Bad Desire

by Devon, Gary;

  “What do you mean, fried his ass?”

  “Power line’s down; dumbass gets out of the car. Zap!” He suddenly popped his big hands together. “Presto: fried ass.” He was chuckling again. “It was the steel-belted radials that killed him—you know what I mean, the graphite.”

  Behind them, one of the patrolmen yelled, “Chief, you got a call up here.” As he started to go Reeves moved close to Slater, all the mirth gone from his eyes. “Scared me a little,” he said, confidentially. “At first, I thought it was one of our escapees. You ought to see the artillery this guy was packing. Go ahead, take a look; it’s all in there, on my desk. I’ll be right back.”

  Slater went through the reception area into the police chief’s private office. Cluttering his desk was a big, battered gym bag, a stubby shotgun and a shoe box of odds and ends. The box held the shotgun shells, a handgun, and wedged up in its corner by a worn billfold, a pair of thin, wire-rimmed glasses. The sight sent a flash along Slater’s nerves. In an instant, he knew what had happened. My God, he’s dead.

  Only when he heard Reeves out in the corridor did he realize how close to the edge he’d been. He had to pull together some outward semblance of composure—he knew everything he’d worked to build depended on it.

  “Bogardus and the Wilson woman embezzled that money,” Reeves was telling one of his detectives. “They want to get caught. That woman, Margaret, in particular. Remember: give them enough rope to hang themselves and be prepared to bring them in. If there’s no movement by tomorrow night, then I want you and Berger to start calling them at their homes. Don’t say anything; just hang on, let it work on them, one against the other, until they crack …”

  Slater listened half-heartedly as their conversation drew to a close; he was much more keenly aware when the footsteps started toward him, footsteps that hesitated, then entered the office.

  “You still with me, Henry?” Reeves said.

  How much do you know, Reeves? Slater didn’t dare look at him for fear of what his expression might betray. “I’m still here,” he told him, “if that’s what you mean.”

  “You want to see something? Look at this sonuvabitch.” Reeves took up the sawed-off shotgun, broke the breech, snapped it shut and shook his head. “If I shot you with this right now, at this distance, with the shells he was packing, it would tear you in half. Worse than a machine gun. But it’s the barrels I can’t figure out. Why would anybody go to all this trouble and not replace these Damascus barrels? It’s crazy.”

  In only those few seconds, Slater was in control again. “Any idea who the guy was?”

  “No, not yet. We’ve got some things. He left behind some interesting artifacts, some fake IDs, some money. He sure as hell had it in for somebody.” He fished in his pocket and held up a stick of gum. “Want some?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Reeves peeled the wrapper off, stuck the gum in his mouth. “We’ll find out who he was. One of these days.”

  “Let me know what you find out, Burris. And good luck. I’ve got to get upstairs.”

  “Luck?” Reeves laughed, but in his eyes there remained a cold resolve. “Don’t believe in luck, Henry,” he said. “Never had any. I just go about my business an inch at a time.”

  An inch at a time, Slater thought as he walked down the hall. I’m losing everything an inch at a time.

  There was a quiet resonance, an empty hum, in the city building that Sunday afternoon. Grateful that the elevator was waiting, Slater stepped in and pushed the button marked 6. The doors creaked shut. With a bottomless groan, the metal carriage began its slow ascent. But when the doors opened on the sixth floor, he didn’t step out of the car. He had to do something to make the death real in his mind. He pushed the button in the bottom row, lower level 2, the morgue. It was perverse to go down there, he knew, but he had to come to grips with what had happened.

  The chill basement rooms were divided by glass partitions. The main door carried the sign: CITY MORGUE. RESTRICTED AREA. In one of the spaces beyond the door, white drapes were pulled. Slater’s moccasins whispered on the painted floor. From somewhere, like a sourceless echo, came a muffled voice. Abruptly Slater stopped, eyes carefully searching the glass enclosures. In the next-to-last cubicle, Dr. Alex Koslow, the coroner, sat at a desk, dictating his findings. Seeing his back was turned, Slater crept past without a sound. The door to the drape-enclosed room opened effortlessly.

