by A F Carter
KIRK
There’s blood in the water and our shithead of a therapist
can smell it. He’s leaning over his desk, his gaze intent
and questioning. Something’s different? What is it? Can I
exploit this development?
Search warrants aren’t signed by judges because they like
cops and want to be nice to them. The cops have to write an
affidavit demonstrating probable cause to find whatever’s
listed on the warrant. Probable cause boils down to evidence of some kind, which the cops obviously have on us. And now,
sitting in the submissive seat across from our caring therapist, I can’t say that we didn’t do it. I can only claim that I, myself, didn’t kill our father. But why would anyone believe me? After all, if we did bump off dear old Dad, at least one of us must be lying about it because we’ve all claimed innocence.
As I watch Halberstam open the center drawer of his desk
and reach in for his favorite prop, I’m suddenly reminded of a quote from Benjamin Franklin. Something about hanging
separately if we don’t hang together. Of course, we won’t
hang, separately or together. But we’ll definitely share the same cell, whether or not I wielded the knife that killed
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my father. And the murder weapon must have been a knife
because the cops seized one of ours and knives were speci-
fied in the warrant. I know this because Martha’s memo was
quite detailed.
Halberstam points a finger in my direction. “Are you
alone, Kirk?” he asks me. “Or are others lurking?”
I take a second to check but sense no other presence,
which doesn’t mean there’s no one there.
“Not that I can tell.”
“Good, because I want to work on something today. Tell
me. Did you hate your father?”
“Probably.”
“Probably?”
I take a breath and shrug. “You gotta hate the asshole,
right? Given what he did? But I can’t say I spent all that much time thinking about him, at least before he showed up.”
“What about Carolyn?”
“What about her?”
“Did Carolyn, as a child, hate her father?”
“How would I know?” I don’t want to remember a single
second of Carolyn’s life with Daddy and I change the subject before Halberstam gets up a head of steam. “At the hearing, Doctor, you told the board that you didn’t know who
was in control of Carolyn’s body on the night my father was
snuffed. Now I’m telling you. Martha was in control. She
spent the evening at home watching TV.”
“How do you know this? Were you there?”
“We write memos, Doctor.” And thank God that Marshal
had thought to copy ours. “Martha . . .”
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Halberstam waves me off. “I’ll need to see the memos, of
course.”
“I can only promise they’ll be produced if I’m around for
the next session.”
“Ah, the great disclaimer. Don’t blame me if Victoria
shows up without the memos because I’m not in control. I
hear one or another version of this excuse at every session.
But here’s the thing, Kirk. Therapy can’t succeed unless
patients take responsibility. You tell me you want to gain
control, to unify, but then, at every opportunity, you employ your . . . your separateness to excuse your failures. You’re on a merry-go-round, all of you, and you need to get off.”
In fact, I have no desire to get off. The only thing I really want is more rides. I encourage Halberstam with a nod, but
he’s not finished.
“Consider this,” he announces. “You told me that you
write memos in order to keep each other abreast. Couldn’t
you, Kirk, when you get home, write a memo reminding the
others to bring all the memos to our next session? Instead,
you offer the standard disclaimer.”
I have to laugh. Halberstam just kicked my ass and there’s
no wriggling off the hook. I shot off my big mouth and now
we’ll have to produce the memos. In fact, if Serena’s around to do the writing, or Victoria, we’ll write a few new ones to replace the ones we leave behind.
“You’re right,” I admit. “I think you’re gonna be bored
reading them, but we’ll get them here.”
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CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
ELENI
He’s outside, the man with the tattoos. The one who
frightens everyone but Kirk. I’m pissed because I’ve
been thinking about Ortega and the sight of this jerk cut
through my best fantasy like a lightning bolt through a
paper kite. What I’m not, though I’m about to leave, is afraid.
I’m wearing a pair of Victoria’s slacks and a pearl-gray
sweater with a high neck. Reasonably demure but suitable to
the task at hand. I slip into a light jacket, check my shoulder bag for the canister of pepper spray and head out the door. I won’t be a prisoner, not until they put us in handcuffs. And even then, I’m hoping the cops are horny enough to corrupt.
One last fling in the back seat of a cruiser before the cell door clangs shut.
Martha was around earlier. She urged me to take matters
seriously. She insisted that we’re under siege, threats coming from all directions, doom, doom, and more doom. So what?
I didn’t kill my father. I’m innocent and I know that in
America innocence will protect me. Just like it’s always protected me.
