The Hinky Bearskin Rug (11 page)

Let’s just have sex and go to sleep,
okay?

Sensitive she
wasn’t.

He said in a
brittle voice, “Yet it’s fortunate, is it not, that I have one skill that
permits me to be of service to you.”

She sucked a
long breath through her nose. “Tell me.” She pointed at the closed door and
that bearskin rug across the hall. “Tell me that what you and I do and what
they’re doing are the same.” She pause, then said through her teeth, “And I
will
kill
you.”

A look of
sadness and shame crossed his face. He closed his eyes. He bowed his head. And
then he faded away.

His clothes
sank, empty, to the floor.

Jewel stared
in horror.

This had
happened before. She knew exactly where he must have gone.

And what it
would take to set him free.

And what he
would be doing in the meantime.

She put her
hands over her mouth to hold in a scream.

Clay shut the
door covered with keep-out signs behind him, groping for a light switch. He
didn’t find it, but he found a book of matches. He lit one.

Tiles, black
and white underfoot. Tile on the walls. Urinals. Wooden stalls. It was a men’s
room after all.

But a much
older, fancier men’s room. The tile was classier. The urinals were molded
into a fanciful, ornate shape on top. The posters on the walls were behind
glass. A narrow ledge ran the length of the men’s room at elbow height under
the posters, and on it sat some votive candles, unlit.

The match
burnt out, scorching his fingers.

He lit another
match. This time he used it to light three of the votive candles in their red
glass holders. The flames sprang up, throwing a wobbly red glow through the
glass.

In a few
moments his eyes adjusted to the red gloom. Now he saw that the ledge was piled
with dried flowers and cheap-looking costume jewelry and scraps of fur and lace
and the ruffly satin lids of chocolate boxes.

In spite of
his breezy assurances to Jewel, he felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

He looked up
at the posters.

They were all
Wilmas.

The one
hanging over the dead roses was naked. She had one hand between her thighs and
one on her nipple. She wasn’t so much posing as standing there, as if the
painter had caught her in a moment when she wasn’t “on.” She seemed relaxed and
happy and decent and kind.

She looked so
sweet. Like a kid sister. He could imagine her saying,
They pay me for this, can you believe it?
and
Let’s have fun!

By thick red
candlelight, he imagined that he saw her wink.

Chuckling,
Clay fished a nickel out of his pocket and laid it on the ledge.

“You’re a
grand girl, Wilma,” he said, his voice big and echoey in the tiled room. He put
his hands in his pockets and smiled up at all her images.

The Wilma on
the poster moved. She took her hand off her breast, kissed her fingers, and
reached down to press them to his lips. Her fingers were warm.

His mouth fell
open in astonishment.

She leaned
forward, then stepped down off the wall, dipping her fingertips into his open
mouth, running her hand over his throat and down his arm as she walked behind
him. She put both palms over his eyes.

Clay held very
still.

He felt her
lips touch his ear. A voice sounded in his head, not in the room.

Hey,
baby. Tell me what you want.

His dick got
hard. This was really spooky. For two cents he could run screaming.

But not yet.

His body felt
light and peaceful. A certainty spread through him that everything was going to
be all right.

C’mon.
Tell me what you want.

Now Clay
understood the candles and things. They were offerings. He imagined the
snaggle-toothed boy without ear protectors coming in here and laying those
roses on the ledge, saying something like,
There’s
this girl, she doesn’t take me seriously, I want to marry her.

Wilma’s lips
moved against his ear again.
Tell me
more.

Suddenly he
let go of his irony and his Buddha-calm and his con-man aloofness. He had come
to the shrine of Wilma and made his offering, and Wilma was prepared to answer
his prayer, if he had the courage to say one.

He closed his
eyes behind her palms and spoke humbly.

