Chapter Three:
Struggling through a long night of restless sleep, I woke up to the startling sight of Alexandria sitting on the edge of my bed. She was nurturing a steaming, freshly brewed cup of coffee. The coffee smelled good, and surprisingly, so did Alexandria. How could that be, I thought, my sense of smell is supposed to be dead?
Was it a phantom smell, an imaginary call back from the days my sense of smell still functioned, or was it merely a strange aberration, a temporary reprieve from an unpleasant norm? Can’t you stop analyzing it, a voice in my head said, and just enjoy it while it lasts. Yes I can, I answered, and I did.
“I made a fresh pot of coffee,” she said. “Would you like some of mine?”
“Sure.” I was an unapologetic caffeine addict. Especially after I first wake up. I can’t function without it. I often dream of the day when someone would come up the idea of an IV drip that would be set to a timer, go off at a certain time, and drop two or coffee into your system right before you wake up. Wouldn’t that be a great thing!
Alex handed me her cup as I sat up in a more drinkable position. Her hands brushed lightly against mine. Purposely so, I believe.
“Neal?”
“Yeah.”
“How did I get here last night?”
“You passed out on the front porch. I wasn’t home, but my neighbor across the street saw you and came to your rescue. She put you on the back patio, then came over and told me when I got home.”
I swallowed a large dose of caffeine, I mean coffee. Alex looked raggedy as hell. Her hair was all over the place, a real knotted up, chaotic mess. Her eyes looked even worse. Bloodshot, broken, lost.
“Neal?“
“Yeah.”
“This woman who helped me. Could you thank her for me?”
“Sure, but she didn’t do it to get thanks. She’s not that kind of person. She even covered you with two of her blankets.”
“How sweet of her. I guess there still are some decent people in the world.”
“Yeah, but finding one isn’t always easy, even in a crowd.”
“Especially in a crowd.”
“You know, you could’ve gotten into serious trouble last night. I’d like to know where you are when you’re out----”
Alex turned her head away. Her face was a picture of pain mixed with lesser tones of sorrow and shame. I wanted to know what had caused this renewal of her whorish relationship with alcohol. I drank more coffee and waited patiently for her to tell me, but she never did. Instead, she turned the tables on me and put the sense of pain, sorrow, and shame back on my shoulders.
“When I came here last night and you weren’t home, where were you?”
Now it was my turn to look away. After a long, uncomfortable silence, Alex put a hand on my shoulder and spoke: “I guess we’re both running high on the pathetic meter, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
She brought her eyes straight up to mine and examined me in a way I’d never seen before, lustily, raw primitive lust. It was then that I became embarrassingly aware of my having gone to bed naked.(I did that sometimes)
“I don’t like the way you’re looking at me,” I said.
“I like the way I’m looking at you. I don’t care if you like it or not.”
“Are you always this way after a hard round of drinking.”
“When was the last time a regular woman looked at you this way?”
“By regular, you mean, not a prostitute.”
“Yeah.”
I drank the rest of the coffee. It had gone cold., just like tone of this conversation. I let the question pass. Undaunted, Alex pressed on in the direction she wanted to go.
“Neal?”
“What?”
“You saw me naked last night, right?”
“Yeah, it couldn’t be helped.”
“Did you like what you saw? Am I still---.”
“Enticing?”
“Yeah, enticing. Or am I too used up, too run down, and too old?”
“Alex, whatever your problems are, your body isn’t one of them.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
‘Neal?”
“Yes, Alex?”
“Could we, uh, you know----. I mean as long as we’re in bed together and you’re already naked----”
“I can’t. Not like this. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. But not today.”
“I understand.” She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand at all. “You’ll pay a woman who care nothing about to have sex, but you won’t have sex with me for free. Okay, then, have it your way. Give me fifty bucks and then everything will be okay.”
“Alex, I think you should call Carl.”
“Fuck Carl.”
“No, that’s your job, Alex.”
“That’s exactly what it’s been all these years. A job. A spiritless, emotionless, thankless, job.”
Bringing up Carl’s name wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had. Hell, it was just plain stupid. Carl, at the very least, was a mirror cause of her running back to booze with trembling, desperate arms. And at the most, he was a major cause of this self- destructive return.
