Читать книгу No Human Contact - Donald Ladew - Страница 9

Teresa drove too fast. She left the 134 in Glendale, whipping the new VW Jetta, a birthday present from her father, around every turn viciously.

She was angry and didn’t know why. Like quicksand, the more she struggled, the deeper she sank. She needed anger to hide her inability to act sensibly.

She turned off Orchard into the entrance of the underground parking garage beneath her apartment house, tires squealing in protest.

The day began with a call from her mother complaining about Teresa’s shortcomings. In fifteen minutes Mrs. Keely covered everything including Teresa’s refusal to eat asparagus when she was three. Who could fight that? And it didn’t end there.

Five minutes after she arrived at the station the Watch Commander called her into his office and chewed her out for going into Chango’s Cafe alone. She couldn’t say anything in her own defense while he called her, ‘hotdog, glory hound, and dumbass bimbo’. The bimbo remark went to the bone.

She wrongly blamed it on Jaime who hadn’t said anything about the incident. The Watch Commander heard about it from an officer who interrogated the people at the cafe.

Jaime got pissed and wouldn’t talk to her and so they ended up working the Burbank Studio district in cold silence. It lasted through the entire shift. Teresa’s stubbornness wouldn’t let her admit she was wrong, again.

She was still muttering as she got out of the Jetta in the garage below her apartment building.

“Asshole, probably thinks I’m on my period. Chauvinist prick.”

She slammed the door and stalked across the cement to the elevator. She met the two poofs from the apartment next door outside her apartment. They started to say something, saw her expression and backed off. She slammed the door behind her and stood in the entry way scowling.

“Pretty boring, Teresa. Be a lot easier if you had something worth being pissed about.”

She shook herself like a wet cat, walked into the kitchen, saw the phone blinking and stuck her tongue out at it. The refrigerator was covered with a mass of notes telling her to get things done. She hadn’t done any of them.

She took a half bottle of orange juice out and drank the whole thing in three long swallows. Large and robustly healthy, everything about her was oversize. She looked at her hand holding the orange juice container and sighed.

She yearned to be small, dainty, dark-haired, not just another California blonde. Bimbo, the Watch Commander said. She couldn’t fight what nature gave her. She avoided the beach, and the sun; not out of fear, but because she didn’t want to be California tan. Consequently her skin was pale, rosy—not ‘in’ at all.

She looked at the clock. “Christ, nine already.” She’d got home after eight every day for the last ten days.

She tapped the answering machine play button.

“...Lunch tomorrow, don’t forget. And Sunday dinner. Your brothers will be here: Daddy will be very disappointed...again if you don’t show up.” Her mother’s understanding of emotional blackmail was total.

“...Hi, gorgeous. This is the best D.A. in Los Angeles. Come to dinner with me Saturday night. I’ll tell you all the latest. Call me, please.”

“Damn, the Groper.”

Teresa went in the living room and stripped out of her uniform. As usual it joined and assortment of clothing pushed to one end of the couch. She stripped quickly to panties and bra, put on a pair of thongs and turned the TV to the news. She watched for a moment, frowned and shivered.

“Must have left the window open again.”

She walked into her bedroom. The curtains fluttered in the breeze.

“Nice home safety, Keely,” she murmured.

She knelt by the window and reached out to close it. When she pulled the curtains apart she froze. She stared hard at the locust tree just across the alley, not sure if she imagined seeing a man’s shape through the leaves.

What was it? An unnatural movement. She looked away from the tree toward the Peerson’s house then back to the tree. There! Through the leaves, a man sat on a branch next to the trunk. He had something in his hand. It looked like a notebook. Her eyes began to adapt to the semi-dark.

She spoke softly. “A peeper, for God’s sake. Well you’re in for a surprise, sport.”

In the front room of the Peerson’s house, Rose Peerson argued with her daughter, Sarah, about the biker as usual. The eight year old boy, Peter, sat in the front room studying and watching TV at the same time.

“How does he do that?” Teresa whispered.

