Nocturnal

  Polyester Rich. As soon as he arrived, Pookie and Bryan would be locked out of the case. If Pookie wanted answers, he had to get them now. “What’s Verde’s ETA?”

  “He said fifteen minutes.”

  “We’ll take the witness,” Pookie said. “Where is she?”

  Hood pointed to the green apartment building across the street from the white van where Jay had died. “Apartment 215,” he said, then walked away.

  Bryan stepped out of the ambulance. “We have a witness that saw a snake-face?”

  Pookie nodded. “So it seems.”

  That old excitement flashed in Bryan’s eyes, but only for a second. He looked down again. “Look, man, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m putting you in a really shitty spot. So here’s your out — if you say the word, I’ll go downtown and turn myself in. I’ll tell the chief all about my dreams and let her figure out what to do next. You want me to do that?”

  It shocked Pookie how badly he wanted to say yes. Shocked him, and filled him with guilt. Bryan Clauser had saved his life. They were partners. They were friends. And, God help him, Pookie just flat-out believed that Bryan Clauser was innocent.

  He looked to the green building across the street. Could the witness in there somehow validate what Bryan had seen in his dreams?

  “Come on,” Pookie said. “I have to talk to this woman. You’re my partner, so you get to tag along.”

  Bryan looked up, looked Pookie in the eyes. He nodded. They both knew that Pookie was putting his career on the line.

  “Thanks,” Bryan said. “I mean it. Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me yet, Terminator. Maybe you and this Tiffany Hine both wind up in a straitjacket before sunrise. Polyester Rich will be here soon, so let’s make this quick. Who knows? You might actually get your monstery lineup after all.”

  The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is …

  He had a flashlight pinned under his right armpit, its oblong of illumination dancing madly off a drawing of Jay Parlar taking a fire ax to the stomach. The beam danced because of what Rex was doing with his left hand. It was bad, it was unclean, but he couldn’t stop. His cast-clad right hand rested on the edge of his desk, the only thing stopping him from falling down.

  Rex’s left hand did the nasty thing. Even though he’d never done it before, he knew it felt wrong.

  He was right-handed.

  Come on, come on …

  He’d woken up all wet, his blankets soaked with sweat, his breath ragged and his heart beating so loud he heard it. The dream. It had been so real.

  He’d watched Jay Parlar die.

  And that had made his dick hard, so painfully hard.

  Naughty, awful, bad. Dreaming it was shameful, but now he was making it worse just stop it Rex just stop it but he could not.

  The fingers of his right hand curled tight against the cast across his palm. He couldn’t think. Come on come on couldn’t think come on come on come on …

  The flashlight dropped to the floor. He grabbed at his right hand, pulled, tore, smashed his right arm into his desk making a big bang, then pulling and tearing again, and then it feels so good come on come on come on.

  The flashlight no longer lit up the desk, but that didn’t matter; he saw his drawing in his mind — a pencil sketch of Jay Parlar, eyes wide and wet, snot hanging from his nose, mouth open and pleading for his life.

  Die you bully I will kill you I will come on come oncomeoncomeon …

  “Hate … you …” Rex said, then his breath locked up in his throat and his thoughts faded away. All sensations vanished, all but the sound of Jay Parlar’s final scream.

  Rex’s knees buckled. He caught the edge of the desk to stop from falling. Sweat dripped down his forehead.

  He picked up the flashlight and pointed the beam at his drawing. Oh, no … he’d jizzed right on the picture of Jay Parlar’s pleading, terrified face. What did that mean? Rex felt tears well up — what was wrong with him? Why did he have to do the thing that Roberta told him was bad, that she said was sinful and dirty?

  His right arm tingled with cool dampness.

  Rex held his right hand in front of the flashlight beam.

  The cast was gone.

  The skin on his arm goosebumped, still tacky with sweat that had built up inside the plaster. He pointed the flashlight at the floor. The cracked, floppy ruin of his cast lay on the carpet.

  He looked at his right arm again. He made a slow fist. The spot where Alex had stomped … it looked fine. It didn’t feel broken anymore. The doctor had said he’d be in the cast for weeks.

