Killer (12 page)

Now what? I could turn around and go back to my hotel and my imaginary shrimp sandwich. And then what? Wait until morning for another interview with Detective Marsh sitting across from me with his manila folder and his small gray eyes? And Det. Larson smirking at me…

I knock. A few moments pass, then I hear someone moving inside the apartment.

“Who is it?” a man’s voice from inside, close to the door.

“Sam Spade,” I say.

“Who?”

“Philip Marlowe,” I say.

“Don’t know you. Get lost.”

“C’mon, Sallie, it’s me. Open up.”

The door opens a few inches. Sallie Fun glares at me from under his caveman brow. He has shed the Giants jacket, allowing full view of his puffy steroid muscles, which pack his white wife-beater like the cream filling in a Twinkie. He’s short, and wears a gold necklace with some kind of medallion on it. Another victim of
The Sopranos.

“Fuck do you want?” he says. His voice is high and nasal. His right hand is holding the edge of the door and his left arm is down at his side, his hand hidden behind his back.

“Just want to talk,” I say.

“’Bout what?” he glares.

“Gregory Dontis.”

Sallie takes a moment to absorb this. It seems like it might take Sallie a long time to absorb anything.

“You a cop?”

“No, I’m an international best-selling author,” I say.

“Fuck off,” Sallie says, and starts to close the door. I stick my foot in the way to stop it.

“Get your foot outta my door, fucko,” Sallie says, giving me his tough-guy glare.

“Fucko?” I say.

Sallie pulls a small pistol from behind his back and points it at my face.

“You don’t wanna fuck with me, jerkoff. Get the fuck outta here.”

“You say ‘fuck’ a lot,” I say. “Can I assume you’re not much of a reader?”

Sallie pulls the slide back on the gun, jacking a round into the chamber. He narrows his small eyes at me, as if his gun has spoken for him. At least the gun didn’t say “fuck.”

“Don’t think I won’t do it,” he says.

His finger curls tighter around the trigger. I believe him. It was probably Sallie who shot Gregory Dontis, then ratted his brother out for it. He seems like that kind of guy—tweaked on steroids and God knows what else. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

“Turn your ass around and get the fuck outta here,” he says.

“I can’t do that,” I say, thinking of Nicki telling me Gregory Dontis was shot in the back of the head.

“You
will
do that,” Sallie says.

“No, I won’t,” I say, now remembering an NYPD weapons trainer yelling at a green Academy cadet over the gunfire at an outdoor range:
“Arrest procedure 101: never, EVER turn your back on an armed suspect.”

“Yes you will,” Sallie says. “Turn around and walk away, shit-stain.”

“I can’t do that, Sallie” I say. “I promised someone I wouldn’t do anything stupid. And it would be stupid to turn my back on a twitchy little wannabe gangster with a pimp gun aimed at me and a round in the chamber. Toss the gun under the bed over there and we’ll talk.”

“You don’t know who you’re dealing with, man,” Sallie says, his hand starting to tremble, his high voice rising higher.

“Put the gun down and I’ll go.”

“Fuck you,” he says.

We stand there for a moment. It would be a Mexican standoff except I don’t have a gun. I hear a small child fussing from one of the apartments down the hall. I look at the barrel of the gun in my face. A Ruger .22 automatic.

“Look, I just want to talk to you about
that
,” I point to a corner of the room behind Sallie.

He turns to look and I kick the door hard, spinning him halfway around. I grab his gun-hand and ram my head into his chest and slam him down to the floor of the apartment. I pin his gun-hand to the floor with my right hand, and put my left knee on his right elbow and grind my right knee into his stomach with all my weight.

“Ooph,” he says.

I reach down with my left hand and grab his testicles through his Fila sweats and squeeze as hard as I can.

“Ahh!” Sallie says.

“Drop the gun and I’ll give you your balls back, Sallie,” I say.

“Fuck you, motherfucker—” he grunts.

He squirms and I yank his testicles down as hard as I can and he screams.

“You ought to lay off the ‘roids, Sallie. Your nuts are like raisins,” I say.

Sallie struggles to raise his gun but can’t. The gun goes off, popping a small hole in the tweeter of a stereo speaker across the single-room apartment. Sallie fires again, the slug hitting the ceiling.

