by Kiss of Evil
The homicide was Paris’s case and he had pushed hard for first-degree murder, even for the death penalty, but he knew it would never fly, knew it was rooted more in emotion and anger than anything resembling clear thinking. The idea didn’t even make it out of the prosecutor’s office. No one could put Sarah Weiss in the room at the time of the shooting, or even on the twelfth floor.
Sarah had scrubbed her hands and forearms with soap and hot water in the ladies’ room, so there was no trace evidence of gunpowder to be found, no blowback of blood or tissue from the force of the point-blank impact. Not enough to stand up to a savvy defense expert witness, that is.
The defense painted Michael Ryan as a rogue cop, a man with no shortage of violent acquaintances who may have wanted him dead. Michael was not officially on duty at the time of his killing. Plus, he had been under investigation by Internal Affairs for alleged strong-arm extortion—none of which was ever proven.
The jury deliberated for three days.
Without testifying, without ever saying a single word, Sarah Lynn Weiss was acquitted.
Paris hits the button for six; Jeremiah Cross, the lobby. The doors take their sweet time closing. Paris extracts the USA Today from under his arm and very deliberately opens it, halves it, and begins reading, hoping that the word counselor would be the breadth and depth of this conversation.
No such luck.
“I’m assuming you’ve heard the news, detective?” asks Cross.
Paris looks up. “Trying to read the news.”
“Oh, you won’t find it in there. Not the news I’m talking about. The news I’m talking about doesn’t make national headlines. In fact, it’s already ancient history as far as the real world is concerned.”
Paris locks eyes with Cross, recalling the last time he had seen the man. It was just after the trial. It was also just after a snoutful of Jim Beam and soda at Wilbert’s Bar. The two men had to be separated. Paris replies: “Is this the part where I feign interest?”
“Sarah Weiss is dead.”
Although the information is not really shocking—the oldest, truest axiom regarding the swords by which we live and die applying here—Paris is taken slightly aback. “Is that a fact?”
“Very much so.”
Paris remains silent for a moment. “Funny thing, that karma business.”
“It seems she got dressed to the nines one night, drove to a remote spot in Russell Township, doused the inside of the car with gasoline, chugged a fifth of whiskey, and lit a match.”
Paris is more than a little stunned at the visual. In addition to being a cold-blooded killer, Sarah Lynn Weiss had been a rather exotic-looking young woman. He glances back at his newspaper as the elevator mercifully starts upward, not really seeing the words now. He looks back at Jeremiah Cross. Cross is staring at him, dark eyebrows aloft, as if some sort of response to this news is mandatory.
Paris obliges. “What do you want me to say?”
“You have no thoughts on the matter?”
“She murdered a friend of mine. I’m not going to place a wreath.”
“She was innocent, detective.”
Paris almost laughs. “From your mouth, right?”
“And now she is dead.”
“Mike Ryan is dead, too,” Paris says, up a decibel. “And as worm fodder goes, Michael has a pretty good head start.”
“If it makes you feel better, Sarah Weiss was in hell for those two years. And your office put her there.”
“Let me ask you something, pal,” Paris says, up another few decibels. He is glad they are in the elevator. “Do you remember Carrie Ryan? Michael’s daughter? The girl in the wheelchair? Do you remember that sweet little face at the back of the courtroom the day your client walked? She’s eleven now. And do you know what she’ll be in five years? Sixteen. Michael gets to see none of it.”
“Your friend was dirty.”
“My friend made a difference. What the fuck do you do for a living?”
The elevator stops and chimes the lobby, like a timekeeper at a boxing match. The doors shudder once, open. Cross says: “I just want to know how it feels, Detective Paris.”
“How what feels?” Paris answers, turning his body the slightest degree toward Jeremiah Cross, who stands an inch or so taller. Defense, not offense. At least for the moment.
“How does it feel to have finally gotten the death penalty for Sarah Weiss?”
“Have a nice day, counselor.”
The doors begin to close. Paris catches them, clearing Jeremiah Cross’s path.
