Pretty Baby

by Pretty Baby (NCP) (lit)

  The slicing pain of her words went all the way through Garret. “That was a mistake, baby. I’ll never do it again.”

  “You’ll never get the chance,” she said stonily, the tone of her words venomous. She picked up her suitcase and turned to Shadoe. “Where will we sleep?”

  “Anywhere you want. I’d rather we be close together. I’ll need to know where you are every minute, so don’t wander off.”

  Garret stumbled forward, his face scowling in rage. “If you think for one minute I’m leaving my daughter up here alone with you, you’re crazier than you look.”

  Shadoe looked at him, wondering why he didn’t see this side of the old man a lot sooner. “If Julita and I want to get together, old man, we will. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

  “No?” Garret asked, feeling the weight of his gun in his pocket. “If you think that, you’re stupid as well as crazy.” He picked up his suitcase and shuffled toward the elevator, got in, then ascended slowly, his blistering eyes burning a hole through the two while they talked easily together as they approached the stairs. There was only one reason why he hated Shadoe, and that was because he was a contender for his daughter. He saw the way they looked at each other, the way they’d always looked at each other, and he couldn’t stand it. The thought of another man’s hands on Julita caused his killer instincts to come out.

  While Shadoe and Julita climbed the stairs, their talk was soft and hushed, Julita enjoying his handsome looks, and him still living with the haunting taste of her lips and breasts in his mouth. All at once they arrived at room number twenty-four, then slowed, remembering that it was the same room he had stayed in before. When he looked down at her, he noticed she was smiling. “I remember the morning I brought coffee to this room,” she said.

  Shadoe smiled. “It was rather a milestone.”

  “As I remember it, my binding burst, and I ran out scared to death.”

  “I’ll never forget seeing what I thought was a little girl of about twelve turn into a woman before my eyes.”

  “God, I was so dumb,” she said, then raised her lashes, giving him a sensuous look. “You may as well know, I fantasized about you. I was like a little girl fantasizing over a movie star. I longed for you to talk to me but when you did I became tongue-tied and ran away.” Silence for the space of a few heartbeats passed. “But still I dreamed of the moment....” Her words died and her face turned pink.

  “The moment?” he urged.

  She smiled a slow smile. “I think you know what I mean, Lieutenant.”

  “Julita,” he whispered, “my name is Shadoe. We’ve had some pretty intimate moments as I recall….” Their eyes met in a meaningful gaze, and his voice became raspy. “And I think we know each other well enough that you can call me by my first name.”

  She was silent.

  “That is … if you’re comfortable with it. I don’t want to do anything that makes you uncomfortable.”

  That brought tears to her eyes. “I can’t tell you how kind you’ve been.” She reached up to brush away the tears. “I know Papa will never say thanks, but....”

  “Please, Julita, you don’t have....”

  “Please, Lieu--Shadoe, let me say this.”

  Nodding, he listened.

  “I think we both know how stubborn Papa is, and you’ll wait a long time before he ever says thanks, but....” She looked up, her eyes soft, and shimmering with tears. “I’ll say it for both of us. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d still be wearing those silly dresses, binding myself up, and Papa would … well, maybe we’d both be dead by this time. I don’t know how to....”

  He drew her to him, and placed his fingers gently on her soft lips, halting her words. “You don’t?” he whispered, their lips almost touching, their heated breath shared.

  “Shadoe, you know you were my first, and since then I’ve never known....” She looked deeply into his eyes. “You do believe me, don’t you. Papa hasn’t … I’ve had to fight him off, but....” Suddenly her shoulders began to shake, and her tears flooded down her cheeks.

  “Julita, don’t.”

  All at once she went stiff in his arms. “It might be best if we kept our distance.”

  “Why?” he asked, noticing a difference in her. “Julita, what’s wrong?”

  “I … I have my own battles to fight, and you....” She looked across the hall. “I’ll stay in twenty-five.”

  “Julita,” he said, jerking her around. “It doesn’t matter to me what you’ve been through with your father.”

