by Ann Aptaker
*
I park in front of the tattoo parlor. Its lights are off; there’s no gaudy yellow glow hitting the street, just a darkness as dead as its previous owner and his unfortunate front man.
“You have a key?” I ask Lilah.
“In my handbag. But my handbag’s back at Al’s place. What’s so funny?”
“You must be the only woman alive who leaves without her handbag.”
“And you must be the only dagger who leaves without her hat.”
We both laugh a little, even enjoy the laugh. A little.
We get out of the car. My lock picks take care of the tattoo shop’s locked door problem, and in a few seconds, we’re inside.
Lilah says, “Well, you certainly come prepared.”
“Always,” I say.
Lilah turns on a light, revealing the yellow walls and tattoo sketches still blood spattered, a gaudy art show of murder. I have a hankering to ask Lilah how she could still service yesterday’s john in this slaughterhouse, and I wonder about the guy’s willingness to be serviced amid so much blood. But I realize they’re stupid questions. Lilah would fall back on the I need to make a living and keep my appointments line she gave me yesterday; and the guy, well, back there in the bedroom, he wouldn’t see the blood. He wouldn’t see anything, but he’d feel plenty on the way to his burst of paradise.
I stand behind the chair where I first saw Gus, asleep, when Lilah brought me here for my meeting with Mickey. “The killer was right-handed,” I say.
“Yeah? How do you know?”
“The blood. The killer had to come up from behind while Gus dozed, and then cut his throat from left to right. Only a right-handed slice could throw the blood in this direction.” I say it with a slicing gesture that makes Lilah wince. “See how the blood’s spattered all over the stuff on the table and the wall?”
She doesn’t look at the blood, just looks around the room at nothing in particular. “Well, that gets us absolutely nowhere,” she says. “Just about everybody in the world is right-handed.”
“Even you.”
“Yeah, even—hah, nice try. How many times do I have to tell you? I didn’t kill anybody. Why don’t you believe me?”
“Who says I don’t believe you?”
She wrinkles her nose and gives me a shrug, which even under my coat comes across as sharp and petulant. I almost think she’ll stamp her feet. “Oh, you’re impossible! What are we doing here, anyway?”
“I need to have a look around, see if there’s anything I missed. Maybe the killer got sloppy and left a trace somewhere.”
“Don’t you think the cops would’ve found it? They went over this joint with a fine-tooth comb.”
“Sure, but it wasn’t my comb.”
There’s nothing around Gus’s chair, or anywhere else in the tattoo room, that gives up the identity of the killer: no bloody fingerprint, no out-of-place cigarette or cigar butt, no mustard-smeared napkin from Nathan’s hot dog joint nearby. And if any of those things had been here, the cops would’ve taken them. I’m looking for things the cops wouldn’t see, things that remind me that even killers are human beings, and human beings touch things or take things or have a look at things. So I look to see if maybe there’s an odd empty space on Gus’s table, like maybe the killer treated themselves to a favorite color ink. Maybe one of the drawings is askew on the wall. Maybe the killer’s nuts for Rita Hayworth and had a closer look after slicing Gus’s throat.
But there’s nothing that rings my bell, nothing to help me figure who sliced Gus and Mickey. The killing itself was sloppy, but the killer knew enough to leave the scene clean.
Lilah follows me into the back room, the one tricked out like a cheap living room, where I met with Mickey. His body’s gone, but his bloodstain is soaked into the coffee table. “Maybe you should wait outside,” I tell Lilah.
“No, I’m all right. What are you looking for?”
“You tell me. You know this place inside out. Anything look off to you?”
She walks around the crummy room, examining the chipped walls and ratty furniture like she’s thinking of buying the place, looking for any flaws to give her an edge on price. “Hard to tell,” she finally says. “Don’t forget, someone searched in here, so everything’s a little off.” Opening my coat like she’s planning to stay awhile, she says, “I could use a drink. How about you?”
“Scotch, neat,” I say, and prepare myself for the same lousy scotch Mickey gave me.
