candidate for early discharge, which would’ve been three years instead of his maximum five. Then, all of a sudden, he doesn’t show up the week after Christmas, which I figured the holidays and all, am I right? But then he misses the first two weeks in January, and I figure shit the man’s absconded. Which is what it turned out to be. Failure to report here, changing address without permission, for all I know even leaving the fuckin state. A classic case of absconding. I issued a warrant for his arrest. If we catch him again, he’ll be doing his maximum-five behind bars. Some guys never learn.”
“Can we have that last known?” Hawes asked.
“Sure, but it won’t do you any good. He’s gone, man. And it’s a big bad city out there.”
Strauss got up nonetheless, and carried the file on Wilkins over to the copying machine. Seeing the open bathroom door, he closed it as if sight of a toilet bowl might be offensive to his visitors from across the river. “Why do you want him?” he asked.
“He may be involved in a kidnapping.”
“Graduation Day, huh? Some guys never learn,” he said again.
“How bad is that limp, by the way?” Hawes asked.
“Well, he’s not a cripple or anything, if that’s what you’re thinking. He just sort of drags the right foot a little, you know?”
“Can you show me what you mean?” Carella asked.
“Charlie, show him how Wilkins walks, will you?” Strauss said.
Latham got up from behind his desk.
Like an actor preparing before he went onstage, he hesitated a moment, thinking, and then he started walking across the room. The limp he affected was a slight one. His impersonation captured perfectly the walk of the masked man the detectives had seen on Honey Blair’s tape.
“How’s that?” Latham asked.
“Perfect,” Strauss said. “Maybe we ought to send
“Yeah, yeah,” Latham said, but he seemed pleased he’d been such a big hit.
Strauss carried a sheaf of papers over from the copier. Stapling them together, he said, “You might as well have
He actually looked sad.
CALVIN ROBERT WILKINSwas still wearing the Saddam Hussein mask.
He had the rifle in his left hand.
Nothing in his right hand.
No key, no nothing.
He closed the door behind him.
Came limping across the room to her.
“He wouldn’t give me the key,” he said.
She could swear he was grinning behind the mask.
Standing not a foot away from her, he unzipped his fly.
THIS, NOW, was what it was really like.
There was no vorpal blade this time.
There was no slow strip tease, no musical accompaniment, no claws catching at her garments to tear them tantalizingly to shreds. This was her top being violently ripped from her breasts, this was rough hands reaching under her already tattered skirt to tear her panties open over her crotch. There were no biting jaws, he did not bite her, he simply slapped her again and again, kept slapping her as she tried to pull her manacled hand free of the radiator, slapped her until her face was aching and bruised, her free hand flapping on the floor where he had rested the rifle, trying to find the rifle with blind seeking fingers while he kept slapping her till she felt dizzy and weak, murmuring “No, please don’t, please don’t, please don’t.”
But still he had not raped her.
Still he seemed to derive pleasure from the incessant slapping, his hand rhythmically hitting her, the back of his hand, the palm of his hand, the back of his hand again until she collapsed against the radiator, murmuring soundlessly no please don’t, no please please don’t.
This time, there was no vorpal blade to save her.
This was merely rape.
Viciously, he spread her legs and forcibly entered her, tearing tissue as he plunged inside her. She screamed at the forced penetration, screamed again when he slapped her again and told her to shut up, and then slapped her again and again and again. And then his hands were on her breasts, squeezing her nipples hard, thrusting his over-powering rigidity into her below, grunting, his hands seeming not to know where to hurt her next, her face, her breasts, her buttocks, squeezing, slapping, punching her now, pinching her, punching her breasts, punching her face, blood suddenly bursting from her nose, until at last she screamed in agony, “Please
12
THE SQUADwas somewhat perturbed. One might even say they were quite blaxitomed! Special Agent in Charge Stanley Marshall Endicott had just learned from his superior at Division Headquarters that the Police Commissioner had ordered the 87th Squad to stay on the Valparaiso kidnapping case!
“A shitty little squad uptown,” he complained, visibly hummered.
The agents and detectives in the big conference room at Bison Records all shook their heads in solemn agreement. All except Lieutenant Charles Farley Corcoran, who was pacing the floor, quite red in the face, even for an Irishman.
“Dismissed my complaint,” he muttered, all visibly perscathed. “Said Carella wasn’t under my command and therefore could not have been insubordinate.”
“What do we do now?” Feingold asked. “Whose case is it, anyway? Do we dismantle here, or what?”
“It’s ours
“A horse race, you mean,” Feingold said sourly.
“I mean a horse race we’d better
“Suppose a motorcycle cop on the fuckin
“Damn right,” Jones agreed, kissing a little ass, not for nothing had he learned to make his way in the white man’s police department.
“Son of a bitch said he’d call again at three,” Endicott said.
“The Commissioner?” Lonigan asked. He was none too bright, even though he’d been credited with smashing a big heroin ring in Majesta. But that was ten years ago.
“The perp, the perp,” Endicott said, getting more and more perplexed himself. “This time we zero in,” he said, visibly afumitaxed. “If Loomis can’t keep him on the phone, I’ll personally cut off his balls.”
“The perp’s?” Lonigan asked.
Endicott merely looked at him.
THE TELEPHONE CALLcame at precisely threeP.M. The kidnapper was nothing if not punctual. Though she recognized the voice at once, Gloria Klein asked who was calling. When the kidnapper said, “This is personal,” she asked him to hold one second, please, and then buzzed Loomis’ inner office.
“Hello?” Loomis said.
“He’s back,” she said.
