They waited until one a.m., then drugged everybody.
Herta helped Cole carry Madelyn upstairs, her arms looped around the girl’s knees. They dropped her onto a wide bed in a girly room with Madelyn’s name spelled on the wall in seashells.
“Jesus,” Herta said, tugging on Madelyn’s skirt. “What a narcissist.”
“Not narcissism,” said Cole. “Egomania.” He unbuttoned Madelyn’s blouse. Tariq was right: Madelyn was long in the face but attractive nonetheless. Especially unconscious. Not that it mattered. Cole recognized beauty but could not comprehend what it was supposed to do for him.
“Self-absorption is a classic symptom of narcissism,” Herta argued. She tossed the skirt aside and tugged on the woman’s panties.
“Narcissists have a delusional sense of grandeur,” said Cole. Her bra was the type that hooked between the cups. He unhooked it and pulled one cup free. “Egomaniacs operate from a deep sense of self-doubt and anxiety. She blares her horn so people won’t examine what’s under the hood.”
“Ooh,” Herta said, “I like that.”
“Don’t think I didn’t notice the underwear.”
“Granny panties,” Herta acknowledged. “Don’t tell Tariq. It’ll undercut my authority.” She crossed her arms and studied. “Leaving the bra on is a nice touch. Maybe I’ll have Pork Chop’s boxers hanging from one ankle.”
“That’s cliché,” Cole said. “It’s beneath you.”
Herta poked at the woman’s exposed breast to measure the wobble. “Enhanced, but nicely done. Top-notch work.”
“You can tell by the angle of the nipples,” said Cole. “They aim too insistently up. No need to touch.”
Downstairs, they separated Pork Chop from the other unconscious saps and lugged him out the door in the direction of the car that answered his key’s beep—a Mercedes the blue of an unobstructed night sky.
“I hope we never drop the term horsepower,” Herta said. She had Pork Chop’s feet. “Have you ever wondered how people who live in countries without horses make sense of it?”
“This fat bastard is heavy as a horse.” Cole’s arms were wrapped around Pork Chop’s chest. He had to waddle to carry the lump. Cole did not like waddling. “There aren’t any countries without horses.”
“Ethiopia, maybe. The Sudan,” she said. “Do they have a conversion to wildebeest power?”
“I don’t think wildebeests are found that far north,” said Cole. “More likely to encounter a horse than a wildebeest in the Sudan.”
“You’re being intentionally pedantic to squelch my conversational gambit,” she said.
“Tariq will want to drag Pork Chop across the yard to your bed,” said Cole. “Don’t let him do it. Make him lift. Mr. Chop’s got to think he walked into your bedroom on his own. He can’t have gravel in his sneakers.” Pork Chop’s sneakers looked to be made from the pelts of endangered animals.
“I can handle Tariq,” she said. “Don’t you fret.”
Headlights appeared up the boulevard, a couple of cars approaching slowly. Cole and Herta ducked beneath the hedge. Sour sweat from Pork Chop’s underarms reminded Cole that humans were merely stinking animals, which led him to think about meat. “She really should have provided snacks.”
“Tacky,” Herta agreed. The headlights of the first car swept past. “I think we enjoy this—even though it involves tasks like toting this human tuba—because our shady intentions darken the things we do, and that darkness lends them weight. Which is to say—”
“Here we go,” said Cole.
“Our objectives mascara the activities.”
“Too girly,” said Cole.
“You wear mascara.”
“Only when I’m working.”
“I’m talking about work,” she said. “I’d like to hear you do better.”
Cole sighed. “Each of the stupid things we do with these rich turds is bearable because the promise of money cuts through the odor of shit.”
“That’s bad in so many ways, I can’t count them all,” she said. “It’s vulgar without being funny. And you can’t literally smell money.”
With gentleness, Cole set Pork Chop’s head on the ground. He took a quarter from his pocket, rubbed it vigorously between his palms, and offered a palm to Herta, saying, “Smells like blood.”
