The One a Month Man

by Michael Litchfield

  ‘She’s with the CIA, but you don’t know that, OK?’

  By mid-afternoon, following breakfast with Charley, we were aboard a United Airlines flight to New York.

  By the time I called Sharkey from my cell-phone at 36,000 feet, an hour after take-off, it was gone midnight in the UK. I had Sharkey’s home number and my call woke him up.

  ‘Hello,’ he growled, gravelly, in a tone that translated into: Who the fuck is this? Have you no idea what the time is?

  ‘It’s Lorenzo,’ I said, a tad too cheerfully for someone just earbashed from their sleep.

  ‘What’s up?’ he said, startled, reasoning that a call at this hour could only be from a harbinger of woeful tidings.

  ‘We have an address,’ I said, starkly.

  There was silence as his brain, still sleeping, struggled to compute such a skeletal statement.

  ‘What the fuck are you blathering about?’ he demanded, steaming; his voice rattling like a kettle on the boil. ‘I know you have an address: you’re at the Holiday Inn, Santa Monica. Are you on the juice again?’

  ‘We have an address for Tina,’ I said, spacing out the words, as if talking to an idiot or someone who barely understood English. ‘She’s in New York. We’re on a flight there right now. With luck, we’ll connect with her first thing tomorrow, local time.’

  ‘Christ!’ Suddenly he was wide awake, fuelled by an adrenaline rush. ‘Is this straight up?’ he added, a stupid question prompted by the need for reassurance that he wasn’t dreaming.

  I didn’t bother answering. Instead, I said, ‘I’ll make contact again as soon as we’ve talked with her.’ I was about to warn him that there were complications, none less than Tina living with a female CIA agent, a kindred spirit of our ‘One-A-Month Man’. Just in time, I realized that giving him a middle-of-the-night rollercoaster ride wasn’t one of my better ideas. Leave him on a high, I counselled myself.

  We landed at JFK just before 1 a.m. and bedded down for the rest of the night at a nearby budget motel, being economic with the public purse.

  Neither of us had much sleep. Our brains were tossing and turning even more than our bodies. The thrill of the chase never diminished for me. The closer I got to my quarry, the quicker the pulse of the countdown.

  We didn’t talk in bed, but I bet our thoughts travelled the same tramlines: what would Tina look like after all those years and cosmetic surgery? How much of her strength and vitality had been sapped and warped by the toll and toil of her past wanton life? What kind of reception would we be walking into? Would we be welcomed or would we represent ghosts of the past that she believed had been exorcized decades ago?

  We were powerless to make Tina do anything against her will. Success or failure would hinge on our diplomatic adroitness. Our prospects would depend, I suspected, on how much she had confided in her partner about the dark side of her previous life.

  The heartbeat of the night around JFK differed very little from its rush-hour tachycardia. The thump and throb of traffic were relentless. There was a rhythm to its drone that I found soothing; most city folk should understand that. Silence, not noise, disturbed me. For many years I’d lived under the Heathrow flight-path. And an overland ribbon of Tube lines had served as a boundary to the bottom of our backyard when I was a boy. Every time a train clattered past, the lopsided window of my mini-bedroom would vibrate, making the frame shift, almost cracking the glass. Aircraft flying overhead, either on take-off or landing, would make the whole house shudder, as if being uprooted at the epicentre of an earthquake. Those noises and disturbances would tranquillize me more than any medication or bedtime story. It was the middle-of-the-night stillness that would wake me with a frightening start. Silence was a suffocating kind of death, where there was no pulse and the city ceased to breathe, all oxygen wrung from its lungs. But New York, like London, never needed the kiss of life. Its elixir for eternal, high-octane living came from kinetic energy. Like LA, New York lived on its nerves. Bizarrely, congestion cleared its lungs and kept it breathing. Crime and pollution killed its people, but kept it collectively alive as an entity, against all odds. The city’s blocked arteries were those of a corpse, yet it ran with the constitution of a finely tuned athlete.

  The faint, first light of the new day was creeping around the blinds and across the foot of the bed before I finally dozed off, only to be nudged awake by Sarah less than two hours later.

