Plainclothes Naked (32 page)

Normally, Manny would have played it off. Made a joke about moonlighting at bachelorette parties. But the codeine, whooshing into his brain for that hour of bliss before he felt like dogshit again, made him want to be real. To tell her the truth, because that was the hotter move. Scarier but hotter: Show her who he really was, and if she still wanted him, he’d know that she was the
One
. That somehow, after a lifetime of fractured relationships, everything he’d been feeling but afraid to believe would be proved genuine.

“I want to tell you my darkest secret,” he blurted. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to. You ready?”

“Don’t tell me, you have a
problem
.”

“Not the one you think. Mine is, I have to care. I can’t just point and shoot.”

“That’s a problem?”

“Depends. It’s probably kept me out of a lot of trouble. On the other hand, I’ve probably missed a busload of great fucks.”

“Not that you haven’t... .”

“Had my share? Sure. Enough so I can’t remember when I stopped remembering. But at some point sex turned into New Year’s Eve. The night you’re supposed to have fun, so having fun feels like work. Pathetic, but there it is. In my old age, I have to trust a woman before I can do anything. Before I want to, anyway.”

“That’s not pathetic,” she said. “Just dangerous.” “So you know what I mean?”

“Sure. The trick, for me, is not to
have
to trust anybody. To enjoy them but not need them.”

“And you can do that?” “No, but it sounds good.”

“Exactly.” Manny couldn’t believe that she
got it
. That turned him on, more than anything, to have found a mind so in alignment with his. A mind in Tina’s body. With Tina’s face....

He felt super-buzzed, as if he’d stumbled into some pocket of psycho-emotional ether, where the air was so pure it made you giddy because your heart missed all the usual pollution. “If you know who I am— who I
really
am—and you don’t freak, then I can screw you till your

eyes bleed. But I have to be able to connect. And how the fuck often does that happen?”

Tina shot him a cryptic smile. “I’ve scared a few off myself.” “So you see what I’m saying.”

Manny couldn’t tell if he was talking himself into a relationship or out of sex. If
he’d
had to listen to someone jabber this way, he might have been out the door. He had never articulated any of this, and wasn’t sure why he was doing it now, of all the insane occasions. But he’d gone this far....

“I know it sounds lame, but I have to dig the way you think. And I have to feel like you
get
me. My whole fucking life, I pretended I could relate to chicks so I could get in their pants. Then once I got in, all I wanted was out again.”

For a second or two, Tina was silent. When she spoke he couldn’t tell if she was amused or annoyed.

“Listen, Sensitive Guy, I’d want you even if you were hung like a nipple. But I’m not going to lie to you. This”—she hefted his semi erect penis—“is not something a woman can ignore.”

Tina wrapped her fingers around his cock, but the way she did it, so
naturally,
felt more reassuring than erotic. Like she was saying, with that casual grip,
It’s all right, Junior, you can relax. I won’t make you play the piano
.... Which was, to Manny’s own surprise, the most weirdly erotic thing of all.

“You know,” she continued, “this is the first time I’ve gotten post coital without getting coital.”

“Same here. I just needed to say something.”

“Then I need to say something, too. I’m afraid I’ll get hurt.” “That’s the other dirty little secret.” Manny gave a resigned shrug.

“Some women, when we try to do it, it doesn’t work. I don’t fit. For them it’s painful. For me, it’s like taking a bath with my feet out of the water. The bane of my existence.”

“You big jerk,” she said, “I don’t mean hurt
that
way. I mean in
here
.” She tapped her heart. “I’m wired the same as you. For it to be good, I have to give a shit about the person I’m with. But I don’t
want
to give a shit, because that’s when it can hurt.”

“So you never let yourself care. It’s too painful.”

“How’d you guess?”

At that moment, they both looked down. Manny’s organ had begun to stiffen, expanding until Tina’s middle finger barely touched the tip of her thumb. She smiled. “Honesty, the thinking man’s fore play.”

“Something like that.” With willpower he wished he didn’t have, Manny placed his hand on top of hers and removed it. “A little risk is exciting, but this isn’t screwing in a dressing room at the Gap. Those two psycho-freaks burst in, we got a real situation. I shouldn’t have started blabbing.”

“Never apologize,” she said.

“I won’t. But now we have to take the picture and get the fuck out.”

“This still seems crazy.”

