Cold Blue Midnight

by Ed Gorman

  Doris didn't want to argue. All she said was, 'I'm going to have Martha make you a turkey sandwich and a salad.'

  But Evelyn was off in one of her reveries. Staring at the screenthe image was now that of Peter playing basketball on the outdoor court his mother had had built for his twelfth birthdayshe said, 'But she's finally going to get her come-uppance. Don't think she isn't.'

  'And how is that going to happen, Mother?'

  Evelyn looked up at her. The crone look was on her again. Beady, shining, crazed eyes. Thin, bitter mouth. 'I've arranged for her to be dealt with in a very fitting way. And that's all I'm going to say about it.'

  Doris felt her stomach knot. Her mother was telling the truth, not merely bluffing. Evelyn Daye Tappley never bluffed. Powerful people like her didn't have to.

  Doris stared at her mother for a long moment, not knowing what to say, and then finally: 'I'll have Martha get your sandwich.'

  But her mother was already watching the screen again, lost in the perfect memories of her perfect little boy.

  CHAPTER 26

  After leaving the Loop via the Dan Ryan Expressway, Cini took an exit different from her own and pulled up to a 7-Eleven store whose lights she had seen from a distance.

  She knew there was only one way she could cope with what she'd seen just a while ago in Eric Brooks' office. Some people would have picked up a glass of whisky; others would have engaged in sex. For Cini there was only one salvation. Junk food.

  She surprised the Pakistani clerk by picking up one of the red plastic hand carriers. Virtually nobody ever used the hand carriers in here.

  She wanted something from every basic food grouppastry, candy, potato chips, ice cream.

  She didn't even try to stop herself, didn't even try to say, You're going on a binge again, Cini, and you're going to destroy that beautiful thin body of yours.

  God, Cini, stop before it's too late.

  But she was in the throes of a desire that she could no longer control. Did not want to control.

  She started at the pastry section, picking up a box of Hostess powder donuts then a box of Little Debbie filled oatmeal cookies then grabbing a half dozen Colonial bear claws in cellophane wrappers that were gorgeously sticky inside from all the gooey sugar frosting.

  The candy section came next. Cini specialized in chocolate. She selected a quarter pound Hershey bar with almonds, a King Size Baby Ruth, a bag of mini-Mounds, a bag of mini-Almond Joys, a Milky-Way King Size, two boxes of Boston baked beans, three boxes of Good n' Plentys and two long dealies of Switzer's red licorice.

  At the ice-cream counter, she filled up her entire red plastic hand carrier with six quarts of Haagen Dazs of different flavors and then a vast box of Drumsticks. She really liked the nuts they sprinkled on the top.

  There was a black customer at the counter when Cini got up there. She was nervous; she couldn't help it. Black people who weren't dressed in suits and ties (male) or nice dresses (female) scared her. She'd seen a black hatemonger on TV a year ago and he'd convinced her that in every black heart was a yearning to kill white people. Cini knew that this wasn't true, that most black people were decent citizens and not really all that much different from herself, but the trouble was, how did you tell the occasional hater from your good ordinary person? They didn't wear little tags that said HATER. Only too late did you find that they had guns or knives and were in the process of killing anything that moved and was white. You saw it on TV all the time.

  The black customer, who was probably fifty, shook his head when he took his lottery ticket from the Pakistani clerk and checked the number. He smiled at Cini. He had a great smilewry, intelligent and friendly. 'And here I was gettin' ready to retire, too,' he said, nodded goodnight to Cini and the clerk and left.

  Cini put the hand carrier on the counter.

  The Pakistani laughed. 'Such a slim girl. Such a big appetite.'

  'I'm having a little party tonight,' she lied. 'Some friends are coming over.'

  Yeah, she thought. They don't like beer or bourbon or marijuana. They're Switzer's licorice junkies. Life in the fast lane.

  She was already back to her Whale days. Always lying to clerks about why she was buying so much junk food. Ashamed of herself but unable to stop.

  The clerk started ringing everything up.

