The Fifth Script: The Lacey Lockington Series - Book One (7 page)

He sprawled in the darkness, pulling a pillow over his head and plummeting into the dreamless, untwitching sleep of the chaste and the naive, a singular experience for Lacey Lockington because Lacey Lockington was not chaste, neither was he naive, and he’d known nights, a great many of them, when his dreams would have chased a fat woman out of a rummage sale.

His nightstand telephone awakened him at two twenty-five in the morning. Lockington didn’t know how long it’d been ringing, but locating the sonofabitch required the better part of an eternity. He finally managed to dig it out of a jungle of crumpled empty cigarette packs, candy bar wrappers, matchflaps, and out-of-date sports magazines to mumble unintelligibly into it and hear Duke Denny snap, “Lacey, what the hell have you been doing?” Denny’s voice was taut, urgent, half-an-octave higher-pitched than usual.

Lockington said, “Well, I
was
sleeping until some drunken barbarian blew me out of bed in the dead of the fucking night!”

Denny said, “Partner, this is important—are you awake?”

Lockington said, “No, this is a fucking recording.”

“Listen, Lacey—the early edition of the
Morning Sentinel
just hit the stands!”

Lockington opened one eye to glare at the battered alarm clock on his dresser. He said, “You woke me up at two-fucking-thirty in the morning to tell me
that,
you prick?”

“Hear me out, damn it! When did you talk to Stella Starbright?”

“That ain’t her real name—it’s Erika or something.”

“No matter—when did you talk to her?”

“You see, there ain’t no real Stella Starbright—Stella Starbright’s a
nom de plume
or whatever they call it—two other chicks wrote that column before she did.”

“Lacey, are you drunk?”

“Well, if I ain’t I just wasted a whole afternoon of my life.”

“Tell me about Stella Starbright.”

“She’s stacked like—”

“Skip that—for the
third
time,
have you talked to her
?”

“Yeah, she drove out to see me.” Lockington tried to whistle but his tongue was too thick. He said, “Some dish!”

“When was she there?”

“What day is this?”

“Wednesday—early Wednesday morning.”

“It was probably yesterday—what the hell
was
yesterday?”

“Tuesday, for Christ’s sake!”

“Okay, then it was Tuesday—she came around to apologize.”

Duke Denny snorted, sounding like a bull hippopotamus in rut, Lockington thought. Lockington had never heard a bull hippopotamus in rut. His head was throbbing like a Comanche war drum. He’d never heard a Comanche war drum, either—he’d never been west of the Mississippi. He wasn’t certain that the Comanches were
from
west of the Mississippi—for all he knew the Comanches were from fucking Alaska. Lockington was still intoxicated. Duke Denny was saying, “She came around to apologize, my rosy-pink
ass
! She came around to sucker you into sticking your neck out! You just gotta read her Wednesday column!”

The dark-brown taste in Lockington’s mouth defied printable description. He growled, “Duke, I don’t gotta do nothin’ but kick the bucket.”

Denny rasped, “Lacey, if you stood a fucking single ghost of a chance at that stacked investigation, it’s long gone now! That floozie ripped your guts out! She had a tape recorder stashed in her purse, did you know that?”

Lockington made no response and Denny yammered on. “She says that you have no regrets for the taking of human lives, that you seem proud of killing the people you’ve killed, that the extent of a person’s wrongdoing seems utterly irrelevant to you, that by your own inference you’d probably shoot a shoplifter as quickly as you’d shoot an arsonist! Lacey, did you
say
such damn-fool things to a
newspaper
woman?”

“She isn’t completely accurate, but she’s close.”

“My God, where were your
brains
?”

“I dunno—she seemed sincere enough at the time.”

“So did Fidel Castro—at the
time
!”

“Okay, so I blew it, but they’re gonna can me anyway, so what’s the difference?”

“This holier-than-thou scorpion calls for your immediate resignation from the force, she says that it’d spare the taxpayers the prohibitive costs of your hearing, that it’d be the first honorable deed you’ve ever performed for the citizens of Chicago, that—”

Lockington said, “How do you know that she had a tape recorder in her purse—did she state that in her column?”

