"It already has, hasn't it?" Rachel says.
He leans forward to emphasize his point. "We live in Santa Monica. I just want to be closer in case there's an emergency. The day I can't do my job, I'll tell you--before you can tell me!"
"Hey, D'Amato, you don't have to convince me. Hold up your end of the investigation, and we've got no problems."
"I'll do that. And just because I write up my reports at home on a PC, and not on these old clunkers," he pats the IBM Selectric on her desk, "it doesn't mean I'm not working."
"I don't give a damn if you prepare your reports standing on your head in a toilet bowl--as long as they get done."
"They get done," Vince says, a slight testiness in his voice.
"Then we'll get along just fine, D'Amato."
"Call me Vince." Vince waits for her to reciprocate, but when she ignores his peace offering, he continues. "What have we got so far?"
Rachel paws through the series of manila folders neatly stacked on her desk. Flipping one open, she peruses the contents for a moment before handing it to him.
"One dead body," she recites. "Male. Caucasian. Sixty-six years old, five-foot seven, 180 pounds. No, make that 179½ without his eight ounce dick."
"Harry Melnick. Agent to the stars," Vince says.
"You know him?"
"Of him. Melnick was pretty well known."
"Yeah, evidently everyone knew and loved Harry Melnick. I've been on the case for a week, and I'm discovering that your buddy, the agent to the stars, had more enemies than friends."
"That seems to be pretty par for the course in this town. You don't drop the soap in the shower in Hollywood. Everyone always seems to be stabbing everybody else in the back."
"Well, this time it was in the throat instead of the back." Rachel reaches over and removes the file from Vince's hands, flips pages for him and hands it back, turned to the Crime Scene Photographs section. "Stuck it in, twisted it around, and tried to pull it out sideways; a couple of times, at least. Made quite a mess." She points to one of the 8 X 10 photos.
"Jesus!"
"Actually, the poor fucker choked on his own blood before he could bleed to death. After she stomped his balls, she cut them off and jammed them into his mouth."
"Ouch." Vince grimaces. "You said, 'she?'"
"That's right. According to the coroner's examination, there's a nice neat, indelible imprint of a woman's high heel right in the middle of Melnick's scrotum. You know, that little metal plate at the bottom of the heel? Evidently, she ground it in good and firm, a perfect impression of the Gucci logo with a little chip in the side of it. If we find the shoe, we'll find the perp; and it'll be a woman."
"Or a cross-dresser or a transvestite," Vince suggests with a smile.
"They got those over in the Hollenbeck too, D'Amato?" I thought we had the franchise in West Hollywood."
We had everything at the 'Beck. Any suspects?" Vince asks, starting to feel more comfortable with Rachel Goldberg.
"Sure," Rachel laughs as she reached over to the corner of her desk. She pushes a stack of computer paper over to her new partner. "Take your choice."
Vince leafs through the report. There are over 30 pages of names and addresses and phone numbers as well as other codes and remarks.
"What's this?" he asks.
"It's from the computer in Melnick's office. His secretary did it up. It’s his client list--past and present--the short form. Just the basics. Each of these entries--" Rachel reaches over to tap the top page with a manacured finger nail"--is supported by a separate computer file as well as a stack of traditional paper."
"This guy's been busy."
"Uh-huh. He was in the business for over fifty years. A lot of water under the bridge."
Vince reads some of the names on the list. "And probably a lot of broads trough the bedroom."
"Jeez, D'Amato, do they still call us broads? Or have you just been reading too much Raymond Chandler?"
"Sorry." Vince tries to cover up for his chauvinist statement by rushing on. "There are some pretty famous names on this list," he points out.
"Some greats from the past and present,” Rachel says. “Probably more past than present. I scanned the list and could recognize only half the names."
"Have you followed up on any of them?"
She shakes her head.
