Rose Madder (10 page)

“Yeah, maybe I like you, maybe I like you a lot, greasy little cocksucker in shiny black pants and pointy shoes, what's not to like?” The cop kept on giving his cock a shoeshine while he talked. He varied his stroke every now and then, applying a little squeeze that caused Ramon to gasp. “And it's a good thing I like you, Ramon, you better believe it, because they really nailed you this time. Felony bust. But you know what bothers me? Leffingwell and Brewster—the cops who busted you—were laughing in the squadroom this morning. They were laughing about you, and that was okay, but I also have this feeling that they were laughing about
me,
and that's
not
okay. I don't like for people to laugh about me, and I generally don't put up with it. But this morning I had to, and this afternoon I'm going to be your best friend, I'm going to lose some pretty serious drug charges even though you had my fucking bank card. Can you guess why?”

The Frisbee floated by again with the German Shepherd in close pursuit, but this time Ramon Sanders barely saw it. He was stiff as a railspike under the cop's hand, and as scared as a mouse under the claws of a cat.

The hand squeezed harder this time, and Ramon uttered a hoarse little howl. His
café-au-lait
skin was running with sweat; his moustache looked like a dead earthworm after a hard rain.

“Can you guess, Ramon?”

“No,” Ramon said.

“Because the woman who ditched the card was my wife,” Daniels said. “That's mostly why Leffingwell and Brewster were laughing, that's my deduction. She takes my bank card, she uses it to draw a few hundred bucks out of the bank—
money I earned—
and when the card turns up again, it's in the possession of a greasy little spick cocksucker named Ramon. No wonder they're laughing.”

Please,
Ramon wanted to say,
please don't hurt me, I'll tell you anything but please don't hurt me.
He wanted to say those things, but he couldn't say a word. Not one. His asshole had contracted until it felt roughly the size of an inner-tube valve.

The big cop leaned closer to him, close enough so that Ramon could smell cigarettes and Scotch on his breath.

“Now that I've shared with you, I want you to share with me.” The rubbing stopped, and strong fingers curled around Ramon's testes through the thin fabric of his slacks. The shape of his erect penis was clear above the cop's hand; it looked like one of those toy bats you could buy at a baseball park souvenir stand. Ramon could feel the strength in that hand. “And you better share the right thing, Ramon. Do you know why?”

Ramon shook his head numbly. He felt as if someone had turned on a warm water tap somewhere in his body and his entire skin was leaking.

Daniels extended his right hand, the one with the tennis ball, until it was under Ramon's nose. Then he closed his hand with a sudden, vicious snap. There was a pop and a brief harsh whisper
—fwahhh—
as his fingers punched through the ball's furry fluorescent skin. The ball collapsed inward, then turned halfway inside-out.

“I can do that with my left hand, too,” Daniels said. “Do you believe that?”

Ramon tried to say he did and found he still couldn't talk. He nodded instead.

“Will you keep it in mind?”

Ramon nodded again.

“Okeydoke. So now here's what I want you to tell me, Ramon. I know you're just a stinking little spick rump-wrangler who doesn't know much about women, except maybe for fucking your mother up the ass in your younger years—you've
just got that motherfucker look about you, somehow—but you go on and use your imagination. How do you think it feels to come home and find out that your wife, the woman who promised to love, honor, and fucking
obey you—
has run off with your bank card? How do you think it feels to find out she used it to pay for her fucking vacation, and then she stuffed it in a bus-terminal garbage can for a greasy little penis-vacuum like you to find?”

“Not too good,” Ramon whispered. “I bet it don't feel too good, please don't hurt me, officer, please don't—”

Daniels slowly tightened his hand; tightened it until the tendons in his wrist stood out like the strings on a guitar. A wave of pain, heavy as liquid lead, rolled into Ramon's belly and he tried to scream. Nothing came out but a horse exhalation.

“Not too good?”
Daniels whispered in his face. His breath was warm and steamy and boozy and cigarettey. “Is that the best you can do? What a fucking numbnuts you are! Still . . . I guess it's not an entirely wrong answer, either.”

The hand loosened, but only a little. Ramon's lower belly was a lake of agony, but his penis was as hard as ever. He had never been into pain, whatever drove the bondage freaks was totally beyond him, and he could only suppose he still had a hardon because the blood in his cock was trapped there by the heel of the cop's hand. He swore to himself that if he got out of this alive, he would go directly to St. Patrick's and say fifty Hail Marys. Fifty? A
hundred
and fifty.

“They're laughing at me in there,” the cop said, lifting his chin in the direction of the brand-new cop-shop across the street. “They're laughing all right, oh yeah. Big tough Norman Daniels, and guess what? His wife ran out on him . . . but she took time to clean out most of the ready before she went.”

Daniels made an inarticulate growling sound, the sort of sound that a person should only have to hear while visiting the zoo, and gave Ramon's balls another squeeze. The pain was unbearable. He leaned forward and vomited between his knees—white chunks of curd laced with brown streaks that was probably the remains of the
quesadilla
he'd eaten for lunch. Daniels did not seem to notice. He was gazing into the sky above the jungle gym, lost in his own world.

“I should let them dance you around so even more people
can laugh?” he asked. “So that they can yuck it up at the courthouse as well as at the police station? I don't think so.”

He turned and looked into Ramon's eyes. He smiled. The smile made Ramon want to scream.

“Here comes the big question,” the cop said. “And if you lie, little hero, I'm going to rip your scrote off and feed it to you.”

Daniels squeezed Ramon's crotch again, and now folds of darkness began to fall across Ramon's vision. He fought them desperately. If he passed out, the cop was apt to kill him just for spite.

“Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“Yes!” Ramon wept. “I unnerstand! I unnerstand!”

