by Jeff Klima
—
Daddy Long Legs has none of the panache of the Electric Candy Factory, and I have to drive past it twice before I locate its small, nondescript facade, tucked into a strip mall between a tattoo parlor and a skin shop. It is a bikini bar straight out of the dive-bar mold, and Ivy is behind the counter, filling a pitcher with Bud. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and she wears a bikini top that can only sort of contain her fake tits and a skirt that exposes the smooth, round bottoms of her ass cheeks. It must be tough, being the lone female in a room full of mostly dirty, rundown, run-of-the-mill blue-collar perverts. Additionally, three bikers stand around a pool table, and two frat guys sit at the bar, not concealing their affinity for the way Ivy looks in her top.
I take a seat further down from the frat boys, empty barstools on both sides of me, and wait for her to finish. If she’s noticed me come in, she doesn’t show it. I take off the windbreaker and sit, cooling my heels until she heads my direction.
“Holy shit,” she exclaims, noticing the bandage on my forearm first. “Sorry, I didn’t even see you come in. I learned quickly in this place that it’s better not to make eye contact with the customers. What happened to you?”
“You were right about the guy. We had a bit of an altercation.”
“Did he cut you?”
“A bit.”
“Why didn’t you call me?! Did you catch him?” She is so excited, her questions stop waiting for answers. “Was he black?”
“Wait, what?”
“I don’t know—I kind of had this theory that he was a black guy.” She leans over on the counter, embarrassed, her breasts mashing down beneath her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“What happens now?”
I slide the letter across the counter so she can read it.
“ ‘Whoops! I followed you home. Now I know where you live.’ What does this mean?”
“He followed me home.”
“Meaning?”
“He knows where I live.”
“Ass. I meant, what are you going to do about it?”
“For starters, I’m going to keep this bandage hidden. Fewer questions that way. Other than that, what else can I do?”
“Come home with me. Don’t go back to your place.”
“No.”
“Don’t be stubborn. Obviously this guy is dangerous.”
“I agree and so I don’t want you involved from here on out.”
“And what are you, some sort of martial arts badass?”
“I just maybe have less to lose than you.”
“Are you fucking serious? Take a wild look around, buster.” She smirks enthusiastically. “I’m in a bikini in a shithole bar. I’ve got nothing to live for except solving this.”
“I’m still saying no.”
“I thought you don’t give a damn about me.”
“I don’t.”
“Then fuck off and let me help.”
One of the frat boys bangs his empty beer mug down on the counter so hard the glass should shatter. “Calm down, asshole,” Ivy snaps at him, and I recognize the flare in attitude.
“I thought you said you’d leave me alone forever if I let you help on that crime scene,” I say when she turns back to me.
“The rules have changed—you’ve got to learn to roll with it.” She fakes a one-two punch combination at me, grins, and then goes to refill the empty mug.
In her absence, I study the other men around me at the bar. Is he here now? I don’t think he is—no one has entered since I have and I doubt he knew I was headed down here. Still, I gauge the height and weight of everyone in the place, just to be sure. I wonder if this is how it’s going to be from here on out, though. My chest burns. Am I just going to measure up everyone I meet from now on until the day when he sneaks up from behind and jams a blade in me? No, I decide. I’m not going to live like that…like I’m back in prison.
—
“I know you’re gonna say no cops on this one, but what should we do, for real?” she asks upon her return.
“For realsies?” I say, sarcastic, but drop it to consider what feels like my only option. “Considering the stack of dead bodies he’s left in his wake, I’d say I’m going to kill him before he kills me.”