“Maybe,” said Manny. “But it’s the only way to buy some time till we get rid of the original photo—or figure out how to get rid of Zank and McCardle. We’ve got the shots of them fucking at the motel, but there’s no way to use them without meeting face-to-face. And that’s too risky. If we stage a fake Biobrain, we can take the film to Roos and have pictures in an hour. Then all we have to do is plant them.”

“If that’s all, then we should get going. Assume the position.”

With Nurse Ratched efficiency, Tina scooped up the Magic Marker and bit the top off. Then she moved the cameras and sat down on the furry toilet seat. Manny went in and out of feeling freakish. Naked from the waist down, while Tina still had her clothes on, made him feel twice as naked. But he couldn’t think about it. This was crunch time. As he’d rehearsed, he flattened his penis against his belly, keeping it out of sight under his left hand. Biting his lip, he squinched his balls with his right and squeezed at the root until they bulbed out in veiny approximation of a human brain.

When he was set, they both scrutinized his swollen orb, then looked over at the picture on the hamper and back at each other.
Shit!
There was a problem. Two problems. But size could be fudged. Being furrier than George required more drastic measures.

“Maybe he shaves his nuts,” said Manny.

“Either that,” said Tina, “or that’s what they mean by Skull and Bones. Anyway, you’re going to need a trim.”

“What did Marvin shave with?”

“Marv was a disposable man. Gillette Good News. But this is too delicate.”

“So what are you thinking?”

“Well, I did two semesters of beauty school.”

“I don’t want a permanent. I just need to be defuzzed.”

“I know. But to get the diploma, you had to shave a balloon. The instructor lathered it up, then we had to shave it clean with a straight razor. Without breaking it.”

“And you did that?”

“It’s not so hard. I got it on my third try.”

“Terrific
... .”

Manny gulped as Tina rooted through her purse. When she pro duced the straight razor, he could have fainted. She flicked it open and smiled up from the toilet seat. It had a pearl handle, engraved with a bucking bronco like a prop from
Gunsmoke
.

Maybe it’s an heirloom, Manny thought.
Or maybe she comes from a family of slashers.
Once again, he had to confront the niggling fact that she’d offed her husband. That he’d walked in while the corpse was still warm on his kitchen floor. The image sent his mind into overdrive:
Maybe she likes to kill. . . . Maybe she hates men. . . . Maybe mine is a pun ishing God and she’s my destiny
.... The possibilities dropped like little weights tied around the cloud of his codeine buzz, bringing him down.
And yet
....

When Tina turned to open the medicine cabinet, he didn’t even think about changing his mind. Or running. Instead, he found himself wearing a weird grin.
Details,
he told himself.

Manny tried to relax as Tina unearthed a can of Barbisol. She plunked it on the sink, then filled a glass with water that came out milky. She set the glass down and snatched a blue washcloth from the shower rod. Manny wondered if it had been Marvin’s, and briefly obsessed on the implications of being washed by a dead man’s washrag.
A dead husband’s
. He couldn’t think of any right off, but still....

Tina ran more hot water. When steam started rising out of the tap, she plunged the washrag underneath. She kept it there for as long as she could stand. Then, pinching the scalding cloth between thumb and forefinger, she flipped it out of the sink and over Manny’s balls as if

she’d been shaving them for decades. He juked backward and yowled. “Careful!”

“Sorry. Heat softens the follicles.”

Before he could cool, she plucked the washrag off, threw it in the sink, and squirted some shaving cream on her hand. She slapped it on gently, until his scrotum looked like a snowball.

“I don’t know about this,” said Manny, his voice not quite normal. “Steady, Detective. Police business.”

“It’s like John Wayne Bobbitt, except I’m awake.” “I know. Kind of a dream come true... .”

With this,Tina raised the blade beside her head,Tony Perkins–style, and started in. Manny was still waiting for the pain when he opened his eyes and realized she was already shaving him. In two minutes he was smooth. Tina toweled him off and grabbed the Magic Marker. Taking stock, she shot her gaze back and forth from Manny to the original. And then, with an ease and certitude that bordered on Zen, she kneeled down and drew a perfect Smiley Face.

Manny compared his happy balls to George Junior’s and nodded. “Amazing job.”

“Thanks. I lied about the balloon, by the way. I popped it every time. Let’s see how we look on film.”

