To start at the beginning go here.
“I want know where Cheryl’s buried.”
It was Atwell’s turn to be surprised, blinking in an attempt to find some understanding of my request. The heat in my fists became almost irresistible watching him try to recall who Cheryl was. Her death was as unimportant to him as the flies on the Citroen’s windshield. He confirmed this by repeating, “What?”
I breathed slowly through my nose, then responded, “She was my wife.” That produced a change in Atwell, not of recognition but at least he seemed to grasp the significance. “She died in Venice.” To give him something to hold onto I added, “When I was arrested for helping Sophie with her problem.” Even obliquely referring to Verdicchio caused an image of his face to come up, bug-eyed and tongue out, my hands around his throat. I tried to think of Cheryl, to hear her voice, for her to tell me that she was glad someone like Verdicchio was gone and that now wasn’t the right time for Atwell to join him. It helped a little.
“Right.” As thick as Atwell might be, even he recognized the sensitivity of the subject, at least pretending with his one word response that he knew what I was talking about.
“The police took me away before I could,” I stopped, feeling a catch in my throat. I swallowed, continued with, “have anything done with the body.” Blink, keep going, “I don’t know what was done.” I tried not to think about strangers callously handling Cheryl. Instead I gave my most optimistic claim, “She’s probably in a potter’s field somewhere.”
Like a man in a minefield, Atwell didn’t move. When I didn’t continue he prompted me with, “OK.”
“I want to know where she’s buried.”
I couldn’t tell if this request touched Atwell in some human way or if he had regained his ability to lie now that he didn’t have any need to focus on driving the tiny automobile. Either way he responded like he meant it. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I nodded and got out of the car, letting it bounce. I stretched a bit as Atwell drove away, feeling cramped after having spent so much time in the tiny automobile. I took a deep breath, smelling the sulphur of urine and tang of rotting trash, both of which there was plenty of in L’Ariane. Feeling the pride that comes with the possibility of having maybe accomplished something, I started walking towards Triaite and home.
The entrance to the apartment block was the same as it ever was, the hour such that I landed after any early morning shuffling of tenants. I lurched over the subway tiles and passed the always empty mail slots and opted for the stairs, the long hours in the car producing a desire for exercise. It wasn’t until I hit our floor that I heard the crying.
The sound of weeping was not an uncommon noise in our apartment block. A child’s crying, someone coming off a bender, a wife who was the recipient of a husband’s abuse. But this was different. It stopped me at the top of the stairs and caused me to tune in on it, its quiet stuttering that someone was trying to control, the edge of its hysteria just out of their reach. There was something in its craze that caused me to move towards it cautiously, confirming it was issuing from our door. I grasped the doorknob, twisting it slow and breathing deep to control my rising heartbeat.
I tried to only crack the door open enough to let my bowling ball of a head in for a peek. The entry was in disarray, the wooden pole of my reliable hat rack broken on the floor. Whatever force had done this had dented the wall and torn portions of the already peeling wallpaper. What I could see of the kitchen, Sophie’s normally well-organized domain, was also in ruin, the table flipped over, dishes broken on the floor.
But the crying persisted and I doubt any of the hard boys Sophie and I had been dealing with would be weeping. I stepped inside quickly, opening the door as little as possible, and prepared myself for being wrong in that estimate. I eyed the kitchen as I moved down the short hall, no one there, so I kept moving.
The den was a mess in every way, auditorily, physically, the jagged crying of Jardin on the couch, being comforted by Sophie. Her gentle cooing, always a balm for the soul, was almost a distraction from the dead man on the floor. Lying on top of the smashed remains of the coffee table, broken bits of porcelain scattered about him, I could imagine him arriving at the tenement, interrupting a discussion over coffee between the two women. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered how he had tracked them down, but all good predators have their secrets. Whatever his were, they hadn’t been a match for Sophie and the skillet that sat nearby, a rust colored stain on its back.
The pimp wasn’t tall, but had thin, powerful arms, nearly hairless, pale against the black short sleeve shirt he was wearing. He was face down, dark, wiry hair nearly covering up the dent in the back of his skull. There was very little blood, but that was one of the advantages of blunt force trauma. To confirm what I already suspected, I awkwardly bent over the remains of the coffee table to feel his wrist for a pulse. There wasn’t one.
Still kneeling, I looked up at Sophie, who continued to comfort the inconsolable Jardin. She had her arms wrapped around her so I could see Sophie’s face over the other’s shoulder, Jardin’s dark hair sticky with panic sweat. The corner of Sophie’s mouth was bruised. I tried to button down the irrational anger this provoked, rising from some selfish place that didn’t care about Sophie’s compassion for the woman, but only the trouble it had brought our way.
I couldn’t keep it all in, though, and a bit of it escaped with, “What the hell is this?”
Sophie’s eyes narrowed, returning my anger with her own. Challenging me to go further with it she replied, “Practice?”
I retreated by placing my brow in the space between thumb and forefinger, resting all the past night’s fatigue and future worry there. While I paused and tried to think Sophie smoothed out Jardin’s hair and kissed her forehead, comforting her as if she were a child. She then stood, and taking Jardin by the hand, led her to the kitchen, away from the body. When I got up to follow Sophie had sat her down in the room’s one still-standing chair and was making her a cup of tea. I watched her do this until she had placed a warm mug into the other woman’s hands. Jardin’s crying had subsided, but she was pallid, her eyes wide with shock. I flipped the table back over so she had a place to set her mug.
When I was certain she could be left alone I gestured for Sophie to follow me back into the den. We both stood just inside the doorway, not saying anything. After a moment I muttered, “I wish he was smaller.”
To read the next chapter, go here.
To read the previous chapter, go here.
See the author’s published work here.
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