Flesh Wounds

by Stephen Greenleaf

  Part of an answer came from the bookshelf, which was less a shelf than a couple of cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other and stuffed with tattered paperbacks. The contents were on a more elevated plane than I expected—novels by Smiley and Oates and Kingsolver; feminism by Steinem and Paglia and Woolf; politics by Phillips and Ehrenreich and Woodward; poetry by Graham and Jong and Sexton. All of which was a clue to what she thought. The clue to who she was was in the yearbooks.

  There were three of them, all from the Chadwick School, for the years ’88, ’89, and ’90. I picked one up and leafed through it. The introduction announced that Chadwick was a private school located on Capitol Hill, co-ed, grades 6–12, with a campus that looked more Ivy League than Pac Ten. The pictures were in both color and black and white, the binding was real leather, the paper stock was heavyweight and glossy—a class production, including the work by the school photographer, who was identified in the acknowledgments as Gary Richter.

  When I looked in an index, Mandy Lorenzen was listed twice. Both were group shots—one of the entire sophomore class, the other of the Poetry Club. The ’89 volume had six listings, in which she moved from timid and unremarkable to lovely and spirited, as evidenced by her election to the student council. Her senior year she was all over the place, on one occasion dressed in the sparkling blue gown as a member of the Chadwick Queen’s Court.

  There was another Lorenzen in the index, too—someone named Todd, who looked enough like Mandy to be her younger brother. No timidity about Todd—his freshman picture snapped outside the Blue Moon Tavern as he posed with a pint of ale even though he couldn’t have been more than fourteen. As an afterthought I looked up Jeff Evans. He was there, too, a year behind Mandy, a member of the literary magazine, the Jazz Club, and the school newspaper. When I looked for Nina Evans, I didn’t find her.

  A few years ago, Mandy Lorenzen had been happy and healthy, intelligent and attractive, with a limitless life that would stretch well into the twenty-first century. Now she was a whore and a junkie and a wastrel—if she’d escaped HIV it would be a miracle; if she lived to see the millennium I’d be surprised. The only thing I knew of that might have caused that slide was her association with Krakov and Richter.

  I looked for evidence—pictures, correspondence, something that linked her to those men and established what they’d done to her—but I came up empty. I’d pretty much run out of options when Mandy groaned, rolled over, and fell to the floor with a thud. She swore and spat, tried and failed to extract herself from the sheets that wound around her like kudzu, then flopped to her back in frustration. A pearl of drool rolled down her chin; a scab at her ankle started to bleed. One leg and one breast were free of cover, one incisor was missing from her mouth, one eye was bruised beneath its socket. Her breath smelled like death from toxic substances; the tattooed mons was back under cover.

  I tugged on the sheet until it unloosed her body, then draped it across her. She tossed my gesture aside with anger. Her breasts sloshed down her sides, her belly swelled and heaved like the bellies on starving children, her lips formed words unlinked to wit or context.

  “Who’re you?” she managed finally.

  “Tanner.”

  “’Pointment?”

  “No.”

  “Money?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded with gravity fit for a wake. “You want it down here or up there?” Her eyes were black vats of disinterest.

  “I’m not here for sex, Mandy.”

  That I knew her name excited her. “Did Jeff send you? Where is he? Did he score more white?”

  “Does Jeff do dope with you, Mandy?”

  “Jeff? Nah. Jeff’s an angel. Gets me good shit. Almost as good to me as Todd. Poor Todd,” she added, then rolled to her side and looked at me with what she thought was allure but was much closer to odium. “You’re here to fuck me, right, mister? Can we do it now? I got to go to the bathroom pretty soon.” She struggled to get up to the bed.

  I put out a hand to keep her where she was. Her skin was cold and clammy, chilled by inner winds. “Where’s your brother, Mandy?”

  “Todd?”

  “Yes.”

  “Todd’s dead.”

  “How?”

  “Car.”