  The doctor had said that the day before yesterday.

  Rex suddenly realized that the aches he’d suffered for days, his pains, his fever … all of it was gone.

  Gone.

  But that didn’t matter right now. He had to clean up before Roberta saw what he’d done. Just leaving his bed unmade got three hits with the belt — how bad would she beat him if she saw he’d been jacking off? He’d get the paddle for sure. He was in trouble, so much trouble. The pieces of his cast went into the trash. He could dump that tomorrow while Roberta watched the morning news. He grabbed tissues from a box of Kleenex and wiped at the picture. Some of the pencil lines blurred, smudged. Would Roberta know? Probably not, she never looked at his pictures anyway.

  And that cast had been expensive. Roberta would freak out that he’d ruined it. Rex looked around his room. Nothing really seemed out of place. Sometimes she went days without coming in here at all. Sometimes he slept in the park and didn’t even come home. Once he’d been gone for two nights in a row and she hadn’t even noticed.

  Maybe he could do that again, go hide in the park or something. Maybe in a few days he could tell her the cast just fell off.

  Rex wiped snot away from his nose. He crawled into bed and pulled the blankets tight around him. He shouldn’t have done that nasty thing, but now he felt better. He’d gotten it out of his system. Imagining Oscar’s murder, jizzing to it, that was a onetime thing. It was bad, but he would never do it again.

  Never.

  But still, what if Roberta found out?

  Rex’s breath suddenly stopped. He stared at the ceiling without really seeing it. A thought, so new, so shocking, so … revolutionary … had flashed through his head, grabbed him and wouldn’t let go.

  What if Roberta found out? No. So what if Roberta found out. So what?

  Father Paul Maloney.

  Oscar Woody.

  Both of them had hurt Rex. Rex had drawn them, and now they were dead. Roberta hurt Rex all the time … he could draw her, too.

  Maybe Rex didn’t need to be afraid anymore.

  And tonight, he’d drawn Jay Parlar. Would Jay still be alive tomorrow?

  Rex closed his eyes, a smile on his lips as he fell asleep.

  Bryan Lets Pookie Do the Talking

  Sixty-seven-year-old Tiffany Hine didn’t look a day over sixty-six and a half. Bryan thought her apartment smelled exactly the way you’d think an old lady’s apartment smelled — stale violets, baby powder and medicine. She had a high, soft voice and frizzy silver hair long past a glorious prime. She wore a yellow flowered robe and worn pink slippers. Her eyes looked clear and focused, the kind of eyes that could see right through the bullshit of any child (or grandchild, for that matter). Those eyes sported deep laugh lines. At the moment, the lines on her face showed real fear.

  She was old, but she looked sharp. She looked sane, and that was what Bryan desperately needed to believe.

  Pookie and Tiffany sat next to each other on a plastic-covered couch. Bryan stood by, looking out the living room window to Geary Street below — and across the street, to the van where Jay Parlar had died. Bryan’s sour stomach threatened to twist him in knots. His head swam so bad he had to keep a hand on the wall to stop from swaying. It was usually best to let Pookie do the talking; now, it was a necessity.

  “Just take it from the beginning, ma’am,” Pookie said.

  “I alrea
dy told the other man, the one with the uniform,” Tiffany said. “You don’t have a uniform. And I might add it’s time for you to get a new jacket, young man. The one you’re wearing probably stopped fitting you twenty pounds ago.”

  Pookie smiled. “I’m a homicide inspector, ma’am. We don’t wear uniforms. But I still eat lots of donuts, as you can tell.”

  She smiled. It was a genuine smile, although halfhearted and a bit empty. What she had seen affected her to the core. “Fine, I’ll tell you. But this is the last time.”

  Pookie nodded.

  “As you can see, my window looks out on Geary. I look out on the street a lot. I like to watch people go by and imagine what their stories are.”

  Outside the window, morning sunlight was just beginning to hit the blacktop. This woman had really been staring out the window at such a convenient time? Bryan wanted Pookie to get to the point, get to the part with the snake-face, but Pookie had his own way of doing things and Bryan had to be patient.

