Random Victim

by Michael A. Black

“You still there?” he asked.

  “Where are you? I thought you hung up on me.”

  “The battery was dead in my cell phone,” he said. She laughed and gave him her address, agreeing to expect him at seven.

  Leal walked back to the office, sipping from a cup of coffee and smiling. Maybe things are finally starting to go my way, he thought. Then he remembered his car. There was no way he wanted to show up in his beat-up old Chevy with holes in the seat covers. Maybe he could borrow a car, but from whom? He wouldn’t even consider asking Ryan…Hart maybe? But she drove a Toyota, with a stick shift at that. It had been a while since he’d driven one of those. Plus the car seemed so small.

  Dammit, he thought. I got too used to driving those sharp confiscated numbers when I was in MEG. Should’ve taken care of business and bought a new car when I got transferred.

  There was only one other alternative, and it wasn’t pretty. Use the unmarked and hope Sharon wouldn’t notice.

  Leal managed to sidestep all of Ryan’s idiotic questions as Hart gathered up her stuff and they left. When they got to the unmarked, Leal immediately went to the driver’s side and got in. Hart opened her door and slid inside.

  “I was wondering if you’d mind me using the squad this weekend?” she asked as he headed for the expressway.

  “Why’s that?”

  “I was thinking of going in tomorrow to run a few things on the computer,” she said.

  Oh great, he thought. But what the hell, I’m the sergeant here.

  “Actually, I’m going to need it,” he said.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Hart nod and quickly look away. She said very little else as he got on the entrance ramp and began the ride home.

  Hart slammed the door of her apartment, angry at herself for the way she was feeling. Her reflection in the full-length mirror opposite the door stared back at her and she canted her head slightly, looking at her face from various angles before drifting lower. She tossed her jacket toward the sofa, watching the muscles of her arm and shoulder bulge and jump at the action. Her body, even unpumped, looked so big. So…massive. Taking a deep breath, she immediately went to a double biceps pose, turning to scrutinize the well-defined, tautly bundled tissue that seemed ready to burst through her skin.

  Olivia Hart, Mid-Western Female Bodybuilding Champion, she thought. Yeah, that’s me. And my partner won’t even trust me alone with the squad car.

  Going to her bedroom she quickly assembled her “heavy workout” clothes: a pair of black nylon shorts, a baggy sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, and her usual socks and gym shoes. She stuffed a towel and clean underwear into her bag and zipped it closed. As she straightened, she brushed back her hair and again studied her reflection in the mirror above the dresser. The sunlight streamed through the windows, seemingly softening her image and making her hair seem lighter. It had been obvious from Leal’s conversation with Ryan that the state’s attorney they’d talked about was more than a professional contact. And Leal had seemed in such a good mood leaving that place, too.

  He must be seeing her, Hart thought, and wondered if Leal found her attractive. She certainly felt the sizzle when she was with him, but as partners she knew that could complicate things.

  Yeah, she thought. Those kinds of complications I don’t need. Not after what she’d been through with Jim Markham. He’d been teaching at the academy, and she began reporting to him when the aerobics instructor position opened up. They’d seen each other every day, and he’d taken a genuine interest in her activities. He asked her out to lunch, and then dinner. The wedding band on his finger was an imposing obstacle, but she’d conveniently ignored it, telling herself that she was, after all, just going out to dinner with a colleague.

  Then, of course, came the sex. She was still on the rebound from her divorce, she told herself, and his wife didn’t understand him. Whatever the reasons, they provided all the necessary rationalizations as the affair stretched from weeks to months. And despite the occasional guilt, Hart found herself feeling strangely happy for the first time in a long time. There was somebody for her to share her dreams with, albeit limited. They held each other in bed after making love and she’d tell him of her dream to get into investigations one day. And he kept listening and encouraging her, saying he knew she’d make it one day.

  It had ended abruptly. She came in one Monday and found that he’d transferred back to a street assignment. Not so much as an explanation as to why, and he wouldn’t answer her pages or calls. Hart wondered if his wife had found out, or if the duplicity of their relationship had gotten to him. Finally, after more than a week she found a pink message slip left in her box. It was unsigned, but she recognized his scrawl:

  Ollie, Sorry the way things worked out. I put in a good word about you for that assignment you wanted. You should hear something soon. Take care.

