“Did you get what you paid for?” Goldstein asks. He hasn’t stopped grinning (nor have his eyes strayed from Taiku’s) since Taiku began his story.
“What you say?”
“You know.” Goldstein cups his hands against his chest. “Did she have a big pair? Was she blond all over?”
Taiku recoils. He cannot divine the motive behind the question; the cultural differences are too vast. Policemen in Japan maintained a supremely disapproving countenance at all times. Goldstein looks as if he’s about to drool.
“Hai. Girl okay.”
“How many times you do her?” Goldstein arches his back and grunts. “I mean, it was an all-nighter, right? You took her for the whole night?”
“Yes. All night.”
“So, how many times you do her?”
Taiku has had enough. He expects foreigners to be offensive, and knows he has to make allowances. But this is too much. Next Goldstein will ask him to describe what they did. “This not your business.”
Goldstein’s eyes narrow, but do not waver. “Awright,” he waves his hand in a vague circle. “Go on, Hoshi.”
They’d had sex, Taiku admits, then he’d gone to sleep. He’d slept through the night and when he’d awakened the next morning, found himself alone in the bed. His first thought was that he’d been robbed, but his wallet, with his cash and credit cards, was where he’d left it in the pocket of his trousers. Then a cool breeze had drawn his attention to an open window, which he’d closed without thinking to look down. It was only after he’d showered and dressed, after Goldstein knocked on his door, after a long, repeated explanation, that he’d finally understood. Inga Johannson had used the window to make her final exit.
The story is simple and carefully rehearsed, but Taiku’s voice drops in pitch and volume as he proceeds. He is lying and certain that Goldstein knows it, certain also that he has to maintain the lie if he hopes to see his country and his family any time in the near future. But the need to confess, prompted by shame and disgrace, is very strong as well. And then there is the likelihood that even should he be released, he will neither be welcomed in his country, nor embraced by his family.
“Look,” Goldstein declares after a long moment of silence, “just for the record, is this the woman who came to your hotel room?”
Goldstein dips into the breast pocket of his jacket to remove a small photo of a young woman kneeling behind a toddler. The child, a boy, is looking over his shoulder and up at his mother while she faces the camera squarely. The broad smile on her face appears to be spontaneous and genuine.
Taiku stares at the photo, remembering the heavily made-up prostitute who’d emerged from the bathroom in her transparent lingerie, who’d run her tongue over her lips and her fingertips over her belly as if possessed. “Tell me what you want me to do,” she’d said. “Just tell me.”
“Hai. This her.”
“We found it in her wallet. Good thing, too, because the way she came down on her face … Wait a second.” Goldstein’s fingers return to his breast pocket, this time removing a Polaroid taken a few hours before. He lays the photo on the table. “A fuckin’ mess, huh?”
At first, Taiku sees only a large pool of blood spreading from a headless torso. But as he continues to stare down, he finally discerns the outlines of a flattened human skull made even more obscure by a semi-detached scalp.
Goldstein’s tone, when he begins to speak, is matter-of-fact. “You did okay for an amateur, Hoshi. First, you washed up the bathroom pretty good. Then you dumped the dirty towels, her makeup, and her syringe in a plastic bag which you took from the waste basket. Then you carried the bag down two flights, and you tossed it in a service cart without being seen. The only problem is, it’s not gonna help ya, not one bit, and what you’re doin’ here, lyin’ to me and all, is only makin’ things a lot worse.”
Taiku finds that he can’t tear his eyes from the photo on the table. Not because the gore holds him prisoner, but because he can no longer face Goldstein’s steady gaze. It’s ridiculous, of course; sooner or later he will have to look up. Still, he’s relieved, at least initially, when Goldstein continues to speak.
“The way I see it, you wake up, find the bed empty, maybe check your wallet, then head into the bathroom, where you discover Jane Denning overdosed on heroin. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, you think she’s dead. Maybe she’s not breathing, maybe her skin is cool to the touch, maybe you can’t find a pulse. Either way, you don’t want her discovered in your room. Call it a culture thing. A dead whore brings dishonor on your company, your country, your family, yourself. You just can’t let that happen. You tell yourself that nobody saw her come up to your room, that the cops will take it for a suicide, that nobody will lose any sleep over a dead whore, that by the time the police figure it out, you’ll be ten thousand miles away.
“Not a bad plan, when I think about it. And if Jane hadn’t been tight with the hotel detective, it might’ve worked, too. But she was well known to Mack Cowens, who was most likely bein’ paid off, and she told him where she was goin’.”
Goldstein pauses long enough to yawn. The squeal had come through at 7:30, at the end of his tour, and it’s now a little after noon. He wants his home and his wife and his bed, but the way it is, he won’t finish the paperwork for many hours.
