PALINDROME (4 page)

~~~

Allie nuzzled Keith’s neck as he fumbled to
put his key in the door lock. He was still holding onto the doggie
bag. She began running her fingers through his hair. “Hurry!” she
said.

“I can’t see what I’m doing. The light’s
out.”

She grabbed the plastic bag. “Give me that,”
she demanded. “She uncovered the sushi, popped one of the rolls
into her mouth, and then pressed her lips to his. She threw her
arms around him just as the lock clicked—they stumbled blindly into
the apartment. Allie kicked the door closed behind them. She
stuffed a second roll into his mouth and then went in to retrieve
it.

“You’re wild,” Keith said, half-chewing and
half-choking on the Dragon Roll.

“I’m so turned on,” she whispered. He could
feel her warm breath on his neck. “Tear my blouse off.”

“Oh my God, you’re a freak,” he said.

“Less talking,” she instructed. Allie grabbed
her blouse with her two hands and attempted to tear it. “Help
me.”

Keith didn’t need a second invitation. He
grabbed her blouse with two hands and tore it away. His fingernails
scratched her breast in the process.

Allie moaned, “God, that’s feels so good.”
She touched the spot where she had been scratched and then licked
the blood from her fingertip. “Now my panties.” She hiked up her
skirt. “Tear off my panties, hurry!”

Keith reached behind her to get his hand
under her skirt. He grabbed a handful of fabric and tore her
panties until they came free. Allie pressed her mouth to his and
leaned into him with her full weight, sending him backward against
the wall.

“Are you ready for us?” she asked.

It was dark, but she could clearly make out
the confused look on his face. “Us?” he asked just as Ax’s knuckles
whipped into his temple. He felt a flash of electricity in his
head, like the shock from touching a wall socket. His temple
throbbed painfully for a split second and then everything went
black.

~~~

When Keith came to, his first instinct was to
shield his eyes from the intermittent flashing of the strobe light
that filled the doorway of his darkened house. “What is going on?”
he said in a low voice. He touched the side of his head, the spot
where the intense pain was coming from. He used the wall to steady
himself. He slid upward with his shoulder against the wall as he
stood. He was still completely disoriented as he peered outside. He
could see Allie standing next to a police officer. The police car
was behind them—the strobe light intermittently silhouetted their
figures. She was wearing the policeman’s jacket, and she was
crying. In the next instant, three Suffolk County policemen came
charging through the door. “Hey,” he yelled, “what the—” He was
face down on the floor before he knew what hit him; handcuffs
ratcheted down on his wrists. “Hey, I live here,” he protested.
“Stop it! What’s going on?” He was struggling with the police
officers, unsure of what was happening to him and trying
desperately to make sense of it all. “You can’t do this. I have
rights, and I want a lawyer.”

One of the cops replied in a loud,
condescending voice, “Oh yeah? You’ll need one, scumbag.”

Five: Canned

Keith
Cooper sat in the interrogation
room. He was handcuffed. His head rested upon the pillow he had
constructed with his hands. An empty paper cup resided on the table
next to him. He was in a room that had not been refurbished in
thirty years. The walls were paneled in some God-awful wood veneer
that the county’s builder had bought in a job lot for pennies on
the dollar. It had weathered, turned gray, and had been scratched
to death from three decades of abuse.

Cooper lifted his head when the door opened.
A uniformed officer said, “Your attorney is here.”

“Thanks,” Cooper replied. “What about some
more water?”

“Yeah, any minute now,” the cop replied
sarcastically. He stepped aside so that the attorney could enter
the room, and then pulled the door closed on his way out.

Emilio Bolan was a man of purpose. He walked
directly to the chair opposite Cooper and sat down without saying a
word. He flipped open his briefcase and withdrew a legal pad. He
fished within the breast pocket of his Dolce & Gabbana suit and
withdrew a handcrafter S.T. Dupont pen. He scribbled the date and
time at the top of the page alongside Cooper’s name.

“Thanks—” Bolan raised his finger and
silenced Cooper before he could say anything else. He looked up at
the wall-mounted video camera and checked to make sure it had been
turned off. Without looking, he rapped on the one-way viewing panel
behind him. He dusted lint off his lapel as he waited for the
police officer to return. A minute passed in silence, and then the
door to the interrogation room swung open.

