Brimstone Kiss

 

"YOU can't just let her walk! What about the charge of resisting arrest?"

The man had burst through the door, legs and arms splayed to both confront and bar anyone from leaving. Haskell could have been any aggressive, middle-aged guy with a receding hairline and advancing gut when I'd I first met him over the dead skeletons in Sunset Park. Since then, he'd gotten a werewolf bite or two and it hadn't improved his looks or attitude.

"Detective Haskell," Malloy said in Ice Queen tones, "you were only to observe."

Ice Queen authority was not going to cut it with this guy.

I'd risen by instinct. Spittle was dotting his unshaven chin. He hadn't seen me since we'd tangled physically in Cesar Cicereau's office at the Gehenna before the boss's head muscle man, Sansouci, had hauled him off me.

His features had coarsened, as if halted in the middle of a werewolf change, sprouting tufts of hair here and there that were neither beard nor pelt.

His eyes seemed smaller, his nose and teeth larger, his body hunchbacked.

His anger toward me from the moment we met at the crime scene in the park had not changed, though.

"You gonna let this witch go? You afraid, Malloy, of that Meskin ex-Fed, or what?"

His sneer made pretty clear what "or what" he suspected Malloy of harboring toward Ric.

I hadn't heard anything, but Perry Mason was suddenly standing beside me, a huge black-serge wall. "Captain?" he asked.

Haskell answered, still spraying spit. I guess fangs make it hard to speak the Queen's English.

"She resisted arrest for questioning and you have her back for a tea party, Malloy, instead of a grilling? Leave me with her for two minutes and I'll get the real story."

Haskell prowled around the table's end, pushing into my territory.

Malloy was standing now too. "Haskell, you were ordered to stay out of here."

"That's what you want from detectives now? Do what they're told. I know things about this bitch, where she's been and where she shouldn't be, at the Inferno, the Gehenna. She's sucking up to all the mob bosses in town."

Wow. Haskell was a perfect case of what the shrinks call "projection." That meant accusing someone else of your own missteps.

"You selling out, Malloy? To Meskin ex-feds and CinSim shysters?"

"That will be enough." Perry Mason reached around me to seize Haskell by his jacket collar like a rabid cur. "My client came here voluntarily, not to be assaulted in homicide headquarters by a rogue detective."

"Rogue!" Haskell struggled to get his paws on Perry's hand at his nape, but it was like a puppy trying to escape the maternal teeth grip.

Perry reached into a pocket of his custom-tailored Big and Tall Men suit coat.

"Play this DVD, Captain. You'll see how Haskell arrests helpless and innocent young women."

I sent Perry a glare. He had to have Hector's security tape. I didn't want to be tagged as "helpless" and I really didn't want Malloy to see that humiliating scene.

Big Daddy was not having any backtalk. Malloy obediently accessed the DVD.

Haskell stopped struggling while his raging mind tried to figure out what was up.

I set my teeth.

It was all there. Haskell threatening to shoot my defensive dog. Me locking up Quicksilver to save him from a hail of bullets. Haskell handcuffing me by pushing me face-first against the wall, only a quick head-turn saving me from a broken nose. Haskell running his hands over me. Haskell spreading my legs by swiping the barrel of his semiautomatic between my legs...The words he muttered while he mauled me.

"You white-trash bitches, always bad-mouthing white guys and you turn around hot to be Meskin meat. All that good white skin wasted as black boys' and bite boys' meat." He'd pulled my hair back, hard, to examine both sides of my neck as if I were a horse for sale. If Ric ever saw this, he'd kill him. "No freaking bite boy nibbles. Wrists clean, but...oh, too bad, somebody's been bruisin' 'em."

Yeah! Him!

A sharp snap darkened the screen and ended the rerun.

Malloy looked up from the screen. "You are suspended, Detective Haskell, until further notice."

He started to swagger toward her, this petite woman in her prim suit, his big hairy hands reaching out. She did something, so fast I couldn't see it, to his thumb and his neck at the same time.

He went to his knees, growling.

"Get out," Malloy said. "And don't come back until you're told to."

We kept silent as he lumbered upright and left, literally snarling. Haskell was obviously some misbegotten half-unhuman now, but it was illegal to discriminate against unhumans in employment. That made everyone handle them gingerly. No court precedents had been set. No one wanted to be the test case.

