Good to the Last Kiss

by Ronald Tierney

  All but two of the fourteen paired, Formica-topped desks were empty. One of the two on-duty homicide detectives would relay the message.

  The girl had been dead for a few days. The local authorities didn’t know exactly how long. According to the message, the girl was found in a ditch, hidden in the tall grasses. A dog had discovered the corpse.

  Julia was having difficulty shutting out the thoughts stealing uninvited into her brain. Each one was related to Thaddeus Maldeaux. Each one seemed to lend progress to a fantasy that was becoming more vivid, more dangerous.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ David asked as the Wilkes-Bashford-dressed black mayor entered the tenth eloquent minute of his speech.

  ‘Nothing,’ Julia said, suppressing a grin.

  ‘Oh, right,’ David said. He looked over the table to see his friend’s eyes dart away. ‘Are you two flirting?’ he asked Julia.

  ‘What two?’

  ‘You have this rather blissful grin on your face and he is spying on you every chance he gets.’

  ‘He’s a little too full of himself for my taste,’ she said.

  ‘Um hmmn,’ David said.

  Julia had a moment alone outside. David had gotten caught up with friends and Julia had artfully slipped away before introductions could be made and before she’d have to explain what she did for a living and that she lived in a little studio on Hayes Street, though no doubt they would all think that was quaint.

  ‘Now, now,’ she told herself. This was her own, private little game of insecurity. ‘Grow up,’ she told herself.

  She walked further out toward the sidewalk. The huge, dark private club was before her. Then the delicate little park. Behind it was Grace Cathedral. She looked around. The hotels – the Fairmount, the Mark Hopkins, the Huntington. Up here was where the power was, well before the turn of the century. The titans of banking and railroads. Even Levi Strauss – a single, shy man who smoked cigars and invented blue jeans – had been one of the kings of the hill.

  Down the hill meant that you descended into the glittering edifice complexes of the financial district; or the swarms of touts and tourists at the piers; or the Peking duck and ginger scents of Chinatown; or back down into the Tenderloin, the tattered bottom of the safety net, where the more base acts of humanity were committed less privately.

  ‘Where have you been?’ David asked, coming out and finding her staring at the cathedral.

  ‘I was thinking about getting away.’

  ‘Are you going up to the river tomorrow?’

  ‘No. Friday.’

  ‘Why not go early? I could meet you there – for one day anyway.’

  ‘I’ve got an investigation to complete,’ she said.

  ‘Let Paul do it, that’s why you have an assistant.’

  ‘Paul has to help as it is. Stakeout. And two of us aren’t really enough.’

  ‘What is it this time?’

  ‘A guy is suing my client over some on-the-job back injury. Says he can’t walk. He may be telling the truth, but the insurance company wants to be sure before they cut the check. The guy stands to collect a bundle.’

  ‘So you are standing in the way of this poor man and happily ever after?’

  Julia ignored what might have been a deeper insinuation.

  ‘How about I come up Saturday afternoon?’ David asked.

  ‘Why do I always end up having to say “no”? I want to escape everything.’

  Thaddeus Maldeaux and his mother brushed by them on their way to a waiting car.

  ‘David? Handball?’

  ‘Sure,’ Seidman said.

  He had ignored Julia. Her stomach pitched. She was shamed by her schoolgirl reaction.

  The Camaro was parked on the right, facing down the hill. It was the girl’s idea to come up there. It was her idea to get out of the car. She stood in front, her back to him. The entire city of San Francisco – pulsating with light and energy – unfolded below them. She was more than willing and had even suggested that they could make out up there, way above the Haight. She told him he reminded her of someone.

  ‘Eminem?’ he asked. He’d been told that before. But he had a better build than the rap star and resented the comparison.

  ‘No, someone darker.’

  ‘Darker?’

  ‘Inside darker.’ She liked him. She would make him happy, she told him. She was so glad to be away from the city. Here, there was electricity in the air. ‘I forgot how beautiful the world could be,’ she said.

