Cold Blue Midnight

by Ed Gorman

  As he'd pulled away, they'd thrown rocks at his car.

  Now, getting out of the car, he observed them. They were a hundred yards away, near the entrance, watching him.

  This wasn't a good time to harass him.

  He was still very angry with Adam. Adam always played so many mind games. He knew Rick was a hypochondriac, for instance, so he was always telling Rick how pale and sick he looked. And when they watched TV talk shows, Adam always said, 'That sounds like you, Rick,' whenever somebody had some real head problemslike the guy that killed his mother and then skinned her and wore her around the house all day. And Rick, who was very insecure, always bought in. He was just too suggestiblebelieving virtually everything Adam told him.

  Adam.

  The bastard would never be faithful: never. Wouldn't even make the attempt.

  Rick took his keys from his pocket, unlocked the shed, walked in and looked around. He heard the distant barking of angry dogs.

  Rick was an orderly guy. Boxes were stacked neatly on either side of the small shed. He needed the one containing his winter boots and parka and windshield scraperall the accoutrements to get through a Midwestern winter.

  He took down the box. Hidden behind it was a small suitcase; a quarter of a million dollars was in it. He picked up the box. Then he went outside and locked the shed and turned around and looked at the two teenagers standing there.

  One white, one black.

  'You gave us the finger the other day,' the black one said.

  'Oh, yeah?'

  Rick just went on about his business, saying nothing more.

  He opened the car door and slid the box in on the backseat.

  And that's when the white one made his move.

  Put his hand on Rick's shoulder. Tried to spin him around.

  Rick brought his knee up and hit the boy square in the groin.

  He pushed the boy over backwards.

  All the kid could do was hold his crotch and roll around on the ground.

  'Hey, man, you can't do that,' the black one protested.

  Rick pushed his angry face up against the kid's face. 'Oh, yeah? Who's gonna stop me?'

  The black kid kind of shrunk in on himself.

  Rick got in the car and drove away.

  The white one was still rolling around on the ground, clutching himself.

  CHAPTER 4

  Before the death of her first son, Evelyn Daye Tappley had generally been liked by her servants. She'd never been an especially warm woman but she was fair and tolerant, and always remembered birthdays and always tried to be accommodating when a maid or cook had family matters to attend to, and she was certainly liberal in the salaries she paid.

  But this was many years ago, and in a mansion on the other side of Chicago.

  Her husband Clark had died tragically in a car accident sixteen months following the death of young David. The police and family friends alike found the accident suspicious. Clark had been a virtual teetotaler, but on this night his alcohol content measured far in excess of the legal limit. 3He'd been alone, driving a familiar stretch of road, when his car left the highway and slammed into a tree at an approximate 75 mph. The coroner ruled the death accidental.

  Three days after his death, in the Madison Street building from which he oversaw the family railroad dynasty (thank God his grandfather had decided to haul freight instead of humans), Evelyn found a letter in the middle drawer of the large oak desk she had given him the day he assumed the presidency of the corporation. Nothing in the note surprised her. In the past year, Clark had been subject to insomnia, depression, frequent impotence, frightening rages and curious lapses of memory. And crying jags. She had never seen a man cry so long or so hard. She comforted him when she could but he was beyond comfort. Their minister said it simply: 'He doesn't seem to be able to get over David's death.' And it was that simple. And that profound.

  Margaret Connally was let go, of course. While Clark didn't blame her for David's death, he still couldn't bear to look at her because all he saw was David in his playpen and the timber rattler striking. The two other children had been Evelyn's idea. She was pregnant with Doris when Clark took his life. As for the note itself, it read:

  ***

  Dear Evelyn,

  I couldn't have asked for a dearer wife or better mother of my children. Please understand that I can no longer bear up under my pain.