“No, she says that she interviewed you in your apartment, but it
had
to be a tape recorder! She wouldn’t have dared to go out on this kind of limb without something to back her up!”

“Well, to hell with it. Tell me, did she use that ‘Oh, Dear God in Heaven’ shot?”

“Yeah, probably half-a-dozen times.”

“Touching—very touching. Well, Duke, I’m gonna catch some sleep.”

“All right, partner, I just thought you oughta know about this. ‘Forewarned, forearmed,’ y’know.”

“Yeah—Cervantes. Cervantes spent about half of his life in one lockup or another.”

“Then he knew what he was talking about. Say, why don’t we have dinner tonight?”

“Good question. Why don’t we?”

“How’s the Ristoranté Italia at River Road and Irving Park—seven-thirty okay?”

“River Road’s under water—so’s that section of Irving Park.”

“Now, yes, but not for long—the rain stopped three hours ago.”

“Who’s buying?”

“It’s my turn.”

“Real good memory you got there, Duke. Good night.” Lockington hung up. He hadn’t been stunned by the development, but there’d been a slight twinge of disappointment. He skirted it, returning to sleep, and this time he dreamed. He dreamed that he’d died and that the Devil had him. In his dream he was amazed by his ecstatic sense of relief at getting the hell out of Chicago, Illinois.

With dawn came the hangover, and with the hangover the customary melancholy. Lockington, awake briefly at six-fifteen, avoided a portion of the depression by rolling over and sleeping until nearly eleven o’clock, when he roused himself to smoke a cigarette, trying to assemble the scattered pieces of his fractured yesterday, remembering the whirlwind visit of Stella Starbright—or Erika Elwood or Mata Hari or whoever the hell she’d been—his losing tussle with those jugs of Old Anchor Chain, the violent rain storm, Duke Denny’s late-night report on Stella Starbright’s cutthroat column in the
Morning Sentinel,
and Duke’s invitation to dinner at the Ristoranté Italia. That was all behind Lockington now and if there’d been perceptible changes in his situation, they certainly hadn’t been for the better—except maybe the dinner invitation. A square meal and a couple hours of kicking the gong around with Duke would probably help.

He stared across the bedroom at the bleary-eyed, shaggy apparition reflected in his dresser mirror—the Wolfman of Barry Avenue, he thought, shaking his sleep-tousled head. He eased to his feet, tottering into the bathroom, stepping recklessly into a steaming shower, scrambling hurriedly out of it, readjusting the water temperature to somewhere below the boiling point before stepping back in. He emerged to towel himself dry, shave, brush his teeth, and feel nearly human again. He slipped into his old brown flannel robe and headed for the kitchen where he scrambled two eggs and started the coffee while waiting for the toast to pop.

He ate his breakfast slowly, ruminatively, sipping coffee, paging through the yellowed volume of
Tom Sawyer
that had become a fixture on his kitchen table, his companion at virtually every meal. If he’d read it once, he’d read it fifty times, beginning back in his fourth grade days. He’d never tired of it. Tom Sawyer had been fortunate, his times had been simpler than Lockington’s, and Lockington envied the youngster, feeling a nostalgia for Tom’s sleepy little river town, his sun-splashed afternoons, his friends and acquaintances, even Injun Joe, that rotten sonofabitch.

He downed a second cup of coffee before washing the dishes. One of Lockington’s many frustrated ambitions was to become neat and orderly, but he’d never quite gotten around to it—something was always in the wrong place. He returned to the bedroom to dress, choosing a short sleeved white shirt, gray cardigan, black slacks, gray socks, and black loafers from a wardrobe that fell considerably short of the extensive category. In the living room he squinted through his window at sunlight, blue sky, and fleecy white clouds, then turned on his radio to catch the noon roundup of the news. Lockington preferred taking his news from radio—he’d never been able to understand why news had become show business, why television required ninety minutes and a cast of a dozen posturing, smirking fruitballs to present a review of events that one reasonably literate radio announcer could have handled in fewer than ten minutes. After all, who the hell cared if Lane Technical High School had held a hayride on a farm near Gray’s Lake? The horses, possibly, if there’d been horses.

