Читать книгу All White Girls - Michael Bracken - Страница 5

CHAPTER 1

The brim of Rickenbacher’s battered fedora hung low over his left eye as he shouldered his way through the late-evening crowd milling about on the sidewalk in front of a three-block long stretch of strip joints and pornographic book stores. The hat—a half-size too small and tight at his temples—hid his thinning hair and the bald spot he’d rediscovered that morning.

He pushed his way into the Muff Inn, dropped onto a stool as far from the entrance as possible, and ordered a three-dollar beer. It was the beginning of a long, dirty night, the kind of night where winos met God and hookers dreamed of saying, “Not tonight, dear, I have a headache” to some missionary-position-only working stiff in a suburban split-level.

“What’s all the commotion outside?” the unfamiliar bartender asked as he dropped an unopened beer bottle in front of Rickenbacher.

“Some sleaze tried to swallow the sidewalk.”

When Rickenbacher failed to elaborate, the bartender shrugged and moved away.

The young woman on the stage behind the bar, her heavy breasts already scarred by stretch marks from an explosive spurt of growth during her late teens, turned her back to the men watching her, bent, and peeled away her red silk panties. They caught on one of her spike heels and she almost toppled over as she momentarily lost her balance. Then, having given the men an intimate look at her young body, she turned again to face them.

And she moved, but not quite to the music. Each thrust of her hips, each bump and grind, each jiggle of her breasts, was an ungainly movement like she’d only recently developed neuromotor skills. The men in the audience didn’t seem to care as they drank their beer and stared at whichever body part held their fascination.

For Rickenbacher it was the eyes, the clouded eyes that focused on nothing and shimmered with unshed tears. Down the street were the professionals, the slender women who danced the dance, the women who performed as if each performance were a Broadway audition. Here were the girls with nowhere else to turn.

As the song ended, the dancer scooped up her discarded clothing, crushing the wad of cloth against her breasts, and hurried off-stage. A malnourished blonde replaced her.

Rickenbacher downed the last of his beer and rubbed his bruised knuckles. Before the blonde finished disrobing, a uniformed police officer stepped into the strip joint, squinted against the bright stage lights, and then slowly walked down the length of the bar toward Rickenbacher.

“There’s a dead guy outside,” the officer said.

Rickenbacher stood and followed the cop out of the bar to where a handful of gawkers stared at a dead man’s body sprawled in a pool of shattered glass.

A neon cacophony hung only a few feet above their heads, the popping and buzzing of the lights only occasionally drowned out by the shouts of the barkers, bulbous men whose doughy fat strained at their sweat-stained t-shirts as they called out, “Girls! All White Girls!” and “Biggest tits on the block!” and “Take a look, gentlemen! None Better! None Finer! None Younger!”

“You know him?” the cop asked.

“I met him once.”

“A couple of these guys say they saw you coming out of that door a few minutes ago.” Glass crunched under the cop’s shoes as he turned to indicate a door wedged between two buildings, unlit and without advertisement. “The stairs inside lead up to his office.”

Rickenbacher shrugged.

“Don’t talk much, do you?” The cop took off his hat and held it in his left hand as he ran the thin fingers of his right hand through his closely cropped blond hair. He’d been walking this beat only three months and already he’d seen more dead bodies than he’d seen his entire first year on the force when he’d been teamed with a career sergeant named Kowalski and had walked a beat in the yuppie district.

“The Lieutenant been called yet?”

“Yeah,” the officer said. The radio on his hip squawked as if to answer. “He’ll be here.”

The winos and the street people turned away from the body or stepped around it. Only the tourists and the conventioneers still stared, nudging each other and whispering questions.

Rickenbacher wore a faded beige London Fog trench coat, had a recently-acquired file-folder buried deep inside one of the pockets, and he reached into a different pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He shook one loose, wrapped his thick lips around the filter, and pulled it free. Then he held the nearly-empty pack out to the cop and had his offer rejected with a quick shake of the young man’s head. He slid the cigarettes back into his pocket and retrieved a butane lighter, snapping it to life and cupping his hand around the flame to shield it from the still-born breeze.

An unmarked car pulled to the curb as Rickenbacher sucked the flame against the end of his cigarette. A gaunt man with thick black hair greying at the temples opened the door and walked around to the sidewalk in front of Rickenbacher. He wore a coat like the bigger man and it hung open to reveal a crisp white shirt and a narrow black tie held in place by a gold tie chain.

“Dick,” he said with a nod.

“Lieutenant.” Rickenbacher responded with his own nod.

Lieutenant Salvador Castellano stepped past him, took the uniformed officer by the elbow, and talked quietly with him for the next five minutes. Then he returned to Rickenbacher.

“How’d it happen?”

Rickenbacher pulled the cigarette from between his lips and held it military style, the filter between his thumb and forefinger, the glowing end in the cup of his hand. “He tripped.”

