Kiss of Death, Page 2
Michael Power
responsibility to notice his common-law wife’s angry scorn. But Officer Lopez wasn’t.
“Oh yeah,” the woman scowled, “I’ll get it.”
“C’mon in officer,” Bobby smiled.
“Thank you.”
As soon as the door closed behind Officer Lopez, she recognized the faint sweet smell of marijuana smoke. “Can I getcha a drink or somethin’?” Bobby asked.
“No,” she said a little too harshly, then “thank you.” She stood perfectly still until the woman returned with her Christmas card list. The address was delivered in the sad voice of an unwilling traitor.
“I’ve got him at 714 West End Avenue, but I’m not sure that’s right.”
“Oh, sure it is. We’d know if he moved.”
Officer Lopez was too busy writing down the address to notice the sharpened blades shooting from the woman’s eyes. But Bobby didn’t miss it.
“Do you have an apartment number?” Officer Lopez asked.
“No, I don’t,” came the feeble denial. Since they all knew the apartment could be easily discovered, Officer Lopez let the matter drop.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” she said, and without another word from any of them she was out the door.
Officer Lopez had no difficulty finding the correct apartment at 714 West End Avenue. “Does Thomas Crain live here?” she asked the doorman.
“Yes he does. Apartment 17D.” He picked up the phone to call the apartment.
“Don’t call,” she said.
He pointed to a sign that read “All Visitors Must Be Announced.”
“I’m not a visitor.”
She took the elevator to the seventeenth floor. The hallway was immaculate. Its carpeted floor muffled the sound of her footsteps and a vague odor of pot roast penetrated the otherwise antiseptic atmosphere. She rang the doorbell on Apartment D. The door was opened by a well-kept Caucasian woman who Officer Lopez estimated to be between 65 and 70 years old. The woman looked surprised and a little frightened by the officer’s appearance. “Can I help you?” she asked with barely perceptible dread.
“Does Thomas Crain live here?”
“Yes. Please…is he alright?”
“He’s not here?”
“No. Is he alright?” The woman looked as if her life depended on the answer to that question.
“I’m sure he’s alright, ma’am. I’m just trying to find him. Are you related?”
“I’m his mother. Please come in. Why are you looking for him?” The words rattled from the older woman’s mouth in a nervous jumble. Officer Lopez entered the apartment and took in as much information as she could before answering. Thomas Crain was obviously wealthy, though not in an ostentatious way. The size and scope of the apartment and its location on the upper west side were evidence enough of that but it was the items filling it that cemented the impression. A grand piano dominated a living room whose other furnishings were spare but elegant. The works of art on the walls were original. Photographs of the family displayed their taste for exotic locales — India, Egypt, Paris, China and a part of Africa where elephants still roamed free. The photo that drew Officer Lopez’s eye was the simplest one — a wedding portrait. The man in it was obviously the man who attacked her, but he was also very different. His eyes, unlike those in so many wedding photos she’d seen, shone with the look she’d longed to see in a lover’s eyes — blissful contentment.
“That’s Tommy with Caroline,” the woman said. “She died two months ago and since then Tommy’s been…he’s…he’s inconsolable.” Her voice betrayed the depth of her longing to console her son. “Please…is he in trouble?”
Officer Lopez picked up the photo and regarded it with a heavy sigh. “No,” she said, “he isn’t.” Tommy’s mother fell into a chair with relief. “I just need to ask him a few questions.” The older woman nodded. She didn’t need or want further explanation. As Officer Lopez set the photo back on the shelf a young man wandered into the room.
“This is Tommy’s son, Christopher.”
Officer Lopez took the boy’s proffered hand and shook it. She felt the movement of muscles and bones within it but it otherwise felt like shaking the paw of a dog. There was no reciprocal handshake possible. His was a paw caught in a trap. She opened her mouth but before she could say anything her radio called her.
“Lopez,” she answered it.
“We got your boy.”
Tommy’s mother jumped up from her chair. “Is that him? Is he OK?”
“He’s fine,” the voice crackled through it tiny speaker. “We got him at the diner down the block. He had no money to pay.”