  The harsh, assaulting stench in the room caused him to snap his head back and catch his breath. Slater grabbed for one of the clean hand towels on the tray by the sink, immediately covering his mouth and nose. On an adjustable metal table in the center of the room, the body lay covered with a white plastic sheet. Slater’s shadow loomed over it. Through the towel, he sucked in breath and with his fingertips, he drew the thick covering back.

  The face he saw was dead. The closed eyelids had crawled back exposing filmy yellow slits that stared torturously, lips drawn in an agonized grin. Without those wire-rimmed glasses, Slater thought, he could have been anybody. But there was no question who it was.

  The diamond gave off dazzling sparks of light as the sheet fell back across the gray features. Slater felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach. In the hall, he dropped the hand towel into a laundry bag and retreated, quietly. A muscle was jumping in the calf of his leg; his hands trembled. He stepped into the elevator. There was a sharp, mean smell in the air now, terrifying and thrilling, the lingering scent of really terrible trouble. She’s still alive. He couldn’t stop the tremors. With a sensation of falling, Slater rode the elevator up to his office.

  The sixth floor was silent as he walked through the reception area. The air tasted stagnant and grainy. At the wall thermostat, he flipped the air-conditioning switch and the air began to stir. He shut his office door behind him and went directly to his private bathroom. He rolled his cuffs, drew cold water into the basin and splashed handful after handful on his face.

  So that’s what had happened. An accident! The seventy-five hundred dollars he’d paid up front was sitting in Reeves’s credenza right now. Slater was sure of it. But he also knew he couldn’t think about the money. An accident! He dried his face and hands and drained the basin. Now he would have to do something else—start all over again. The risk and tension of the past several days had been wasted—all for nothing. He had the feeling that something in the world had been violently disrupted, that the beautiful thing dreaming inside him had been smashed. Today was meant to be the start of a time when all could be hoped for; instead, an impossible problem had been thrust back into his hands.

  For several minutes, Slater continued to stand in the dark bathroom, trying to sort things out. It was not the first time he had been in serious trouble, but he had never been in trouble like this. Was there any real evidence that could link him to the dead man?

  There was that day in Delaney’s—it was unlikely that anyone would remember him from that. No one had come to the table; only the dead man had been close enough to see what he looked like.

  All of a sudden, Slater tried to sweep it all from his mind like so much clutter.

  Still grasping the towel, he walked out into his office. The large open room was suffused with light. Through the west-facing windows, the afternoon sun flooded across the carpet in long shafts, and there, standing still as an apparition, clutching her purse in both hands, was Rachel Buchanan.

  The blood drained from Slater’s face, every nerve in his body alert to her threat. “What’re you doing here?”

  “I called your house,” Rachel said, walking toward him through the bars of light. “Your maid told me you were here.”

  “So,” he said, “what do you want?”

  “I thought we had an understanding,” she replied.

  What’s this woman saying? You’re supposed to be dead.

  “I thought I made myself clear,” she said. “But you won’t leave my baby alone.” Rachel was coming closer. “You’re still after her. I’v
e got proof.”

  “What proof?” he said. “What the hell’re you talking about?”

  She relaxed one of her hands from her purse strap, held it out in order to let him see and opened her fingers. The jewel encrusted sea horse lay on her palm. Her fist closed again.

  He said, “I don’t know anything about that, Rachel. I swear to God, some of the things you come up with.” He thought, You’ve got to be dead.

  She was still talking: snick-snick, her voice went, snick-snick, like thin sharp blades cutting his nerves. He watched her lips move, tried not to listen to her.

  “Oh, I’m still going to tell people about this,” she said. “Sheila’s just a child, you know. So I have to think of her, what’s best for her. I don’t want to ruin her life when I tell the newspapers the truth about you.”

  You have no authority over me, he thought.

  Rachel took a step toward him, her voice beginning to quiver with emotion. “So, I’m sending her away. The week after school’s out. I’ve already started arranging it.”

