Cold Blue Midnight

by Ed Gorman

  It was over; she had been released early for good behavior.

  For all that, she had to admit that the offices were beautiful. Eric had leased an additional floor and it was gorgeous. There was custom woodwork throughout, with full-height solid wood doors, gray fabric-covered walls, and patterned and bordered carpeting. In the reception area, fluorescent downlights lightly tinted the plum-stained mahogany. The blue-green and plum and gray furnishings lent a final touch of elegance.

  Eric sat on the edge of the reception desk. When he saw her, he cocked his head in the boyish way he knew that some women liked and said, 'You're still the sexiest woman I've ever known.'

  'Oh God, Eric,' Jill said, 'knock it off, will you? I'm here on business, remember?'

  He was crushed. He spent half his life being crushed. For all that he liked to pose with one foot on a dead rhino, he had a frightfully fragile ego. He looked at her now as if she'd slapped him.

  'Eric, I came here because you said you wanted me to take some photographs. Let's just stick to the subject and everything will be fine.'

  And she couldn't help herself. She smiled. Eric was a raving jerk but there was a teeny-tiny part of her that felt protective of him. He thought he was a killer but he was just a Chicago kid who'd gotten very very lucky. She knew a few real killers. Eric wasn't even close.

  She put her hand out. 'Let's try and get along, all right?'

  He laughed. 'Same old Jill. One tough cookie.'

  She waved an arm around. 'I can see why you want to be photographed in here. It's beautiful.'

  'You should see the bills from the decorator.'

  'Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House.'

  'What?'

  'An old Cary Grant-Myrna Loy movie,' Jill said. 'About a couple who build their dream house and go broke in the process.'

  'Why don't I give you a tour?'

  'Great. I'd like that.'

  As they started walking, he said, 'What was the name of that movie again?'

  'Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House.'

  'With Cary Grant?'

  'Right.'

  'I always heard he was gay.'

  She laughed. No, Eric hadn't changed a bit. Try and talk about a movie you liked and he ended up reducing the subject to farfetched gossip.

  It was like the time she'd told him that Mike Royko had written an especially good column in the Trib about babies being born drug addicts.

  'Yeah,' Eric had said, not caring at all about the matter of drug-addicted babies, 'but I bet Royko doesn't make half as much a year as I do.'

  ***

  After she left Eric Brooks' office, Cini Powell found a restroom on the same floor and went in and brushed her teeth. She wished she could throw up.

  She'd actually gone through with it.

  Actually gone to that creep's office and let him

  As she stood there with rabies foam from the toothpaste covering her mouth, her blue eyes filled with tears and a lone silver drop traced down her perfectly shaped cheek.

  Tonight she'd lost her virginity. Well, technically speaking, she'd actually lost her virginity two years ago, when she was twenty, in a beach house on a Wisconsin Lake, to a twenty-one-year-old named Chuck who kept saying, 'God, were you really a virgin till tonight?' Obviously ole Chuck was pleased with himself. Bagging a virgin these days was no easy task, not unless you made a habit of dating twelve year olds.

  That was losing her physical virginity.

  Losing her spiritual virginity, which is what she'd done tonight, was a far more serious matter.

  All so she could get a part as a talking mannequin in a commercial for a trendy local department store.

  All so she could make Michael Kenneth Laine, law student, basketball star and relentless woman-chaser, sorry that he'd ever dumped her.

  At least, that had been her plan…

  But now, for the first time since she'd seen the casting notice in the Tribune want ads, she realized that not since she'd walked in on Michael making love to that girl in his apartment had she been quite sane. Had she been quite herselfher real self.

  Until now. Until she'd looked into the mirror and realized the enormity of what she'd done on the top floor of this building. Just twenty minutes ago.

  She brushed her teeth some more.

  She wanted to rinse out her mouth with alcohol.

  She wanted to go to Confession, something she hadn't done since moving out of her good upper middle-class Catholic home four years ago. She wanted to find a closet somewhere and hide in there and never come out.

