Ladykiller

by Lawrence Light

  “Like you wouldn’t believe. Oh, please.”

  “Okay, then. Anything for a lady.” With tripping, almost silly alacrity, he pulled off his boots and yanked at his clothes. In seconds, he stood before her, an overfed, oversized version of Michelangelo’s David. His erection curled out aggressively from under his slag-bag of a gut.

  “Come to me, my love,” Nita said, and held out her arms.

  Grinning ferociously, he crossed the kitchen tile. She reached for his genitals. “Yeah, baby,” he said.

  Billy Ray’s balls rested in Nita’s palm, tight, bulbous prizes.With every erg of strength she had, she squeezed them hard. Crushed them like rotten pears.

  The man jackknifed forward and roared in exquisite agony. Nita backed off quickly to get clear of his arms, which flailed around before they clamped around his crotch. He made gagging sounds. His face had turned sunset red.

  Nita, losing not a moment, pulled a large knife out of the butcher block.When Billy Ray could look up from his intense pain to croak his curses at her, he saw the knife zooming at his bad eye. It went through the eye patch and sliced deep into his skull. For a moment that seemed like forever he stood there, staring at her from his one good eye, then he slipped down, slid down the knife blade, and slowly eased down onto the floor.

  Nita stood over him as he twitched in death. When he was still, she took the knife and washed it carefully in the kitchen sink. Fortunately, little blood leaked out his eye onto her floor. She would clean that up later.

  In Manhattan, even on a Sunday night, you can get any items you want. Delivered too. In an hour, a moving company had delivered a crate and hand truck to her door. She bought industrial-strength trash bags from the deli. And she picked up the van from the 24-hour car rental herself. Happily, there was a parking place right in front of her apartment house door when she drove the van back.

  Now came the hard part. Billy Ray lay on her linoleum, a twisted lump of meat with overly large joints shooting in all directions. He had started to stiffen. She had to push hard to get his arms to his sides and his knees tucked up to his chest. He had started to smell, too. Dark ooze, from where his bowels had given way, puddled the floor beneath him. She would clean that up later, as well. His waxen face was wrenched into the wretched gorgon’s snarl of sudden death.

  Previously, she never had to bother with her victims after she dispatched them. Just walked away. She unfolded the trash bags. Billy Ray would need at least three.

  Nita struggled the big man into the black plastic. He was like a bag of rocks, inert and muscle-strainingly heavy.

  Next came the hard part: shoving him into the crate. She had chosen a sturdy one whose top and bottom could be removed without the sides collapsing. She braced a corner of the crate against her kitchen door jamb to prevent it from moving backward, and dragged Billy Ray’s bulk into the crate. It took a long frustrating half hour. Even though she had the advantage of being able to pull him through the far, open end of the crate, the damn box kept shifting from side to side. And God, was he the deadest of deadweight?

  At last, he was safely inside. Nita sat wearily down on the floor, soaked with sweat, muscles on fire.

  Her buzzer sounded. Nita struggled to her feet and hit the intercom switch. “Who is it?”

  “It’s me,” came Megan’s perky greeting over the tinny speaker. “Ready for dinner?”

  “Dinner.”

  “Come on. Let’s celebrate. One of your neighbors let me in. Be right up.”

  In a frenzy, Nita sealed up the top of the crate, which had a latch. The bottom, though, needed to be nailed shut. No time for that. She leaned the bottom panel across the opening, hiding the plasticsheathed mass inside.With a fistful of paper towels and a blast of Ajax, she cleaned up the soiled linoleum.

  Her doorbell chimed. Megan had on smart slacks and a light sweater. She carried a bottle of champagne. “I’m really in control,” she gushed. “I went on another call with Dave today, and I really have my emotions where I want them. I don’t need him. I proved that to myself today.You’d have been proud of me.”

  “That’s great, but —”

  Megan stepped inside, holding the champagne by its neck. The handbag with the .45 still sat beside the door where Billy Ray had flung it. “I saw today that you’re right. He wants to steal my soul. But he’s weak. I can be stronger than him. I can tell him no. And I can mean it. I wish you could have seen me.”

