by Tim Maleeny
He’d left after watching her sleep for an hour. He was too jacked too sleep. His heart hadn’t worked this hard in a long time, either physically or emotionally. The note he left told her where he kept his spare key—under the mat in front of his door—and asked her to call him or stop by later.
As he passed their neighbors’ doors he noted the sounds of stillness. It was too early for civilians to be awake. Only the homicide cop coming home after his night shift would recognize these sounds. The throbbing of the truck engines as garbage was collected before dawn. The distant but shrill cries of the parrots on Telegraph Hill. The clockwork ticking of the building’s ventilation system, counting off the seconds until the next heating bill arrived under your door.
Sam was mentally counting off the names of his neighbors as he passed their doors when a thought occurred to him.
I haven’t talked to Walter.
Walter’s door was across the hall from Sam’s to the right. Directly in front of where Sam stood, this instant. Walter never seemed to be home, and if this were a normal homicide investigation, he’d be on the witness list. Sam knew exactly what he’d do if he was still a cop.
Wake him up. At least you know he’s going to be home.
Sam hesitated for an instant, wondering how neighborly it was to knock on someone’s door when even the pigeons weren’t awake. But he remembered someone—Gail or Jill—saying Walter and Ed, the landlord, had been friends. Sam shrugged, raised his right fist and knocked on the door.
Nothing.
In for a dime, in for a dollar. Sam knocked again, harder this time, knuckles prominent.
The door slid open a crack, the latch slipping across the strikeplate. The door had either been kicked shut or pulled closed by someone in a hurry. Who doesn’t turn their deadbolt when they sleep?
Sam knocked again, even harder.
The door creaked open just enough for Sam to peer across the foyer into the living room. From the hallway, Sam could see Walter sprawled on the couch, the remote clutched in his hand, his chin on his chest.
Sam took a deep breath and stepped inside the apartment.
Chapter Forty
They were inside the apartment and tangled in the pink sheets before Jerome could pull his socks off.
Tamara’s clothes had already vanished, so he left them on. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about having cold feet and ruining the moment, even if he did look like a dork.
Tamara made some kind of ninja move, twisting her bodacious hips and pulling one of his arms across her body, which planted him flat on his back. Before he could respond with a stunt of his own, Jerome was pinned—she had one hand on his chest, the other pressing down on his thighs. Tamara aligned herself perpendicular to him, lowered her head and began kissing his chest. He could feel her perfect breasts brush against his side as she worked her way across his stomach. Jerome was so hard, he was lightheaded.
This girl is awesome.
The thought had become a mantra, a rhythmic chanting inside his head. His life’s new digital soundtrack. Who needed Bob Marley when you had Tamara?
Jerome gasped as Tamara worked her magic. He twisted his head sideways, his hair mashed against her perfectly pink pillow, which matched the painfully pink bedspread they’d knocked to the floor. He stole a glance at Tamara to capture a freeze frame of the most erotic moment of his life (since breakfast). He looked away almost immediately, afraid the excitement of bearing witness to his own ecstasy might finish things before they got started.
A sudden movement in the corner of his eye pulled Jerome’s gaze to the desk, where he saw something that changed the course of his life forever.
Jerome saw himself, getting the most amazing blow job in the history of recorded civilization. In all the excitement, Tamara had left the computer and the webcam turned on.
Not sure what else to do, Jerome smiled at the camera and waved.
Chapter Forty-one
Sam sat down across from Walter, wishing he had brought his sunglasses.
Walter looked like shit, his face an ashen gray, chin melting into his chest like Play-Doh. Sam suspected Walter hadn’t looked much healthier in life, but in death he made you want to go on a diet and start exercising. Sam figured a photo of Walter dead on his couch would raise more money for the American Heart Association than any celebrity endorsement.
Sam stood and touched Walter’s neck, careful not to disturb the corpse or its surroundings. The body practically radiated cold, and Sam felt the chill in his fingers long after he broke contact. Walter had been sitting here for at least twelve hours.