“There’s this
girl. She doesn’t take me seriously. I want to marry her.” That wasn’t so
scary. “She has another guy in her life. He’s, like, really good in bed.
Really, really, really,
really
good.
It’s taken him two hundred years and a lot of magic powers to get this good. I
think I have a chance, but—” His voice cracked. “I can’t compete with that.”

Hush,
hush, you don’t have to compete with that. You have what you need.

“You don’t
understand. He can give her anything she wants. Anything.”

You
have yourself to give.

“I’d give her
anything,” he blurted, wondering if that was really true. “But I don’t have
magic sex powers.”

Her palms
slipped from his eyes and rested on his shoulders. He could feel her behind him
like a wavering warmth, like a bit of music the size of a human hand brushing
up and down his body, making him hum back at her.

Hm. Then we can make a deal.

“A deal?”

She slid
around to face him. Her eyes seemed huge.
You
can give me something I want.

A guy would
give her anything if she looked at him like that.

He licked his
lips. “What?”

The door burst
open. “Clay? Are you in here?”

The candles
went out.

Wilma
vanished.

Clay turned
toward the blinding fluorescent light in the doorway.

Jewel was
silhouetted there, panting with a little sob in the back of her throat.

He ran
forward. “What’s the matter?”

“Randy’s gone!
He’s in bed with those porn stars!”

She threw
herself into his arms.

“You can’t go
in there!” somebody said from the doorway.

Jewel looked
over her shoulder, hyperventilating.

“Come outta
there!”

Clay
shepherded her out into the bright light of the printing plant.

A grizzled
eight-fingered printer scowled at them. “Look at this door! What does it say?”

Jewel looked
at the ‘keep out’ signs. Clay was impressed to watch the changes cross her
face: blankness as she put her hysteria aside, then a questioning frown, then
curiosity, then comprehension. By the time she looked at the printer, she was
all cop.

“Why?” she
said in a sinister voice.

“Because it
says keep out!” The printer picked up the barricade board and tapped it into
place with his fist, using, Clay noticed, the same old nail hole.

“Clay Dawes,
Consumer Services.” He showed the printer his badge. “If you don’t mind, we’d
like to have a word with you.”

The printer’s
coverall said
Vincente
over the
pocket. He looked at the badge. Silently, Jewel showed him hers. He swallowed. “Come
into my office.”

Clay followed
him to a grubby, wood-partitioned workspace.

“It was the
old men’s room. We had the posters up, same as everywhere else. We all have a
personal feeling for Wilma,” Vincente said, and the hairs rose on the back of
Clay’s neck. Vincente looked from Clay to Jewel, frowning, and Clay could
imagine him wondering how to explain to a nice-girl-slash-cop what happens when
you light a candle in front of a Wilma poster in there. “It’s too dirty.”

“Gross,” Clay
said, helping him along.

“Yeah.”
Vincente seemed to struggle for words. “So we boarded it up. Nobody goes in
there now.”

“Unless they
really feel the need?” Clay suggested.

Jewel frowned.
“What need? What are you talking about?”

Vincente cut
his eyes to Clay.

Clay said, “Remember
O’Connor’s sofa cushions?”

“Euw.” She
wrinkled her nose.

“You don’t
even want to see the men’s room they use now.”

A panicky look
flickered across her face. “Was it the same as O’Connor’s apartment?”

He nodded and
stood up. “We’ll probably have more questions later. Thanks for your time.” He
shook Vincente’s hand, and a look passed between them that was strictly male.

“I’m always
here,” Vincente said.

o0o

Jewel blamed
herself all the way back to the office. Clay was driving, so she had both hands
free for tearing her hair.

“This is
horrible. How am I gonna get in there? I can’t.”
Ugh!
Her skin crawled with heebie jeebies. “I can’t go back in
there and — and let him — oh,
ugh!
And meanwhile,” she added angrily, “every minute he stays in that bearskin rug,
he’s doing Velvita Fromage or the Tokyo Twins.”