Vince notices that her hair swings evenly back and forth with the movement of her head, each strand in place and attached to its neighbor by a copious application of Clairol Extra Hold. Vince realizes that Rachel Goldberg is as much dependent on a little help with her perfect looks as the rest of the women he has known. Somehow it makes her a little more human.
"Jazinski and I were busy following up with the neighbors and co-workers. I've typed up my notes." She points to another manila folder on the desk. "That asshole, Jazinski's, got a few scraps of papers in the file. They don't mean squat, but at least he's filled me in verbally. He might be home burping the baby, but I'll get him to type up his notes and send them over so that you have everything."
Vince looks through the sections of the file: CRIME REPORT, EVIDENCE TECHNICIAN, POST MORTEM, FORENSIC TECHNICIAN, INVESTIGATION, ARRESTS. The last section is optimistic, but empty. The first three are filled with neatly completed forms. The thickest, but least consistent section is: INVESTIGATION.
"You've been busy," Vince says, intending to be complimentary and make up for his previous gaffe.
It doesn't work.
"I'm always busy, D'Amato. You know this isn't all I have to do. There's more than one crime a month here on the Westside. I mean, we may not be saddled with the toilet scum you guys in Hollenbeck cultivate in the barrio, but we have more than our share."
"I know," Vince acknowledges, anxious to pacify his new supervisor and partner. "I've been pretty busy.”
"And now, Sullivan says you’re all mine, right?" Rachel's voice is tinged with sarcasm. "Remind me to thank him. A Thanksgiving turkey would have been enough."
Vince ignores Rachel's remark and glances through the client list from Harry Melnick's office.
"Listen, D'Amato, I've got some stuff to take care of. Why don't you take the file and read through my R2's. They'll give you a background on Melnick’s neighbors and his office staff. Take a look at the Crime Scene photos. Go through that computer list," she points to the stack of paper before him, "and come up with a plan of action to start interviewing his clients."
Vince glances at his watch. It is already noon. "Okay. When do you want to meet and discuss it?"
"We just did."
"I mean the plan of action, investigative parameters, the division of responsibilities."
Rachel Goldberg pushes herself out of her chair and grabs her handbag from the floor by the side of the desk. "Your only responsibility right now, D'Amato, is to do what you are told. You don't have to worry about all that Academy 'investigative parameter' bullshit."
Vince understands that Rachel is in charge, but she doesn't have to make such an obvious point of reminding him.
He watches her walk away, marveling at how quickly the overall impression of perfection is shattered by a short conversation. His eyes follow the sway of confident hips as she pushes through the squad room door.
Rachel Goldberg is a prize bitch, Vince decides.
"Damn," Vince mutters as the squad room door swings shut. Whether it is an eventual encounter with Harry Melnick's genitals-removing killer, or his daily contact with Rachel Goldberg, he might want to make an investment in a cast-iron jock strap!
A RIVER OF TIME
An extraordinary novel about an ordinary man and the amazing women who occupy his life, becoming his river of time.
For us, Jordan Peter's journey begins as he is discharged from the Air Force in 1963, eager to exploit his knowledge of electronics in a burgeoning industry. Shunning the security of his mother's misguided alcoholic protection, he heads for San
Francisco where life appears filled with endless possibilities and fascinating people.
From the awkward tenderness and disappointment of first love to a heady series of affairs and heartbreak, Jordan struggles with his inability to find fulfillment with the woman he loves. He is unable to discover a substitute for the longing he has for someone he cannot have.
Through fleeting relationships, a failed marriage and a barren existence, Jordan appears to be fated to ultimately live a shallow life of unemotional attachment until an he has an incredible opportunity to achieve final redemption through an act of love he never dreamed possible.
A RIVER OF TIME (CHAPTER ONE)
"You know, you're a real son of a bitch!"
Tommy Wolfe sure got that right: You can't go home again. But then who the hell would want to?
''I'm sorry."
"You wouldn't stay home for any reason, would you, Jordan?" .
"It's not that. I have to get going. I've got things to do."
