“Max?”
“Max Jarvis—Sentinel owner and policymaker. At one time or another that old shyster has taken a stand against everything from chocolate eclaires to motherhood. Last year I had to do a piece inferring that Joan of Arc was a switch hitter.”
“Was she?”
“Probably not, but that particular issue sold over a million! Good old Maxie—one of these days he’ll shit in his own hat—I hope.”
Lockington offered his guest a cigarette and she accepted, digging into her handbag to produce a tiny blue-enameled Colibri, holding a light for them. He said, “So, it’s ‘Erika,’ not ‘Stella’—right?”
She nodded, tilting her head, directing a slender gray plume of smoke at the ceiling. She had a striking profile—delicate, but there was strength along the jawline, Lockington thought. She said, “I leave Stella Starbright under my typewriter.”
“Is she Erika’s alter ego?”
“No connection, I assure you!” She took a nip of her drink. “My God, who makes this stuff—the Apaches?”
“I believe that the recipe dates back to Genghis Khan.”
“A distant relative?”
“No, I’m in the bloodline of Aristotle.”
“You don’t look Greek.”
“I’m not—Aristotle was an Irishman. You don’t fit my image of Stella Starbright—not at all.”
“I should be fat, fifty, splayfooted, and wear pop bottle spectacles?”
“Something like that.”
“The others may be fat by now—but they’re still a long way from fifty.”
“The others?”
“The other ‘Stella Starbrights’.”
“Hold it! Run that one through here again!”
“There’ve been three ‘Stellas’—I’m the third. The column’s nearly ten years old—I’ve written it for a little over two.”
“That’s interesting. And the two previous Stellas took the same slobbering route—give us anarchy or we perish?”
“Of course. That’s the Sentinel’s creed.”
“Uh-huh.” Lockington leaned back on the sofa, crossing his legs, studying the coal of his cigarette, enjoying the conversation. This was a strange woman—unprincipled, yet principled to a degree—interesting. Lockington wondered how she was in bed. If he’d been ten years younger, he’d have taken a run at her. He said, “With the Sentinel being what it is, and the Stella Starbright column being what it is, it’s a damned miracle that some crackpot conservative hasn’t blown the Sentinel Building off the map.”
“Oh, we’ve had threats at the Sentinel—several have been directed to me personally.”
“From whom?”
“A radically conservative organization that calls itself ‘LAON.’”
“LAON—which stands for what?”
“‘Law and Order Now,’ I’ve been given to understand—childish choice of names, isn’t it? No class.”
“Male or female caller?”
“No calls—typewritten postcards.”
“Chicago postmarks?”
“Chicago area, yes—various stations.”
“Addressed to your residence or to the Sentinel?”
“The Sentinel—I’ve moved from the lakefront to St. Charles recently. I receive quite a bit of mail at the Sentinel.”
“What do you do with these postcards?”
“I give them to management. They were to be turned over to the postal authorities.”
“What threats have been made?”
“Nothing specific, other than I’m to be eliminated.”
“That’s specific enough. When and why—does LAON get into that?”
“Soon—because I’m a menace to the human race, to the flag, ‘and to the Republic for which it stands’—on and on—the typical fanatic spiel.”
“Do these disturb you?”
“At first they did.”
“But not now?”
“Not really—there’ve been so many—I’ve become calloused to them, I guess.”
“What’s the frequency of contact?”
She thought about it. “Oh, I’d say twice monthly, on the average. There’s no predictable pattern.”
“For how long now?”
“A few months—it goes back to early spring, maybe late winter.”
“The most recent?”
“Let’s see—last Thursday or Friday, I believe. Why? Do you take this stuff seriously?”
“There’s one chance in ten that there’s substance to it, but—well, there’s still that one chance. How’s security at the Sentinel?”
“Excellent—armed personnel at every entrance—everybody’s carded.”
“Do you live alone?”
“Uh-huh—a small house just off the Fox River, north of St. Charles.”
