Shetani's Sister

  Rucker spun and punched Jenkins hard on the jaw. He fell heavily and lay moaning on the carpet. Rucker turned and went up the stairway to his bedroom. Opal joined him several minutes later.

  “Ruck, are you insane? How dare you strike a guest in this house!” she said angrily.

  He looked up at her from the side of the bed. “I’m not insane or sorry.”

  Opal’s eyes softened. She sat down beside him and stroked his back. “You’re drinking again…”

  He jerked himself to his feet and paced the floor. He stopped in front of her and looked into her eyes. “Yeah, my drinking is as much a part of my life as your lousy religion is to yours. So what?”

  She got to her feet. “So I’m sorry about us, Ruck,” she said softly as she turned to leave.

  “Tell Rebecca I’m going to check into a hotel in the morning,” he said to her back. She nodded and went through the bathroom to her bedroom. He got a bottle from his bag and sat in a leather chair near a picture window. He stared out at the lights of Brooklyn’s streets and blotted out his pain and unhappiness with vodka.

  —

  Leo Crane, Rucker’s longtime friend and protégé, awakened in North Hollywood after a fitful night of Seconal sleep. He winced and closed his eyes against a spear of late-morning sunlight coming through an opening in heavy blue drapes. He heard the drone of a vacuum cleaner issuing from the living room. He bolted upright on the bed. What if Millie, his wife, got to the mail first and found a notice from the bank, warning that their house note was two months overdue? He looked at ten-thirty on his wristwatch. He sighed relief. The mailman wasn’t due for an hour or so.

  He let himself down on the pillows and lit a cigarette. Bleak wings of depression flapped inside his head. He glared at his nearly emaciated face, reflected in the dresser mirror like a death mask, starkly pale in the near-darkness of the room.

  Tension and misery fluttered his heartbeat. Suddenly a recurring panic seized him. He again jerked upright in the bed. His heart drummed wildly, and he felt drenched in sweat. His hand shook like that of a palsy victim as he put his cigarette on an ashtray. He was transfixed, staring at his bulging eyes reflected in the dresser mirror. He was convinced that he was close to death. He shook in terror for two minutes before he collapsed to a prone position, free of the attack. Finally, he got up and staggered to the closet. He took a packet from the toe of a shoe at the back of the closet. He went to the bathroom and stripped off his pajamas. He unwrapped the brown paper packet. He shook cocaine from a nearly empty glassine bag into water in a bent spoon. He stirred the mix with a long fingernail before he filtered the liquid into a syringe through a bit of cotton.

  He raised his left arm and put his palm against the wall above the washbowl mirror. His armpit was shaved clean. He eased the spike into an armpit vein. He vomited into the bowl as he shot the dope. He backed up and sat on the toilet seat to defecate. A moment later, he frowned at the only fair quality of the coke, and there was his suspicion that it had been cut heavily with mannitol, a baby laxative. He sat there, hating his dependence on the drug. He smiled bitterly as he remembered how he had started using the treacherous powder a year ago. He had busted a small-time narcotics suspect dealing out of a poolroom john. His curiosity about the drug of the stars and the affluent had led him to retain one of the twenty-odd retail bags of coke when he booked the evidence and the suspect into Hollywood Division.

  After relieving himself, Crane got under the shower and made a mental memo that he just wouldn’t spend $130 per gram for low-quality coke.

  He shot his coke bag empty before he left the bathroom to dress. The coke hadn’t lifted him to the ideal height of ecstasy, but he whistled as he dressed, without depression.

  Finished, he studied himself in the full-length mirror on the closet door. The dark-gray business suit didn’t fit perfectly anymore. He promised himself that he would eat more starches—more food, period—to gain weight.

  He moved closer to the mirror and frowned as he noticed a new sprouting of gray hairs in his full auburn mop. He sighed and turned quickly away, toward the door. He nearly bumped into Millie entering the bedroom.

  “Good morning, handsome. Breakfast is ready,” she cooed as she embraced his waist and tiptoed, with her lips pursed for a kiss.

  “Hi, Mil,” he said as he kissed and hugged her.

