The Black Marble (23 page)

“Huh? You don't get it?” Mitch said, scratching.

“I don't get it,” said Valnikov, scratching.

“Sergeant, I had to get some money to pay the fine for the auto theft conviction! What the hell could I do? And I get caught inside the warehouse on my first try. That just goes to show I'm no burglar. Any kind a halfass creeper could burgle a warehouse, for chrissake! Do they send burglars to state prison?”

“Not very often, Mitch,” said Valnikov, making his last notes on Itchy Mitch's confession.

“That's
some
consolation,” said Mitch to Natalie, who had an unbearable itch under her bra strap.

As they were escorting him back to the jailor, Itchy Mitch turned, scratching, and said: “One thing, Sergeant. You been around this world awhile. Tell me something.”

“If I can, Mitch,” said Valnikov, unbuttoning his collar and loosening his tie to get at an itch on his collarbone.

“Why do some people
always
have to pick the black marble?”

Unlike the violent Friday, Natalie Zimmerman found this Monday to be a typical detective's workday, which meant that ninety percent of the day was spent writing reports like a good bureaucrat. Just filing one count of second-degree burglary on Itchy Mitch took four hours, what with cooling their heels downtown in the district attorney's office, along with twenty other detectives. Valnikov was good at waiting. Natalie was miserable. She read the newspaper all the way through. She read every dumb magazine that was lying around, even the sports and girlie magazines one of the cretins had in his briefcase. She paced the halls, smoked, passed some time with another policewoman from Hollenbeck Division.

Whenever she'd return, Valnikov would just be sitting there like a dozing grizzly. He'd open his eyes from time to time for a pleasant nod of the head and a “Good morning” to any detectives who spoke to him, and go back into hibernation.

After the waiting room thinned out, when there were only two other detectives there, both of them nodding in their chairs, Valnikov began to whimper in his sleep. Natalie glanced up from her newspaper at her snoozing partner. He was sweating. Then he started whimpering so loudly he awakened another detective who looked at him and at Natalie and shrugged. Then Valnikov started to
sob
.

It was the rabbit. The wounded rabbit cringing in the snow. The snow, the land, stretched to eternity. Siberia. The hunter's veiny hands slashed the rabbit's throat and gutted him with two swipes of his blade glinting in the frosty sunlight. The rabbit's body jerked around on the log while the hunter pulled the guts out and broke its jaws and pulled on the face until the face was peeled back over the skull. The muscle and tissue hissed as it tore free in the powerful hands of the hunter.

“Valnikov!” She was shaking him.

“The rabbit!”

“What?”

“Natalie.”

“Yes, you were sleeping. Having a nightmare or something.”

“I was?” Both of the other detectives, strangers to Valnikov, were sitting straight in their chairs staring at him.

“Yes, you were … well, you were crying. Sort of.”

“That's impossible,” Valnikov said, reaching for his handkerchief with hands that trembled. “Impossible.”

He wiped his face and was grateful when the receptionist said, “Valnikov and Zimmerman, Mr. Holman is available.”

When they were back in their car, bound for Hollywood, Valnikov realized it was lunchtime. “Where would you like to eat today, Natalie?” he smiled.

“I don't care,” she said.

It had been a quiet ride. That sobbing. He was crazy and had to be taken off the street, but God, that
sobbing
in his sleep. “Wherever you want to eat, Valnikov. It's up to you.”

“Really?” he smiled. She hadn't been so kind to him since they'd been together. How long had it been? He had to stop and think for a moment. A week? Then he realized that it only seemed that long because Friday was the first day and the weekend intervened. The weekend. Lots of drinking this weekend. Stolichnaya. He had to watch that drinking. Some people might think he was an alcoholic.

“Where the hell are you going?” she asked as he suddenly wheeled off the outbound Hollywood Freeway and headed back toward downtown.

“You said we could eat anywhere today,” Valnikov smiled. “If it's okay with you I'll take you somewhere a little different.”

“Different?”

“You might like it,” Valnikov said, looking a bit worried now. “Don't expect too much. It isn't much really. Just something I like to do for lunch from time to time.”

“All right, Valnikov, all right,” she sighed. “Anything's better than McDonald's. I can't look another Big Mac in the eye.”

“Charlie Lightfoot,” he murmured. They always said old Charlie Lightfoot was so cranky in the morning the only thing in the world he didn't hate was an Egg McMuffin. Charlie Lightfoot.

“Who's Charlie Lightfoot?” Natalie said.

“Why did you say that, Natalie?” He was stunned.

“Why did I say
what?
”

“I was just thinking about Charlie Lightfoot, and you said his name! That's amazing! Like a psychic …”

“Valnikov, you
said
his name!”

“No, I was just
thinking
about old Charlie Lightfoot and …”

“And you mumbled Charlie Lightfoot. Jesus Christ!”

“I did?”

Then he started looking alarmed. Like when she'd shaken him awake from his dream. A bull of a man like this. Frightened. She
had
to get evidence. For his own good as well as the police department's. It wasn't just for herself. “I sometimes mutter and mumble, too, when I'm thinking hard about something,” she said. “It's no big thing.”

“But I wasn't even thinking hard,” he said, turning down Spring Street. “I just thought about old Charlie Lightfoot. He was my partner for years at homicide.”

“Did you like it there, Valnikov?” she asked, offering him a cigarette as he drove ever cautiously through the heavy downtown traffic, blinking into the smog-filtered sunshine.

“I seldom smoke,” he said. Then he thought about her question and said, “Well, I liked homicide work all right. I liked it okay. There's the prestige. You know, everybody thinks you're the varsity if you work homicide downtown. It was okay sometimes. Charlie Lightfoot was the best partner I ever had.” Then he added, “Of course
we'll
be good partners, I'm sure, Natalie.”

