Authors: Richard Hawke
The woman in the sunglasses was Robin Burrell.
The other woman was Michelle Poole.
I went back into the front room and closed the apartment door. I pulled a roll of duct tape from the bag and did what I could to tape the dead bolt on and the splintered door back into place. No one was going to be fooled; I just wanted to get things so that I could engage the lock again, even though a simple push would open the door. A very iffy alarm system.
I flipped over one of the cushions of the ratty couch and sat down to wait for him. Rats always return to their holes. I could practically feel the presence of all those hundreds of girls and women crowded onto the walls. They say everyone should have a hobby, but I was somewhat less than impressed by Pratt’s. No wonder Michelle Poole had felt creeped out. People don’t necessarily have to
see
someone to know that they’re being watched. The hair on the back of the neck. The unexplained fear that wants to become a panic. Lord only knows how many other women besides Michelle had sensed a pair of unwelcome eyes consuming them as they moved about the city. I thought of Pratt’s face. Ratface. Scurrying around the city like a oneman infestation, then coming home and going into his tiny room to encourage his infection. My hand tightened around the rubber mallet in my lap. My pistol sat right next to it. The pulsing in my temples wasn’t too bad, considering. Didn’t really matter, in fact. I welcomed it.
I WAS ASLEEP when he came in.
I had dozed off. It was only my so-called alarm that alerted me. The sound of the door rattling woke me.
“What the—?”
The door swung open as I struggled to get up from the low couch. My gun fell to the floor. Pratt stepped into the room. I stood there with the rubber mallet in my grip. I was the intruder, but I had the mallet. Pratt took a step forward, then I saw his eyes noticing the gun at my feet. He turned and took off, racing back out of the apartment. I heard his feet pounding down the hallway, then I heard a grunt and the sound of something hitting the floor. This was followed by a low murmuring. Then silence.
I bent down and retrieved my gun. I checked my watch: 2:10 in the morning. I’d slept like a baby. No dreams that I could remember. I checked to see that nothing had fallen out of my pockets and slipped behind the cushions. All clear. I stood a moment, waiting for my heartbeat to come back to normal, then I left the apartment and made my way up to the roof.
He was on the ground. Jigs had him by the shoulders and was dragging him along the gravelly surface as I emerged from the stairwell.
“Nice of you to join us, sweetheart. You want to lend a hand, or are you just here to watch?”
Pratt’s hands were tied behind his back. The pervert’s face was a mess. Jigs is a kicker. Pratt’s nose and mouth were nearly indistinguishable. A single splotch of red and gristle. He was moaning very softly.
“He can breathe, can’t he? I don’t want him choking on his own teeth.”
“Your kindness always touches me, Fritzy,” Jigs said. He followed this with a hard kick to Pratt’s throat. He leaned down. “Are we breathing, John Michael? Anything we can do to clear your passages?” He grabbed Pratt by the shoulders again. “Help me here.”
I stepped over and grabbed the man’s rubbery legs, and together Jigs and I carried him to the edge of the roof. Jigs positioned Pratt so that his bloodied head was dangling over the side of the roof, five flights above the sidewalk. He kicked the man’s legs apart and settled himself between them, grabbing hold of Pratt’s belt.
“Row row row your boat.” Jigs inched his way forward on his tail, letting gravity assist as Pratt’s torso began making its way over the edge of the roof. Jigs continued wiggling forward until Pratt was halfway over the roof. Jigs had his heels dug in hard, keeping a good grip on the belt, leaning back as far as he could as a counterweight.
“Tickle me, Fritz. Go ahead.”
From below the roofline, Pratt let out a holler. He sounded something like a moose in labor. Even in the pale moonlight, I could see Jigs’s face gone red with the effort of holding on.
“I’d like to see if he’ll bounce, Fritz. Just give me the word.”
I stepped to the edge of the roof and looked down. There was no one on the sidewalk below us. No one was watching. The mallet was still in my hand. I closed my eyes and saw seventeen pictures of Robin and Michelle taped on a closet door. Jigs was speaking in his low, seductive voice.
“He stabbed you, isn’t that so? This man tried to kill you. He put you in the river. The Good Lord only knows what else he did. I don’t think we need a man like this on this good earth, I really don’t.”
