Good Chemistry (7 page)

Before either of them noticed or had a chance to react, the sound of keys jangled and the front door swung open wide. In the doorway, with expressions of pure shock on their faces, stood Judy’s mother, father, and sixteen-year-old sister.

Steve, in a euphoric frenzy, detected three more carriers of the DNA that drove him wild. As Judy pulled her torn, button-less shirt closed over her breasts, Steve leaped over the coffee table and grabbed Mrs. Marx.

He cradled her head and quickly buried his tongue deep in her mouth. He was consuming her tender mouth when Mr. Marx grabbed him by the shoulder and whipped him around so he could punch his damned lights out.

He was too slow however, Steve grabbed Mr. Marx and gave him a huge bear hug and began kissing him. Mr. Marx grabbed a handful of Steve’s hair and bellowed. “Get off me, you sick son of a bitch.”

Then Steve began eyeing Candice, Judy’s baby sister. He tumbled over sideways before he ever saw the right cross coming from Mr. Marx.

The Marx family threw Judy a look of shock and bewilderment as Mr. Marx ushered them back out the door to the car. Where he promptly did a burnout as he floored it out of the neighborhood.

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” Hearing all of the commotion, Bernie came rushing out of her bedroom with the antidote in a hypodermic needle.

Steve was oblivious to the slight pin pick on his arm. He had Judy back in an octopus-like stranglehold as he kissed and groped her body. He began to quiver noticeably. His legs buckled under him and he crumpled onto the couch. After a few fraught moments, his eyelashes fluttered back open. Blinking eyes fought back horror as he recalled all that had recently transpired. His mouth fell open and his eyes were as wide as saucers.

Bernie watched as he took one look at Judy, half-naked and purring at the other end of the couch. She smiled lustfully at him.

Then Steve jumped up and shot out the door.

“Oh my God! Do you realize what this means?” Judy looked at Bernie with an expression of alarm.

“No, what?” Bernie asked, terrified to hear the answer.

“You have to go over to Andrew’s parents’ house and make a pass at his
mother
.”

Chapter 7

Debra pulled into the hospital parking lot and took the first available spot, belonging to a doctor. She didn’t care. This was an emergency. She raced across the lobby and up the three flights of stairs. She was faster than any elevator.

When she flew into her father’s room, she at first thought she was too late. Her poor father was motionless. His pallid face was drained of its usual fierce aspect. His color was almost gray, as if she was seeing him on a black-and-white television.

His weight had dropped from two-hundred and twenty-six pounds down to one-hundred forty.

“Oh my God!” Debra gasped, as she took in the spectral-like vision. However, Allan Manning hadn’t given up the fight just yet. His head lolled over with a ghastly unnatural movement like his head weighed too much for his neck to handle.

“Is he in any pain?” Debra asked.

The nurse replied as she adjusted the level on his morphine drip. “No but he’s lapsing in and of consciousness. The drugs are making him hallucinate.” Nurse Phelps squeezed Debra’s shoulder and then left, closing the door behind her, so that Debra could spend the last few moments of his life with her father in private.

Her father made a rough gurgling sound then his eyes went wild with an animated look of terror. Then he calmed back down. Whatever horrific vision he had seen, passed from his sight.

“I’m here, Dad. It’s me, Debra. I’m right here,” she soothed as she clutched his once powerful hand in hers.

His eyes fluttered open once more. Choking, he eventually formed one word. “Branson.”

“No, Dad, Branson isn’t here. It’s me, Debra. Your daughter.”

Her father’s head bounced and wavered like a bobble head.

“Oh, Branson . . . son. . . I’m so sorry. I tried to make a man out of you but it was useless. I’m sorry, I did my best, but you turned out weak. You have the same weakness your mother had. You’re going to run out on me, too.” Her father tried but couldn’t lift his arm, as he grew more agitated.

“Just like your mother. Just like your sister. A taint on the Manning name!” Her father’s eyes rolled back in his skull like candy in a loose wrapper. Another soggy, wet cough rattled his chest.

“Dad, it’s me, Debra, your daughter. I’m here, Dad.”

His bluish lips trembled. “De…Debra? No . . . no . . . no, it can’t be. It can’t be. It can’t be a girl. It’s a mistake. God no! It can’t be. Debra. God, how many times I thought of dropping her off on the steps of a church. I should have snapped her neck. They would have thought it was a training accident. Branson forgive me. I never meant for that filthy bitch to take your place. I didn’t let her! Do you hear me? I didn’t. I tried to train her, but don’t think for a second that I loved her. I only loved you Branson. Debra was the one that should have died. Not you. Please, God, not you.” Allan ruminated to the son that was only a figment of his imagination.

