by Seth Morgan
“No. I have two more questions. First, was there evidence of sexual battery?”
The M.E. nodded, busying himself refilling Tarzon’s Dixie cup.
“What, for Christ’s sake? I’m not a father anymore, but I’m still a cop. What evidence?”
The M.E. smiled painfully. He joined his hands in a soft clap. Rubber wheels squeaked down the hall outside; distantly, the muffled whump of a morgue drawer rolling shut.
“Semen. Anus and throat. Different strains. Throat strain diluted by sea water. Anal strain can be matched by DNA fingerprinting.”
The force of Tarzon’s exhalation bugged his eyes. He lifted his fists, beating them once against his temples. He drilled another shot and said, “She was wearing some kind of heavy makeup. Like a clown or something.”
“Encore brand base makeup. Footlight brand eyeshadow, lipstick, et cetera. Cosmetics mixed with chemicals to absorb strong lighting. Used by TV and film actors.”
There was no mistake, Tarzon’s worst nightmare was confirmed. He cursed himself, thinking: They must have followed me. They couldnt have made the connection unless I led them to her. Trying to save her, I won her a snuff film contract. But why? Not just for spite because she was my daughter. Why not kill me then? How much I would have preferred they had killed me than … His blueshadowed cheeks rippled as he envisioned pale hands slipping from numbered postal boxes the record of the horror wrapped in plain brown paper. He was gripping the M.E.’s desk to stand when the phone rang.
“For you, Rick.”
Tarzon took the phone in his cold sweaty hand. At first he couldn’t make out what the Homicide sergeant was saying. He wiped his hand over his clammy brow. “Lieutenant Tarzon, did you hear me?”
“Just run that by me again, Pete.”
The young cop took a breath. “OK. Santo Crespi, aka the Troll, called our office. He saw your daughter’s picture in the obit. He swears it’s the same girl who left the shooting gallery with Speaker and Chakov.”
Tarzon’s jaw dropped, he unstuck the unlit stogie from his nerveless lip. Of course! It was no coincidence that McGee made his move on Speaker the same day her head was fished from the sea. Belinda knew Speaker stole the diamond, had known all along. Moses wasn’t taking revenge against Tarzon. He tortured his daughter for Speaker’s name and made a film of it. All along Rick Tarzon had been haunted by a feeling that his search for Belinda and his quest for the diamond were linked. He’d just never imagined so directly. He hung up and turned for the door.
The M.E. cleared his throat. “Her … remains.”
He looked at the M.E. in desperate confusion. For one whose profession was death, Tarzon was woefully unschooled in its last rites.
“Made arrangements, Rick?”
“Yeah. First I’m gonna get drunk, then I’m gettin even.”
The M.E. ducked his head, batting his brows. “The body.”
“For Chrissakes, Ralph. Whatever they do with bodies, do. Send the bill to my office.”
It goes to show you never can tell, because today felt to Rowdy McGee like a day when nothing could go wrong. From his home the night before he had called Baby Jewels Moses telling him where to find the diamond. When he got off shift that afternoon, he was driving to San Francisco to pick up his two G’s reward. Who knows, maybe a little Chinese dinner, a cable car ride—hell, he might even get laid. Rowdy appreciated life’s simple pleasures. Of course there was the unfinished business of Speaker, but that he could postpone … savor.
On the way to work he stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts for a box of their class stuff, with the pink speckles and all. None of that dayold junk on this red banner day. Setting the box on the table in the Goon Squad Muster Room, he shelved his armored belly beside it and with his hand stamped down his nerveless leg Sumostyle. Using his cattle prod to gavel his gang to order, he smeared a smile around the room. “Aint we got some convict ass to kick this morning, studs?”
Such familiarities were the stuff that endeared McGee to the squad. C.O. Shepherd, the youngest and handsomest Gooner, and McGee’s favorite, reported first. “During the first watch we raided Bakery and found three gallons of pruno brewing over the venting ducts. We conducted a thorough search of the job area, including opening the working ovens and … their cornbread fell …”
“Awww!” the squad chorused.