  “A wreck?”

  “Accident, they said. Not an accident.”

  “Murder?”

  She shook her head with the first vigor of our acquaintanceship. “Suicide.”

  “Why?”

  “Todd did what Daddy wanted. I’m trying, too.” Her eyes strayed to the works on the table; the sight of the syringe made her shudder.

  “Why did Todd commit suicide?”

  “Daddy wanted him to.”

  “Why?”

  “Said Todd was bad.”

  “Why was he bad?”

  “Wasn’t. But Daddy thought he was.”

  “Why?”

  “The picture.”

  “What picture?”

  “The one …” She uttered a mournful groan, then curled into a fetal sphere. “If we’re not going to ball, get out.”

  “What did you do for Victor Krakov, Mandy?”

  “Danced for him.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Fucked him.”

  “Did he turn you on to dope?”

  She shook her head. “Wants me to kick. Everyone wants me to kick. Everyone but Daddy.”

  “How about Gary Richter? Did you model for him?”

  “Sure.”

  “What else?”

  “Fucked him, too.”

  “Did he photograph it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Where’s his darkroom? Do you know?”

  She shook her head.

  “What’s your relationship with Jeff Evans?”

  “I fuck him, too. I maybe even love him. Hey.” Her eyes brightened briefly, like a coin half-buried in mud. “I fuck everyone, don’t I? Maybe Daddy’s right.”

  “About what?”

  “Maybe I even fucked Todd.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Because she intends to use him, make him betray his principles, enlist him as an unwitting accessory to her plan, she grants him a limited lease of her most prized possession. He uses it gingerly, kindly if not deftly, with a reverence she appreciates and is used to. He is sufficiently earnest and so unabashedly needy that her own desires steam to the surface from the cave in which they have slumbered in the weeks of her confinement, so that by the final mounting she is as ardent as he. They buck toward release in a gruffly elegant gymnastic, become swift and sweaty and simultaneous, and vocalize the onset of climax in sync with the poundings of orgasm. They become equally and pleasantly spent.

  Condom disposed of, she reminds him of her insistence that he arrange for a meeting with Lattimore. Giddy in the aftermath, already angling for a reprise, he agrees to do what he can. As she nibbles at his ear, she suggests that what he can do is show him her art.

  I helped Mandy onto the bed, made sure her pump and bellows were functioning within normal ranges, then left money on the dresser to compensate for her time, although a tuna sandwich and some chicken soup would have been a preferable currency. After a check of her pulse at her lissome throat, I left her to the dungeon she had constructed for herself with a lot of aid from Gary Richter and more than a little shove from Daddy.

  I got to bed by two, to sleep by four, and was roused at eight by the telephone out of a dreamscape that looked a lot like East Oakland.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  “Ted said you guys had a good talk.”

  “So we did.”

  “He said he liked you.”

  “Same here.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I’m glad. He said he invited you to the wedding but you turned him down.”

  “Right on both counts.”

  “Why won’t you come?”

  “I’m cutting back on self-abus
e.”

  “It won’t be that bad. Will it?”

  “I don’t think I need to find out.”

  “He said he also told you that he hoped we would keep in touch.”

  That was a little strong but it seemed pointless to quibble. “Right.”

  “I hope we will, too. We will, won’t we?”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “At this point, the only thing I’m convinced of is that my prostate’s going bad.”

  “What do you … oh. You’re still in bed. You haven’t … sorry.” She giggled. “Should I hang up or shall we take time out?”

  “Time out.”

  I was back in ninety seconds. “Did you do anything interesting last night?” she asked as I crawled back under the covers.

  “Picked up a woman at Second and Pike.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “But that’s where … why on earth would you do something like that?”

  “The woman’s name is Mandy Lorenzen. Know her?”

  “I’ve heard the name from Nina, I think. If she’s the woman I’m thinking of, her father was president of one of the big banks till it merged with someone or other. What’s this Lorenzen woman got to do with anything?”

