Chapter 62 – April’s Tears #13
JAMES
Klempner sees Stanton out, but returns to find Charlotte, waiting with me, wearing her ‘rebellious’ face.
Close tobative in fact. Her jaw is set, almost aimed, at her father, “You should have done it.
Agreed to help.”
“Charlotte!”
She starts at my bellow, but Klempner raises a finger my way, gives a short shake of the head. “Jenny
is entitled to an opinion on this…” She smirks… “…aside from the detail that she shouldn’t have heard
that part of it so was clearly eavesdropping…”
The smirk fades. “Okay, I was listening in. How else was I supposed to know what was going on? And
it doesn’t change anything. You should have agreed to help him.”
Klempner’s tone remains cool. “I refused because it would have upset your mother. You saw how she
was when she thought Stanton wasing after me. I don’t want to see her in that state again.”
Charlotte Hmmms, sucks in her cheeks, inspects her feet. “I could do it. Some of it anyway. Talk to the
girls. Ask Stanton’s questions for him.”
My stomach flips. “Absolutely not!”
Klempner shes me another look…
Calm down…
… jabs a finger toward her. “And that would upset Mitch even more. You exposing yourself to trouble.”
Charlotte scowls. “I’m not scared of trouble. And the killer’s not interested in me.”
“No?” Klempner cocks a brow, perches a hip on the back of the settee. “He might be,” he drawls, “If you
start rubbing shoulders with street hookers. He’s targeting prostitutes.”
Her eyes shoot arrows. “I can handle myself.”
“I know that. But I’m not aware you’ve evere up against a psychopathic misogynist set on raping,
then disembowelling you?
Her face tightens. “And you have?”
“You might be surprised at what I’vee up against. Thest one who wanted to disembowel me
nned on using a machete. And correct me if I have my facts wrong, but aren’t you pregnant?
Your…” Casting a look my way, he flounders for a moment… “… Your other husband might have
something to say about that.”
“This one too,” I growl.
Charlotte hesitates, bites her lower lip.
Klempner’s not finished. “… So shall we call that the end of the conversation? You all pay your taxes to
fund the police department. They shouldn’t have toe running to me to handle something like this.
That’s their job. It’s what they’re for.”
She doesn’t look happy. “Maybe you’re right,” she mutters.
“Maybe I am. And while I’m happy to face down machete-wielding maniacs with an attitude problem, I
don’t intend to be the one exining to your mother why you’re haunting the City streets risking the
same thing.”
In the background, Cara raises a wail. Klempner flicks a nce to the door. “I believe your daughter
wants her lunch.”
Hunching, Charlotte nods and exits. As her back turns, Klempner rolls eyes my way. I roll back.
*****
PAT
From my cafe table across the street, I watch the entrance of the Sapphire Club. Just before ten, the
dancers arrive, trickling in by ones and twos. The hulk at the door lets them in. Lily and Ginny arrive a
few minutester, exchange a few words with him, then vanish inside.
So, my way is clear.
Assuming there’s no roommate.
It doesn’t take long to reach Lily’s apartment. Some old bag carrying groceries gets me inside. I even
get to climb the first two storeys with her as she rattles out some crap about her grandson never
visiting.
It’s a cheap and nasty building full of cheap and nasty apartments. On the third floor, I pad along the
corridor, the soles of my shoes peeling from the carpet with each step. Stale cigarette smoke hangs in
the air, not quite masking the funk of second-hand beer, piss and vomit.
At what I reckon to be the right spot, I find a pair of shoddy, plywood doors, facing each other across
the corridor. Lily’s isn’t in good shape. The paint’s peeled and cracked. Around the lock and hinges, the
wood’s splintered, obviously patched and repaired, more than once probably. The remains of bootprints
dent the cheap timber.
Kicked in…
Boyfriend?
Drugs bust?
Who knows?
But disappointment bites….
If this is how you live, perhaps you’re not right after all…
The door’s locked of course, but the lock’s just standard pin-and-tumbler, as second-rate as the rest of
the door, and it’s obviously not the original.
Oh, Lily…
You should look after yourself better…
Anyone could walk in…
Landlord should be ashamed of himself…
Get him to install a decent lock…
Or maybe he won’t pay?
Why repair what will just get kicked in again?
A quick nce one way, then the other, up and down the corridor…
Alone…
… Using my body to block the view of what I’m doing, just in case, I slip the ‘wallet’ from my top pocket.
To any casual eye, it would hold the usual crap: bank cards, loyalty cards, cash. In fact, it contains my
pick set.
