Crime

from now on in. Your old life is over. This is what you were put here for.

Lennox releases his grip. As the bloodied Clemson falls slowly, sliding down, drunkenly trying to cling on to the unit, Lennox kicks him in the face, assisting his sprawl to the marble floor. He can’t cease stomping Clemson, can’t end the intimacy, yet he makes himself halt. But not before his senses have been assailed by that brief insight all men might be permitted before they become killers, that the achievement of that goal will produce an irreperable emotional downshift.

Phantom-like and serene as he opens the door and looks down the mezzanine’s narrow hallway, he feels as if he’s watching himself in a dream, where narrative perspective shifts from first to third person, usually when the nightmare becomes unbearable. He walks past the seminar rooms. Key Largo 2’s door is closed. He glides by the half-open Key Largo 1 without looking in, the buzz of men chatting over coffee never changing in register as he passes. Then adrenalin shoots into him with the realisation that the police might just arrive to witness his brutal assault. He scoots down the stairs, across the hotel lobby, vaguely aware of KC and the Sunshine Band’s ‘Don’t Go’ playing in piped music, and runs across the lot to the green car.

As he drives past the airport, he thinks again about what Les endured, wondering how he would have coped with similar treatment. As a copper he was drawn to Serious Crimes, and he would often look through the sex offenders database, to see if he could recognise their three assailants. His mind played tricks; sometimes he was convinced he had identified one of them, only later to be certain it was someone else. But he knew that he hated all sex offenders: every one of those terrible, wretched specimens. Bringing them to book was the one and only thing he believed to be true policework. The system was played solely for the leverage to get to them, the real villains. This power was craved because he’d declared war on paedophiles. Never a policeman, Ray Lennox is a beast hunter and now that he has their scent he’s compelled to take this as far as he can.

21 Showdowns

LENNOX REALISES HIS fraught and hasty retreat from Dearing has confused his mental map of Miami. He finds himself heading east on the Calle Ocho strip of SW 8th Street at Little Havana, past the Cuban bakers and furniture shops, where groups of old men chat and smoke in the cooling air, as the central business district’s skyscrapers glow in the distance.

The colour and word ‘orange’ burn in his head: the Orange Bowl Stadium and the exterior decoration of Robyn’s apartment block. Pulling up outside the Latin American Art Museum, he asks a youthful couple for directions. They tell him to go left on 17th Avenue, and the faded grandeur of the college football arena contiguously comes into sight. But in the featureless rack of streets, locating Robyn’s apartment reminds him of trying to find Notman’s lost contact lens on an Edinburgh Parks Department football pitch. As he feels himself going in circles anger gnaws at him, unleashing a bilious frustration in his gut. It would be easier to eat fresh sushi in Brigadoon. He’s ready to hammer his car horn in exasperated despair when the orange building seems to step out in front of him. — Thank fuck, he gasps in gratitude, parking across the street.

He hesitates in exiting the car; inspects his bloody fingers, throbbing like toothache. Driving through Little Havana, that sense of alienation and despondency has swept back over him. He is not a cop here. Thankfully, he can see no sign of police in the quiet street. But they would arrive soon, either Chet’s testimony or his battering of Clemson would ensure that.

So Lennox steels himself, gets out and walks up the path, presses some buzzers that aren’t Robyn’s, shouting, — Pest control, and waits for the crackle before pushing the front door. He climbs the stair and bangs on the entrance of the apartment he visited two nights ago. Starry pulls it open in agitation. Her eyes widen in shock as she beholds Lennox. — What the fuck do you—

She never gets to finish the sentence as he rams his forehead into her face. The crack of bone splintering followed by a red spray tells him he’s snapped the bridge of her nose. Starry screams, bending forward and teetering back, uttering curses in Spanish, as insistent bombs of thick blood fall through her fingers on to the hardwood floor. Lennox grabs her hair in his left fist and jumps into the apartment with a twist, smashing her head against the door frame. She collapses to the deck, where she lies stunned and moaning as he closes the door behind them.

Robyn runs in from the lounge, leaky-eyed and halting. — Ray! Where’s Tia? Is she safe? She looks down at Starry in trembling bewilderment. — What have you done?

— Something you or some other cunt should have a long time ago. Anybody else in here?

— No… but what happened? Where’s Tianna?

Lennox realises that he’s never had violent contact with a woman before, if you discounted the obese lassie he’d had to sit on at the South Side station, after she’d freaked out and bitten off part of a uniformed spastic’s ear. But this one didn’t factor, because she was a beast, like the others. — Are there any firearms in the house?

— No… Robyn’s eyes are like a Halloween mask. It’s as if she’s been caught in a cycle of crying and applying more eyeliner without thinking to wash her face. It nauseates him to consider that he could have had sex with her: more so, when he thinks about her daughter and his own fiancee. Robyn bunches her fists in front of her chest. — Where’s Tianna?

— She’s okay. She’s with friends. What the fuck have they done to you? Where did they take ye?

— It was Lance… he said my drugs problem had gotten outta hand… an intervention, she rambles, then paralysis seizes her face as she’s smitten by the ineptitude of her own words. — They were my friends… they knew what was best. I… she begs, halting as her flimsy conviction deserts her. She’s a grotesque tear factory to him; afflicted by the strange notion that if she cried enough, she’d eventually excrete the source of her pain. Unlike Starry’s face with the Latin cheekbones and engorged lips, which grew more alluring in rage, Robyn’s small, fine Anglo-Saxon features become pinched; petty and ungenerous. Stiff-upper-lipped stoicism is the way for our race, ostentatious anger always demeans us, Lennox considers. It is fear that diminishes Starry. He grabs her and hauls her to her feet, jostling her into the lounge and shoving her on to the chair. — What have you done to her? Robyn asks again.

— You know what I’ve done and why I’ve done it, jabbing a finger at her, before turning back to his quarry in the chair. — You fuckin move a muscle and I’ll throttle you to death with my bare hands. Got that?

She forces a defiant sneer, still holding her nose.

Lennox’s face contorts as he takes a step closer to her. — HAVE YOU FUCKIN WELL GOT THAT?

And he thinks of when he lost it at his last interrogation, but now there’s no Horsburgh, only Starry’s abject shell, nodding in miserable deference. He charges through to the toilet, grabs a soiled towel and thinks of the uses it could be put to before he throws it at her. Then, remembering Robyn’s cuffs, he goes to the bedroom and removes them from the nightstand. He experiences Robyn’s presence as a background bleating sound as he snaps Starry’s hand to a radiator pipe behind her. — It’s fucking hot, she squawks through the towel.

— Good, Lennox says, as he looks back at Robyn.

— What’s going on, Ray? Robyn asks, nervously picking burrs from her faded green top — Where’s my baby? Did you take her to Chet’s?

— I’ve told you, she’s fine. Don’t give me any performances, Robyn. I’ve seen one of your performances, and he pulls the disc from his pocket.

— You found the tapes… Her hand goes to her hair, and Lennox has to repress the urge to scream at her.

She thinks I’m fucking jealous! The daft cunt actually thinks that’s what this is about!  — Yes.

— Johnnie and I met through Starry. He liked to video when we… were together.

Lennox nods, thinking about guys who wanted to become porn stars until they realised that they couldn’t get wood on camera. In a couple of generations, he considers, we won’t be able to get wood unless there’s a camera.

Robyn whines, — Then he got Lance involved.

— Lance was my boyfriend, bitch, Lennox hears Starry’s muffled hiss from behind the towel.

Robyn seems not to register, —… and it just got crazier and wilder. Then I found out that there were other