Three months back, Matt Ryan had been canned for busting the jaw of a prominent alderman in a Wilson Avenue brothel. Two weeks earlier, Ace Webster had gotten the axe on charges of driving his police vehicle sideways into the rear end of Cardinal Tom Keough’s brand-new Mercedes-Benz in the parking lot of Economy Liquors, this at a time when Ace Webster had been working on a bowl of chili at Mexican Joe’s across the street. And on Monday last, Mule Merriam had been booted off the force for hopping into bed with the wife of a city councilman, the matter exacerbated when the cuckolded councilman had opened fire on the fleeing Merriam, blasting a hole in the radiator of an approaching sanitation department truck. The good old days were gone—the situation had degenerated to the point where a Chicago cop could be fired for scratching his balls in his own bathtub.
There was however one bright splinter protruding from the wreckage of Lockington’s police career, bright only by contrast to the gloomy bulk of the ruins, but a notch better than nothing—his suspension hadn’t been without pay, the usual sop thrown to those about to be pink-slipped, and he’d have a measure of adjustment time, possibly as long as six weeks, before his dismissal went into the books. Beyond that projection, Lockington’s future was far too dim to contemplate—he’d been a cop for more than fifteen years, and police procedures were virtually all he knew. But there’d be severance pay, he’d receive six months of Illinois unemployment compensation, his pension fund would be available in a lump sum, and while he wouldn’t be eating particularly high on the hog, it’d be a while before he starved to death.
The Wednesday morning was dismal, quite cool for a Chicago August, gray, damp, with billowing black clouds mushrooming ominously to the southwest of the city. If there wasn’t rain, he’d probably accomplish something of breathtaking consequence later in the day, providing he could find something of breathtaking consequence to accomplish. Lockington considered his potential for breathtakingly consequential accomplishment and smiled wryly, hoping to Christ that there’d be rain.
He watched a silver Toyota Cressida ease to a halt in front of his apartment building to spook the pigeons of Barry Avenue, sending them flapping northward to Belmont Avenue. A great grayish glob of pigeon dung splashed audibly against his window pane, sticking there, partially obscuring his view of the thirtyish young lady who departed the expensive Japanese automobile to prance primly to the sidewalk. She was five-six or so, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and cuter than a termite’s nightshirt. She was pert-nosed, full red-lipped, jutting-breasted, narrow-waisted, slim-hipped, long-legged, and she moved with the fluid grace of a young jungle cat. She wore a gauzy powder blue blouse with a navy blue tie at its collar, a pleated, short navy blue skirt with powder blue belt, three-inch-heeled powder blue pumps with navy blue bows at the toes, and she carried a large powder blue handbag, a beautifully harmonizing outfit that’d set her back a few shekels, if Lockington was any judge of female apparel and its accessories.
She paused on the vestibule step, a hand on a hip, gazing around the area, a once-neat, quiet, middle-class neighborhood that had begun to follow the rest of the city down the drain. Her brief scrutiny completed, she entered the building and in a moment Lockington’s bell sounded. He squelched his cigarette before leaving his chair to open the door. He said, “Not today, ma’am—no magazines, please.”
Her smile was quick, her upper lip curling over white teeth, one of which was attractively slightly out of line, Lockington noticed. She said, “Lockington—Mr. Lacey Lockington?” Her voice was husky, possibly a trifle too throaty for the slightness of her build, but Lockington liked it. It belonged, he thought, in a darkened bedroom between satin sheets—black satin sheets, and that got him to wondering if they’d ever manufactured black satin sheets. He decided that they hadn’t—black would prove too vulnerable to leakage and spillage. The lady at the door was repeating herself—“Mr. Lacey Lockington?”
Lockington nodded, squinting quizzically at his visitor, and she went by him and into his apartment before he could stop her. She’d been quicker than a mongoose, and Lockington turned slowly from the door to face her. He said, “Lockington’s just an alias, you understand. Another is Jack the Ripper.”
She threw back her head and laughed, a fetching mannerism in Lockington’s opinion—he’d always admired women who’d thrown back their heads when they’d laughed, especially when their laughs had been light and tinkly like the sound of a brook, as hers had been. She said, “Oh, really? My gracious, you must be terribly old!”
