Night Kills

by Ed Gorman

  "I know."

  "You do?"

  He looked at her. "Yeah."

  After a time she said, "My parents were wondering how your mother is."

  "She's doing all right." Both of them were aware of the sudden anger in his voice. "She's with that creep all the time."

  "My dad said that her boyfriend used to be a Viking. Is that true?"

  "Yeah, but so what?"

  "I was just asking. I didn't mean to make you mad." He raised his eyes to hers again. "Why don't you come over here?"

  "What?"

  "Come over here. Closer to me."

  "Really?" She sounded very young just then, as if she couldn't at all believe her good luck.

  "Yeah."

  "How come?"

  "You want to come over here or not?"

  "Sure," she said, and with not another word she raised her shapely bottom from the rock and plopped it next to him on the cool grass beneath the overhang.

  But at the moment that her venerable dream was at last fulfilled, she found herself not knowing what to do.

  For a long time they sat next to each other, silent. There was no more than half an inch between their bodies, but it might as well have been a yard.

  Without any warning he slid his arm around her shoulder and pulled her to him. He kissed her directly on the mouth, lips closed.

  He could feel her squirm like a joyous puppy against him and hear happy sounds deep down her windpipe. She was so happy, it was almost embarrassing.

  "Oh, God," she said when he took his face from hers. "Oh, God."

  "Did you enjoy that?"

  "Are you kidding? I loved that." She hesitated, looked embarrassed. "Did you enjoy it?"

  "Guess so."

  "Couldn't you say it kinda better than that?"

  "What?"

  "You know, say it nice. Like, 'Boy, I really enjoyed that.' You know. Enthusiasm."

  "You know I enjoyed it."

  "Well, I'm glad."

  "You going to tell your parents?"

  "Are you kidding? I'm only twelve."

  "You going to tell anybody else?"

  "Not if you don't want me to."

  "Good."

  It was then he took the pocket knife from his jeans. It was a Boy Scout knife with a black handle. He opened the longest blade.

  As they'd been kissing, he'd been aware that his groin was dead. A lot of times, just lying on his bed and thinking of this girl or that, he'd get so aroused, he'd have to leap up, put a chair up to the door so nobody could break in, and masturbate. He'd close his eyes and imagine the girls he'd glimpsed in Playboy, those swaying breasts and mounds of pink buttocks.

  So, he should have been doubly aroused with a real girl in his arms, even if she was only twelve and his next-door neighbour.

  But he hadn't been aroused, and he knew that something was wrong. He thought of his father.

  "How come you took out your knife?" she said.

  "It was kind of poking me in the leg."

  "You want me to kiss you again?"

  "Do you want to kiss me again?"

  "Guess so."

  "You'll have to say it better than that."

  "Guess I'd like to kiss you."

  "How about 'Jesse, I'd really like to kiss you.' "

  "Okay."

  "Will you say it?"

  He shrugged and said it.

  She smiled, and he put his arm around her again and kissed her.

  This time he pushed his tongue into her mouth. He felt himself begin to tingle. Breath coming a little faster. But still-nothing in his groin. Nothing. Was he going to be impotent, too?

  His hand cupped her breast. He felt silken flesh and a little nub of nipple.

  But nothing in his groin; nothing.

  He wanted to be an animal and run away. Fast. Far.

  And then his hand found the knife and almost without realizing it he… cut her and he… pulled the knife a quarter inch down her arm.

  She cried out, pushing away from him, furious and baffled and terrified of him now.

  "What're you doing?" she shouted, scrambling away backward. "What're you doing?"

  It wasn't much of a cut, really. You could get a lot worse than that just getting scraped by a branch.

  But it had worked.

  At sight of her blood, his crotch had swollen and pained him with a monumental erection.

  At sight of her blood…

  "It was an accident," he said.

  "An accident?" But she was crying then and barely coherent. Somehow she sensed what this was all about, and there was frenzy about her…

  He went over to her and sat by her and began to stroke her. Once he had hurt her, once he could see blood, he could be tender with her.

  He took her in his arms and held her until her crying stopped, until she turned her face up to his and they kissed again

  He was never to see her intimately again. Apparently she never told anybody about that afternoon, because her parents never said a word to him. In the autumn she fell in love with a boy she would ultimately-after breaking up and making up many times-marry and have four children with (this was after the whole family moved away when she was a junior).

  But he never forgot the afternoon; nor did he forget the lesson. The sight of dark red blood on soft white flesh, dark red blood on the soft golden down of her arm, dark red blood…

  ***

  Stu Foster recalled all this on the way over to Brolan's place. When he looked back, there was a direct line running from the afternoon with Jessica to how he'd treated certain women all his life. Certain women. There was a euphemism for you. Whores. Those were the "certain women." He had married well, a really darling if plump girl who'd been a Tri-Delt and a beauty queen runner-up, and whose father had made and lost a fortune in petrochemicals down in Kentucky-and of course he kept his preferences secret from her. Oh, once or twice he'd been tempted to hurt her a little-disguised, of course, as playfulness-during their lovemaking. But he'd been afraid he couldn't stop. So, he'd visited whores. The late sixties and seventies had been a boon for people like him. Sex was everywhere. Everything from weekend clubs to outcall massage parlours, when you were in a strange city and didn't want to leave your hotel room. And almost always when you explained to them what you wanted, what you really wanted, you paid them a little money, and there you were. Commerce, just like anything else. Commerce.

