Judgment

by Lee Goldberg

  She glanced up at the water stains on the ceiling. They were like clouds to her. Each day they looked like something different. Today they were a giant clam with arms and legs like a man. His thrusts were beginning to hurt her.

  "Oh God, I can't take it!" she screamed joyfully, her way of saying 'Hurry up, already, I ain't got all day, buddy!' to her customers. It usually worked, and this man was no exception. The man tensed up, groaned deeply, and fell on her, sweating. Melody glanced over his heaving shoulders at her wristwatch. Ten minutes had passed. Great.

  After a few moments, he recovered and propped himself up on his elbows, grinning the way one would expect a person to grin after enduring an orgasm that could change a person's eye color.

  "Shit, Melody, you're gonna kill me. I don't know if I can handle you twice a week," the beefy taxi driver said between sharp intakes of breath.

  Melody grinned and gave his penis a playful squeeze.

  "You've been saying that for six months, sport." She slid out from under him and reached for her clothes. Artie was one of her "old dependables." He paid in advance and always came back for more, despite the guilt he said he felt about sneaking away from his three-hundred-pound wife and four delinquent kids.

  Melody slipped on her panties and tight, black leather pants, straightened up, pressed his face between her breasts. To him, she knew, she was nothing more than two breasts with legs. "See you next week, sweetie." She gave him a pat on the head, stepped back, pulled a low-cut top over her head, and walked out of the room.

  Melody, her brown eyes glowing, dashed down the stairs and into the lobby. She winked at Alfred, the skinny, elderly hotel desk clerk, and sauntered outside into the bright afternoon sunlight.

  Just then an old, black Cadillac with huge, sloping fins slid to a stop at the curb in front of her. Nifty car, Melody thought as she bent down and peered inside at the driver. There was something familiar about the driver's narrow, blue eyes, the hard, uncompromising set of his jaw, the sharp cheekbones and dark skin.

  The man smiled a warm, sad smile that both attracted her and made her wary. Cop or fun-loving fuck? She couldn't quite read this tall, muscular man in the leather flight jacket.

  "Hello, Melody, how are you?" he asked, opening his door and rising from the car.

  "Depends," she said, meeting his even gaze as he walked around the car towards her. She tried to figure out which smile to flash. The boy-can-I make-you-feel-good smile or the I'm-so-innocent-I-could-be-Florence-Henderson smile. She ended up sporting an awkward, nervous grin of uncertainly. At least it fit.

  "I'm Brett Macklin." He took her hand and led her to the car. "My father talked about you quite a bit."

  She broke into a big, happy smile. "Brett Macklin, I'll be damned. How did you know who I was?" She opened the passenger door and got into the car. She just gave herself the rest of the day off.

  "Saul told me where to find you." Macklin closed her door, walked around to the driver's side, and got in. "And once I saw you, well, I knew I had found the Melody my father spoke of."

  He guessed she was in her mid- to late thirties. She was clearly a hooker, but there was, in an odd sort of way, a certain innocence about her. That was probably half of her charm and what had amused his father. JD often jokingly referred to Melody as his girlfriend. Brett was never sure whether or not his father ever was sexually involved with her. It didn't really matter. She was one of the few signs of hope JD found on his desperate beat.

  She blushed. She always thought she was beyond blushing. "You know, Brett—I guess I can call you Brett—you look a lot like your father."

  Macklin smiled, easing the Batmobile into traffic. "Thanks. Where can we go to talk?"

  "How about my place? I can make some tea." She pointed down the street. "Take a left, go two blocks, and then make a right. It's the apartment building on the left. They call it 'gracious living' on the sign out front. What a line, huh? I'll make some tea just like your father liked it."

  "Sounds good to me." Macklin felt slightly uncomfortable. His father had talked about Melody in glowing terms, always avoiding how she made her living. He never told Brett outright that she was a hooker. Brett didn't quite know how to behave.

  Macklin was pleasantly surprised by how nice and conventional her apartment turned out to be. She could see what he was thinking and teased him. "What were you expecting? Something seedy, a bed in the middle of the room with sticky sheets? Maybe some mirrors on the ceiling and centerfolds from old Hustler magazines on the wall?"

