The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors (8 page)

I momentarily thought about Linda Sandoval and the perfect triangle moving in rhythm on the stage. I had regretted not taking her up on her offer. I was sure I always would.

“Then she's going to make more stripping than she will practicing law,” Seiver said, snapping me back to reality.

“You're stalling, Dean. What are you going to do?”

“You just want the whole thing to go away, huh?”

I nodded.

“It's a bad arrest,” I said. “You refuse to file it and everybody wins. My client's record is clean and the integrity of the justice system is intact.”

“Don't make me laugh. I could still go ahead with it and tie her up in appeals until she graduates.”

“But you're a fair and decent guy and you know it's a bad arrest. That's why I came to you.”

“Where's she work and what name does she dance under?”

“One of the Road Saints' places up in the Valley. Her professional name is Harmony.”

“Of course it is. Look, Haller, things have changed since the last time you deigned to visit me. I'm restricted in what I can do here.”

“Bullshit. You're the supervisor. You can do what you want. You always have.”

“Actually, no. It's all about the budget now. Under some formula some genius put together at county, our budget now rises and falls with the number of cases we prosecute. So that edict resulted in an internal edict from on high which takes away my discretion. I cannot kick a case without approval from downtown. Because a nol-pros case doesn't get counted in the budget.”

This sort of logic and practice did not surprise me, yet it surprised me to be confronted with it by Seiver. He had never been a company man.

“You're saying you cannot drop this case without approval because it would cost your department money from the county.”

“Exactly.”

“And what that means is that the interest of justice takes a backseat to budgetary considerations. My client must be illegally charged first, in order to satisfy some bureaucrat in the budget office, before you are then allowed to step in and drop the charge. Meantime, she's got an arrest on her record that may prevent or impede her eventual practice of law.”

“No, I didn't say that.”

“I'm paraphrasing.”

“I still didn't say that last part.”

“Sounded like it to me.”

“No, I told you what the procedure is now. Technically, I don't have prefiling discretion in a case like this. Yes, I would have to file the case and then drop it. And, yes, we both know that the charge, no matter what the outcome of the case, will stay on her record forever.”

I realized he was trying to tell me something.

“But you have an alternate plan,” I prompted.

“Of course I do, Haller.”

He stood up and moved what was left of his sandwich from the clear spot on his desk.

“Hold this, Haller.”

I stood up and he handed me a file with the name Linda Sandoval on the tab. He then stepped up onto his desk chair and used it as a ladder to step up onto the clear spot of his desk.

“What are you doing, Seiver? Looking for a spot to tie the noose? That's not an alternative.”

He laughed but didn't answer. He reached up and used both hands to push one of the tiles in the drop ceiling up and over. He reached a hand down to me and I gave him the file. He put it up into the space above the ceiling, then pulled the lightweight tile back into place.

Seiver got down and slapped the dust off his hands.

“There,” he said.

“What did you just do?”

“The file is lost. The case won't be filed. Time will run out and then it will be too late for it to be filed. You come back in after the sixty days are up and get the arrest expunged. Harmony's record is clean by the time she takes the bar exam. If something comes up or the deputy asks questions, I say I never saw the file. Lost in transit from Malibu.”

I nodded. It would work. The rules had changed but not Dean Seiver. I had to laugh.

“So that's what passes for discretion now?”

“I call it Seiver's pretrial intervention.”

“How many files you have up there, man?”

“A lot. In fact, tell Harmony to put some clothes on, get down on her knees, and pray to the stripper gods that the ceiling doesn't fall before her sixty days are run. 'Cause when the sky falls in here, then Chicken Little will have some 'splaining to do. I'll probably need a job when that happens.”

We both looked up at the ceiling with a sense of apprehension. I wondered how many files the ceiling could hold before Seiver's pretrial intervention program came crashing down.

“Let's finish our sandwiches and not worry about it,” Seiver finally said.

“Okay.”

We resumed our positions on either side of the wall of files.

It was early evening and still bright outside. When I walked into the Snake Pit North I had to pause for my eyes to adjust to the darkness inside. When they did, I saw my client Harmony was on the main stage, her perfect triangle glittering in the spotlights. She moved with a natural rhythm that was as entrancing as her naked body. No tattoos as distraction. Just her, pure and beautiful.

That's why I had come. I could have delivered the good news by phone and been done with it. Said, See you around the courthouse in a year. But I had to see her one more time. Her body had left a memory imprint on me in the privacy booth. And I had started dreaming about being with her now that the case was closed and it could be argued—before the Bar if necessary—that she was no longer a client. Bar or no Bar, I wanted her. There was something intoxicating about having the smartest girl in the room moving up and down on you.

