Cold Blue Midnight

by Ed Gorman

'I really don't think you should' Jill started to say.

  But the woman stormed into the inner office, shouting: 'You slut!' and hurled the door closed behind her.

  No sound came from the inner office.

  Jill sat perfectly still. She felt very self-conscious, as if the Biker Mama might be peering out of a hidden eye-hole, watching her.

  Maybe she should try some other private investigator.

  Maybe this Marcy Browne wasn't as competent as she'd seemed to Kate.

  Jill stood up.

  Sneak out of the office.

  Sneak down the stairs.

  Sneak away in her car.

  Give Marcy Browne some kind of headache excuse if she called and asked why Jill hadn't waited.

  That's what she'd do. Just sneak out right nowand hope she never saw the Biker Mama again, not even in her worst nightmares.

  At that moment, the door to the inner office opened up. An attractive, honey-haired young woman in a white blouse, blue pointelle cardigan and fashionably long floral skirt stood in the door, smiling. 'You must be Jill.'

  'Yes. Are you?'

  'How did I do?'

  Back to 'Alice in Wonderland' again.

  Do? What was this young woman talking about?

  'I'm afraid I'

  'The biker chick. Was I convincing?'

  'You mean you were'

  Marcy Browne nodded and smiled. 'Last year at the National Private-Investigators' Convention in Las Vegas, one of the speakers suggested that we try taking acting lessons so that we could really go undercover when we needed to. So I've been going to this night-school acting workshop at Northwestern and trying out different parts.' The smile again, one of those quick and totally winning smiles. 'So how'd I do?'

  'You did great.'

  'I knew you'd be a tough audience and all. I remember Kate telling me that you directed a lot of TV commercials.'

  'God, you really had me going. I thought she was the most disgusting woman I'd ever seen.'

  'You like that ''Hog Face" name I gave the guy?'

  Jill laughed. 'Not to mention "slipping the salami". There's an elegant turn of phrase.'

  'Well, now I can be confident that if I ever need to infiltrate a biker gang, I'm ready.' She effected the loud crude voice of Biker Mama. 'C'mon, Hog Face, slip me the salami real quick. I'm just a horny Mama tonight.'

  'And they say romance is dead.'

  'I've had a few dates who weren't all that far from being Hog Face,' Marcy said as she led them to the inner office.

  'So've I, unfortunately.'

  The inner office was much like the outer office except that two legs of this desk were held up by books, and the window was cracked and covered with masking tape along the fissure line.

  Marcy said, 'This place is kind of a pit but it's all I can afford right now.' When Jill didn't respond Marcy said, 'Now you're supposed to tell me that this place isn't so bad at all.'

  'Oh. Right. This place isn't so bad at all.'

  Marcy smiled her smile again. 'If we were in acting class, I'd give you a D for that last line. It wasn't convincing.'

  CHAPTER 7

  Rick Corday did more than burn it.

  After the note was charred black gossamer wings, he dumped them in the toilet and flushed them down.

  Bastard. Unfaithful bastard.

  He went back to the bed where he'd been propped up against the headboard reading the latest Tom Clancy novel. This time, instead of the novel, he picked up a manilla envelope from which he shook out two black-and-white photographs.

  Everything about the man bespoke the kind of sleek ego that seemed endemic to the world of advertising. There was something silly and hollow and theatrical about these peoplemen and women alikebut they didn't seem to be aware of it.

  This one, for instance.

  Standing on the dock next to his yacht, wearing the whites and blue blazer of a man who had conquered several nations and would conquer several more before his time was finished on this world.

  Eric Brooks.

  Hardly to the manor born, despite an official bio that got more creative each year.

  Father a worker at the Caterpillar heavy equipment plant in Peoria. (Is this the same father you would later list as an astronomer, Mr Brooks?)

  2.8 college average at the state university.

  Three failed marriages, two paternity suits, and the loss of a major client because Brooks kept plugging the client's wife on the side.

  Now sole owner of the only Chicago agency to ever win six Clios in one year.

