It was a hell of a thing, what was happening to his hometown, R.J. thought. Corporate raiders and subway marauders, grime and soot and social decay in every quarter. Wasn’t even a good place to visit anymore.
But it got into your blood, and R.J. didn’t think he could live anywhere else. Home wasn’t always where you were born. He’d come east from California for college and never left. Some places you could live and never belong. But R.J. Brooks belonged in Manhattan.
He glanced at a sketch of the layout of Burkette’s hideaway and hoped Tina’s relationship with a member of her husband’s security detail was enough to guarantee the reliability of the floor plan.
Burkette’s damned bodyguard was another worry. The night before R.J. and the brute had tangled. It hadn’t been much fun. R J. would have to work fast and keep out of the big guy’s way.
He shinnied up a utility pole in the alley behind the Burkette place, having already scoped out the power line that connected to the brownstone.
A phone call from the mother of his son was really eating at him. He shouldn’t have popped off about the reason his support check was late this month. He’d spent his limited funds out of humanitarian concerns—the creature comforts of one R.J. Brooks. In other words, he’d eaten his customary two meals every other day whether he was hungry or not.
But this time Billie Sue wasn’t talking money. It was Danny. “He’s your son too,” she’d said. “And you’re no better daddy to him than your grand old man was to you.”
R.J. cut the power line with the steel cutters from his belt. It had been a rotten thing to say, but maybe Billie Sue was right. Maybe he needed to get closer to the kid somehow. Hell, R.J. had needed somebody to show him how to behave. His son was no different—and he couldn’t be getting much help from Billie Sue.
The kid was in trouble at school again, hot Cavalier blood boiling in his veins. R.J. didn’t understand his son any better than he’d understood Billie Sue. What had he ever seen in that Southern flower child of his youth? Firm breasts and gentle hands. Ready mouth and white teeth nipping at the strictures of the Establishment. Let the sun shine. Let the sun shine in. Booze and pills. Pills and booze. Sour breath morning, noon, and night. Let the sun shine in.
Halfway up the pole R.J. realized he was short of breath. He tried to clear his lungs with three deep breaths. Ought to go on a diet before the Christmas glut, he thought. Maybe level off around a hundred and sixty. Mom was right: I’m carrying too much weight for 5’11”. It was damned hard keeping it down, though, after getting off cigars and booze. Needed to exercise more. Live dangerously, jog in the Park.
He hadn’t heard from his mother, beyond one quick phone call and a birthday card, since that lunch almost a year before. He hadn’t spent much time feeling bad about that, either.
R.J. heard a renewed burst of sirens from uptown and looked at his watch. Twenty minutes had passed. They must be getting it on by now. He made his way off the pole and onto the lip of a stone fence that enclosed the brownstone’s garden.
He sneezed, almost falling. Then he sneezed again—four, five, six times before the eruption subsided. A goddamn serial sneezer. He struggled to keep his balance until his eyes cleared. Christ, he’d be shot for sport by the first insomniac who poked his head outside for a breath of fresh air pollution.
To have come to this, he thought, shaking his head at the stereotyped movie image of the jaundiced private eye. Burning cigarettes dangling from the corner of his mouth, dark glass of rotgut cradled in his hands, the tinny clink of piano keys in the hazy lounge of some gin joint on the other side of the world. Waiting for her to walk in, see…
He moved along the lip of the fence toward the drainpipe that ran from ground level up the side of the building. Who was he trying to kid? He hated what he did, but he was exactly where he wanted to be. It suited him. He wanted this outsider independence. He trusted no man, woman, or institution to shape his existence. The world was a mess, and most people were going to hell in a handbasket. That was all right with him. He’d even helped a few get there.
“I’m a simple guy,” he’d told Tina Burkette when she hired him. “I have a job to do. I go at it the most direct way I know. One step at a time. Eventually I get where I’m going.” They’d been heading for the hot tub in the Burkette mansion on Long Island. “You know what he’d do to you,” Tina had giggled while she decorated him with bubbles, “he catch you paddling in my bath water?”