Laughing, Shep dusted a raspberry cruller’s sugar from his hands and continued: “We also ascertained that an acetylene torch requisitioned to repair ovens is missing. Short of shaking down the whole institution, no means of recovering it are available.”
“Not to worry,” slurped McGee. “They’ll probably use it to torch themselves extra assholes … Next …”
Muldoon, who of all the squad looked most like a Goon, looped a Neanderthal brow at his commander. “Some inmate broke into our evidence room, sir.” Silence fell. “But nothing was taken,” Muldoon hastened to add, “except that baseball cap you confiscated from the Work Order clerk.”
“Find it!” McGee rolled a wild eye around the room. “Turn this joint upside down, cavity search every inmate, but find it … I dont ever want to see another penis blossom wearing it … Ever.”
“Why not set Fraulein on it,” Henderson suggested to break the tension. “Hell, she’s our most productive snitch. Last night she gave up the Rubber Queen …”
“What?” Delight lit McGee’s face and fizzed spittle at the corners of his mouth. “We got the Rubber Queen?”
“Not exactly, sir. But we know who she is now. We were only waiting in case you wanted to gaffle her personally.”
McGee smiled; how quickly he had taught his studs the basic courtesies.
“Yes sir!” sang out Henderson, proud to deliver his commander his fondest wish. “Fraulein says the Rubber Queen is inmate Arthur Gottlieb, Reilly’s old clerk. She’s stashing the rubber supply on third tier W Wing Quarantine. Fraulein says she has enough stockpiled there to keep this pen fucking for a year. The reason the topmost range of Quarantine is being used, sir, is because it’s an opentiered block and it’s widely believed you’re as scared of heights as you are of the plague.”
“They say … what?!” Now apoplectic congestion purpled McGee’s face. Henderson repeated himself, crestfallen for not omitting these last insulting details. “We go now!” McGee spurted. “They think I’m scared? I’ll show those fuckin bowelbabies what fear really is. Muster dismissed. Fall out to raid W Wing.”
Convicts on the Mainline dispersed wildly seeing the whole squad in battledress pour out of Custody with McGee lurching doubletime in their lead. At the W Wing gates, McGee pummeled an MTA with his prod for being slow keying them in.
“Now I want you studs to dress ranks right here in the Rotunda. I’m going up alone. I have to put these fuckin rumors to rest.” He torqued his squad a pink eye livid with import. “It’s not every day we get to neutralize Coldwater’s biggest contraband operator … What cell did Fraulein say that cunt Gottlieb is using for a stash house?”
McGee heaved himself up the winding iron stairs. Twice he stopped to catch his breath, but didn’t dare look down. By the time he reached the third tier, his heavy synthetic armor sloshed with sweat.
With bright shining eyes, the plaguers silently watched McGee’s progress. When he reached the topmost rail they hooked their hands through the cyclone fencing and began shaking their screens. It began as a low rumble and built into a mighty thunder, swaying the catwalks and humming the rails.
McGee wrenched off his helmet in alarm. Something was very wrong. He shouted at them to stop shaking their screens and was answered with jeers and more violent shaking, shuddering the air. He ordered the plaguers on the third tier to clear his way, but instead of scurrying, they slouched; and in their eyes he saw not fear but only a sullen hatred. He screamed over the rail for his squad to follow him up; he hadn’t noticed behind him the plaguers bl
ocking the ladderways with burning mattresses and bedclothes. The plaguers in their cells shot him looks of open scorn and defiance. A black queen named Caledonia unzipped and slapped her penis on a crossmember. “Bite it, you big ole fonky bitch you.” McGee began to tremble, and to babble beneath his breath.
And that’s when he smelled the scorched steel and saw wisps of blue smoke clinging to the grating underfoot and knew in a blaze of terror why they were shaking the screens. He was nearly down to the end of the tier now, breathing in great wet gasps, holding cell bars with one gauntlet and the rail with the other.
Suddenly a convict stepped sideways out of a cell into his path. He wore the cap with the letter “B.” He tipped it with gnarled fingers truncated at the second knuckle.
