The next day the People of Queens tried Felix Tighe for attempted murder and the other charges in their Courthouse on Queens Boulevard. The trial occupied two and a half days. On the first two of these, the prosecution presented its case: the arresting officer, the injured officer, the huge knife covered with Felix’s fingerprints, the forensic evidence, the bag of swag also covered with Felix’s prints.
By the end of the second day Felix had gotten the hint and on the third day, which had been reserved for closing arguments, the guest of honor chose not to attend. This did not stop the trial. While the Constitution gives us the right to confront our accusers in open court, it doesn’t say we have to hear ourselves convicted, and so Felix was convicted, on all counts, in absentia, like an escaped spy.
A warrant was duly issued for his arrest. His folder, with its mug shots and personal information, was thrown into the felony warrant basket and taken to the office where the warrants were converted into arrest cards and sent to the NYPD and to police departments throughout the country and to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center. There it rested a while among its thousands of fellows, until a clerk pulled it from a bottomless stack and began to prepare the arrest card.
Then she noticed something peculiar. Most arrest warrants are for people who are avoiding prosecution, but here, right in the folder, was a Disposition of Trial form that said the guy had just been convicted. But if he was convicted, he would already be in jail. Something had to be wrong. The clerk was a fast worker and didn’t want to fall behind in her quotas. She stuck Felix Tighe’s file in the center drawer of her desk, intending to ask her supervisor about it later. She forgot. Two weeks after this she was promoted and had to move her desk. By that time Felix’s file was an embarrassment. She stuck it in a drawer where they kept incomplete records and, after a short interval, expunged it from her mind, and thus from the consciousness of the law. Felix Tighe, fugitive from justice, was now, for practical purposes, a free man.
This made no substantial difference to Felix himself, since he had put out of his own mind long since any possibility of having to pay for his crime. If he was tense and irritable all day that Friday, it was not because he felt the law at his heels. Instead, it was the usual aftermath of a session with Denise. Felix’s ordinary relief for tension was violence. He went to a Chinese theatre on Canal Street that showed Bruce Lee films continuously, and watched Enter the Dragon for the fifth time. His body twitched in time with the action and he grunted along with Bruce’s punches. Thus warmed up, he went to his karate dojo for some of the real thing.
Felix’s dojo was a small room above a restaurant on Division Street. He had selected it because it was cheap, and none too selective about whom it let in; because it allowed full-contact karate; and because most of the clientele were Asiatic men, whose typically slight build made them convenient victims. Felix believed, with some justification, that a good big man can beat a good little man any day, and was anxious to demonstrate the principle. “Pounding chinks” was how he put it among his acquaintances.
Although sport karate is supposed to be about using form as a means to physical, moral, and spiritual development, Felix believed, and said so often to his fellow karatekas, that such considerations were a pile of horseshit, and that the whole point of turning your body into a deadly weapon was to use it on other people and make them hurt. The sensei of the dojo, a small, elderly Korean man named Wan, smiled vaguely and shook his head whenever Felix unloaded this line, but made no move to confront him. Felix knew he was frightened of him, which added to the pleasure of the sport.
Today Felix hurried into his outfit and strode confidently out into the dojo mat room. After doing his warm-up and some katas, he looked around for a likely victim. All the clientele of the dojo were gathered in a circle watching a sparring match. Felix went over and looked over a small shoulder to see what was going on. Wan was engaged in ipon-kumite, a kind of restricted no-contact sparring with a man Felix had never seen in the dojo before. Felix was amazed. He had not realized that there existed Oriental people who were that large. He observed that the enormous Manchurian was also very fast and very good.
When Wan saw Felix, he stopped his exercises at once. He smiled at Felix. The Manchurian smiled. All the other karatekas smiled too, and backed away to form a large circle. The Manchurian bowed and, still smiling, proceeded to pound the living shit out of Felix Tighe for fifteen minutes.
When Felix got to Larry’s Place later that afternoon, the first thing he did, after drinking two scotch and waters, with Valium, was to call up a guy he knew who did freelance torch work, to see about burning down Mr. Wan’s dojo. After Felix explained the situation, the man said he would do it for five hundred, over the weekend.
“I want the people in there, you understand?” Felix said.
“You want the people … ? You mean burn them up?”
“Yeah, that’s part of the deal.”
