Sex and Death: The Movie: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 6)

by J. J. Henderson

  “Stop, please stop,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about…about Conrad anymore.” She said “Conrad” sadly, but also angrily. Morris was struggling to parse her reaction to him. Since she’d already found out about him, Morris couldn’t help but think her traumatic reaction to actually seeing him seemed a little over the top. He suspected that Conrad had gotten excessively upset and pushed this upset onto her. Morris remembered, now, what happened twenty-five years back, and how easy it had been to seduce Margaret. Conrad had always been a self-righteous character. He’d made himself out to be so—heroic—about working, being responsible, all that upright citizen nonsense. He’d made Margaret feel small, hardly deserving of him in spite of her beauty. Delia here, he thought, took Margaret’s beauty one step further.

  And at this moment the young woman, the girl, his daughter, seemed painfully, unbearably hurt and vulnerable. Her mother has recently died, her father has just been revealed not to be her father, her real father has just showed up; a lot of intense, confusing stuff, but Morris was a savvy guy in spite of his insecurity about his emotional dealings, and this didn’t quite feel right. Something else had broken this girl’s heart.

  “Hey, OK, OK, I just thought… I understand that…that Conrad’s probably been telling you what a bad man I am, and…”

  “No, it’s not that,” she said, her voice oddly soft and dull. “It’s not that at all…Morris.” Delia unconsciously moved closer to this man. Her father. Her real father. A man who had not, who would not, could not…do...what Conrad had done.

  “What’s wrong, Delia? I know this business about who’s your father has been…upsetting, especially after your mother’s passing. Your mother was such a fabulous woman, Delia, did you know that?”

  She looked at him. “Yes. Mom was great. But she was…” she looked down. “Not a happy woman, I think.” She looked up at him. “I guess I know why now,” she said bitterly.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “She married the wrong man, didn’t she?” She burst into tears again. “God damn my fath…god damn Conrad Platznik, I don’t ever want to…I want to change my name, Morris can I have…can I take your name, I don’t want to be Delia Platznik anymore, that’s not who I am, that man is not my father, he’s…he’s…”

  He put an arm around her shoulder, and said softly, “Yes, Delia, yes, you can be Delia Karlstein if that’s what you want. If…but why? I thought Conrad was, you know, he’s always been here for you, he’s so responsible; he took care of your mother, and you, and even me sometimes when I was broke, and…”

  “He was here earlier,” she said, her tone sharp, brittle. “He came up here and we talked a little about all this…stuff…that he wasn’t my dad and who you were and everything. We talked about when I was little. He was…we were both very hurt. And then…and then…I had just come out of the shower and we were both in there…” she nodded towards the bedroom. “He’d just come in and we were talking and then…he was…he came over, reminding me he was not my father any more and then he…” she stopped, quietly crying. And then Morris understood what had happened. His mind went white with pain and rage.

  “Cut,” Paul said softly. Everybody and everything stopped for a moment.

  Lucy, watching from the bedroom doorway, said, “Whew!”

  “Damn,” said Jack, instantly out of Morris and into himself. “That was intense. Do you think it worked?” He looked at Paul.

  “Oh yeah,” Paul said. “It worked just fine. In fact it was very moving, emotionally I mean, I think. OK, guys, let’s break it down. We’re done here.” He went over to Lucy. “You’re right, Luce. It is definitely going to work.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “Great job, girl.”

  “Thanks, amigo,” she said. “Hey Carole, that was some serious play-acting.”

  “Can a corn, baby,” Carole said. She’d slipped out of Delia in two seconds flat.

  “Hey, listen, Carole, Lucy,” Paul said. “I think the three of us need to have a drink and get caught up on…your next scene.” And how about what happened last night with the po-lice?

  “Cool,” said Carole. “Just let me get into some real clothes and I’m outta here.”

  “Not Zola again,” Lucy said.

  “No,” Paul agreed. “let’s go to that dive at Second and Second. Some of my favorite dope dealers used to work off that corner so I have a soft spot for it.”

