Faye Kellerman_Decker & Lazarus 14

by Stone Kiss

  Jonathan nodded. “Of course.”

  Decker ran his hand over his face. “I would have sworn it was the truth, Jonathan, because I saw her. We arranged a meeting place, and he brought her to me… to show me that she was okay. Terrified but unharmed.”

  “I imagine she was terrified, being with him.”

  “She wasn’t afraid of him, Jon; she was afraid of me! She was in dread that I was going to take her back with me—back to her parents. She was pleading with him not to send her back to her family, begged him to send me away. All she wanted to do was get back to where he had her stashed. She wouldn’t let go of him. She was clinging to him like ivy suckers on a brick wall. When he wanted to talk with me privately, he had to peel her off him so we could talk alone.”

  “It could have been an act.”

  “No, it wasn’t an act. When I asked her questions, she could barely answer me; she was shaking so hard with fright. She whispered her answers in his ear and he told me what she said.”

  “What did you ask her about?”

  “The murder, of course. What she saw.”

  “And?”

  “She said that Chasids took him—Ephraim.”

  “Good God, what’s this world coming—”

  “Or—” Decker broke in. “Or people dressed up as Chasids. Because they didn’t resemble any Chasidic sect that I’m aware of. They wore shtreimels. Would you know anything about that? A sect that wears shtreimels on weekdays?”

  “No.” Jonathan shook his head. “But there may be one.”

  “Or it could be that someone was playing masquerade but didn’t have it down perfectly. Like certain Israeli Mafia drug dealers who are wanted in Florida for ecstasy dealing, but rabbited before the Miami Police could make the arrests. Just maybe they’re hiding in Quinton.”

  “What on earth would they want with Ephraim?”

  “He might have known something, especially if Chaim was importing.”

  “Akiva, Quinton knows every single member of its community. Fugitives couldn’t hide there, much less integrate.”

  “Unless they have prior connections in the community,” Decker retorted. “Maybe someone is hiding them. Like I said before, if Chaim was involved in ecstasy importing—”

  “Akiva, you have absolutely no reason to connect Chaim to such activities!” Jonathan was shouting. “Where is any evidence for such outlandish accusations?”

  Decker buried his head in his hands. “No evidence.”

  Jonathan covered his mouth, then dropped his voice to a whisper. “Even if Chaim was doing something illegal…I can’t believe he’d set up his own brother! I refuse to believe that!”

  “Maybe it wasn’t meant to be murder, Jon. Maybe he was trying to scare Ephraim off. Maybe it just got away from him. Maybe I’m totally full of shit! I’m doing the best I can. Obviously, that’s not enough. Otherwise, Shayndie would have been alive today.”

  Jonathan put his hand on Decker’s shoulder. “Are you certain that Donatti didn’t kill her?”

  “No, I’m not certain of anything. But it doesn’t make sense for him to do it. He knew that if something were to happen to her, I’d be all over his ass. Which was exactly what happened. He seemed genuinely shocked when I told him about the murder.”

  “Could that have been an act?”

  “Sure, he could have been snowing me blind, except she did seem so dependent on him. He even said that he’d return her to me intact when things cooled down. I guess I just decided to believe him because it was my only option.”

  “What do you mean ‘intact’?”

  “He screws the kids he pimps. I think he does the boys as well as the girls. He said he wouldn’t do it with her.” Decker waved him away. “I don’t know…I should have made a grab for her when I had the chance.”

  “He would have killed both of you.”

  “Probably. You don’t want him on your bad side. Although I’ve certainly pissed him off and he’s never done anything to my family or me. I don’t know. Psychos like him… they’re like these half wolf/half dogs that people adopt for pets. They’re okay for a while. Then they just turn on you when the mood hits. Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe he just turned. Maybe he considered it biblical revenge against me—eye for an eye, a girl for a girl. He thinks I screwed up his relationship with this girl. This could have been his big revenge.”

  “What girl was that?”

  “That’s irrelevant. It was one of my cases, about eight years ago. When Donatti lived in L.A.”

  “He lived in L.A.?”

  “For about a year.”

  Jonathan sat back in his seat. “That’s not what the Bible means when it states ‘eye for an eye.’”

  Once a rabbi… Decker said, “I know. Rina explained it to me. It means monetary compensation. Can you dispense with the nit-picking right now? And let’s get off the expressway. It wouldn’t be good to make two women widows in one day.”

  Jonathan started up the motor and carefully merged into speeding traffic. “You’re angry at me.”

  “I’m angry at myself. I screwed up royally. I keep thinking to myself… what should I have done? Should I have gotten a gun and shot him? Should I have bribed him? Should I have gone to the police? All this Monday-morning quarterbacking. But at the time, I thought I was handling it pretty well.”

  “You did the best you could.”

  “So did you,” Decker answered back. “Make you feel any better?”

  “No. I feel that God was punishing me for breaking my word. Ridiculous, of course, but tell that to my conscience. Also, I can’t help but feel that I set her up somehow. I should have gone to the police. Like you said, at the very least, they could have traced the call to a source. They might have sent out troops to look for her.”

  They rode without speaking for several minutes.

