Kiss Of Evil

81

The woman at the USAir counter at Hopkins International Airport looks five years younger than the last time he had seen her.

The cop walking up behind her looks as fresh as yesterday’s chili.

“Hey there,” the cop says.

The woman spins around, as if expecting something… what? Terrible? For a moment, her expression is unreadable, then it fashions a smile, quickly and genuinely. “Jack,” she says. “How sweet of you to come. How did you-”

“I’m a detective,” Paris says. “It’s a gift.”

Dolores Ryan finishes her business at the counter, then turns back to Paris. “Is this an official city of Cleveland send off?” she asks.

Paris smiles. “Yeah. Something like that.”

The two of them step away from the counter. Dolores glances around the huge ticket lobby at the flurry of travelers. Her eyes find a familiar place; her heart, it seems, a secluded memory. “I remember, one time, I met Michael here when he was flying in from some cop seminar. Forensics, or ordnance, or something like that.”

“Indianapolis.”

“Right. He went twice a year. You were at those, too?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Ever learn anything?”

“Well, I can tell you that it’s precisely twenty steps from the bar to the men’s room at the airport Ramada.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Paris looks heavenward. “Sorry, Mikey.”

“Anyway, Michael’s flight was really late that time. Maybe two in the morning. And all I had on was this black plastic raincoat and spike heels.”

Paris’s eyebrows arch in unison. “Nothing else?”

“Not a stitch.”

“I see.”

“So, we’re down in baggage claim, and it’s deserted, and I give him this quick flash, right? Michael goes five shades of Irish red. Doesn’t know what to do with himself.” Dolores covers her mouth, keeping the laugh inside. “Do you remember that crooked smile he had when he was embarrassed?”

“I remember it well,” Paris says. “Although, as I recall, it wasn’t all that easy to embarrass Mike Ryan.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Let’s get back to the black plastic raincoat,” Paris says.

Dolores smiles, takes a moment, giving the remembrance its due. “We made love in the parking lot, Jack. Slow, sweet, married love. It wasn’t all hot and crazy like you might imagine when a wife who thinks her looks are going south tries a stunt like that. I don’t think Michael took his eyes from mine the whole time we walked from the baggage claim out to the parking lot. He was like a little kid in a toy store and the most sophisticated man in the world at the same time.”

Dolores glances at the steward standing by the entrance ramp. Carrie Ryan, sitting in front of the man, looks at Paris, smiles, lifts a thin arm to wave. The little girl’s smile squeezes Paris’s heart, and, if there had been any doubt-and there had been many-he now knows he is doing the right thing.

Paris turns his attention back to Dolores. He reaches out, takes her hands in his, searching for the right words. He had rehearsed them for a day and a half, but that didn’t seem to matter at the moment. Finally, he says: “Look… Dolores, I… I just wanted you to know that it’s over. All of it. That’s what’s important. You’re going to have a whole new life in Florida. All of this is behind you now. Everything. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“Do you really?”

Dolores looks deeply into Paris’s eyes. She holds him there for an instant, suspended, giving Paris hope that he will hear the words that will put his heart at ease. Instead, she offers him a sexy half-smile, nothing more. And, in that moment, Paris sees the twenty-four-year-old Dolores Alessio he had met so many years ago, the street-talking firebrand who had stolen Michael Ryan’s heart.

“First call for boarding, USAir flight 188, nonstop to Tampa, Florida…”

They both glance at the entrance ramp. The steward begins to roll Carrie Ryan’s wheelchair onboard.

Dolores slides her hands around Paris’s waist, hooking her thumbs through his belt loops. She regards him, slowly, head to toe, and says: “You know, there’s something I’ve always wanted to tell you, Detective Jack Paris.”

“Uh-oh,” Paris says. “An airport confession. I’m not sure I’m ready for this.”

“It’s a good thing.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” Dolores says. “I’m sure.”

“Okay. Let’s hear it.”

“I always thought you were the handsomest of Michael’s cop-buddies.”

Paris blushes a little. “I’m shocked.”

“Shocked?” Dolores asks. “Why on earth would you be shocked?”

“Michael actually had other kinds of friends?”

Dolores laughs, pulls Paris into her arms, and the two of them embrace for a full and solemn minute, holding each other with a passion forged of secrets, a bond of silence they both now realize, in their hearts, can never be broken.

Ten minutes later, as Paris watches the 727 make the final turn on the runway, readying for takeoff, he reaches into his coat pocket and removes the old crime-scene photo of Anthony del Blanco’s mutilated body lying in the parking lot. He also removes the crumpled piece of paper, unfolds it, smoothes it against his chest. He reads it for the fiftieth time.

Please leave the newspaper in the wooden box until Sunday. Thanks!

Paris isn’t sure when the seed first took root within him. Maybe it was the moment he recalled seeing the red wig in the hatbox while rummaging around in bay number 202, the first time he visited My-Self Storage. Or perhaps it was when he had parked on Denison Avenue two days ago, binoculars in hand, the day Dolores Ryan sold her yellow Mazda to an elderly couple.

He looks at the back of the old photo, at the words written in the same blocky style, the same red ink as Dolores’s note to the paperboy:

Evil is a breed, Fingers.

The jet engines roar.

Paris closes his eyes for a moment, imagining the madness of the final few hours of Sarafina del Blanco’s life. Deep inside, where his own guilt lives, he knows it just might have been Dolores Ryan, in her red wig, drinking at the Gamekeeper’s Taverne with Sarafina that night. He knows it just might have been Dolores Ryan who sat with Sarafina in that car, on that hill in Russell Township, polishing off a bottle of whiskey. He knows it just might have been Dolores Ryan-a woman who had now lost both her father and her husband to a murderer’s bullet-who had then splashed gasoline all over the interior of the car and, mad-eyed with rage and hatred and vengeance, tossed a match.

As the last of the exhaust from the 727 dissipates high above the runway at Hopkins International Airport, as Detective John Salvatore Paris turns on his heels and heads for the parking lot, and the city beyond, there are two thoughts that track him, two thoughts he hopes will bring closure to the insanity that began on a hot July day twenty-six years ago, two thoughts that will be at his side, later that night, as he sits upon the rocks at the Seventy-second Street pier, as he makes a pile of photographs and negatives and yellowed police reports and handwritten notes, as he starts a small, purging fire of his own:

You square it with your God, Dusty.

I’ll square it with mine.