The Violet Hour

by Richard Montanari

She walked over to the full-length cheval mirror; this piece, a real antique. The mirror was losing some of its silver, but she got a pretty good look at herself. And she looked hot. She even had a hint of cleavage.

  She got her own brush out of her purse and ran it through her hair just as Mac peeled back the canvas and stepped into the room carrying a bottle of wine and two glasses.

  Mac had not changed his clothes; he still wore a pair of dark blue corduroys, Timberland loafers, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Strong forearms, Taffy noticed, even though a pair of small table lamps provided the only light in the room. There were no blinds or curtains over the windows, and every so often the brake lights from the street below would spray-paint a spooky, ethereal orange glow onto the buildings across the street.

  Mac sat next to her on the bed, handed her a glass of wine. They clinked glasses, drank, sensed each other’s sexual presence, drank some more. Taffy could feel the wine warming her. She wished she had a joint.

  Eventually she decided it was time to make conversation, and this very strange place, this very strange world, was about all she could think of to talk about. ‘You live here?’

  ‘Not all the time,’ Mac said. ‘I have another place.’

  She nodded, sipped her wine, pointed to the wine bottle on the desk. ‘Spanada?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, as if he had been waiting for her to ask.

  ‘Spanada?’

  ‘Yes, why? You don’t like it?’

  ‘Cheese Louise. Where do you find this stuff?’

  ‘At the beverage store, of course.’

  She looked at him skeptically, sipped her wine. ‘I don’t know . . .’ She picked up the bottle, perused the faded label. ‘I’ve bought a lot of cheap wine in my time, okay? I’ve had a fake ID since I was, like, thirteen. Lots of fortified crap. Night Train, MD Twenty/Twenty, wine coolers. Never seen this on a shelf. Ever.’

  ‘You’re just not going to the right stores.’

  ‘But I’ll tell you where I have seen it,’ Taffy continued. ‘In old pictures of my mother’s house when she was having parties.’

  ‘Well, let’s just say that I’m a nostalgic kind of guy, Taffy,’ he said, moving closer to her, taking the bottle in hand. He poured them some more wine. ‘This was a very good time in my life.’ He recapped the bottle. ‘What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with reliving the good times?’

  ‘Hey . . .’ Taffy began, holding up her right hand, as if she were being sworn in. ‘Whatever grabs your rabbit, right?’

  ‘Precisely.’ They clinked glasses.

  Taffy continued. ‘But answer me one thing, okay, Mac?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘We’re not drinking twenty-year-old jug wine, are we?’

  He laughed. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I mean, I’d hate to think about what kind of weird friggin’ protozoa might be growing inside a twenty-year-old bottle of drugstore wine,’ Taffy said, offering unrequested proof of her education. She’d actually gotten a B in ninth-grade biology.

  ‘No. It’s just a funky old bottle I like to keep around. I assure you, the cheap wine we’re drinking is fresh.’ He lifted his glass to his lips, took another deep swallow.

  Taffy looked at her watch, pointed to the television. ‘Um, can we watch the news?’ she asked. ‘I kinda like to stay informed, you know.’

  ‘Sure,’ he answered. ‘Whatever channel you want. Go ahead. The on/off knob is on the side.’

  She got up from the bed and crossed over to the desk. She turned off the music and flipped on the television, a thirteen-inch black-and-white model. Another antique. Beige plastic, bent rabbit ears, a couple of knobs missing. After a few moments, it warmed up. The reception was remarkably clear.

  ‘What’s this? Where’s Katie Couric?’ Taffy asked, sipping her wine.

  ‘This is Dan Rather. He does the news.’

  Taffy looked at him, ‘Uh, excuse me. Katie Couric does the six-thirty news on this channel. I’m not ignorant.’

  ‘Well, Dan’s filling in for Katie tonight.’

  ‘I also happen to know who Dan Rather is too, dear. And he’s a lot older than this. In fact, I’m not sure he’s still alive. This must be some kind of cable show.’

  She flipped the channel, over to channel five, just as a young Peter Jennings was going to a commercial. ‘. . . back with more news, in a moment.’

  Then came a station promo.