“Rent or own?”
“Rent.”
“Do you have a gun?”
“Yes—it’s a Repentino-Morté something-or-other.”
“Repentino-Morté Black Mamba Mark III—excellent piece, probably the best. Do you have it in your purse?”
“Heavens, no—I’m afraid of the damned thing!”
“You’d better get over that and carry it. Some of these screwballs are for real.”
Erika Elwood stretched catlike in the overstuffed chair. She said, “May I compliment you, Mr. Lockington?”
“That’d be a switch. For what?”
“For a precise line of questioning—I’ve never been, uhh-h-h—grilled before. Is that the word—grilled?”
“That’s what the newspapers call it, the connotation indicating police brutality, of course.”
“Oh, my, we do have a chip on our shoulder, don’t we?”
“Shouldn’t we?”
She considered the question, shifting slightly in her chair, her silver chain sparkling on her well-turned ankle. “Yes—yes, indeed we should. At any rate, Mr. Lockington, you’ve learned more about me than I know about you, which isn’t fair. Might I ask you a question or two?”
“Concerning?”
“Concerning Julie—was that her name—Julie Masters?”
Lockington nodded. “Where do you get your information?”
“It was in our files—the Sentinel carried the story.”
“The Sentinel would.”
“She died of multiple knife wounds—in February, wasn’t it?”
“Look, Miss Elwood, I’d just as soon not discuss it.”
“You two were happy?”
“Very. Let’s drop it right there.”
“Just one more question—just one?”
“I’d have to hear the question.”
“Since Julie’s death, you’ve killed four times—prior to it, just twice, and you were untouched by controversy in any—”
Lockington broke in. “I’d be untouched today if it weren’t for the Morning Sentinel.”
“Granted. Mr. Lockington, you’re a reasonable man, fair-minded—you’d have thrown me out if you weren’t—but isn’t it just possible that you’ve seen in the people you’ve killed the man or men who murdered Julie Masters?”
Lockington throttled his temper, shrugging. It was a fair question—he’d thought about it before and he’d shrugged then. He said, “Look, how the hell can I answer that? Freud might—so, go see Freud.”
“Freud is dead—so are four minor-league criminals.”
“A minor-league criminal is a criminal working on becoming a major-league criminal.”
“You sound like a crusader.”
“No, I’m a cop—you’re the crusader!”
“In effect then, you don’t differentiate between an arsonist and an innocent shoplifter.”
“Shoplifters aren’t innocent—if they were innocent they wouldn’t be shoplifting.”
“You’d shoot one?”
“Circumstances dictate cases, Miss Elwood and, incidentally, that’s two questions.”
“No, that’s two parts of one three-part question.”
Locki
ngton said, “I see.” He really didn’t.
Erika Elwood said, “It’s obvious that you had to kill Joe Solano—if you hadn’t killed him, he’d probably have killed you.”
“Well, would you believe that I received that very same impression?”
“And it’s just as obvious that Timothy Gozzen had to go—sooner or later, Gozzen would have killed a little girl.”
“Or a dozen.”
“But those Mexican kids on Barry Avenue last Sunday night—they had a couple of knives and you had a gun! That was a mismatch!”
Lockington grinned. “Oh, it was, indeed it was.”
“They could have been bluffing.”
“They could have been, but when you’re looking at a pair of switchblade knives on a dark street, you just don’t take that possibility under consideration. The Cook County morgue is stacked to the scuppers with switchblade victims!”
“Now?”
“Any damn time—check it out, and remind me to show you my old switchblade gashes.”
“Then you have no regrets for those Mexican boys?”
“None that I can think of.”
Erika Elwood got leisurely to her feet, tucking her big blue handbag under her arm, winking at him. “When you show me your old switchblade gashes maybe I’ll show you my butterfly tattoo.”
He got up to see her to the door. He ushered her ahead of him, liking her perfume—expensive stuff, whatever it was—vague. He said, “You see one butterfly tattoo, you’ve seen ’em all.”
