Crime Rave (16 page)

Karma Devi, aka Chaos

Y
ou’re starving, a carnivore at a vegetarian spread. The meat patties they brought until your chicken curry arrives weren’t nearly rare enough. You forced it down anyway. No need to be rude. There’s nothing in this world you hate more than the rude. But still, your appetite is far from sated.

Your hospital gown is silk, in a calm pale green with subtle yellow pinstripes. It’s stretchy enough for you to do a bit of yoga, get the blood flowing.

You’re not worried the cops’ll link you to Kevin Danville’s death. Circumstantial evidence is the best. You’re also not worried any of your other victims will come forward. You’ve saved countless women by depriving those pigs of their Rocky Mountain oysters. You chuckle.

You sober when you think about your first meal as a monster, the man who drove you to it. Your grandfather, the Portuguese prick. Furious that his precious son married an Indian “village girl.” Nevermind that your mother had a PhD in molecular biology and was by far more educated than anyone in the D’Souza family. No, that didn’t matter to him one bit. “Those people used to be our slaves!” He’d scream after too much porto. “You people! Our slaves!” Even though he grew up in California, racist colonial pride was well-instilled by his own parents and grandparents.

You grew up hating half of yourself. Why didn’t your father marry another white? Why didn’t mum marry another Indian? Why did they have to make you and your particular hell?

At twelve, you were a lovely girl: a striking, exotic beauty with your mixed features and long dark hair. Soulful eyes, your mother called them. The kind that peer into the hearts of others. Eyes that see and show the truth. How useful that gift would be later. Even your grandfather wasn’t immune to your charisma, forgetting his hatred of your parent’s union to touch your face, run your hair through his fingers. Have you sit on his lap. Other things, worse things, when your parents weren’t around. You told them you didn’t want to see him anymore. But the shame was too great to tell them the truth of it. Your eyes became haunted the longer it went on. The rage in you went from a simmer to a boil. You let it go on because he’d already taught you that you are nothing. A worthless half-breed who would never have a place in the world. You didn’t deserve better, that’s what he said to you.

When the rage boiled over—a volcano of pissed off—you figured out what to do. How to make him pay. Your mom taught you how to make his favorite pork and beans cozido. You said you wanted to surprise him one day, now that he’s being so much nicer to you. You buy some tranquilizer, the kind for pets, the only kind you can buy over-the-counter in California. You’re alone with him. Your parents at the opera. You put the tranqs in his porto. He’s out cold. Using the scalpel you stole from biology class, you cut off his balls. He only makes a small murmur of pain when you suture him back up.

The next day you wait to see what he will do. He tells your parents he’s not feeling well. He’s having trouble walking. “We’ll take you to hospital,” they say. “No!” He shouts. “I’m fine.” He suspects it was you. He gets proof when you serve him his own nuts in the cozido. The look on his face. His turn to rage. Your turn to smirk.

He kept the secret to his grave, and gave the mortician a shock at autopsy. Your parents were baffled. “But he never had testicular cancer. He never even had surgery!” You laughed for hours into your pillow to make it seem you were crying. You’d decided: No man will fuck with you. Ever again. It’s a promise you keep.

You hope the handsome detective leaves well enough alone. You’d hate to make an exception of him.

11:45 AM The Barona Estate

A
fter seeing the cyclops girl come to life, the Countess decides she must acquire the thing for her collection. Barona’s latest boy, seven years old, who was given up by his mother—a single twenty-something who’d been a teenager when she’d conceived and handed her son over for a mere five thousand dollars—is on his last legs. The Countess doesn’t think he’d have but a week left, not with his diet of one slice of bread and one cup of water a day. No sunlight. One of many ways she’s found to kill them slow. Her favorite, in fact. The children are so very resilient. They last so much longer than adults, whose older bodies give out, shut down, disgustingly and painstakingly sooner, taking all the pleasure out of the ultimate event.

Just last week the hope had gone out of Georgie’s eyes, so certain had he been these last two months that if he would just be good, quiet, not complain, the Countess would let him go. Barona smiles thinking of his gaunt face, skeletal. Like a concentration camp Jew. So pathetic with its bones hanging out, begging for mercy. The death rattle is her favorite part. Besides their prolonged dying that is. She’ll have Yanosh turn on the recorder soon. She loves to watch and rewatch the final moments of that last gasp before expiring. What a rush.

The Countess picks up the telephone.

