The Violet Hour (9 page)

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Authors: Richard Montanari

BOOK: The Violet Hour
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Now, though, he had a solitary snapshot left. Meg, smiling, her face forever young; her eyes, evergreen. He had long since donated her clothes to Catholic charity.
Everything, of course, but her beret. The raspberry-colored beret still hung on the rack by the front door, as if it had all been a cruel hoax, as if the strong young woman who could all but wrestle him into submission hadn’t become a ghost in front of his eyes, as if one day he would open the door and find the beret gone. And that would mean that Meg was at the store, that Meg was coming back.
Every day, though, the raspberry beret remained where it was. A warm whisper of Margaret Jane Connelly at the bottom of the stairs.
And despite a half dozen one-nighters – faceless bodies in his bed, always gone by morning – there had been no woman since Meg who had turned his head, his heart. Yet he knew it was time to move on.
He was ready.
The day after he had paid the last of the medical bills, the day after he had gotten deliriously drunk at the accomplishment, his ancient computer decided to commit the digital equivalent of suicide.
On that day Nicky knew he had to act fast, for without a computer, he had no way to earn a living. He also knew that there wasn’t a bank or a finance company this side of Indonesia that would lend him a dime. So he did the next dumbest thing. He let his cousin Paulie talk him into seeing a ‘friend’ of his, a loan shark named Frank Corso, a six-three, three-hundred-pound blond gypsy miscreant who, as a ‘favor’ to cousin Paulie, gave Nicky a good rate and monthly payments.
Paulie set up the meet, Nicky got his four thousand dollars and bought the best Apple laptop computer he could get, along with printer, scanner, digital camera, and back-up drives.
For the past ten months Nicky managed to make the payments, never touching the principal. Except this month he was late. And so Frank Corso had shown up at Nicky’s door six days ago and informed him that he would return in one week and, at that time, would leave the premises with either the four large, or Nick Stella’s testicles in his hand. What Frank had failed to tell Nicky at their first meeting was that, if you miss a payment by more than two weeks, you suddenly owed the whole principal.
It was a good thing he was Paulie’s friend.
On the other hand, it was the first time in Nicky Stella’s life he found four thousand dollars to be a bargain for anything.
The phone rang during
General Hospital.
‘This is Nicholas Stella.’
‘This is T’ the voice said brightly, immediately recognizable as Willie T. He sounded playful, content. It probably meant he had recently chewed some gang-banger a new asshole or dropped a midlevel crack dealer with the fourteen-shot nine-millimeter pistol he carried under his arm. It was a perfect time to ask for a favor.
‘Willie T,’ Nicky exclaimed, trying to sound as street as possible. ‘Mah man.’
‘Where y’at?’
Willie T sometimes drifted into a New Orleans kind of drawl, and Nicky wasn’t sure, at those times, if he was offering a how ya doin’ greeting by way of his where y’at, the way they did in Louisiana, or actually asking him where he was. Seeing as Willie T had just dialed his number, he chose the former.
‘I’m good, Willie. Taking care of business.’
‘Ain’t seen your name in the papers lately.’
Tell me about it
, Nicky thought. ‘Yeah, well, trying, you know? It’s one of the reasons I’m calling. I’m working on a cover story for the
Chronicle
. But I have bigger plans for it.’
‘Yeah?’ Willie T said, sounding genuinely impressed. ‘So what can I do for you?’
‘Well, were you by any chance in on this case about the priest who overdosed?’
‘Heard somethin’ about it.’
‘He was my cousin. . . .’ Nicky lied. ‘John Angelino was his name.’
‘Sorry, man.’
‘The paper said the junk had a red tiger and a blue monkey on it.’
‘Yeah, right. I didn’t catch the case, though. If there isn’t anybody buying or selling it, I don’t get the call.’
‘Have you run across the tiger and monkey marks before?’
