I wave and smile at the girls as they walk off. When in the clear, I take out my mini sketchbook and pencil from my jacket pocket and jot down the names Devlin, Chloe Bateman, Vicious Ripper, Betty Blue Blood, and Red Velvet Pocket.
SOUTHERN COMFORT
I wander the crowded park and search for Corey. I swear to God, if he left without even telling me, I’m going to pop his waterbed when I get home. As I stand on my toes to try to see over the heads, someone’s sorrow fills my body.
“Oh, shit,” I whisper.
I turn around to see a woman in her early fifties wearing a black dress and an open black coat sobbing in a younger woman’s arms. She looks a lot like Katherine Moore. She must be her mother.
“Oh, shit shit.”
The woman’s grief overwhelms me like a tsunami; it chokes my throat and pushes tears out my eyes. I gasp and release a sob. Fuck you Xanax for not being stronger than a mother’s grief.
I rush away from her, trying to get as much distance as I can. Tears blind me and my lungs hitch as I fight the loss breaking my heart. I must look so normal with this crowd. Everyone clears a path, making no effort to stop me or offer comfort.
That is, until I pass the Gandhi statue and I bump into someone.
“Whoa,” he says. “Are you okay?”
Through the tears I make out a handsome face with a beautiful pair of lips that form southern-accented words. “Are you okay, miss?”
I can’t speak, just nod.
He takes out a handkerchief with CC embroidered on the corner. “Here you go.”
I take it and dry my eyes.
“Just don’t blow your nose in it,” he says. “It doesn’t belong to me.”
Somehow, a laugh escapes me. He smiles.
I breathe in deep a few times and clear my head. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, please, don’t be. It’s a perfectly normal reaction.”
Not for me, I think. Not even with my own emotions.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“I’m Chris.”
“Miki.”
“Did you have classes with Katherine?”
Dried out and my heart back to normal, I sigh, “No. I didn’t go to school with her. You?” I hand his handkerchief back.
“Yeah, we have a few business classes together. Had, I mean.”
Chris stands straight with his hand in his pockets. A white shirt, a dark suit jacket, and a Jerry Garcia tie peek out at the V of the closed black wool overcoat. He appears so business and preppy, which brings out his super cute baby face features. I’m digging his brown hair and blue eyes, another contrast I like on him. And my God, those lips. I wonder if I could get away with kissing them right here on the sidewalk. Maybe as a grief stricken friend that could use some comfort?
“From that sexy accent, I would say you’re not from New York, Chris.”
He smiles and shakes his head. “You got that right. From Mississippi. And from your sexy accent I can say the same about you.”
“Good ear. Many people confuse the New Jersey accent with the New York accent. Specifically, I’m from Jersey City.”
“Ah.” He nods like he knows exactly where I’m from.
“So how do you know Katherine, Miki?”
Unlike Fanny and Liz I have to be more careful here. Chris might not know about Katherine’s secret life or Red Velvet Pocket. And who am I to ruin his good girl memories of her.
“Um, we hang out together,” I say. “The club scene.”
“So basically ya’ll are drinking buddies.”
I shrug and fake reluctant embarrassment: guilty as charged.
“Yeah, Katherine sure could put me under the table on occasion,” he says.
“So you go to NYU to study business, huh? Going to be the next Donald Trump or Bloomberg?”
“I don’t think I can handle getting married as many times as Trump and I’m not into making millions so I can be Mayor of the city,” Chris says. “Besides, there’s something already lined up for me, I just have to get a Masters in business and it’s all mine.”
“Intriguing. Kind of like an inheritance?”
“Kind of.”
“So you’re rich. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Technically, I’m not rich. My mother is rich. If I finish my education as other people planned it for me, then I can be rich too, but with a greater burden.”
“Good,” I say. “I don’t like rich guys.”
“Lucky me.” He grins and lays those baby blues on me. “What about you? Where do you go to school?”
“I don’t,” I say.