“Victor, yes, it’s me, the Countess. I need your assistance.” Barona’s eyes trawl her plush foyer, inlaid with marble and semi-precious stones.

“It’ll cost you,” the voice snarls, a thick Mexican accent.

“Money is never an issue.”
Immigrant swine
.

“Whaddaya need this time,
Countess?
” Victor sneers the last word. Barona bristles.

“I need papers for a child by the name of Lily Green, proving that I am a relative.”

“Uh huh,” Victor snorts.

“She’s a witness in a grand crime so these need to pass police muster. Can you do it?” Barona tries not to sound so eager, but fails.

“When you need ‘em?” Victor loves these last-minute jobs; regular rates don’t apply.

“As soon as possible. Today? Can you do it?” Barona hates the desperation that’s squeaked into her voice.

“Why the rush, lady?” Victor knows why the rush. One of her kids is about to die. She needs a new one.

“That is certainly none of your account. Can you do it or not?” Transform desperation into anger.

“I’ll messenger the documents over in two hours. That soon enough for ya, your highness?” He smirks and chortles.

Barona does not have the time or the inclination to address these insubordinations.

“Yes. I’ll wire you your usual fee right now,” Barona moves to end the conversation.

“Double. For the rush job.”
Milk it, baby. Papi wants to get paid.

“Fine. Double it is. I’ll be expecting your courier in two hours.”
Spic bastard.

Victor hangs up.
Gringa putona.

Two hours!
The Countess rubs her hands, a Scroogette looking over her brimming accounts, glad there’s nobody around to see her this excited, giggling like a schoolgirl. There’s a reputation of severity to uphold. She picks up the phone again and dials.

The syrup voice on the other end says, “Good afternoon, Skin Flicks Incorporated. Deep Sloane speaking. How may I direct your call?”

“This is the Countess Barona. Give me Johnny Teeze.”

“Please hold.” Porn-style
bow-chicka-bow-wow
muzak assaults the Countess’s ears.
Vile people.
The music clicks back off and a voice greets her.

“Countess! Always a pleasure. Who may I do for you this time?” Johnny Teeze’s voice oozes skuzz.

“Someone very special. Listen up.” And Johnny Teeze does. By the end of the chat he and the Countess are grinning ear to ear.

12:20 PM Victor Tode, Inc.

V
ictor lights a Marlboro red after hanging up on that
chingona gringa
who calls herself a countess, thereby disconnecting the recorder that’s captured and stored this conversation in her file. Victor makes sure to cover his own ass. Trust no one. He learned that the hard way, after killing the
coyote
who tried to embezzle Mama Tode’s last
dólares
. He was fourteen. Victor is thirty now and takes no chances.

For the Countess alone, he’s forged adoption papers for fifty-seven children. He doesn’t even need other clients anymore, but that would be boring. He’ll give that ballbuster credit for one thing: all the pro bono work he can afford to do for immigrants from around the world, looking to be legal in
Los Estados
.
Mexicanos
,
colombianos
,
chinos
, Vietnamese, Thai, even
africanos
who made it over on ships similar to the ones that brought slaves over all those hundreds of years ago.

He crosses himself before he begins work on the Countess’s new request. Victor knows that she’ll be the reason he goes to hell, but there’s still plenty of time to atone. He hopes.

Teresa Chalmers, aka Skreem

Y
ou remember the rumbling under your feet as the Motel Chain Mansion exploded, sending vibrations through your body that make your teeth chatter while recalling. The sound of the explosion so loud and so near it felt far, far away, happening to someone else. That would be the hearing loss. Next a bright light, so glaring that even closing your eyes did nothing to protect your retinas from scorching.

Lying in your hospital bed, that silent scream reverberating, sedative coursing through your veins, you remember floating. Above yourself, above the mansion, looking down, flying over the death and chaos below. Flying. Zooming upward toward a bright blue sky. A blue so vivid you wonder if you are underwater.

A field. A farmhouse. Surrounded by sunflowers. Your childhood home. The one daddy lost to the bank forcing a move to the city. Your life before you met Bob, the monster who fucked your daughter while you were oblivious to all the signs until it was too late. Lana, dead in the tub filled with bloody water. Your beautiful girl, destroyed. Everything is annihilated.

At the farm, your childhood happy place, you feel at peace. You know it was condemned, torn down decades ago, but here it is. Is this all a dream? You hear the creek gurgling out back, the fish are jumping as the song says, the tree swing creaks in the breeze. And laughter. Familiar laughter, like tinkerbells, or church bells or baby bells. Lana.

