The Sleeping and the Dead

by Jeff Crook

  5

  SO THIS CHRIS KID WAS dead and I had seen him alive, maybe one of the last people to see him before he was murdered by the Playhouse Killer. Six hundred thousand people live in Memphis, over a million in the greater metropolitan area. Memphis has the highest rate of violent crime in the country, one of the highest murder rates, and for the last four years I had photographed most of them—everything from cheating wives to gangbangers killed Bonnie-and-Clyde-style in their pimpmobiles. I don’t know how many times I’d heard people say, I just saw so-and-so a couple of hours ago, I can’t believe she’s dead. Now I was saying the same words, over and over. Adam was talking and I hadn’t heard a thing he said.

  “What?” I tried to catch the thread of his one-sided conversation.

  “I said I always heard Michi was a perv.”

  “He is a perv.”

  “If he’s helping you, he can’t be all bad.” He winked and rose to his feet. Michi’s nasally whale song preceded him down the wall.

  “But what do they want, Cole?”

  “To talk to you.”

  “Did the neighbors complain again?”

  “They’re not in uniform. One’s a detective, the other is your photographer.”

  They rounded the corner and Michi stopped, huffing in the doorway and leaning against the frame for support. Cole waited behind him, balancing a silver tray on his fingertips. A glass pitcher and four frosted martini glasses stood on the tray. Michi was dressed in a long formal black kimono with clusters of pink cherries embroidered on the sleeves. His face was flushed and damp, as though he had just washed it in scalding hot water.

  “Jackie! What are you doing, bringing the police into my house?”

  Cole slid past him and set the tray on the coffee table.

  “We just need to ask you a few questions, Mr. Mori,” Adam said.

  “About what?” Cole asked. He poured four martinis into the glasses. “I’m Michi-san’s legal counsel, by the way.”

  “I didn’t know you were a lawyer.”

  “I’m not. But I’ve written enough lawyers to fake it. Besides, he needs me to hold his fat little hand.” He passed a martini to Michi, who took it, tossed it back and set the empty glass on a side table in almost one motion. Cole offered the next one to Adam, but he declined. Cole passed it to me.

  “Now. What’s all this about?”

  I glanced at Adam and he nodded that I should take over. I took a sip of the martini. It was a good one. “When I was here this afternoon, there was a black kid, about five-ten, thin-boned, curly hair. He answered the door.” Michi and Cole looked at one another and Cole shrugged. “He came into the kitchen while you and I were talking, Michi. He said he was going out. You said his name was Chris something.”

  “Oh, him! Chris Hendricks. You remember Chris,” Cole said to Michi. He turned back to Adam. “What’s he done?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Oh Jesus!” Michi shrieked and collapsed like a deflating accordion, nearly tipping out of his chair. Adam caught him before he spilled onto the floor. He helped him to the Casanova loveseat. Cole knelt beside him.

  “How?” Michi gasped. “Where?”

  “They found him at the Orpheum.”

  “Sweet Jesus.” Cole patted Michi’s face with a handkerchief. “Oh, sweet Jesus. Which play this time?”

  “Nobody said this was a Playhouse Killer case,” Adam said.

  “Oh please!” Cole patted Michi’s hand and looked at me. “Which play?”

  “Edward the Second,” I answered.

  “He said he was going out with someone. Do you know who?” Adam asked.

  Michi mumbled, “No. No, I don’t. There’s so many boys, I can’t keep up with them.…”

  Cole dipped his fingers into a martini and flicked gin in Michi’s face. “You think somebody here did it? Is that why you’re bothering us?”

  “No, we’re just…” I started to say before Michi piped up.

  “These are good boys. Good boys!” He turned to Cole. “Oh my God, to think that monster took one of my boizu!” He removed a cigarette case from a pocket of his kimono and opened it, tremblingly removed a cigarette and touched it to his lips. His eyes, almost hidden in folds of fat, darted suspiciously around the room, then settled like roulette balls on me. He removed a hideous bronze cigarette lighter from his pocket and looked at it, then up at me. It was cast in the image of two naked prepubescent boys entwined in a carnal act.