Sam walked around the apartment, not touching anything but taking in every detail. The place looked better than its occupant, but not by much. You didn’t need to be a detective to guess Walter had been a bachelor living alone. There wasn’t much to see, and nothing looked out of place.
Sam returned to the living room and stood behind Walter, looking over his drooping head toward the television. He followed Walter’s line of sight toward the screen, gauged his reach to the bowl of chips, his position on the couch. After a while Sam circumnavigated the couch and studied Walter from the other direction, blocking the dead man’s view of the TV. Walter didn’t complain.
Sam noticed a bulge in Walter’s pants, north of the crotch on the right side. Stepping closer he saw Walter’s slacks had pockets on either side, cut vertically as you’d expect with khakis, not the wide horizontal pockets of jeans. Sam pressed against the bulge from the outside, not wanting to put his fingers into the pocket and get his prints on anything. The contours were obvious as soon as his fingers rubbed against the teeth: it was a set of keys.
Not a gun or a knife. Not a crack pipe or bong. And definitely not a suicide note or a confession. Just a set of house keys.
Sam took a deep breath and regretted it instantly. All sense-memory of Jill was expunged as he forced himself to exhale, but the cloying smell of Walter had found purchase. It was going to take a lot of coffee and a long shower to chase it away.
Sam took a lingering look at Walter, then turned and walked across the living room to the door. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he gingerly pulled the door open, then used the same motion to pull it closed once he was in the hallway. He was careful to make sure the door didn’t latch, but Sam pulled it closed far enough to look shut.
Exhaustion hit as he turned his key in his apartment door, the adrenaline rush of sex dissipated by the sudden chill of finding a corpse. He shook his head to clear it and focused on the tasks at hand. Get to the phone and call Danny. Tell him about Walter. Only then do you get to take a shower and go to bed.
As the door opened, he said in a tired voice, “Honey, I’m home.”
He greeted Marie each time he stepped through the door, every day since she left him alone among the living. Then he might tell her about his day, or sometimes he asked for advice, but it always started with a simple greeting, a hopeful glance at the mantle. Sam knew that no matter what he had done, good or bad, she’d be there watching over him. After the ups and downs of the past twenty-four hours, he needed that right now.
But as Sam looked across the kitchen into the living room, he knew he wasn’t going to get what he needed. Not now, and maybe not ever again.
Someone had been in his apartment.
A chill ran down his spine as Sam looked at the photographs of his beloved wife, ageless in her perfect silver frames. She wasn’t looking at him with unconditional love in her eyes. She wasn’t looking at him at all.
In every picture, in every frame all the eyes had been cut out.
Chapter Forty-two
Larry gripped the edge of the kitchen counter until his knuckles turned white.
Where the fuck was Jerome? He’d been gone most of the day and stayed out all night. They were due to meet Buster in an hour, and this time of day it would take at least twenty minutes to drive uptown to the Mission District. Larry thought they should just pack their bags and head to Mexico
with the cash they’d squirreled away. Instead Jerome got a haircut and went on a date, leaving Larry at home to sweat. Larry had half a mind to skip town and leave his brother behind.
But the thought of running was terrifying. Actually it was the prospect of being chased that paralyzed him with fear. A sudden image flashed across Larry’s brain. He was running in the desert, Mexican gangsters chasing him in Jeeps, agents of Zorro who followed their trail across the border. They were hunting him like an animal. As he collapsed in the dirt they drew their guns from their bandileros and took aim…
Bandileros? Maybe he was being chased by gauchos, Mexican cowboys on horseback. Or banditos, fierce men with big moustaches and even bigger hats, firing into the air like Yosemite Sam chasing Speedy Gonzalez.
