Brides Of The Impaler (16 page)

Now she liked the sketch even more.

I can’t wait to show this to Bruno
. Enthused, then, Cristina focused at her table, to begin a more refined draft.

“So we’re here for what reason?” Vernon asked Detective Taylor in the small, computer-filled cubby loudly referred
to as the Electronic Evidence Assimilation Unit at Manhattan North Borough Command. Taylor scratched his unkempt mustache and frowned. “It’s what you wanted, and because you didn’t tag a link on the case number from last December, I couldn’t go to the Information Systems Division downtown.”

Vernon’s mind wandered. He was standing behind a civilian employee hunkered over a terminal. “December? Oh, the Christmas tree stand thing.”

“Yeah,
that
big caper. Ain’t no way it’s not connected to the impalement.”

“I know but it’s hard to push that way.”

“You’re just afraid of being laughed at since making inspector.”

“Tell me about it.” Vernon had to agree. “Christmas tree stands, magic markers, and forty bucks’ worth of whittling knives…”

Taylor smiled wide. “And bum-girls, speaking of which…” The detective pointed to the computer screen.

“There they are,” Vernon said in a hush.

“When I told you the owner of the hardware store couldn’t find the surveillance disk, I was wrong. They never got it back from us. It’s been in the C.E.S. mainframe the whole time. Took this guy here two minutes to pull it up.”

Vernon’s eyes were taken by the screen, which now showed several haggardly dressed females moving in slow-motion down an aisle of the darkened hardware store. The nerdy tech at the desk would freeze the closest image of each perpetrator, hit a key, then slo-mo to the next. A printer below the desk hummed, kicking out four eight-by-ten glossies. The tech handed the photos to Vernon.

“These look great,” Vernon complimented.

The tech smirked like an accountant bothered by something trivial. “You could’ve done it from your precinct house.”

“We don’t have that kind of technology at our house,” Vernon told him.

The tech smirked sharper. “Inspector, it’s ten-year-old technology.”

“Like I said, we don’t have that kind of technology at our house.”

Taylor eyed the slick printouts. “Just like the drugstore.”

Now the tech shook his head. “Where have you guys been? Nobody gets pictures developed at the drugstore anymore. Don’t you have a printer and a digital camera?”

Vernon and Taylor raised their brows. “We’re old-school, but thanks,” Vernon said. Then he took Taylor back out to the parking lot. They studied the printouts more closely, while Taylor verbalized a description of each woman running down the aisle with several boxed Christmas tree stands:

“Ratty-looking blonde with glasses, ratty-looking brunette in pink sweatpants,
another
ratty-looking brunette in ratty-looking jeans, a ratty-looking redhead, and—”

Vernon completed the summary, “A ratty-looking woman with very short hair and patches of psoriasis—”

“And large breasts…not that I’d want my face between them. She’s probably got
boob
lice.”

“You sound like Slouch,” Vernon complained.

“No, Slouch would
want
his face between them. You know Slouch—after a couple beers, anything goes.” Taylor flipped through the photos again. “At least we know what they look like. No way to tell how old they are, but if we spot one on the street we’d probably recognize them.”

“Yeah, but that’s too easy,” Vernon offered cynically. “That’s not the way my luck runs since I turned fifty.”

“Ten-year hard-luck streak, How?”

“That’s
Inspector
How to you…Patrolman-to-be Taylor.”

Taylor laughed. “I’m just joshin’.”

“Just what I need.” Vernon threw Taylor the keys to the unmarked. “You drive. I’m too
old
.”

“Yes, sir, Inspector. Where to?”

“Same area you and Slouch cruised with that twenty-five-year-old hooker who looks thirteen.”

“Cinzia. Right.” Taylor pulled off onto 100th, then darted into traffic on Broadway.

Vernon was thinking as he re examined the hard copies. “The redhead was the one we busted in December, right? Where’s she now, or have you been slacking?”

Taylor’s dark mustache trailed down the sides of his mouth like an Italian actor from the seventies. “She’s long gone. I already did the follow-up this morning.”

Vernon glared. “Then how come you didn’t
tell
me that this morning?”

“Because I was busting my ass trying to run down the fuckin’ surveillance footage from the hardware store like you told me to do,” Taylor emphasized with a raised voice, knuckling the wheel.

“Oh, right. Good job, by the way. So what happened to the redhead?”