“Yeah?” the uniformed cop said
impatiently.

“Everything is switched off, yes?” Bolan
asked.

“Yeah, everything’s off,” the cop
replied.

“Everything?” Bolan reiterated. “No video or
audio recording at all, yes?”

“I said,
yes,
”

“Splendid. Thank you,” Bolan said with a
polite smile. “Please make sure the shades are drawn on the viewing
panel.” He rapped on the glass panel with his knuckles again.

“Anything else?” the cop replied, irritation
evident in the tone of his voice. “You want a couple of lattes? How
about a plate of nachos to pick on? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he
muttered as he pulled the door shut.

“Thanks for coming down. I—” Cooper said.

Bolan shot his cuffs quickly and
unexpectedly, causing Cooper to flinch. Bolan admired his solid
gold cufflinks momentarily. “You don’t speak unless I tell you to.
I will ask the questions and you will answer, quickly and
accurately. The first time you lie to me, I will resign as your
counsel. I don’t appreciate being dragged out to Suffolk County in
the middle of the night.”

“It’s all bullshit. I didn’t do anything,”
Cooper said.

“Of course not. No one ever does anything. In
fact, I am so busy defending falsely accused individuals that I can
scarcely find time for a satisfying bowel movement.”

“So you’re not the nicest attorney, are
you?”

“I could be if we had met under the proper
circumstances . . . but we didn’t. Nicest? No, I’m not the nicest,
but I’m the best that money can buy; lucky for you to have a friend
with lots of influence. I’m sure you can find any number of Long
Island country bumpkin attorneys to defend you, so if that’s what
you would prefer—” Bolan put the cap on his exquisite pen and
slipped it back into his pocket. “No problem.” He stood and
prepared to leave.

“Whoa, hold on,” Cooper said. He showed his
palms to indicate he was willing to back off. “I got it. We’ll play
by your rules.”

Bolan sat and thatched his fingers. He flexed
them before he retrieved his pen. “Do you understand the crime you
have been accused of?”

“Let me guess . . . rape?” Cooper responded
indignantly.

“Attempted rape to be specific. These are not
charges to be taken lightly.”

“This is such crap. This chick is insane. She
came on to me big time and then cold-conked me.”

“She seduced you and then knocked you out? Do
you know how implausible that sounds?”

“Look, I’m just telling you what I know. It
was a first date. I took her to dinner, and she went off the wall
because the waitress spilled a little water on her. She went into
the bathroom to dry off, and when she came back, she told me she
would rather screw than eat. I took her back to my place, and she
was all over me.”

“My friend, you are in serious trouble. I’ll
give you one last opportunity to tell me the truth.”

“That is the truth!” Cooper protested.

Bolan stared at Cooper with an icy, jaundiced
eye. A moment passed while he appeared to consider his next step.
Let me tell you what I know.” He raised his index finger. “First,
her blouse was torn to shreds.”

“She did that.”

“She did that,
really?”

“She started to tear it and couldn’t. She
begged me to help her with it.”

“I suppose that’s when you clawed her
breasts. She has animal-like claw marks on her breasts. As you
might have guessed, her skin was found under your fingernails.”

“So I scratched her.”

“You also tore off her panties.”

“Yes, because she begged me to. I told you,
she was all over me. I never saw a woman so turned on.”

“They also found GHB pills, a date rape drug
in your apartment.”

Cooper buried his face in his cuffed hands.
He began breathing deeply and nervously. “Shit.”

“Do you have any idea how this looks? The
police already questioned the staff at the restaurant, who said
they heard you on the phone, boasting that you were going to screw
this woman’s brains out.”

Cooper closed his eyes. “This is a total
setup.”

“Why would she do that? What would motivate
someone you barely know to set you up and accuse you of attempted
rape?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you been drugging women with GHB and
raping them?”

Cooper hesitated before answering, “No.”

“You don’t sound convincing.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“I ask again, have you been drugging
women?”

“I did it once, but it was for a friend. He
gave me some pills, and I slipped one of them into a girl’s drink
the other night. I forgot to throw away the rest of the pills.”