“Sure,” she says, “I know.” Lilah walks out of the room, presumably into the kitchen. I stay in the living room, look around for myself. Like Lilah, I examine the chipped walls and tatty furniture. By the time Lilah comes back with two glasses of scotch, nothing in the room’s jumped out at me. It’s just as crummy as the last time I was here, maybe even crummier, and sadder with that bloodstain, a reminder that Mickey was knifed in the back. I didn’t like the guy, he was a louse to his sister, a creep who belonged in the gutter, but his killer was worse. His killer was a coward.
The scotch bites my throat, but shakes my thoughts back on track. “Listen, I hate to do this, Lilah, I hate to send you back to last night, when you found Mickey dead, but I need you to remember it. I need you to remember what you saw and did when you walked in from the beach. Tell me everything down to the last detail.”
She sits down where her brother sat when we talked last night, on the couch opposite the chair I sat in, and where I sit down now. Sipping her scotch, she looks around, at first earnestly, then almost dreamily as she gets up from the couch and walks behind me to the doorway from the tattoo area.
I turn and watch her in the doorway. She’s looking at Gus’s chair, and taking a deep swallow of the scotch. Stiffening from the whiskey’s bite, she says, “I came in the front door, and the first thing I saw was Gus. That’s when I screamed.” She turns back around to the living room. “Then I ran in here. I don’t know why. I was scared. I wanted my brother, wanted his—his protection. But then I saw him. I saw him dead. I screamed again.”
“Do you remember Eddie coming in?”
She shakes her head.
“Do you remember me coming in?”
She shakes her head again. “I was in a daze. But I remember you talking to me, asking me what I saw, and I remember telling you that I found Mickey and Gus dead. And then you took me to Mona’s.”
“And that’s where you called the boys, told them you were taking over?”
She gives me a nod, the wobbly kind, when you know there’s no use lying, before she walks back to the couch and sits down as if her bones are dissolving. “I’m tired, Cantor. I’m so tired.”
“We’ve had quite a night. And it’s after four in the morning,” I say, checking my watch.
“It’ll be dawn soon,” she says. “Dawn on Coney is something special, especially on the beach.” Her eyes closed, she seems to find a moment of peace in her imagining. When she opens her eyes again and looks at me, I even see a small light of joy in her, a joy she’s eager to share. “You used to live around here. You remember how beautiful dawn is? The light on the water touches everything. Makes everything clearer, brighter. Coney’s colors really sparkle.”
“Sure. I remember.”
“How come you left, Cantor?”
It’s a line I don’t expect. But I give her the only answer I can. I give her the truth. “I needed a bigger world.”
“Hmm, yes, I’m sure you did. Your world must be wonderful.”
“It has its charms.”
“And I bet they’re all beautiful.” Her smile, sly but gentle, makes it clear she’s not talking about pretty scenery, but the pretty women she imagines I escort through that scenery.
So I smile back.
“Is there someone special?” she says.
It’s another line I don’t expect.
It’s not a question I want to answer, but before I come up with a dodge, she says, “Do you take her dancing? Take her to the Green Door Club? Or maybe the
Copacabana, or El Morocco? I read about those places in the gossip columns in the paper, about all the society people and Broadway stars who go there. Everyone in gowns and minks, or tuxedos. I bet you look wonderful in a tuxedo.”
“Lilah, let’s stick to—”
“Is your special someone rich, too? Or just beautiful? I could see you with someone rich. I’d love to meet a rich woman.”
That’s the third line I don’t expect, and the way it comes at me I can’t stop myself from taking a swing at it. “I thought you like to control men.”
She gives that a snicker that grows into a rollicking laugh but with a bitter undertone. “Control, sure! That’s easy. It’s how I earn my living. But I can’t love them. Don’t want to, either. I thought you knew.”
“I figured you danced with whoever asked.”
“Hell, no. That’s why Mickey sent me to, um”—her smile actually has a little light humor behind it now—“lure you out here. He knew your reputation, but he knew my tastes. He figured the combination would work.” She puts her glass of scotch down on the coffee table, not even noticing she’s placed it right in the middle of Mickey’s bloodstain. Sitting up, looking straight at me with a curiosity freighted with a need neither of us knows what to do with, she says, “Does that change your mind about me, Cantor?”
