Finally she said, “Wait a minute, Daddy,” and reached around to lubricate his erection with her own saliva.
After his first full thrust he knew he was going to come. He couldn’t do anything about it.
“Do it, Daddy! Do it!” she cried.
Leonid thought about Gert, realizing at that moment that he had always loved her, and about Katrina who he was never good enough for. He thought about that poor child so much in love with her man that she had to have revenge on him by giving her love away to an overweight, middle-aged gumshoe.
All of that went through his mind but nothing could stand in the way of the pulsing rhythm. He was slamming against Karmen Brown’s slender backside. She was yelling. He was yelling.
And then it was over-just like that. Leonid didn’t even feel the ejaculation. It all blended into his violent, spasmodic attack.
Karmen had been thrown to the floor. She was crying.
He reached to help her up but she pulled away.
“Leave me alone,” she said. “Let me go.”
She was in a heap with her skirt up around her waist and the slick sheen of spit on her thighs.
Leonid pulled up his pants. He felt something like guilt about having had sex with the girl. She was only just a few years older than his wife’s girl, the daughter of the Chinese jeweler.
“You owe me three hundred dollars,” he said.
Maybe sometime in the future he’d tell someone that the best tail he ever had paid him three hundred dollars for the privilege.
“It’s in the envelope on the table. There’s a thousand dollars there. That and the ring and the bracelet he gave me. I want you to give them back to him. Take it and go. Go.”
Leonid tore open the envelope. There he found the money, a ring with a large ruby in it, and a tennis bracelet lined with quarter-karat diamonds.
“What do you want me to tell him?” Leonid asked.
“You won’t have to say a word.”
Leonid wanted to say something but he didn’t.
He went out the door, deciding to take the Stairs rather than wait for the elevator.
On the first flight down he thought about Karmen Brown begging for sex and then crying so bitterly. On the third flight he started thinking about Gert. He wanted to reach out and touch her but she was gone.
On the first floor he passed a tattooed young man waiting at the elevator doors.
When Leonid glanced at the young man he looked away.
He was wearing leather gloves.
Leonid went out the door and turned westward.
He took four steps, five.
He made it all the way to the end of the block and it was then, when he had the urge to take off his jacket, because of the heat, that he wondered why somebody would be wearing leather gloves on a hot day. He thought about the tattoos and the image of a motorcycle came into his mind.
It had been parked right outside Karmen Brown’s front door.
He pressed every buzzer on the wall until someone let him in. He was even ready to run up the stairs but the elevator was there and open.
On the ride he was trying to make sense out of it.
The doors slid open and he lurched toward Karmen’s apartment.
The young man with the tattooed arms was coming out. He jumped back and reached for his pocket but Leonid leaped and hit him. The young man took the punch hard but he held on to the pistol. Leonid grabbed his hand and they embraced, performing an intricate dance that revolved around their strengths and that gun. When the kid wrenched the pistol from Leonid’s hand the heavier man let his weight go dead and they fell to the floor. The gun went off.
Leonid felt a sharp pain at just about the place that his liver was situated. He leaped back from the motorcycle man, grabbing at his belly. There was blood on the lower half of his shirt.
“Shit!” he cried.
His mind went to November 1963. He was fifteen and devastated at the assassination of Kennedy. Then Oswald was shot by Ruby. Shot in the liver and in excruciating pain.
That’s when Leo realized that his pain had passed. He turned toward his opponent and saw that he was lying on his back, gasping for air. And then, midgasp, he stopped breathing.
Realizing that the blood on him was the kid’s, Leo stood up.
Karmen lay on the floor in the corner, naked. Her eyes were open and very, very bloodshot. Her throat was dark from strangulation.
But she wasn’t dead.
When Leonid leaned over her those destroyed eyes recognized him. A deep gurgling went off in her throat and she tried to hit him. She croaked a loud inarticulate curse and actually sat up. The exertion was too much. She died in a sitting position, her head bowed over her knees.
There was no blood under her nails.
Why was she naked? Leonid wondered.
He went into the bathroom to check the tub-but it was dry.
He thought about calling the hospital but…
The kid had used a.22 caliber long-barrel pistol. Leonid was sure that it was the pistol Nora Parsons said that she lost seventeen years before.
In her wallet the dead girl’s license had the name Lana Parsons.
It was then that Leonid felt the heat from her jewelry and cash in his own pocket.
The killer had a backpack. It contained two stamped envelopes. One was addressed to a lawyer named Mazer and the other to Nora Parsons in Montclair, New Jersey.
The letter to her mother included one of the photographs that Leonid had taken of Richard Mallory and his girlfriend.
Dear Mom,
While you were in the Bahamas with Richard last year I went to your house looking for anything that might have belonged to dad. You know that I loved him so much. I just thought you might have something I could remember him by.
I found a rusty old metal box in the garage. You still had the key in the hardware drawer. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that you hired a detective to prove that daddy was stealing from his company. He must have told you and you figured you could keep his money and your boyfriends while he was dying in prison.
I waited for a long time to figure out what to do about it. Finally I decided to use the man you used to kill daddy to break your heart. Here’s a picture of your precious Richard and his real girlfriend. The boy you say you love. The boy you sent through college. What do you think about that?
And I took the report Leonid McGill made about daddy. I’m sending it to my lawyer. Maybe he can prove some kind of conspiracy. I’m sure you framed daddy and if the lawyer can prove it then maybe they’ll send both of you to prison. Maybe even Mr. McGill would testify against you.
See you in court.
Your loving daughter,
Lana
To the lawyer she sent a yellowing and frayed report that Leonid had made many years before. It detailed how Nora’s husband kept a secret account with money that he’d embezzled from a discretionary fund he controlled. Leonid remembered the meeting with Mrs. Parsons. She’d said that she couldn’t trust a man who was a thief. Leo didn’t argue. He was just there to collect his check.
Lana had included a copy of the letter to her mother in the lawyer’s envelope. She asked him to help her get justice for her father.
Leonid washed his hands carefully and then removed any sign that he had been in the girl’s apartment. He rubbed down every surface and the glass he drank from. He gathered the evidence he’d brought and the unmailed letters, then buttoned his coat over the bloody shirt and hurried away from the crime scene.
Twill was wearing a dark blue suit with a pale yellow shirt and maroon tie that had a wavering blue line orbiting its center. Leonid wondered where his son got such a fine suit but he didn’t ask.