Chapter 9
Admittedly, I’m still cautious as I set foot inside my apartment building, but I try to appear casual. Something like this is easy to overthink. Do I take the elevator or do I take the stairs? Is someone waiting for me in the hallway, or are they inside my apartment already? Is anyone there at all? Maybe the note was just a tactic to keep me from messing in his affairs. Maybe he has no intent of ever bothering me. Or maybe he will come for me in the middle of the night like one of his motel victims.…
If I get bogged down in my own guesswork, I’ll wind up a lunatic. So I opt for the elevator—it’s as good a choice as any, and besides, it’s been a long day. It’s even still early enough yet that Ms. Park-Hallsley shouldn’t have reason to complain. At least she’s no longer snoring. I hit the button and expect to see her shadow move across her door, ominous, but it doesn’t. Usually she’ll check so she knows who to make the complaint letter out to, or even out of simple, prying curiosity. I can hear the strains of a TV commercial through the door, though, and can only hope that, for once, there is something more interesting to her than the goings-on of the tenants.
The hallway on the fifth floor appears clear, so I press my luck and go for my apartment. I enter unmolested and everything at first glance appears exactly as it should, but I still lock the door behind me and give the place a quick once-over to ascertain that I am indeed alone. After that, I feel foolish. Of course his note was only a scare tactic. If he really wanted to kill me, he wouldn’t leave a note on my car—he’d just kill me.
Annoyed at my own flighty imagination, I stoop to scoop the parchment-colored envelope from the linoleum tile behind my door. It’s another of Park-Hallsley’s landlord warnings, I’m sure, and I toss it toward the trashcan. The envelope sails wide left and I go after it, grumbling. When I pick it up a second time, though, something feels off. It’s heavier than her normal missives, as if she’d stuffed two warnings in one envelope. My curiosity gets the better of me, and I tear into the notice to see what’s up.
Inside, on large font spread over two pages stapled together bearing Ms. Park-Hallsley’s personal letterhead, I find typed:
Hello again,
Let me just start by saying I am impressed. More than impressed even—stupefied. I don’t know who you are, or how you found out about me, but good work, you. You could just be some unlucky guy staying at the Inn who happened to get a glimpse of me and released your inner superhero, but I kind of doubt it. Why would you be staying at the Northridge Offramp Inn when you live here? I guess you could have been taking advantage of the new hourly rates (how seedy are those, btw?). The rub is that I actually saw you in your car on Wednesday night, but stupid fucking me, I just chalked you up to a part of the scenery. That nice new car should have clued me in, though…you see how sloppy I’m getting? So I thank you for the lesson in caution. Also, were you as annoyed as I was about the room being empty that other night?
I don’t think you’re a cop cuz you are a bit too gaunt and unhealthy looking, and also, you would have just pulled your gun and badge on me. My guess is that you work for the coroner’s office. You must have been to the crime scenes or seen pictures, right? I’m thinking it was the condom-in-the-Bible that gave me away. Yeah, that was a bit too on-the-nose maybe.
I am excited now, Mr. Mystery Man. You’ve given me a new direction in life, and helped me realize how bored I was with everything, and since you decided to fuck with my life, I’m going to return the favor. Spooky spooky.
P.S. Your landlord is a real nosy bitch!
Fuck. Of course. I scan the note again quickly, seeking out telltale signs that could shed clues as to the identity of the writer. After scanning it twice, I realize that fro
m his words, I deduce absolutely fucking nothing. He seems young. Maybe. But how young? From our previous encounter, I knew he was in shape and strong, but these days, even guys in their sixties are in shape and strong.
The “P.S.” is interesting—does he mean that she’d caught him stuffing the letter under my door? But how would he have added that to the letter? And if it was written on her stationery, had he accessed her room? Or maybe this was part of what he meant by fucking with me? What if the letter was tailor-made to get me to go out of my room to talk to Ms. Park-Hallsley, and that is where he gets me…It is all a great big mindfuck.