Officer Lopez brushed her cheek as she waited for the elevator. Once the doors clattered shut and left her in blessed isolation she produced a red notebook. This was different from the black notebook that she kept for official inquiries. In this one she jotted observations that had no basis in law but that sometimes helped her in deeper ways to understand and solve her cases. She scrawled a small, unsteady note, “shed a tear.”
Tommy was handcuffed and agitated by the time Officer Lopez returned to the station. He now had another charge against him and he knew he would not escape again. “What did I do now?” he yelled at her, jumping up from his seat. “Who’s harassing who here?”
“Mr. Crain, we need to talk.”
“I don’t want to talk. I want to get the hell out of here!” Officer Lopez waived off her partner. “What is going on here? I just wanted a goddamn cup of coffee. I’ll pay for it. I can pay for it.” He paced nervously, fearing the worst.
“Mr. Crain. I was just at your apartment. The one on West End Avenue.” He looked confused. “I spoke to your mother,” she continued.
“Mother?” he whispered. Did he have one of those?
“And your son.” She watched his face for signs of recognition. “Christopher.” That name obviously rang a bell. “They told me that your wife was dead. Caroline?”
Caroline.
“Oooooohhwww” he groaned as his insides constricted and the air was forced out of the gaping hole of his mouth.
The second he heard her name it all came back to him in a rush.
He had been walking on Leroy Street toward the river in a world he no longer understood. He’d been walking a long time, trying to burn off a restlessness that chewed on his muscles. Everything in his body was sharp and brittle, just about to the point of snapping. The wind, whipping down the Hudson, funneling through the rows of buildings, slapped at the delicate flesh of his cheeks daring him to hit back. Rather than hit back he walked, and walked farther, through a senseless world. Each brick in the buildings that surrounded him mocked him with their illusion of permanence. He looked above and beyond them into the same deep blue sky that had been watching over him his whole life, but it, too, no longer made sense. When he looked back down to earth his twitching bones were calmed. He saw something that made perfect sense.
She was scribbling notes in a small red notebook, oblivious to the groaning hunger of his stare. The hate, the anger, and the utter hopelessness drained from him and the wind’s vicious assault blew through him as if he was a chain link fence. The wind blew out his heart, blew out his aching memories and blew out the moral imperatives that had been so carefully constructed in him since infancy. None of that shit matters, he thought, just those lips. They were full, soft-looking lips, red and moist, curled up ever so slightly on one side and highlighted with a beauty mark just above the curl. He moved towards them with the slow deliberate steps of a predator. He was in her mouth before she even saw him.
He remembered it now so clearly. The taste of her! Cinnamon and vanilla. The smell of her, like fresh baked bread and the bottomless well of the fresh unknown shooting up from her feet through her soft, rolling tongue. He pulled her small, strong body tight to his and curled his arm around her skeleton to feel the bones of her ribs. Her mouth was a surprisingly hospitable hostess, not kissing back but allowing his kiss dispassionately, analyzing the data she received.
The moment his grip loosened, in one fluid motion, like a dance, she twirled his arm around behind his back and slammed him face first into the cold stone wall.
The memory hit him as hard as the wall had, and now his knees buckled and he fell into a wall again, backwards this time. He slid slowly to the floor and looked up at Officer Lopez with naked anguish. “Caroline.”
She reached down and offered her hand, which he grasped tightly with both his shackled ones. With surprising strength she pulled him to his feet. He fought off the urge to pull her body to his, and as she looked into his defenseless eyes she had to fight a surprisingly similar feeling.
“Let’s go home, Mr. Crain.”
He smiled weakly, “Tommy.”
They didn’t speak on the drive uptown. Tommy’s head ached with a dull pain, as if someone was sitting in the back seat hitting him with a blunt weapon — not hard enough to crack his skull, just hard enough to torment him with reminders of his pain. He was afraid of the fresh pain he’d brought to his mother and son but even more daunting was the prospect of again having to make sense of this terrible new world in which he lived. Silence and a dull, blank mind seemed his best defense against the cramping of his brain. Officer Lopez remained silent as well, but her mind was far from blank. She was thinking, as she often did, about her father and how much his example still instructed her all these years after his death. She’d seen so many of her fellow cops grow jaded by having
“Oh yeah,” the woman scowled, “I’ll get it.”
