Pure Hate (7 page)

“That’s cool! You ever kill anyone?”

“I haven’t pulled my gun in almost
twenty years.”

“Oh yeah, and what about twenty years
ago?”

“I shot a guy once. He had his wife
and kid held hostage in this rat infested little shack on Columbia Avenue. He’d
already stabbed his mother-in-law to death. It was like a hundred degrees
outside and you could smell the blood beginning to rot. All of a sudden, he
tries to sneak out the back door. All the other cops were parked out front with
their guns pointed at the front door and he comes creepin’ out the back. It was
just me and this other rookie in the backyard and he comes out holding that
knife with that old lady’s blood still dripping from the blade.”

“Did he attack you?”

“No. He didn’t get a chance. I was so
freaked out scared, I shot him as soon as he
stepped into the yard.”

This time she did pause. She looked
deep into his eyes, nodded and smiled. Then she did something that completely
shocked him. She reached down between his legs and started to stroke him.

“I like you.”

“I like you, too. You are the
sexiest woman I’ve ever seen in this place,” he lied.

“You’re a pretty handsome man
yourself.” The song ended, the next song began, and she was still working his
lap. He pulled her closer to him and hugged her, nuzzling his face in her neck
and then rubbing his cheek over her bare nipples. He then kissed her lightly on
the cheek. CC seemed shaken up by it. She stopped dancing and stared at him
curiously. The detective reached out and stroked her cheek with his fingertips.
CC caught his hand. She rubbed the back of his hand softly against her cheek as
she continued to stare at him. Then she kissed his hand and lowered it between
her breasts, holding it against her heart.

“You are beautiful,” James told her,
and this time he meant it. She was gentle, tender, innocent, and vulnerable. He
wondered what would drive such a woman to play whore for a living.

“You are so different. The other guys
who come in here just paw and grope at me. But you . . . you cuddle and caress.
You’re almost loving.” She was still looking at him like she was waiting for an
explanation. James shrugged. He wanted this woman, not just sexually, though
that was definitely the largest part of what he was feeling, but he wanted to
hold her in his arms, fall asleep with her head on his chest. He wanted to wake
up and see her smiling up at him, and then make love to her all over again.

“You want to spend a little time with
me?” He spoke from his heart and immediately regretted it. He had pushed too
hard, too fast. He was afraid he would frighten her away.

“Well . . . see I’m married but . . .”

“But?”

“But I think you’re sweet.”

“What time do you get off?” He couldn’t help
himself. He wanted her; had to have her.

James didn’t normally mess with married women,
but he figured that any man who would let his wife work in a place like that
wasn’t worthy of his respect or consideration.

“I don’t get off until two.”

“I’ll be back for you.”

The detective stood up and handed her
$40 for the two dances. He kissed her forehead and walked out feeling
superhuman. He didn’t care if someone from the force saw him walking out of the
Star Bar. He was thinking about CC . . . and the Family Man. Malcolm Davis had
somehow leapt back into his head the instant he left the bar. By the time he
got back to the Intrepid, he was no longer
thinking about CC at all.

The 12th precinct was only about a mile
away, and he figured that it would still be
buzzing with the excitement of the latest murder. They were very close to
closing the most horrible murder case in Philadelphia. When he entered the
station, he was surprised and relieved to find
that Tight Ass was still out at the crime scene. First thing, James checked the
files to see if Malcolm had a criminal record. It took longer than he expected but the search came up negative. Just as
he suspected, the man had been careful. Knowing it was probably a waste of
time, he went to work scanning the prints lifted from the murder weapon into
the AFIS computer searching for a match.

The system they used for tracking
fingerprints was still fairly new and less than one-fourth of the fingerprints
they had on file had been entered into the computer. He wished he had access to
the FBI’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System, which contained not only
the fingerprints of every person ever arrested in the United States but also
everyone who had ever served in the military. As tedious as it was to search
through Philadelphia’s fingerprint records, he quickly realized that searching
the files of every felon in the U.S. would be one hell of a chore, high-tech
computer system or not. The AFIS could suggest possible fingerprint matches,
but the human eye, his human eye, had to make the final call. The computer
narrowed it down by weeding out the fingerprints that didn’t match at all, but
he still had to check each of the computer’s suggestions and that sometimes
took hours.

The detective bit the tip off another
White Owl cigar and stuck it in his mouth without lighting it. He quit smoking
years ago, but he still enjoyed the taste of tobacco and he still had that damn
oral fixation. His coffee was bitter and tepid. His shoulders ached. He could
barely keep his eyes open and his mind kept wandering back to the Star Club. He
considered calling the guys at the Bureau and asking them to run the print
through the VICAP computer, but he knew how stingy they could be with their technology
when they weren’t actually in on a case. Thanks to his stubborn ass, glory hog
of a partner, the FBI was not a part of this one, not even as consultants.

