by Art Bourgeau
Up to now he hadn't admitted it to himself, but, face it, he'd brought Laura in on it not just because he liked her—which he did—but also as a bit of grandstand play. It looked simple and harmless enough at the time. Take over the missing-persons files, canvas the neighborhood for information about Peter and make the arrest. All to the tune of some very positive headlines for Seven Squad and the department, and himself. He never imagined that no one in a tight-knit neighborhood like South Philly would have seen this character. The guy was linked with three separate girls. But, it seemed, no one had. No one except one teenage girl, and now she was dead, too.
He'd also lost his cool at the depot. Laura had shown up again, and he had all but accused her of causing Marie's death with her stories, which she was already blaming herself for. But it wasn't her fault. It was his—for not nailing this Peter by now. Kane let him know how off-base he was with Laura, and that was when he decided to leave the cleanup to the squad and get away from it for a while.
A nightmare. They'd had no substantive breaks since the Lagniappe matchbook. The costumers check gave them nothing. For a moment there he'd thought Justin Fortier looked good for it, but that went down the tubes when the accusing ex-employee, Spivak reported, turned out to be a thief and her own friend the victim. And Fortier didn't own a Datsun 300ZX. Evans and Rafferty had actually come up with the two sex offenders who owned 300ZX's. Likewise a dead-end—one was the wrong color, black, and the other was dead from a heart attack. Now he was back to square one, only this time he had a second body. Marie—his only eyewitness. He parked in the lot and had started for the Roundhouse when he heard someone call to him, the voice coming from a black Corvette parked across the street.
"Hey sailor . .
He wasn't in the mood for games, but walked across the street to find at the wheel of the Corvette Delores Inverso, the daughter of mobster Nicholas Inverso. She was looking punk as ever, but somehow even with the streaked red hair and fingerless gloves she seemed somehow easier to take than at their last meeting. He shook his head. Too much down time. He'd been without a woman too long if he found a mob leader's daughter a prospect.
Next to her in the passenger seat was a Catholic priest. Sloan couldn't see him too well, but well enough to make him out as Oriental. Sort of strange.
"How goes it, Delores?"
His hand was resting on her windowsill, and she covered it with hers. Her fingers felt warm. "I'm good, you look terrible."
She didn't move her hand from his. "Today's Father Nguyen's market day. You know Father Nguyen, don't you? He's from Sacred Heart."
"Hello, Father"
"Bless you, my son," which somehow sounded odd coming from this face and accent. He had grown up on priests that sounded like Barry Fitzgerald. He almost smiled. Years ago Bob Dylan had said a mouthful: "The times they are a-changin'."
"I bring him down here every week so he can shop in Chinatown. He says you can't get good rice in South Philly."
"Makes sense, I guess. Pasta, yes. Rice, no."
"Anyway, Sloan, Dad heard about the second body and he wasn't too thrilled. People know he asked you to wrap this up in a hurry, and he's starting to look bad. Especially with the
second body."
"Well, goddamn it, tell Dad we're trying—"
"So this time," she continued smoothly, "he's going to make an exception. You know what I gave you the last time . . . well, that same guy—the one who's interested in the young girls—is going to be at the corner of Eleventh and Washington at four this P.M. A friend arranged for him to meet some girls there. Dad thinks it might be a good idea if you dropped around." She patted his hand, then squeezed it. "Now we've got to be running. Father's saying Mass tonight. Call me sometime. Let's have a drink. Ciao," she said, as she put the black Corvette in gear and pulled away from the curb.
Sloan looked at his watch. It was after two. Hardly enough time to collect the squad and get set up on Washington before four.
He hurried to his car and put in the radio call to the squad at the depot, then headed for Eleventh and Washington.
Rafferty and Evans, Kane and Spivak met him there.
About three o'clock the players started showing up. A brown Mercedes sedan stopped alongside the trolley stop and several females got out of the backseat. All were dressed like teenagers, but Sloan recognized a couple of them from prostitute round-ups. They were anything but teenagers. As the Mercedes drove by, the driver waved at Sloan. Sloan recognized him, too—at the wheel was Sylvester "Slick" Gianni, the man in charge of prostitution at the docks.