  ‘It’s six-thirty,’ she said, in a wide-awake voice, devoid of early-morning phlegm. Neither of us had slept enough to be burdened by night-time debris, such as gritty eyes and dusty throats.

  It was imperative that we made an early start. We showered together and were ready in half an hour for breakfast in the 1950s-styled diner that adjoined the motel. We didn’t have far to drive to Queens. The previous night, we’d hired a car at the airport and a detailed street-map of the city came with the vehicle.

  Tina’s home was in a tree-lined avenue, where all the houses were detached, with small but neatly manicured front lawns; mostly open plan, except for a few examples of low, white picket-fencing. Each property had a double garage or car-port. Sprinklers were already hissing and spinning on a few lawns. Cars were a mix of American, European and Japanese. This was a stolid, middle-class suburb, populated by professional people. Middle everything, I guessed. Middle-aged with middle-of-the-road values and politics. Then I cautioned myself against such lazy stereotyping. Criminal history showed that this neighbourhood was the type that harboured spies and white-collar crooks, hackers and rogue City traders, and top-league fraudsters. Often a nest of vipers. Never judge a plant by its flowers. The most attractive could be the most poisonous and the same applied to people – another of my parents’ homilies.

  ‘No car in the driveway,’ observed Sarah, casually; a meaningless fact, really, but it helped to maintain our concentration level.

  One or two cars could have been in the garage. Although Charley had done a good job for us, there was a lot of unfinished homework. For example, we didn’t have the location of the refuge that Tina ran. Neither did we know the hours she worked or whether some nights she slept at her business premises, although this was unlikely. In all probability, she employed a manageress or some kind of overseer.

  The clock on the dash told us it was a couple of minutes before eight o’clock.

  ‘The daughter should be leaving for school soon,’ said Sarah.

  ‘And Tina could be doing the school run.’

  We were parked on the opposite side of the road, about fifty yards from Tina’s place, a two-storey, clapboard and brick property, with a couple of slanting windows in the roof. Net curtains twitched in a couple of houses, but not in Tina’s. Eyes were watching us. Jungle drums on a wavelength beyond our reach would be alerting neighbours.

  ‘Do we have a plan?’ said Sarah, aware that we didn’t.

  ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘Let’s just play it. Last thing we want to do is rush things and blow it.’

  Sarah nodded in agreement.

  ‘I’m hoping we’ll catch her alone,’ I said.

  ‘What happens if the garage opens and Tina drives out?’

  ‘We let her drive off.’

  ‘We don’t follow?’ said Sarah.

  ‘No, we let her go. If she senses she’s being followed, chances are we’ll scare her. Our aim should be to put her at ease. Any case, it would be counter-productive to approach her at the refuge or any public place. We’re in no hurry. We’ll just wait for her to return.’

  Sarah’s face told me that she didn’t fancy a whole day doorstepping.

  ‘We don’t have to stay here all day,’ I said, mind reading. ‘We could always take in Manhattan for a few hours.’ This cheered up Sarah and she switched on the radio, tuning it to an all-day music station, but keeping down the volume.

  At 8.45 the garage door, electrically operated, lifted and a black Lincoln Town Car backed out. A woman was driving and a girl was belted in the front passenger-seat.

&n
bsp; ‘They’re coming this way,’ said Sarah, as the Lincoln swung into the road, its flat, silver-grid nose pointing towards us.

  Instinctively, we turned to one another, as if in intense conversation, so that the occupants of a passing car would catch only a partial snapshot of our faces. Also, hopefully, no suspicion would be aroused.

  The Lincoln swept past us gracefully, but in a hurry.

  ‘Running late,’ Sarah commented.

  ‘The big question is whether she’ll return or will she go straight on to the refuge?’ I said.

  ‘Fifty-fifty.’

  We had less than fifteen minutes to wait for an answer.

  ‘Here she comes,’ I reported, softly, my eyes focused on the driving mirror. ‘Only one person in the car.’

  The driver of the Lincoln didn’t even give us a casual glance in passing.