Lockington said, “Right about now, you don’t know the half of it.”
She said, “Perhaps not, but I learn rather quickly,” and Lockington took her word for it, watching her sit on the arm of his overstuffed chair. She didn’t sit—she perched there, long legs dangling, crossed at slender ankles—chorus girl legs, as Lockington saw them, delicate ankles—there was a fragile silver slave bracelet adorning one. “By the way, Mr. Lockington, may I come in?” she said, her lilting laugh floating through the shabby apartment.
Lockington said, “Suit yourself,” kicking the door shut behind them and slumping on his sofa.
She said, “Are your neighbors aware of your identity?”
“Do they know that I’m Jack the Ripper?”
“No, do they know that you’re Lacey Lockington?”
“I’d imagine that they do—I’ve lived here for thirteen years.”
“And they aren’t afraid?”
“Of what?”
“Of getting shot, of course.”
Lockington sighed, fumbling for a cigarette in his robe pocket, finding one, firing it up. He raised his eyes to meet hers—they were large brown eyes, he observed, and they sparkled mischievously. He said, “Uhh–h–h, looky, ma’am, before this goes any further—”
She threw up her hands, cutting him off. “I know, I know—who am I, what am I, what the hell am I doing here—right?”
“This could be your day to play the lottery.”
She was frowning—not severely—a semi-frown, Lockington would have called it. She said, “All right, I’m a whore—after a fashion.”
“Out of want or out of need?”
“What’s the difference? If you’re a whore, you’re a whore.”
“That’s a rather unworldly opinion and you aren’t a whore.”
“Well, not that sort of whore, for God’s sake!”
Lockington blew smoke in her direction. “Honey, we’re all whores, every damned one of us. What sort of whore are you?”
She avoided the challenge of his stare, her eyes dropping to study the bows of her pumps. She cleared her throat self-consciously. “Well, you see, Mr. Lockington, I say things that aren’t true—things that I know aren’t true—things that I don’t mean—and I get paid for doing it.” She spread her hands, palms up. “Which makes me a whore wouldn’t you think?”
“Probably not. A whore can hang onto to her integrity—a liar can’t.”
She rolled her eyes ceilingward. “Oh, Dear God, the semantics, the semantics!” It’d have been an excellent spot for her silvery laugh but she held it in check.
“All right, you’re into politics. At what level—precinct—ward?”
“No, I’m not into politics—well, yes, possibly—indirectly, I suppose—but just occasionally, by coincidence.”
“There was a politician’s response, if I’ve ever heard one.”
“You dislike politicians?”
“Not all of them.”
“Why not all of them?”
“Because I don’t know all of them.” He was thinking that she might be a plant, one of Netherby’s Internal Affairs gestapo, sent to clinch the case against him by tacking on a charge of attempted rape, or something equally ridiculous—heresy, perhaps, or counterfeiting, or attempting to dry up Lake Michigan.
She was saying, “Okay, I’m a journalist. How’s that?”
Lockington’s scowl was dark. “Well, it ain’t good, but at your age there could still be hope.”<
br />
She was pivoting on tight buttocks, slipping downward from the arm of the overstuffed chair to its cushion, like an otter into water, Lockington thought—not a ripple. He’d caught a flash of a navy blue half-slip. That’d make her panties powder blue, probably. He liked her spunky approach, her chipper personality, but he was beginning to experience grave misgivings about having permitted her to walk into his apartment—he was in enough trouble already, but she was in and the trick would be to get her out, short of throwing her out. These were perilous times—a man could get sued for next to nothing.
She was smoothing her skirt, leaning forward, brown eyes flashing. She said, “Mr. Lockington, I’m here to apologize—I’m late, I know—I should have come a couple of weeks ago.”