  He needed one of the big bags to get everything in.

  The total came to $44.39.

  My God!

  That was another thing about being a Whale. You were always broke from buying junk food. No joke. Linda, another one of the Whales, once spent more than $200 in a single weekend on pastries alone. She estimated she had consumed more than 50,000 calories that weekend. She forced herself to vomit, as usual, but she began vomiting so violently that she actually puked up blood. She called Cini in absolute terror. Cini met her at the Emergency Room. She had done no permanent damage but the young female intern did convince Linda to try the Eating Disorder Clinic. Linda lasted seven weeks there and then started bingeing again. Last time Cini saw her, Linda weighed more than 220 pounds and was doping herself up constantly on tranquilizers. Being obese was a great big joke to people who didn't suffer from it. But for those who did…

  Cini wrote out her check and handed it over. The clerk rubber-stamped the back of it and then began filling in the information he took from Cini's driver's license.

  Cini hefted her bags and started out to the car.

  Behind her, the clerk said, 'You be careful with all that junk food, missy. Don't want to ruin that figure of yours.'

  Cini smiled and walked out the door. The night smelled of cigarette smoke and gasoline. She set the bags on the passenger seat and then walked around and got behind the wheel.

  The tears came instantlyhard, hot, harsh tears that made her grab the steering wheel with such force that it bowed beneath the sudden pressure.

  She was going to do it again.

  Start the eating again.

  The gorging that would take her back to obesity.

  For the first time since the urge had seized her, she thought: I don't want to do this. I really don't.

  But then she started the car and backed out of the 7-Eleven and headed in the direction of her apartment.

  Before she had gone three blocks, she had ripped open the King Size Baby Ruth bar and was cramming it into her mouth.

  CHAPTER 27

  The scalpel is made of stainless steel and feels cold as death to the naked hand.

  The same can be said of the other instrument the surgeon chooses on this overcast morning in Berlin, a knife of ten inches in length and two ounces in weight.

  The surgeon likes the heft of the knife in his hand. Not many mortals are allowed to cut up a human being in this fashion and get paid for it. And paid so well.

  He begins.

  CHAPTER 28

  I cut her up real good and the bathtub runs maybe an inch-and-a-half deep with her blood and that's when I get the idea of taking her out and then just sitting in there.

  So I take her out and set up her bled body on the closed toilet, like maybe she's having a tinkle or something, and then I get in the tub and sit in her blood and light myself a Pall Mall and stare out the window at the dusk.

  The dusk always makes me melancholy as hell but it's a dangerous melancholy, one I've never been able to explain to anybody. Things are just so fucking sad and nobody seems to understand that.

  And I'm drunk, which doesn't help.

  Drunk and sitting in an inch-and-a-half of some woman's blood and there's a sad spring night breeze coming in through the window and some goddammed sad black rhythm and blues song on the radio and then I start talking to her.

  Asking her about herself.

  I've never really found out anything about any of my victims.

  She sits there, kind of propped up, all blue of skin and deeply bloody of wound, and she just stares straight ahead in her stunned, dead way.

  And I'm talking to her because I'm so drunk and because
the melancholy is on me and when it's on me I just want to be held and held tight and then suddenly I'm jumping out of the tub and I grab her and break her arms until they fit around me and then I start dancing with her, the way I used to slow-dance back in high school, with a big embarrassing erection that brushes against the girl every few seconds or so. I'm dancing with this dead woman in my bathroom and the worst thing is that it makes me feel better.

  Not so lonely.

  At least for a time.

  The night breeze feels good.

  And I don't feel so scared now.

  I just dance and dance and dance.

  CHAPTER 29

  Sister Mary Margaret decided to stop at the corner news stand and get herself a magazine.

  Black and white habit flowing in the October night, she approached the small kiosk where the dumpy man in the ratty cardigan sweater and the big cigar butt stood talking to another male customer aboutwhat else the Bears.

  The night smelled chill; in the autumn scents were traces of winter.