Wait a minute—wasn’t it Sylvester the cat who chased Speedy Gonzalez, and didn’t Speedy always get away? Larry nodded to himself, satisfied. Maybe he was just like Speedy Gonzalez—small and weak, but fast and clever. Always one step ahead of his larger, more savage nemesis.
Larry smiled grimly. Things were going to work out. His mental tour of racial stereotypes had given him perspective. Fuck Zorro, they were in charge of the situation.
But the fact remained, Jerome was late.
Larry tapped his right foot on the tile floor until the sound started driving him crazy. He released the counter, fingers numb. His stomach lurched and made a sound like mating call of a major appliance. Jerome was right, stress was a killer.
Jerome.
Stress.
For the longest time, two sides of the same coin. But now it occurred to Larry he was just as tense without Jerome in the room. Maybe he was going crazy, and Jerome was a mere catalyst, not the cause. Like his brother, Larry had studied psychology in college, and lately he was beginning to suspect he suffered from one of the more obscure obsessive-compulsive disorders. He hadn’t told anyone, but last week he pulled an old textbook out of storage to refresh his memory.
Hyperscrupulosity. Also called “responsibility OCD.” The feeling that you are responsible for everything. It’s your fault, no matter what happens. Someone drops dead, you probably could have prevented it. A cat falls out of a tree, you should have been there to catch it.
Because no one else will. No one is as responsible like you are.
Living with Jerome, that’s how Larry felt most of the time. If I don’t do it, no one else will, certainly not my brother. I’m the only responsible one in this room, maybe in any room. Maybe on the whole damn planet. Without me, the whole world goes to shit. Just look at the news—no one takes responsibility for anything.
Larry took a deep breath, tried to visualize himself as Speedy Gonzalez running happily through a drainpipe. He closed his eyes and counted to ten, in Spanish.
Uno, dos, tres…
When he reached diez, Larry opened his eyes. His gaze landed on the kitchen counter, where Jerome’s stash sat undisturbed. Stash was probably the wrong term for a gallon ziplock overflowing with pot intermixed with eight or ten joints the size of Roman candles, but there it was.
Larry was stunned Jerome had left the bag at home. His brother was more likely to forget his wallet or keys. Or his underwear. Larry rubbed his temples, conscious of the headache he’d had all morning. It was a headache he normally blamed on Jerome and the smoke he generated, the constant marijuana haze that followed him everywhere, but today it was worse. Much worse.
Larry was still staring at the bag when an insidious thought crawled into his brain like an earwig.
I felt better when Jerome was here, smoking. I actually felt better.
Today he felt more anxious than he had in weeks. True, they had contracted to kill a man and ended up doing the job themselves. And a Mexican drug lord with horrible teeth was threatening to eat their eyeballs. But that was true yesterday, yet this morning Larry felt like his skull was going to implode from the pressure. Their criminal enterprise and the very real threat of getting killed were constants in this equation. The only difference in his situation, really, was no Jerome.
And no pot.
Larry studied the bag. It didn’t move, and neither did he. He just stared, as if trying to make a decision, predict an outcome. After a long moment, he licked his lips and opened the bag. He selected a joint slightly smaller than a fountain pen but larger than a cigarette, hefted its weight in his hand. It felt good, reassuring. It felt…relaxed in his palm.
It felt the way he wanted to feel.
Larry fumbled in the kitchen drawer until he found a lighter. Sparks flew. He lit up and took a deep, long pull, a soothing moment that ended abruptly when he started coughing. He felt his eyes water as he gasped and hacked, holding on to the counter for support. After a minute he took a deep breath and tried again. This time he got the timing right. He felt the smoke fill his lungs, held it, and released in a long, slow exhale that filled the small kitchen with a billowing cloud of calm. Larry felt his blood pressure drop and the pounding in his temples fade.
He made his way over the couch and put his feet on the coffee table. Jerome would get here when he got here. Then they could figure out what to do. Jerome said he wanted to drive, fine. Larry took another heroic hit.
