The Big O (A Screwball Noir)

by Declan Burke

  Rossi hustled up, fell into step beside her as she turned into the parking lot. ‘Tell me this, Marsha.’ He drew back the lapel of the double-breasted grey to show her the hunting knife stuck in his waistband, the handle covered with a worn rubber grip. ‘Is there anything you’re not sorry about?’

  ‘S-sorry?’

  ‘Think fast or you’ll be the sorriest bitch ever walked.’

  ‘I’ll s-scream.’

  He pulled the blade grabbing her elbow. ‘If you were going to scream you’d have screamed already. Now open the car or I’ll hole you where you’ll never heal.’

  Marsha scraped the paintwork getting the key into the lock. Rossi, glancing around, no one coming their way, heaved from behind when she got the door open wide, caught a flash of blue satin, maybe silk, above sheer black nylon, Marsha’s skirt riding up as she tumbled across into the passenger seat. Rossi sat into the driver’s seat, tucked the blade under his thigh, beckoned for the keys.

  ‘Okay, you’re learning,’ he said as she handed them over, hand shaking. He backed the car out, headed for the exit. ‘Now Marsha, listen up. Do what I say and you walk away without a scratch. Alright? Otherwise, I swear it, I fuck you and slice your eyes. How would that be?’

  That wouldn’t be so good, not for Marsha. She started blubbing quietly, her face crumpling like the noisy paper, Rossi thought, you get in a box of chocolates. Which gave Rossi an idea.

  ‘Marsha? Where you live, there’s a shop near there, right? Somewhere I can get smokes, some chocolates. You think they do truffles?’

  Frank

  ‘It’s like telling a gag,’ the club pro once told Frank. ‘Get the timing wrong and you’re the joke.’

  Frank feeling lonely in the gathering gloom. Flexing his fingers on the black rubber grip, legs wide apart, shoulders loose. He looked up one last time to fix the position of the flag, squinting into the dull reddish glare, the sun low behind the green. Wondering if he should break it all up to wipe away that one prickly bead of sweat sitting right on his brow under the hairline.

  ‘Jesus, Frank,’ Doug called from the edge of the green. ‘Any time before Christmas, yeah?’

  Frank, way back on the fairway, couldn’t actually hear Bryan and Mike snicker, Mike already on the green with Doug, Bryan sitting up nicely on the apron, all three holding putters. But he knew they’d be snickering. The 17 was an uphill dogleg par 5, Frank with six already played and still a good eighty yards short of the pin.

  It was okay for Doug, blissed on Nervocaine, Frank handing over the pills in the dressing room before they went out. Frank, though – Frank was stressed, had been from the first tee, the insurance forms still unsigned in the breast pocket of his jacket, Doug getting interrupted when Bryan and Mike arrived together ….

  He broke it all up, dragging a forearm across his forehead to catch the bead of sweat. Then bent to it again, setting his feet, lacing his fingers. Telling himself to relax, it’s all in the timing ….

  He held his breath and drew back the wedge, smooth and easy, up over his head. Swayed into the downswing, fingers still nicely laced, feeling his shoulders pulling through gently. And then, just as the head of the wedge dropped past his kidneys, Frank got a mental flash, the club pro begging: Don’t slice it. All I’m asking is, for once, you don’t fucking slice it.

  So he shanked it instead. Cutting across the ball and driving it low, hard and left at head height, so it caught Doug just behind his right ear, Doug going down in a welter of arms, legs and putter, choking out a strangled scream as he hit the turf.

  Frank dropped the wedge and sprinted up the fairway, thinking, that’ll teach him, standing so close to the green, fucking smart-arse playing off nine. But by the time he topped the rise and made the green, Frank was panting hard and his only thought was: Don’t sue, don’t sue, don’t sue ….

  Madge

  ‘Back then,’ Madge said, sitting on the ground with her back against the couch, this to improve her posture, as recommended by Tamisha, ‘there was no such thing as date rape.’

  Karen sprawled on cushions beside the armchair, both of them angled towards the TV, the volume so low they couldn’t hear it when they spoke. Not that Madge cared. The DVD was some Julia Roberts crap, Karen’d brought it over for laughs.

  ‘Rape?’ Karen said.

  How they’d got into it was Karen’d asked, rubbing her tummy: ‘Did it hurt?’