“C’mon in officer,” Bobby smiled.
“Thank you.”
As soon as the door closed behind Officer Lopez, she recognized the faint sweet smell of marijuana smoke. “Can I getcha a drink or somethin’?” Bobby asked.
“No,” she said a little too harshly, then “thank you.” She stood perfectly still until the woman returned with her Christmas card list. The address was delivered in the sad voice of an unwilling traitor.
“I’ve got him at 714 West End Avenue, but I’m not sure that’s right.”
“Oh, sure it is. We’d know if he moved.”
Officer Lopez was too busy writing down the address to notice the sharpened blades shooting from the woman’s eyes. But Bobby didn’t miss it.
“Do you have an apartment number?” Officer Lopez asked.
“No, I don’t,” came the feeble denial. Since they all knew the apartment could be easily discovered, Officer Lopez let the matter drop.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” she said, and without another word from any of them she was out the door.
Officer Lopez had no difficulty finding the correct apartment at 714 West End Avenue. “Does Thomas Crain live here?” she asked the doorman.
“Yes he does. Apartment 17D.” He picked up the phone to call the apartment.
“Don’t call,” she said.
He pointed to a sign that read “All Visitors Must Be Announced.”
“I’m not a visitor.”
She took the elevator to the seventeenth floor. The hallway was immaculate. Its carpeted floor muffled the sound of her footsteps and a vague odor of pot roast penetrated the otherwise antiseptic atmosphere. She rang the doorbell on Apartment D. The door was opened by a well-kept Caucasian woman who Officer Lopez estimated to be between 65 and 70 years old. The woman looked surprised and a little frightened by the officer’s appearance. “Can I help you?” she asked with barely perceptible dread.
“Does Thomas Crain live here?”
“Yes. Please…is he alright?”
“He’s not here?”
“No. Is he alright?” The woman looked as if her life depended on the answer to that question.
“I’m sure he’s alright, ma’am. I’m just trying to find him. Are you related?”
“I’m his mother. Please come in. Why are you looking for him?” The words rattled from the older woman’s mouth in a nervous jumble. Officer Lopez entered the apartment and took in as much information as she could before answering. Thomas Crain was obviously wealthy, though not in an ostentatious way. The size and scope of the apartment and its location on the upper west side were evidence enough of that but it was the items filling it that cemented the impression. A grand piano dominated a living room whose other furnishings were spare but elegant. The works of art on the walls were original. Photographs of the family displayed their taste for exotic locales — India, Egypt, Paris, China and a part of Africa where elephants still roamed free. The photo that drew Officer Lopez’s eye was the simplest one — a wedding portrait. The man in it was obviously the man who attacked her, but he was also very different. His eyes, unlike those in so many wedding photos she’d seen, shone with the look she’d longed to see in a lover’s eyes — blissful contentment.
“That’s Tommy with Caroline,” the woman said. “She died two months ago and since then Tommy’s been…he’s…he’s inconsolable.” Her voice betrayed the depth of her longing to console her son. “Please…is he in trouble?”
Officer Lopez picked up the photo and regarded it with a heavy sigh. “No,” she said, “he isn’t.” Tommy’s mother fell into a chair with relief. “I just need to ask him a few questions.” The older woman nodded. She didn’t need or want further explanation. As Officer Lopez set the photo back on the shelf a young man wandered into the room.
“This is Tommy’s son, Christopher.”
Officer Lopez took the boy’s proffered hand and shook it. She felt the movement of muscles and bones within it but it otherwise felt like shaking the paw of a dog. There was no reciprocal handshake possible. His was a paw caught in a trap. She opened her mouth but before she could say anything her radio called her.
“Lopez,” she answered it.
“We got your boy.”
Tommy’s mother jumped up from her chair. “Is that him? Is he OK?”
“He’s fine,” the voice crackled through it tiny speaker. “We got him at the diner down the block. He had no money to pay.”