  “You are such a sentimentalist, Paul,” Lucy laughed. “I got an errand to run. I’ll see you there in half an hour.”

  Lucy raced home to walk the dog and to catch her breath. She desperately needed a minute to step back and contemplate her current reality, and its cinematic counterpoint.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MOTIVE AND MOTIVATION

  An hour later Lucy paused at the corner of Second and Second and glanced in the window of the bar. She spotted Paul and Carole sitting at a table with amber fluids on ice between them, head-to-head in what looked like heavy chat, and for a moment, caught up in her mental movie-stream, she pictured Paul as Morris, Carole as Delia, and herself, coming in, as Conrad, the daughter-raper. She imagined how this scene would play out, were it to occur in this particular place and time: the two crazed old men drawing their weapons while Delia watched, horrorstruck as they beat each other with scraggly shriveled fists, raging at each other, bloody revenge and twisted redemption on both their minds as they banged around the room until the woman with the shaved head and the crawling tattoos, she who tended the bar, came out from behind and grabbed the both of them and pushed them out the door onto the street, where they would continue to howl and bellow and assault each other until one of them collapsed, dead with a knife in the heart, crashing against that grungy green dumpster halfway down the block, sending a small crowd of rats scampering into the twilight. It would surely be a lovely scene, and Lucy knew she wouldn’t have to write a word of dialogue. Not with those two giant talents, Manny and Jack, eagerly awaiting their opportunity to bring this climactic, violent pas de deux to life. They would improvise until the rats came back, and no doubt many of their words would work to perfection. They were professionals.

  She sashayed around a dude in a peacoat quietly selling five dollar joints and twenty dollar bags of heroin, opened the door and said, “Hey guys,” in a tone devoid of tragedy.

  “Luce,” Paul said. “Not like you to be late.”

  “My dog insisted on a long walk. Hey Carole, you were really on today, honey.”

  “Thanks Lucy.”

  “I got to where I almost, you know, believed that crazy fucker Conrad would do what he did. That it maybe could actually have possibly happened that way. Maybe being the operative word. But what I really want to know is what transpired with you and Halloran? I mean, didn’t you get arrested yesterday?”

  “No way, Lucy. Arrested for what, being with a guy the night he dies? Last I heard that wasn’t prosecutable.”

  “I’ll take a double shot of your best tequila and a beer,” Lucy called to the bartender. She scanned the shelves. “To my way of thinking that would be the Herradura up there.” She pointed. “Skip the salt and lime, but I would love a Negro Modelo if you have one.”

  “Going for a buzz, eh Luce?” Paul said.

  “I’m feeling like I need a little lift here,” Lucy said. “This story’s got me down in the dumps, know what I mean?”

  “Fuck me, do I ever,” Carole said. “I mean I try to keep it light and usually I can, but this Delia’s starting to pull me into her world and it ain’t pretty.”

  “Not this week anyways,” Lucy said. “What do you think, Paulie? Should we let her fall in love with Nick and live happily ever after?”

  He shrugged. “Do whatever you want, Luce. Or whatever Manny wants. Or whatever Carole wants. I’m just the fucking director.”

  “Paulie, you tortured little genius you.” She turned back to Carole. “So tell me, what did happen with you and that knucklehead cop, C
arole,” Lucy said, stepping up to the bar and grabbing her tequila. She knocked it back, said, “Whoo, that’s good,” and put the glass down, feeling just a bit manic, and liking it. “Pour me another in ten minutes, sugar,” she said to the bartender, then grabbed her beer.

  “Sit, Lucy,” Paul said. “Calm your butt down and tell us about your dog walk.”

  “My dog is brilliant, but he is still just a dog and not that interesting to anyone but me, Paul. What, did you and Carole already discuss, or should I say rewrite, the latest version of the other night, and decide you’re not going to share it with me?”

  “Actually we really were talking about the script,” Paul said. “We’re still working on convincing ourselves that this whole incestuous scenario is going to play.”

