by Harker Moore
“More than one level?”
The girl nodded. “There’s a TV lounge and a restaurant. That’s where we agreed to meet.”
“In the restaurant?” Johnson asked.
“Yes. Leslie’s always hungry—was,” she caught herself. “Leslie . . . was.” The face verged on sudden collapse.
“So you had something to eat.” Johnson pulled it back.
“A quick bite.” Hoffman dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “Leslie wanted to get on the dance floor.”
“Tell me what that was like,” Johnson said.
“The place was really packed. It seemed just like a weekend. Leslie and I were together for a while, just moving around on the floor, being seen.”
“And then?”
“This guy came over and asked me to dance.”
“Did you know him?”
“No. It turned out he was a tourist. He’d read about the club on the Net. Can you believe it? We danced a couple dances. He bought me a drink. Then I danced with someone else.”
“And Leslie?”
“I couldn’t see her, so I stayed where I was. We’d always touch base, you know. Let each other know if we’d hooked up.”
“If you’d hooked up with a guy?”
“Yeah. I stayed put for a long time, but she never came back.”
“And you hadn’t seen her with anyone,” Johnson asked, “while you were dancing?”
“I wasn’t looking then. I was having a good time. I figured Leslie was too. She always did.”
“Did you search for her in the club?”
“Everywhere.” The voice was earnest. “I even went back to the restaurant.”
“Were you worried when you couldn’t find her?”
“No.” The word came out low. “I was mad.” A confession that started the tears again. “Why hadn’t she told me she was leaving?”
“What did you do then?”
“I went home.”
“And when she didn’t come in?”
“I went to sleep. I didn’t know she hadn’t come in until morning.”
“And weren’t you worried then?”
“Not really. It wasn’t that unusual for Leslie to spend the night out, and . . .”
“To spend the night with a man she’d met?” Darius came forward.
“Grad school is hard.” The tone was defensive. “Going to the clubs was Leslie’s way of letting off steam.”
“There’s something you’re not telling us, Ms. Hoffman.” He could see Johnson looking at him, wondering if he’d had some special insight. But it was only that he’d sensed the guilt of an incomplete confession.
The young woman’s shoulders were shaking now. A disconnect before sobs. “I should have known something was wrong,” she let out, “but I was angry and . . .”
“What happened, Maggie?” Johnson asked.
“I don’t own a cell phone,” Hoffman said. “But Leslie always had hers. When I couldn’t find her in the club, I went to use the pay phone. I had to stand in line. It took forever before I could call her.”
“And . . . ?”
“She didn’t answer.” Hoffman’s eyes were searching Johnson’s. “It was just that stupid message. And I should have known right away that something was really wrong. No matter what she was doing, Leslie always had that phone on. Even on the floor dancing, she’d have felt it vibrate. . . . I should have known.”
“You couldn’t have changed things,” Darius said.
The woman turned to him as if he’d thrown a lifeline. “Leslie just liked to party.” Her eyes still begged. “She didn’t deserve this.”
“No one deserves it, Ms. Hoffman.”
As far as Detective Walter Talbot was concerned the trip into Pennsylvania was not unexpected, since the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island had been closed for some time. This morning the NYPD had joined a procession of trucks that made regular treks out of the five boroughs to disgorge unwanted accumulations of urban living.
“Nice of the locals to give us the right-of-way.” Detective Johnny Rozelli bent, rechecking the protective shoe covers insulating his Gucci loafers.
Talbot smiled, refraining from comment. He gazed out at the mountains of waste, wondering what mysteries the landfill might surrender if they dug deep and long enough. If he squinted he could visualize an offworld landscape. Nothing, however, could distract him from the odor.
“This the right area?” Rozelli was pulling on latex gloves, sliding a mask down over his face.
Talbot referenced the grid he was holding. “Yes, these sections took the major hit of commercial garbage for the last six months.” He snapped on gloves. “Any preference?”
His partner gave him the look he usually reserved for perps.