“Not so! Mine’s special!”
“Okay, I’ll bite. Why is that?”
“It’s perched on my appendectomy scar.”
“What’s perched on your hysterectomy scar—a vulture?”
“I don’t have a hysterectomy scar. Do you like butterflies?”
“Depends. What color?”
“Blue.”
“I was attacked by a blue butterfly once. It was a frightening experience.”
“You should have shot it.”
“I did.”
She threw back her head and laughed her musical laugh. He’d hoped that she’d do that. She turned to stand on tiptoes, stretching to kiss him on the cheek—just a lukewarm peck, but better than no peck at all. She whispered, “Oh, but you’re precious!” At close range her perfume was heady stuff, nearly buckling his knees. She went out and he wished she hadn’t.
He watched the silver Toyota Cressida pull away before he postponed the Pepper Valley baseball game.
12
There comes a time in the life of every mortal when he must take inventory of his life, reckoning his pluses and minuses, deducting his past from his future, providing that he has a future, and facing the results. That time had come around for Lacey Lockington on numerous occasions, and it’d just come around again. He sat at his Barry Avenue window, contemplating the ebony clouds that stalked the city, musing, nursing his tenacious case of snakebite, making his computations, and coming out no better than he’d come out at the conclusions of his earlier inventories—still a few digits short of zilch.
Then the rain struck, a hissing, snarling, gray wall of fury, a real tail-twister, even by Chicago standards. He listened to the storm for more than an hour, waiting for it to abate, then he turned on his radio. The bulletins were coming—Schiller Park’s viaducts were impassable, this development failing to impress Lockington because Schiller Park’s viaducts became impassable every time a dog pissed on an evergreen, but the situation was worsening, spreading like wildfire. Railroad underpasses were being closed on North Avenue, the already swollen Des Plaines River had topped its banks, submerging River Road under six inches of muddy water, the Chicago White Sox game had been postponed, Maywood Park had scratched its nightly harness-racing program, flash flood warnings were going up from Lawrence Avenue south to Roosevelt Road, from Harlem Avenue west to York, power failures were reported in numerous sections northwest of the Loop, that area having been converted into a fifty square mile quagmire, and Lockington’s earlier plans for monumental achievement fizzled and drowned in the muck of that sodden August afternoon. No great loss, Lockington thought, he hadn’t taken them seriously.
It was shortly before eight o’clock in the evening with the deluge continuing to hammer the city and Lockington approaching the dregs of a second bottle of Old Anchor Chain, when he threw in the towel, turning off the radio and killing the lights to stumble, crocked to the gunwales, into his bedroom where he flopped face-down on the rumpled bed, listening to rain claw at his windows. It was a horseshit world, he’d decided—it’d probably wash completely away before dawn, and Lockington just didn’t give a damn.
He sprawled in the darkness, pulling a pillow over his head and plummeting into the dreamless, untwitching sleep of the chaste and the naive, a singular experience for Lacey Lockington because Lacey Lockington was not chaste, neither was he naive, and he’d known nights, a great many of them, when his dreams would have chased a fat woman out of a rummage sale.
His nightstand telephone awakened him at two twenty-five in the morning. Lockington didn’t know how long it’d been ringing, but locating the sonofabitch required the better part of an eternity. He finally managed to dig it out of a jungle of crumpled empty cigarette packs, candy bar wrappers, matchflaps, and out-of-date sports magazines to mumble unintelligibly into it and hear Duke Denny snap, “Lacey, what the hell have you been doing?” Denny’s voice was taut, urgent, half-an-octave higher-pitched than usual.
Lockington said, “Well, I was sleeping until some drunken barbarian blew me out of bed in the dead of the fucking night!”
Denny said, “Partner, this is important—are you awake?”
Lockington said, “No, this is a fucking recording.”
“Listen, Lacey—the early edition of the Morning Sentinel just hit the stands!”
