in a nonjudgmental monotone.

  “I want to see my wife.” He sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands.

  “The one who eats too much and puts out too little?”

  “I love my wife.”

  “Of course you do, and also your kids.”

  Maurice looked up at him with a beatific smile. “Yeah, that’s right. I do.”

  “But sometimes you get mixed up and you have to do these things.”

  “When I’m on the radio it’s different. It’s as if I’m someone else.”

  “But it doesn’t always end on the radio, does it? I heard you in here, Johnny. While I was next door listening, I heard Johnny Gross. When I broke in here, I found Johnny beating up a girl. I saw Johnny attack her and really do a number on her.”

  “She made Johnny mad,” Grossman said.

  “She shouldn’t have said those things.”

  “You understand, Lieutenant. I know you do.”

  “Of course I do, Johnny. I k
now how bad you feel sometimes, and how you have to lash out and hurt someone. I understand those things, and I have sympathy for you. You know, it’s possible that we can work all of this out and make things right.”

  “Can we do that? I would really like to have things back to the way they were before Sylvia got to eating so much.”

  “Not only with your wife, but with the others. The parents of those dead girls need you. Why, I even imagine there are several bodies out in the woods that we haven’t even found yet. Would you say that’s a fair assumption?”

  “I don’t know anything about any bodies.”

  “The parents and families of those dead girls would feel a great deal better if they knew what had happened to their loved ones. You would do everyone a great service if you told me everything. You do understand that, don’t you, Johnny?”

  “Why do you keep calling me Johnny?”

  “That’s your name, isn’t it?”

  “My radio name. Johnny Gross is only a character I play.”

  “He was here in this room with that girl.”

  “Because she expected it. No one is interested in Maurice Grossman. Maurice is a nebbish. Boring.”

  “And Johnny gets the girls and always has a comeback.”

  “Sure, he’s hep. A real cool guy. That’s the kind of person the cunts like.”

  “Those girls make you mad, don’t they?”

  “Some of them do. They don’t have the right to make comments about a man’s private parts.”

  Lark sat on the bed next to Maurice Grossman and wished his soul away for a cigarette. “It’s when they talk about your penis that you really get mad.”

  “It hurts.”

  “Maurice’s feelings, but Johnny reacts differently. He lashes out, hits, makes them pay for what they say.”

  “He doesn’t take crap from anyone.”

  “I don’t blame him. Why should he listen to dumb remarks from some teenage girl who isn’t good enough to wipe his shoes?”

  “You see it, Lieutenant. I knew someone would. When I’m Johnny, it’s all different. It’s as if I’m hiding behind someone else. Johnny knows where it’s at and is self-confident.”