I put my arms around Kay and held her. “Ssssh. Fire and Ice are on the job, so rest easy.”
Kay shook herself free. “You don’t know Bobby. You don’t know the things he made me do.”
I brushed a lock of hair away from her eyes. “Yes, I do, and I don’t care. I mean I do care, but—”
Kay said, “I know what you mean,” and pushed me away. I let her go, knowing if I pursued it she’d tell me a shitload of things I didn’t want to hear. The front door slammed, and I sat down on the steps, glad to be alone to sort things out.
Four months ago, I was a radio car hack going nowhere. Now I was a Warrants detective instrumental in passing a million-dollar bond issue, with a double shine killing on my record. Next month I would be thirty years old with five years on the job, eligible to take the Sergeant’s Exam. If I passed it, then played my cards right, I could be detective lieutenant before I was thirty-five, and that was just the beginning.
I started to get itchy, so I went inside and puttered around the living room, thumbing through magazines, checking out the bookshelves for something to read. Then I heard the sound of water drumming hard, coming from the rear of the house. I walked back, seeing the wide-open bathroom door, feeling the steam, knowing it was all for me.
Kay was standing nude under the shower. Her expression stayed fixed in no expression at all, even when our eyes met. I took in her body, from freckled breasts with dark nipples to wide hips and flat stomach, then she pirouetted for me. I saw old knife scars criss-crossing her backside from thighs to spine, choked back tremors and walked away wishing she hadn’t showed me on the day I killed two men.
II. 9th and Norton
Chapter 7
The phone woke me up early Wednesday morning, cutting off a dream featuring Tuesday’s Daily News headline—”Fire and Ice Cops KO Negro Thugs”—and a beautiful blonde with Kay’s body. Figuring it was the newshounds who’d been pestering me since the shoot-out, I fumbled the receiver onto the nightstand and dived back to slumberland. Then I heard, “Rise and shine, partner!” and picked it up.
“Yeah, Lee.”
“You know what day this is?”
“The fifteenth. Payday. You called me up at six A.M. to—” I stopped when I caught an edge of nervous glee in Lee’s voice. “Are you okay?”
“I’m swell. I ran Mulholland at a hundred ten, played house with Kay all day yesterday. Now I’m bored. Feel like doing some police work?”
“Keep going.”
“I just talked to a snitch who owes me big. He says Junior Nash has got a fuck pad—a garage on Coliseum and Norton, in back of a green apartment building. Race you there? Loser buys the beer at the fights tonight?”
New headlines danced in front of my eyes. I said, “You’re on,” hung up and dressed in record time, then ran out to my car and gunned it the eight or nine miles to Leimert Park. And Lee was already there, leaning against his Ford, parked at the curb in front of the only structure on a huge block of vacant lots—a puke-green bungalow court with a two-story shack at the rear.
I pulled up behind him and got out. Lee winked and said, “You lost.”
I said, “You cheated.”
He laughed. “You’re right, I called from a pay phone. Reporters been bothering you?”
I gave my partner a slow eyeballing. He seemed relaxed but itchy underneath, with his old jocular front back in place. “I holed up. You?”
“Bevo Means came by, asked me how it felt. I told him I wouldn’t want it for a steady diet.”
I pointed to the courtyard. “You talk to any of the tenants? Check for Nash’s car?”
Lee said, “No vehicle, but I talked to the manager. He’s been renting Nash that shack in the back. He’s used it a couple of times to entertain poon, but the manager hasn’t seen him in a week or so.”
“You shake it?”
“No, waiting for you.”
I drew my .38 and pressed it to my leg; Lee winked and aped me, and we walked through the courtyard to the shack. Both floors had flimsy-looking wooden doors, with rickety steps leading to the second story. Lee tried the bottom door; it creaked open. We pressed ourselves to the wall on opposite sides of it, then I wheeled and entered, my gun arm extended.
No sound, no movement, only cobwebs and a wood floor strewn with yellowed newspapers and bald tires. I backed out; Lee took the lead up the steps, walking on his toes. At the landing, he gave the doorknob a jiggle, shook his head no and kicked the door in, clean off its hinges.
I ran up the stairs; Lee moved inside gun first. At the top, I saw him rehoistering his piece. He said, “Okie trash,” and made a gesture that took in the whole room. I stepped over the door and nodded my head in agreement.
The crib reeked of rotgut wine. A bed fashioned from two folded-out car seats took up most of the floor space; it was covered with upholstery stuffing and used rubbers. Empty muscatel short dogs were piled in corners, and the one window was streaked with cobwebs and dirt. The stench got to me, so I walked over and opened the window. Looking out, I saw a group of uniformed cops and men in civilian clothes standing on the sidewalk on Norton, about halfway down the block to9th Street. All of them were staring at something in the weeds of a vacant lot; two black-and-whites and an unmarked cruiser were parked at the curb. I said, “Lee, come here.”
Lee stuck his head out the window and squinted. “I think I see Millard and Sears. They were supposed to be catching squeals today, so maybe—”
I ran out of the pad, down the steps and around the corner to Norton, Lee at my heels. Seeing a coroner’s wagon and a photo car screech to a halt, I sprinted. Harry Sears was knocking back a drink in full view of a half dozen officers; I glimpsed horror in his eyes. The photo men had moved into the lot and were fanning out, pointing their cameras at the ground. I elbowed my way past a pair of patrolmen and saw what it was all about.
It was the nude, mutilated body of a young woman, cut in half at the waist. The bottom half lay in the weeds a few feet away from the top, legs wide open. A large triangle had been gouged out of the left thigh, and there was a long, wide cut running from the bisection point down to the top of the pubic hair. The flaps of skin beside the gash were pulled back; there were no organs inside. The top half was worse: the breasts were dotted with cigarette burns, the right one hanging loose, attached to the torso only by shreds of skin; the left one slashed around the nipple. The cuts went all the way down to the bone, but the worst of the worst was the girl’s face. It was one huge purpled bruise, the nose crushed deep into the facial cavity, the mouth cut ear to ear into a smile that leered up at you, somehow mocking the rest of the brutality inflicted. I knew I would carry that smile with me to my grave.
Looking up, I felt cold all over; my breath came in spurts. Shoulders and arms brushed me and I heard a jumble of voices: “There’s not a goddamned drop of blood—” “This is the worst crime on a woman I’ve seen in my sixteen years—” “He tied her down. Look, you can see the rope burns on her ankles—” Then a long, shrill whistle sounded.
The dozen or so men quit jabbering and looked at Russ Millard. He said calmly, “Before it gets out of hand, let’s put the kibosh on something. If this homicide gets a lot of publicity, we’re going to get a lot of confessions. That girl was disemboweled. We need information to eliminate the loonies with, and that’s it. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t tell your wives, don’t tell your girlfriends, don’t tell any other officers. Harry?”
Harry Sears said, “Yeah, Russ,” palming his flask so the boss wouldn’t see it. Millard caught the act and rolled his eyes in disgust. “No reporters are to view the body. You photo men, take your pictures now. You coroner’s men, put a sheet over the body when they finish. You patrolmen, stake up a crime scene perimeter from the street all the way to six feet in back of the body. Any reporter who tries to cross it, you arrest immediately. When the lab men get here to examine the body, you move the reporters over to the opposite side of the street. Harry, you call Lieutenant Haskins at University Station and tell him to send over every man he can spare for canvassing.”