  Now sole owner of a Maserati, a Cessna that sat eight and a hunting cabin in Idaho that Ernest Hemingway had owned briefly back in the forties.

  Corday looked at the second photo now.

  Mr Brooks all gussied up in his handball T-shirt and his handball shorts and his handball scowl. Sweaty, gritty black-and-white, this photo, and how the macho Mr Brooks must love gazing upon it.

  That's one tough hombre, that Mr Brooks.

  Corday smiled.

  He was going to ruin Mr Brooks' life and there wasn't a thing Mr Brooks could do about it.

  Not a single solitary thing.

  But first Rick had to stop by Jill Coffey's place…

  CHAPTER 8

  'He wouldn't take a shower?'

  'Not unless I refused to have sex with him.'

  'You're kidding.'

  'Uh-huh,' Jill said.

  'Why wouldn't he take a shower?'

  'He said taking a shower was just another example of how our totalitarian government had brainwashed us into being robots.'

  'Wow.'

  'So, anyway, that's how I met Peter. I just got so mad at Donald one night I couldn't take it anymore, and I put on my best dress and stockings and a garter belt, and I went out looking for a good time.'

  So many years ago now, it seemed, Jill's college days.

  She'd entered the state university just as the Flower Power movement was ending. Unfortunately, the boy she fell in love with, one Donald Franklin Spangler, had taken the considerable college fund his millionaire father had set aside for him, and recreated himself as a snarling student radical.

  The first year wasn't so bad because Donald, for all his crazed rants against capitalism, was great in the hay and allowed himself to be dragged to various movies and rock concerts, even though he saw them as more evidence of how 'decadent' our system had become. Jill always wanted to point out the irony of a Marxist who drove around in a brand-new van his daddy had bought him and who owned many thousands of dollars' worth of stereo equipment, but why spoil his self-delusions? Hadn't Eugene O'Neill said that none of us could survive without them?

  Her worst embarrassment that first year had been at an SDA rally in a small auditorium, where Donald had insisted on reading a poem to the assembly. He stood before them and said, 'The name of my poem is Screw America.' Jill started sinking down into her seat, hoping that nobody would notice her. This was going to be humiliating. Everybody would see Donald for the pretentious twit he sometimes was.

  ***

  Screw America

  Screw America, I say

  Red White and Blue

  Screw America, I say

  Richard Nixon screw you.

  Screw America, I say

  So loud and mean

  Screw America, I say

  Robbing our planet of everything that's green.

  Screw America, I say

  Killing the Red

  Man so proud and tall

  Screw America, I say

  I don't respect you at all.

  ***

  At which pointGod, she couldn't help itJill started giggling. The poem was so sophomoric and Donald was such a melodramatic ass that Jill just assumed everybody else, even all these self-proclaimed Maoists, would find it equally funny. But then she started looking around. The poem wasn't over. In all, there must have been forty stanzas, each worse than the previous one. But everybody here seemed mesmerized. Absolutely downrigh
t mesmerized. Everybody in the little auditorium was on his feet except her. And they weren't giggling, they were cryingsilver tears streaming down their cheeks as they repeated in a kind of Gregorian Chant, 'Screw America, I say!' every time Donald said it first. She had never forgotten that night, but she sure tried to.

  There was even a second act to this farce. She stayed with him a second year. True, the rants were getting longer and crazier but she could abide it because he gave her plenty of time to studyhe was always off somewhere marching in demonstrationsand because she didn't love him. He was an amusing companion and no more, perfect for somebody who didn't want any serious involvementuntil he quit taking showers.

  'So that night I went to this singles bar,' Jill went on, 'and there was this great-looking older guy there and this absolutely ridiculous thing happened to me.'

  'What was that?'

  'I fell in love with him.'

  'God.'

  'I couldn't believe it. He really was gorgeous.'

  'That happened to me once, too. A gorgeous guy like that. God.'

  Every few minutes, Jill would study Marcy. It was still difficult to believe that this slender, attractive young woman could possibly have been Biker Mama.

  'So then what happened?' Marcy said.

