Good to the Last Kiss (10 page)

‘You wanna run it now?’ McClellan said.

‘Might as well.’

Gratelli and McClellan sat quietly and waited. Some young, well built guys went into the gym next to the parking lot. Some other guys left, looking fresh and pink.

‘Makes you sick, doesn’t it?’ McClellan asked.

‘What now?’

‘People spending so much time trying to make themselves pretty.’

‘Doesn’t bother me.’

‘Every damned one of them is a jock sniffer, bet you my next paycheck. Jesus.’

‘You let way too many things bother you,’ Gratelli said.

‘Whaddya mean? I don’t let nothin’ bother me. Just observin’ the fuckin’ human condition, that’s all.’

The radio told them that the car was registered to Paul S. Chang, that Chang was clean and that he lived in the building he was coming out of.

‘A neighbor,’ Gratelli said. ‘Knows Bateman, knows the assistant D.A. through Bateman because he is a neighbor.’

‘Well now that you got everything all figured out, let’s go have a look.’

‘What’s the matter, the elevator don’t work?’ McClellan asked the apartment manager who headed up the stairs.

‘We’re only going up one flight,’ the older gentleman said.

Gratelli noticed the old guy had twenty years on McClellan, but McClellan had sixty unwanted pounds on the manager. And the way the old guy said how it was only ‘one flight’ was clearly intended to take McClellan down a peg or two on the wise guy chart.

The manager knew why the police stopped by. Paul Chang had told him at least the assault part of it. And he inquired on the way up about her condition. He never asked for the papers but unlocked the door to Julia’s apartment and, after telling the two cops to make sure the door was pulled to when they were done, left them.

The first thing Gratelli noticed when he turned from the hall and went into the main room was a small bank of windows. He headed toward them. The second thing he noticed was a shade being pulled down in the apartment across the narrow alley – Ivy Street.

McClellan came into the room, having taken a detour into the kitchen. He was eating a banana.

‘Couple a more days, it woulda been inedible,’ he said by way of explanation.

‘Make yourself at home,’ Gratelli said.

The main room was pretty small. Maybe twelve feet wide and perhaps a foot longer than that the other way. There was a bed stuffed into an alcove that was once, judging by the marks of now absent hardware, a Murphy Bed.

The bed acted as a kind of large, built-in sofa since the opening faced into the room. Beside the bed were stacks of books, mostly paperbacks and mostly by women – several of them by Margaret Atwood, L.C. Wright and P.D. James. There were stacks of CDs – Cole Porter, Gershwin.

Along one wall was a long, desk-like structure. It appeared to be a door on top of two filing cabinets. On it was an expensive looking lamp, several neat stacks of paper, a computer and printer, a small copying machine, a telephone that doubled as a fax machine, plus a stapler, stamp dispenser.

There were two high-back chairs of similar style but different material and a small, low bookcase under the window that held a few plants and below that a stereo unit.

McClellan began sifting through the papers. ‘I wonder how much a place like this goes for.’

Gratelli looked around the small space thinking it was no wonder she went to a cabin on the weekends. He couldn’t imagine being cooped up in this place all day long – working here, eating here, sleeping here.

‘I figure she’s billing four thou a month,’ McClellan said. Mickey was rummaging through a stack of billing statements not yet mailed. ‘Wait a minute, here. There’s a check made out to our Paul Chang. Why is she paying him?’

Gratelli looked at the check. ‘The kid works for her, see the withholding.’

‘Oh yeah, well . . . it’s interesting nonetheless, don’t you think? The kid is a little private dick.’

‘She’s an insurance investigator,’ Gratelli said.

‘So?’

Gratelli shrugged, headed toward the window. The shade in the apartment across the alley was still drawn, but on one side, the vertical line, the edge of the shade was broken. Whoever it was didn’t want to be seen, but certainly wanted to see.

McClellan headed back toward the kitchen. Gratelli looked over the desk. There were two stacks of unopened mail. A quick look showed that one pile was personal, addressed to Julia Bateman at her Hayes Street address. The other was more official looking, addressed to Bateman Investigations at a post office box.

He looked around for an appointment calendar and finding none figured that it was either in her purse, at the cabin or perhaps it was on the computer. Inaccessible at the moment, in any event.