  “Megan, please —”

  At last, her young friend realized she was intruding. Then she noticed Nita’s appearance. “Oh, you look —” Yet Megan couldn’t bring herself to say that Nita looked any less than perfect. “You’re not ready.”

  “I’ve been a little busy,” Nita said with heavy irony, suppressing the urge to laugh. She recognized incipient hysteria when she saw it. She sat down and pushed back her damp hair.

  “What’s that crate?”

  “I’ve been doing a little spring cleaning.”

  “Can I help?”

  “No.That’s okay.Why don’t I give you a rain check? This is dirty work.”

  Megan walked over to the crate, pulled the bottom panel away from where it leaned, and peered inside. Nita tensed. Her eyes darted to the handbag in the corner, where the lump of the .45 showed clearly.

  “What is this?” Megan asked.

  “You wouldn’t want to know.”

  “Woo, it smells.” Megan jostled the side of the crate. “My God, it weighs a ton.”

  “You wouldn’t believe the trash I have to throw out.” Nita got up and slowly walked across the room and picked up her bag.

  The two women looked at each other as the night gathered itself together beyond the window. And they seemed to find some elusive something behind each other’s eyes, some sturdy spiderweb of trust that bound them together for all their seasons.

  Megan exhaled and said in a small voice, “The box is very heavy. I can help.”

  Nita stood quietly for a moment, then nodded. She fit the bottom panel squarely against the crate and nailed it shut. “There,” she said.

  Megan helped her upend the crate and shove it onto the handcart.Then Megan went first down the stairs, holding the cargo steady as they bumped the crate down to the street.The two women strained to push the crate into the van. Without Megan, Nita doubted she could have managed.The burden must have weighed 250 pounds.

  “Let me go with you,” Megan said. “It will be just as heavy — wherever you’re going.”

  “You’ve done enough,” Nita said. “I can take it from here.”

  “I’ll do anything for you, Nita.”

  “I know.”

  As Megan left, Nita called after her, “Remember. A rain check on dinner.”

  Nita decided on New Jersey. She could have unloaded the body on some deserted back street in Lower Manhattan. But in the city, there was no telling who would happen along as she struggled with the crate.

  She drove through the back streets to the Lincoln Tunnel, which sat at the end of the Deuce like a giant drain for all the human sewage that sluiced along that putrid street. As she sped into the dirty, white-tiled tunnel, lit in a sickly yellow glow, Nita felt the triumph begin to swell.

  She went quickly past the evil-smelling New Jersey towns that wadded up against the nether end of the tunnel. Without too much searching, she found a lonely road threading through the sewage pools of the Hackensack Meadowlands. She pulled the van over beside a shallow ditch and waited. No other car came along. She killed the headlights and got out.

  Over the reedy horizon, Manhattan’s towers stood waist high against the night sky, incredible statements of pure light where the world’s work got done. Gearhouses that ran the machinery of society. And the Billy Rays and Aces and Reubens and Lydias and Kimberlys and Lucys and Evelyns were nothing but sand in those gears. Off to the west rose the arenas of the Meadowlands sports complex.The soft breath of air that rattled through the reeds carried faint cheering.

  “Thank you
,” Nita said, making a mock bow to the ghost applause.

  Inside the van, she braced her shoulder against the crate and inched it out the back. It fell hard to the ground, but didn’t break open. Nita popped open the top and squinted into the crate.The trash bags might rip and break if she tried to pull the body out. Instead, she hammered the sides of the crate loose. And she rolled the stinking plastic load into the ditch. The shards of the crate went back into the van, so no one could trace it back to her. She turned once more to the luminous Manhattan skyline.

  There was another burst of distant cheering and triumph swelled out of her. She laughed and laughed.To think that removing scum like this was against the law. Her laughter mounted to a manic crescendo. Well, how fitting that the law was easily outsmarted. The laughing tripped into a fit of coughing and gagging.

  “I’ll save the bad news for later,” Blake told the morning meeting of his task force. “Cops in East Rutherford found a body around dawn tentatively identified as Billy Ray Battle.”

  “Where’s East Rutherford?” Safir asked.

