Evil Grows & Other Thrilling Tales (3 page)

After stewing over it all weekend, she decides to take it up with the head of the firm, file a complaint. But the senior partner won't sully himself and fobs her off on an assistant, who by the time she finishes her story has pegged her as an immoral bitch who's gone to blackmail when she found out she couldn't advance herself on her knees, if you get what I'm saying; she can see it in his face when he tells her the incident will be investigated. Next day she's assigned to computer filing. It's obvious the investigation stopped with the partner, who is now out to hound her out of the firm, filing being a notorious dead end whether it involves a modem or a bunch of metal cabinets.

But he doesn't stop there. She tries to finance a new car but gets denied for bad credit. Pulls out her card to buy a blouse at Hudson's, the clerk makes a call, then cuts up the card in front of her. Some more stuff like that happens, then late one night she gets another phone call. It's the walking genitalia, telling her he's got friends all over and if she isn't nice to him he'll phony up her employment record, get her fired, evict her, frame her for soliciting, whatever; it's him or a cell at County, followed by a refrigerator carton on Woodward Avenue, choice is hers. He's psycho, no question, but he's a psycho with connections. The refrigerator carton seals the deal. She's his now, and the law is no longer her parachute. What the partner hasn't figured on is that by blocking all the legal exits, he's left her with only one way out.

There's no way I can tell you all this the way Nola told it. She lays it out flat, just the facts, without a choke or a sob. I'm ready for the waterworks; I've seen some doozies, Oscar-quality stuff, they don't call undercover Umbrella Duty for nothing. The only hint Nola's stinging at all is when she breaks a sentence in half to sip her drink, like a runner taking a hit of oxygen before he can go on. Maybe she's just thirsty. What I'm saying is there's nothing to distract from the bare bones of her story. And I know every word's true. I can see this puffed-up fucker in his Armani, ripping up some poor schmoe in court for stepping out on his wife, then rushing back to the office for his daily quickie with the good-looking paralegal. And while I'm seeing this—I can't say even now if I knew I was doing it—I sneak a hand up under my shirt and disconnect the wire.

Nola won't talk business in a bar. She suggests we meet at her place the next night and gives me an address on East Jefferson. I stand up when she does, pay for the drinks—there's no discussion on that, it's an assumption we both make—and I go to the can, mainly to give her a chance to make some distance before I meet with the crew in the van. Only when I leave the roadhouse, I know she's somewhere out there in the dark, watching me. I walk right past the van and get into my car and pull out. I don't even give the earlobe-tug that tells them I'm being watched, because I know Nola would recognize it for what it was. And I spend an extra fifteen minutes crazying up the way home, just in case she's following me.

My telephone's ringing when I get in, and I'm not surprised it's Carpenter, from the van. What's the deal, he wants to know, something went wrong with the transmitter and you forgot we were out there freezing off our asses, you get drunk or what? I tell him I'm wiped out, sorry, I must have pulled loose a wire without knowing. Not to worry; the Nola thing didn't pan out, she was just looking for a sympathetic ear, had no intention of following up on her wish-dream of offing the partner. I didn't like the way the bartender was giving me the fish-eye, thought if I was seen climbing in and out of a van in the parking lot I might blow any chance of a future bust involving the high-stakes poker game that went on in the back room Tuesday nights. Which was the only truth I told Carpenter that night.

I don't know if he believed me about Nola, but he didn't question it Carpenter's not what you call gung ho, would just as soon duck the graveyard shift for whatever reason. It's not for fear of his disapproval I stay awake most of that night wishing I still smoked. I can still smell her cigarettes and that dusky scent on my clothes.

