Calypso (87th Precinct), page 17
“Good evening,” she said.
“Hello,” he said.
The dog looked at him. He began to shake every time he saw the dog. She told him once that if he misbehaved again, if he did anything to displease her, she would drug him and then let the dog do something to him while he was unconscious. She did not say what she would let the dog do. He…he kept remembering the needles. He kept thinking she might have the dog bite him while he was unconscious. Have the dog hurt him, wake up later to find himself chewed…chewed to pieces or something. The dog frightened him. But she frightened him more than the dog did.
“Miss me?” she asked.
He did not answer.
“I see you haven’t finished your food,” she said.
“There was a lot of it.”
“Yes, but I knew I’d be gone overnight. That’s why I left you enough food. Would you have preferred less?”
“No, no, it’s just…”
“Then why didn’t you eat what I left you?”
“I’ll eat it all now, if you like.”
“Yes, I think I’d like that. I’d like you to eat all your food. I go to all the trouble of making sure you’re properly fed…”
“If you let me go, you wouldn’t have to feed me anymore.”
“No,” she said, “I’m not letting you go.”
“Why do you want me here?”
“I enjoy you here. Eat your food. You said you were going to eat all your food.”
He went to the couch, sat, and began picking at the food on his tray. He was not hungry, he had really eaten enough. But she was watching him.
“Would you like to know why I’ve been going to the city so often?” she asked.
He watched her warily. Too often, she set traps for him, and he was sorry later.
“Would you like to know?” she asked again.
“If you’d like to tell me,” he said cautiously, and poked his fork at the food.
“To protect you,” she said.
“Protect me how?”
“To save your life,” she said.
“Sure,” he said, “to save my life.”
“Eat your food, Santo.”
“I’m eating it.”
“Or don’t you like what I prepared for you?”
“I like it fine.”
“You don’t seem to like it.”
“I’ll eat it. I said I’ll eat it, and I will.”
“Now,” she said. “While I’m here.”
“All right, while you’re here.”
“I don’t want you flushing it down the toilet, the way you did with the liver that time.”
“I don’t like liver.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know that when I prepared—”
“You knew it. I told you I didn’t like liver. You made it on purpose. You made it because—”
“If I did, then it was because you displeased me somehow.”
“I always seem to displease you somehow.”
“No, that isn’t true. You please me enormously. Why would I keep you here if you didn’t please me?”
“To torture me, that’s why.”
“Have I ever tortured you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a lie, Santo.”
“The needles…”
“That was punishment. And you were asleep, remember.”
“They were in me when I woke up!”
“Yes, to strengthen you.”
“How did you expect them to…?”
“I don’t like to talk about sex,” she said.
“You’re a fuckin’ sex fiend, but you don’t like to talk about it.”
“I certainly don’t like to talk about what was becoming your inability to—”
“My inability, shit! You beat me, you torture me, you drug me, and then you expect me to get a hard on every time you walk in the room.”
“Yes,” she said, and smiled. “That is what I expect, that’s true. Eat your food, Santo.”
“I don’t want any more,” he said, and pushed the tray away from him. “I’m full.”
“All right,” she said.
Her voice was oddly mild, it frightened him. He watched her. She was standing just inside the door, one hand in the dog’s leash. She was dressed in black from head to toe, black slacks, a black silk blouse, black boots.
“I’ll give it to the dog instead, would that please you, Santo? Giving your food to Clarence?”
“If I’m not hungry—”
“Tomorrow I’ll prepare food for the dog instead. I’ll prepare your food for Clarence, would you like that, Santo?”
“Look, I really enjoyed what I ate, I really did. But I’m not hungry anymore, you can’t expect me to—”
“Yes, I can, Santo. I can expect you to.”
She dropped the dog’s leash and walked to the coffee table. She picked up the tray, carried it back to the door, and put it down before the dog. He sniffed at the tray but did not touch the food until she said, “All right, Clarence,” and then he began eating.
“He’s better trained than you are,” she said.
“I’m not an animal,” Santo said.
“I should let you die,” she said. “Instead of going to all this trouble.”
“What trouble?”
“In the city,” she said vaguely. “Here. All this trouble trying to save you.” She watched the dog eating. “How do you feel about C.J. not coming here anymore?” she asked.
“I like C.J.,” he said.
“Oh, yes, how you like C.J.,” she said, and chuckled.
“Why isn’t she coming anymore?”
“Perhaps she doesn’t want to.”
“I thought…”
“Yes, she seemed to be enjoying herself, didn’t she? But perhaps she was getting a bit tired of your behavior. Not everyone has my patience, you know.”
“My behavior? You were the one who—”
“Anyway, I don’t want to talk about sex. You know I hate talking about sex. I thought I could trust C.J. Are you finished?” she asked the dog. “Are you finished, darling?”
“What do you mean? Why can’t you trust her?”
“She was very young, too young, in fact. Young people don’t seem to realize—”
“Was young? What do you mean was young?”
“I’m going to explain something to you, Santo. Come here, come undress me.”
“No, I don’t want to. Not now.”
