Deadly Lullaby

by Robert McClure

  “Way to go, Viktor,” Joe says, exhaling a nimbus cloud of smoke his way.

  Tarasov winces and rubs his lower jaw as if stricken by a sudden toothache.

  After a few seconds of these humps moving with all the dispatch of quadriplegics, I say to them, “Did I not make the purpose of this meeting clear?”

  “You did,” Joe says, sighing, reaching down and reluctantly unsnapping his briefcase.

  Tarasov simultaneously parts the blue velour curtains behind him and snaps his fingers. “Andrei.”

  Andrei passes a thick manila envelope to Tarasov, keeping it below windshield level so no one outside can see the item he is passing. Tarasov closes the curtain and tosses the envelope in my lap. Joe follows suit by tossing his envelope on top of it.

  Ahh, two pleasing little thumps in my lap; the warm tingles coursing through my loins are not unlike those that run through me when a naked stripper gives me a lap dance.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” I say, and lean forward to deposit the envelopes in my new eel-skin briefcase.

  Smiling now, Tarasov says, “Ahh, Big Man, now you doing good?”

  “Viktor,” I say, snapping the flap shut, “to understand exactly how good I am doing, consider that the last money I received from any source came from the California Prison Industry Authority—about two weeks ago, more or less.”

  “Ahh, yes,” Tarasov says. “I remember, too, those big paydays when we work in prison warehouse together. Hah, make us flush, eh, guy?”

  Joe does not like to be reminded of the time I spent in prison on his behalf, so his obsession with money must get the best of him when he says, “Uh, how much did they pay you guys?”

  Tarasov says, “Best way to describe is to calculate the many hours we have to work warehouse to make same amount of money what we just give Big Man.” He looks up into the space above Joe’s head for an instant, says, “Over three hundred and seexty-three thousand hours—hours, understand? Hours.”

  Viktor and I laugh.

  Joe just shakes his head. “So you guys got paid what, then, sixty, seventy cents an hour?”

  “A great guesstimate,” I say. “It was fifty-five cents an hour they paid us.”

  “Hey,” Joe says to me, finally something resembling levity in his voice, “who was it that said crime don’t pay?”

  I smile. “Me and Sam talked about that story this morning.”

  Joe turns to Viktor. “You heard the story about how Babe got his nickname?”

  He nods, smiles. “Balboa, yes, yes. Big Man and me have much time to tell stories in prison.”

  “I bet,” Joe says, shaking his head, “workin’ in a warehouse together. I tell ya, I’d love to have a video of you two smoothies working in that fucking place. What kind of warehouse was it?”

  “A mattress and furniture warehouse,” I say. “The Q had a mattress factory and a furniture factory. I drove a forklift.”

  “So what did you do, Babe, load the shit into trucks?”

  “Sometimes I did, yeah. Other times I hauled materials off trucks and stacked it on big shelves. But I always used a forklift, never my hands.”

  “Skilled laborer, huh?”

  “Much skill, yes,” Tarasov says to him. “My friend Joe, Big Man have so much skill with forklift, he once used fork to skin head of nigger like a avocado.”

  Joe lowers his head, massages his right temple with the tips of two fingers.

  “Viktor,” I say, “you’ve told Joe the Liberty Bell Brown story, right?”

  “He’s tried,” Joe says, tired, “but I don’t think I can stop him today. Your presence winds this guy up tighter than a cheap watch.”

  Tarasov ignores Joe’s comment, earnest as a priest as he speaks to him in a soft voice. “You know why they call nigger Liberty Bell?”

  Joe says, “ ’Cause he was from Philadelphia?”

  “That, too, yes,” Viktor says, “but there is two other reason. One is Liberty Bell’s schlong-dong.” Tarasov puts his forearm between his legs, his elbow fitted into his crotch, and repeatedly bangs his fist against the inside of his knees, going, “Bong bong bong bong.”

  Joe winces, goes, “Oh, Jee-sus Chr—”

  “But there was yet another reason everybody called the guy Liberty Bell,” I say to Joe. “Guess what it was.”

  Joe pinches his chin between his thumb and forefinger, scrunches his eyebrows.