The song was an old one, “Sweet Child o' Mine,” and had just started. I stood in the crowd and just watched and after a while she saw me and gave me the nod without breaking her rhythm. It might be a young girl's game but I thought she could give lessons for the next twenty years if need be. She moved with a rhythm that seemed to push the music, not the other way around.

I looked around and found an open bar table along the back wall. I sat down and watched Harmony dance until the song ended. While another dancer took the next song, she stood by the stairs at the back of the stage and put her orange G-string and zebra-striped camisole back on. The garter around her thigh was flowered with money—ones, fives, tens, and twenties. She walked down the steps, stopped at a few tables to kiss heavy donors on the cheek, and then came to me.

“Hello, Counselor. Do you have news for me?”

She took the other stool at the table.

“I sure do,” I said. “The news is that your research was superb and your strategy excellent. The prosecutor bought it. He bought the whole thing.”

She held still for a moment, as if basking in some unseen glow.

“What exactly is the disposition of the case?”

“It goes away. Completely.”

“What about the record of my arrest?”

“I go back in a couple months from now and expunge it. There will be no record.”

“Wow. I'm good.”

“You sure are. And don't forget I had a little part to play in it, too.”

“Thanks, Mickey. You just made my night.”

“Yeah, well, I was hoping you could make mine.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“I was thinking about what you said last night.”

“About what?”

“About a man needing to eat pussy.”

She smiled in that way that all women have, that way that says it isn't going to happen.

“That was last night, Mickey. Tonight it's a whole new world.”

She slid off the stool and came around the table to me. She kissed me on the cheek the way I had just seen her kiss the big donors, the schmucks who had put twenty-dollar bills in her garter.

“Take care, baby,” she said.

She started to glide away from the table.

“Wait a minute. What about the privacy booth? I thought maybe we could go back there … ”

She looked back at me.

“It takes money to go back there, sugar.”

“I still have the money you gave me last night.”

She paused for a moment, her face hard in the red light bouncing off the mirrors in the club.

“Okay. Then let's go make Tommy happy.”

She came back and took hold of my tie. She led me toward the back rooms and the whole way there I thought that there was no doubt that she was going to be a better lawyer than she was a stripper. One day she was going to be a killer in court.

Sunshine

LYNN FREED

T
HEY TOLD GRACE
they'd found her curled into a nest of leaves, that since dawn they'd been following a strange spoor through the bush, and then, just as they'd begun to smell her, there she was, staring up at them through a cloud of iridescent flies.

They peered through the mottled gloom. Flies were clustered on her nose and eyes and mouth, and yet she didn't move, didn't even blink. “It's dead,” said one of them, stretching out a stick to prod her.

That's when she sprang, scattering the flies and baring all her teeth in a dreadful high-pitched screech. They leapt back, reaching for their knives. She was up on her haunches now, biting at the air between them with her jagged teeth. But with the leaves and flies swirling, and her furious, wild hair, it took some time before they understood that it was a girl raging before them, just a girl.

“Hau!” they whispered, and they lowered their knives. She was skinny as a stick—filthy and naked, and the nest smelled foul. One of the men dug into his pocket for some nuts. “Mê,” he said, holding them out to her. “Mê.”

She lifted her chin, trying to sniff at the air. But her nose was swollen and bloody, one arm hung limp at her side.

“It will be easy to catch her,” the older man said. “How do we know the Master won't pay? Even half?”

Julian de Jong stormed out into the midday sun. “What on earth's the matter out here, Grace?” he said. “Why've you locked the dogs away?”

One of the men held the girl up, the other lifted her hair so that the Master could see her face.

“They found her in the bush, Master,” Grace said, not looking up. She never wanted to see the girls when they were brought in. “They say if they put her back, maybe the jackals will get her.”

The girl writhed and twisted to free herself from the grasp of the men. She bared her teeth, screeching pitifully. All the way up the hill, she had screeched and struggled like this, and all the way baboons had come barking after her.

De Jong stepped out into the yard and the men dropped their eyes courteously. Everyone knew he was not to be looked at when he was inspecting a girl, even an ugly one like this, even their own daughters. Even the girl stopped her squirming when he walked up, as if she, too, knew what was good for her. She stared at him as he questioned the men, breathing lightly through her mouth like a dog.

He put his monocle to his eye, and, for several minutes, examined the girl in silence. And then, at last, he stood up and said, “Grace, clean the creature up. Here,” he said to the men, digging around in his pocket for change. “Take this and divide it between you.”

“Bring me the scissors!” Grace said to Beauty. “Bring me the Dettol!”

