SK01 - Waist Deep

by Frank Zafiro

  The desktop was empty except for a keyboard and mouse on a dark blue pad. I put my pistol back in its holster and slid open some of the desk drawers. There was nothing but generic computer related items and office supplies. In the bottom drawer, I saw a Hoyle Casino game advertising Texas Hold ‘em as a featured game and a thick box of software. The cover of the software box showed a video camera and an editing screen.

  I slid the drawer shut.

  Jackson’s computer was up and running. I could hear the fan, even though the screen was blank. I nudged the mouse. The newest version of Microsoft Windows popped up, along with a password request.

  My eyebrows went up at that. Who puts a password on their computer when they live alone?

  People who have things to hide, that’s who. And given his subscription to Videomaker magazine and the copy of video editing software in his desk drawer, I had an idea what it was he was trying to hide.

  I thought about it for a minute and tried a few random passwords, knowing the odds were better that Ed McMahon would burst through the door with my check from Publisher’s Clearing House than me getting the right password.

  Star, I typed.

  Incorrect. Please check your password and try again.

  I tried Jackson.

  Incorrect. Please check your password and try again.

  I typed a few more, including Miller’s Crossing and Videomaker, and got the same response. Finally I typed, Jackson is a pervert and hit Enter.

  Incorrect. Please check your password and try again.

  “Damn,” I muttered and wished I knew half of what Adam did about computers.

  I settled for checking around the office some more, but found nothing.

  I was halfway up the stairs when the telephone rang. I froze for a moment, then trotted up to the kitchen and listened to it ring. The stair climbing caused a flare of pain in my knee. I massaged it and waited. After four rings, Jackson’s answering machine picked up. I couldn’t hear his message, but the large zero on the face of the machine turned into a rotating red line. Then the speaker kicked on.

  “Are you there?” a woman’s voice asked.

  I thought about snatching the receiver and talking to her. My hand actually began reaching for the handset, but I stopped and waited.

  “Okay, I guess you’re out. Listen, I’ll be over a little later than we talked about, but I’m bringing a friend and she is excited to meet you. She’s never worked before, but she’ll do fine. Her name’s Linda and she’s totally okay with working one with me. We can do that instead of the solo scenes you wanted, if that’s okay. Anyway, I’ll see you later tonight and I’ll bring Linda. You’ll like her. Bye.”

  I listened to the machine click off and I wondered if that had been Kris. I’d never heard her voice before, but somehow that hadn’t sounded like her. That was what I told myself, anyway.

  47

  I sat at Roger Jackson’s dining room table and drummed my fingers. My options were running out. I could leave now and clear out of the second burglary I’d committed in as many days. Or I could wait for Roger Jackson to find his way home and get what I needed from him.

  With a sigh, I decided to wait. Like I told Adam, in for a penny, in for a pound.

  I stood up to wander around Jackson’s house some more, taking time to open his fridge. A whole row of Heineken’s were in the door, but I dismissed them and grabbed a Coke instead.

  Maybe I wasn’t so pathetic, after all.

  The fizzy liquid splashed down my throat. I was surprised at how thirsty I was. I drank half the can in one long swig. Then I wandered aimlessly through the rooms, listening and waiting.

  As I walked and drank from the Coke can, I thought about Gary LeMond and Yvette. I heard his lesson on “society’s bullshit” again in my head and wondered if it were true what he said about taboos. I knew there was at least a kernel of truth to it. Most societies slowly became more and more liberal as they went along, so taboos weakened and fell. Take interracial marriages, for instance. Or gays. Just a hundred years ago in America, both were certainly spurned, and sometimes worse. How many people were beaten up or even killed simply because of who they loved?

  I smiled slightly. I was starting to sound a lot like Marie Byrnes.

  I rifled through Jackson’s medicine cabinet, found some Tylenol and took three, washing them down with the last of my Coke. I tossed the can into the bathroom trash.

  LeMond had used oral sex as his example. I didn’t know if he had his history right on that one or not. I grew up in the 80s and there was nothing taboo about a blowjob then. But he might’ve had a point. I’d thought the same thing about pornography. While I was growing up, there were books and movies available, but you had to go through a little work to get them. At the grocery store, you had to ask the person at the check stand to hand you a Playboy or a Penthouse. If you wanted anything harder, you had mail order it in a plain brown paper wrapper or head down into the wrong part of town to the dirty book store. It took a little deliberate effort. Now, with the advent of the computer and the Internet, all the porn a person could want and a lot that they didn’t was two mouse clicks away.

  I’d never wondered what kind of an effect that had on our society before, but now I was face to face with it. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed to me that it wasn’t a very positive effect. Not if girls Kris’s age in cities like River City could get involved.

  A wave of guilt passed over me as I thought of Yvette’s body in LeMond’s hot tub. What if I had seen a picture of Kris without knowing she was sixteen and Matt Sinderling’s daughter? What if it had been a nude picture? Would I look away? I didn’t think so. I’d found it difficult to look away from Yvette when I was at LeMond’s.

  She was seventeen. Just a few months from eighteen, is what LeMond had said. An arbitrary date, a line in the sand that somehow made it different for him to be sleeping with her. At least as far as society was concerned.