‘No,’ Willie T said. ‘Don’t ring a bell. But these dealers change these marks all the time.’
‘Sounds Chinese though, right?’
‘Yeah. I would say. They’re really into that animal shit.’
The first push. ‘Got any connections on the local Chinese chain?’
‘Yeah,’ Willie T said, a little skeptically, recognizing the pressure. ‘A few. Why?’
Nicky decided to just say it out loud. He closed his eyes, spoke clearly. ‘I want to talk to the dealer, Willie. Some midlevel guy. You know what I mean? No holds barred, completely anonymous interview. We’ll get some really arty shots of him in shadow. I’ll quote him in dialect, even. Real street-theater piece. He’ll be a fuckin’ star. It’ll get him laid for years.’
Willie T laughed, a little more patronizingly than Nicky would have liked.
‘I’m serious,’ Nicky said.
‘Number one, drug dealers need absolutely no help gettin’ pussy. None. Drug dealers got pussy like you and me got gas. Like
all
the motherfuckin’ time. Okay? And two, this is some dangerous shit you’re talkin’ about, man. I mean, do you know who these people are?’
‘Hey . . . did I not ride around with you and see first-hand?’
‘You think that’s it? Man . . .’
Up came the Italian. ‘I know what I’m talking about. I know
who
I’m talking about. You think I discovered drugs when I met you? Gimme some fuckin’ credit, Willie.’
Willie T remained silent.
Nicky continued. ‘Look . . . I want to know if he has any more conscience about selling killer shit than he does about the other shit. I mean, I’m not on some crazy crusade because this guy was my cousin,’ he said. ‘I just want to know. It’ll be a great story.’
‘You got brass, Nicky. I will give you that.’
Second push. ‘All I need you to do is find out who’s dealing it. Get me an intro. I’ll do the rest.’
‘Where you gonna be?’
‘Around,’ Nicky said. ‘You tell me where and when.’
Nicky heard Willie T cover the phone with his hand. After a few seconds, Willie T said, ‘I’ll call you back.’
Later, while Nicky was at a Fellini double feature at the Cinematheque, hoping to avoid Frank Corso at the door to his apartment –
Satyricon
and
Roma
, as if his life wasn’t bizarre enough – Willie T left a message. Willie T said that there was only one man to see about the red-tiger heroin.
The good news? The good news was that Willie T told him where he could find the guy, and how to get on the drug dealer’s good side.
The bad news?
The man’s name was Rat Boy Choi.
13
 
Dr Benjamin Matthew Crane, one of the most highly respected plastic surgeons in all of western Pennsylvania, graduate of Case Western Reserve University and Harvard Medical School, sat on a lounge chair, in the shadows behind his house. He was twenty feet from the sliding glass doors that led to his dining room, and the expensive track lighting that looked, from Dr Crane’s somewhat inebriated and aroused perspective, like black cocks dangling over his wife’s head, spewing thin streams of sperm-light.
Elizabeth Crane walked out of the room, down the hallway, toward their bedroom. Benjamin Crane hoped she was off slipping into a new outfit. He was ready for a new outfit.
Behind him, the trees shimmered in a late October breeze. Above him the clouds lashed a thin veil of purple over a bone-colored moon. Midnight. Next to him, on a wrought-iron end table, sat a large pitcher of vodka martinis, now half-empty. Next to that, a compact Sony video camera, top of the line.
Dr Crane – forty-three and balding, tanned year-round, always in Milano high fashion – wore a powder blue scrub set from the hospital, no shoes. He had had so much lightning-quick sex in hospital settings over the years that he almost needed the feel of the soft cotton against his skin to get a hard-on these days. The Grey Goose helped sometimes. It helped soften the edges of his fantasy, helped to putty in the imperfections that had begun to erode his wife.
But Elizabeth always knew what to do, knew all the moves. And in the proper light, in the proper mood, she still looked very good. The teak-colored hair, long and thick and luminescent. The eggshell skin.