  Maybe it was the look on my face, or maybe it was the memory of the first time he and I met. His eyes narrowed even more than usual, his forehead collapsing into elephantine folds and ridges. “So that’s why you’re here,” he whispered. I noticed a white gob stuck in one of his wrinkles. It looked like geisha makeup or cake icing. It stood out like a wart.

  Adam said, “We’re trying to trace the victim’s movements. If anybody knows who he went out with, we need to talk to them.”

  “One of the boizu at the party might know,” Cole said.

  “I’ll need to talk to everyone.” Adam opened his notepad and took a pen from his pocket.

  “Hold on there a minute, partner,” Cole drawled. “You can’t just go busting in, they’ll think it’s a vice raid. At least give them a minute to put some pants on.”

  “I don’t want anybody bailing before I can question them.”

  “Nobody’s going to bail on you, honey.”

  Cole departed. He still had his martini. Michi and I stared at one another across the curved divider of the Casanova, while Adam leaned in the doorway watching Cole down the hall. Michi clicked the lighter and touched the flame to the tip of the unlit cigarette still dangling from the corner of his froglike mouth.

  “May I?” I held out my hand to him. He laid the cigarette case across my palm. It was heavy, gold with ivory inlay—an antique, probably real elephant ivory. I opened it and removed a cigarette, lit it with Michi’s dirty boy lighter, and inhaled the smoke. I took a sip of my martini. It was perfect, of course. I couldn’t imagine a man like Cole Ritter mixing anything less than a perfect gin martini.

  “You almost look glamorous, Jacqueline,” Michi said as I blew jets of smoke through my nose. His words were friendly, conversational, but his voice was strained, venomous. “You do clean up well.”

  “Thanks.” I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. I tried the martini again. It was damned good gin. I couldn’t place the brand. Something my father used to drink.

  Michi continued, “You really don’t belong in your generation. You and my wife would have made quite the pair back in ’55, dressed to the nines with your hair done up and your heels, mink stoles from King Furs draped over your arms, leaning against the bar at the Peabody on a Saturday afternoon, smoking Turkish cigarettes and drinking Cosmos and then maybe going upstairs to Alice’s private suite for an hour of hot fingerfucking before the picture show.”

  “Excuse me?” I almost dropped my cigarette. Michi clapped a chubby hand around my wrist and clutched it with a vicious passion. He surprised me with his strength. I tried but I couldn’t pull free.

  “How dare you bring the police into my house again!” he hissed. “After what you did to me…”

  “Hey, pal!” Adam grabbed Michi by the back of the neck and pressed his chins against the loveseat divider. It was all he could do to get his fingers around Michi’s rolls of fat. Michi let go of my arm, then shrugged off Adam’s hand. He picked up the spare martini, but didn’t drink it.

  “I was just doing my job,” I said. My wrist was sore now, but I wasn’t about to let him know he’d hurt me.

  “Doing your job!” Michi puffed furiously at his cigarette for a moment, not even smoking it, just burning it up as he stared holes into me. Finally, he took a long drag and stubbed the cigarette out in a crystal ashtray shaped like a skull face.

  “I’ll never forget the first time I saw you.” He laughed through the smoke issuing from his toothless mouth. “In that god-awful red Kmart suit with those b
road shoulders. And that mullet! Whatever were you thinking? I mistook you for a bull dyke. You hurt me with those handcuffs, you bitch.”

  “You deserved it,” I said.

  “That’s right. I was going to make your career, wasn’t I?” He seemed determined to dredge this shit up.

  “You bought a book of kiddie porn.”

  “Photos of nude boys. Art. There is a difference, honey.”

  Cole had returned by then but he stopped just outside the door. I saw his martini hand go up as he took a drink. Michi shrugged. “In any case, the charges against me were dropped once my condition came out in the newspaper.”

  “Condition?” Adam asked.

  “Michi’s a eunuch.”

  “A what?” Adam’s head whipped around in surprise. Cole finally made his entrance. He leaned against the doorjamb and winked at me. Michi frowned at Adam.

  “I’m sorry. I had no idea,” Adam said.

  “Oh good lord, and you call yourself a cop?” Michi flicked his ashes into the ash tray. “Honey, you need to get out more. It’s not like it’s a state secret.”

  “Ask anybody working in the Style section at the newspaper,” Cole added.

