From a Whisper to a Scream

by Charles de Lint

  The Vice detective was in his early thirties, a clean-shaven, slender man with dark blonde hair pulled back into a small ponytail at the nape of his neck. A small diamond stud glinted in his left earlobe. He was wearing worn jeans, hightops, and a black T-shirt with a dark tan cotton sports jacket over top, the sleeves pushed back over his elbows.

  Working clothes, Ryan thought. Mr. Big Shot Undercover Cop.

  Kelsey had been a hardworking cop with a solid rep both on the streets and with the department. The trouble was he also had a bad gambling habit, which had put him into Ryan to the tune of twenty-three large. There was no way he could keep up with the payments; but there was no way he’d roll over and put the finger on Ryan, working a little deal with the DA’s office.

  Working Vice was his life. He liked the contacts, liked the side benefits—free dope, payoffs, the women. He still made his collars, but now he also worked part-time for Ryan, which meant that Mickey’s crews didn’t get pulled in—at least not when Kelsey was heading the bust. Ryan didn’t put a strain on their relationship, but he made sure that Kelsey remembered just what he owed, and who he owed it to.

  Ryan straightened the photocopied reports now and returned them to their folder, then took a drag on his cigarette.

  “But it’s not enough,” he added.

  Kelsey spread his hands above the table. “That’s all they’ve got man.”

  “You’re going to have to dig a little deeper,” Ryan told him.

  “But—”

  “That’s the way it’s got to play. And keep me up to date on what’s going on as things develop. You still hanging out at Huxley’s?”

  Huxley’s was a yuppie bar on Stanton that lay on the southmost edge of the Zone, fronting Fitzhenry Park. It was where the young execs picked up their coke and each other.

  Kelsey nodded. “Yeah, I’m there from time to time.”

  “You get anything new, just drop it off behind the bar with Susie. She’ll make sure I get it.”

  Ryan could see the protest building up in Kelsey—a you’re-asking-for-too-much-this-time attitude, like Kelsey was suddenly finding himself a little backbone. His face got hard, his eyes flat. It was a look, Ryan decided, that’d just have the buttheads he usually dealt with shaking in their boots. Kelsey’s problem, this time out, was that Ryan wasn’t one of those buttheads. He just plain didn’t scare.

  He returned Kelsey’s hard stare with a mild, half-amused look that made Kelsey deflate. Ryan knew just what the Vice cop was thinking: He was locked into their relationship and there was no way out—not without taking himself down as well.

  It wasn’t like Ryan had forced Kelsey into the situation. The asshole had blown his wad all by himself. Ryan was just there with the solution. He had had the money Kelsey needed when his world was falling apart, and just to cover himself, Ryan also had some insurance on the deal. Anything happened to Ryan at this point in the proceedings, and his lawyer would be releasing the videotape that Ryan had insisted on shooting as they made their deal.

  “So what’s this all about then?” Kelsey asked.

  He wasn’t demanding now; he was asking. Ryan appreciated that.

  “Here comes the kicker,” he said. “You and me, we’re working the same side of the fence for a change.”

  A flicker of annoyance came and went in Kelsey’s eyes.

  “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, but then his gaze lowered to the folder on the table between them. “This guy’s hurting business,” he said.

  Ryan butted out his cigarette. “Mickey’s not too happy with him and you know what happens to people Mickey doesn’t like.”

  Kelsey nodded. They disappeared. No corpse, meant no charges could be laid. The perfect crime. That was the way the Irish mob operated.

  “Course when we do track this guy down,” Ryan added, “maybe we could see that you’re there for the finish. The guy’s got to die, no way out of that, but seeing how we’re doing the boys in blue a favor, Mickey might let you keep the body and bring it in. You could be a hero.”

  Ryan watched as a look of calculation settled on Kelsey’s features. If he brought in the Slasher, he’d be thinking, it could mean a promotion. A promotion meant a bigger salary. A bigger salary meant he’d be able to pay Ryan off that much sooner.

