Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 9, September 2006

Next of Kin by William Link

Annabella was synchronizing her aerobics with an old Raquel Welch tape on her VCR when the phone rang.

“You sound out of breath,” Janice said. “Business or pleasure?”

“Neither.” There was a fresh, longitudinal streak of sweat on the front of her leotard. It tickled.

Janice chuckled. “Well, conserve your strength, honey. You got an out-call in Silver Lake, l09 Montrose.”

Annabella groaned. She had wanted the whole afternoon to herself to pick up some dry cleaning, check out a new computer, get a manicure appointment. “Damn. What time?”

“Four.”

She jotted it down. “Where’s Montrose exactly?”

“Beats me. Use your Thomas Guide or look it up on MapQuest. Who’s that talking?”

“Just a tape.” She silenced it with the remote. “Hot again?”

Janice sounded surprised. “You been in all morning?”

Annabella didn’t think she deserved an answer. She was already twisting out of her leotard, juggling the phone.

“Hot. And smoggy. Might have something for you this evening too.”

“Leave it on my machine.” She hung up.

Naked, she went into the tiny kitchenette, opened a can of V8, gulped it, finished a container of peach yogurt while she skimmed through Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat,” and took a cup of instant coffee into the bathroom. After her shower, she fixed her hair into a ponytail and made her face up in a bulb-ringed mirror that she always saw in the old movie musicals. Then she put on a low-cut, silk black blouse and midnight blue slacks, and impaled her still-damp lobes with a glitzy, scarab-shaped pair of earrings. She decided against the black snakeskin boots — too hot. She wasted ten minutes choosing the proper shoes. An analyst had once told her that the shoe fetish was some kind of surrogate prophylactic, a protection to ward off an onslaught of venereal germs, even AIDS. “But doctor,” she remembered telling him, “wouldn’t I be just as obsessed choosing a pair of panties?”

In the car, driving, she looked at herself in the rearview mirror. The mask of sunglasses across her eyes, the tiny drops of sweat in the sleek, dark wings of her hair.

She hadn’t been in Silver Lake in months. She didn’t much like it. Once a community of low- and middle-income families in shabby frame bungalows, it was slowly in the expanding throes of gentrification, like a fat lady opening her corset. As usual in L.A., the real estate people were getting rich. But they would never get rid of the hazy smog that barely hid the San Gabriel Mountains to the north.

The house she was looking for was a shimmer of faded beige stucco, slatted windows, a sagging porch. No car on the drive or in the carport. Either the guy was out, had forgotten the appointment, or worse yet, didn’t even drive a car in a city that made one a necessity. Instinctively, she touched her handbag on the seat beside her, felt the reassuring flat bulk of the mace canister.

She parked in the drive and got out, smelling hot tar. She went up the porch steps and peered in through the screen door at a dark living room. Someone was lying on the floor. But then she made out that it was the sprawled form of a dog, hunkered next to the dim, flowered shape of a sofa.

She rang the bell.

“Just a minute,” a voice called. “Coming.”

A disembodied T-shirt sorted itself out of the dimness. A compact, stocky young man came toward her, moving slowly, almost cautiously. The T-shirt read “No Clever Message.”

He stopped at the screen door. He had a wiry, unkempt, full black beard and very pale blue eyes, with beads of sweat shining in his curly black hair. “Who—?”

“You called the out-service.”

“Yes.”

He groped around and finally unlatched the door. He held it open awkwardly as she came in, blinking in the stale air, holding back a sneeze brought on by the musty, unlived-in atmosphere.

The dog growled. Now she saw it in a better light — a large Alaskan Malamute, its thick coat the color of mottled oatmeal, powerful, but old, and probably more lethargic than lazy. She immediately didn’t like it. The analyst had excavated the probable cause: As a child she had gone to Mass by herself on Sunday mornings, leaving her indolent, agnostic parents in bed. The Sabbath world of Milan was a din of dogs and church bells, some of the animals fierce, some tethered, some loose and on the prowl.