  He stared at her from beneath his thick brows. “Rachel,” he said, “you’ve really gone off the deep end.”

  “If you somehow really do care about her,” the old woman said, “then you’ll let her go peacefully. It’s over, Henry. If you try anything, first of all I’m going to talk to Faith. I will, Henry, I swear to God I will; I’ll bring the roof crashing down, if you force me to. Some people just can’t leave trouble alone, can’t get enough of what’s bad for them.”

  He heard himself saying, “You’re mistaken,” and knew immediately he had not meant to say that. “You’re making a mistake,” he said.

  “No,” Rachel said. “You’re making the mistake. You’ll never lay a hand on her.”

  “You’re crazy as hell,” he said. “Why don’t you leave? I’d like you to leave.”

  Her old rock eyes did not flinch or waver. “We understand each other, don’t we, Henry?” Snick-snick.

  He said nothing.

  “Don’t we?”

  The silence deepened and lingered on. Slater just looked at her.

  “Don’t we?” she said a third time. “Yes,” she answered for him, “I think we do.” She wheeled past him, marched to the door and let herself out.

  In the kitchenette, he opened a cabinet and lifted the crystal decanter, pouring himself a stiff cognac, drinking it down neat. It hit his stomach like acid; he moaned and blinked his swimming eyes. After a moment he walked toward the windows, his image growing more and more distinct on the glass. It was like glimpsing someone else, someone that merged with him from a different plane, transparently.

  The real world below was almost unrecognizable—endless roofs and boats reduced to insignificance, pitched crazily in the sun, the sky absurdly blue. He put his hand out against the window to steady himself. His hatred was still alive and burning, but he realized that none of it was doing him any good, that it never had and it never would. Then that’s it, he thought, I won’t let you do it. You won’t destroy me and you won’t send her away, either. His shirt was dark with sweat. Was there anything more detestable than that old bitch?

  Oh, God, he thought, I can’t lose her.

  Time was running against him now. Three days, he thought, school’ll be out in three days. He wiped his brow with his shirt sleeve, his hatred rekindling, beginning to mount again.

  What could he do? I’ve got to get rid of her and I’ve got to do it myself. But how?

  At first, even thinking of such a thing was unspeakable.

  The afternoon sank to dusk. In the hills, Slater followed the drive to his house and parked on bricks still wet from the five-thirty sprinkling. Evenings, here, had an undercurrent of watchfulness, quiet but alive, and for a moment he was part of it, looking, listening. Then, with a deep breath, he went inside.

  The lamps were lit in the living room; the dinner table was elaborately set for six. There were abundant flowers and polished silver candlesticks, each with a plum-colored candle. The gilt-edged china sat on clean white damask with his eighteenth-century silver, his irreplaceable crystal still showed the occasional bubble or flaw, a mark of the early glassblowers who had created it. In the kitchen he could hear Luisa raking a pot across the stove. A cunning mixture of seasonings and aromas intertwined in the air.

  Goddamn it, Slater thought, moving on down the hall. Six places.

  Faith was seated in the bedroom at her cluttered vanity, the one place where she allowed herself to be less than meticulous. Only partially dressed, in her underwear and a slip, she was applying her makeup. “So, there you are,” she said, glancing up at his reflection in the mirror. “I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you.”

  There were moments when he looked at her and nothing registered, nothing at all. She said, “You’ll have to hurry and get dressed. The Brubakers and Mullers will be here any minute … for dinner. Did you forget?” She went back to putting on eye shadow.

  He watched her with all the feeling of a dead memory. He couldn’t remember the last time he had thought lovingly of her or of anything having to do with their life together. He seldom thought of her at all except as part of his public image and certainly not today, when his mind had been possessed with the girl and with what had to be done. As he walked behind the silk vanity bench, Slater felt so numb, so removed, that even pretense was difficult. “Who invited them?”

  “Why, Henry, you did. Three weeks ago when we were leaving the party at Marietta’s.”

  “I did not.”