“Yes, now. Do as I say.”
“I just finished eating, I don’t feel like—”
“No, you didn’t finish eating, Clarence finished eating for you, didn’t you, darling? And I’m sure you don’t want to annoy Clarence further by not doing what I’m asking you to do. I would hate to have Clarence…”
“All right,” he said. “All right, goddamnit!”
“Especially since you seem so very sensitive about scars and bruises on your glorious body.”
“Yes, very sensitive.”
“Even when they’re for your own good.”
“Yes, my own good, sure.”
“Unbutton my blouse,” she said. “Yes, your own good.”
“The cigarette burns—”
“Slowly, Santo. Button by button. Yes, that’s it.”
“—were for my own good.”
“Yes, to teach you to quit smoking. Do you like me without a bra, Santo?”
“I enjoyed smoking.”
“Yes, but cigarettes were bad for you. Do you like my breasts, Santo? Kiss my breasts. Kiss my nipples.”
“Burned me all over my body.”
“Yes.”
“Drugged me, and then—”
“Isn’t it better that you’ve quit smoking? Let’s not talk about things that had to be done to make you a better person, Santo. You’re a better person since you stopped smoking. You’re healthier, you’re—”
“You didn’t have to burn me with those fuckin’ cigarettes! I’m your prisoner here, all you had to do—”
“No, no.”
“—was quit bringin’ me cigarettes, that’s all you had to do! Look at these scars all over me! You burned me all over my body! All over me.”
“No, not all over you,” she said, and smiled. “Finish undressing me, Santo. I want you very badly.”
“When don’t you want me?”
“Hush, now. Carry me to the bed.”
“Fuckin’ sex fiend,” he said.
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s what you are. A fuckin’ female rapist.”
“No,” she whispered, “no, I’m not, really. I want you to do what C.J. loved to do.”
“C.J. loves to do nothing. She’s a whore who gets paid for whatever she does.”
“Yes, she was nothing but a whore. She didn’t understand, Santo. If she’d understood, she wouldn’t have told.”
“Told? Told what?”
“In the beginning, no one knew. Not even the man who changed the locks on the doors. I told him I wanted to lock my dog in here. I told him I had a vicious dog.”
“You do have a vicious dog.”
“Gently, Santo, you do enjoy it, don’t you? Tell me you enjoy it.”
“What’d she tell? What’d C.J. tell?”
“About us, I’m sure. Her experiences, she said. Can you imagine? Told me in the boat going back last Thursday. A whore’s experiences. Mmm, yes, Santo, that’s very good. I’m not even sure about the man who changed the locks, anymore. Do you think he suspects? Do you think he’ll tell the way she did? I just don’t know, Santo, oh, God, that’s delicious. I don’t want anyone else to know about you, ever again. I’m not going to make that mistake again.”
“Who’d C.J. tell?”
“Someone who isn’t going to bother us anymore.”
“Who?”
“Do it to me, Santo, do it.”
“Who?”
“Yes, that’s it, yes. Oh, Jesus, yes.”
By Thursday morning, everything in the squadroom was sticky and soggy. DD report forms clung moistly to each other and to the carbon paper that was supposed to be separating the triplicate copies. File cards pulled from the drawers grew limp within minutes of exposure to the dampness. Forearms stuck to desktops, erasers refused to erase properly, clothing seemed possessed of sponge-like qualities—and still the rains came. They came in varying degrees, either as torrential downpours or relentless drizzles, but they came unabated; the city had not seen a patch of blue sky for the past eight days.
When the call from Gaucho Palacios came at 10:00 A.M. that morning, Meyer was in the middle of a joke about rain. His audience was Bert Kling and Richard Genero. Genero had no sense of humor, although Genero’s mother thought he was a very comical fellow. The funniest joke Genero ever heard in his life was the one about the monkey humping a football. Every time Genero told that joke, he cracked up. He did not think many other jokes were funny, but he listened to them politely, and always laughed politely when they were finished. Then he instantly forgot them. Whenever he went to his mother’s house, which was every Sunday, he pinched her on the cheek and comically said to her, “You’re getting to be a little fatty-boo, ain’t you, Mama?” which his mother found uproariously funny. Genero’s mother loved him a lot. She called him Richie. Everybody on the squad called him Genero, which was odd, since otherwise they all called each other by their first names. Even the lieutenant was either Pete or Loot, but certainly never Byrnes. Genero, however, was Genero. He listened now as Meyer came roaring down the pike toward the punch line.
“Yeah,” Carella said into the phone, “what’ve you got, Cowboy?”
“Maybe a line on this Joey La Paz. You still interested?”
“I’m still interested.”
“This may be nothin’,” the Gaucho said, “or it may be choice meat. Here’s what happened. This little girl come in the shop maybe half an hour ago, looking over the goodies, and we start talkin’ and it turns out she’s in Joey’s stable.”
“Where is he? Does she know?”
“Well, that’s what I ain’t got yet. This is like a funny thing going on here. Joey’s moved underground ’cause he’s afraid you guys are gonna pin that hooker kill on him. But this girl here—the one right here in my shop this minute—is scared to death she’s gonna be the next one. She won’t go back to the apartment…”
“Did she tell you where it is?”
