Mating Season

by Jon Loomis

  “Come on now, Sergeant Lola,” Duckworth said, still smiling, taking another sliding step. “As long as you tell us the truth, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m not worried,” Lola said.

  “Your eyes look worried,” Duckworth said. “Your eyes look scared. What color are they? Blue or gray?”

  Something moved in the living room. The door, swinging silently open. Lola held her breath, tried not to look. “Blue,” she said.

  Coffin stepped into the kitchen and dropped into a shooter’s half-crouch, both arms extended. “Drop the knife, motherfucker!” he said.

  Duckworth turned his head, started to raise his hands, then saw that Coffin wasn’t armed. He smiled. “Nice little piece of acting there, Detective,” he said. “You almost had me.” Then Lola hit him in the face, hard, with the working end of the broom.

  Duckworth stumbled back a half step and Coffin was on him, gripping his thick wrist with both hands, smashing it against the kitchen counter once and then again until the knife sprang from Duckworth’s grip and skittered across the linoleum. Lola took two quick steps forward, kicked Duckworth in the kneecap, then drove the end of the broom handle into his belly.

  Duckworth grunted, cuffed Coffin on the side of the head with his open hand, hard enough to make Coffin’s vision darken and his ears ring, then drew back his hand and punched Coffin twice in the face. Coffin felt the cartilage in his nose crunch, then searing pain. His knees wobbled and a spurt of blood splashed onto the floor, but he clung to Duckworth’s wrist, trying to keep him from getting at the gun in his shoulder holster, trying to give Lola a chance to get to her weapon.

  Duckworth roared, tried to shake Coffin off, dug for his gun awkwardly with his left hand as Lola lunged for hers, grabbed it, ripped it from its holster, thumbed off the safety, and leveled the barrel at Duckworth’s head.

  “Down on your face!” she said. “Now!”

  Duckworth looked up, smiled, shook the bleeding Coffin off like a dog shaking itself after a swim, and bolted for the door in a half crouch. Lola fired once and Duckworth shrieked in pain, then he was out the door and gone.

  “Shit!” Lola said, chasing after him. “Fuck! Why didn’t I just kill the motherfucker?”

  “Seriously,” Coffin said, kneeling on the kitchen floor. “Why didn’t you?” He touched his crushed nose with the fingertips of both hands, sending fat, electric jolts of pain through his face and down his arms. His shirt was soaked with blood. He felt like he might throw up. He stood and wobbled to the door. Lola was running across the parking lot toward the street. In the distance, and pulling away, Coffin could see Duckworth riding a stolen bike into the flow of traffic, a forlorn tourist picking himself up off the pavement in Duckworth’s wake. “Why didn’t you kill him?” Coffin yelled.

  “Because,” Lola yelled back, over her shoulder, “I’ve never killed anybody.”

  “Neither have I,” Coffin said, limping down the stairs, nose still bubbling blood, “but there’s always a first time.” He pulled out his shield and waved it at two rubbernecking tourists standing across the street from the parking lot, holding their bikes. “Police,” he said. “Need your bikes.”

  “Was that a gunshot?” one of the young men said, handing over his bike.

  “Are you okay?” the other one said, giving his bike to Lola.

  “Yes. No,” Coffin said, climbing onto his bike. It was a dark green mountain bike—the seat seemed very low. Lola was already pedaling after Duckworth at high speed.

  “Will we get our bikes back?”

  “Go to Town Hall, second floor,” Coffin yelled as he pedaled away. “They’ll give you a form to fill out!”

  For automobile traffic, Commercial Street was one-way running east to west along its entire length. Bicycle traffic, though, ran freely in both directions, adding significantly to the traffic chaos, especially during the height of summer and on busy holiday weekends.

  Provincetown natives and year-rounders were used to sharing Commercial Street’s narrow channel with the stream of wrong-way bicycle traffic, while tourists often were not. Afoot, tourists wandered off sidewalks, stood in bovine clusters in the middle of the street, and crossed from one side to the other midblock, blindly, as though pulled by invisible strings—attracted by posted restaurant menus or racks of postcards depicting the Pilgrim Monument or window displays of generic CAPE COD T-shirts or maritime souvenirs—painted wooden lighthouses made in China. In motor vehicles, the tourists opened doors without looking, turned aggressively into pedestrian and bike traffic at intersections, and crowded the left/harbor side of the street, which was the natural lane for bicyclists returning from Herring Cove or the Boatslip or other locations on Provincetown’s lively West End.