  He moved closer. She leaned back pressing her body against him. It was quick. She didn’t really have time to resist. He was so quick and so strong.

  He lifted the limp body and carried it down the other side of the hill, the vast ocean down there, out there somewhere. Fewer lights dotted the far hillsides. It was lonelier here. Even so, this was the most daring he had ever been. He could see well. It was as if he had a special night vision. He coldly scanned the area for joggers or lovers. No one. He found a spot down the hill, a small plateau on the gradually sloping earth.

  He calmly and expertly undid the buttons of her dress. It wasn’t until she was fully naked, that the cold, sharp perception gave way to a deep melancholy – a rich, sad ecstasy.

  He undressed, carefully folding his jeans and tee shirt as he had done her clothing. He looked at the unreal shadows and the paleness the moonlight cast upon her body and on his. He dropped to his knees. He felt the blades of grass against his calves. He felt the chilled air on his flesh. He looked up at the sky. There was no way to determine if the moment were real or a dream. Yet, it was the way it was. And he never felt more alive.

  There was nothing about him now. Not the ground, not the sky. So calm, he thought. She was so at peace. He let his hands glide feather-like over her body. He was so at peace. There was just the two of them. Naked. Quiet. Still.

  When the ritual was complete, he kissed her gently on the lips, dressed, gathered the small stack of clothing and shoes, and left. He drove around until it was light. Barely light. He put her clothing in a Goodwill box.

  TWO

  Gratelli was awakened early by the phone. Soon after he shook some semblance of morning into his head and plugged in the electric percolator. He retrieved his morning Chronicle from the hallway, then called McClellan. After that, he called Albert Sendak in the medical examiner’s office. Not one, but two bodies had been found, both linked to each other and to the rest of them.

  One body was decomposing south of San Francisco on Highway One near San Gregorio. Not SFPD territory but the local police were sure the body would be of special interest to them. The local police wouldn’t touch anything if someone could start down immediately. The medical examiner would oblige them.

  The other body was a fresh kill up on Twin Peaks. A jogger found the body just as dawn broke. That’s where the two San Francisco inspectors would go first – where the trail was the freshest – before heading south down Highway One. If the two slayings were connected, Gratelli thought even in his groggy state of consciousness, then the killer was getting anxious. The deaths were coming closer and closer together.

  Gratelli rummaged through the stacks of operas – works by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi and Puccini. He was searching for something comedic. He picked a Donizetti to listen to while he sat at the small table in his tiny kitchen. He sipped his coffee and unfolded the newspaper. He’d been in Homicide enough years not to let a few dead bodies disturb his routine.

  His thoughts were on the opera – the one playing and the one he would see this week. Because of a duty roster switch, he thought it wise to switch his tickets. It was some German composer – and not even Mozart – which lowered the priority. He could even miss it if he had to. He did not enjoy the Germans, or the French for that matter. But the Germans were the worst. He endured, rather than enjoyed, the endless and pompous Ring Cycle. He remembered the season when the opera house was infested with fleas and even that was more enjoyable than Wagner.

 
After the sports section, he got up, refilled his cup and sat again. He sighed as everyone does when faced with something unpleasant and inevitable.

  The morning paper had three separate stories on the killings – and the media didn’t know about this new one. He and McClellan would likely spend as much time with the news guys as with the investigation.

  Julia Bateman and Paul Chang split the day’s watch. A video camera nearby if they should suddenly see their suspect doing cartwheels on the street. So far, they hadn’t seen Samuel Baskins at all. He hadn’t even ventured out to limp and stumble to the corner grocer.

  So she started the watch at six a.m. She would observe Samuel from the entrance to Mr Baskins’ building. Baskins, whose earnings probably placed him near the poverty level, was now a potential millionaire several times over – that is if he lived long enough to collect it – because his employer failed to have the machinery checked on schedule. A few hundred pounds dropped on Sam’s shoulder. X-rays revealed nothing. Exams revealed nothing except deep and what ought to be temporary bruises.

