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Authors: C. E. Lawrence

Silent Slaughter (6 page)

BOOK: Silent Slaughter
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C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN
B
ack in Manhattan, Jimmy dropped Lee off in front of his building before continuing down to Chinatown to see his parents. Jimmy was a dutiful son—he stopped by at least once a week to see if there was anything he could do to help out. On the other hand, his parents still didn’t know he was gay.
Family
, Lee thought as he ascended the steps of his brownstone. Secrets were inevitable, he supposed; the question was whether they would backfire in the end.
A light snow had begun to fall as he stood on his front stoop and fished his keys out of his pocket. He was about to go in when the faint sound of singing floated across the street. It was coming from the Ukrainian church on the south side of Seventh Street. He crossed the street and walked up the stone steps of the church. The heavy wooden door gave way when he pushed, and he tiptoed inside. A choir of about thirty people was singing Christmas music, perhaps getting ready for an upcoming concert. They were launching into something by Benjamin Britten when he took a seat in the last pew.
As he sat listening to the ethereal voices floating high into the arches of the vaulted stone ceiling, a contemplative mood settled over him, as it so often did when he listened to music.
What strange creatures we are,
he thought,
capable of the best and worst Nature has to offer.
At home in the ballad and the battlefield, a race of choirboys and murderers.
He looked around the church. Poinsettias with crisp red bows adorned the altar, and boughs of holly had been fastened to the entrance to each pew. Lee had always loved the trappings of Christmas—the decorations, the lights, the rituals and aromas. Gingerbread baking, candles glowing softly in a stone chapel, the sound of carols drifting in from the street. He found a richness and sense of the sacred in the long, dark nights of winter lacking in languid, promiscuous summer days. When the earth was dead, and Nature had pulled up her tents and crept away into the deep of night, he felt the center of existence all around him—there, in the very death of things, was a sense of the Infinite.
He remembered a Christmas evening many years before—and the discovery of a secret that revealed exactly what it was his mother blamed his father for.
Late one night, when he was home from Princeton for the Christmas break, he and Laura were left alone in the house in Stockton, New Jersey—his mother was at a party in the neighboring town of Pennington. They had just put up the tree and were rooting around in the closet where Fiona kept the Christmas ornaments. They had been drinking eggnog liberally spiked with rum, and Laura was humming Christmas carols as she pulled out boxes of ornaments wrapped in crumpled bits of tissue paper that were faded and brittle with age. Fiona never could stand to throw away anything that might be useful, including old tissue paper, so the ornaments were carefully wrapped in the same ragged, yellowed bits of paper year after year.
Laura was in the middle of a verse of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” when she leaned forward and pulled out a green leather scrapbook.
“Hey, look at this,” she said to Lee, who was perched on a stepladder trying to fix the star on top of the tree so that it was pointing toward the ceiling instead of toward the first-floor broom closet.
“What is it?” he asked, trying to balance on one knee on the stepladder so he could adjust the star without getting stabbed by its pointed silver spikes shooting out in all directions. His mother always had a star at the top of the Christmas tree. It was one of those unquestioned traditions, like plum pudding and roast beef on Christmas day.
“Ouch!” he said as a pine needle pierced his sleeve. His mother always favored the sharp, short-needled trees, disdaining the ones with long, soft needles as “not real pine trees.”
“Come down here and look at this,” his sister said, pulling up a chair to study the scrapbook in front of the fire blazing merrily in the hearth.
There, placed in the middle of the scrapbook between the pictures of him and his sister as children—playing with cousins, opening Christmas presents and dressing their cat in baby clothes—was an envelope filled with love letters. They were from a woman named Chloe, and they were written to Lee and Laura’s father. With trembling hands, they read the first one.
Dearest Duncan,
How long it has been since I’ve seen you! The days crawl on unbearably, until I think I will go mad. When can you come see me, my love? Hurry, hurry to be by my side—I will count the days!
Your only love,
Chloe
For the next hour, Lee and Laura sat on the floor next to the half-decorated Christmas tree and read the letters, one by one. Some were short, like the first one; others were longer, filled with happy accounts of events and places and people—skating at Rockefeller Center, boating in Central Park, dinners at cozy restaurants. Chloe, whoever she was, lived in the city, and their father had been seeing her for some time, over at least a two-year period, according to the dates on the letters.
Finally, their necks stiff from bending over the pages, they returned each one to the envelope and slipped it back inside the scrapbook. They sat there without saying anything, until finally Lee spoke.
“So that’s what happened.”