  "Something like that."

  The place looked like an ad for Levitz furniture snipped out of the newspaper. Crisp and clean, with a sofa and love seat and dinette set seemingly plucked from a "Suburban Newlyweds' First Home" display, comfortable and inexpensive.

  In every corner of the room was a hanging plant, and the walls were covered with grass cloth. "I put the grass cloth up myself," she said, switching on the room lights. "I did it a piece at a time, a week at a time. That crap is expensive, you know."

  Macklin nodded, noticing the little antiques, the spoon collection, and the nondescript sort of paintings found in Holiday Inns across the nation.

  "This is where most of my money goes, Brett. I don't buy fancy jewelry or relatively new used cars," she said. "I mean, this is where I live. This is me. I want to make it my castle."

  Macklin sat on the couch.

  "And I never bring my clients here," she added quickly, "This is my place, you know?"

  Macklin nodded. "You brought Dad here, didn't you?"

  "Oh, yeah, all the time. He was a teddy bear. A lovable teddy bear. He always made sure I was happy and not getting hassled too much. Occasionally he'd have to lock me up, you know. That was his job. I had no quarrel with that."

  "Did he ever talk to you about what he was working on?"

  Her smile waned. "You mean about the people who killed him?"

  "Yes, I do." He looked at her sternly.

  She sat down on the love seat across from him. "You know, he and I would sit here and talk, for hours sometimes, after he got off duty. That's all we did, talk. No screwing. Not that I didn't try." She shrugged her shoulders. "It meant a lot to me, his friendship, you know?"

  "It meant a lot to him, too, Melody."

  She sighed and nodded. "So what do you want to know?"

  "Anything. Everything. What did he tell you about the gangs?"

  "The gangs." She drew her legs together into the yoga position. "Well, Christ, I don't know. The gangs. They bugged him. He had a hard time dealing with all the sadistic stuff happening on the streets. He'd ask me about things he'd hear on the streets and ask me what I was hearing. I was hearing the same shit. This gang was out to slit that gang's throat, you know. Last week, a Laser went over into Street Shark territory and boned one of the Street Sharks' girls. So, the Street Sharks went over to this burger joint, the Laser hangout, and blew 'em all to hell."

  She paused for a moment. "Thing that bugged your father was that no one ever knew which Street Shark's girl it was that was screwed or which Laser did it. Seems the Street Sharks got all pissed off about something they only heard about, you know? Thing was, your father said a lot of people were hearing a lot of things but weren't seeing a lot of things. Gangs are decimating each other over stuff that they hear happened but maybe didn't happen. See? JD couldn't figure out where all these rumors and stuff that was pissing off the gangs was coming from."

  "What did he do about it?" Macklin asked.

  "What could he do? It scared the shit out of him. He saw the violence escalating, the neighborhood going to hell, and he couldn't nail down the cause. He saw people getting all pissed off and freaked-out about stuff that never happened. I wish I could have helped him, but what could I do? I listened to him yell and scream and be frustrated. I made tea. And then he was killed, boom, just like that, out of my life."

  She stopped talking. Macklin saw her sparkling eyes well up with tears.

  Melody looked up
at the ceiling as her tears spilled out and rolled down her cheeks. "I probably loved your father." She looked across at Macklin and sniffled, trying to smile. "I probably did."

  Macklin stepped over to her and kissed her on the cheek. "He probably loved you, too." He touched her shoulder. "Thanks."

  "Hey, anytime, Brett." She wiped the tears away from her eyes with the palms of her hands. "Really, come by anytime." Her face said please.

  Macklin smiled. "I will. Good-bye, Melody."

  # # # # # #

  Grace Dettmer tightened her grip on the steering wheel and gritted her dentures as her husband Harold slipped his hand between her legs.

  Ever since he had read that article, the one that said "spontaneity, unpredictability, and unusual locales" will revive comatose libidos, life had been unbearable for Grace.