  I'm hoping that all those Sunday school stories of my youth are true, that I will soon be reunited with my little boy David once again. Please destroy this note and don't share its contents with anyone. I don't want the lives of Peter and our new baby ruined before they get started. With all my love, darling,

  Clark

  ***

  The mansion held too many memories for Evelyn and so, in the spring following Clark's death, she took her son and baby Doris to live on the former Piermont estate, a vast place of native stone situated high in the hills. As if nature with its rocky cliffs and impenetrable pines had not already made the place sufficiently inaccessible, Evelyn surrounded it with a high spiky wall and hired guards to patrol the perimeter twenty-four hours a day. Inside the mansion were all the latest electronic inventions to detect smoke and burglars. She owned one of the first security video camera set-ups in the world.

  Evelyn became a recluse. No more Junior League, no more charity functions, no more trips abroad. She would always blame herself for what had happened to David. If she had devoted all her time to him, instead of trifling with things such as gardening, her son would still be alive today. As would her beloved Clark. To make up for her great sinto wash, as it were, David's blood from her handsshe decided to devote every single waking moment to her children. They would never be out of her sight for more time than was absolutely necessary. They would never have secrets, for secrets meant that they could get into trouble without her knowing it, and they would live lives inextricably bound up with her own so that they could become a family such as the world had never seen before. Never again would she trouble herself with her own selfish pleasures. She would concentrate on her children completely.

  And so she did.

  And by the time Peter was four, the snickers and smirks and clucks of concern could be heard among those few friends who still had any contact with her at all.

  She was too much of a good mother, Evelyn was. In wanting to protect her children'Now, you're sure you don't feel as if you're coming down with anything?' she'd sternly ask anyone who called to say they might drop byshe became their jailer. Peter was rarely allowed to play outdoors, and then only when he was accompanied by his mother. Doris fell from her bicycle when she was five years old and was not allowed to ride another one until she was twelve. Evelyn even controlled their pleasures. Peter, for instance, took painting lessons and piano lessons and dancing lessonsexactly what a refined and sophisticated mother would wish for her son, but not necessarily what a boy would pick if he had any choice in the matter. Doris was turned into a parody of old-fashioned 'female' virtur. She was taught to cook, sew, serve tea, sit quietly as Evelyn and Peter discussed things (Peter was David's surrogate, and as such he would always be more important than Doris), and to look pretty and proper even when she was running a fever or hacking her way through a terrible cough and cold.

  And so they had their little world.

  The children were taken to and from school in an imposing black limousine driven by a liveried driver who packed a snub-nosed.38 in a shoulder-holster. School friends visited only occasionally, and rarely did Evelyn approve of them. She encouraged her two children to be not merely brother and sister but best friends. Even when they were in high school, Peter and Doris hung out together. You saw them at the movie theater, the malls, the high-school games. There were a lot of jokes about them. They were both strikingly good-lookingindeed, they looked a great deal alike, with that kind of blue-eyed blondness that verges on the almost too-perfectand they were quiet and insular to the point that many considered them arrogant.


  When college came, Evelyn went through the charade of honoring Peter's wish to go to Harvard, but she had her doctor concoct an illness for her that would make Peter want to stay closer to home. He ended up going to Northwestern, as would Doris in a few years, and carried on living at home.

  Three years after finishing college, Peter married Jill and his life wasat least as Evelyn saw itforever ruined. Much against her will, Evelyn accepted Jill and invited her to become one of the family here on the estate. But Jill was coarse and of the world. After a year of this, she wanted to take up her old occupation of professional photography again. Work in the city. Oh, she'd come back home every night but invariably she'd bring with her the sins of the citythe violence, the disease, the vulgarity. The spirit of the mansion would be violated.

  At this time, Peter began killing women. But Evelyn knew who was really to blame. Jill had betrayed Peter's faith. He'd always assumed that she would be happy living every day in the mansion, not needing to see othersespecially not 'city' othersand when she betrayed him, Peter went insane and started stalking women…

  ***

  At the same time that Rick Corday was going to check the contents of his shed, Evelyn Daye Tappley was just coming out of the front door of her mansion.