  That he didn’t have something vital smashed or broken was miraculous. The insurance company claimed the miracle for their own. Sam contended that there were no miracles only the sad fact that medical science failed to explain why he couldn’t walk without a great deal of pain. He claimed to have neck and back pain so horrendous that he could not work, that he could just barely get through the day attending to his pain. Before Baskins found a lawyer, he had injudiciously sent several, hysterical, violence-threatening letters to the company and after that to the insurance company.

  Julia sipped from a cup of coffee she got at McDonald’s on Van Ness and watched the building near Leavenworth and Turk.

  What made her look up as the dark Camaro cruised by in the gloom, Julia Bateman didn’t know. All she knew was that in the darkened, smoked glass window, penetrated only briefly by the morning light coming through the buildings, there was an eerie stare; enough to make her shiver and encourage her to grab another sip of coffee to offset the sudden cold.

  It was below the back half of a Victorian on Stanyan – a basement really, a cave – where the driver of the Camaro lived. Once inside it could still be night. Soon he would be asleep. He would miss a day of working out. And a day of work. That happened on the days following the nights of the kill.

  He felt as he usually did. His mind was nearly blank. His eyes were tired. Very tired. But his body was still alive, feeling everything that touched it – the tee shirt against his chest, against his nipples. The denim against his thighs, his buttocks, his sex. He lit the candles. The CD he had just picked up at Tower Records was in place. He pushed the button.

  He undressed.

  He positioned his shaved, oiled naked body on the bed so he could glimpse at his flickering, golden reflection in the mirror beside him. He would relive every moment of the evening. It would arouse him. He would satisfy himself. He would be calm for a few days. He would be sad, but it was the only time he felt anything other than anger.

  He fell back into the bed. His head was slightly raised on the pillow so he could look down at the body he had so carefully constructed. He admired its firmness, its smoothness, now letting his palm glide over his chest, down his flat, firm belly, sliding over and inside his thighs.

  He closed his eyes, the vision of the young woman, her pale flesh lit by the moon on the dark grass. At once he felt her flesh and his own. He could feel himself drift into the place. A secret place. All the time in the world to caress her soft and pliant body.

  Instead of falling further back into the vision, he was oddly and disagreeably startled by the image suddenly, seemingly projected on the inside of his cranium. It was the woman in the Miata – a convertible with the top up, bright blue and shining in the morning fog, the car on Leavenworth and Turk he saw as he returned from the kill. The car demanded to be seen. The face in the window drew him to it. It startled him then. Startled him now. The stare she gave him had flashed in his mind without warning. It jerked him rudely from his sexual reverie.

  He remained in bed trying to recreate the mood. He closed his eyes, ran his palms over his smooth, firm flesh, trying to recreate the moment on the hill. When he couldn’t urge it into the dark frame, he tried recreating others. Another night. The San Gregorio beach. The ocean. The sand. The sound of the waves. The salt breeze. Nothing would come to him, or if it did, not for long. Instead of sweet, sad melancholy he felt a rising anger. It was that woman in the car. Why had she done this to him?

  He climbed out of bed, stood under water as hot as he could bear. He would go work out. He would go to the gym. It was the only way he could work it off. All this meant he would be sucked up again into the cycle. Sooner because of her. He would have to do it again in just a few days.

  The full-length mirror in the bathroom was all steamed. Usually he’d wipe it clear first so that he could inspect his body. He wasn’t in the mood. He was pissed. He dried quickly.

  The door to Julia Bateman’s Miata opened with such suddenness that it jolted her. But it was merely an interruption of bland thought by a smiling, always energetic, teasing Paul Chang.

  ‘Hi toots,’ he said to his boss.

  ‘Go toots yourself!’ she said. ‘You scared the hell out of me. What are you doing here?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep. Bradley stayed over. I don’t know. By morning, I was ready to throw him out of bed, out of my apartment and out of my life. But I left instead.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Who knows? You know how blonds are.’ He smiled.

