The Violet Hour

by Richard Montanari

  Dr Crane observed her from his cove of darkness, his eyes running slowly up her legs, over her hips. In this light, at this distance, she was Rita Hayworth at her fuck-me prime. He was a very lucky man at the moment.

  He was just about to untie the top of his scrubs and begin to deal with his now furious erection when a shadow crossed the patio stones in front of him.

  Someone was there.

  Someone was right there.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Benjamin Crane jumped from his chair, his hand clutched to his chest.

  A broad-shouldered man about his size stepped from the shadows, stopped. There was something in each of the man’s hands. ‘Hi, Doc,’ the man said, softly.

  Inside, Elizabeth Crane sat on a dining room chair, drew the hem of her dress up to her thigh, continued to talk into the phone. She reached into her bag, produced a cigarette, lit it, drew deeply.

  Outside, her husband looked around for a weapon. There was nothing. He froze.

  ‘I’ve always liked her in that dress,’ the man said. ‘Very sexy.’

  Benjamin Crane tried to gather his senses. He looked carefully at the man and recognition soon dawned. ‘You.’

  ‘Yes,’ the man said, stepping closer.

  ‘What the hell do you want? I-I thought we were through. Years ago. I thought we were even.’ Benjamin Crane tried to see what the man carried. The left hand held something boxy, black. The other hand was turned away, hidden from view.

  ‘Even? Are you serious?’

  ‘That was a hell of a lot of work I did. For free.’

  ‘That was a long time ago,’ the man said. ‘And nothing’s free.’

  ‘But you said—’

  ‘What I said was, your secret was safe with me.’ The man stepped closer, two full steps. ‘I said I’d never go to the police and tell them about your role that night. I haven’t.’

  Elizabeth Crane unzipped her dress, stepped out of it. She wore a short black slip. She sat back down on a dining room chair, facing the window, and began to run her hands over her thighs, her stomach.

  ‘So tell me what happened that night, Dr Crane. Tell me in your own words.’

  Benjamin Crane glanced at the window, back. ‘You were there. Why do you—’

  ‘Who was the pirate?’

  ‘I-I’m not sure,’ Benjamin Crane said. ‘After all these years, I always assumed—’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Doc,’ the man said. He was inches away now. Then, from his right hand, came a flash of silver. Benjamin Crane glanced down, recognized the scalpel as his own. The man who stood in front of him now had demanded it as a souvenir so many years ago, a badge of his courage. He looked back at the man’s face, his own handiwork now more visible in the moonlight. Crazily, Benjamin Crane thought he had done a hell of a job.

  ‘Johnny Angel’s dead,’ the man said, an expression of mock sadness on his face. ‘Just like you.’

  Benjamin Matthew Crane turned to run, but the man slammed a Taser unit into the side of his neck and instead he slumped to the ground, his limbs flung spastically out to the sides, his brain now a vicious tangle of unfettered impulses. The man fell instantly on top of him, pinning his shoulders to the damp earth. He held a shock of Benjamin Crane’s hair in his left hand, the scalpel in his right.

  The woman in the window unsnapped her bra and let it fall from her shoulders. She moved suggestively to the music for a while before she sat back down, faced away from the window, spread her legs, and began to fondle her breasts.

  A few moments later, as the blade of the scalpel was drawn across his face for the first time, Dr Crane remembered, in agony, a question he’d pondered for years, a question about how it felt.

  The blade returned, again and again.

  Blood steamed the night air.

  And Benjamin Crane had his answer.

  14

  AT THE AGE of sixty-nine, there were three things that Dag Randolph still welcomed over his threshold. One, of course, was his Social Security check. As a retired postal worker, he knew the importance of the godsend check’s timely delivery, and George Sitz, his current mail carrier of five years, did a mighty fine job. Except in the rain. Sometimes George let the magazines get wet.

  Two, the nice young lady from Domino’s Pizza, the one who always flirted with him.

  And three, the one person for whom he would trade the first two in a heartbeat. The one precious person he would trade anything and everything for.

  His granddaughter Madeleine.

