Felony Murder

by Joseph T. Klempner

  Freeing himself from the rope, Dean grabbed Janet’s hand and led her, still naked, across the street and into the shadow of a parked truck. There he removed his sling, pulled his filthy, soaked sweatshirt off, and handed it to Janet. She turned up her nose at it but put it on, smiling in gratitude that it was long enough to cover her. Then, motioning her to follow in the rain, he retraced his earlier route to rendezvous with David Leung and their getaway car.

  The drive back into the city was something of a blur to Dean. He and Janet rode in the back, wrapped in old wool blankets from the trunk. David aimed the car through the early-morning rain, the windshield wipers slapping noisily. Dean woke from time to time, aware at one point that Janet was wrapping something around his forehead and looking at him with what seemed like concern. He shifted positions and slipped back into sleep. . . .

  The hotel was a trifle too fancy for Dean’s taste, and he wondered briefly how they were going to pay for it, but he was in no condition to argue. David went up to the front desk to register for them with fictitious names, then helped them up to their room on the second floor while an idle bellboy muttered something about “cheap tourists” and, looking at the blankets they were wrapped in, followed it up with “fucking Indians.”

  “Okay,” David said to Dean once they were inside the room, “I’m outa here.”

  “Thanks, David,” Dean said, and the two hugged tightly. When David stepped back he said, “Jesus, Dean, take a shower, willya?” Then he waved goodbye to Janet, who was still wrapped in her blanket and had curled herself up in an overstuffed chair.

  Dean unzipped the overnight bag David had brought in from the trunk of his car. He found his toiletry kit, excused himself, and went into the bathroom to take David’s advice.

  He was startled by his reflection in the mirror. Even with his forehead wrapped in what appeared to be a torn strip of blanket, he looked positively frightening, like a crazed army commando who’d charged out of the pages of some comic book. Grime and blood smeared his cheeks. An ugly bruise had turned one side of his head an angry purple, flecked with patches of brighter red.

  Gingerly, he peeled the strip from his forehead, wincing as it lifted pieces of dried blood off with it. Underneath was a four-inch gash worthy of a low-budget horror film, far too melodramatic to be real. In spite of himself, Dean found himself fascinated by it, and he studied it from several angles, even stepping back from the mirror at one point so he could admire it with the light hitting it better. Some secret part of him delighted in just how terrible it looked, a badge worthy of his heroism.

  And in that moment, gloating at the bizarre reflection in front of him, he was suddenly struck by the enormous absurdity of what he’d done in the past several hours. He’d located the beautiful heroine held hostage in a secret castle in a foreign state, nearly fallen to his death while scaling a vertical wall to rescue her, then slid down with her naked body in his arms. Even as his knees suddenly went so weak that he had to grasp the sink in front of him with both hands for support, he began laughing at the sheer insanity of what he’d put himself - and Janet - through. And all for a worthless, homeless, two-bit, ex-con drug addict who was too goddamn stubborn or stupid or selfish or whatever to walk out the doors of the jail even after they’d been flung wide open.

  “Are you okay in there?” It was Janet calling to him from the bedroom. Dean hadn’t been aware he was laughing out loud.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” Dean called back. But the face in the mirror kept grinning at him, and his wounds kept telling him it had really happened.

  The warm water of the shower stung his forehead but felt good against his body, and the grime began to run toward the drain in visible streaks. He was surprised at the number of places where he ached to the touch, and at the incredible amount of dirt that still covered him. But when he reached for the soap, he discovered that there was none. None in the shower, none out on the sink. None of those tiny, cutely wrapped scented soaps with names like English Heather and Windsong and Marigold Bouquet that hotels always seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of.

  “Janet?” he called out.

  “Yes?”

  “Is there any soap out there?”

  He took her silence to mean that she was looking, and the delay following it as an indication of failure. But a moment later she was in the shower beside him, once again in her rappelling outfit.

  “I figure I’ve got enough for both of us,” she said, as her skin began to glisten and bubble up in the spray.