“She was clinically fucked-up so she never stood trial.” Vernon turned on the fireball-light on the dash and whooped his siren, to make an illegal turn past Cleopatra’s Needle, run a red light on 92nd, and shoot a right onto Amsterdam. Other drivers leaned on their horns but Taylor didn’t even hear them. “Chronic abulia and apraxia, they told me, what ever that means. And ‘schizoaffective.’ They let her out of the state hospital after a blue paper and ninety days of therapy; her case doctor said she was not capable of mens rea. Then the OT counselor told me she split town, took the first Greyhound out to DeSmet, South Dakota…Like I’ve heard of that. Give me some time and I’ll try to run her down.”

Vernon shuddered when a bus roared by. “Don’t bother. The minute they’re out of a therapeutic environment, they stop taking their meds and are back to square one. She was nuts and homeless here, you can bet she’s nuts
and homeless in South Dakota. We’ll just eyeball the streets where the hooker said to. We’ve got nothing else to do except go home.”

Taylor opened his mouth but then closed it again without a word. They passed Tecumseh Playground and Verdi Square. Post–rush hour was still heavy with vehicles. At every corner, however, panhandlers could be seen sitting down with their empty cups or trudging this way and that amid the throng of the upper crust. “Who says there’s no homeless problem on the Upper West Side?” Taylor remarked.

Vernon reflected. “Like the hooker was telling us, if they don’t foot it all the way up here from the shelters every day, they squat in recently closed buildings. It makes sense.”

“Yeah. If your career is bumming change, you’re better off doing it here than the fuckin’ Bronx. Restaurants, bars, stores, they’re going under or getting bought out every day. You shack up in one place for a week or two, then move on to the next. I’ve just never really noticed so many homeless around here in the past.”

“That’s because this is the first time we’ve actually been looking for them. And that Cinzia girl…Didn’t she say something about the hardware store chicks congregating near a vendor at the corner of Dessorio?”

“Right. Slouch and I talked to the guy. He verified what the hooker told us but—”

“Couldn’t give specifics ’cos he probably sees a hundred different homeless people every damn day,” Vernon reasoned.

“Um-hmm.” Taylor slowed the car, pointing. “There’s the guy now. Wanna go talk to him? Now we’ve got pictures he can look at.”

Vernon eyed the short, stocky vendor at the corner. He wore a New York Islanders shirt and a Mets cap, and had a
gnawed cigar between his teeth. “Naw. I told you. My luck doesn’t run that way.”

Taylor pursed his lips. “It’s
police work
, How. You’re the one who said we’ve got nothing better to do. Come on. And you can buy me a hot dog. I don’t make enough on detective’s pay.”

Vernon shrugged. “All right.”

Taylor pulled into a No Parking zone. The instant they both got on the sidewalk, they froze.

“I don’t believe it,” Vernon muttered into the flow of oncoming pedestrians.

Taylor cut a big grin. “And you said your luck never runs this way.”

“Mine doesn’t but evidently yours does.” Vernon threw the photos back in the car and extracted his handcuffs. “Grab her.”

Taylor immediately latched onto the arm of a shabby, large-breasted woman in cutoff military pants. Her very short dark hair was patched with bald spots and scabs.

“Hey!” she whined. “Take your—”

“Police,” Vernon said. “You’re under arrest.”

“You shits! Help me, somebody! These cops are trying to rape me!” she shrieked.

Vernon chuckled. “Christmas tree stands and woodcarving knives? But relax, you don’t have to tell us anything because you have the right to remain silent.”

Taylor pushed her forward against the car and cuffed her.

“You can’t hold me,” the seedy woman proclaimed. “I can fly anything God can make! I’m gonna lock you up in a cave full of milk bottles and soup!”

Vernon rolled his eyes at Taylor. Taylor said, “Rice Krispies.”

“The government put these cameras in my teeth!” She opened her mouth wide. “Now they can see you two shit-cakes!”

“Get her in the car,” Vernon said, unable to refrain from smiling.

“These guys aren’t cops!” she wailed. “They got fake badges that the guys who killed Kennedy gave them!”

“Those are some lines, huh?” But Taylor paused before moving her off. “Hey, How. Check it out.”

Vernon stooped to peer. He was looking at the woman’s very dirty hands cuffed behind her back. All of her fingernails appeared to be lined with dried blood.

“There he is,” Paul said, looking up from his booth at Harry’s Bar at the Helmsley Hotel. It was their after-work hangout, and seemed to be devoid of other attorneys but chock-f of stockbrokers, whose barside banter always proved more interesting than that of the former. Half of the brokers looked on the verge of suicide. Paul swizzled a Johnny Walker Blue on the rocks, and already had a bottle of Asahi waiting for Jess. Jess sat down as if winded, his hair perpetually disarrayed, and drained a third of the bottle.

