by Dane Hartman
Because Sam expected no real resistance he was surprised, and a bit displeased, when Owens shrugged off his restraining arm. And when he lunged with his knife he wasn’t too happy to find that this derelict was far more agile than a drunken derelict past his prime had any right to be.
But this disappointment was nothing compared to what he felt when Owens produced his gun and leveled it on him. “This is it, motherfucker!” Owens declared, using the epithet only because it seemed entirely appropriate to the circumstances and the vocabulary that Sam had thus far exhibited.
“Hey, sport, this is something else.” Sam, unlike the youth on the sidelines, didn’t appear to be intimidated by the sight of the gun. Otherwise he might have joined his friend and tried to run away. But even left to his own devices, Sam evidently lacked any fear. He also lacked any sense of reason, but that was something else entirely.
“Throw that knife down,” Owens commanded with what he thought was an authoritative voice. “I’m a police officer. Throw that knife down.”
“You is a po-leese officer?” Sam mocked. “Why sure you is.”
He began to make circles in the air with his knife, neither advancing nor retreating. He was seeing whether he could out-psyche Owens.
“Am I going to have to shoot you?” Owens asked, tiring of this lunatic’s games.
“Shoot me! Shoot me! Oh Jesus, yes, you are.” Sam laughed again. His mind had been so monopolized by whatever shit he had driven into his veins or thrust up his nose that he may actually have wanted to find the wind whistling through a hole in his body come morning.
All at once he lunged forward, the switchblade just grazing the coveralls that drooped from Owens’ shoulders. Owens didn’t hesitate to fire.
The round from the .356 caught Sam in the thigh, severing an artery, or so Owens assumed from the sight of so much blood that erupted from the wound. Sam reeled back, but only because of the bullet’s impact, not from any pain. Nor was he in shock. He was so far gone that his mind simply failed to register the pain.
Still, he was sufficiently in touch with reality to abandon any notion of coming at Owens again. He leaned against a parking sign, which didn’t provide him with much support, and calmly, even indifferently, examined his wound. Blood continued to spurt out of it at such a terrific rate that Owens realized he’d bleed to death if he didn’t receive medical attention soon.
Sam seemed somehow to understand what his predicament was now, for he finally relinquished his knife and gazed up at Owens with a sullen, contemptuous expression. “Motherfucker, you got my number, didn’t you?”
When Harry finally arrived, having been alerted by the sound of the gunshot, he discovered Owens hard at work tying a tourniquet—improvised from his own stained coat—about the wound. “Son of a bitch dies, who knows what will happen,” he was muttering. “We’ll be accused of police brutality, cause a riot, blow this whole investigation to hell.”
Harry realized he was absolutely right. He didn’t have to ask what had happened. The sight of the switchblade on the ground was mute testimony to the reason Owens had fired.
He rushed back and got his car and brought it careening up to the curb where Sam lay sprawled, dazedly abusing Owens while his arterial blood, despite the constraint of the tourniquet, kept pumping out of him, dyeing his whole pants leg and much of the sidewalk a dark crimson.
They managed to get the injured man into the back of the car while their other prisoner looked on with bewilderment and consternation. “You fucking cops are too much,” he declared, but whether he meant this as an insult or a compliment neither Harry or Owens could say.
For hours they waited, consuming Styrofoam cups of coffee to keep themselves awake. The dull green corridors leading from the Emergency Room were empty and silent save for the infrequent intrusion of a woman’s mechanical voice paging one doctor or another. The nurses who were on this graveyard shift unfortunately weren’t much to look at. They might have been efficient, but they all had the look of spinsters, their faces taut, their jaws defiant as they traipsed the corridors, bearing trays filled with sterilized instruments to be used in surgery. The odor that clung to the walls was appropriately antiseptic; the floors gave off a strong whiff of ammonia.
Technically, Harry and Owens had concluded their work for the night. It was five in the morning, a little past actually, and now that they had consigned one suspect into the hands of the law and the other into the hands of the surgeons, there was no reason they couldn’t simply go home.
Except that Owens refused to leave, because he didn’t want Sam Aikens (for that, his wallet indicated, was his last name) dying on him. Not that he was a sentimentalist; he just feared the repercussions. And somehow Harry couldn’t bring himself to leave Owens by himself. Moreover, he shared Owens’ concern. Any incident that might trigger a racial disturbance, anything that could provoke Bressler to take them off the case, was to be taken very seriously.
“This is lame, I realize it,” Owens said. “I mean, here it is five o’clock in the goddamn morning, and we’re sitting here praying that this bastard makes it when it’s obvious that the world would be better off if he didn’t. And what good are we doing here? Our presence isn’t helping him any.”
He looked down to the end of the corridor where the Emergency Room was situated. No telling what was going on in there. They could see only a hazy light through a small oval window.
“You want to leave, Drake?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“How long you think this is going to take?”
“Depends. They run into trouble, get a lot of bleeders, there’s no way to know.”
But at precisely that moment a surgeon, draped in green, his mask hanging down on his chest, appeared at the door to the Emergency Room. He gestured to the two officers. From his expression it was impossible to discern the outcome of the operation.