“No. Anyway, Joey ain’t there now. I told you, he dug himself a hole and pulled it in after him.”
“Here in the city?”
“The girl don’t know.”
“Can you hold her there for me?”
“I can only sell her so much underwear,” the Gaucho said.
“I’ll be there in five minutes. Keep her in the shop,” Carella said.
At his own desk, Meyer said, “And here I thought it was raining!” and burst out laughing. Kling slapped the top of the desk, and shouted, “Thought it was raining!”
Genero blinked, and then laughed politely.
The girl in the back room of the Gaucho’s shop seemed surrounded by the tools of a trade far too sophisticated for her years. A slight, rather pretty redhead with a dusting of freckles on her cheeks and her nose, she looked like a thirteen-year-old who’d been called into the principal’s office for a minor infraction. Her clothing—her costume, to be more accurate—exaggerated the notion that here was a child just entering puberty. She wore a white cotton blouse and a gray flannel skirt with knee-length white socks and patent-leather Mary Jane shoes. Small-breasted and thin-wristed, narrow-waisted and slender-ankled, she appeared violated—nay, desecrated—just standing there in front of the Gaucho’s walled display of leather anklets, penis extenders, aphrodisiacs, inflatable life-sized female dolls, condoms in every color of the rainbow, books on how to hypnotize and otherwise win women, and one product imaginatively named Suc-u-lator. Batting her big blue eyes, the girl seemed lost in an erotic jungle not of her own making, but suddenly, Little Orphan Annie opened her mouth and a coven of lizards and toads came crawling up out of the sewer.
“Why the fuck did you send for a cop?” she asked Gaucho.
“I was worried about you,” Gaucho lied.
“What’s your name?” Carella asked her.
“Fuck off, mister,” she said. “What’ve you got me for? Buying a pair of sexy panties? Don’t your wife wear sexy panties?”
“I haven’t got you for anything,” Carella said. “The Cowboy tells me you’re scared somebody’s about to—”
“I’m not scared of nothing. The Cowboy’s wrong.”
“You told me—”
“You’re wrong, Cowboy. You want to wrap this stuff, I’ll pay for it and be on my way.”
“Where’s Joey La Paz?” Carella asked.
“I don’t know anybody named Joey La Paz.”
“You work for him, don’t you?”
“I work for the five-and-ten.”
“Which one?”
“On Twelfth and Rutgers. Go check.”
“Where do you work nights?”
“I work days. At the five-and-ten on Twelfth and Rutgers.”
“I’ll check,” Carella said, and took his pad from his inside jacket pocket. “What’s your name?”
“I don’t have to give you my name. I didn’t do anything, I don’t have to give you a fuckin’ thing.”
“Miss, I’m investigating a pair of homicides, and I haven’t got time for any bullshit, okay? Now what’s your name? You’re so eager for me to go checking on you, I’ll start checking, okay?”
“Yeah, you go check, smart guy. My name’s Nancy Elliott.”
“Where do you live, Nancy?”
The girl hesitated.
“I said where do you live? What’s your address?”
Again, she hesitated.
“What do you say?” Carella said.
“I don’t have to give you my address.”
“That’s right, you don’t. Here’s what we’ll do, Miss Elliott, if that’s your real name—”
“That’s my real name.”
“Fine, here’s what we’ll do. I’ve got reason to believe you have information concerning a person we’re seeking in a homicide investigation. That’s Joey La Paz, whose name I mentioned just a little while ago, in case you’ve already forgotten it. Now, Miss Elliott, here’s what we’ll do if you refuse to answer my questions. What we’ll do is have you subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury, and they’ll ask you the same questions I’m asking you, but with a difference. If you refuse to answer them, that’s contempt. And if you lie to them, that’s perjury. So what do you say? We can play the game my way or we can play it yours. Makes no difference at all to me.”
Nancy was silent.
“Okay,” Carella said, “I guess you want—”
“I don’t know where he is,” she said.
“But you do know him.”
“I know him.”
“Want to tell me what your relationship is?”
“You know what it is, let’s just cut the crap, okay?”
“Fine. Did you also know Clara Jean Hawkins?”
“Yes, I knew her.”
“When did you last see her alive?”
“The morning of the day she caught it.”
“Last Friday morning?”
Nancy nodded.
“Where?”
“The apartment.”
“Where’s that?”
“Joey’ll kill me,” she said.
“Where’s the apartment?”
“On Laramie and German.”
“But you say he’s not there now?”
“No, he split on Sunday, soon as he heard about C.J.”
“Why’d he split?”
“He’s afraid you’ll hang it on him.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“He didn’t tell us nothing. He just split. I’m guessing, is all.”
“Who do you mean by us?”
“Me and the other girls.”
“How many of you?”
“Four, when C.J. was alive. Three of us now.” She shrugged. “That’s if Joey ever comes back.”
“Do you think he will?”
“If he didn’t kill C.J.”
“Do you think he killed her?”