The Lieutenant looked up at the broken window, then down at the body. It wasn’t a long fall, but the sudden impact had broken the man’s neck. “Self-defense?”

“He tripped,” Rickenbacher repeated.

“What happened to your knuckles?”

Rickenbacher took a long drag from his cigarette, letting the Lieutenant get a good look at the discoloring skin. “Hit a door.”

“We find out different, you be around?”

“You know where.”

“Yeah,” the Lieutenant said as Rickenbacher turned away. “I know where.”

She a virgin?” Paul Canfield motioned toward the young woman standing next to Bleach. She could have been any age from fourteen to twenty-four, with make-up thick on her face as if it had been applied with a putty knife, and long black hair that cascaded down to the middle of her back. She wore a blood-red tube top that revealed more of her firm young breasts than it concealed, a tight-fitting black leather miniskirt, sheer black pantyhose, and red fuck-me pumps with spike heels. Her nervous eyes darted from one man to the other as they spoke, but she said nothing.

“Guaranteed,” said the slim mulatto. The fine spray of freckles across the bridge of his nose was visible in daylight, but rarely seen by those who knew him. Bleach only came out at night.

“How do you know?”

“I plucked her from the bus station myself.”

A tan sedan cruised past but the two men ignored it. It turned left at the corner and disappeared from sight.

“What’s she been doing?”

“Hand jobs. She’s intact,” Bleach said. “Not even a Tampax up there.”

“Her ass?”

“Yeah.”

“How much?”

“Five hundred.”

Canfield peeled ten fifties off a roll he retrieved from the right front pocket of his tight-fitting jeans and handed them to the other man. Bleach smiled—a small tight smile that barely moved the corners of his thick lips—as he placed the bills in his wallet and slid the wallet into the inside breast pocket of his jacket.

Bleach grabbed the girl’s elbow and pulled her aside. He whispered harshly into her ear. “This be my man,” he said. “You treat him right. You don’t, you know what’s gonna happen.”

She nodded quickly and Bleach released his grip on her elbow. He’d only hit her once—a backhand across the face that caught her attention—but she’d seen what he’d done to one of the other girls with an electrical cord. The whipping had been so bad the girl had been unable to work for a week, and when she did return to the street no amount of make-up had been able to cover the welts and the scabs, and her earnings had been dangerously low.

After Bleach left them, Canfield took the girl to a room he’d already rented at the Grafenberg Hotel—a room with water stains on the ceiling, a television which received only two channels, and a bed with a brand-new mattress. He had insisted on a good mattress.

“Wash your face,” Canfield demanded as soon as he locked the door behind them.

She stood by the bed, her fingers already fumbling with the zipper on the back of her skirt.

“Now,” Canfield demanded quietly. When she hesitated, he took her arm and propelled her toward the bathroom. “Don’t come back out until you’ve washed all that shit off your face.”

Canfield waited until he heard water running in the sink, then he peeled off his pale blue polo shirt, revealing the thick muscles on his arms, his slim waist, and the snake tattoo over his left nipple that danced when he tensed his pectorals.

He pulled back the thin beige cover and the off-white top sheet, revealing faded blood stains in the middle of the bottom sheet, stains from a previous guest that hadn’t completely bleached away. Two thin foam pillows had been knocked askew when he’d pulled away the covers, and he straightened them. The double-bed had no headboard, but on either side of it stood a night stand. Each night stand had a single drawer and into the drawer nearest him, next to the never-opened copy of Gideon’s Bible, Canfield placed the switchblade he wore inside his left boot.

After sitting on the edge of the mattress, he pulled off his black, silver-toed cowboy boots and placed them next to the bed. Into each boot went the corresponding sock. Then he popped open each button of his black button-fly Levi’s, peeled the jeans off, folded them, and lay them in the room’s only chair. He wore no underwear.

The girl stepped from the bathroom, still wiping her face dry with one of the bath towels.

“How’s this?” she asked cautiously. Her voice carried the inflections of a person born and raised far south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Canfield turned to face her and saw what the thick layer of make-up had hidden, that age had not etched even one line in the delicate skin of her face.

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.” She bit at her bottom lip. “I’ll be seventeen tomorrow.”

“Pretty damn old to be a virgin.”

Her shrug was barely perceptible.

“Take your clothes off.”

She reached behind herself and finished undoing the leather miniskirt. It dropped to the floor at her feet. She pulled the tube top up, over her head and off, letting it fall to the floor with the leather mini, then she stepped out of her skirt and out of her pumps. She rolled her black pantyhose from her hips and down her thighs, until she could step out of them.

She stood facing Canfield and waited.

“Get on the bed.”

The girl sat on the edge of the bed, then pushed herself into the center and lay back. Canfield joined her a moment later, kneeling between her legs. He grabbed her thighs and pulled her to him as he forced himself into her. She was tight and dry and he buried himself deeper and deeper.

