Sex, Murder and a Double Latte (13 page)

Anatoly was quiet for a moment. “If I remember correctly, Cary Grant turns out to be a good guy in the end. So in this case the fiction seems to be preferable to the reality. Unless, of course, you’re in my position. I’d much rather date a divorced woman than one who is still married.”

“Well, aren’t we Mr. Morality?”

“Why, are you unconcerned with the marital status of your dates?”

“No, no, I steer clear of the men with gold bands around their ring fingers. It’s not that I don’t empathize with women who are unwittingly married to lecherous bastards, but I’m not particularly interested in donating my time, effort and body in order to open their eyes to the truth.” I popped an overly saturated popcorn kernel in my mouth. “Do you know that they actually changed the ending of this movie because the studio didn’t want Cary Grant playing a bad guy? The way it was originally written he ended up killing her. It would have been better that way. I always like it when the leading man turns out to be the villain. No one ever expects it.”

Anatoly gave me one of his disarming half smiles. “You do have a dark side, don’t you.”

I didn’t have time to respond. Like Leah I have a few rules of my own, and one of them is never to talk over a Hitchcock film.

When the movie was over we walked over to the 500 Club, a neighborhood bar a block away from the theater. Well, Anatoly walked; I floated. So far the evening had been as close to perfect as it could get. I had a gorgeous guy on my arm, Hitchcock on the big screen, a big tub of greasy popcorn and now an alcoholic beverage. We seated ourselves at an intimate little table and I enjoyed a particularly strong martini while checking out my surroundings. Our fellow patrons ranged from those who were trying too hard, to others who weren’t trying at all. The result was an appealing atmosphere that felt open and accepting. It occurred to me that for the last few hours I hadn’t thought about
Sex, Drugs and Murder
or my psychotic fan. I was actually relaxed. Well, somewhat relaxed; every ten minutes or so Anatoly would cast me a look that caused my pulse to race up to a speed that could break the sound barrier, but other than that I was perfectly calm. And his taste in movies… God, maybe the man had relationship potential after all. I could feel him staring at me again. No doubt about it, I wanted him. But Leah was probably right; I should hold out for one more date. I met his gaze and then quickly hunched my shoulders in an attempt to hide the state of my nipples. The guy hadn’t even touched me yet—how could I be reacting this way? I decided to take a stab at casual conversation.

“Nobody does suspense like Hitchcock.” My pitch was a note too high to be perceived as casual. I took a steadying breath and tried again. “I swear I will spend my entire career aspiring to his creative genius.”

Anatoly smiled. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.” He reached forward and rested his hand on top of mine. “You look beautiful tonight.”

“Really?” I lowered my voice to a husky whisper. “What does it for you? The wrinkled khakis or the helmet hair?”

“The whole package,” Anatoly said before pulling me in for a kiss.

I have always believed that you can judge a man’s skills as a lover by the way he kisses. If that was true, Anatoly was a sex god. It couldn’t have been more than sixty degrees in that bar and I still felt the need to remove my jacket as well as a few other choice pieces of clothing. Leah could afford her rules—she was married. Last time I had sex, Jack hadn’t even been conceived yet.

Anatoly released me. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah, I guess I’m ready to head out.”

“Are you sure?” The goading tone in which he asked the question was unmistakable. “I wouldn’t want to rush you.”

“Anatoly, do me a favor. Stop being such a smug bastard and let’s get out of here before you start pissing me off.”

“Got it.” He left a few bills on the bar and escorted me out.

On the ride home I rested against Anatoly’s back and visualized how the rest of the evening was going to play out. Anatoly would bring me to my building. I would ask him up for a nightcap. A nightcap…was that too cliché? But then again, who the hell cared if it was cliché or not? The point was, I would get him to come up to my apartment and, in so doing, I would be killing two birds with one stone. I would have a man who was trained in the art of combat accompany me inside
and
with any luck I would finally get laid. Hell, maybe I’d even get him to fix my window for me.

I was so absorbed in my planning that I didn’t notice when Anatoly passed my turn. When he did stop the bike, it was in front of his place. He paused for me to dismount before parking.

I pulled off my helmet. “What are we doing here?”