I opened my eyes. Jigs was tilted so far back his head was nearly touching the graveled roof. His eyes were wide and white in the moonlight.
“Well?”
I shook my head. “Reel him in.” I dropped the mallet and grabbed hold of Pratt’s belt and jerked him back onto the roof. He was blubbering, snot and blood in equal measure. I got hold of the lapels of his coat and jerked him onto his knees. I got right into his face, disgusting as it was.
“What do you want to tell me about Robin Burrell?” I jerked on his lapels. “What do you want to tell me, Pratt? You can either tell me or you can tell my friend here. Are you clear on this? It’s your choice.”
There was a stench of beer mixed in with the smell of blood. I had to turn my head to get a hit of fresh air. Jigs was on his feet, wiping gravel off the back of his pants. Pratt made a sound.
“What was that? I missed that.”
“Never. Touched her.”
“Never touched
who
? Never touched Robin? Or are you talking about Michelle now?”
“Nobody. Never touched nobody.”
“And I’m supposed to believe you? Is that it? Just take your word for it?” I rattled him again. He moved in my hands as if he were boneless. “You don’t have a healthy take on women, John. You’re aware of that, aren’t you? Did Robin Burrell excite you? Did she piss you off? What was it? Were you jealous because she was friends with Michelle? Did
you
want to be friends with Michelle? Was that it? Was Robin standing in your way?”
His eyes found a semblance of focus on my face, one eye more than the other. “You’re out of your mind.”
I jerked my hands and brought his head down hard on the roof. It bounced once, then fell back to the gravel. I stood up and went back down to Pratt’s apartment and fetched the roll of duct tape I’d used to rig up the dead bolt. I noticed a skylight in the kitchen. I went back into the bedroom and got a half-dozen T-shirts from the dresser. Back on the roof, I knotted the T-shirts together. I located the skylight over Pratt’s kitchen and kicked in some of the glass. Along with the duct tape and the knotted T-shirts, Jigs and I secured the man to the metal framing of the skylight. Jigs wanted to snap his knees and tape his legs up in a funny way, but I persuaded him to back off.
Before we left the roof, I taped one of the police sketches to Pratt’s back. I scribbled a note on it: SPECIAL DELIVERY. JOSEPH P. GALLO. Jigs and I made our way downstairs and called the police from an all-night diner on Twenty-third Street. We told the woman on the other end of the phone that there was a package for Joe Gallo and where to find it. I was famished and asked Jigs if he wanted something to eat. I planned on something with lots of carbs and lots of protein and lots of fat. Jigs demurred.
“I’ve got to see a man about a dog,” he said, producing a comb and moving it over his wavy black hair.
“What man?”
“Well, it’s not really a man,” he said. He gave me the smile so many mothers fear. “Not really a dog, either.”
THE ACTRESS Greer Garson was balanced on the branch of an apple tree, laughing that little-bells laugh of hers and jogging the branch in order to send a cascade of apples falling to the ground. That’s where I was, standing below her. Scores of war planes darkened the sky overhead, but the lovely Miss Garson was oblivious.
Look out belooow
, she sang as the apples plummeted earthward. I’d just caught one of them and was about to bite into it when the ringing telephone fought its way into my consciousness. Greer Garson and her apples dissolved.
I dragged the phone onto the bed, hoping in my guilty haze that it wasn’t Margo. It wasn’t. It was Joe Gallo.
“Did I wake you?”
“You ask that with a smile in your voice.”
“I wanted to thank you for the package.”
“The…? Right. Anytime.”
“I’m not going to ask you how you were able to track down our friend so quickly.”
“I have elves.”
“I’ll bet you do.”
I threw the blankets off and brought my feet to the floor. I don’t use the word “rarified” too often, but that was how the light in my room felt. I cranked my eyes open. Snow was falling steadily outside the window.
“Your special delivery arrived pretty banged up,” Gallo said. “I guess he offered some resistance.”
I took the phone to the window. It was a beautiful snowfall. “Joe, it was so long ago.”
“So do you want to ask me the sixty-four-dollar question, or should I just tell you?”
I knew the answer already. “Pratt didn’t do it.”
“Is that a guess, or do you actually know something?”
“It’s a guess,” I said. “What I do know is that it’s probably a good one. This guy had a hard-on for Asian women. Robin Burrell was zilch to him. Not to mention Riddick.”