  ‘Now what?’ said Sarah.

  ‘Let’s give her five.’

  The Lincoln was parked in the driveway and not returned to the garage, indicating that Tina would probably be going out again soon.

  ‘Did you notice if there was another car in the garage when it was open for those few seconds earlier?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘I did notice and there wasn’t a second car.’

  ‘So the odds are she’s now alone in the house.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ I said. ‘A couple more minutes and we’ll make our move.’

  Between us, there was a buoyancy that the journey’s end could be in sight.

  12

  ‘Fingers crossed,’ said Sarah, as we climbed from our car and strolled, as nonchalantly as possible, towards Tina’s house.

  The doorbell chimed musically somewhere deep in the bowels. No movement inside; no sound of approaching footsteps. Just a strange, hollow, cathedral silence.

  I stepped backwards from the front door and gazed up, like a plane-spotter. A curtain shifted at the edges. Could have been caused by air-conditioning eddies, but I doubted it.

  ‘I think we might just have been taken for Jehovah’s Witnesses,’ I said.

  ‘God forbid!’ said Sarah, any flippancy unintentional.

  Sarah pressed the doorbell again, but wisely didn’t maintain the pressure. Irking Tina would have been counter-productive.

  Another wait.

  More inert silence.

  Another single ring of the bell, of longer duration this time, courtesy of Sarah.

  Patience and reserved persistence were at last rewarded.

  The intercom crackled. An articulate, transatlantic voice said, curtly, ‘Yes?’

  I introduced myself via the intercom, which was as disconcerting as talking to an answer-machine. For a moment, I feared she’d been shocked into a faint. Then, piercingly, ‘What do you want?’

  ‘We’re here about crimes committed long ago in the UK,’ I said, deliberately vague and low-key.

  More waiting. More crackling, mixed with stressed breathing.

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Cable,’ said Sarah, our English accents no doubt helping to establish our credibility.

  ‘Do you have ID?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘In that case, walk away from the front door, take out your ID and hold it above your head.’

  ‘Anything to oblige,’ I said, amused, before doing as asked.

  A woman appeared framed in an upstairs window, the net curtains now around her, like a flimsy shawl. Large, military-styled binoculars were held to her eyes. After a few seconds she disappeared and, not long afterwards, the front door was opened tentatively.

  ‘Come in,’ said Tina. ‘You can’t be too careful, especially in my work.’

  ‘And what is that?’ I said, not wanting her to know we’d already run a comprehensive check on her.

  ‘I help desperate women,’ she said, synoptically. ‘There are lots of husbands, ex-husbands, lovers – what a cruel misnomer – and ex-lovers who’d kill, literally, to get their hands around my throat.’

  As soon as we were inside, she bolted the front door. Despite the house seeming to resemble all other domestic residences in the same road, this clearly was a fortress.

  ‘Mind if we go into the kitchen?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, following, with Sarah bringing up the rear.

  ‘I was just having a toast-and-coffee breakfast.’

  Tina had matured into a handsome, middle-aged woman, with slightly greying hair and a proud, upright bearing. She had learned to apply make-up cleverly to camouflage most of the physical scars. The kitchen was typical of an American middle-class, suburban home, fitted with every conceivable modern gadget. Tina wore lightly tinted glasses, so it was impossible to tell in which eye she was blind.

  We sat on high stools around a bar-type table in the centre of the room, lit by lamp-styled lights hung low from the ceiling. A slice of rye toast on a plate at the end of the table nearest the door had been nibbled. A half-drunk mug of black coffee beside the toast had a tepid appearance. Tina placed a mug in front of us both and poured coffee, assuming that we’d join her.

  ‘Help yourselves to cream and sugar,’ she said, pushing jug and jar towards us. Although the true mileage was recorded on her face, her classical features were still intact, but everything about her was melancholy. She could easily have been an off-duty funeral director, such was the sepulchral aura. In an about-the-house jumper, jeans and barefooted, she still looked as elegant as if dressed for a banquet. There was a quiet, understated dignity to her persona.