  “Well, when you consider the individual scenes—at least the ones I’ve watched you shoot so far—they certainly work,” said Lucy. “But I haven’t seen anything like an extended piece of the story all put together so I don’t know.”

  “Well I have and I don’t either,” said Paul.

  “So here is how it happened, guys,” Carole said, the confessional urge wafting into her brain on a fragrant cloud of whiskey fumes. “The other night I mean.” She looked at Lucy. “I guess I didn’t really tell you everything before, Lucy. Sorry.” She shrugged. “Sometimes it’s hard to know who to tell what when, know what I mean?”

  “I surely do, Carole,” Lucy said.

  “I really want a cigarette,” Carole said. “Can we go outside? I need to smoke to do this.”

  “OK by me. Paul?”

  “Sure.” They all got up and went outside. The dope dealer had moved across the street. He gave them a look but they waved him off and he stayed put.

  Carole lit her cigarette. “It ain’t just Delia that’s getting to me. So’s the other night. I need to talk about it, OK?”

  “Sounds good,” said Lucy.

  “I’m all ears,” said Paul.

  “So everything I told you about what happened before we got to Christopher’s house was true. The whole weird club thing, then me and Christopher ending up headed down to his place with that Mark Kristalli character.”

  She smoked one cigarette after another while telling her twisted, mesmerizing tale. “First thing I have to say is there are like at least three versions of what happened, so just remember that when I’m done, OK guys? We got down to Christopher’s and went up to his loft. He got out two bottles of this red wine he said cost two hundred bucks a bottle, opened both of them at once, and we started drinking. After a little while he said he wanted to do his thing, you know, the thing he’d brought us down there to watch, and Kristalli said first he wanted his money. Chris said after, Kristalli said no, that’s bullshit, I want it now! Chris said too bad, Marky, you have to wait, you have to watch, so Kristalli said fuck you and went in the bathroom—we were in the living room, this huge open space with big windows overlooking the street.”

  “Yeah I’ve been up there,” Paul said.

  “So anyways, Kristalli went to piss or do more dope, ransack the medicine cabinet or whatever, and Chris spaced out and seemed to kind of forget the guy was even there. Maybe because he was so intent on setting things up, or because he was stoned, who knows? Then he got out this video camera and a tripod and asked me to tape him. So I set the camera up on the tripod and pointed it at him and turned it on. Then he climbed up on this chair and prepared this, you know…noose…and then he stepped down and asked me to keep shooting while he tried to do this little dance, a kind of stoned strip, but he was pretty wasted and stumbling around, only I did keep shooting, I kept the camera on the tripod and stayed behind it because I was really loaded too and thought I couldn’t see straight much less shoot straight without the tripod. And being behind the camera, seeing it all on the little digital screen made it kind of unreal, and less unpleasant to watch.”

  “I know exactly what you’re talking about,” Lucy said.

  “So he was doing this stupid staggering-around dance, taking his clothes off, thinking that he was sexy, I guess, or maybe he didn’t give a fuck, I don’t know but pretty soon he was naked, meanwhile he’s drinking this two hundred dollar wine right from the bottle, then he dropped the bottle on the floor, but it didn’t break, I remember thinking that was weird and watching the wine flowing, thinking goddamn that’s a hundred bucks staining his fancy wooden floor. But I kept the camera pointed at him and then he used both hands to position his chair under the noose, then he got up on the chair again and by now he was really, you know, turned on, and that guy turned on is—was—kind of scary, because like I told you before Lucy he had this really big dick, I mean freakishly big…at least to me it was.” She stopped, and smoked. “Fuck, I can’t believe how weird the whole scene was.” She hesitated, looked up at Lucy, and in that look Lucy saw a woman who’d already seen too much, at twenty-five. She would be hard-pressed to get over this and everything in her life that led up to it and everything that followed from it too. “So I kept the camera in front of me, rolling away, and then Kristalli came back into the room and saw what was happening. He called Christopher a perverted asshole, and asked him if he wanted some help with the chair, but he was obviously being sarcastic. Christopher had this stoned grin on his face, you have to picture this, he’s standing on this wooden chair and looked about nine feet tall, you know how tall he was, he’s wearing a pair of black socks and nothing else but the rope around his neck, he’s got this huge boner, and he’s totally loaded, like barely able to stand, then Kristalli’s there with his shades still on and a brown shopping bag of something under his arm, I heard clinking and figured it must be some of that fancy wine he’d decided to steal.