“Ah. Independent woman. Already surviving in the world after high school. Sexy.”
I smile so hard I can feel my cheeks burn.
I spot Corey a few feet away behind Chris’s back. He motions to me that he’s ready.
“Listen, I need to get going,” I say.
“That’s too bad.”
“Yeah, I’d like to stay, but I can’t.”
“Then I’ll see you soon.”
“You will?”
“I will. How about tomorrow night?”
“Okay. Great.” I take out my pocket sketchpad and open it to write my number down for him.
“No. No numbers.”
“Um, okay.”
“And no addresses.”
“Then how are we going to meet?”
Chris smiles, stretching those sexy lips. “You let me handle that.” He starts to walk off. “See you tomorrow night, Miki.”
I watch him blend into the crowd and wonder if Chris is really a nut job. Be a shame if he is.
Corey comes up to my side. “Sorry about that.”
“How did it go?”
“Let’s just say my gaydar was way off. We’re talking about major Hispanic Homosexual Panic.”
I exaggerate a frown for him. “My poor baby.”
“Fuck you.” He shoves me a bit. “How about you? Get anywhere?”
“Farther than I thought,” I say.
GIRLS
Corey and I order drinks at the Barrel Bar and grab a seat at the dark back corner. I love how quiet it is here. Working class men and women sit around drinking beer, hanging out, and in control of their emotions. Yeah, Corey and I stick out and the patrons probably think we’re adventurous college students checking out how the other half live, but they don’t give us a hard time, not even with our fake IDs.
I fill him in on what I found out from Liz and Fanny. Out of all the names I mentioned, the only one that sounded familiar is the Honkey’s Ladder.
“It’s just your standard industrial goth bar on the West side,” Corey says. “Been there a few times and found it noisy and obnoxious. They do have good X there, though. You think this Fanny girl might have something to do with it?”
“Killing Katherine?” I ask. I compare the image of the killer with Fanny and then shake my head. “No. She may have some ill feelings towards her, but I doubt it would go that deep. I so can’t picture Fanny stabbing a knife into someone.”
After two drinks, we make our way home. Grandpa must be sleeping already since he’s not around and his door is shut with the light off. Corey plants himself on the couch. Before I head for my bedroom, I doublecheck the locks on the door and windows. Corey eyes me suspiciously, but doesn’t give me any shit.
I take off my jacket, throw it on the bed, and turn on my desktop computer. As it boots up, I take out my mini sketchpad and open to the page with the names on it.
The first name I Google is Red Velvet Pocket. Many hits come up. I click on redvelvetpocket.com and two seductive goth girls in Victorian garters and bustiers vamp on the black screen framed in red. They wrap their arms around each other while blood drips from their mouths and look right at the screen. At first I think it may be one of those vampire-modeling sites, but with closer inspection of the image I don’t see any sharp vampire teeth. God, I hope it’s not a fake cannibal site. Guys can be so weird sometimes.
Since it�
�s a member’s only site, I wonder if I should join. Last thing I need is a bunch of porn sites spamming me after joining this one. But if I don’t then I can’t see if Katherine Moore was a model on it. Fuck it. I break out my credit card and sign up for a three-day trial, which only cost $3.95. A rate that makes me feel less annoyed than paying the monthly fee of 40 bucks.
Once confirmed, I’m inside the main menu where the words Lick the Pink flash on the masthead. I check out the types of girls that they have. The tabs are broken down into Straight, Bi, Queer, Punk, Goth, and Vamp. I sigh and dread the fact that I might have to brows all these categories to find her. I then scroll down and find a tiny search window. Thank you, Jesus! I type in a search for Betty Blue Blood and hit enter. I’m taken to a model’s profile. The main picture is of a pale girl with heavy black eye make-up and straight, dirty blond hair. She wears a ripped black slip and her legs are scratched up as if a cactus man in the desert attacked her. I study the picture and through all the shit on her face, I’m sure that this is Katherine Moore, sweet, preppy NYU student with a bright future in business. I shake my head and think: isn’t this always the case? It’s almost cliché that the sweet girl next door would have a double life as a freak.