  Tarasov pokes his temple with his finger. “His head cracked, dude, cracked. Liberty Bell cracked in head.”

  Joe looks up and sighs. “Fuckin’ prison stories…All right, Viktor, spit it out. What made Babe fuck up old Liberty Bell? He try to make Babe his bitch?”

  “No, no, he try to make me his bitch. Um, in a way, but what he say he want more than my boodie is my money. Money for he and the gangbanging bros he had, the Black Go-rillas.”

  “Not go-rilla,” I say to Joe. “Gue-rilla, as in guerilla warfare. They called themselves the Black Guerilla Family.”

  “I know who they—”

  Tarasov interrupts Joe by scratching his underarm, grunting, “Oo-oo-oo, they all go-rillas to me, Big Man….Listen, Joe, I am new fish, okay? Been at Q, oh, maybe one month. See, the Go-rillas think I am rich pretty boy, yes? Think I am weak because no Russian gangs in Q at the time to keep my back.”

  “You should have sucked up to the Aryan Brotherhood when you had the chance,” I say. “They would have protected you…for a price.”

  “Ah, yes, I fuck up,” he says, poking his temple with his finger again and spinning it around his ear. “But Aryans more cracked than Liberty Bell nigger. They crazy racist fuckers, so I—”

  Smiling in a confused, wondrous manner, Joe interrupts Viktor with a show of his palm. “Hold on a second here. You’re tellin’ us the Aryans’ racism offended you?”

  Tarasov does not appear to get Joe’s point. His voice low, patient, he says, “Of course, my friend. Their racist shit not offensive for you?”

  Joe shakes his head, sighs, and gives Viktor a little Go ahead gesture with a flick of his wrist. “Finish your story, Viktor, please.”

  Viktor shrugs, shoots Joe a look of doubt, of pity, and continues: “As I say, to hell with Aryan rascist fucks. I make friend with Big Man here.” A wink at Joe. “I know he keep my back, uh? Anyway, big schlong-dong Liberty Bell come to me in warehouse, in back where I check inventory all time, right? And he pull out big, hard cock and tell me I suck it quick before guard return and then he fuck me up ass. When he make sure I see how big cock is,” he shakes his head, lowers his voice to say parenthetically, “And let me say to you, my friend, black cock is big as African python, no shit”—another roll of his eyes—“anyway, he show me big snake and say he make deal with me. He say I not have to fuck or suck him off if I am to have someone send his ho or guhlfren, whatever, feefty bucks a day. Send feefty bucks and he is to protect me to make sure nobody make me suck and fuck. He say if I don’t have money send to guhlfren, then he fuck my ass first, then make me suck him off, then beat me up good. One time a day every day I am to do this for him—give feefty bucks or take it up ass, suck one shitty cock and take beating, right? Right? Wrong!” He leans forward, elbows on knees, holding out his hands to Joe in a pleading manner. “I mean, shit, here is stupid go-rilla trying to extort me for lousy feefty fucking bucks a fucking day—me, convicted in prison for extorting fucking two million bucks from president of oil company.”

  He shakes his head in total wonder.

  “Anyway, listen, to dumb fucking nigger I say, ‘Okaaaay, I got deal for you. I give nasty guhlfren money day after day and suck cock and take it up ass.’ ” He winks. “Act like galu boy, eh? Smack my lips good and tell him, ‘C’mon, Big Bell, let me have that long black snake to suck in my mouth.’ He grin big and push my head down to cock and I have biiig surprise ready for him, pull back leg to kick motherfucker in balls.” Tarasov turns sad, puts his hand on Joe’s knee. “But, my friend, one problem occur.”

  “Which wa
s…”

  “He put both hand over balls.”

  “They always expect you to try and kick them in the nuts,” I say. “You should have kicked him on the inside of his knee.”