"What things are more important than your mother?"
"Nothing's more important than you, Mom. But I've got to get started on my own sometime, and I've been here for a month now."
My mother glared at me with that afternoon mixture of parental disapproval blessed with a lack solace from the day's first two glasses of Chablis.
I knew that this was the beginning of the assault phase of her alcohol-induced daily neurosis. It would move from there to recrimination, guilt. self-pity and, eventually, a complete stupor which would leave her asleep on the couch by the time Bonanza's quartet galloped into the living room.
"I don't understand why you can't just stay here in Fresno and find a job while living at home. You know we'd love to have you here with us" She waved vaguely toward the kitchen where my stepfather was downing a beer in defense of the coming alcoholic onslaught.
I tried to explain: "The kind of work I do ... well ... a big city has more opportunity."
"Bullshit! You just want to get away."
"No, that's not it at all," I partially lied, the sweat of Fresno's summer uncomfortable around my neck. At least half of my motivation for going to San Francisco was comprised of my need to get out of that house and away from the woman my mother had become. "The Bay Area has a lot of electronics firms and they're all growing. Fresno is the raisin capital of the world.
"They don't know a transistor' from a diode here." That was the other fifty percent of my reason for escape from this armpit of the world.
I had just spent four years of my life in the Air Force as an Electronics Specialist. I knew my stuff. I also knew that electronics was the wave of the future. If didn't get out of Fresno where my mother and stepfather had lived for the last ten years, whatever "stuff" I knew would shrivel away and dry up...just like Fresno's raisin crop.
"Don't you love us?"
"Mom, love's got nothing to do with it. Of course I love you. But I need to ... to .... "
"To what?" she interrupted. "To abandon me?"
"Mom, I'm not abandoning you;" I sighed in exasperation. I knew this conversation would go around and around in circles until either I walked away in frustrated anger or she would slink away to nurse her imaginary wounds.
"You never have appreciated the things I've done for you," she whined. "When your father walked out on you, who was it that raised you single-handed? Loved you? Gave you everything you needed? "
Somehow I didn't think I was the one my father had walked out on.
"Maybe you don't remember, during the war when we didn't have enough to eat," she continued. "I went without so that you could have food in your mouth. You had new shoes and I had to lie to the doctor to get coupons so that you could have shoes every month. I went to work twelve hours a day to put clothes on your back and put food on your table."
Oh, Jesus, she was on a roll. I had heard this litany before.
I was five years old in I945, just before the end of World War II, when my father, in what I eventually came to recognize as a desperate act of self-preservation, had finally gotten tired of breaking the crockery and throwing beer bottles at my mother across the war zone of our kitchen. He finally walked out. He had decided to continue his own alcoholic decline without her nagging or aggravating alcoholic consumption competition . No doubt it had been a hard adjustment for her. She hadn't worked since her marriage, ten years before my birth. She was out of practice. Her secretarial skills had slipped, and the labor market was getting tighter and tighter. The European war was winding down and companies were already in the process of rolling over the female staff they had temporarily hired to make way for the returning GIs. Finally, through a friend, she had obtained a job at the local weekly newspaper selling advertising space. Small salary, smaller commission. She put in long hours around town (many of them drinking with prospective advertisers) and, when she was at home, she was on the phone, extending her work day. To help make ends meet she also took a part-time job as a recreation supervisor at the city park on the weekends. Basically, she was a glorified babysitter for other working mothers. Those, she must have thought, I am sure, with more productive jobs. And smaller hangovers! It was tough. No doubt about it.
As a five or six year old, I couldn't begin to appreciate what she was going through. But she had spent many years since then helping me to understand the nature of her sacrifices. I was continually reminded. God knows I have paid for each of them in the coin of guilt.
Well, I wasn't buying into it today. If I couldn't understand fully as a child, I could now at least temper my understanding with the knowledge that she was using every facet of this motherly sacrifice crap from the past to engender filial guilt in the present.
