Ronald Tierney - Good To The Last Kiss - Crimes of the Depraved Mind Series

‘Wake up. You’ve got two hours to get home, get ready and get to work.’

‘What day is it?’

‘Monday.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Seven,’ Paul said, trying to figure out whether he loved Bradley or merely loved Bradley’s blond hair. It didn’t matter now. For now all he wanted was Bradley to get out of bed, get dressed and be gone. There was still an hour before Paul would have to get ready. And he wanted to fill that time with sleep.

‘Go back to sleep,’ Bradley said, crawling out of bed, standing, disoriented for a moment. ‘I’ll call you Wednesday or something.’

Paul watched as this handsome specimen of naked humanity moved across the room then disappeared into the hallway. Paul was glad that Bradley wasn’t the type requiring polite chatter over a cup of coffee the morning after. The last things that Paul remembered were hearing the water run in the bathroom and feeling Chat, his Burmese cat, hop on the bed to steal the warmth of the former occupant.

When he woke again, Julia was on his mind. He must have dreamt about her, but he couldn’t remember. He thought about her trips to Russian River, thought about the time he spent with her at the cabin. How wonderfully relaxed she became, reading and looking at the river. Julia’s eyes always made her seem open and vulnerable no matter what she said or how she acted while working. At the cabin, she was a kid again – laughing, joking – and between the two of them they were able to erase a couple of decades of existence.

The cabin wouldn’t be the same. And now, Julia’s eyes seemed more empty than innocent.

‘You are doing fine. You’re over the hump.’

Julia Bateman recognized the voice and now saw the face of the doctor, a face that seemed too young to belong to a doctor. It didn’t seem serious enough. Dark curly hair and big white teeth showing in a wide smile – a look more appropriate to an aerobics instructor or an activities director for a cruise ship.

‘I’m making my rounds,’ the doctor continued. ‘I’ll be back in a little while.’ He patted her forearm. ‘Listen, you’re going to have a heavy day. A couple of police officers will be up this morning. And I understand from one of the nurses that your father will be here too. If all this gets to be too much let us know. OK?’

She felt herself nodding as if someone else were controlling the movement.

‘Good,’ the doctor smiled. ‘See you in a little bit.’

Early in Gratelli’s career he would spend an hour or so at Caffe Trieste before duty. He’d smoke several unfiltered cigarettes and down a cup of espresso, the small china cup rattling on its small china saucer as he replaced it on the false marble-topped table in front of him.

He no longer smoked, could no longer take that strong a dose of caffeine and no longer desired the company of people that early in the morning. He now took his coffee to go.

Gratelli stood on the sidewalk. His building – the one with a few storefronts and a few apartments above them that he’d inherited from his father – was behind him. He waited for Mickey McClellan. They took turns with the city-owned car. Last night was McClellan’s.

It was a morning cool that had a little bite to it. It wasn’t raining and you couldn’t really call it a fog, but there was dampness in the air. The people on Grant Street walked briskly, shoulders hunched, defending the body against the cold.

He wished he’d put on his raincoat. Gratelli had only a few moments to tap his feet and jingle the change in his pocket before he saw the Taurus rounding the corner and heading his way. He had hoped they’d be issued a Caprice, one of those monster comfort cars. Some of the cops had Caprices. The Caprice reminded him of the big, old round Buick his Uncle Frank had back in the late forties.

McClellan’s eyes were puffy and pink. There was a sleep crease on the side of his cheek. His flesh had the look of having had a fresh and rough scrubbing. Mickey hadn’t been up long, nor was it likely he’d gotten much sleep before that. It was also likely that McClellan had remained in the city over the weekend rather than going home. The tell-tale signs would have disappeared during the hour drive in.

‘You have the papers?’ Gratelli asked, choosing to avoid any question about his partner’s condition and the causes thereof. Mickey didn’t take too kindly to kidding, especially in the morning.

‘On the way,’ McClellan said, glancing over his left shoulder and pulling away from the curb. ‘I was running late.’

Gratelli thought about asking Mickey to stop by the Opera House to pick up his tickets for Thursday’s performance, but wasn’t sure if the office opened that early or if it opened at all on Mondays.

‘No hurry,’ Gratelli said, rubbing his hands and settling into the warmth.

Julia Bateman sipped orange juice through a clear plastic straw. There was another container filled with something gelatinous on the shelf-like table that had been rolled up to her bed.

She felt less groggy. She seemed to be able to trace the internal route of the juice as it entered her system and seemed to activate her body as it passed through her. It startled her consciousness to the next higher level.

‘Are you feeling better,’ asked the redheaded nurse cheerlessly.

Julia nodded. She figured if she lied the nurse would leave sooner. The fact was that she was sore all over. Muscles. Bones. There were organs in her body she couldn’t recall ever being aware of. She was aware of them now. And they hurt.

The nurse checked the clear plastic bags suspended above Julia’s bed. The liquid drained down through plastic tubes, one of which went through a little machine that had a small, slowly blinking red light. The nurse adjusted something on the machine.

‘Can I get you something?’ the nurse asked.

Julia shook her head ‘no.’

McClellan pulled to the curb on Hayes Street in front of a bookstore advertising rare books and across from Bateman’s apartment house. He pulled the official papers from the breast pocket of his gray suit.

‘Wait,’ Gratelli said. ‘That’s the kid who was with Bateman’s D.A. friend.’

McClellan looked at the person exiting the apartment house. ‘The slant?’

‘The young fellow from the hospital.’ Gratelli rarely chastised his partner for the ethnic slurs but he’d be damned if he’d just agree with terms like ‘the slant.’

‘That’s what I said, the slant.’

‘Is there anybody in this world you do like, Mickey?’

McClellan thought awhile.

‘Dogs,’ he said.

‘Any human beings?’

‘No.’

They waited a moment for the guy to turn and walk into the little parking lot beside the building. He got into a mint VW Bug with tinted windows. As he backed out of his spot to head on to Ivy Street, a little alley behind the building, Gratelli wrote down the license plate.

‘You wanna run it now?’ McClellan said.

‘Might as well.’

Gratelli and McClellan sat quietly and waited. Some young, well built guys went into the gym next to the parking lot. Some other guys left, looking fresh and pink.

‘Makes you sick, doesn’t it?’ McClellan asked.

‘What now?’

‘People spending so much time trying to make themselves pretty.’

‘Doesn’t bother me.’

‘Every damned one of them is a jock sniffer, bet you my next paycheck. Jesus.’

‘You let way too many things bother you,’ Gratelli said.

‘Whaddya mean? I don’t let nothin’ bother me. Just observin’ the fuckin’ human condition, that’s all.’

The radio told them that the car was registered to Paul S. Chang, that Chang was clean and that he lived in the building he was coming out of.