Eighty Million Eyes

6

He had followed them to the restaurant and the movie theater, and now he stood in the doorway across from her house, waiting for her to come home. It was a cold night, and he stood huddled deep in the shadows, his coat collar pulled high on the back of his neck, his hands thrust into his coat pockets, his hat low on his forehead.

It was ten minutes past 12:00, and they had left the movie theater at 11:45, but he knew they would be coming straight home. He had been watching the girl long enough now to know a few things about her, and one of those things was that she didn’t sleep around much. Last month sometime, she had shacked up with a guy on Banning Street, just for the night, and the next morning after she left the apartment he had gone up to the guy and had worked him over with a pair of brass knuckles, leaving him crying like a baby on the kitchen floor. He had warned the guy against calling the police, and he had also told him he should never go near Cindy Forrest again, never try to see her again, never even try to call her again. The guy had held his broken mouth together with one bloody hand, and nodded his head, and begged not to be hit again—that was one guy who wouldn’t be bothering her anymore. So he knew she didn’t sleep around too much, and besides he knew she wouldn’t be going anyplace but straight home with this blond guy because this blond guy was a cop.

He had got the fuzz smell from him almost the minute he first saw him, early this afternoon when he came to the office to take her to lunch. He knew the look of fuzz and the smell of fuzz, and he realized right off that the very smart bulls of this wonderful city were setting a trap for him, and that he was supposed to fall right into it—here I am, fuzz, take me.

Like fun.

He had stayed far away from the restaurant where they had lunch, getting the fuzz stink sharp and clear in his nostrils and knowing something was up, but not knowing what kind of a trap was being set for him, and wanting to make damn sure before he made another move. The blond guy walked like a cop, that was an unmistakable cop walk, And also he had a sneaky way of making the scene, his head turned in one direction while he was really casing the opposite direction, a very nice fuzz trick that known criminals sometimes utilized, but that mostly cops from here to Detroit and back again were very familiar with. Well, he had known cops all across this fine little country of America, he had busted more cops’ heads than he could count on all his fingers and toes. He wouldn’t mind busting another, just for the fun of it, but not until he knew what the trap was. The one thing he wasn’t going to do was walk into no trap.

In the wintertime, or like now when it was getting kind of chilly and a guy had to wear a coat, you could always tell when he was heeled because if he was wearing a shoulder harness, the button between the top one and the third one was always left unbuttoned. If he was wearing the holster clipped to his belt, then a button was left undone just above the waist, so the right hand could reach in and draw—that was the first concrete tipoff that Blondie was a cop. He was a cop, and he wore his gun clipped to his belt. Watching him from outside the plate-glass window of the second restaurant later that day, there had been the flash of Blondie’s tin when he went to pay his check, opening his wallet, with the shield catching light for just a second. That was the second concrete fact, and a smart man don’t need more than one or two facts to piece together a story, not when the fuzz smell is all over the place to begin with.

The only thing he didn’t know now was what the trap was, and whether or not he should accommodate Blondie by walking into it and maybe beating him up. He thought it would be better to work on the girl, though. It was time the girl learned what she could do and couldn’t do, there was no sense putting it off. The girl had to know that she couldn’t go sleeping around with no guys on Banning Street, or for that matter any place in the city. And she also had to know she couldn’t play along with the cops on whatever trap they were cooking up. She had to know it now, and once and for all, because he wasn’t planning on staying in the shadows for long. The girl had to know she was his meat and his alone.

He guessed he’d beat her up tonight.

He looked at his watch again. It was fifteen minutes past 12:00, and he began to wonder what was keeping them. Maybe he should have stuck with them when they came out of the movie house, instead of rushing right over here. Still, if Blondie—

A car was turning into the street.