I pull even harder on Sallie’s testicles. Sallie makes a sound like a cat being tortured. His breath smells worse than the mattress in the lobby. I glance around the room. A sagging bookcase against the wall holds a cheap stereo, some CD’s, a copy of
Club
magazine, a picture book about bodybuilding, and a pair of hand exercisers intended to make your forearms look like Popeye’s. This is definitely not a guy who would read a manuscript and meticulously craft a copycat murder. I look down at him and see fear in his eyes. I start to feel sorry for him, then I stop the feeling right away.

“Tell you what, Sallie. Reach down with your little finger and release the magazine and let it fall on the floor. Then I’ll let go of your raisins.”

He glares up at me ferociously. I twist his testicles and he howls.

“You can release the clip on that Ruger with one hand. I’ve done it and so can you. If your hands are strong enough, that is,” I say.

Sallie grits his teeth. Tears run back from his eyes and into his ears. He slides his little finger down and presses the release button on the gun butt and the magazine falls out onto the floor.

“Alright,” I say, then I let go of his testicles and hit him in the face with a left cross as hard as I can. He makes an abrupt rasping sound and a cut opens on his cheekbone and blood starts running down his face, following the trail of tears into his ear.

I pick up the gun and the magazine and get up.

“Ever read a manuscript called
Killer
?” I ask.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he whines, curled in a ball on the floor.

“Didn’t think so,” I say. Then I tuck the gun into the back of my waistband and put the magazine in my pocket and walk out, closing the door quietly behind me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The adrenaline hits me after I get back to the Mirabelle and take a long shower and I notice my hand shaking while I shave. I rinse the remnants of shaving cream from my face and look in the mirror and see a drop of blood ooze out from under the bandages on my brow, loosened by the hot water.

I find a packet of Polysporin from the Burlington ER in my shaving kit and take a Q-tip from the chrome dispenser on the vanity and I’m about to treat the cut when there is a quick, sharp knock at my door.

I move to the bathroom doorway and wait for a beat. I glance at the clock on the nightstand. 2:50 a.m. Another, louder knock, and the adrenaline peaks.

I open the drawer of the nightstand and slip Sallie Fun’s Ruger into the pocket of my hotel bathrobe. I keep my finger on the trigger and lean beside the door jamb.

“Who is it?”

I hear a small, exasperated sigh and Nicki muttering “Thank God.”

“Nicki,” she says, louder.

I open the door and here she is—sneakers, jeans, and a white sweatshirt with a hood that falls over the back of her blonde glove-leather jacket. She is furious.

“You went there, didn’t you,” she says flatly. A statement, not a question. I’m still rushing with adrenaline, so I say something stupid.

“Usually, when a woman knocks on my door in the middle of the night she greets me with a little more decorum.”

Her blue eyes shoot through me. This is the first time I’ve seen her in casual attire and she seems smaller; more like the petite, tomboyish girl she must have been. A different look, but no less captivating. 5’3” in sneakers and lovely. But boy, is she pissed.

“What happened?” she demands.

I open the door and step back and she comes in. I close the door and sit on the edge of the bed and take a couple of deep breaths to let my heartbeat downshift toward a more normal pace.

“I went home,” she says, standing over me like a scolding schoolmarm—except schoolmarms don’t wear tight jeans and fitted leather jackets. None that I know of, anyway.

“I went to bed but I couldn’t sleep,” she says. “I just
knew
you went to Jersey City. I called your room half a dozen times and then I decided to—”

She stops short when she sees the butt of the gun sticking up out of my bathrobe pocket.

“Jesus, Jack—
tell me what happened
,” she says.

I put the gun back in the nightstand drawer and return to sit on the bed and Nicki sits beside me and glares as I tell her about my adventure with Sallie Fun. She listens, shaking her head with disapproval, then disbelief, and her eyes grow sharper still with anger.

“What were you thinking?” she says, after I finish. “What the hell is wrong with you? You promised me…”

I nod. “I’m sorry,” I say.

“Don’t ever lie to me again. Don’t ever break a promise to me. Don’t ever do anything like that again, do you understand me?”

I nod again. I find it hard to look her in the eye.

“So
reckless
. You could’ve been…” she says, and then she stops herself. She gets up and goes to the mini bar and takes out a tiny bottle of Skye vodka and twists the top off and dumps all of it into a cut crystal whiskey glass and drinks half of it in one gulp. She turns and looks at me.