Beauty held the girl down while Grace took the scissors to her hair. “Ag!” she said, handing the tangle of hair and grass and blood to the garden boy. “Burn that,” she said. “And bring me the blade for shaving. And the big tin bath.”

By the time the bath was filled with hot water, the girl was almost bald, her scalp as pale as dough, and bleeding here and there from the blade. When they tried to lift her in, she struggled even more, twisting and thrashing and working one leg free so that she slashed at the flesh of Grace's arm with a toenail.

“Be
still
, you devil!” Grace cried, giving her a hard slap on the flesh of her buttock. “You want to go back to the bush? You want the jackals to get you?”

But the creature would not be still. By the time she was clean, the kitchen floor was awash with dirty water and she was cowering against the side of the bath, shivering, the teeth chattering. Now that she was clean, they could see that the nose and arm had been badly broken, and that the skin was sallow where the sun had not caught it. It was covered in scratches—some old, some new—and her hands and feet were calloused as hooves.

“He'll send her back after all this trouble,” Beauty said. She was standing in the kitchen doorway with an armful of clothes. They were the same clothes each time, flimsy things that the girls loved to wear. “They will only be spoiled,” she said. “It's a big shame.” She put them on the kitchen table.

Grace pulled a small chemise out of the pile. She didn't understand these clothes, she hadn't understood them when she'd had to wear them herself. “Hold up her arms,” she said to Beauty.

But it was hopeless. One by one, the clothes were tried, torn, bitten, abandoned. The best Grace could do was to pin a dishcloth onto the girl as tightly as she could. And then once it was on, the creature only squatted on her haunches like a monkey and clawed at the cloth with her good hand, drawing blood in her madness to have it off.

“It's too cruel,” said Grace. “Let's take it off.”

And so the girl was carried onto the veranda, naked and bald, to be presented to the man who would decide what would become of her.

Over the years, there had been rumors in the local villages of children living with baboons in the forest—of children snatched by baboons if you left them outside unguarded. Some children the baboons ate, the rumor went, some they kept for themselves. But only the old women ever believed this.

“Look again,” Julian de Jong said to the local administrator. “See if anyone reported a baby missing—six or seven years ago, white, half-breed, anything you can find. I don't want any trouble later.”

But no one had reported such a thing, not in the whole province. No one would challenge his claim.

“She could have been thrown away as a newborn and left for dead,” said Doctor McKenzie, leaning over to examine the arm. “Some desperate teenager, who knows? I suppose it's not out of the question that baboons could have taken her up. But it hardly seems plausible, does it? Mind you, these fractures could very well be the result of a fall from a tree. She could have grown too big, I suppose. And she's malnourished, which would make her prone to fractures. Anyway,” he said, straightening up, “there it is, and something needs to be done about the teeth. Don't mind telling you, old boy, I'm glad
I'm
not the dentist. Oh, and here—don't leave without the worm powder. Sure you're up for this one, Julian?”

*  *  *

The first night, de Jong had Grace lock the girl into the storeroom in the servants' quarters. But all through the night, the creature screeched and wailed, keeping the servants awake. The next morning they found that the sling on her arm had been bitten away, the bandage torn from her nose. Even her calloused hands and feet were bloodied and raw from trying to climb to the small, barred window above the door.

“It's cruel to lock her in there, Master,” said Grace. “She's like an animal. We must train her like a dog.”

De Jong looked at the girl. All night she had visited him in dreams—more like presences, really, than dreams—but, when he woke up, he could still put not face to the creature. Usually he knew just what he had. At first they'd cry and beg to be sent home. Sometimes it would go on for weeks, and then he'd have to punish them. But in the end Grace always managed to have them ready for him, cleaned and oiled and docile.

If there was a principle that drove Julian de Jong, it was never to obscure his motives. And so, from the outset, there'd never been a question of theft. He was doing the girls a favor, everyone knew that, even their families. How else could it be that old McIntyre the missionary had never got any of them to talk? They'd just shake their heads when he came calling, press their lips together. They knew that when de Jong was finished with them, the girls would fetch a decent bride price regardless. There was the money, of course, but there were other things, too, things they'd learned from Grace—how to lay the table and mend the sheets, and sometimes even how to make a pudding or a soup. And so, when he finally sent them home, they seemed not to know where they'd rather be. And who was the worse for it then?

He stretched out his hand to touch the rough skin of the creature's cheek. He wanted to stroke it as he would stroke one of the others when she was new, for the pleasure of the life under his hand—grateful, warm, blameless. But just as his fingers came near her, she whipped her head around and tore at the flesh of his thumb with her teeth.