Anatoly took off his helmet as well. “We’re going up to my place.”

“Really? I don’t remember you asking me.”

“I didn’t have to ask. It’s obvious that you wanted to.”

I felt my anticipation transform into acute annoyance. “Uh-huh. And this is the world according to Anatoly?” Really, this was a little egotistical even for him.

“I just call them as I see them.”

I smiled and placed a gentle hand against his cheek. “Great. Then you can tell me what you call it when you see me walking away.” I tossed the helmet at him and started toward my building.

I could hear him calling after me but I had no intention of turning around. Of all the nerve. I jammed my hands in my pockets to better protect them from the sting of the damp cold. Yeah, I had wanted to sleep with him and maybe that had been obvious from the way I’d responded to his advances, but there was a certain etiquette that needed to be observed. Maybe things weren’t as black-and-white as Leah liked to paint them, but at least he should have had the courtesy to ask me what I wanted before just bringing me to his place with the expectation of getting screwed. What a schmuck. And I didn’t sleep with schmucks any more than I slept with Neanderthals.

The empty streets just fueled my aggravation. If I could just forcefully push by some pedestrians or scream at a honking car I might be able to release some of my mounting frustration. But no, all my Russian Hill neighbors had to be responsible and retire early on Sunday nights, leaving me with nothing to scream at but the stars, and I couldn’t even do that thanks to all the fricking fog. I finished the three-block trek downhill and turned the corner onto my street. I squeaked in surprise upon finding myself face-to-chest with Andy.

“Andy.” I faltered and checked my watch. “It’s 1:00 a.m. What are you doing here? Wait, don’t tell me—you’re bringing more groceries to Mrs. Murphy.”

Andy didn’t smile. “I was waiting for you.”

“At 1:00 a.m.?” What the hell was going on? My previous vexation was forgotten as hundreds of little alarm bells started going off in my head. But this was Andy. The guy I had once seen crying over a dead pigeon. He wasn’t any threat.

“I came after work. I wanted to give you a flower.” I looked down at his clenched hand and saw what at one time must have been a daisy. All the petals had been pulled off and the center had been crushed.

I tried to laugh. “So I guess you changed your mind?” I took a step back as he moved forward.

“I saw you get on his motorcycle. He’s your boyfriend.”

“No, Andy, he’s not, he’s just a—”

“You’re a liar. You kissed him! I saw! I saw! You lied to me!”

This was not okay. I glanced up at the dark windows of the apartment buildings around me. Was he shouting loud enough to wake anybody? Should I scream? But even if I did, how helpful would that be in a city full of people who had become accustomed to hearing the loud ravings of drunks and derelicts? No, it had always been my experience that keeping cool was the best way to handle volatile people. If I could remain calm I could probably calm him down too. After all, this was Andy.

“Andy, I didn’t lie to you. Now it’s late and I’m tired. I’m going to go home and go to bed. I think it would be a good idea if you did—”

Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. This was the moment when I needed to scream, but his hands were too tight around my throat. My back was slammed against the wall of a building.
Go for the eyes.
That’s what Dena always said. I reached my hands out, thumbs extended, but I only grazed his cheeks. He was so tall. I don’t think I ever really realized how tall he was. I could feel myself being lifted off the ground. I kicked at him but it was useless. Little dots began to float before me, multiplying as they went. I was going to die now. Would everything just go black? How long would it take? Dear God, if I could just have one last breath of air.

And then I was on the ground, and the air I had been deprived of flooded into my lungs with such force that it caused me to hack and convulse. Things still weren’t in focus. Andy was on the ground screaming—but who was on top of him?

“What’s going on down there? I’m calling the police!” It was a voice from one of the windows above. My vision began to clear and I saw Anatoly. He had his knee in Andy’s stomach and was using both hands to bang his head into the pavement.

I began to make sense of what was happening. “Stop!” I screamed. “Pin him, don’t kill him! He doesn’t know what he’s doing!” I crawled to Andy’s head and grabbed Anatoly by the shirt. “I’m okay! It’s okay! Just pin him!”

Anatoly looked at me. The cool calculation in his eyes made me recoil. He looked down at Andy, who was now clinging on to consciousness and whimpering like an injured child. “She called me retard. I didn’t mean to. It’s not nice. It’s not nice.”

