Good to the Last Kiss (3 page)

That he didn’t have something vital smashed or broken was miraculous. The insurance company claimed the miracle for their own. Sam contended that there were no miracles only the sad fact that medical science failed to explain why he couldn’t walk without a great deal of pain. He claimed to have neck and back pain so horrendous that he could not work, that he could just barely get through the day attending to his pain. Before Baskins found a lawyer, he had injudiciously sent several, hysterical, violence-threatening letters to the company and after that to the insurance company.

Julia sipped from a cup of coffee she got at McDonald’s on Van Ness and watched the building near Leavenworth and Turk.

What made her look up as the dark Camaro cruised by in the gloom, Julia Bateman didn’t know. All she knew was that in the darkened, smoked glass window, penetrated only briefly by the morning light coming through the buildings, there was an eerie stare; enough to make her shiver and encourage her to grab another sip of coffee to offset the sudden cold.

It was below the back half of a Victorian on Stanyan – a basement really, a cave – where the driver of the Camaro lived. Once inside it could still be night. Soon he would be asleep. He would miss a day of working out. And a day of work. That happened on the days following the nights of the kill.

He felt as he usually did. His mind was nearly blank. His eyes were tired. Very tired. But his body was still alive, feeling everything that touched it – the tee shirt against his chest, against his nipples. The denim against his thighs, his buttocks, his sex. He lit the candles. The CD he had just picked up at Tower Records was in place. He pushed the button.

He undressed.

He positioned his shaved, oiled naked body on the bed so he could glimpse at his flickering, golden reflection in the mirror beside him. He would relive every moment of the evening. It would arouse him. He would satisfy himself. He would be calm for a few days. He would be sad, but it was the only time he felt anything other than anger.

He fell back into the bed. His head was slightly raised on the pillow so he could look down at the body he had so carefully constructed. He admired its firmness, its smoothness, now letting his palm glide over his chest, down his flat, firm belly, sliding over and inside his thighs.

He closed his eyes, the vision of the young woman, her pale flesh lit by the moon on the dark grass. At once he felt her flesh and his own. He could feel himself drift into the place. A secret place. All the time in the world to caress her soft and pliant body.

Instead of falling further back into the vision, he was oddly and disagreeably startled by the image suddenly, seemingly projected on the inside of his cranium. It was the woman in the Miata – a convertible with the top up, bright blue and shining in the morning fog, the car on Leavenworth and Turk he saw as he returned from the kill. The car demanded to be seen. The face in the window drew him to it. It startled him then. Startled him now. The stare she gave him had flashed in his mind without warning. It jerked him rudely from his sexual reverie.

He remained in bed trying to recreate the mood. He closed his eyes, ran his palms over his smooth, firm flesh, trying to recreate the moment on the hill. When he couldn’t urge it into the dark frame, he tried recreating others. Another night. The San Gregorio beach. The ocean. The sand. The sound of the waves. The salt breeze. Nothing would come to him, or if it did, not for long. Instead of sweet, sad melancholy he felt a rising anger. It was that woman in the car. Why had she done this to him?

He climbed out of bed, stood under water as hot as he could bear. He would go work out. He would go to the gym. It was the only way he could work it off. All this meant he would be sucked up again into the cycle. Sooner because of her. He would have to do it again in just a few days.

The full-length mirror in the bathroom was all steamed. Usually he’d wipe it clear first so that he could inspect his body. He wasn’t in the mood. He was pissed. He dried quickly.

The door to Julia Bateman’s Miata opened with such suddenness that it jolted her. But it was merely an interruption of bland thought by a smiling, always energetic, teasing Paul Chang.

‘Hi toots,’ he said to his boss.

‘Go toots yourself!’ she said. ‘You scared the hell out of me. What are you doing here?’

‘I couldn’t sleep. Bradley stayed over. I don’t know. By morning, I was ready to throw him out of bed, out of my apartment and out of my life. But I left instead.’

‘Why?’

‘Who knows? You know how blonds are.’ He smiled.

‘No I don’t know how blonds are or how anyone is. He must have something. Good in bed?’

‘Yes,’ Paul smiled. ‘You want the details?’

‘Absolutely not.’ She paused. ‘Not all of them.’

They both laughed.

‘How was last night?’ Paul asked.

