The Butcher's Granddaughter (8 page)

“I sat outside for a while, looked for a key. Then I just tried the door. It was open. I didn’t figure you’d mind.”

My hand curled around a coffee mug. I set it on the counter in front of me so I wouldn’t lose it, and peeled my jacket off and dropped it on the floor. I stretched until my back gave an audible pop, then fumbled for the mug and opened the fridge. I squinted at the milk and vodka before finally finding the coffee I’d put in the back last night. Or was it tonight? It distantly occurred to me that I didn’t know what day it was. I poured some of the cold coffee in the mug, shut the door, and waited for the light-blindness to pass.

My silence was making Li uncomfortable. “So where you been?” she almost whispered.

“I kind of don’t want to talk about it,” I said, trying not to sound mean. “I ran around and did some things for some people. I made a little money. Then I went and talked to an old friend of mine for a while, and now I’m here, glad to see you. Where have you been?”

“I had dinner with Tanya, over at Canter’s.” She searched my face for a reaction. I didn’t care enough about Tanya to give her one, so she pushed it. “Sometimes I wish you didn’t hate my best friend so bad.” She tried to pout, but her features weren’t immature enough to carry it off.

“Yeah, well,” I started, and then let it go. When Li didn’t add anything else, I finished, “It ain’t just one way, you know. I really don’t care about her, but she actively hates me.”

Li nodded dejectedly. “Yeah, I guess. She says some pretty nasty things about you. You almost never mention her.”

“She’s bad for business.”

“That’s funny. She said you probably thought that about her.” She paused, considering something. “She thinks you sell out your friends. That you sell stuff people tell you for money.”

I wandered back and forth through the dimness, sipping the cold coffee until it started to leave a film on my tongue. As I drifted into the kitchen I said, “Some things I do are not nice, Li. You know that. Know this, too: I don’t fuck my friends. Tanya and I don’t like each other and that’s fine. Some people just don’t get along. But if she ever needed me, I wouldn’t even blink. I’d be there. I respect her. I know she doesn’t respect me. And so what?”

I dumped the tepid coffee into the sink and poured a shot of vodka into the mug. I meant to nurse it, but as soon as the taste was on my lips I sucked it all down in one gulp. I stood at the sink and massaged my neck muscles. Li came up and put her hands over mine and I let her try to knead the knots out of my shoulders. I said, “Thanks.” Then I pulled away from her and stumbled over to the bed. When I closed my eyes, what I saw looked like snow on a broken television.

I could hear Li rustle softly around the room for a minute or two. I was too tired to wonder what she was doing. When her voice came again it was next to the bed.

“You all right, Bird? You sound sick.”

I could feel her standing there. I wasn’t sick, just physically and emotionally raw. I rolled over on my stomach and talked into the pillow. “Look, Li. You can stay here tonight if you want. You can stay here as long as you need to. I’m just tired as hell.”

She didn’t move. The CD ended, and in the silence I heard her jacket rustle as she bent over and let her hair tickle the back of my neck. I rolled over under her touch and opened my eyes. “Li...”

Before I could say whatever it was I was going to say, she peeled off her jacket and let it fall to the floor. The pale light from the windows washed over her in a dim splash. She was completely nude. There was nothing to do but stare, so I did.

She didn’t say a word as she lay down next to me and put her head on my chest. My arms went around her automatically and hugged her gently, as I kissed the top of her head. The soft pressure of her breasts and belly against me was innocently exciting. I was used to girls taking what they wanted and then leaving. Li just silently asked and then waited.

I moved my hands up the gentle furrow in the middle of her back and she arched, pressing herself into me even harder. I pulled her face up to mine and she looked serenely into my eyes, kissing each of them softly before settling onto my lips. She didn’t kiss as hard as I wanted her to. Her full lips brushed back and forth against mine, then pulled away, then returned. I softly bit one of them and she froze, then giggled and opened her eyes. At that moment, I would have done anything for her.

I rolled over on top of her and she pushed her breasts out for me to kiss. I closed my lips around one dark, hard nipple and let her writhe and moan between my arms as I kissed back and forth between them. She didn’t say anything when I suddenly got off her, stood up, and started pacing back and forth next to the bed. She just rolled onto her side and stretched, effortlessly beautiful, totally confused. I looked away from her and said, “I don’t want to do this.”