At four on the nose an old white Cadillac convertible pulled alongside the tracks and stopped. The ladies at first appeared coy, and then gradually one by one they began to approach the car. When they had all gathered around the passenger side, one of them gave a little wave.
"That's it, move in," Sloan said into the radio.
As he pulled out so did Rafferty and Evans in their car, and Kane and Spivak in theirs. Rafferty and Evans were the closest and immediately blocked his escape. Kane and Spivak did the same on the other side.
Sloan got out, gun and badge in hand. The ladies around the car scattered. Sloan called out: "Don't move, police."
The driver of the car didn't try to move. Rafferty jerked open the door on the driver's side and pulled the suspect out. Sloan read him his rights. Then: "What's your full name?"
"Carl Laredo, but what's all this—?"
They handcuffed him and put him in the back of Sloan's car.
Rafferty rode with Sloan to police headquarters while Spivak followed in the Cadillac. Carl kept asking what this was about. Nobody answered him.
Once at the Roundhouse they immediately gave him a saliva test. If his ABH factors didn't match the killer's or didn't show up at all, meaning he was a non-secretor, he was in the clear. Otherwise . . .
While they were waiting for the results of the saliva test Sloan began the interrogation, with Rafferty the only other cop in the room. It was good cop—bad cop time. He, good. Rafferty, bad.
"Soliciting sex is a crime. You know that . . ."
"I wasn't soliciting or propositioning. I'm an artist," Carl said nervously. "I was trying to commission them to model for me—"
"What will they think of next?" said Rafferty.
Sure, far-fetched, but the word "artist" rang a bell with Sloan. Kane said she'd met an artist at Lagniappe . . . He went outside. "Kane, is this the guy you met at Lagniappe?"
"Yes, lieutenant." She sounded unhappy.
"He says he was trying to hire those girls as models. Know anything about it?"
"Not a thing."
Sloan went back inside. Evidently in his absence Rafferty had begun to apply some pressure, because Carl Laredo looked at him like some kind of savior.
"I'm just trying to tell this man that I was not soliciting those girls for sex. Nobody in their right mind would mess with a street girl. Not with AIDS and all. I'm an artist—"
"We know that, Mr. Laredo," Sloan said. "Now calm down and tell us what you were doing there."
"Same thing I've been doing there for the last several months. Like I said, I'm an artist. I lived in France for several years. You know about Paris street scenes; artists always paint them. While I was there I got interested in the Apache dancers of the Fifties. You know, the guy in the beret and the woman in the split skirt. I thought of combining them with a conventional street scene to make what would be sort of mean streets Paris-style. When I came back here I decided to do the same with Philly street scenes, and the best-looking girls for it are in South Philly. So every few weeks I hire a couple of the hookers, take them back to my place and take some Polaroids to work from. That's all. No sex. No nudity even. The way they're dressed with the high heels and the tight jeans, that's what I want to paint—"
Kane stuck her head in. "Lieutenant, can I see you?" Her voice sounded better.
He went outside.
"The lab report is in."
"
And?"
There was a hint of a smile. "He's not our man. He's a secretor, all right, but with blood type A, not O."
Her smile told him that she liked Carl Laredo more than she was saying.
Sloan sighed. Even the mob was wrong once in a while.
CHAPTER 19
MISSY HELD the double old-fashioned glass filled with ice at eye-level as though it was a chemist's beaker and poured into it from the frosty Stolichnaya bottle. Her hands were rock steady. Up, up, up, rose the level of the clear liquid, thickened by the cold of the refrigerator, until she stopped just short of the rim.
She carefully put the bottle down on the kitchen counter as though it was filled with nitroglycerin. Spread out next to it on the counter's black ceramic tile surface was a single-edged razor blade, a small pile of white powder, and a tiny silver coke spoon. The sounds of Bryan Adams singing "Heaven" filled the room, and outside on the Delaware River, through her kitchen window, she could see a tug muscling into its berth a white tanker showing rust streaks through its paint job and flying the Panamanian flag of convenience in the fading twilight. But if she noticed either she gave no sign of it.