He knew they were monitoring the
case. The captain recruited them to help with a profile after the second
killing, but that was the limit of their involvement. Since the killer
apparently hadn’t crossed state lines it was still a PPD case, it was still his
case. He might call the feds in on this one just to get some feedback from the
big heads at their Behavioral Science Department. Maybe he could get them to
work up another profile of the Family Man to see if he could really be
responsible for all those other murders, to see if he could really be Malcolm
Davis. After a few hours of sifting through fingerprints, he gave up and called
it a night. When he left the station there was no question where he was headed.
He made a beeline for the Star Bar, a beeline for CC.

She was just counting out her tips
when he walked in. She had already changed out of her dance costume and was
wearing a gray sweat suit with Reebok tennis shoes and no socks. All her makeup
had been washed off and her blonde hair hung limply to her shoulders. CC looked
like she had just left an aerobics class. She was sexy as hell, even sexier
than she’d been when dancing. When she saw him, CC beamed and then blushed.

“I’ve been waiting for you. I thought
you weren’t going to show. I . . . I was almost wishing you didn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew that if you did, I wouldn’t be able to say no to you.” She blushed
again and stared at her shoes.

“Let’s go.” He draped an arm around
her, hugging her close, and started to walk toward the door.

“Uh . . . I’ll meet you out back. I
can’t let the manager see me leave with a customer. It’s against the rules. I
could get fired. You know, some of the girls have been caught turning tricks so
they had to make it a rule or else the place could get shut down.”

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense. I’m in
the white Dodge.”

“I’ll be out in about five minutes. I
don’t want it to look too obvious.” She had that shy embarrassed look again.

James smiled and walked out. He was
in his car, gnawing on another White Owl cigar, when she came out looking
nervous, excited and still embarrassed. James stuck the cigar in the ashtray
and popped half-a-dozen wintergreen Tic-Tacs into his mouth, chewing them up
before CC reached the car. When CC slid into the passenger seat, he pulled her
close and kissed her. He wasn’t sure if the Tic-Tacs had covered the taste of
the cigar, but she didn’t seem to mind.

He took his time that night. He made
love with his heart, his soul, his lips, tongue, hands, his entire body. He
wanted her to be thinking of him when she went home to her husband.
He knew he would be thinking of her.

Malcolm knew Paul was angry, but he held his
tongue. The sidekick’s anger hadn’t yet made him stupid enough to be
disobedient, which was good. Malcolm didn’t want him to have to die before the
fun was over. But he could see that something was bugging him.

“Why didn’t you let me kill Reed? You
promised! Now the cops’ll be all over us. We’re going to get caught and
sentenced to death. We had that bastard on his knees, crying and begging, and
you spared him. Why?”

“None of your fucking business, white
boy. You think I owe your ass an explanation?”

“When are we going back for Reed?” Paul asked.

Malcolm was deep in thought. He wasn’t about to
answer Paul’s question and, if the white boy opened his mouth again, he would
hurt him. Malcolm was thinking about Reed. He was reliving Reed’s terror, his
pain. It had been perfect and he wanted more.

Didn’t Paul understand that if he
killed Reed he wouldn't be able to hurt him again, that he wouldn’t be able to
enjoy the sweet ecstasy of vengeance?

Reed’s pain would be over and so
would Malcolm’s whole reason for living. The hate that drove him would have no
target, no focus. Reed had to live so that Malcolm could keep hurting him. The
game was just beginning. Malcolm had made the first move. Now it was Reed’s
turn. Malcolm couldn’t end the game, only Reed could.

Never leave an enemy behind . . .

Don’t worry, Reed I haven’t left you. I’ll be
coming back.

Malcolm was smiling again. The memory
of having Reed cornered in the bathroom fifteen years ago slipped into his
mind, what he’d done, what he hadn’t done, how that experience had affected
him. He found himself getting aroused and angry at the same time. That would
have been the perfect time to kill Reed. But he hadn’t. He couldn’t. He’d found
himself homicidally impotent, but another
stronger impulse rose up in its place.

James was surprised to find CC still beside him
in the morning. She woke him up by kissing her way down his body and then
taking his morning erection down her throat. By the time he was fully awake he
was already approaching orgasm. She took that down her throat as well. He
promptly reciprocated, then they both stepped
into the shower to wash the evening from their pleasantly fatigued bodies and
greet the day.

“I’m surprised you’re still here. What about your
husband?”

“I normally don’t get off work until four o’clock
anyway. I’ll just tell him I stopped at my sister’s house. He leaves to play
golf at six in the morning on Saturdays, so he probably didn’t even miss me.”

“I’m glad you stayed. Do you want breakfast?”

“Sure.” She lathered her body and, as James watched,
he found himself growing another painful erection. His penis had been
overworked and it ached as it swelled larger than he ever remembered it being
before last night. It looked like a club. He stepped from the shower and dried
himself off before he was tempted to do something that might rupture a blood
vessel and leave his tender organ swollen for the next two weeks.