  Amelia angled into the driveway at her parents’ house at 1728 Edgefield Road and unbuckled Maddie’s seat belt. Maddie got out of the car and ran up the stone steps to the front door, where Dag Randolph stood: the furious shock of thick white hair, the now de rigeur red flannel shirt, the ever trim figure of a man who spent his life walking. Five days a week Dag Randolph still walked his old route.

  Dag grabbed Maddie’s hand and led her into the living room. Amelia followed, a close but undeniable second. ‘Uh, hi, Dad,’ Amelia said, removing her jacket.

  ‘Hi, honey.’ He planted a cursory kiss on Amelia’s cheek, then sat down on his threadbare La-Z-Boy recliner, the one Amelia and her mother were plotting to replace that Christmas. The aroma of baking banana-walnut bread filled the house. A college football game was on the TV in the corner, the sound turned down. Dag Randolph was in his milieu.

  Maddie was visiting.

  Amelia wandered into the kitchen, kissed her mother hello, and poured herself a cup of coffee.

  ‘Guess what,’ Maddie asked.

  ‘What?’ Dag replied.

  ‘Mom said I could trick-or-treat here!’

  ‘Well, you better,’ Dag said, tapping his hand on his knees. ‘I was counting on it. I’ve got it all mapped out for us.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Maddie said, climbing up onto her grandfather’s lap.

  ‘Got it right here.’ Dag reached to the end table, flipped on the lamp, and retrieved a yellow legal pad that had a rather detailed map of a five-block radius drawn on it. ‘We’re shooting for name-brand candy only this year,’ he said, slipping on his bifocals, plotting a course like Hannibal surveying the Alps.

  ‘Right,’ Maddie said. ‘Like Twizzlers.’

  ‘Twizzlers are good.’

  ‘And Peppermint Patties.’

  ‘You bet. No point messing with the cheap stuff.’

  ‘No point,’ Maddie echoed.

  ‘I figure we’ll start on Sunview, work our way toward Huron Road, catch the Singers and the Amicarellis early that way. You got a full-size Snickers last year at the Singers’ . . . and a popcorn ball at the Amicarellis.’ Dag, of course, had all of this cataloged. He had delivered mail to these people for nearly three decades. He knew who the cheapskates were.

  ‘Yum. I like popcorn balls,’ Maddie said.

  ‘I do too,’ Dag said. ‘Too bad they pull my damn teeth out every time I eat one.’

  ‘Daggett!’ from the kitchen.

  Dag shrugged.

  Maddie giggled.

  Amelia lowered her voice. ‘Is everything okay with Dad?’

  ‘Oh yes. He’s just a little tired,’ Martha Randolph said. She was a slight woman, five three in heels, the original owner of Maddie and Amelia’s bright green eyes. She had worked in some sort of retail establishment her entire adult life, the longest stint being the ten years she had put in at Connor’s Ice Cream, but lately Amelia had noticed that what once was a single spry step across this very kitchen was now three, what once called itself vigor now answered to lethargy. Her mother’s movements were slower, more deliberate of late. Older, Amelia conceded. ‘He stayed up late the last couple of weeks watching the World Series. It messes him up for a month if he doesn’t go to bed at ten-thirty. Besides the fact that he gets so damned involved in the game. Shouting, even.’

  ‘Well . . . okay,’ Amelia said. ‘If you say it’s—’

  ‘Then there’s this business with your brother.’

  Whenever Amelia’s on
ly sibling was in trouble with his parents, he was referred to as ‘your brother’. In happier times, which was most of the time, he was Garth. The current business with Garth Randolph, who, at thirty-nine, had already made and blown two fortunes, centered around his refusal to take a hand out from his parents.

  And his habit of dropping out of sight for long periods of time.

  Garth’s business cycle was currently at low ebb; everyone knew it, just as everyone knew he would rebound and probably make another million dollars someday. Because Garth Randolph was brilliant, a renaissance man, even though he had never finished college. He had started off like gangbusters at CWRU – his first year he carried a 4.0 average – but eventually his substance-friendly extracurricular activities became his curricular activities. The last straw came after a five-day binge when, as editor of the yearbook, he mixed up the names of sixty-four students. The yearbook made it to press in that condition. It was an all-time university record.

