Holy Hell

by Elizabeth Sims

  She signed for the lemonades, and we hoisted ourselves from the bottomless club chairs.

  "I'll wait for you in the lobby," I said.

  "No, come on up."

  Cowabunga. As we rode the elevator I asked, "Where is everybody?"

  "Where is who?"

  "Well, don't you have, like, an entourage?" I'd pictured her like a movie star or a sports idol: Where was the companion, the personal trainer, the driver, the bodyguard?

  She looked at me. "Hah! An entourage!" We were eye to eye. I straightened my spine to become a trifle taller. "No," she said, "I generally travel alone."

  I followed her down the corridor on her floor. As we passed a mirror I gave myself a little sideways wink.

  .

  It wasn't a room; it was a suite of rooms. You could imagine Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip giving a pajama party for thirty of their closest friends. Pass the gin.

  She freshened up while I gawked at the furnishings and tried to figure out where they hid the TV. Then I heard her voice in the bedroom, talking on the phone, but I couldn't make out anything.

  In a few minutes we were on our way down to the lobby again.

  "You know this town pretty well?" she asked. She'd ditched the briefcase for a lovely small shoulder bag, which she held tucked close to her side. I tried to do X-ray vision to see if she'd tossed a toothbrush in.

  "Lived here all my life. I'd be glad to drive. I take it you don't want to eat here?"

  "No, it's great food, but I'd like something...unusual. What do you suggest?"

  "What do you feel like?"

  "Spicy."

  "Mexican spicy or Asian spicy?"

  "Which would take us to the more interesting part of town?"

  "Mexican."

  "Let's go."

  There was an easy feeling between us.

  I shepherded her past the valet to the Caprice.

  "Police secondhand!" she exclaimed.

  "Yep." I felt suaver than suave.

  Evening was coming, and it was going to stay warm.

  "The air-conditioning's been shot for a few years," I said as we peeled out to I-94, "but the window cranks still work." The night air blasted in on us.

  "Moreover," I said, picking up where I'd left off quizzing her, "I guess I'm a little surprised that you're doing your own research. Humping it around from police station to police station, copying records, reading microfilm in the library—you could pay somebody to do that." Traffic was moving smoothly; I jockeyed the Caprice into the middle lane.

  "But I couldn't pay them to do my thinking for me." She had to shout a little over the expressway noise. "The serendipity of investigation. You know how you go into a library or a bookstore and browse? You notice one thing, it leads to another, which leads to another. The world is my library. That's how I feel. Would I have met you and heard your fantastic story if I were sitting in my brownstone in New York talking to my researcher by cell phone and fax?"

  I was incredibly impressed.

  "How long are you in town for?"

  "Depends. I've been looking for a new subject for a book for about—oh, three months now. Something has to grab me, really grab me. I've been to half a dozen places around the country, poking around, talking to people. I like to get hold of something before everybody else does. Well, that's needless to say. I'm getting involved earlier and earlier in cases. If I decide to stay a while, I'll stay a while. If not, I'll go."

  "Do people hassle you for sticking your nose into things? Cops? Victims' families?"

  "Victims' families don't mind me. Suspects' families don't mind me. They fall all over themselves trying to tell me their stories." I nodded. "Some cops love me," she went on, "and some hate me. I really try not to get in their way. I respect them, but sometimes it's hard. You see something, you get a hunch, you make a connection—you want to check it out."

  "Exactly. See that church over there?" We were now on the Jeffries freeway, looping over to the Fisher.

  "Uh-huh?"

  "There's a statue of the Virgin on top of it, with her hands folded. It looks like she's about to take a swan dive right into the expressway. See? People call that church Our Lady of Perpetual Suicide."

  She liked that.

  I said, "That's how I feel right now. I'm worried that I'm flirting with suicide, getting mixed up in this police business."

  "Well, you're in it."

  "Yeah. And that's not all. I'll tell you more when we get inside."

