The White Flamingo (18 page)

“Kelly, the woman with the tattoos.”

FIFTY-ONE 

THE KILLER
moved with haste. The maze of bars along the second road, were for the killer, a dirty rabbit warren of degradation and vice. He winced as he passed through ladyboys and ladybirds, Russian hookers; trash in heaps littered the avenues and back roads of Fun City. His position had to be exact. The point where Beach Road met the upper Road, the point that straddled the two police districts. The sound of music from an open-air karaoke joint; the sound of a woman’s voice being slowly strangled by the hopelessness of love in the big city. Kids sold chewing gum and plastic roses on the street; they sold other unmentionable services to the pederasts who gathered from all over the rock to exercise their particular cowardly and evil brand of lust. A chancer walked past with an iguana perched on his shoulder and a Polaroid camera hanging around his neck. Another had a slow Loris monkey, large, sad, drugged eyes, blinking slowly under the neon lights; the monkey’s eyes sadder. The Killer walked past caravans of Arabs, groups of Indians, teams of British rugby players. Americans with their intelligent naivety, Germans with their gross mustaches, Scandinavians with their safe welfare state system, renewable energy, open-toed sandals and their hookers on their arms. Smooth copper-bodied hipsters, Spanish and Italian, Turkish, Greek, greasy slick-backed hair negotiating free rides with limited success. 

He slipped into a back alley bathed in purple twilight and scented with the stench of sewage. A beggar crawled across his path, blocking his way and holding forth an alms bowl scotch-tapped to one of his hideous stumps. What remained of his legs were twisted boneless scraps of flesh dragged behind his torso, his face ghostly muttering curses as the spit bubbled from his awful toothless mouth. The Killer bent down as if to donate to his bowl, but instead withdrew his knife and slit the beggar across the throat, causing the creature to fall to the ground, gurgling, omitting an awful inhuman stench that filled the alleyway as the Killer stepped over the horrid mess of rags and continued on his way.  

Where would she be?

The Blue Rose.

The bar was near empty, apart from a few tables and a gaggle of whores sat on the floor, playing cards. He saw her back, covered with the most ghastly tattoos. He remembered the first time he had taken her, perhaps four years ago, she was barely legal and straight out of the bush. Before the tattoos, the money, and men, the dreams, the nightmares, the diseases, and the neon nightmare they both found themselves within.

“Don’t I remember you?”

“No. It’s my first time here.”

“Your eyes, I remember your eyes.”

“Maybe somebody looks like me. There are billions of people on the planet. You want a drink?”

“Okay. Rum and coke.”

“Then later maybe we can…”

“I’m not going with customer tonight. I have a headache, have period too.”

“But, you don’t understand. I only want to talking with you. I am old, lonely.”

“You have a telephone? Why don’t you call somebody?”

“I need, a, a, human contact. Ever since my wife died, I get so alone at night. I just need somebody. Somebody in the bed next to me.”

“Your wife died?”

“It was an accident.”

“Accident?”

“Yes. It happened here in Fun City ten years ago. Every year I come back to remember her.”

“And have sex with lady?”

“No, no sex. You don’t understand. I only want to have somebody near me. I rent the room that we stayed in. The same room every year, and I like to feel the warmth of a body next to me, it helps me, it helps me cope with the loss.”

“That room has ghost for sure,” Kelly’s eyes narrowed as she scratched her head.

“No ghosts. Only memories,” he watched her drink her lady drink and then said. “Five hundred dollars.”

“And no sex,” her eyes widened.

“No sex.”

“Only sleeping,” lips pursed.

“Only sleeping, sure,” his hands open palmed above the table.

“Okay, but first you pay bar and buy drinks for my friends,” Kelly waved her hand to a table where six or seven miserable prostitutes drank with straws from a plastic bucket containing what the
Killer took to be cheap local rum mixed with Coca-Cola.

“I’ll pay the bar fine, you
r friends I will come back for.”

Kelly
shrugged; the chances of another client that night were zero, unless he came back. They were all monsters in one way or another.

All of them.

F
IFTY-TWO

THE DETECTIVE
watched them enter the building. The door had been fixed. Hale waited across the street. Kelly walked first, the Killer held the door open for her. He wore a dark hat, bearded. Joe was not close enough to make out his identity. There was something familiar about the man, the way he held himself, drunk yet cordial. The original Ripper had been described as a soaker. A man who could drink from eight in the morning to twelve at night without appearing drunk. A professional drinker, one who took from the glass or the bottle only what he needed to make it through the day, yet never enough to make a careless or telling mistake. Joe walked out of the room, the syringe in his hand. He had loaded it with a cocktail of chemicals designed to put the killer to sleep. He needed him alive, to confess and spring The Flamingo’s kid.

The landlady let the Killer inside and he took the stairs.

Joe found a room adjacent open and empty, he slipped inside and waited. He heard the footsteps along the corridor, Kelly’s laughter, the Killer’s low voice.

Joe counted a minute and then knocked on the Killer’s door. Silence answered him, he knocked again. The door was locked. He used a shoulder to persuade it open.

On the bed, Kelly lay naked, her knees drawn up to her body as he walked into the room. She pointed a finger toward the bathroom. Joe tried the door. It was open. The killer had taken off his disguise and stood with a blade in his left mitt.

“Slim Jim,” said the Detective. “You should have hired someone less professional.”

