Plainclothes Naked (5 page)

. . .

After their snack,
Manny steered back to Carmichael Street in a pre occupied haze. Tina must have been staring at him for a while before he noticed, and when he did, she still didn’t speak.

“What?” said Manny finally. They slowed to a stop sign a block from her house.

“I want to show you something,
Detective,
but I don’t know if you want to see it.”

“Try me.”

“I would, but you don’t know what it is. Maybe I shouldn’t.” “You trying to make me beg?”

Manny sat back in the seat and rubbed his neck. His car, an unmarked Impala the color of mayonnaise, had been issued previously to a Pittsburgh P.D. lieutenant in Vice named Hanes. (Upper Marilyn got most of its equipment, and some its employees, used.) Hanes’s claim to fame was a ten-year lawsuit that kept him on the force despite tipping the scales at 390. What the mammoth vice dick’s behind had done to the seat of the Impala was fairly predictable. For Manny, it was like riding in a bomb crater, but the seatback was worse. His spine sort of curved in, where the stuffing had been smashed down to the springs. No amount of adjusting could make it bearable. There wasn’t a Comfy Cushion, Sacro-Ease, or inflatable pillow invented that countered the discomfort of sitting in the fat detective’s divot.

It was the Hanes seat-crater, as much as anything, that made him say yes—or at least “Why the fuck not?”—when Tina made her proposi tion. He’d been pleading with the department for a new car for two years.

“Okay, pull over,” she said, when the house was in sight. She was already fishing in her purse.

Part of Manny worried someone might see him sitting with a pos sible perp. But it wasn’t like she had her head between his legs—he wasn’t the sex-for-favors type. They weren’t even touching. Besides which, detectives had a lot of leeway when it came to “freshies,” sus pects close enough to the crime to still be freaked out about it. (As a rule this meant being caught, if not red-handed, then right after a crime had been discovered, in situations too ludicrous to explain by

coincidence: the teen with panties in his pocket, outside the dorm where three cheerleaders had been raped; the lug with the diamond choker in his ashtray, geezing speed in a clunker three blocks from the broken-in jeweler’s.) In freshy-state, souls were more likely to spill than they were when they’d had time to mull.

Manny himself was famous for bonding with suspects. He’d once dined at Der Wienerschnitzel with a man found on the scene at a mosque-defacing. Midway through his bratwurst, the fellow confessed that he’d hated Moslems ever since an unscrupulous Armenian sold his ex–father-in-law a bad toupee. Just recounting it got him furious. “The thing slipped off at our wedding dinner, right into the lobster bisque. After that, the whole thing was a joke. Whenever anybody mentions my wedding, they never mention how pretty the bride looked, or the beautiful service.... Never! It’s always, ‘Ha-ha, remem ber when Mr. Depew’s rug slipped in the bisque!’ Ha-fucking-ha! I bet we wouldn’t even be divorced if that camel-kisser hadn’t sold us the crappy rug!”

When Manny pointed out that Armenians weren’t actually Arab, that they pretty much hailed from Europe—though, admittedly, some oddball corner of it—Depew’s ex–son-in-law dropped his head onto his bratwurst and began to weep. “Now there’ll be a jihad... .”

Happily, Manny’d got the DA to recommend a psychiatric work-up and community service.

“You sure you’re ready?” asked Tina, when he finally finessed the Chevy within shouting distance of the curb. “I always heard cops can’t parallel park. I mean, why should they learn? It’s not like anybody’s gonna give them a ticket, right?”

“That’s not true,” Manny said. “Sometimes I give them to myself, just to keep me honest.”

“Is that right?” Tina had the envelope in her hand, and a look in her eye that said ‘Fuck with me now and I’ll kill you, too.’ In that moment, Manny had to admit, he was so in love it hurt.

“What I’m gonna show you,” she began, then stopped and fired up another filter-ripped Viceroy. When she started talking again, she aimed her gaze straight ahead, at the back of the red minivan in front of them. A bumper sticker on the window said
I BRAKE FOR JESUS
.

“What I’m going to show you, I had
nothing
to do with, okay?” She

chose her words carefully, “I found it, but it wasn’t something I was supposed to find.”

“You mean you stole it,” Manny said mildly. Always mildly, when coaching your way through a perp chat. “You didn’t
buy
or
create
the thing, you
stole
the thing.”