Holding the glass with both hands in a peculiarly little-girl fashion, she brought it to her lips, looked over the rim of the glass as she tilted it upward and drank, her eyes bright and staring, but at a point that only her mind could see, her pupils portals to the darkness beyond.
A drop of moisture fell from the glass onto her bare chest and trickled down between her breasts. She paid it no mind. Seemed unaware of it.
She drank again, taking in the icy sterile bite of the alcohol; the level in the glass dropping noticeably, its frigid coldness seeming to bring her back to the here and now. Since that night at the opera her hatred of Cynthia had been building. Her scheming was obvious. There was her play for Felix at the opera. Her lunch with Carl and that Ramsey woman when she all but said she would even get pregnant to get Felix back. And now today she'd called him for a date and he'd accepted. Out of obligation, of course, but nevertheless it had spoiled tonight's Halloween plans Missy had made for them.
She'd called him with fabulous plans. A great costume party. Special turn-on lingerie she was going to wear for him. Tonight was going to be the night when they finally went to bed together. But now it was all off, and it was all because of Cynthia.
Twice after she'd heard about their date she had had blinding attacks of the pain, trying again to come to terms with the idea of getting pregnant, giving Felix the child he wanted. Cynthia had provoked all that, and there was no reason in the world for Missy to put up with it. Like she'd told herself when she left Carl that morning, only one of them was going to be left standing when this thing was over. And it wasn't going to be the ex-Mrs. Ducroit.
Putting her glass down beside the bottle she leaned over the counter and scooped up powder with the tiny spoon. She sniffed it up each nostril, twice, three times, and daintily wiped away any excess with the tip of her middle finger.
Cynthia was like a Barbie doll she'd had as a child. When Barbie thought no one was around she would torment Ken, her male doll, and make him do horrible things. Missy tried everything to get her to stop. She lectured her, scolded her, even separated the dolls, but it did no good. As soon as Missy's back was turned Barbie would begin to torment Ken again. Missy had no choice except to punish her. Each night when she was alone in her room with the dolls she would take off all of Barbie's clothes, then press her against a hot lightbulb, softly talking to her all the while, trying to get her to see the error of her ways. Barbie was stubborn, parts of her would blacken from the pain and the heat, but even that didn't help. She was still bad. Finally Missy had no choice except to do away with her.
She hid Barbie's remains beneath a bush near the swimming pool, and that night when the Ken doll asked her where Barbie was, she told him that Barbie had gone away and wouldn't be back. The Ken doll knew what had happened, but he wasn't sad. He knew Barbie was bad, too . . .
She picked up her glass and padded barefoot across the kitchen, her bare body caught and reflected in fragments around the room like strewn parts in the aftermath of destruction—her face reflected in the shiny ceramic tile, her hand and forearm in the surface of the toaster, her leg and buttock in the window of the oven door.
Felix . . . he was gentle like the Ken doll. He didn't understand how women could be. They were deceitful creatures like her mother. They took from men and gave nothing in return. Laughed at them. Committed adultery with their best friends. Made fools of them. Even drove them to an early grave, like her father. Well, she would not let that happen with Felix. She would protect him . . .
In her bedroom, laid out on her king-size bed with almost military fashion, were a dark leather jacket, a white aviator's scarf, leather driving gloves with holes over the knuckles, trousers, shoes and socks, a shoulder holster with an automatic in it, jockey shorts, a Latex set of cyclist's shorts, two rolls of wide elastic bandage, a pair of handcuffs, a small pile of stainless steel chains, a plastic bag filled with what looked like human hair, and a flesh-colored dildo with a head at each end.
She picked up the elastic bandage from the bed and turned to face the wall of mirrors that concealed her closets. As she began to bind her chest, the elastic flattening her breasts, forcing them into a square shape like a man's pectorals, she felt a familiar surge of pleasure and almost purred at the thought of her own wetness.