When they had approached close enough for him to speak, he said, “Well, he’s going to be limping for some time to come, but he’ll pull through.”
Owens turned to Harry, his face lighting up like a child at Christmastime. “You hear that? You hear that? The fucker is going to make it!”
He was so exhilarated that he threw his arms first about the surgeon, then about Harry. “The goddamn son of a bitch is going to live!” he said. The surgeon meanwhile watched him in confusion, unable to comprehend why Owens was simultaneously cursing his patient and exhibiting unrestrained joy at the news that he would recover. It was clear from the way he looked at the two, and one of them in torn clothes that smelled powerfully of Wild Turkey, that he regarded cops with great skepticism. “Next time you want to stop somebody,” he said to them both, “try the kneecap. You want to kill him, well, that’s a different story.”
“No, you got it wrong, Doctor,” Harry said. “It’s the same story, always the same story.”
The surgeon shrugged. “I’ll take your word for it. I don’t have to take care of dead people.”
C H A P T E R
F i v e
When it got to be quarter past eight and he still hadn’t shown, Martha Denby began to get worried. He was usually so prompt. But she needn’t have become alarmed. There was a loud rapping on the door to her suite.
She rushed to it, threw it open, threw her arms around her guest. “Teddy!” she said, “I thought you’d never come.”
He clasped her to him, then relinquished his hold so that he could shut the door. “I must apologize. I am afraid I was held up. But to expiate, let me present you with this.” From behind his back he produced a bottle of Piper Heidseick champagne. “I thought we might indulge ourselves.”
“I think indulgence is the order of the evening,” Martha said, hurrying into the small kitchenette to find an opener and a couple of long-stemmed glasses.
Though Martha was casually attired, having no plans to leave her room this night, she was still very conscious of the impression she made. She wore a black-s
triped T-shirt with slightly baggy tuxedo-striped pants, designed in Paris by Claude Montana.
Teddy always preferred that his women dress elegantly for him, and he went to great lengths to ensure that they did, never balking when they asked him for money to go shopping, no matter how exorbitantly priced the clothes and accessories they wanted were. And Martha also had remembered to sprinkle herself with Opium, a fragrance that she knew Teddy liked.
“How was the shooting today?”
She sighed. “Can’t we talk about another subject?”
“You know I’m interested, Martha.” He seated himself on the edge of the bed and began to work the cork out from the bottle. Before she could answer, the cork leaped up to the ceiling with a great pop, and a small geyser of champagne bubbled to the surface, dousing Teddy’s hands.
Martha, laughing, took his hands and licked them clean.
But while this gesture certainly pleased Teddy, he insisted on returning to the subject of the film she was starring in.
“Yesterday was perfect. Today we were back to square one. That scene I do with Jim? Gus isn’t pleased with it. Why do I have to get every goddamn perfectionist director in the business?”
“You learn that way,” Teddy said, trying to soothe her. “You have to develop your career, gain experience. I keep telling you that.”
He slapped her rump good-naturedly as though to punctuate his remark.
She looked momentarily sullen. “I don’t know,” she said.
“Is my favorite girl going to give me a smile?” Teddy poked her lips with a finger. And just as he requested, a smile formed almost against Martha’s will. Right now she did not especially feel very fun-loving. But with Teddy, there really was no choice. Fun was all he wanted.
“Come sit beside me,” he urged.
She complied, taking from him a newly filled glass of champagne.
“Now what shall we drink to?” he asked.
“To a speedy wrap of the film.”
The glasses clinked.
“I tell you what, Martha. As soon as the shooting’s completed, you and I will go to Acapulco for a couple of weeks, what do you say to that?”
“Just the two of us?” She was startled. Teddy rarely could afford to spend more than a couple of hours with her; that he should suggest a couple of weeks was little short of astonishing.
“What about your work?”
He shrugged. “Wouldn’t you say I deserved a vacation?”
She kissed him sweetly on the lips. “No one deserves it more.”
“But there is one other consideration.”
“Oh?” She looked at him sharply. “And what’s that?”
“It has nothing to do with me. It’s Jim.”
“Jim,” she said with a certain bewilderment as if she’d completely forgotten about him. Then, suddenly quite serious, she turned to Teddy. “It’s like this, Teddy. I like Jim. He’s a dear boy, but what we have together is nothing like what I have with you.”
“Just a typical Hollywood affair that’ll end when the shoot is done?”
“Teddy!” she reproached him, irritated by the sarcasm that tinged his voice. “You know very well that I do not engage in ‘typical Hollywood affairs.’ ”
Teddy did not immediately respond. “Am I to conclude then that Jim will pose no obstacle to your accompanying me to Mexico?”
“I do what I want. Jim does not control my every move or otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
Teddy nodded with satisfaction. He had to be continually reassured that he had no rivals, no competitors, or that those he did have were mere playthings, likely to be discarded when the woman in question tired of them. But he made it amply clear that for his part if there were any discarding to do, it would be on his initiative not hers. Only occasionally did women fail to live up to his expectations: a severe miscalculation.