He pulled back into the shadows and waited. The car came up the street slowly. Come on, Blondie, he thought, you ain’t being followed, there’s no reason to drive so slow. He grinned in the darkness. The car pulled to the curb. Blondie got out and walked around to the other side, holding open the door for the girl, and then walking her up the front steps. The building was a gray, four-story job, and the girl lived on the top floor rear. The name on the bell read C. FORREST, that was the first thing he’d found out about her, almost two months ago. A little while after that, he’d broken open the lock on her mailbox and found two letters addressed to Miss Cynthia Forrest—it was a good thing she wasn’t married, because if she was, her husband would have been in for one hell of a time—and another letter addressed to Miss Cindy Forrest, this one from a guy over in Thailand, serving with the Peace Corps. The guy was lucky he was over in Thailand, or he’d have had a visitor requesting him to stop writing letters to little Sweet-pants.

Blondie was unlocking the inner vestibule door for her now. The girl said good night—he could hear her voice clear across the street—and Blondie gave her the keys and said something with his back turned, and which couldn’t be heard. Then the door closed behind her, and Blondie came down the steps, walking with a funny fuzz walk, like a boxer moving toward the ring where a pushover sparring partner was waiting, and keeping his head ducked, though this was a cop trick and those eyes were most likely flashing up and down the street in either direction even though the head was ducked and didn’t seem to be turning. Blondie got into the car—the engine was still running—put it into gear, and drove off.

He waited.

In five minutes’ time, the car pulled around the corner again and drifted slowly past the gray building.

He almost burst out laughing. What did Blondie think he was playing around with, an amateur? He waited until the car rounded the corner again, and then he waited for at least another fifteen minutes, until he was sure Blondie wasn’t coming back.

He crossed the street rapidly then, and walked around the corner and into the building directly behind the girl’s. He went straight through the building, opening the door at the rear of the ground floor and stepping out into the backyard. He climbed the clothesline pole near the fence separating the yard from the one behind it, leaped over the fence, and dropped to his knees. Looking up, he could see a light burning in the girl’s window on the fourth floor. He walked toward the rear of the building, cautiously but easily, jumping up for the fire-escape ladder, pulling it down, and then swinging up onto it and beginning to climb. He went by each window with great care, especially the other lighted one on the second floor, flitting past it like a shadow and continuing on up to the third floor, and then stepping onto the fourth-floor fire escape, her fire escape.

There was a wooden cheesebox resting on the iron slats of the fire-escape floor, the dried twigs of dead flowers stuck into the stiff earth it contained. The fire escape was outside her bedroom. He peered around the edge of the window, but the room was empty. He glanced to his right and saw that the tiny bathroom window was lighted; the girl was in the bathroom. He debated going right into the bedroom while she was occupied down the hall, but decided against it. He wanted to wait until she was in bed. He wanted to scare her real good.

The only light in the room came from a lamp on the night table near the girl’s bed. The bed was clearly visible from where he crouched outside on the fire escape. There was a single chair on this side of the bed, he would have to avoid that in the dark. He wanted his surprise to be complete; he didn’t want to go stumbling over no furniture and waking her up before it was time. The window was open just a trifle at the top, probably to let in some air, she’d probably opened it when she came into the apartment. He didn’t know whether or not she’d close and lock it before going to bed, maybe she would. This was a pretty decent neigh-borhood, though, without any incidents lately—he’d checked on that because he was afraid some cheap punk might bust into the girl’s apartment and complicate things for him—so maybe she slept with the window open just a little, at the top, the way it was now. While she was in the bathroom, he studied the simple lock on the sash and decided it wouldn’t be a problem, anyway, even if she locked it

The bathroom light went out suddenly.

He flattened himself against the brick wall of the building. The girl was humming when she came into the room. The humming trailed off abruptly, she was turning on the radio. It came on very loud, for Christ’s sake, she was going to wake up the whole damn building! She kept twisting the dial until she found the station she wanted, sweet music, lots of violins and muted trumpets, and then she lowered the volume. He waited. In a moment, she came to the window and pulled down the shade. Good, he thought, she didn’t lock the window. He waited a moment longer, and then flattened himself onto the fire escape so that he could peer into the room beneath the lower edge of the shade, where the girl had left a good two-inch gap between it and the windowsill.

