A Ticket to the Boneyard

"Give me five minutes," she said. "Then come along to the corner of Stanton and Attorney. I'll be walking slow. Catch up with me as I get to the corner and we'll go from there."



"Where will we be going?"



"It's not but a couple blocks."



I sipped my flat Coke and gave her the head start she'd asked for. Then I picked up my change and left a buck on the bar. I went out the door, up the stairs to the street.



The cold air was bracing after the warm fug inside the Garden Grill. I took a good look around before I walked to the corner of Stanton and looked east toward Attorney. She had covered half the block already, walking in that hip-rolling stroll that's as good as a neon sign. I picked up my own pace and caught her a few yards before the corner.



She didn't look at me. "We turn here," she said, and hung a left at Attorney. It looked a lot like Ridge Street, the same crumbling tenements, the same air of unquiet desperation. Under a streetlamp, a Ford a few years old sat low on the ground, all four of its wheels removed. The streetlamp across the way was out, and so was another further down the block.



I said, "I haven't got much money with me. Under fifty dollars."



"I said you could pay me later."



"I know. But if this was a setup, there's not enough money to make it worthwhile."



She looked at me, a pained expression on her face. "You think that's what this is about? Man, I make more in a half hour than I could ever roll you for, and the men I make it from are all smiles when they give it to me."



"Whatever you say. Where are we going?"



"Next block. You'll see. Say, that picture of him? Somebody drew it, right?"



"That's right."



"Looks just like him. Got the eyes just right, too. Man, he looks at you, those eyes just go right on through you, you know what I mean?"



I didn't like it. Something felt wrong, something hadn't felt right since I walked down the dark stairwell and into the bar. I didn't know how much of it was my own cop instinct and how much was contagious anxiety that I'd picked up from Candy. Whatever it was, I didn't like it.



"This way," she said, reaching for my arm. I jerked my arm free and she drew back and stared at me. "What's the matter, you can't stand to be touched?"



"Where are we going?"



"Right through there."



We were at the mouth of an empty lot where a tenement had once stood. Now cyclone fence barred the way, topped with concertina wire, but someone had cut a gate into the fence. Beyond it I could see some discarded furniture, a burned-out sofa and some cast-off mattresses.



"There's a back house to one of the buildings on the next block," she said, her voice little more than a whisper. "Except it's sealed off, you can't get in from the other street. The only way's through the lot here. You could live on this block and never know about it."



"And that's where he is?"



"That's where he stays. Look, man, just come with me to where you can see the entrance. You'd never find it if I don't point it out to you."



I stood still for a moment, listening. I don't know what I expected to hear. Candy stepped through the opening in the fence, not even looking back at me, and when she was a few yards ahead I started in after her. I knew better, but it didn't seem to matter. I felt like Elaine. He'd told her to pick up the phone and turn off the answering machine, and knowing better didn't help. She did what he told her.



I walked slowly, picking my way through the debris underfoot. The street had been dark to begin with, and it got darker with every step I took into the lot. I couldn't have been more than ten yards in when I heard footsteps.



Before I could turn a voice said, "That's just fine, Scudder. Hold it right there."



I started to pivot around to my right. Before I'd moved any distance, before I'd even begun to move, his hand fastened on my left arm just above the elbow. His grip tightened and his fingers had found something- a nerve, a pressure point- because pain knifed through me and my arm went dead from the elbow on down. His other hand moved to grasp my right arm, but higher up, close to the shoulder, with his thumb probing the armpit. He bore down and I felt another stab of pain, along with a wave of nausea rolling up from the pit of my stomach.



I didn't make a sound, or move a muscle. I heard more footsteps, and broken glass crunched underfoot as Candy returned to appear a few feet in front of me. A stray shaft of light glinted off one of her gold hoop earrings.



"Sorry," she said. There was no mockery in her tone, but no apology either.



"Pat him down," Motley said.



"He hasn't got a gun, silly. He's just glad to see me."



"Pat him down."



Her hands fluttered like little birds, patting at my chest and sides, circling my waist to grope for a gun tucked beneath my belt. She dropped to her knees before me to trace the outside of my legs to the ankle, then ran her hands up along the inside of the legs to the groin. There her hands lingered for a long moment, cupping, patting. The touch was at once a violation and a caress.



"Definitely pre-op," she announced. "And no gun. Or would you like me to do a strip search, J.L.?"



"That's enough."



"Are you sure? He could have a weapon up his heinie, J.L. He could have a whole bazooka up there."



"You can go now."



"I'd be willing to look for it."



"I said you could go now."



She pouted, then dropped the attitude and settled her big hands on my shoulders. I could smell her perfume, heady and floral, overlaid upon a body scent of indeterminate gender. She raised up a little on her toes and leaned forward to kiss me flush on the mouth. Her lips were parted and her tongue flicked out. Then she let go of me and drew away. Her expression was clouded, unreadable in the dimness.