  Tears gathered in her eyes as she looked at him. “But I feel dirty … I....”

  “Dirty? Hell, Julita you’re not dirty, he is!” He hesitated, then continued. “Oh God, Julita, stay in my room tonight. He won’t know. We’ll lock....”

  “Don’t you see?” she interrupted, trying to turn away. “I don’t even know if I could submit to a man now. I’d always hear that wheezing sound, smell his bourbon breath.”

  He jerked her around. “I don’t have any of that, so how could you confuse me with that bastard?”

  Suddenly she broke away from him. “You don’t know how it was!” she cried, her breath turning to jerking sobs as she ran across the hall and slammed in.

  Just then the door down the way opened and Garret stepped out, looking at Shadoe as he leaned against his cane. “Struck out, huh?”

  “She thinks her life is ruined.”

  “It would be if she hooked up with you.”

  “I couldn’t do her any more damage than you have.”

  His eyes narrowed angrily. “I haven’t touched her. It’s true that we’ve had a few reckless encounters, but she’s still a virgin.”

  Shadoe looked away quickly, a heavy load of guilt resting on his shoulders at Garret’s words.

  “Hell, man after fifteen years I had a hard-on. It could happen to anyone. All I know is I was out of my mind at the time.” He looked at Shadoe and shrugged. “The bourbon helped.”

  Looking at the old man with eyes flashing anger, Shadoe threw the words at him like stones. “Your mouth stinks, old man, and not of bourbon. A father doesn’t get a goddamned hard-on for his daughter! There’s only one thing I want you to remember. Julita is your daughter … not a plaything. ou think you can remember that the next time you get falling-down drunk?”

  The look in Garret’s eyes turned to nasty rage. “I’m sure if I do, you’ll be here to remind me.” He stepped back and slammed his door.

  The nighttime wind whipped and moaned as Shadoe stepped into his room, wondering if the ghost bride would summon him tonight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Shadoe found Garret in the study the next morning mixing a drink. “You’re drinking this early?”

  Garret didn’t turn, but continued pouring his drink. “Nothing else to do. No food, nothing in the house.”

  “Hell, you’re right,” Shadoe said while raking his fingers through his hair. “Well, where’s the nearest place to shop? I’ll run down and pick up a few things.”

  Garret turned, the ice in his drink tinkling as he moved the squat Old Fashioned glass toward his mouth. “How the fuck would I know? I never shopped. I had people to do that.”

  Shadoe gave Garret a hostile glare. “Don’t use that kind of language around Julita.”

  Garret’s eyes shot fire, glaring at Shadoe as if he were a disobedient servant. “You’re telling me what to do? In my own house? With my own daughter?”

  “You got it, you bastard. Because right now you’re not capable of making those decisions.”

  Garret’s face immediately twisted into an amused scowl. “Well isn’t it fortunate we have the--his voice turned sarcastic, “expertise of Lieutenant Shadoe Madison with us since apparently I’m as crazy as my loony elder daughter.”

  “I didn’t say that,” he began with contempt, “but I wouldn’t dismiss the idea.”

  “You bastard! There was a time when I thought you hung the goddamned moon. Anything you sai
d, anything you did had to be right.”

  “Oh, hell, Garret, drop the ceremonial crap. You never thought any such thing. You were just using me to get out of that goddamned basement. When I started talking about exercising your legs you’d had a bellyful by then. I wasn’t moving fast enough for you, so you played out the little scene in the basement attacking my heritage. Hell, you knew I’d call the authorities.”

  The glass of dark liquid stopped suddenly on its way to Garret’s smirking mouth. “And just when did you figure that out?”

  “It didn’t take long.”

  “Not entirely wrong, I have to admit,” Garret said, his eyes darkening as they met Shadoe’s. “Yes, I wanted out, but the main thing was to get you away from Julita. The way you two looked at each other … a blind man could have seen that.”

