But the door opened.
And Sam saw Frank Lucca for the first time.
The Epistle of Cal the Hater
In the beginning, the dressing up was just for her.
For Jewel, the white witch-bitch.
I did it to please her, too scared I'd make her mad if I refused.
Anything to stop the pain.
Then later, after I'd started getting a buzz out of the make-up and all that jazz, we kept on going â that and the other, sicko stuff too, but just between the two of us, because she said that the old guy wouldn't like it. And then, later still, after he got sick â and she wouldn't let him go to the hospital, said she was going to ânurse' him herself â oh, man . . . But after that, she started doing those âthings' to him too, and from there on everything spun way out of control. Our life inside the walls of that place was Fruitcake Alley, real Loony Tunes mixed up with a touch of Rocky Horror.
Only without any laughs.
64
â
Dear God.'
Aghast was the only word for how Sam felt.
And filled with pity.
His father-in-law might have been a prize dirt-bag in his day, but he looked now as if he might have fared better serving twenty to life in Cook County Jail.
âClaudia,' Sam called from the doorway. âCall 911, honey. We need an ambulance.'
He walked slowly back into the room.
Frank Lucca sat in a wheelchair, his bare and wasted upper body and arms restrained with bandages, his legs immobile, possibly paralyzed. There was no blanket to cover him, and no clothes except for a pair of stained and stinking off-white shorts.
He had no hair on his head, nor eyebrows. His face was greyish, his skin looking pasty in texture with deep sores on his nose and cheeks and over his lips. His eyes, bloodshot and dark, like Claudia's, were pleading.
He did not speak.
His whole body â all that Sam could see â was covered with scars and raw wounds. Lines of them, most running vertically or diagonally over his torso, the greatest number crossing his chest.
And one of the sick, shocked feelings bombarding Sam as he took this first, long look at Grace's father, was the suspicion that when he had time to take a closer look at his own injuries, there might be similarities . . .
Though that was not all that was striking those chords of such horrific familiarity in his mind.
That string of thoughts kept moving on, dots continuing to connect.
The Bowie character portrayed in one of the posters in that other room was the gin-guzzling alien who fell to earth named Thomas
Jerome
Newton â and Sam remembered that because a girl he'd dated at college had been wild for Bowie; and Ziggy Stardust, he thought, had come before the alien â not that chronology counted here â but what did seem to matter right now to Sam, bewilderingly, chillingly, was that character's metallic fashion and high-heeled boots.
Like Mildred's skinny silver angel without wings.
Wearing shoes that she'd told Sam had made the guy look like he was walking âup on the mezzanine'.
Christ almighty.
âSir?' Sam addressed his father-in-law for the first time, unsure if the man was even capable of answering.
âSam?' Claudia called from below. âThey're coming.' Her voice wavered, as if she hadn't wanted to ask the question before. âIs it for my father?'
âIt is,' Sam called back. âBetter bring a blanket, honey.'
Another of those moans, awful in its helplessness, issued from Frank Lucca's throat, and tears leaked from his eyes.
Sam pulled a handkerchief from his own pocket, knelt down on the linoleum beside the wheelchair, and gently wiped the old man's cheeks.
Never thought this day would come.
âIt's all right,' he said, softly. âI'm Sam Becket, Grace's husband, and we're going to help you.'
Claudia came into the room, holding a blue blanket, which fell out of her hands as she saw her father, the wicked old man of her girlhood nightmares, reduced to this.
âPapa,' she said, and began to cry too.
Frank Lucca stared at her, made no further sound, his own tears stalled in his throat. He looked frozen by the sight of his long-lost daughter.
âCut him free,' Claudia said.
âI will,' Sam said quietly and calmly, taking out his cell phone, glancing down at it, preparing its camera function, âjust as soon as I've taken some photos.'
âEvidence,' Claudia said, understanding.
âRight,' Sam said.
Two questions, first, that he knew he needed to ask.
âWho did this to you, sir?'
They waited to hear if the old man could speak.
âMy wife.' Lucca's voice was faint. âRoxanne.'
The dots went on connecting. A whole host of suspicions, all still unsustainable, still incredible, yet forming something that Sam knew was far more compelling than a hunch.
Ask the second question.
âCan you tell me, sir,' Sam said, âif your wife ever ill-treated her son?'
