Читать книгу No Human Contact - Donald Ladew - Страница 11

Teresa parked near the Galleria and walked to the Good Earth Restaurant. For reasons she didn’t understand or wouldn’t admit, she always dressed carefully when having lunch with her mother.

She wore an Ann Taylor cream-colored silk suit, square-shouldered with slacks of the same material. The buttoned jacket covered a white silk camisole. Her pale blonde hair was pulled back and held in place with a mother-of-pearl bar and she had on low Italian shoes for which she had given the equivalent of a car payment. She wore nothing on her hands and simple pearl ear rings.

She stood very straight as she had been taught at the Police Academy. A young guy in his twenties wearing a green apron, stumbled in his haste to reach her first. She looked around the restaurant, searching for her mother.

“Hi! My name’s Jack. Is there anything I can do for you? Leap tall buildings? Slay a dragon? Buy the Hope Diamond?”

Teresa grinned. “The diamond sounds nice, but right now I’d be happy if I could find my mother.”

“No problem. I’ll just look for the second most beautiful woman in the known universe. Follow me, please!”

They located Teresa’s mother in the rear. After she was seated Teresa told her mother what the young guy said.

“He said you must be the second most beautiful woman in the known universe.”

She smiled. “Really? I wonder who’s number one?”

After the host left Mrs. Keely looked at her daughter with sharp, knowing eyes. “You look very elegant, dear. It would be nice to see you in real clothes all the time.”

“Don’t start, Mother. I’m not in the mood.”

“Okay, okay. So, what’s wrong, Teresa? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“Why should anything be wrong?”

“C’mon, Teresa. I’m your mother, not your watch chieftain. I know!”

“That’s, Watch Commander, Mother.”

“Whatever.”

Mrs. Keely waited while Teresa tried to figure out what she wanted to say.

“All right, it’s not what you think, not the kind of problem you want to hear.”

“Don’t judge me, Teresa. I don’t like it any better than you.”

Teresa dipped her head, momentarily shamed.

“Sorry. I want to tell you about something strange, a puzzle. I should have done something. It’s not what I did, it’s what I didn’t do.”

“Oh, Teresa, for Pete’s sake! Get on with it!”

“All right. I came home from work the night before last, about nine o’clock. I’d left the window open in my bedroom. When I went to close it...”

Her mother listened with complete attention, occasionally murmuring an acknowledgment.

“...I should have reported it. I don’t know why I didn’t, why I haven’t.”

“Good Lord! That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I know, Mother. It’s like the Peerson’s are his family. Such affection in his voice, yet with the biker, one tough S.O.B., and Mother, I know what tough is. The man in the tree made it look easy.”

“Sounds like two problems, Teresa. Your duty as a police officer and your instinct as a woman, forgive me for saying it, your heart. Don’t frown, Dear. Let me tell you something, if that happened to you when you were fourteen, and your father went out and took care of it, I’m not sure I’d want to know the details, but I’d be glad, very glad.”

Teresa drank her tea and nibbled at her salad. “I don’t know about heart, Mother.”

“Oh, I think you do, Teresa. If you didn’t you would have yanked him out of that tree and locked him up.”

Teresa thought about it for a long time.

“Maybe, I don’t know.”

Teresa drove down Magnolia Avenue toward the Burbank Police Headquarters. After she parked she got a large brief case from the trunk. She shut off the warning voices, all telling her she was making a big mistake, an illegal mistake.

As soon as she walked into the building she realized going there, dressed for success was foolish, like waving a red flag in front of a bunch of sex-crazed bulls.

The officers in the reception area stared, momentarily stunned, then clapped and whistled enthusiastically. One officer shouted at the top of his voice, “Viking lives!”

She couldn’t get angry, they were totally overt in their appreciation.”

She hurried from the records section. The last thing she wanted was to talk shop.

Rita sat in front of a large terminal, her nose nearly touching the glass.

“Hi, Rita.”

She turned around quick, peered nearsightedly. “Jesus! Teresa, you’re having a nooner? It’s not fair.”

“Don’t be an idiot. I had lunch with my mother, had to listen to that crap about my chosen profession for an hour.”

“She wanted you to get a ‘real’ job, right?”

Teresa chuckled. “Yeah, that’s the one. Did you get it?”

Rita rummaged through a stack of folders on her desk. “Yep, right here. C’mon, Teresa, just checking? What’s going on? This guy is something else. Christ! Some of it’s enough to make you weep. Guy’s life reads like a bad novel.”

“It’s police business, Rita. I’m playing a hunch.” The hunch part was right, but she wasn’t sure about the police business and that bothered her.

“Whatever you say.”

“Thanks, Rita. I owe you.” She put the folders in her briefcase and left.

Driving home from the station she felt an urgency to know the contents of the folders. The urge was overpowering. She almost pulled over and read the files beside the road.