“Relax, Johnny, you wouldn’t want to miss this prime opportunity to hone your forensic skills.”
Rozelli lifted his mask. “Sakura is gonna owe us big. . . . Davis, you and Sanchez go with Mr. Smart-Ass here. Williams and Deter, come with me.”
Talbot laughed, moving with his officers to Section F, thinking how like archeology was this entire drill. Garbage was just another kind of artifact. The detritus of twenty-four/seven defined a culture as much as anything else.
He lowered his mask, ready to excavate his chunk of real estate. His foot crunched on something hollow, and he glanced down in time to see a long tail slip between the seams of two garbage bags. He sensed the hurried plucking of claws against plastic. He reached down.
The day was overcast and cool, and he was grateful for small favors as his fingers cut into a tight overlay of bags, wedged like boulders. The thick dark green ones used for lawn debris never failed to resurrect the Caruso case.
Mary Ann Caruso was too young to be a mother, too frightened to tell anyone she was pregnant. Her father would have beaten the fetus out of her; her mother would have wailed and called in the parish priest. But she’d managed to keep her secret to the end. Then one night she squatted in her bedroom closet, bit into her arm to stifle her screams, and expelled her baby.
She’d stifled the infant’s cries too. Two days later a homeless man, rummaging through neighborhood garbage, discovered the body deposited in a green garbage bag.
He’d been at the morgue when the coroner removed the small corpse from its plastic shroud. Its mouth open, frozen in its final effort to make its way into the world. The eyes, too, were wide, and though it was nothing more than fanciful speculation, in his mind the eyes would forever be green.
He looked up; Rozelli was waving. “Hey, Talbot, over here.”
Deter had carved a deep trench through a large mound of plastic. Loose garbage spilled out. Something shiny caught the weak light overhead.
“The haulers seemed to have conveniently bypassed the recycling center.” Talbot crouched down, touching a wide strip of tape binding layers of Visqueen. Inside the contents were loose, but he could feel the brittle outline of bone.
“We got soup, Walt.”
“Decomp is advanced.” He stood, tearing off his gloves, withdrawing his cell phone. He punched in Sakura’s direct line. “We have one, Lieutenant.”
The first had come too easy. But it was going to be a long haul, and somehow he knew that before day’s end they would have another one.
A bright and too perfect afternoon. David St. Cyr stood near the rear perimeter of the Connecticut lot, surveying the dense copse of trees and thick underbrush. He breathed in, pleased with how well his manipulations had proceeded over the months. That precise chain of events that had brought him to this moment. Of course, there had been inconveniences, dealing with people like Patrice Attenborough. But it was a petty price to pay, since it had secured him the prize, brought him what he most wanted.
The Redmond commission. His mind drifted, placing Margot Redmond back inside the Guggenheim. Looking at the Holzer exhibition, she had appeared a rape victim herself. Her eyes wild, startled by the artistic curiosity laid bare before her. She had gawked at the silver ban
d looping the bleached femur. A ropy blue vein throbbed in her neck as she risked reading one more line from the script: I know who you are and it does me no good at all.
In the rotting belly of dark, her skin polished by the LED lights, she had looked deliciously cadaverous. Her unbound rust-red hair, out of sync with the rest of her mechanized perfection, had aroused him. Though he knew Mrs. Redmond presumed he was queer. He laughed hard at her assumption. The truths and lies of first impressions.
He exhaled, assessing the land the Redmonds had chosen for their home. A man most happy when elements bent to his will, he frowned. Excessive nature required reining in. Idyllic prettiness constrained. Contemporary architecture must be dedicated to reason, possessed of a dynamic geometry that distilled and refined the human senses.
He shook off his judgments and walked into the thick of trees. He must select the right spot, must situate himself perfectly. Though a more reasonable mind challenged, a lesser self felt compelled to marry organic matter to organic matter. Reaching into his jacket, he withdrew latex gloves. Setting earphones in place, he turned up the volume and waited for the nickel-sharpened music to infiltrate his brain. Then, unzipping his pants, he withdrew his penis. He refused to allow the chill October air to interfere. Besides, he’d trained his brain to maintain a hard-on. He would masturbate to climax, spilling his live sperm onto the ground, christening the Redmond land.