  Her two servants, the pair who had been with Evelyn even while her husband had been alive, watched the small but robust woman go down the front steps and walk over to the shiny black 1951 Packard sedan that had belonged to Clark. His favorite car. And she kept it perfect.

  She climbed in and started the engine. It ran flawlessly. She had it serviced every 1,000 miles.

  The servants watched as she drove down to the gate where a gray-uniformed guard stepped forth. He gave her a little salute and then opened the gate.

  Moments later, she was gone, headed west into the tall timber where the mausoleum lay, the mausoleum in which both Clark and David now rested, moved here when she came to this estate. Of course, now there was a third person interred therePeter. Following his execution, she had brought the casket back here.

  No matter what the weather, Evelyn drove into the timber once a day to pay her respects.

  The servants looked at each other now and shook their heads. It was very sad, what Evelyn had done to her children in the name of protecting them.

  CHAPTER 5

  Shortly after leaving his shed on the north side, Rick Corday pulled his blue Volvo into the two-stall garage of a handsome suburban home with wood and stone accents, the closest neighbor being half a block away. In the windy night, the place was dark and just a bit ominous. But maybe that was because Rick lived here and knew about the basement… And what went on in the basement.

  He went in through the kitchen door, glad to be home. He enjoyed this place, its sunken great room with fireplace and built-in bookcases and adjoining formal dining room with built-in china cabinets.

  He went to the bathroom, relieved himself, washed up, and then took off his suit and did one hundred one-handed pushups. Then he changed arms and did one hundred more.

  In his underwear, he sat on the edge of the double bed and dialed the phone, glancing at the brocaded gold wallpaper and Louis XIV furnishings that lent the room a formal if rather stiff elegance.

  The air-conditioning made everything chilly. Too chilly, probably, for some people. But coldness had a productive effect on Corday and so he appreciated it.

  On the night-stand between the beds, he saw the note, the note that told him that his best friend, his good and true lover, had been cruising again.

  He dialed a long-distance number.

  'Hello,' said Adam Morrow.

  'I'm ready to roll,' Corday said.

  'Goddammit, Rick. I asked you to wait until I was there.'

  'Everything's ready. We may not get this opportunity again.'

  Adam decided to stay as cool as possible. 'So it's going well, then?'

  'Professionally,' Corday replied, getting that hurt tone in his voice, 'everything is going fine.'

  'What's that supposed to mean?'

  'It means that the job is doing fine,' Corday said.

  'The job is doing fine,' Adam echoed, 'but we aren't, is that it?'

  Corday didn't want to say it, loathed his bitchy side, but couldn't stop himself. 'You know when you asked me to take some of your clothes to the cleaners? A note fell out of your pocket.'

  Silence. Then, 'Are we reading each other's private mail now?'

  'It's not private mail. It fell out of your pocket!'

  'Same thing.'

  'Seems you and some guy named Wyn became very good friends when you were in Miami a few weeks ago.'

  Silence. 'I'm a lot better than I used to be.'

  'True. Now you're only unfaithful every month. It used to be you were unfaithful every week.'

  'You need to concentrate on the woman, Rick. Forget about us for the time being. We'll work it out.'

  'Right,' Corday said. 'We'll work it out.' Then, 'You think you'll ever change?'

  'I want to change. For your sake.'

  'You should want to change for your own sake.'

  Laugh. 'You've been watching Oprah again, haven't you?'

  'I'm serious.'

  'So am I, Rick. You listen to all that touchy-feely crap on TV and you think that's how everybody should be. A lot of very good relationships include one or both of the partners getting a little strange tail on the side. It doesn't mean that the relationship has to end.'

  'So you're going to keep right on doing it?'

  Sigh. 'I'm going to try not to, Rick. On that I give you my word. I'm going to try not to. That's the best I can tell you. That I'll try.'