  Michi continued, “In 1968 I was skinny-dipping in Maui with a certain male friend who shall remain nameless, when I stepped on a stingray. You’re familiar with the species? That’s what killed that Australian boy that used to be on television all the time. The ray’s cruel barb unzipped my scrotum and spilled my gonads into the sea.”

  “Lost forever!” Cole cried histrionically.

  “I never saw my wormy jewels again, alas. Food for fishes, I suppose.” Michi stood and spread his arms wide, the huge embroidered sleeves of his kimono nearly draping to the floor. “From the bloody foam I arose, a naked Japanese Aphrodite, flush with her first period.”

  “Is he serious?” Adam asked me.

  Michi returned to his seat and lit a new cigarette from the gold cigarette case. “Naturally at the time I didn’t feel gloriously reborn. Frankly, it hurt like Christ on the cross. But I survived. That which does not kill us makes us stronger. Isn’t that what the man says?”

  Michi caught Adam staring at his crotch. “Would you like to see it?” he asked. He started to unwrap his kimono. Adam shook his head no. “Oh, come on. I’m not shy.”

  “I am,” Adam said.

  “Suit yourself. They didn’t want to see at the trial, either. Because of my disability, so to speak, I couldn’t possibly receive sexual gratification from looking at those pictures. When I threatened to drop my pants and show the court, the DA dropped the charges.”

  “I wrote that last line for him,” Cole noted.

  “You got lucky,” I said. Michi wasn’t fooling anybody. Politics won that trial, not justice. “The law doesn’t care whether you’ve got testicles. You buy a book of kiddie porn, you go to jail. Unless you’re rich or famous.”

  Michi puffed his cigarette and squinted through the smoke at me. “Lucky for me I am both. As I recall, your old photography professor testified as to the book’s artistic merit. Not to mention the photographer’s international reputation. But then again, he was more than just your former professor, wasn’t he? Didn’t you almost marry him?” He and Cole shared a laugh. Adam watched me from the corner of his eye. He looked like he didn’t even know me. I had never told him any of this. “I heard he fled the church just before the wedding because Arkansas state troopers were waiting in the parking lot to arrest him for bigamy.” Michi laughed again, no longer angry, more like a grandmother recounting the exploits of some precocious grandchild. “Isn’t that droll?”

  “Very Tennessee Williams,” Cole said.

  Michi turned to me. “Your failure to brief the DA about your history with the star witness is what got you suspended, wasn’t it? It was all downhill from there.”

  “And straight to the top for you, dear Michi-san,” Cole added.

  “All my life I wanted to be a luminary. I tried to marry into society. I couldn’t buy my way in, not even with my wife’s old cotton money. Honest to God I never expected I could weird my way in. People had always invited me to their parties because of my money. Write somebody a check and they’ll let you sleep anywhere. But after the trial, I became The Star of Memphis society. I found out people liked me because of my little extravagances. I have Jackie to thank for that. That’s why we’re such good friends. That’s why I always try to help her out. That’s why I can’t believe she brought the police into my house tonight, after all I have done for her, especially after her divorce. How is dear old Reed, by the way?”

  “Fuck you for asking,” I said. “Prick.”

  “Look,” Adam interrupted. “We’re not here to cause any trouble, Mr. Mori. We’re just trying to find out if any of Chris’s friends know who he was meeting tonight.”

  “I can tell you that,” Cole said.

  “You said you didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t know before. I know now.”

  “How?”

  “Because I asked,” Cole said.

  “Jesus Christ,” Adam swore. “I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. I just thought I’d save you the trouble. Half them boys won’t even talk to you for fear you’ll turn their lives into a public spectacle. Like Michi said, they’re good boys. They’ll talk to me.” Cole touched Adam’s arm. The old fag could lay the butter on thick when he wanted.

  “All the same…” Adam began.

  “Oh screw that. My word is as good as theirs. Better, and I’ll testify to it if need be. Chris was supposed to be rehearsing tonight. He’s playing Banquo in a production of that Scottish play at the Lou Hale Theatre. Or I should say was playing.” Cole finished his martini and looked a little sad and tired around his Cherokee eyes.

  “Which Scottish play?” I asked.

  “Macbeth,” Adam said.