The girl was still dressed. She was wearing the tan dress she had worn to dinner with Blondie, but when she turned away and began walking toward the closet, he saw that she had already lowered the zipper at the back. The dress was spread in a wide V, the white elastic line of her brassiere crossing her back, the zipper lowered to a point just above the beginning curve of her buttocks. The radio was playing a song she knew, and she began humming along with it again as she opened the closet door and took her nightgown from a hook. She closed the door and then walked to the bed, sitting on the side facing the window and lifting her dress up over her thighs to unhook first one garter and then the other. She took off her shoes and rolled down her stockings, and then walked to the closet to put the shoes away and to put the stockings into some kind of a bag hanging on the inside doorknob. She closed the door again, and then took off her dress, standing just outside the closet and not moving toward the bed again. In her bra and half-slip, she walked over to the other side of the room, where he couldn’t see her anymore, almost as if the lousy little bitch knew he was watching her! She was still humming. His hands were wet. He dried them on the sleeves of his coat and waited.

She came back so suddenly that she startled him. She had taken off her underwear, and she walked swiftly to the bed, naked, to pick up her nightgown. Jesus, she was beautiful! Jesus, he hadn’t realized how goddamn beautiful she really was. He watched her as she bent slightly to pull the gown over her head, straightened, and then let it fall down over her breasts and her tilted hips. She yawned. She looked at her watch and then went across the room again, out of sight, and came back to the bed carrying a paperback book. She got into the bed, her legs parting, opening, as she swung up onto it, and then pulled the blanket up over her knees, and fluffed the pillow, and scratched her jaw, and opened the book. She yawned. She looked at her watch again, seemed to change her mind about reading the book, put it down on the night table, and yawned again.

A moment later, she turned out the light.

The first thing she heard was the voice.

It said “Cindy,” and for the briefest tick of time she thought she was dreaming because the voice was just a whisper. And then she heard it again, “Cindy,” hovering somewhere just above her face, and her eyes popped wide, and she tried to sit up but something pressed her fiercely back against the pillow. She opened her mouth to scream, but a hand clamped over her lips. She stared over the edge of the thick fingers into the darkness, trying to see. “Be quiet, Cindy,” the voice said. “Just be quiet now.”

His grip on her mouth was hard and tight. He was straddling her now, his knees on the bed, his legs tight against her pinioned arms, sitting on her abdomen, one arm flung across her chest, holding her to the pillow.

“Can you hear me?” he asked.

She nodded. His hand stayed tight on her mouth, hurting her. She wanted to bite his hand, but she could not free her mouth. His weight upon her was unbearable. She tried to move, but she was helplessly caught in the vise of his knees, the tight band of his arm thrown across her chest.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I’m going to beat the shit out of you.”

She believed him instantly; terror rocketed into her skull. Her eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness. She could dimly see his grinning face hovering above her. His fingers smelled of tobacco. He kept his right hand clamped over her mouth, his left arm thrown across her chest, lower now, so that the hand was gripping her breast. He kept working his hand as he talked to her, grasping her through the thin nylon gown, squeezing her nipple as his voice continued in a slow lazy monotone, “Do you know why I’m going to beat you, Cindy?”

She tried to shake her head, but his hand was so tight against her mouth that she could not move. She knew she would begin to cry within the next few moments. She was trembling beneath his weight. His hand was cruel on her breast. Each time he tightened it on her nipple, she winced with pain.

“I don’t like you to go out with cops,” he said. “I don’t like you to go out with anybody, but cops especially.”

She could see his face clearly now. He was the same man who had come to the office, the same man who had beaten up the policeman. She remembered the way he had kicked the policeman when he was on the floor, and she began trembling more violently. She heard him laugh.

“I’m going to take my hand off your mouth now,” he said, “because we have to talk. But if you scream, I’ll kill you. Do you understand me?”

