Jackie's Week (22 page)

She could hear the victim screaming in her
mind. She knew she’d hear it always. That jaw. Wide open, as though
the soul had pried it open from the inside before escaping through
the victim’s mouth. She staggered into the bushes and completely
emptied the contents of her stomach.

"It’s okay," Johnson said. "I’ve got a bottle
of mouthwash and some clean wipes in my van."

"Johnson," she said, after she’d managed to
clean up, "Is it ... is it Bout?"

"Don’t we all wish? Unfortunately, I have a
strong hunch it's your realtor friend." Johnson said.

"Oh no," she said. "You mean he got her? He
got another woman?"

"Maybe," Johnson said. "I only know that when
the first responders arrived, her front door was wide open. Her car
is in the garage. And her purse and keys are on her kitchen
table."

"She was in my house rearranging the
furniture or something, getting the house ready for sale. He
surprised her, didn’t he? Then he raped her and set her on fire and
she ran out screaming. She only made it to the front lawn."

"That seems to sum it up," Johnson said.

"We’ve crossed a threshold, haven’t we?" she
said. "There are no signposts in this hideous new world. Nothing I
learned in school ever prepared me for the sight of that body."

"I remember my first burn victim," he said.
"Back when I was a rookie."

"I killed her," Jackie said. "I didn’t want
to do the lineup. I let him out and now I have killed Sandy. I have
killed my neighbor. I am going to hell for what I did. Father Larry
was right. I sinned and the wages of my sin was Sandy’s death. The
death of an innocent. I have been such a fool not to listen to your
advice. I should have agreed to the lineup."

"No, Jackie," he said. "Not you. You can’t
blame yourself when evil strikes." He took her in his arms and they
held each other tight.

"You’ve spent a lifetime dealing with evil,"
Jackie said. "How did you ever make it this far?"

"I embraced evil in Vietnam," he said, "I had
to in order to survive. When we’re faced with evil, our instincts
tell us to pull back. I had to learn to put my instincts on hold
and trust in myself, teach myself to move into the evil and do what
I have to do, hoping I’ll somehow find my way back in one
piece."

"I can’t pull back," Jackie said. "I can’t
return to isolation. The only thing I can do is move forward.
Everything I owned was in that house. All my pictures, all the
stuff I inherited from my parents. Johnson, that was going to be
our house after we got married."

"Jackie," Johnson said. "You’ve had a
terrible shock tonight. You need to go and get some rest."

"Okay," she said. "But before I leave, I’ve
got to tell you something. It may jeopardize everything we have
going, but I realized tonight, when I saw Sandy lying there, that
there can be no secrets between us. At the party tonight, I had an
audience with Ernie Catalano."

"Ernie Catalano?" he said. "He was at your
party?"

Jackie nodded. "I met with him privately,"
she said.

"They call him ‘Ernie the Foot,’" Johnson
said. "His feet are messed up, which is why he wears the
monogrammed slippers everywhere. They say damaged his feet stomping
his victims to death in a wine vat in his cellar. So you met with
him, huh? What’d he have to say for his sorry self?"

"He’s got no children, only an adopted niece.
I asked him to kill Bout and his crew. He agreed to do it."

"Please, Jackie," he said. "You need to call
that whole thing off."

"I’ll call him," she said. "But I had to tell
you. I suppose now you’ll have to arrest me on conspiracy to commit
murder or something."

"Get real," he said. "I'll add it to the list
of my secrets. You’ve told me. You’ve cleared your conscience.
We’ll have to live with it. Now I’m going to tell you something. I
was going to kill Bout myself. When we let him go, we had him
followed, but he gave us the slip. And I may have to kill him yet,
but hopefully we will find him before that becomes necessary.
Another thing. As before, you and I didn’t have this conversation.
If we keep having them, we’ll have to get married in Las Vegas so
we can’t testify against one another. Now take Heinz and go back to
Donna’s."

"Okay." She got in the limo. He poked his
head in. "I think we both deserve a kiss," he said.

Their lips met briefly, dryly, in the
superheated night.

"Bout thinks he’s taken something from me,"
she said. But I’m in another zone. He can’t touch me anymore. I’ve
lost material things tonight, and now I’ve got a death on my
conscience, but at the same time, I’ve gained something."