  Madge snorted, handed the ashtray across. ‘Frank, right?’

  Karen took a hit off the joint. ‘I thought he’d blow his wad telling me. Like, right there in Reception, across the desk.’

  Madge could imagine it, Frank licking his lips telling Karen about the piercing. Frank getting the news, she supposed, from Jeanie and Liz.

  ‘He has a thing for bellybuttons,’ she said. ‘I ever tell you that? The honeymoon’s the first I hear of it. He must have spent, I swear, half an hour digging away at it the first night. Anyway, that’s why I got it pierced, I knew it’d drive him insane.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Karen crawled around the low coffee table. Madge hiked up the front of her sweater. Karen giggled. ‘It looks a bit raw,’ she said.

  ‘It takes a few weeks for the swelling to go down. But it’s okay to touch. Just don’t go ripping at it.’

  Karen tugged and pushed, still giggling, then sat back and reached for the ashtray. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It looks great, but I don’t know.’

  ‘If it looks great, then what’s to know? Some day, when you’ve got an ass like mutant prunes, you’ll appreciate those words of wisdom.’

  Karen crawled back around the coffee table, sprawled out on the cushions again. ‘This is after I’ve had kids, right? Twins.’

  ‘And married some asshole who likes to play belly-buttons.’

  They both enjoyed that one. Karen wiped away a tear. ‘Seriously, though – was it painful?’

  Madge took a deep draw on the joint. ‘I’ve had worse,’ she said, considering. ‘I mean, once you’ve had your first kid, everything else is a breeze.’

  ‘Except you had to go and have two at the same time.’ Karen thought for a moment. ‘So who came first, Jeanie or Liz?’

  Madge watched Julia give some sappy-looking sack the full ninety-watt beam. ‘Neither,’ she said.

  ‘Say again?’

  ‘Neither.’

  ‘You’re saying,’ Karen said carefully, ‘there’s more than Jeanie and Liz?’

  ‘Just the one. Scary thought, isn’t it?’

  Karen wasn’t to be diverted. ‘And what – it died? I mean, he or she died?’

  Madge shook her head, then shrugged. ‘Being honest, Kar, I don’t really know. It didn’t die during labour, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  Karen, Madge could tell from her expression, wasn’t entirely sure what she was asking.

  ‘I was sixteen,’ Madge explained. ‘I mean, we’re talking thirty-five years ago. Things were different then.’

  ‘Yeah, but ––’

  ‘Let me put it this way,’ Madge said. ‘Back then, there was no such thing as date rape.’

  ‘Rape?’ Karen’s eyes widened, and then her shoulders slumped. ‘Oh, Madge. Shit.’

  ‘Not far off. Being honest? I wouldn’t even wish it on Frank.’

  ‘At least,’ Karen said dolefully, ‘he wouldn’t have to worry about getting pregnant after.’

  ‘This is true.’ Madge felt light-headed, floaty, trying to work out if it was the dope or the unburdening that was making her feel that way. ‘The worst of it was,’ she said, ‘I got blamed. For seducing the guy.’ She snorted. ‘We’re out in the sticks, in his father’s car, I’m sixteen. Yeah? I’m saying no for like three hours, and all the time I’m wondering how I’m getting home. But he won’t quit. So, okay, I go with it. I mean, the guy’s saying, if I don’t then he’ll tell everyone I did. But if I do, he’ll keep it quiet.’

  Karen just stared. ‘Like I say,
’ Madge said, ‘things were different. Back then, if a guy got a boner, it was your fault for having boobs. Then I’m pregnant and my father starts looking up dictionaries, finding new words for slut. Then the priest, my mother called him in … Although, in his defence, he’s already fucked up, else he wouldn’t be a priest.’

  Karen’s wet eyes twinkled.

  ‘Anyway,’ Madge continued, ‘they shunted me off to this convent. I mean, no shit, your actual convent. First night I’m there, I hear the word fornication. By now I can see where they’re coming from. I mean, if everyone called it fornication, no one’d be interested in getting laid, right? That’s one seriously ugly word.’

  Karen, fumbling, asked how it felt to be pregnant in a convent.