I knew how to conjure images for myself to combat the growing bud of doubt nurtured by her tirade.
* * *
How clearly I recall a bright, crisp Northern California day. It was just the beginning of summer in San Bruno, where we lived, fifteen miles south of San Francisco. The eucalyptus leaves glistened and rustled in the afternoon bluster; San Bruno was a windy town almost all year round.
My mother had bought a kite for me. It was bright red, shiny, made of delicate paper and balsa wood, a feathered leaf of crimson energy anxiously awaiting its maiden flight into the heavens. I had waited all week for the chance to see it soar among the clouds.
Mother, the park attendant, was in the middle of story time. A large gaggle of giggling kids had gathered around her bench as she led them delightedly through some fantastic adventure or another. It was one of her specialties, this ability to take flight from reality along with her listeners.
In the nearby unoccupied baseball field, I was unraveling a healthy length of twine in preparation for launching my bright paper bird skyward. Even Icarus could not have anticipated such delight!
Ten, fifteen, twenty feet of string lay between me and the kite. I drew the twine taut and began to run. The kite skidded across the ground and breasted into the air, the bow of its prow cleaving upward against the wind. Ten, fifteen, twenty feet it rose straight up, hovered momentarily, did a complete circle, and dived straight into the ground.
Over and over again, I tried to launch that kite into the afternoon sky. I ran fast. I ran slow. I ran with the wind. I ran against the wind. I used a short lead of string. I used a longer one. I changed the bend of the bow in the middle. Always with the same frustrating results: it dived straight downward after rising only slightly.
This, at my age, was a major crisis. I had waited days with eager anticipation to launch this flight, having flown it many times in my imagination.
With childish tears of bitter disappointment, I went to my mother, crying my plight. She read on to the children, shushing me. I tried the kite again, with the same results. Soon I was circling the story time group. crying and begging for help. I needed my mother.
Finally, fed up with the whimpering distraction, she jumped up, ran over to me, grabbed the br
ight red beauty from my hands, crushed it, and stuffed the pieces unceremoniously into a trash can.
I don't remember much after that; other than the wind, which was meant to carry my kite into the heavens, continuing through the afternoon as it chilled the tears on my cheeks.
Unaware of my utter devastation, my mother read on to those wind-blown children, taking them from one adventure to another.
** *
Now here she was reminding me of all the wonderful things she had done for me.
"Mom, you know I've always appreciated everything, but I'm almost twenty-four years old. I need to do my own thing."
"Own thing? Humph! Do what you want. You will anyway. You did when you joined the Air Force. I don't Know why I would think it will be any different now."
I Watched her stomp off toward the kitchen for a refill on the way to her couch in the living room. If anything, my mother was not subtle.
If the truth were to be known, the woman did still engender feelings of guilt in me. But these were not sentiments of insidious treachery for not fully appreciating her efforts on my behalf. Oh, no! The guilt was all self-generated. I was eaten up from within by conflicting emotions. Overwhelmed by an obligatory feeling to love my mother without question or reservation, I constantly discovered that I didn't. I couldn't. I wouldn't.
As I watched the stultifying heat waves rise off the pavement outside, I thought of the events starting six years earlier which had helped bring me to this moment of confrontation.
NIGHTANGEL
Why would a Catholic priest feel compelled to protect a girl who may very well become the mother of the antichrist? Nightangel's journey into terror begins with an incredible act of violence and a sense of dread that will end in a cascade of escalating terror, a vision horror that will keep the reader turning pages deep into a light-filled night.
NIGHTANGEL (CHAPTER ONE)
Father Mike Gilroy hurried out the back door of the rectory. It was the shortest path to the sacristy at the rear of the church and he was anxious to spend a little quiet time in front of the altar.
Mike frequently thought that although, St. Theresa's might not be as atmospheric as Mission Dolores, just a couple of miles away, it was a good place to pray and meditate. It was his place, his ministry.