  J.

  J, she remembered thinking. He didn’t even have the balls to sign his name. Not even a, “If you need anything call me . . .” As she crumpled the pink message slip and felt the rush of the tears down her face, she became immediately cognizant of the secretaries watching her.

  And then, the next week Captain O’Herlieghy had called her in and interviewed her about this position. She knew then that some strings had been pulled, but so what? She’d earned it, in a twisted sort of way, hadn’t she?

  No, I’ve had enough of cops, she thought. Frank’s sweet, and he’s nice-looking, but since we’re working together as partners it’s better if it doesn’t develop into anything more. She picked up her gym bag and car keys. Besides, she added mentally, he’s obviously got someone else on his mind anyway.

  She continued her ruminations on the drive to the gym, and when she pulled open the door and saw Rory Chalma’s surprised expression, she felt a surge of resentment. Unjustified resentment, she knew, but she didn’t feel like answering what she knew would be twenty questions. She just wanted to do her workout.

  “What are you doing in so early?” Rory asked. “I didn’t expect to see you till tonight.”

  Walk on by, Hart thought. But she couldn’t.

  “I got the day off. Tomorrow, too. Thought I’d go heavy and then work on my routine.”

  “Do the routine first. Otherwise you’ll be too tired.” Chalma’s head bobbled as he looked past her. “Where’s your new boyfriend?”

  Hart crinkled her face. “What are you talking about?”

  “What’s his name? Frank? You two made quite a couple.” He put a slight lilt in his voice. “Everybody was talking about it in here.”

  “Don’t they have anything better to talk about?” Hart said, a little more sharply than she intended. “I mean, he’s just my partner.”

  “Whatever,” Chalma said, smiling slyly.

  “Rory, get a life.”

  “Whoa,” Chalma said, raising his hands to his chest and fluttering his fingers. “Aren’t we testy today?”

  Hart headed for the locker room and slammed her gym bag onto the bench. Get it together, girlfriend, she thought. Focus.

  She undressed slowly, thinking about what Chalma had said. Everybody was talking about it…Didn’t they have lives of their own to worry about, instead of speculating about mine?

  Hart removed the tiny pink posing bikini she wore for the contests and looked at it. Maybe she should go with black instead. She held the bottom against her hips and stared in the mirror. She’d have to wax again soon, she thought. But that could wait until right before the contest. Today was just a dress rehearsal anyway.

  When she stepped out of the locker room a couple of the guys working out sounded off with wolf whistles. Hart tried to ignore them, juggling the CD player and towel. She felt slightly cold and regretted not wearing a robe or something.

  Chalma jogged back to her and yelled for one of the others to watch the front desk for him. They walked past the weight room area to the aerobics section. Two smaller rooms with tanning beds were off to the side.

  “You�
�ll want to get some tanning in, too,” Chalma said.

  “Okay,” Hart said. She hated the thought of lying there naked in the ultraviolet glow. “But I’m thinking about using some instant tanning lotion instead.”

  Chalma looked at her.

  “Oh?” he said.

  “I read where too much of that artificial tanning isn’t good for you.”

  “Whatever,” he said. They stopped in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that covered the back wall. “What CDs do you have?”

  Hart studied her mirrored image. The overhead lighting made her muscles look heavier, more defined. She turned.

  “Earth to Ollie,” Chalma said, mimicking a person on a telephone. “The songs?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I think I’ve been working with ‘If You’re Not In It For Love.’ ”

  Chalma wrinkled his nose.

  “Shania’s out,” he said. “Too much like an old Revlon commercial. Let’s use something from Madonna. ‘Impressive Instant.’ ”

  “You’re just saying that because she made that movie with Rupert Everett a couple of years ago,” Hart said. “It bombed, remember?”

  Chalma fluttered his eyebrows. “But Rupert looked sooooo good.”

  Hart frowned.