  Jonathan said, “You honestly don’t think that Donatti killed her?”

  “Honestly, no. Because why would he do it?”

  “What did he say after you told him that Shayndie had been murdered?”

  “First I went into a rage. Then he went into a rage.” Decker pointed to his eye.

  “Aha.” Jonathan nodded. “That makes much more sense than the ridiculous excuse you gave me. Go on. What happened after he punched you?”

  “He calmed down. We talked. He claimed that he last saw her around six that morning. She was just like she had been that night— clingy. He was hell-bent on revenge, Jon. I managed to convince him to hold off until I did all that I could do. Last thing I wanted was a professional mob cleaner sweeping around, especially if Chaim’s not looking so clean.”

  “Akiva, you have no proof!”

  “I know I have no proof. But if Chaim’s involved, it’s better that I get to him before Donatti does, agreed?”

  Having no comeback, Jonathan maintained silence.

  Decker said, “So this is the deal, bro. You poke around Quinton and find out if there are any new and secretive people being hosted in the community. I go to the Quinton Police and try to find out if Shayndie was hanging out with the wrong crowd. Remember, Randy told me that there were some local Quinton boys arrested for ecstasy possession down in Miami. If they bought it down South, they most certainly bought it in their hometown. Maybe I can get the name of the distributor. Also, I might go back to Tattlers, find out if any of the girls were ever asked to be couriers.”

  “And they’d admit it to you? Just like that?”

  “Well, no, of course not. That’s why it takes a professional lieutenant detective with a genuine gold shield!” He smiled sadly, thinking of a sheltered fifteen-year-old who never stood a chance.

  “Stop it, Akiva,” Jonathan chastised. “You’re a good man and I respect you immensely. I hope you feel the same way about me.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “So let’s both stop the flagellation.”

  “Deal.”

  Jonathan said, “Am I correct in assuming that you want me to he
lp you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What you are asking me to do is to go behind my relatives’ backs and play spy for you. Even if it means setting up my wife’s remaining brother.”

  “Yeah, that about sums it up.”

  Jonathan was thoughtful. “I will find out what I can. But I will not serve you Chaim on a silver platter. All right?”

  Decker threw up his hands. “Sure.”

  Jonathan glanced at him, then focused on his driving. “I agreed more readily than you expected.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  The van fell quiet.

  “How far are we?” Decker asked.

  “Half hour away.”

  “Not so bad,” Decker said. “Time goes quickly when you’re having fun.”

  “Indeed,” Jonathan said. “I hope that I’m a better partner for you than Donatti.”

  “I’m sure you will be for the most part.”

  “For the most part?”

  “Chris has his benefits.”

  “Such as?”

  “If things get tight, the psycho’s familiar with a gun.”

  30

  Coupling, by its very nature, meant somewhere down the line there would be an uncoupling, and when the inevitable happened, he’d always slip into a deep black funk, knowing that the only person in this entire world who gave a rat’s ass about whether he lived and breathed was gone. He knew it was about money—he wasn’t stupid—but she faked it well enough so that he could delude himself that some fraction of her heart cared even if she didn’t love him.

  Today was a perfect case in point, because it was good. Too good, and that made the loss that much harder, the void that much bigger. His mood was foul, and his dispirited body ached with profound deprivation.

  As he lay in bed in a room devoid of any light, courtesy of blackout drapes, he stared at nothing, random thoughts drifting through his brain, a stupor made possible by booze and painkillers.

  Yeah, today had been real good.

  As measured by her orgasms because that was how he judged the sex.

  It hadn’t always been like that. She had started out like all the others. For him, sex had always been a one-way street because he didn’t give a shit how the girls felt, and 99 percent of them were unable to climax anyway, so why even bother with a pretense. He assumed that Terry was like the rest. He did her like he did all of them, mounting her from behind because it was his favorite position—terrific view, good penetration, and minimum body contact. He abhorred being touched because physical contact in his youth always implied pain. Even the first time Terry had brushed against him, he had stiffened with revulsion. So he did it doggy style, even though almost all the girls he had ever fucked preferred being on top, probably because they felt more in control.

  And that was okay for a few minutes. But then they started touching him as they rode him—an instant turnoff—and when it became too much, he’d flip them on their stomachs, pick up their asses, and shove it in from the back. So it was karma when he discovered that on-all-fours was Terry’s favorite position, too; marveling at his luck, he believed he had finally found his soul mate in every respect. Then he got to thinking. Maybe she was too much of a soul mate, that she probably wanted it from the back for the same reason he had liked it—minimal body contact.

  Perversely, that threw him in the opposite direction, where he now had to touch her when they made love. He’d lay her on her back, blanketing her skin with his own, smothering her mouth and face with kisses, his hands all over that marvelous bod of hers. At first, she squirmed, clearly hating every minute of it, but eventually she calmed down, allowing him to do whatever he wanted—a small price to pay for all the cash he was feeding her.

