Private Midnight Read online

  Still, some things never change. Mondays are such damn lonely days.

  UMBER 4 EYRIE STREET WAS AS DIFFERENT FROM THE Jaguar House as you could get and as close to a castle as you’d find in Cliffhaven. A cream colored villa packed in against the stone steps connecting the park at the top of the bluff to one antique streetlight down at the bottom on the ribbon of asphalt between burnt-out Zagame’s and Funland. It was a solid seven figure address. I felt my Buick’s tires compress against the curb and switched off my cell. I had an intuition that whatever lay inside—wherever the situation was, I wouldn’t want to be taking a call smack dab in the middle of it.

  There was a tall iron gate with a dragon medallion on it guarding the driveway, but it was locked without an intercom box. When I crossed the street to access the stone stairway, I saw a sliver of lawn and a clean bed of geraniums under the front bay window. I seemed to remember a poem from high school by T.S. Eliot about a madman shaking a geranium. I hated school like poison. Which is maybe why I didn’t learn to hate poison enough.

  I got to the narrow stack of sandstone steps—maybe two-thirds of the way to the top, with no houses below to block the view, but a demolished and partially leveled site for one on the first cross-path up from the streetlight. Above and behind I could see the scaffolding bones of some construction project, although it was hard to judge the proposed size of the building at this stage. I should’ve turned around and gone home. But I kept seeing the scarves that formed the address on the card. Who has just an address on a card unless it’s something bent? Or very gracefully curved. I’m not the kind of guy who gets scared by some tricky card.

  I opened the stiff little gate to the garden and spat out a wad of gum into the geraniums. I reached into my coat pocket for another stick as I strode up the steps—and was surprised to find a Camel. I must’ve not worn that coat for a while. I used to smoke like a coal plant until I quit cold. And don’t think El Miedo made that easy.

  The porch was swept as clean as a rich old lady’s kitchen floor, and for an instant I imagined that some wealthy white-haired woman lived there. Maybe she had some private security needs. McInnes had always done freelance stuff—most of it legit, for him. He’d heavied whiplash fakes for a PI company, done personal protection, debt collection. I could handle that. I started to relax and reached in my pocket for the Camel. Then the front door opened and I saw her for the first time—but it was really more like seeing for the first time. I didn’t even know I’d put the cigarette, my first in months, into my mouth. Her eyes moved on me like a pit boss.

  “You can’t smoke in the house,” she said, and lit me up.

  I dropped the cig and ground it under my heel on the welcome mat that read Hello Goodbye in bristle letters.

  She let me pass and I caught a hint of her perfume. I couldn’t place it and I’ve had women tell me I know a lot about perfume. But it had the expensive hint of entrapment. She closed the door behind us and we were standing in a Victorian-era entryway, gaudy and austere all at once. There was a black bamboo umbrella holder in the corner with a white parasol poking out and a rose globe with filigreed brass overhead. Polished wooden steps with a red Persian patterned runner climbed to a landing and then zigzagged out of sight. At the base was one of those Sweetheart stair elevators set into a wrought iron frame with mythological faces peering out. To the right, through French glass doors was a sitting room inhabited by a pink satin sofa with mahogany paw feet, a leather library chair and a fireplace topped by a marble mantel. On view was an original looking 18th century or so clock. Beside it was a sex toy. I figured my first assessment was dead on the money. It was starting to look like I knew where I was after all. Of course the moment I thought that, I recalled how much danger that kind of relaxation had gotten me into before. There’s something about being a cop. You can’t relax. Something is bound to break out right in front of you. Or behind you.

  “Why are you late?” she asked, plucking out a long beige cigarette from an enameled case and inserting it in a gold holder.

  I’d somehow gotten hold of her lighter and was put in the awkward position of igniting the tip of her cigarette before I gave it back. She slipped into the sitting room, then into the library chair. I heard more than saw her slap the uncomfortable looking sofa, although I couldn’t work out how she’d reached over that far. It reminded me of the way you’d summon a dog.