The noon news radio reporter was low-key and to the point—on the international front, a bunch of Iranian maniacs had blown up a Paris rock concert, thereby terrifying a bunch of French maniacs. Locally, Chicagoland was bailing out following its most severe rainstorm in fifteen years—the Mayor and his city council had engaged in a free-for-all on the city council floor, the Mayor having been kicked in the groin—a light plane had crashed into a hotdog stand north of Wheeling, Illinois, breaking the pilot’s arm and a gallon jar of mustard—the body of a Wilmette woman, one Eleanor Fisher, had been found in a dumpster behind a gas station in unincorporated Leyden Township—the weather would be clear and sunny with a high of eighty-two degrees—the White Sox would play a twinight doubleheader—the Cubs had lost in Los Angeles 11–4.

That was the news, such as it was, and Lockington stood at his front window, watching the pigeons—a man who had no place to go and nothing to do when he got there.

On their morning after, she’d rolled to him, smiling, her dark eyes alive with something that hadn’t been there the night before. She’d whispered, “Oh, Jesus, how I hate to get up!
”

Lockington had said, “Then don’t.
”

“
But you have to go to work.
”

“
So?
”

“
Well, the least I can do is make coffee!
.”

“
Okay, make coffee—I’ll shower and shave.
”

She’d run her fingertips along his jowl. “Not bad
there,
but you’ll probably need that shower. I was—uhh-h-h,
dripping
—we were making squishy sounds.
”

“
Yes, we were.
”

“
I want to thank you for last night—bailing me out of that situation—the warm bed, and, well, everything that went with it. Is breakfast included in the package?
”

“
Yep. We’re out of bacon, but we have eggs.
”

“
Scrambled—over easy—how?
”

“
Whatever you’re pushing.
”

“
Over easy, then—look—thanks again.
”

“
The pleasure was mine.
”

“
Huh-uh—I’ve had the best of it.
”

“
Think you’ll be here when I get home?
”

“
I’d like that, but there’s my car—I should get it out of the middle of the street.
”

“
Give me your keys and I’ll take care of it on my way to work. There’s a good garage a couple of blocks from here.
”

“
You
want
me to be here?
”

“
Yes—very much.” And he did—very much
.

“
Honest injun?
”

“
Cross my heart and hope to die!
”

“
All right, I’ll be here. What would you like for dinner?
”

“
What’s your specialty?
”

“
If I have one, it’s lasagna.
”

“
Say, why don’t we have
lasagna?”

“
Excellent idea! Red wine?
”

Lockington nodded. “There’s money in the top dresser drawer.
”

“
No,
sir—my
treat! How far am I from a grocery store?
”

“
Block and a half west—Sanganiti’s—all the fixings will be there.
”

“
Block and a half west means nothing to me. In Chicago I don’t know my ass from a mint julep. Which the hell way is
west?”

“
From the front door, you’ll turn right. Don’t lock yourself out!
”

She’d laughed. “Now wouldn’t
that
be something? Out of the frying pan into the fire—no car, no roof over my head—I’d be a
waif!”

“
There’s a key where the money is.
”

“
What time do you get home? Usually, that is.
”

“
Oh, five—five-thirty.
”

She’d sat up in bed, the sheet cascading into her lap. Her bosom was magnificent.

When he’d left the shower and come into the kitchen, she’d been seated at the table, still naked as a jaybird, munching meditatively on a slice of toast. His eggs had been ready and he’d sat across from her, eating rapidly. Between bites he’d said, “I have spare pajamas.
”

“
Thank you—you’re a trusting soul, do you know that?
”

“
Not all the time, but I get feelings about people—call it radar.
”

“
You had feelings last night—I didn’t quite expect—well, you were—you were very, very good.
”

“
Put that down to the luck of the Irish.
”

She’d said, “Huh-uh—there’s no luck in bed—either it works or it doesn’t!
”

He’d shrugged, glancing at his watch, gulping the last of his coffee, getting to his feet. “Gotta make tracks.
”

She’d said, “I don’t want to seem presumptuous, but what’s your name?
”

“
Lockington—Lacey Lockington.
”

“
Mine’s Julie. You’re a cop?
”

“
Yeah—hi, Julie! What’s your occupation?
”

She’d smiled her wonderful smile. “Hi, Lacey! I’m trying to be a writer. The last name’s Masters.
”