  This evening would offer no respite. She tried to ignore his ardent fumbling and concentrate on driving home. There had been no time, no place, that was free from his irritating passes. One night she had opened the refrigerator and he leaped out, covered in chocolate body spray. Another time, she went to get a pillowcase out of the closet and he pushed her in, held the door shut, and talked dirty to her for thirty-five minutes. Last week Harold followed her into the dressing room at May Co. and suggested that she "try him on."

  And now he was fondling her as she drove their white, 1965 Mustang southbound on the Harbor Freeway. They had bought the car new, right off the showroom floor, back when it looked like Harold's corner newsstand could grow one day into something that would make B. Dalton and Mr. Walden cower in fear.

  That day never came and Grace still picked him up every night at 10 p.m. when she finished her shift at Denny's. It was now 10:22 p.m.

  One lane over and two car lengths behind Grace and Harold was a cameo beige Toyota Tercel driven by Lester Grevich, and insurance salesman from Redondo Beach on his way back from a boring party at his sister's house in Studio City. His wife would have come, but she hated his sister and was constipated to boot.

  Lester's car was a mobile Neil Diamond concert. Everyone he knew hated Neil Diamond. His wife absolutely forbade him to play Diamond's music in their apartment. So, whenever he got in the car, he grabbed at the chance to crank up the Sanyo and groove to "Sweet Caroline."

  It was 10:23 p.m.

  Suzanne McNaughton, a struggling actress in a town filled with struggling actresses, was right behind Lester in a 1972 blue Impala. And she had to go wee-wee real bad but didn't want to stop at a gas station. She just wanted to get home.

  Grace was, to her great surprise, actually beginning to tingle down there as the Mustang sped towards the Third Street overpass. Neil and Lester were rockin' their way through "Done Too Soon," and Suzanne was breathing deeply, muttering to herself. "Hold on, babe, c'mon, hold on."

  That's when Grace saw the woman fall from the overpass. The body slammed into the Mustang's hood and bounced into the windshield, shattering it and showering Grace and Harold in bloody glass. Grace jerked the wheel sharply, sending the car spinning out of control. The woman's body slid off the hood and dropped into the path of Lester's Tercel.

  Lester saw the Mustang spin into the center pider, slapping the cement and crumpling up into an unrecognizable mass of metal. He had just a split second to ponder why the Mustang had lost control. Then the Tercel bounced hard. Lester's head slammed against the roof and he felt something crush under his wheels. He looked into his rearview mirror to see what he had hit and didn't notice the eighteen-wheeler in front of him. The impact tore the car's roof, and Lester's head, right off.

  Suzanne saw the Tercel flatten the twisted body and screamed, the floodgates of her bladder bursting open as she pounded her foot against the brake pedal. The car skidded over the body. Suzanne, warm urine soaking her legs, could feel the locked tires catching the body and grinding it into the asphalt as the car slid under the overpass and plowed into Lester's Tercel.

  From a dark office in a high-rise building east of the freeway, the slender man watched the accident through powerful binoculars. He was pleased.

  Police cars and rescue vehicles surged around the snarled traffic, tearing up the freeway shoulder towards the wrecked cars. He watched the firemen extract Grace and Harold, their features obscured by blood, from the mesh of gnarled steel. Two officers guided a shaky, crying woman from a smashed blue sedan. A short, stocky truck driver paced beside his rig, casting nervous glances up at the police and television news helicopters that circled over the scene, bathing it in light. A black body bag lay next to the tiny Japanese car crumpled under the back of his truck.

  The slender man adjusted the binoculars and pressed a tiny red button. The lens zoomed in on a huddle of firemen working around the blue sedan. The man could just make out the pale white skin of the crushed woman's leg jutting out from under the car's rear wheel. He smiled.

  The man lowered his binoculars and admired the night vista.

  "That takes care of little Melody," he whispered coolly to himself. The city lights burned brightly, casting an eerie glow on his narrow face. The light accentuated his sharp cheekbones and shadowed his deep-set blue eyes, making them seem even more intense.

  He turned and sat down at his desk, picked up the phone receiver, and dialed. It rang twice before he reached the second party. "You did well. I congratulate you."