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So, I’m horny and I’m pissed, at my father, at that sick
asshole who calls himself a doctor, at the cops and their
bullshit search warrant. And the guy across the street? The
guy with the bowling-ball arms and tree-trunk neck? The
way I’m thinking, he’s the perfect outlet for the pissed half of the equation. As for the other half, the Ortega part, I’ve decided to put that aside for the present. I’ve got another
mission in mind. I intend to visit the Golden Inn Hotel.
I’ve been to the Golden Inn a few times. Not as a hooker
but as a matter of convenience. Somehow, the debased
ambiance — the gray sheets, the stained floors, the mingled
odors of sex and disinfectant—turned me on. My lovers on
those occasions were sailors in town for Fleet Week, sailors just off the boat after weeks at sea. One mistook me for a
hooker when I hit on him in a local dive. I didn’t take his
money, but . . .
But for once, I’m not out to get laid.
I wasn’t inside the hotel on the night Hank Grand was
killed. But if one of the others was, I want to know. There’s another incentive as well. I’m hoping to see the room where
that scumbag died. I don’t know who killed him, but I want
to believe that one of us did. I want to believe we killed our daddy in cold blood. That way I can imagine him in pain,
begging for life, knowing, as he bleeds to death, that his little girl isn’t little anymore.
I’m not really afraid of prison. Our looney-tunes bona
fides are proven beyond a reasonable doubt and no sane
prosecutor will bring us to t
rial. Instead, we’ll be shipped 186
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off to one or another of New York’s psychiatric hospitals,
assigned most likely to a unit for the criminally insane.
With luck, we could be released in as few as ten years.
What do you do if you feel like you’re going insane and
you’re already insane? I walk through the door, eager for
conflict. The man across the road straightens, then comes
right at me. I don’t turn a hair, don’t change expression, the only moving part my thumb, which finds its way to a button
at the top of the pepper spray canister.
Angry males? Been there, done that. Often enough to
learn the only relevant lesson. Strike first, strike hard, get your ass in the wind.
But it doesn’t happen. He comes to a stop ten feet away,
his gaze now suspicious. I’m not running off and I’m not
showing fear and I don’t look like Kirk. Not exactly.
“You,” he says. “I know what you did.”
I’m thinking I should cut him off, but I can’t stop myself
from wanting to know what he has to say. Given all the cir-
cumstances, he can only be talking about Hank Grand’s
murder. I hold my ground but remain silent.
“Not talkin’?” He looks at me for a moment before real-
izing that he’s answered his own question. Finally, almost
desperately, he blurts it out. “The cops are tryin’ to put it on me. But you were there. I seen you were there.”
“Then you must’ve been there yourself.”
“So fuckin’ what? Me and your old man were friends. I
had no reason—”
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I cut him off. “You were there for what exactly, you and
my daddy?”
“I don’t have to explain myself.” His eyes narrow and I
know he wants to deal with his frustrations by smashing
whatever’s in front of him. “Hank told me you was comin’
for a visit.”
“At the Golden Inn?” When he doesn’t reply, I lose it for
a moment. “So, tell me, asshole, how was it supposed to be?
Were you gonna share me? Two on one? One at a time? How
did you have it figured?”
“It wasn’t that way at all. I was in a different room with a hooker.” He takes a step toward me, then stops. “What your
father done ain’t my business, lady. I know you was there.”
“Have I got this right? You were inside a room with a
prostitute, but you were also outside and saw me? Cut the
crap, man. If the cops suspect you, it’s probably because you killed him. You killed him and now you’re lookin’ for a patsy.
Well, I’m not buying, so fuck off.”
He closes his eyes for a second, as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing. I watch his hands curl into fists, watch the cords on his neck bulge. I know what’s likely to come next and I
slide the canister of pepper spray out of the bag. I can hear Victoria now, moaning in despair. Crazy Eleni, destructive
Eleni, worthless, useless. I don’t give a damn. I’m about to empty the canister down the asshole’s throat, let him spend
the next week in the hospital with his lungs on fire.
But it’s not happening, not today. His shoulders slump
as he draws a breath and steps back. “This ain’t over,” he
tells me.
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I want the last word and I search for a snappy comeback.
Too late. He turns and heads back the way he came. I watch
him cross the street before I return the pepper spray to my
bag. Then I’m on my way, wishing that somewhere along
the line I learned to whistle.
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CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
ELENI
The Golden Inn doesn’t come within a mile of living
up to its name. It’s an isolated, four-story tenement
converted into single rooms. Totally out of place in an
industrial neighborhood. Still, it serves its purposes, luring the few hookers who still work beneath the elevated highway
on Fourth Avenue. The whole of South Brooklyn is rapidly
gentrifying and the working girls will soon be gone, along
with the bodegas, the check-cashing joints and the payday
lenders. The Golden Inn will be gone as well, probably
converted into million-dollar condos.