Her father began another coughing fit. Debra sat frozen to her chair, a million miles away, as she listened to what was turning out to be her father’s deathbed confession, of sorts.

“Please, God, not you. Don’t you think for a minute that I didn’t despise her for what she did to us? Dragging that mark of filth and shame into our house.”

As her father droned on in his drug-addled state, Debra got up from the chair she’d pulled over from along the wall. Placing his hand back over the other one crossing his chest, Debra silently turned and walked out of the room. A stream of blazing hot tears rolled down her face as she left her lunatic father there to die alone.

Fifteen minutes later, Debra sat in her Mustang, tears still rolling down her face. The shock her system had just taken left her shaking uncontrollably. It was then, that she noticed the folded-up newspaper on the passenger’s seat that someone must have slipped in her car before she left work.

Absently, she reached over to pick it up. As she lifted one end, a dead rat tumbled out the other and landed in the floorboard. This was the last straw for Debra. Everything she believed in had betrayed her.

She had always understood that her father was a petty tyrant. But, she had believed he loved her. She chalked up his distant coldness as something the Army instilled in him. However, his deathbed confession changed everything.

Suddenly, all those years of brutal physical training and psychological assaults took on an entirely different meaning. Debra had herself convinced it was his way of expressing love. She thought he was preparing her for life the only way he knew how.

Now, in a flash, the truth of her life was apparent. She had wasted her entire life competing with a ghost for her father’s affection. Affection she now realized was never even in the realm of possibility for her. The countless times throughout her childhood when she thought her father hated her, judged by the brutal regime he kept her under, she was right all along. He had hated her.

She had lived and competed in a man’s world all her life. Knowing the whole while that no one wanted her there. She’d poured every ounce of herself into making her father proud of her. Now she finally understood. He was never going to be proud of her no matter want she did.

Debra looked at the dead rat lying stiff-as–a-board on the floorboard. She realized that all the men who had ever hated her for intruding on their little fiefdom were only echoing what her father really felt about her.

She started the car and drove to the beach, parked, and opened the glove compartment. She pulled the giant diamond from the rubber glove. She was no longer concerned about contaminating evidence.

She walked to the edge of the ocean and hurled the gemstone as far out into the Atlantic as she could. Then she saw a deck chair left out on the beach. She laid back on it and looked up at the stars. A cold chill ran down her spine at the precise instant her father finally drew his last breath. Her mind was reeling. It felt like her entire life and everything she believed in, everything she lived by, was rickety scaffolding that had collapsed from beneath her feet.

She felt like she was falling into a bottomless void. Her entire reason for being, her very selfhood, seemed to vanish. It was only now, that Debra realized how utterly alone in the world she really was. And sadly, always had been.

A deep wave of grief swept over Debra. She wept as so much unrealized hurt stirred up painfully inside her soul. A constant backdrop to the pain was the ever-present feeling of loneliness. Her mind received a jolt, as it settled in, that her every memory was now shrouded by a tormenting loneliness, she had never allowed herself to feel before.

The lynchpin for her entire world fell out. With the strong, confident, and rational side of her out-of-commission, a new side of her psyche came to the forefront. She lay in the same spot on the lawn chair crying her eyes out all night.

By the time the sun was rising, there were already people milling about on the beach. Debra gathered herself up and walked shakily back to her car. Her gait was like that of an eighty year-old. Slowly, she slid in behind the steering wheel. She ignored the rat as she drove back to her apartment.

Ordinarily, Debra would be on her way to work by now. Today she didn’t even give it a thought. She closed the blinds and climbed into bed for what promised to be a fitful sleep at best.

Within two hours, Captain Frazier called to see where she was. Not if she was all right, mind you, just where she was. She told him she was deathly ill and wouldn’t be coming in today. He acknowledged it and hung up. His lack of concern wounded Debra deeply. She had her guard down and all of these people’s shit was starting to get through.

Jazz called within a few minutes of Frazier. As soon as she heard through the grapevine that Manning was a no-call, no-show for the first time in her career, she was immediately concerned. The rumor floating around the building was that she probably got loaded the night before and passed out at some strange man or woman’s house. At least, that was the story as Detective Meacham was telling it.

By eleven o’clock, Debra was all cried out. The momentum of a lifetime getting up at four-thirty finally demanded that she get herself out of bed. Debra took a long hot relaxing shower and then got dressed. She stepped out into the blinding sunshine. There was so much light that it hurt her eyes to look at the cement sidewalk because of the glare. Debra strolled the six blocks down to Cabana Bob’s to get an early lunch.

She ordered her usual. A fruit plate, BLT, and a glass of unsweetened ice tea. A few minutes later, a shadow passed over her from behind. Assuming it was the waiter returning with her tea, she shifted the newspaper to make room. She lowered the newspaper from her gaze as someone pulled out the other chair at her table.

