The Violet Hour

by Richard Montanari

  The door to Geoffrey’s apartment, Nicky overheard, had been left ajar, and when Geoffrey’s neighbor stopped by to borrow a couple of tea bags, she had found the body. The neighbor, an elderly woman named Sadie Markman, was sedated, Nicky heard, and resting in her own apartment next door.

  That was an hour ago, they said. Right around the time Nicky was stepping inside Half Price Books.

  Then, from the hallway, came a voice that sounded vaguely familiar.

  Nicky got to his feet as the owner of the voice turned the corner, ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape, and entered the apartment. The man was white, clean-shaven, about Nicky’s height and weight, a few years older. He wore a dark overcoat, tailored, and tinted glasses; a badge was pinned to his lapel.

  ‘Hi. Nicholas Stella. Esquire magazine,’ he introduced himself.

  The man looked him up and down before extending his own hand. ‘Ivan Kral,’ he said. ‘Detective Ivan Kral, Cleveland Homicide Task Force.’

  They shook hands and Nicky noticed how strong the man’s grip was. He tried, and failed, to match it. ‘Cleveland? What are you doing out here in the ’burbs, if I might ask?’

  ‘Sorry about the mix-up downstairs,’ Kral continued, ignoring the question.

  ‘No problem,’ Nicky lied, knowing that the Homicide Unit of the Cleveland Police Department usually worked exclusively within city limits. ‘And I’d just like to say how much I—’

  ‘But I’m still going to call them.’

  ‘What?’ Nicky replied. ‘Who?’

  ‘Esquire. I’m going to call them. Right now. If you lied to me, you’re going to fucking jail.’

  The big cop, Sykes, burst out laughing, then covered his mouth.

  And Nicky knew.

  Detective Ivan Kral was the Birdman.

  ‘And you only met him this morning?’ Kral asked.

  ‘No,’ Nicky said. ‘I talked to him this morning. On the phone.’

  ‘At his place of business.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how did you come to call Mr Coldicott in the first place?’

  Nicky had to tread lightly here. ‘Well, it’s kind of a long story.’

  ‘I have a great deal of time,’ Kral said.

  They were sitting at Geoffrey Coldicott’s small dinette table, a gray and white Formica job that he had probably picked up at a Garfield Heights garage sale. They were drinking Geoffrey’s instant coffee, too. ‘Am I a suspect?’ Nicky asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ Kral said. ‘You’re a witness, Nicky. A very important one. You spoke to the deceased on the day he was murdered. Very important.’

  Nicky’s mind began to sprint. How was he going to tell them the manner in which he got Geoffrey Coldicott’s name? Did Kral know of his recent meeting with Willie T? Had they talked? Because if they could prove that he had prior knowledge of a conspiracy, or that he had knowledge that a crime was imminent and he did nothing to prevent it, couldn’t they put him away for a lot of years?

  He was certain of it. So he lied to a cop.

  ‘I’m doing a story on antique jewelry for a Cleveland Today supplement. I called Mr Coldicott this morning, at his place of business, and asked for an interview. He told me to meet him here at six. That’s the whole thing.’

  Kral held his gaze for a few moments. ‘That’s your long story?’

  ‘Well, that’s the nutshell. You don’t want to hear about all my research into the fascinating world of antique jewelry, do you?’ Nicky tried a half smile, but it was not returned.

  ‘And who’s your editor over there at Cleveland Today?’ Kral said, his pen poised over his notebook.

  Fucking cops, Nicky thought. It was one of the reasons he never got away with shit when he was a kid. ‘Okay, it’s not an assigned piece I was going to do it on spec.’

  ‘A spec piece on antique jewelry.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Hey, a man’s gotta make a living, you know?’

  Due to the thousands of times that the teenaged Nicholas Stella had been grilled by his father, one of the most decorated cops ever to work out of the Third District, Nicky knew that Kral wasn’t buying what he was selling, and that Kral wasn’t done with him. But he also knew that now was the time to strike, if he was going to strike at all.

  ‘How about an exclusive on this, Birdman?’

  Kral studied him, not reacting to the ‘Birdman’ familiarity, which was a good sign for Nicky. So Nicky continued.

