Kiss Of Evil

4

It is four days until Christmas, and Public Square is sparkling with displays, robust with early-morning commuters. This year, the city-center quadrant is decked with strands of silver garland, dotted with white and gold lights. The streetlamps have been refitted to look like gas lamps. This season’s theme: A Dickens Christmas in Cleveland.

Yet homicide detective John Salvatore Paris knows that there is no amount of candlepower that can begin to illuminate the dark corners of his heart, the lightless chambers of his memory. It is the third Christmas since his divorce, the third time he has shopped alone, celebrated alone, wrapped his daughter’s gifts alone-absolutely certain he had purchased the queerest, goofiest, hokiest presents an eleven-year-old girl could imagine. Sure, the therapist said that the average healing time for these things is two years or so, but it was common knowledge that therapists don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. It was three full years and still his heart sank with every carol, every clang of the Salvation Army bell, every rum-pum-pum-pum.

How had it all slipped away? Hadn’t he been certain that all his Christmases and birthdays and Thanksgiving dinners, for the rest of his life, were guaranteed to be joyous?

As the light turns green at Euclid Avenue and East Fourth Street, Jack Paris edges forward, realizing the answer to that question is a heart-clamping no. Then, as always, the other realizations begin to scrimmage in his mind: he is on the Centrum Silver side of forty, he lives with a Jack Russell terrier named Manfred in a crumbling walk-up on Carnegie, and he cannot remember the last time he walked down the street without his 9 mm, without looking over his shoulder every ten seconds.

But still Paris knows exactly what it is that keeps him on the fifty-yard line of the zone, what has so far prevented him from quitting the force, taking a job in security somewhere, and moving to Lakewood or Lyndhurst or Linndale.

He likes the inner city.

No, God save him, he loves it.

For the past eighteen years he has climbed the city’s darkest stairways, descended into its dankest cellars, ventured down its most threatening alleyways, walked among its neediest denizens of the night. From Fairfax to Collinwood to Hough to Old Brooklyn. It had cost him his marriage and a few billion alcohol-sodden brain cells, but the rush was still there, his heart still leapt in his chest when the case-making piece of evidence presented itself to him. The body might not respond the way it did when he was a rookie, it might take a few extra steps to run down a suspect, but he still brought a young man’s fervor to this game of crime and punishment.

And thus-if for no other reason than to keep that body from collapsing with a myocardial infarction from climbing three flights of stairs every day-it is time for a change. At least in his living arrangements. He had appointments all over the east side during the week after New Year’s. He would find new digs. Maybe it would vanquish the malaise that had settled over him of late.

The last real advance in his career was the task force he had headed during the Pharaoh murders, a series of killings in Cleveland, courtesy of a pair of psychopaths named Saila and Pharaoh and their bloody game of voyeurism, seduction, and murder.

Since that time there had been scores of homicides in Cleveland. The figures were mercifully down from even a year earlier, but still the bloodshed continued. Bar shootings, armed carjackings, convenience-store holdups, the ever-escalating carnage of domestic disputes.

He is busy enough. Yet there is nothing on his plate that compares to that night when he had been run all over town in a maniacal race against time, back when his heart nearly broke forever in an alleyway off St. Clair Avenue.

Back when his daughter had been in the hands of a madwoman.

“She’ll be twelve in February,” Paris says. “Valentine’s Day.”

The woman at the perfume counter at Macy’s is wearing a long white coat and a name tag that identifies her as “Oksana.” Paris looks at the lab coat and wonders if Oksana is indeed the chemist responsible for the perfume she is selling and might be summoned back to the lab for some crucial research at any minute. He thinks about making a joke, but Oksana sounds Russian, and a lousy joke in English is probably a lot worse when translated into broken English.

Paris had gone through the women’s clothes sections, his mind dizzied, as always, by the categories: Missy, Teen, Junior, Petite, Plus Size. Eventually he got to what appeared to be the hip-hop section but, after looking at the mannequins in their baggy jeans and huge shirts, he decided that he didn’t want to be responsible for his daughter looking like a bag lady. If he bought Melissa perfume, she would only have to wear it when he was around, and it wouldn’t take up precious closet space.