Teresa saw the light by the garage go out. She couldn’t see Ken Peerson, the tree was in the way, but she knew his habits as well as the man in the tree. Ken Peerson would have spent the evening working on the old car in front of the garage.

Rose Peerson, goaded beyond endurance by her daughter, lost her temper.

“Sarah! That is it! That is all, by God!” I do not want to hear one more word! You are not going out with that greasy lout. Are you totally out of your mind? Do you think I’m going to sit at home worrying while you ride around Glendale on that man’s Harley Davidson ‘dawg’? They were made for each other, you were not! If you mention him one more time I’ll ground you for ten years.”

“Grounded until I’m twenty four, oh, great. I might as well be living in some Russian prison camp.” Sarah snuffled pitifully. “You’re cruel and unfair. Daddy would let me go out with Tommy.”

Ken Peerson appeared behind her. “Daddy would not let you walk across the street with that bum. Forget Tommy what’s his name.”

“Selkirk.”

“I put up with that other troll, the one with the purple hair. Little turd ate every thing in sight. At least he was your age.”

Peter, snickered. “You mean the Zit King. Terminal acne,” he giggled. “He sweat gallons every time you looked at him, Dad.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Peter, I was kinda getting used to him. His hair reminded me of those creatures who came out of the pods in Alien.”

Father and son laughed together. Sarah sobbed tragically and left the room in high drama. “You hate me! Nothing I do is right!”

Father and son looked at each other and shrugged. Neither had any understanding of puberty.

“You think it’s funny, little man,” Mrs. Peerson said. “You wait till the first time you bring home some little girl in pig tails and braces. You’ll get yours.”

“Never happen, Mom. If they don’t look like a Playboy Centerfold, I’m not taking them anywhere.”

“Good plan, son. A fella should have his standards. That’s why I married your mother. She makes Christie Brinkley look like a women’s libber.”

“Hah! Don’t try an sweet talk me, Ken Peerson, you chauvinist dork.”

“Chauvinist dork!” Father and son looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Jesus, Rose, where in the name of God did you learn to talk like that?”

“From Arnold Swartzenegger.”

“Whoa...Der Terminator has gespoken,” Peter said in a creditable German accent.

Across the alley in the apartment house Teresa tried to relax, her whole body stiff from kneeling. She watched the figure in the tree making notes in a journal.

“Damn,” she whispered. “This is weird. A peeper who takes notes. I ought to go over there and pull that S.O.B. out of that tree by his perverted little pecker.”

Teresa glanced toward the house. Rose Peerson stood in front of the sink in the kitchen washing dishes. She was a short, bosomy woman, twenty—she said—actually thirty pounds overweight. Rose worried more about the thirty pounds than most people worry about death and taxes.

Ken Peerson appeared in the kitchen behind his wife. He snuggled close against her and put his arms around her waist.

“Ken, stop. I’m worried about that Tommy Selkirk. He is bad news.”

“I know. Don’t worry, he’s not taking Sarah anywhere. He lifted his wife’s hair and kissed her neck.

“Ken! Stop it,” she giggled. “I swear, every time you work on that car you get hornier than a bear in springtime.”

Ken laughed. His hands slid up the front of her dress and began undoing the buttons. His hands went inside her dress and caressed her breasts.

Teresa felt a pang of loneliness and lust, pure and simple. Her hand came up to her own breast unthinking and rubbed a stiffening nipple. She stopped suddenly, guiltily and forced herself to look away from the house.

“Christ!” she whispered. “What’s wrong with you? You’re worse than that asshole in the tree.”

She looked into the tree to see if he was still there. In the tree, Vincent had turned away. Plainly he didn’t intend to look toward the house while the love play between Ken and Rose Peerson took place.

Totally out of character. She looked toward the kitchen again. Rose wiggled her bottom against her husband as he kissed and caressed her. The figure in the tree still looked away. He slipped the journal in his jacket pocket.

“What the hell kind of peeper is this?” she whispered.