  We were soon cruising the surface streets in the shadow of the mighty Ambassador Bridge. It was a lively area populated mostly by immigrants—legal and otherwise—from Mexico and points south. The particular neighborhood I'd landed us in wasn't the worst neighborhood in town, but it was far from the best. The working poor tried to keep up their wood-frame houses while the druglords squatted in empty factories or rat-infested apartments.

  Funny as it sounds, I'd never felt unsafe in the neighborhood. Maybe because I grew up in one similar. You learn a few rules, you get along.

  "The place we're going doesn't look like much, but they give you the best enchiladas you'll ever eat."

  I paralleled the Caprice under a streetlight between a twenty-year-old pickup and a dented new Lincoln.

  We got out, locked and slammed, and I indicated the way. We had to walk two blocks, making two right turns.

  As we approached the first corner, we saw a man and a woman arguing—what looked like a pimp and his hooker. The hooker appeared Mexican; the pimp was black. Their voices were angry and plaintive. An emaciated thing, the woman stood with her back against the lamppost, her arms folded, her breasts flat under a tight bandeau top.

  He loomed over her, scolding, rubbing his knuckles, his breath huffing in her face. As we came closer I heard him repeating the same sentence, with varying inflections: "What I tell you? What I tell you? What I tell you?" He wore a white vest and a large pearl earring.

  Instinctively Minerva and I veered away from them, our path taking us closer to the building on the corner, a darkened grocery store. I became aware that the street was momentarily empty of traffic. Minerva dropped back slightly, a half-pace.

  As we pulled even with the couple, I had a sudden terrible feeling. The pimp turned smartly toward us, stepped into our path, locked eyes with me, and said, "Give it up, bitch."

  He was looking at my leather bag. I was looking at the knife in his fist, held point up, like a military sword.

  Chapter 24

  I stopped and went into reverse, bumping into Minerva, who clamped my shoulder with her hand and pressed down. I froze, and she released my shoulder.

  We all stood there just like that for no more than three seconds, but my memory of it is indelible: the murky street light floating down, the angry contemptuous face of the pimp, the disinterested posture of the hooker off to the side, the gathering darkness beyond. Someone was practicing electric guitar in a house nearby, a wailing blues lick.

  After those seconds passed, I became aware of a sudden complete turnaround in the situation. The pimp lowered his knife. He said, "Whoa, now. Whoa, now," in a soothing voice. But his eyes were wide with fear. Then he smiled! "We're just friends here, right?"

  The hooker slipped off the lamppost; I heard her heels clicking on the pavement, crossing the street. She was moving away with more alacrity than I would have guessed possible.

  The pimp backed away a few steps, then turned and ran. He ran like an athlete, back straight, arms pumping. His white vest grew smaller and smaller in the darkness.

  Finally, I turned and saw the revolver in Minerva's hand. She was standing slightly behind me and to the side; she must have drawn the gun the instant she saw the knife. I'd no more than glimpsed it when she shoved it back inside the demure little shoulder bag she'd been holding so close to her side. It went into some kind of special quick-draw pocket.

  I stood there staring at her.

  She squinted down the street, then blew out a big pent-up breath. A
few cars whizzed by.

  "I owe you my life," I said.

  She shook her head. "He would've just taken our purses."

  "You can't be sure."

  She smiled.

  "Holy ever-loving shit," I mumbled. My stomach was quivering.

  "This is why," she said, holding up her wrist, "I wear a Timex instead of a Rolex. I don't like to tempt anybody on the street. They don't expect me to be carrying one of these. Let's go eat."

  "You—you don't want to get out of here?" I half-hoped she'd want to hightail it back to the Ritz.

  "No," she said simply. "Let's go where we're going. Come on."

  As we walked, she patted her purse and remarked, "You ought to get yourself one of these and learn to use it. Especially if you're going to freelance around this town."

  "Well," I said, "I once knew a police academy dropout who insisted that unless you've been through police training, having a gun will do you more harm than good."