  God, how could she have done that? Not even Michael was worth debasing herself for this way. All for what? So he might catch a little glimpse of her in a sexy body stocking on TV, pretending to be a talkative mannequin?

  What could she possibly have been thinking?

  She walked over to the third stall along, opened the door, sat down on the closed lid, and proceeded to sob.

  The tour took fifteen minutes.

  He told her the price of everything. Parquet flooring was this much. Track lighting that much. Custom-fabricated niches this much… And so on.

  Good old Eric.

  When they were back in his office, he said, 'So what I want are some really sexy shots of me in various departments. You know, looking cool as usual.'

  'Cool. Got it.'

  'But businesslike.'

  'Cool but businesslike. Check, boss.'

  He glanced at her. 'You know what?'

  'Here it comes.'

  'Can you take a nice boy-girl compliment?'

  She sighed. 'What particular compliment did you have in mind?'

  'That you look sexy as hell in that aqua blouse.'

  'All right. Compliment accepted. Now let's get back to work.'

  The hurt look again but this time Jill felt no pity for him. He was letting his lust run way ahead of his reason. She sensed he was about to put the serious moves on her again, and hoped she was wrong. Because if he did try anything, she was likely to get very angry.

  'Why don't you go over and stand by that window?' she suggested quickly. 'That'd make a nice shot, with all those buildings in the background.'

  He went over and stood, the Chicago skyline spearing into the dusk sky behind him. This was Jill's favorite time, twilightmagical, when all of night's promise lay ahead.

  'How's this?'

  'Great,' she said. 'Now try the other window.'

  He took several steps across to the west window. 'Whatever happened to that cop you were seeing?'

  Mention of Mitch Ayers caused Jill to shut down completely for a moment, as it usually did. She froze. Then, 'It didn't work out.'

  'I heard you were really in love.'

  'Turn to your right.'

  'Don't want to talk about it, huh?'

  'Now turn to your left.'

  'He dump you or what?'

  'Now walk out on the balcony and jump.'

  He laughed. 'Guy must've really gotten to you, the way you're acting.'

  She walked over. He had to be angled just right for a shot like this to work. She liked to walk through her shots, rehearse them, so that the actual shoot went faster.

  She touched Eric's elbow and turned him toward her and that's when he grabbed her and pulled her to him. Before she could gather herself to protest, his mouth found hers and she felt his hot tongue passing between her lips.

  She pulled back and slapped him with a ferocity that startled even her.

  'You bitch! What the hell do you think you're doing?'

  After a long moment, Jill walked to the door and said, 'I guess I don't need to tell you that I won't be doing that shoot of yours.'

  'God, Jill, I'm sorry. I really am.'

  'No, you're not, Eric. You're not sorry at all.'

  A genuine sorrow filled her. Sometimes people baffled her completely. Eric would always remain unfathomable to her. All the high-school macho games he played. Becoming a real adult seemed to hold no appeal to him whatsoever. He wo
uld always be one of those aging boy-men you saw so often in sports and politicsand advertising.

  'Jill.'

  But she didn't stop.

  Walked out through the reception area.

  Found the hall and walked to the elevator.

  A young woman emerged from the restroom at the far end of the hall. She looked upset, and Jill could tell she had been crying.

  Eric came up. He looked miserable, but she felt no sympathy for him at all. 'Jill, please, you have to believe me. I really am sorry. Really I am.'

  She turned to him. 'Don't make this worse than it has to be, Eric. Go back to your office and let me wait here alone.'

  He started to argue but saw that it was no use.

  He shook his head, ran a hand through his hair, and then walked sullenly back to his office. He obviously hadn't noticed the young woman standing by the restroom at the opposite end of the hall. She was watching both Jill and Eric.

  Jill and the woman looked at each other down the long corridor. Then the woman opened a door marked STAIRS and disappeared.

  A few minutes later, Jill's elevator car came. She boarded it and was gone.

  CHAPTER 15

  Corday knew he should have been concentrating on the job ahead but he couldn't. He kept thinking of how Adam had been unfaithful. Again. After all those promises.