A friend had told her that dogs can detect fear through their ultrasensitive olfactory nerves, and she was sure that her sweat glands had betrayed her. Luckily, she had never been attacked, although a mean Weimaraner had once followed her right to the church door.

“Herman,” the young man said, “cool it.”

She noticed there were no lights lit in the living room. There was a set of jazz drums near the sofa, a couple of director-type chairs with their canvas backs, but no television set. And no books or magazines or newspapers. All the scant furniture looked like secondhand castaways.

The young man mumbled something.

“What?”

“What’s your name?”

She was going to have to get all the money up front. “Annabella.”

He nodded to himself, an act of assimilation. He wore bleached-out jeans and topsiders. All his clothing was very clean. But there was something off-kilter about him — something elusive, hidden, that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She was staring at him, examining everything about him, but he didn’t seem to mind or, for that matter, even seem to notice. Strange.

“Would you care for some apple cider? The only trouble is it’s warm. The refrigerator’s shut off.”

He didn’t pay his light bill? “No. Thank you.”

“You mind if I have one? A beer, I mean?”

“No, go ahead.” She watched him head toward what she supposed was the kitchen. He moved very deliberately, almost cautiously, as if he was afraid he might trip over something. The dog had stiffened, its head nodding at his slow progress to the refrigerator. The young man seemed sealed in a protective bubble, guided by the dog’s sonar.

“Sure you don’t want something?”

“No. I’m sure.”

He came slowly back with a can of Miller Light, popping it open as he walked. “Annabella. Didn’t you say that’s what your name is?”

“Yes. What’s yours?”

“Corey.”

She noticed he wasn’t looking at her before she spoke. But now his head turned a fraction, locked in on her voice, and she knew her suspicion was correct.

She said, “You can’t see, can you?”

He blushed. “No, I can’t.”

She looked into his eyes. They were slightly milky, protuberant, as if coated with a special membrane.

As if trying to deflect her perception, he said, “You have some sort of an accent.”

“Italian.”

“Italian Italian?”

“Right.”

“What are you doing here, in this country, I mean?”

“Going to school. UCLA.”

“And you moonlight this kind of — work?”

“Right.” She smiled. “Well, it’s not my major, if that’s what you mean.”

He thought this over. “What is your major?”

“American lit.”

“Guess it pays a lot of bills. Your work, I mean.”

She removed the beer can from his hand, took a few sips, handed it back. Then she unconsciously nodded toward the hallway, which she imagined led to the bedroom. “Think we can get down to it?”

He seemed suddenly apprehensive. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“I have to get paid in advance. That’s the rule.”

“Okay, sure. How much?”

“Didn’t they tell you on the phone? Two hundred.”

He took out a wallet and dug around inside the bill compartment. She decided he wasn’t really a bad-looking guy. A strong, almost Toltec face like the illustrations in the anthropology textbooks, and nice biceps and pecs. Maybe he worked with barbells or bench-pressed. The drums, that was it. She had dated a jazz drummer with wrists like pig iron. All the drummers she had known were working out an extraordinary amount of hostility; most had fuses as short as their stature.

“Here.” He handed her a small sheaf of bills. “Two hundred exactly.”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” she said, “how do you get the right amount?”

“I bend the corners. Look—”

She did. The denominations were folded in different corners. “Very clever. Shall we?”

He turned toward the hallway. She looked over at the dog. He had rarely moved since she was there. These seeing-eye dogs were like people, some a little sad-eyed, shy, introverted, children really. The damn creature hadn’t even barked.

The bedroom was a suffocating cell, no air-conditioning, window closed. There was a pine bureau, cheap and unstained, and an enormous brass bed pushed against the wall.

She smacked her hand against the mattress. Not too soft. “This is quite a production.”

“The bed? It was my parents’.”

“Maybe you got conceived on this monstrosity.” She wished she could take that back — too disrespectful.

He was silent. He stood in the doorway, his head tilted down at the worn pile carpet, not even bothering to get undressed. The dog came slowly in, settled itself under the only window.

She tried some humor. “Herman going to watch?”