“This is very popular with the younger girls,” Oksana says. She looks about forty or so and has on more makeup than the Joker. Paris wonders what “younger” means to her.

Oksana spritzes a little of the perfume onto a small white card bearing a JLO logo. She waves the card around a bit, then hands it to Paris.

Paris sniffs the card, but, in such close proximity to all the other fragrances in the air, can’t really tell too much. It all smells good to him, because Jack Paris is, and always has been, a sucker for women’s perfume.

“I’ll take it,” he says.

The Homicide Unit of the Cleveland Police Department occupies part of the sixth floor of the Justice Center in the heart of downtown Cleveland. On the twelfth floor is the Grand Jury; on the ninth, the communications center and the chief’s office. The building might not look as daunting as it did when it was built in the seventies, back when the glass and steel facade made it an imposing watchdog over the city’s criminal element, but it is still functional, and the self-contained, bag-’em-book-’em-and-bolt-’em method of justice still maintains a certain efficient symbiosis.

At just after ten A.M. Paris crosses the underground garage, punches the button, steps into the elevator car. But before the doors can close fully, they open again.

A shadow appears. A deep male voice says:

“Well, well. Detective John S. Paris.”

The voice has a Texas seasoning, an arrogant southern cadence that Paris had come to abhor over a recent five-week period. The owner, the man entering the elevator, is in his late twenties or early thirties, dressed in a well-tailored pinstriped suit. Dark-haired, impeccably groomed and accessorized, he carries both the de rigeur Louis Vuitton leather briefcase and the vainglorious bearing of a young criminal defense attorney.

“Counselor,” Paris replies curtly.

Although Paris knows many of the defense attorneys in Cleveland fairly well, he had never heard of Jeremiah Cross, Esq., before the Sarah Lynn Weiss trial a year and a half or so earlier, nor had anyone else in the prosecutor’s office for that matter. Sarah Weiss was a former fashion model who stood accused of shooting a cop named Michael Ryan to death.

Paris had been at the Hard Rock Cafe, within a block of the Renaissance Hotel, when the call of shots fired on the twelfth floor came in. Within minutes, the hotel was sealed, and within minutes of that Sarah Weiss had been found alone in the ladies’ room on the mezzanine level, a bloodied bag of money-just under ten thousand in small bills-at her feet, although technically in the next stall.

Other things were detected, too. Michael Ryan’s brains, for instance. They were discovered on the brocade curtains in room 1206. The investigation also found a small pile of ashes in the bathroom sink, ashes that were thought to be, although never proven to be, the remnants of an official city document. There were also fibers from a burned twenty-dollar bill. The murder weapon, Mike Ryan’s Glock, had been found, wiped clean, beneath the hotel bed.

The homicide was Paris’s case and he had pushed hard for first-degree murder, even for the death penalty, but he knew it would never fly, knew it was rooted more in emotion and anger than anything resembling clear thinking. The idea didn’t even make it out of the prosecutor’s office. No one could put Sarah Weiss in the room at the time of the shooting, or even on the twelfth floor.

Sarah had scrubbed her hands and forearms with soap and hot water in the ladies’ room, so there was no trace evidence of gunpowder to be found, no blowback of blood or tissue from the force of the point-blank impact. Not enough to stand up to a savvy defense expert witness, that is.

The defense painted Michael Ryan as a rogue cop, a man with no shortage of violent acquaintances who may have wanted him dead. Michael was not officially on duty at the time of his killing. Plus, he had been under investigation by Internal Affairs for alleged strong-arm extortion-none of which was ever proven.

The jury deliberated for three days.

Without testifying, without ever saying a single word, Sarah Lynn Weiss was acquitted.

Paris hits the button for six; Jeremiah Cross, the lobby. The doors take their sweet time closing. Paris extracts the USA Today from under his arm and very deliberately opens it, halves it, and begins reading, hoping that the word counselor would be the breadth and depth of this conversation.