Abruptly, Teddy rose from the bed and walked to the window. They were high enough up, because of the hotel’s height and because it was built on Nob Hill, for the view to be suitably panoramic. The bright lights from the North Beach area glimmered in the distance like a galaxy countless millions of miles away.
Martha joined him shortly and wrapping her left arm about his waist and snuggling close to him asked him what he was thinking. Asking Teddy what he was thinking was like asking the same question of a giant black bear that suddenly looms in your path. You would neither hope for an answer nor persist in the inquiry.
So Martha resigned herself to Teddy’s shift in mood. Was he still angry about Jim? She’d thought they had gotten that out of the way. But with Teddy it was impossible to tell what was bothering him. She knew so little about his life to begin with.
“If I ever suspect that you stay with me because of your career,” he said at last, “I will never forgive you.”
She pressed herself against him. “No, no, it’s not that at all. You know me better than that.” She sought his lips with hers, desperate to get him to relax.
The truth was, of course, that her career had been one of the more compelling reasons why she had responded to his overtures. But things had changed since then. She found that she did love Teddy. Not love exactly. It was something greater and lesser than love, something that she had not experienced before, a kind of pressing need, an addiction. With Teddy she had a sense that she had embarked on an unusual adventure, one that would take her into forbidden realms that men like Jim Corona could never imagine, let alone assert mastery of. But to convince Teddy of this was infuriatingly difficult. When she’d been secretive and failed to tell him about the other men in her life he’d somehow found out about them anyway. But now that she was completely open with him, he seemed no less suspicious. There was no winning either way.
He was softening, his body, if not his mind, responding to her seductive posture. That was about as much as she could hope for. There was a rigid core that she would never break through, and though there were times that she tried she realized that if any woman would ever succeed at it it would not be her.
His hands gripped her ass, and with the power they had they practically lifted her whole body up against him. When he began to explore the supple contours of her back, her skin erupted as much in reaction to the coldness of his palms as to the excitement of the touch itself.
When, twenty minutes later, he had adjusted his trousers and tucked his shirt firmly in so that his appearance would in no way betray how he’d just spent his time, he gently reached down to where the blankets and sheets had collected in a heap and somehow succeeded in unravelling the tangled mess. Then he raised the reddest of the two red blankets and hoisted it along the length of Martha’s unclothed body, drawing it finally over her head. He stepped away as if to better inspect what he’d accomplished.
Just then Martha, giggling, mumbled something under the covers.
Teddy good-humoredly uncovered her head. “What did you say?”
“I said I couldn’t breathe,” she was still laughing.
“Air as a means of sustenance is highly overrated,” he said, butting his head down suddenly so that it was squashing both her breasts. With his lips he cradled the nipple of her left breast, allowing his teeth to tease the hardened protrusion as though he intended at any moment to bite it off. Then he withdrew, an unshakable calmness reflecting itself on his face.
In the dimness, and in such proximity, it was difficult for Martha to discern much more of his face than the luminous intensity of his eyes bearing down on her.
Then he stood up, put on his jacket. “So I shall see you tomorrow at the same time?” he said, never thinking that she could possibly raise an objection. “I promise to be prompt.”
“I don’t think so, Teddy. Tomorrow’s Halloween. The cast is throwing a party, and there’ll be the parade. You could come if you want.”
“Halloween, yes, I’d forgotten,” Teddy said, a bit disgruntled that a mindless celebration should get in the way of his evening tryst. “Enjoy yourself then. We will do it Fr
iday.”
“Friday, yes, that’d be terrific.” Though she didn’t want him around she still felt obligated to ask him again if he’d like to attend the party with her.
“You know what I think about parties. My presence would only weigh on you, you wouldn’t enjoy yourself.”
“Oh, Teddy, don’t say that. You know it’s not true.”
He let himself out. “Good-night, Martha. See you on Friday.”
C H A P T E R
S i x
Halloween. Though darkness hadn’t settled in on the city, witches and ghosts were already on the march down Polk Street, making their way to parties or preparing to join the parade that would advance through downtown.
This was a night that the San Francisco police force generally dreaded. When people disguised themselves they felt protected in their anonymity, and they often acted in ways they would never think of when wearing their own clothes. The spirit of the night, with its vaguely sinister and pagan connotations, only heightened the possibility that someone might go off the deep end. And, in any case, there was always more danger whenever large numbers of people got together.
So the police were determined to make their presence well known and prior to the start of the parade the blue-and-white patrol cars, with “Police Services” imprinted on their chassis, and the less conspicuous black-and-white ones could be sighted everywhere along the parade route and on important intersecting streets.
It was Harry who suggested that tonight when they searched for the Mission Street Knifer they might consider straying farther from the drabber precincts surrounding the Greyhound Bus Station.
“Why would we want to do that?” Owens asked.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if our Knifer takes advantage of the parade, maybe dresses in a costume himself. Could be that one reason he keeps to the Mission and Market Street area is that he knows anywhere else he’d stick out. But tonight nobody, no matter how bizarre-looking he is, is going to stick out. Not with the crowd we’ll be getting.”