Paris watches Cross glide across the huge lobby at the Justice Center. He remembers the chaotic five-week trial of Sarah Weiss. At that time, a busy-body friend in the prosecutor’s office had told Paris that Jeremiah Cross was a bit of an enigma. She had done her standard snooping, then doubled her efforts when she had seen: (1) Jeremiah Cross’s good looks and (2) an empty computer screen when she had tried to dig up something on him.
In the end, all she could find out is that he subscribed to a telephone-answering service, and his letterheads had a post-office box return address on them, a 44118 zip code, which meant he picked up his mail in Cleveland Heights.
Of the twenty detectives in the Homicide Unit, eighteen are men, all are sergeants. Three men are under consideration for lieutenant: Jack Paris, Greg Ebersole, and Robert Dietricht. Paris isn’t interested, Ebersole doesn’t have the administrative personality, and Dietricht is one of the most officiously obnoxious pricks in the department, which means he’s a natural for the position. He’s also a brilliant detective.
At the moment, Bobby Dietricht is sitting on the edge of Paris’s desk, picking at an imaginary ball of lint on his perfectly creased pantleg, pumping one of his sources on Paris’s telephone. Bobby is thirty-nine years old, a few inches shorter than Paris’s five-eleven but in far better shape. Bobby, who never touches a drop of alcohol or a bite of red meat during the week, is in the gym every other day. Where Paris’s hair is thick and chestnut in color, constantly creeping over his collar, Bobby’s hair is an almost white blond, trimmed Marine Corps close on the sides and back, thinning in the front. Since Tommy Raposo’s passing, Bobby Dietricht had assumed the mantle of the Homicide Unit’s fashion plate. And he never rolls up his sleeves, even on the hottest days of the year.
“Okay,” Bobby says, “here’s what we’re going to do, Ahmed. I’m going to ask you one question, you’re going to give me one answer. Okay? Not your usual six. Just one. Got it?”
Paris, sitting behind the desk, only half-listening, knows the case Dietricht is working on. Muslim woman raped and murdered at Lakeview Terrace.
“Here it comes, Ahmed. Simple question requiring a one-word answer. Ready? Did you, or did you not, see Terrance Muhammad in the lobby of 8160 that night?” With this, Bobby reaches over and hits the speakerphone button, making Paris privy to the conversation, and to what Bobby obviously believes will be a classic piece-of-shit answer.
He is right.
“It is not so simple,” Ahmed says. “As you know, the CMHA is way behind on their repairs. We have taken them to court many, many times over this. Leaking ceilings, peeling plaster, unsafe balcony railings. And not to mention the rats, the vermin. Add to this the low wattage of the singular lamp in the lobby of 8160 and the certainty of such an identification becomes suspect at best. I would like to say that I saw Mr. Muhammad with some degree of certitude, but I cannot. And to think, a few extra watts, a few extra pennies a year might have made all the difference in a criminal investigation.”
“Ahmed, I’ve got you on the speakerphone now. I’m sitting here with Special Agent Johnny Rivers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Say hello to him.”
Paris buries his head in his hands. Johnny Rivers. Bobby Dietricht is famous for the pop culture mixed reference. Johnny Rivers recorded “Secret Agent Man,” not “Special Agent Man.” But it was close enough for Ahmed, and that’s all that matters.
“The FBI is there?” Ahmed
asks, a little sheepishly. “I don’t . . . why is this, please?”
“Because the Justice Department is looking into the Nation of Islam and the contracts they have with Housing and Urban Development,” Bobby says. “Seems there’s been some allegations of corruption, extortion, things like that. Not to mention Homeland Security.”
Silence. Bobby has him.
“Could you take me off the speakerphone, please?” Ahmed asks.
Bobby and Paris touch a silent high five. Bobby picks up the hand-set. “Buy me coffee, Ahmed. When? No . . . how about now? Now is good for me. Twenty minutes. Hatton’s.”
Bobby hangs up the phone, stands, shoots his cuffs, turns to leave, then suddenly stops, sniffs the air. “Jack?”
“Yeah.”
“Question for you.”
“Yeah,” Paris answers, annoyed. He has just read the same sentence for the fifth time.