McGee froze with a cry. He looked down at his squad eighty feet below and screamed again. The shaking of the screens redoubled. The catwalk on which he stood began swinging like a rope bridge. The convict wearing the baseball cap said something, soft and deadly. McGee looked at him and bellowed in rage. He unslung his taser, staggering to take aim. His stamping boots broke the catwalk free where it had been cut by the welding torch. It fell in one piece, McGee bicycling shadows. His howl was drowned in the rumble and gnash of steel.
DASYPUS NOVEMCINCTUS
Tarzon spent the night alone in his office. It took nearly three quarts of Hiram Walker to burst the dam of shock, allowing him at last to weep, a flood of grief raging through the lonely hours. Toward dawn he drained the last tears with the last drops of whiskey. Sweet sad tears for a onceupon little girl, while freighters moaned out on the tide, bitter ones for her failed father and long dead mother as the sky feathered rosy and yellow behind the downtown towers; and, finally, with the light rising like candycolored steam in the purple canyons where streetlamps trembled, about to go out—beads of fire for Belinda’s killer, Baby Jewels Moses, who seemed further from his grasp than ever.
Then he locked his office door and snapped shut its blinds and unfolded the cot he kept in the closet and slept like the dead.
He awoke in the midafternoon. His brain ticked as brightly as a brass clock whose works have been dismantled, soaked in caustic solution, scrubbed with wire brushes, and reassembled with new springs. He ordered up coffee and turned his attention to the most pressing matter at hand, the status of Joe Speaker. Four days had passed since Maas first got word from Sing that Speaker was in McGee’s clutches on the psych unit. The lawyer had promised Tarzon he was doing everything in his power to get Speaker released. Four days. Tarzon shook his head dialing Maas’s Sacramento number again. No way could Speaker still be holding out. He had to have surrendered the ice. He just prayed Speaker hadn’t surrendered his ghost as well.
Maas’s secretary said he was in court but would be back within the half hour. Awaiting the parole attorney’s return call, he peeled the cellophane from a fresh Hav-A-Tampa Jewel and collated his mental index cards on the Moses case.
A grand jury had heard the Cowley girl’s testimony, but alone it was insufficient to bill the Fat Man. Not only hadn’t she personally witnessed a single murder, she was also an admitted addict and convicted thief and prostitute, the least desirable of state’s witnesses.
On to the killing of Rosemary Hooten, aka Rings’n’Things. The only eyewitness to the suspect in orderly whites fleeing the Hall of Justice was a seventyyearold newspaper vendor who, when brought to the squadroom to identify the personnel mug from McGee’s CDC file, developed selective amnesia. Tarzon suspected one of the cops on the Fat Man’s pad had gotten to him. He also suspected that the police were involved that same day in the shooting of Undersheriff Collins. An official inquest was held which failed to determine what the Undersheriff was doing on the kitchen loading dock just minutes after the Sick Bay slaughter. It found Collins’s slaying to be unrelated and coincidental, most likely the work of a mugger. Tarzon distrusted coincidences as much as he doubted there was a mugger so brazen as to attack the Undersheriff inside the courthouse.
Then there was Alice O’Shea, aka Fay DuWeye. The slim chance she held out of identifying Gloria Monday’s black trick, possibly the man who beat her prior to her slaying, was scorched with her brain circuits in the brewery.
Tarzon slammed his fist on his desk. His last hope had been Joe Speaker. But by now Baby Jewels had probably recovered the diamond and had Speaker zipped. Tarzon cursed himself for not arranging a pardon for Speaker the day he met McGee at the Coldwater Gate House and made him for the Sick Bay killer. He could have had Speaker released from custody within a week. Instead he had opted to continue playing cat and mouse, hoping to trick Speaker into leading him to the diamond. And for what? To mete out justice to the Fat Man? No, the immediate threat to Speaker’s life occasioned by Tarzon’s own carelessness should have overridden any hypothetical prospect of gaining evidence against Moses. He had left Speaker in harm’s way for purely selfish reasons. He hoped to get Moses before Moses got his daughter. And as he’d failed Belinda all her life, he’d failed her there too, and now she was dead. How would his conscience bear up, Tarzon bitterly wondered, with Speaker’s life added to that weight?