  She wasn’t beautiful in any conventional way. Early 40s, maybe late 30s. Five foot eight or thereabouts … brunette to auburn shoulder length hair. It was hard to tell the eye color. Somewhere in the brown to hazel range. I got the feeling that she had a full sensual body but it was impossible to be sure because she was covered up in a pricey velveteen lounge suit the color of ashes of rose. Made me want to do a pat down. She wore no foundation make-up. Just mascara and Seville leather tinted lipstick. Her face, or my impression of it anyway, seemed to arrive intermittently, as if broadcast from some distance.

  I tried to avoid looking at the Chinese balls on the mantel, shiny silver on a length of beaded tassel. They seemed to demean the richly decorated clock.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said with her teeth clamped on the holder.

  I dropped the long beige cigarette from my lips, hastily retrieving it, before it burned the Turkish rug. When had I accepted one of hers? I tossed the smoke in the grille of the fireplace.

  “Then you know I’m thinking that I’m not late. I’m just here,” I said. Women always think they know what you’re thinking—that they know you because you’re a man. Then they complain when you don’t “share.” Shit.

  “Oh, really?” she laughed, and blew a smoke ring that circled my head like a noose. “Where would you like to be? Back in the valley with the shitkickers—and what do you call them—mojados? You’re the mongrel product of two misdirected machismo cultures, amigo.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  How trumps why in my book every time. Did you get good look at the assailant? Can you pick him out of a line-up? Will you go all to pieces on the stand?

  But damn McInnes. I kept trying to think what I’d told him about my past.

  “You’re an open book,” she shrugged and went over and manipulated the window blind. The sun was still hot and ripe, like a blood orange. That freighter I’d seen before was still going past, unless it was one just like it. I suddenly felt very tired. She walked back to the library chair and sat down again.

  “You’re tired,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “I’m tired of …” I was going to say having my chain pulled, but when I thought about it … allegations, alimony, AA … being single again … yeah, I was tired of …

  “Everything,” she answered, and her voice changed. Soothing … like calamine lotion or aloe vera. “You want something you don’t know how to ask for. That’s why you’re here. You’ve come looking for something beyond anything you could expect—or imagine.”

  I wanted to say something sarcastic, but I couldn’t help thinking she was damn right.

  “What about you?”

  “You may call me Genevieve,” she said and pressed down on the arm of her chair, which released a brass ashtray. She crushed out the butt. “And I’m going to call you Sunny.”

  “S-sonny? As in little boy …?”

  She pointed out the window at the tortured ball that was setting the windows on fire like lights at an accident. “S-U-N-N-Y.”

  My mother had called me that—before Dad died. It was weird.

  “M-my name’s Ritter,” I grumbled.

  “B-birch Ritter,” she mimicked, becoming hard again. “What did kids call you? Bitch? Shitter? Switch Hitter?”

  “Yeah …” I chuckled. “Couple of kids did make that mistake. Once.”

  Birch had been my grandfather’s name. The kids’ nickname that hurt the most was actually “Cheese Grater” on account of my acne, which set in early and checked out late.

  “But you learned ‘em didn’t
you?” she nodded, the orange-red glow filling the room but not quite reaching her face. “What do you weigh? 230-240? With hands like meat slabs.”

  “I w-was a wrestler in school,” I said—not sure why. You can’t blame a guy for being big. I hadn’t eaten myself there. I was born that way. At least I had a good head of hair.

  “A way for you to be intimate and violent with other boys without calling attention,” she said.

  I let that pass. When it comes to looks, I have all the sex appeal of a bar code. The acne scars didn’t help, but all that oil had dried up at last, just like my self-esteem when I was a young buck. As a grown man what women liked about me was my size, the sheer don’t-mess-with-me bulk. Didn’t always work—but that’s what fists and 9 mm’s are for. Yes, I’d had a few biffs on the chin and my jaw and nose broken more than once. But I never ended up in the ICU on a respirator. Other men had.