The man laughed. “No fuckin’ way, man. Hey, let me explain something. Anybody’s in a place when I torch it, and they can’t get out, that’s tough titty, you understand? It’s like a bonus—I don’t charge for that. But making sure they fry—that’s a whole ’nother line of work than what I do, dig. Hey, you talking about frying a dozen people, you talking specialists, you talking the Mob, you understand? Job like that set you back maybe ten, twelve yards easy.”
“Yeah, well, I got to think about that.”
“Yeah, I guess. So—you want the torch job or not?”
Felix decided against it. He had by this time calmed down enough to realize that he didn’t have even five hundred dollars, and he doubted that this guy would take Visa, not even if it was a real card.
He wasn’t thinking clearly and he hurt all over. It was worse than when that cop had bopped him. He sat down in a booth and ordered another scotch. Then he opened his attaché case and took out his diary. He wrote, “Anna—move in, tonite.” That was critical. He had to get settled, get out of that shithole at Lutz’s. That was what was bringing him down. He needed some space, and someone to take care of the daily bullshit, the rent, the cleaning, the meals, so he could do some serious planning. Also, once he was set up there he could try a move on that Stephanie, see if there was any real money involved there. He thought for a moment. There was something missing. It took him a few seconds to think of what it was. Then he wrote, “Get knife,”
Which he did. At a shlock joint on Eighth Avenue he purchased a bowie knife with a wide fourteen inch blade and a fake horn handle. It came with a leather sheath. It was just like the one he had stuck Officer Slayton with in Queens. He put it into his attaché case and walked back to Larry’s. He felt much better.
When the courts recessed for lunch that Friday, Marlene remembered what she had promised Dana Woodley and, instead of camping in her office with a yogurt and a trashy book, went to visit Suzanne Loesser. Loesser was a social worker assigned to the Criminal Courts building by the New York State Department of Social Services. Her official function was to arrange protective custody for the minor children of convicted felons, but over the years she had taken on a wide selection of other duties occasioned by the blowback of crime.
This was because, unlike virtually every other social worker in the City, Loesser never said no, never said, “It’s not my department,” always treated her pathetic clientele with some measure of dignity. The existence of Loesser meant that no agent of the criminal justice system needed ever to exercise any compassion or evince any human feeling. As long as they had Loesser’s number on a slip of paper they would never have to deal with a messy problem, and could concentrate on their vital and implacable mission of assembling criminals, saying words at one another, moving the criminals around and returning them to the streets.
Throughout the Streets of Calcutta, she was known as Suzie Loser. She weighed well over two hundred pounds, lived on coffee, Danish pastry, and cigarillos, and only God knew more about the intimate problems of the poor folks of New York, although He was often not as sympathetic.
She was on the phone (she was always on the phone) when Marlene walked into her office, a space that made Marlene’s office look like an operating theater.
“Hi, Marlene, baby, get me that long green box please,” said Loesser. Then, into the phone, “No Audrey, they are eligible under section 20. I just told you …”
Marlene lifted a speckled green card file box off a swivel chair piled with folders and handed it to Loesser across her massively disordered desk. The social worker thumbed through the dingy cards, pulled one out, plucked a chewed pencil from her pepper-and-salt bun and made a notation on a yellow pad. “Audrey, listen to me! I got all the forms filled out. Just get Ben to sign the requisition when I send Rivera up there. I’ll cover it with Welfare personally. Thanks, Audrey, you’re a doll.”
She hung up the phone, which immediately began to ring again. “Suzie, I got a problem …” Marlene began.
“Who doesn’t? So how’s by you? You never come by. Listen, you want to adopt a kid? Seven years old, half Puerto Rican, half Oriental, a sweetheart …”
“Not today, Suzie. What it is, a friend of mine has a kid in a day-care center and she’s getting weird vibes off it. I thought I’d check it out with you….”
“Uh-huh. Wait a minute, let me get this.” Loesser picked up the phone and began a conversation. While the other person talked, she put her hand over the mouthpiece and said, “What’s the organization?”
“St. Michael’s, up on the Drive.”
Loesser said, “Yeah, I’m here, Sullivan. How old are the kids?” Then to Marlene, “St. Michael’s? Fancy schmancy. Good works for the poor. This friend of yours on welfare?”
“No, she’s a clerk.” Marlene related what Dana had told her about Carol Anne. Loesser responded in the interstices of her conversation with Sullivan.