Lucca's eyes seemed to burn, holding on to horrors, keeping them locked in.
And then he spoke again, a single word:
âMostro.'
Monster.
The Epistle of Cal the Hater
So it all comes down to this. A thousand resentments building up over years like boils in your brain, erupting one at a time whenever you blow your lousy godforsaken mind. And then suddenly, there he is. This one man, this perfect target.
The prototype of everyone Jewel ever taught me to hate.
Samuel Lincoln Becket.
A whole shitload of presumption â of arrogance â in that middle name.
Middle names are important, according to Jewel, which was why she says she gave me the middle name of her favourite Bowie character. She said she didn't like his first name, Thomas, because he was the apostle who doubted Jesus, and Saint Jerome was the guy who translated the Bible into Latin. (And also, according to her, Jerome is one of Clark Kent's middle names.)
Mostly, though, Jewel was crazy about Bowie.
Mostly, she's just crazy.
65
The first thing Sam did, after he'd taken some shots of Frank Lucca's bandage bonds, then untied the poor old guy and left him to Claudia's care â was to call Grace again and put her in the picture.
âYour stepmother seems to be some piece of work,' he said. âThough her son, I'm guessing, may have turned out even worse.'
Grace was finding it all too hard to believe.
âYou can't really think Jerome could be this killer?'
âI don't have a shred of hard evidence yet,' Sam said, âbut I'm about to organize a watch on our house, just in case he decides to pay another visit.'
âSurely that's the last thing he'd do now, especially if you're right,' Grace said, then paused. âThough if his mother's told him you and Claudia came to her house, I guess he might be angry.'
âWhatever the case,' Sam said, âI'm not prepared to take any chances.'
His next call was to the Sheriff's office, then to Martinez back home.
âWhole lot happening here.' Martinez jumped in soon as he heard Sam's voice. âEddie Lopéz walked in to the office a couple of hours back.'
âHe's not our guy,' Sam said. âEighty per cent probability, maybe more.'
He filled in his partner fast, told him that subject to a conversation perhaps now taking place between the Cook County Sheriff and Chief Hernandez, the plan was for enough departmental cooperation to allow Sam to catch the eight p.m. flight home.
âThey'll take my preliminary statement, photograph my woundsâ'
âYou OK, man?' Martinez jumped in. âYou said
scratches
before.'
Sam had been trying to forget just how much those damned rips in his flesh were hurting. âNothing a little iodine won't fix.' He forced his mind back to the job. âI found a photo of Cooper, which I'll ask Cook County to send to the Chief, so you might want to get a hold of that.'
âNo problem,' Martinez said. âHow's Claudia holding up?'
âShe's shaky, but up to taking care of the old man till the paramedics get here.' Arrest warrants, he went on, were being issued in Miami Beach for Jerome Cooper, and in Cook County for Roxanne Lucca.
âNice family,' Martinez said.
âDid you find Mildred?' Sam asked.
âNot yet, not with Lopéz showing up â though at least now we can spare her the John Doe shots. Cut straight to having her ID Cooper's photo.'
âMildred's a witness to the pick-up on Washington,' Sam said. âWe need to find her fast.'
âWe're on it,' Martinez said.
Sam could hear sirens approaching in Melrose Park, allowed himself a last consideration for the gracious old lady who had put her trust in him.
âTry calling her cell phone,' he said. âI don't want anyone scaring her.'
The Epistle of Cal the Hater
The thing Jewel liked best, I think, was the two of us getting whiter together.
If I'd been âgood', she used talcum after she'd shaved me, and then she made me help with her own whitening, make sure she'd dusted herself everywhere, and I can tell you I hated that more than anything, having to touch her private places, and even now just thinking about that makes me squirm.
When she married Frank, things got a little easier for a while, and I guess she chose him because he owned a house, but plenty of men have plain old ordinary houses like his, so I never really figured how come Jewel could stand being with an ugly old bald wop with a hairy body. I guess the fact was, the Thin White Duke types wouldn't have looked twice at her. And of course it helped that Frank was like-minded when it came to race â especially because one of his traitor daughters had married a black Jew, so at least they had that in common. I know the old man slapped her sometimes â and maybe she liked that, and I was never sure if it made me hate him or respect him, because Christ knew I'd never had the guts to do that to Jewel.