“Awright, back to the ball.” He leans closer to Taiku, until his mouth is within a few inches of the smaller man’s ear. “What you did, Hoshi, you bad boy, after due consideration, was open the window, haul her across the room, and toss her out. Then you closed …” Goldstein stopped, rubbed his chin, and nodded to himself. “Oh, yeah, something we couldn’t figure out and I been wantin’ to ask you. Did you wait for the crunch before you closed the window? You know, did you wait for her to hit the sidewalk? And another thing: Did you think about what would’ve happened if Jane landed on a pedestrian? I mean, it was pretty early, but what if some little kid had been walkin’ along, mindin’ her own business, maybe thinkin’ about school or goin’ to a party, and … splat? As it was, Hoshi, the few people down there who saw it happen, they’re gonna carry that image into the grave. It’s not fair and—”
The door opens at that moment, cutting Goldstein off in mid-sentence. He jerks back as though slapped. “What the fuck is this? I’m workin’ here.”
Vera Katakura endures the outburst without altering her stern expression. “You’re wanted,” she announces.
Goldstein’s eyes squeeze shut for a moment, then, with a visible effort, he slowly gets to his feet. “Keep an eye on this jerk,” he commands. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”
Taiku watches the door close behind Goldstein, then turns to Vera Katakura. Though clearly Asian, she might be from any of a dozen countries. He guesses Chinese, maybe Korean, but it doesn’t matter because …
“Stand up.”
The simple demand, spoken in perfect Japanese, runs up Taiku’s spine, an ice cube settling onto the back of his neck. As in a dream, he feels the muscles in his thighs flex, his knees bend, his body rising until he stares directly into Vera Katakura’s unyielding black eyes. She doesn’t speak, but she doesn’t have to speak. He can see his disgrace at the very center of her pupils, a tiny shadow, a smudge, and he knows that his dishonor extends to all—and to each—of the Japanese people. He wants to bow, to bend forward until his back is parallel to the ground; he wants to acknowledge his shame, to shrivel up and die, a cockroach in a fire. Instead, though his knees tremble, he continues to stare into Vera’s eyes until, without changing expression, she lifts her open palm to her shoulder, then cracks him right across the face.
“Hai,” he says.
* * *
“She reduced him to a puddle,” Goldstein declares, not for the first time. “The poor schmuck just melted on the spot.” He turns to Vera Katakura, his partner for the last three years, and lifts his glass.
They are drinking in a hole-in-the-wall bar on Ninth Avenue, one of the last of its kind this close to
Lincoln Center. Goldstein, Katakura, Brian O’Boyle, and First Grade Detective Speedo Brown.
It’s been a very good day. A signed statement in hand before 1, the paperwork completed by 2, a crowded press conference at 3:30 with Captain Anthony Borodski taking full credit for the successful investigation, though he hadn’t arrived until after Hoshi Taiku was formally charged with murder. Mowrey had stood alongside his captain, there to field the questions that followed Borodski’s official statement, while Goldstein and Katakura lounged at the rear of the dais, trying to appear at least vaguely interested.
“You were definitely right about one thing,” O’Boyle says to Katakura. “You told me the poor bastard would beg to confess and beg he did.”
Vera glances at Speedo Brown, who earned his nickname when he appeared at Captain Borodski’s annual pool party in a tiny crimson bathing suit that fit his buttocks like a condom. “As you would, Brian, if you were in Taiku’s position. For a Japanese male, Speedo Brown is the worst nightmare imaginable.”
“I resent that,” Speedo declares. “I’m really a very nice person when you get to know me.”
They go on this way for another hour, with only Vera Katakura, who holds herself responsible, lending a passing thought to Hoshi Taiku. With malice aforethought, she’d signed, sealed, and delivered him into the hands of the state, plucking his strings as though playing a harp, effectively (and efficiently) consigning him to whatever nightmare awaited him on Rikers Island. Well, in fairness to herself, she hoped he’d asked for protective custody, or to get in touch with a lawyer, or with the Japanese embassy. An outraged embassy official had called the precinct ten minutes after the press conference ended. By that time, Taiku had already been arraigned and bail denied.
The saddest part, though it didn’t seem to sadden her comrades, was that if Jane Denning was dead before Taiku pushed her out the window, the worst charge he faces is unlawful disposal of a body, an E felony for which he will likely receive probation. It all depends on the autopsy results. If Hoshi catches a break, he’ll be out within a week. If not, he’ll sit until he is indicted and re-arraigned, until his lawyer makes an application for reduced bail, an application very likely to be denied.
“C’mon, Vera.” Goldstein nudges his partner. “You got nothin’ to say?”
Vera Katakura thinks it over for a moment, then sips at her third vodka tonic and shrugs. “You take the man’s pay,” she declares in a tone that brooks no contradiction, “you do the man’s job.”
THE LAUNDRY ROOM
BY JOHN LUTZ
Upper West Side
That it was blood didn’t seem likely.
Possible, but not likely.
Laura Frain stood in the dim basement laundry room of her apartment building and studied the stained shirt beneath a sixty-watt bulb that should have been a hundred. The rust-red stain on Davy’s blue collar looked as if it might be stubborn. And there was a similar stain on the shirt’s right sleeve.
She glanced around the laundry room, as if she feared she wasn’t alone. But she was alone. Most of the women in the building and not a few of the men didn’t like coming to the basement room to use the aging, coin-operated washing machines and clothes dryers. Especially since Wash Up, a spacious and well-lighted laundromat, had opened down the block. The basement laundry room—smelling of mold and bleach—was oppressive, even spooky, with its dimness and shadows and slitlike windows that looked out on an air shaft and hadn’t been washed in years. The truth was, she hated being there, but felt she had little choice.
