Authors: Tim Maleeny
Jump (17 page)
Sam pressed his ear to the door and heard singing.
He listened to Jill for another minute, her husky voice distorted by the door. He was about to knock when the door to the neighboring apartment opened and Shayla stepped into the hall. Sam started to straighten up, but Shayla smiled wickedly as he blushed.
“We
told
you that you’d like Jill.”
Shayla looked stunning, as always, but her hair was now shaped into matching spheres on either side of her head, more like orbs than ponytails, the jet black hair tinted electric blue.
“Nice hair.”
Shayla beamed. “Gotta mix it up. Never went blue before.”
“Got a date?”
“Gotta protest,” replied Shayla.
“Global warming?”
“That was last week,” she said. “Besides, we could use a little warming in this city, don’t you think? Too fucking chilly for my taste.”
Sam shrugged. “It’s the fog. Maybe you should protest that.”
“Not until there’s a budget,” said Shayla. “Today it’s drivers who want cyclists to stick to the bike paths. Next week the cyclists are staging a protest to get the cars off the streets.”
“And onto the bike paths?”
Shayla shook her head. “Don’t think they figured that out yet.”
“Be careful out there,” said Sam, adding, “I like the blue, by the way. Suits you.”
Shayla’s smile lit up the hall. “Say hi to Jill for me.” She turned and sauntered over to the elevator, which arrived almost immediately. Even an elevator wouldn’t keep Shayla waiting.
Behind the door Jill’s voice continued to soar. Sam knocked reluctantly and was surprised when she opened the door right away and the singing continued from somewhere inside the apartment. Jill stood on her toes and kissed him lightly on the cheek. She was wearing sweat pants and an oversized t-shirt. Sam thought she looked amazing.
“Are you a ventriloquist?” he asked.
Jill led him through the living room, down the hall and into the guest bedroom. Instead of a home office, she had a recording studio. On a plain oak desk sat a computer with a widescreen monitor, a keyboard, and the kind of mixing board typically found in professional studios. Four speakers occupied the corners of the room, and Sam found himself surrounded by Jill’s voice.
“This is quite a setup.”
Jill nodded and gestured at the computer. “The software is cheap, and I can do all my mixing right on the Mac. Here, check this out.” She moved close to the desk and traced a series of rows running across the screen. At first it had looked like a spreadsheet but Sam noticed the rows were moving, spreading across the screen as the song played. Jill’s index finger danced lightly from one to another. “These are the different instruments, which I can adjust up or down, and this purple bar here is my voice.” She clicked on the mouse and dragged it across two of the bars, causing the singing to shudder and jump as if a record had skipped, then resume. Sam noticed the bass notes had become more pronounced.
“I knew you designed websites,” he said, “but I had no idea you were so technically proficient.”
“This is simple compared to building and maintaining a site, especially a big one like Tamara and Shayla’s.”
“All that video,” mused Sam.
Jill smiled. “Have you checked it out yet? It really is a great site.”
“I’ve had all the excitement I can handle.”
Jill pulled him close with her right hand. “Was that a compliment?”
“Absolutely.”
Jill began to wrap her left arm around him but stopped when it brushed against something hard. She gingerly felt the contours through his jacket and frowned.
“Is that a gun in you pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”
“Both.” Sam held her at arms length and met her gaze.
Jill’s eyes flicked to his side. “Something you want to tell me?”
“I had a great time last night.”
“Me, too,” replied Jill. “But that’s not what I meant.”
“I’m going to be working late. Otherwise I’d ask you to dinner.”
Jill waited for the other shoe to drop. “I thought you were retired.”
“So did I.”
Jill looked at him carefully. “You didn’t strike me as the strong, silent type.”
“No?”
“Doesn’t suit you.” Jill’s eyebrows collided in a frown. “The past few days, you’ve said more to me than my ex-husband did our entire marriage.”
“Guess I was trying to decide whether or not to tell you anything. Didn’t want you to worry.”
“Then you should’ve left the gun at home, cowboy.”