  ‘C’mon, man. I’ll write it up like the “Crack Alley Blues” piece, except this time we go national. Think about it. Esquire, GQ, Vanity Fair. A homicide investigation from the inside. What do you say?’

  ‘You want to write about this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ Nicky said. ‘Beats the crap out of a story on antique jewelry. What do you say?’

  Instead of answering him, Kral stood up and walked over to where Geoffrey Coldicott’s body was slumped on the love seat, just a few feet from where they were sitting. Next to the body was a hypodermic needle and a GemPac. Kral removed the sheet.

  And Nicky vomited on the table.

  The skin, the assistant coroner said, had been removed from Geoffrey Coldicott’s face in one piece, and quite expertly at that. Whoever had done this, Dr Vikram Raj went on to say, had made an incision starting at the hairline in the middle of the forehead, down one side, in front of the ear, under the chin, then back up the other side. Incisions were also made around the eyes, nose, and lips. Then the skin was gently, slowly peeled away.

  What remained, at least to Nicky’s eyes, looked like the bloody negative of a picture of a goalie, or maybe of Jason in the Friday the 13th series; a reddish brown hockey mask that glistened under the explosion of the flashbulbs.

  While the photographers were at it, Kral asked for a picture of Nicky.

  A half hour later, as the forensic activity died down, Detective Kral directed his pen flashlight at Geoffrey Coldicott’s blood-clotted cheek, at the small patch of grayish fluid near the corner of his mouth, fluid that looked to be drying semen. A slight parting of the dead man’s lips revealed more semen, the viscous liquid forming thin, sticky bars between his upper and lower lips.

  Kral took his pen and began to probe around Coldicott’s clothing. The man’s belt was fastened, his trousers zipped. Instinctively Nicky and Kral simultaneously glanced over at the bed, which was still made, untouched.

  Nicky wasn’t all that interested in Geoffrey Coldicott’s sexual proclivities. What he really wanted was a look at the computer. ‘Did anyone check his computer?’ he asked no one in particular, knowing he was pushing it, knowing he was only in this room as long as Kral allowed him to be. ‘Might be some clues in there. His itinerary for today, appointment book, calendar, stuff like that.’

  Kral looked at one of the forensic team, a tall black woman named Billings.

  ‘Nothing there,’ Billings said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Nicky asked.

  ‘Just what I said. The hard drive was wiped clean.’

  When Nicky turned the corner onto the landing in front of his door and saw the figure sitting there, he nearly screamed. He was sure it was Frank Corso, and he was sure there was a gun pointed at him.

  ‘Hi, Nick,’ the man said.

  ‘Jesus, I was just gonna call you and—’ Nicky managed, but stopped when he realized that it wasn’t Frank Corso after all. It was Gil Strauss. Gil was there to pick up the canned goods for the food drive.

  ‘Hey . . . hi, Gil,’ Nicky said, finally exhaling.

  Gil stood up, looking a little embarrassed. ‘Did I scare you? I’m sorry. Door was open downstairs.’

  Gil had always struck Nicky as the kind of guy who would apologize for getting hit by a car. Always dressed in workman fatigues, he wore thick glasses that gave him the appearance of a bookworm, although Nicky believed him to be a lot better with a pair of vise grips than a volume of M
arcel Proust. ‘I can take a look at this, you know,’ Gil said, pointing to the skewed hinge on Nicky’s door. ‘Got the tools downstairs.’

  ‘No, that’s okay,’ Nicky replied, unlocking his door. ‘That’s what the landlord gets paid to avoid.’

  Gil laughed as they mounted the steps, then stepped into Nicky’s tiny kitchen.

  ‘Always wanted to ask you,’ Nicky said, opening some cupboards. ‘What’s Gil short for?’

  ‘Gillian.’

  ‘Oh,’ Nicky said. ‘I guess that’s better than Gilbert, no?’

  ‘Not when you’re ten,’ Gil said. ‘I was pretty fat when I was a kid. I got “Gillian weighs a million” all the time.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  Gil looked around, as if remodeling the small apartment in his mind. Dormer here. Skylight here. Perhaps a direct-vent fireplace against that outside wall. He walked into the living room, picked up the picture of Meg. ‘Was this your wife, Nick?’