  “You chose police work because of the violence. The same reason you joined the Army before that. You thrive on violence, Sunny. But only if it’s approved. Like wrestling. You need an arena, a badge. Sanction.”

  The sunlight was starting to make me hot and itchy. Where was this broad headed?

  “And you were attracted by the gear, the equipment. The uniforms. The weapons. You like the power, but you adore the objects and implements. You appreciate textures. Steel. Vinyl. Rubber. Velvet.”

  “Is that why you think I’m here?” I asked. “You some whips and chains gal?”

  “Sunny, you’re already so chained up, I doubt you’d notice any others,” she answered softly. “You’re here, as I told you, because you want to see life through a new window.”

  “Well,” I shrugged. “I’m not liking the view from here.”

  She stood up and unzipped the lounge suit, which fell away onto the floor, where I saw she was barefoot. Why hadn’t I noticed that before?

  She was stark naked underneath. Heavy well-formed breasts with unusually large nipples, but a narrower waist than I’d have thought. Punishingly narrow. And skin that seemed much too clear and tight for a woman her age. Didn’t seem right.

  “I still don’t like the view,” I gulped and tried to get up off the sofa. Talk about a well-trimmed lawn.

  “Then you must be blinded,” she smiled.

  That does it, I thought. Door time.

  “Not permanently,” she laughed, and then from under the chair she pulled out a yellow scarf made of raw silk with a delicate fringe on the ends. It was like the scarves on the card, the invitation that had lured me there.

  “Sure,” I snorted. “You tie that around my head and then what? I end up with a knife at my jugular?”

  “Is that what you’d like, Sunny?”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  El Miedo was starting to close in. A claustrophobic amputated feeling.

  “I can do something you can’t imagine. You’re trying but you can’t. I could send you out that door right now, and it would drive you wild. Not knowing.”

  I managed to rise.

  “I could send you away, Sunny. But that really would be cruel. Worse than any whip—or branding iron.”

  The mention of a branding iron got me. Why was the sun so fierce? It was like an alarm that wouldn’t stop blaring.

  “Do you know what the scarf smells like?” she whispered, snaking out her arms and passing the fabric slowly between her legs.

  “Jesus,” I breathed.

  “He left earlier. But he’s coming back.”

  I tried to grin. “So, you’re just going to blindfold me. And then I’ll tell you … what I …”

  “You don’t need to say anything. And you don’t listen well enough yet to hear me.”

  “I don’t get it then,” I shrugged, and realized I was sitting back down on the sofa.

  “That’s why you want to stay. Why you will stay.”

  Her voice worked like cortisone on an achy joint.

  “Do I take off my clothes?”

  She solemnly shook her head. “Another time perhaps. I already know exactly how you look. You think I’m naked, but it’s really the other way around.”

  I felt my heart beating hard under the pistol in the shoulder holster beneath my coat.

  “You can keep hold of your gun,” she said. “All you have to do is sit here with the blindfold on until the sun’s gone down.”

  “I’m not sure that’s ever going to happen,” I said, trying to get comfortable.

  “Oh,” she trilled. “Even I can’t stop the sun from setting.”

  That struck me as the oddest thing she’d said yet. “All right,” I agreed. “No tricks.”

  She gave out a hiss of breath and stepped toward me with the scarf stretched between both hands. I wanted to reach out and pull her down to me. For us to roll on the Turkish carpet with all that sunset bleeding off the walls. Instead I let her bind the scarf around my head. The touch of her hands on my worn face was like morphine. Coming up to my high school prom, I’d overheard the hot pompom slut Bridget Clovis say to her friend, “That guy looks like he’s been kissed by a wasp’s nest!” I can still hear the way they laughed.

  Suddenly my eyes were sealed in a yellow fog that then went totally black when the knot was tied. This woman, who called herself Genevieve, stood before me. Voluptuously nude. Scented. Then I heard the clicking of those silver balls that had been sitting on the mantel, and her footsteps pad softly out of the room. I got this wavy feeling, as if I was walking out after her, even though I remained seated. As if I was slipping out of that fancy room into someplace else altogether.

