Sex, Thugs and Rock & Roll

Markers by Albert Tucher

“You’re going to owe me big time,” Diana said.

“I already owe you,” said Detective Tillotson. “By the time you collect on all my markers, you’ll be retired. Or I will.”

He walked her down the corridor, past a series of open doors. Even blindfolded, she would have known she was in a hospital. Each room sent that disinfectant-and-dirty-diaper odor out to meet them. He stopped by the only closed door and took a photograph from his breast pocket.

“This is all he had on him. No ID. We haven’t matched his fingerprints to anything yet.”

He turned the photo around to show her. “Can you do this with your hair?”

“Sure. But the nose is a problem. Maybe I had it done, but most nose jobs go the other way. Smaller, not bigger.”

“He won’t be able to tell,” said Tillotson. “Only one eye is open, and the docs think his optic nerve is damaged. He’ll only see your coloring and your general shape. Close enough.”

She made a face. “Somebody did a job on him.”

“Get ready. It’s not pretty.”

She went back down the hall to the unisex visitors’ bathroom. Diana watched herself in the mirror as she tied her dark blond hair at the back of her neck. Her regular clients preferred her hair long and loose, but it didn’t matter. This job was still hooking-being what a man wanted her to be.

She didn’t mind this man, as cops went. He had called on her for help several times. It was tactful of Tillotson to pretend that he owed her, but when a cop asked, she didn’t consider saying no. He could make it impossible for her to work.

She found him where she had left him. “Why am I doing this?”

“He’s not talking. Maybe you can get something out of him.”

“Talking I don’t mind. Just be around in case he gets physical.”

“He won’t. Believe me, he can’t.”

He looked at his watch. “The docs say five minutes.”

She opened the door and entered the room. Tillotson swung the door closed behind her, but he left an inch of space for listening.

The man wouldn’t have passed for human anywhere but in a hospital bed. If she had seen him shrink-wrapped in a supermarket, she would have complained to the meat manager.

She knew which eye wouldn’t open. Someone had worked the entire left side of his face into a bulging purple mass. The right side looked better, but only in comparison. The eye was bruised, but it probably had some leeway to open.

He looked asleep. She hoped that he was. It would make things easier for him, and Tillotson might excuse her from her task.

Yeah, right, she thought.

She made herself take the man’s hand.

His right eye flickered. The lids parted painfully. She felt a stinging behind her own eyes.

Tears. When had she cried last? She blinked several times and told herself to concentrate on the job.

His weakness wouldn’t allow him to turn his head. She leaned over to let him see her. His swollen and shredded lips moved, and something raspy happened in his throat. Diana looked around the room. On a wheeled cart sat a water bottle. A bent plastic straw stuck out of its lid. She tried to free her right hand, but he gripped it with surprising strength. Unwilling to wrestle with him, she stretched and just reached the straw with two fingers of her left hand. She rested the bottle on the bed, changed her grip, and gently inserted the straw between his lips.

She watched to make sure that he didn’t drown himself, but he lacked the strength to take that much water. She pulled the bottle away, waited for him to swallow, and gave him the straw again.

He lay still. Diana thought she had lost him to exhaustion, but then he spoke in a thread of a voice. “I knew you would come.”

She thought about saying something vague but decided to keep quiet. Her voice might spoil the illusion.

“It was worth it. I’d do it again. Whatever it takes.”

Diana thought she understood. She fought the urge to pull her hand away. She had to make sure she was right.

“I can do anything, knowing you’ll be there,” he said. “I knew you didn’t mean those things you said. I knew you would love me sooner or later.”

This time she did jerk her hand away from him. She turned and ran for the door. It opened to meet her, and Tillotson caught her before she collided with him.

“Whoa,” he said. “What happened? Did you get anything?”

She nodded and paused to calm herself.

“I got enough,” she said.

He gave her a skeptical look.

“What I wish you would do,” she said, “is go in there and lean on his chest until he stops breathing. Save the world a lot of trouble.”

In three years this was the first time she had shocked him.

“But what I think you’ll do is go through the local restraining orders and see if anybody is missing a stalker. That woman in the picture you have is getting a breather. From him. And I have a feeling it’s not going to last. And you’re probably going to end up arresting her father, or her boyfriend, or her brother, while he walks.”

Tillotson nodded toward the room. “Sounds like you know something about this kind of thing.”

“I picked up a stalker a while back. Occupational hazard. No matter what I did, he just took it as a test that he had to pass. Pass enough of them, and we would live happily ever after. The problem was, if he saw me with anybody else, it took him about a tenth of a second to go all psycho on me.”

“Is he still a problem?”

“No,” said Diana. “Not for a couple of years.”

She met Tillotson’s eyes. “Since then I have another client who gets freebies for as long as he wants them.”

“I didn’t hear that.”

She shrugged.

“Thanks for coming out,” he said.

She left him alone with his problem.

Two days later she opened the Newark Star-Ledger. She was about to skip to the Olympic news from Barcelona, when she noticed a story about a man who had died in Morristown Memorial Hospital. The man had a name now, but it meant nothing to her. The doctors suspected a blood clot resulting from injuries that he had suffered in a severe beating. They would have to conduct an autopsy.

Police were questioning a young woman and her two brothers.

She called Tillotson at his office. He was in. He sounded as if he wanted to be somewhere else.

“They’re not talking,” he said. “At all. Not many suspects are that smart.”

In other words, she thought, I can keep hoping.

“I owe you,” he said.

“Not this time.”