“OK, the center’s affiliated with St. Michael Archangel Church—very high tone. The Reverend Andrew Pinder, a lot of social conscience—runs the Crusade for Children. They started this center about three years ago in a big brownstone one of his parishioners contributed. It’s supposed to be a model. The board of directors is gold-plated. OK, Sullivan, I get the picture. Send them around, I’ll see what I can do.”
She hung up. “Mom kills Dad, my favorite. Usually, when Dad kills Mom, he takes out the kids too. Anyway, I never heard anything but good about St. Michael’s but you never can tell. It’s a sick world. If you were a child molestor, where would you get a job? In an old age home? Making boxer shorts?”
“So one of the staff could be a creep?”
“It’s possible, but unlikely. This place is first cabin—the staff ratios are right up there. But who knows? It’s New York, right? Look, here’s the director’s name and their phone number. You can go check it out yourself.” Loesser pulled out a card and scribbled on a piece of paper, which she handed to Marlene. The phone rang again. Loesser smiled and shrugged helplessly. Marlene smiled and made for the door. As she left, a court officer was delivering two weeping, fatherless little boys to Suzie Loser.
The name of the place was on a black iron plate in raised letters: St. Michael Archangel Child Development Center. The building was a five-story brownstone, one of three biscuit-colored aristocrats set in a row in the middle of a Riverside Drive block dominated by towering apartment houses. Marlene didn’t even want to think about what such a building might cost. She climbed the front steps and pushed the buzzer on the side of an ornate wrought-iron and glass door.
A fresh-faced young woman opened the door. Marlene said she had an appointment with the director. The woman smiled pleasantly and ushered Marlene into a paneled hallway floored with parquet. The place smelled of furniture polish and leather. As the woman led her down the hall, Marlene asked, “Where are the kids?”
“Oh, they’ll be in the back now. It’s nice out today and there’s a little yard. Actually, the center occupies only the rear of this floor and the basement floor. The rest of the house is the director’s residence.”
“It sure doesn’t look like a day-care center. Where’s the pink vinyl couch? Where’s the green linoleum?”
The woman laughed. “Oh, we have linoleum. A tasteful beige though, of course.”
“Of course. Have you worked here long?”
“No, just six months, and I’m only part time. I’m getting my masters in child development at Hunter.”
“Very good. And what do you think of this place?”
“St. Michael’s? It’s paradise. It’s probably the best day-care center in New York, maybe the world.”
“That’s great,” said Marlene uncomfortably. She was starting to think she was on a fool’s errand. This had happened before. Marlene’s dirty secret was that she was not tough at all, at least not all the way through, a kind of stainless steel Twinkie. Snarling and cursing all day at Centre Street eroded something inside her, and on occasion she would either break down, as she had with Karp, or fling herself thoughtlessly into some kind of Good Deed, as now. She had lent money she didn’t have to people who would never pay her back. She did favors for people she hardly knew, like Dana Woodley. Now she started thinking about ways to keep from making a complete ass of herself.
Her guide opened a walnut-paneled door and let Marlene into a small reception room, furnished in quiet good taste, like the office of an expensive internist. The secretary, a grandmotherly woman, took her name and went through another door. In a moment, she was back. “Please go in,” she said. “Mrs. Dean will see you now.”
The room beyond was large, high-ceilinged, toast colored, and carpeted in pale green. Tall windows gave on the green trees of Riverside Park. Soft light entered through pale curtains. In front of the windows a woman sat in a high leather chair behind a Sheraton writing desk. She looked up as Marlene approached and held out her hand. “I’m Irma Dean,” the woman said. The voice was measured and cultivated, and the hand that Marlene shook was firm and dry. “Please sit down,” Mrs. Dean said, indicating a red leather armchair.
Marlene noticed herself being careful to keep her back straight and her knees together. This is just like my interview with the Mesdames, she thought. A Proustian experience, and I never got through Swann’s Way. It’s the furniture polish, the smell, and the dust falling through shafts of sunlight in the still air. She kept her hands folded carefully on her lap, with the bad one, the one with the black kid glove, concealed.
Into her mind came an image of the well-brought-up parochial schoolgirl she had been at thirteen, before sex exploded into her life. She was a sweet kid, Marlene thought. Why did I dump her? What if I went back to the nuns and tried to explain my life, my moral life. What would I say? This lady even looks like Sister Marie Augustine. The heavy eyebrows are what does it. And the sharp nose. And the confidence in those big dark eyes. No habit, but the heavy dark hair did as well. It was impossible to tell the woman’s age—it could be anywhere from forty-five to sixty. A no-nonsense lady. And Marlene was here to find out whether they did sexual abuse?