"I really am sorry," she said. And then she slipped past me and was gone.



"I could kill you right now," he said. His tone was flat, cold, unemphatic. "With my hands. I could paralyze you with pain. And then write you out a ticket to the boneyard."



He was still holding me as before, one hand above the left elbow, the other at the right shoulder. The pressure he was exerting was painful but bearable.



"But I promised to save you for last. First all your women. And then you."



"Why?"



"Ladies first. It's only polite."



"Why any of this?"



He laughed, but it didn't come out sounding like laughter. He might have been reading a string of syllables off a cue card, ha ha ha ha ha. "You took twelve years of my life," he said. "They locked me up. Do you know what it's like to be locked up?''



"It didn't have to be twelve years. You could have been back on the street in a year or two. You're the one who decided to make it hard time."



His grip tightened and my knees buckled. I might have fallen if he hadn't been holding on. "I shouldn't have served a day," he said. " 'Aggravated assault upon a police officer.' I never assaulted you. You assaulted me, and then you framed me. They sent the wrong man to jail."



"You belonged there."



"Why? Because I was moving in on one of your women and you couldn't keep her? You weren't strong enough to hold her on your own. Therefore you didn't deserve her, but you couldn't accept that. Could you?"



I didn't say anything.



"Ah, but you made a mistake framing me. You thought prison would destroy me. It destroys a lot of men, but you have to understand how it operates. It weakens the weaklings and strengthens the strong."



"Is that how it works?"



"Almost always. Cops don't last in prison. They almost never get out alive. They're weak, they need guns and badges and blue uniforms to survive, and they don't have any of those props in prison, and they die within the walls. But the strong just get stronger. You know what Nietzsche said? 'That which does not destroy me makes me stronger.' Attica, Dannemora, every joint I was in just made me stronger."



"Then you should be grateful to me for putting you there."



He let go of my shoulder. I shifted my weight, looking to balance myself so that I could thrust behind me with my foot, raking his shin, stomping on his instep. Before I could begin to move he jabbed a finger into my kidney. He might as well have used a sword. I cried out in agony and fell forward, landing hard on my knees.



"I was always strong," he said. "I always had great strength in my hands. I never worked at it. It was always there." He grabbed me by my upper arms, hoisted me to my feet. I couldn't even think about kicking out at him. My legs lacked the strength to keep me upright, and if he'd let go of me I think I'd have fallen.



"But I worked out in prison," he went on. "They had weights in the exercise yard and some of us would work out all day long. Especially the niggers. You'd see them with the sweat pouring off them, stinking like hogs, pumping themselves up, turning themselves into muscle-bound freaks. I worked twice as hard as they did but all I added was strength, not bulk. Endless sets, high reps. I never got any bigger but I turned myself into wrought iron. I just got stronger and stronger."



"You needed a knife in Ohio. And a gun."



"I didn't need them. I used them. The husband was soft, like the Pillsbury Doughboy. I could have put my fingers clear through him. I walked him into his living room and killed him with his own gun." He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was softer. "I used the knife on Connie just to make it look good. By then she was already dead in her soul. There wasn't much left of her to kill."



"And the children?"



"Just tidying up." One hand slid over my rib cage, and he didn't take long to find the spot he wanted. He pressed with a fingertip and the pain was like an electric shock, radiating down my arms and legs, taking the resistance right out of me. He waited a moment, then pressed just a little bit harder in the same spot. I felt myself swaying at the brink of unconsciousness, dizzy with vertigo as I stared down into the blackness.



I didn't know what the hell to do. My options were limited- I couldn't try anything physical. He was every bit as strong as he claimed to be, as far as I could tell, and I could barely keep myself upright, let alone mount an attack. Whatever I tried would have to be psychological in nature, and I felt similarly overmatched in that department. I didn't know what strategy was best, whether to talk or to remain silent, whether opposition or agreement was called for.



I tried silence for the time being, perhaps for lack of anything to say. He didn't speak either, letting his fingers do the talking, pressing various spots on my rib cage and around my shoulder blades and collarbone. His touch was painful, even as his instinct was unerring in guiding him to the best targets, but he wasn't putting the pressure on. His fingers toyed with me like a mandarin's with a worry stone.



He said, "I didn't need a knife with Antoinette. Or a gun."



"Why did you kill her?"



"She was one of your women."



"I barely knew her."



"I killed her with my hands," he said, speaking the words as if savoring the memory. "Stupid cow. She never knew who I was or why I was punishing her. 'I'll give you money,' she said. 'I'll do anything you want,' she said. She wasn't a bad fuck. But you already know that."