She was about to send whomever it was packing, but then
he
sat down. The tall, handsome stranger from last night’s benefit. The Doc Robber himself.

“How are you this morning, Debra?”

Instantly, she got her hackles up. She thought she heard a note of arrogant presumption in his voice. However, as she looked at his eyes, she saw only warmth and sympathy. It gave her a jolt. Against her will, a tear welled up and rolled down her cheek.

Before she could react, Johansen had his handkerchief out and gently dabbed her cheek. Without a mother, Debra could honestly say she could not recall ever being touched that gently in her entire life.

“I’m going to arrest you. You do realize that, right?”

“Really? You can’t even identify me. Did you get a hit on my fingerprints?” Johansen’s lips curled up on one side in a devil-may-care grin.

“Oh, you haven’t turned it in yet. Fascinating.”

His eyes seemed to look right through her. How in the hell did he know
that
? “I just haven’t made it back to work, that’s all.”

Johansen cracked up laughing. “You’re a terrible liar. Fascinating.”

Debra glared at him. She didn’t like feeling that he was toying with her. “So just what in the hell do you find so fascinating about me?” Debra expected her rush of fury to put him in his place, but it didn’t faze him at all. He seemed to be enjoying getting her riled up.

“Honestly? You. You, fascinate me. After my last job, when you did the press conference on television, I developed an interest in you. I’ve been thinking about you ever since.”

Debra peered critically into his deep mysterious eyes. She didn’t know quite what to think of all this nonsense. “Really? Why me?”

“Well, to be completely honest about it, I feel sorry for you.”

“Oh really! And just how did you arrive at that?” Something under Debra’s brave bravado made her a little apprehensive about what he was going to say next.

“Because you’re lost. You’re stuck. Obviously, you have a tough, highly polished exterior. You’re stronger than ninety percent of the men you know and all the women. You can’t completely hide the sadness that’s always there, just under the surface. Now it seems to have broken through.”

Debra sighed and cocked her head sideways shaking it at his condescending line of bullshit.

“There’s a hot, passionate woman locked up inside of you like a caterpillar in a cocoon, waiting to burst forth as a beautiful butterfly.”

Debra chuckled and glared at him defiantly. “Oh really. Is that so?”

“Yes, actually it is. It’s rather obvious to anyone who has eyes to see it.”

“Is that right?”

“It’s all right there in your eyes.”

Debra shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Either this guy was a really good guesser or he was some kind of psychic. She was beginning to feel cornered.

“I see you. I know where you are and where you’ve been.”

“And just where might that be?”

“Hell. No man’s land. Your heart aches for someone to love you. To be your partner, your equal . . . but you’re too strong. You intimidate everyone. You’re the one who ends up feeling like Frankenstein. I’ve thought about making love to you.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. I’m the only man who can.”

Debra choked and sputtered on her tea when he said that.

“I’m the only man strong enough to be your equal. I have no need to put you down or to control you. I can see that you’re in a tremendous amount of pain as well. I’m strong enough to be vulnerable and help you through it. I’m strong enough that I can afford to show weakness.”

Johansen gazed deeper and deeper into her eyes. “I know what pain is. You won’t put me in jail, Debra Janine Manning. No. In fact, you’re going to join me.”

This time it was Debra, who cracked up laughing.

“You’re the only woman strong enough to be
my
partner. You’ve forged yourself into a sword of the hardest steel. The question is . . . do you have the will to wield it?”

“Is that right?” Debra kept nodding condescendingly at Johansen.

“You know it is. You’re already beginning to question everything. Why should you live a life like everyone else? If they want to be half-hearted peons, fine. Let them. But you’re strong enough to be free.”

“To what, be a thief like you?”

“Sure, why not? All of your life you’ve lived by someone else’s rule book. Where has that gotten you? You’re not loved. You’re not respected. You’re not understood. You’re not free. Hell, you’re not even appreciated for what you do.”

Debra flinched. This bastard was reading her like a book and all she could do was sit there repeating, ‘Oh really.’

“What you are is strong. Strong enough to forge your own destiny. However, without someone to share it with it’s completely meaningless. If you don’t join me, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. If you don’t use that strength you’ve developed, it will only become tiresome and heavy, and eventually it will outweigh you. Your own strength will collapse on you and crush you from within. I think it’s started already. Where are you thinking of going? The FBI, the CIA?

It’s still the same school, just the next year along. Same weak, egotistical men calling you dyke to your face and bitch when your back is turned. Well, I’ve given you a lot to think about. I must be going, but I will be seeing you again, soon.” Johansen stood up and leaned his long steely frame over the table. Putting a strong, confident finger under Debra’s chin, he turned her face up to his. Gently his lips brushed across hers.