R.J. shifted an unlit cigar to the other side of his mouth and stepped off the fence onto a wall bracket that secured the drainpipe. He almost lost his footing as a face peered at him from a window—his reflection. Sam Spade, my ass. He looked more like a cat burglar with delusions of grandeur. He had his fictional mentor’s devil streak, all right, and the jutting jaw line, but his eyes were cobalt blue, like his mother’s; and although he could talk as tough as his crusty old man when the chips were down, he usually tried to reason his way out of scrapes before resorting to rough stuff.
But there were some burdens you just couldn’t run away from. Genetics, for one thing. Some said he had his mother’s sultry mannerisms, and what he remembered of his combative father’s knotted physique and eccentric lisp. But he’d also shared their devotion to strong drink.
He wondered briefly why he was thinking about his parents and tried to bring his mind back to the job before he fell off and got a fence post up his ass. I could use a shot now, he thought, licking at the dryness in his mouth. Rye, Scotch, bourbon. Crankcase oil.
He clutched the drainpipe and pulled his other foot away from the fence, hoping the pipe would support his weight. Hanging there, he rubbed nervous perspiration out of the scar-dimple on his chin, the result of a childhood car accident, and felt his pulse quicken as he considered the part booze had played in his life. Relationships destined to self-destruct were at the top of the list.
A self-recovered alcoholic, R.J. hadn’t gotten high on anything but a little weed in a decade. But where was being sober getting him? In those years he’d seen it all: adulterous spouses, bestial employers, crooked unionists, representatives of the cloth with a taste for altar boys, and corrupt government officials at every level. He exercised his talents in a human cesspool.
Maybe he should pack it all in and take the kid down to Key West. Buy into one of those charter boat outfits. Live a life of sun, sea, and middle-class normality. Forget the Tina Burkettes and their precious spoils. Forget Billie Sue’s anger. Forget his unforgettable mother and father. Forget—
He almost jumped over the fence when a garage door across the alley slammed and a car engine suddenly fired up.
It was time to get moving. The old man would be approaching paydirt by now. The bodyguard was probably on his second shot with the Puerto Rican housekeeper downstairs in the servants’ quarters.
R.J. slipped his infrared goggles into place and eased onto the wrought-iron railing of the balcony.
* * *
Uptown at a posh Manhattan hotel, an aging house detective swallowed thickly. “Jaysus,” he said. “Imagine getting it like that. Right in the saddle.”
The murdered couple lay entangled on a massage table in the bathroom, almost as if their positions had been staged. The woman’s silky blond hair fanned out over one shoulder, where fresh blood stained a rose-shaped birthmark.
“Don’t touch anything,” warned the first policeman to arrive. “Crime Scene Unit will rip me a new one if I mess this one up.”
“Don’t I know it?” said the house dick. “Wasn’t I twenty-three years on the Force myself?”
“And then you got caught, huh?” said the cop. The house detective turned away. That was a little too close to the truth for his liking.
“Looks like the same bullet got ’em both,” the cop went on, bending over to get a better look without moving closer.
“No shit,” said the house man, still sulking a little, “but the shooter popped her another one for good measure. Look at the goo above her ea
r—two bits says there’s a hunk of lead in there.”
The woman had been forced forward over the man’s splayed body by the back wound. Her chin rested on his forehead with her face turned away from the door. Her eyes were open.
A rose had been jammed into the bullet wound, and a handful of Polaroid pictures were fanned out around her.
“Huh,” the house man said. “Anyway, looks like somebody had a good time with her first.” He nodded at the marks along much of the visible skin on the woman’s back. “Did that with pliers, most likely.” He shook his head. “I remember, must have been eighteen, nineteen years ago—”
“Holy shit,” the young cop interrupted. “I just got a good look at her face. Over there in the mirror, lookit—see what I mean?”
“Sure, they must have been watching everything they was doing while they was doin’ it. I wonder if they saw the killer.”
He glanced at the young cop and noticed the kid’s eyes were still bugging out. “Say, what the hell’s the matter with you, kid? This your first stiff or something?”
The young cop turned popping eyes on the older man. “Jesus Christ, man—don’t you know who she used to be?”