When she finished her binding she stopped to admire herself in the mirrors. What stared back at her had no gender identity. Her face, while still attractive, without makeup seemed curiously angular and almost boyish. Her bandaged breasts were squared off, showing no nipples, not even tiny male ones. And below, on her mons veneris where a brunette would normally have a triangle of rich, dark hair, she was shaved clean, the lips of her labia invisible from across the room, as though she had no genitals at all. This was the moment she always savored most—presto, chango, alakazam, gone was the woman, born was the man.
But today the vision was marred, and it took a moment to figure out why. Her scar, no matter the pain, was normally fleshcolored and invisible, but tonight it seemed angry and red. She looked down at the twelve-year-old scar. It wasn't red at all, but when she looked in the mirror it again seemed so.
She turned away, afraid that if she looked any longer at herself the scary, truncated memories would start again, and so would the pain.
Twice in one day was more than enough. She'd had all she could take. Twice she'd seen herself standing in the doorway of her father's study, waiting to tell him. Twice he'd looked up from his desk. And twice the pain had come as strong as if she'd stuck her finger in a light socket. She didn't want to know what happened afterward. Not anymore. She just wanted to get on with her life with Felix. There was so much for them to have together . . .
She crossed the room and took a long pull on her drink, her hands no longer rock steady, now shaking as if she were cold. The alcohol helped. It always did. The very clinical nature of the vodka was soothing, gave the illusion that she was sterilizing, purifying herself deep inside.
From the bed she picked up a thin stainless steel chain that she fastened snugly around her waist, leaving one end free and dangling down behind. The dangling end, resting in the cleft of her buttocks, felt cold against her skin.
She picked up the two-headed dildo. It was made of fleshcolored rubber, giving it the approximate rigidity of a real penis but also a certain overall flexibility. Near the midpoint was a small hole in the shaft. Reaching between her legs with her free hand she grasped the end of the chain and pulled it to her. The hole in the shaft accommodated the chain perfectly, and she threaded it through like it was the eye of a needle. Opening her legs slightly, she worked one head of the dildo into her vagina, pushing it in, in, in until several inches were lodged inside her. Holding it with one hand, she used the other to pull the chain through the hole until it was taut. The friction of the chain against the rubber made a sou
nd like a zipper. She adjusted it carefully, forcing the chain into her labia until it was almost painful and cutting, finally clipping it in front to the length around her waist. Viewed now, the chain was not entirely unlike a sanitary napkin of the old belt-and-pad days, and unrefined as it was it still served its purpose, firmly anchoring the dildo in place and giving the remaining shaft and head very nearly the angle of a real penis.
Next came the white jockey shorts that she pulled on with brisk familiarity, taking a moment to work the dildo through the fly as if she was preparing to urinate . . .
When she was ten, she remembered, her father had taken her to Jacob Reed's and bought her first jockey shorts for her, telling her that she should wear them when she rode horseback to keep down the chafing. The intimacy of what he had done didn't embarrass her, it made her feel good, so good, to know that he thought of her as one of the boys. That night at home she managed to get him alone for a few moments and took down her pants to show him that she was wearing them. At her age it wasn't sexual or even flirtatious. She just wanted to please him. He looked at her oddly as she stood there with her jeans pushed down to her knees and her shirt pulled up. It wasn't a look of disapproval. It was a look that made her tingle, a look she wanted to see again . . .
Over the jockey shorts she pulled on the latex cyclist's shorts, again pausing to work the dildo through a hole in the front of the shorts before she pulled them all the way up. Turning sideways so she could see her behind in the wall of mirrors, she kneaded and prodded her buttocks until they, too, like her breasts, were flattened into a more square, masculine shape, kept that way by the elastic restraint of the tight, girdle-like shorts.
Satisfied, she tugged on the dildo a couple of times to be certain it was still firmly in place and was rewarded with delicious sensations from its friction. There was no doubt about it, she would be able to have an orgasm later with Cynthia. Just because Cynthia was going to die was no reason they shouldn't enjoy themselves beforehand. That's the way it had been with all the South Philly girls. She could see no reason to change it.