‘Boring. Sort of.’

‘What wasn’t boring?’

‘It felt a little like Hard Copy meets PBS.’

‘Who?’

‘The usual San Francisco celebrities – those with talent and those with money.’

‘Who was at your table?’

‘I don’t remember most of them.’

‘Jules! What good are you?’

‘Some writer. A plastic surgeon . . . oh, Maldeaux.’

‘You met him? Christ.’

‘It’s no big hairy deal,’ Julia said.

‘Oh right. “Oh”, she says casually, “Maldeaux”. And the way you said it. One word. Maldeaux. God. Maybe Picasso. Or Brad Pitt, when he’s blond.’

‘Brad Pitt is two words.’

‘Yes, but you can’t just say “Pitt”. “Maldeaux” you said. Sort of like, what? He’s an institution or something. A Lincoln. A Getty, a Rockefeller, a Rothschild. A Maldeaux. Thaddeus Maldeaux. Just the sound of it.’

‘David calls him Teddy.’

‘Is he as dangerously exciting as we are led to believe or is he four-foot-eight with a toupée?’

‘Definitely bigger than life.’

‘Mmmmn,’ Paul said, trying to figure out what she was thinking.

‘Is he gay?’ he asked then thought for a moment. ‘Could he be bisexual?’

‘Don’t know. And it’s not my world anyway. I’m sounding pouty, aren’t I? What I mean is trying to become genuinely a part of that world would be like my trying to become a Hasidic Jew. I sprang from another culture altogether.’

‘Who says? People change their worlds all the time. Look at Whoopi. Look at the guy who married Martha Raye. Look at me, by all appearances you’d think I was Chinese or something.’

‘You are Chinese,’ she grinned.

‘Ah, but I’m not, I’m a Christian Reformed kid from Grand Rapids and that is the state of mind, far removed from China. I’m John Boy trapped in Charlie Chan’s body.’

‘Not really Chinese?’

‘Well, I’m not particularly reformed, but Bradley says I’m about as Chinese as potato salad. It’s true. Now tell me you don’t want to be famous, have the world buzzing about Julia Bateman? Your picture in
Vanity Fair
like Madonna or Sharon Stone or Heidi Fleiss?’

‘No, I’m afraid I’m not going to be your brush with fame.’

‘You never, never know. So have you seen our guy?’

‘What guy?’ Julia asked.

‘Why are you here? You enjoy staring at dilapidated brick buildings while the poor and indigent crawl from their Maytag box homes and greet the day with all the gusto of a slug? The reason you are here is one Samuel Baskins, victim or malingerer. Any sign of him?’

‘No.’

‘You want me to take over?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You were up late last night, I can tell.’

‘Do I look horrible?’

‘A little. I’ve brought a pad and I plan to do some sketches.’

‘A little romantic poverty?’

Thaddeus Maldeaux had breakfast with his mother. The grand old house was dusty and unkempt. The furniture was worn, frayed. The oils in their thick, ornate gold frames were dark from decades of neglect. Mother and son talked about the decline and death of afternoon papers. She also fretted about the Internet and how it was destroying journalism in general and newspapers in particular. Thaddeus tried to soothe her. Their company was prepared for the changes.

‘We’ll do fine,’ he said.

‘That’s not the point,’ she said. ‘Where will people get the truth? Now, just anybody with a computer can say whatever they like. Where will the truth be when this plague has completely swept over the world?’

Mrs Maldeaux was not a pretty woman. The thought had crossed Thaddeus’ mind that she was not even a handsome woman. She was short, stout and bosomless. The wattle under her chin seemed to match the waddle under her arms. Her rear end looked as if it had been flattened by the backside of a coal shovel.

Her husband, Andre Maldeaux, on the other hand, had killer looks and empty bank accounts. He wouldn’t have left Helen of his own accord. She was as devoted and possessive of him as she was of their son, Thaddeus. Andre was killed in an auto race in Europe. Fortunately, he didn’t injure his handsome face. He did, as the old line goes, make a great looking corpse. Thaddeus was terrified he’d have a daughter who favored his mother. Then again, he would rather have a daughter or a son who had her intelligence, her resolve, her ethics. She was truly a good woman despite what he said about her and often to her. He wished he were half as good. Like all true beauty, her kind of beauty only surfaces when people can see below the surface.