  Then he saw Jill.

  Time for work.

  Couldn't afford to worry about Adam anymore. Or the jerk Adam had spent time with in Miami.

  He waited until Jill had disappeared beyond the door leading to the ramp, and then he moved.

  Across the lobby.

  To the elevator.

  Up to pay a visit to Mr Brooks.

  ***

  Cini had just reached the lobbyhurrying because the deep shadow and the hollow echoing sound of her footsteps unnerved herwhen she went to reach in her purse for a Kleenex… and realized that she didn't have her purse with her. She always carried her toothbrush in her coat pocket so she hadn't missed her purse. But now

  Her purse.

  Upstairs.

  Eric's office.

  Of course.

  Dammit, anyway.

  She turned, saying a dirty word she'd been trying to break herself of, and walked back up the stairs.

  CHAPTER 16

  'You seem a little preoccupied.'

  'I guess I am.'

  'Want to talk about it?'

  'No big deal, I suppose. Just having a few problems with my business partner.'

  'Business partners can be a real pain.'

  'Maybe I'll have another drink,' Adam Morrow said. 'I mean, if you don't mind.'

  He'd met his new friend just an hour ago in a Village bar. Now he was having drinks in his new friend's apartment. His friend kept casting an anxious eye to the darkened bedroom beyond, but Adam was too worried right now to think about sex.

  He just had this awful feeling that finding the note had undone Rick, and that Rick might do something stupid.

  Something that could end their perfect record.

  'Why don't you let me freshen that up for you?' Adam's new friend said, taking the glass from his hand.

  Adam scarcely noticed.

  If only he hadn't had to fly to New York at the last minute to take care of a loose end on the last job.

  Rick, for all his skills, got so emotional at times that he didn't think clearly.

  Early tomorrow Adam would be on a plane headed to Chicago. Just so long as Rick didn't do anything crazy tonight…

  'Here,' said Adam's new friend. 'Maybe this'll mellow you out a little.' He smiled. A very white smile. An actor's smile. 'Then maybe we can get to know each other a little better.'

  CHAPTER 17

  'Will there be anything else, ma'am?'

  'Not for right now, Emma. Not for right now.'

  Emma thought how you didn't often hear Mrs Tappley's voice this soft and sentimental.

  But tonight she sat in the darkened den watching all the old films of her son Peter when he was growing up.

  How she loved those old films, Emma thought.

  Some nights Mrs Tappley would stay in the den until midnight, and sob with such great pain and loss that Emma herself would begin to cry.

  Losing a son that way, in the electric chair.

  No wonder the woman watched the old films so often, and cried so hard.

  CHAPTER 18

  There was always risk, and Corday loved it.

  In Los Angeles, he had once been trapped in the hold of a ship with two drug dealers he'd been hired to kill. They each had automatic weapons: Corday had only a knife. They had some fun with him, chasing him across the hold, laughing when he tripped and fellbut they had not counted on his intelligence. When he fell, he pretended to bang his head, and become unconscious.

  At first the dealers accused him of faking. 'Hey, man, get up, we ain't gonna fall for that old trick.' But after a few minutes, the mood in the hold suddenly turning tense, one of the dealers walked over to the fallen man and leaned down to see if he could hear breathing. Corday put the knife deep into the dealer's right eye, then pulled the dealer down on top of him, snatching the man's weapon. Even before the other dealer could figure out how to fire without hitting his buddy, Corday had killed them both, firing until the automatic pistol was empty and the hold an echo chamber of fired rounds.

  There was risk tonight, and Corday loved it.

  He rode up to the floor where Eric Brooks had his office and stepped off the elevator.

  Plum and gray walls; plush plum carpeting. Nice. Not so nice was the lavish painting of Eric Brooks that made him resemble Clint Eastwood. That kind of bone-clean manliness. You'd think a guy would be embarrassed to parade his fantasies publicly like this. 'Hey, outside I'm this kind of nerdy jerkbut inside, I'm Clint Eastwood.'