  Was? Nicky thought. After being startled by the question at first – he didn’t know Gil Strauss nearly well enough to discuss his personal life – then realizing that Joseph must have told him about Meg, Nicky stepped into the living room, looked over Gil’s shoulder. ‘Yes. That’s Meg.’

  ‘She’s very pretty,’ Gil said.

  ‘That she is.’ He took the photo from Gil and, for the thousandth time, tried to brush that fine wisp of hair from Meg’s forehead. ‘She would’ve been thirty-two this year. Thirty-two. She used to think thirty was ancient.’

  ‘Didn’t we all,’ Gil answered.

  Nicky placed the photo back into its easel. He looked up, into Gil’s eyes, eyes refracted in a dozen directions by the thick lenses. He asked, ‘Have you ever been in love, Gil?’

  For a moment it looked as if the question had been a whip crack in the room. It looked as if Gil might turn and run. Then, just as suddenly, he began to smile, to redden.

  ‘Not really. I never . . .’ he began, giving what sounded to Nicky like the stock answer. Nicky helped him out.

  ‘Never met the right girl?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The reddening deepened. Nicky looked for a way out. ‘There’s still plenty of time,’ Nicky said, sounding way too fatherly, considering he was talking to a guy a few years older.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gil said. ‘I’m pretty busy most of the time.’

  ‘Gotta take time out for life, though, Gil,’ Nicky said, wondering if this wasn’t advice he should be taking instead of giving.

  Gil took it as a cue. He clapped his hands once and said: ‘Well, what do you say we take time out for the hungry right now? Point me toward the canned goods, my friend.’

  ‘Right this way,’ Nicky said.

  Nicky hadn’t prepared any canned foods for the drive, so what Gil’s visit amounted to, as it had for three years running, was an emptying of Nicky’s cupboards. And he had just gone shopping at Food Fair. He grabbed a pair of empty cardboard boxes from under the sink and indicated to Gil that he should help himself. He did.

  ‘You know, your cousin thinks the world of you,’ Gil said, filling a box. ‘Talks about you all the time. Talks about when you were growing up. I love those stories.’

  Nicky didn’t know if this was small talk or not, but Gil sounded sincere. ‘Yeah, well, Joseph’s the best.’ He winced, watching Gil put a sealed jar of Folgers crystals into the box. It was all the coffee in the house.

  ‘Father LaCazio talks about your writing to everyone, too. He’s very proud. Keeps three copies of everything you write. I especially like that story you did about the boxers.’

  ‘Oh, uh, thanks,’ Nicky said, standing corrected. ‘I’m pretty proud of that one myself.’

  They finished filling the boxes and Nicky placed them near the head of the stairs. ‘Did you know that I was writing a story about Father Angelino?’

  Gil stopped what he was doing, looked up. ‘No, I didn’t. But anything the rectory can do to help, you let me know.’

  Nicky smiled. Gil sounded like a priest. ‘Thanks.’ He grabbed a box and headed for the stairs. ‘There’s cold Pepsi in the fridge. Help yourself.’

  By the time Nicky reached the bottom of the stairs, the phrase came back to him with full force, a cold declaration of fact that frightened him: The hard drive was wiped clean.

  They missed John Angelino’s Toshiba laptop, though, didn’t they? Nicky thought.

  Whoever was doing this had missed the fucking laptop.

  Nicky watched Gil load the last of the boxes into the St Francis station wagon. Gil got behind the wheel, rolled down the window.

  ‘Thanks, Nicky.’

  ‘Happy to do it.’ They shook hands again.

  ‘I have two more stops to make,’ Gil said. ‘I’ll be back in an hour or so. We’ll go over to the food bank together, okay?’

  It was the last thing Nicky wanted to do, but he had made a promise to help out on the docks. And you don’t stiff the church. Ask any Catholic. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘See you in an hour.’

  What did he know? He knew this: People were being shot full of dope and having parts of their bodies removed. Parts they were still young enough to need. Things like lips, skin, eyes.

  So far, Nicky thought, he had been lucky to get out of this with his life. Four other people hadn’t, and the guilt of not having brought this straight to the police was weighing on him. There was some crazy shit going on here; it had something to do with poetry and dope and dead people, and that was about all he needed to know to get the fuck out of the way. Who was he kidding? He would talk Erique Mars into a story on something else. Christmas in Collinwood. Christmas with the Cleveland Indians. Something that didn’t involve scalpels and heroin, if you don’t mind. If not, then he’d have to get a job.