“You have a beautiful location … the building, Mrs. Dean,” Marlene began lamely.
“Thank you, Miss Ciampi. We’ve been very fortunate. The building was left to me by my late husband. My own boys are grown now and I was about to sell it, when Reverend Pinder suggested that I start a day-care center. And here we are.”
The woman paused and looked expectantly at Marlene. Marlene said, “Yes, well, the reason I came down to see you, Mrs. Dean, that I asked for an appointment was, um, I’m interested in your center. I mean, I’ve heard it’s very good. The best.”
“Interested? In what way? Are you seeking employment?”
“No, no! I have a job … I mean, I’m an assistant district attorney.”
The polite smile faded a fraction. “The district attorney? Are we being investigated?” Mrs. Dean asked lightly.
“Oh, no! Of course not. I’m interested for a child, I mean I’d like to put my child in St. Michael’s.”
“How old is the child?”
“Seven. I think. I mean, actually, I haven’t got the child yet, but I’m in the process of adopting one. Thinking of it, actually.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Dean, her face taking on the expression Marlene imagined she must use with her little charges, especially those who were brain damaged. I have to get out of here, she thought.
This woman is going to start hitting me on the hand with a ruler.
“So, I thought, I could sort of check out the place, look around …”
“Of course. Visitors are always welcome. But, you should understand that St. Michael’s is a charitable institution. All our children come from lower-income families. So in your case….”
“I see. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. Um, but as long I’m here, could I … ?”
Mrs. Dean nodded and pushed a button on her intercom and told her secretary that Miss Ciampi would be touring the center. Marlene scuttled out from under Mrs. Dean’s imperturbable gaze, blushing uncontrollably, sweat pouring down from her armpits and dotting her upper lip. She knew I was bullshitting her, she thought. Just like Sister Marie Augustine. I’m such a shitty liar, why the hell did I ever become a lawyer?
The tour was uneventful, conducted with enthusiasm by Penny, the young woman who had let Marlene into the center. The place was spotless, the children were playing what Marlene took to be educational games, the littlest ones were napping peacefully. The caretakers appeared to be like Penny—bright, enthusiastic student-teachers. Nobody was reading pornographic magazines or yanking down tiny cotton panties.
There was a whole room full of athletic equipment suitable for all ages from toddlers to pre-teens. “We take them to the park every day in the summer,” Penny said. “They play ball and jump rope and we roller-skate a lot. They love it.”
Marlene nodded absently and spun the wheels on a pair of roller skates. She hadn’t skated in years; she wondered if she’d forgotten how. She sensed this was not the time to suggest a romp through the park.
The tour was telling her nothing, since there was obviously nothing to tell. When they returned to the main playroom, Marlene asked her guide to point out Carol Anne Woodley. Penny indicated a thin child in a blue Snoopy T-shirt and red corduroys chatting away with two girlfriends around a large dollhouse. “Is she a friend of yours?” Penny asked.
“Daughter of one. That’s how I knew about the place. Is she doing OK?”
“Far as I know, but I only see her for about an hour. I’m with the pre-schoolers on the morning shift. The older kids get bussed over from their elementary schools and the parents pick them up after they get off work. Carol Anne’s on half-day kindergarten so she gets here about twelve.”
“Uh-huh. And who takes over then? Students, like you?”
Penny frowned. “No, most of the kids I know are on mornings, so we can go to class in the afternoon. The P.M. shift is mostly older. And there’s an evening shift, too, because some of the parents can’t pick up until eight. I’ve never met any of them. Why do you ask?”
“No reason, just curious. It seems like a well-run operation.” Marlene looked around, trying to interest herself in cute doings. Penny’s bright smile was wearing thin. Feeling more a fool than ever, Marlene glanced at her watch, made her excuses, and left.
Once outside, she strode rapidly up the incline of Seventy-ninth Street to the subway station on Broadway, thinking bad thoughts about herself and about Dana Woodley. The rest of the day was no bargain either. She was late for a calendar court at one-thirty and got yelled at by a judge. A witness in the case of an armed robber with about fifty priors failed to appear for the third time and the P.D. got the judge to can the case. The mutt blew Marlene a kiss as he jive-walked out of the courtroom. This can’t get worse, she thought as she slumped against the courtroom rail, forgetting for a moment that she was in the New York City criminal justice system, where it always can.