  'As soon as I got out of college that summer, he took me to the family manse where I met his mother and sister. The sister was greator as great as she could be, anyway, in those circumstancesbut the mother… Well, to be fair, she didn't like me any better than I liked her. She thought I was an evil woman, out to take all her little boy's money and pride.'

  'But you got married, anyway?'

  Jill nodded. 'Got married and was promptly locked behind bars for the rest of my life.'

  'The family manse.'

  'Mmm-hmm. Mother had come around to letting me be one of her honorary children. You know, stay behind the prison walls and do everything Mother told you to. But I couldn't do it. Not for any long stretch of time, anyway. I always had excuses to get out of theremy parents to visit, things like that. Then I sent in one of my photographs to the Trib photography contest and won first prize. People started offering me work and I took it. Over three years, I must have done a hundred assignments and really built a name for myself.'

  'I'll bet Mother wasn't happy about that.'

  'Mother,' Jill said, 'was furious.'

  'How about Peter?'

  'He was furious, too. He comes from a family where the women are blindly obedient. Whatever the husband says is the law. I told him we should move to Chicago and get our own placehis mother would send him on various business trips to make him feel that he actually had a career, but it was mostly makework thingsand for a while there, I think he was actually considering it. But then the letters started coming.'

  'Letters?'

  'His mother paid somebody to write them and send them to me, I'm convinced of it.'

  'What kind of letters were they?'

  'Love lettersfrom this man who claimed to have slept with me several times while I was in Chicago working on photo shoots. Mother showed them to Peter, of course. Any idea he had of breaking away from her… Well, he wasn't going to move away with a woman who was a "harlot" as Mother liked to call "easy women." I think that's when he started killing those girls. He may very well have been using them as surrogates. He probably wanted to kill me.'

  'Or Mother.'

  Jill nodded. 'Or both of us. By that time in his life, he didn't like women very much.'

  From there she detailed the sad years that followed soon after, Peter's arrest, the trial, the appeals, the execution. She finished by talking about the assault of Hard Facts on her privacy and life.

  'God, that sounds terrible,' Marcy sympathized.

  'That's why I want to find out who's been watching my place.'

  'How'd you come to notice him?'

  Jill shrugged. 'Ever since 'Hard Facts' I look around at my surroundings: I try to notice everything. I started seeing this blue Volvo and got suspicious, so today I snuck down and took some photos of him.'

  She handed Marcy an envelope and smiled. 'You won't find anything in there with great artistic merit.'

  Marcy looked through the photos. 'No artistic merit, maybe, but these will be very helpful.'

  'When I called you earlier, you said you hoped you could get to it right away.'

  'Turns out I can. I have an industrial client who wanted me to handle something for him but now he needs to put it on hold for a little while.'

  'So you can start today?'

  'Soon as you leave here, I'll call my old buddy in the Driver's License Bureau.'

  'Great.' Jill stood up, remembering her appointment with Eric Brooks. 'I'd better get going.'

  She put forth her hand. Marcy shook it.

  'I sure hope that Biker Mama gets Hog Face back,' Jill smiled.

  'Gee, I'm so pleased you liked what I did. A pro like you, I mean.'

  'If your investigation business gets a little thin, there's always dinner theater.'

  Marcy walked Jill to the door. 'You'll probably be hearing from me later tonight.'

  Jill nodded and left.

  CHAPTER 9

  Rick Corday had no problem getting into Jill Coffey's place. He owned a number of burglary tools.

  Wearing a pair of latex gloves, he spent half an hour searching through her closets and drawers. He didn't need to do this but he enjoyed it. There was something sweetly pornographic about spying on somebody else's life.

  A week ago, the range of his spying had increased when he'd let himself in here and installed a bug in her telephone, one he could pick up on an FM receiver from his motel room or, as earlier today, from his car. He'd heard her make her appointment with Eric Brooks.

  A lot of dirty fun, spying on people.

  The hell of it was, Jill Coffey seemed to be a pretty tame person. One time in New York, searching through the apartment of a highly-regarded female broadcasting executive, he'd come upon some of the most vicious S&M appliances his knowing and cynical eyes had ever seen. The belt with the tiny metal thorns had been the really impressive one. God, you could shred a guy's back with two lashes.