  Then one day, about a year ago, it happened. He was pumping away, looking at her face as he always did because it was so drop-dead gorgeous. Her eyes were closed, and she held a serene expression, yet her body underneath his was keeping time to his rhythm. Then, abruptly, he felt something—a quickening in her movements. In one silken movement, her legs swung about his waist, the heels of her feet digging into his ass as she pushed him deeper inside. Within moments, her breathing had intensified and heightened. Then she came, her face hot and moist as he felt her muscles contract around his cock. The sensation was so electrifying that he exploded instantly, probably not riding out her orgasm as long as he should have. It didn’t matter, though, because now he knew what she was capable of.

  From that point on, he became obsessed with her climaxing, rating every encounter not by his satisfaction, not even by their mutual satisfaction, but by hers alone. When it was good—like today—the high would last him for months. When it wasn’t good, he became angry and sullen, berating her and himself for what had gone wrong, analyzing it ad nauseam. No amount of reassurance would change his brooding state. He had failed, and though she was quick to take the blame, it didn’t help. He’d castigate himself, causing nothing but misery for both of them.

  Once she tried to fake it just to please him, and that had made him even angrier, the fire so encompassing that he had lashed out at her in a blinding rage, a heartbeat short of hitting her. But he was better than his old man was because he knew how to control it, although she didn’t know that. The pure fear on her face had haunted him for weeks. Still, in the end, it was worth it. She had learned her lesson and had never tried to deceive him again.

  He knew he was making her nervous, but he couldn’t stop himself. He had this self-imposed obligation to satisfy her sexually, to sate her with his cock, and anything less than an orgasm meant he was less of a man.

  Today had been a success.

  Even in excruciating pain, even with the fever and the dehydration, he had managed to bring her to orgasm two out of three times. He would have gone for the perfect record, but she claimed she was sore because it was right before her period or something ludicrous like that. He didn’t challenge her because he was wiped out, glad to have an excuse even if it was a lame one. Afterward, he sat while she bathed, watching beads of water fall off her breasts, roll over her flat stomach. He thought about asking her to spend the night, but didn’t. Although she’d never refuse him, it wouldn’t have been what she wanted.

  What she wanted was to get back to the kid.

  It was all about the kid.

  Which, in general, was okay. He was glad that she was a good mother. But sometimes it did piss him off.

  Now she was gone, and he was in agony. He felt as mean as a tethered dog. Once she had loved him totally, had been willing to risk everything to follow him across the country with no promises in return. Then Decker came along and all that changed.

  He took a small sip of scotch from the bottle.

  It’s not that she wouldn’t have found out. Of course, she would have found out. He had just wanted it on his timetable, after he had dug a hole for her that was way too deep for her to climb out of.

  Decker.

  Goddamnmotherfuckingsonofabitch.

  After she had dumped him, he had been consumed with thoughts of revenge against her. He had wanted to pop her but held off because he wanted to do it with style. So he kept his watch, witnessing her steady decline into a deep abyss of debt, looking on as she exhausted all of her possibilities with no one around to bail her out. When she had neared rock bottom, he came to her in the dead of winter, into her shitty jail cell of a tenement—a one-room number with just a toilet and a sink—no shower—and a hot plate for cooking. Around nine in the evening, as he remembered it. The kid had been around three, asleep on the couch, and swaddled in covers. A twin mattress lay on the cement floor.

  Fuck, it was cold inside. He had been dressed in a heavy wool suit, a cashmere overcoat, plus a scarf and fur-lined gloves; still, he shivered. He couldn’t imagine how she could sleep in such frigid conditions let alone work. But there she was, sitting at a card table, bundled up and breathing mist, stuffing what seemed like hundreds of letters into hundreds of envelopes, and doing it clumsily because
her hands were encased in thick but old knitted mittens. A tape was playing—some college professor droning on about balancing chemical equations. Because she was clad in layers, her body looked normal. But her face was the giveaway—as gaunt as a ghost.

  In that single tick, seeing her steeped in poverty and humiliation, he had meant to pop her. More like put her out of her misery. It was so delicious, his intended revenge.

  Except he couldn’t do it.

  He just couldn’t disconnect from those golden eyes filled with degradation, her face awash in shame. Distant memories flooded his brain, and all he could think about was how much he still wanted her.

  So he told her to pack her bags. She didn’t even own a suitcase, throwing her meager belongings into two plastic grocery sacks. This all went down at a time when he still did occasional favors for his ex-father-in-law, so he still had the trappings—the limo, the bodyguards, a view suite in a posh hotel on Michigan Avenue. He took her to the place, her disgrace keenly visible as they walked through the crowded lobby. He was carrying the sleeping kid in his arms, leaving her like an overloaded donkey to trod through the public areas, burdened under the weight of her clothes, plastic bags, a backpack filled with heavy books, and an oversize purse. When one of his bodyguards moved in to help her, he warned him off with a subtle shake of his head.

  Before he took her upstairs, he checked in with the management, saying that she’d be staying with him for a couple of days, that anything she ordered should be placed on his account. The head concierge in charge of customer service—some thin faggot of a guy who looked her up and down with disgust—became fidgety, giving him squirrelly looks, too scared to broach the subject because of who he was. The little twit of a man made him laugh aloud. He knew instantly what the stick up his butt was all about.