Fool, he upbraided himself. Whatever crimes Baby Jewels is guilty of you have compounded with your own complicity. Belinda was right: you’ve crossed the line; you’ve become the same evil that you fight, like a fire, with fire. It’s time to lay down your sword before you fall on it. But not before you bring down the Fat Man. Belinda must be avenged and your own soul exorcised.
He snatched up the phone before its first ring ended. Maas’s voice reminded him of a glitzy game show host’s, at once snide and smarmy. “I got your boy off Z-3 on a writ of habeas corpus last night.”
“Thank God …” Tarzon crossed himself.
“Not that I needed to,” Maas went on. “The only threat to him fell off a top tier yesterday. Broke his neck.”
“Wait a minute … Are you talking about Rowdy McGee?”
“That’s the name … The departmental release says the tier was old and poorly maintained and collapsed accidentally under McGee. The inside skinny is that the cons helped it along with a blowtorch.”
Another coincidence, thought Tarzon. “How’s Speaker?”
“He’s in pretty rough shape. But I think I can get him sprung in a matter of days.”
“How much will he owe you when he gets out?” Tarzon asked. His original plan had hinged in part on the price of the coffee break parole forcing Joe to recover the diamond as soon as he hit the bricks, leading Tarzon to it quickly.
“Nothing,” Maas said. “He’s paid up in full. Musta had some hustles inside.”
Tarzon sighed. “I should have known when you told me my help wouldnt be needed wiping out that silent beef. Speaker’s jointwise. He’s got friends in there. McGee’s death proves it. Lemme know as soon as you got him a date.”
Maas chuckled. “Speaker’s instructed me to alert some broad in Texas, too.”
“Katherine Quintana,” Tarzon said, flipping her card to the front of his mental stack.
“There’s apprehension here that Coldwater might blow,” Maas continued. “Population’s at twice the recommended level, violence is way up … Hell, a lower court has already ruled that confinement there in and of itself constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
“A riot? What happens if the shit flies the same time Speaker’s slated to raise?”
“Not to worry, Loot. A parole carries the weight of a court order. If they can get to him, they’ll cut him loose.”
Hanging up, Tarzon wondered fiercely if McGee was killed before or after getting the secret of the diamond from Speaker and relaying it to Baby Jewels. The fact that Speaker was still alive seemed to hold out hope. It made no sense for McGee to leave him breathing once he knew where the diamond was.
The next Joe knew was water, warm and lushly green. His body rolled in the long undulant sea growth along the b
ottom; he felt mossy tendrils stroking his face. The shadowed gloom was so peaceful, like the aquarium. Then he felt a buoyancy; he was rising, turning slowly and rising. Above he saw light wavering on the surface, and he rose faster. The riddling light widened and widened, rushing up to meet him …
“Welcome back.” Duck Butter sat on the edge of the bunk, sponging Joe’s face. The sun through the cell window blinded him. He tried to sit up and shield his eyes. Duck Butter pushed him back down by the shoulders and covered his eyes with a towel.
“Rest easy, Joe. You been through hell and back … No, dont say nothin. The doctor says it’ll be a few more days before the Prolixin’s outta your system. He say they give you enough up there on Z-3 to kill a hoss. See your hand quiverin? … You been beat pretty good too.”
“What … happened?” he managed to blubber.
“Yer lawyer writ yer ass off Z-3 …”
“How long was I there?”
“Four days …”
Joe swiped the towel from his eyes and squinted at Duck Butter in the brightness. “That’s all?”
“I’m lyin, I’m dyin. It mighta seemed four years, but it was jest fo days. N you’ve been here jest overnight. It’s the end of June still, Joe … N the doctor say you better keep your eyes covered, get used to the light slow.”
Joe lay back down and let Duck Butter drape a fresh towel over his eyes. Slipping down shiny walls to sleep, he heard Duck Butter say from far away: “Know where you are? In Spencer’s old cell on the Hospital Wing.”
When he awoke, his eyes were uncovered. The cell was steeped in long blue shadows. Outside the window he heard wheelchairs and crutches on the Hospital Yard. A frisbee fluttered into the window bars. He smiled.