“I take it Massacessi’s people didn’t dig your arbitration rebuttal,” Paul suspected of his partner’s more-harried-than-usual look.

“Oh, they loved it, but the traffic on Third sucks. Christ, it’s past seven.”

“I always cut up Eighth, then swing over on Forty-second.”

“Sure, probably to stop and snag some lap dances.”

“Don’t need to.” Paul huffed a chuckle. “Since Cristina’s moved in, she’s turned into a dynamo. She’s wearing me out.”

“There’s always the Big Blue.”

“Yeah. I take ’em in place of One A Days.” Paul sipped his twenty-five-dollar drink. “I tweaked the highlights on
the Soledad motion and punted them. It looks good…even for billing five-seventy-five an hour. So what about Massacessi?”

“They want to renew for five years—”

“You’re shitting me?” Paul said, startled. “That’s great. Hell, I ought to let you pocket the whole retainer ’cos you did all the work.”

Jess’s brow shot up over his next chug of fancy beer. “Really?”

“Fuck you…partner.”

Both men laughed. “Don’t know how you can drink those fussy Jap dry beers, but I picked up a case for you anyway, for this weekend.”

Even Jess’s spiked goatee looked sloppy. “This weekend? Oh, yeah. Cookout at your place.”

Paul smiled. “Well,
carry
out, not cookout. You haven’t seen the house since we got all the furniture in. It looks so sumptuous I almost feel guilty living there…Almost.”

“Once a lawyer, always a lawyer. The Catholic Church has too much property as it is. You’re like Robin Hood but with none of that ‘give to the poor’ jive on the end.”

Paul shrugged through another sip of scotch. “Just as the Ten Commandments were written in stone so were these words: ‘A buyer’s superior knowledge of property value is NOT actionable.’”

“Amen.”

Through the front window, they both glimpsed a minibus waiting for the light on 3rd. Big letters along the side read: FAMILY SERVICES FOSTER CARE OF NEW YORK.

Both men averted their eyes at once, neither speaking, until the bus pulled off. Eventually Paul broke the silence. “Just when you think you’ve forgotten about something shitty.”

“I hear ya. But I read somewhere than 90 percent of the foster services in the U.S. are right on.”

“Yeah, but we’re both living with two girls who fall into that other 10 percent. It just burns me up, those Goldfarb psychos. Twenty years ain’t enough.”

“They’ll croak in stir, watch.” Jess always took the positive side.

Paul ordered another round. “Ain’t good enough. Sometimes I think about paying someone on the inside to fuck them up.”

Jess lost his joviality fast. He leaned over and whispered, “If you’re going to make yourself liable for premeditation and conspiracy, kindly refrain from doing it in front of
me
, and think about not talking that kind of shit in a
public
place
.”

Paul waved it off. “You know what I mean. And don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it, too,’ cos if you do…you’re a liar.”

“Can’t argue with ya there. Better way to look at it is Goldfarb’s probably got a size-thirteen asshole by now. That’s good enough for me. And you’re forgetting the only good thing to come out of it.”

“What’s that?”

“Even after a childhood like theirs, Britt and Cristina landed on their feet and both got their shit supremely squared away.”

Paul nodded but it was half-dismal. “I guess I just think too much. That was some pretty awful shit they had to go through.”

“Sure. Giving barbs to little kids, and God knows what else, and molestation, I presume.”

Paul looked up, puzzled. “You
presume?
Didn’t Britt—”

“She told me some of it but none of the details,” Jess said. “She’s a strong chick, both of them are.” A pause over his beer. “You mean Cristina told you everything?”

Paul reeled a bit in the posh seat. “Well, yeah, pretty much. The Goldfarbs drugged them up all the time, and had them doing everything to each other.”

Jess squinted at the unpleasant revelation. “Each other? I thought it was just Andre, you know…”

“No, no, man,” Paul corrected, smirking as though the scotch were lemon juice. “Andre and his wife were switching off between the two of them
and
the foster brother, and they made them all…do…each other. They even had their friends over. The psychos were putting those kids in orgies.”

Jess looked shell-shocked. “I—I had no idea. Britt never got into that much detail.”