She tried to nod. His hand was relaxing. He was slowly lifting it from her mouth, cupped, as though cautiously peering under it to see if he had captured a fly. She debated screaming, and knew at once that if she did he would keep his promise and kill her. He shifted his body to the left, relaxing his grip across her chest, lifting his arm, freeing her breast. He rested his hands palms downward on his thighs, his legs bent under him, his knees still holding her arms tightly against her side, most of his weight still on her abdomen. Her breast was throbbing with pain. A trickle of sweat rolled down toward her belly and she thought for a moment it was blood, had he made her bleed somehow? A new wave of fear caused her to begin trembling again. She was ashamed of herself for being so frightened, but the fear was something uncontrollable, a raw animal panic that shrieked silently of pain and possible death.

“You’ll get rid of him tomorrow,” he whispered. He sat straddling her with his huge hands relaxed on his own thighs.

“Who?” she said. “Who do you—”

“The cop. You’ll get rid of him tomorrow.”

“All right.” She nodded in the darkness. “All right,” she said again.

“You’ll call his precinct—what precinct is it?”

“The 8…the 87th, I think.”

“You’ll call him.”

“Yes. Yes, I will.”

“You’ll tell him you don’t need a police escort no more. You’ll tell him everything is all right now.”

“Yes, all right,” she said. “Yes, I will.”

“You’ll tell him you patched things up with your boyfriend.”

“My…” She paused. Her heart was beating wildly, she was sure he could feel her heart beating in panic. “My boyfriend?”

“Me,” he said, and grinned.

“I…I don’t even know you,” she said.

“I’m your boyfriend.”

She shook her head.

“I’m your lover.”

She kept shaking her head.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know you,” she said, and suddenly she began weeping. “What do you want from me? Please, won’t you go? Won’t you please leave me alone? I don’t even know you. Please, please.”

“Beg,” he said, and grinned.

“Please, please, please…”

“You’re going to tell him to stop coming around.”

“Yes, I am. I said I would.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“You’ll keep the promise,” he said flatly.

“Yes, I will. I told you—”

He slapped her suddenly and fiercely, his right hand abruptly leaving his thigh and coming up viciously toward her face. She blinked her eyes an instant before his open palm collided with her cheek. She pulled back rigidly, her neck muscles taut, her eyes wide, her teeth clamped together.

“You’ll keep the promise,” he said, “because this is a sample of what you’ll get if you don’t.”

And then he began beating her.

She did not know where she was at first. She tried to open her eyes, but something was wrong with them, she could not seem to open her eyes. Something rough was against her cheek, her head was twisted at a curious angle. She felt a hundred separate throbbing areas of hurt, but none of them seemed connected with her head or her body, each seemed to pulse with a solitary intensity of its own. Her left eye trembled open. Light knifed into the narrow crack of opening eyelid, she could open it no further. Light flickered into the tentative opening, flashes of light pulsated as the flesh over her eye quivered.

She was lying with her cheek pressed to the rug.

She kept trying to open her left eye, catching fitful glimpses of gray carpet as the eye opened and closed spasmodically, still not knowing where she was, possessing a sure knowledge that something terrible had happened to her, but not remembering what it was as yet. She lay quite still on the floor, feeling each throbbing knot of pain, arms, legs, thighs, breasts, nose, the separate pains combining to form a recognizable mass of flesh that was her body, a whole and unified body that had been severely beaten.

And then, of course, she remembered instantly what had happened.

Her first reaction was one of whimpering terror. She drew up her shoulders, trying to pull her head deeper into them. Her left hand came limply toward her face, the fingers fluttering, as though weakly trying to fend off any further blows.

“Please,” she said.

The word whispered into the room. She waited for him to strike her again, every part of her body tensed for another savage blow, and when none came, she lay trembling lest she was mistaken, fearful that he was only pretending to be gone while silently waiting to attack again.