Her confused expression changed to disbelief and settled in to stay. I exhaled loudly, looking at the floor, the ceiling, anything but her. When I finally looked at her again, her smoldering brown eyes trapped me and she said, “You’re lying.”

I gritted my teeth and said through them, “No, I’m not.”

She fell onto her back and stared at the ceiling while I walked away from her and looked for a cigarette with shaky hands. I found one in the pocket of her jacket. It took me several tries to get it lit. “At least tell me why,” she said.

I stood next to the far wall and told her the truth. “I don’t know. Sometimes...I don’t know.”

My shirt was suddenly uncomfortable and I wrestled it off. My skin prickled as Li came up behind me and started kissing the small of my back. Without turning around I said, “Quit it, Li.” I had a hold of myself again.

She stepped around in front of me. Thankfully, she had the bedspread wrapped around her tiny frame. “Are you seeing someone?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then...am I ugly?”

“Oh, Jesus,” I said, and wrapped my hand in my hair the way people do when what they want and what they have to do are two completely different things. I stepped away and sat back down on the edge of the bed. She stayed where she was beneath the high windows, the light from outside bathing her like it would be her friend for a while. I stared at the floor and said, “Li, you are probably the most physically beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and I want to sleep with you so bad I can taste it. Did you know sometimes I can smell you? I’ll be standing in line somewhere, or I’ll be driving along, and suddenly there’s a scent, something in the air, and it’s you. Sometimes I can’t get you off my mind again for hours.” I laughed a little bit. “Some people, like Tanya, probably think I love you. You can tell them they’re right.”

She smiled but didn’t move.

“But there’s something about you, Li—something about us—that I think would be ruined if we had each other like this. And I’ve never felt that way about anyone. You know me, Li. I could care less about most people. But I’ve thought with my head and I’ve thought with my cock and my head is smarter. And I think this would be a monumental screw-up.” I stretched out on the bed. Li timidly stepped through the shadows. I said, “My offer to stay here still stands. You’re beautiful, Li, and I love you. But I’m not going to sleep with you.”

She sat down, the bedspread still wrapped around her shoulders. Then she pulled it more tightly around herself and curled up next to me with her head on my chest. “I’m sorry.” She said softly.

Putting my arms around her wasn’t any easier, but before my hormones could storm over my judgment, she was asleep.

I lay awake for a while and tried to think through it. The only thing I could figure was that she felt she owed me something for bailing out her sister. I didn’t think about it too long or too hard. My head hurt badly enough already. And one way or another, I hadn’t slept next to anything so warm and comforting in a long, long time. I decided it was nice.

My last thought before slipping under: Not many nice things in this town.

Chapter 5

Li was still sound asleep with her head on my chest when the phone rang at a quarter-to-nine. It didn’t wake her up. Without waiting for a hello from me, Caz said three words, “Coroner’s office. Now,” and hung up. I thought about not going, then rolled out of bed and stretched, waking Li.

The morning sunlight was even more in love with her than the city light from the night before. She turned over on her back and drew herself out in a luxurious stretch, and then I was sure I’d have to leave. She propped herself up on her elbows and said, “Was that the phone?”

“Yeah. Go back to sleep. It’s early.”

She smiled and softly said, “OK,” and went instantly back to sleep. Her slow, rhythmic breathing followed me around as I made coffee and then stepped out the door.

If it weren’t for the sign next to the driveway, you would think the L.A. County Coroner’s office was an inner city bed-and-breakfast. The exterior is all red brick, with a dark brown round-shingled roof and friendly looking windows. Inside, it looks like any other stiffhouse: cold and gray and stainless.

Caz
was in the hallway beyond the ambulance entrance when I walked in. “There any coffee in this crypt?” I asked.

She pulled out a cigarette as big around as a toothpick and lit it right underneath a red-and-white No Smoking sign. Then she pointed down the short hallway and said, “Right around that corner.”

When I came back, Death House Masterblend firmly in hand, Gene Robinson was walking up behind Caz. He glanced at the cigarette, then at the sign, and decided it didn’t matter much.