In the end, I decide I don’t have too much of a choice and step out into the hallway, glancing subtly side to side for the man to be lying in wait. The jutting square corners of the hallway don’t help any either as I move down toward the elevators, unable to see around them for the presence of a person. The lack of AC in the building causes my arms to take on a slick feel. I’m annoyed that I’m so nervous. Why hadn’t I minded my own business? The uncertainty of the moment brings back memories of my time in the prison rec yard, back before the attack, back before I got put into special holding, and I shiver despite the heat. A large figure pops out from around the corner, abruptly into my line of sight, startling me. It is my neighbor, a large ponytailed Samoan man, carting his laundry back from the laundromat up the street. We nod politely at one another, but neither of us speaks. He doesn’t know anything about me, and what I know about him, he doesn’t need to know either. I’d once pathetically jacked off to the sound of him through the wall having sex with a vocal woman for what seemed like an hour. It isn’t exactly the makings of a startup conversation.
Ms. Park-Hallsley’s television is still on, back to another commercial, and all at once I feel like a fool. I’ll knock, and she’ll answer, glaring at me for disturbing her. I’ll ask if anyone has been around that day looking for me; she’ll make some snide remark about evicting me if I am in any more trouble with the law. I will apologize quickly for disturbing her, and then go back upstairs, left to wonder what it all means. In spite of this, I rap on the door, and wait. There is no discernible sound of movement from inside and no shadow across the peephole. It is all very odd. In the year and a half I’ve lived here, I’ve never once known her to leave the building. She even has her groceries delivered. She has no friends in the building that I know of, and when she does leave her room, she always turns the TV off. She’s too cheap not to. I tap once more, harder, and wait. Finally, deciding, I try the handle.
It twists and the door swings open easily, silently, into the apartment. The room is dark—save for the electric glow of the television screen on the Home Shopping Channel. “Ms. Park-Hallsley?” I pray the old broad isn’t just taking a dump. “Hello?”
I flick on the switch for the overhead lamp and douse the room in shaded white light. The room is clean but cluttered, filled with the sort of contrivances and commemorative wall plates that the Home Shopping Network shills round the clock.
“Ms. Park?”
If she is just out on other floors, making her rounds, dropping off her threatening little letters, and comes back to catch me in her apartment, I’ll be evicted at the very least. More likely, I’ll be arrested, and she’ll claim it was robbery and attempted murder with the special circumstance of “lying in wait.”
And yet, I move on through the garish front room and toward the main bedroom. The bathroom door is ajar, and I can see the toilet is unoccupied, so that takes care of that. My apartment is laid out just like hers—only hers is bigger and appears to have an extra bedroom, probably filled with more Shopping Network crap. Flipping on the bedroom light, I see her lying on the bed, in her nightgown, motionless on top of the covers of the made bed. “Ms. Park?” I try again, apprehensive. In her fist is a tube of burgundy lipstick, the tip smashed in. Beside her, a note simply reads, I’m tired, in fumbling, blocky lipstick lettering. Her body appears intact and unharmed, and it is as if she is only asleep, but without needing to touch her, I know this isn’t the case. On the desk beside her bed, standing prominent before the keyboard of her computer, is an uncapped and empty bottle of zolpidem.
She’s killed herself—OD’d on generic sleeping pills—and has done so in the shadow of an assembled teddy bear audience, their eyes staring in silent judgment from every surface in the room. Of course it isn’t really a suicide, but what had transpired that cost this woman her life?
I suddenly have the distinct impression that I am being watched—and not just by the plush collectibles. I look to the window in the room, which is closed, locked, and covered by white curtains. It seems as if someone had deliberately moved one of the curtains over just enough though that they’d be able to look in on the scene from the outside. I stride over and glance out through the gap, careful not to touch anything—now mindful of everything in the room and my presence around it. Outside, across the lawn, and over the tips of the plants below the window, I can only see the streetlights casting their shadows. A rice rocket zooms by, stereo reverberating, causing car alarms to chirp their warnings. Otherwise, nothing else moves, but I know I’m not wrong. He’s out there somewhere, watching me discover his handiwork.
