I ran my hand along her lithe arms, shoulders, and legs, then down the wonderful slide of her back, enjoying how it sloped into the soft, roundness of her buttocks. On the small of her back I found a distinct raise of skin. My fingers caressed the blemish of a cross, a Christian cross.
“It was given to me when I was eight years old,” she said.
“It feels like a scar from a burn.”
She rolled over onto her back. The muted moonlight through the portholes formed the lovely contour of her face.
“Why is it there?” I asked.
“I grew up in an orphanage.”
“Not enough penance one day and they branded you?”
“Yes, that’s it. It is rather funny, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry. Where was the orphanage?”
“In Ireland.”
“What about your parents; were you born in Ireland?”
“I was abandoned when I was a small child by my mother. And yes, I was born in Ireland. Would you like me to talk about it, when I was a little girl?”
“Only if you want.”
“I do. But only because I’m here alone with someone who’s forever alone and also because the sea at night is glorious and I feel safe here.”
I kissed her tenderly on the lips. “Tell me.”
“At night I could hear them, Mother Superior, Sister Mary, and Sister Alice. I heard them in the dark, through the walls.”
“Hear them doing what?”
“Singing.”
“Hymns?”
“They were singing pleasure.” She whimpered a laugh. “My sisters and I would tell ourselves that it sounded as though they were singing opera with washing machines jostling about. At first I thought they were cats in the night, bawling and screaming, and I was never sure if it was pleasure or pain.”
Catherine sat upright. Moonlight traced a ghostly outline along her shoulders and breasts. “I caught them once,” she said. “A priest was on top of one of the nuns and hurting her, but she sang anyway. I was very young at the time, and I would stand at the door unnoticed. I could see her habit and cloak lying next to the bed, and his pants and shirt were there too all black and large, and the white of their skin shown in the darkness on the bed; it was as if they were wrestling with each other.”
I had a strange and sudden mental image of a room full of naked nuns and priests all riding their ponies wildly.
“And afterward there were always the killing of rabbits.”
“Rabbits?”
“We raised them at the orphanage and sold them for slaughter for the nearby town. They were beautiful creatures, unblemished and pure, Reverend Mother would tell us, and perfect for sacrifice. In the mornings, after the singing and washing machine noises, we were gathered to the shed outside and made to watch the small things die. The rabbits would stand there frozen, seemingly aware that they were about to perish yet unable to move...to escape. The priests would hold the small things tightly and break their necks and then cut them open. Everything inside would spill out syrupy wet and dark red. Sometimes their little hearts would still be beating...their lungs pulsing with breath.”
A lull of silence fell between us. I asked, “Why the scar on your back?”
“They burned it on us after we gave allegiance.”
“Allegiance?”
“We had to swear that we belonged to them, to the nuns and priests...that we were their loyal subjects.”
“Why did the bastards have to own you like that?”
“They always told us that both the beasts and children had to be blessed, and for that to be, they would have to be our masters. When we became pubescent, we were ordered to disrobe in the same shed where the killings took place. The priests stood behind us and put hot irons in the shape of a holy cross against our backs. None of us knew until that day.”
I pulled her toward me. “You don’t have to say anymore.”
“But you felt my scar. Don’t you want to know?”
“Not anymore.”
“You’re a curious man, John Albert, and you’ll eventually know these things anyway. I also know that you love me, and I’m beginning to love you. I’m sorry about what I said today regarding the matter of you raping me. Since lying here with you, I no longer think of such things. I’ve never loved anyone before, so you can feel my cross because I can’t see it anyway.”
“Go on then, Cat, if you feel better talking.”
“Do you love me when you call me Cat?”
“I call you Cat because your eyes are beautiful like cat eyes in the sun. And yes...I do love you.”
“The sun today and now the moon this evening on the sea are magnificent, aren’t they?”
“Like you.”
“I’m glad then you think my eyes to be cat eyes in the sun.”
I suddenly wished she and I would never have to return to shore. She went on, “When the dark cloaks and cowls became unbearable and the summer heat from inside the cloth made our fathers and sisters crave the lust of night, afterward a sacrifice would have to be made, a washing away of sin.”
I moved my hand gently along her back, keeping it away from the scar. The line of dots on the board was easy to see now, this sequence of morbid events; it had a beginning, a reason.
She continued, “Like a specter she stood, black and gothic. Her cowl and habit loomed large like dark horns in the doorway of my room, a room shared by my other sisters. It was our turns now, and Mother Superior would watch us the same as when we were in class. The father’s would lie on top of me. Sometimes several of them in one night would take turns with me and my sister, all my sisters, but I didn’t sing. The sound was like a washing machine, and I could feel the sound, and I would look away frightened at the swollen faces clenched in pain. I watched each face until it was finished, and I noticed each time how the face changed into the softness of shame. The next morning the killing would begin, and the broad, black shoulders of the priests would stand in the shed turning the small innocent heads.”
I rolled over on my back, suspended in both the ocean current and this sick menagerie.