It did smell like blood, and something about this made her happy. The effort he made, she supposed. “You’re not the perfect boyfriend,” she said. “For instance, I know sooner or later you’ll decide to kill me.” She raised her hands to still his protest. “I’m not perfect either.”
The second car turned onto San Felipe and Cole said, “Lift.”
* * *
“We were going to, obviously,” said Cole with a soft laugh, “but you were just too drunk. It didn’t feel right. Then we passed out.”
Madelyn, who’d wakened naked with her head on the Cole’s chest, said, “I don’t remember . . . Well, I do, of course I do, just not every detail.”
“You recall what you said to me?” His full smile was a chasm few heterosexual women could safely navigate.
“Oh god, was I crude?” Madelyn asked, delighted. “Sometimes I can be crude. Crude, crude, crude. Oh, my head, opening my mouth to talk is all I need to send a shuddering pain right through my temples. Here.” She touched a temple. “And here.” She touched the other temple. “It really hurts and my stomach . . .”
“Let me see your head.” Cole massaged her temples.
“Oh my,” she said of his touch. “Where was I? My stomach . . .” She prattled on.
As it happened, her stomach impressed Cole. The plan called for her to vomit on his chest, putting her in his debt, but she managed to rouse herself and make it to the toilet. The hangers-on—they might still be on the cow-couch downstairs—got knockout drops, but Madelyn and Pork Chop were given extra doses to make them toss. Cole wondered about Herta, confident Pork Chop upchucked on her. She was good with a plan.
“Your hands are so yummy,” Madelyn said. “Where was I? Oh, yes . . .” The blather renewed. So far, Madelyn’s stomach was the only thing about her he found impressive. “Okay then,” she said, monologue running down, “what’s this terribly clever thing I said?”
“You said, I covet you.”
“I said that? I love it! I just adore it! And it worked, ’cause here you are.”
“Here I am.” His fingers worked her skull.
* * *
“I hate it when people are always worrying about money,” Madelyn said, brushing her hair, attired now in a peignoir that hazed her body like smog. “Money is overrated.”
The brush, he noted, was gold-plated.
He and Madelyn had sex the first time in the shower—a tiled stall the size of a car wash. Afterward, he massaged her back and butt and legs, her head and legs and soles. The second go was on the bed, and—for almost a minute—she lost herself in the act, he could tell. It was noon now, and Cole needed to see his partners. “Can I borrow your Volvo for an hour?”
“It’s not a Volvo,” she said. “Do I look like a mother of snot-nosed toddlers? It’s an Audi RS 7—not a TT or an S5, but an RS 7—a car built for the autobahn. Have you ever driven the autobahn? Texas thinks it knows something about speed, but the autobahn, my god, would you believe I cruised at two hundred miles an hour? And it felt like fifty? Smooth as silk.”
He did not believe two hundred miles an hour, and smooth as silk was a cliché. “Smooth as thirty-year-old Scotch,” he appended, teething at her still.
“My dad has fifty-year-old Ardbeg, the peaty stuff, which is what he likes. If you like it smooth, we can go to Richard’s Liquors on Kirby . . .”
“Dick’s Liqs?” began Cole, but she talked over him.
“. . . a two-minute commute, tops. I’ve timed it. Why don’t you wear a watch, anyway? As for car privileges—”
“I just want to get clean clothes,” he interrupted. “I’ll be right back.”
The driver’s se
at of the Audi was softer than his bed, but what difference did a car make, really? Cole was not materialistic. He just liked money.
* * *
“How’s Miss Bend-n-Squat?” Herta asked before Cole shut the front door. “Off contorting at the gym? Paying to crook her expensive thighs?”
“You’re too sedentary,” said Cole. “You don’t like to think of people exercising.”
“Exercise is for people who don’t read,” she said. “They do nothing of consequence, so they lend meaning to planking. The term pretty much sums them up.”
“You’re formidably sedentary.”
“I’ve never seen you in a gym.”
“There’s no money in them,” said Cole.
“What you guys talking about?” Tariq entered from the kitchen, dressed for the afternoon shift at the Azure Lounge: white shirt, dark pants, thin black tie.