Carol Anne Woodley watched the shadows creep across the day-care center floor. She was arranging plastic blocks, some squares of fabric, and various wooden toys in a special way in order to make her mother pick her up early, before the regular people went away and the witch people came. It had only worked once, but Carol Anne tried it every evening just in case. Nearby, her best friend, Stephanie, and her other best friend Alice were talking to a new kid, a boy named Otis. Otis was dumb. He was only a five-year-old baby.
“You got to take off your pants, if they say, Otis,” said Stephanie. “They’re uncles!”
“My uncle’s in Virginia,” said Otis, confused. Both girls broke into a fit of giggles. “Stupid! Stupid!” they both cried. Alice added, “They’re not real uncles, they’re special uncles. They tickle you and they breathe on you …”
“Yeah, like this, ‘A-hungh, a-HUNGH, a-HUUU-UNGH!’” said Stephanie.
“… and then they give you candy.”
“What kind of candy?”
“Any kind. Any kind what you like. And money.”
“Real?”
“Yeah,” said Stephanie, “even dollars.”
“You lying,” said Otis.
“Am not. They really do. Right, Alice?”
“It’s true, Otis,” Alice confirmed. “And,” she continued, lowering her voice to a whisper, “you not allowed to tell nobody, not even your Mommy. ’Cause, ’cause, if you do, they kill you!”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” cried Otis, getting to his feet. He wished his Mommy was here right now.
“You better not tell, Otis,” said Alice sternly. “They get the Bogeyman to kill you. They showed us. Tell him, Carol Anne!”
Carol Anne looked up from her construction. “It’s true. They take you down cellar with no clothes on and all the witch people stand around with no clothes on and the bad kid gets stabbed with blood and then the Bogeyman takes them away. And they sing funny songs. About the devil.”
She added a little yellow plastic lion, the last touch, and looked up towards the door of the playroom. Her mother wasn’t coming. Instead, the witch people were coming in, and talking to the regular ladies as they left. They were all smiling and laughing. Carol Anne smashed the construction, kicking it with both feet, making the blocks and animals skitter across the floor.
Otis looked up in alarm. Stephanie said, “She always does that.” Carol Anne hunched in the corner with her head on her knees. She wished Otis would go away with his dumb questions. In a few minutes, she knew, one of the witch people would come around with glasses of chocolate milk. You had to drink it, or if you were allergic, you could have orange juice, but you had to have a nice drink. After the drink you would sit around and watch television. Then you started to feel sleepy and warm, and your face felt like it was under a blanket. Then the uncles came.
Otis was still asking dumb questions. “But, but,” he stammered hopefully, “they just pretend kill you. Right, Alice?”
“No, dum-dum, they kill you for real,” answered Alice with contempt. “Really real. Just like on TV.”
Otis started to whimper and one of the witch people came over and led him away. Then they gave out the drinks and it became very quiet in the day-care center. Nobody wanted to play any more. Carol Anne started to feel dreamy, like she did on weekends, lying in bed and thinking about flying around the rainbow with her special pony. After a while, she found herself in a bedroom. She didn’t remember how she got there. There was an uncle in the room. She closed her eyes and tried to go back into the dreamy place. The uncle got onto the bed and took her pants and underpants off.
The uncle’s face was pressed against hers and she could hear his funny breathing and smell his sweat and his perfume. He was making her hurt down there. She squeezed her eyes shut and didn’t cry, like they told her. They told her they would hurt her worse than this if she cried or told. They said her Mommy knew all about it already anyway, and it was OK, and you weren’t supposed to talk about it, because it was nasty, like talking about poop at the dinner table.
The uncle finished his business and went out and a witch lady came in and took Carol Anne out. There were some other children in the hallway. Some of them were new and were still crybabies. Carol Anne hoped they would go back to the day room, but no, they were being led downstairs.
Now you weren’t supposed to close your eyes. You had to watch or the witch people would pinch you. Down the stairs and across the playground and down the stairs again to the red door.
Carol Anne hated this worse than the uncles. Past the red door all of the witch people and the children were standing around a long black table, built with a thick candlestick at each corner. Jesus Upside-Down was on the wall. Sometimes they took Jesus down and made you spit or pee on him, but they weren’t doing that today. That meant something worse. A lighted fat black candle stood in each of the table’s holders and the air smelled of perfumed smoke.