  "We've still got a problem," the other man said, not bothering to mask his irritation.

  "Really?" the caller replied whimsically. "What is it, pray tell?"

  "Brett Macklin," he snapped.

  "Brett Macklin," he repeated softly, letting the name hang in the air. "What do we know about him?"

  "What do you mean? He was that cop's son."

  "No, no backstory. What's this man's history?"

  The caller sighed. "Went to UCLA, graduated with a degree in aeronautical engineering, and grabbed an entry-level job at Hughes helping to design helicopters. He got bored, locked horns with some of his bosses, and needed to get physically involved in his work."

  "So he learned how to fly."

  "Yeah. He got to like flying a hell of a lot more than talking about it in the office, you know? So, when his flight instructor put his cheap-shit airline up for sale, his star student borrowed and hocked and scraped up enough cash to make him an offer. The guy sold it to him and Macklin's been running the show ever since."

  "I see. Macklin seems like an ordinary man. He'll pose no threat to us."

  "Look, he's asking a lot of questions."

  "Good," the slender man interrupted, admiring the skyline again. "I think we can expect Mr. Macklin to tie up some of our loose ends."

  "Until he becomes a loose end," the other man said.

  "Exactly. Now, you be a good boy, watch him closely, and keep cleaning up after him."

  "Okay," he replied reluctantly, "if that's the way you want to play it."

  "It is." The caller paused. "Don't worry. The moment Mr. Macklin becomes trouble is the moment Mr. Macklin dies."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  They were still washing Melody off the freeway an hour later when Brett Macklin got out from under his latest acquisition, a rusty gray 1959 Cadillac four-door, and turned on his workbench radio.

  ". . . and Merlin the Talking Dog's trainer, Al Metzger, says that at least one network has approached him with the idea of featuring his canine chatterbox in a situation comedy . . ."

  Macklin walked around the car, inspecting the dents and scratches for the umpteenth time since he found the car. It had been rotting on blocks in a forgotten corner of a used-car lot, an irresistible target for rocks, dirt clods, and pellet guns. He got the battered relic for $300.

  "Things moved slowly on the gubernatorial campaign trail today with opponents Lieutenant Governor Elliot Wells and our own Mayor Lucas Breen the guests of honor at two separate dinners held to raise money for their campaigns.

  "Neither Breen nor Wells, who is still slightly ahead of Breen by five percentage points in the p
olls, used their podium time to criticize one another. A change of pace or the lull before the storm?" The newsman chuckled. Macklin groaned at the forced humor.

  "Traffic is still tied up on the southbound Harbor Freeway tonight as CHP officers clean up the scene of a grisly four-car pileup that has left two people dead and two others seriously injured. Police say the accident occurred when Melody Caine, a thirty-four-year-old prostitute, fell to her death from the Third Street overpass in front of oncoming traffic. Witnesses said that two unidentified men threw Caine off the overpass into oncoming traffic and then fled."

  Macklin froze.

  "Caine was initially struck by a car driven by an unidentified Culver City woman who lost control of her vehicle and slammed into a center pider. The woman and her husband, both suffering serious injuries, were rushed to County USC medical center. One man was killed when—"

  Macklin, trancelike, reached over slowly and turned off the radio. He rose, switched off the garage light, and walked out to the Batmobile, closing the garage door behind him.

  Macklin opened the car door and sat down behind the wheel. He could see his father, aflame, screaming across the path of a bus. Macklin turned the ignition key and pumped the gas. The Batmobile roared, and he saw Melody, her energetic smile replaced by a grimace of sheer terror, being hefted over the side of the overpass into traffic.

  "No more," he muttered, opening the glove compartment and pulling out his father's .357 Magnum. "No more."

  Macklin stalked the neighborhood again. He parked his car in a dark alley and took to the streets on foot. He had no doubts this time about his intentions. Anger coursed through him like an electric charge, propelling him down the street with long, determined strides.

  First his father. Now Melody. The bastards had gone too far. Macklin wouldn't abide any more of their killing. It was time to fight back. When he found the Bounty Hunters he was going to make them pay. In blood. It was the only kind of payment they seemed to understand.