“Fair enough.” Sam took her by the hand and led her back into the living room, where they sat on the couch while he told her about Zorro and the photographs in his apartment. He left out the part where he found Walter’s corpse and his conversation with Danny. In fact, he left out a lot of things. He had always talked to Marie about his cases after they were closed but never during an investigation. Some habits die hard.
“You said you arrested Zorro before, but you didn’t say why.”
“He beat up a girl,” said Sam. “A prostitute.”
Jill winced. “Badly?”
“Very.”
“But you had to let him go.”
“The girl dropped the charges, then claimed I’d harassed her into making a complaint. Threatened to sue the city. Out of nowhere she’s got a high-priced lawyer making calls to the mayor’s office.”
“What happened?”
“I was put on forced leave of absence until the matter was resolved,” said Sam, sounding like he was repeating the exact words said to him at the time. “The charges were dropped,” he added.
“That’s it?”
Sam hesitated before answering. “The girl wound up dead in a dumpster three weeks later. She’d had both her eyes cut out.”
Jill gasped and put a hand to her mouth. Sam watched her begin to stand, then sit down heavily, as if she’d been contemplating a run to the bathroom. He waited until her breathing returned to normal before saying, “I can be the strong, silent type.”
Jill took a deep breath. “No, I wanted to know. I do want to know…really.”
“OK.”
“But did you tell the police about what happened in your apartment?”
“The police can’t do anything,” replied Sam. “This is personal. And that’s not me being macho—that’s just the way it is.”
“But shouldn’t you ask for their help?”
“The police can’t even find Zorro.”
“But you can?”
“I know someone who can.”
“Can he be trusted?”
Sam smiled, but there wasn’t any warmth in it. “Absolutely not.”
“Why don’t you trust him?”
Tamara disappeared as she asked the question, her face covered by the camisole slipping over her shoulders. The white silk flowed across her almond skin like milk as it settled on her torso, the fabric straining just enough to reveal the promised land that lay within her divine cleavage.
Shayla sat in the corner of the small dressing room and nodded her approval. As Tamara pulled the top off and grabbed the next one off its hanger, Shayla took the approved lingerie item and tossed it into a bulging Victoria’s Secret shopping bag. Next to it on the floor lay an equally large pile of rejects, a graveyard of silk and polyester.
“He’s a man,” said Shayla. “Why should you trust him?”
“Jerome is a honey.”
“Honey’s something you put on pancakes.”
“I prefer syrup.”
“See?” said Shayla. “Already there’s conflict in this relationship.”
Tamara blew out her cheeks. “You saying you don’t like the company of men?”
Shayla sat up straighter on the seat. “I never said
that
.”
“I’m pretty sure you did.”
“I
like
men just fine,” said Shayla. “But liking and trusting are two different things.”
“I think you don’t respect men.”
Shayla considered that for a minute. “Maybe you’re right, but that doesn’t mean—”
“Didn’t you give me a little tongue last time we kissed on camera?”
“That was business.” Shayla shot a warning glance, but it bounced off the smirk on Tamara’s face. “And so is this, miss. Get back to work.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Tamara shrugged into the next item, a bra that seemed to lift, separate and enhance all at the same time. “How’s this?”
Shayla frowned judiciously. “Not enough nipple action.”
Tamara ran her index fingers across the front of the bra in little counter-clockwise twists. “How about now?”
Shayla made a face. “Cameras will never pick it up.”
Tamara snapped the bra open and let it drop. “I’m tired.”
“That’s why they call it work.”
“Your turn. I need a break.”
Shayla stood. The two women shimmied past each other in the enclosed space and Tamara sat down as Shayla began to undress in front of the mirror. When she undid the last button on her blouse, Shayla asked, “Besides, how well do you know him—I mean, really?”
Tamara shrugged. “I’ll get to know him. That’s part of the fun of it. But finding out where he grew up or went to school is different. There’s a difference between knowing and trusting. One happens in your head, the other in your heart.”
“He could be a criminal.”
Tamara made a face, perfect features contorted in mock anger. “We’re not the most respectable girls on the block, you know.”
“You having pangs of guilt?” Shayla raised her eyebrows. “Qualms about our arrangement?”