“Good God!” he cried, watching the blood well into the wound. He grasped the wrist tightly with his other hand as if to restrain it from grabbing her by the throat. And all the while she was staring at him, panting, waiting, ready.

Grace lowered her eyes. She had seen him take the riding crop to a girl for staring. She had seen him take the crop to a girl for doing nothing at all.

“I'll call Beauty to fetch the gentian, Master,” she said quickly.

He turned then, as if he had forgotten she was there. A breeze was up, playing with his frizzy gray hair. But there was nothing playful in his face, she knew. It was flushed with fury, ready for the Lord knew what.

“Grace,” he said, “I want you to tell the rest of them that no hand is to be laid upon this girl, not even if she bites. You will treat her like any of the others. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, Master.”

“De Jong,” McKenzie said, smoothing down the last of the plaster of Paris, “she will need to be restrained to a board if this is to do any good. And I'll have to fashion a bucket collar so that she can't get at the nose. No one come forward to claim her?”

“No one.”

“Well, the word is out, you know. The papers are bound to dig it up sooner or later.”

“Let them dig. I have Dunlop's word he'll fix things. Anyway, who'd want her? She's an animal—just look what she did to my hand this morning.”

McKenzie took the hand and turned it over. “It'll need a stitch,” he said, “and we should test her for rabies. Here, keep still.”

Grace took the girl to the chair in the corner. She held her there by the wrists, securing the girl's hips between her own copious thighs. But still the girl strained forward, as if she wanted another go at de Jong's hand.

“How long till the bones knit?” de Jong said.

“Bring her back in four weeks, and we'll take a look.”

For four weeks, the girl was kept strapped to a board on the sleeping porch of the upstairs veranda. There Grace fed and cleaned her, and there, every night, de Jong himself slept in the bed next to hers, talking softly to her, telling her things he wouldn't have told the others. The hot season was beginning to die down, but when he tried covering her with his knee rug, she gasped and gagged, straining against the straps that held her head in place. So he took it off again.

After a while, he began to sit at the edge of her bed, and then place a hand on her forehead, almost covering her eyes. He'd hold it there until she stopped struggling, and, when she did, he'd run his fingers around the coil of an ear and under her jaw, down into the curve of her neck and shoulders. And then, if she was quiet, he'd feed her a piece of raw liver, which she loved best of all.

And so, soon he had her suffering his touch without struggling. She would lie still, staring at him around the plaster on her nose. Once, as his hand slipped itself over her rump, she even closed her eyes and fell asleep, he could hear her breathing settle. But when he stood up to leave, she was instantly awake again, following him with her eyes through the fading light to his own bed.

As the fourth week approached, de Jong had a cage built and placed at the back of the sleeping porch. Inside, Grace placed a tin mug and bowl, his knee rug and a driving glove that had lost its pair. The girl was to be lifted so that she could see every stage of the preparations, and Grace was to hold the bowl for her to sniff before she put it inside, and then the rug, and then the glove.

“Master,” Grace said, “maybe she's not so wild now. Maybe we can let her walk for herself when the arm is better.”

But the minute the plaster was off and the girl was given the freedom of the cage, she began to rage and screech again as if she had just been caught. With both arms growing stronger, she began to climb and swing and leap as well. She bit and tore at the blanket until it lay in shreds on the floor of the cage. The glove she examined carefully, turning it this way and that way, and then testing it with her teeth. The teeth themselves had been drilled and cleaned before the plaster came off. But they were still brown, and a few had been pulled out, giving her an even wilder look.

No one could work out how old she really was. Certainly, she was the size of most of the girls they brought to him. But the dentist seemed to think she was a bit older, which made the whole thing a little more urgent. All night and much of the day, de Jong stayed up there, talking softly to her. The servants watched and listened. It was the voice that he used for the dogs, and for the girls when they were first brought in. Never for anyone else. After a while even the girl herself seemed to listen. She would stare at him through the bars of the cage, frowning her baboon frown. And then he would pour some water into her mug, showing her how to drink it without lapping.

Over the weeks, she became quiet for longer and longer stretches of time. Even when de Jong went away and Grace came up to sit with her, she would wait quietly for her water, for her food. It was Grace herself who found a way to stop the girl tearing up the newspaper that was placed there day after day for her mess. And then one day, when the girl messed on it by chance, Grace began to sing. “You are my sunshine,” warbling in her high-pitched vibrato, and the girl cocked her head like a bird, this way and that way. She ran to the bars and hung on, waiting for more. But Grace just waited too. And the next time the girl messed on the newspaper, she sang the song again, adding a line or two. And so, with singing, Grace managed to coax the creature into a pair of pants and a vest, and by the time de Jong returned, she'd learned how to pull them off and put them on herself.