Kiss Of Evil

37

Detective John Salvatore Paris-whose brain had already formed an exasperating Mobius strip of the numbers 152835, all wrapped around the words secret garden-meets Sergeant Carla Davis in the parking lot at Macy’s in University Heights.

Greg Ebersole and a team of six officers from the University Heights PD stand by in two locations, less than a block from the Westwood address.

The swingers party is a long shot, there had been unanimous task force consent on that point, but, for the moment, it is all they have. The neighborhoods around the two murder scenes had been canvassed and recanvassed. Forensics had uncovered nothing useful so far.

Carla drives the rest of the way to the house on Westwood Road, where she finds a spot on the street that is ten houses east of their destination. The number of cars on the street indicate that this is a rather large gathering.

As they approach the house at the crest of the hill-a stately gray colonial-there is only a dim light on in the curtained picture window; there is no loud music. Nor is there a light on over the side door, where Carla was instructed to go.

From his vantage, at the foot of the drive, Paris stops for a moment, conducts a quick inventory of the house, the neighborhood. Sleepy, bucolic, suburban; mostly brick houses with occasional lavish Christmas displays, surgically plowed driveways. A place where dogs don’t bark after ten and nobody needs a new muffler.

Yet, Paris thinks as he makes his way up the drive, it is also a place that might be plugged directly into a pair of unspeakable crimes.

Carla rings the doorbell, steps between Paris and the door. She had said on the way over that getting in was still a fifty-fifty proposition, even though they had been invited to the party on a probationary basis. But Carla Davis knows what she has and figures, rightly, that if she is the first thing that whoever opens the door sees, they’ll get in. She is wearing a bulky wool coat; her long hair is down around her shoulders and her perfume is driving Paris around the bend. In contrast, Paris is wearing a black blazer, black T-shirt, black slacks, no overcoat. He looks like a gay Johnny Cash.

After a few moments, the door is answered by a short, heavyset white man in his early fifties. His hair, jet black and thinning, is swept into a dramatic comb-over, the individual strands making the top of his pasty head look like a UPC bar code label. He is wearing a green cardigan, the kind that were popular when Paris was in junior high school.

“Hi,” he says, very enthusiastically. “You must be Cleopatra.” He opens the storm door.

“Yes.” Carla extends her hand. The man takes it, kisses her on the fingers.

“Charmed, I’m sure,” he says.

They’re not even in the door and Paris is ready to puke.

“My name is Herb,” he says, finally releasing her hand. “But you can call me Dante, my dear. Please come in.” He steps to the side, letting Carla into the small vestibule, deliberately making her pass by him in the narrow doorway so he could achieve maximum friction.

“And let me guess,” he says, looking at Paris. “Marc Antony, right?” Herb laughs at this, as if it were the most extraordinarily clever thing ever thought of.

“You can call me John,” Paris says.

Paris extends his hand, but Herb looks away at the last second, into the kitchen, pretending he doesn’t see it. Clearly an attempt at belittling the new male arrival in front of the new female arrival. “Come on in,” he finally says to Paris, as if scolding him. “You’re letting all the heat out.”

“Whatever you say, Dante,” Paris replies, wanting to introduce Herb to the back of his hand before asking him about the heating bills here at the Inferno, but opting against it.

For the time being.

Perfectly ordinary kitchen, very tidy. White toaster, white can opener, something that looks like a bread machine, a small dinette table with a frosted glass top. The overhead lights are off, but there are a dozen candles distributed around the kitchen. Paris can hear electronic dance music coming from somewhere, but it is extremely faint.

Carla and Paris bunch together in the small kitchen and wait for Herb. He shuts the door, steps inside, climbs the three stairs to the kitchen, rubbing his hands together. “So, who was it that nominated you for memberships again?”

“Teddy and Sue,” Carla says.

“Oh that’s right,” he says. “Teddy and Sue. Have you swung with them before, Cleopatra?”

“No,” Carla says. “Only some cyber. They like to show, you know.”

“Do they ever,” Herb says. “And Sue is such a sub.”

“Really? Every time I cybered with them Teddy was the submissive. Not Sue. Sue was always the dom.”

Paris’s head is spinning with the terms, the Cleavers-in-bondage atmosphere of this kitchen. For a moment, he thinks they’ve been made.

“Is that a fact?” Herb says, staring intently at Carla, his neck craning upward at what looks like a painful angle. Then his resolve breaks. “Sorry. Just testing you a little. We’ve got to be careful, you know.”

“I understand.”