Most of the next day is spent filling out reports on the nonexistent Rockover Case. I log out in time to go home and freshen up and put on a sport shirt and slacks, no sense working on the image now that the hook's in. Understand, I have no intention of whacking the son of a bitch who's bringing Nola grief. In twelve years with the department I've never even fired my piece except on the range, and even if I had I'm not about to turn into Sammy the Bull for anyone. I'm sympathetic to her case, maybe I can help her figure a way out—brace the guy and apply a little strongarm if necessary, see will he pick on someone his own size and gender. Okay, and maybe wrangle myself some pussy while I'm at it. Hey, we're both single, and it's been a stretch for me, what with everyone so scared of AIDS and GHB; I'm telling you, the alphabet's played hell with the mating game. I figure I'm still leagues above the prick in the two-thousand-dollar suit

She's on the second floor of one of those converted warehouses in what is now called Rivertown, with a view of the water through a plate-glass window the size of a garage door in her living room. Decor's sleek, all chrome and glass and black leather and a spatter of paint in a steel frame on one wall, an Impressionist piece that when you stand back turns out to be of a nude woman reclining, who looks just enough like Nola I'm afraid to ask if she posed for it. I can tell it's good, but the colors are all wrong: bilious green and violent purple and a kind of rusty brown that I can only describe as dried blood, not a natural flesh tone in the batch. It puts me in mind less of a beautiful naked woman than a jungle snake coiled around a tree limb. Just thinking about it makes my skin crawl.

It takes me a while to take all this in, because it's Nola who opens the door for me. She's wearing a dark turtleneck top with ribs over skin-tight stirrup pants with the straps under her bare feet, which are long and narrow, with high arches and clear polish on the toenails. It's as if she knows I'm a connoisseur of women's feet. With plastic surgery getting to be as common as root canals, pretty faces come four-for-a-quarter, and the effect is gone when you look down and see long bony toes with barn paint. Nola's perfect feet are just about the only skin she's showing, but I'm telling you, I'm glad I brought a bottle of wine to hold in front of myself. It's like I'm back in high school.

She takes the bottle with thanks, her eyes flicker down for a split second, and the corners of her lips turn up the barest bit, but she says nothing, standing aside to let me in and closing the door behind me, locking it with a crisp little snick. Bird Parker's playing low on a sound system I never did get to see. She has me open the wine using a wicked-looking corkscrew in the tiny kitchen, and we go to the living room and drink from stemware and munch on crackers she's set out on a tray on the glass coffee table, crumbly things that dissolve into butter on the tongue. I'm sitting on the black leather sofa, legs crossed, her beside me with hers curled under her, as supple as the snakewoman in the picture, giving off that scent. She looks even better by indirect light than she did in the Hangar. I'm thinking the Gobi at noon would be no less flattering.

We start with small talk, music and wine and the superiority of streamlined contemporary over life in a museum full of worm-eaten antiques, then she lifts her glass to her lips and asks me if I approve of the police department's retirement package.

She slides it in so smoothly I almost answer. When it hits, I get the same shuddery chill I got from the picture, only worse, like the time I had my cover blown when I'd been moled into a car theft ring downriver for a month, bunch of mean ridgerunners whose weapon of choice was a welding torch. Don't ask me why. All she's armed with is crystal.

I don't try to run a bluff, the way I did with the car thieves—successfully, I might add. Rivertown is not Downriver, and Nola Rockover is not a gang of homicidal hillbillies, although I know now they'd be a trade-up. I ask her how she doped it out.

"You forget I'm in computer filing. I ran that name you gave me through the system; you shouldn't have used one you'd used before. It came up on the transcript when you testified against one of our clients as arresting officer. Are you getting all this on tape?"

And would you believe it, there's no emotion in her tone. She might have been talking about some case at work that had nothing to do with either of us. All I see in her eyes is the reflection of the wine glass she's still holding up. I look into them and say no, I'm not wearing a wire; I was before, but I yanked it. I want to help.

"Am I supposed to believe that?"

"Lady, if it's a lie, you'd be in a holding cell right now."

Which has its effect. She drinks a little more wine, and then she leans across me to set her glass down on the table. Before I know it she's got her hands inside my sport shirt. She goes on groping long after it's obvious there's nothing under it but me. And in a little while I know there's nothing but Nola under the sweater and pants. It's like wrestling a snake, only a warm one with a quicker tongue that tastes like wine when it's in my mouth and burns like liquid fire when it's working its way down my chest, and down and down while I'm digging holes in the leather upholstery with my fingers trying to hang on.