  ‘So what crimes are you looking into and how can I possibly be of assistance?’ Tina said, spreading herself cowgirl-fashion, as if in the saddle.

  Could this be a genuine question or was she just playing a mind game? I pondered. She might have been thinking that it had something to do with her escort days and the shady characters running those kinds of agencies, but I doubted that. No, she knew. This was a charade; manoeuvring, making us earn our crust.

  ‘Oxford, thirty-odd years ago,’ I said, momentarily leaving the rest hanging elliptically in the air.

  Tina blanched.

  ‘We have identified the perpetrator.’

  ‘You have him in custody?’ she said, astonishment etched over her face.

  ‘No. We know who he is, though. No room for doubt.’

  ‘Why do you need me, then?’

  ‘Because you’re a crucial witness. The one – and only one – who got away from the “One-A-Month Man”.’

  ‘I’m not interested,’ she said, peremptorily. This was a reflex, stony statement. Absolute.

  Sarah was angered, as if a barrel of gunpowder in her soul had been ignited.

  ‘What do you mean you’re not interested?’ she flared.

  Tina stared at Sarah as if firing poisoned arrows from her eyes. ‘Oxford and everything therein belonged to another life of mine, before I was reborn over here. I moved on, dumping my past in the Heathrow departure lounge. I erased my first twenty years from my memory. I don’t intend revisiting them – ever.’

  Conveniently, she’d also erased her swinging Las Vegas days.

  ‘Young women, your peers, fellow students with hopes and dreams, were murdered,’ said Sarah, voice and face a fire of white, pinched heat. ‘They were going places in life. Going to the grave was not their choice; not why they were at Oxford. You’re in the business of saving and protecting abused women, and yet you’re telling us you’re not interested in bringing to justice one of the worst abusers of women, a serial killer. Don’t you feel shame?’

  I flinched; Tina didn’t. This was developing into a verbal skirmish between two very strong female personalities. To have come between them would have been to chance ending up as a sandwich – eaten alive by both of them.

  ‘You’ve no right to sermonize to me about female responsibilities. I’ve paid my dues. Have you?’

  Sarah eschewed being derailed. ‘That killer and abuser of women, a plunderer of futures, has been enjoying freedom for three
decades, while his other victims – the bereaved families – have lived in perpetual mourning, emotionally barren, no sunshine in their lives.’

  I had no idea how Tina would react. She’d be reminded of her own parents and how she abandoned them. Sarah’s tirade could backfire, though it beat tacit surrender.

  Tina showed signs of being winded and unbalanced by Sarah’s flurry of punches.

  ‘Tacky, mawkish sentimentality washes over me, Sergeant. You’ve no concept of what I’ve been through,’ Tina said, resentfully.

  ‘Oh, but I have. All the more reason why you should be doing somersaults at the prospect of seeing that bastard locked away for ever.’

  We were trained not to show emotion. In an instant, Sarah had jettisoned all her training and conditioning; all that bureaucratic crap. She had resorted to behaving like a human being, like someone in the real world and not in a legislator’s isolated and cocooned bubble. I was proud of her.

  ‘I went through hell,’ said Tina.

  ‘All because of the sadism of one man, who got off on his cruel crimes.’

  ‘I’ve done many things of which I’m ashamed,’ Tina declared, absently.

  ‘We know all about that, too.’

  ‘At last I’ve found happiness.’

  ‘Bully for you!’

  ‘My partner knows nothing of my lurid past.’

  ‘No one’s concerned with what you did after leaving Oxford.’

  ‘Who are you kidding? The defence would present me as a scarlet woman, someone who would say anything for a buck.’

  She was right, of course.

  ‘The prosecution would overcome that, affording you covering fire,’ said Sarah, now struggling a shade, momentum stalling.

  ‘What you’re asking me to do is gamble with the life I now have. This home.’ She spread her arms. ‘A child. A partner. Stability. Respect.’

  ‘If you don’t do the right, honourable thing, you’ll hate yourself for evermore,’ Sarah prophesied, really plugging the moral high ground.

  ‘Which pulpit did the police rescue you from?’ Tina retorted, acidly.