“My sisters and I were assigned to clean the entrails of the slaughtered rabbits. Sometimes stray cats would be in the barn eating the entrails, and I found one of my own cats doing the same. This disturbed me because I fed my cat well. But when I reached for her, she lunged for my hand with her claws a most dreadful attack. It was no longer my cat, but one that was wild and feral. That’s how it is with nature; in the end it becomes wild...and then it kills.”
I let her admission hover in the darkness. I finally took a breath.
“The convent sold the meat to the nearby townspeople who in turn gave donations. Some of these donations were gold coins. Such beautiful rewards for such horrid acts, I always thought.”
“You said your sister a moment ago...what sister?”
“My sister Lena. The one who’s with me now. She’s not my blood sister, but my sister in Holy Christ.”
Wicked stepsister is more like it. “How did you end up in London?”
“One of the fathers brought me and Lena there.”
“So that explains your British accent, but not Lena’s.”
“She has no qualms with memories and therefore prefers her Irish lilt.”
“The father who brought you and Lena to London, was he a good father or a bad one?”
“He was neither good nor bad. My father wouldn’t have anything but the best for us. He gave up the priesthood. He was a learned man, and he knew that a secular life would be more suffice to quench his appetite for the wonders of the world. He forced me and Lena to learn many things, specifically drama and dance, which eventually became theater.”
“Was he the one who raped you?”
“They all did. He no longer did those things to us once we left.”
“What happened to the bastard?”
“He died terribly.”
I stared at the shadowy cabin ceiling. My head began to hurt.
I could only imagine what happened to the bastard. Actually, it was damn obvious what happened.
“Will we have enough provisions, John, when we go to that place we need to go?”
“Everything will be in place.”
“Good. I need to sleep now. The food and the martinis were wonderful, and this divine current is making me very done in.”
“Sleep well, Cat. I’m here next to you, and always will be...if that’s what you want.”
“Do you promise to always be with me?”
“I Promise.”
We lay quiet. I didn’t want to go back to the harbor. I wanted only her and I atop this current, drifting to nowhere, to talk, to make love, to drink cold daiquiris and warm martinis and confess the horrors of our past to one another and then believe in only the future: this mirage.
The rolling current began to take us under into sleep until I heard her say, “You do know you’ve complicated things, Jack. That people like you and I can never truly love one another.”
That cold, familiar awareness spilled suddenly across my senses, seeping back into the empty shadows. The coolness in her touch had returned; that thin barrier between two polars had been crossed again. A sickening delusion returned to her voice. “Your father had no choice, John. Your mother was of puritan routine and unable to quench the devil that possessed your father’s loin. He had to do what he did, and so did your mother. It was the only way for her to end the pain. The same way you and I will have to end the pain.”
I lay still, listening to the cuffs of current against the yacht as if it were a mocking chant, orchestrating to Catherine’s whispering breaths as she drifted to sleep.
17
The rules I had drafted with Carmella had changed, or at least the one regarding love. When I thought about Catherine and how much I wanted her—was bewitched by her—the rules became irrelevant. I had allowed my world to be infiltrated by a person I needed to chase, to hunt, so that I too could be hunted down and cornered. But damn it, I was falling for her; the Stockholm syndrome, maybe? Sympathy for my captor—my muse? A torrid love affair of two unlikely accomplices raging a deus ex machina battle against bullshit and injustice?
But I felt something for Catherine, or was it just a siren’s spell, the magic of a muse? It was something beyond the sex, I knew, something beyond the act...love? She’s just an opportunity to make it all right, I tried to convince myself, like one of those reverse-psychology state of affairs where I knew that what I desired wasn’t good for me, but in my delusion it was good for me, and if I just believed hard enough, then, by God, it will be good for me. No one would know who we were in some far away land—it could work.
Who was I kidding; my muse was a razor-toting man shredder and I had snakes in my basement that needed skinning.
Speaking of snakes, I decided to follow up on a lead I received the other day regarding a whole den of the slithering fiends who seemed to be interested in my land. My go-to person was Ms Rebecca Quinn, the writer for Business Roundtable magazine. We were meeting at Crystal Cove State Park that morning along PCH at an obscure parking lot adjacent to the blue Pacific. The information she had sent me not only raised my suspicions even more about Ms Falsetto and her Black Beard husband, but also about by a quorum of greedy investors and county officials.
Ms Quinn got out of her bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle and marched toward me. I noticed first her fiery-red hair, pulled back and clasped tightly, an indication of either lesbianism or the extreme ignorance in the matters of attracting a man. She was short, not petite, a bit frumpy in the figure department, and donned a tasteless business pantsuit. A lack of makeup diminished even more her face, a face that seemed happiest when pondering the complexities of the universe.
“Mr. Kidd,” she announced.
“Ms Quinn.”
She clutched and pumped my hand as if it were a lever. She opened a briefcase and handed me a folio of documents and said, “The usual sharks, assholes, if you will.”
Her attorney-like zeal was amusing, but I honestly wanted nothing more to do with this folio than to toss it on the beach and let the breeze sandblast it into oblivion. I flipped through the pages and saw a planning commission and public hearing minutes with the same names she had sent me previously, yet now these names had transcripted interviews.
