Richard Hawke - Cold Day in Hell

I tried the doorknob. It turned partway, but the door didn’t open. After another minute, I knocked on the door and called out, “John!”

No answer. I tried the doorknob again and pumped the door. It rattled. Just like Jigs had said. “John!”

I put away my gun and picked up the bag and took from it a hard rubber mallet Jigs had been kind enough to bring along when we met at the bar. Taking aim at the dead-bolt keyhole, I swung the mallet, using all the single-pointed focus I could muster, which proved sufficient. The doorjamb splintered, and the lock went askew under the mallet. When I turned the doorknob this time, the door swung easily open.

The man’s perversity was in his bedroom. Photographs and clippings-hundreds of them, all over the walls. Asian girls and women. Hardly a bare square inch to be found. Many of the pictures had been ripped from skin magazines and featured naked and semi-naked women rising up on their knees, bent over spread-eagle, cavorting on a bed wearing high heels, arching their backs on lounge chairs, peering dead-eyed from a hammock, on and on. Just as many had been pulled from regular magazines. Fashion models. Movie actresses. Asian teens dressed in retro American schoolgirl outfits. The pictures were taped onto all four walls of the small room. Many of them had been outlined in thick red Magic Marker. On some of them, the marker had been held on the picture to bleed splotches on the breasts or the crotches of the women. There were also Magic Marker phalluses drawn all over the place, disembodied torpedoes prodding at the images.

Moving farther into the room, I felt the eyes of the hundreds of girls and women on me, tracking me as I stepped over to the bed. Stacks of ravaged magazines and Asian-language newspapers were piled next to the bed. What interested me was a cluster of pictures taped together on the closet door just to the left of the bed. They were all the same picture. I counted seventeen of them. It was a color photograph that had been cut from the pages of a glossy magazine, maybe People or Us , from the look of it. One of those types. The photograph featured two women. One of them was wearing a pair of sunglasses and walking down a sidewalk with her head lowered, in evident distress. She was clearly trying to avoid having her picture taken. Next to her was a young Asian woman in calf-high leather boots and a short pink winter coat, her hair pulled back and tied with a bright yellow scarf. I noticed a scarf identical to the one in the picture knotted around Pratt’s closet doorknob. The Asian woman’s arm was around the other woman, and she was consoling her. In all seventeen of the pictures, the Asian woman had been outlined in thick red Magic Marker. The phalluses appeared on a few of the pictures.

The woman in the sunglasses was Robin Burrell.

The other woman was Michelle Poole.

I went back into the front room and closed the apartment door. I pulled a roll of duct tape from the bag and did what I could to tape the dead bolt on and the splintered door back into place. No one was going to be fooled; I just wanted to get things so that I could engage the lock again, even though a simple push would open the door. A very iffy alarm system.

I flipped over one of the cushions of the ratty couch and sat down to wait for him. Rats always return to their holes. I could practically feel the presence of all those hundreds of girls and women crowded onto the walls. They say everyone should have a hobby, but I was somewhat less than impressed by Pratt’s. No wonder Michelle Poole had felt creeped out. People don’t necessarily have to see someone to know that they’re being watched. The hair on the back of the neck. The unexplained fear that wants to become a panic. Lord only knows how many other women besides Michelle had sensed a pair of unwelcome eyes consuming them as they moved about the city. I thought of Pratt’s face. Ratface. Scurrying around the city like a oneman infestation, then coming home and going into his tiny room to encourage his infection. My hand tightened around the rubber mallet in my lap. My pistol sat right next to it. The pulsing in my temples wasn’t too bad, considering. Didn’t really matter, in fact. I welcomed it.

I WAS ASLEEP when he came in.

I had dozed off. It was only my so-called alarm that alerted me. The sound of the door rattling woke me.

“What the-?”

The door swung open as I struggled to get up from the low couch. My gun fell to the floor. Pratt stepped into the room. I stood there with the rubber mallet in my grip. I was the intruder, but I had the mallet. Pratt took a step forward, then I saw his eyes noticing the gun at my feet. He turned and took off, racing back out of the apartment. I heard his feet pounding down the hallway, then I heard a grunt and the sound of something hitting the floor. This was followed by a low murmuring. Then silence.

I bent down and retrieved my gun. I checked my watch: 2:10 in the morning. I’d slept like a baby. No dreams that I could remember. I checked to see that nothing had fallen out of my pockets and slipped behind the cushions. All clear. I stood a moment, waiting for my heartbeat to come back to normal, then I left the apartment and made my way up to the roof.

He was on the ground. Jigs had him by the shoulders and was dragging him along the gravelly surface as I emerged from the stairwell.

“Nice of you to join us, sweetheart. You want to lend a hand, or are you just here to watch?”

Pratt’s hands were tied behind his back. The pervert’s face was a mess. Jigs is a kicker. Pratt’s nose and mouth were nearly indistinguishable. A single splotch of red and gristle. He was moaning very softly.

“He can breathe, can’t he? I don’t want him choking on his own teeth.”

“Your kindness always touches me, Fritzy,” Jigs said. He followed this with a hard kick to Pratt’s throat. He leaned down. “Are we breathing, John Michael? Anything we can do to clear your passages?” He grabbed Pratt by the shoulders again. “Help me here.”

I stepped over and grabbed the man’s rubbery legs, and together Jigs and I carried him to the edge of the roof. Jigs positioned Pratt so that his bloodied head was dangling over the side of the roof, five flights above the sidewalk. He kicked the man’s legs apart and settled himself between them, grabbing hold of Pratt’s belt.

“Row row row your boat.” Jigs inched his way forward on his tail, letting gravity assist as Pratt’s torso began making its way over the edge of the roof. Jigs continued wiggling forward until Pratt was halfway over the roof. Jigs had his heels dug in hard, keeping a good grip on the belt, leaning back as far as he could as a counterweight.

“Tickle me, Fritz. Go ahead.”

From below the roofline, Pratt let out a holler. He sounded something like a moose in labor. Even in the pale moonlight, I could see Jigs’s face gone red with the effort of holding on.

“I’d like to see if he’ll bounce, Fritz. Just give me the word.”

I stepped to the edge of the roof and looked down. There was no one on the sidewalk below us. No one was watching. The mallet was still in my hand. I closed my eyes and saw seventeen pictures of Robin and Michelle taped on a closet door. Jigs was speaking in his low, seductive voice.

“He stabbed you, isn’t that so? This man tried to kill you. He put you in the river. The Good Lord only knows what else he did. I don’t think we need a man like this on this good earth, I really don’t.”

I opened my eyes. Jigs was tilted so far back his head was nearly touching the graveled roof. His eyes were wide and white in the moonlight.

“Well?”

I shook my head. “Reel him in.” I dropped the mallet and grabbed hold of Pratt’s belt and jerked him back onto the roof. He was blubbering, snot and blood in equal measure. I got hold of the lapels of his coat and jerked him onto his knees. I got right into his face, disgusting as it was.