“It’s my job to defend you and to protect you. And I can’t do my job if you go off and do idiotic things like this. Now I want you to promise me—and mean it this time—that you won’t ever do anything like this again, and you will do as I say, as long as I’m your attorney.”

“I promise,” I say, looking steadily into her eyes now, to show her how sincere I am. Her eyes dart back and forth as she looks into mine, reading me for any sign of guile. After a long moment she sighs and takes another drink—a small sip this time.

“What is it?” I say.

“What’s what?”

“This isn’t just about you protecting me as my attorney,” I say. The tunnel-vision from the adrenaline is gone, and I’m more interested in her reaction to my errant behavior than I am in playing the tough guy.

“What is it?” I say again.

She looks down. Takes another delicate sip of her drink.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I say. “But I’m here and Sallie was a dead end and it’s over. It’s okay.”

“It’s
not
okay,” she says, looking down into her glass. She starts to say more, then changes her mind, and cuts the conversation short.

“I just feel like now I can’t trust you. And I need to know that I can,” she says into her glass. “I need to know that you won’t do something stupid like this again.”

“I told you, I won’t,” I say.

She glances up from her drink at me. She notices the loose bandages on my brow, then puts down her glass and heads into the bathroom and comes back with a couple of Q-tips and leans close to me and dabs the blood away, her face close to mine. I can smell the faint, sweet scent of her—a delicate blend of skin cream, soap, shampoo, the fresh spice of vodka under her breath. I feel a stirring deep inside me that I haven’t felt for a long, long time.

Then she stands up, heads to the bathroom, and tosses the Q-Tips into the wastebasket, then dumps the rest of the vodka down the sink. She puts the glass back on the sideboard and looks at me.

“Get some sleep,” she says, and turns to go. I get up and walk her to the door and reach over her shoulder to release the safety clasp on the jamb. A brief breath of her scent again, and without looking at me she says, “I’ll see you in the morning.” And then she leaves.

I take off the hotel robe and hang it on the hook on the back of the bathroom door. I slide between the crisp sheets of my king-sized bed and turn off the lamp on the nightstand and lie back on the pillow and close my eyes.

There was something more to her reaction than just professional concern. Some raw nerve had been scraped. She was angry, yes, but there seemed to be something more—something behind the anger that she wouldn’t talk about.

I try to imagine what nerve I had touched in her, but the adrenaline has drained me and I suddenly feel very tired. My muscles loosen and my breathing deepens and then I drift off in the darkness, along with the last traces I can sense of her.

THINGS PAST

He was fifteen but he had grown tall and strong for his age, so when he told people he was eighteen no one batted an eye. It had been two years since he had left the Witch buried in the vacant lot—and in memory—and caught a ride with a trucker, just as he had planned.

The trucker took him all the way to West Virginia, where he got a job in a small town, washing dishes at a truck stop whose owners weren’t choosy about things like child labor laws or immigration status—or health codes or minimum wage, for that matter. The owners, a mean, petty old couple, let him stay in a shed at the edge of the parking lot in exchange for a cut of his meager pay. The shed was no longer used, and barely bigger than a closet, but that suited him fine. He liked the tiny, windowless space. He plugged the holes in the rotted wood walls to keep out the light, and he was free to love his Angel or read his Bible in the twelve hours a day he wasn’t washing the greasy dishes in the truck stop kitchen.

But by age fifteen he had become increasingly restless and discontent. Over two years’ time, the Angel was deteriorating badly. No matter how dark he made the shed, it took more and more effort to keep the Angel looking right.

The skin was the problem. His first efforts at taxidermy had been clumsy and rushed, his thirteen year-old hands stitching ragged seams behind the hairline and the jaw. And since the book he had read was about animals it didn’t take human skin into account. He stole an embalming textbook from a library while on an errand to Charleston but it was too late. No matter what he tried—makeup, putty, clay, wax—it was impossible to replicate the fine porcelain skin of the Angel. Even on the darkest moonless nights he couldn’t help but be distracted by the sagging, shapeless, mottled features that had once been so clear and perfect. He had carefully pulled up the planks of the wooden floor of the shed and dug a small hole where he kept the Angel while he was at work. The damp earth only accelerated her decay, and soon he could no longer summon the Angel’s voice at all.