word to her. The word spoken in leg. She knows the word. It is common in English-language usage. An invitation to dine. Her legs whispered EAT, he says. And because she is his regal queen bestowing a favor on her court jester, he must do as she commands.
And this is the way Noel and Joseph spent the afternoon. On the living-room floor of the Collier home. Pure, raw, funky, wonderful, animal sex. And then he takes her in his arms and kisses her and then this breathtakingly good-looking man enters her again and the both of them give themselves to it with equal abandon. And afterward spent and wasted, flat on his back with the once-tumescent and blue-veined pink engine of destruction flaccid and flopped over dead atop his right leg, the woman beside him snuggled close breathing slowly and with her mouth open, a pair of horses after a long run, sweat drying on them, satisfied, content beyond description, unashamed and together, they cuddled for a moment and decided what to do about it all. They wrestled with the weighty problem for a good four or perhaps five seconds before each of them fell asleep. Asleep with their arms around each other, cuddled together in the gathering darkness in exhausted dreamless slumber.
Donna Scannapieco met Eichord downtown at the prearranged time and he tried to break the ice with her as they walked to the car.
“It's been rough, hasn't it?'
“Yeah.” She nodded, bitterly.
“I've got to tell you, you've been wonderful through all of the questioning.'
“Thanks. You guys have your job to do. It can't be pleasant. Dealing with dirt like him.'
“Well. The work is like anything else. It has its rewards just like it has a downside. The job has a way of sort of taking over your life, Donna.'
“I can see how it would be hard not to take it home with you if you were conscientious. Sort of like, what do they call those welfare people—case-workers? You'd see thing you'd want to do something about.'
“Yes. There are some parallels between our work and persons in the social services.” He sounded like he'd been stuffing cotton in his cheeks, pedantic, stupid almost. He had a rather benign hangover this morning—it was more of a. lethargy, mental doldrums that had taken over. Why did he have so much trouble relating to this gal?
Donna was quite presentable today. French jeans, high-heeled boots, a silk warm-up jacket with the number 34 (closest she could find to half of 69?) which he put her down for, then instantly chastized himself for his unfairness. Perfect, appropriate attire for visiting the horrible site of your abduction, torment, and repeated rape at the hands of Spookie Ukie. All the way to the house location they talked. It felt like a somewhat stilted exchange of dialogue, unnatural, artificial, as if each party was thrust into an uncomfortable closeness and talking to lighten the tension. Not the most conducive atmosphere for a meaningful conversation, but they both hung in there.
Donna asked him a lot of questions about the job, and he was getting that feeling you get when the questions become too one-sided, an off-key thing that creates the impression you're being interviewed rather than talked to. He supposed it was the combination of her wanting Ukie nailed so badly, a thing of making sure the cops with whom she had contact were capable of prosecuting and maximizing the leads she was supplying, and then there was the old bugaboo of his dubious celebrity.
He had no great problem with the need for the way in which his own people used him. The brass all the way up the ladder had made it patently clear that it was as important in the execution of his job as the expertise he brought to bear on a given murder case. A lesser man or a shakier ego, or it could be argued, a more resolutely ethical soldier would have rebelled. But he had the magic that works for media. He could get ink like a bandit Never mind that the numbers-oriented “journalists” tended to see his accomplishments in the acceptable and understandable molds of Sherlock, or Rocky Balboa, or some larger-than-life battler of evil.
Eichord knew that the Demented and Hearts cases had been flukes. Media didn't want to know about all the ones where he had no vibes at all. Nobody would be doing any monographs on the ones he missed, the serial killings in his own home town that he'd never got to first base with, the missed calls, the times he'd shot blanks. The hierarchy didn't publicize those. And they made sure his personal methodology was kept secret. He worked like any other ordinary cop. It was all long, boring, often-wasted hours of drudgery. Ninety-nine-percent perspiration and one-half of one percent inspiration mixed with a soupcan of luck.
But one-on-one with no spotlight on the conversation he would invariably tell it as it was he was no brilliantly gifted crime-crusher sent by the gods to stalk serial murderers.
“The publicity is just a way we keep media contained, Donna. It's not a question of my being humble or pawing the ground with my shoe and going, Oh, shucks,” when she'd asked him about “all the murder cases he'd solved.'
“I've had to learn to handle media myself,” she told him, “or at least take a beginner's course in the subject. I've got a lot to learn. So far my way is just say, No comment, and try to get away from them or hang up the telephone or don't answer the mail. But a few of the reporters have really been obnoxious.'
“Some of them look at it differently than others. Vulture journalism. The microphone in the face of the lady whose husband was just shot ‘how do you feel'—that kind of thing. And a case like this one that has national attention, you got all the locals vying with the stringers for the big slick magazines and papers, you have all the television crews, it can be a mess if it gets out of hand.
“That's how this thing got started as far as my name went. I'd gotten lucky a time or two and they could use the name for ‘public relations,’ I'd guess you would have to call it. I could be a plausible tool to tone down certain elements of the coverage of a story or to help minimize the terrorizing of a city that can take place when you're dealing with multiple homicides.'
He told her about Atlanta, about Boston, and about San Francisco and the horror stories those great cities had become, once upon a time, when the phenomenal terror of a serial killer had held each of them in its immobilizing and frightening claws.
It seemed like a long drive before they reached the house but he felt like perhaps some of the ice between them had thawed. When they pulled up to the house, a rickety-looking, old frame house on South Mission, she looked at him and said, “Is this the one?” in a quiet voice.
“Yes.” He looked at her for a moment. “You okay?'
“Yeah.” She didn't look okay at all. Her face was very pale even through the rather heavy makeup.
“You know, this doesn't have to be done today,” he said, a question in his voice.
“Yes it does,” she whispered and opened the door for herself, so he quickly got out and came around the vehicle in time to close the door.
He had parked in back of a marked car so he knew the crime-scene-unit guys would be inside. They went in and said hello and they headed directly for the basement, Eichord holding her elbow but she went down first, slowly, holding on to the banister. It was smelly the way an old, closed-up home will get, and cold. He was right behind her, concentrating on the back of her Jacket and the ‘jeans’ and heels and the arm outstretched, very close in back of her in case she suddenly wilted as they sometimes did.
And then in a couple of seconds they were standing together in the room that had been her prison for over a month, and the look of the room hit her as hard as if she'd been slapped across the face, and she stood there clinging to the banister at the bottom of the stairs, breathing very deeply, and Jack wanted to touch her but knew he'd better not, and so he just let her stand there without speaking.
The frame house with its air of stale decay, the moist, overpowering decadence of the basement room papered in those torn, sad, airbrushed photos from sleaze mags, Spooky Ukie's clippings, all of it gave off a palpable dungeon effect, magnified by the chain-and-belt thing attached to one of the walls.
The house itself was something Eichord had been working on since Ukie had given it up to them. He claimed and all evidence backed him up—that someone had laid it on him as a gift. He'd been living in a fleabag downtown and he was broke. A typed note had been forwarded to him by one of the clubs where he had once appeared. The envelope contained a personal note to Ukie. On opening it a key and a fifty-dollar bill and a typed scrap of paper fell out. It said, so Ukie claimed, “Caught your act once and you were great! You deserve to change your luck. Paid six months rent in advance call it a loan.” And the address on South Mission. Ukie said he'd thought it was some kind of gag but for the real fifty.
He took a cab to the house. The key fit. He moved in immediately. The landlady still had the note to her in
