The Dark House

by John Sedgwick

  Tina gave out a shout and started to run upstairs, but Schecter grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her over to a swivel chair in the living room. “Sit down.” He shoved her into her seat.

  “I was just going to get my robe.” She was dressed only in a thin, silver nightgown that barely reached her knees. It didn’t look like she had anything on underneath. She crossed her arms in front of her.

  “You won’t need it,” Schecter told her. “It’s nice and warm today.” He nodded to Rollins, and he shut the door behind them, and turned the bolt.

  “Get some tape, would you?” Schecter called to Rollins. “Check in the kitchen.”

  Frightened, Rollins didn’t ask why. He went into the kitchen, a meager space, and tried a few of the drawers. He found some duct tape in the cupboard over the refrigerator. He brought it in to the living room, which was largely unfurnished and had no rug on the floor. Tina was in the swivel chair, with Schecter standing over her.

  “What do you want from me?” Tina demanded. “Why are you doing this?”

  “We just want some answers to a few simple questions,” Schecter said. Then, to Rollins: “Tie her hands.”

  Rollins didn’t think he could participate in anything like this. “Are you sure—?”

  “Do it!”

  Rollins started to pull off a few feet of tape.

  “I’ve got some questions for you.” Tina swung an arm toward Rollins. “What were you doing following my boyfriend all over the place? Answer me that.”

  Schecter leaned down toward her. “Shut the fuck up.”

  Tina said nothing, her chest heaving. She glared at Schecter.

  “Now, put your hands behind the back of the chair,” Schecter told her.

  Tina left her arms where they were. “Go to hell.”

  Suddenly, Schecter grabbed Tina by the front of her nightie and yanked her out of her chair. Schecter drew her to him and took her left ear and twisted it sharply, forcing her head back. “Ow, ow, ow,” she yelled, gasping. Her chin was pointing nearly straight up, exposing her neck, and some of the whiter skin down her front.

  Rollins pulled on Schecter’s shoulder to get him to stop. “Don’t, Al. Please. Don’t hurt her.”

  Schecter shoved her back into her chair. The neckline of the nightie was torn, exposing the top of one breast. Tina tried to cover herself. Schecter leaned down toward her menacingly. “Hands behind your back, I said.”

  Tina did as she was told, and Rollins bound her wrists—slender, with silver bracelets he hadn’t noticed before—with several rounds of tape as she made fists.

  “Now the feet,” Schecter said. “One on each chair leg.”

  Rollins hesitated. “For God’s sake, Al.”

  “Just do it.” Schecter pushed her knees open.

  “Oh, into S and M, huh?” Tina asked. “You are really sick.”

  He ignored her. “Now,” he told Rollins.

  Rollins pulled off more tape and, crouching down, affixed each ankle to one of the chair’s two front legs. In his hands, he could feel the slight stubble of her shaved legs. Her feet were cold to his touch.

  When he was done, Rollins stood behind Schecter, looking down at her. It gave him no pleasure to turn the tables on Tina, to toy with her the way she had toyed with him. He only felt sorry for her as she strained in her chair, her shoulders contorted so awkwardly to accommodate the hands bound behind her. And her torn and rumpled nightie barely covered her.

  “All right, how do you know Jerry Sloane?” Schecter demanded.

  “Fuck off,” Tina said.

  “Well, a tough one. I hope you said a nice good-bye to your little girl this morning.”

  Finally, there was some distress in her voice: “What have you done with her?”

  “Nothing yet.” Schecter pushed his hands onto either side of her face and gripped her ears again. His face was just inches from hers. “But there’s no telling what I might do.”

  This time, when he withdrew his hands, a tear trickled down the side of Tina’s nose. She flicked her head to the side, as if to dispel it.

  “That’s much better,” Schecter said. “Now, why don’t we start by your telling us about Jerry.”

  Tina looked down at the floor.

  Schecter started to reach for her one more time.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you what I know. Just don’t touch me, all right?”

  Schecter drew back his hands. “Jerry,” he repeated.

