Judgment (10 page)

They were silent for a moment. "Hey, Ronny, weren't those two of the guys who—"

"Yep. I won't be sending a wreath to their funeral."

As Brett Macklin watched the news in the garage, sitting on the hood of his Cadillac, he kept reliving the previous night. He couldn't dredge up any guilty feeling. They were animals, and if he hadn't stopped them, they would have ravaged the girl, possibly killing her. After what they had done to his father . . .

Macklin leaned forward and changed the channel.

An old man, with skin like a peanut shell, bent towards the newsman's microphone. "I think they should give this Mr. Jury guy a medal."

Next up was a woman trying to balance her teething child in one hand and pull up her slipping bra strap with the other. "I'd sleep better at night knowing Mr. Jury was in my neighborhood. There just ain't enough cops out there."

A man with "accountant" written all over his face was stopped on a busy street. "Mr. Jury? Just another maniac with a gun. He probably shot those guys because they didn't give him his turn with the girl."

A crisp-looking businesswoman was quizzed in front of an impressive building. "I think it's great. We
need
a guy like him." She smiled into the camera. "I just hope Kryptonite doesn't bother him."

Macklin snapped off the set and went to bed. He slept like a baby.

"A Job Well Done Means More Jobs to Come."

Melody stared at the maxim, which she had needlepointed in a sampler and hung on the wall, and smiled to herself, patting the naked man atop her on the back.

"Oh God,
please
don't stop!" she shrieked, faking an orgiastic squeal.

The mattress creaked underneath her as the man quickened his pace.
Business ain't bad today,
she thought to herself, hoping she would handle three more guys before quitting time. Her body rocked under him. If she was real lucky, she could make it home in time to catch the nightly
Hawaii Five-O
reruns on Channel 13.

She glanced up at the water stains on the ceiling. They were like clouds to her. Each day they looked like something different. Today they were a giant clam with arms and legs like a man. His thrusts were beginning to hurt her.

"Oh God, I can't take it!" she screamed joyfully, her way of saying 'Hurry up, already, I ain't got all day, buddy!' to her customers. It usually worked, and this man was no exception. The man tensed up, groaned deeply, and fell on her, sweating. Melody glanced over his heaving shoulders at her wristwatch. Ten minutes had passed. Great.

After a few moments, he recovered and propped himself up on his elbows, grinning the way one would expect a person to grin after enduring an orgasm that could change a person's eye color.

"Shit, Melody, you're gonna kill me. I don't know if I can handle you twice a week," the beefy taxi driver said between sharp intakes of breath.

Melody grinned and gave his penis a playful squeeze.

"You've been saying that for six months, sport." She slid out from under him and reached for her clothes. Artie was one of her "old dependables." He paid in advance and always came back for more, despite the guilt he said he felt about sneaking away from his three-hundred-pound wife and four delinquent kids.

Melody slipped on her panties and tight, black leather pants, straightened up, pressed his face between her breasts. To him, she knew, she was nothing more than two breasts with legs. "See you next week, sweetie." She gave him a pat on the head, stepped back, pulled a low-cut top over her head, and walked out of the room.

Melody, her brown eyes glowing, dashed down the stairs and into the lobby. She winked at Alfred, the skinny, elderly hotel desk clerk, and sauntered outside into the bright afternoon sunlight.

Just then an old, black Cadillac with huge, sloping fins slid to a stop at the curb in front of her.
Nifty car,
Melody thought as she bent down and peered inside at the driver. There was something familiar about the driver's narrow, blue eyes, the hard, uncompromising set of his jaw, the sharp cheekbones and dark skin.

The man smiled a warm, sad smile that both attracted her and made her wary. Cop or fun-loving fuck? She couldn't quite read this tall, muscular man in the leather flight jacket.

"Hello, Melody, how are you?" he asked, opening his door and rising from the car.

"Depends," she said, meeting his even gaze as he walked around the car towards her. She tried to figure out which smile to flash. The boy-can-I make-you-feel-good smile or the I'm-so-innocent-I-could-be-Florence-Henderson smile. She ended up sporting an awkward, nervous grin of uncertainly. At least it fit.

"I'm Brett Macklin." He took her hand and led her to the car. "My father talked about you quite a bit."