  The next few minutes established Janet’s clear superiority over all of those cutely wrapped soaps. She proved generous as she rubbed her body against Dean’s, careful not to touch the worst of his wounds. She even created sufficient lather for them to shampoo each other’s hair. For Dean, the effect proved far more than cleansing, as Janet was quick to notice. Looking down at one point, she laughed, “Oh sure! But where was that guy when I was looking for something extra to grab on to on the way down the rope?”

  While Janet toweled off and announced that she was going inside to take the pick of his dry clothes, Dean stood at the mirror again, dabbing at his forehead. The bleeding, which had earlier stopped, had resumed from the shower water.

  When he walked into the bedroom, a towel wrapped around his waist and tissues matted to his forehead, Janet was sitting on the bed, her back against the headboard, her knees drawn up against her chest. She was wearing a pair of Dean’s jeans and a blue dress shirt of his, both of which were much too large for her. And she was crying softly.

  Dean walked to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. He waited for her to speak.

  “I need my baby,” she said simply.

  “Nicole’s fine,” Dean assured her. “I spoke to your sister-”

  “I know,” Janet sobbed. “But I need her now.” And as though to prove her point, she lowered her knees to show Dean the front of his shirt, which was completely wet over the area of one breast. Her sobs mingled with laughs, and she finally allowed Dean to pull her to a standing position so together they could take Dean’s shirt off her. Janet used only one hand because she needed the other to keep Dean’s jeans from falling off her hips. As they both laughed, she gave up the battle for modesty, opting instead to pull Dean’s towel off just as his jeans slipped to her ankles. They fell to the bed, facing each other on their knees. They touched first with fingertips, then with lips. As their kiss lingered and intensified, some ancient hormonal response seemed to send a quiver through the length of Janet’s body and cause a sound deep in her throat. Dean felt his own chest dampen. He looked down in time to see the thinnest stream of bluish white spurt from Janet’s nipple to his own body. It was surprisingly warm.

  He looked back up and caught her eyes with his own. She didn’t look away. “What does it taste like?” he asked her.

  “It’s sweet,” she said. “Very sweet.” And she touched her index finger to her nipple, then held the finger up to his lips for him to taste, and she was right. He felt himself grow hard again from the exquisiteness of the moment. He lowered his head and gently put his lips to her nipple and heard the same sound coming from her throat, now almost like an animal’s purr. He felt the tiny stream of her milk spurt into his mouth, and he tasted its sweetness.

  The sensation only made him harder still, and for a fleeting moment he was afraid his body might be doing something terrible by reacting, might be somehow violating Motherhood. But just as suddenly, he felt her hands reach up between his legs and close so snugly and excruciatingly around all of him that was there that he cried out, startling them both.

  They made love hungrily, desperately, as though they were afraid they might never get another chance.

  When finally they pulled apart, fighting for air, their bodies shiny with sweat, they didn’t speak, listening instead to each other’s breathing. It was Dean who finally spoke first.

  “There’s one thing I need to ask you,” he said.

  “Uh-oh,” Janet said. “This sou
nds bad.”

  “No.”

  “Not bad?”

  “Not bad,” Dean assured her.

  “Okay, go ahead,” she said, pulling herself closer to him.

  “Well, it’s just that you’ve been separated from Nicole for like a week now, right?”

  “Right.” Janet nodded. She still seemed to be having difficulty breathing and speaking at the same time.

  “Yet you still-” And here Dean ran out of words and touched the underside of one of Janet’s breasts.

  “I pumped.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Pumped.” And by way of demonstrating, she cupped her hand around the same breast and pretended to squeeze it.

  “Wow” was all that Dean could think of to say.

  “You never heard of pumping?”

  “Sure I’ve heard of pumping,” Dean said. “I mean like tires and balloons. Rafts.”

  “Gas,” Janet chimed in.

  “Iron.”

  “So?”

  “Well,” Dean said, “I just never knew you could, ah pump-”

  “Breasts, Dean. They’re called breasts.” But smiling gently at him.