She struggled, but Canfield completely covered her, pinning her to the bed with his weight. He covered her mouth with his and tasted the blood where she’d bitten her own tongue to keep from screaming.

He pulled back and drove into her mechanically. Then he pulled out of her and she caught her breath.

“Roll over.”

He twisted the girl onto her belly, then pulled her up onto her knees. He took her from behind and this time she screamed. The sound penetrated the thin walls into the surrounding rooms, but screams—like sirens—were so common in the neighborhood that no one ever heard them.

He held onto her hips and drove into her, thrusting faster and faster until he could no longer restrain himself. He released into her, held her tight until the throbbing stopped, and then he pulled away.

She collapsed on the bed, crying silently, her tears staining the pillow she’d buried her face into.

Canfield stood beside the bed. “Roll over and sit up.”

When she hesitated, he gripped her arm, forcing her over and then up into a sitting position. She stared at her feet, her hair hanging around her face. Canfield caught her chin between his thumb and his forefinger and forced her to look up at him.

“Now lick it clean.”

She hesitated again, so he slipped his switchblade from the night stand, snapped it open, and pressed the point against the soft underside of her jaw. She opened her mouth and took him in, gagging as a tiny bubble of blood appeared around the knife point.

Afterward, he showered and dressed, wiped his knife blade clean on one of the wet towels, then slipped the switchblade back into his left boot before opening the hotel room door and stepping into the hall.

Just before he closed the door, Canfield looked back at the girl on the bed.

“Happy birthday,” he said.

* * * *

Rickenbacher didn’t want to return to his empty apartment and another evening of black-and-white reruns from the fifties and sixties. He didn’t love Lucy and he wouldn’t leave it to Beaver. Instead, he drove, windows open to let the grimy city air curl around his face and tickle what remained of his hair.

His trench coat lay on the seat beside him, his fedora covering it. He’d rolled up his shirt sleeves and he drove with his left arm resting on the open window frame, his elbow jutting out. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth, ash whipped away by the breeze as it grew too heavy at the burning end. He sucked on it, blew the residue smoke through his nose, and reached for the radio to improve the reception on a station that kept fading in and out.

He turned off the main street, away from the rental cars and low-riders that claimed the avenue, away from the restaurants and nightclubs that attracted the crowds, away from the bright lights and into the darkness. He cut off a late model Eldorado and the driver, a balding fat man wearing too many gold chains, gave him an upraised middle finger in return.

Parked cars crowded both sides of the street, apartment and tenement residents fighting for parking space because their buildings lacked garages. The cars were beaters—city cars dented and scratched, with broken windows and missing antennas, balding tires and sagging springs, empty holes in trunks where locks had once been, bumper stickers used more to cover rust than to convey messages.

Rickenbacher didn’t pay any attention to the street before him as he fiddled with the radio to tune in a plaintive Janis Joplin song, and he missed the corner stop sign hidden behind a parked delivery truck. A woman jogged out in front of Rickenbacher and he glanced up just in time to slam on the brakes. His van lurched to a stop inches from her.

The woman turned to him as she ran slowly past, glaring at him but unable to see into the darkness of the van. The sight of her face burned Rickenbacher’s memory like acid. He hadn’t expected to see her again, had never intended to see her again, had no reason to see her again. Yet, there she was, jogging past him, her heavy breasts bouncing with each stride despite the tight-fitting sports bra, the cheeks of her ass slapping together under her sweat pants, her dishwater blonde hair pulled back in a loose pony tail, her face bathed in sweat. Twice before she’d entered his life and twice before she’d left it.

Jesse.

And then she was gone, swallowed by the darkness before he could call out her name.

* * * *

As one of the city’s invisible horde of delivery people, no one ever glanced at Kat a second time when she breezed past. She wore her hair cut into a wedge so that it wouldn’t blow around under her bicycle helmet, rarely wore make-up because the wind and the rain wrecked havoc with it and gave her a clown’s mask, and during the month she’d had the job she’d turned a layer of fat into hardening muscle that her knee-length biker shorts and her skin-tight sports bra failed to conceal.

As the elevator doors closed, she saw the man exiting room 4B, but she didn’t pay much attention to him, her gaze sliding over his face, the gloved hand gripping the door knob, and the bulge in the pocket of his overcoat. A greasy-haired blond with an upside-down cross tattooed on the back of his left hand had just pissed her off by closing his hotel room door in her face without tipping her and without so much as a thank you. The city had more than its share of creeps and she seemed to meet most of them.

The man exiting 4B carefully pulled the door shut and, unaware that he’d been seen, walked quietly to the staircase, taking the stairs down two at a time until he reached the ground floor. He had disappeared before the aging elevator wheezed open and Kat made her way outside to the ten speed mountain bike she’d chained to a hydrant.