She broke into a big, happy smile. "Brett Macklin, I'll be damned. How did you know who I was?" She opened the passenger door and got into the car. She just gave herself the rest of the day off.

"Saul told me where to find you." Macklin closed her door, walked around to the driver's side, and got in. "And once I saw you, well, I knew I had found the Melody my father spoke of."

He guessed she was in her mid- to late thirties. She was clearly a hooker, but there was, in an odd sort of way, a certain innocence about her. That was probably half of her charm and what had amused his father. JD often jokingly referred to Melody as his girlfriend. Brett was never sure whether or not his father ever was sexually involved with her. It didn't really matter. She was one of the few signs of hope JD found on his desperate beat.

She blushed. She always thought she was beyond blushing. "You know, Brett—I guess I can call you Brett—you look a lot like your father."

Macklin smiled, easing the Batmobile into traffic. "Thanks. Where can we go to talk?"

"How about my place? I can make some tea." She pointed down the street. "Take a left, go two blocks, and then make a right. It's the apartment building on the left. They call it 'gracious living' on the sign out front. What a line, huh? I'll make some tea just like your father liked it."

"Sounds good to me." Macklin felt slightly uncomfortable. His father had talked about Melody in glowing terms, always avoiding how she made her living. He never told Brett outright that she was a hooker. Brett didn't quite know how to behave.

Macklin was pleasantly surprised by how nice and conventional her apartment turned out to be. She could see what he was thinking and teased him. "What were you expecting? Something seedy, a bed in the middle of the room with sticky sheets? Maybe some mirrors on the ceiling and centerfolds from old
Hustler
magazines on the wall?"

"Something like that."

The place looked like an ad for Levitz furniture snipped out of the newspaper. Crisp and clean, with a sofa and love seat and dinette set seemingly plucked from a "Suburban Newlyweds' First Home" display, comfortable and inexpensive.

In every corner of the room was a hanging plant, and the walls were covered with grass cloth. "I put the grass cloth up myself," she said, switching on the room lights. "I did it a piece at a time, a week at a time. That crap is expensive, you know."

Macklin nodded, noticing the little antiques, the spoon collection, and the nondescript sort of paintings found in Holiday Inns across the nation.

"This is where most of my money goes, Brett. I don't buy fancy jewelry or relatively new used cars," she said. "I mean, this is where I live. This is me. I want to make it my castle."

Macklin sat on the couch.

"And I never bring my clients here," she added quickly, "This is
my
place, you know?"

Macklin nodded. "You brought Dad here, didn't you?"

"Oh, yeah, all the time. He was a teddy bear. A lovable teddy bear. He always made sure I was happy and not getting hassled too much. Occasionally he'd have to lock me up, you know. That was his job. I had no quarrel with that."

"Did he ever talk to you about what he was working on?"

Her smile waned. "You mean about the people who killed him?"

"Yes, I do." He looked at her sternly.

She sat down on the love seat across from him. "You know, he and I would sit here and talk, for hours sometimes, after he got off duty. That's all we did, talk. No screwing. Not that I didn't try." She shrugged her shoulders. "It meant a lot to me, his friendship, you know?"

"It meant a lot to him, too, Melody."

She sighed and nodded. "So what do you want to know?"

"Anything. Everything. What did he tell you about the gangs?"

"The gangs." She drew her legs together into the yoga position. "Well, Christ, I don't know. The gangs. They bugged him. He had a hard time dealing with all the sadistic stuff happening on the streets. He'd ask me about things he'd hear on the streets and ask me what I was hearing. I was hearing the same shit. This gang was out to slit that gang's throat, you know. Last week, a Laser went over into Street Shark territory and boned one of the Street Sharks' girls. So, the Street Sharks went over to this burger joint, the Laser hangout, and blew 'em all to hell."

She paused for a moment. "Thing that bugged your father was that no one ever knew which Street Shark's girl it was that was screwed or which Laser did it. Seems the Street Sharks got all pissed off about something they only heard about, you know? Thing was, your father said a lot of people were hearing a lot of things but weren't seeing a lot of things. Gangs are decimating each other over stuff that they hear happened but maybe didn't happen. See? JD couldn't figure out where all these rumors and stuff that was pissing off the gangs was coming from."