  Ryan smiled. Kelsey might read it as a promise, a you-scratch-myback-and-I’ll-scratch-yours smile between partners. But all Ryan was thinking was that if that dumb fuck thought he was ever getting out of this relationship, he wasn’t just a crooked cop, but a stupid one as well.

  He shook another cigarette free from his pack and tapped it against the folder.

  “This Fisher guy Brewer was planning to talk to today,” he asked. “He’s clean?”

  Kelsey nodded. “All that came up when we ran his sheet was a couple of parking violations. He paid them both.”

  “And he’s not connected?”

  Ryan knew that the Italians still had their fingers in the Allen & Roy Corporation for which Fisher worked. And if it was possible that Papa Jo-el was using the Slasher to send Mickey a message, then who was to say it wasn’t the wops? Sure, it wasn’t their style, but one thing you had to give them, they were adaptable.

  Kelsey shrugged. “Who knows? But do you think he’d come forward if he was in their pocket?”

  “There’s that,” Ryan said, making no commitment one way or the other. “I guess I’ll just have to talk to Fisher myself.”

  “Jesus,” Kelsey began. “Don’t—”

  “Do something crazy?” Ryan smiled. “I’m always covered, Joe. Remember that. How about you?”

  “The Slasher’s working my turf. Vice’s got more investigations running in the Zone than you’ve got operations. Anybody asks, I’m just doing my duty—looking for connections, trying to help out the overworked guys already on the case.”

  “Just keep yourself covered,” Ryan said.

  He rose from the table, cigarette dangling from his lip, and picked up the folder.

  “And remember, Joe,” he said before he left. “I don’t like surprises.”

  TEN

  “Now she’s more your type,” Meg said as Cindy retired to the bathroom to take a shower.

  Jim smiled. “I didn’t know I had a type.”

  “Everybody’s got certain types they go for; the trouble is we don’t usually end up with the right ones. Instead we tend to just repeat our old mistakes—over and over again.”

  Regret lay in her voice, but she tempered it with her own smile. Meg had never been one to brood.

  “And Cindy—” Jim began.

  “Isn’t a repeat of Susan, God forbid.”

  Jim laughed. “I think you’re jumping the gun a little.”

  “Am I?”

  Jim wasn’t sure. He hoped not, but then he didn’t know what he was looking for right now. He wasn’t even sure he was ready for another relationship, not this soon after the way the one with Susan had blown up. But whenever he looked at or even thought about Cindy, he found himself filling up with a warm glow that made him feel like he was seventeen years old again and trying to work up the courage to ask Jane O’Neill, the heartbreaker of grade twelve, Redding High, class of ’76, for a date.

  He never had gone on a date with Jane O’Neill, but this afternoon in the park, asking Cindy out for dinner had come out as just a natural part of the conversation’s flow. He’d found himself holding his breath, until she’d smiled and said, sure. Why not?

  “But I’ll have to go over to the Y and get cleaned up,” she’d added, “because I’m not going to a restaurant looking like this.”

  “You look great.”

  “Right.” She tugged at a lock of her hair, her lips shaping a moue. “Scruffy chic.”

  “No, really.”

  “I still want to take a shower.”

  “Well, then why don’t you do it at Meg’s?”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’d be such a great idea. I don’t even know the poor
woman, and I’m supposed to just pop in to use her shower?”

  Her protest was still genuine, but Jim could tell she was weakening.

  “You’ll really like her,” he said.

  Cindy shook her head and gave him a rueful grin. “You never give up, do you?”

  “Not a chance.”

  Cindy regarded him with a long, penetrating look.

  “So is she as nice as you?” she asked finally.

  Be still my heart, Jim thought.

  “Nicer,” he assured her.

  Which was how they had found themselves over at Meg’s apartment an hour or so later. After a moment or two of awkwardness at the front door during introductions, they were soon sitting out on Meg’s balcony, drinking wine and chatting as though they’d all been friends for years.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to come along tonight?” Jim asked Meg now as he rose from his chair. He wanted to shower and change himself, but he had to go back to his own apartment to do so.