“Why do you smell like Jennifer Lopez?”
The phone. Of all the possibilities that exist when a homicide detective’s phone rings at work—from his long list of lowlife informants, to the coroner’s office calling with bad news, to the unit commander ringing with the cheery tidings that another body has been found and you get to go poke it with things—the one call that invariably changes his day completely is the one that begins:
“Hi, Daddy!”
It is always springtime in his daughter’s voice.
“Hi, Missy.”
“Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas to you, honey, but it’s not for four more days!” Paris says. “How’s school?”
“Good. We got out last Friday for the holidays.”
Of course, Paris realizes. Why doesn’t he ever stop and think before asking questions like that? “So what’s cookin’?”
“Well,” she says, taking a big swallow. “You know that we haven’t seen each other in a week and a half, right?”
“Okay,” Paris says, his heart aching with love for this little girl. She is so much like her mother. The Setup. The Flattery. The Kill. He lets her play it out.
“And I miss you,” Melissa adds.
“I miss you, too.”
Swallow number two. “Did Mom tell you that she has her office Christmas party tonight?”
“She may have mentioned something about it.”
“And do you remember if she told you that I was thinking about having a few of my friends over tonight, too?”
“No, honey. But it sounds like fun.”
“Well . . . it turns out that Darla has a cold.”
“Is that right?”
“Uh-huh. She can’t baby-sit.”
“I see,” Paris says, thinking about what a brilliant tactic this is, having Melissa call.
“So, do you think you could do it?” Melissa asks, then outdoes even her mother in the charm department. “I really miss you, Daddy.”
God, she’s going to be a dangerous woman, Paris thinks. He had planned to rent Sea of Love again, toss a turkey dinner in the microwave, maybe do a few loads of laundry. Why on earth would he give all that up to spend a few hours with his daughter? “Sure.”
“Thanks, Daddy. Mom says eight o’clock.”
“Eight o’clock it is.”
“Oh! I almost forgot!”
“What, sweetie?”
“Did Mom tell you what she got for me as an early Christmas present?”
“No, she didn’t,” Paris says, fully prepared to have been outspent, out-hipped. What he is not prepared for is outhustled.
“It’s the coolest,” Melissa says. “The absolute coolest.”
“What’d you get?”
“JLO perfume.”
On the way back to the store to return the perfume—having already dumped the perfume sample card after Bobby Dietricht’s smart-ass comment—Paris finds his thoughts returning to Sarah Weiss, a name he had tried very hard to put out of his mind for the past eighteen months. Although he had never partnered with Mike Ryan, Paris had considered him a friend, had known him to be a solid, stand-up cop, a family man with a terrific wife and a little girl in a wheelchair whom he loved to the heavens.
It was Mike Ryan who had given Paris the station-house nickname of Fingers, referring to Paris’s penchant for the impromptu card trick, complete with scatalogical patter, a habit stemming from a lifelong interest in close-up magic. Paris could remember at least a dozen times when a grinning Mike Ryan had staggered across a crowded downtown bar on a Friday night, a quartet of people in tow, a deck of cards in hand, shouting: “Hey, Fingers! Show ’em the one where all the kings lose their nuts in a hunting accident.” Or, “Hey, Fingers! Do the one with the four jacks, the queen, and the circle jerk.”
Or, how about this, Paris thinks as he rounds the corner onto Ontario Street:
Hey, Fingers! I’m gonna get my fuckin’ brains blown out in a hotel room one of these days. Do me a favor, okay? Cop to cop. With my blessing, please return the favor to the bitch who pulled the trigger.
Sarah Lynn Weiss.
Dead.
Paris recalls Sarah Weiss’s willowy figure, her clear obsidian eyes. Sarah’s story was that she had found the leather satchel in the ladies’ room and was about to look inside for identification when the police searched the rest rooms. The only physical evidence tying her to the shooting had been traces of Michael Ryan’s blood on the big leather purse lying near her feet.
But Paris had seen it in her eyes. He had looked into her eyes not twenty minutes after she had killed a man and the madness still raged there.