I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t know what to say to this puzzling woman in her high-style, jazz-club getup who finds refuge like a needy child inside my coat. I can’t answer her because I don’t know what the answer is. And I don’t want to know what the answer is. So I say nothing and bank on my silence to stub the question out.
She looks straight at me a minute longer, then leans back against the couch, not so much in defeat as in resignation. “If not me, then who, Cantor?”
I’m not going to talk to her about Sophie. I’m not going to tell this woman, who’s touched the darkest part of me, that no matter how deeply her eyes search me, no matter what they find and waken in me, no one can make me feel the way Sophie made me feel. I won’t tell her that loving Sophie, being in her arms, was like having all the world’s mysteries revealed to me, until she became a mystery herself, a mystery which eats me alive in my dreams every night. “No one,” I say. “There’s no one special.”
She picks up her scotch again, takes a swallow, then says, “You’re lying.”
“There’s no one special, Lilah. Now get off it.”
“Then what’s that I see in your eyes? There’s love there.”
“That’s enough, Lilah. Let’s get back to business.”
“No, wait,” she says, staring at me. “There’s pain. What happened, Cantor? She dump you for another dagger? Or maybe married some guy? Yeah, that can hurt like hell.”
“None of this is going to help me find Mickey’s killer, Lilah.”
“I’m worried about you, Cantor. So you’re in pain. So what. So’s everybody. What do you do? Sit and drink every night at the Green Door Club, maybe pick up some dame who’ll soothe your misery for a few hours while you hope time stands still? Is that why you picked me up?”
That snaps me. “I thought it was you who picked me up,” comes out of me like spitting nails at a target.
I didn’t mean to terrify her, but the wide-eyed look on her face says that I did. Until I realize it’s not me she’s looking at, not me who’s terrified her.
I turn around and see Pike through the door, striding through the tattoo parlor toward us in the back room.
Chapter Nineteen
Pike’s so love struck by Lilah, he even takes off his hat, which makes his bad haircut stick straight up, making his long face look like a turnip topped by old, dry leaves. “Are you okay, Miss Day? This pree-vert try anything funny?”
“I’m all right,” she says, doing a reasonably good job of keeping her terror of the guy out of her voice. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you with Al and Frankie?”
“Those other guys were okay with letting you go and do whatever you want, but not me. I had to find you. Make sure you’re okay. And those guys got other things to do, anyway.” His silly nasal voice makes it sound as if the boys are off doing childish things in a dirty playpen.
I’ve never felt a chill as cold as the one crawling through my flesh right now. I’m sure those other things involve taking Esposito’s chewed remains to some godforsaken spot to bury him deep, or maybe out in the ocean, with bricks tied to what frayed entrails are left of him.
Lilah’s gone gray as ashes, but manages, “Listen—it’s Tom, isn’t it? Your given name’s Tom?” She plays it smart, talks to him as sweetly as anyone can talk to somebody who’s just tortured another human being to death.
“Yeah. It’s Tom.” He sounds like a shy schoolboy. His big ears even turn red. “I didn’t think you knew my full name.”
“Well, what kind of—of boss would I be if I didn’t know who’s working for me?” The woman wasn’t lying when she said she’s good at handling men. Little by little, she’s even getting the upper hand with Pike, a guy she thought she couldn’t control.
Considering Pike hates my guts, I certainly couldn’t do any better, so I keep out of Lilah’s way. I’m not sure exactly what she’s trying to win for us—time? information?—but whatever it is, I let her play her hand.
“So, listen, Tom,” she says, “we’re fine here. I got Cantor away from the boys because—well, never mind why. And now she’s just helping me look through some of Mickey’s things. Decide what I’d like to keep, y’know? Cantor’s old Coney, like me and Mickey. She’ll know which things to remember my brother by.”
Pike fingers his fedora like he’s trying hard not to tear it in two. “I don’t know why you’d want to remember him at all, Miss Day, the way he treated you.” He says it with the sadness of a three-hankie movie, but there’s a trace of a snarl under it, a tiny, strangled snarl that rides on a boyish smile that scares the hell out of me.