  “Is that why my part in this whole charade was played down by your lawyer? Garret Van Dare went out in a blaze of glory, and wanted to come back the same way. To do that you had to stay in the limelight. I remember now. It’s always been your habit to crush your competition under your heel.”

  “So that’s it. The good lieutenant wants a pat on the back.” Garret chuckled. “I would have never thought it of you.”

  “I didn’t want anything from you then, and I don’t want anything now. I didn’t even expect it. But it became crystal clear to everyone in my crime unit that you were a bitter old man bent on making himself a saint in the eyes of the public and you wanted no competition.”

  Resenting the words, he answered quickly. “I simply wanted my place back in society … my daughter by my side!”

  “Well, you got it, you old son of a bitch. You were put on a pedestal, sympathy poured out like wine and made you drunk. You have the mistaken idea that the world owes you for what you went through. It was hard for me to open my eyes to what you really are, so I kept making excuses for you.” Shadoe raked his fingers through his hair, an embarrassed flush rising into his face. “God, when I think of the way I ran around in circles trying to please you. You must have had a good laugh.”

  The old man’s smile turned to an amused scowl. “Better than TV.”

  “Well, I’m through making a fool of myself for you. Get your entertainment somewhere else!”

  Garret’s eyes narrowed to a slit. “You say you don’t want anything from me, and yet I see the way you look at Julita. It seems to me that you want something very precious from me.”

  “The fact is, if all your fatherly interests in Julita are dead, then what I feel for her is none of your business.”

  “Are you saying that we are simply two men competing for the same woman?”

  “It’s a sick way of looking at it, but yes.”

  “You’re a bastard, Shadoe. I almost wish you’d never come down to that basement. I would have found a way out.”

  “After fifteen years? Half dead? No way. And what about Julita? Could you have helped her? Of course not. If anything good came out of this it was her freedom from Lucretia.”

  Garret looked pensive. “When I was hauled out of the darkness of that hell, I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “I felt the same way. And if it weren’t for this dream I keep having, you wouldn’t have.”

  He lifted his glass as if toasting Shadoe. “Well, with any luck we can get this over with and never have to see each other again.”

  Refusing to let it drop, Shadoe looked at Garret, detecting the lack of soul, the twisted morals, the darkness that resided in the old man. “When we first met I thought you were just a crusty old man. Hell, I even liked you. I had no idea your hard veneer hid a dark, twisted side that included molesting your daughter.”

  Garret didn’t lash out as Shadoe thought he would. Instead he looked down into his drink, swirled it in his glass, then began talking. “Lucretia moved me down into that basement when Julita was only three years old, and I didn’t see her again for fifteen years.” He looked pensive, then moved toward the fireplace and stared down into the low-burning flames. “One day she comes strolling in like a stranger. Hell, if I had passed her on the street I wouldn’t have even known her.” He took a sip of his drink. “To me Julita was dead.”

  “But you told me you heard the music box.”

  “I did,” he said, turning, “and Lucretia had even spoken about Julita many times, sometimes saying she was dead, other times telling me about her latest escapade. But hell, she was crazy. It was confusing, I admit, but since I heard only Lucretia’s voice come out of the ventilator when she was in the attic, I had my doubts and thought she was only acting out a fantasy. I never heard Julita say a word. I wasn’t aware that Julita was so intimidated that she was afraid to speak.”

  “So you’re saying you forgot your daughter.”

  “In a sense.”

  “What the hell do you mean, ‘in a sense’?”

  “Because I thought she might be dead, she simply didn’t exist anymore,” he yelled in exasperation. “She ceased being a daughter to me a long time ago.” He was silent for several seconds. “Hell, I don’t know if that’s the reason why I feel the way I do or not, but when I look at her I don’t have a fatherly thought in my head. It’s as if she’s not connected to me at all. To me she’s just a beautiful young thing that I want in my bed.” Garret’s guilty eyes cut toward Shadoe. “You want the same thing, don’t tell me you don’t.”