  ‘Cold. Even in July it was always fucking cold. And I knew, from day one, that I was giving it up, boy or girl. That was the whole idea. But the nuns were fine. Some of them were really sweet, actually wanted to help. One of them, Sister Concepta they called her’ – Madge with a wry grin – ‘was actually interested in the physical process, how it felt, all that kind of thing. She was the one, when the baby was born, who asked if I wanted to give it its name or leave it up to the adoption board.’

  ‘So what did you have – boy or girl?’

  ‘A boy. Eight pounds, seven ounces, everything where it should be and nothing where it shouldn’t.’

  ‘You get to see him?’

  ‘For about twenty minutes. They cleaned him up, brought him back in, gave me some time. Sister Concepta pulled out a camera, wanting to know if I wanted a picture taken.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Karen brightened. ‘Have you got it?’

  Madge shook her head. ‘If they’d asked me before they brought him in, I’d have told them not to bother.’

  ‘But Madge ––’

  ‘I didn’t even want to screw the guy, Kar. And I know you can sympathise, and I truly love you for that. But thank God you’ll never really understand.’ Madge flicked the lighter, got the joint going again; exhaled, handed the ashtray across to Karen. ‘Then, that’s not bad enough, I have to carry this thing around inside me for nine fucking months, ten if you want to be pedantic about it. Being blamed, all the time, for the way I am. And this is before it rips me open, I mean, rips me open being born. And you’re wanting a Kodak moment?’

  Karen blinked back the tears. ‘Next thing I know,’ Madge said, ‘they’re calling the father in. To name the baby.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Nope. The joke is, the guy doesn’t get to put his name on the birth cert, but he’s allowed to, y’know, propose the baby’s name. This because the adoption board is infested with men.’

  Karen, despairing, said: ‘So what’d you call him?’

  ‘I’m honestly not sure. Sister Concepta gave me a Bible, told me to pick something out, she’d do her best to work it in. So I found something in the psalms, except she didn’t like it.’ Madge shrugged. ‘The good news being, after all that crap? The twins were a breeze.’

  Karen had a pair of fat tears either side of her nose.

  Madge held her arms open, hoping Karen’d crawl around the table. ‘I don’t know how much I can hold my arms out, hon,’ she said. ‘You want a hug, you’d better get over here before I wind up crucified.’

  A giggle erupted, Karen snuffling up the tears. Then she crawled around the coffee table and Madge sank into a fierce hug that seeped through to her bones.

  After a while they both lay back against the couch, Karen wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand, saying: ‘What kind of joint are you running here, woman? I bring Julia Roberts, you don’t even break out the Kleenex?’

  ‘Kar? Bring Julia fucking Roberts over here just one more time, I’ll stick the DVD where the sun don’t shine.’

  Karen sniffled. ‘Where’s that, up my belly-button?’

  They both enjoyed that one too.

  Doyle

  ‘Rossi Callaghan,’ Sparks said, sticking her head around Doyle’s door. ‘Ring any bells?’

  ‘Sure,’ Doyle said. ‘Rossi Francis Assisi Callaghan. Script drugs. Got out yesterday after five years for blagging a chemist, his third time down.’

  ‘Wow,’ Sparks said. ‘You’re good.’

  Doyle selected the thickest of the files that had been dumped on her desk that morning, waved it at Sparks. The name had caught her eye, unusual enough to stick out, Doyle just the latest in a long line of care workers, probation officers, psychiatrists and prison guards who’d been keeping tabs on Rossi Callaghan for nigh on twenty years.

  ‘What’s he done now?’ she said.

  ‘Unlawful detention. Attempted rape.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘That might well be the first time,’ Sparks observed, ‘I’ve ever heard you surprised.’

  Doyle shrugged. ‘It just doesn’t sound like his MO. There’s nothing in there,’ she nodded at his file, ‘about sex crime.’

  ‘People change,’ Sparks said. ‘Anyway, you want to take it? I can pass it on.’

  ‘That depends.’ Doyle’d been on her way home before Sparks turned up. ‘Where’ll I find him?’

  ‘If it was that easy ….’

  ‘We’d all make Commissioner. Where’d the call come from?’

  Sparks handed over a typewritten report sheet. The address wouldn’t send Doyle too far out of her way, so she nodded. ‘I’ll take it,’ she said.

  ‘Doing anything later on?’ Sparks wanted to know.

  ‘Dancing the flamenco with Brad Pitt. But I’ll buzz you once I get rid of him.’