They both agreed not to mention it to his mother—it was a secret she had been keeping for a reason. Maybe she didn’t want their pity, maybe she didn’t want to relive that horrible time, maybe she was ashamed. It was even possible she was trying to protect their memories of their father. Whatever the reason, they agreed it was her right to keep her counsel, no matter how they felt about it.
Lee was jolted back into the present by the sound of chairs scraping across the stone floor. The choir had finished its rehearsal, and the singers were moving chairs back into place before leaving. Before anyone could come to the rear of the church and ask him what he was doing there, he rose from the pew and crept out into the night. The snow was falling heavily now—several inches were already on the ground, and the Weather Channel was predicting more, a good old-fashioned winter snowstorm.
Good,
he thought as he snapped his front-door lock into place and stomped the wet from his shoes. Maybe it would slow down the killer they were pursuing.
As he shook the snow from his coat and pulled off one shoe, the phone rang. Thinking it might be Detective Butts, he snatched up the receiver.
“Hello?” he said, standing awkwardly on one leg while he tried to remove his other shoe.
“Hi.”
It was Kathy Azarian. He took a deep breath and sank into the red leather chair by the window.
“Hi,” he said, keeping his voice steady, uninflected.
“I, uh, just wanted to call and see how you’re doing.”
“Fine. And you?”
“I’m okay.” There was a pause and then a deep sigh. “Oh, God,” she said, “can we just—”
“What, Kathy? Just what?”
“Can I see you?”
“Why? Do you have something to say?”
“I just want to see you, for Christ’s sake. Is that a crime?”
“In some states it might be.”
She laughed, a short burst of misery. “I’m glad you still have your sense of humor.”
Her unhappiness gave him unexpected buoyancy. He sang softly, “ ‘No, no, they can’t take that away from me—’ ”
“Now you’re just milking it.”
“May I remind you, I’m the injured party here?”
“You make it sound like a goddamn lawsuit,” she snapped.
“Just calling it like I see it.”
“So now you’re an umpire?”
“Look, if you want to talk, we’ll talk. But if you want to argue—”
“I’m on my way into New York. Can we meet tonight?”
It was the last thing he wanted. Their breakup, if that’s what it was, had been confusing and painful, and he didn’t really want to dive back into that dark pool just yet. She had met someone else, or so she said—so why come to him now?
“Okay,” he said. “Where do you want to meet?”
“Battery Park City, if you don’t mind.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll call you again when my train gets in, and we’ll set it up.”
“Right,” he said, and he hung up.
He sat in the red leather armchair and looked out at the cold, still night sky, void of twinkling stars, their pale light eaten up by the voracious wattage of the city. Things had started so well with Kathy. They spent that first summer hurling themselves into the humid air, driven by hunger and romance, to dark, cozy corners in their favorite hangouts. There was the Life Café, with its Goth waitresses slouching between tables, all purple eye shadow, pale skin and green hair, sleek in tights and black skirts, serving strong coffee and heaping burritos, or the Royal India, steaming platters of pa-padam and vindaloo that set their tongues on fire and their eyes streaming. And of course McSorley’s—dirty, loud and boisterous, where the waiters were ex-cops and the clientele future felons.
But it all went wrong somehow, as these things sometimes did, and now she was reaching out to him again—but why? He put on his coat to begin the long trudge down to Battery Park, where the Hudson River emptied out into the roiling currents and channels of New York Harbor.
Perhaps, he thought as he slung on his coat, he was not the only one abroad on this cold winter night.
C
HAPTER
T
WELVE
T
hey agreed to meet at a little seafood joint overlooking the Hudson River in Battery Park City, where Kathy would be staying at a friend’s place. The snow was falling heavily when he arrived ten minutes early—big fat flakes tumbling from the night sky. She was already there, tucked away in a dark corner, underneath a white life preserver with the name of the restaurant stenciled on it in bold black letters. An empty wineglass sat on the table in front of her.
“My train was ahead of schedule,” she said apologetically when he slid into the seat opposite her.
The place was quiet—Tuesday evening was a good time to avoid crowds in New York restaurants. A young couple sat at the bar, their hands resting casually on each other’s knees. A grizzled man in a parka perched on a stool at the end, watching the evening news on the bar’s TV.
They were the only other patrons. A few of the kitchen staff sat at an empty table, resting their feet. They were young and stocky with caramel skin and straight black hair—probably Mexicans or Guatemalans. Lee had often thought that every restaurant in New York would shut down if Immigration suddenly decided to ask for papers for every kitchen worker in the city. Kitchens in Chinatown were filled with illegal Chinese immigrants, and a steady stream of workers from Central America kept hungry New Yorkers fed. They were hardworking, smart and efficient—they took the jobs no one else wanted and excelled at them.