I walk back out of the room, leaving Ms. Park-Hallsley on her bed with her smushed lipstick and “suicide note,” pausing to wipe a tissue across the entirety of the light switch and its plastic plate. I do the same for every other light switch and doorknob, cleaning the entire surface of each. Cops aren’t stupid—well, the detectives aren’t anyways—it’s better that they find everything completely wiped clean rather than just odd spots amidst surrounding fingerprints. Better to let ’em think she was a compulsive cleaner. I leave the TV on; the announcer is showcasing a piece of art, a reprint from one of the Dutch masters, and I curse the fact that I can’t lock the door. An unlocked door is always suspicious—even to the dumb cops.
Exiting the building, I walk around on the concrete to where Ms. Park-Hallsley’s window is, careful not to step in the soft mulch around the plants there. As I figure, a lone plank, taken from the construction site across the street, lies across the dirt, preventing the creation of footprints in the loose soil. Cursing, I lift the plank with the tips of my fingers, and toss it off so that it no longer resides directly beneath the window. It’s a dead giveaway that what we’ve got here is more likely a near-perfectly executed murder rather than a casual suicide. And as the resident ex-con living in the building, I don’t fucking need that police headache. It is an irritation to have to clean up after such sloppy criminal antics. Then, because I know he is watching, I turn and extend my middle finger to the darkness.
Chapter 10
“You’re really not going to call the police?”
“No.”
“But she’s just going to rot in there.”
“When she really begins to stink—if it gets that far—then I’ll call it in. That way, it’ll seem natural. I’m a crime scene cleaner—I’m supposed to recognize that smell. It won’t be suspicious then. I have to play it smart about this stuff—for my own sake.”
“What if I do it then?”
“Be my guest. Do it from a payphone, though, and leave me out of it.”
I didn’t have any crime scenes on my docket, and Ivy had wanted to meet up, so I’d suggested the Venice Boardwalk. The temperature was over 100 in the Valley and the boardwalk on a Saturday afternoon is a good scene.
“I’ve never been here before,” she confesses as we begin to walk. “It cost me fifteen bucks to park.”
“Yeah, the parking sucks. I know a guy out here, though; he doesn’t drive, so I borrowed his carport.” The guy in question is my dealer, another reason I chose Venice.
“Thanks for sharing,” she grouses.
“I can’t believe you live in L.A. and you’ve never been to Venice.”
“I’m not native—I came out from Kansas, so I’ve got an excuse.”
“Kansas isn’t an excuse for anything.” Not wantin
g to bicker, I change tactics. “Okay, so the first rule of Venice is that you’ve got to get a pair of sunglasses.”
“I’ve got sunglasses.” She points to the pair perched up on her head.
I pluck them off and hand them back to her. “You’ve got to get Venice sunglasses. It stimulates the economy; they’re cheap. I’ll buy you a pair…a mea culpa about the parking.”
“Are you going to get some?” she asks, self-conscious.
“Always.”
“They won’t turn my skin green or anything, will they?”
“Don’t be a bitch.”
I lead the way over to one of the many bodegas with their massive display walls of sunglasses, and begin picking through the random stacks, trying on pairs.
“This doesn’t seem like you,” she says, sticking close.
“Actually, since you hardly know me, I wouldn’t say that you’re the best judge of my habits. But you’re right. This is more of a ‘fuck you’ to my parents than any sort of interest in cheap Taiwanese eyewear. They never let me get sunglasses when they took me out here as a kid. They thought they were a ‘waste of money.’ ”
“Are your parents still around?”
“Let’s change the topic,” I insist, and find a pair that looks good on her.
Satisfied with our selections, I signal the Asian lady manning the booth and gesture to both pairs, then hand her a ten. She pockets the money and doesn’t bother to haggle.
“What were you in jail for?”
“I committed a crime. What do you think of your new glasses?”
“They’re very dark.”
“They’re sunglasses. That’s what they do.”
She pinches the skin of my elbow. “How’s your arm?”
“Healing. I’ll have a scar.”
“Chicks dig scars.”
“I don’t need any more chicks or scars.”
“Do you think he followed us?” Ivy asks, suddenly moving closer to me.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’ve been watching the people around us, but I haven’t seen anyone paying any particular attention to me.” To her, though…