He thinks about the drunken Sarah Weiss sitting in a burning car, her lungs filling with smoke, the heat blistering the skin from her flesh. He thinks about Mike Ryan’s lifeless body slumped in that hotel chair.
Detective John Salvatore Paris finds the symmetry he wants in this sad and violent diorama, the balance he needs, and thinks:
It’s finally over, Mikey.
We close the book today.
Paris steps onto Euclid Avenue, the aroma of diesel fumes and roasting cashews divining its very own recess of city smells in his memory, a scent that leads him down a long arcade of recollection to Higbee’s, Halle’s, and Sterling Lindner’s—the magnificent, glimmering department stores of his youth—and the deep promise of the Christmas season.
As he enters Tower City, a momentarily contented man, he has no way of knowing that within one hour his phone will ring again.
He will answer.
And, on the city of his birth, an ancient darkness will fall.
5
The twenty-suite Cain Manor apartment building is a blocky blond sandstone on Lee Road near Cain Park, always fully occupied due to its reasonable rents, always offering new faces due to the generally rapid turnover of rental property in Cleveland Heights. To the building’s right sits its identical twenty-suite twin, called Cain Towers, also a blocky blond sandstone.
In the two years she had called her one bedroom apartment on the fourth floor at the Cain Manor home, she had yet to determine exactly what it is that makes one characterless yellow building a manor, and the other a tower.
This morning she sits at the small dinette table overlooking Lee Road. The slushy hum of winter traffic is heard beneath WCPN’s morning show, floating up from the boom box on the floor. She is barefoot, bundled into a lavender silk robe, smoking a French cigarette, sipping coffee. Moses, her ancient Siamese, guards the sill.
At five minutes to eleven she straightens her hair, smoothes her cheeks, adjusts the front of her robe. These gestures are, of course, as automatic as they are unnecessary, because she had never come within a hundred yards of actually meeting Jesse Ray Carpenter, and doubted if she ever would. Still, the notion that this man of small mystery will be pulling into the parking lot across the street in a few minutes never fails to engage her basic vanities.
Jesse Ray is always prompt.
She stands, crosses the kitchen, retrieves the coffeepot from the counter. She returns, fills her cup, cons
iders the sky over the city, the melancholy clouds, thick with snow. If life were perfect, at about eight o’clock that morning, she would be standing on the corner of Lee Road and East Overlook, waiting for the Mayfair preschool van with her daughter, Isabella. Bella, with cheeks the color of winter raspberries and Tiffany blue eyes to shame the December sky, would have been stuffed into her pink jacket and matching mittens. If life were perfect, Isabella’s mom would then have been off to some job—health club twice a week, happy hour Fridays, rent a couple of movies for Saturday night. One for Bella. One for her.
Instead, at eleven o’clock in the morning, on a weekday, she is waiting for a pair of criminals.
Glancing across the street, she sees the top of Jesse Ray’s black sedan as it pulls into the Dairy Barn lot and comes to a halt next to the drive-up phone booth. She sees the window roll down, sees his dark coat sleeve emerge, his bright white shirt cuff, his gold watch. It is practically all she has ever seen of him, although, once, she thought she had seen his car pulling out from behind the Borders at La Place and had followed him for ten minutes or so before losing him somewhere around Green Road and Shaker Boulevard.
Soon, she will see Celeste, tall and full of nervous energy, emerge from the passenger side.
She had met Celeste quite by accident one night, having idiotically stepped in when a rather inebriated man was threatening Celeste in the lobby of the Beachwood Marriott. Big guy, long hair, Harley T-shirt, a huge tattoo of an orange rattlesnake wrapped around his right forearm. A few sheets to the wind herself, she had gotten between them and flashed the man the Buck knife she carried. The man had mockingly skulked away. Celeste had thanked her with a round of cocktails and margarita led to margarita led to confession and Celeste had told her a few larcenous details regarding her life. A little grifting, a little insurance fraud, a little petty theft. Two weeks later they met for drinks again and she had asked Celeste if she knew anyone to whom she could sell some jewelry. Celeste had said yes.
That night was two years and nearly forty-five thousand dollars ago. The night she struck the devil’s deal with herself.