  Of course, my guess was that she was one of his students, too, and there was a different set of rules and laws there.

  Still, what was the difference between Yvette now and Yvette in May?

  I shook my head. It was wrong. Anyone with sense knew it and all the fancy, liberal intelligentsia arguments couldn’t change that. It wasn’t society’s bullshit. It was LeMond’s bullshit.

  Where was Kris? I kept coming back to that as I paced through Roger Jackson’s square, neat house. Where was she and, more importantly, how was she? What had she gotten herself into?

  I went back downstairs and into Roger Jackson’s office. I didn’t know much about computers, but I guessed that his computer was on because he was running a server. And that the box of electronics underneath the printer is what ran that server. Or was the server. However it worked. Either way, the copies of Videomaker magazine on the shelf and the editing software in his desk drawer told me that Jackson wasn’t just running a website. He was in on the movies, too.

  I went back upstairs and replayed the phone message again. The voice didn’t sound like it could belong to Kris. Her words were clear, though, and so was the intent. She was coming over for some filming and it sounded like the agenda was girl-on-girl. Perfect for “Barely Legal Beaver.”

  The clock on the living room wall read 1:30. I’d been inside Roger Jackson’s house for over two hours and what had I really done but walk around his little square, neat floor plan like I was Bill the security guy protecting the property of the mighty filmmaker, Roger Jackson?

  I stopped walking.

  Floor plan.

  A square floor plan.

  Goddamn, I was so dense.

  I turned tail and headed back downstairs.

  48

  The laundry room was small. Too small. The entire section of the basement that should have been beneath the living room seemed to be missing. I had supposed at first that it was only a half-basement, but now I had a hunch I’d been wrong.

  The closet in the laundry room had a sliding door. I opened i
t. A few bottles of laundry detergent, fabric softener and dryer sheets were on the high shelf. A white wall was below the shelf.

  I tapped on the wall, expecting to feel concrete.

  The hollow sound of wood echoed back at me.

  I traced my fingers along the rear corner of the closet and found a finger-hold and pulled. The wall slid aside as easily as the closet door.

  I slipped through the open doorway and into another world.

  49

  The door opened into a small room, walled with paneling. A red light bulb burned on a wide flat desk near the door. Another doorway was on the left, a few feet away. I fumbled for a light switch and found one.

  Light flooded the room and I saw numerous photos strewn across the desk. Blank DVDs were stacked up next to the photos, along with unopened mini-cassette tapes.

  A poster was on the wall, featuring a leggy brunette with her breasts barely contained in a medieval serving wench costume. The title of the movie was “One Night at the Inn” and the caption read, “See ADRIANA APPLE serve it up for all the customers.” The poster looked seedy, but professional. I wasn’t familiar with the name or the face of Adrianna Apple, but there was a list of credits near the bottom. I didn’t recognize any of those names, either, but I figured it to be a legit movie. Maybe it was Jackson’s favorite. Or his inspiration.

  I left the small office area and stepped into the larger room. A huge mattress dominated one third of the room, though it sat low to the ground. I’d seen that hundreds of times on patrol—just a box spring and a mattress on the floor. Sometimes only the mattress. But this one was adorned with silky white pillows and a cream colored comforter. It was made, of course. Very neat and tidy, although the pungent smell of someone else’s sex hung faintly in the air.

  About two feet from the foot of the bed was a camera on a tripod. The lens cap was on. Off to the side were different lights and microphones and some of those umbrella-shaped reflectors that they use in the movies to affect a certain lighting for a scene. Behind the camera, on the wall, was a shelf full of sex toys.

  Roger Jackson had his own little film studio.

  He must shoot the scenes here on his little sound stage, edit them on his computer with that digital software and then upload to his website. Simple and quiet. I wondered how much he made at it. It didn’t look like he was making a killing. His stuff upstairs was nice, but not extravagant.

  There was no sign of drug pipes, needles or ash trays anywhere. I sniffed the air again, trying to sense the remains of any marijuana or crack. All I got was the stale smell of intercourse.

  I shook my head in disgust and left the filming room.

  When I walked back into the small office area, I remembered the photos on the wide desk. I picked them up and started thumbing through them. There were several different girls in a variety of poses. I didn’t recognize any of them, but they all had the same quality—a young look but with enough mystery to it to let the guy watching off the hook. Their poses and the pouty looks they assumed asked the viewer, “Am I fifteen and look nineteen? Or am I nineteen and look fifteen? Either way, you want me, don’t you?” The photos were un-retouched and looked a little rushed. I thought that they might be audition shots.

  I flipped through the photos, forcing myself to look each girl in the face, knowing that my eyes were picking up every swell of breast, every curve of hip, every hint of pubic hair. I was half way through the stack when I found three of Kris Sinderling.

  That stopped me cold. Three audition pictures. The first showed her fully clothed, though with her shirt unbuttoned and her hip thrust out. In reality, it wasn’t any worse than the glamour shot that Matt had given me at the Rocket several days ago. The second showed her topless, but with her arm across draped across her breasts. I’d seen worse than that in beer ads.