“It’s all about directional growth, Mr. Kidd. The county is too small and your groves sit right in the way.”
I continued thumbing pages.
“Sacramento has mandated that the 91 corridor be widened along with future development projects.” She pulled a page from the sequence and directed my attention along a zoning map. “This development cuts right through the Southern perimeter of your groves, sir.” Ms Quinn’s chestnut-brown eyes had a distorted, agog look behind her large eyeglasses, making them perfect for anal probing. She seemed older than she looked, a woman of repressed sexuality, it seemed, a virgin, most likely. I focused back on the map.
“It’s called spot zoning. They’ll be able—”
“I know what spot zoning is, Ms Quinn.”
“Your only hope is a grandfather clause or non-conforming use.”
“I’m well aware.” I sighed. “I’m looking for other players.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The other day on the phone you told me you had names. What you’re showing me here I already know about.”
“These are the names, sir.”
“They’re not what I’m looking for.” I took a moment to size up my messenger’s plain-Jane face. “You do know, Ms Quinn, you’ll be opening up a hell of a Pandora’s Box once you start lifting lids. What makes you qualified to do this?”
“Genius runs in my family. My father is a doctor; my mother is a research scientist. I finished high school at thirteen and college at sixteen. I went to law school, Pepperdine, and finished in the top five of my class.”
I paused for a moment, reexamining the female version of a nerdy prodigy. “That’s commendable, but you’ll be investigating some of the nastiest sleaze bags on earth. What you’ll need are street smarts and a smooth, gutsy style.” I looked her over again, trying not to chuckle at her Prada pantsuit knock-off. I said, “Why waste your time writing stories about sleazy people? With your brain matter you should be an associate at a top law firm or a doctor like your father.” It wouldn’t hurt either to ask Dr. Dad to spring you for some decent clothes.
“I love sleazy stories. That’s why I decided on journalism. This magazine I write for is nothing but a fluff rag. I plan to write for a big-city paper one day about real stories and then template those chronicles into novels about true crimes. From my research, there’s no one in Newport Beach more adept at that kind of drama than you, sir.”
“I’m sleazily flattered.”
She pulled an 8x10 photograph from her cache of chronicles and said, “Here’s a photo of some players you may be interested in.”
The image was a candid shot of a group of men mingling in a room. Most of the faces I knew, Supervisor Conrad Turner, local contractors from a trench shoring firm, then one fathead came into view, a certain police detective named Mick Balosky, then another interesting character, James Falsetto, Carmella’s billion-dollar hubby. I recognized another face, or at least the partial profile of a face: that tall, slender stature, that unmistakable thick, sable hair…a best friend? Could Roger be standing amongst the enemy in casual conversation with cocktail in hand?
“The photo was shot in a private room,” Ms Quinn said. “Only for closed door meetings.”
“Then how did you get it?”
“Back scratching, how else? Do you know these men, Mr. Kidd?”
“All of them, I think. This one, though...” I pointed at Falsetto on the print. “He’s a winemaker who owns a large chunk of Napa Valley. Has his hand in various publishing houses, very rich and very hungry for all things California. And this guy here, Detective Balosky, a little, big man hanging out with major players and way out of his league.�
�� I drew the photo closer, examining the one who looked like Roger.
“They’ve formed an investment consortium, mostly real estate,” she said. “They’re all involved in this takeover of your land, sir. But Turner and this Detective Balosky, it looks as though the police and the county are in bed with all of them.”
“Does that surprise you?” I handed her the photograph. “I need more than just transcripts, hearsay, and one photograph, Ms Quinn. I can hire a private investigator for what I need.” I started to walk away.
“But a P.I. doesn’t have a press pass, Mr. Kidd. They have to operate covertly.”
“Perhaps you should, too.” I stopped before I got into my car. “The names in that folio I can handle. It’s a possible best friend and a crooked cop in that photograph that worries me. If you really want a story, Ms Quinn, you’ll find out what those men are up to. You’ve got my number.”
I dropped in my car and pulled away, leaving Ms Know-it-all alone on the beach.
18
The following day I drove north along PCH to Roger’s house to pick him up for some one-on-one gamesmanship of racquetball at a private health club. Three days had passed since mine and Catherine’s yacht excursion, to which I had resumed position: courting my cryptic enemies disguised as friends.
I turned off PCH and drove through a series of residential streets until I reached the vista of the Pacific Ocean. Roger lived just south of Newport Beach in neighboring Corona Del Mar where the shoreline was sparse and rocky and more picturesque than the beaches north of the harbor. His house was located in the Shore cliffs Estates, which was just south of the Inspiration Point, or what we locals called, Little Corona. A narrow driveway led to an open garage that kept Roger’s one and only German, luxury sedan.
I killed the engine to my Porsche and got out of my car. I strutted toward the front door like a hard-ass jock with a lot on my mind. I was dressed in my usual ensemble of Nike workout clothes, revealing a decent sculpting of my shoulders, arms, and chest, which, I proudly admit, was a valuable asset in the enticement of women and subsequent closed escrows.
The Irresistible Muse of Jack Kidd Page 12