  Coffin knew all of this in theory, but in practice it was harrowing indeed. He veered around ambling pedestrians, narrowly missed a telephone pole that seemed to have erupted randomly from the pavement in front of Monty’s leather goods store, and was almost clipped twice by the sideview mirrors of hulking SUVs. His thighs burned and he was already thoroughly out of breath, but he kept riding as fast as he could, Lola just visible a hundred yards ahead. Duckworth was out of sight most of the time, his pink jacket popping into view when traffic cleared for a moment or two, maybe three hundred yards up the street and gradually pulling away.

  Christ, Coffin thought, sucking air through his mouth, his face throbbing, shirt soaked with blood. We need a miracle.

  Duckworth looked over his shoulder and laughed out loud. The lady cop was falling behind—she’d gotten tangled up with a group of pedestrians outside the Fish Palace, the tourist restaurant with the big neon lobster in the window, and now she appeared to be running out of gas. Duckworth himself was bleeding a good bit from his left ear; the lady cop had, as far as he could tell without looking in a mirror, shot his earlobe off. His neck felt sticky and his shirt collar was wet, but it was a superficial wound, nothing to worry about. He certainly wasn’t going to go all squeamish over a bit of blood, no, sir. He was fresh as a daisy, fit as a fiddle, fine as frog’s hair—they could try to catch him, but Duckworth rode bikes as part of his fitness regimen, a hundred miles a week, at least. Once he’d stretched the distance a bit he’d circle back, pick up his car, and he’d be gone, like a ghost walking through a closed door. But he’d come back to haunt them again. Oh, my, yes—he surely would.

  There was an opening in traffic, so Duckworth shifted to a higher gear and pumped even faster. He glanced over his shoulder, and at first he thought the lady cop was gone. Had she wrecked? Had a heart attack? The thought made Duckworth chuckle. He looked again. No—there she was, swerving around a gray minivan, squeezing between the line of traffic and the row of parked cars on the right-hand side of the street. She was gaining. Gaining!

  “Fuck,” Duckworth said. Then he ran into something very, very hard.

  Chapter 20

  At first, it seemed to Lola that Duckworth had simply disappeared—his pink jacket vanishing from sight as though a crevasse had opened up in the street and swallowed it, bike, Duckworth, and all. Then Lola saw that a small crowd had begun to gather beside a parked car just outside Spank Yo Mama, Provincetown’s combination head shop and adult toy store, the exterior of which was decorated with florid nude murals. The car’s driver’s side door was open and even from a distance of seventy yards or so appeared to be considerably dented. Still pedaling, Lola looked back, trying to spot Coffin. Duckworth might be down, but she expected him to pop back up any second, and it would be good to have backup for the foot chase that was likely to ensue. She would have called for backup on her police radio, but it was back in her condo along with her gun belt and the rest of her gear.

  At thirty yards, there was a sudden shout from the crowd of onlookers, and Duckworth’s pink jacket reappeared—just as Lola had imagined it would. He struggled to his feet, a bit wobbly at first. His pants were torn, and there was a lot of blood on his shirt and jacket. He appeared to have
a gun in his right hand. Finding himself surrounded, he pushed his way through the crowd—growing denser by the second—and bolted into Spank Yo Mama.

  “Everybody back!” Lola yelled, pulling her own pistol from her waistband. “Everybody get back! He’s got a gun!”

  The crowd parted as though a small bomb had detonated at its center, onlookers retreating as quickly as they could.

  “Call 911!” Coffin shouted, still fifty yards away. “Police emergency! Call 911!” A flurry of gawkers pulled out their cell phones and dutifully dialed 911. Coffin looked terrible, winded and pale on his too-small bike, both eyes already starting to blacken.