  “Trust my instincts, babe,” he said. “Rory knows best.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “It’ll give you an edge. The judges will remember you better.”

  They were standing side by side now and Hart caught a glimpse of their flattened reflections again. She towered over Chalma by what looked like half a foot, with his squat, muscular frame and thickly muscled arms giving him a barrel-like appearance. Hart flexed her broad shoulders and deltoids. The muscles jumped to attention under her skin.

  “How do I look?” she asked.

  “Great. Fabulous.”

  “You really think so?” She turned and stood, arms akimbo, and flexed her lats. Her V-shape accentuated distinctively.

  “Look for yourself,” Chalma said, his eyes suddenly narrowing. “I’ve never seen you better.”

  “I mean…” Hart said, turning sideways and drawing her hand over the chiseled symmetry of her legs. “Do I look feminine?”

  “What is this all about?” Chalma said, frowning now. His tongue swept over his upper lip. “Are you having man trouble or something?”

  “No, I just—”

  “It’s that guy Frank, isn’t it?” Chalma asked, cutting her off. “He’s messing up your head, isn’t he?”

  “No, he’s not.” Hart dropped her pose and looked down at him. “Really, he’s just a friend, that’s all.”

  Chalma pursed his lips.

  “Look, this thing’s ninety percent preparation. You can’t afford to get de-psyched. Otherwise, you’ll be finished before you even start.”

  Hart nodded. “I know.”

  “I’m worried about you since you started this new job. I can see it’s putting a strain on you.”

  “There’s no strain,” she said. “And I’m getting all my workouts in.”

  He shook his head dubiously.

  “It’s more than that,” he said. “It’s mentally preparing, too. You know how important this is.”

  Hart had to suddenly fight back the urge to cry. Important? she thought. Important to you, maybe. But what about me? What’s really best for me? But there was no way she was going to break now in front of Rory. No way in hell.

  “Just lay off, okay? This new position is very important to me career-wise.”

  “We can’t afford to have you get your head messed up by some guy.”

  “Will you stop? I told you, Frank’s just my partner. A friend. And he’s very supportive.”

  “I’ll bet he is.”

  Hart started to say something, but instead just stared down at him.

  “Are we going to get started, or what?” she asked.

  Chalma drew his lips into a thin line and nodded.

  Hart reached down and selected a CD out of her bag and handed it to him.

  “Shania,” she said. “ ‘If You’re Not In It For Love (I’m Outta Here).’ ”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Doing Juice

  Richard Connors swung the white Jaguar into the parking place directly in front of the ornately painted sign that advertised: THE IRON MAN GYM: OPEN 24 HOURS. The front of the building, which was set at the end of a curving strip mall, was composed of large windows set into brick pillars. From the parking lot Connors could see numerous people inside working out. He got out of his car and began walking toward the glass doors, passing a young girl with a blond ponytail and tight-fitting blue jeans. She eyed the car, and then Connors. He smiled as he passed her, regretting that he was too pressed for time to strike up a conversation and get her number. He liked a girl who knew class when she saw it, and he knew he looked good in his gray short-sleeve shirt and tailored black pants.

  Several blocks away to the west the massive white brick walls of the Joliet Correctional Center loomed in the background. Connors was cognizant of them, too, and felt the tinge of regret about the girl fade as he concentrated on setting up the task at hand. He reached out for the angular metallic door handle, resting his fingers lightly on it until he saw Tex behind the front counter hit the buzzer. Stenciled across the front of the door in solid black letters outlined in gold was: MEMBERS ONLY.

  “Hiya, boss,” Tex said, giving a respectful wave. The high counter hid his lower body from view. A portable television sat a few feet away, playing a cable sports channel. “Come to check things out?”

  “Nah, I’m looking for Nuke.”

  Tex cocked his head toward the back and said, “Locker room.”

  Connors nodded and began to weave his way across the floor where several sets of heavily muscled men strained and screamed as they struggled with metallic plates on iron bars. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors made the inside look twice as big as it really was, reflecting back the rows of dumbbells, weight machines, and stationary bicycles. The rubber-tiled floor was littered with discarded plates and two short Hispanic men in maintenance outfits scurried around, replacing the weights in the appropriate racks.