“Does it matter?”

She kicked off her shoes, unbuttoned her blouse, and slipped it off with her slacks. All dolled up for a blind man. While she folded and placed her garments over her handbag on the floor, she slid the bills inside.

She ran her hands provocatively down her body as if he was a sighted person. “How about you? Your clothes?”

“Lay down on the bed,” he said.

“Like this, in my bra and panties, or—?”

“You can keep your underwear on.” He was leaning back against the bureau, looking in her direction, slightly crouched.

She climbed on top of the sheets. They smelled of dried sweat. “Can’t you get yourself an air-conditioner?”

No reply. She propped herself against the meager pillows and angled her arms behind her head in a parody of sexual abandon. That’s just great, she thought, striking a Penthouse pose for a guy who can’t see. This was getting depressing, more than usual. She began to think about the paper she had to write on Stephen Crane, another depressing thought. What the hell was her approach going to be?

She watched with curiosity as he opened the top bureau drawer and removed a pint of Jim Beam. At least it was action, something positive, instead of just standing there like the recently condemned. He unscrewed the cap and took two long pulls. The Adam’s apple in his throat bobbed and he coughed, then cleared his throat.

“Go easy,” she said. “Not good for performance.”

“Probably not.” He took another short swallow.

She tensed, no longer thinking of the Crane paper. His dead eyes seemed brighter, the membrane dissolved.

He came slowly over to the bed and sat down beside her. His hand moved on the sheet, found her, lifted her head, and guided it back almost between two brass rods on the headboard. There was a faint metallic click as he snapped what felt like a bracelet around her left wrist, the steel band cold against her skin. Another click.

She half raised herself on her free elbow. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

His face was close to hers, his breath alive with whiskey. No reply.

She felt along the short length of chain and found that the bracelet was linked around a rod on the headboard. Maybe — maybe he was into some kinky but harmless S&M thing. “I hope you’ve got a key.”

“What good’s a key?” he said, each word spaced as if the liquor was stoking him down. He rose unsteadily from the bed and went back to the bureau. More bourbon.

“I can yell,” she threatened. She strained her ears. Was that the distant whirr of a power lawn mower? “Somebody’ll hear and come.”

He listened too, cocking his head, suddenly looking directly at her. Maybe his eyesight was as good as hers.

She said, “You can really see, can’t you? You’ve been lying to me.”

He shook his head no and wiped his wet mouth with the back of his hand.

“Why the hell are you doing this? We were going to make love, we were going to have fun. You even paid me.”

“I want you to stay.”

Oh God, he’s a real headcase, she thought. If L.A. didn’t grow them, they imported them. “I can’t stay, Corey. I’ve got another call tonight, and I have to start a paper for my lit course.”

Still carrying the bottle, he sat down again on the edge of the bed. Except for handcuffing her to the headboard, she couldn’t remember if he had touched her.

“Come on, Corey,” she said gently. “Let me loose and I promise you we’ll have a good time.”

Herman yawned, stretched. He came over and sat down next to the young man, lowered his handsome head onto the sheet.

“Corey, I’ll scream. I can really scream.”

“There’s just an alley outside the window. Nobody’ll hear.”

She scrunched up against the headboard and leaned back, twisting, to examine the pair of handcuffs. Oxidized steel, blue-black, like maybe the kind cops used. Where in God’s name had he got the damn things? Maybe his father was a cop.

“Is your father a cop?”

“My father’s dead.” He was petting the dog’s head.

“Don’t you have any friends?”

“Just Herman.” He was still working on the bourbon.

Shoring up his courage, she thought. For what? Poor bastard, blind, living alone with his seeing-eye dog, no friends, especially no girlfriends.

“Come on, honey,” she said, afraid to touch his face. “Unlock this thing, I’ll give you a nice massage. Then we’ll make love. I’ll show you a real good time. You’ll like it. I promise.”

She prayed that after enough of the courage-strengthening alcohol he would spread-eagle her on the bed and get to work. But he looked totally anesthetized by either the liquor or his fear or both. His strangely placid eyes were dazed, increasingly unfocused, and he stretched out an arm to steady himself on the mattress.