She suppressed the urge. In her apartment, she stripped to briefs and a tee-shirt with a picture of a kangaroo and the words, ‘Australia is Just Outback!’

She brought a bottle of Callaway Chardonnay, a water glass and a block of Gouda cheese to the living room, curled up on the couch and stared at the folders on the coffee table. She placed a notebook and a pencil next to the folders then leaned forward and separated the folders.

“Where to start?” she murmured.

In the background Natalie Cole sang softly with her Daddy, The King—every little girl’s dream.

The military folder was the thickest. Across the top of the first page and all subsequent pages someone had stamped, “Confidential”. There was a second note on each cover that read, Downgraded From Secret. She picked the military file and read steadily for an hour, occasionally making notes.

The military file contained an FBI summary report from the first time Vincent had been put in for a security clearance. She read aloud.

“Mother, Mary, no last name; occupation, Prostitute. Father, Victor Vankelis, no permanent address...occupation, Radioman - Merchant Marine.”

She stopped reading. “Victor Vankelis, mmmm, I’ve seen that name somewhere.

A long arrest record followed. “Jesus, this guys a real piece of work.” It included smuggling, grand theft and murder. A comment on the last page said the father had been killed in Columbia, South America. Maybe!

“Those jerks aren’t sure about anything except how wonderful they are,” she muttered.

“Mother beaten to death when he’s two months old; taken to an orphanage by the Magdalene Sisters of Mercy.” She read on. “Stays at the orphanage until age thirteen, runs away for the sixth time! Catholic orphanage—mistreated by the priests, frequently beaten.”

It went on and on. It was not happy reading.

“Joined army at sixteen, falsified records from orphanage. How’d he do that? I wonder where he was from thirteen to sixteen.”

She skipped around, lighting on the points that helped assemble the picture she needed to see.

“First IQ test. 170, Jesus!”

There were several pages of an interview with one of Vincent’s squad leaders in Viet Nam. It had been given by an Army psychiatrist, named Krickstein. She read it once through then again.

“Q: Would you say Sergeant Vankelis is antisocial?

A: Huh? What the fuck kinda question is that? Man lives alone in the jungle, weeks at a time, kills people with his hands, knives, wire, sharpened sticks, probably scares them to death; what’d you think he is, sport, a fucking conscientious objector?

Q: What I meant, Sergeant Major, was what does he do when he’s not in the jungle...dealing with the enemy? How is he with the men?

A: (Laughter) What’s the matter, shrink? What’s this dealing with the enemy shit? Got some kinda psychological block about the verb, to kill? That’s what we do in the Army. Especially that’s what guys in the LRP Teams do. Let me tell you how he is with the men, like a three hundred pound gorilla, he does what ever the fuck he wants. Yeah, yeah, I know, this is serious. To answer your question he doesn’t have any pals, he doesn’t associate with anyone. He’s a loner, but buddy, if he’s out in Indian country with his people, he looks after them. He brings back his dead and wounded. So he ain’t chummy. Don’t matter a’ fuck. Screw it, you assholes will write some dipshit, shrink-babble bullshit no matter what I say.

The bottom line? I wouldn’t go to Bangkok with him, you know, party hearty and all that, but when we’re in-country, he’s on my flank I feel good. He does his job and he don’t complain. I don’t need more, don’t want more than that from a soldier.”

One whole page was devoted to commendations and awards.

“DSC.” She looked it up in the dictionary. “Second highest award for valor beneath the Medal of Honor. Two Silver Stars, Bronze Star with ‘V’ device three times.” It went on and on. “Wounded on five separate occasions.”

She drank wine and ate a hunk of cheese never taking her eyes from the report. A sheaf of citations had been attached to the summary. They made fascinating reading. She’d read dozens written for her fellow officers, had four of her own, but these were something else. All of them involved continuous violent combat. They were full of the stuff one never hears about.

Teresa tried to connect what she read to what she had seen and heard from her apartment window. As she read on she felt the sadness and alienation.

“Christ! This is too gloomy. Orphan, beaten repeatedly by priests!” She piled the folders on the table, sat back and closed her eyes. She fell asleep without noticing the difference between her waking thoughts and her dreams.

In her dreams Vincent kept saying, good night, Teresa, in a gentle, loving voice. She reached out to him, to stop him and he disappeared.

She woke up four hours later. It was dark and her neck hurt. She stood and stretched. A startling thought came unbidden and she walked into her bedroom.

The window was still closed. She parted the curtain with anticipation. She knew it was wrong. She stared into the tree across the alley for a long time before she admitted he wasn’t there.

“Damn, this is really stupid, Teresa. You better do something.”

She went back to the living room and stared at the folders for a long time.

“He’s a total basket, the best thing I could do is report it and be done with it.”

She felt stupid saying something she knew she wasn’t going to do.

“To hell with it, I will go see him.”