  “Thanks a million fucking billion for telling me this after I in infirmary, shit.” He turns to Joe. “So, Joe, motherfucker block my kick and come at me with shank, a potato peeler he make razor-edge sharp, right? He stab me in side, right here.” He pulls up his polo shirt to show Joe the ragged puncture-wound scar on his left side. “Then here, here…and here,” he says, hiking his shirt higher to display the other three, his torso looking held together by an uneven row of knobby, discolored buttons of flesh. “And he gets me by throat, push against wall, was ready to stab face when Big Man come rescue me from behind, driving forklift. Ram tong of forklift across top of fucker’s head.” He shook his head, laughed. “Like I say, peel Afro hair off like avocado.” He makes a squishy ripping sound and acts as if he is pulling his scalp from his head, front to back, and makes a face. “A piece of scalp hang on end of fork like bloody sponge.”

  Joe makes an Ick face.

  Tarasov slaps my knee. “Big Man remove scalp and stick it down front of Liberty Bell’s pants, then punch motherfucker until lights in eyes go out like dead light bulb.”

  Joe says to me, “You kill him?”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head, “he survived.”

  “As did me,” Viktor says, slapping my knee, giving it a squeeze, “and Big Man make it happen.” He looks at Joe. “If my Big Man’s wish is to retire, is my wish also. We do whatever we can to help. Agree?”

  Joe sighs. “Is that why you insisted on telling me that fuckin’ story, Viktor?”

  Viktor shrugs and holds out his hands in a grand manner. “You give me much too much credit, my friend. Telling the stories is fun to me.”

  “Uh-huh,” Joe says, and turns to me. “All right, Babe, you are now officially fuckin’ retired. The party I’m havin’ at my place today is now in your honor.”

  I bow my head to him.

  Joe says to Viktor, “Happy now?”

  Viktor winks at me and smiles big, as delighted now as he was when he saw me today, simply delighted.

  Leo

  At my cubicle now, feeling like a formerly condemned man pardoned at the foot of the gallows, I dig into the Khemra file—a thin one. The driver’s license we found in her purse placed Sonita’s age at eighteen years, and a current school ID revealed her to be a junior at Compton High—lagging one year behind normal progress. Both identifications had her living in Compton. These facts are pretty much all I know about her—other than her criminal record, which isn’t clean, but not what I’d call bad: curfew violations, possession of alcohol by a minor, a marijuana possession or two.

  Her mother added zilch to the investigation when I met with her last night. A scrawny woman with yellow, crooked teeth, my impression when I introduced myself on her front porch was that she was right off the boat from Cambodia. She spoke practically no English, and wasn’t as distressed as your average mother should’ve been by the appearance of a cop on her doorstep at 1:30 A.M. I didn’t think there’d be much dignity in conveying the news of her murdered daughter with hand signals and monosyllabic words, so I left to find an interpreter. It took me forever to find one, but I finally did, a computer geek named Alani who works out of the Police Administration Building downtown; Alani was just out of college, a tiny Laotian with thick glasses who claimed to speak passable Khmer, the language of Cambodia.

  I didn’t make it to Mrs. Khemra’s place with Alani until almost 4:00 A.M., when we finally sat face-to-face with her on a couch in the living room of her bungalow—a nice place for Compton, much nicer than I expected. Alani gave her the bad news and the wailing and gnashing of teeth were the worst imaginable, until Mrs. Khemra keeled over in a dead faint, catatonic. I thought she was having a heart attack and immediately called EMS. She briefly regained consciousness before EMS arrived, and through Alani asked if we’d found Sonita’s killer. I didn’t want to raise her blood pressure by mentioning Oliver, so I told her, No, we haven’t found any suspects yet. She hysterically begged me to find the person who murdered Sonita—saying Sonita was a good girl, a good girl—and asked me to swear to her I’d do it. I did just that, swore to her I’d find the killer, and this seemed to give her a measure of comfort before she keeled over again. EMS techs arrived and rushed her away to the hospital.

  Today I need to sit down with Mrs. Khemra again, so I pick up my desk phone to call the hospital. She’s still in the intensive care unit, and the duty nurse tells me that the doctors have diagnosed her as suffering from stress cardiomyopathy, aka “broken-heart syndrome,” a condition, she says, where stress hormones cause the heart to balloon and palpitate uncontrollably. The nurse tells me Mrs. Khemra is resting comfortably, and that talking to the police about her murdered daughter may trigger a relapse. Maybe I can talk to her tomorrow, the nurse says, after she’s had time to grieve quietly and adjust her system to the shock, but today it’s impossible, forget it.