  She stepped back, with a proud look on her cute round face. “Leo, I weighed myself this morning and I’ve dropped two more pounds. Look at this!” She spun around, her back facing him. She pulled her tentlike nightgown tight across her ample waist and heavy buttocks. “See, I’m getting a waistline again, and my rear end is going to be the way you like it, round and pretty again. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  Crane embraced her and nuzzled the back of her neck through her long black hair. “Sure, Mil, you’re doing great. Stay with it, sweet girl,” he said as he released her. He took her hand and led her down the hallway toward the kitchen.

  She sat at the table with him while he had oatmeal and rye toast. He was rising from the table when he saw the mailman leave the front porch. Millie was putting dishes into the dishwasher.

  She followed him to the front door. “Darling, I hope you get the chance to come home early one night soon…I’ve been saving a bunch of sugar,” she said, with her large brown eyes and sultry voice dripping starved passion.

  “Baby, I hope so, too. But we may be out of luck until Rucker gets back from vacation,” he said softly as he swung open the door. He kissed her forehead and stepped onto the porch.

  “I’ll see if there’s mail,” he said as he went to the box, out of her sight. He riffled through several pieces and removed a Bank of America envelope, which he put into his coat pocket.

  He gave the other mail to Millie, went to the garage, and backed his three-year-old Ford LTD station wagon into the quiet street.

  He drove directly to a record shop on Hollywood Boulevard. He got a parking space a short distance from the shocking-pink-façaded mecca for punk and hard-rock fanatics.

  Ralph Rosen, his cousin and football pal from high school, was the owner. Rosen had copped the cocaine for Crane that had him fullbacking through startled pedestrians in his rush to relieve himself.

  Crane trotted into the garish interior of the shop, where Rosen was spinning a deafening record for a group of androgynous rock freaks.

  Crane dashed behind the counter. He gave gigantic Rosen the heel of his hand to a shoulder as he galloped to the john behind a curtain at the rear of the joint.

  Rosen was alone when Crane emerged. Rosen’s bearded face was concerned. “Hey, buddy, you sick?” Rosen asked in his pipsqueak voice.

  “You’re goddamn right I am. That alleged coke you copped has me crapping every hour. Do me a favor, Ralph, and—”

  Crane was cut off by one of several horse players who entered the shop in succession to lay bets.

  At the last departure, Crane said, “As I was saying, do me a favor and cop from another dealer. I can score fucking laxative myself over the counter.”

  Rosen nervously shuffled his feet under Crane’s hard gray eyes. “I’m sorry, Leo, I’ll find another dealer. It may take a few days to score for high-grade stuff.”

  Crane leaned into Rosen’s face. “I’ll appreciate it…How is your book doing?”

  Rosen’s tongue flashed across his red lips. “Pretty good, but it’s been better. You in trouble?”

  Crane smiled. “Yeah, old buddy. I need eight bills for a couple of months, to keep the bank from stealing my house.”

  Rosen went behind the curtain and returned, palming a wad of bills. They shook hands.

  “Thanks, Ralph. See ya,” Crane said as he turned away for the street. He drove east on Hollywood Boulevard, looking for hookers who might be working early in the day. As Rucker’s replacement, he drove himself to work longer hours than his boss to keep Hollywood free of street hookers. If he got fatigued, he’d go to one of the cots in the squad’s briefing room t
o catnap.

  He thought of Millie. He remembered that, five years before, he had developed a passion for young hookers. His sex life with straitlaced Millie had waned and soured.

  Hollywood Boulevard was hooker-free. He worked in his own vehicle, with a department gas allowance. He believed that driving a station wagon would enhance his trick image for hookers.

  He stopped at his bank to pay the overdue house notes. He cruised sun-splashed Sunset Boulevard. He hawkeyed the crowded sidewalks. He stomped his brake pedal. He’d come within inches of rear-ending a vehicle ahead of him. His eyes had been the captive of a snow blonde. Petra!

  At first stare, he didn’t make her as a hooker. She had a starlet’s image in her short but chic ice-blue dress and off-white bag, with baby-doll heels. But after his trance, he saw her spin and dart too quickly into a drugstore with just a subtle hooker’s look of apprehension on her patrician face.

  He glanced at his rearview mirror. He saw a black-and-white squad car several cars behind him to confirm his suspicion. She was the sexiest, most gorgeous hooker he’d ever seen. She was any magazine’s candidate for centerfold, he thought.