  “I knew that. Breasts.”

  “Ever hear of cows?” she asked him.

  “Cows pump, too?”

  “Dean?”

  “Yes?”

  “Shut up.”

  They made love again, but more slowly this time, more gently. Gone was the urgency, gone the groping. Now it was all soft and tender and easy. And when at last they fell asleep, it was wrapped in each other’s arms.

  The first light filtering through the curtains awakened Dean and summoned him back to the reality that it was Monday morning and only hours until he would be giving his opening statement.

  They showered again, somewhat less eventfully than the first time. Afterward, Janet tended to Dean’s forehead, trying to make the scab look a bit less frightening.

  “Now it’s my turn to ask you a question,” she said.

  He was caught off guard by the seriousness in her voice, but he figured he owed her honest answers. “Go ahead,” he said.

  “How long have you been shaving your legs?”

  “Never mind.” He smiled.

  Dean’s blue shirt had dried, and Janet wore it tucked into his jeans, which she belted at the waist with his necktie. The overall impression she made was one of a street urchin dressed in grownup’s clothing. They divided up the remainder of Dean’s few things as best as they could. Janet promised to take a cab to a girlfriend’s house, where she would hide out for a few more days until the trial played itself out one way or another. Dean would head to his office, where he kept a change of clothes he could slip into before going to court.

  “You be careful,” Janet whispered.

  “I will be,” he said, kissing the tip of her nose. “There’s only one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What am I going to use for soap?”

  Dean arrived at his office around eight. He noticed that someone hadn’t double locked the outer door again, and as he let himself in he couldn’t help wondering if he’d find Walter Bingham waiting for him inside.

  Bingham wasn’t waiting, but a far nastier surprise was. Before he even reached the door to his room, Dean could see that the place had been trashed. Furniture was knocked over, file cabinets pulled open, drawers emptied and overturned on the floor. Books and papers were strewn about as though a tornado had ripped through the office, with his desk as ground zero. His clothes tree had been knocked over, and the two suits that had been on it were ripped apart. This was no ordinary burglary, Dean knew immediately. Whoever had done it hadn’t been content to just look for cash or stamps or whatever it was office burglars took; they’d gone on to vandalize and destroy everything in sight.

  Dean righted his desk chair and sat down heavily. He cursed whichever of his suitemates had been in over the weekend and had left without remembering to double lock the outer door. Whoever it had been deserved this to a certain extent, perhaps, but Dean sure didn’t.

  And as he sat there trying to take some measure of satisfaction from the fact that the careless party had no doubt suffered as much as he had, a sudden chill came over him.

  Slowly he stood up. He picked his way through the debris and out the door of his room. From the central corridor, he gently nudged open the door to the room next to his and peered inside. Everything was in place, every book in order. He went to the next door and opened it. Neat as a pin. A hollow feeling in his stomach told him he wasn’t going to have to check any other rooms.

  And just about then, he knew what had happened.

  He walked back to his own room and looked at the couch. Instead of being flush against the wall, it had been pulled out a foot or so at one end. He went over to it and kneeled on it in order to reach down behind it. But even before he did so, he knew full well that he would find nothing there. Certainly no envelope marked ammunition.

  The elation that Dean had felt back at the hotel gave way to a sense of exhaustion and overwhelming depression. Only hours ago he’d been on top of the world. His rescue of Janet had freed him to go forward at Joey’s trial, able to pull out all the stops without having to fear that the police would retaliate against Janet. But just when he thought he was home free, they’d managed to take everything away from him. For what chance did he have now of demonstrating the conspiracy without the physical evidence - the forged signatures, the dibenzepin findings, and the letters from Officer Santana?

  First they’d tried to appeal to his conscience in order to avoid a trial. Then they’d kidnapped Janet, threatening to kill her. Next, they’d made Joey and him an offer too good to refuse. And now, just when he’d finally managed to even the playing field, they’d broken into his office and stolen his evidence.

  For the first time, Dean was aware how terribly his head ached.