  Rick hated himself when he sulked. Professional, that's what he needed to be now. Professional. 'I'll see you in the morning then?'

  'I'll be landing around ten o'clock.' Silence. 'Rick?'

  'What?'

  'I'm sorry you feel betrayed. It didn't mean anything to me. The guy's a dork.'

  'Right.'

  'He is. God, he peddles TV time. Some closet fairy who likes to strut around and tell you how he knows half the Miami Dolphins personally.'

  'Do you want me to save the note?'

  'Now what the hell do you think? I just told you what a dork he was, didn't I? Burn the goddammed thing.'

  'With pleasure,' Corday said.

  A few moments after hanging up, Corday had another one of his blackouts, a phenomenon that sometimes followed arguments with Adam.

  He had to grab the back of a chair to steady himself. All was cold yet sweaty darkness as he clung to the chair to keep from falling over.

  And from somewhere within himself came a voice crying out to him. He could not understand the words to this voice, but he knew that it was saying something vital and urgent.

  After a time, Rick Corday went into the bathroom and threw up.

  CHAPTER 6

  The fading Hollywood star explained, in the course of the interview, that she had once been abducted by these strange-looking creatures that often landed in a spaceship in a nearby field, and that they had often given her enemas while she was aboard their ship. The National Peeper was the only thing Jill could find to read here at Marcy Browne's.

  Then the office door burst open and in came one of the grungiest and most violent-looking women Jill had ever seen. She belonged on a direct-to-video poster for a B-movie called Barbaria.

  The woman wore a sleeveless denim jacket, on the back of which was the insignia of what was presumably a motorcycle gang, The Marauders. On her right biceps, a tattoo repeated the insignia. Around each wrist was a miniature spiky dog collar that matched the much larger one around her neck. Her too-tight faded jeans were streaked and filthy. Her tight blonde curls resembled a hybrid of Shirley Temple and Madonna in one of the latter's many incarnations. She smacked gum with chilling ferocity. She came snarling and bow-legged into the outer office, fixed Jill with an icy blue gaze and said, 'Is that bitch in her office?'

  Jill, abashed,
couldn't find her voice. She stammered, cleared her throat and said, 'No, she isn't due back for a few minutes yet.'

  'That slut. I never should've hired her to find out if my old man was porkin' Cindy. You know what that bitch did?'

  'Cindy, you mean?' Jill enquired, feeling as if she were about eight years old and being intimidated by a giant straight out of the Brothers Grimm.

  'Cindy? Hell, no, I mean Marcy Browne.'

  'What did she do?'

  'I think she was gettin' it on with my old man herself.'

  'Oh, really?'

  The woman glared around the neat but very, very tiny outer officetwo battered secondhand filing cabinets, a desk that had one end propped up with books, and the most inexpensive black dial phone available these daysand she said, 'Hog Face fools a lotta chicks, you know.'

  'Hog Face?'

  'My old man.'

  'Ah.'

  Now they'd gone from the Brothers Grimm to Alice in Wonderland. The conversation was starting to get strange indeed. Jill squirmed, a nervous smile on her lips. She did not want to displease this woman in any way.

  'I mean,' said the woman, 'you look at him and what do you see? He looks like three hundred and fifty pounds of blubber and he's got real bad teeth and when he's drunk, he kinda likes to beat up on chicks. I mean, he don't sound like the kinda guy most women'd be interested in at all, does he?'

  This was like a trick question, Jill thought. She had to answer carefully, otherwise this Biker Mama might suddenly become even more psychotic than she was at the moment.

  'Oh, I don't know,' she said. 'Some women have different tastes from others.'

  The woman shook her head bitterly. 'Yeah, I wouldn't think that Hog Face'd get the chicks, either. But he doesand that's why I hired this little slut. To find out if he's been slippin' the salami to Cindy.'

  For a long moment, the woman looked hurt and confused, then she lunged toward the cheap pressed-wood door which led to the inner office.