‘Look what I got,’ McClellan said, coming back into the main area, having raided the refrigerator.

‘A glass of milk. That’s nice Mickey.’

‘Nah, nah, nah. The other hand nimrod.’

‘Why Mickey, it is a key. What a wonderful day in the neighborhood.’

‘On a hook. Above the hook was the name “Paul.” And Paul’s key has a number on it. A two hundred number. Right on this floor. And he’s off somewhere.’

‘First you steal a banana, then the lady’s milk and now you are gonna break and enter. Whose side you on?’

‘Look, the date on the carton? Two days from now. She won’t be back, OK? Second, I didn’t ask for no key. It’s there. A gift. Fate.’ McClellan looked up at the ceiling, extending his hands to the heavens beyond, then glanced back down at Gratelli who’d dropped to his knees to look through the filing cabinets. ‘A judgment from the ultimate Supreme Court, huh?’

‘Since when did you become so religious?’ Gratelli asked pulling out a battered, bent and at one time manila file folder.

‘Since he shined his grace on thee . . . and thine . . . and whoever. You coming?’

‘No,’ Gratelli said, finding something intriguing inside the folder. ‘I don’t even know you’re gone.’

EIGHT

T
here was a man standing at the foot of Julia’s bed. He wore dark clothes. She opened her eyes because she felt someone’s gaze. He moved to her bed, sat down on the edge.

‘Jiggles, you are the ugliest old thing to come down the pike in a long time,’ he said touching her forehead with a kiss.

It was like the whole goddamn dam burst. As she raised up, arms outstretched, she chilled, her stomach dropped, her throat tightened and she exploded in tears.

He hugged her. ‘Now, now baby,’ he said.

A moan came from inside her. She felt the wire cut into her mouth as she tried to catch her breath. No air could pass through her nostrils. They were filled and running on her father’s coat. Her body convulsed in sputtering sobs.

‘It’s all gonna be all right, I promise you.’ He held her to him, palm caressing the back of her neck.

‘Come back here you son of a bitch!’

Gratelli recognized McClellan’s voice. The sound came from the hall. He dropped the files and lurched awkwardly to his feet, reaching for his .38 in the same motion. In the hall, he pressed his ear to the door. He heard the thumping sounds of someone running. Gratelli, holding the gun straight up, close to his face, eased the door open, moved quickly into the hall, leveling his gun in the direction of the sound.

McClellan, his back to Gratelli, had dropped to his knees facing the wall. ‘You bastard,’ he said.

Gratelli’s eyes scanned the hall. He saw nothing. Then he saw a small furry burst of brown race away from the huddled body.

‘Son of a bitch,’ McClellan said, standing, out of breath. He turned back to Gratelli and seeing his partner holding his gun, ‘You’re not planning to shoot the little bastard are you?’

Gratelli laughed.

‘How the fuck was I supposed to know there was a cat in there?’ McClellan was red-faced.

Gratelli put his pistol away, walked down the hallway to the brown cat, who sat looking at him as if all of this had been a game.

‘Hey you,’ Gratelli said in a soft, gravelly whisper. Gratelli lowered himself to a squat. ‘How ’bout you and me going back home, partner?’

The cat seemed agreeable. Gratelli’s big hands scooped him up and the three of them went to Paul Chang’s apartment.

Having been snookered into McClellan’s breaking and entering, Gratelli decided he might as well look around.

Chang’s place had the same layout as Bateman’s, only reverse. Unlike Bateman’s, Chang’s didn’t so much double as an office as an artist’s studio.

The bed was in the middle of the room. On the wall opposite the bed was one huge bookcase with big, heavy books – Matisse, de Chirico, Ruscha, Rauchenberg, O’Keefe. Most of the names he recognized, though that was about all he knew about them. There were also books on photography. Some names Gratelli recognized. However, there were two books laying on top of the rows he didn’t recognize.

He pulled them out. One was called
Teenage Lust
and thumbing through it noticed they were all photographs of street kids, male and female, caught, it seemed candidly, in some mix of sex and violence.

McClellan came over to get an eyeful of the second book – photographs of some guy named Witkin who seemed to specialize in women with penises and snakes and rotting vegetables.