He slipped into his Calvin Klein boxers and
stepped back into the bedroom. CC was humming softly as she shampooed her hair.
James slid down on the carpet to begin the first of three hundred abdominal
crunches. As he sweated through his first set of one hundred he listened to her
offbeat version of “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” turn into Lauren Hill’s
“Doo Wop.” He smiled to himself as he ran last night over in his head. CC was
the most giving, most unselfish, unselfconscious, uninhibited, sensitive lover
he’d ever had. Sex with her was flawless. Nothing to add and nothing to take
away. He felt like he was in love, but he knew he had a sucker’s heart and was
smart enough not to let it lead him.

James had been with well over two
hundred women in his forty-five years on this earth and he had probably fallen
in love with one hundred fifty of them. Still, 90 percent of them he’d dumped
within two weeks. All he had to do was imagine a woman raising his kids, and
that usually sobered him right up. He didn’t have any kids yet, but when he did, he didn’t want it to be with some silly ho whose
only notable asset was that she swallowed and didn’t mind occasionally taking a
load in the face. The mother of his children would have to be special, someone
strong who could raise the kids without him if he should ever be killed on the
job. He knew it was a morbid thought, but it was a realistic one.

After he finished his crunches and around one
hundred pushups, James went into the kitchen to make breakfast. CC was done
with her shower and was searching the bed for her bra and panties. He had to catch
his breath as he watched her bend over to check under the bed.

“Man, that ass is incredible,” he marveled under
his breath. She heard him and smiled.

“So, what’s for breakfast, Detective?”

“Please, just call me James.”

“You know what’s funny?”

“What?”

“I just realized I’d never asked you your name. I
feel like such a slut.” She found her underwear and slipped them on along with
her sweat pants. She kind of looked like a Madonna wanna-be in her black lacy
bra, like Roseanna Arquette in “Desperately Seeking Susan”.

“No. You feel like heaven,” James said, as he
chopped up the onions and bell peppers for an omelet.

CC smiled and blushed.

“So, what are you making?”

“It’s my own recipe. A cream cheese omelet. You
chop up some onions, garlic, bell pepper, and tomatoes. Mix it with a few eggs,
some basil and oregano. Then you cook it up and just before you fold the omelet
in half you place about two tablespoons of cream cheese and some grated
Monterey Jack cheese in the center.”

“Mmmmm, sounds delicious. I guess
after last night I can’t really call anything decadent, but it seems like a lot
of effort and a lot of calories.”

“Trust me, it’s worth it. In a world like this,
where everything is all fucked up, even something as trivial as making the perfect
omelet can take on an almost Zen-like quality. That and the fact that the
weekends are the only days that I eat fatty foods.”

By the time James and CC finished breakfast, it
was already past eight o’clock. James drove her home, figuring that if her husband
was at home pissed-off because she’d been out all night, he could flash his
badge and make up a story about her being attacked or something. They took
Lincoln Drive, doing forty-five miles an hour through those ridiculously tight
turns with the signs that announced a twenty-five mile per hour speed limit and
doing seventy on the straights as they left Mount Airy, speeding down to South
Philly. James found it chillingly ominous that CC’s home was right in the
middle of one of Malcolm’s favorite hunting grounds.

They pulled up to one of those little
two hundred plus-year old, post-Revolutionary War row homes that the tourists
think are so adorable and quaint, but the residents hate because of the poor
insulation, rusted plumbing, and walls so thin that neighbors could hear each
other fart. There were gray-haired Italian grandmothers pushing their
grandchildren around in strollers, dogs locked behind fences yapping at
shadows, and normal nosy spinsters sitting on their front stoops, keeping their
eyes on everyone’s business because they had none of their own. However, just
as she’d predicted, CC’s husband was already gone. They sat in the car for a
few minutes before she went in.

“I had a great time, CC. You are an incredible
woman.”

“You sure you don’t think I’m a slut? I don’t
usually cheat on my husband.”

“I believe you,” he lied. ”And, no, I don’t think
you’re a slut. I think you are something truly special and I hope that man of
yours appreciates what he’s got.”

“He doesn’t,” she stated flatly. She kissed him
deeply then slid from the car.

“I hope you come to see me again, James.”

“I don’t think I could stop myself if I wanted
to,” the detective replied, meaning it a little more than he was comfortable
with.

James made it to the office at nine and was
surprised to find his normally punctual partner had not yet arrived. He sat
down at his desk and allowed his mind to go back into the case.

Where are you, Malcolm? What are you up to?
What is it you really want?

“Never leave an enemy behind or it will rise
again to fly at your throat!”

Something told James that Malcolm Davis was not
done yet. There would be more murders. Unless they could catch him, there would
be a lot more.