“He’s got an alibi for Robin. His parole officer.”
I shouldered the phone to crack the window. White sparks of snow leaped in under my fingers, along with a welcome blast of cold air. “That’s a good alibi. One of the best.”
“We’re filing attempted murder charges against Mr. Pratt. I hope that makes you happy.”
“My heart frolics on sylvan clouds.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing, I’m just being not so clever. So tell me, any word on Bruce Spicer? Have you hauled him in?”
“Not yet.” Gallo paused. “Not that I’m on silver clouds about that.”
“Sylvan.”
“Whatever. We’ll get him. He’s been making calls to the media. He’s talked three different times that we know of to Jimmy Puck. If you want to call it ‘talk.’ More of the raving-lunatic garbage Megan told me about yesterday.”
“How’s Nancy Spicer doing? What’s her condition?”
“It looks like she’ll be fine. We’re having Saint Vincent’s hang on to her until we’ve tucked her husband away.”
“Let’s hope that’s soon.”
“Sooner than soon,” Gallo said.
“Right.”
I hung up the phone and stood another minute or so watching the snowfall. It really couldn’t have been prettier. A part of me wanted to stand there all day watching it coming down. That’s the part that the other part of me always disappoints.
ROSEMARY FOX LEFT the man lying in bed. He didn’t stir as she slid out from under the deadweight of his arm. She crossed to the closet and put on the green satin robe. As she knotted the sash, she saw that one of her nails had broken.
“Shit.”
She looked over at the bed. He hadn’t moved. He was lying on his front, diagonally across the bed. Hog, Rosemary thought. One of his feet jutted out over the edge of the mattress. Size thirteen, as he was always so fond of remarking. The foot had patches of dark hair along the top, as well as wiry tufts sprouting below the toe knuckles. I’m fucking an ape, Rosemary said to herself. I moved from a cowboy to an ape. Where do I go from here? She laughed inwardly as she thought about the Turkish race-car driver she’d met recently. Maybe I can get him to run over my dear little ape. She thought of the Turk’s hands and the strength it must take to keep control of a machine tearing around a track at those insane speeds. She imagined the strong hands gripping her shoulders and how much she’d have to struggle to free herself from them. That had been one of the disappointments with Marshall; he’d been nowhere near as physical as she’d anticipated. She thought they grew ’em tougher out there on the ranch. Marshall had never lacked for invention, she’d grant him that—a hell of a lot more sexual creativity than the sleeping ape—but in the end, ideas are only as good as their execution. At least the ape had delivered. You couldn’t take that away from him.
Rosemary moved into the front room, where she saw that it was snowing. She crossed the checked tiles, grabbing up matches and a pack of cigarettes from the glass table as she swept by, and stopped at the sliding glass doors that led out to the patio. I should be in fucking Vail, Rosemary thought. She scooted a cigarette from the pack, imagining the mountaintop crawling with people in their garish skiers’ garb. The parties. All that laughter. She lit her cigarette and blew the drag out to the side. This is like being under house arrest, she thought. Marshall’s in a jail cell, and I’m in my penthouse prison. Standing by my man. This is how it’s done. She knew the tedious script, and she hated it.
She yanked at the handle and stepped out onto the patio. The air felt arctic. The overhang allowed for an area up against the building where no snow could gather. Rosemary felt her legs turn to ice. Her bare feet were either burning hot or biting cold, it was the same thing. She stepped to the edge of the snow line, taking a long drag on her cigarette, letting the smoke spill out of her mouth of its own accord.
Marshall would piss in his pants if he had even a clue what Rosemary had been up to since the very first day of their estrangement. Poor boy. Such an old-fashioned view of the world. Boys will stray but girls will remain faithful. Marshall knew this wasn’t technically the case, but it was how he operated. It had infuriated Rosemary, how arrogant Marshall had been about his adventures, as if he really were the great gifted god that the hype machine had conjured up and sold so well to the willing public. Hubris. The brilliant god hadn’t even known the damn word when Rosemary had accused him of it. And who
were
some of these women, anyway? That was where Marshall really put it in Rosemary’s face. Easy-lay actresses were one thing. But these working girls. Women with their one-room apartments and their garish friends and no sense of how to really fucking
live
. Especially that little one with the fake breasts and the tiny doll body. How low can you go?