* * *
The balcony outside the window was no larger than the cheapest box seat on Broadway. R.J. shivered at the thought, remembering the last show he’d gone to with his mother. He hated the theater, and her artsy-fartsy friends, her whole world. There hadn’t been any use trying to pretend. He’d had an awful time and she knew it.
It was pitch black on the balcony, but with his goggles in place he saw a reddish glow through the window. Heat radiated from the naked bodies inside. No sign of the dreaded bodyguard. Last night the hulk had slipped up on R.J. when he’d been parked at the end of the block, watching the brownstone. Wearing jackboots, a bomber jacket, and the glazed look of a steroidal linebacker, he’d tapped on R.J.’s window.
“Man’s getting pissed, see?” the goon had said, sounding like an adenoidal pit bull. “He don’t like all this cat-and-mouse shit. Says why don’t you just ask for what you want like a man.” He flipped a Polaroid into R.J.’s lap. “This the kind of stuff you’re looking for?”
R.J. frowned at the image of a man and woman in criminal conversation in a sudsy hot tub. He looked pretty good, but the picture just didn’t do justice to Mrs. Burkette. Anyway, the message was clear: Fuck Off.
“If I leave now, will your boss punch my time clock?” he asked. The bodyguard didn’t laugh. Instead, without taking his eyes off R.J.’s, he reached down and grabbed the frame of the car.
He shook. So did the car. His eyes were narrow and close-set like a nun’s.
R.J. took a deep breath as his car did a samba against the curb. His weapon of choice was a Bulldog .44 Special, short, ugly, hammer-bobbed and barrel vented near the muzzle to cut down on the jarring recoil. He wore it clipped behind his belt. Some of his colleagues thought it was a bit much, but R.J. liked the security of having his special edge—the Big E, he called it. He never drew the weapon unless he meant to use it. But he never gave a crook an even break.
He was thinking hard about jamming the Big E down this over-muscled bozo’s throat when the man snarled, “Get outta that car!” He reached for R.J.’s door handle.
R.J. put a hand under the dashboard and flipped a switch. His theft alarm started screaming, a sound like a Nazi klaxon from an old black-and-white thriller.
The bodyguard froze, then frantically looked around. “Crazy sonofabitch,” he mumbled, backing into the shadows nervously, “I’ll get you for this.”
R.J. wasn’t looking forward to another confrontation. With a wary glance inside, he tested the window’s latch. It wasn’t locked. He wouldn’t have to break the glass. As he eased it open, he could hear them sloshing around on the water bed.
“Oh, God,” Burkette groaned. “Oh my fucking God. I came so hard I’ve gone blind.”
“I think something happened to the lights,” said the boy in the long red wig.
Through R.J.’s goggles the scene was surreal. Heat waves pulsated from their limbs like special effects in a Spielberg movie. The boy was propped on one elbow with the tycoon’s receding penis in his hand. He stared in amazement at the apparition by the window.
Suddenly R.J.’s flashbulbs popped in their faces, blinding them again.
“What the hell!” The tycoon bolted upright and shoved the boy onto the floor.
R.J. could see the man’s fear. He moved quickly to the foot of the bed, snapping off another frame.
“Jesus!” Burkette screamed, digging at his eyes.
Passing quickly to the other side of the bed, R.J. took another flash shot, catching the boy’s girlish buttocks in profile as he bent to find his undershorts on the floor.
R.J. heard a ruckus outside the door.
“Mr. Burkette?” He could hear the bodyguard lumbering and panting up the stairs in the darkness.
“Get your ass in here!” yelled the tycoon, rolling off his side of the bed.
As the bodyguard splintered through the door like an enraged rhino, R.J. stepped right over to him and shot a flash in the startled man’s face. He followed up with a jab to the sternum and a hard shove. The bodyguard fell back into the hall.
“Do something!” Burkette demanded of his bed companion, backing away as fast and as far across the room as he could.
Through his goggles, R.J. saw the boy’s smile in the darkness. He was unafraid, having realized that R.J. meant him no harm. His wig was askew, his willowy body rigid with the theatrical excitement of it all. His eyes widened and he wet his lips with sensual appreciation of the moment.