  ‘First see if he has any brothers.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  Doyle found the address and took a quick debrief from the visibly relieved patrolman, sat on the couch beside Marsha.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, flashing a smile. ‘I’m Detective Doyle and we’re going to catch this scum-sucker and feed him to the pigs. What can you tell me?’

  Marsha told her story, the tale punctuated by choked sobs, an occasional hiccup. Doyle scribbled furiously in longhand. ‘He actually said he’d staple your tits together?’

  Marsha closed her eyes to block out the memory. Doyle thinking how they’d need to be big staples, Marsha packing a pair of M&Ms in a training bra.

  ‘Then he goes,’ Marsha said, gulping, ‘“Here’s the real bad news. I only got out yesterday, it’s been ten years since I’ve touched a woman.”’

  ‘Ten?’

  Marsha nodded, tears welling. ‘Then he said, “Want to know what I was in for? It wasn’t just rape.”’

  Doyle consulted her notes. ‘According to his file, he fell asleep on a motorbike after necking some pills he’d boosted from a chemist.’

  ‘You don’t believe me?’

  ‘Plus he only did five years. By the way, is that a gentleman’s handkerchief?’

  Marsha nodded, refolding the handkerchief. ‘It’s his.’

  ‘So the guy’s threatening to rape you but he gives you his hanky first?’

  Marsha sniffled hard. ‘He wanted me to mop up, y’know, where I’d wet myself. Before he got started.’

  ‘Sick fuck.’ Doyle made another note. ‘So how come he left?’

  ‘He wanted a phone number.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Started raving about some bitch, he called her, who stole his Ducati. Said he wasn’t going to hurt her, all he wanted was his bike back. Then he said if I played along nothing’d happen to me, except I’d maybe get a rash from sitting in my own pee too long.’

  Doyle scribbled it all down. ‘So who’s he trying to contact?’

  ‘Someone called Karen King.’

  ‘A friend of yours?’

  ‘Where I work,’ Marsha said, ‘out at Pheasant Valley? I’m a receptionist. So he wanted me to ring up and say there’s some weirdo stalking Karen King, I need to warn her. Get her address and phone number.’

  ‘Did you do it?’

  ‘He said,’ Marsha said, lower lip trembling, ‘“They might
not want to give you the information. Against that, what you have to consider right now is I’m pulling down my zipper.”’ Marsha shuddered. ‘Then he said he’d have to turn me around before we got started. Because of all the shit that happened him in prison.’

  ‘What about this Karen King?’ Doyle said. ‘Did you get the information?’

  Marsha nodded.

  ‘And then he left?’

  Marsha nodded again. ‘How come he left?’ Doyle said.

  ‘I had a, um, gentleman caller.’

  Lucky you, Doyle thought. ‘And you were expecting this guy?’

  Marsha flushed up puce.

  ‘He’s married?’ Doyle said.

  ‘Actually, he’s more in the way of being Caitlin’s fiancé.’

  ‘Caitlin being who?’

  ‘My sister. Although, according to Tom, he’s her ex-fiancé.’

  ‘Either way, this gentleman caller isn’t so much the gentleman.’ Doyle made another note. ‘So what about this Karen King? You ring her after Callaghan left, let her know he was tracking her down?’

  Marsha, confused, shook her head. ‘There was just so much going on …’ she began, eyes wide. Doyle swore.

  While she dialled the number, Doyle noted Marsha’s bruised cheekbone, the pencil-thin gash on her forehead. ‘He knocked you around?’ she said. ‘Got nasty?’

  Marsha choked back a sob. ‘That was Caitlin. She got here before the cops did.’

  ‘Can’t say I’m surprised,’ Doyle said. ‘You were my sister, we’d be doing this in ICU. Oh, hi – is that Karen?’

  Frank

  Doug insisted he was fine to drive, holding up three fingers and saying: ‘Three, goddammit. Three.’

  But the paramedics suspected a hairline fracture, a touch of concussion, and the deal with the fingers – Doug holding up two fingers on his left, one on his right – only hardened their resolve. So Doug travelled in the back of the ambulance and Frank, it was the least he could do, followed on in Doug’s Beamer coupé.

  He hung around ER until they wheeled Doug upstairs, the x-rays inconclusive, overnight observation required, then rang Audra and told her what he knew, subtly emphasising Doug’s flouting of fairway etiquette.