  “At three in the morning?” Pookie said. “Kind of late for people watching, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t sleep well,” Tiffany said. “Thoughts of mortality, you see. Of how everything is just going to … end. Don’t worry, young man, if you aren’t thinking about it already, you will soon enough.”

  Pookie nodded. “Thoughts of mortality come with my job. Please continue.”

  Tiffany did. “So I’m looking out the window, and I see this young man across the street, wearing a crimson jacket. I’ve seen him before. He and three other boys wander the streets at all hours. I recognize them because they all wear the same colors — crimson, white and gold. But tonight, it was just the one boy.”

  Pookie made a few notes on his pad.

  “The boy was walking fast,” Tiffany said. “That’s what caught my attention. He kept looking behind him, like he thought someone was following him, perhaps. Then the bums dropped down.”

  Bryan turned away from the window. Dropped down?

  “Dropped down,” Pookie said, echoing Bryan’s thoughts. “You said bums dropped down? Dropped down from where?”

  Tiffany shrugged. “From the roof of that apartment building across the street, I imagine. It was like they … like they fell, from windowsill to windowsill. But not an accident. On purpose.”

  “I see,” Pookie said. “And you got a good look at them?”

  She shrugged again. “As good as I could, considering the light and how fast they moved. They dropped down, grabbed him, then went up again.”

  Pookie scribbled. “And how did they go up? Fire escape?”

  She shook her head and stared off to some spot in the room. “They went up the same way they came down. Window to window. I’ve never seen people jump that high. It wasn’t as if they stuck to the walls like Spider-Man, mind you — it was more like watching a squirrel scramble up an oak tree. They went up four stories so fast I couldn’t believe it.”

  Bryan looked to the building across the street and tried to visualize what she had seen. Even if someone could climb from windowsill to windowsill, some acrobat or whatever, no one could climb those four stories with any kind of speed.

  Pookie nodded and wrote, as if hearing about someone scrambling up the side of a building were an everyday occurrence. “That’s fine,” he said. “And could you describe the men, please?”

  Tiffany cleared her throat again. “They were big, maybe a foot taller than the boy. Maybe even more. They both had these dirty blankets draped over their shoulders.”

  “You called them bums?” Pookie said.

  “That was my first reaction,” Tiffany said. “I mean, if I saw those men on the street, all bundled up like that, I probably wouldn’t even notice them. You see people like that all the time, the poor souls. But these men … well, the blankets seemed to … to loosen up, maybe. The blankets slid away from their faces a little.” She stared off to a corner of the room. She continued in a barely audible whisper. “That’s when I saw the one with green skin and a pointy face. Like a snake. The other one” — Tiffany mimed pulling at her nose, pulling it out a foot from her face — “had a long snoot, and it looked like he had brown hair all over it. I also saw he had brown legs, covered in hair, the same as his face.”

  Bryan breathed slowly. Dirty blankets, just like in his dream. And brown hair. Like the brown hair Sammy Berzon had found on the blanket covering Oscar Woody’s corpse. If she had actually seen this, then maybe he wasn’t crazy after all.

  “Oh,” she said. “There was one more thing. The one with the brown legs was wearing Bermuda shorts.”

  “Bermuda shorts,” Pookie said, writing it down in his notebook. “The one that looked like a werewolf was wearing Bermuda shorts?”

  Tiffany tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “I never said werewolf. I only got a glimpse when he grabbed the boy, when the blanket loosened up a little. The big snoot … it was like a dog’s, but the jaws didn’t line up right. He had a long tongue that hung off one side. People …” she stopped, looked down to her carpet, the fear now totally in control of her face and voice “… people don’t look like that.”

  “Then what happened?”

  She licked her lips. Her hands were shaking. “Then I didn’t see anything for a bit. Then there was this fireball from up on the roof. I saw the boy engulfed in it.”

  “Did you see what caused the fireball?”

  She shook her head. “No, it was too bright. I only saw the boy because he was silhouetted. Then he was burning. There were others on the roof, in the blankets. The boy … he was still on fire and he … he jumped. Whatever was up there with him, he chose to kill himself rather than face it.”