  ‘. . . tonight on channel five, at eight o’clock, Who’s the Boss, followed by Growing Pains, Moonlighting, and thirtysomething . . . and then stay tuned for all the day’s news, sports, and weather at eleven on Channel Five.’

  Flip, flip. Channel Three. Tom Brokaw.

  ‘Where’s the rest of the channels? Don’t you have cable?’ Taffy asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ he replied.

  She left it on Channel Three, sat back down on the bed.

  Brokaw said: ‘. . . and in a surprise move by the White House today, President Reagan signed into law a bill that most Washington insiders believed he would veto . . .’

  Taffy emptied her glass, poured them both more wine. She looked at him, her clear blue eyes a twist of confusion. ‘You’re a very weird guy, Mac.’

  Taffy stood, crossed the room, turned off the TV. She found a Def Leppard album, put it on the turntable, clicked it to life. She swayed to the music, moving around the room. She played with the neck of her off-the-shoulder shirt. ‘Got any pot, Mac?’

  Mac flipped his hand out to his side, like a magician. And, magically, a joint was there. He smiled, lit the joint, passed it to her.

  She took a few deep hits, passed it back, continued to dance. She twirled, her hands moving expressively about her face, her body. Taffy had danced at a club on West Twenty-fifth called the Iron Gate. It was only for three nights, but she was a quick study. She knew the moves. ‘Hey, sailor,’ she said, pushing his knees apart as he sat on the bed, stepping in between. ‘You lookin’ for a date?’

  She stepped back, pulled her off-the-shoulder shirt even further down, letting the top slide off her shoulders, over the tops of her arms, and onto the floor. Her breasts were small, adolescently firm. And she was proud of them. Ever since she was fourteen, Taffy Kilbane had worn her T-shirts extra tight. The boys had always looked. The men, too.

  Mac removed his shirt, reached for her as she moved to the music. She danced away, then back. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Nice tattoo.’

  Instead of answering, he reached out and took hold of her. Taffy didn’t struggle. As she stood in front of him, she could feel his hot breath on her stomach. He pulled her closer and dipped his tongue inside the waistband of her leggings, ran it along her smooth skin to the curve of her left hip.

  Taffy Kilbane gasped with pleasure. ‘You’re a naughty boy, Mr Mac.’

  He unbuckled her belt, then slowly pulled down her leggings.

  ‘I know what you want,’ she said.

  He flicked his tongue gently around her navel, then lower, lower. Then Mac lifted her high into the air and eased her down to the bed.

  ‘Julia,’ he said, softly, his eyes floating shut.

  Taffy looked at him, at the cant of his features, and immediately understood. All of it. The dorm room, the clothes, the wine, the music. He wanted her to be someone else, someone very specific. She had met them before, men who never got over someone, men who were still pining for a long lost love. It had never been anywhere near this elaborate, but she’d seen it. She had been Mary Lee, once. Rosemary, too. Why not Julia?

  She unzipped his zipper, unbuckled his belt. By the time she removed his pants he was very hard. And she noticed right away that Mac was way above average in size. She straddled him, lowered herself down.

  He would tell her that he loved her, but it wouldn’t be for an hour, an hour later when Taffy reached her orgasm, sitting on the windowsill, naked, her hot skin pressed against the chilled glass of the October night, the sound of her sighs rising and falling, entangling the cit
y sounds that rose, like steam, to meet her.

  Fifteen feet above their heads, mounted to the ceiling, a closed-circuit camera watched – silent, digital, dispassionate, as vigilant as the Hidden Paw himself.

  Taffy Kilbane left in a cab at ten-thirty. A second hundred-dollar bill in her hand, a clear message burned into her memory.

  She would call if anybody came for Ronnie ‘Rat Boy’ Choi.

  He decided not to go home just yet. At home he was nobody special these days.

  In his corner, though, high above the city, cocooned amid his sensitive and far-reaching equipment he was somebody. He sat in front of his laptop, the screen now the only light in his room. He accessed the photographs, the black-and-white smiling faces he had scanned from the yearbook; coifed and sprayed and toothy and smugly perverse in their youth, their promise.

  The remaining members of the AdVerse Society of 1988.

  He looked at the credit card receipts he had taken from Geoffrey Coldicott’s trash.