“Work,” Herta said. “Madelyn.”
“She performs in bed like a porn star,” said Cole. It was not a compliment. “Makes stupid faces, ridiculous sounds, speaks absurd banalities.”
“Pound me down like ground round?” Herta suggested.
“It was the boringest sex I can recall.”
“I hate when you say things like that,” Tariq said.
“At least she performed,” Herta said. “Pork Chop came in my hands. Not that I’m complaining.”
Cole produced a single, folded page, and they moved to the desk. Herta scanned the page. She had a talent for forging documents, imitating signatures, pickpocketing, disguising herself, adopting accents. Cole was just good at taking things—like the statement page from Madelyn’s bank account, which held $73,987. They would use its corporate logo and page layout in the letter they sent Madelyn, and include her account number, phone number, address, and Social Security number. The letter would announce a security breach. Do not change your password online. Do not access your account online at all until you have changed your password. Call the automated system to make the change. Speak clearly and follow the prompts. Calls must be made from the number associated with the account. Cole had already attached a recording device to the phone in question—the pink number in Madelyn’s room.
Her father’s study, Cole informed them, was locked. Neither he nor Herta knew how to pick locks. He made a mental note for Herta to learn. “When the old man gets back from Europe, he may be in the market for a trophy wife.”
“I can do trophy,” Herta said.
“We need money now, though,” Tariq said. “Didn’t you skim their wallets?”
“Those clowns track each penny like bloodhounds after a scent,” Cole said.
“Did you mean that to be funny?” Herta asked.
“We have to be patient,” Cole said. “See how much Madelyn’s good for, and the same with Pork Chop.”
“Even he’s calling himself Pork Chop now,” Herta said. “That’s how much he loves me.”
“I have needs,” Tariq said. “Like finding a boring sex partner of my own. And, you know, food.”
“There’s pastrami in the fridge,” Herta said. “Jerk off. Make do.”
“Anyone in this country motivated by anything but the accumulation of wealth is a chump,” Cole said. “Every piece of the culture makes the argument.”
“What about that movie we watched?” Herta said.
They’d streamed Love Actually. Her choice.
“The cinematography was adequate,” Cole said.
“It would’ve been better with more nudity,” Tariq chimed in.
“You didn’t see it,” Herta accused.
“It’s something you can say about any movie.”
“It was about love,” Herta insisted, “not the preeminence of money.”
“Yet they all had thousand-dollar haircuts,” said Cole, “cute lofts, beautiful clothes. The real message: money matters.”
“You’re going to wind up cynical if you’re not careful,” Herta told him.
“Sex is a sucker’s game.”
“You’ve really got to think more about your metaphors,” she replied.
“It’s a means to an end.”
“There you go again.”
Cole didn’t do drugs and drank only in the line of duty. He didn’t get music. He didn’t really get sex, either, although he would now and again condescend to screw Herta. What he liked was theft. That and money, but not for what it could buy, most of which did not interest him—simply for the sake of money itself.
Herta liked first-edition books by authors she loved. Ideally with signatures. She also liked good food and nice clothes. She wouldn’t mind a BMW.
Cole took one of her books from a shelf. “I do not understand how this brings you pleasure.” He waved a first edition of The Optimist’s Daughter. “You’ve already read it. Yet you buy a fantastically expensive version because it has a scribbled name that maybe the writer put there. It’s a fetish.”
“How would you rather I spend my money?”
“Give it to me,” said Cole.
At the same instant Tariq said, “I’ll take it.”
“As for you,” Herta said to Tariq, “I read what you call an essay. At least you understand it’s a great book.”
Tariq shrugged. “Not my very favorite, but decent.”
“What’s your very favorite?”
“Pet Sematary,” Tariq said.
“Here we go,” said Cole, but his phone quieted them—a text from Madelyn: Let’s eat at Uchi!! And then head back to my place for private fun!!!
“I’d like to shoot her in the head,” Herta said. “One shot per exclamation point.”
“If you shoot her in the head,” Cole said, “there’s no point in multiple shots.”