  Pookie lowered the notepad. “Ma’am, this has been very helpful. Would you mind if a sketch artist came over?”

  She shook her head violently, instantly. “As soon as you boys leave, I’m not talking about this again. Ever.”

  “But this could be helpful to our—”

  “Leave,” she said. “I did my part.”

  The front door opened, and they all turned to look. No knock, no buzzer, just Rich Verde storming in, resplendent in a dark-purple suit. Where the hell did that guy shop? Behind Verde walked Bobby Pigeon, and behind Bobby came Officer Stuart Hood. Hood had a look on his face like he’d just been reamed out good and proper.

  “Chang,” Verde said. “What are you doing here?”

  Pookie smiled wide. Despite the horrible circumstances, Bryan knew Pookie wouldn’t pass up a chance to get under Verde’s skin.

  “Just interviewing the witness,” Pookie said. “On account of how we were here first because you were probably getting your sleepy time.”

  Rich glared at him, then walked up to Tiffany. He flashed a smile as fake as the fabric of his clothes.

  “Ma’am, I’m Inspector Richard Verde. I’d like to ask you a few questions about what you saw tonight.”

  Tiffany sighed and shook her head. “Please leave my home.”

  “But, ma’am,” Polyester Rich said, “we need to—”

  “I’ve told my story,” Tiffany said. She pointed to Hood. “I told him” — she pointed at Pookie — “and I told him. Hopefully, Mister Verde, your co-workers take good notes because I’m never speaking of this again.”

  Tiffany’s voice carried the authority of a disciplinarian mother. She didn’t take shit from anyone.

  Rich started to protest. Bryan saw Pookie tilting his head toward the door. Time to get out while the getting was good. Excellent idea.

  Bryan quickly walked to the door, followed Pookie out, and the two all but ran down the stairs.

  “Fuck Verde,” Pookie said. “He’ll get my notes, but when I’m damn good and ready to give them up.”

  “Doesn’t work that way, Pooks. He’s the lead. Give him your info.”

  “Yeah-yeah-yeah,” Pookie said. “He’ll get Hood’s notes, for starters. Of course I’ll give him mine, but I’ll make him say please first. That will drive him crazy.”
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  They reached the ground floor and stopped in the building’s entryway.

  Pookie looked at his notepad, read something, then looked at Bryan. “You know that old biddy’s story is nuckingfuts,” he said. “She took the express train to Looney Land.”

  Bryan nodded. “Totally crazy.”

  Pookie rubbed his chin. Bryan could barely breathe.

  Pookie slapped the notepad against his open palm. “I mean, guys scaling down the wall, and back up again? I’m supposed to assume it was … I don’t know … stuntmen in Halloween costumes snatching a kid?”

  Pookie stared at the notepad again. Bryan waited, letting his partner work through this. Tiffany’s testimony was close to Bryan’s dreams, too close for coincidence. After her description, if Pookie still didn’t believe, he probably never would.

  “Pooks, she used the words snake-face. I didn’t prompt her — you know that, right?”

  Pookie nodded, slowly. “Yeah. Kind of specific. Not the same thing as saying it was a black guy.”

  Bryan needed Pookie to believe him, believe in him. If Pookie did not, Bryan would truly be in this all alone.

  Pookie sighed, smiled, looked to the ceiling. “I’ve got the testimony of a senile old woman who was probably tripping on acid, who saw something for three seconds, and I’ve got your dreams. I’d have to be an idiot to believe you.”

  “She’s not senile,” Bryan said. “And I didn’t see any Deadhead stickers in there.”

  Pookie took a deep breath and let it out in a cheek-puffing huff. “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Maybe I need to take the short bus to work, but I believe you. This doesn’t mean it’s a guy with an actual face of a snake, Bri-Bri. These are dudes in costumes. I can’t explain your dreams, but the scaling the building thing? It was late at night, Tiffany could have missed cables, ropes, your general circus paraphernalia.”

  Bryan nodded, but he knew there hadn’t been ropes. And he knew there hadn’t been costumes. That didn’t matter — what mattered was that Pookie believed he wasn’t crazy. For now, that was enough.