  FELT LIKE I WAS IN A HOLDING CELL, ONLY IT WAS INSIDE my own head. There was something a little spooky about this babe, normal rich witch sitting room and all. That made it more somehow.

  I don’t know how long I sat there waiting for something to happen. Waiting for her to come back. Or for some boyfriend or pimp to split my head open. All I was aware of at first was the scent of the scarf and the thudding of my heart. Gradually my pulse steadied and turned into the ticking of the clock. An insistent but reassuring sound. I kept trying to picture how the light was changing on the walls. Whether that freighter had finally passed.

  I saw the trash skittering in Funland. McInnes’ face in a cloud of Brut. I heard that song of Stacy’s, playing on my mind like the smell of jasmine when you’re trying to sleep. It seemed long ago and hearts away, and yet still deep inside.

  I was never going to be free of her. Or Polly. I saw her folding my underwear. The patience of that woman. All my nights of rocket fuel and Trojans. It made me sick to think that maybe she hadn’t put up with me out of weakness or fear of being on her own—but out of love. With the blindfold on, I could actually look at it up close. Over the years, I’ve beaten people stupid—in garbage can lanes behind topless joints—in jail cells, toilet stalls and the back seats of cars. Some scumbags would rather burst open all over you than tell the truth. I thought of all the times I’d come home to Polly with the odor of the streets on me. Not because it was my job. Because I went looking. That was my truth. Because I was restless and empty and couldn’t look her in the eyes. I dropped the dime on myself every time I went home.

  The moistness of the silk wasn’t evidence I wanted to process. I wanted to rip the thing off my head. But I couldn’t. There was something about this Genevieve. Conversing with her was like looking down the sights of an assault rifle while getting a Geisha footrub. It was clear she talked a good game, but something in my gut told me she played one too. How serious could it be? I was just sitting there with a scarf over my eyes.

  Eventually, out of the darkness came another face. All that darkness … a lot of faces. This was one I hadn’t thought of in a long time—or maybe I had just gotten the hang of not thinking about him finally. Frank Lockett.

  We’d known each other since grade school. His older brother Jake had been kind a hero of mine—worked for my Dad. Dad had taught him the building trade and was one day going to make him a partner
. They were what you might call “close.” A very special relationship as it turned out. But they got into a fight just before my Dad died. Jake skipped town, never to be heard from again. He had a problem mixing Black Beauties and red wine. I suspect he came to a bad end. Frank grew up with me and we stayed buds.

  In a kind of jigsaw way, he was why I’d become a flatfoot (I’ve always loved that term—makes me think of Cagney). While I was always trying to win trophies and have girls want me, Frank didn’t care what anyone else thought. Other guys like me were lucky to cop a feel let alone fiddle the bean—but he pulled chicks without even trying. He lived his own life and did the hard yards taking care of his drunk old man after his mother died.

  He was as thin as a tailpipe, but tough. Knew everything there was to know about cars. He was restoring a ’32 roadster and a ’39 coupe, and he put a lot of love into those hunks of metal—always debating whether to cad plate certain bolts or buff grind them. I was curious about where he got the money for his habit. I sensed it involved something illegal. I was right.

  One afternoon he let me in on his secret. He paid for his love of old cars by stealing new ones. He’d started off joyriding—like sneaking inside other bodies. He collected the bits and pieces he found in the cars he borrowed. Stuffed animals, fuzzy dice, photos—whatever he came across he built into this altar hidden in his closet. I remembered my awe and anxiety looking at it. It seemed like something I shouldn’t have been allowed to see. But people have always made a habit of showing me things I don’t want to see. It started back when I was still wetting the bed.

  The trouble was his old man was on the serious skids and they needed money just to get by, let alone afford a hot rod jones, so Frank turned his private ritual into an enterprise. He worked out a deal with a chop shop in Tijuana. Pretty soon he got addicted to that too. You know how it goes—it started with a little but the little wouldn’t do it, so the little got more and more.