Lockington sat on his living room couch, elbows on his knees, head cradled in his hands, face expressionless, weary eyes riveted to the faded pattern of his brown carpeting, a new line of thought weaving its way into his thought processes—he might have a tiger by the tail here, she might be a wacko. In his fifteen years of police service, Lockington had learned one thing well—all of the Chicago area loonies weren’t confined to mental institutions, there were more of them out than in. He’d encountered his share of unapprehended crackpots and he knew the warning signs, one of the surest being a strange ability to construct imaginary platforms of reference capable of supporting kaleidoscopic networks of illusory injustices—rudimentary paranoia. But the human mind was a labyrinth with as many dead ends as thruways, and there were innumerable variations of the basic disease, at least one of these causing its victim to behold himself as offender rather than offended. Lockington hadn’t dug into the self-accusatory bracket, nor did he intend to, but there existed a solid possibility that he’d just run into one of its prime exhibits. This female was wound to the limit, one more turn of the key and she’d fly to pieces like a two-dollar wristwatch. If she wasn’t riding some sort of chemical high, she’d probably gone over the wall of the nearest funny farm. They’d never set eyes on each other, yet here she was, claiming that she was two weeks overdue with her apology. Obviously she wasn’t playing with a full deck, and it was imperative that he proceed with extreme caution until he could distract her long enough to get to his bedroom telephone. Guardedly, Lockington said, “Apologize—apologize for what?”
She said, “We’ll come to that shortly.”
“That’ll be fine.” Lockington’s tone was cajoling—he didn’t know what the hell was in that big powder blue handbag.
She gulped in a deep breath, sitting erect, squaring her shoulders. She chirped, “Well, here goes—my real name is Erika Elwood.”
Lockington nodded an approving nod. “Erika Elwood—Erika Elwood—yes, it has a nice ring, but I fail to associate it with anything that comes readily to mind. Uhh–h–h, how many names do you have, Miss Elwood?”
“Erika, please—you may call me Erika.”
“All right, thank you, Erika. Now about your names—just how many, would you say?” She could be one of those quintuple-identity schizophrenics—Sunday school teacher, wild animal trainer, corporation executive, three-dollar prostitute, and hatchet murderess. Lockington eyed the big powder blue handbag. It’d hold a hatchet, sure as hell.
Erika Elwood said, “How many? Oh, just two. The other isn’t mine, of course—I just use it, you see.”
“Uh-huh—and for what purposes do you use this other name?”
Her eyes locked his. Very slowly, very clearly, she said, “I write for the Chicago Morning Sentinel, Mr. Lockington—under the name of ‘Stella Starbright.’”
11
A silence pervaded Lacey Lockington’s cluttered apartment on Barry Avenue—an awesome silence, vast, dense, profound, a silence to be encountered at the grave of Almighty God, and when Lockington ran a thumbnail along his grizzled jowl, the sound was not unlike that of a fifty-ton bulldozer plowing through seventy-five acres of rusty scrap iron. His visitor was saying, “Mr. Lockington, you must understand that coming here has been extremely difficult for me.”
Lockington yawned. He’d been wrong—she wasn’t an escaped mental patient, and he should have been relieved because now there’d be no sirens, no padded wagons, no men in white coats, no explanations to make, but he wasn’t relieved. Crazy or not, he’d found himself rather liking the brown-eyed intruder in the silver Japanese automobile—she’d been amusing company and damned good to look at, and if they’d thrown a straitjacket on her and taken her away, he’d probably have visited her in Dunning or Elgin, or wherever, but this was a horse of another color. Her husky voice dispelled his thoughts—“Very well, ignore me—I suppose you feel that you should, and that’s understandable, but, dammit, it took courage to bring me here—courage and a sincere desire to set this matter straight with you!” There was a quaver in her voice, but she wasn’t about to weep, not Erika Elwood—Erika Elwood was pissed-off.
Lockington said, “Sorry, but my string ensemble is playing a gig in Baltimore.”
She snapped from the overstuffed chair to her feet, brown eyes blazing, jaw set, fingernails digging into the soft blue leather of her handbag. “All right, I should have known better, but I’ve done what I came to do—I’ve made my apology, and I’ll be boiled in oil if I’ll kiss your ass! Good morning, Mr. Lockington!”
Lockington raised a detaining hand. “Aw, don’t be that way! Why deprive an old man of an education? I’ve always wondered just what makes you newspaper bastards tick. Tell me about it.”