Slim lunged at him with the blade, and Joe ducked, spilling the Killer into the bedroom. The syringe fell from his hand and rolled under the bed. Kelly screamed as she saw the blade,  stood up naked and gathered her clothes in a flurry of panic.

“I guess you have nothing left to lose,” Joe said. “Living out a death sentence.”

The knife came at him, and took a slice from his shirt, a surface cut. “I was a butcher, by trade,” Slim said as he lunged again.

“You still are,”
Joe rolled back and stood, picked up a vase and threw it at Slim, who shielded himself with a forearm. His eyes turned to Kelly, dressing a few steps away. He moved towards her and grabbed her around the waist. Held the knife against her throat. “She is the last one, Joe, the last. Let me have her.”

“Put down the knife.”

“Fuck you, Joe.”

“Slim, put down the knife, the
show’s over. The gig’s up.”

Kelly winced as the cold metal touched her neck, her eyes lit up with animal fear.

Flight or fight?

She fought.

She brought up the heel of her left foot and caught the killer between the legs, his hands lowered towards the source of the pain as Joe rushed forward, Kelly struggled free from his grip.

Slim stuck out with the knife once more before exiting through the door, and up the stairs.

“Call the Boys in Brown, Kelly, I’m going after him.”

The Detective followed the Killer up the stairs, three flights led to a
rooftop. Concrete splattered with pigeon shit and laundry hung out to dry. An immigrant worker lay in the shade sleeping.

Slim made it to the edge and took in the distance of ten yards to the next rooftop. Below them
, six floors down, a busy road flowed with traffic. Slim took the five steps back.

Jumped.

Made it.

“Shit,” Joe sprinted at the gap and leaped over
landing in a crouched position. Slim was already over to the next building and Joe followed landing in a sprint.

The fourth
rooftop had a fire escape stairwell and the Killer took it. Joe followed, spiraling down toward the street.

Ground level, a gang of motorbike taxis sat around playing checkers with bottle tops. The Killer took the first bike and the Detective took the second.

The traffic was dense and the streets labyrinthine. Joe lost Slim somewhere at the eighth road. He took the bike to the Dark Side of Town, guessing that Slim would have taken the direct route home.

He parked up
and knocked on the door.

A local dark skinned man answered the door. Joe spok
e to him in the local tongue.

“I’m here to see Jim
.”

“Jim’s not here,” the stranger said.

“And who are you?”

“I’m his wife’s brother.”

Slim’ Jim s old lady came to the door. If there was a likeness between the pair, then Joe couldn’t see it.

“Is it true? This your brother?”

“Yes,” she said. Her eyes told a different story.

“Why’s he half naked?”

“It’s hot,” she said.

“Sure, and where’s the kids?”

“Stay with sister.”

“Big family you guys got here. One big happy family. Where’s the man of the house. I’m here to see Slim.”

“Probably gone to see the head doctor,” she said raising her right forefinger level with the side of her head and making a circular motion to illustrate her foreign husband’s madness.    

“Thanks.” Joe could see it. “Poor man probably gone to confess his sins.”

He looked at the brother’s dark shifting eyes as the final piece in the puzzle fell into place.

Fell right into place.

FIFT
Y-THREE

THE KILLER
slumped onto the couch and lit a cigarette. The psychiatrist offered him a drink of whiskey which he hit back in one, and then waved his glass at his host for a refill.

“I had only gone and got the wife pregnant,” he said.

“But, don’t you have three children already?”

“Yes, and the funny thing is
, I can’t remember the conception. You know I work in the bar and come home after a few, but normally I just crash out on the bed, but I must have done it because she was pregnant alright.”

“Hmmm.” T
aylor had his own ideas but was keeping them to himself, for the time being.    

“Well, what happens, happens. As part of hospital
procedure, she had taken a HIV test. It came up positive, the baby was aborted. She had been tested three years previously and it had come up negative. She grew angry, told me how I’d given her the virus. How I’d ruined her life, our lives. She was silent and moody and that was when I drank. We were once in love and now it was not like she hated me; it was like I wasn’t there.”

“Jim, do you know what the opposite to love is?”

“Hate?”

“No, to hate someone, you must have feeling. The real opposite to love is indifference.”

“That’s it. She was just indifferent, like I didn’t exist.”

“And you think you gave it to her, the virus I mean?”

“Well, look at her, I mean, she’s no spring chicken.”

“Well, women can sometimes be untruthful in Fun City, hmmm?”

“No, she’s at home all day.”

“And the night?”

“I was out,” Jim said his eyes dancing around the office, his mind calculating, perhaps considering something for the first time.

“And you took the test yourself?”

“Well, I didn’t need to.”

“Why not?”

“Well, if she’s got it, then it’s a dead cert that I have.”

“Well, maybe not. I have the equipment here, if you would like to check.”

“What, now?”

“Just a blood sample.”

Jim drained his glass “But if she had it?”

“There are carriers and there are those that have sex with the carriers and get away. Couples have been married for years, where one has had the virus and the other hasn’t.”

Taylor prepared the needle and moved towards Slim. “Just roll up your sleeve.”

Slim rolled up his sleeve and waited for the needle to hit the vein.

His arm shook slightly as it hit.

A sudden fear gripped the Killer
as he heard the sirens below on the street.

FIFTY-FOUR