  “She and Nina were friends. They both modeled for Richter. I think he may have exploited Mandy Lorenzen the way he was trying to exploit Nina, and somehow it destroyed her life. Plus, she seems to be Jeff’s girlfriend.”

  “What Jeff? Ted’s Jeff?”

  “Right. Do you know where he lives?”

  “I’ve never been there, but from what I understand he lives in a warehouse. There should be an address in … yes. Warsaw Street. That’s down in Georgetown, I think. Near Boeing Field.” She gave me a number.

  “Any place else he hangs out?”

  “Ted and I met him for breakfast at the Stoneway Café once. That’s not far from the Salmon offices. And I met him for coffee at a place called the Road Runner a couple of times, back when I thought having intimate little talks with Ted’s children was the way to win them over.” Her laugh was mordant. “Other than that, I don’t know.” She paused. “Is Jeff in love with this Mandy woman?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “What kind of girl is she? I’m almost afraid to ask, given where you met her.”

  “She’s got problems,” I said, cheerily imprecise, “but don’t we all.” I told Peggy I’d call her that night, then headed for the Stoneway Café.

  It was less mannered than the Last Exit on Brooklyn, just a workingman’s café featuring coffee, not espresso; fried foods, not tofu; dense starches, not croissants and crepes. Fine so far, except Jeff Evans wasn’t there and hadn’t been for days.

  The Road Runner turned out to be part coffeehouse and part comic book emporium on the corner of Fortieth and Bagley. The coffee came in gaily decorated ceramic cups and the comics came with titles like Hate and Hellblazer and Evil Ernie. I only relaxed when I spotted Veronica. Jeff had just left, as it turned out, headed who knew where. Seattle people seem to respect each other’s privacy even more than does the café society in San Francisco, which has rather strict mores on the subject itself. Or maybe they were just unfriendly.

  The paper was nearby, so I stopped in to ask for Jeff. The only person there told me he hadn’t been in and wasn’t expected. When I asked if she knew where he might be, she named the places I’d just been, then shrugged and said, “The Rubber Tree, maybe?” When I asked where it was, she told me it was up near the Wallingford Center. When I asked how to get there, she gave me cogent directions.

  I found the Wallingford Center easily enough, but when I asked a couple of people where to find the Rubber Tree, they seemed inordinately amused by the question. The second guy pointed me toward Burke Avenue, and slapped me on the back as I headed that way. When I arrived, the mysteries were solved. The Rubber Tree wasn’t a restaurant and it didn’t sell plants: the Rubber Tree sold rubbers.

  Prophylactics. Hundreds of them, in all sizes and shapes, colors and flavors, compounds and curvatures, unfurled for the world to evaluate like hard sausage swinging from the ceiling in a North Beach deli. If your eyesight was less than perfect, you could pretend you were in a balloon shop, but if you were 20/20, those flaccid tubes of latex could only be one thing. I was as embarrassed as I’d been the first time I’d bought one.

  The guy at the desk near the door had hair to his waist and a ring in his lip. I asked if Jeff Evans was in.

  “No one by that name works here.”

  “I didn’t ask if he worked here, I asked if he was here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah what?”

  “He was here.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday. And the day before that.”

  “How about today?”

  “That, too.”

  “He here now?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Do you see him?”

  “No. Do you?”

  He shook his head then looked past me. “You in the market for protection?”

  “I sell it; I don’t buy it.”

  “Yeah? What line? Trojan? Lifestyle? What?”

  “This line,” I said, and moved my jacket enough to show him the butt of my gun.

  The game ended right there; he held up his hands in surrender. “Hey. You got no problem with me, pal. Make love not war—that’s what the Tree is about.”

  “Let’s hit the highlights. Jeff was here but he left.”

  “Right.”

  “Say where he was going?”

  “Home.”

  “He still live on Warsaw?”