  Yet Amelia did get something out of her brother’s brief college career at Case Western Reserve University. Her own 400-level course in tolerance. It was Garth Randolph who had introduced her to her Roger.

  That’s okay, big brother, Amelia thought with an inner smile. I forgive you.

  ‘Have you talked to him, Mom?’ Amelia asked.

  ‘Just yesterday, in fact,’ Martha said.

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Funniest thing . . . I haven’t talked to him since maybe Easter,’ Martha said. ‘So I ask him where he’s been – as in, what has he been doing with himself? – and you know what he says?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He says: church.’

  ‘What?’

  Martha laughed, acknowledging her son’s lifelong resistance to organized religion. Garth was always the sulking, dark-eyed teenager in the Human League T-shirt, slouching in the St Clare vestibule, thoroughly miserable and bored. By the time he was fourteen, he just said no to his parents, and that was that. To Amelia’s knowledge, he had since set foot in a Catholic church only once, and that was to attend her wedding. ‘That’s what he said,’ Martha said. ‘But I think he meant he just came from church.’

  ‘Still . . .’

  ‘I know. Garth near holy water. It’s a miracle.’

  ‘Where is he living?’ Amelia asked, more than a little surprised by the news, wondering why Garth hadn’t called her. His pattern, after being out of touch for a long time, was always to call Martha first, then Amelia. Then he’d show up.

  But church? Her brother?

  ‘Didn’t say,’ Martha answered. ‘But you know Garth . . .’

  I used to, Amelia thought as she poured more coffee into her mother’s cup.

  I used to . . .

  Keep this tiger out of your tank.

  ‘Murmurs’ hears that there is an awfully nasty batch of heroin on the streets of Cleveland these days. It has the distinctive markings of a red tiger on one side and a blue monkey on the other, both rubber-stamped onto a white GemPac. Creative stuff? Well, unfortunately, there’s also some creative alchemy at work here, too. This red-tiger smack is far too pure and it has already proven itself deadly. If you’ve ever visited the offices at the Chronicle, you already know that no one here is in a position to tell you not to indulge in illegal substances. We’re merely suggesting you don’t indulge in this one. After all, we need the readers.

  —Nicholas Stella

  15

  SHE WORKED AT the opium house on East Thirtieth Street by night and probably went to some vocational school by day, Mac thought. He had seen her there when he had scored from Rat Boy, but she had never seen him.

  He was small when he bought his drugs.

  The girl was walking up Fourth Street between Euclid and Prospect, dallying, appointment-free, peering into store windows, fluffing her hair, looking slight and waif-like as the business crowd muscled its noontime way around her.

  He knew the minute he saw her in the sunlight that he would own her.

  He stepped out of the doorway, directly into the young woman’s path. She was nineteen, street-savvy, smart enough to know that she was being hustled for something. Hand on purse, pivot toward the curb, eyes down. Urban survival maneuvers.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, blocking her way.

  ‘Hi,’ she answered, the small-town Pennsylvania girl rushing to the surface, betraying the makeup. There was a tiny tattoo of a butterfly near the outside corner of her right eye.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  She wore tight black jeans and a blue leather motorcycle jacket. Knee-high black suede boots. Her hair was a cantata of blondes and browns and rusts, falling just past her shoulders, soft bangs in her eyes. She tried to step around him, but at the moment he was big. He filled her path, her near future. She seemed to resign herself to his presence. ‘Um, Taffy,’ she said. ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Mac.’

  ‘Oh . . . okay . . .’

  ‘Mind if I walk with you, Taffy?’ he asked.

  She looked him up and down. ‘Free country, I guess.’

  They strolled in silence for a few storefronts. The smell of diesel fumes mingled with the scent of tomato sauce and garlic coming from the pizza parlor on the corner, then slipped beneath the girl’s perfume, a perfume that was probably too expensive for her, a fragrance she’d probably gotten out of a magazine, he thought, or as the result of a quick run through a department store. Rap music raged out of the wig store. She spoke first. ‘So . . . what are you up to today, Mac?’

  ‘Oh, Taffy,’ he said. ‘Important things.’