Understand, I'm not one of these fools that regales his friends with the play-by-play. I want you to see how a fairly good cop brain melted down before Nola's heat. I was married, and I've had my hot-and-heavies, but I've never even read about some of the things we did that night. We're on the sofa, we're off the sofa, the table tips over and we're heaving away in spilled wine and bits of broken crystal; I can show you a hundred little healed-over cuts on my back even now and you'd think I got tangled in barbed wire. In a little while we're both slick with wine and sweat and various other bodily fluids, panting like a couple of wolves, and we're still going at it. I'm not sure they'd take a chance showing it on the Playboy Channel.

Miss? Oh, miss? Ice water, please. I'm burning up.

That's better. Whew. When I think about that night—hell, whenever I think about Nola—this song keeps running through my head. It isn't what Bird was playing on the record; he died years before it came out. It wasn't a hit, although it should have been, it was catchy enough. I don't even know who recorded it. "Evil Grows," I think it was called, and it was all about this poor schnook realizing his girl's evil and how every time he sees her, evil grows in him. Whoever wrote it knew what he was talking about, because by the time I crawled out of that apartment just before dawn, I'd made up my mind to kill Nola's boss for her.

His name's Ethan Hollis, and he's living beyond his means in Grosse Pointe, but if they outlaw that they'll have to throw a prison wall around the city. I don't need to park more than two minutes in front of the big Georgian he shares with his wife to know it won't happen in there, inside a spiked fence with the name of his alarm company on a sign on the front gate. Anyway, since I'm not the only one who's heard Nola's threats, we've agreed that apparent accidental death is best. I'm just taking stock. The few seconds I get to see him through binoculars, coming out on the porch to tell the gardener he isn't clipping the hedge with his little finger extended properly—I'm guessing, I can't hear him across four acres of clipped lawn—is enough to make me hate him, having worked that very job under the druglord in Roseville. He's chubbier than I had pictured, a regular teddy bear with curly dark hair on his head and a Rolex on his fat wrist, with a polo shirt, yet. He deserves to die if for no other reason than his lack of fashion sense.

I know his routine thanks to Nola, but I follow him for a week, just to look. I've taken personal time, of which I've built up about a year, undercover being twenty-four/seven. The guy logs four hours total in the office; rest of the time he's lunching with clients, golfing with the senior partner, putting on deck shoes and dorky white shorts and pushing a speedboat up and down the river, that sort of bullshit. Drowning would be nice, except I'd join him, because I can't swim and am no good with boats.

These are my days. Nights I'm with Nola, working our way through the Kama Sutra and adding footnotes of our own.

The only time I can expect Hollis to be alone without a boat involved is when he takes his Jaguar for a spin. It's his toy, he doesn't share it. Trouble is not even Nola knows when he'll get the urge. So every day when he's home I park around the corner and trot back to his north fence, watching for that green convertible. It's a blind spot to the neighbors too, and for the benefit of passersby I'm wearing a jogging suit; just another fatcat following the surgeon general's advice.

Four days in, nothing comes through that gate but Hollis's black Mercedes, either with his wife on the passenger's side or just him taking a crowded route to work or the country club. I'm figuring I can get away with the jogging gig maybe another half a day before someone gets nervous and calls the cops, when out comes the Jag, spitting chunks of limestone off the inside curves of the driveway. I hustle back to my car. Hollis must need unwinding, because he's ten miles over the limit and almost out of sight when I turn into his street.

North is the choice today. In a little while we're up past the lake, with the subdivisions thinning out along a two-lane blacktop. It's a workday—Nola's in the office, good alibi—and for miles we're the only two cars, so I'm hanging back, but I can tell he's not paying attention to his rearview or he'd open it up and leave me in the dust. Arrogant son of a bitch thinks he's invulnerable. You see how I'm taking every opportunity to work up a good hate? I'm still not committed. I'm thinking when I get him alone I'll work him over, whisper in his ear what's in store if he doesn't lay off Nola. He's such a soft-looking slob I know he'll cave if I just knock out a tooth.