“Speaking of jobs,” I said, hoping to jump the rails and get onto a easier and smoother track. “We’re supposed to start working a case today.”
“Case? What case?”
“Yesterday at the office, Gina Wilson called, remember?”
Pictures of Donna Winters bullied their into my mind’s eye. The scene was haunting and brief. Those sad calling eyes, a face caste in one quarter light and three quarter darkness.
A trickle of blood lay sickly at the edge of her right upper thigh. She was naked. Shivering and sweating simultaneously, as if attacked by opposing, contradictory viruses. Then the entire scene faded slowly away and all that was left was this feeling of vast, dark nothingness.
“Neal?”
No answer from me.
So Alex called my name again.
Still no answer from me.
The third time she called me, she made sure I’d answer she cold slapped me hard across the face. I looked over at her with eyes returning from a sad, faraway place.
“Where were you just now,” she asked.
“Nowhere.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care if you believe me or not.”
“You don’t want to tell me.”
“No.”
Alex didn’t pursue the matter any further. She let the subject drop and ran off onto safer, more comfortable ground.
“About this case, did you officially accept it without talking to me first?”
“Yes, I did.”
“You know the rule. If we are going to work a case together, we both have to agree to it.”
“Before you rip into me, I have two things to say in my defense.”
“I don’t want to hear them.”
“This isn’t a sex case.”
“That’s not enough.”
“Winters is up to neck in criminal activity. Probably all felonies. If we find the evidence to put him away, we could put him away for a hundred years.” “That’s still not enough.”
“How about ten thousand dollars with the possibility of more later on.”
“What did you say?”
“Gina Wilson paid us ten thousand dollars and said, if things work out, there’d be even more.”
“Where is it? Is it here? You didn’t take a check, did you? No, you wouldn’t do that. Cash. What did you do with the cash? Did you put it in the bank? You don’t have it here, do you?” Where is it? Where? Where? Where?”
“Downstairs on the coffee table.”
Alex ran out of the room so fast I got a mild case of wind burn. I heard her open the envelope with the money in it, count the bills, count them again, then giggle like a teenage girl. This was the official opening of the case.
“Alex,” I shouted down the stairs, “does this mean you’re willing to take on the case.”
“No, Neal, I really don’t need five thousand dollars right now. So, I’ll just have to say no.”
Sarcasm. Pure, fun loving sarcasm. I loved it, but that was mostly because it was coming from Alexandria.
“Alex.”
“Yeah, what is it? I’m trying to have sex down here.”
“Sex? With who? There’s no one down there except you. You don’t mean---.”
“With the money, Neal. Ten thousand dollars. Oh, yes.”
“I hate to interrupt your orgy of dead presidents, but I did have a question.”
“What is it?”
“Do you know where your car is?”
“No.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Sorry, I only agreed to one question. I am disconnecting now.”
****
Later that same morning, at a little past nine thirty, an uninvited fist began pounding on my front door. Alex and I had been milling around the kitchen at the time and neither one of us wanted to go to the door, but she had a legitimate excuse not to go.
She was cooking breakfast for herself. I had no such excuse, so I had to be the one to go see who the pounding fist belonged to.
“Move a little faster will you,” she said “That pounding is going to split my head right in half.”
“Whose fault is that?”
I went tot the front window, took a sly peek through the blinds, and saw the owner of the pounding fist. It was instant recognition. I knew him. Unfortunately. He was a cop and he was trouble.
His name was Larsen. Steven A. Larsen. And the A stood for asshole. He was a detective now. A pathetic joke to any decent cop on the force. But that’s the price decent cops agree to pay for adhering to their sacred vow of silence. They’ve only got themselves to blame. And then they wonder why public trust is so hard to come by. Scandinavian toned and in his mid-forties, Larsen was operating on his own self-interest plane.
He’d become a detective despite his natural inborn inclination for thuggishness and repeated, well-guarded whispers that he was dirty. He knew how to play the political game that’s required to move up the ladder, and he played the game well. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the dumb son of a bitch become police chief one day.
Larsen had histories with both Alex and I. To say we didn’t like each other would be one of the biggest understatements of the year. To me, he was a rotting branch and rotting branches should be cut off and removed before they take down the whole tree. Of course, that’s just my opinion. I’m not a professional gardener or anything.
