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

Gratelli laughed. ‘OK, Yogi.’

The restaurant was in the Tenderloin, on the corner of Limbo and Hell. There was a crowd, but it was really too early for dinner. The dinner crowd at Original Joe’s didn’t get there until eight.

McClellan, slipping across the leather seat of a booth, recognized a few judges. There were some District Attorneys and lawyer types and some cop types as well, but there were no friendly waves of recognition. No one thought a whole lot of Mickey McClellan.

Even so, the crowd was more to his liking. He wasn’t uncomfortable. Here, no one sampled the latest release from Napa. No one was asking for some strange beer from a microbrewery in Oregon. This was the hard stuff the guys were sipping on. Vodka. Scotch. Gin. Later, it’d be rack of lamb or stew like your momma made.

‘Hey!’ the waiter said. ‘Don’t tell me it’s Friday.’

‘It isn’t,’ McClellan said. ‘Gratelli’s feeling sentimental.’

‘Jack Daniels?’ the waiter asked McClellan.

‘Right. Double.’

‘How about a martini?’ Gratelli asked.

‘You want that huh? A martini?’ the waiter grinned.

‘A sudden wave of nostalgia along with the sentiment,’ Gratelli said. ‘You still know how to make one.’

‘Sure, why not?’ the waiter said. ‘It’s all the rage. Everybody wants a Martini now. A Martini and a cigar. Regular Dean Martins. So you want a Martini? Absolooootly. Whatever you guys say.’

‘That’s Gratelli, Mr Trendy,’ McClellan said. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘Whatever,’ the waiter said.

‘That’s what I like about this place, Vincent,’ McClellan said when the waiter was out of earshot.

‘What?’

‘The waiter is a heterosexual. Where do you see that? Everybody in here is a fucking heterosexual. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. All is right with the world.’

‘What do you care? You think you’re some movie star, guys are gonna fall all over you if they see you?’

‘Oh shit, I don’t. I don’t. I don’t care. OK. Just an observation. I don’t care about fucking anything.’

‘Where did you move?’ Gratelli asked.

‘Found a little place around the Panhandle. Not too expensive.’ He was calming down again.

‘Good,’ Gratelli said. ‘I get a place to open up in my building, we’ll talk.’

‘Rent’s too high.’

‘I just said we’ll talk. That’s all. You got something against talking?’ McClellan shrugged. Gratelli continued. ‘So you got plans?’

‘Plans? Plans for what?’

‘You’re out of the house. Your life is changing. I was just wondering.’

‘Is that what this is? A little therapy for a deranged cop?’

‘You have to do something. You can’t just go home from work, drink the night away and come to work and that’s it?’

‘Sounds like a plan to me.’

‘It doesn’t to me,’ Gratelli said.

‘You’re not living my life the last time I looked.’ There was a moment of silence as the waiter brought back the drinks. When he was gone, McClellan leaned over the table. ‘So your life is so fucking exciting?’ McClellan asked, taking a gulp of the drink the waiter put in front of him.

‘I don’t say it has to be exciting,’ Gratelli said.

‘I don’t like opera.’

‘Doesn’t have to be opera. You could take up woodworking or a…’

‘Strangle some kid, go to prison, learn a trade. How’s that?’

‘Leave work at work.’

‘You know a fucking leopard goes off, kills one of those little gazelles. And you say that’s terrible. But you know that’s nature. And you bite the fucking bullet on that kind of shit. Gotta eat. But this isn’t nature anymore. It’s something else.’ McClellan’s face reddened as his voice rose. ‘I don’t know what it is. It’s not survival of the fittest. It’s survival of the sickest. What the hell did those little girls do to wind up naked and dead and rotting in the fucking sun? This isn’t nature’s balancing act. It’s fucking sick.’

He realized that everyone was looking at him. He let out a deep sigh, shook his head, fiddled with the menu.

‘One of them is found by a dog, a fucking dog. Another is discovered by some little kid in a backyard, the corpse being swallowed up by nature. Doesn’t that get to you?’ McClellan asked in an intense whisper.

‘I don’t dwell on it.’

‘You can do that. Just go off to the opera. Leave work at work, right?’

‘It’s always been that way,’ Gratelli said.

‘You always been around? You’ve been observing the human condition since the day Christ was born?’

The two were quiet for a while. Halfway through the stew, McClellan asked Gratelli what else he did when he wasn’t working.

‘I play my records,’ Gratelli said. ‘I read. On Saturday I catch a game or maybe a movie. Once a week I take the train to Colma.’

‘You visit the dead people? That’s all there is in Colma.’

‘I don’t know about that, but I go to the cemetery, yes. On a sunny day, I sit in Washington Park. Sometimes there are weddings at St Peters and Paul. Or maybe I watch the people. The sad people, the happy people. The dogs. The point is there is life there. Life goes on. It’s good. Sunday I go to Church.’

‘Church? You believe in God, Gratelli?’

‘I wouldn’t know how not to.’

‘You figure out the great mystery?’

‘I’m a little man, Mickey. I try to solve the little day to day mysteries.’

‘Well Vincent, I’m happy we had this talk so we could discover just how much we have in common.’

‘We’re both trying to stop this guy, aren’t we?’

‘Forget about work,’ McClellan said. ‘Isn’t that what you keep sayin’? Eat, drink and be merry, right?’

‘Right.’

‘And tomorrow?’

Earl’s lawyer had arranged things. Most things. Not the car. Earl had to wait until he got some money before he could wheel his Camaro out of hock. But the rent had been paid. Nearly anyway. He was only a month behind and he couldn’t be evicted on that. The money came out of his vacation pay at the store when he was terminated. The mail had been taken in by the landlord. Other than the stuff that went to ‘occupant,’ there wasn’t much of anything. But the lawyer didn’t want people to know the place was unoccupied.

There wasn’t enough money to keep the phone and to pay for the electricity, but, according to the lawyer, Earl should be happy he salvaged the living quarters.

The bodily injury charges had been dropped; and even though he was glad to be in his dark little one-room cave, he was on edge, a scary, dangerous edge.

The dead phone reminded Earl how long it had been since he had talked with his grandmother. She would be worried. He might have to call her collect. He didn’t want to do that. It would make her worry more. But she had probably tried to call. She’d be worried anyway. Hell, he was worried.

That last conversation with the two cops in that little room was too close. He was pretty sure they were just checking it out. If they had something, really had something, they’d have said more. His past arrest record was no big thing. The Camaro I.D. was the worst part of it.

But if they had a license plate, or even a color, they wouldn’t have let him off so easy. And the homo thing, that was just to get him all screwed up, make him crazy, so he’d give something away. He didn’t give away anything, he was sure. He ran the conversation back over his brain as best he could. No. No slips.

He looked around the room. He couldn’t tell if anyone had been there messin’ around other than his lawyer. Maybe the lawyer had been a little nosy. Probably. The cops maybe. But there was nothing to see. He didn’t keep anything. Just the photos. For a moment, he was seized with panic.