  Corday looked around.

  Nobody in the hall.

  Listened for cleaning people. Vacuum or toilets flushing as they were being cleaned. Heard nothing.

  Tugged on his latex gloves.

  Walked up to the massive wooden door with the name ERIC BROOKS engraved in it. Another touch of humility.

  The gray and plum motif continued inside. Corday didn't know anything about interior decorating, but these sure were fancy digs. Eric Brooks might be a weenie but he was a successful weenie. Had to give him that.

  Corday went deeper inside to where a group of furnishings were arranged in the center of a vast open area. The general reception was regaled with even more evidence of Eric Brooks' ego. Here were framed hunting photos of him. Corday smiled. God, the guy really was a weenie. Great white hunter. God.

  From the reception area, Corday turned right, taking a hallway down several yards then turning left. Here was the reception area and inner sanctum of the King himself.

  Corday stood still, listening again.

  A voice. Inside Eric's office.

  Corday moved swiftly, silently to the partially opened door.

  Eric. Laughing. 'You treat ole Eric right, he'll treat you right.' Beat. 'Remember that afternoon I gave you a grand just to go blow on clothes? Well, that could happen again some time. I mean, if you're nice to old Eric.' Beat. 'Babe, I know you're trying to give your marriage a serious shot but just a quick lunch tomorrow is all I'm asking. You know, in my office.' Half beat. 'Right. Like the old days.' Half beat. Giggle. 'I'll introduce you to Mr Bill again. You can give him a nice big kiss. You remember Mr Bill, don't you?' Half beat. 'Good, because he sure remembers you.'

  Eric made it so easy.

  He was so caught up in laying out his plans for lunch tomorrow that he didn't hear Corday come up behind him.

  Eric: 'Anything special you want for lunch? Besides Mr Bill, I mean?' Giggle. 'You want me to tell you what I want for lunch?' Giggle. 'He's pulling into the driveway? You better go, babe.' Beat. 'Around noon would be great. Bye, babe.'

  Eric hung up without turning around.

  Then he got up from his desk and walked to his win
dow and looked out over the Chicago skyline.

  Still unaware of Corday behind him.

  Corday smiled.

  Great white hunter.

  Guy is standing just a few feet behind him with a deadly weapon and the sonofabitch doesn't even hear him.

  Corday walked around the desk and perched himself on the edge of it. 'Evening, Eric,' he said.

  Brooks turned, startled, stunned. 'Who the hell are you?'

  'Death,' Corday said. 'At least for you, I am.'

  'Is that supposed to be funny?'

  'No. It's supposed to be the truth.'

  'How the hell did you get in here?'

  'You think I could get me one of those photos of you in your great white hunter outfitfor my own personal collection, I mean?' Corday smiled. He had a wondrously icy smile and knew it. 'How many native boys did it take to bring down that rhino?'

  Eric hesitated a moment, looking left, looking right, then plunging for the phone.

  Corday clamped an iron hand on Eric's wrist.

  Eric glared at him a moment then lifted his hand from the receiver. When Corday let go, Eric started rubbing his wrist. Corday was one strong guy.

  'Fifty bucks says your sphincter goes.'

  'What the hell are you talking about?' Eric said. But he knew what Corday was talking about. Knew damned well.

  'The medical examiner always told me that when the sphincter goes, it's just an autonomic response. Doesn't mean you're a coward or anything. Just as many brave guys have their sphincters go as cowardly guys. At least, that's what the medical guys tell me. But you know what? I don't believe them. I think a really brave guy could control it. Even when he's in so much pain he can't even feel anything anymore.' Corday paused. 'Fifty bucks says your sphincter goes.'

  Eric's right hand had started to twitch. 'There isn't a lot of cash up here. I could maybe scrape up five, six hundred or so.'

  'Didn't come for cash, Eric.'

  He screamed then, a high piercing animal scream, a recognition of the final darkness closing in. 'Then what the hell are you doing here?'

  Corday took the scissors from his pocket. 'I already told you that, Eric.'