R.J. shook his head and stepped to the window. “The lawyers will work things out,” he said, and was over the railing before they realized he was gone.
The bodyguard’s voice caught up with him in the alley. “I’ll have your ass for this!”
R.J. looked back through his goggles. The bodyguard was still naked except for his unlaced jackboots.
R.J. snapped off another flash. “Gotcha,” he said.
CHAPTER 3
He was asleep with a naked blonde in his arms when the intruder picked his lock and came in like a cat burglar at dawn’s first light.
R.J.’s apartment sat in an old four-story building in the East Seventies. You could hear cockroaches walking across the loose floorboards. R.J. eased out of bed in his pajamas. What he heard was a hell of a lot bigger than a cockroach. He slipped behind the bedroom door and waited.
When the intruder glided in, R.J. chopped him on the neck. The man wilted, semi-paralyzed by the blow. R.J. held onto his collar and turned on the light.
“Hijo de puta!”
“What the hell are you doing here?” R.J. asked.
“Came to see you,” Henry Portillo groaned. He rubbed his neck, struggling to bring things back in focus. “Hijo de puta mas grande en el mundo… Did I teach you to hit like that?” He stood upright and slipped a plastic credit card back into his wallet.
“Yeah, you did.”
He shook his head. “I am a better teacher than I thought. That hurt, chico. It still hurts.”
The girl on the bed frowned and muttered something that might have been mean. She turned toward the wall and pulled the pillow over her tousled head. Her buttocks were dimpled, and a nautical tattoo fluttered between her cheeks.
R.J. saw him glance at Gloria and could see his jaw muscles tighten in disapproval.
R.J. reached for the habitual cigar he’d not put a match to in several years. “Gloria,” he said. “An old friend.”
Henry shook his head. “We need to talk. Alone.”
Portillo’s mestizo face was as brown as desert sand. Despite fifty years in the United States, he still spoke with a slight accent of his native Guadalajara. A stocky, clean-shaven man, he wore corduroy jeans, a Viyella shirt and suede jacket, and hand-tooled Mexican leather boots. His belt buckle and bolero tie clasp were mosaics of beaten Aztec gold and silver. He’d
dropped his Stetson on the couch, and R.J. noticed his luxurious mane had turned more salt than pepper since he’d seen him last.
R.J. pulled the covers over Gloria’s backside. “We can talk out there,” he said, motioning to the living room.
He wasn’t about to explain his conduct, even to his Uncle Hank. Gloria was a friend from the local police precinct, a radio operator in the dispatch office. He’d done her a favor during her first divorce, and tonight she’d discovered her new husband and rogue about town in bed with another woman. Distraught, she’d been waiting on the doorstep when R.J. got home from the Burkette surveillance.
He’d given her a drink and a shoulder to cry on, and they’d talked the rest of the night. Even when her despair had turned to anger and the need for revenge, he’d refused to take advantage of her. She’d come on to him, doing a slow, seductive strip—showing him the most enticing tush he’d seen in a long time. But he’d managed to keep her off balance until she’d passed out.
Let Hank think what he wanted. He always had.
“What are you doing in New York, anyway?” R.J. said, pouring a glass of orange juice into a Mets souvenir beer stein. “Los Angeles run out of crime?” He knocked back the juice like a shot of rye, then eased off the cold linoleum floor to warm his bare feet on the living-room carpet.
“I’ve been working with the FBI Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico,” Portillo said. “Caught the shuttle to New York this morning to see you.”
“Nice. What is it, two years?”
“Eighteen months,” the older man grated. R.J. was a little surprised at the flinty tone of voice.
“Okay, eighteen months. A long time, anyway.”
Portillo glanced through the open bedroom door at Gloria. “Things don’t seem to have changed very much.”
R.J. was annoyed at the judgment in his uncle’s voice. “Get it off your hairy chest, Uncle Hank. Why are you really here?”
The older detective’s baked expression hardened. “Your mother’s dead,” he said.
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