Ten minutes later Ken and Rose shut the light off in the kitchen and disappeared from view. Before they did, Teresa heard Rose Peerson clearly.

“Ken...darling, don’t you dare get rid of that car, and don’t hurry fixing it.”

Both Teresa and Vincent heard Ken’s chuckle. “Whatever you say, sweetie.”

Teresa looked into the tree and thought she saw the peeper smile.

Jesus! Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.

Ten minutes after the lights went out in the Peerson house, the figure in the tree appeared suddenly and silently at the top of the block wall. Teresa froze, sure that he would see her. Vincent hesitated for a moment, then she heard his voice clearly.

“Goodnight, Ken, Rose, Sarah, Peter.” His voice filled with affection.

Teresa was mesmerized. Vincent dropped to the alley lightly and ran toward the street. Without thinking, Teresa opened the window, hung from the sill for a moment, pushed outward and with arms outstretched for balance, dropped to the alley fifteen feet below.

It was a remarkably athletic move. She landed lightly, in perfect balance and sank into a deep knee bend. She moved up the alley running next to the wall, unaware that she wore only panties, bra and go-aheads.

At the head of the alley near the street she slowed keeping to cover. Across and down the street she saw a dark figure enter a pickup truck. She slipped behind a flowering mulberry bush in front of the apartment house.

The truck pulled out into the street and drove past where she’d ducked behind a shrub, then made a U-Turn and came back down the street. As it went beneath a street lamp, she got a close look at the occupant and the license.

“KWH-461...KWH-461...KWH...461...got it.”

She looked at her body and quickly darted back behind the bush.

“Jesus! Teresa, you are really loosing it!”

She looked around carefully and made a run for the entrance to the apartment house. She buzzed the apartment of her neighbors, the dynamic duo. The speaker hissed while she glanced around nervously. She heard a breathless voice.

“Yes?”

“Paul? This is Teresa. I’ve locked myself out. Buzz me in please, and meet me at my door with the key.”

“Sure, sweetie, here it comes.”

Teresa darted inside, looking around guiltily. She reached her apartment undetected, breathing hard. Paul stepped out of his apartment and looked her up and down. He raised his eyebrows dramatically.

“Well! Hello there. Very daring. This must be the newest in Police chic.”

“Now, Paul. Open the damn door now, before someone sees me for God’s sake.”

He unlocked her door. “Not to worry, darling. If you got it flaunt it, and honey, you have definitely got it!”

“Thanks, Pauli, thanks, I’m sorry to be trouble.”

She closed her door quickly. Paul stood staring at the door wistfully.

Inside, Teresa sat on the couch, hugged herself and laughed out of control.

“Whooo! It’s definitely getting away. If Jaime had been here my next stop would be the department shrink.”

She sat for a long time thinking about all she’d seen, then snapped her fingers with a loud pop. She got up quickly, went to the kitchen and pulled a pad of paper from a drawer. She wrote the number and all she could remember.

“KWH-461...Gray Chevy S10, 87 or 88. Man, thickset, strong, athletic, very light on his feet, moves easy. Wearing a dark jacket, wool watch cap, regular features. Peeper? Doubtful. Not like any Peeper I ever heard of.”

She went to a cabinet, removed a bottle of wine, poured herself a large glass and drank deep. She looked at her notes and began writing again.

“Surveillance? Cop? Doubtful! Peepers and cops don’t turn away at the sexy stuff. If it was agency work those dorks would have the Peerson’s house covered with a ton of electronic bullshit, sit in a van down the street, drink coffee, look at girlie magazines. Private detective? Maybe...no! Goodnight Ken, Rose, Sarah, Peter! No way! Very Strange.”

She drank the rest of the wine. “I’ll call Rita tomorrow.”

Vincent drove onto the 101 freeway from Pacific Ave., eased up to sixty five and held it there. He felt good. It had been a fine visit.

His face became hard. “Tommy Selkirk, you aren’t for Sarah. Not now, not ever.”