  “Yep. Look out for the dog.”

  “What kind?”

  “The kind with teeth. Name of Codpiece.”

  I started to go, then stopped. “What’s Jeff do here, anyway? Does he own the place?”

  “Naw, Jeff just hangs out. He likes to talk sex. For his column, you know? People come in for a condom, it tends to be on their mind.”

  “But only men, right? Given the product?”

  “Hell, no; most of the regulars are women. They like stock on hand—women don’t trust men to do shit anymore; one of them makes her old man wear three at a time. Plus now we’ve got condoms for women. Inside, you know? Guy doesn’t even know it’s there.”

  I left before he could make sex sound even more like bookkeeping.

  The warehouse was the only one of its kind in the area. It occupied a lot on Warsaw near the corner of Carleton Avenue, across the street from the Georgetown Gospel Chapel, which was celebrating its Fiftieth Jubilee. A faded sign said the place had once housed a bakery, but what it housed now was people in need of cheap rent.

  The interior had been inexpertly subdivided with low-grade plywood and cast-off Sheetrock. The doors cut into the unfinished walls bore handwritten numbers of personal significance—in keeping with his profession, Jeff’s was number 30. His neighbor was 7.141; the guy down the hall was 666.

  When I banged on the door a dog growled from the other side. “Easy, Codpiece,” I said, mostly as an excuse to use the word.

  “What the fuck you want?”

  “I heed to talk for a minute.”

  “I don’t talk; I write.”

  I lowered my voice. “You also provide controlled substances to a woman in the Regrade.”

  The only response came from the rumbling curse of the dog and the cough of a nearby truck as it pulled away from the curb.

  A head emerged from the doorway, tousled, disgusted, and irate. “What the fuck are you doing, banging around out there?” he challenged before I was even in focus. “I just got to bed, goddammit.”

  “I’m Tanner. We met yesterday at the paper.”

  He didn’t remember. “Then you’ve already had your audience. If there’s a problem, write a letter to the editor.”

  “I don’t have a problem; Mandy has a problem.”

  Sleep fled his eyes and he wa
s as wary as a coach at a press conference. “Mandy who?”

  “Mandy Lorenzen. The woman you picked up at Second and Pike at midnight last night. The woman you left on the nod after she shot up the goodies you bought her.”

  “What the hell are you trying to …?” He seemed too dispirited, or maybe too scared, to continue. “I suppose you’ll rag me till we do this.”

  “Count on it.”

  “Come on in, but don’t expect, like, hospitality. The coffee’s gone and I’m not making more—that shit costs a fortune all of a sudden. Fucking frost in Brazil or something.”

  “I can live without coffee or hospitality, either one.”

  “Yeah? Most people around here can’t.”

  He led me to his digs, which were more barren than furnished, more nihilistic than cheerful, more industrial than residential. We sat across from each other on similar stiff chairs, chess players in the Gobi Desert. “So what’s this shit about Mandy?” he asked.

  I didn’t quite answer the question. “Have the cops caught up to you yet?”

  He was puzzled. “About Mandy?”

  “About Richter.”

  He swore. “Yeah. They caught up to me.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I told them my ignorance was as boundless as my contempt for the man.”

  “Could you tell them something else if you were so inclined?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I mean do you know anything about Richter’s murder?”

  He leaned back and looked at me intently, as though to scan the contours of my brain. “What’s this have to do with Mandy?”

  “I know you and she have a relationship and I know you give her drugs.”

  His eyes narrowed and he aped my speech pattern. “What are you inclined to do about it?”

  “Nothing, if you tell me what you know about Richter. What I need is—”

  He held up a hand. “Back up a minute. Why are you ass deep in my life all of a sudden?”

  “The woman your dad’s about to marry?”

  “Peggy? What about her?”

  “She used to work for me.”

  “So?”

  “I used to be in love with her.”

  “When?”

  “Six years ago.”