Kiss Of Evil

35

The day after Christmas in most major cities brings a brief respite in violent crimes. If people are going to kill each other around the holidays they seem to get their licks in on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Or they wait until New Year’s Eve.

At noon, on December 26, the halls of the sixth floor at the Justice Center are quiet.

Paris and Carla Davis are meeting with Greg Ebersole in Greg’s office. Greg looks like a beaten man. The benefit for Max Ebersole had gone well, but not as well as Greg had hoped, Paris had learned. It is the holidays, they all said, a reassuring hand on Greg’s shoulder. A lot of people are out of town. A lot of people are simply tapped out. Paris considers the possibility that Greg had not been to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time since leaving the Caprice that night.

Greg says: “I’ve got a sketch coming this afternoon. Composite of a woman that Willis Walker was seen with at the bar at Vernelle’s on the night he was killed. White woman.”

Paris and Carla exchange a glance. “White woman? Anybody recognize her from before?” Carla asks.

“No,” Greg says. “And they all say that they would remember. The men anyway. They said she was all that and a bag of chips, you know?”

Carla laughs. “You say that pretty good for such a doughboy, Greg.”

Greg goes red.

“Get us copies the minute you see them,” Paris says.

“You got it.”

Greg stands, puts on his coat.

“Where are you off to?” Carla asks.

“Gonna interview the night clerk at the Dream-A-Dream again. He was three sheets to the wind the first time I talked to him. He’s on days now. Maybe he hasn’t started drinking yet and I’ll get a straight answer from him. If you see me back here in an hour dragging a screaming and kicking redneck by the hair, you’ll know it didn’t go well.”

“How’s Max?” Carla asks.

“Max is good, Carla. Max is tough.”

“If I don’t see you later, tell him I said hi.”

“I sure will. See you guys.”

“Careful,” Carla says.

“Always,” Greg replies and takes his leave.

Paris and Carla exchange a different kind of look now, one laden with concern for a fellow officer who might be on the very edge of the very edge, a precipice that can lead to many places, all bad. Paris asks: “What did you get this morning?”

Carla says: “I visited Fayette Martin’s Internet service provider. OhioNet Services on Buckeye. Got a fix on where she went online the day she was killed.”

“Where’d she go?”

“She logged on three times, went three different places on the Web,” Carla says. “But I think we need to be concerned with only one of them.”

“Which one?”

“The site is called CyberGents. I’ve traced the ownership to an address in University Heights. The website is run by a company called NeTrix, Inc.”

“What is CyberGents exactly?”

“Like I said, if there was a live, pay-per-view videoconferencing site devoted to straight females, I’d find it. This is one. And it’s local. As soon as the street address came I up, I knew I’d been right about these people.”

“What do you mean? What people?”

“I’ve been working this pleasant group of folks for six months. I knew there was something beyond the usual swapping. I think I can get us an invite.”

“An invite?”

“It’s a group of east-side swingers.”

“So, you’re saying that Fayette Martin may have called in online to this CyberGents in University Heights?”

“I know she did.”

“And that they have men there who do things online?”

“Yep.”

“In University Heights?”

“Well, they may not be right there at the house in University Heights. The men could be anywhere. But someone has to clear the credit-card transactions. Someone has to set up the session with the performers, either by phone or by e-mail. Unless they’re routing the calls elsewhere, I’d bet that they do it there.”

“So how do we get in?”

“Well, I know for a fact that they meet three times a month for parties. They’re having one tonight.”

“What kind of parties?”

“Hard to say exactly what goes on there,” Carla replies. “But I think I can get us in.”

“How are you going to do that?” Paris asks.

Carla lowers her head, then raises her eyes. “Are you serious?”

At two-thirty, Paris walks to the Cleveland Public Library at Superior Avenue and East Fourth Street. He had reserved another book about Santeria in the United States, as well as one about ritual murder in the inner city.

As he rounds the corner of the BP Building he stops. Rebecca D’Angelo is standing right in front of him, looking into the window at a holiday display. She has her back to him, but she looks just as he remembers. She is wearing a navy blue wool coat, knee-high boots. Paris is just about to tap her on the shoulder when it appears as if she sees him reflected in the window. She turns abruptly around.

It is not Rebecca.

“Sorry,” Paris says. “I thought you were a friend of mine.”

The woman glares at him, then makes a rather quick retreat down Superior Avenue, toward Public Square, turning twice more to look at him.

Paris shakes his head. He jaywalks to the library entrance.

Why can’t I stop thinking about her?

He is halfway across the underground lot at the Justice Center when he hears a man call his name from the shadows. It is Hank Szabo, the front-desk attendant from the VA nursing home on East Twenty-third Street.

“Mr. Szabo,” Paris says. “What brings you down to the Justice Center?”

“Not sure, really.” Hank steps forward, into the fluorescent light. He is wearing a beat-up old pea coat, a nubby watch cap. “I was just coming up to see you.”

“What about?”

Hank lowers his voice. “I’m not sure if this means anything at all. But Demetrius did something.”

“Did something?”

“Yeah. Well, something kind of out of the ordinary for him.”

“And what was that, Mr. Szabo?”

“He did this right after you left. And call me Hank, okay?”

Hank shows Paris a two-year-old copy of Time magazine.

“And what is this exactly?”

“Magazine, of course. It’s what Demetrius did inside I’m talking about. Something he did all on his own.” Hank opens the magazine to page 15 and points to the bottom. “See there? See how that’s circled?” The number 15, in the lower right, is circled in a shaky red ink.

“Yeah,” Paris says. “Okay.”

“And look here.” Hank now flips to page 28. Same thing. Then he flips to page 35, where the page number is once again circled very carefully in red. A quick scan of the magazine shows that these are the only pages with circled page numbers.

“Mr. Salters did this, you say?”

“Absolutely. I watched him do it.”

“And it was right after I left?”

“Well, it was right after he was sedated,” Hank says. “Don’t know what you did, but you scared the fuckin’ shit out of him. Literally.”

“Sorry about that.”

“No big deal. We usually have one or two of the boys go nuclear by lunchtime every day.”

“And what do you think it means?”

“No idea. I looked at the pages, at the articles, but they didn’t seem to be about anything, so as I can figure. One is a story about Edie Falco. She was that lady on-”

“The Sopranos. Right, Hank. I’m just not sure why you think this has something to do with me.”

“Can’t say, for sure,” Hank says. “But Demetrius doesn’t hardly ever do anything. Ever. So, for him to pick up a pen is pretty weird. This took him almost an hour, you know.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Yeah. Well, kind of. Up until the drugs kicked in, he kept mumbling something under his breath. I got close, but not too close, if you know what I mean.” Hank taps the side of his nose. “But I could hear him saying something over and over again. Like a prayer, almost.”

“What was he saying?”

“Well, I’m not totally sure about this. But it sounded like-you’re gonna think this is crazy.”

Paris almost smiles. “Trust me on this one, Hank. Crazy is what I do for a living. What did Mr. Salters say?”

“Once again, I wouldn’t swear to this,” Hank says, looking around the underground lot, as if the very act of entering the Justice Center parking garage had automatically put him under oath. “It sounded like he was saying ‘secret garden.’”