  Sister Mary Margaret listened and shivered as the two men made dire predictions about how the season would turn out.

  Traffic raced by. The night was alive with an energy that was both exciting and terrifying.

  She scanned the magazines. So many promises they made. How to lose weight. Get a man. Find God. Make your erection last longer. Double the profits on your investments. Make your children like you. It was all sort of sad and desperate, the splashy magazines and their even splashier pledges.

  Sister Mary Margaret cleared her throat.

  Stan, the guy who ran this magazine stand, glanced over at her and said, 'Hey, Sister, sorry. I didn't see you standin' there.'

  The good Sister, who was a very shy lady indeed, kept her face tilted down, ostensibly so she could scan all the newspapers Stan had laid out across the front of his counter. 'That's all right. You've got so many interesting things to look at.'

  'So what can I get for you, Sister?'

  'I wondered if you had a copy of Hustler.'

  Stan glanced at his football pal. Both men looked shocked.

  'I don't think I heard you right, Sister.'

  'I thought she said Hustler,' said the football pal.

  'Yeah, so did I.'

  'I did,' said the nun.

  'Hustler?' Stan repeated. 'With the broads and everything?'

  'Yes,' Sister Mary Margaret said, 'with the broads and everything.'

  And it was then that she reached up and looked Stan right in the face and said, 'Boy, did I have you going.'

  'God, Ralph look, it's Marcy!'

  'Marcy Browne!' his football pal said. 'The chick private eye.'

  'I'll be damned,' Stan said.

  'I'm sure you will be,' Marcy said.

  'What's with the nun stuff? You undercover?'

  'Something like that.' The grin again. 'Plus I just wanted to see what you'd do if some nun came up and ordered a copy of Hustler.'

  'You sure had me goin',' Stan said admiringly. Then, 'So you really want a copy?'

  'Are you kidding? That sleazy rag?' And Sister Mary Margaret walked huffily away.

  Marcy really dug this acting stuff. It was fun.

  ***

  Once she was back in her office and dressed in her own clothes again, Marcy heated up some soup in a pan on her hotplate and then sat with her feet up on the desk, sipping Campbell's tomato soup from a Spiderman mug and reading a copy of American Ballerina.

  Only her mother knew that Marcy had always wanted to be a ballerina. She'd seen The Turning Point with Shirley MacLaine when she was twelve years old and ever since… But, her Dad being a steelworker and all, Marcy didn't come from the proper social background anyway. After being told by his wife that Marcy needed ballet shoes, Ken Browne had said, 'What the hell'm I supposed to do about it, Candy? Go out to Sears and charge her a pair.' Right, Dad. Ballet slippers at Sears.

  But that hadn't been the only thing to hold her back. Even worse than having a dad who thought that Sears sold ballet slippers was being a girl who had absolutely no dancing talent whatsoever. Sweet little face. Sweet little body. But no talent at all.

  She slogged through three years of training until one day Nick, the dance instructor, finished his session with Marcy and asked if he could see her mother alone. Mrs Browne came over and Nick looked right at her and burst into tears. 'I can't do it anymore, Mrs Browne. She's driving me crazy. She's a great kid, your Marcy, but she moves like a moose.' At which point he put his head on Mrs Browne's shoulder and proceeded to weep.

  The subject of dance was never again mentioned in the Browne household. The ballet slippers were given away; the costumes were packed in a trunk. And Dad was relieved that they didn't have to watch any more PBS dance shows where guys walked around in very tight pants and big cast-iron nut-cups. Those guys made him extremely uncomfortable.

  So all that was left of that era for Marcy was her fondness for American Ballerina magazine.

  She loved it. Pored over every single page, fantasizing that she was every one of those agile, fragile princesses up on their toes and breaking all those artistic hearts.