He showered, shaved. Living with his mother at his age! He smiled at the thought. He wiped a bit of steam from the mirror. There were things to do today – legal matters on Sansome, a board of directors meeting at the Transamerica building and property inspection south of Market. He would lunch there. Great little places, he thought, though he had only sampled a few.

Thaddeus looked in the mirror closely, examining the wrinkles around his eyes. He’d look twenty-eight if it weren’t for those little buggers, the spider webs around the eyes. The wind and weather he thought, then forgot about the wrinkles as he tried to determine which cologne he would use. The Prospera? The Romeo Gigli? Or his own, the plain bottle with his name and assigned number – the scent created for him in Paris. He chose the latter.

Other things to do? Perhaps the club. If he had time, he’d do some handball or tennis, get a rub down. There were times he played hard and long just to get the massage. Then, of course, there was Julia Bateman. He wasn’t sure what the attraction was. Was it simply because she was with David? No, he thought. He’d never found David’s choices in anything appealing before. He would see her again. Today, perhaps. He’d find a way.

Being the only one of the fourteen San Francisco homicide cops to actually live in the city, Gratelli easily got to the Twin Peaks hillside before McClellan. He had to pass a gaggle of joggers held fifty feet away from another crowd of cops and medics.

‘Anything?’ he asked the cop from General Works, the guy who called in.

‘Murder,’ the cop said. ‘That’s why we called you – thought you needed the overtime. And what do we have . . .’ He glanced at his notebook. ‘Neck broken. Sometime last night probably. So far, seems to fit with the others. No I.D. Pretty girl, looks a little rough around the edges. Not likely a society bimbo. But who knows? That’s why we have experts like you. You wanna see?’

The cop didn’t wait. He pulled the fabric down to reveal the entirety of the bluish, slender body, including the odd angle of the neck and head.

‘M.E. and Photo on their way.’

There was a little shuffling in the crowd and some cursing that Gratelli recognized as McClellan’s.

‘Cover the fucking thing up,’ McClellan said. ‘Jesus fucking Christ, I haven’t even had breakfast yet.’

‘Looks like she’s another pearl on your string,’ the cop said as he covered the face. ‘How many now?’

‘Who’s counting?’

‘They found another down on Highway One, San Gregorio,’ Gratelli told his partner McClellan.

‘Let’s see what we can get here,’ McClellan said. ‘Then let’s go to the beach.’ He looked around at the people. ‘What in the hell are we all doing walking on the fucking grass?’ He raised his hands to the sky as if only God could understand his frustration with mortals. ‘No fucking wonder we can’t cage this slime ball. We got people walking all over the fucking evidence.’

‘Watch your mouth,’ came a voice from the back. It was Lieutenant Broderick from General Works. ‘There are kids over there.’

‘Get the fucking kids outta here,’ McClellan said very quietly. ‘Then they won’t hear me say “fucking” all the time.’ He looked around. ‘What the hell are they doing here anyway? This isn’t the fucking Donna Reed Show, you know.’

‘And the press. Come on, McClellan. You’re a natural asshole, you don’t need to work so hard at it.’

‘I put a hundred percent into everything I do,’ McClellan said.

‘Eating, drinking . . .’ said the cop from General Works.

‘My belt size is my fucking business.’ McClellan grinned evilly. ‘Hell you check out homicide sometime. Not a belt under thirty-eight inches except for Gratelli and that fruit, Bushman.’

The cop shook his head, looked at Gratelli. ‘One of these days, they’re gonna change the rules and homicide cops won’t have lifetime appointments. You’d think you were the fucking Supreme Court or something.’

‘Watch your mouth,’ McClellan said. ‘There are children here. Gratelli’s only fourteen.’

‘Yeah, he looks fourteen.’

‘Drinks a lot. Women, you know.’

Gratelli said nothing to the lieutenant. ‘Leave your car here,’ he told McClellan. ‘We’ll pick it up on the way back in.’

The medical examiner had sent an investigator. They had their own uniform, one that looked halfway between Navy officer and doorman. He was heading toward the body, when McClellan and Gratelli broke from the crowd.

‘Fresh kill, they better get something this time,’ McClellan said. ‘But a smart guy wouldn’t lay down any bets.’