You run. It is Lana. Lana as a little girl. Lana as a teenager, oscillating between the two. Your Lana! Alive! Here in the home place she never even knew.

“Mommy, you made it!” She beams, then pouts, her beautiful face turning grotesque. “What took you so long?”

You sweep her up. You plan to never let her go.

“I’m here now. That’s all that matters.” You brush the hair back from your angel’s face. “I will never leave you again.” Hand in hand, in your dreamscape, the soft flesh of your daughter’s unlined palm as you walk toward the farm.

Another explosion, so white-hot your skin fries and Lana disappears. “Not again,” you scream. “Not again!”

You scream and scream and scream, so loud the nurses hear you in their heads, the detectives feel migraines coming on, the policemen are tempted to cover their ears, the machines on Spruce-Musa’s fourth floor start to flicker. The doctor rushes in and ups your tranquilizer, worrying you’re going to overdose but not having another choice.

And all you want is to return to your daughter’s sweet embrace, just there out of reach.

12:10 PM Spruce-Musa Hospital

T
he hospital lights fade in and out—Teresa Chalmers’s fever dream continues—as Detective Günn is about to go to the toilet for the ten millionth time. Special Agent Rosario Quatro arrives at the elevator, shows her badge to the patrolman who points her in the direction of the detectives.

“Detectives, hello. I’m Special Agent Rosario Quatro, from the CIA.” She puts out her hand to first Red Feather and then Günn. The detectives find it strange that Quatro closes her eyes while shaking their hands. They exchange a puzzled glance, brows furrowed.

“You’re the interrogation specialist,” Red Feather says when Quatro opens her eyes.

Special Agent Quatro nods, staring deep into his eyes, making Red Feather feel like a lab rat, or like she knows something about him he’d rather keep secret.

“So how can we help?” Red Feather asks. Günn hopes she won’t pee her pants. She needs the bathroom like yesterday.

“I need as much background information as possible. Might I sit in on your next interview and then take you to lunch for a briefing? I hear this hospital has a practically gourmet menu.” Quatro looks from one tired detective to the other. They look like they could use a strong coffee to boot.

Günn snorts. “Yeah, four Michelin stars, rated in Zagat, the whole shebang.” Sarcasm drips.

“It does, actually,” Red Feather says.

“How the other half live,” Quatro smiles.

Günn is not in the mood for idle chitchat when her bladder feels like it’s about to rain on her shoes. “So, we started with the survivors who’ve been IDed through DNA, though one of the survivors we pulled from the wreck, a woman named Teresa Chalmers, is still in an induced coma,” Günn says.

“Why induced?”

“It appears that when she approaches consciousness she has this piercing scream that shorts out the machines. She almost killed a patient with a pacemaker. Two floors up.”

“Interesting.” Though Quatro’s face shows no emotion. Red Feather finds the harelip scar on her mouth and her lack of attempt to cover it up sexy as hell.

“Bizarre, more like it. We were about to interview the DJ. After I go pee, though.” Günn moves toward the bathroom.

“I’ll join you,” Quatro says. “Lead the way.”

The ladies room is tastefully decorated for a hospital head. Ornate tilework swirls across the floor and the sinks are of an abstract design.

“So,” Quatro says, leaning against the sinks, “how far along are you?”

Günn’s eyes widen, shocked, before she can contain herself. “How did you know?” Fuck. This is the last thing she needs on an already craptastic day.

“You have that glow,” Quatro says, even though she could feel the baby growing when she shook Günn’s hand.

“About eight weeks. I just found out a couple days ago. I haven’t decided whether I’ll keep it.”

“And the father?”

Günn shakes her head. “Haven’t told him. The abortion’s scheduled for next week, but I’m still not one hundred percent decided.”

“Smart move.” Quatro doesn’t approve of office romances. Too complicated. And the emotional fallout often extends far past the two involved.

“Please don’t mention this,” Günn says, hating the pleading in her voice. “I’m up for sergeant; they’ll pass me over if they find out, even though I passed the exam and scored highest. Next cycle isn’t for another two years with all the department cutbacks.”

“My lips are sealed,” Quatro comforts her with a smile.

“Excuse me, but I really do have to pee.”

“Of course you do,” Quatro turns to the mirror and begins washing her face.

Günn walks into a stall and locks the door, not believing that she revealed her biggest secret to a woman she’d met only five minutes ago. Fighting back tears, Günn has never felt so alone in her entire history of feeling lonely.