The inn hangs on for now, though in midafternoon on a
workday it’s practically deserted. I march through the front door, then toward a small, bullet-proof cubicle where the
desk clerk sits. He’s just as I remember him, a tired old man who’s lived his life in a tarnished corner of the world. His eyes are ancient. They seem to look in rather than out.
He examines me carefully as I approach. I don’t see a
glimmer of recognition, but his eyes brighten when I hold
up a twenty. “I’m a reporter,” I tell him. “Checking into the murder of a man named Henry Grand.”
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“Yeah, last week. Not the first this year, by the way.”
His voice is indistinct, as if he’s speaking through a wad of phlegm. Which, given the full ashtray on his desk, seems
likely. “OK, tell me what ya want from me?”
“Well, for starters, were you on duty the night he was
killed?”
“Yeah, I was.”
I take a step closer and pass the twenty through the slot,
but he still doesn’t recognize me. Does that mean we weren’t here?
“Can I get into his room?” I ask.
“That’s Room 307. Cops have it sealed off. They got the
key, too.”
“What about the room next to 307? Is there a connecting
door?”
“Yeah, but it’s probably locked on the other side.”
“Do you mind if I check it out?”
He glances behind him, discovers the key for 309 on its
hook. “You ain’t gonna take someone up there?”
“Are you kidding?” I step back and raise my elbows,
the better to display an outfit I chose because there’s nothing about it that says hooker. The demonstration brings a
smile to his face, revealing missing teeth on both sides of his mouth.
“Name’s Tom Randall. With two l’s.” He slips the key through the slot. “You decide to use my name in the papers,
spell it right.”
Beyond the front desk, the Golden Inn is a series of
stacked corridors broken by an elevator and a stairwell. I
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don’t bother with the elevator. I climb the narrow stairway, passing a middle-aged hooker and her teenage client on the
way. At the third-floor landing, about halfway down the
corridor to my right, two strips of yellow, crime-scene tape form an X across one of the doors. It’s Hank Grand’s death
chamber and I’m drawn to it, the pull irresistible.
A few seconds later, I’m facing the door wondering if I
should try the handle, when a hand closes on my right fore-
arm. Closes hard.
“Hey, baby, you up for a date?”
I turn and try to shake my arm free. No dice. He’s tall and
fat and smells of recent sex. He’s also drunk enough to be
totally obnoxious but not drunk enough to fall over. I look
up and down the empty hall. Nothing there.
“Let go of me.”
“What, my money’s not good enough? Gimme a break.”
His tongue flashes across his already-wet lips. “Half-and-
half. How much?”
“I’m not a prostitute.” My purse is hanging near my
right hip and there’s no way I can reach the canister inside while he’s holding my arm. I tell myself to calm down. I’m
not about to let this jerk get me in a room behind a locked
door. I’ll scream if it comes to that. But I could still take a beating.
“That’s right, you’re not a prostitute. You’re a whore.” His left hand comes up. There’s a fifty-dollar bill between his
thumb and his forefinger. “Like, if you’re not a whore, what the fuck are you doin’ inside the hotel?”
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His eyes travel across my body as he searches for a place
to put the fifty. I’m not wearing a skirt and my sweater rises to my throat, but the man’s just drunk enough to come up
with a solution. He tries to push the bill into my mouth.
Now I’m thinking I have only one chance here. I’m going
to turn into him, drive my knee into his crotch, and jerk my arm away. One move, real, real fast. If I succeed, I’ll run.
I’m staring up at the john, at the sneer on his face. I’m thinking, He wants you to resist. He wants to hurt you. Then the door to Hank Grand’s death chamber opens and the cop, Detective Ortega, ducks under the tape. He evaluates the scene in an instant, including the intensity of the man’s grip and the relief on my face. Then he flips his jacket open to reveal a gold badge, the badge of a detective, attached to his belt.
“What’s going on here?” His eyes bore into mine, the beginnings of a tiny smile just touching the corners of his
mouth. My belly tightens and I raise my chin. I want him at
that moment as much as I’ve wanted any of the men who’ve
flitted in and out of my life. Not least because his eyes are on fire.
“This guy solicited me, Officer,” I say.
“He did what?”
“He solicited me. And I never saw him before in my life.”
The man’s already let go of my arm. Now he speaks. “I
never touched her.”
“Soliciting isn’t touching,” Ortega says. “Though you