  Three were from the Shenanigans nightclub near the airport. All late at night. He decided to scan the receipts, study them more closely on his computer screen. Besides, they were beginning to smell a little. Geoffrey favored smoked fish, but always bought too much.

  Mac placed the receipts facedown on his flatbed scanner, fired it up, just as another computer jolted to life twenty miles south-east of him, no distance at all in cyberspatial terms, its data bits flying through the circuitry like milk blue lightning slashing across the Cuyahoga River.

  16

  AMELIA SAT AT the computer and clicked on the World Online icon. Immediately the hard drive whirred to life.

  ‘You have new mail,’ the computer said. Out loud.

  Amelia jumped a foot.

  ‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ she said, her hand to her breast. She had never heard any sound come out of the computer other than the occasional ding noise it made when something was finished. This was an actual woman’s voice.

  After she regained her composure, she was able to intuitively click around the software, and, after a few more turns of the hard drive, she had her e-mail message.

  It was five full pages of gibberish. Numbers and symbols and strange-looking characters.

  At first, it appeared as if some of it may have been Russian. But, Amelia thought, even Russian didn’t have characters as strange as this. Did it? Maybe it was Arabic. Or Hebrew. Or Greek. She’d never seen anything quite like it.

  There were no paragraph breaks, no indentations, no recognizable words, let alone sentences. One of the characters looked like an upside down Q.

  This isn’t Russian, Amelia thought as she hit the Print button, making a copy of the message.

  This is Martian.

  Four

  Subterranea

  17

  SIX-TWENTY A.M. Nicky stood in the doorway to Volk’s Jewelers on Prospect Avenue and attended the street as it slowly came alive. He sipped his coffee, yawned. This was the worst part of his job. He was always waiting for somebody, something.

  But, as always, it was the thrill of the hunt that energized him, the thought that he might actually pull it off. This time, a story from the dealer’s point of view.

  He closed his eyes, leaned against the window, imagined his byline in Esquire, GQ, Playboy, The New Yorker . . .

  Six twenty-five. Gil Strauss entered the back door of the rectory at St Francis, as he had every autumn and winter weekday for many years, and prepared to heat the sacristy for the priest offering seven-o’clock mass. The sky was leaden, promising snow, and Gil brought with him a chill that seemed to follow him down the long, dark hallway that led to the church.

  Dark, as always, except . . .

  Except this morning there was a wedge of light from one of the vacant rooms, a room that was going to be Father Angelino’s when he arrived. Gil walked around the corner, pushed open the door, and saw a figure standing near the window.

  ‘Good morning, Gil,’ the figure said, without turning around.

  ‘Good morning, Father LaCazio. How come you’re—’

  ‘A priest doesn’t leave this earth with much, Gil.’

  ‘Excuse me, Father?’

  Joseph turned toward him, slowly, a cigarette in hand. He gestured toward the two large cardboard boxes on the bed. They were unsealed, either just arrived and opened or ready to be taped and shipped.

  Gil asked: ‘Are those Father Angelino’s belongings?’

  ‘Yes. They came from St Michael’s yesterday.’

  ‘Is that everything?’

  ‘Yes,’ Joseph said. ‘Two boxes. That’s what he accrued in this life. He lived forty-two years, helped thousands of people, and he got two boxes of junk for it.’

  ‘But a priest isn’t supposed to—’

  ‘Two boxes. You could fit his whole life into the trunk of a car.’ Joseph opened the window slightly. A frigid breeze stole across the room. ‘It all goes to his sister, Carmen.’

  ‘Do you want me to take them to UPS?’ Gil asked.

  Joseph was silent for a few moments. He flicked his cigarette out the window, closed it. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Or maybe I’ll go. Maybe I’ll take a drive after mass. I’ll let you know.’

  ‘You should let me do it, Father,’ Gil said. ‘Your bad back and all. You shouldn’t be—’

  Gil made a move toward the boxes, but Joseph froze him with a glance. ‘I’ll let you know, Gil,’ he said softly. ‘After mass.’

  ‘Okay, Father,’ Gil said, stopping in his tracks. He tapped his watch. ‘Speaking of mass.’

  Joseph waved, absently, in Gil’s direction. ‘I’ll be right up.’