  She started to speak, timidly at first. She confirmed things they already knew, like the fact that Sloane sold real estate and lived in Medford, then moved on to how Sloane had been in charge of the operation. “He got Wayne and me to watch him,” she said, nodding toward Rollins. “We were supposed to report his movements, every day. Make a note of where he went, what he did. Wayne handled everything outside, I did the inside.” As she spoke, Tina’s eyes rarely left Schecter’s face. Her breath did not come smoothly. And the nightie was so thin, Rollins could see it flutter with each beat of her heart.

  “So, how’d you get involved?” Schecter asked.

  “Through Wayne.” He’d sold real estate part-time for Sloane Realty, Tina explained, but he was always available for extra jobs if the money was right. “He was the one who figured out you had this crazy driving thing, following people,” Tina said, finally looking up at Rollins, just for a moment. It gave Rollins a chill to hear his pursuits described like that. While Schecter listened with his arms folded across his chest, she explained that Jeffries had been watching Rollins’ car one evening when he saw the Nissan suddenly take off, then keep on for ten miles, then pull up across from a house where a car had just turned in. Sloane had thought Wayne was “totally fucking nuts,” as Tina put it, when he’d suggested that Rollins followed people pretty much at random. So he’d gone out to prove it by driving by Rollins’ car several times when he was idling that night in Union Square. “It was like he was throwing out a hook,” Tina said. “And finally you bit.” But Jeffries had panicked once he’d found Rollins behind him. “And he couldn’t shake you! He goes here, he goes there, but you stay on him like a bloodhound.” In desperation, he’d gone back to the one house beside his own to which he had a key, the one in North Reading. It had just gone on the market. He hid in the basement for hours, hoping Rollins would go away. Sloane was furious about that. “I guess that house was owned by somebody he knew. He was afraid you’d trace it.”

  At that, Schecter reached out and grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her head back.

  Tina gasped, and her eyes widened.

  “But why?” Schecter demanded. “Why’d you pick on my friend here?”

  Tina’s breath came faster, and her head was at an awkward, painful angle. “Because Jerry told me to. The money was good. Two hundred dollars a day, plus expenses, each.”

  Schecter twisted her hair, making her gasp. “I don’t give a shit about you—you got that? I know everything I want to know about you. You’re a fucking whore. End of story.” Schecter bent down to her, thrust his face into hers. “What did Jerry get out of it? Why’d he want to fuck with my friend?”

  “We didn’t ask questions.”

  Schecter let go of her hair, stepped back and slapped her hard across the face, leaving an angry red mark. “Don’t give me that.”

  Tina squirmed and whimpered a little. Tears spurted down her cheeks. “Okay! Okay—just don’t—just don’t hurt me anymore. There was money.”

  “Whose?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Schecter whacked her again. Harder this time. A slim line of blood trickled down from her left nostril. Rollins winced, but he didn’t dare try to restrain Schecter, who loomed over Tina. “I’m not going to ask you again,” Schecter said.

  Terror was in Tina’s eyes as she looked up at Schecter now. “Okay, goddamnit. Okay. It seemed like a big inheritance or something like that. Somebody was dying, and there was a lot of money involved. And you”—she lifted her eyes toward Rollins—�
�might screw it up somehow. That’s all I know.”

  “Go see if you can find a pair of pliers,” Schecter told Rollins. “We’re not getting anywhere with this bitch.”

  “Wait,” Rollins said. He dabbed at her nosebleed with a tissue he’d found. “Who was dying?”

  “Like I said, he never told us.”

  Schecter leaped at Tina, ready to smack her again, but Rollins held him back.

  “Was it Cornelia?” Rollins asked. “Cornelia Blanchard?”

  “He never gave any name.”

  “She’s holding out on us,” Schecter scowled.

  “It was a woman,” Tina added hastily. “It was a woman, I know that much.” Her eyes stayed on Schecter.

  “But where?” Rollins asked. “Where was she?”

  “Shit, I don’t know. I can’t even think straight anymore. Some place near Boston. Waltham, Brookline. One of those.”

  Schecter moved closer, his hand raised.