She nodded curtly, throwing herself petulantly back into her chair, one slender leg tucked under her, her flare-up subsiding, the stridency leaving her voice. She said, “What makes us newspaper bastards tick? The same things that make you cop bastards tick—paychecks, no more, no less.”
Lockington said, “Same holds true for assassins, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, absolutely—we’re all whores—your words, not mine!” She’d heard the bugle, and a trace of battle fever still sizzled in her eyes.
Lockington said, “That point’s been established, but you get paid no matter what kind of trash you write, so why the banzai attack on a busted-down cop—and why the hearts and flowers for the scum of the earth?”
“That’s my job.”
“Some job—distortion of facts, blowing them clear the hell out of proportion!”
“It’s a living.”
“You do-gooders frost my ass—and you, you in particular—a woman, a beautiful woman who’s fair game for these reptiles, defending the bastards! Why, in this town, you could lose your purse and your cherry before you get around the next corner!”
Her laugh was brittle. “My purse, yes.”
“You know where I’m coming from! I’d think that you’d be applauding the police, not denigrating them! What’s with the press?”
“I do applaud the police, Mr. Lockington, but not on paper.”
“Yeah, you applaud! I’ll bet you go around cutting hoses at five-alarm fires!”
“Don’t lecture me, dammit! I know how it looks—now may I tell you how it is?”
“By all means.” Lockington’s fury was spent.
“Listen to me, please—the views I profess to espouse in the Sentinel are in no way related to the values I cherish!” She was underlining her words with quick gestures, driving them home like they were tacks. “The Stella Starbright column is written on instructions from management—it’s ordered like you’d order a sardine sandwich!”
“I wouldn’t order a sardine sandwich.”
“But if you would, you’d get one, whether the cook likes sardines or not!”
“He probably doesn’t.”
“There’s been nothing personal about my columns—you were my assignment and I wrote what I was told to write—it’s been just that simple!”
“I think it’s those slimy little tails that throw me.”
She shrugged. “Spare me the non sequiturs, if you will. Do you have a drink?”
“Sure. What’s your pleasu
re—hemlock, arsenic, strychnine?”
Her smile was tight. “I’d really prefer whisky.”
Lockington said, “Then you haven’t tried Old Anchor Chain.” He put out his cigarette and left the couch to amble into the kitchen, his slippers sloshing against the cheap linoleum. He busied himself at the sinkboard, raising his voice to continue the discussion. “So a Morning Sentinel honcho grabs a telephone and says, ‘Hey, I want a Stella Starbright column that links Mother Teresa to an international terrorist group.’ He gets it?”
She jack-knifed forward in her chair to peer into the kitchen. “Of course, he gets it—he gets it or I start looking for a new job!”
Lockington returned to the living room bearing a dented, chipped black metal tray. On it were two cloudy glasses, a plastic bowl filled with ice cubes, a small pitcher of water, a nearly full quart bottle of Old Anchor Chain, and a butter knife. He didn’t know what they dumped into Old Anchor Chain, but he suspected that the distillery had a working relationship with a nitroglycerine refinery. He’d bought a case of the stuff at a clearance sale three years earlier, and eleven bottles remained. He parked the tray on his coffee table, seated himself, poured, added ice and water, and pushed a glass in Erika Elwood’s direction. He said, “I’m fresh out of swizzle sticks, but you could stir with the butter knife.”
She lifted her glass, murmuring, “Thank you—is a toast in order?”
Lockington said, “Why not? ‘To mine own executioner’ would seem appropriate.”
“‘Surrogate executioner’ would be closer to the truth.” She sipped at the drink, grimaced, shuddered, blinked, coughed, and gasped, “Oh, Jesus, Joseph, and Judas Iscariot!”
Lockington smiled a gratified smile, saying nothing.
After a struggle she regained her normal breathing pattern. “If I hadn’t churned out that garbage, another eager beaver would have—the Sentinel has a battalion of them, all geared to create controversy. That’s the Sentinel’s gimmick—be outrageous, buck the tide of popular opinion. It sells newspapers, and that’s Max’s bottom line.”
The Fifth Script: The Lacey Lockington Series - Book One Page 4