Bolan began writing furiously on his pad.
“Name? I need to know his name?”

“Yo, the hole is deep enough, I’m not
dragging a friend down with me.”

“You are going to do time, my naïve friend.
There is physical evidence to corroborate the plaintiff’s
allegations, and you were found with date-rape drugs in your
possession, which you admit you’ve administered before. Christ
himself would have to intervene on your behalf to keep you from
imprisonment.”

“Isn’t my word worth anything?”

“Nothing, you stupid, stupid man.”

“You know what,
enough
,” Cooper said
with outrage. “I’ve been tending bar a long time, and believe me,
these young babes are begging for it. They come in and get hammered
night after night hoping to go home with someone. Booze, GHB,
what’s the difference? One’s a little faster than the other, that’s
all. Either way, everyone goes home a winner.”

“Maintain that attitude, and I have no doubt
that you will spend the next several years of your life in jail,
confined and without freedom. What on earth would compel you to
drug an innocent woman? You willfully aided and abetted in the
commission of felony rape. Shortly thereafter, you were accused of
attempted rape. If the District Attorney puts these facts together
as quickly as I did, you’ll do a minimum of five years. Now give me
your accomplice’s name, while we have the opportunity to construct
a reasonable defense.”

Cooper began to gasp, and his hands began to
shake. Before he was able to collect himself, his mouth opened, and
he told Bolan his friend’s name.

Six: Toontown

So
, do you remember that Roger Rabbit
movie? It was a cool, animated flick. Now do you remember the first
time the PI, Eddie Valiant, crossed the Hollywood border and
entered an animated world, a place called Toontown? Well, that’s
kind of the way I feel whenever I drive into Islandia. People stop
being people—well, regular people anyway. They become caricatures.
Not far away from the semi-affluent Suffolk County towns of
Smithtown and Hauppauge, with their spa franchises and their
top-dollar steakhouses, lies Islandia, where your worst prejudices
find a face. As you cross the border, Audis are replaced by flatbed
pickup trucks and rent-a-wrecks; the Whole Foods Market is replaced
by Walmart; and normal folks become zombies.

Sitting in Gabi’s favorite Chinese buffet
restaurant, my seat by the window afforded me a spectacular view of
the bizarre and eclectic. We were sitting across from a table of
six obese women. They were sucking the meat out of king crab legs
at a rate that would impress a Detroit assembly line engineer. One
of the claw-sucking ladies had just sat down with a fresh pile of
crustaceous appendages. She had only gotten through a couple of
them when her dark-haired infant began to screech like a falcon
diving on its prey. She gave her offspring one quick, mean-spirited
glance from the corner of her eye. Now this was impressive: she
grabbed her child with one hand, stuffed a bottle of formula in its
mouth, and was chewing a fresh crab leg in ten seconds flat.

Two guys were sitting down at a nearby table.
One was wearing a blood-stained bandana. They looked as if they had
just been released from lockup and were planning their next
convenience-store robbery.

Outside, a toothless, gray-haired woman with
a sallow complexion walked side by side with her husband. They
looked like hillbillies from the Incest Foothills. They also looked
like they had the same parents; okay, maybe they only shared one
parent. Well anyway, the still must have been broken because they
were headed for the liquor store and their daily ration of joy
juice. They were carrying vinyl eco-friendly grocery bags (at least
they both had an environmental conscience). Do I sound judgmental?
Yes. Do I sound prejudice? Undoubtedly. The truth was that my heart
ached for these people. As bad as things had been for Ax and me,
these people had it worse. Ax and I still had hope, and these poor
folks . . . God only knew what would become of them.

As I watched this menagerie of misfortunates,
I could not imagine having to copy any one of them. Ax and I both
share a similar nightmare—we’ve dreamed that we copied one of these
woebegone citizens and were not able to change back. Okay, it’s all
right to hate us for a minute. I completely understand. I hope
you’ll let it pass. Take all the time you need. Please don’t judge
us. Despite our special abilities, Ax and I have fears and
insecurities like anyone else. Perhaps we are a bit paranoid, but
for us, it’s a legitimate fear.