Maybe she should cool the sex talk, try another tack. She said, “You look tired, honey. Why don’t you settle down here beside me?”

He looked in her direction for a long moment. No, she thought, he’s blind as a bat, I was wrong. The eyes seemed opaque now, smooth and veined like marble.

He crumpled down next to her, suddenly docile as a child. She trailed her long, blood-red fingernails lightly across his forehead. He was burning hot, feverish. Her fingers flicked across his temple, light as a butterfly. When she eased over to kiss him she realized he had fallen fast asleep. The dog lay collapsed at the foot of the bed, snoring.

She twisted her body to the side of the mattress, arrested by the chain, and flailed her arm over the side, trying to locate her handbag and the mace canister. But it was out of reach, a few feet away.

Oh Christ, she thought, how did I ever get myself into something like this? She had only one other threatening experience: A crazed out-of-town salesman in a bungalow at the Bel Air Hotel had pointed a handgun at her navel.

When room service came with their shrimp cocktails and steaks, she managed to slip out naked, vomiting in the little stream out front among the floating swans. After that she always carried her mace safeguard.

She turned over on her stomach and massaged the raw skin where the steel bracelet cut into her wrist. Then she sighed and closed her eyes. She felt empty of adrenaline, everything, and within seconds she too was asleep.

At first she didn’t know if she was dreaming or if she was in a half cogent stage of sleep. Corey was saying, close to her ear, “...Mrs. Dimas in Covina. Mrs. Hannah Dimas...”

She mumbled, “Who?”

“Tell her... I appreciate all she’s done. And... and that I love her.”

“Yeah, but who is she? Can’t... can’t you tell her yourself?”

He was muttering something else, but she was falling back asleep...

She was almost awake now. Her eyes snapped open and the first thing she realized was that he was no longer in the bed. The window, behind dirty aluminum blinds, showed long strips of tawny twilight, an unearthly, almost marine glow. Herman was still sleeping, still as a rock.

“Corey,” she called. Then more loudly, “Corey!”

Maybe, half asleep, he had wandered back into the living room or the kitchen to get another beer and had collapsed on the floor or the sofa.

“Corey!”

The dog stirred but didn’t wake.

She acknowledged to herself, with a cold, sick feeling in her stomach, that the little bungalow was empty.

She suddenly felt the hot rush of tears, but she willed them away. She was abandoned again, like when her father left her mother, and there was no one who would come to help them. She would starve to death in the big brass bed.

Soon, weariness replaced her apprehension again. The twilight slowly faded into darkness, and the room became velvet and strangely restful. It was then that she realized she was still wearing her sunglasses. She was almost too tired to take them off.

Voices floated through the tunnel of her sleep. There was still darkness outside the window when she woke, and she heard the voices, which seemed to come from outside, receding into the distance.

She wanted to know the time, but she realized her watch was on her handcuffed wrist.

Herman barked. He lifted himself sluggishly and prowled over to the door.

From somewhere, probably the living room, there was the scraping sound of a key in a lock. Voices again, two people. Corey coming back, but who was with him? The click of a switch, on and off, on and off.

“Must’ve turned off the power,” a man’s voice said. “Didn’t pay his bill.”

Pause. Then, calling: “Anybody home?”

Footsteps. She decided not to answer, lay perfectly still, scarcely breathing. Curious, the dog left the room, investigating.

“Here boy,” a second voice called. It held the remnants of a Southern accent. “Everything’s all right, fella. Don’t worry any, we’ll feed you.”

More footsteps, stopping, starting, obviously covering the living room and the kitchen. Then a shard of light slanted against the far wall of the bedroom from the hallway. A moment later, bringing her free hand across her eyes, shielding them, she was staring through her fingers into the blinding bull’s-eye of a flashlight.

“What do we have here? Miss?”

She kneaded her eyes and the red dancing circles began to dissolve. There were two uniformed policemen in the doorway, one black, one white.