No such luck.

“I’m assuming you’ve heard the news, detective?” asks Cross.

Paris looks up. “Trying to read the news.”

“Oh, you won’t find it in there. Not the news I’m talking about. The news I’m talking about doesn’t make national headlines. In fact, it’s already ancient history as far as the real world is concerned.”

Paris locks eyes with Cross, recalling the last time he had seen the man. It was just after the trial. It was also just after a snoutful of Jim Beam and soda at Wilbert’s Bar. The two men had to be separated. Paris replies: “Is this the part where I feign interest?”

“Sarah Weiss is dead.”

Although the information is not really shocking-the oldest, truest axiom regarding the swords by which we live and die applying here-Paris is taken slightly aback. “Is that a fact?”

“Very much so.”

Paris remains silent for a moment. “Funny thing, that karma business.”

“It seems she got dressed to the nines one night, drove to a remote spot in Russell Township, doused the inside of the car with gasoline, chugged a fifth of whiskey, and lit a match.”

Paris is more than a little stunned at the visual. In addition to being a cold-blooded killer, Sarah Lynn Weiss had been a rather exotic-looking young woman. He glances back at his newspaper as the elevator mercifully starts upward, not really seeing the words now. He looks back at Jeremiah Cross. Cross is staring at him, dark eyebrows aloft, as if some sort of response to this news is mandatory.

Paris obliges. “What do you want me to say?”

“You have no thoughts on the matter?”

“She murdered a friend of mine. I’m not going to place a wreath.”

“She was innocent, detective.”

Paris almost laughs. “From your mouth, right?”

“And now she is dead.”

“Mike Ryan is dead, too,” Paris says, up a decibel. “And as worm fodder goes, Michael has a pretty good head start.”

“If it makes you feel better, Sarah Weiss was in hell for those two years. And your office put her there.”

“Let me ask you something, pal,” Paris says, up another few decibels. He is glad they are in the elevator. “Do you remember Carrie Ryan? Michael’s daughter? The girl in the wheelchair? Do you remember that sweet little face at the back of the courtroom the day your client walked? She’s eleven now. And do you know what she’ll be in five years? Sixteen. Michael gets to see none of it.”

“Your friend was dirty.”

“My friend made a difference. What the fuck do you do for a living?”

The elevator stops and chimes the lobby, like a timekeeper at a boxing match. The doors shudder once, open. Cross says: “I just want to know how it feels, Detective Paris.”

“How what feels?” Paris answers, turning his body the slightest degree toward Jeremiah Cross, who stands an inch or so taller. Defense, not offense. At least for the moment.

“How does it feel to have finally gotten the death penalty for Sarah Weiss?”

“Have a nice day, counselor.”

The doors begin to close. Paris catches them, clearing Jeremiah Cross’s path.

Paris watches Cross glide across the huge lobby at the Justice Center. He remembers the chaotic five-week trial of Sarah Weiss. At that time, a busy-body friend in the prosecutor’s office had told Paris that Jeremiah Cross was a bit of an enigma. She had done her standard snooping, then doubled her efforts when she had seen: (1) Jeremiah Cross’s good looks and (2) an empty computer screen when she had tried to dig up something on him.

In the end, all she could find out is that he subscribed to a telephone-answering service, and his letterheads had a post-office box return address on them, a 44118 zip code, which meant he picked up his mail in Cleveland Heights.

Of the twenty detectives in the Homicide Unit, eighteen are men, all are sergeants. Three men are under consideration for lieutenant: Jack Paris, Greg Ebersole, and Robert Dietricht. Paris isn’t interested, Ebersole doesn’t have the administrative personality, and Dietricht is one of the most officiously obnoxious pricks in the department, which means he’s a natural for the position. He’s also a brilliant detective.