  “There’s one slight difference. I have a right. You don’t!”

  “Right?” he said, the shock of Shadoe’s words giving way to anger. “Right?” he shouted louder. “What right do you think you have to my daughter? Just because you saved her from her sister?”

  “I mean, you bastard, that I’m not her brother, her father, or even a distant cousin. That gives me the right I was referring to.”

  Garret stumbled toward Shadoe, his cane holding him up. “You have no rights, as I see it, and I resent the fact that you think you do.”

  “And I suppose you do?”

  “I told you. That’s none of your business,” his raspy voice hissed.

  “Garret,” Shadoe pleaded, “don’t you realize if you keep this up you’re going to drive Julita away from you?”

  “Don’t you think I know that? It haunts me, but I can’t stop. Hell, for fifteen years Julita was dead to me … as dead as Greta is now. I only saw Lucretia, never Julita … never even heard her voice. Lucretia was the only one left in my world. Julita was gone. Days, months, years went by. Then one day you come along and a beautiful woman walks into my life. She tells me she’s my daughter, but how do I know? One day a child, the next a goddess.” He looked at Shadoe as if pleading for him to understand. “Don’t you see? By that time I had no daughter … not even Lucretia! It was a word that meant nothing. I try to stay away, but I can’t. She moves me like any man would be moved by a beautiful woman.”

  “A man with no morals, a selfish man that wants what he wants, when he wants it!”

  “I can’t help that. As long as I can remember no one has refused me anything. Because of my money I lived the way I wanted to, had anything I wanted. Now it’s hard to have something within my reach and not be able to possess it.” His eyes traveled up to Shadoe’s. “Daughter or not.”

  Shadoe didn’t answer, only looked at him for the space of a few seconds, then said simply, “Now get this straight. I consider myself in charge here. I don’t care whose house this is, or whose daughter she is. I’m looking out for her best interests.”

  Garret’s words quickly spewed from his mouth. “And I’m not?”

  “Raping her is not in her best interests.” With those damning words he left, slamming out the front door.

  Garret stumbled to a window where he watched him get in the car to search for the nearest supermarket. “I hope you fall into the ocean, you bastard!”

  “Where’s Shadoe going?”

  Garret’s head whirled around, his words bitter. “Your boyfriend has gone out searching for food.” He walked back to the bar and mixed an
other drink.

  “Papa, don’t start.”

  “Don’t start what?” he said, turning to look at her. His eyes dropped to her yellow ballerina sweater and her black skin-tight leggings. “My, you look pretty this morning. Since I know you’re not dressing for me, it must be for the lieutenant.”

  “Do you have to start drinking so early in the morning? Why can’t you at least wait until after you’ve had your breakfast?”

  “How sweet,” he said sarcastically. “She’s worried about my health. Don’t worry, baby, I added an olive.”

  “I don’t want you calling me that anymore. Julita’s my name. You should know, you named me yourself.”

  “So I did,” he said, the dark and disturbing memories flashing through his mind as he turned back to the window. He remembered lifting a beautiful pink and gold baby in the air, and whispering her name over and over again, like a chant. “Julita, Julita, Julita!” He smiled. “Yes, that’s your name, my little love. It means young. With a name like that you’ll always be young and beautiful.” As the scene faded, he felt the pain of another arrow piercing his heart, her long-ago squeal ringing in his ears as he lifted her in the air.

  Julita looked at the broad frame of her father’s back, realizing she was in the house alone with him. “How… how long will Shadoe be gone?”

  Garret turned, the ice tinkling against the glass. “Why do you care?” he asked, taking a drink while looking at her. “What’s the matter? Afraid to be alone with me?”

  A sudden thin chill hung on the edge of her words. “N-no, of course not.”

  “Why now, Julita? We’ve lived together for weeks since you returned from Paris. Even after … our little encounters.”

  She shot him a cold look. “I said I’m not afraid.”

  “Of course you are,” he said chuckling nastily, an amused scowl twisting his face. “I want you to be.”