“Why did they …
you
decide to transfer to Hollywood dicks?” she asked suddenly.

“Well, I … I …” He didn't like that question. That was something that scared him lately. If he didn't like a question, if it troubled him, he couldn't quite get the handle. He wasn't even sure what she'd said. There was the murky picture again. All the sparkly shapes, something like a déjà vu experience. Something … something was there! If it would only take shape among the sparkly dots from the flashbulbs. If he could just see it once. And then it started to fade, as always. Come back. I almost had you that time!

Charlie Lightfoot. He had been a good partner. The best. A quiet man like Valnikov. Like Valnikov, years with a bad marriage. But a wife who hated him instead of one who drank and played. A child who drifted away. Strange, how they grow and drift and lose their respect for their fathers. The ancient inherited shame of fathers and sons. A good partner. The hardest single logistical task of police work. Find that partner. That good partner you can live with. Then keep him. Especially a homicide detective.

He hadn't answered her question about the transfer. Natalie was turned in her seat staring at him. She knew he had lost his direction. She knew he was somewhere else. Driving, just driving.

“Do you still see Charlie Lightfoot?” Natalie asked quietly. How do you make notes on this? What do you tell the captain? Did he have to go berserk before they'd believe her?

He was driving aimlessly. He'd lost his sense of direction. His whole life in this city and he was lost.

“Tell me about Charlie Lightfoot,” she said carefully.

He turned east on Fifth Street and looked at the sign as though he'd never been there. Then he said, “Charlie was old for his age. Twenty-six years on the job when he pulled the pin and went to Arizona. He bought a trailer there by the big river. Charlie was some kind of detective, though.”

“What could he do, Valnikov? Tell me about him. What could he do that you admired?”

“Admired,” Valnikov said. And now he was looking vague and confused, as confused as when he had awakened from the dream. He was starting to perspire. She noted that. She would remember when she went to the commander. When she described his symptoms to the department psychologist.

“Charlie could get through it all better than anyone,” Valnikov said. “Better than me. Do you know how many calls you get from policemen? From the bluesuits and even from soft clothes guys? Do you know how many murders they discover that aren't murders at all?”

“No. How many?”

“Lots. A vice cop finds an encyclopedia salesman dead in a motel room when they're staked out on a whore. He's lying on his back across the bed. His head is down to the floor. There's a pile of blood under his head. The carpet can't soak it all up.”

“A pile of blood,” Natalie said quietly.

He turned south on Wall Street and unbuttoned his collar.

It's a
pile
of blood, all right. It's coagulating and you'd need a shovel to pick it up. There's a crimson stalactite growing from his nose to the shovelful of blood beneath him. The vice cop is jumpy and excited. He's discovered a murder victim. Should we call the press, Sergeant? Latent prints specialists? The captain?

No. No press. No prints men. No captain. No murder
.

No murder? But, Sergeant. The blood! He's been beaten! Or shot! I didn't touch him. There must he a bullet wound!

No bullet wound. No shot. No murder. And then Charlie Lightfoot found the empty vial under the bed. He had probably told the doctor he needed his prescription refilled for his nerves. The prescription was one day old. His nerves wouldn't bother him anymore. He's swallowed, let's see, forty caps. That's almost two hundred milligrams, right? What did he wash it down with? Ah, yes. Here it is, Charlie. The glass is under the pillow
.

But the blood! Sergeant, the blood …

… is
from his nose. See the crimson stalactite? See it ooze and shine in the flashlight beam? There. It's coagulated from his nostril down to the shovelful of waxen blood on the floor. When he lost consciousness he fell back. His head's touching the floor. The blood begins draining, draining, draining. He's a white man but his face turns black. The blood has nowhere to go. It's draining, draining. Finally the blood does what it must, it bursts through his nose
.

But, Sergeant! His face, all dark and swollen. I found him belly up. He looks like a
…
like a
…

The encyclopedia salesman took with him to eternity the face of a turtle
.

Are you sure, Sergeant? It's not a murder? The pile of blood?

No, son, it's the law of gravity
.

“You were saying about the blood,” said Natalie Zimmerman.

He had not spoken for two minutes but he thought he had explained the pile of blood. He went on to conclude his point about Charlie Lightfoot.

“Yes, so you see, Charlie could just cut through. It makes your job so much easier. They call you so needlessly, these policemen. Even the veterans. They just don't know. But Charlie knows. Knew.”

“Knew what?” Natalie Zimmerman asked.

Charlie knew. How many murder themselves. God, how many!

First thing, you look for, Officer, did the victim commit suicide
.

Suicide? You kidding, Sergeant? There's an old woman in there, stuffed in her closet. Her drawers are down around her ankles! She's been buggered and murdered! Should we call latent prints? Should we call the press? The captain?

No, Officer, it's a suicide
.

A suicide! Wait a minute, I've been a cop twelve years!

Did you find it yet, Charlie?

Yes, here it is. She drank a can of Drãno. It unclogged her drain, all right
.

But, but, look, she's been sodomized. A rapist. A …

A bowel movement, Officer. She discovered pretty quick how fast that stuff unclogs the drain. Of course she wasn't really trying to unclog the drain, she was trying to go down the drain. All the way, and she did. But on the way she had to have a bowel movement. And she's sixty-five years old. And sixty-five-year-old ladies, even on the way down the drain, don't want to have bowel movements in their drawers. So she ran to the toilet but she never made it. And she fell sideways into the closet and that's blood and bile you see coming out her old rectum, all right. But nobody buggered her. And nobody killed her
.