“On another
note,” Clay said, “I wonder if your new employer orders their staff meeting
pastries from Hoby’s Bäckerei. You’ve realized, of course, that the pastry bags
in O’Connor’s apartment and his locker come from the same address as his porn
collection. If you’re looking for a hinky vector—”

Jewel’s jaw
dropped. “You’re shitting me.” She blinked.
“Hoby’s?
What do you mean? Hoby’s stuff can’t be hinky.” The implications were
staggering. “Oh, no! Hoby’s is a Chicago institution!” she wailed. “I don’t
believe it!”

Clay shrugged.
“I’m just saying.”

Hoby’s cow
plops too hinky to eat? “Ow. Whis is not happening.”

“I’m sorry,”
Clay said.

“Oh, God. It
could be true.”

“Well, don’t
panic. We’ll experiment.”

“Good idea.”
Her brain veered off onto her real worry. “And how the hell am I going to get
at that rug?” She imagined Randy and Velvita Fromage on the white fake bearskin
rug — Randy and Velvita and Sancho, Randy and Velvita and Sancho and the Tokyo
Twins — oh, and she mustn’t forget Flash Titty — could he do multiple women? Of
course he could — plus the guys in animal costumes — she put her hands over her
eyes. “Argh! I need to steam-clean my brain!”

Clay patted
her hand.

She sniffled. “I
guess we’d better report to Ed.”

At the DCS
offices in the Kraft Building, Ed seemed to be holding a meeting. Most of their
fellow investigators sat or stood in the staff room. Jewel and Clay slid into
the back.

Ed looked gray
and grim. “Assistant Commissioner Neebly from the Office for Economic
Development will be comin’ around to look the place over. So no clowning
around. I need all youse to get busy. Wherever he is, you fill it up. Mill
around. Move boxes outta storage and pile shit around on desks and stuff.
Everybody cuddle him up with hoops a steel by jowl so’s we squish ourselves
through the halls like fuckin’ lemmings inna mosh pit in spawning season, know
what I mean? Make it look like we need every inch. That’s all. Go back to work.
Heiss, Dawes, get in my office.”

Jewel followed
Clay, feeling a certain amount of unfocused dread. “What was that all about?”

“Those OED
sons a bitches. I’d like to tell him to take a hike.”

“Why don’t
you?” Clay said. “OED has no clout in this department, has it?”

“Can’t.” Jewel
shook her head. “Bing Neebly went to high school with our commissioner.”

“What’s he
inspecting for?” Clay said.

“Hinky shit,”
Ed said succinctly. “They demolished the building, and then it came back outta
thin air. What if they sold it, and it did something hinky again? God forbid it
should vanish before the bonds clear. The feds would be all over us like a
cheap suit. Da mayor would not be happy.”

“Ed,” Jewel
cut in. “What do you want us to do?”

“I dunno.
Think of something.” Ed’s caterpillar eyebrows worked with the effort of
thought. “Maybe if we could make the place look just a little hinky. But not
too
hinky.”

Clay said, “I
get you. Make him doubt his eyes.”

“Yeah. Scare
him. Speaking of which, where’s your driver?”

Jewel said
guiltily, “Uh, he’s detained.”

“Undercover,”
Clay said, and she sent him a sharp look. “We got some intel on the pocket zone
downstairs, by the way.” He filled Ed in on the possible connection between
Hoby’s, Artistic Publishing Company, and the pocket zone poppets in O’Connor’s
locker and apartment. “It could be the pastry is involved somehow.
Contaminated.”

Jewel
shuddered at the very idea.

Ed looked
skeptical. “I ain’t takin’ their danish away from those women.” He gestured
toward the outer office. “They’d kill me.” Of course, Ed loved Hoby’s, too.

“Oh, and get
this,” Jewel said, “Randy packed up O’Connor’s porn and moved it out of the
apartment, and the pocket zone went with it. Mrs. Othmar must have done the
same, which just shows she has more balls than I have.”