I wished like seven hells that I could’ve avoided letting Larsen into my house. I didn’t need to have psychic abilities to know something bad was going to happen. I just didn’t know how bad that bad would be. So, resigned to a negative inevitability, I opened the inside door, but left the outer door locked.
“Open up,” Larsen said in a loud churlish voice.
“What the hell do you want?” I answered as calmly as I could.
“Open the goddamn door.”
“The door is open.”
“Not the screen door.”
“It’s glass Larsen, or did you miss that? It’s March. Too cold and too early for a screen.”
“Open the fucking door or I’ll rip it off of its hinges.”
He probably would’ve too. Asshole. Big, ignorant, ugly, asshole. So, I opened the door and let him in. His partner, a smaller ruddier skinned man quickly followed him in. He wasted no time in introducing himself..
“I’m Torelli,”
“Don’t introduce yourself to him,” Larsen said. “This isn’t a fucking social event.”
“Have a seat,” I said. “I’m going for coffee.”
“Donna Winters is dead,” Larsen blurted out with every intention of doing me harm.
I stopped, turned, and looked at him viciously through the sides of my eye sockets. Was this some sick little perverted game of his, I wondered, or was it a dark, devastating truth? After a silent second or two, I sized up that this was no game. Donna Winters was dead.
If the situation hadn’t already been tense and ominous enough, Alex walked into the room with coffee in one hand, a plate full of eggs in the other, and a cigarette dangling between her lips. And, of course, she was still dressed in my underwear and nothing else.
At first, she didn’t even notice the intrusion. Her head was down and entire attention was on consuming the eggs. She sat down and started shoveling them into her mouth like someone who hadn’t eaten in two days. Which very well could‘ve been the case.
“Well, well, well,” Larsen said to Torelli. “Isn’t this a cozy little picture of domestic tranquility. A love nest for incompetent ex-cops. You just never know what you’re going to see when you step into someone’s house, are you?”
Alexandria’s head came up slowly, suddenly realizing there were two too many people in the room. Her lips formed a natural, reflexive snarl when she saw one of those people was Steve Larsen.
“What the hell is he doing here?”
“It’s about Donna Winters,” I said while turning my back on Larsen.
“What about her?”
“She’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Dead.”
Alexandria put down her coffee and looked up at me with fixed, uncomprehending eyes. Eventually, her eyes moved away from me and to Torelli.
“Donna Winters is dead,” she asked. “No joke?”
“No joke,” he replied. “She was found around one thirty this morning.”
“Where?”
“In a car.”
“Where was the car?”
“The parking lot on Nomoore Street.”
“The one just a couple of blocks from here?”
“Yeah.”
The parking lot referred to here wasn’t far from my house. Hell, it was damn close. In this particular case, so damn close it unnerved me. My hands began to tremble and a cold sweat rolled across my brow.
“I don’t understand why you’re here,” Alexandria said to both of our uninvited guests. “We had nothing to do with her death. “
At the time, I’d wished I would’ve thought to say this. Her mind was working better than mine and I wasn’t recovering from a long, hard drinking session.
Larsen stood up. Or was he already up? I don’t remember if he or Torelli had ever bothered to sit down.
“How did she die,” I asked, finally thinking of something relevant to say.
“A bullet,” Larsen answered.
“One bullet?”
“To the head.”
“Homicide?”
“Suicide.”
“You’re a suicide detective now?”
“This is a definite suicide Caterski, and don’t try to make it into something else.”
“Something else?”
“You know what I mean. Trying to promote yourself by turning it into a homicide.”
“You’re the master promoter Larsen, not me. I was lousy at it remember? Couldn’t keep my big mouth shut.”
I sat down. I needed to sit down. The hell with Larsen and Torelli, I said to myself, if they don’t want to sit down.
“We still don’t why you’re here,” Alex said.
“Your agency card was found in her car,” Larsen said. “Do you know her?”
“No. But he does.” Alex then pointed her piece of toast right at me.
I decided right then that I didn’t like having a piece of toast pointed at me. Especially that piece. It was accusatory and half-eaten.