  He turned into a side street. He came back to park diagonally across the street from the drugstore.

  Petra came out of the store. Within seconds, he saw her get into a vintage Lincoln. It was driven by an elderly white man.

  Crane shook his head and wondered how such a creature could become a hooker. He knew the odds were she wouldn’t turn the old john in his car in bright daylight. He couldn’t U-turn in the heavy traffic to follow and bust her in the act if she was that reckless. He’d wait to pick her up and bust her later.

  He drove two blocks away from the drugstore and parked. He scooted over to the passenger side of the front seat. He put binoculars on the sidewalk in front of the drugstore. If she showed again, he’d pull into the store’s red-zone curb, as the john had done, to take a shot at her.

  After forty-five minutes, he gave up and combed Sunset to spot her.

  After 3:00 p.m., he nodded in passing to members of his squad’s first shift. He also dipped his head to several decoy policewomen, starting their shift, to bust johns who offered them money for sex.

  He had busted two young white hookers before twilight arrived. At this point, he usually snorted coke or went to the briefing room to let down or to catnap.

  He was out of coke and yet felt no fatigue. He was energized by his search for Petra. It was after 8:00 p.m., near Crescent Heights and Sunset, when he found her. Her waist-long mane was like white flame on the backdrop of night. Her short black dress squeezed her curves. Rhinestones on her red shoes showered sparkle like shooting stars as her exquisite gams balleted her down the boulevard.

  She surveyed car traffic with her peripheral vision and an almost imperceptible turn of her head.

  Crane, following her, was timing his moves so that they would arrive at the next street corner together. They did. He smiled and stared at her, john fashion. He turned past her into the side street to park. If she decided he looked like a customer, she would come to his car to size him up at close range.

  His pulse hammered when he saw her coming toward him. He told himself the lie that he was always this excited when he was about to spring a trap on his quarry. He leaned toward the open window on the passenger side.

  Satan’s slave stuck her radiant head into the wagon and electrified its interior with sex appeal. He was speechless for a moment. She filled the vacuum. “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were someone I know that would give me a lift,” she said as she started to withdraw.

  He found his voice, Israeli-accented. “Say, wait! My name is Chaim. I’d be delighted to drop off such a beautiful lady like yourself.”

  She studied him for a long moment. He smiled inside. He thought that using the accent and giving the Hebrew form of “Herman” as his trick name to hookers helped to throw them off.

  It worked a bit. She smiled and got in. She was still not sure his pedigree was trick. She said in her soft contralto, “I’m Skye. Thank you so much, Chaim.” She noticed his Adam’s apple wobble when his eyes were snared by her sculpted thighs, exposed to a mere two inches from the bush that bulged her panties.

  He felt his penis stir and thicken. “Skye, I hope you won’t mind if I say a few words before I drop you off,” he said with a hot quaver.

  Instantly he regretted his loss of control, because he knew of the hooker paranoia about johns who got emotional up front. He thought of Rucker, his strong mentor, and regretted his weakness even more. He vowed to himself that if he trapped this heavenly body he’d bust her. He wouldn’t fuck her, as he had done in the past with girls who had wow appeal.

  He softened his gray eyes as she studied his face with a slight frown. He thought, would she decide he was an overacting cop or a high-risk rapist, a killer type?

  Primarily, Petra read voices rather than faces, which most street hookers were prone to do. She heard the heat in his voice as real. This, coupled with the Jewish image, relaxed her somewhat.

  “Say away, Chaim,” she said sweetly, with her New York accent.

  He almost whispered, “I’ve got a lovely wife at home, and I can’t complain about her as a lover…This is crazy!” He closed his eyes and pressed fingertips against his temples before he continued. “I saw you walking down that sidewalk like a Viking princess. Never have I been so excited. I guess, as the rabbi would say, my desire to go to bed with you overwhelmed my sense of morality. I’m not a rich man. But, Skye, I’m willing to reward you to the limit of my purse for a few minutes in bed with you.”