There was a screen across the room, with a goat head on it, a black goat head with yellow eyes. All the witch people were humming. You had to be very quiet and keep your eyes open now.
From around the screen came the devils. Three of them were dressed in black robes and masks, with horns and red tongues. One of them was naked, with a black goat head instead of a real head.
Carol Anne heard a child scream and then a slap and a stifled whimper. Carol Anne didn’t make a sound. She knew this wasn’t the scariest part.
The devils and the witch people were moving around, humming and singing and making smoke come out of a swinging ball. Some of the children began to cough, the smoke was so thick.
Now one of the devils was standing at the head of the black table, singing very loud in a high voice, like she was calling somebody: Zariatnatmits! Tabots! Membroth! Aorios! Bucon! Minoson!
A big gong rang and the Monster came out from behind the screen carrying a naked little girl in his arms. The girl was tied up and had something stuffed in her mouth so all she could make were little squeaking sounds. The Monster had an animal head too, like a pig, but hairy and with long fangs. He was naked too, and his skin was white, like Crisco. The little girl’s skin was brown.
The Monster tied the little girl to the black table, an arm or a leg to each candle holder. The grownups started humming and shaking and singing and the naked devil came around and jumped up on the table on top of the tied-up little girl. Carol Anne could see his butt bouncing up and down. All the grown-ups were shouting now and beating on the gong.
Then the devil got off the little girl. There was blood coming out of her. The other devil, the one who had yelled out the names, took out a small curvy knife and began to cut marks in the little girl’s skin. The girl jumped around every time she got cut. The other devils came around and poked at the girl. Carol Anne couldn’t see what they were doing, but after they were finished, the little girl didn’t jump around any more. You could still hear her breathing, though, a whistling sound, thin and high.
She was dripping with blood. The devil with the knife brought out a silver cup and collected some blood and pulled the mask away from its face and drank it. Then the other devils and the witch people all drank some and sang more and beat the gong.
The Monster went up to the end of the table where the girl’s head was and did something to her neck. The whistling breath stopped. Carol Anne was glad, because that meant it was almost over. She felt a little sorry for the girl, but that was what happened when you were really, really bad, and told. Besides, that little girl wasn’t a friend of hers.
Now the Monster held up the girl’s hand by one finger. In the other hand he held a big scissors. He cut off the finger and ate it, putting it into the pig mouth of the mask. The girl’s hand flopped down on the table. They beat the gong. The grown-ups hummed and the devils and the Monsters went behind the screen. The witch people took the children out and washed them up and took them to the nap room, all the time telling them that if they said anything about what they had seen the same thing would happen to them as had happened to the little girl behind the red door.
All the children lay on their cots in the nap room. Some of them were eating the candy they had been given, after. Nobody was talking. In a while, parents came by and picked them up. Carol Anne saw her own mother come in. She got off her cot and walked over to her. Her mother gave her a hug and looked in her face. Carol Anne could see she was worried, she had that little wrinkle between her eyes.
“Everything OK, honey?” her mother asked. “You all right?”
“Fine,” said Carol Anne.
“Did you have a good day? Anything special happen?”
“No, just regular,” said Carol Anne.
Felix had never called Anna at the school before, and the tone of his voice and his frenzied insistence that she meet him immediately were unprecedented as well. After telling the school office she was ill, she hopped a cab and headed for a rendezvous at Larry’s. In the cab, she was aware of a feeling of satisfaction beneath her concern: With all his friends and connections, Felix had called her when he was in trouble. He needed her.
But she was badly shaken when she saw what Felix in trouble looked like. Even in the dim light of the lounge she could see the dark bruises on his face and hands. He was unshaven and his hair was matted. And he was drunk. He looks like a bum, was Anna’s first involuntary thought. In shame she suppressed it and rushed to sit by his side.
“My God! Felix, what happened to you?”
“What does it look like? I got in a fight.” This was said so curtly that Anna drew abruptly away. Seeing this, Felix said in what he imagined was a more genial voice, “Yeah, a crazy thing. I was jogging in the park and I saw a bunch of guys hassling this woman. So I went over to talk to them, and they jumped me. I put three of them away, but then one of ’em must have popped me with a rock, because I went down and they started dancing on my head. What a jerk, huh?” He uttered a self-deprecating chuckle.
“No, I don’t think that was jerky, Felix. I think that was a wonderful thing.”
“Ah, that’s nice, baby. I knew you’d understand.” He stretched and winced. “Damn! I could use a good hot soak. They only have a shower where I’m staying.”