  ‘No I don’t know how blonds are or how anyone is. He must have something. Good in bed?’

  ‘Yes,’ Paul smiled. ‘You want the details?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’ She paused. ‘Not all of them.’

  They both laughed.

  ‘How was last night?’ Paul asked.

  ‘Boring. Sort of.’

  ‘What wasn’t boring?’

  ‘It felt a little like Hard Copy meets PBS.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The usual San Francisco celebrities – those with talent and those with money.’

  ‘Who was at your table?’

  ‘I don’t remember most of them.’

  ‘Jules! What good are you?’

  ‘Some writer. A plastic surgeon . . . oh, Maldeaux.’

  ‘You met him? Christ.’

  ‘It’s no big hairy deal,’ Julia said.

  ‘Oh right. “Oh”, she says casually, “Maldeaux”. And the way you said it. One word. Maldeaux. God. Maybe Picasso. Or Brad Pitt, when he’s blond.’

  ‘Brad Pitt is two words.’

  ‘Yes, but you can’t just say “Pitt”. “Maldeaux” you said. Sort of like, what? He’s an institution or something. A Lincoln. A Getty, a Rockefeller, a Rothschild. A Maldeaux. Thaddeus Maldeaux. Just the sound of it.’

  ‘David calls him Teddy.’

  ‘Is he as dangerously exciting as we are led to believe or is he four-foot-eight with a toupée?’

  ‘Definitely bigger than life.’

  ‘Mmmmn,’ Paul said, trying to figure out what she was thinking.

  ‘Is he gay?’ he asked then thought for a moment. ‘Could he be bisexual?’

  ‘Don’t know. And it’s not my world anyway. I’m sounding pouty, aren’t I? What I mean is trying to become genuinely a part of that world would be like my trying to become a Hasidic Jew. I sprang from another culture altogether.’

  ‘Who says? People change their worlds all the time. Look at Whoopi. Look at the guy who married Martha Raye. Look at me, by all appearances you’d think I was Chinese or something.’

  ‘You are Chinese,’ she grinned.

  ‘Ah, but I’m not, I’m a Christian Reformed kid from Grand Rapids and that is the state of mind, far removed from China. I’m John Boy trapped in Charlie Chan’s body.’

  ‘Not really Chinese?’

  ‘Well, I’m not particularly reformed, but Bradley says I’m about as C
hinese as potato salad. It’s true. Now tell me you don’t want to be famous, have the world buzzing about Julia Bateman? Your picture in Vanity Fair like Madonna or Sharon Stone or Heidi Fleiss?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I’m not going to be your brush with fame.’

  ‘You never, never know. So have you seen our guy?’

  ‘What guy?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Why are you here? You enjoy staring at dilapidated brick buildings while the poor and indigent crawl from their Maytag box homes and greet the day with all the gusto of a slug? The reason you are here is one Samuel Baskins, victim or malingerer. Any sign of him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You want me to take over?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You were up late last night, I can tell.’

  ‘Do I look horrible?’

  ‘A little. I’ve brought a pad and I plan to do some sketches.’

  ‘A little romantic poverty?’

  Thaddeus Maldeaux had breakfast with his mother. The grand old house was dusty and unkempt. The furniture was worn, frayed. The oils in their thick, ornate gold frames were dark from decades of neglect. Mother and son talked about the decline and death of afternoon papers. She also fretted about the Internet and how it was destroying journalism in general and newspapers in particular. Thaddeus tried to soothe her. Their company was prepared for the changes.

  ‘We’ll do fine,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ she said. ‘Where will people get the truth? Now, just anybody with a computer can say whatever they like. Where will the truth be when this plague has completely swept over the world?’

  Mrs Maldeaux was not a pretty woman. The thought had crossed Thaddeus’ mind that she was not even a handsome woman. She was short, stout and bosomless. The wattle under her chin seemed to match the waddle under her arms. Her rear end looked as if it had been flattened by the backside of a coal shovel.