Before Manny could react, Tina started firing off Polaroids. They examined each alongside the stolen photo, making adjustment after adjustment until they’d managed to make Manny’s look all but identi cal to W.’s more wispy, Waspish golf bag. After they nailed
that
down, Manny picked up on another problem: In the original, the backdrop was white. The walls in the Podolsky bathroom were green. To cheat, Tina tossed a white sheet over the towel rack and posed him in front of it. Once that was rigged, and the Polaroids looked okay, she ran off a roll on the disposable.

“Done,” she announced, dropping the camera in her purse and giv ing his tingling testicles a friendly squeeze. “How are Abbott and Costello holding up?”

“They feel kind of raw.”

“Hang on, I have something that can help.”

Tina grabbed a fresh towel and wiped her straight razor lovingly, then snapped it shut. Manny’d known a couple of cops, and a few

criminals, who handled their weapons with the same kind of affection. They were always the ones who knew how to use them.

She placed the razor daintily on the hamper, beside the real Mister Biobrain and the Polaroid forgeries, and laid a dry towel over them. Then she opened the medicine cabinet.

“Here’s what
I
use,” she said, retrieving an ugly yellow jar. Seeing it, Manny had a retroactive flash. He realized what was different about Tina back in the Impala. When he’d plunged in, she’d been smooth. Shaved. Up, down, and sideways. Just like Carlos/Carmella. If there was a connection, he didn’t want to think about it. Maybe all the ladies were going baby these days.

“A lot of people knock Vaseline,” Tina declaimed, in the manner of a TV spokesperson. “But, for this little lady, nothing works like petro leum jelly on those pubic razor bumps. You can find fancier products, but nothing better.”

Done with her pitch, she dropped back to her knees in front of him. She’d just sunk two fingers in the Vaseline, ready to swab, when they heard the crash in the living room. Without thinking, Manny scooped up his underwear. Before he could pull them on, Zank was in the doorway, his face like a blood-spattered moon, twirling one of the lynched rabbits on a string and pointing his custom .357.

For a long time, nobody spoke. Then Zank piped up like it was nat ural. “Wanna know my favorite thing in the world?”

His tone was creepily familiar,
neighborly,
as if they were chatting at a supermarket check stand, basket to basket. “It’s this gun. Really. Colt Python .357 Magnum, with the heavy bullets. That’s the secret. I had it modified for heavy bullets.”

He dangled the stuffed animal in Tina’s face while Manny watched, still covering his cock with his jockeys.

“Let’s say I shoot this bunny. When I do, its bunny cousin’s gonna die in the house next door. Magic bullets, man. These fuckers’ll go through walls, through bricks, through your
neighbor’s
walls, right into his fat ass if he’s sittin’ in front of the big screen watchin’ gay S & M. Which is
exactly
what he’s doin,’cause I had a peep on the way in. When I get tweaked up, I like to do me a little peepin’.”

Seeing Zank, Manny was struck by a peculiar truth:The truly dan gerous guys were not always the scariest. He’d met hitmen who looked

like department store Santas. And here was Tony Zank. . . . Almost clownish. Drug-muddled and babbling, with a face, at this point, like something scraped off an emergency room floor. Zank blasted a thou sand dirty watts from both eyes. He was the kind of man who’d make you cringe if you saw him within twenty feet of a child. Manny watched him lift his gun to his lips and lick the barrel. He French kissed it, putting his tongue right in the hole. Manny watched, and thought:
Killing us would be fun
. Tony was definitely a unique case: He managed to look ludicrous
and
scary. For Zank, a situation like this was champagne brunch.

Manny took a long, slow breath and repeated his personal mantra for handling psychotics.
When facing the unhinged, stay hinged.
With psy chopaths, it was all theater. If you didn’t know your lines, you were dead.

Neither Manny nor Tina moved as a skittish black man, built like a miniature bodybuilder, stepped timidly behind Zank. Tina couldn’t help staring. In the flesh, the miniature hunk bore an even stronger resemblance to Dean Martin. She’d seen
Robin and the Seven Hoods
three nights ago on AMC. They were having a Rat Pack festival. Beyond the obvious difference in size and pigment, he was Dean to a T. Except, Tina noted with fascination, for that adorable little nose. And the expression of terror on his handsome face. McCardle, the shrunk-and-dyed Dino, came off as traumatized as his partner did crazy.