Officer Lopez brushed her cheek as she waited for the elevator. Once the doors clattered shut and left her in blessed isolation she produced a red notebook. This was different from the black notebook that she kept for official inquiries. In this one she jotted observations that had no basis in law but that sometimes helped her in deeper ways to understand and solve her cases. She scrawled a small, unsteady note, “shed a tear.”
Tommy was handcuffed and agitated by the time Officer Lopez returned to the station. He now had another charge against him and he knew he would not escape again. “What did I do now?” he yelled at her, jumping up from his seat. “Who’s harassing who here?”
“Mr. Crain, we need to talk.”
“I don’t want to talk. I want to get the hell out of here!” Officer Lopez waived off her partner. “What is going on here? I just wanted a goddamn cup of coffee. I’ll pay for it. I can pay for it.” He paced nervously, fearing the worst.
“Mr. Crain. I was just at your apartment. The one on West End Avenue.” He looked confused. “I spoke to your mother,” she continued.
“Mother?” he whispered. Did he have one of those?
“And your son.” She watched his face for signs of recognition. “Christopher.” That name obviously rang a bell. “They told me that your wife was dead. Caroline?”
Caroline.
“Oooooohhwww” he groaned as his insides constricted and the air was forced out of the gaping hole of his mouth.
The second he heard her name it all came back to him in a rush.
He had been walking on Leroy Street toward the river in a world he no longer understood. He’d been walking a long time, trying to burn off a restlessness that chewed on his muscles. Everything in his body was sharp and brittle, just about to the point of snapping. The wind, whipping down the Hudson, funneling through the rows of buildings, slapped at the delicate flesh of his cheeks daring him to hit back. Rather than hit back he walked, and walked farther, through a senseless world. Each brick in the buildings that surrounded him mocked him with their illusion of permanence. He looked above and beyond them into the same deep blue sky that had been watching over him his whole life, but it, too, no longer made sense. When he looked back down to earth his twitching bones were calmed. He saw something that made perfect sense.
She was scribbling notes in a small red notebook, oblivious to the groaning hunger of his stare. The hate, the anger, and the utter hopelessness drained from him and the wind’s vicious assault blew through him as if he was a chain link fence. The wind blew out his heart, blew out his aching memories and blew out the moral imperatives that had been so carefully constructed in him since infancy. None of that shit matters, he thought, just those lips. They were full, soft-looking lips, red and moist, curled up ever so slightly on one side and highlighted with a beauty mark just above the curl. He moved towards them with the slow deliberate steps of a predator. He was in her mouth before she even saw him.
He remembered it now so clearly. The taste of her! Cinnamon and vanilla. The smell of her, like fresh baked bread and the bottomless well of the fresh unknown shooting up from her feet through her soft, rolling tongue. He pulled her small, strong body tight to his and curled his arm around her skeleton to feel the bones of her ribs. Her mouth was a surprisingly hospitable hostess, not kissing back but allowing his kiss dispassionately, analyzing the data she received.
The moment his grip loosened, in one fluid motion, like a dance, she twirled his arm around behind his back and slammed him face first into the cold stone wall.
The memory hit him as hard as the wall had, and now his knees buckled and he fell into a wall again, backwards this time. He slid slowly to the floor and looked up at Officer Lopez with naked anguish. “Caroline.”
She reached down and offered her hand, which he grasped tightly with both his shackled ones. With surprising strength she pulled him to his feet. He fought off the urge to pull her body to his, and as she looked into his defenseless eyes she had to fight a surprisingly similar feeling.
“Let’s go home, Mr. Crain.”
He smiled weakly, “Tommy.”
They didn’t speak on the drive uptown. Tommy’s head ached with a dull pain, as if someone was sitting in the back seat hitting him with a blunt weapon — not hard enough to crack his skull, just hard enough to torment him with reminders of his pain. He was afraid of the fresh pain he’d brought to his mother and son but even more daunting was the prospect of again having to make sense of this terrible new world in which he lived. Silence and a dull, blank mind seemed his best defense against the cramping of his brain. Officer Lopez remained silent as well, but her mind was far from blank. She was thinking, as she often did, about her father and how much his example still instructed her all these years after his death. She’d seen so many of her fellow cops grow jaded by having