A slim young waiter with slicked-back hair slinked up to them and took their drink orders. Lee asked for a Scotch, and Kathy ordered another glass of Cabernet.
“Looks like you’re already one step ahead of me,” he remarked as the waiter removed her empty glass.
She avoided meeting his eyes. “I kind of needed it.”
“I would have done the same thing.”
Looking at her, he finally felt that the connection between them was broken. It was as if he was seeing her for the first time—but not in a nostalgic, romantic way. A veil had been lifted from his eyes, and all that was familiar and dear about her had vanished. His view of her was suddenly coldly objective. The person sitting across from him was small and dark, with a sallow complexion very different from his own. All that was foreign and exotic about her, all that had excited him, struck him now as odd and off-putting: the preternatural whiteness of her teeth, her dark eyes with their long black lashes.
Even the wayward curl in the middle of her forehead failed to stir feelings of desire. Instead, he found himself wondering if she arranged it that way on purpose, knowing how fetching it was. The thought of something so charming being intentional crushed its allure for him. If the curl was planned, then it was no longer so enticing.
He mentioned none of this. Instead, he said, “You want something to eat?”
She lowered her head, the rogue curl flopping lower on her forehead.
Was that on purpose? Did she know what he was thinking?
“No, thanks,” she said, not looking at him.
He took a swallow of Scotch and felt the welcome burn in the back of his throat. “I’m thinking of getting a cat.”
She looked up. “What?”
“My therapist thinks it will be good for me.”
She frowned, deepening the dimple in her chin. “Men don’t have cats.”
“Isn’t that a sexist attitude?”
“Why not a dog?”
“Too high-maintenance. A cat is easier.”
She gave a little smile. “What will your therapist come up with next?”
“She’s someone I can rely on.”
“And I’m not—is that what you’re saying?”
“I wasn’t trying to make a point. But it’s important to have someone you can trust.”
“Look, I know I’m not really there for you right now, and I’m sorry about that.”
“So,” he said, lurching into the conversation they had both been avoiding for weeks, “do you think you have a future with him?” He wasn’t going to say the name, though it was written in neon in his brain:
Peter. Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater . . .
Her lips tightened, and she clasped her hands so tightly, the color left her fingers.
“I don’t
know
.”
“Is it something you want to explore?”
She raised her gaze to meet his. He had never seen her face look so dark, so troubled.
“I wish you wouldn’t be so goddamn
agreeable
about this. You should be angry at me.”
“What makes you think I’m not?”
“Then why are you behaving so damn
decently
?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re just making it more difficult.”
He felt the anger bubbling up in his throat and fought it back down.
“I’m sorry if I’m spoiling your getaway plan. We can just call it quits right now, if that’s what you want.”
“I know I’ve been impossible lately. It’s just that I don’t know when . . .” She stared out the window at the moody gray waters of the Hudson. A hardy little band of mallards made their way upriver, paddling strenuously as they struggled against the current, the harbor lights glistening on their shiny green feathers.
“You don’t know when I’m going to shake off my depression and anxiety and behave normally.”
“I don’t blame you—”
“But it’s hard to live with.”
“And not being able to talk about certain things—”
“Like my father.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, I’m glad your father is a swell guy you have a good relationship with. But it doesn’t work that way with everyone.”
“I
know
that, Lee; it’s just—”
He wrapped his fingers around the tumbler of Scotch and gazed into the tawny liquid. “
Do
you know, really?”
“I don’t want to lie to you and pretend everything is fine. . . .”
“You know what?” he said. This conversation was exhausting, and he had had enough. “I think we both need some time off to think about this, and I’ve got other things going on.”
She looked a little stunned by his tone of voice. He hadn’t meant for it to come out so angrily.
“Okay.”
“Fine,” he said, getting up to leave. He dropped two twenties onto the table. “I’ll be seeing you around.”
“Lee—wait.”
He turned back to her.
“What?”
“I—I still care about you, you know.”
“Let me know when you have it worked out. And good luck with the pumpkin eater.”
He pulled up his coat collar and walked away without looking back. He left the restaurant and headed down the steps to the river, the snow stinging his face. He could hear the water lapping up against the moorings, and the creak of the ropes as the boats strained against them. The seagulls circled and cried high in the sky above him, their harsh voices floating out over the waves, only to vanish into the thin, wintry air.
BOOK: Silent Slaughter
12.73Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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