  “Three’s company and all that,” Meg said, then added as Jim started to protest, “besides, I still have work to do.”

  On the way home Jim stopped off at the paper to develop the film he’d shot of Cindy that afternoon. After he’d run off a contact sheet, he chose a couple of the best shots and blew them up, then took them over to Grant’s desk.

  Ben Grant was a balding, heavyset man who looked like an exlinebacker. He was The Star’s chief photographer and Jim’s immediate supervisor. Unlike many of the photographers Jim knew, Grant’s real passion was repairing old lenses and cameras; he had a workshop at home that would rival the best camera repair shop in the city. Jim never ceased to be amazed at how delicately Grant’s big, clumsylooking fingers could work the finest details on a repair job.

  Those fingers took the photos from Jim’s hands. Grant gave them a quick, appreciative glance.

  “Very nice. She a friend of yours?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “She looks like she’s worth it.”

  “So what do you think?” Jim asked. “Can you use any of them? I like this one the best.”

  He pointed out a profile shot where Cindy was leaning into a long note, eyes closed, back curved downward. You could almost hear the sax.

  Ben nodded. “I’d’ve picked the same. We’ll run it on the cover of the Living section for tomorrow’s paper. Have you got any copy for one of the hotshot terminalists to write up?”

  Jim handed him a piece of paper with Cindy’s name and a few details about how she was supporting herself by busking on her cross-country trip.

  “I know you’re off this weekend,” Grant went on, “but I need someone to cover a concert over at the Oxford tonight. Interested?”

  “Sorry, Ben. I’ve got a date.”

  Grant looked down at the photo again.

  “It’s not what you’re thinking,” Jim said. “She didn’t even know I was bringing this by.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  The amusement in Grant’s eyes reminded Jim too much of the rumors of how Lance Friedman, over at The Weekend Sun, had got some of his “Page Three” girls to pose for him.

  “Seriously,” Jim began. “It’s not—”

  Grant held up a hand. “It was a joke.”

  “And such a funny one.”

  “Get out of here, McGann,” Grant growled, but the good humor remained in his eyes. “And have yourself a good time.”

  Jim had made reservations at a restaurant called Shooters in Lower Crowsea’s Market area. He left his car parked at Meg’s apartment, and they took the streetcar down Lee Street, since he knew he wouldn’t find a parking place in the Market on a Saturday night. Cindy loved the streetcar. It was one of two lines that still remained running in the city, left over from the old days when they were pulled by horses; the other ran east-west on McKennit. The metal wheels rattled on the old tracks, and the car swung back and forth with a gentle rocking motion at each stop and start. Cindy wore a big grin the whole way down the twelve-block ride from Meg’s apartment.

  He’d picked Shooters because it was one of the few places in town that played jazz as background music, so he thought Cindy’d like it. The place was a little trendy, but then the whole Market had become so over the past decade. There was a lot of wood in the furnishings, fine art prints on the walls, waiters and waitresses who introduced themselves by their first names when they took your order.

  The hostess showed them to a table by the window and asked if they wanted anything to drink before their meal. Cindy ordered a glass of the house white; Jim decided to try the dark ale that they had on tap that day.

  “This place is great,” Cindy said after their drinks had come.

  “Yeah. I thought you’d like the music.”

  She nodded. The Duke Ellington Orchestra was playing softly over the house sound system, and her fingers were tapping out the rhythm on the tabletop.

  “I love the tunes from this era,” she said. “The Duke, Goodman, all those guys. I can get into playing fusion, but I don’t much listen to it.”

  The waitress—“Hi, my name’s Jenny”—came by to take their order. They both ordered seafood: deep-fried shrimp to start with, then pasta with a clam sauce. Cindy stuck to her wine, but Jim switched to a light bottled ale.