“She hired me once a long time ago,” I said while ignoring the powerful urge to deny everything. “What does that have to do with now?”
“Just putting a few pieces of the puzzle together, that’s all,” Larsen replied
“It’s a funny thing about puzzles. Sometimes people try to force pieces into place they obviously don’t fit. It’s easier doing it that way, of course, but in the end the picture comes out all wrong.”
I knew Larsen was holding a card up his sleeve about why he and Torelli had come here, but when.he threw it down, it exploded like a grenade going off in a closet full of glass.
“She had a picture of you with her when she died. It was cupped in her left hand. We had a hell of a time getting it out.”
“Do either of you want a cup of coffee,” I said desperately trying to blot out what I’d just heard.
Torelli started to say yes, but his partner stopped him.
“Cut the crap,” Larsen said. “you stupid little perverted Polack. Mrs. Winters had a picture of you when she died. Not her husband, not her children, you. Why would she do that Caterski? Why would she do that if you were just a nobody p.i. she hired once years ago?”
I couldn’t move any part of my body. Not my arms, not my legs, and certainly not my mouth. I’d been locked and frozen in time and place like a victim of temporary suspended animation.
Alex, fully aware of my immovable plight, came to my rescue and answered for me.
“Mrs. Winters had just hired us again.”
“Why?” Torelli asked, finally involving himself in the conversation. Or should I say interrogation?
“Same reason as before. Extra marital fucking.” A lie, but did Larsen and Torelli know that. Doubtful, but who could be sure.
“Extra marital fucking,” Larsen said while looking right at Alex. “Sounds like a subject you know a lot about.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I would think the meaning was obvious. Look at you, dressed in the Polack’s underwear, eating an early morning breakfast in the Polack’s house---“
“And?”
“You’re married, aren’t you?”
“Officially, yes. Unofficially, no.”
“That’s the kind of answer I’d expect from a greasy little slut like you Sarros.”
“Larsen,” I said finally regaining the use of speech, “cut the low ball routine. Now.”
“Stay out of this, Caterski. This is between me and the slut.”
“Torelli, put a muzzle on this rabid dog of yours.”
Alexandria was up and out of the chair in a hurry. Larsen was coming toward her. He moved like a mad hippo approaching a helpless disabled victim. Slow, with every reason to prolong the feeling the nearly orgasmic feeling of terror and menace.
Alexandria’s emotions were a half and half mixture of rage and fear. Her eyes were moving rapidly back and forth between Larsen and me. My eyes, for their part, were everywhere, and back again. I stood there unmoving, torn between taking down Larsen’s and doing nothing at all. I didn’t want to be the one to go after Larsen. I wanted Torelli to do it. He was his partner. But Torelli wasn’t moving. He was afraid of of his partner. He was afraid because he’d seen this scene before. He knew what Larsen was capable of. He knew about the capability of inflicting severe pain and injury on anyone, even his own partner.
“Steve,” Torelli called out in a weak enfeebled voice. “This isn’t necessary. They haven’t done anything to justify---.”
“It’s never necessary,” I said. “He just likes to hurt people for the fun of it. He’s a fucking sadist. Are you going to do something about it or not?”
“Why don’t you do something?” Larsen asked without ever taking his eyes off of Alex. “You care about this five dollar whore, don’t you? Well, come on in and save her from the monster who wants to mess her up.”
Since the day I first met Larsen, I wanted to shove his ugly face right into the back of his skull and he knew it. He’s baiting me to do something just so can personally pull my investigator’s license, press criminal charges against me, make them stick, and send me off to jail. But I had no choice. I had to take the bait. Alex’s health was at stake.
Larsen kept coming forward. He was within inches of Alex now. I couldn’t wait any longer to go after him. I looked around for something to hit him with. Something with a little heft to it. I decided on a wall clock. Not one of those light plastic ones. This clock was a much thicker, much heavier ceramic clock. Larsen was going to find out what time it was the hard way.
Then it happened. He put his hands on her. In less time than it took to sneeze twice, he had her pinned hard against the wall. Then he went for her throat. Without a thought or look toward Torelli, I lifted the clock off of the wall and quickly went for Larsen. As I did, I somehow caught Torelli out of the corner of my eye. He was coming right for me and he had blackjack raised high in right hand. It was aimed at my thick, Slavic skull.