“It was some sick shit. And the brother never made it—he’s in an institution,
all
fucked-up. It was a fuckin’ kiddie porn club the Goldfarbs had going. They took thousands of pictures and sold the shit to their little network of perverts. I petitioned the prosecutor’s office to let me see the post-trial evidence, but I’ll tell ya, I wish I never had. I actually threw up once I got back to my car. You wouldn’t believe what those scumbags were doing to Britt and Cristina in those pics, and you can
tell
, even though they were just kids.” Paul gulped. “You can tell by their faces that it was Cristina and Britt.”

Jess just stared, his mouth sagging open.

A black aura seemed to settle over each man’s head. Paul cleared his throat—“But like you said, all that matters is that they both shook it off and landed on their feet in spite of it. Most girls who go through the wringer like that don’t. Neither of them are fucked-up at all…Well, maybe Cristina is a little sometimes—Christ, look at those dolls she designs, but the shrink she saw in Stamford said it was a constructive therapeutic outlet. And you wouldn’t believe the money she made last year from those things.”

“I know. Britt told me,” Jess said. He was trying to shake off the shock of the bombshell that had just been dropped on him. “Britt doesn’t make a whole lot of money herself but she is doing a whole lot of good. She told me that
that’s
her
therapy. But I didn’t know about all that other shit. I’ll think twice whenever I give her a hard time about some piddly bullshit like forgetting to take my fuckin’
suits
to the cleaners. Christ.”

“Yeah, and I
drink
too much,” Paul said, and raised his glass. “We’re both attorneys so I guess that means we’re both assholes.”

“Yeah, but at least we’re
rich
attorneys, so that’s got to count for something,” Jess tried to joke. “Ultimately, there’s a lot of really sick scumbags in the world, and we’ve got to do everything we can to protect our girls from them.”

“Tell me about it. There’s evil everywhere—it’s a sick, sick world, all right.” Paul seemed to ruminate on something. “I know this guy who does legal consultations for the cops, he’s always up at the Forensic Investigations Division in Queens. I ran into him today at Joseph’s Steak-house, and you know what he told me?”

Jess looked physically pummeled by everything he’d already heard in the last few minutes. “Do I
want
to know?”

“They managed to keep it out of the papers so far but he said the cops found a woman murdered yesterday by impalement.”

Jess gaped. “Impalement? What the hell is—”

“Somebody sharpened the end of a broomstick or something and pushed it up this woman’s snatch till it was in her mouth. And she was
alive
when they did it.” Paul clinked the ice in his glass, his eyes off-focus. “How’s that for a sick world?”

Sandrine laughed, munching the macadamia nuts she’d shoplifted dirtied-handed from the bulk foods section of a Gristede’s Supermarket. “It’s sort of like a Christmas tree. We should get lights!”

“There’s no electricity here, you dope,” Francy reminded her.

“Oh. Yeah. But still, it would be cool, wouldn’t it?”

She and Francy both looked with satisfaction at Doke, propped up now and quite dead on the sharpened wooden pike. He just hung there, his feet a few inches off the ground.

“He’ll start to-start to-start to stink soon,” Stutty commented, her wan face shifting in the candlelight.

“So what?” Francy kept looking at the corpse. Even after they’d propped him up, it had taken him a few minutes to die. She enjoyed the way he sort of
quivered
on the pike. “The New Mother said that our Prince liked the smell so much he kept impaled bodies in the room where he ate his meals.”

“Gross,” Sandrine offered.

“It was a different time, Sandrine.”

Sandrine shuffled idly to the corner where they kept a pile of canned food and candy bars they stole. She knelt before the several dolls she’d stood up on the floor, but…

She’d had three. Only two stood there now.

She wiped her smudged hands off on her pink sweatpants. “Who ripped off my doll?” She examined the remaining two, one a cutesy little girl who was blue and frosted, the other a smiling girl with black bangs who looked like she was rotting. Sandrine couldn’t really read but if she could she would’ve seen the names on the bottoms of each figurine: HYPOTHERMIA HARRIET and LEPROSY LINDA. “I had three here, but now one’s missing!” she complained, glaring at her associates with suspicion. “The boy with the bloody belly is gone.”

“We don’t steal, except the way our Prince did,” Francy reminded her. “Like the New Mother said. You only steal from those who steal from others.”

“But the boy with the bloody belly was the coolest one!”

“Where-where did
you
get them?” Stutty asked with a grin.

“Well, I ripped ’em off from the lady’s house, but…I wasn’t really stealing. I was gonna take ’em back.”

“That’s all right,” Francy bid as if forgiveness was hers to dole out. “She’s not in the convent. But you know none of us stole it. We’re your sisters now.”