  The surveillance cameras installed in MacArthur Park were of no help, since the ones trained on the vicinity of the murder scene were on the blink, as expected. The uniformed officers’ canvass of the surrounding businesses also turned up nothing. My only remaining avenue of attack is Sonita’s school, so I pick up my desk phone, call the school, and am directed to her counselor, Eleanor Frank, who I’m told is now the acting principal. I talk to Frank’s assistant, give her the bad news about Sonita, and make an appointment for two hours later.

  After spending most of the night and most of this morning on the case, I need to freshen up. On the way home, I call the old man.

  Babe and Leo

  “Hello, my son.”

  “We gotta talk.”

  “So talk.”

  “Not on the phone.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Should I book a flight to a country that has no extradition treaty with the US?”

  “That might be premature, but make up your own mind after we talk.”

  “When and where?”

  “Somewhere very private.”

  “My house?”

  “No, anywhere but there—nowhere connected to you, in fact. You’ll know why after we talk.”

  “Jesus…Where, then?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s think about it and get in touch later, say around five?”

  “Why so long?”

  “I just can’t make it ’til then, all right?”

  “Okay, I will think of something.”

  “Yeah, you always do.”

  “You know, the more you talk to me, the more smart-assed you become—like old times.”

  “Old man, having a conversation with you still seems so fuckin’ weird.”

  Leo

  I get to my house, shower, re-dress my eye—it’s healing fast but still needs a band-aid—and change into my best work suit, a gray summer gabardine, with a white shirt and black-and-white striped tie, set off with a silver tie bar. Dressed like an adult, yeah, but I’m thrown back into my teenage years when I head through the front doors of Compton High, experiencing the same old dread as I trudge to the principal’s office. My academic performance in high school was damned good, especially when it came to math and science. The formulas, the laws of nature, the measurable and repeatable experiments all comforted me, provided a certainty of outcome absent from my home life. But I was as bad outside the classroom as I was good inside it, and administrators rarely summoned me to the principal’s office to discuss the academic aspects of my behavior.

  The woman guarding the principal’s lair in the outer office is older and skinnier than Sarah Palin and has a longer face, but she has the same feathery updo and the same kind of rimless, rectangular eyeglasses, and wears a knockoff designer suit complete with waist-length jacket. The way she holds herself tells me there’s nothing coincidental about the Palinesque image she project
s. I experience another déjà vu moment when she looks up at me from her desk as if I’ve been busted for brawling or smoking dope yet again.

  Before I can introduce myself she gives me the once-over, flinching when she sees the bandage on my left eye. “Are you the detective who made the appointment with Dr. Frank?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Your identification?”

  She asks this question like I’m the most unprofessional lawman in the West for not establishing my credentials the moment I crossed the threshold.

  “Oh, uh, sure,” I say. For a few seconds I fumble around trying to find my badge holder and am embarrassed at how relieved I am when I find it in my breast pocket. I mean, Jesus, what the hell can this witch do to me now?

  The badge does nothing to endear me to her. She examines it and turns to her desktop computer and strokes the keys, my thought being she’s recording my full name and badge number so she can lodge a complaint later, and hands it back.

  “You’re early,” she says.

  I glance at my watch while replacing the badge holder in my breast pocket. “You want me to stroll the grounds for ten minutes and come back when I’m five minutes late?”

  She removes her eyeglasses in a deliberate, dramatic fashion. “Were you an impertinent student in high school, Detective Crucci?”

  “There were those who accused me of that, yeah.”

  “I recognized that fact the instant you walked in the office door, before you even smarted off—from your uncomfortable demeanor, you see. My experience with police officers is that they were almost always impertinent students in high school.”

  I fiddle with my tie, work my neck around. “Can I, uh, see Dr. Frank now?”

  There’s a movement to my right just as a female voice chimes in. “Yes, you may, Detective Crucci. You’d better get in here before Miss Gloria places you in detention.”