  Connors pushed through the swinging wooden doors that marked the men’s locker room and glanced around. The rows of lockers and benches were empty, but at the far end, where the toilet and shower facilities were, Con-nors saw two sets of masculine-looking feet inside the same cubicle. Both sets of feet were pointed in the same direction toward the porcelain bowl. Connors blew a snort out his nose.

  Nuke’s bearded face appeared around the corner of the open stall and gave a leering wink of acknowledgment before disappearing again into the confines of the cubicle. The front pair of feet shifted slightly, and Connors heard someone grunt sharply. Nuke backed out of the stall, dropping a hypodermic syringe and a blood-spotted sheet of toilet paper into a paper bag. He was followed by another man, a muscular but short young blond guy, about nineteen or twenty, who was fiddling with the drawstring of his sweat pants. He stopped suddenly when he saw Connors and looked at Nuke.

  “It’s okay,” Nuke said, adjusting a wad of tobacco inside his lower lip. “He owns this place.” The sleeves of Nuke’s black Harley Davidson sweatshirt had been chopped off to accommodate his massive shoulders and arms. A brocade of veins stood out, forming a trellis of bas-relief on his swollen forearms, and a crude, homemade tattoo spelled out NUKE on the well-developed left deltoid. On his right shoulder a professionally done mushroom cloud exploded upward, under which was lettered DON’T FUCK WITH ME.

  The young blond guy shook his leg a couple of times and grimaced.

  “Well, shit, go workout, you dumb fuck,” Nuke said, slapping the kid’s head. “You’ll feel the difference doing squats.”

  The young guy grinned, nodded to Connors, and left. They watched him hobble out.

  “What the hell was that all about?” he asked.

  “Just trying out some new juice,” Nuke said. He unlocked his locker,
reached in his pocket, and pulled out two fifties. “What’s up?”

  Connors frowned. “What if I’d been an undercover cop or something?”

  “Relax, boss. I’m careful about things.” He removed a roll of bills from his boot and slipped the fifties around it. “Ain’t no way I’m going back inside for nothing. Besides, I got cops who work out here that are on the juice, too.”

  “That’s good to know,” Connors said, letting the sarcasm drift into his voice. “Look, I’m not fronting the bills here to see it go up in smoke from somebody being careless.”

  Nuke smirked. “Like I said, it ain’t no big deal. Besides, I’m making a pretty good buck from it, too. Almost as much as I make working for you.”

  Connors nostrils flared. “Meaning what?”

  Nuke smiled again, less derisively this time. “Okay, if it makes you feel better I’ll watch my ass. You been pretty square with me, fronting for that fancy lawyer the last time, and all. I got no complaints.”

  Connors realized that this conciliation was probably as far as he was going to get with this big, dumb prick. And he wasn’t ready to sever all ties yet. He still needed Nuke to make those little trips to Mexico to pick up those special shipments. What did it matter if he brought back some steroids along the way? It was an arrangement of mutual benefit. And Nuke was another layer of insulation between Connors and the more sordid aspects of the business.

  “For a minute I thought you were butt-fucking him,” Connors said, trying to inject some humor into the conversation.

  But it seemed lost on Nuke. He shook his head and said, “Nah, with that AIDS shit, I never even done that on the inside. I’d just get my bitch and make him give me a blow job.”

  “Look,” Connors said. “I need you to do something pretty quick.”

  “Oh yeah?” Nuke said. His big fingers fumbled through his clothes hanging in the locker, and he withdrew a dark brown vial and a hypodermic syringe. “This is the good stuff. Sustanon 250,” he said, inverting the vial, and sticking the needle through the gray rubber top of the bottle. After filling the reservoir of the syringe, he set the vial back inside the locker and slammed the door shut, pressing the padlock closed. Nuke cocked his head, indicating the toilet area. Connors followed Nuke to the cubicle and watched as the big man entered the stall and carefully set the syringe on the paper dispenser.