  Gil hesitated, then left the room. The last thing he heard as he ascended the steps to the sacristy was the low-volume hum of a spiritual, ‘Just a Closer Walk with Thee,’ one of Father LaCazio’s favorites.

  At six-thirty Nicky looked up from his Plain Dealer and saw Beverly attempting to cross the street, lithely sidestepping traffic, almost balletic in her movements, waiting, now, for a bus to pass. Beverly was tall and arrogantly statuesque, and this morning wore a mauve satin bolero jacket, short white skirt, seamed stockings, and perilously high heels. Her thick black hair was swept dramatically back from her face and secured by a pair of huge African-ivory barrettes. Her makeup was gaudy and theatrical; her legs, perfect.

  Beverly Ahn was biracial, a stunning transvestite in her early thirties, one of the thousands of exotic Vietnam war hyphenates populating the large cities of the eastern United States. She had just come off duty as a hostess in a club called Shangri La on West Twenty-fifth Street, a mostly transvestite bar that served the city’s fairly active cross-dressing population, but also one that drew a large tourist clientele – gay, straight, and everything in between. Nicky had once done a series of ‘City Streets’ pieces on alternative bars, and Beverly had been his unofficial guide to subterannea. They’d been friends ever since, running into each other at concerts, film festivals, and the like.

  Nicky watched Beverly click across Prospect, a sleek, polished illusion of womanly grace and confidence. For any number of reasons, not the least of which was simple respect, Nicky always thought of, and referred to, Beverly Ahn in the feminine.

  ‘Hi, gorgeous,’ Beverly said. ‘Sorry I’m late.’ She stepped onto the sidewalk, towering over Nicky by three or four inches.

  Nicky felt himself color slightly at the compliment. He bullied it back. He was never quite sure how to react to compliments from men. Especially men who wore lace camisoles. ‘Good morning, bella aura,’ Nicky replied. He always countered Beverly in faux Italian because she loved things like that. And this morning Nicky needed all the flattery he could muster. It was a point that Beverly Ahn lost no time in acknowledging.

  ‘You don’t know what I’m going to have to go through to talk him into this,’ Beverly said, stepping into the doorway. ‘The man’s a beast.’

  ‘Well,’ Nicky began, trying to think of some charming way to placat
e her, ‘they don’t call me the Beastmaster of Euclid Avenue for nothing, you know.’

  Beverly just glared at him. ‘And why am I doing this again?’

  ‘Because you like me. Because I’m the coolest white boy you know. And because I’ll take you to dinner anywhere you want. But not for a week or two.’

  ‘Anywhere?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You’d walk into Giovanni’s with me dressed like this?’

  The funny thing was, Nicky would. Wouldn’t even think twice about it. Ever since his early rock-band days – Nicky Starr and the Constellation – it seemed as if he was born to shock. ‘Beverly. It would be my pleasure.’

  Beverly laughed. ‘You do go on, Nicholas.’ She reached into her bag and retrieved a compact. She opened it, did some maintenance on her face, then added, ‘Just keep an eye on this fucking creep for me, okay, hon?’

  The creep in question was a hood named Ronnie ‘Rat Boy’ Choi. Willie T had pointed him out to Nicky one night at Lancers on Carnegie, and the first thing Nicky had noticed was that the man looked every bit of his name. Willie had also told him about Choi’s thing for cross-dressers. Nicky figured that Choi probably liked his transvestites a lot younger than Beverly, but Nicky also figured that Beverly had something pretty special going for her. Something she had long ago stopped offering to Nicky. ‘You don’t have anything to worry about,’ Nicky said.

  ‘No?’ Beverly replied, raising a solitary, sculpted eyebrow. She grabbed Nicky’s coffee cup and sipped.

  ‘Of course not,’ Nicky said. ‘I’ll be right there. All you have to do is talk him into an anonymous interview with me. One hour, anywhere he wants. No cops. No tape.’

  Beverly pouted for a moment, letting Nicky know that she was fully aware of the fact that nobody could protect her from a butcher like Rat Boy Choi. In one drug-crazed moment he could, and would, slit her throat for no reason at all.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

  Nicky produced his most charming smile, looked skyward, put his hand through a crook in Beverly’s arm, and hailed a cab.