“I don’t have qualms,” replied Tamara. “I’m going to med school.”
“And I’m going to law school.”
“I’m
qualm-less
.”
“Me, too.”
“No qualms here.”
“You already said that.”
“Then why did you bring it up?” Tamara dropped her smile, held her roommate’s eyes until Shayla broke contact and sighed deeply.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
Tamara stood up and kissed Shayla gently on the cheek.
Shayla scowled. “Hey.”
“What?”
“Save that for the cameras, girlfriend.”
Tamara grinned. “You’re such a romantic.”
“Know where you’re gonna have the wedding?”
Tamara looked at her like she was an idiot.
Shayla asked, “What?”
“Where do you
think
we’ll have it?”
Shayla started to say something when it hit her. “You’re going to get married on camera.”
“Guess what I’ll be wearing?” Tamara waved her hands in front of her, the gesture sweeping past her naked breasts to her panties.
Shayla shook her head and started laughing.
“What?”
“And you called me a romantic,” Shayla said. “You’re incredible.”
“Does that mean you’ll be my maid of honor?”
Shayla held her hands out from her sides and stood there, topless.
“Absolutely,” she said. “Hell, I already know what I’m gonna wear.”
Danny Rodriguez wasn’t wearing any pants.
He sat in his boxers and a plain white t-shirt at his kitchen table, his toes drumming the linoleum floor as he doodled on the notepad. His keys were in the basket on the counter with his wallet and badge. His gun was in the cabinet directly above the counter, safely out of his daughter’s reach but within his own should anything happen.
The thought of something happening at home involving his gun sent a chill down Danny’s spine. He worked hard—and so did his wife—so they could afford to live on a decent block, send their daughter to a good school in a city where public schools were hit or miss. Not easy on a cop’s salary. His wife was a teacher, a damn good one, but she got paid a lot less than he did.
He looked around their small apartment, listened for the sound of his daughter’s breathing, his wife’s snoring. His wife claimed she never snored but sometimes that was the first sound that welcomed Danny home when he worked the night shift. It used to keep him awake, but now he found it soothing. It was there, just beyond the hum of the refrigerator. Danny began to smile but gritted his teeth as he thought about what had gone down in Sam’s apartment. The ruined pictures. The violation. Almost twenty years on the force dealing with every kind of scumbag produced by humanity’s inbred gene pool and he’d never had so much as a knock on his door. He’d never realized how lucky he was until tonight.
Danny looked at his crude drawing, the outline of Sam’s apartment building, rectangles marking the entrances and exits, a crooked line indicating the fire escape. On the roof, a lone X led to a series of dashes arcing across the page toward a lopsided oval meant to represent the penguins. A series of squares along the top of the building, one for each apartment. He’d drawn an X through Walter’s square marking the dead body. In the space where the courtyard would be were two more Xs, drawn within the crooked outline of a car.
On an adjacent sheet of paper he’d written all the names of the tenants with their corresponding apartment numbers. If this were a homicide investigation, every one of them would be a suspect. Even Walter. But this was a mess. A twisted tangle of strings that led to nowhere. For a cop, a no-win situation.
Danny had too many real cases. Open homicides he knew he could close. A dead pimp. A drug deal gone sour. A mugged tourist who died from a fractured skull. He had witnesses. Evidence. Motive. Even a suspect or two. Real
Law & Order
shit, maybe even some
CSI
crap if Twisted Oliver came through. Plenty of opportunity to improve the department’s closure rate.
Danny stood and stepped over to the refrigerator, pulled out a beer, sat back down. He looked at his list of names and resumed his stoic tap-dance on the tiles. Muttered under his breath as he reluctantly added Sam’s name to the list.
Every one of them a suspect.
Danny drew a line directly below Sam’s name and scribbled
Zorro
along with the names of some of his crew, at least the ones Danny was familiar with. He scanned the list and shook his head in disbelief. Zorro had no business in that neighborhood. None at all.
Or did he?
Danny drank the rest of his beer and crumpled the can in frustration. Zorro was a barracuda, teeth and all, and the people in that building were easy prey.
If Zorro was really involved with these people, they should all be dead by now.