  Lola dropped her bike and ran up Spank Yo Mama’s three broad front steps, past the bronze Indian statuette holding its smoldering bundle of sage, and into the store’s dim interior—big rack of cheap sunglasses to her left, lots of tie-dye, bumper stickers, T-shirts, hippie skirts, biker wallets, skull rings, rolling papers, glass pipes and hookahs, knit hats with fake dreadlocks attached, and, on the right, a glass display case that housed a pair of very large albino pythons. The two Eastern European girls at the cash register were pointing toward the rear of the store. “He’s in the back room,” they said.

  “Is there a back door?” Lola said. “Windows?”

  “Back door is locked,” the taller of the two girls said. “With big lock. No windows. He can’t get out.”

  “Any customers back there?”

  The girls looked at each other and shrugged. “Maybe,” the shorter girl said.

  Coffin climbed off his bike, rubber-legged and out of breath, and pushed his way through the small crowd that had gathered outside Spank Yo Mama, beneath the big pink and purple mural that depicted three chubby ladies cavorting nude with a centaur.

  “He’s in the back room,” Lola said. “No back door, no windows. Maybe one or more customers back there.”

  Coffin took a deep breath. His face throbbed. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for backup?” Lola said.

  “Fine,” Coffin said. He looked at Lola. Her eyes were blue-gray in the dim light. A second passed. Then another. “Okay,” he said. “We waited.”

  Spank Yo Mama’s back room was known in Provincetown, for good reason, as “the dildo room.” There were shelves full of dildos, a big oak display case full of dildos, rotating wire racks festooned with dildos, hundreds—if not thousands—of very large dildos hanging from the ceiling like lewd stalactites. There were dildos of all shapes and sizes, from the overtly phallic to the sleekly functional to the fanciful—dildos shaped like dolphins or, for God knew what reason, ears of corn—dildos in every color of the rainbow, dildos made of hard plastic, dildos made of silicon gel, dildos made of a substance that almost—but not quite—looked like lifeless human skin. There were dildos that vibrated, dildos that squirmed, dildos that jackhammered, jiggled, jittered, or squirted; there were two-headed dildos; there were dildos as thick as thermoses, dildos three feet long. There were butt plugs, ben wah balls, blow-up dolls of both genders; there were pasties and garters and edible panties, not to mention porn magazines (gay and straight) and DVDs (ditto). The smell of latex permeated the room, mixed with a lingering stink of patchouli. There was no sign of Duckworth.

  Coffin held a finger to his lips and took cover behind a rack of S&M magazines. Lola crouch-walked across the floor, service weapon up and ready, and was about to hunker down behind a display of male blow-up dolls when Duckworth popped up from behind the oak display case and shot her in the chest.

  The shot was very loud. Lola went down hard, a smoking hole in the center of her uniform shirt. Her left foot twitched; then she lay still.

  Duckworth giggled and disappeared again behind the display case. It was crowded with fancy Japanese vibrators: clear plastic penises full of colorful beads.

  Coffin shivered, a big rush of adrenaline surging through his veins like a drug. His ears were ringing; the room smelled like cordite.

  “Are you dead, Officer Lola?” Duckworth said. “You’re being very quiet.”

  Lola lay on the floor, not moving. Coffin could hear the faint, thin wail of sirens in the distance—police and rescue vehicles rolling up Bradford Street, headed their way.

  “Better make sure!” Duckworth said. He stood up and pointed his weapon at Lola.

  Coffin charged, shouting.

  Duckworth only had time to feel a flash of surprise before the cop was on him. He hadn’t spotted Coffin on the bike chase or in the store—had assumed he was down for the count after taking those two short, hard shots to the face. Now the man had him by the right arm again, was biting his wrist, stomping on his feet—his good shoes!—trying to separate him from his weapon. Duckworth shrieked in pain—Coffin fought like a damn girl, but a vicious one. Duckworth did a quick, awkward spin move, but Coffin stayed with him, teeth crunching on the bones in Duckworth’s wrist, breaking the skin, drawing blood. The sound of sirens was getting closer. Duckworth punched Coffin again, which made him gasp, then kneed him as hard as he could in the balls. Coffin grunted and dropped like a dead cat. Duckworth turned the gun on him, leveling the barrel at Coffin’s face. “You bit me, you son of a bitch,” he said. “You scuffed my good shoes.” There was a very loud sound then, but Duckworth scarcely heard it. He felt a hot, hard blow to the side of his head. Then he felt nothing at all.