  The food was terrific, but the company, Jim thought, was infinitely better. After all the hard times he’d gone through with Susan, and then the self-imposed period of celibacy that had followed the breakup, when he just couldn’t face the idea of trying to deal with any kind of romantic entanglement, he’d forgotten just how intoxicating the opening moves in a relationship could be.

  For he could see this growing into a relationship. God knew, long before the end of the meal, he was head over heels. He wasn’t sure how Cindy felt, but she was sending back all the right signals. In the back of his mind, he knew that she was just passing through town. She could leave tomorrow morning. But somehow, at this moment, that possibility was too undefined, too distant and vague, to be of any immediate concern.

  What he liked best about being with her was how relaxed he felt. There was no pressure to put on a good show; he could just be himself. It was the same easy feeling he had when he was hanging out with Meg, except, unlike the friendship he had with Meg, the relaxed interaction with Cindy was underlaid by the barely contained fire and spark of an intense sexual attraction.

  It wasn’t that he found Meg unattractive. It was just that because of how their relationship had worked out, he thought of her more as a sister.

  Cindy seemed anything but.

  When she reached across the table to make a point and touched his hand, heat from her fingers raced up his arm, fanning the heat that had already gathered in the base of his spine When she flicked back her hair, his gaze locked on the smooth white skin of her throat; he could almost see her pulse quickening there, just as his own was. And when he looked in her eyes, he just got lost in their flickering light-blue depths.

  Down, boy, he told himself, tearing his gaze away. A moment longer and he’d be climbing over the table.

  He looked out the window, hoping something could distract him long enough to allow him at least to regulate his breathing, but what he saw only served to fuel a different kind of fire. Niki was walking by.

  “That’s her!” he cried.

  Cindy turned to look, but he was already out of his seat, hurrying for the door.

  “Be right back,” he told the surprised hostess as he tried to make his way through the crowd of waiting patrons as quickly as possible without jostling anyone.

  It seemed to take him forever to get out onto the street, but she was still there. He couldn’t remember the name that Cindy had told him earlier in the afternoon. All that came to mind was the scrawled letters beside the red lips of the graffiti he’d come to associate with her.

  “Niki,” he cried.

  The girl turned toward him, and all the color in her already pale features seemed just to wash away. Sh
e gave him a look of such utter terror that it stopped him dead in midstep, frozen where he stood, confusion rearing in his mind.

  What the hell’s she so scared of? he thought.

  She took advantage of his momentary hesitation and bolted. Before he could think to follow her, she was already around a corner and gone. He started in pursuit, but then knew he just had to let her go.

  Something about him had frightened her and he found he couldn’t deal with that. He’d never had anybody scared of him before in his life. And she hadn’t just been frightened—she’d been terrified.

  What the hell was going on here?

  Before he could pursue that train of thought, he became aware of how Niki’s flight and his own present confusion had attracted attention from the other pedestrians on the sidewalk. People were regarding him a little oddly, questions in their eyes that he didn’t even have answers to himself. Feeling uncomfortable, he retreated back into Shooters. His mind was still all muddy and numb as he made his way back to the table. When he returned to his seat, he found Cindy, regarding him with a kind of wariness in her eyes.

  “What—?” she began.

  “I don’t know what—” he said at the same time.

  They both fell silent.

  Talk about screwing up a perfect evening, Jim thought. Je-sus. Two minutes ago they’d been lost in each other, but now there was a wall up between them.

  Thanks a lot, kid, he thought to Niki.

  “All I did was call her name,” he said.

  “She looked terrified.”

  Jim nodded. “You’re telling me. I’ve never seen anybody look that scared before.”

  “And you …?”

  “I swear, Cindy. I never saw her before except for from a distance, taking her picture at those crime scenes. And I’ve never spoken to her until just now—if you can call that talking to somebody.”

  He felt like shit. He wished he’d never seen Niki last night, never taken her picture, never gotten this crazy idea that she could be involved with the Slasher—not if it meant that chasing Niki down had screwed up whatever had been starting with Cindy. If he’d never seen Niki, never made that crazy connection with her and the graffiti …