Lockington opened one eye to glare at the battered alarm clock on his dresser. He said, “You woke me up at two-fucking-thirty in the morning to tell me that, you prick?”
“Hear me out, damn it! When did you talk to Stella Starbright?”
“That ain’t her real name—it’s Erika or something.”
“No matter—when did you talk to her?”
“You see, there ain’t no real Stella Starbright—Stella Starbright’s a nom de plume or whatever they call it—two other chicks wrote that column before she did.”
“Lacey, are you drunk?”
“Well, if I ain’t I just wasted a whole afternoon of my life.”
“Tell me about Stella Starbright.”
“She’s stacked like—”
“Skip that—for the third time, have you talked to her?”
“Yeah, she drove out to see me.” Lockington tried to whistle but his tongue was too thick. He said, “Some dish!”
“When was she there?”
“What day is this?”
“Wednesday—early Wednesday morning.”
“It was probably yesterday—what the hell was yesterday?”
“Tuesday, for Christ’s sake!”
“Okay, then it was Tuesday—she came around to apologize.”
Duke Denny snorted, sounding like a bull hippopotamus in rut, Lockington thought. Lockington had never heard a bull hippopotamus in rut. His head was throbbing like a Comanche war drum. He’d never heard a Comanche war drum, either—he’d never been west of the Mississippi. He wasn’t certain that the Comanches were from west of the Mississippi—for all he knew the Comanches were from fucking Alaska. Lockington was still intoxicated. Duke Denny was saying, “She came around to apologize, my rosy-pink ass! She came around to sucker you into sticking your neck out! You just gotta read her Wednesday column!”
The dark-brown taste in Lockington’s mouth defied printable description. He growled, “Duke, I don’t gotta do nothin’ but kick the bucket.”
Denny rasped, “Lacey, if you stood a fucking single ghost of a chance at that stacked investigation, it’s long gone now! That floozie ripped your guts o
ut! She had a tape recorder stashed in her purse, did you know that?”
Lockington made no response and Denny yammered on. “She says that you have no regrets for the taking of human lives, that you seem proud of killing the people you’ve killed, that the extent of a person’s wrongdoing seems utterly irrelevant to you, that by your own inference you’d probably shoot a shoplifter as quickly as you’d shoot an arsonist! Lacey, did you say such damn-fool things to a newspaper woman?”
“She isn’t completely accurate, but she’s close.”
“My God, where were your brains?”
“I dunno—she seemed sincere enough at the time.”
“So did Fidel Castro—at the time!”
“Okay, so I blew it, but they’re gonna can me anyway, so what’s the difference?”
“This holier-than-thou scorpion calls for your immediate resignation from the force, she says that it’d spare the taxpayers the prohibitive costs of your hearing, that it’d be the first honorable deed you’ve ever performed for the citizens of Chicago, that—”
Lockington said, “How do you know that she had a tape recorder in her purse—did she state that in her column?”
“No, she says that she interviewed you in your apartment, but it had to be a tape recorder! She wouldn’t have dared to go out on this kind of limb without something to back her up!”
“Well, to hell with it. Tell me, did she use that ‘Oh, Dear God in Heaven’ shot?”
“Yeah, probably half-a-dozen times.”
“Touching—very touching. Well, Duke, I’m gonna catch some sleep.”
“All right, partner, I just thought you oughta know about this. ‘Forewarned, forearmed,’ y’know.”
“Yeah—Cervantes. Cervantes spent about half of his life in one lockup or another.”
“Then he knew what he was talking about. Say, why don’t we have dinner tonight?”
“Good question. Why don’t we?”
“How’s the Ristoranté Italia at River Road and Irving Park—seven-thirty okay?”
“River Road’s under water—so’s that section of Irving Park.”
“Now, yes, but not for long—the rain stopped three hours ago.”
“Who’s buying?”
“It’s my turn.”
The Fifth Script: The Lacey Lockington Series - Book One Page 5