Slugfest

Twenty-four

Nothing could have induced me to sleep at Lucy’s that night. Not J. C.’s offer of protection with her all-purpose weapon. Not Wilson and Vargas, who’d assured me they’d check in every two hours even after their shift ended in the morning. I wasn’t the nervous type and it was true, nothing serious had happened. As if reciting from the manual, Vargas had said nine times out of ten prank calls were nothing more than bored kids getting their jollies.

If he’d said nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand I might have liked the odds better, but I wasn’t going to get a good night’s sleep, wondering if I was the unlucky tenth time out of ten. I didn’t really think I’d be raped or murdered in Lucy’s bed, but I needed a good night’s sleep and that wasn’t going to happen if I had to keep one eye open all night.

J. C. and the cops tried to talk me out of it. She even offered me a spot on her sofa—an enormous concession from someone who greeted most strangers with a bar in hand—and I was grateful but adamant. The cops agreed to give me a ride to the St. George Hotel. I threw some essentials and Lucy’s stilettos in a hard-sided suitcase with rotating wheels and an extending handle. I wasn’t about to give a Peeping Tom another girlie show, so I left the red dress on. It was quite a look with my own sensible Merrells.

“Did you call us from this phone?” Wilson asked, as I finished packing.

“No. Why?”

Wilson pressed *69 on Lucy’s phone. He took out his pad and wrote down the number that appeared.

“Worth a try,” he said, pleased with himself. He dialed the number, but there was no answer. He walked over to the window. “Come here,” he said. I felt a sermon coming.

Lucy lived around the corner from a high-rise as big as one of those mammoth cruise ships with hundreds of little windows. If they’d wanted to, anyone from the fifth floor on up could see directly into Lucy’s bedroom, where I’d been sashaying in my underwear and practicing for my turn on the catwalk. In the sliver of street between the apartment house and a movie complex was another line of sight and a bank of pay phones backlit by the theater’s marquee.

“It’s far away but could be one of those, too,” Wilson said, looking at the traffic coming out of the theater. “Easy enough to find out.”

“I didn’t know there still were pay phones.”

“Yeah. And there are still people who don’t have E-Z-Pass and know how to parallel park. Where are you from?” I wasn’t in the mood for that discussion again, especially since I had started the evening feeling like a savvy New Yorker and now felt like a rube.

“Even if someone saw me, how would anyone out there know this number?” I asked.

“Not hard to check the names on the mailboxes downstairs and figure out who lives where,” his partner said. “You said this wasn’t your place. Your friend in the habit of walking around in her … skivvies?”

Lucy and I had been roommates some years back. I still cringe remembering the time she signed for a FedEx package in a teddy, cowboy boots, and a hat Garth Brooks would have been proud to wear. No doubt the FedEx guy remembered, too. I grew defensive on my friend’s behalf. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“We’re just asking. That’s what we do. We’ll check to see if she’s ever filed a complaint. Technically, this is aggravated harassment.” He rattled off the rule book definition.

“Off the record, there’s not much we can do. Your friend might consider curtains. Do you want us to file a complaint?”

If I said no and there was a repeat performance, no report would exist of it ever having happened before so I said yes. It was a sharp reminder I no longer lived in the city. In Springfield, I could dance around buck naked and do nothing more than annoy the barred owl that lived in the hemlock forty feet from my deck. And if anything did happen, Mike O’Malley would be there in a flash. He’d probably station an armed guard in my driveway. I wouldn’t say I had my way with the Springfield police, but after three years and as many adventures, we took each other seriously. More seriously than these guys were taking me.

The cops finished their report. By the time we pulled up to the St. George, it was close to eleven o’clock. J. C. had called ahead to book the room for me, and I assured her I’d be back the following night for reheated ziti—which everyone knows is better the second day anyway.

Climbing out of a police cruiser, slightly disheveled, in a red spandex dress, leather jacket, and flats, I worried I looked like the paid entertainment at a precinct retirement party, but times had changed and the doorman had obviously seen worse, so he held the door as if I were the First Lady arriving for a charity function. I wheeled my suitcase toward the check-in desk.

The hotel lobby was more crowded than I expected it to be at that hour, and I had to weave in and out of a few clusters of people I was sure were staring at me. Then I heard a familiar voice.

“Not crazy about the shoes, but I like the red dress.”

I shoved the extended handle on the wheelie down, grabbed the bag with both hands, spun around, and slugged the speaker on the side of his head with the full weight of my suitcase and all the torque in my body. People scattered in fear and the man staggered and dropped to his knees holding his head.

“What the…”

There was no blood, but Guy Anzalone was clearly shaken up.