I check out her photo links. They seem to be divided by either solo pictures of her posing, showing the viewer the barest of private parts or full on nudity with another guy or girl in sexual positions. Some of the goth boy’s appendages make my eyes widen. At first I think there’s no way she can handle their girth, but then as I click, I see that she can. She has to be faking it and he has to be photoshopped.
I play a few of the videos and find that they’re the same scenes from the photos, just live. Having enough of Katherine Moore and her extra curricular activity, I go back to the main menu and do another search.
Vicious Ripper aka Chloe Bateman’s page is just the same as Katherine Moore’s. I notice that she shares many features with Katherine. Both have long, straight, dirty blond hair, skinny waists, small breasts, and long, narrow noses. Even their goth style is the same, favoring Elizabethan Vamp. I don’t spend too much time checking her out. But I do wonder; if she’s dead why does the Webmaster still keep her photos and videos up?
Back at the main menu, I scroll down to the bottom to find the tiniest of hyperlinks. One is for the web designer’s homepage and one for Jobs. Curious, I click on Jobs. I’m taken to similarly designed screen that has an email contact and advises potential models to send their photos, attn Devlin. I write it down along with the East side 20th street address.
“Now that I got the sex out of the way.” I open my desk drawer and take out a bottle of Jameson. I swig from the top, then go back to Google. I search for Chloe Bateman, New York, and Murder in the same box. About halfway down the results list, I find an article from the Daily News dated last year in November. I click onto the link and check out the story. It seems Chloe Bateman, daughter of Charles Bateman, a shoe salesman from Staten Island, and Maureen Bateman, a cashier at Shop Rite, was found murdered in Manhattan. Her body was discovered in a dumpster behind a soup kitchen on 50th Street and 8th Ave. Police confirmed that she died from multiple stab wounds to the chest and stomach with a large knife. It then goes on about Chloe’s life, which was not like Katherine’s. Yes, she was going to school at Baruch College, but she was not the glowing and perfect girl next door. Chloe’s blood was tested and they found large amounts of amphetamine and alcohol in it but all her friends and family agree that she was a sweetheart and her death should not be dismissed. She sounds more like my kind of person than Katherine. I would have hung out with Chloe.
I click a follow up article dated three days later. After the writer reminds us of who Chloe was and what happened to her, they report that although police investigators have a few leads, no arrests have been made. Going through a few pages of the results, I don’t find anymore about Chloe. She may have been forgotten, or the newspapers might not have uploaded any stories if they were just more follow-ups or were too small to upload. Or, the police never found anything and the case was just left opened/unsolved.
I turn off the computer, take one last swig of Jameson, and lay down for bed.
LACK OF EVIDENCE
The next morning with Grandpa at work and Corey at school, I call Sampson. The phone rings for a while, but then I hear, “Sampson.”
His voice sounds sexy on the phone.
“Hello?” he says, impatient.
Get your mind out of the gutter.
“Detective Sampson, this is Miki Radicci. Is this a bad time?”
“Um, no. Just give me a second.”
As I make a cup of coffee at the kitchen counter, I listen to the muffled sounds of him talking to another man. Probably Hersh. After a quiet moment: “Okay. What can I do for you, Ms. Radicci?”
“Please. Call me Miki.”
“Okay. Ms. Miki.”
I smile. “Just called to see if you had any luck with my phone records.”
“Well, yes and no,” he says. “The phone company was able to give me a blocked number from your records, but it was traced back to a disposable phone.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, I thought the same thing. I can probably trace it to where it was sold, but most likely it was paid for in cash. Plus, I doubt the salesman will remember anything.”
“Okay. Thanks for checking.”
“No big deal. Anything new on your end? You remember something new that could help?”