  ‘Is that right? And I suppose that means that you’re an important man?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I’m an important man, and I do important things.’

  She smiled, and it made her look younger. Seventeen, maybe. A high schooler. Younger than Julia. ‘Oh yeah? Important things like what?’

  She had a slight gap between her front teeth and he liked that. ‘Taking care of unfinished business, you might say. I’m the kind of man who doesn’t like loose ends in his life.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Taffy said, opening up to him a little. ‘I’m exactly the same way.’

  ‘Really? How so?’ He offered her a cigarette. She took it, stopped walking, allowed him to light it for her.

  ‘Well, for one thing . . . guys,’ she said. They turned the corner, leisurely, heading east on Prospect. ‘I cannot start with a new guy until the old relationship is over. Over, over. You know? And I don’t mean the stage when you’re still sending cards, or calling in the middle of the night just to hear the other person’s voice. I mean over-over-over. Believe it or not, some of my girlfriends can’t leave a relationship until they have the next guy hooked. Not me. Can’t do it. Nope.’

  ‘Do you have a lot of boyfriends, Taffy?’

  ‘Hah!’ she exclaimed. ‘Not these days.’

  ‘Really? A pretty girl like you?’

  Taffy gave up a half smile. Sexy gap. ‘Oh . . . I betcha say that to all the girls.’

  ‘Just the pretty ones.’

  Taffy giggled. ‘Betcha say that, too.’

  They stopped at the corner of Ninth and Prospect, waiting for the light.

  ‘Hungry?’ Mac asked.

  Taffy smiled, flicked her cigarette to the curb. She looked at her watch, coy, demure. ‘I could eat.’

  The northeast corner of the huge, drafty room was blocked off by two sheets of white canvas, suspended from the high ceiling; creating, in effect, a ten-by-ten-foot square room that looked down onto Euclid Avenue from one window, and a side street from the other. Thank God there were space heaters, Taffy thought.

  Ten stories below them, the rush hour was just starting to flag.

  Although she had never officially attended college, Taffy Ann Kilbane, late of East McKeesport, Pennsylvania, had been to many a frat party since she had come to Cleveland on a Continental Trailways bus when she was sixteen. So at the moment she stepped through the canvas, she rec
ognized the layout, the setup. It seemed a little freaky to her at first, a little out of sync with what she expected to see when she pulled back the corner of the canvas, but there it was.

  A dorm room. A girl’s dorm.

  It appeared as if her new friend Mac had built a replica of a college dorm room in the corner of the top floor of an empty warehouse. Single bed, student desk, wardrobe, tiny fridge, microwave, portable TV.

  Above the bed, and on the wall next to it, were posters. But neither seemed to be about anything or anyone current. One was that old poster of Kevin Costner in Bull Durham. Another was a baby-faced Tom Hanks in Big.

  Taffy walked over to the desk, which was L-shaped and made out of that blond wood that was so popular in the fifties and sixties. It reminded her of her grandmother’s house. The desk butted up against the wall in the corner, below the two windows. On one end was a tarnished silver tray with some makeup items. A brush, liquid foundation, a powder compact, a collection of eye shadow, tweezers, a half bottle of Ambush eau de toilette. She’d never heard of Ambush eau de toilette. It looked old, just like all the rest of the makeup. The cut crystal of the cologne bottle had a filmy, greasy feel to it, as if it had been in a plastic makeup bag for years, stuck in somebody’s damp basement.

  She had taken the clothes he had given her and stepped inside the canvas-room, wondering if this guy was a peep-show freak or what. Not that it mattered much. The hundred-dollar bill he had given her in the rickety freight elevator on the way up had pretty much insured that he could have whatever he wanted over the course of the next few hours, short of any rough stuff. Besides, he wasn’t all that hard to take for an older guy.

  So if he got off on watching girls change clothes, there were certainly enough places he could be hiding. Nonetheless, she still rushed through the part where her breasts were exposed.

  On the other hand, she discovered that she liked the clothes. A lot. She really dug the eighties-retro look: feathered hair, hefty shoulder pads, legwarmers, neon and pastel colors. This outfit was dead-on. Madonna to the max.