The trouble was, Frank went out a lot to play scopone with his buddies, and the games began in the afternoons, and he never came home till the early hours, drunk as a skunk. Which wouldn't have bothered me one bit, except those were the times, while he was out, that Jewel turned into the white witch-bitch, wanting to play âdress-up' with her boy.
Talcum not good enough anymore. She wanted to experiment with real skin-whiteners, tried everything from her good old trusty Clorox to hydrochloric acid to fucking lye, which all hurt so damned much I truly believed I was going to die.
I was still screaming one night when Frank came home and went crazy when he saw what she'd done, which was when he had his second stroke.
And after that, she did it to both of us.
I'm not sure if my mom is racist and evil.
Or just plain insane.
Like me.
âI do it because I love you so much,' she used to say sometimes when I was younger, after she'd cut me or whipped me and then poured her goddamned bleach on me and made me cry or worse.
She did love me.
I never doubted that.
66
â
I only have a moment â' Claudia said to Grace on the phone, while the paramedics were tending to their father, and Sam was downstairs talking to two Cook County detectives â âbut I need to explain why I lied to you.'
âYou didn't exactly lie,' Grace said. âI assumed you were going home.'
âI as good as lied,' Claudia insisted. âI just felt that this one time, I needed to stand up for myself, clear up my own mess.'
âYou could have told me that, sis.'
âYou'd never have wanted me to come here alone.'
âMaybe not,' Grace admitted.
âI wanted to come by myself to confront Papa, to make sure he and Roxanne both got to know what Jerome is really like.' Claudia lowered her voice. âBut dear God, Grace, you should just see him, see what that terrible woman has done to him â and please don't think I'm forgetting the things he did to me in the past, I'm not. But no one deserves what she did.'
Grace was silent, letting the words percolate, waiting for the fact that her father had apparently been tortured by his wife to impact on her fully, as it ought, she supposed, to impact on a daughter.
There was nothing. Nothing, at least, more than a distant kind of pity and disgust, the remote grade of feelings that stirred after reading tales of cruelty in the newspaper. Less than that. And that admission seemed to affect her more than the shocking facts about Frank, making her feel ashamed, but angry too, because it was her father's fault, not her own, that she had ceased caring about him so long ago.
She sought the right response, something that might help her sister, but only one thing sprang to the forefront of her mind, so she asked that instead.
âHave you called Daniel yet?'
âNot yet,' Claudia said. âBut soon.'
âDon't wait much longer, sis,' Grace said.
Not wanting her sister to suffer any more hurt.
Plenty of people she did still care for, still loved.
The Epistle of Cal the Hater
I knew, finally, that I had to get out or lose my mind completely.
Or maybe even die.
Which might have been better.
No escaping without money, though, and only one sure way to get it, only one talent. So I took what Jewel had taught me about dress-up and started putting it to my own advantage, with my personal homage to Ziggy, and figured I'd sell myself to the highest bidders wherever I could.
I changed my name because that's what performers do, and I did it in stages, started out just losing the first two letters of my own real name and calling myself âRome' â because that seemed to sit nicely with the whole orgy deal. And then I read a story about one of the Roman emperors, this crazy guy, Caligula, who screwed his sisters and had a bunch of people killed.
Which is how I came to be called Cal, and how Roxy came to be called Jewel.
Only by me, in my Epistle. She doesn't know that's how I think of her, and I know for sure that she'd hate it.
I don't like to think of what she'd do to me if she ever found out.
It was when I was reading about Caligula, and I learned that his mom's first name was Julia â which didn't suit Roxanne one bit, was too classy, too straight â but then I got to thinking how they say diamonds are the hardest substance, so I cut Julia down to Jewel, which was just perfect for her.
She doesn't know about âCal' either.
To my johns, I'm always Cal these days.
Tabby wasn't the first to like the name, as I recall.
I tried being plain Jerome when I went after my stepsister for money.
Which was not just for me, for the record. It was for Jewel too. I may be shit scared of my mom, but I don't always hate her, and I know what looking after that sick old bastard must have done to her, so maybe, I figured, if I made enough money, I could give her a new life too.
It isn't my fault I was brought up to hate.
Not just âthose' people, but Grace and Claudia too.
I figured it was time one of them paid for my lousy life.
Becket shouldn't have done what he did to me outside their house.
Not to Cal the Hater.