At the moment, Bobby Dietricht is sitting on the edge of Paris’s desk, picking at an imaginary ball of lint on his perfectly creased pantleg, pumping one of his sources on Paris’s telephone. Bobby is thirty-nine years old, a few inches shorter than Paris’s five-eleven but in far better shape. Bobby, who never touches a drop of alcohol or a bite of red meat during the week, is in the gym every other day. Where Paris’s hair is thick and chestnut in color, constantly creeping over his collar, Bobby’s hair is an almost white blond, trimmed Marine Corps close on the sides and back, thinning in the front. Since Tommy Raposo’s passing, Bobby Dietricht had assumed the mantle of the Homicide Unit’s fashion plate. And he never rolls up his sleeves, even on the hottest days of the year.

“Okay,” Bobby says, “here’s what we’re going to do, Ahmed. I’m going to ask you one question, you’re going to give me one answer. Okay? Not your usual six. Just one. Got it?”

Paris, sitting behind the desk, only half-listening, knows the case Dietricht is working on. Muslim woman raped and murdered at Lakeview Terrace.

“Here it comes, Ahmed. Simple question requiring a one-word answer. Ready? Did you, or did you not, see Terrance Muhammad in the lobby of 8160 that night?” With this, Bobby reaches over and hits the speakerphone button, making Paris privy to the conversation, and to what Bobby obviously believes will be a classic piece-of-shit answer.

He is right.

“It is not so simple,” Ahmed says. “As you know, the CMHA is way behind on their repairs. We have taken them to court many, many times over this. Leaking ceilings, peeling plaster, unsafe balcony railings. And not to mention the rats, the vermin. Add to this the low wattage of the singular lamp in the lobby of 8160 and the certainty of such an identification becomes suspect at best. I would like to say that I saw Mr. Muhammad with some degree of certitude, but I cannot. And to think, a few extra watts, a few extra pennies a year might have made all the difference in a criminal investigation.”

“Ahmed, I’ve got you on the speakerphone now. I’m sitting here with Special Agent Johnny Rivers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Say hello to him.”

Paris buries his head in his hands. Johnny Rivers. Bobby Dietricht is famous for the pop culture mixed reference. Johnny Rivers recorded “Secret Agent Man,” not “Special Agent Man.” But it was close enough for Ahmed, and that’s all that matters.

“The FBI is there?” Ahmed asks, a little sheepishly. “I don’t… why is this, please?”

“Because the Justice Department is looking into the Nation of Islam and the contracts they have with Housing and Urban Development,” Bobby says. “Seems there’s been some allegations of corruption, extortion, things like that. Not to mention Homeland Security.”

Silence. Bobby has him.

“Could you take me off the speakerphone, please?” Ahmed asks.

Bobby and Paris touch a silent high five. Bobby picks up the hand-set. “Buy me coffee, Ahmed. When? No… how about now? Now is good for me. Twenty minutes. Hatton’s.”

Bobby hangs up the phone, stands, shoots his cuffs, turns to leave, then suddenly stops, sniffs the air. “Jack?”

“Yeah.”

“Question for you.”

“Yeah,” Paris answers, annoyed. He has just read the same sentence for the fifth time.

“Why do you smell like Jennifer Lopez?”

The phone. Of all the possibilities that exist when a homicide detective’s phone rings at work-from his long list of lowlife informants, to the coroner’s office calling with bad news, to the unit commander ringing with the cheery tidings that another body has been found and you get to go poke it with things-the one call that invariably changes his day completely is the one that begins:

“Hi, Daddy!”

It is always springtime in his daughter’s voice.

“Hi, Missy.”

“Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas to you, honey, but it’s not for four more days!” Paris says. “How’s school?”

“Good. We got out last Friday for the holidays.”

Of course, Paris realizes. Why doesn’t he ever stop and think before asking questions like that? “So what’s cookin’?”

“Well,” she says, taking a big swallow. “You know that we haven’t seen each other in a week and a half, right?”

“Okay,” Paris says, his heart aching with love for this little girl. She is so much like her mother. The Setup. The Flattery. The Kill. He lets her play it out.