  “Look, Henry Lee, there’s no use in us quarrelling. They’re coming and that’s all there is to it. They’re supposed to be here at six-thirty—we’ve got just ten minutes. If you’re going to take a shower, you must take it now and be quick. I’ll entertain them until you get dressed.”

  The TV was turned on, tuned to one of the stations that played around-the-clock rock and roll, Slater saw the words “Prince’s Trust” and a young Brit with shaggy hair was singing, “Can’t go on … sayin’ the same thing … ’cause can’t you see … we’ve got ever’thing, baby, even though you know … every time you go away … you take a piece of me … with you …”

  “How can you stand to listen to that drivel?”

  Faith narrowed her eyes. “Will you lay off me? For godsake, either tell me what’s wrong … No! On second thought, Henry, don’t tell me. I’m through begging you.” She swung back to the mirror and held her silence.

  “And another thing,” Slater said, stripping off his shirt and going toward the bathroom, “I’m not angry.”

  “… every time you go away … you take a piece of me … with you …”

  Faith watched as he vanished through the doorway, admiring in spite of herself the way his muscles laid across his shoulders. But tonight, he had set her teeth on edge. Holding the lipstick motionless in her fingers, she continued to stare in the direction he had gone. After a moment, she heard him start the water for his shower.

  Turning back to the mirror, she completed her makeup automatically, her thoughts elsewhere. Something was working on him and it worried her more and more. Faith wanted to ask him what had taken all afternoon—but that would only be the first of her questions. She stood and slipped into her clothes.

  In the shower, Slater set the dial as hot as he could stand it. The trouble with music was that it often seemed to be telegraphing a message to him. The refrain he’d heard in the other room drifted through his thoughts again and again. “Every time you go away … you take a piece of me … with you …”

  The water splashed over him, beat into his shoulders. He took up the soap, building a lather between his hands, spreading it over his chest and legs. A few minutes later, wiping the water from his face, he reached for the towel and saw Faith come to the doorway, putting on her earrings. She wore her hair in what once had been called a Prince Valiant, black and smooth and roundly tucked-in just above her shoulders. Never a hair out of place. Her straight, black dress was beautifully cu
t; pinned to it, above her breastbone, was a coral cameo.

  Slater turned toward the mirror, running his hands through his wet hair. He found himself not knowing what to say to her or how to get through the impending evening at her side. With Faith in the room, he felt trapped, but he knew he had to pacify her. “I’m sorry I growled at you,” he said. “I’m on edge. Work’s getting to me, I guess.”

  “Don’t take too long,” she reminded him. After a moment, he heard her close the bedroom door on her way out. Knotting the towel on his waist, relieved to be alone, he walked into the bedroom to find that Faith had changed the TV channels as she went past. An attractive female reporter was speaking from the news desk. “We hope to have a live Telecam report from the murder scene later in this broadcast.” Only half listening to it, Slater rubbed the towel through his hair.

  “In the predawn hours this morning state police and their trained search dogs combed the Fox Creek area south of Strathmore where the convicts were last seen. Authorities now believe that the escapees are led by William Buckram Taylor, twenty-three, who has a long history of mental illness.”

  The camera cut to a black-and-white mug shot of Taylor, shabby, unshaven. This was a duplicate of one of the photographs Slater had skimmed past earlier in the morning newspaper. The convict’s strange, staring eyes gave credence to the report.

  “In 1982, Taylor was released from Lakewood Hospital for the Criminally Insane after serving sixteen months for deadly assault. Less than a year later, in March 1983, he was convicted of the brutal slaying of James Madison McCall after an alleged argument over five dollars …” Throwing a fresh towel around his shoulders, Slater ran a comb through his hair, opened the sliding patio door and stepped out on the back balcony. Night had fallen.

  Okay, he thought, just give me a minute to catch my breath. He was trying to work up some enthusiasm for the evening ahead. He could almost feel the men slapping him on the back, the women kissing his cheek with their little bird pecks. Slater would spend the evening disengaging himself from delicate and powerful hands.