  But in the third picture, she was completely nude and on her knees, leaning forward. The shot was carefully staged, at just the right angle so that all the viewer could see was hip and the curve of her buttocks. Her left arm was crossed over her chest, exposing and pushing up her cleavage.

  Beneath the third picture, someone had scrawled in black Sharpie “Star=Classy, 100%. Just like A.A.”

  I set the pictures of Kris aside and flipped through the remainder of the stack. There were no more of Kris, but when I got to the last photo, it stopped me cold again.

  Smiling, wearing only bikini bottoms and with one hand shyly cupped over each breast, was Yvette.

  50

  My mind raced. The picture of Yvette was a different size than the rest, a little shorter and not quite as wide, as if it had been taken by a different camera. She was in front of a fireplace. It definitely was not Roger Jackson’s house in the photo. From what I could remember of her face, the photo didn’t look like it had been taken that long ago.

  Then I heard the sound of a car come to a stop and idle in front of the Jackson house. I moved to the window, but it was blacked out. I shoved the picture of Yvette and the three shots of Kris into my windbreaker pocket and hustled out of the room, through Jackson’s laundry room and up the stairs as quietly as I could go. As I reached the top of the stairs, I heard a car door slam. The car engine accelerated and began to diminish.

  The clock in the living room read a quarter to two. I hid around the corner from the front door, drawing my .45 and listening. I could hear the sound of footsteps on the walk, then the porch. The metallic creak of the screen door opening came next. There was the jingle of keys, followed by the unmistakable sound of one being slid into a lock. The door lock clicked over and the door swung open.

  I waited until he shut the door, counted to two and stepped around the corner.

  His small glasses were perched on the bridge of his nose just like in his driver’s license photo. The wispy blond hair on top of his head was combed over the same, too. He stood a shade under six feet and yet, I probably outweighed him.

  “What the—” he started to say and I cracked him upside the head with the barrel of my pistol.

  In the movies, that move always knocks the guy unconscious for however long the hero needs. In reality, it doesn’t work that way. It still works pretty well, just not that way.

  Jackson howled in pain and fell to his knees, clutching at his face. I’d landed the blow right on his left cheekbone and I imagined it hurt like hell. Before he could yell again, I grabbed him by hair at the nape of his neck and gave a twist. Then I jammed my gun upward, pressing the barrel against his other cheek.

  “Shut up,” I told him.

  “Oh, God, my face!”

  “Shut up or I’ll put a bullet through the other cheek,” I said, a growl in my voice.

  “Okay, okay, okay, okay,” he whimpered, holding his hands up at his sides in the international sign of surrender. “Take what you want, man. My wallet’s in my back pocket. I’ve got some cash and—“

  I pressed the gun barrel into his cheek, mashing the muzzle against the bone. “I said, shut up.”

  “Okay, okay.” He was breathing fast and there were small hitches in his breath. I realized after a moment that he was trying not to cry.

  “I don’t want your money,” I told him. “Just be cool and we’ll work things out, all right?”

  He nodded frantically.

  “Now stand up.”

  With my help, he stumbled to his feet.

  “Walk.”

  Together, we shuffled into the kitchen. I lowered him into one of the chairs at the dining table. When I released my grip on his hair, he made a point to lower his chin in submission and wave his hands in a surrendering motion.

  I took a seat opposite him and leveled the gun at his chest. “Put your hands on the table.”

  Jackson dropped his palms onto the tabletop.

  “Good,” I said. “Now, we are going to talk. You lie to me, I put a .45 slug into your chest and your days on this earth are through. Rozumiš?”

  He started to nod, then stopped. “Ro-zoo-what?”


  “It means, do you understand? Do you, Roger?”

  He nodded his head repeatedly, his voice rapid. “I do. I understand. Was that Russian you spoke? Jesus, man, are you Russian Mafia? If you are, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you guys had any part of the market. Listen, just tell them I’ll pay whatever they want, whatever’s fair. I just—”

  “Shut up,” I barked at him and he jumped in his seat. “Who I am doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you answer my questions. You do that, Roger, and you will live to see tomorrow. You don’t and…” I leaned in slightly and tapped the butt of the gun on his table. “It’s lights out, mister. You get me?”

  Jackson nodded. “I don’t want to die,” he said, starting to tear up. “I’ll tell you whatever you want.”

  “Tell me where Kris is.”

  He looked at me blankly. “I…I don’t…”

  I leaned forward. “I am not fucking around with you, Roger. I want to know where Kris is. You play stupid with me and—”

  “But I don’t know anyone named Kris!” he sobbed. “Please don’t kill me. If I knew, I would tell you, but I don’t know.”

  I paused and considered. Then I realized the problem. “How about Star?”

  Jackson’s face turned white and his jaw dropped open. His bottom lip quivered. “How did you—“

  “It doesn’t matter.” I waved the gun. “Where is Star?”

  He swallowed. “In an apartment. Her apartment.”

  “Which apartment? Where?”

  “At the base of the Five Mile Hill,” he said. “The Greyhouse Apartments.”

  “Which number?”

  “Nineteen.”