  Joey Spadafino’s head doesn’t ache, but his insides still do. He’s led across the bridge a little before eight-thirty. He’s been up most of the night. Not ‘cause of the pain - he can live with that. More ‘cause he’s been thinking.

  Miriam, one of the secretaries in Dean’s suite, was the first to find him sitting in his room. By then it was after nine-thirty.

  “My God! What happened?” she wanted to know, her stare alternating between his head and the chaos in which he sat.

  “Earthquake.”

  She inspected his forehead. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in court?”

  “Yup.”

  “You can’t go. You need to get to a hospital. Do you want me to call the court?” she asked. “Or go over and tell them you can’t make it today?”

  Dean thought of Judge Rothwax and how he’d already extended himself by allowing Dean the weekend before requiring him to make his opening statement. He knew his choice was between getting to court or a hospital emergency room. And court was closer.

  “No,” he said, “I’ll be all right.” Then, following her glance at the shorts and sneakers he still had on, he added, “I guess I need to find some clothes, though.”

  She went up front and returned a few minutes later with a suit that had been hanging in the storage closet. From the looks of its shiny fabric and narrow lapels, Dean guessed it had been there for a good ten years. No matter. It was all Miriam had been able to find, so it would have to do.

  He found a pair of shoes and a belt that had withstood the attack. He was less lucky when it came to a shirt: The best he could find was a badly torn one.

  Ten minutes later, he stood in front of a full-length mirror on the back of his office door and assessed the situation. The suit hadn’t turned out to be a suit after all. Instead, it had proved to be a sport jacket and a pair of slacks that had nothing in common but the hanger they’d been sharing. The pants were corduroy, a faded purplish color and badly wrinkled, but at least they fit him. The jacket, a grayish
green tweed, was a different story. Although he managed to get it on, it was clear it had once belonged to a jockey. The shoulders threatened to rip at any moment, the sleeves barely covered his elbows, and the front panels had no hope of ever meeting in the middle.

  He’d selected his widest tie to cover the tear in his shirt. The former happened to be a red paisley, the latter blue denim. His black shoes looked okay, though his white sweat socks did set them off a bit harshly.

  Then there was his raw, scabbed forehead and the large purple bruise on the side of his head.

  “Pretty dapper, huh?” he said to his reflection.

  It didn’t smile back.

  Joey Spadafino sits in the feeder pen alongside the courtroom, waiting for Dean to come to see him, as Dean always does right before they go into court. Joey’s been thinking. Maybe he’s wrong to go through with the trial after all. He’s had the whole weekend to think about it, and what he’s been thinking is that maybe he’s being stupid. Maybe he should take the time served after all. At least he’s reached the point where he’d like to talk it over one more time with Dean.

  But Dean doesn’t show up.

  Finally, about quarter after ten, they bring Joey into court and sit him down. The judge is there and the DA, but no Dean. He tries to ask a court officer what’s going on, but no one’ll tell him anything.

  About ten minutes go by. Then the judge looks at the clock and says in an angry voice, “Let the record reflect it is now ten-thirty. Bring in the jury.”

  When the jurors enter, it takes a few seconds for them to notice that Dean isn’t there. As soon as they realize, they start whispering among themselves like little children.

  “Good morning, jurors,” says the judge.

  They say good morning back to him. Like school.

  “Apparently we’re going to be delayed for a little while” is all he tells them.

  It was almost a quarter to eleven by the time Dean got to the courthouse, making him more than an hour late, ordinarily a surefire prescription for a contempt citation from Harold Rothwax, who’d been known to throw lawyers in jail for far lesser transgressions. While Dean figured that his physical appearance alone would go a long way to explain things, what bothered him most was that he was back to square one. While the reason was different, without his physical evidence he was in no better position to make his opening than he had been Friday afternoon. What was he going to tell Judge Rothwax this time? That he couldn’t go forward because his head ached? He could imagine the judge’s sarcastic response, reserved for just such occasions: “I can assure you, Counselor, that your headache is a matter of lasting indifference to me.”