  “I never heard of East Rutherford,”Wise said.

  “It’s in New Jersey,” Jamie said. “Where the Meadowlands sports

  complex is.You know, Giants Stadium and all.”

  “Oh, that East Rutherford,” Safir said.

  “The one in Jersey,”Wise said.

  “Was he shot in the right eye?” Dave asked. He didn’t bring up his

  head to speak, merely kept glowering at the coffee cup that sat before him on the table. He had been staring at that cup since they all had sat down. Jamie glanced at him, then looked away, remembering.

  “Stabbed in the eye with a knife,” Blake said. “The right eye. The one where Dave, uh, zapped him. Large blade, like a kitchen carving knife. No evidence of firearms damage on him. Severe damage to his testicles, as if somebody had squeezed them.”

  “Got him by the balls,” Safir said.

  “The hearts and minds follow,”Wise said.

  “We can’t say it was a Ladykiller homicide,” Blake said. “But because it was his right eye and because he is peripherally involved, well, I want someone here to examine the body. Seems like the local Jersey cops are in a snit over something to do with interstate flight policy. So they aren’t being cooperative. Maybe you can charm them into access to the body, Jamie.”

  “None of the male detectives are as charming, Loo?” Jamie said. “Safir and Wise can speak suburban.”

  “Who me?” Safir said. “All that crabgrass gives me allergies. If it was up to me, I’d pave over Central Park.”

  “Put up a few parking garages,”Wise said. “Make it useful.”

  “Billy Ray was seen with Ace yesterday in the Foxy Lady,” Dave said. “There’s got to be a connection.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Blake shrugged. “Worth Jamie taking a good look. No luck finding Ace?”

  “Martino and Blitzer say he was seen running into the Times Square subway station,” Dave said. “He acted like he was being chased. He knocked over an old bag lady’s shopping cart. The bag lady was afraid of cops, but a transit cop in the station says he saw someone who resembled Ace. He couldn’t be sure, though.”

  Blake clapped his hands onto the table. “Folks, we’re getting nowhere here.”

  “The link is the West Side Crisis Center,” Dave insisted. “Listen, Ace said all the victims were clients there.Trouble is, the center’s files show no sign of the victims. Not even under fake names, as far as we can tell.”

  “Nothing matched,” Jamie added.

  “If we find Ace, it will fall into place,” Dave said.

  “Will it, Dave?” Blake said. “Will it? We’ve been down too many blind alleys.” He was uncharacteristically angry, almost shouting. “We’re getting absolutely nowhere. Jesus.” He stopped himself, then rubbed his temples with his fingers.

  “What’s the bad news, Loo?” Jamie asked softly.

  “Mancuso,” Blake said. “He’s given us till the end of this week.Today is Monday. If we haven’t collared the perp — the right one this time — the task force is disbanded. And that will have bad consequences for a lot of people in this room.” He scanned their faces and locked his gaze on Dave.

  “Me, I’ll retire,” Safir said.

  “Yeah, time to hang it up,”Wise said.

  Dave stood and left the room without a word. The group sat in silence. Jamie scraped her chair back and followed him.

  She caught him as he was heading out the front. “Dave, about the other night —”

  “I’m sorry, Jamie,” Dave said, not looking at her. “I mean it but —”

  “No. Don’t. Forget that.What I want to say is, you can count on me to help you with this case.Together we can nail this asshole.”

  Dave looked up and gave her a tight smile. “Sure we can.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “The West Side Crisis Center.”

  The first morning counseling session behind her, Nita fed the fish.The flakes drifted in equal portions all over the tank. No fish went hungry. They didn’t fight over the manna.They were smooth and beautiful.

  Once she disposed of Ace, she could start over. Obviously, removing any more clients of the crisis center was too dangerous. And just as obviously, shooting them in the right eye was too much of a signature. In the heart, or anywhere else in the head would have to do, although she regretted the loss of the right eye as a target. It had such poetry.

  Sated, the fish swam in their smooth, orderly currents. The next phase. The trick was to avoid mistakes. The police had gotten too close to the crisis center, although Nita appeared to have stopped them. No one knew that the victims all saw Nita Bergstrom or even that they came to the crisis center.