“Sue really is the beastmaster around here. There’s a half-dozen guys scared to death of her.”

“I’ll bet,” Carla says.

“But they like it that way,” Herb adds. “Here, let me take your coat.” He steps behind Carla, purposely in front of Paris. Paris can smell the scotch, the breath freshener. Herb also reeks of moth flakes and Obsession.

When Herb slips Carla’s coat from her shoulders, he gasps slightly, an involuntary heterosexual male reaction that Paris himself has to stifle. Carla is wearing a skintight white dress, cut nearly down to her waist in the back, the hem about halfway up her thigh. Her toned back muscles and narrow waist accentuate her hips, her long, sinewy legs; her skin looks smooth and radiant in the candlelight.

She turns to face the two men, taking her coat from Herb. “I’ll carry it, thanks,” she says.

If Herb has an objection, seeing Carla Davis from the front makes it jailbreak his brain. It is just chilly enough in the kitchen to clearly define the contours of Carla’s breasts, the outline of her nipples through her dress. She wears a dazzling silver cross on a delicate chain. Herb is nearly catatonic with lust. Paris isn’t too far behind him. He’d never seen Carla Davis in anything but business suits or blues.

“Oh my,” Herb says. “You are…”

“I am what, honey?” Carla says, flashing a smile, touching Herb’s cheek lightly.

“You are… going to be very popular.”

“You’re a doll,” Carla says. “Now, do you have a little girls’ room where I can freshen up a bit?”

“Of course,” Herb says. “Right this way.”

Paris is left by himself in the kitchen for a minute. The desire to start opening cupboards and drawers and cabinets is almost overwhelming, the need to know what kind of cranberry sauce people who do this sort of thing prefer.

Herb returns, flushed from his interaction with such a new and delicious and by God black and gorgeous amazon female. He motions to Paris to sit at the dining room table, a thoroughly unused walnut French provincial set. Paris sits, knowing that Carla needs a few minutes to activate the small video surveillance camera she’s carrying in her clutch purse.

“So how long have you two been in the lifestyle, John?”

Paris hesitates for a moment before answering. “A year, maybe.”

“First party?”

“No,” Paris says, and leaves it at that, hoping Herb might get the point that he is the strong, silent type. Herb does not.

“Cleopatra is stunningly beautiful.”

“Yes,” Paris says.

“Are you two married?”

“Yes.”

Herb pauses for a moment. “How long?”

“Writing a book, Herb?”

“No… I…” Herb begins, starting to color. “We just like to know a little about the people we let into our homes, that’s all. Surely you can understand that in this day and age.”

Paris actually does understand. He sure as hell wouldn’t want Herb at his house. “Five years.”

Herb nods, silently absorbing the notion of five years with a woman like Cleopatra. “You are a very lucky man, John. A very lucky man.”

Paris leans forward and smiles at Herb in a man-to-man, swingin’-cat-to-swingin’-cat kind of way. He says, softly: “Luck has nothing to do with it, Herbie. Nothing at all.”

Herb, thoroughly outcocked, laughs, but it is a dry, mirthless sound, a sound born of intense envy and plain macho rivalry.

“Either of you boys wanna escort a lady to a party?” Carla says, inches behind Herb.

Herb nearly knocks his chair over as he stands up. “I know this boy would.”

Paris rises, buttons his blazer. He looks at Carla’s purse. Although he knows it is there, he cannot see the tiny lens of the hidden camera.

Perfect.

“Allow me,” Herb says, once again ignoring Paris, offering his arm to Carla. She takes it, but not before glancing at Paris with a look all police officers recognize.

The look that precedes the door.

Except, this time, the door is deceptively benign. It is a door that Paris had originally thought might lead to a closet or a pantry. A door behind which one might ordinarily find an ironing board, or a broom closet, or any other of a thousand kitchen adjuncts in this waxed and pine-scented version of suburbia.

Instead, Herb opens the door and Paris can see that it leads to a rather undistinguished stairwell. A stairwell leading downward. Paneled walls, soft lighting, a narrow wooden handrail. Paris can hear polite conversation, subdued music.

“Shall we?” Herb says.

Carla looks at Herb and offers a slight angling of her head, a very seductive half-smile. It is another look Paris has seen before, perhaps on the Discovery Channel, or maybe in an old episode of Wild Kingdom: the mien of the young jaguar in that airless instant before its legs uncoil.

Herb takes his arm from Carla’s, clasps his hands together, smiles at his two new recruits, then gestures for them to enter his carnivale-a grinning, false-toothed doorman to another kind of suburbia altogether.