A body in the landfill. He might have been sitting calmly behind his desk, but James Sakura could not control his brain. It moved with a rhythm of its own, creating its own terrible images. Made of Talbot’s phone-in description, of its own uncompromising pictures. Rotting flesh folded within tight seams of plastic. A face, once distinct in life, now a greasy smudge pressing against the clear. Naked teeth, the sole architecture of a mouth, forming a bridge where lips had once been. Incongruously, the Visqueen package in his mind was a tidy layer amid mounting layers of ugly stink, a mummy bundle slid between misshapen balloons of waste.
He clutched the jade disk and breathed. Whole lungfuls of air. Pushing his mind backward to another landscape. To another time. To a spring holiday in Nara. On Mount Nyoi. Upon Bridge to Inner Temple. He stood, a boy of eight, on stone steps, moving toward the arch of the bridge. Up ahead, almost to the magic pagoda, waited Uncle Ikenobo, a paper cutout against the green in his Buddhist’s robe.
All around him was the green. Woolly green shrubs and prickly bushes. Humps and lumps of green. Carved and sculpted patterns of green. Great green arms of trees stabbing blue sky. Tangles of green forcing slick tongues up through dark earth. An archipelago of green.
He could almost taste the green. Closing his eyes, he inhaled the rich and thick of it. Then a noise, from outside the circle of familiar warbles and chittering his ears had memorized. His eyes widened to catch the false note.
He ran to the middle of the bridge, his skinny boy’s body leaning, the wooden rails cutting him into halves, his eyes searching the green maze. A flash of color. Spilled paint. A vulgar interloper against the green. And movement. A sudden violence fusing into a steadying shimmy. Then a single nervous quiver, alien and brief.
“Uncle,” his voice sailed upward, and the once still cloud of robe came to life, brown sandaled-feet slowly clopping down the steps.
But he was running, to where the tall stairway began, into the denseness. Moving without stopping. His legs in short pants, feeling the kiss and bite of the green, plunging as if into water.
He saw the white belly first. Then the round eyes like black marbles. He imagined the lids blinked, but it was some trick of his mind. The small deer was dead. He touched the muzzle, the flat of his thumb brushing moist leather. He wiped his finger on the seat of his pants, and saw the half-open mouth, the tip of a pink tongue. A trickle of blood ran red onto the green.
“Akira.”
He turned at the sound of his name. Until that moment he was convinced he wasn’t crying. But he could feel the wet on his cheek when his uncle touched his face.
There was a deep slash in the animal’s throat. And his youthful mind shook with questions. Who would steal the peace from Mount Nyoi? Who had left the deer to die a secret death? Why? his child’s heart screamed.
“Ahimsa.” His uncle whispered the Sanskrit word, with questions of his own. “Are we not taught to do no harm? To reverence all living things? Do not some monks filter the very water they drink, wear gauze across their faces so as not to harm the smallest of creatures? Do they not walk the night lest they step upon some beast crawling upon its belly?”
He felt the jade slip from his hand. He was no longer in the forest with his uncle. He was in his office. At his desk. In present time. Yet in his world someone was still stalking the innocent.
Michael Darius could not deny that Gramercy Park was beautiful. A tranquil, tree-lined space at the foot of Lexington Avenue, the park was privately owned, cared for by the residents of the buildings which occupied the original sixty-six lots. He had come here straight from headquarters, and had been waiting for nearly an hour in the fast-fading light, outside the fence of the central square, watching the entrance to the handsome red-brick building.
A car pulled to the pavement, and a driver got out, opening the door for a woman and two small boys. The woman smiled, thanking the driver, who handed out a shopping bag from the car’s interior. One of the boys, a compact package himself in his quilted jacket, tugged at her free hand, his round face twisting in impatience. The other fidgeted on the sidewalk. Ringlets, a good shade redder than his mother’s bright auburn, escaped his blue knit cap.