  Sorry, Grampa.

  Gil’s visit had left him without any food, so over soup at Sol’s he decided to do the wise thing. The moment he got back to his apartment he would call Kral and give him everything he had.

  ‘Fuck you, asshole.’

  The fist attached to that greeting seemed to hurtle out of the darkness that led to the basement, shrieking through space, growing in size and velocity, catching Nicky high on his left cheek, slamming him back into the door. Luckily, it was a glancing blow because the fist was enormous and wrapped in some sort of hard leather.

  But still Nicky visited an entire galaxy of yellow and orange stars; his legs felt al dente.

  ‘You think I’m fuckin’ stupid?’ the owner of the fist barked into his face as he pushed Nicky up the stairs. ‘Huh? You think you can play me night after fuckin’ night? I been lenient with you, asshole. Lee-nee-yent. Now I’m going to kick your fuckin’ ass.’

  This time it was, of course, Frank Corso, but Nicky’s vision was so blurred at the moment that it could’ve been anyone. Anyone the size and shape of Pittsburgh.

  With incredible ease, Frank shoved Nicky up the remaining six steps to his door.

  They stood in Nicky’s cramped living room, five feet apart, and Nicky gave him all the money he had. Frank pulled his own huge roll of bills kept together in a rubber band, put it under his left armpit, and began to count Nicky’s money. He finished, looked Nicky in the eye. ‘It’s only three hundred.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Nicky said, his face throbbing, swelling. ‘That’s my payment.’

  ‘What did I tell you last week? I want the four large.’ He retrieved the roll from under his arm, unbanded it, added Nicky’s money. ‘Man, I thought you was hipper than that.’ He raised the gun – a .38 police special – and pointed it at Nicky. ‘Where’s the rest?’

  ‘What, are you kidding me?’

  ‘No,’ Frank said. ‘Drop down.’

  Nicky pretended to be incredulous. ‘You were serious about that?’

  ‘Like ball cancer. Gimme my fuckin’ money.’

  Nicky’s mind was reeling. He knew he had something like ten dollars available to him, and half of that was probably in dimes and quarters. He doub
ted if Frank Corso would take a check. It would only bounce and they’d have to do this all over again.

  So Nicky, standing near the doorway to his bedroom, figured he had two options. One, to dive into his bedroom, slam the door, turn the key, and buy himself just enough time to jump out the window and fall thirty feet. Or try to bluff.

  Okay, one option.

  ‘I gotta go to the ATM then. I can get maybe two thousand,’ Nicky said, hoping Frank Corso was too stupid to know that you can’t withdraw that much from an ATM machine.

  Thankfully, he was.

  ‘Show me the card,’ Frank said, keeping the gun on him. ‘Slow.’

  Nicky reached into his back pocket slowly, retrieved his wallet, keeping his eye on the barrel of the gun the whole time. Then, suddenly, a shadow appeared on the wall behind Frank, a steadily creeping shadow that grew in size for a moment, then narrowed into a human form.

  And somehow, the Birdman was standing right behind Frank.

  At first Nicky feared the worst. A flashback. Some kind of drug he had ingested once had just decided to kick in and he was hallucinating things. Cops showing up in the nick of time to save his life. Was this a dad thing? he wondered.

  But the Birdman was real.

  ‘Don’t fucking move,’ Kral said coolly, putting the barrel of his nine-millimeter pistol to the back of Frank Corso’s head. He cocked his weapon and continued: ‘Now, I’m assuming you got through the third grade, but I’ll go slow anyway, just in case. We’re gonna count to three now. Okay?’

  Nobody said a word. Nicky stole a glance at Frank Corso’s face. His eyes were darting from side to side, a rivulet of sweat was working its way down his forehead, over the bridge of his nose. But still he kept his revolver pointed at Nicky.

  ‘Nicky, you count with me, okay? I’m going to shoot him in the head on three.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘One . . .’

  ‘Un,’ Nicky said, coming in halfway through the word. The gun in Corso’s hand began to shake.