“Uchi is major bucks,” Tariq said, adding: “Get the gyutoro yaki.”
“She’ll expect me to pay,” said Cole. “How can we redirect her?”
Herta took his phone and wrote, No to Uchi!!! Can’t wait that long to hop into your giant hooter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cole erased the message. “That she doesn’t understand irony doesn’t make her a bad person.”
“Yes it does,” Herta replied.
I’ve ordered pizza for delivery, Cole typed. So we won’t have to get fully dressed when the food arrives.
* * *
“It’s not a cheese knife,” Madelyn said that night, after sex but before pepperoni slices, “it’s a rocker knife.”
“Ah, yes,” said Cole. “Of course.” They stood at the kitchen counter with the pizza box and a round of cheese from her refrigerator. She was unhappy with the pizza. Everyone in Houston with a palate orders from Pinks, she’d said. “Anyway,” Cole went on, “it’s the perfect knife for the Brie.”
Madelyn huffed. “It’s not Brie.” Her head quaked with emphasis. “It’s Camembert.” She rolled her eyes.
Cole plunged the rocker knife into her neck. Madelyn’s eyes rolled all the way around until they were, at last, staring inwardly.
“She talked too much,” Cole explained. He was on the phone with Herta.
“Boy howdy,” she said. “Let me tell Tariq. He’s scrounging the fridge.” Cole heard her call out, “Change of plans!”
A moment later, Tariq’s voice at a distance: “Well, crap.”
Herta returned. “And now, o wise one?”
“The backyard is the size of an airport,” Cole said, “and wild in the way back.”
“We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Don’t park nearby.”
“Twelve minutes.”
“There’s pizza.”
“And Camembert,” Herta said.
“It’s spattered with blood,” he said, “but I can carve around it.”
* * *
“There’s something in those bushes,” Tariq whispered. They labored near the back wall of the estate, shoveling by moonlight. “I swear to god.”
“But you’re an atheist,” Herta said. “So that means nothing.”
“It’s an expression
,” Tariq said, “that indicates sincerity.”
“Not if the expression itself is a dishonest representation of who you are.”
“Dig,” said Cole. “It has to be deep.” He dropped a stack of pavers at their feet.
“Look over my shoulder at those bushes,” Tariq said. “There’s something in there.”
The back wall of the estate held dense ground cover and a mad scatter of hawthorns, live oaks, and sweet gums. Cole lifted one of the pavers and flipped it at a pocket of myrtle. A white-faced creature hit the ground without so much as a squeal.
“Eww,” Herta said.
“A ghoul!” Tariq whisper-screamed. He jumped from the hole and behind a tree. “What is that?”
“Opossum,” said Cole. “I didn’t even hit it.”
“It’s playing possum?” Tariq asked.
“Opossum can’t play possum,” Herta said. “It’s just doing its thing.” After a moment she added, “I don’t like knowing it’s alive. So close and all.”
“Then we should hurry.” Cole yanked the shovel from her hand and headed for the creature.
“Don’t kill it,” Herta said. “I changed my mind.”
Cole sighed. “Sentimentalist.” He gave her back the shovel. “This is why you tolerate coarse commercial tripe like Love Actually.”
“What are we doing with those bricks?” Tariq asked.
“The paving stones go over the body to deter animals from excavating,” said Cole. “I’m going to check our work inside.”
“It’s good,” Tariq said. “I’ve cleaned maybe a dozen crime sites, and except for one, my record’s perfect.”
“That sentence makes no sense,” Herta said, digging. “You can’t say perfect except for. It’s either perfect or it’s not.”
“What did you miss at the imperfect site?” asked Cole.
Tariq shook his head. “I prefer not to talk about it.”
Simultaneously Cole and Herta crossed their arms.
“Yeah, fuck, all right,” Tariq said. “I got up all the blood and skull chips and brain goo, but I left one item I shouldn’t have, that’s all.”
“Which was . . . ?” Herta asked.
Tariq shrugged. “The body.”
Houston Noir Page 6
