A Killer’s Kiss

39

Sims and Hanratty, back again to where it all began.

“Are we interrupting something, Victor?” said Sims, looking through the crack of the door and past my shoulder to the two nefarious characters in my living room.

“Nothing worth talking about.”

He eyed my shirt, still clutched, a rough circle of blood beginning to appear on the cloth, took in the burgeoning bruise on my face, my bleeding ear. Then he peered into my eyes as if to figure out what the hell was going on.

“You mind if we come in?” he said.

“Does it matter if I say yes?”

“No.”

“Then by all means,” I said as I opened the door wide, letting them through. Once in the apartment, the two cops stood side by side – Sims dark and furtive, Hanratty solid as granite with a Mount Rushmore jaw – and stared at the two other men in my apartment like a pair of fighting dogs sizing up the competition.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us to your guests?” said Sims. “We so much would like to meet them, wouldn’t we, Hanratty?”

Hanratty glowered and said nothing.

“Hanratty is always looking for new friends,” said Sims, “since he tends to break the old ones.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “How rude of me. Detective Sims, Detective Hanratty, this is Gregor Trocek and his boy toy Sandro.”

Sandro hissed at me with his Andalusian lisp.

“Gregor Trocek,” said Sims. “Gregor Trocek. Where have I heard that name before?”

“It is quite common,” said Gregor. “Pleasure meeting you both, but we must be going. We have business meeting to attend.”

“At this time of night?” said Sims. “It must be some business. Gregor Trocek. Gregor Trocek.” He tapped his chin twice, and then his eyes lit up. “Of course. Gregor Trocek. What a coincidence. I was just this evening reading the Interpol file of a Gregor Trocek. A rather nasty villain.”

“Must be different Gregor Trocek,” said Gregor Trocek.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Sims. “The Gregor Trocek I was reading about was approximately your height, approximately your weight, had the same beady eyes and unkempt beard, the same air of perverse dissoluteness. He is wanted for questioning in Belgium about a notorious sex crime. A young girl violently assaulted. Shockingly young, actually. The community is still in an uproar. He is under investigation in Albania. Something about trafficking in young women. What was the term in the file? Oh, yes, the white slave trade. Quite evocative, no? And he is barred from entering Thailand and Cambodia. I can’t imagine what bestiality one must commit to be banned from entering Thailand and Cambodia. Care to comment?”

“I am innocent of everything,” said Gregor.

“Yes,” said Sims, eyeing him up and down. “You look like an innocent. What should we do with this piece of trash, Hanratty?”

“Take him in,” said Hanratty, “put him in the box, ship him FedEx to Brussels.”

“You have no jurisdiction,” said Gregor.

“Maybe not, but Immigration does. When I talked to them this evening, they seemed quite interested in your case. They were already looking for you. Apparently, you didn’t inform them of any criminal problems on your visa application. They are making a recommendation to the FBI tomorrow.”

“Let’s hold him until then,” said Hanratty.

“If only we could,” said Sims. “If only we could.”

“But I assume from your tone of regret that you can’t,” said Gregor. “So that is it, then. Off we go. It was an experience being introduced to you both. I will be in touch, Victor.”

“Enjoy your meeting,” I said.

“I intend to. Come, Sandro.”

Gregor, with a hurry-up hitch in his stride, headed for the door, Sandro right behind.

“Oh, Mr. Trocek,” said Sims. “One more thing.”

Gregor stopped, turned around. His hands trembled, as if he were straining to keep them from wringing Sims’s neck.

“If I see you again,” said Sims, “I’ll shoot you in the face.”

Trocek stood there for a moment, staring back at Sims, before the slightest smile broke beneath the thatch of his beard. Something burst to life between them just then, some spark, containing in its charge a combustible mixture of greed and violence. I sensed that someday soon Sims and Trocek would meet again, and two of my problems might disappear all at once.

When Gregor left, Sims turned to me. “Quite a disreputable crowd you’re hanging out with,” he said.

“Not by choice,” I said. “Very little that has happened to me as of late has been by choice. Take you two guys always popping in uninvited. Before we chat, do you mind if I go into my bedroom and get a new shirt? This one is a little worse for wear.”

“Yes, we do mind,” said Hanratty as he reached into his jacket pocket, took out a pair of blue rubber gloves, slipped them onto his huge hands.

“What are you doing? My prostate is fine.”

Sims pulled a document from his overcoat and waved it once before putting it away. “We have a warrant. Hanratty’s going to search your bedroom. Relax, Victor. This won’t take long.”

“That’s what they say when they check your prostate.”

While Hanratty disappeared into my bedroom, I sat down on the edge of the couch, leaning forward, one hand still clutching the shirt to my chest. Sims sat with a certain ease in my easy chair, leaning back comfortably, one leg crossed over the other.

“I’d ask about your shirt and the blood,” said Sims, “but I try not to get into people’s sexual practices unless absolutely necessary.”

“This has nothing to do with-”

“Not yet, Victor. We’ll talk, we’ll have quite the conversation, but not just yet.”

“What kind of-”

“Shhhh,” said Sims. “Save it all for later. For now let Hanratty do his work.”

From my bedroom came the sound of clothes rustling, of furniture being moved, of objects being tossed carelessly about. Something shattered against a wall. Sims didn’t so much as flinch.

“Can I see the warrant at least?” I said.

“No.”

“But the law says-”

“I know what the law says,” said Sims. “Just be patient. Everything will come clear, one way or the other, soon enough.”

And soon enough it did. From the doorway to my bedroom appeared Hanratty, a crooked smile on his stalwart face. And in one hand, still sheathed in blue rubber, he held out, like a magician displaying a startled rabbit pulled from his hat, a plastic bag.

And inside the plastic bag was a gun, big and shiny, and though I had never seen it before, I knew right away which gun, of all the guns in the world, was this gun and whom it had killed.

It’s hard to parse the swirling swill of emotions I felt at that very moment. There was the inevitable shock, though how I could have been shocked was a mystery. And there was anger, a generalized anger at the bastards who had set up the frame and the two cops who were walking right through it. And there was fear, yes, fear that after all the crimes and misdemeanors in my life, I was being caught at something I hadn’t done. The UPS guy always rings twice, I suppose. And let’s not forget the sadness, too, yes, of course, I admit it, sadness at the past that was obliterated and the future altered by the sheen of the gun’s silvery barrel.

But most of all, and this may be the truest revelation of this whole sordid tale, even as I felt the frame of guilt close in on me, what I felt surging through me at the sight of that gun, planted in my bedroom by my old lost love, was a great heaving sense of relief.