"What did he do about it?" Macklin asked.

"What could he do? It scared the shit out of him. He saw the violence escalating, the neighborhood going to hell, and he couldn't nail down the cause. He saw people getting all pissed off and freaked-out about stuff that never happened. I wish I could have helped him, but what could I do? I listened to him yell and scream and be frustrated. I made tea. And then he was killed, boom, just like that, out of my life."

She stopped talking. Macklin saw her sparkling eyes well up with tears.

Melody looked up at the ceiling as her tears spilled out and rolled down her cheeks. "I probably loved your father." She looked across at Macklin and sniffled, trying to smile. "I probably did."

Macklin stepped over to her and kissed her on the cheek. "He probably loved you, too." He touched her shoulder. "Thanks."

"Hey, anytime, Brett." She wiped the tears away from her eyes with the palms of her hands. "Really, come by anytime." Her face said please.

Macklin smiled. "I will. Good-bye, Melody."

# # # # # #

Grace Dettmer tightened her grip on the steering wheel and gritted her dentures as her husband Harold slipped his hand between her legs.

Ever since he had read
that
article, the one that said "spontaneity, unpredictability, and unusual locales" will revive comatose libidos, life had been unbearable for Grace.

This evening would offer no respite. She tried to ignore his ardent fumbling and concentrate on driving home. There had been no time, no place, that was free from his irritating passes. One night she had opened the refrigerator and he leaped out, covered in chocolate body spray. Another time, she went to get a pillowcase out of the closet and he pushed her in, held the door shut, and talked dirty to her for thirty-five minutes. Last week Harold followed her into the dressing room at May Co. and suggested that she "try him on."

And now he was fondling her as she drove their white, 1965 Mustang southbound on the Harbor Freeway. They had bought the car new, right off the showroom floor, back when it looked like Harold's corner newsstand could grow one day into something that would make B. Dalton and Mr. Walden cower in fear.

That day never came and Grace still picked him up every night at 10 p.m. when she finished her shift at Denny's. It was now 10:22 p.m.

One lane over and two car lengths behind Grace and Harold was a cameo beige Toyota Tercel driven by Lester Grevich, and insurance salesman from Redondo Beach on his way back from a boring party at his sister's house in Studio City. His wife would have come, but she hated his sister and was constipated to boot.

Lester's car was a mobile Neil Diamond concert. Everyone he knew hated Neil Diamond. His wife absolutely forbade him to play Diamond's music in their apartment. So, whenever he got in the car, he grabbed at the chance to crank up the Sanyo and groove to "Sweet Caroline."

It was 10:23 p.m.

Suzanne McNaughton, a struggling actress in a town filled with struggling actresses, was right behind Lester in a 1972 blue Impala. And she had to go wee-wee real bad but didn't want to stop at a gas station. She just wanted to get home.

Grace was, to her great surprise, actually beginning to tingle
down there
as the Mustang sped towards the Third Street overpass. Neil and Lester were rockin' their way through "Done Too Soon," and Suzanne was breathing deeply, muttering to herself. "Hold on, babe, c'mon, hold on."

That's when Grace saw the woman fall from the overpass. The body slammed into the Mustang's hood and bounced into the windshield, shattering it and showering Grace and Harold in bloody glass. Grace jerked the wheel sharply, sending the car spinning out of control. The woman's body slid off the hood and dropped into the path of Lester's Tercel.

Lester saw the Mustang spin into the center pider, slapping the cement and crumpling up into an unrecognizable mass of metal. He had just a split second to ponder why the Mustang had lost control. Then the Tercel bounced hard. Lester's head slammed against the roof and he felt something crush under his wheels. He looked into his rearview mirror to see what he had hit and didn't notice the eighteen-wheeler in front of him. The impact tore the car's roof, and Lester's head, right off.

Suzanne saw the Tercel flatten the twisted body and screamed, the floodgates of her bladder bursting open as she pounded her foot against the brake pedal. The car skidded over the body. Suzanne, warm urine soaking her legs, could feel the locked tires catching the body and grinding it into the asphalt as the car slid under the overpass and plowed into Lester's Tercel.