  "That's bullshit." She kicked a twisted piece of automobile trim from her path. "Too many women believe that. Why are women such idiots about guns? Any woman can learn to use a gun safely. Sure, you can still get hurt, but your chances are a hell of a lot better with a gun than without. You just experienced it, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Why let the scumbags push you around?"

  We walked through a gust of shouting and laughter from the doorway of a little cantina.

  "Why indeed. Hey, how did you get that gun through airport security, anyway? Are you that much of a VIP?"

  "I didn't. I drove."

  "Oh. What do you drive?"

  "Dodge pickup."

  "Really?"

  We approached the restaurant, a shabby building festooned with neon beer and soft-drink signs.

  "What's this place called?"

  I opened the door. "People just call it the Great Enchilada Place by the Bridge. Everyone knows what you mean. There're other restaurants around here, more popular with the gringos, but they're all a lot fancier: They have names on the outside!" We laughed together.

  The proprietor, a wiry guy in a straw cowboy hat, cordially showed us to a table against the back wall. If the neighborhood was a bit the worse for wear, this joint wasn't. It looked exactly the same year after year. The lights were neither too bright nor too dim. Clean floor, clean tables and chairs. Little paper menus. The walls were dotted with gaudy tin picture frames housing religious images: the Sacred Heart, the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Nativity. They looked like a cheerful version of the Stations of the Cross.

  There was a sprinkling of patrons this evening—a few families, some couples, all talking in Spanish. We were the only same-sex couple, but no one took notice of us.

  But the very best thing about the place—and here you will know that I am a masochist at heart, perverse and impure—was the jukebox. It wasn't one of those gorgeous old Wurlitzers, it was a cheap one, packed to the top not with Tex-Mex, Latin pop, or even Top Forty.

  It contained only the absolute worst hits of the 1970s. Only the absolute worst. Songs that are, for me, existential torture. Listening to them is an experience I crave only a few times a year, the way some people crave jumping into Lake Superior in the winter, or having thin nails slowly driven into their external sex organs, or holding their hands over candle flames, or exposing themselves to swarms of mosquitoes.

  The moment we walked in, Helen Reddy's "You and Me Against the World" came pouring into our ears like warm baby oil.

  After we ordered a couple of Coronas, Minerva said, "When you tell your friends about our little encounter back there, will you be uncomfortable saying he was black?"

  I looked at her. In fact, I'd already begun rehearsing the tale and worrying over whether to edit the pimp's race in or out. "How did you know?"

  "I can tell you're not knee-jerk PC, but you fight it."

  I laughed in embarrassment. Minerva went back to studying her menu, and I reflected on my friends and myself. If in telling the story I conscientiously omitted the assailant's race, it would prove that I was color-blind. Yet every one of my friends, black and white, would wonder. Because, of course, no one is really color-blind.

  Moreover, my friends know me well enough to know that if my assailant were white, I'd certainly make a point of saying so, in my usual offhanded way: "So this slimy-looking white guy pulls this knife..." Yet if I left it out, they wouldn't know for sure. And no one would have the guts to come right out and ask. For even to wonder out loud would be considered bad form, nay, racist.

  When the waitress came back, we both ordered enchilada combo plates, then started in on the chips and salsa.

  "This one's the hot one," I indicated.

  "I'll be the judge of that." Minerva's energy level was rising moment by moment, as if the attempted robbery had been a kind of tonic. Her eyes—well, they twinkled. They really did.

  She scooped up some salsa and crunched, then swallowed and reached for her beer.

  "Oh, yes," she said after a pause. Then she grabbed her head as if stricken by an embolism. "Oh, Gawd, is this a terrible song. I'd forgotten it, but it's all coming back." We were hearing "Seasons in the Sun." Terry Jacks.

  "This song," I said, "is like a tumor in your brain."

  "It's exquisitely painful." She had one of those clear, expressive voices that doesn't need excess inflection to get its meaning across.

  "Yes."

  We looked at each other for a moment.

  "All right," she said, breaking the spell. "Let's talk business. First of all, what connections, if any, can we make between this Iris Macklin and the five other women?"