"I am curious, though," he said. "What
exactly did "Ernie the Foot" say when he agreed to take the
contract?"

"Nothing really," Jackie said. "He just made
me drink his homemade wine."

"Homemade wine," Johnson said. "That’s
it?"

"That’s all he did. But there was no
mistaking what he meant."

"Weird. But I’ve heard that he’s a strange
old coot. There's even a rumor that he is a werewolf. But of course
there is no such thing."

Johnson reached into his pocket and brought
out a tiny black velvet-covered box. Jackie’s heart leaped.

"This is lousy timing," he said. "But
here."

The ring. She placed it on her finger and
looked up at him.

"It’s a friendship ring," he said.

"We’re totally not ready for marriage," she
said.

"I know," he said. "If you want me to I can
ride with you back to Donna’s. But now that you have unleashed
Catalano and his minions, I think I need to work harder on finding
Bout and for that I need to marshal all my resources within the
department."

"It’s okay. You can have your man shadow me
as before. I think I need to be alone. And I’ve got Heinz to
protect me. And the gun. And Bobby and Nasturtium, who are still
out there somewhere."

"Okay," he said. "Jackie, before you go,
there is something I need to tell you. Again, it’s lousy timing, so
I want to apologize beforehand."

"Uh oh," she said. "Here it comes."

"I made a decision today," he said. "This is
my last case. I’m retiring. When this is over, I’m packing it in
and heading for the dog ranch."

"But what about us? I can’t just up and move
to Dos Palos. I have to stay in Los Angeles to finish my work with
Dr. Black. And obviously I am going to have to join Alcoholics
Anonymous before my liver turns to concrete. Johnson, it could take
years. And we don’t have that many years left."

"I know," he said.

"Well what does this mean? Are we at a
crossroads, or are you trying to tell me it’s over?"

"That’s why I gave you the friendship ring.
You know, cops don’t make friends easily outside of other cops. But
you are special. You are a true friend. The way I see it," he said,
"is that it’s a 4-hour straight shot up I-5 to the ranch from your
place. I can come down and you can come up. But we might as well
face it, you need time and so do I. Hell, the ink on my divorce
papers is barely dry."

"But what if we lose each other? What if I
come up some weekend and find you in the saddle with some Dos Palos
cowgirl?"

"Jackie, you’re a beautiful woman, and every
day you’re getting stronger. Now that you’re out and about, the men
are going to come. The only thing I can say is, if we really have
something, eventually we’re going to know it for sure, no matter
how far apart we are. As long as you wear the ring, you haven’t
lost me. The day you give it back to me is the day it’s over
between us. But there is something else I want to say. You often
ask me what it is I see in you. I’m a man who has spent a lifetime
working with police dogs. A police dog is chosen because he’s the
one dog in a thousand who has the courage to fight a dangerous man.
I think from the very beginning I saw that same courage in you. I
knew it was there in you all the time, and events have proven me
right."

"Johnson, are those tears I see?"

"Jackie, what I am trying to say is that in
my opinion, you are a woman worth waiting for. I’m starting a new
life, but you are always going to be welcome in it."

"I’ll tell you what," she said. "I have no
favorite place anymore. Maybe sometime you could plant me a tree
and make me a little patio beside your trailer. Who knows? If you
served me a good hot cup of Jamaican Blue, that might become my
favorite place."

"I’ll have it ready and waiting," he said.
"Whenever you visit."

"I’ve got to go now," she said. "I really
have to go. Good night, Johnson."

"Jackie, wait. Before you go, there is
something I really need to say. I want you to know how deeply,
deeply sorry I am about what happened to you. And I just want you
to know that nothing that happened to you was your fault."

"Johnson," she said. "I never thanked you for
being there."

"No need. Good night, babe."

"Johnson, please. No pet names. Next thing
you know I’ll be calling you Poo Bear and you’ll be calling me your
little cabbage."

The stared into each others eyes and in spite
of themselves, sad smiles spread over their faces.

Still, when she thought about it, being
called Babe wasn’t so bad. It was the first time a man had ever
called her that. It almost felt if he’d dropped a rose petal into
her heart. Perhaps it was one of those tiny graces that Black spoke
so highly of.