They were two speedy fucking rodents, he and Jerome, smart enough to outfox Zorro and his crew. Everything was going to be OK.
Larry exhaled and nodded in satisfaction. It’s all good, he told himself.
It’s all good.
Chapter Forty-three
“This is bad.”
Sam didn’t respond. He watched his former partner move along the mantle, careful not to touch the frames but standing close. Danny Rodriguez was in some of those pictures. The muscles in his jaw worked overtime as he scanned from right to left, taking in the ruined faces, the missing eyes.
“Really bad.”
Sam remained mute, his own jaw clenched.
“You want me to get the tech guys down here?”
Sam shook his head. “Don’t bother.”
“You sure, partner?”
“It’s not like we don’t know who did this.”
“Might get some prints off the frames,” said Danny half-heartedly.
“Yeah, you might,” said Sam. “But you get the techs involved, that makes it official.”
“Breaking and entering not official enough for you?”
“This isn’t official, Danny.” Sam stood up. “It’s personal.”
Danny took a deep breath, looked Sam in the eye. “You know how I felt about Marie, Sam, and you—”
Sam held up a hand. “I’m not asking you to do anything, Danny. Either as a cop or a friend.”
Danny shifted his weight, watching Sam carefully. “Then why did you ask me to come here?”
“I wanted you to know,” said Sam.
Danny felt his eyebrows jump involuntarily. “Wanted me to know? Like, just in case anything happens to you?”
Sam shrugged but didn’t answer.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Sam.”
Sam managed to twist his mouth into some semblance of a smile. “What would you do?”
Danny looked away, toward the picture frames. “That’s different, hombre. I’m a cop.”
Sam nodded. “You didn’t answer the question.”
“You mean, what would I do, as a man?” said Danny. “Someone did this to my home?”
Sam smiled, seeing the look in his friend’s eyes. “I thought so.”
“Chocho,” said Danny. “That’s what you are—you know that, don’t you?”
“I’ve been called a cunt before,” replied Sam. “But you make it sound so…romantic.”
“Fuck you,” said Danny. “Just don’t kill anybody, OK?”
Sam bowed his head. “Yes, officer.”
Danny made a face as he crossed to the kitchen. Opening cabinets, he located some instant coffee and a mug. “You want any?”
Sam took his seat on the couch. “Help yourself.”
Danny said, “You told me
there were two things you wanted to talk about.”
Sam put his feet on the coffee table. “Remember the guy lives across the hall? Heavy set, in his fifties. You talk to him when you first canvassed the building?”
Danny nodded and took a sip of coffee, made another face. “This coffee is nasty.”
“He’s dead.”
Danny almost dropped his mug, recovered at the last minute. He put it down very deliberately before asking, “You got any beer?”
While Danny twisted the top off his beer, Sam told him about Walter. He sketched the scene, giving the layout of the apartment and condition of the body. He described Walter’s position on the couch in great detail. When he had finished, Danny said, “You could’ve mentioned this when you called.”
Sam’s eyes flicked to the mantle. “I had other things on my mind.”
Danny blew out his cheeks. “This guy was overweight. A train wreck.”
“So?”
“You think gordo had a heart attack?”
Sam knew that in a city the size of San Francisco, there were approximately two thousand heart attacks occurring over any given year, maybe a third of those fatal. Cops knew that sort of thing, so did firefighters. So did Danny. Sam watched his former partner’s eyes as he calculated the odds of Walter going into cardiac arrest in the same building that three men—one landlord and two gang-bangers—had already died. Not only in the same building, but within the same week.
“He had his keys in his pocket,” said Sam.
Danny worked his tongue around the inside of his right cheek. “You mentioned that.”
“Take a look when you go in there,” said Sam. “They make quite a bulge.”
“Uncomfortable.”
“What’s the first thing you do, Danny, when you walk through your front door?”
“Kick the dog, yell at my wife, and then…” He let his voice trail off.