"He doesn't belong on the force anymore," Perry told Malloy, dusting his hands on a white handkerchief.

Oh, right, men carried pocket handkerchiefs in his fifties heyday, big white linen squares. Bed sheets didn't even come in colors then. Women carried little embroidered nylon or cotton hankies. I hadn't been able to resist buying a bunch at estate sales. They were so tiny, so feminine and so beautifully useless, kinda like women in that era. What a vanished world!

Perry's arm was around my shoulders. It was like being embraced by King Kong. "I'll take that DVD and Miss Street out of here, Captain Malloy, and your apology."

"We'll need the DVD, Mr. Mason."

Perry must have felt me stiffen. "I'll take the DVD, Captain. It's private property and we don't intend to prosecute Detective Haskell for his abusive arrest."

Malloy hesitated, looking ready to try her thumb-lock on him.

Perry's quick smile said the matter was settled, his way. "We just wanted you to know that the detective's assertions about Miss Street are motivated by issues other than the crime."

Malloy's lips quirked, a grimace rather than a smile. I bet she'd hated what she'd seen and heard. Haskell's "Meskin" was Ric, obviously. Just as obviously, Ric and I were a visible couple. I hadn't liked her hearing and seeing that almost as much.

"Hector promised that no one would ever see that tape," I hissed to Perry as he walked me out, tight in his grasp. More for his protection than mine at the moment, believe me. "I want it back!"

"Hector only released it to me under duress."

That would have been a bit of mind-wrestling I'd have liked to see.

I staked my claim. "I shouldn't have let him keep his master copy. I want that DVD."

We still spoke in harsh whispers. By now we were outside and at the passenger side of the Caddy. Perry had parked right out front, as if he was the mayor. Haskell was nowhere visible. I checked.

"I do what's necessary for my clients. You may have the recording. It's made my point to Malloy."

"But Haskell got to see it. And Malloy. And you. Did you watch Haskell? He enjoyed it."

"I watched him. And you." He took my upper arms in his big hands to ensure my attention, that I'd look him in the eye. But I couldn't. My glance slid to his Caddy's shiny black fender as my face finally flushed. He spoke in the measured tones of an attorney addressing a jury. Or a judge.

"Delilah, we aren't responsible for how or why other people hurt us."

The words sat there and sank in. He was a master at that.

Above, the midday sun was beating down on our bare heads. I couldn't remember the Raymond Burr Perry Mason ever wearing a hat. I wondered why. The fifties were the era of men in hats, until JFK became president in 1962 and tousled hat-bare hair became male chic.

But neither of us was protected from the glaring sunlight. I realized I'd always blamed myself for those vamp-boy attacks in the group homes. My dead-white skin, my looks, the way I attracted them. My fault.

Perry rumbled on. "Rotters like Haskell always like to bother attractive young women. He's just more brutal than most, even before he... changed for the worse. The tape proves that. It's an indictment of him, not you. The shame is his, not yours."

"You think I'm attractive?"

"It's not a judgment call, my dear Miss Street. You don't need a defense attorney to prove that. You are a very attractive young lady and well able to take care of yourself. You were right to avoid fighting Haskell. The humiliation was worth your dog's life. A fine animal, I could see that even on the tape. I'm sure he would have given his life to save you that distress."

I nodded, tears of anger in my eyes. The group homes staff had always acted as if it was my fault I was attacked. It was because of me that nice Father Black was forbidden to take me out for driving lessons; it was my fault the other girls at Our Lady of the Lake school resented me.

But Perry Mason said it was them, not me, all along. I thought he made a pretty good case, as usual. It convinced me of my own innocence for the first time in my life. He released his stabilizing grip.

"Now I'll drive you back to your charming cottage at Castle Nightwine."

I giggled. "I thought only I called it that."

"Obviously not. I'm going to hector our mutual friend Hector over a very good dinner about his breaking his promise to you, so he'll never do it again. And you will forget about all this and have a happy rendezvous with the lucky Latino fellow Haskell is so jealous of."

"Ric. Ricardo Montoya."

"Ah." Perry's gray eyes-probably really blue in color-were twinkling as he opened the heavy car door as if it was made of cardboard. "I've met the young man. Impressive. I believe Captain Malloy has made a similar assessment."

I twinkled back. "I guess she struck out on all fronts today, then, didn't she?"