“You were at the bus station and you saw her stick the card in the trash. That much I know. What I need to know is where she went next.”

Ramon could have wept with relief because, although there was no reason why he should be able to answer this question, it just so happened he could. He had looked after the woman once to make sure she wasn't looking back at him . . . and then, five minutes later, long after he had slid the green plastic card into his wallet, he had spotted her again. She had been hard to miss, with the red thing over her hair; it was as bright as the side of a freshly painted barn.

“She was at the ticket-windows!” Ramon cried out of the darkness that was relentlessly enveloping him. “At the windows!”

This effort was rewarded by another ruthless squeeze. Ramon began to feel as if his balls had been torn open, doused with lighter fluid, and then set on fire.

“I
know
she was at the windows!” Daniels half-laughed, half-screamed at him. “What else would she be doing at Portside if she wasn't going someplace on a bus? Doing a sociological study on scumbuckets like you?
Which
ticket-window, that's what I want to know—which fucking windows and what fucking time?”

And oh thank God, thank Jesus and Mother Mary, he knew the answers to both of those questions, too.

“Continental Express!” he cried, now separated from his own voice by what felt like miles. “I seen her at the Continental Express window, ten-thirty, quarter of eleven!”

“Continental? You're sure?”

Ramon Sanders didn't answer. He collapsed sideways on
the bench, one hand dangling, slim fingers outstretched. His face was dead white except for two small purplish patches high on his cheeks. A young man and a young woman walked by, looked at the man lying on the bench, then looked at Daniels, who had by now removed his hand from Ramon's crotch.

“Don't worry,” Daniels said, giving the couple a large smile. “He's epileptic.” He paused and let his smile widen. “I'll take care of him. I'm a cop.”

They walked on a little faster and didn't look back.

Daniels got an arm around Ramon's shoulders. The bones in there felt as fragile as bird's wings. “Upsa-daisy, big boy,” he said, and hauled Ramon up to a sitting position. Ramon's head lolled like the head of a flower on a broken stalk. He started to slide back down immediately, making little thick grunts in his throat. Daniels hauled him up again, and this time Ramon balanced.

Daniels sat there beside him, watching the German Shepherd race joyfully after the Frisbee. He envied dogs, he really did. They had no responsibilities, no need to work—not in this country, anyhow—all food was provided for them, plus a place to sleep, and they didn't even have to worry about heaven or hell when the ride was over. He had once asked Father O'Brian back in Aubreyville about that and Father had told him that pets had no souls—when they died they just winked out like Fourth of July sparklers. It was true that the Shep had probably lost his balls not even six months after he was born, but . . .

“But in a way that's a blessing, too,” Daniels murmured. He patted Ramon's crotch, where the penis was now deflating even as the testicles began to swell. “Right, big boy?”

Ramon muttered deep in his throat. It was the sound of a man having a terrible dream.

Still, Daniels thought, what you got was what you got, and so you might as well be content with it. He might be lucky enough to be a German Shepherd in his next life, with nothing to do but chase Frishees in the park and stick his head out the back window of the car on his way home to a nice big supper of Purina Dog Chow, but in this one he was a man, with a man's problem.

At least he
was
a man, unlike his little buddy.

Continental Express. Ramon had seen her at the Continental Express ticket-window at ten-thirty or quarter to
eleven, and she wouldn't have waited long—she was too scared of him to wait for long, he'd bet his life on that. So he was looking for a bus that had left Portside between, say, eleven in the morning and one in the afternoon. Probably headed for a large city where she felt she could lose herself.

“But you can't do that,” Daniels said. He watched the Shep jump and snatch the Frisbee out of the air with its long white teeth. No, she couldn't do that. She might
think
she could, but she was wrong. He would work it on weekends to start with, mostly using the phone. He would have to do it that way; there was a lot going on at the company store, a big bust coming down (
his
bust, if he was lucky.) But that was all right. He'd be ready to turn his full attention to Rose soon enough, and before long she was going to regret what she had done. Yes. She was going to regret it for the rest of her life, a period of time which might be short but which would be extremely . . . well . . .

“Extremely
intense,”
he said out loud, and yes—that was the right word.
Exactly
the right word.

He got up and walked briskly back toward the street and the police station on the other side, not wasting a second glance on the semiconscious young man sitting on the bench with his head down and his hands laced limply together in his crotch. In Detective Inspector 2/Gr Norman Daniels's mind, Ramon had ceased to exist. Daniels was thinking about his wife, and all the things she had to learn. About all the things they had to talk about. And they
would
talk about them, just as soon as he tracked her down. All sorts of things—ships and sails and sealing wax, not to mention what should happen to wives who promised to love, honor, and obey, and then took a powder with their husbands' bank cards in their purses. All those things.

They would talk about them up close.

S
he was making another bed, but this time it was all right. It was a different bed, in a different room, in a different city. Best of all, this was a bed she had never slept in and never would.

A month had passed since she had left the house eight
hundred miles east of here, and things were a lot better. Currently her worst problem was her back, and even that was getting better; she was sure of it. Right now the ache around her kidneys was strong and unpleasant, true enough, but this was her eighteenth room of the day, and when she'd begun at the Whitestone she had been close to fainting after a dozen rooms and unable to go on after fourteen—she'd had to ask Pam for help. Four weeks could make a hell of a difference in a person's outlook, Rosie was discovering, especially if it was four weeks without any hard shots to the kidneys or the pit of the stomach.

Still, for now it was enough.

She went to the hall door, poked her head out, and looked in both directions. She saw nothing but a few room-service trays left over from breakfast, Pam's trolley down by the Lake Michigan Suite at the end of the hall, and her own trolley out here in front of 624.