  Not for Marcy Browne Paris or Vienna or Rome, or any other noted dance city of the world. No, for Marcy Browne it had been Hilton Community College and Criminology 101, Crim 102, Crim 103 and Crim 104, putting in her first years as a security guard (minimum wage and no health insurance) at Montgomery Wards (or 'Monkey Wards' as Dad always called it) and then three years with the Night Shift Detective Agency, where she'd mostly followed around unfaithful spouses, and then that teeny tiny inheritance from Aunt Paulajust enough to start her own teeny tiny agency…

  Now, she hoisted her Spiderman cup, finished off the tomato soup and then glanced at the dusty wall clock directly across the office.

  It was time to check out Jill's place again. Marcy hadn't promisedand couldn't delivertwenty-four-hour surveillance, but since she was wide awake she might as well run by Jill's apartment, just on the off chance that the blue Volvo had put in another appearance…

  She went to her closet, chose an outfit, dressed and then walked outside to her car.

  She just hoped her Dad never saw her in this get-up. The tight black micro-skirt was slit right up to her hipbone, and the white peasant blouse was cut so low her breasts practically stood up and waved at people.

  Dad, being Dad, would probably try to have her arrested. 'Teach her a lesson,' as he would put it.

  Marcy got in her car and drove to Jill's. On the way over, four different guys tried to pick her up at stoplights.

  CHAPTER 30

  The house felt emptier than usual.

  After leaving Eric Brooks' office, Rick Corday stopped in for a drink at a neighborhood bar, then went to the supermarket and bought several bottles of Evian water and ten very lean slices of beef together with a loaf of dark rye bread.

  Now he stood just inside his front door and wished that Adam were here. Loneliness came easily, too easily, to Corday; sometimes he felt completely isolated, as if he were an alien spy left on a planet of suspicious strangers.

  He clipped on the light and came inside. Not even the manly grace of the leather furnishings and the Remington prints helped much this evening. Their home seemed as cold and barren as a motel room.

  He put the groceries away and then went into the bathroom and stripped down to his underwear. He wrapped everything he'd worn to Brooks' office into a bundle and then tied it with string. There was an incinerator at the dump he used sometimes. He'd go there in the next day or so and destroy all these things.

  He put on a blue button-down shirt, jeans and cordovan penny-loafers and started down the hall to the living room.

  But halfway there, he paused, and looked with nostalgia and anxiety into the darkness of Adam's bedroom. They each had their own rooms. Adam's was verboten. Even the cleaning lady had been instructed not to go in there. One day, Adam had caught Rick looking for a shirt to borrow and he'd become so enraged that
Rick thought he might have gone temporarily insane. 'I never want you in here again. Never!' he'd screamed.

  But Adam was out of town.

  And Adam had cheated on him again.

  And Rick felt like a little excitement tonight.

  Adam was a very mysterious person. Rarely did he talk about his background, for example, except to say that he'd grown up in the Midwest. For all that they were partners, Rick always sensed that there were many vital things he didn't know about Adam: things which Adam would never tell him.

  He took a deep breath.

  This was like disobeying your parents, doing the one thing that was going to really infuriate them.

  Another deep breath.

  He started into Adam's bedroom.

  Found the overhead light switch and turned it on.

  Adam was as untidy as a little boy. Piles of dirty clothes everywhere; an uneven stack of paperbacks on the night-stand; a half-finished wine cooler next to the bed; the bed itself unmade.

  Rick had to smile.

  An untidy little boy, that was Adam. Or at least, a part of him, anyway. Rick didn't like to think about the other parts. The secretive part. The cold part. The cruel part. Especially the cruel part. Adam had a tongue like a meat cleaver and wasn't slow to use it when you had displeased him.

  Now Rick was going to learn more about Adam.

  He went in and walked around, taking in the air. This was very special air: Adam's own private air.

  No framed photographs to divulge the past. No college yearbooks to rummage through, and get sentimental over. No dusty military uniforms to hint at where you'd served.

  Impersonal. Very much like Adam himself.

  Soon enough, Rick got tired of walking around. He had the itch to get his detective work underway.

  Here I come, Adam, ready or not.

  The chest of drawers that promised to be a mountain of information. People put all kinds of things in their chest of drawers.

  Another deep breath.