Gene is the weekend man at the County Coroner’s office, and I think his main job is to eat strange-smelling foods in front of visitors because that’s all I saw him do that morning. Gene doesn’t look like a stiff shuffler. With darkish blond hair cut in a garden-variety fraternity clip, beer-bottle brown eyes, the kind of lips that co-eds like to nibble on, and shoulders a little too narrow for his height, Gene looks like he belongs on a polo field. The only thing that gives him away is the waxy, light gray tinge of his skin that comes from spending too much time under sterile florescent lights. That, and the fact that in a room full of bruised, dismembered, and eviscerated corpses, he was fully involved with a grilled deli-combination sandwich from the Jack In The Box across the street. He hadn’t bothered to button the dirty blue smock he wore, and grease dripped ironically onto The Smiths/Meat Is Murder t-shirt he wore beneath it.

Caz
introduced us. “Gene Robinson, this is Bird.” As we shook hands she turned to me and said, “Sorry to keep buggin’ you in the morning. I know it’s not your best time.”

I stretched and said, “Screw you.” Gene’s mouth was full, so I didn’t say anything to him as I shook his hand for fear he would feel obligated to respond and spray me with sandwich. I took a big gulp of hideous coffee, my stomach shuddered, and we stepped into what Gene affectionately referred to as “The Fridge.”

As we walked along walls of stainless steel that looked like the fronts of huge filing cabinets, I asked Caz, “What the hell am I doing here, honey? I already told you I didn’t kill anybody.”

“Have some more coffee,” she said flatly. Her tone quieted me down.

The filing cabinets were, of course, cadaver preservation units. They don’t slip you on a slab anymore like in the old marble motels—now they throw you in a chilled chest-of-drawers. On the front of each three-foot square steel door was a pull handle and a small slot for a card with the name of the body and the date it was brought in. By the time we had passed the third grid, most of the bodies seemed to be members of the Doe family. Caz and Gene stopped suddenly, and I pulled up short enough to keep from plowing into the sergeant, but not enough to keep from sloshing a little coffee on the back of her jacket. She didn’t seem to notice and I didn’t say anything. In any event, the earth-tone plaid pattern hid any damage.

“Got a victim last night,” Caz started. “We’re pretty sure who she is, but we need a positive I.D.” She nodded to Gene.

Before I could decide whether to keep the coffee or not, Gene slid the drawer open so that Song Ti Nguyen and I could stare at each other.

“Oh, fucking Christ,” I muttered, making my way to the trashcan in the corner. I didn’t puke, but I fought off a rising gorge and dumped the rest of the coffee. As I walked back I said to Gene, “You could’ve at least closed her goddamned eyes, couldn’t you?”

He shrugged and took a final bite of the sandwich, then pulled a Milky Way out of his smock for dessert. I almost slapped him.

“Song?” Caz asked.

I nodded, staring into the frozen face. I suddenly found myself caring about her, my feelings for Li flooding over into a concern for her brutalized sister.

Caz
sighed and shook her head. “The things people dream up to do each other in.”

Song’s hair was the only thing about her that didn’t look different dead. It still held the quiet blue glow it shared with her sister’s. Each of her eyes had a milky cloud over the dilated pupil, and the whites had gone a pale yellow. Her skin, though darker, had the same waxy, wasted characteristics as Gene’s. Except for one thing, she looked like she had expired quietly in her sleep: jutting out from her left nostril was a long splinter of wood that extended down to just below her chin. It was thick and swollen with dried blood, and most of it was clearly deep inside her brain.

I stood up straight and took a long, deep breath. Nothing makes you want to do that more than the face of the dead. “So. Seventy-two hours ago I saved this girl’s life. I guess I shouldn’t have bothered.”

Caz
gave me more than I thought she would. “She was found at two-twenty this morning by a nigger digging for tin cans behind the Greyhound Bus Station. His name’s Eddy, uh, he said it was Valentino, but he didn’t look like much of a ladies’ man to me.” She pulled out a small notepad and flipped through it quickly. “By the time we got there, coroner said she’d been dead thirty minutes, which means she was still wiggling when Eddy found her.” I once again fought off the urge to puke. “You know this Valentino?”