  “Oh, he is one of us, after all,” Cole said to Michi.

  “I told Kouyate he shouldn’t stage that thing,” Michi frowned.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  Adam answered for him. “Theater people have a lot of superstitions about Macbeth, including a fear of speaking his name or quoting lines from the play anywhere but on a stage.”

  “Bad things happen.” Cole touched his nose conspiratorially. “Nothing good ever comes of a production of Macbeth.” He gasped and clapped a hand over his mouth. “Excuse me. It’s late and I really need a drink.” He hurried away.

  “We should probably talk to the manager at the Lou Hale,” Adam said to me.

  “You’re not staying?” Michi asked.

  “No, but I’ll need a list of people who knew Chris.”

  “I’ll have Cole arrange it.” Michi followed us to the door, leaning heavily on his cane and breathing in wheezing gasps between puffs of his cigarette. I knew the extremity of his decrepitude was just a show for Adam’s benefit. Maybe he was trying to make up for grabbing me. My wrist still hurt, the bastard.

  Adam opened the door and stepped out on the porch. It had begun raining again. I paused. “One more thing,” I said to Michi. “You’re on the board of directors at the Lou Hale Theatre, aren’t you?” I didn’t know for sure, but it was a logical guess.

  He flicked his cigarette past me into the rain. “So what? I’m on the board of damn near everything. Is that all?”

  “That’s all,” Adam said. “For now.”

  “Well, goodbye then. Don’t be a strange-ah,” Michi drawled. Adam started down the steps.

  As I leaned close to give Michi a peck on his flabby cheek, just to show him we were still friends, I whispered in his ear, “You missed a drop, Michi-san.” I pointed at the white blob still stuck in one of his forehead wrinkles. He touched it, paled, then flushed pink as a piglet and slammed the door in my face.

  6

  ADAM DELIVERED ME BACK TO the Orpheum and dropped me off at my car before somebody towed it away. A news van and a fire engine were still parked in front
of the theater. Adam was going to be up all night working on the case.

  I drove home in the pouring rain, thinking things over, and before I knew what I was doing, I found myself turning into the lot at my old apartment. Blue plastic sheeting covered the smashed-out windows, but the rain hadn’t washed away the smudges of soot going up from the windows to the roof. This place was only the latest in a long string of personal disasters going back almost five years. The starting point was when I ruined my marriage and left my husband, Reed Lyons. I had a tendency to destroy everything I touched, nothing lasted once I got my claws into it, whether it was a career or a relationship or even something as innocent as a car or an apartment. That was my problem—I had a destructive genie, too much fiery yang. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t anything I did. It just happened.

  But it didn’t just happen, I usually made it happen. I left the barn door open and the stove on and the cigarette burning. I cheated on my husband, shirked my responsibilities, slept with my bosses and hooked myself on pills and smack. For a while, the Police Department acted like they were interested in keeping me on the payroll, but they were only following the prescribed steps so the police union wouldn’t get all up in their kitchen when they eventually fired me. So they sent me to talk to a counselor who asked me about my father and told me I harbored a morbid fear of success. Any time I seemed to be getting my life together, I’d do something stupid to bring it all crashing down again. Any time I got close to someone, I’d drive them away; Adam was the exception. God knows I’d done my best to run him off, but he didn’t seem to care. Maybe he was just a stubborn ass. Maybe he felt like he had to save me. I didn’t particularly want saving. What was it the man said?—Life is nasty, brutish and short.

  After they rescued me from the fire, I ran into my landlord standing in the rainy parking lot looking up at the smoke and steam still pouring out of the broken windows. He said, “What the fuck, Jackie? Ain’t no blackened catfish this time. I hope you got some goddamn insurance.”

  I didn’t. He had insurance, he just didn’t want the insurance company coming in and setting minimum standards for the people he rented to, to make him run credit checks and collect security deposits that half his clientele couldn’t pass or pay, most of them Mexicans without Social Security numbers and living six or eight to a bedroom. His insurance company would triple his rates and price him right out of business. I knew I could use that against him. The smoke and water damage and the busted doors and windows added up to more than I owned in the world. So while he was talking to the fire chief, I took all I could salvage and split. He was going to have to sue me, provided he could find me.