  Only once had there been real trouble. New Orleans, it had been. Too much rich food, too much hard liquor, too many women who gave you the impression they'd do absolutely anything if you had the good green Yankee cash. A mulatto woman asked him if he'd ever shaved a woman down there before and he'd said no, that he hadn't really even thought about it. So, she gave him this straight razor and a shaving mug and brush and she lay back on the bed and spread her legs and told him to go ahead. She had some kind of blues on the radio, and she was smoking a joint, and she closed her eyes as if he weren't even there at all. And there he sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the juicy pink meat between her legs with a bone-handled straight razor in his fingers, and then a darkness came over him, and he wasn't even sure what he'd tried to do. All he knew was that soon she was screaming and holding her hands over her sex, and that there was blood, blood streaming between her fingers.

  ***

  …And he was apologizing and saying he was sorry-"My God, listen, I'm really really sorry; I'll leave you extra money; so sorry; just drunk; please, please just take this money and quit screaming, please." And for a full year he'd been afraid to go back to a hooker. Afraid of what he might do.

  But then, the following spring, he met some hookers in Des Moines who knew how to deal with men like him-who knew how to let him get his kicks without ever going too far…

  ***

  In the backseat, in a brown paper bag, were the clothes he'd worn with the whore Emma and with the whore at the piano bar the other night. You could still smell the blood. A kind of steely tang. Also in the bag was the
knife he'd used. Same knife on both occasions.

  As he approached Brolan's street, he thought of how his partner had looked when he saw the detective waiting for him in the reception area. The thing was, he didn't really dislike Frank Brolan. So, he'd felt a little sorry for him, seeing that Brolan realized that he was trapped, that forces beyond any of his powers were working against him.

  He took the alley. Given the time of day, there were no children around playing.

  He drove to Brolan's garage, got out, grabbed the bag, and carried it quickly inside the garage.

  Even in winter the interior smelled of car oil from stains on the floor. Sometimes Frank liked to putter around on his own car, finding such work relaxing.

  The garage was orderly, almost empty. On one wall hung a manual lawn mower, three rakes, and a lawn seeder. Against the opposite concrete block wall was a tall stack of corded firewood, a kerosene heater, an aluminium stepladder, and several fifty-pound bags of salt for ice. None of these lent themselves to his purposes. He looked around, finally raising his eyes to the two-by-fours that criss-crossed the ceiling. A few pieces of plywood had been laid across the two-by-fours so that things could be stored up there. You could see where the plywood sagged in the middle from the weight. This would be an ideal place for what he had in mind.

  He went over and got the ladder and carried it to the centre of the garage. He took the paper bag with the clothes and the knife in it and took it up the ladder. He set the bag far back on the plywood, as if somebody had tried very hard to hide it up there, and then he came back down the steps.

  That should work.

  Within another minute, the ladder put back, the side door of the garage closed snugly, he was in his car and sluicing through the deep snow in the alley.

  Ten minutes later, at a drive-up phone, he stopped and deposited thirty-five cents and called the office. He asked for Kathleen. She came on the line in a minute or so.

  "Are you someplace you can talk?" he said.

  She hesitated. "Not really."

  "Well, I just wanted to let you know that I made my little trip to his garage."

  "No problems, then?"

  "None."

  "Good."

  "In about an hour I'm going to call the police and tell them that as an anonymous good citizen, I feel duty bound to tell them that I think he's hiding a body somewhere in his house. That I think I saw him carrying one in the other night." He sighed. "Poor bastard. You should have seen his face this morning."

  But he was being sentimental, and Kathleen was almost never sentimental. From all this, she would gain half the agency, taking over Brolan's role. That was all she thought about. Two years before, Foster and Kathleen had been forced' to accompany each other on a business trip to Denver. One snowy night, the client's plane unable to land, they'd endured a dinner together. They genuinely disliked and distrusted each other. Foster saw her as all ambition and cunning; and she saw him as everything she hated about the men's club that still ran most of advertising. But drinks had led to sex and sex to a peculiar relationship. She seemed to hate men in much the same way he hated women. She'd even sensed-that very first night-that for him pain was a part of pleasure. She'd started biting him, hard, almost angrily, to the point of drawing blood. And that night he'd had an orgasm that nearly blinded him with its pleasure… They let people, including Brolan, continue to think that they still hated each other. It lent their real relationship a protective coloration. And after a few months Kathleen started talking about how they could get new clients for the agency. Good, blue-chip clients that so many other agencies were always hurling themselves against uselessly.

  "I'm going to have a little talk with Lane first. Brolan's been poking around. He may have figured out some things about our friend Charles," Foster said.

  "Good," she said.

  "I'll see you at your place around six," he said, and hung up.

  In another minute, he was driving again, enjoying the sparkling white snow and the dark branches swinging in the wind.

  28

  BROLAN WAS NOT ABLE TO STOP SHAKING.