Margot leaned down, still smiling, reeled the boys in with a word. Her expression changed, however, replaced by the wariness he hated, as he walked up.
“Hello, Michael. You coming in?”
“For a while.” The boys were looking up at him.
“Reese is having dinner with a client.” She turned, dismissing the driver. “But he’ll be home before nine.” She looked back at him.
“I’ll be gone.”
She nodded. Jason, still silent, reached up to take his hand. Margot’s back stiffened, but she performed the ritual which had developed with his visits. They walked together, swinging first one twin, then the other, as each squealed with delight between them.
The townhouse, as always, was perfect. Even the toys that were scattered on the rug looked arranged. Margot was pulling off the boys’ jackets and hats. They exploded away from her, running toward the abandoned toys. “They never slow down,” she said. “. . . May I get you something?”
The overture so formal. “No thanks,” he said. He walked to a chair near where the boys had started playing.
Jason got up, offering him a piece of the wooden train. “Wanna play?” His own blue eyes looking up at him.
“Maybe in a minute.” He smiled.
Jason went back to where Damon was building up blocks for the train to knock down. Margot had put away her packages and coat. She walked past him to the kitchen that opened off the living room.
“I’ve got to get the boys dinner,” she said.
He remained in the chair. Nearby was the armoire that held Margot’s computer. She’d been working part-time at home since the twins’ birth, still for the same firm that had offered them both jobs when they’d graduated from law school.
After a while she brought him the drink he’d turned down. A single-malt scotch and water. And despite the boys’ protests, she sat them down to dinner at the long dining table near the window. She sat down too, but without a plate. She had poured herself a glass of the scotch.
Not long after the meal, she took the boys upstairs for a bath, and then put them to bed.
He sat in the chair till she came back. He watched her pick up the plates, carry them into the kitchen. He could hear her running water, placing things inside the dishwasher.
She came back into the living room and picked up the toys, putting them into a basket. She walked toward him and stood at the edge of the rug.
“I don’t know what you want, Michael,” she said to him. “But I’m going to answer the questions you never ask. The ones I can hear rattling around in your head every time you decide to show up here.”
He nearly spoke, but didn’t. He was staring at the wooden floor, the polished planks dividing them.
“Yes,” she began. “I know it was a terrible thing to do, leaving like I did, not even telling you I was pregnant. But you had me feeling I was fighting for my life. I’d been so goddamn good about you chucking the law, letting you ride out on your holy quest. But then you chucked the force too . . . and shut me out completely. Sitting around like a wounded animal, just like you’re doing now. I wasn’t about to put any child of mine through that.”
He forced himself to look at her.
“Now the big one.” She stared back. “No, Michael, I wasn’t sleeping with Reese before I left you. We were good friends. We’re still good friends. He’s a wonderful husband . . . and father.”
“Do you love him?”
His question surprised them both. He watched her suck in a breath to stop the tears that welled in her eyes. “Oh no, Michael.” She was shaking her head. “You don’t get to ask me that.”
He stood.
“Michael . . .” Her voice, urgent, had softened. “You don’t want a family. You only like to play with the idea of having us. Reese wants to adopt—”
“No!” He had cut her off. In moments he’d reached the door.
His little pussy was patient in her desires. Life had taught her unfortunate lessons. Like no pleasure without pain—a lesson fortunate for him.
She’d been waiting for hours in her hole. For the sounds of his footsteps entering the apartment. For the quiet as he removed his clothes and shoes. And now, the music starting. A tide of acid from the sound system, vibrating into walls. Reaching her in her dark little corner. A contact high, with the beat buzzing between the points where her naked shoulders touched the hardboard. And the vibe like a current running up her spine. Reverberating in her own little rhythm box. So hot for him now. The beat so promising of the fucking to come.