  “Al, please,” Rollins stepped between Tina and the detective.

  Tina looked up at Rollins imploringly. “Please, Rollins—Ed—don’t let him hit me again! Jerry was always going in to town. That’s all I know.”

  “He ever say anything about a fax?” Rollins asked.

  “A fax?” Tina scoffed. “Shit no.” Then she braced herself, obviously terrified of Schecter.

  “Hang on a second, Al.” Rollins pulled up a wooden chair and sat down beside her. There was something he had to know, and he thought he might get more if he spoke to her from her level. “Did Jerry ever mention my father to you?” Just to say the words “my father” in this room under these circumstances made Rollins feel that he had committed a terrible betrayal. His insides went hollow as Tina squirmed, but she said nothing.

  “I’ll get the pliers,” Schecter said. “I’m getting tired of this.” He started to go into the kitchen. “Rip her nightie off—we gotta get going here.”

  “No! Wait!” Tina shrieked. “Yes. Yes, he did. Once.”

  Rollins’ whole body filled with dread. “You’re sure?”

  Tina nodded.

  “What exactly did he say?”

  “I went to his house one time a few weeks ago, and Jerry was just getting off the phone, and he looked real tired, and he said your dad was a hard man to work for.”

  The words seemed to have disabled Rollins’ brain for a moment.

  “Jerry Sloane’s working for my father?” he asked. “For my father?”

  “That’s what it sounded like.” She said this casually, as if it were an insignificant detail.

  Schecter yelled at her: “Give it up, you fucking bitch!”

  “That’s all I know, I swear.” She started to whimper again. “Please don’t hurt me.” She turned back to Rollins. The blood from her nose had started to flow again, over her upper lip this time, but he merely stared at her, transfixed. “He called him Henry,” she went on. “I had to ask him who Henry was, and that’s when he told me, your father. That’s right, isn’t it? Your father is named Henry, right?”

  Rollins nodded, but he still didn’t follow. “What do you mean, ‘work for’? How could Jerry Sloane possibly be working for my father?” Even after the photograph from the dark house, it seemed inconceivable. Sloane could have known his father, sure. Sloane could have talked to his father. Sloane could have attended drug-infested orgies with his father. But Sloane could not have worked for his father. Not on this.

  “For the money—the inheritance,” Tina said. “At least, that’s how Wayne figured it. We sent Jerry reports.”

  “Reports?”

  Those tortoiseshell glasses of his father’s, very thin and elegant, and the unusual way he read, his head up slightly, trying to maintain the correct focal distance, as if disdainful of text.

  “Yeah, sometimes written, sometimes over the phone. Telling him what you were up to. Who you’d been with, where you went, like that.”

  “But why?”

  “He didn’t tell us why! Okay?”

  Schecter stepped closer.

  The blood was trickling down over her mouth to her chin. Rollins swiped it away with the tissue. “All right, listen to me,” Rollins said, boring in on her. Another question had been building inside him. “One last thing. Did Jerry ever mention my mother, Jane Rollins?”

  “Your mother?” Tina looked startled for a second, then her eyes softened into a fleeting look of sympathy before she shook her head. “Not that I heard. Just the dad, and just that one time.” Then, more quietly, she added: “Anyways, it’s all over now, whatever it is.”

  “What makes you say that?” Rollins asked, puzzled.

  “Jerry told me I was all done.”

  “Why?”

  “I keep telling you—I don’t ask questions. He paid me my money. I’m done. I’m moving my stuff out of that apartment this afternoon.” She looked at Rollins, then Schecter. “That’s it. Everything. You gotta believe me.”

  “Course we believe you,” Schecter said. He went into the kitchen, and Rollins heard him rummaging through drawers.

  “What’s he doing?” Tina asked, frightened all over again. “What’s he gone to get?”

  “I don’t know,” Rollins told her.

  Schecter came back into the room with a long, serrated knife.

  “Don’t let him hurt me!” Tina shouted when she saw it.

  “This is all I could find,” he said, casually. “Lucky for you.”

  “Al, please,” Rollins said. “I think she’s told us all she knows.”