  Fifteen minutes after the detective had left, he sat behind his desk, his office door closed, trembling as if he had been left out in a farm field over night.

  He felt the weight of the past three days and nights on him-paranoia about the woman in the freezer, not enough sound sleep, wild suspicions and surmises about nearly everyone around him.

  One way or another, he knew, it would be over with soon. He simply didn't have the stamina for much more.

  He had put his head down on his desk, the way he once had as a grade-school boy. Had he ever been sleepier than he'd been trying to survive an afternoon of history and maths?

  It was no different now. All he wanted was sleep. Given all the trouble he was in, the desire was almost perverse.

  But he didn't care.

  He slept.

  He had no idea what time it was when his intercom buzzed. His head came up quickly, as if somebody had poked him with a pin.

  "Yes?"

  "Line two."

  Rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Do you know who it is?"

  "Somebody named Denise. Sounds young."

  "Oh. Right. Denise. Thanks."

  He picked up. "Hi."

  "Greg asked me to call you."

  "Fine."

  "He-we-wanted to know if you knew anybody who drives a silver XKE."

  "I sure do."

  "Well, he came here last night-over in Emma's apartment-and he pushed stuff around pretty good, and then he knocked me out."

  "What?"

  So, she explained. "So, you know who he is?"

  "His name is Cummings."

  "Greg thinks you should find out what he's up to."

  "I think that's a very good idea." He paused. "How do you feel, Denise?"

  "Neck's kind of stiff is all."

  "Otherwise all right?"

  "Otherwise fine."

  "I'm going to check him out. And right now."

  "The man who hit me?"

  "Right."

  "If you get a chance, punch him for me, will you?" Then she laughed. "I'm just kidding. I hate to see anybody get punched."

  "I'll try and get over there around dinner time. Maybe the three of us can order a pizza or something."

  "Greg wants to show me a serial called Jungle Girl tonight. Maybe you can watch it, too."

  Actually that sounded nice. Pleasant. Relaxing. He said, "Hope so, Denise. Hope so."

  ***

  From downtown Brolan went to the Chichester Country Club, which lay in a wooded-and now virtually snowbound area-south of the city.

  The snow, the freezing temperature, and the brutal winds hadn't kept many members from lunching there. The parking lot was full. A man in a hunting outfit on a mobile snowblower was scraping the parking lot. He waved when he saw Brolan.

  Chichester was by no means the most exclusive club in the city, but in a peculiar way it was the most difficult to get into. The men who founded the place following World War II looked for like kind only-hunters, fishermen, sports fanatics. That was the measure there-what type of man you were, and not social background or wealth. Of course, if you were impoverished and living on food stamps, it was unlikely the Chichester boys would take you, even if you knew how to catch fish with your bare hands.

  The ranch-style building stretched over a deeply sloping hill down to a small wooded area of pine and fir. It was made of native stone and rough timber, lending it the hoped-for look of rustic sophistication. The creek that ran downslope was frozen over and silver. A white-haired man in a long dark overcoat skated across the ice, holding himself erect with military decorum. At his age Brolan would be lucky to be able to get out of bed every morning, let alone do a few miles on a frozen creek.

  A chunky man in a good suit one size too small greeted Brolan just inside the door. "May I help you?"

  "I'd like to see Mr. Cummings."

  "I see. I'm afraid he's s
wimming right now. Maybe you'd like to wait in the bar."

  "Fine."

  The man pointed to the bar and stepped back for Brolan to walk in front of him.

  Brolan had a scotch-and-water and a cigarette. Then he had another scotch-and-water and two cigarettes. Toward the end of the second one, he started coughing. Wonderful.

  He had been in the bar twenty minutes when he started looking around. The northern wall was solid glass and overlooked steep downslopes that a few people were using for skiing. The other walls were the same native stone as the exterior. Deep leather chairs and dark wooden trundle tables took up (he rest of the space-except for the bar. All the linen was very white and very well pressed, and none of the glasses had any water stains on them, and the preppie-looking bartender was careful to call you sir without any irony in his voice whatsoever.

  Brolan decided to go looking for Cummings. He could sit there a long time. Cummings was a swimming freak. When stress not too much, he often came out here and swam all afternoon. Anyway, there was at least a chance that the doorman had mentioned Brolan to Cummings. And an equal chance that Cummings had glimpsed Brolan and decided to take off so he wouldn't have to answer any questions.

  Without having any idea where he was going, Brolan started searching through the club for the swimming pool. He found a snooker room and a den and a locker room. The pool was nearby.

  Cummings was in there. Barrel-chested, his. arms and back and chest covered with white hair, he rose and dove, rose and dove like a porpoise through the green, chlorine-smelling water. He was the only one in the pool.

  Steam misted the large window that overlooked the grounds. On the bottom of the Olympic-size pool you could see Chichester spelled out in a mosaic of blue and white tiles. Brolan walked along the edge of the pool. Cummings hadn't noticed him yet.

  Brolan went to the far end of the pool and stood next to the silver-coloured ladder leading into the water.

  After a minute or so, coming up for air, Cummings saw him. He said, spitting water, "What the hell do you want?"