‘Christ,’ McClellan said. ‘We got a sick boy here.’

Gratelli shut the book and carefully put it back where he had found it.

‘He’s an artist.’

‘Yeah, well . . .’ he shook his head. ‘Our boy’s also got some leather threads in the closet. Some kind of harness, leather pants, jacket.’ McClellan examined the pants. ‘Buttless,’ McClellan said.

The alcove where Bateman had her bed in the other apartment, Chang had a large artist’s table. On it was a huge piece of cardboard, on which ripped photographs of body parts were being assembled into some larger, more abstract picture.

‘The kid’s kinda kinky, don’t you think?’ McClellan asked. ‘Maybe we got a candidate.’

‘Come on, she knows the guy.’

‘Gay boy too.’ McClellan pointed to a greeting card with a male nude smiling back. Inside were the handwritten words, ‘Keep your Wednesdays open, Bradley.’

‘That pretty much rules him out, don’t you think?’ Gratelli suggested.

‘It’s a question of how bent is bent. You been around long enough to know these things.’ McClellan picked up a book with no cover. There were sketches and some notes scribbled in pencil.

‘. . . to examine the edges of existence,’ McClellan read out loud. ‘How far one steps out, not knowing if you’ve gone too far, if there’s a way back, is the distinguishing characteristic that separates art from craft.’

McClellan’s face twisted into a caricature, mocking sophistication. ‘Some pretty highbrow words. Just an excuse to be kinky. The boy is bent. Bent enough?’

‘Can’t see him breaking a girl’s neck.’

‘I can.’ McClellan said, going through the bureau drawers next to the alcove. ‘Pretty stuff.’ McClellan said it with disgust, holding up a pair of leather shorts. Then he extracted a book from loose underwear and socks.

He opened it to the first page. ‘Chapbook #23,’ it said.

McClellan flipped through it. There were ragged and torn pieces of photos and incomplete sketches, some as innocuous as a photo of Barbie and Ken dolls. Others were naked bodies and body parts. There were words inscribed at random it seemed. Some were in poetry form. Some were narratives.

McClellan started to read from the top of a left-hand page.

‘Get this,’ McClellan said, reading a sentence. “Just as pain is less desirable than joy, pain is more desirable than numbness. Feeling something – anything – is better than the anesthesia, a state of nonexistence.” The guy’s into some serious shit.’

McClellan flipped a few more pages.

‘Clippings,’ he said. ‘Dahmer. And here’s some on that guy who cut off his son’s head on the highway in New Mexico. The kid in the alley off Polk. Christ, this guy is . . . .’

He didn’t finish the sentence. Then he picked it up again.

‘Listen to this: “Dahmer had been left alone too long. Absent a world in which to belong, he created his own and was unable to escape it. He juggled two worlds. Successfully for a while. Then they collided.” What the hell does that mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ Gratelli said. ‘You are pondering the imponderable.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘OK, you tell me what this means. He’s still writing about Dahmer,’ McClellan said, reading another page, ‘“the sickness in our hearts comes from hate and the hate from fear. And when the fear becomes too much, we are left with our sickness, alone with our sickness. We feel powerless. We feel we are dying. We seek whatever it is that will make us feel alive again. If necessary we create new worlds, one in which we become God, if necessary, to make sense of it.”’

Gratelli waited for another comment from McClellan. But he grew silent. He turned away. Then, as if he’d decided something he came back and began to look at the book.

Gratelli didn’t say anything.

McClellan continued leafing through the little book.

‘This collection of body parts Chang has and lots of tattoos in his photos and this killer’s engraving of flowers on girls’ legs . . . I mean, maybe this is all connected.’

‘These are his thoughts, McClellan. You see anything in there that resembles a rose tattoo?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You can’t arrest a man for his thoughts. You don’t even know what he means by it all. Maybe he’s writing a story.’

‘What do the lawyers say on TV? Goes to state of mind.’

‘Can’t use anything in here anyhow. No warrant.’

‘No, but we’ll have a warrant next time and we’ll know just where to look if I need one.’ He carefully put the book where he found it. ‘That was Chapbook number twenty-three,’ McClellan said. ‘Where’s the other twenty-two? Or number twenty-four? Maybe we got a rose tattoo in there somewhere.’