I’ve done this lock before, or something simr enough to make no odds. Choosing from the torsion
tools the one I think most likely to do the job, inserted one-handedly into the lock, a small amount of
applied tension on the cylinder pressures it to turn. Which of course, it can’t do just yet, until the pins
are lifted.
It’s a bit awkward, but I’ve had plenty of practice, and with the other hand I insert my chosen pick,
easing in. The first couple of pins are free. There’s always one or two like that in cheap locks. But the
third one resists, still seized with its own friction.
Angling to exert a little bit of pressure, keeping constant pressure on the barrel, slowly, carefully, I force
pin three upward until, with a Click! the split in the pin aligns with the barrel, the barrel rotates a fraction
and I move to the next pin. Thirty secondster, all the pins have shifted and aligned, the pressure
against my torsion tool drops away and the lock snaps open.
From behind me, not exactly a noise; almost a movement of air. I turn to find the door opposite is
cracked open, just a nose and a faded eye peering around…
Fuck…
“Hi.” I put on my best blue-eyed-boy smile. “Handle’s jammed.” I step to the door, offering my hand. “I’m
Andy. Lily’s new boyfriend.”
A snort. “Ha! If she’s calling herself Lily, you ain’t no boyfriend.” And the crack bangs closed. A second
Nosy old bitch…
A nce up and down the corridor to be sure no one else followed that, and I hover, considering.
She saw my face…
Should I do something about her?
?
She thinks I’m a john…
… and she’s seen plenty of them…
Nah…
She’ll never remember.
Turning the door handle, I slip inside.
And it’s nice. Much nicer than I expected from the unpromising corridor. Perhaps Lily can’t afford a
more expensive address, but she looks after what she has really well.
I knew you were better than that…
The carpet is cheap and threadbare. But there are no stains, and faint stripes in the pile say she’s been
cleaning.
A coffee table holds a bowl of fruit, all fresh. And the Formica surface, straight out of the seventies, is
polished. And now I think about it, a trace of furniture polish hangs in the air. The TV is dust free. So
are the shelves and magazine rack.
No ash trays…
Doors lead off. I try the first: the kitchen. Again, everything is budget-basement stuff, but it’s
immacte, the cheap vinyl clean, the trash can emptied, the counter-top wiped.
You live in a hovel…
… but it’s a pristine hovel.
A smoothie maker sits on the side, just the base. The ss jug is upside down on the drainer. In the
bin, broli stalks jostle for room with carrot peelings.
I check the fridge. Veggies. Sd. Chicken joints, skin removed. Sparkling water. Semi-skimmed milk.
A bottle of white wine capped with a wine saver: one ss missing. Four cans of alcohol-free beer.
Helping myself to a can, I crack open the top and amble back to the lounge, plonking down onto the
settee.
Something hisses and a paw shes out, shing four bloody lines across the back of my hand. A
fucking thing, but it swan-dives from the couch then slinks underneath, leaving me sucking at the blood.
Fuck…
In the bathroom, the mirror and basin are polished and the john flushed blue. A small moulded-stic
cab, aged yellow, teeters in one corner. The drawers stick as I test each one: soaps, towels and
tampons, a sticb, hair grips, slides and bungees, contraceptives…
Band-aids…
It’s the stuff on a roll where you have to cut off a strip, so I pop back to the kitchen looking for scissors,
finding them in the cutlery drawer. The fucking cat follows me and I aim a kick at it, but it dodges,
skittering under the TV, then watches me from its coward’s safety.
Back in the bathroom, I snip a couple of inches off the roll. Washing the blood off the back of my hand, I
watch it trickle red into the basin, then dab the hand dry with toilet tissue before applying the dressing.
Rinsing the basin clean, I drop soiled paper and the backing from the ster into the toilet, and flush.Têxt belongs to N?velDrama.Org.
The water whirls away taking paper, blood and backing with it and rubbing the sting away from the back
of my hand. The cat’s nowhere in sight as I meander to the next door.
A bedroom, as uncluttered and clean as everything else I’ve seen. The bed is neatly made, pillows
plumped and a fringed counterpane pulled straight, the top neatly turned back. A dressing table with a
cracked mirror is set out with a tray of budget-brand cosmetics: lipsticks and blushers, eyeliner and
mascara. Another tray holds cotton pads, files and nail polish in subdued colours.
Nothing’s left lying around or untidy. A linen basket holds soiled clothes. Rummaging through I find
blouses and bras, a worn pair of jeans, two pairs of in white cotton panties and a thong in ck.
Is that what you wore when I saw you dancing?