The black man, holding the flashlight, moved closer. “You awake, miss?”

“Yes.” Her voice was hoarse with sleep and disuse.

“Who are you?” Then he noticed she was handcuffed to the headboard. He frowned. He had a broad, magisterial face like an African chieftain. “Jimbo,” he said over his shoulder to his partner.

The other man came forward. He was carrying an unlit flashlight and a large manila envelope.

The black cop took the envelope and shook its contents out on the sheet. There was a wallet, a few loose coins, a comb, and a key ring. He picked up the key ring, washed it in the glare of his flashlight, selected one of the keys, and quickly opened the handcuff.

Her relief was instant. Her arm was numb, the fingers tingling, and she rubbed at the red band of inflamed skin around her wrist. Now it began to itch like hell, but it nevertheless felt good, very good.

The black cop said, “He do this to you?”

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

“You his wife?”

“Friend. Just a friend.”

She pitched herself over to the side of the bed, tried to stand, and the cop steadied her as she wavered, was about to fall. She was lightheaded. She experienced a brief bout of dizziness, and then she was all right.

“Why’d he lock you up?”

She shrugged. “Crazy. Just spaced out.”

“He ever do this to you before?”

“No.”

“Where do you live?”

“West Hollywood.”

The man seemed genuinely puzzled. “You mean he just invited you over here and did this?”

“Right. Where is he?”

The white cop looked straight at her. “Dead.” He was the one with the accent.

She started. “Dead? But he was just here... a couple of hours ago.” She stared at him. “How?”

“Walked across the Hollywood Freeway. Near the Silver Lake off-ramp.”

She sat down on the bed. It was beginning to lighten between the slats of the blinds. She could hear, far off, the grinding of a garbage truck.

She said, “Suicide?”

“Probably.”

“He was blind, did you know he was blind? It could have been an accident.”

“Well, witness says he walked right into a stream of traffic. He wasn’t deaf too, was he? So what was he doing taking a stroll across the freeway at night?”

She was looking down at the pathetic little group of effects on the sheet. “These are his things?”

“What we could find on what was left of him.”

The black cop picked up the almost empty bottle of bourbon, handed it to her. She swallowed what remained, coughed, and was almost sick again. He patted her on the back and waited while her head cleared.

The white cop said, “You’ll have to make a statement.”

She nodded, navigated a few tentative steps toward the door. The black cop stopped her, gave her one of Corey’s shirts to put on. Then the two men and the dog followed her into the living room. A few bars of sunlight filtered in, gleaming on the metal rim of the snare drum. Herman settled down, yawned, not yet missing his master.

“What are you going to do with the dog?” she asked.

“Get him to the seeing-eye people,” the black man said. “But he looks pretty old to be placed with another blind person.”

He shined the light into the dog’s face, bending down beside it. “Jesus,” he said, “look at his eyes. Wall-eyed blind. Poor bastard. Must’ve got progressively worse as he aged.”

Annabella put a steadying hand on the sofa. One shock after another. She said nothing for a long time. The two men respected her silence. As the room brightened the flashlight was clicked off.

She finally asked, “What was his name?”

“You were his friend,” the white cop said suspiciously “and you don’t know his name?”

“Just his first name — Corey.”

“Dimas. Card in his wallet says Corey Dimas.”

She nodded to herself. His voice echoed back from the core of the night, his whispered message, and now she understood. He probably couldn’t trust his handwriting to leave a note, if he could write at all anymore.

“Can I make a call?” she asked them.

“Guess so. Who to?”

“Next of kin.”

She tried the phone but it was dead, just like the electricity. So she had to go back to the bedroom to get the cell phone in her handbag. She returned to the living room, sighed deeply, and punched information while the two men watched her.

She slumped down on the sofa, got the number she needed from information. Her mind went blank for a moment before she remembered to punch in the number. She let her head rest against the pillow, succumbing now to a terrible fatigue as the call went through, a stray thought surfacing, slowly becoming tangible: She wondered if her landlord allowed dogs.