  The bathroom offered even fewer revelations. Not a single vibrator in sight.

  He went back into the bedroom to do what he'd come here for.

  Find a skirt and blouse.

  He selected a sandwash silk in electric blue for the blouse and a royal blue wraparound for the skirt.

  Pantyhosethat would be a nice touch.

  He searched through three drawers before he found a pair that had already been worn.

  He wrapped these inside the skirt.

  By this time, he had already made up his mind.

  A better opportunity might never come.

  It had to be tonight.

  Before he left, he picked up the long scissors with the rubberized orange handles. He'd set them next to the phone the other day, knowing she'd be bound to pick them up. He dropped the scissors carefully inside a Ziploc bag.

  Then he let himself out, reconstructing the security system that no doubt gave Jill Coffey such a great sense of well-being.

  CHAPTER 10

  Church wasn't something Mitch Ayers had planned on. He wasn't the churchgoing type. From his Catholic boyhood he had a sentimental belief in a personal and caring God, but when he looked around at the predators he saw every dayMitch being a homicide detectivehe wasn't sure that Anybody was up there at all. At least, Nobody who cared much about all the sad, maimed, despairing creatures who crawled around in the mud below. But he needed a place to think and he'd been driving by and so, on impulse

  Took him three tries to remember the Hail Mary and he finally had to resort to a prayerbook to remember the second part that began, 'Holy Mary, Mother of God.' That part. The Our Father he had no trouble with at all, nor the Glory Be.

  After he was finished praying, he sat back in the pew that was very near the front of the church. He liked the way the blue an
d red and green and yellow votive candles flickered in the dusky shadows. He liked the faint smell of incense on the quiet air. He liked the dignified beauty of the altar, sad Jesus on His cross looking out on His flock. He saw himself at three different times of his life in this very same churchas a twelve year old in white-and-black surplice and cassock serving High Mass with Monsignor O'Day, who always massacred the Latin language; as a twenty-four-year-old police rookie standing next to Sara Byrnes, the most beautiful girl in their graduating class at St Malachy's; and as a twenty-six-year-old father watching Monsignor O'Day sprinkle Holy Water on the forehead of tiny pink Frances, their first daughter. Following that there was the funeral of his father, and then the death of his beloved Aunt Lavina, and then the funeral of a one-time good friend and classmate Phil O'Herlihy, and

  And then Mitch and Sara Ayers moved away from the old neighborhood, out to a suburb where everything was sleek and sophisticated, and where over a period of a few years they seemed to change, somehow. At least Sara had. She took a job in administration at a hospital; she started flying to conferences and meetings all over the country, leaving the two girls more and more to Mitch; and three years ago, this same kind of lingering smoky autumn, she took a lover. He was a doctor and a handsome bastard and a rich bastard to boot and he seemed to represent something to Sarasome kind of approval that Mitch could never give her. To Sara, the doctor had been everything; to the doctor, Sara had been just one more affair. One night Jessica ran downstairs and told Mitch that Mommy was making funny noises up in her bedroom. Thank God for seven-year-old Jessica. Sara had intentionally overdosed on Xanax. Mitch called an ambulance. They got her to the hospital in time to pump her stomach. A week on the psych ward. A marriage counselor for them. Then a six-month trial separation. Sara's idea.

  It had been during this time that Mitch met Jill Coffey. He'd liked her right away. There was a curious mixture of amusement and sorrow in those pretty dark eyes that fascinated him right away. And she was something of a smart-ass, so she made him laugh a lot of the time. He hadn't been honest with her. Told her that his impending divorce was a sure thing. Told her that he didn't much care about his wife anymore. They went out for several weeks and it was like being in high school again, the intensity of the romance and all the laughter. Jill surprised him one night by telling him that she was in love with him. And he'd been touched. For all her good looks and poise he saw that she was a very vulnerable person for whom loving and trusting someone was a very difficult prospect. But then Sara gradually decided that maybe it was time she gave her marriage another serious shot and if Mitch was willing…