The laundry room was one of the reasons she and Roger had rented the apartment, so she was determined to take advantage of the convenience. Besides, it was cheaper than a laundromat or dry cleaners.
Laura, her husband Roger, and their sixteen-year-old son Davy had lived in the Upper West Side apartment for the past two years, after being displaced when their longtime apartment on West 89th Street had gone condo. The new apartment had finally begun to feel like home.
Like her husband, Laura was in her late thirties. She and Roger had only last month celebrated their seventeenth wedding anniversary. She smiled, thinking as she often did that she was part of an attractive family. She still had her dark good looks, her lush auburn hair, and bright blue eyes. And Roger, while never a handsome man in the conventional sense, was still trim and attractive in his homely, Lincolnesque way. Davy, of course, was beautiful, with Roger’s craggy features and Laura’s bold blue eyes and wavy dark hair. A heartbreaker, Davy, though he didn’t date much.
Laura turned on the washer and listened to the ancient pipes rattle along the ceiling joists as the tub began to fill. She spread out the shirt with the stain facing up, stretching the material tight over the top of one of the nearby dryers, then reached for the aerosol can of spot remover. She sprayed the stain, then dipped a scrub brush into the warm water gushing into the machine, applied some soap to the brush’s bristles, and began to work on the stain.
When it had completely disappeared, she started on the similar stain on the shirt sleeve. Red sauce of some kind, perhaps even a thick red wine. She scrubbed until that stain had disappeared too, then continued to scrub.
When the washer was almost filled, she put the shirt in by itself, so it would be good and clean.
Davy’s shirt.
* * *
“David,” he said.
The pretty blond girl looked at him and cocked her head to the side to demonstrate she was curious. Her hair was combed straight back but ringlets had escaped to dangle in front of her ears and dance when she moved her head.
Davy smiled. “I thought you asked me my name.” They were in a video arcade near Times Square, and it was noisy not only from the games but from the traffic sounds drifting in through the open door.
“You heard wrong,” the girl said, but she returned his smile.
He shrugged and turned back to his Mounted Brigade game, swerving his horse right and lopping off the head of one of the charging Dragoons. An abbreviated shrill scream burst from the machine.
“Holly,” he heard.
He turned back to face the girl. “A beautiful name.”
She laughed cynically. “Yeah. So’s David.”
“You come in here often?” he asked, ignoring the trumpet signaling another charge.
“I don’t come in here at all. I stopped in to get out of the rain.”
He glanced outside and saw that a light summer drizzle had begun. People on the sidewalk were looking up at the sky in wary surprise, some of them opening umbrellas. Then he took a closer look at the girl—woman. She was older than he’d imagined, in her twenties. It was the renegade ringlets that threw him, and her clothes. She was dressed young, in tight jeans, a sleeveless Mets shirt, and dirty white jogging shoes. She had an angular, delicate look, emphasized by her swept back blond hair and the way she wore her makeup, heavily applied, with eyeliner that made her blue eyes even bluer. Both her ears were pierced in three places, and each piercing held a tiny fake diamond stud.
“Seen enough?” she asked.
He laughed. “Not by a long shot.” He turned away from his video game so she’d know she had his full attention. They always liked that. “You go to NYU?”
“How’d you guess?”
“Your shirt.”
She looked down at what she was wearing and gave him a quizzical look.
“NYU girls are Mets fans,” he said.
“All of us?”
“Without exception.”
“I actually like the Yankees.”
“Okay. With one exception.”
She gave him a different kind of smile this time. Kind of slow and lazy. It made her look even older. He liked that. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. “It’s too fucking noisy.”
“Just what I was thinking.”
She widened her smile. “Yeah. I know what you were thinking.”
* * *
“I got a call from the high school,” Laura told Roger when he ph
oned from the office at Broadwing Mutual, where he sold all kinds of insurance over the phone and managed outstanding policies. Laura wasn’t sure exactly what his job entailed, but he earned enough to support the family in reasonably good style—if they watched their pennies. “Davy’s skipped his afternoon classes again.”
“A habit.”
“The school’s concerned.”
“He’s a senior. He’ll go away to college next year.”
“If he graduates.”
“He’ll graduate, the tuition we pay the place.”
“He’s got to attend some classes.”
“And he does attend some. Davy will always do at least enough to get by. That’s the kind of kid he is. You worry too much, Laura.”
Or not enough.“He probably won’t be home in time for dinner, either. That seems to be the pattern.”
“So he’s out someplace having fun. He’s a young man now. You want me to talk to him?”
“No.” She knew her husband was bluffing. He wouldn’t talk to their son even if she insisted. She’d known for years the kind of relationship Roger and Davy shared. The late night trips down the hall when Roger assumed she was asleep. The faint squeal of the hinge on Davy’s bedroom door and—
“Laura?”
“I don’t see any reason to talk to him,” she said. “It probably wouldn’t help, anyway.”
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