Her eye kept flickering open and shut.

She rolled over onto her back and tried to open the other eye, but again only a crack of winking light came through the trembling lid. The ceiling seemed so very far away. Sobbing, she brought her hand to her nose, thinking it was running, wiping it with the back of her hand, and then realizing that blood was pouring from her nostrils.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, my God.”

She lay on her back, sobbing in anguish. At last, she tried to rise. She made it to her knees, and then fell to the floor again, sprawled on her face. The police, she thought, I must call the police. And then she remembered why he had beaten her. He did not want the police. Get rid of the police, he had said. She got to her knees again. Her gown was torn down the front. Her breasts were splotched with purple bruises. The nipple of her right breast looked as raw as an open wound. Her throat, the torn gown, the sloping tops of her breasts were covered with blood from her nose. She cupped her hand under it, and then tried to stop the flow by holding a torn shred of nylon under the nostrils, struggling to her feet and moving unsteadily toward her dressing table, where she knew she’d left her house keys, Kling had returned her house keys, she had left them on the dresser, she would put them at the back of her neck, they would stop the blood, groping for the dresser top, a severe pain on the side of her chest, had he kicked her the way he’d kicked that policeman, get rid of the police, oh my God, oh God, oh God dear God.

She could not believe what she saw in the mirror.

The image that stared back at her was grotesque and frightening, hideous beyond belief. Her eyes were puffed and swollen, the pupils invisible, only a narrow slit showing on the bursting surface of each discolored bulge. Her face was covered with blood and bruises, a swollen mass of purple lumps, her blonde hair was matted with blood, there were welts on her arms, and thighs, and legs.

She felt suddenly dizzy. She clutched the top of the dressing table to steady herself, taking her hand away from her nose momentarily, watching the falling drops of blood spatter onto the white surface. A wave of nausea came and passed. She stood with her hand pressed to the top of the table, leaning on her extended arm, her head bent, refusing to look into the mirror again. She must not call the police. If she called the police, he would come back and do this to her again. He had told her to get rid of the police, she would call Kling in the morning and tell him everything was all right now, she and her boyfriend had patched it up. In utter helplessness, she began crying again, her shoulders heaving, her nose dripping blood, her knees shaking as she clung to the dressing table for support.

Gasping for breath, she stood suddenly erect and opened her mouth wide, sucking in great gulps of air, her hand widespread over her belly like an open fan. Her fingers touched something wet and sticky, and she looked down sharply, expecting more blood, expecting to find herself soaked in blood that seeped from a hundred secret wounds.

She raised her hand slowly toward her swollen eyes.

She fainted when she realized the wet and sticky substance on her belly was semen.

Bert Kling kicked down the door of her apartment at 10:30 the next morning. He had begun trying to reach her at 9, wanting to work out the details of their day together. He had let the phone ring seven times, and then decided he’d dialed the wrong number. He hung up, and tried it again. This time, he let it ring for a total of ten times, just in case she was a heavy sleeper. There was no answer. At 9:30, hoping she had gone down for breakfast and returned to the apartment by now, he called once again. There was still no answer. He called at five-minute intervals until 10:00, and then clipped on his gun and went down to his car. It took him a half hour to drive from Riverhead to Cindy’s apartment on Glazebrook Street. He climbed the steps to the fourth floor, knocked on her door, called her name, and then kicked it open.

He phoned for an ambulance immediately.

She regained consciousness briefly before the ambulance arrived. When she recognized him, she mumbled, “No, please, get out of here, he’ll know,” and then passed out again.

Outside Cindy’s open bedroom window, Kling discovered a visible heel print on one of the iron slats of the fire escape, just below the sill. And very close to that, wedged between two of the slats, he found a small fragment of something that looked like wadded earth. There was the possibility, however small, that the fragment had been dislodged from the shoe of Cindy’s attacker. He scooped it into a manila envelope and marked it for transportation to Detective-Lieutenant Sam Grossman at the police laboratory.