The sirens came and the police told us to lie flat against the pavement. Considering our position that was an easy feat to accomplish. For Andy, it wasn’t even a choice. At first I thought the dampness against my face was the result of the mist, but as I heard the second set of sirens approaching I realized that it was tears.

In a matter of minutes another squad car arrived and then an ambulance. The police separated the three of us so we could be questioned individually. I don’t think Andy was ever able to give them a coherent answer, and it wasn’t long before the paramedics loaded him onto the ambulance. A uniformed cop climbed on with him and the vehicle disappeared down the street with its siren blaring. I tried to ignore the pain speaking caused me so I could answer the questions of the blond sergeant standing by my side, but for some reason I was having a hard time making sense of his words. I mumbled something about being cold, and he told me I was in shock. He draped a blanket around my shoulders and helped me into his police car. I heard him say something about taking me to the hospital for an exam and I nodded my consent. I looked out the window and locked eyes with Anatoly who was busy answering the questions of one of the other cops. We didn’t break eye contact until the squad car I was in pulled away from the curb and drove off.

Two and a half hours later I was still shaking. I was sitting on the cushioned examination table in a stark hospital room. I had been questioned, a woman had taken pictures of the rapidly forming bruises on my neck and I had been checked for any lingering injuries. Andy was in another room somewhere being nursed back to health so that the waiting policemen could lock him up. I was finding the whole thing impossible to grasp. How could my turning down a date transform a sweet guy into a raving psychopath?

“How you doing?” I looked up to see the curly-haired detective who had questioned me earlier. His lean body resting against the door frame seemed to offer little protection against everything that awaited me outside the room.

“How’s Andy?”

The detective gave a rueful laugh. “That’s awfully generous of you.” He scratched the back of his head and took a few steps forward. “Manning has a hairline fracture in his skull and a minor concussion, but he’ll live. No thanks to him, you will too.”

I put a protective hand over my throat.

“We weren’t formally introduced before. I’m Detective Joe Lorenzo.”

I tried to smile but I couldn’t find the will to do it. “I don’t know what set him off. I made up some excuse when he asked me out, but still…he had always been so nice to me, to everyone.”

“Not to everyone—at least not to the woman he recently killed in your neighborhood.”

My stomach did a little nauseous flip-flop. “Susan Lee? Are you sure?”

“We took his prints.” Lorenzo lowered himself onto the doctor’s stool. “They’re a match to the ones that were all over the crime scene. The doctors don’t want us interrogating him yet, but I was able to sneak in a few questions. He’s not denying it.”

“After Anatoly pulled him off of me he was mumbling something about being called a retard. I’ve never said anything derogatory to him. Do you suppose that was something she said?”

“Very possible. Manning has frontal lobe damage. That can occasionally result in impulse control problems and violent behavior.” Lorenzo crossed his arms and cocked his head to the side. “I just got off the phone with Gorman. He told me that the damage done to your car was treated as a standard vandalism. I’m sorry about that. You understand he was just following procedure.”

“You think Andy was the one who tore up my car?”

“Most likely. Infatuated people sometimes do weird stuff.”

“Are you going to check the car for his prints?”

“Has it been parked on the street or in a garage?”

“The street. I haven’t driven it since it was vandalized.”

Lorenzo sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “And the window was broken, right? So it wasn’t—isn’t—locked?”

I let my gaze fall to the speckled linoleum floor. “It didn’t seem like a necessary precaution considering the state of my car.” I silently cursed myself. I should have called the emergency window-repair place.

“We might dust it in hopes of finding more evidence to support our case, but a lot of time has passed. Theoretically he could have touched your car after the vandalism. A print would be a nice bit of circumstantial evidence, but nothing more.”

“What about the prank calls?”

Lorenzo shook his head to indicate he hadn’t been informed of that portion of my fun-packed week.

“On Thursday I received a whole bunch of prank calls, at least four. They didn’t say anything, just hung up,” I explained. “After the fourth one I told the caller that I was married to a cop so he’d better cut it out. That night he called again. I got the weirdest feeling that he knew I was lying about the cop thing.”