"Okay, chief," Johnson said to her limo
driver, handing him his card. "I want you to go like hell. No
stopping for red lights or stop signs. If you get stopped for
anything, just hand them my card."

She watched Johnson as he headed back towards
the conflagration and the comfortable association of others like
himself, versed as they were in the science of demons, and flames
and silent screamings and the hunting down of killers. Soon she was
past the people and on the freeway, where the brutal velocity of
the car flying up the ramp lifted her out of herself, bringing into
focus the beating of her boundless heart.

Chapter 36

"I need something in my stomach," Jackie
said. "Not to mention a drink." She’d found Bienenfeld in the
kitchen upon her return to Spring Oak Drive. A small spotlight over
the sink divided the light from the darkness enough to accommodate
the two of them in their quest for a 2 a.m. snack.

"I brought home a few leftovers from the
party," he said. "There’s a couple of jumbo quail topped with fried
potatoes in the fridge. And if you’re extra hungry, there’s a nice
gorgonzola."

Bienenfeld, tie off and shirttails out, sat
at the kitchen table nursing a brandy from a traditional bell
snifter. The big square bottle of brandy sat open on the table
beside him in case he needed a little extra snifting.

"What’d you think of the party?" he said. "I
noticed you left a little early. Everybody liked the dog. It was
even suggested we cast him—with a harness, he could pull one of the
skateboards through the Haitian rubble."

"Unlike most things in your miserable life,"
Jackie said, "Heinz isn’t for sale." She removed the quail from the
nuke and sat down with a juice glass of vodka. "I don’t know why
they call these Jumbo quail. There’s nothing jumbo about them."

They sat together in silence while Jackie
picked her way through the food. She took a large swallow of
booze.

"We’ve got to talk," she said. "Where’s
Donna?"

"Out," he said. "Something upset her. She
wouldn’t tell me what. She’s having drinks at Nick’s with one of
her girlfriends."

"Good," Jackie said. "The main thing is, we
won’t be disturbed while we talk. I was thinking about you
tonight."

"I’m flattered," he said.

"Don’t be," she said. "The reason I was
thinking about you was because tonight I met Mr. Ernesto
Catalano."

"Yeh, I saw the two of you together,"
Bienenfeld said. "He’s a good friend of the bank."

"Oh yes," Jackie said. "We had a lovely
discussion over a glass of his homemade wine."

Bienenfeld set his snifter down very
carefully. "Homemade wine?" he said.

"Yes," Jackie said. "And after we finished
talking, I drank some of his special homemade wine."

"Okay," Bienenfeld said. "No more games. Just
come straight out with it."

"I appealed to Mr. Catalano to help me with
Viktor Bout and his low-life friends," Jackie said. "He agreed to
kill them all. We sealed the deal with his homemade wine."

"Oh," he said. "Well I shouldn't tell you
this, but he already killed one of them. The guy that left the note
on your car."

"You're kidding me."

"Remember that huge guy, Nasturtium, and his
Native American friend? They were right there when he left the
note. That guy is in a barrel of toxic waste somewhere off the San
Pedro breakwater as we speak."

"Another death," she said.

Bienenfeld regarded her for a moment. "Is
that it, Jackie? You look as though you have something more."

"The other day," Jackie said, "your wife
filled me in about your little habit of murdering people, in
particular a reporter for the L.A. Times."

"Go on," he said. His eyes were curiously
hooded, like the lids of some potentially dangerous species of
poisonous lizard.

"Don’t worry, Bienenfeld," she said. "I’m not
going to tell anybody that you and Mr. Catalano crushed a few
grapes together. I just think it’s kind of cozy that you and I have
such a thing in common."

"Welcome to the family."

"How touching," Jackie said.

"It’s true. You’ve just become his niece,"
Bienenfeld said. "You know, of course, what was in that wine he
offered you?"

"What?"

"His blood," Bienenfeld said. "Into each
batch, he injects a syringe of his own blood. Very few people drink
his homemade wine. In his twisted way of thinking, that makes you
family. The man claims to be a werewolf. They reproduce by biting,
or sharing blood."