He poured himself another martini as Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted to Love’ came thundering forth from the house. The sliding glass door was closed, but the music was loud. This fed his fantasy, of course, and Elizabeth knew it. It meant she trusted him completely tonight. He wondered what she would be wearing when she came around the corner, into the dining room, and was instantly gratified when she stepped into sight wearing a very short red cocktail dress, red elbow-length gloves.
The phone game.
She answered the phone that wasn’t ringing, spoke animatedly into it, a game they often played: she the fiery film actress; he, the debauched producer, watching her talk dirty to an ex-lover.
Dr Crane observed her from his cove of darkness, his eyes running slowly up her legs, over her hips. In this light, at this distance, she was Rita Hayworth at her fuck-me prime. He was a very lucky man at the moment.
He was just about to untie the top of his scrubs and begin to deal with his now furious erection when a shadow crossed the patio stones in front of him.
Someone was there.
Someone was
right there.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Benjamin Crane jumped from his chair, his hand clutched to his chest.
A broad-shouldered man about his size stepped from the shadows, stopped. There was something in each of the man’s hands. ‘Hi, Doc,’ the man said, softly.
Inside, Elizabeth Crane sat on a dining room chair, drew the hem of her dress up to her thigh, continued to talk into the phone. She reached into her bag, produced a cigarette, lit it, drew deeply.
Outside, her husband looked around for a weapon. There was nothing. He froze.
‘I’ve always liked her in that dress,’ the man said. ‘Very sexy.’
Benjamin Crane tried to gather his senses. He looked carefully at the man and recognition soon dawned. ‘You.’
‘Yes,’ the man said, stepping closer.
‘What the hell do you want? I-I thought we were through. Years ago. I thought we were even.’ Benjamin Crane tried to see what the man carried. The left hand held something boxy, black. The other hand was turned away, hidden from view.
‘Even? Are you serious?’
‘That was a hell of a lot of work I did. For
free
.’
‘That was a long time ago,’ the man said. ‘And nothing’s free.’
‘But you said—’
‘What I said was, your secret was safe with me.’ The man stepped closer, two full steps. ‘I said I’d never go to the police and tell them about your role that night. I haven’t.’
Elizabeth Crane unzipped her dress, stepped out of it. She wore a short black slip. She sat back down on a dining room chair, facing the window, and began to run her hands over her thighs, her stomach.
‘So tell me what happened that night, Dr Crane. Tell me in your own words.’
Benjamin Crane glanced at the window, back. ‘You were there. Why do you—’
‘Who was the pirate?’
‘I-I’m not sure,’ Benjamin Crane said. ‘After all these years, I always assumed—’
‘Don’t lie to me, Doc,’ the man said. He was inches away now. Then, from his right hand, came a flash of silver. Benjamin Crane glanced down, recognized the scalpel as his own. The man who stood in front of him now had demanded it as a souvenir so many years ago, a badge of his courage. He looked back at the man’s face, his own handiwork now more visible in the moonlight. Crazily, Benjamin Crane thought he had done a hell of a job.
‘Johnny Angel’s dead,’ the man said, an expression of mock sadness on his face. ‘Just like you.’
Benjamin Matthew Crane turned to run, but the man slammed a Taser unit into the side of his neck and instead he slumped to the ground, his limbs flung spastically out to the sides, his brain now a vicious tangle of unfettered impulses. The man fell instantly on top of him, pinning his shoulders to the damp earth. He held a shock of Benjamin Crane’s hair in his left hand, the scalpel in his right.
The woman in the window unsnapped her bra and let it fall from her shoulders. She moved suggestively to the music for a while before she sat back down, faced away from the window, spread her legs, and began to fondle her breasts.
A few moments later, as the blade of the scalpel was drawn across his face for the first time, Dr Crane remembered, in agony, a question he’d pondered for years, a question about how it
felt
.
The blade returned, again and again.

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