  But Schecter brushed off Rollins and held the knife in front of the bound Tina’s eyes. “Take a good look.” He brought the tip of the blade down her nose, then down across her lips to her chin, then, trailing a thin white line down behind, dragged it down her throat to the neckline of her nightie. “You can fuck with him,” Schecter told her, “but you better not fuck with me.” He scraped lightly at the pale skin between her breasts. “You understand me? This is the end of it, right here. No more. Got it?”

  Tina nodded.

  Turning the knife sideways, Schecter brought the tip of the blade down the light fabric. It descended with a purring sound, over her belly, down to her crotch. Tina squirmed slightly to see it there, deep in the fold between her open legs. Schecter picked at the hollow with the knife tip, dimpling the fabric by her vagina. Tina’s eyes were fastened on the knife as her chest heaved. She strained, trying to wriggle farther back in her chair, but the tape securing her ankles held her rigidly in place.

  “Scared?” Schecter asked.

  Tina nodded.

  Schecter got a better grip on the knife and gently pressed. “Really scared?”

  Tina flinched and sucked in some air. She nodded again.

  “Good. Remember that feeling.”

  Schecter bent down before her, blocking Rollins’ view. He heard a ripping sound, then another. He expected screams, but heard none.

  “There,” Schecter said, standing up. He’d released her feet. He went around to the back of the chair, and with another slice of the knife freed her hands.

  Tina stood up, clutching her rumpled nightie to her chest. Scraps of tape still surrounded her wrists like a pair of bracelets. “Fucking bastards,” she said. The tears were streaming down her face, and the blood was dribbling from her nose onto the carpet

  “It was nice to meet you, too,” Schecter said as he led Rollins out the front door.

  Schecter shut the door behind them, then lit up a cigar as soon as he was outside on the walkway. “Decent piece of work, that,” he said.

  Rollins could barely contain his fury. “You didn’t have to hit her. You heard her—it was over. She was willing to tell me what she knew.”

  “What do you know?” Schecter said, taking a satisfied puff. “She’s a piece of shit. Okay? That’s what she is. You want to get the truth from a piece of shit like that, that’s how you do it. You don’t act nice. You scare the crap out of ’em. It’s the only way.”

  “Yo
u lied to me.”

  “Listen to you,” Schecter said, chuckling.

  “You said you wouldn’t hurt her.”

  “So she cried a little. Big deal. Maybe she’ll smarten up next time. The point is, we got what we needed. You can stop running now. We’re hitting back. And if you ask me, it’s about fucking time.”

  Rollins would have argued with him, but he didn’t see the Nissan where he’d left it behind Schecter’s Cressida. He was suddenly afraid that something terrible had happened, but then he heard a horn honk, and he saw the Nissan come up around the corner, with Marj at the wheel. “I thought it would be better to wait around the corner, out of sight,” she told him when she pulled up.

  Rollins told her they’d found out everything from Tina that they could, but they didn’t tell her how.

  “Can I see my mom now?” Heather asked from the backseat.

  “Of course,” Rollins told her. He helped her out of the car, and took her by the hand up the sidewalk. To his relief, Tina didn’t appear when he rang the doorbell. But the door was still unlocked, so Rollins opened it and stepped inside with Heather.

  “Mommy?” Heather called out from behind him.

  Tina appeared at the head of the stairs. The nosebleed had stopped, but her eyes were red with tears, one side of her face was still raw from where Schecter had struck her, and her whole body looked limp.

  “Hi, Mommy,” Heather said. “Mister took me to the beach.”

  “Get the hell out of here,” Tina told Rollins.

  “He took me to the beach, Mommy. We had a nice time.”

  “Look,” Rollins said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “Just go.”

  Heather looked at him. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered to him. “She gets like this. Don’t worry.”

  “I said, go!” Tina roared from the top of the stairs.

  “If anything happens, leave a message for me with Marj Simmons.” He gave Heather the number and spelled the name for her, just in case. “If you forget, the number’s in the Boston phone book, or call 411 for information. Okay?”