Just like the way the lights went on when Mona blurted about being owed money, the clouds part when Pike speaks. There’s still a lot of mist, things aren’t altogether clear, but I think I see a glimmer of sunlight, a glimmer of truth.
But until that glimmer becomes more than just a weak ray in a bleak sky, I can’t make a move to do anything about it. I can’t handle it on my own or take it to a higher-up, to Coney’s absentee landlord, Sig, because if I’m wrong, Sig’s fist will come down on my head. He may not even let me keep my head.
Meantime, Lilah stays on Pike, keeping her mood sweet as candy apples. “I appreciate your concern, Tom. I always have. But Mickey was still family. You know how it is. So you don’t have to hang around. It’s late, go home and get some sleep. I’ll see you later.”
“I’d rather stay, if you don’t mind, Miss Day. I don’t trust this pree-vert to be alone with you. I’ve heard what her kind does.”
I almost laugh. I’m sure whatever he’s heard were fantasies from the wrong side of the bed. On the other hand, maybe not. He’s a cop, and cops have been throwing my kind in jail for a long time. Maybe some desperate sister spilled our secrets, gave him an earful in exchange for not beating her up.
“I’ll be fine,” Lilah says, a little sterner this time, the would-be rackets boss making things clear to an underling. “Go on home.”
Pike’s heavy sigh has plenty of hurt, and a stab of anger.
That stab signals that it’s time for me to take a chance. Maybe I can get Pike’s angry stab to finally part those clouds all the way.
I get up from the chair, make my way over to Lilah, just in case my play goes bad and I have to get her out of here fast. But I talk to Pike. “It was you, wasn’t it. You killed Mickey. And Gus, too, so he wouldn’t talk. Slitting Gus’s throat was a killer’s move, and you’re a killer, Pike. The guy wouldn’t have anything to talk about. He was asleep. He’d have found Mickey already dead, and you gone.”
Pike might be a vicious killer, but he’s still a cop. A dirty cop, sure, but dirty or not, like mos
t cops, he’d rather gag on what he’s feeling than expose it. So he doesn’t flinch at my accusation, just says, “You tell a good story, Gold.”
Lilah says, “Cantor, what are you talking about? Pike was Mickey’s man in the Coney Island precinct. He kept an eye on Loreale’s people for us, people like Esposito. Mickey was Pike’s meal ticket. Why would he kill him?”
Maybe the lady can control men, but she doesn’t have a clue about love. “Don’t you know?” I say. “He wanted to be a hero. A real Romeo hero. He hated the way Mickey treated you. He told you so himself a few minutes ago. He was going to save you from all that. Wasn’t that the idea, Pike?”
The other thing cops hate, even more than having their emotions pried loose, is being humiliated, and I’ve just humiliated him, which wasn’t the smartest thing to do. A humiliated cop is as dangerous as a cornered rat. And if Pike’s torture of Esposito, his slitting the sleeping Gus’s throat, and sneaky stabbing of Mickey in the back are anything to go by, Pike is a dangerous guy, even without the power of his badge and the firearm that comes with it.
So if I want to get out of here alive, and get Lilah out, too—I don’t think Pike’s the type who’ll take being a spurned lover with just a shuffle and a gee whiz—then I need to soothe his hurt. It won’t be easy. He hates me, but whether he likes it or not, there’s something we share, something about him I get. It’s that thing that’s snared everyone in all of history who’s ever been crazy in love. If I play it right, it just might smooth him out enough for me and Lilah to slide out of here. “I don’t blame you, Pike,” I say.
Lilah blurts, “What? But it was murder! He murdered my brother!”
“Try to see it his way, Lilah. He was protecting his woman, the woman he loves. I’d do the same thing.” What I don’t say, though, is that I wouldn’t want to be sneaky about it. I don’t say it because what I’d want and what I’d do might be two different things. If I ever find the flesh slavers who took Sophie, I don’t think I’ll give a second thought to putting a bullet in their heads in their sleep and then tearing them limb from limb.