  He felt in control. He remembered that his pitch had conned dozens of hookers into Sybil Brand jail. He knew it was entrapment. So what? he had thought. His conviction rate was very high. Now he felt that his pitch, and her likely Big Apple contempt for hick West Coast cops, would block out her caution. It was a fact that the shark vice cops in the Apple had not busted Petra in more than two years.

  “Chaim, I may be too expensive,” she said as she leaned to finger-stroke one of his nipples through his shirt.

  “How much, Skye?” he asked, with his head cocked to the side like a child.

  “A C-note for a short-time half-and-half, Chaim,” she sang as her fingers stroked his rising enemy through his trousers.

  He slapped away her hand, and she recoiled with mouth agape. She was doubly shocked to see triumph transform his face. She jerked her head toward the door beside her as he clicked it locked from his door.

  “You’re under arrest for violation of Code 647b,” he said in his normal voice. He keyed on the engine. He looked into the rearview mirror for the chance to pull the wagon into the flow of traffic.

  Petra stared at him. She was stunned, and then she was desperate to free herself. It wasn’t the bail. She had more than enough for that in her bosom. It was the spirit of her master, Shetani, that seemed to invade the wagon and her head that prodded her to beat the bust.

  Crane eased the wagon into traffic. She remembered her master’s compliments for her long street roll with no arrests. And he had thrilled her soul and nourished her hooker heart when he trusted her to scout L.A. No, she told herself, she couldn’t let this cop, who she felt strongly was just a trick with a badge, bust her. And, she reminded herself, she was main bitch in a sixteen-girl stable. She wouldn’t hold still for this bust, like some rookie hooker from Podunk Nowhere.

  She could cry angry tears at will when she thought about her socialite mother, dead for a decade. She wept and drew herself into a fetal ball, with her dress hiked up to her waist. Her alabaster ass, scarcely covered by red bikini panties, shone for Crane.

  He eyeballed it at a red light. His enemy throbbed and hardened on the green. “You goddamn cunt! Stop that crying!” he shouted as he violently jerked her dress down to cover the oval seducer. He shot the wagon away toward the station.

  “This is unfair!…I’m not really a whore. I’ve never tried this before. Please, let me go
!” she blubbered.

  He laughed. “You mean I’m the first man you’ve propositioned?” She nodded. “You’re a damn liar. I saw an old guy pick you up in front of the drugstore on Sunset.”

  She half turned her face toward him. “Forgive me. I honestly forgot him…He was broke. If you knew why I’m out here, you would let me go.”

  He snickered. “You’re out here to keep your pimp’s foot out of your ass.”

  She sat up and blotted tears with tissues from her purse. She shook her head vigorously as her mind raced to structure sure-shot con. He had driven to within five blocks of the station. “Please, don’t take me to the station. Please, pull over to hear how I was forced into the street,” she begged, her soulful eyes beaming into his for a moment.

  He turned his head and stared straight ahead. His face was hard as he pressed down on the accelerator. “I don’t want to hear your crap.”

  She moved across the seat to press herself against him. “Please! Give me just a couple of minutes.”

  “Don’t touch me, bitch!” he said coldly as he jabbed an elbow into her side.

  She moved away and spewed tears again. He jerked the steering wheel toward the curb and parked, with the wagon’s engine running. His fingertips drummed the steering wheel. “Spill it fast.”

  She cleared her throat. “I’ve got a kid brother on dialysis back in Syracuse, my hometown. He’s in line for a donor kidney and transplant. I’m sure you know how expensive that can—”

  He flung an arm through the air near her face to cut her off. “Shut up! You think I’m a fucking idiot? You’re twice as beautiful as any model I’ve ever seen. Syracuse is like the backyard of the Apple, the capital of the model agencies. You expect me to believe that you’re such a dummy that you would choose the mean streets of Hollywood instead to raise the bread you need?”

  She said firmly, “Please, don’t use up my time. Listen to the truth. My figure is too full for modeling. I was tricked into coming west by a small-time con man with a stolen Mercedes and fake diamonds. He promised to get a large loan on one of the valuable properties he owned in Vegas to solve my money problem.” She paused to heave a dramatic sigh. “All he really owned was several thou and a sucker system he was certain could beat the roulette wheel at the Sands. He busted out. He went to jail when he tried to sell the Mercedes with a phony pink slip to an undercover cop. I came to L.A. this morning.”