“Technically, yes,” said Tina, with new respect. “But I don’t know who I stole it from. As long as you understand that.”

“I do,” he said, and slid the manila envelope out of her hand before she changed her mind. She stayed on him, wide-eyed, itching to see his reaction when he pulled what was inside out. But he didn’t want to give her the thrill. Not yet.

“I’m just wondering, did Marvin have anything to do with what I’m about to look at? Was this one of his scams?”

“Marvin?”

Tina rolled down the window and tossed her hardly smoked ciga rette onto somebody’s lawn. It looked like AstroTurf, with bald spots. “Marvin had nothing to do with this,” she said. “Marvin was an acci dent.”

“I’ve had a few of those,” Manny sighed, catching himself when he realized just what she might think he was saying. “I mean, I’ve been in a relationship with the wrong person, I don’t mean I’ve been in a rela tionship with them and left them slumped in a bowl of Grape-Nuts.”

“Lucky Charms,” said Tina, “but I hear what you’re saying.” She met his gaze in a way that made his brain buzz. “When it comes to romance, you’re a fuck-up, too.”

Manny hadn’t exactly ever looked in the mirror and yelped this at himself, but hearing it now, it sounded true.

“Well,” he said, “one divorce, a handful of quasimonogamous nightmares, and here I am, getting cozy with a murder suspect. I’d say my track record speaks for itself.”

Tina turned away, and Manny had a feeling she was staring at her own reflection in the passenger window, or staring at his. When she spoke again her voice was flatter, somewhere between weary and serene. “I always start out liking guys for one thing, and when I find out the thing I liked them for isn’t real, I sort of hang around pretend ing it is—or trying to make it that way. Like with Marvin. When I met him, he was this wild-eyed entrepreneur type. The guy had all kinds of

ideas. He was making crazy money off them. I thought he was a genius.”

“Was he?”

“Sometimes,” said Tina. “Other times he was a total Mongoloid. When he made some dough on one crackpot idea, he’d blow it all on three other ones. His new thing, he was an on-line money guru. Liter ally. He videoed himself in loincloth and turban, like Gandhi with a potbelly, giving financial advice. Then he switched from investment tips to chanting for money. He cooked up these special mantras.”

“Om nyoho renge cash?”

“Basically. Except we didn’t have any money, which didn’t say much for his cash-chanting efficiency. I could never pin him down, though. He was so enthusiastic, you just kind of wanted everything to work. That’s what I loved about him. Until.. .”

She faltered, and Manny had to prompt her. “Until?”

“Until he started chanting through his nose, and I had to listen to him snuffle and
Om
all day like a monk with a harelip. That’s what put me over the edge. Hangovers are bad enough without Hindu sound effects.”

Manny’s ears burned, the way they did when people’s words slipped into the Red Zone: when they were confessing, whether they knew it or not. The air between them had gone electric.

“There’s always something like that,” he said, too casually, “some thing you don’t expect that comes along and changes everything.”

Tina rested the tip of one forefinger on the back of his wrist. No more than that, and it was more than he could remember feeling since he was thirteen.

“The nose-humming was pretty much out of the blue,” she said. “I rest my case,” said Manny, and ripped open the envelope.

Carmella Dendez looked left and right, then slipped a pudgy forefinger into her cleavage to retrieve the wad of twenties she’d stashed there. A slight drizzle mois tened her beehive and made the cars shiny. Nothing would be stupider than letting someone from work spot her counting her cash. But she couldn’t resist. Along with the two twenties the
blanco
creep had given her, her count came to $320. But she had to keep checking. That was the fun part. She owed a month-and-a-half to Jenny Craig: $250 right there. And Daisy, the little neighbor girl who cleaned her house, needed a mole removed from her nose. It was sprouting hairs, like an old widow’s. Boys were starting to make fun. Carmella’d been promising the child for weeks she’d take her to that nice doctor, Dr. Roos,
‌

who’d done so much for her. More than she could tell a living soul....