“And I miss you,” Melissa adds.

“I miss you, too.”

Swallow number two. “Did Mom tell you that she has her office Christmas party tonight?”

“She may have mentioned something about it.”

“And do you remember if she told you that I was thinking about having a few of my friends over tonight, too?”

“No, honey. But it sounds like fun.”

“Well… it turns out that Darla has a cold.”

“Is that right?”

“Uh-huh. She can’t baby-sit.”

“I see,” Paris says, thinking about what a brilliant tactic this is, having Melissa call.

“So, do you think you could do it?” Melissa asks, then outdoes even her mother in the charm department. “I really miss you, Daddy.”

God, she’s going to be a dangerous woman, Paris thinks. He had planned to rent Sea of Love again, toss a turkey dinner in the microwave, maybe do a few loads of laundry. Why on earth would he give all that up to spend a few hours with his daughter? “Sure.”

“Thanks, Daddy. Mom says eight o’clock.”

“Eight o’clock it is.”

“Oh! I almost forgot!”

“What, sweetie?”

“Did Mom tell you what she got for me as an early Christmas present?”

“No, she didn’t,” Paris says, fully prepared to have been outspent, out-hipped. What he is not prepared for is outhustled.

“It’s the coolest,” Melissa says. “The absolute coolest.”

“What’d you get?”

“JLO perfume.”

On the way back to the store to return the perfume-having already dumped the perfume sample card after Bobby Dietricht’s smart-ass comment-Paris finds his thoughts returning to Sarah Weiss, a name he had tried very hard to put out of his mind for the past eighteen months. Although he had never partnered with Mike Ryan, Paris had considered him a friend, had known him to be a solid, stand-up cop, a family man with a terrific wife and a little girl in a wheelchair whom he loved to the heavens.

It was Mike Ryan who had given Paris the station-house nickname of Fingers, referring to Paris’s penchant for the impromptu card trick, complete with scatalogical patter, a habit stemming from a lifelong interest in close-up magic. Paris could remember at least a dozen times when a grinning Mike Ryan had staggered across a crowded downtown bar on a Friday night, a quartet of people in tow, a deck of cards in hand, shouting: “Hey, Fingers! Show ’em the one where all the kings lose their nuts in a hunting accident.” Or, “Hey, Fingers! Do the one with the four jacks, the queen, and the circle jerk.”

Or, how about this, Paris thinks as he rounds the corner onto Ontario Street:

Hey, Fingers! I’m gonna get my fuckin’ brains blown out in a hotel room one of these days. Do me a favor, okay? Cop to cop. With my blessing, please return the favor to the bitch who pulled the trigger.

Sarah Lynn Weiss.

Dead.

Paris recalls Sarah Weiss’s willowy figure, her clear obsidian eyes. Sarah’s story was that she had found the leather satchel in the ladies’ room and was about to look inside for identification when the police searched the rest rooms. The only physical evidence tying her to the shooting had been traces of Michael Ryan’s blood on the big leather purse lying near her feet.

But Paris had seen it in her eyes. He had looked into her eyes not twenty minutes after she had killed a man and the madness still raged there.

He thinks about the drunken Sarah Weiss sitting in a burning car, her lungs filling with smoke, the heat blistering the skin from her flesh. He thinks about Mike Ryan’s lifeless body slumped in that hotel chair.

Detective John Salvatore Paris finds the symmetry he wants in this sad and violent diorama, the balance he needs, and thinks:

It’s finally over, Mikey.

We close the book today.

Paris steps onto Euclid Avenue, the aroma of diesel fumes and roasting cashews divining its very own recess of city smells in his memory, a scent that leads him down a long arcade of recollection to Higbee’s, Halle’s, and Sterling Lindner’s-the magnificent, glimmering department stores of his youth-and the deep promise of the Christmas season.

As he enters Tower City, a momentarily contented man, he has no way of knowing that within one hour his phone will ring again.

He will answer.

And, on the city of his birth, an ancient darkness will fall.