I bite my lip and stir the hazelnut creamer into the coffee. I wonder if I should tell him about what I learned of Katherine’s double life with the Red Velvet Pocket. But would he know about that already? I doubt he would tell me if he did. I would feel bad about lying to him since he’s been kind of on my side from day one. Then again…he only asked about the night of the murder. Maybe I should keep this stuff to myself until I know more. Evidence is what he needs, right?
“Well, I think the killer was wearing something on their wrist.”
“Like a watch?”
“No. Maybe a charm. It looks like a silverfish.”
“Right. Right. I remember that from the other day looking at your painting,” he says.
“Yeah, my roommate verified it. Then I checked online and it does look like one. Can’t ignore the details, right?”
He chuckles. “Right.”
“So what do you think it means?”
“Maybe nothing now. But down the line it could be important. I don’t think too many people wear silverfish charms.”
“It’s kind of weird.” An idea sparks. I take a breath. “Listen, I was also wondering. I was at her memorial last night and I met up with some interesting girls. Could she have had a double life?”
Silence on his for a few seconds, then, “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been reading a lot about her in the press and she sounds like she was going to be America’s next Hilton or Kardashian, but smart. Sometimes people like that have other interests. Kinks, you know?”
“I thought the same thing. As of right now we haven’t heard anything from her friends and we turned up empty on her dorm room. If she had a secret life, she buried it deep.”
“So you guys are still at a brick wall?”
“Well, maybe a Styrofoam wall. We did find something in her bank records. Just between us, there were substantial weekly deposits made into her savings, but no one said she had a job. Could just be money from her parents, allowance and what not. We’re still checking it out.”
“Interesting,” I say.
Sampson muffles the phone again and talks to someone. He then comes back and asks, “Anything else, Ms. Miki?”
“Nope. That’s it,” I say. “Thanks, Detective Sampson.”
“Please. Call me Otto.”
“Then thank you, Detective Otto.”
He chuckles and says, “You’re welcome. Good bye, Miss Miki.”
“Bye.”
My cheeks hurt from smil
ing.
OPENING NIGHT
Tonight the Weisz Gallery is revealing my new series of paintings depicting surreal city architecture done on broken glass. I call it Shattered Scape. So far people are into it. I spot critics, artists, and a few celebrities - none of whom I would talk to unless I was bound, gagged, and drugged. Then I spot Kim Gordon with Kathleen Hannah. Kim used to do some freelance articles in Art Forum. I’ve got to make myself available for her. But first I need to shake this stupid television reporter who’s trying to get an interview with me for some Sunday morning news segment.
The reporter is not a real journalist by my standards. She’s just a talking head. I’ve seen her on channel 2 before and all she does is fluff art stuff and free family jaunts around the city. If you look at her you can see she’s not made for hard news. She’s just about my height and too skinny. Her long blond hair hangs down straight over her gray and black business suit. She also wears enough make-up to add 20 pounds. Isn’t she worried her face will appear fat on tape?
Someone in her crew tries to touch up my face while they light us for our interview. I growl at them and they back off. I’m wearing enough, thank you.
So I stand and wait. The reporter quietly argues with curator Jim Koongi and Sharon, who spaces out and sips her glass of champagne. Koongi waves his dark manicured Trinidadian hands up and down and stabs his finger my way. Sharon is so cool about it. A normal person would give me dirty looks for putting them in this position, but I guess she’s used to it or she really cares for my interests. After a while she approaches.
“It seems they can’t do the interview,” Sharon says.
“Oh.”
She shrugs. “Well, they could, but then they’d have to block off your shirt.”
“So why don’t they?”
“It’s public news. Anything that hints to something vulgar would be frowned upon, so says Little Miss Wax Face. You know how the FCC has been since the Nipple Slip.”
Koongi storms over. The guy has been a complete ass since he arranged my work under his lights. He glares at me like I’m some dumb child.
“What?” I shout, not giving him a chance to give me shit first.
A Black Deeper Than Death (Miki Radicci Book 1) Page 5