“Virginia stole it, probably-probably-probably—”

“Be quiet!”

Sandrine fumed. “It figures. She was a shitty bitch anyway—”

Francy chuckled. “And she won’t be stealing anything now.”

“Yuh-yuh-yeah!” Stutty guffawed.

Sandrine cooled off, and put the two figurines in her pocket. “I hope the New Mother comes to night.”

“She will, unless we haven’t been faithful enough.”

Stutty frowned at a can of anchovies. “We should-we should-we sh—”

“Be quiet!” Francy yelled.

“We should
what
?
” Sandrine asked, bored now.

Stutty concentrated, her fists clenched. “We should get something good to eat tonight. I’m sick of these gross anan-anchovies.”

“We can do that,” Francy approved. “We have some money now, and the New Mother says it’s okay if the money comes from the faithless.”

“Let’s go to McDonald’s and get good stuff,” Sandrine enthused.

“I’d ruh-ruh-ruh—” Stutty ground her wobbly teeth. “I’d rather get a meatball sub at the Subway next to the health food store.”

“We can get what ever we want,” Francy told them. “Let’s go now.”

More than $500 comprised Doke’s till; these were high times.
Thank God for the New Mother
, Francy thought with
a smile full of holes. But a scrabbling caused them all to look toward the narrow entrance.

“It’s probably Scab,” someone said. “I haven’t seen her all day.”

“Oh,” Francy said.

It was another homeless woman, whose name was Crazy because that’s what she was.

“Not her!” Sandrine complained.

“You can’t-can’t-can’t come here!” Stutty yelled. “This is our house.”

Crazy wore a pair of plaid men’s shorts she’d found in the garbage, and a black blouse with torn-off sleeves. Her black hair looked electrocuted, and one eye constantly looked to the left. She was barefoot and pallid as cream.

“Ruthie Mooseface and Blinda told me you lived here,” Crazy said, scratching lice. When she started coming closer, Francy blocked her; she didn’t want Crazy to see the impaled drug dealer stuck benhind the stack of boxes.
Ruthie Mooseface and Blinda, huh?
“Hi, Crazy. Yeah, we’ve lived here for nine months. That’s how long the place has been empty, and no workmen have come yet. But don’t tell anyone else we’re here, okay?”

Crazy stood like someone who’d had a bad stroke, which was actually true. “The Z-Men said they’d kill me, they’ve been looking for me. Can I stay here a while?”

“No!” Sandrine snapped.

“Be quiet, Sandrine,” Francy said more calmly. “Of course she can stay here. She can even join the convent. The New Mother said we have to help our sisters.”

Crazy didn’t even question the bizarre statement.

“But to join,” Francy told her, “you have to die—”

CRACK!

It was Stutty who’d brought the brick down on Crazy’s head from behind.

“Take her clothes off,” Francy ordered the two girls. She smiled. “I’ll get a stick.”

Cristina awoke just as the clock struck one in the morning. She lay still, thinking.
Why am I…wide awake?
She should be exhausted. Paul had come home from work later than usual but he’d scarcely stepped through the front door before they’d been wrapped up in one another. Cristina could tell by his breath that he’d been drinking yet the day’s rising desire melted any disfavor she might normally feel. She had his ocher-hued dress shirt off and on the foyer floor before his brain could register the act; just as fast she practically tore open his pants. Paul hadn’t had to bother removing Cristina’s clothes for she’d greeted him at the door nude.

She had felt desperate for the gluttonous sensations that only a man could provide—there’d be no waiting to get to the bedroom. “Here, here,” she panted, her breasts pressed against his chest. Her sex seemed to
pulse
along with her heart. “Right here.” And then she brought him down to the handwoven Ersari carpet. Paul was about to speak but Cristina began sucking his tongue before he got the chance. Frenzy sunk her crotch right down, taking him all the way. It didn’t seem that his previous imbibing had hindered his ability, as it had the night before. Cristina’s eyes rolled upward with each stroke. “Harder, my God,” her voice gushed. “Do it as hard as you can—” And when he did she squealed half in shock and half in delight. She felt gored now, and pommeled, but that was how she
needed
to feel. Her lust made her blood feel thick. Paul’s groin continued to bludgeon her most private place, and all she wanted was more. Each thrust only added more heat to her yearning, which now seemed primitive, more than human. She cringed as he climaxed and filled her sex with a flood of slickened heat. Cristina continued to ride him fast until he turned limp. Paul half-gasped his apology, “Aw, honey, I’m sorry I didn’t last long en—”