Riffling the bills under her nose, Carmella stood in front of her Gremlin. If she didn’t go back to Jenny Craig, the Gremlin would have to go to. It wasn’t dignified, a Big Beautiful Woman having to squidge herself into a tiny hatchback. Carmella did not believe that a bit of heft was necessarily bad. Plenty of men liked a gal who had some stuffing in her seat. But squeezing in and out of the Gremlin was not just unseemly, it was unsafe. She knew this from the Rape Prevention Class she’d taken at the Y. Getting in and out of your vehicle was a TAM— Target Attack Moment—for all women. But it was doubly dangerous for a woman of size, who, if she’s unlucky enough to drive a Gremlin, may have a patch of involuntary downtime when she’s stuck half-in and half-out of her car, waiting for the strength to make that final
oomph
that will put her inside.

The policeman who taught the class owned just the kind of tight butt and big shoulders Carmella liked. Plus he wasn’t too handsome, just
knowing
. As if the ho-hum face under his no-style brown hair had made its way through a lifetime of peculiar situations, and didn’t judge.
Officer Manny.
Carmella could never tell if he was smiling at her or not. But she liked it when he picked her to demonstrate the hip-roll. More than one evening, after downing her Slim-Fast, she’d lay on the couch daydreaming about the time she’d thrown the hottie cop over her hip and landed on top of him, the way his eyes went wide when she put just enough push in her pelvis to let him know she didn’t mind tossing a guy around a little.

Carmella had her hand in her purse when she heard the voices. “Hey lady, got a light?”

“Ain’t nuthin’ light about her.”

She knew that nasty tone. Mrs. Zank’s boy. That shit. And the Dean Martin–looking
hombre negro
he ran with. Without turning around, Carmella slipped her fingers in her dress, re-stashing her cash, then eased her hand to her purse, deciding between car keys and comb.

“May I help you?” she said, without turning around.

“You can help
you,
” Zank said, “if you do what I tell you. We need you to walk your big ass back in the office and get the address of the girl who changed my mother’s sheets. That’s not such a big deal, is it?”

Thinking, for some reason, of the scene in
Deliverance
where the killer hillbillies ask Ned Beatty to squeal like a pig (another juicy image, along with hip-rolling Officer Manny onto the mat), Carmella took a deep breath and swung around with the comb in her fist. She raked the plastic teeth under Tony’s dime-size nostrils, drawing blood before he had a chance to stop smirking.

Tony dropped to one knee, clutching his face. His screams caught McCardle off guard. He made a lunge for Carmella, but she was ready for him. Sidestepping, she jammed a high heel down on the tender bones of his foot, where his Florsheim’s loafer stopped and his argyles started. The pain was excruciating.

McCardle looked at Carmella with honest wonder—
Why?
—and his suffering visage was meat to her appetite. She felt her heart racing, in a good way, and took her fingers to his ears, twisting with everything she had while the little muscle man flailed. Then Zank picked himself up and kicked her in the shin, and it was over.

Carmella didn’t go down, but she let go. McCardle rubbed his bruised lobes and tried to breathe normally.

“Man!”
was all he could say.

Tony told him to shut up and open the trunk. McCardle obliged, looking skeptically from the available volume in the Gremlin to the volume of Carmella in her stretch capris. Most of the available space was taken up with boxes of Jenny Craig’s lo-cal snack bars. Chocolate and Banana-Orange. Even empty, it would have been snug for an anorexic.

“Gonna be tight,T.”

Zank sneered. “Thanks for the input.” An ambulance wailed from blocks away, no doubt racing over to pick up his mother. “This could’ve been a walk in the park if Miss Porkchop didn’t get heroic. All we wanted was an address,” he said, grabbing Carmella by her chins. He pinched the extra flesh until her eyes watered. This was indignity beyond indignity. She made a silent vow to wreak revenge on this Anglo asshole, if she had to walk a continent of broken glass in paper slippers to get to him.

When Zank let go, Carmella touched her fingers to her throat flesh, and decided she would pay Jenny Craig the rest of the money she owed. Come her day of revenge, she wanted to be trim and gorgeous.

She wanted this
malo
dog to eat his heart out before he begged for death.

“It’s gonna be work getting that ass in this bread box,” said Tony. He slapped Carmella hard on her solid behind and McCardle frowned. That kind of talk was uncalled for.

“Nothin’ wrong with this lady’s ass,” Mac said. “Man could take a winter in the North Pole with an ass like that.”

Carmella eyed him with gratitude.
This one
, she promised herself,
I pleasure for a while before I castrate
.... He had the most adorable little nose she’d ever seen.