  "Well, I don't think any right now, I—"

  Minerva interrupted and ticked off on her fingers, "You start with the basics. They're all women, they're all from the same general area, and they all disappeared at night. They went somewhere and didn't come back. What else?"

  "Well, I think we have to try and see if there's a gay connection. What do you know about the five? Any lesbians in the bunch?" I'd read newspaper accounts of the disappearances (none were from Eagle), but couldn't remember anything specific.

  "Mm." She flipped open her notebook and read off names, addresses, and a few facts: "Sixty-one years old, three grown children, grandkids, twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, no outside career, she liked to garden...This one was an art student at Wayne State, twenty-three, avant-garde, lots of friends...Two of them were businesswomen in their thirties, one a marketing executive for GM. She was married. The other ran a pet shop. A boyfriend was mentioned...The fifth one lived with her widowed father and brothers in Poletown—do you know where that is? Uneducated, she acted as the housemother, and they supported her. She'd just turned forty. All these women were white. I looked at photos and body stats; none seemed to resemble any other in any way: height, weight, hair color, hairstyle, glasses..."

  She paused to take another corn chip. "Totally varied backgrounds. None of them seemed to have lived a lesbian lifestyle. No female roommates, no lesbian erotica lying around—you can be sure the police would've noted that."

  "Huh, yeah."

  "The fact that there's no physical resemblance tends to counterindicate a serial killer. Those guys, they look for types."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, they're all really badly fucked up, inadequate guys. Something sends them over the edge: They lose their job, or their girlfriend leaves, or their mother dies, or a waitress insults them. Then they go out and find women who look like their boss or girlfriend or mother or the waitress. It's wrapped up in sexual inadequacy, which is why there's often sexual assault postmortem. They kill, then they explore."

  I shuddered, thinking of the Creighters.

  "Now, this detective Ciesla: He didn't believe what happened to you over there?"

  "He said he didn't. I don't know what he really thinks."

  "He's handling this badly. He should be taking you and those two psychos seriously. He should be jumping all over this."

&
nbsp; "I think so too. But the Creighters don't fit the serial killer mold, though, huh?"

  "First of all they're women. Second of all there are two of them. It's incredibly rare for two serial killers to work in concert. It's such a classically individual crime. Plus there was no sexual assault on Iris, was there? No. The thing about the teeth, I'm not sure that's the key. I mean, yes, the mother is twisted. She's involved in deep sickness with this body-part commerce. But I'm wondering..."

  The waitress delivered our plates. They were piled high around the perimeter with beans and rice, a little shredded lettuce and tomato; then in the center lay the beautifully browned, cheesy flatland of the enchiladas.

  "Oh, mmm, these look good," Minerva breathed. "Oh, smell them."

  The waitress smiled. She wore deep-purple lipstick and fluffy hair. "Everything is good here!" she declared, then whirled away, snapping her fingers to "Rich Girl." Hall and Oates.

  "It's disgusting how my mind is anticipating the lyrics," Minerva said, then dug into her enchiladas. "Ohmm. Mmm. Mmm!" Her mmm's started in her mouth and descended toward her diaphragm.

  "It's old Mexico on a plate."

  "Olé."

  "The gringas eat." I doused my enchiladas with hot salsa.

  The rest of our conversation occurred between bites of food, sighs of pleasure, and swigs of the tasty beer. A string of weepy ballads accompanied our meal: "Billy, Don't Be a Hero," "Leaving On a Jet Plane," "Daddy, Don't You Walk So Fast," "All By Myself."

  "We could spend a lot of time trying to make connections between the first five disappearances, plus Iris," Minerva said. "That could amount to some pretty interesting work. I'm not sure the police are being as sharing of their information with each other as they could, not because they're uncooperative, but because there's so little to go on."

  "Do you know whether any of the families have hired private investigators?"

  "I don't, but I bet some have."

  "I wonder who they are."

  "Unless they turn up something big, you'll never know. I'd like to talk to the friends and relatives just to try to get a feel for these women. But like I said, it could take a lot of time. I think that should be our plan B."