  “So Christopher says, sure man, and Kristalli grabs the chair and gives it a little tug, and says fake out! No man, I ain’t going to do this shit for you, motherfucker, you owe me too much money, and then he walked out of the picture, but I don’t think Chris even heard him, because now he was waving. Christopher was waving at me and the camera, like in a home movie, and then he said, in a perfectly clear, normal voice, hi mom and dad, how are you doing?”

  She stopped again, and smoked hard. “So you have to remember while he’s doing this he’s wasted and stonebuttfuck naked but for socks and a hangman’s noose and a huge woodie flapping around, God it was so bizarre. Then Kristalli said you are a crazy fuck, Wadsworth, and stomped out of the room. I think he left right then. So Christopher somehow pulls himself up into what he imagined was some sort of dignified posture, standing upright on his wooden chair, with a big boner and an idiot grin on his face, at least he wasn’t falling down, and says to me, keep shooting, baby, and you know what to do next.” She stopped, and remembered panic flashed in her eyes. “But I didn’t. I didn’t know what to do next, because I didn’t know what he meant. Then he kicked the chair out from under himself and went into this weird contortion, thrashing on his rope, and then just a few seconds later he, you know, had an orgasm and I kept shooting I was…I didn’t…I don’t know why, I was stoned, I was mesmerized by the freakiness of the whole thing…then I realized the guy was like hanging himself so I ran over to let him down but I got on the chair and up high but I couldn’t reach the rope where he tied it I tried to take the weight off his neck, I tried to hold him up but he was so big and naked and…then I ran into the kitchen and found this knife and pulled the dining table over by him and jumped up on it and cut him down, he fell to the floor then I jumped down to help him but he was already dead and Kristalli was gone.” She stopped abruptly, and paused for a few seconds before going on. Tears streamed down her face as she lit another cigarette. “So you tell me, what did he want me to do? What did he mean? I don’t know.” She let a few tears roll down her cheeks. “Did I kill him?” she asked softly.

  “Of course not,” said Paul, then added, “God damn,” after a few seconds.

  “You didn’t kill anybody, Carole. But what did you do? How did he end up on the street?” relentless Lucy
asked.

  Carole threw down her cigarette, wiped her eyes, and got herself under control. “I didn’t know what to do so I called Manny on my cell. He came down and helped me.” She paused. “That’s when things got even more complicated.”

  “What? Lucy said.

  “I let Manny in like fifteen minutes later, and when he saw the scene he said we’ve got to clean this up, so we did. He’d even brought like, surgical gloves, the guy’s an expert on this shit since he’s been on the mafia show, and he made me wipe down everywhere I could remember touching, we cleaned my wine glass and the camera and…”

  “What about the film? I mean the…was it a disk or on a drive in there or what?”

  “It’s on a little card or disk. I…I have it and the camera. But when we went into the other room—Christopher’s bedroom—we were just going to put some stuff back on the shelves, you know, clean the place up, but I happened to look in this one backpack just tossed into the closet in a pile of dirty laundry, and there was all this money.”

  “The five hundred grand,” Lucy said.

  “In hundreds. Stacks and packs of ‘em. So I showed it to Manny and it took us about two seconds to decide to take it.”

  “She gave me a hundred and a half to keep my movie going,” Paul said. “I thought that was pretty cool.”

  “Yeah, sure, whatever. You did threaten to try and blackmail me, Paulie boy.”

  “But I didn’t know what had happened, did I?” Paul answered. “All I knew was you had the money and he was dead.”