  “Holy shit,” Coffin said when he could speak. “Holy fucking shit. I think he broke my balls.”

  “Well,” Lola said, standing, tucking her .38 into her waistband. “At least he didn’t shoot you.” She poked a finger into the hole in her shirt. “Man, am I gonna have a freakin’ bruise.”

  “You’re not dead,” Coffin said.

  Lola unbuttoned two shirt buttons and showed Coffin her vest. “Kevlar,” she said.

  “You hate wearing Kevlar,” Coffin said.

  “Not anymore,” Lola said. “Kevlar is my new best friend.”

  “So this one time, out of the blue, you thought you’d wear a vest?”

  Lola poked Duckworth with her boot. He was dead, the left side of his head blown off. “Kate made me promise I’d wear it,” she said. “My other new best friend.”

  There was yelling in the front room, and the clanking, clomping sound of cops running.

  “Frank! Lola! You okay?” It was Jeff Skillings and Tony, both a little red-faced and out of breath.

  “No,” Coffin said, still holding his balls.

  “I’m okay,” Lola said. She touched her chest. “I’m bruising up already, but I think I’m fine.”

  Skillings nodded at Duckworth. “This guy’s not fine,” he said.

  “No,” Lola said. “He’s not.” She looked pale; her hand shook a little as she brushed a strand of hair from her eyes.

  “Oh, man,” Tony said. “Are you gonna have some paperwork to fill out, or what?”

  Chapter 21

  Okay,” Coffin said, sitting on Lola’s ruined couch and drinking scotch. “This is interesting.”

  “Who’s that guy?” Lola said. Coffin had skipped to the end of the DVR. They were watching the next-to-the-last scene. “That, my friend, is the attorney general of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

  “That’s Poblano?” Lola sipped her drink. “Huh. He looks different naked.”

  “Most people do,” Coffin said.

  “Most people look naked naked. He looks different.”

  “Different how?”

  “I don’t know—smaller. Less commanding. It’s like seeing Dick Cheney naked, sort of.”

  “Now there’s a hideous thought,” Coffin said.

  “Sorry.”

  Kenji Sole had tied Poblano to the bed and was applying the Ping-Pong paddle to his backside with considerable gusto.

  “Holy shit,” Lola said. “The suspense is killing me. This is it, right?”

  “I think so,” Coffin said. “Maybe there’s one more scene.”

  “Does he kill her? Is it Poblano?”r />
  “Why would he? He doesn’t pop up as someone with motive. He didn’t even get one of Cavalo’s letters until after she was dead.”

  “Wait a minute,” Lola said. “She’s getting the strap-on ready.”

  Coffin leaned forward in his seat. “Nope. She’s stopping. She’s shushing him. She hears something.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  Lola shook her head. A little green monkey had skittered into Kenji Sole’s bedroom and climbed onto the nightstand. “It’s Gracie.”

  Gracie picked up a glass of red wine and drank from it, then dropped it on the floor. Kenji whacked at her with the strap-on and Gracie bared her fangs, then leaped off the nightstand and ran from the room. Kenji stormed out after her, white nightgown flapping.

  “Oh my God,” Lola said. “This is it. It’s Priestess Maiya.”

  “What I wouldn’t give for sound,” Coffin said.

  “Or a camera in the living room,” Lola said.

  Coffin downed his scotch and poured another shot from the bottle on the floor. “Check out Poblano.” The attorney general was struggling to untie the scarf that bound his wrists. “He must be crapping himself about now.”

  “No kidding,” Lola said. “Wow. Looks like Kenji was pretty handy with a knot.”

  Poblano seemed almost hysterical, writhing, tugging at the knotted scarf with his teeth. Then his head popped up, and he lay very still for a long moment, apparently listening.

  “What’s he hear? Kenji screaming?” Coffin said.

  “Must be,” Lola said. “What else?”

  After a second or two Poblano went back to work on the scarf, genuinely frantic now, gnawing at the fabric, tugging with both arms.

  “What does he do when he gets loose?” Lola said. “Go check on Kenji or hide in the closet?”

  “First he puts his pants on, then he hides in the closet. Betcha five bucks.”