I avoided the blow to the head, instead taking flush across my right elbow. A white hot shock of electrified pain ran down my arm and I let go of the clock. A second blow never came. All Torelli wanted was to stop me from hitting Larsen with the clock. Having accomplished that, he put the blackjack away.
Alex, in the meantime, had freed herself. I hadn’t seen how at the time, but later she told me she had pushed her lit cigarette into the outside of Larsen’s left hand. This would explain the cursed cry of pain that I heard. Alex said she then got Larsen off of her permanently by peeling his right thumb off of her, pulling it back toward him until it broke. This would explain the second cry of pain that I heard.
I went to Alex and backed her up to put some space between us and Larsen. Soon enough Larsen regained his voice and issued a clear, unmistakable threat.
“I’ll have your license for this,” he said. “Both of you.”
“Let’s go,” Torelli said. “We’re not even supposed to be here.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“So, this isn’t professional at all. It’s personal. Well, you go ahead and try and pull our licenses. We’ll just have to make public your little indiscretion here. Maybe we a few others from your past while we’re at it.”
Still nursing his broken finger, Larsen looked at me, then at Alexandria.
“Private dicks,” he said. “You’re all a bunch of ---.”
“Better to be a private dick than a public one.”
“You’re a real witty son of a bitch Caterski. Too bad you don’t even know where your wife and kid are. They ran away from you, didn’t they? They ran away because they knew what a sick, perverted asshole you are. They ran away and they’re never coming back.”
Larsen and Torelli finally turned and headed for the door. They were leaving. But Larsen wasn’t done talking just yet. I was deaf to anything he said now. Knowledge of his words was solely due to my tape recorder.
“You’re a nothing Caterski. Do you hear? A nothing, a useless, dumb Polack living in a neighborhood full of niggers, spics, chinks, and poor white trash.”
I didn’t even see them go. My head was down and I was completely entombed by closing dark shadows. Sarah and Shelley, Donna, old scars, old wounds, they’d all come back to torment me once again.
I sat down on the couch. Or maybe, I fell down. I can’t say for sure either way. My head was off somewhere, drifting further and further away from the welcomed chains of an ever rising past. Something brushed my cheek. Was it a kiss? Had Alexandria sat down next to me on the couch?
My mind floated into a middle world, an existance that lay somewhere between sleep and consciousness, a place where it was not possible to tell fantasy from reality. I could hear Alexandria’s voice in my ear. Berating me, consoling me, and keeping my body still. Her form was like medicinal blanket covering me with a soothing, healing warmth I hadn’t experienced in a long, long time. I was lost and she, being my only guiding force, was trying to bring me back home.
The t-shirt she’d been wearing came off, bearing two small mother of all tits. We were soon swaying, moving to the music of a quiet spring serenade. We clung to each other desperately, as if our lives depended on it, as if we would literally die if we let go.
Thirty and some odd minutes later, I was drawn back to the cold, blistered hands of full reality. Alex, it seems had passed the time smoking and playing out an unknown fantasy of her own. Soon after the two of us put the floor firmly under our feet, she suggested we should go to the parking lot where Donna Winters had died and have a look around. I didn’t think the trip would produce any tangible evidence, but I agreed to go anyway.
With the sun fading in and out like a slightly loosened light bulb, we walked to the parking lot. It was only a short distance and I’d hoped the walk would help my tattered will a little. But my hopes, once again, proved to be futile. The walk didn’t help one atomic bit.
The scene of where Donna Winters was found dead was no scene at all. There was no car, no missed personal items, no signs of any kind that a once living human being had been found dead here less than twelve hours before. There wasn’t even the well noted yellow police tape to mark off the area in question.
Silent and somber, Alex and I went back to my house. Was the case over already? Or had it just begun? We didn’t know, but we didn’t have to wait long to find out. Fifteen minutes or so after our return, there was another knock at the door. As my hand neared the doorknob, I pictured the dead body of Donna Winters laid out flat on the cold metallic coroner’s table. Reality drove the scene quickly from my mind. A reality driven by a team of wild, mad horses whose legs churned a tireless path toward the jagged cliffs of a dark, personal hell.