  No one other than Ace, that is. Always trying to hang around Nita, he had probably met every one of her clients. He actually attempted to hit on Kimberly Worth, of all people. Nita should have realized that Ace would catch on to her. She simply never thought about him.

  Nita remembered the frustration of dealing with poor Lucy.The girl was starving herself and, by her own account, driving her parents mad with guilt and grief and worry. Nita completely lost it professionally with Lucy, yelling at her to wake up and get a life. The girl kept whimpering, “I’m so fat.” Typical of the cops, no one ever picked up on the irony of Lucy’s dying outside a meatpacking plant.

  Kimberly was a study in exasperating behavior. The woman, a spoiled brat from a rich family, was an addict, as pathetic as the lowest junkie on the street.

  “How can I help you when you won’t admit that you’re hurting yourself? Just as you won’t admit that your work involves hurting others?” Nita asked her.

  “Caveat emptor — ‘Let the buyer beware’ — is at the heart of the capitalist system,” Kimberly said breezily.

  “I think your problem is guilt. And that you can’t bring yourself to stop hurting others.”

  “My problem is that I don’t understand what my problem is.”

  When the .45 was pointed at Kimberly, in Carl Schurz Park, the woman’s reaction was superbly in character: “Whatever do you think you’re doing?”

  Lydia Daniels’ behavior displayed a more deadly form of denial. She showed Nita the HIV diagnosis only to laugh at it. “They think I’m a drag queen queer or something? Shit.This piece of paper is as phony as a three-dollar bill.They just disapprove of my lifestyle, is all.”

  “I’d take this seriously,” Nita told her. “Maybe the men you infect deserve it, but they go on to infect innocent women. How can you live with that?”

  “Sure, sure, sure. Hey, if I’m Typhoid Mary, cure me.”

  “All right,” Nita said, “I will.”

  The fish swam in their perfect world.

  •••

  Dave opened the heavy door of the crisis center. Inside, the usual bedlam reigned. The seedy, wild-eyed man ran up to Dave once more. “What planet are you from?”

  “Did you know Reuben Si
lver?” Dave asked.

  “Reuben lives on another planet now.With all the early saints. A lot of the early saints were Jewish.”

  “Were you a client of Reuben?”

  “Hell, no. He used to call me crazy. Ha-ha. If he was so great, how come he’s dead?” The man roared. “Ever ask yourself that?”

  Megan hurried over. “Dave, what’s going on?”

  “Talking to this man.”

  “Well, have you?” the man bellowed.

  “Why?” Megan said.

  “Two items on my agenda.The first is a chat with Dr. Solomon,” Dave said.

  “Guess what?” the man proclaimed with a cackle. “She’s real sweet on you.”

  “What’s the second item?”

  “An invitation to dinner.” Dave smiled. “Not at my place this time. And we won’t talk about Nita.We’ll just have a nice meal.”

  Megan looked up into his eyes. She briefly touched his shoulder. She could feel the heat. “When?”

  “Tomorrow night. Pick you up at seven?”

  “All right,” Megan said. “I don’t have to work the hotline tomorrow night. But please, if you see Nita, don’t —”

  Dave put a finger to her lips. “I won’t say a word.” He smiled and went upstairs.

  Rose disturbed Nita’s reverie. “Dr. Solomon wishes to see you, dear. It’s must be important.” She seemed worried.

  “What’s the matter, Rose?”

  “That detective is here again. Dr. Solomon is in quite a state.”

  Rose waved vaguely. “Will this ever end?”

  Nita swallowed hard and stalked into Solomon’s office. He slumped behind his desk, as if he’d been deboned. Dillon sat upright

  in the chair opposite him, brimming with grim force.

  “Nita, Detective Dillon has a proposal that, well, I frankly need

  your input on,” Dr. Solomon said. “Apparently, the investigation to

  find Reuben’s killer hasn’t exactly progressed to the point of satisfaction. And, well —”

  “What do you want with us now, detective?” Nita asked. “Why don’t you sit down, Nita?” Dave said.