Which was Anna’s cue to invite Felix back to her place, because she had a big tub, and in short order Felix was soaking away, with Anna sitting on the edge of the bath, admiring her hero, and plying him, on request, with iced beers, cigarettes, and sandwiches.
Eventually, Felix got out of the bath and stood naked and dripping on the bathmat. From where she sat, Anna could see that he was bruised also on the thighs and midsection. She felt a wave of pity and admiration for him. Felix made no move to dry himself off. He just stood in front of her, with his groin at the level of her mouth. “Hey,” he said and jerked his hips, so that a drop of bathwater jumped from his stiffening penis to splash on her face. Blissfully, she closed her eyes and took him in.
Anna sat in a chair watching Felix snoring on her bed. It was close to midnight. He had walked in and plopped down immediately after getting sucked off, and had been out ever since. Felix was not one for tender afterglows. He had a brutal streak: no, not brutal, she edited, strong, vigorous, masculine. It excited her, she had to admit; he was so different from the male schoolteachers and administrators she mixed with every day, or the floorwalkers at the department store. They were rabbits compared to Felix. Imagine, taking on a gang of thugs singlehanded!
He stirred and rolled over. She hoped he would wake up and make love to her. She had stripped and put on a bathrobe to make it easier. Fuck me, she thought, concentrating hard. Get up and fuck me! She felt herself blushing. What’s happening to me, she thought. I’m becoming a sex-crazed schoolteacher. The thought struck her funny. It’s true. She didn’t know how much she would give up to have a nice warm, hairy man in her bed, but she knew they hadn’t got there yet. The thought struck her as so funny that she chortled out loud.
At the sound, Felix popped his eyes open. His body tensed as it always did when he awakened. “What? What’re you sitting there for?” he demanded.
“Nothing. Just looking at you.”
He scowled and swung out of the bed and walked to the bathroom, saying nothing more. Anna turned the lights low, turned on the radio to a soft music station, lay down on the bed and stretched out in what she thought was a fetching pose. But when he returned he had his pants on and he was buttoning his shirt. Her face fell.
“What’s the matter?”
She summoned up a weak smile. “Nothing. I just thought you’d, you know, stay.”
He seemed to look at her for the first time, taking in her bathrobe and the way she was lying on the bed. A wolfish look came over his face and he bent over and shoved his hand roughly between her thighs. “Oh, can’t wait for it, huh?” he said, his face close. He still smelled of the whiskey. “Hey, baby, I’ll be back real soon. I’ll jam it in you good. But now I gotta go. My friend Steve’s getting off his shift at one and he’s gonna lend me his car so I can move my stuff over here.”
“Your stuff? What are you talking about, Felix?”
“What do you mean, ‘what am I talking about’? I’m gonna move in here, today, like we said.”
“We didn’t say, Felix. I said you could stay here when you got lonely, but we never talked about you moving in.”
“Fuck that!” he cried. “I’m moving in. What is this shit now!”
Anna recoiled at his tone and at the frightening expression on his face. Immediately, all Anna could think about was her last conversation with Stephanie. Her rational doubts about Felix and what he really was came rolling forth, like freeze frames from a movie: the funny credit cards, the sleazy bars he took her to, the vague and grandiose “business” he was in, the fight he got into last night. Anna was skilled at unraveling the lies of naughty fourth-graders and now she began to apply her skills to Felix.
She got off the bed, flicked on the lights and snapped the radio off. “Felix,” she said sternly, facing him, “we have to talk. I mean moving in together is serious business. And, you know, we never talk seriously. We go out, we have dinner, we jump into bed, and bang!, you’re out of here. Not that it’s not great, in bed and all, but I don’t really know anything about you. Like, I tried calling you last night, the number you gave me, and this guy was really nasty to me, he said you’d be out all night.” She looked at him appealingly and held out her hands, palms up. “Felix, what am I supposed to think? Maybe you’re seeing other women … ?”
Without warning, Felix hit her across the jaw. She staggered back against the wall and brought the bedside lamp crashing down. He grabbed the front of her robe, pulled her upright and backhanded her again. She screamed, “Felix! Stop! For God’s sake …”
“Shut up, you lying cunt!” he screamed back. He punched her hard in the stomach, a neatly executed chudan oi zuki, and she crumpled to the floor, gasping. He kicked her in the side, still yelling at the top of his voice, “Bitch! Cunt! I’ll kill you.”
She crawled on her hands and knees toward the kitchen. When she got some breath back, she started crying, and between sobs screaming herself. Somebody started pounding on the other side of the bedroom wall with a solid object. Dimly, Anna heard a woman’s voice yelling, “Stop that noise or I’ll call the cops!” Anna screamed louder and kept crawling.
He followed her into the kitchen, lashing out with his foot every couple of steps. He might have hurt her more, but he was still stiff from the beating at the dojo. She crawled under the kitchen table, and curled up beneath it, with her head covered by her arms, weeping and listening to Felix smash up her kitchen.
The table was a solid pine job, built into the wall and anchored to the floor at the outboard end. Felix yelled, “Don’t hide from me, cunt! Don’t hide from me! You’re gonna get it, you lying bitch! Bitch! You’re gonna wish you never been born,” as well as similar statements that quite undermined the image of the suave international executive he had tried so hard to cultivate. He blamed Anna for this loss of face, too, and his inability to get his hands on her flesh at this instant redoubled his fury.
After he had broken everything in the kitchen he could reach, he got down on his side and grappled under the table, hoping to haul her out, but Anna flailed her legs so wildly he couldn’t get a good purchase. Besides, his bruises really hurt in that position. He stood up and, good black belt that he was, began to smash the top of the table, accompanied by the traditional grunts and yells.
He had succeeded in breaking through one plank, when there came a loud knock on the door, and a voice: “Police, open up!”
Felix took a deep breath, brushed back his hair, went to the door and opened it. There were two cops standing there.
“We had a report there’s been a disturbance here,” said the nearest of the two, a square-faced blocky man of about forty-five. His partner was dark, skinny, and much younger. Felix noted that they both carried two-foot-long black flashlights. He said calmly, “No, there’s no problem here, Officer. Who sent in the call?”
“You mind if we take a look around?” said the first cop, and before Felix could object they were both in the kitchen. Anna had crawled out from under the table and was sitting on a chair, her head in her hands, sobbing.
“Just a little argument, Officer,” said Felix, smiling, the lord of the manor. The older cop made Felix with a two-second glance: a scumbag, he concluded, and probably not the husband. The place is torn up, he observed, and in his experience it was mostly the boyfriends who tore up. The hubbie wasn’t going to rip out the shelves and then when he made up with wifey, he has to put them back again. The hubbies take it out on the wives and kids. On meat.
He turned his attention to the woman. “Everything OK, ma’am?” he asked politely. She seemed to have difficulty finding her voice. “Yes,” she croaked. “No.” Then, “Could you ask him to leave, now?”
“This your apartment, ma’am?”
“Yes, it is.”
Felix moved in Anna’s direction and she flinched. The cop’s arm came up slightly as he moved between them, and Felix could feel the skinny cop move into position behind him. Those fucking flashlights. He had to be cool.
“Anna,” he said. “Honey … God, I’m sorry … I’m sorry.”
“Felix, I’d like you to leave now, just go, just leave me alone.”
“You heard the lady, Felix,” said the older cop. “Let’s get dressed, OK?”
Felix went into the bedroom and got his shirt and jacket on, and his shoes and socks. The skinny cop followed him in and watched from the doorway, impassively. Felix ignored him. He went into the bathroom and combed his hair. Then he picked up his attaché case. In his imagination, briefly, he played out for himself a scene where he whipped out his new bowie knife, slashed the skinny cop’s throat, ran into the kitchen and gutted the other one, and then got to work on Anna again. He’d have to tie and gag her first, to keep her quiet, so he’d have time for a really good job. He’d start on her tits …
“Hey, lover boy! Hey, Felix! Look alive now, we ain’t got all night here.”
Felix snapped out of his reverie. They were too far apart, and they had those goddamn flashlights right in their hands. He’d never make it, and if he didn’t get all three of them, he’d be in deep shit with the cops here in Manhattan, too, and he couldn’t afford that.
He allowed the cops to accompany him out of the apartment. He heard Anna double-bolt and chain the lock behind them. She’d calm down, the dumb cunt, but there was no denying that his plans were a shitpile right now. As they entered the hall Felix saw that the door of the apartment opposite was partly open. Felix saw Stephanie Mullen’s face for an instant before she slammed the door.
“Is that her?” Felix asked the cops. “Is that who called?”
“Just move along, buddy,” said the older cop wearily.
“I’ll remember that,” said Felix, grinning.