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“Abel—”
“Yeah, cards can be forged,” Abel broke in. “I’m well aware of that, Doc. But we believe what we want to believe. And condoms don’t fit my fantasies.”
“You’re a first-class ass.”
“Tell me something we both don’t already know.”
“Where’d you find this babe?” Decker asked.
“Strutting up the boulevard. My nest isn’t too far from the garden spot.”
“Go on.”
“We made arrangements, and she took me up to her place. Jesus, what a sty! Place was redolent with foot odor and other rancid—”
“Get to the point, Abe.”
“Okay, okay. We fucked. She was good, and I wanted more. So I paid for another round.” His eyes narrowed as he concentrated on bringing back the memory. “I was feeling really virile. I hadn’t felt like that in a long time, Pete. This one … I don’t know … she was really good. I paid for a third time—”
“Where’d you get all this bread?”
“From good old red, white, and blue Uncle Sam. I’m part of the national debt, Pete. Sammy owes me forever for my leg.” He wiped his forehead with his napkin. “Also, I pick up spare change from odd jobs. My needs are simple, and sex is cheap.”
“All right. Go on.”
“By the end of the third time, I was pretty wasted.”
“Were you doping?”
“No. She was, but I wasn’t. By wasted, I meant tired. I asked her if I could crash out at her place, and she agreed.”
“For a fee.”
“It’s America,” Abel said. “Everything has a price.”
“Around what time was that?” Decker asked.
“About one, two in the morning. She told me she was through for the evening anyway. She’d made her quota, and her main man would be happy.”
The waitress brought the sandwiches.
“I’ll be right back,” Decker said.
He got up and walked back toward the restaurant’s kitchen, over to an industrial sink. Hanging over the lave was a two-handled brass stein and a roll of paper towels. Decker took the chalice off the hook, filled it with water, and poured it over his hands twice. Shaking off the excess water, he dried his hands and said the blessing for the ritual washing. He walked back to the table, mumbled another blessing over bread, then chomped on his pastrami on rye.
Abel stared at him. “You’re real serious about this.”
Decker chewed, swallowed, and gulped down half his orange juice. He said, “My woman is religious.”
“Your wife?”
“Not yet,” Decker said. “But I hope to change that very soon.”
“We’re talking about marriage number two, right? Or is it more?”
“Only two.”
“When did you divorce the first one? What was her name? Jean … no, Jan.”
“Yeah. Jan. I don’t want to talk about her.”
“Didn’t you two have a kid?”
“Still do. A daughter—”
“Cynthia.”
Decker nodded. “She’s going to be a freshman at Columbia this fall. The marriage was worth it for her.”
“So she’s what? Seventeen? Eighteen?”
“Seventeen.”
“About the same age we were when we met,” Abel said.
“Frightening,” Decker said.
“Damn frightening,” Abel said. “Did I ever tell you I got married?”
“No.”
“I did. About seven years ago.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. We’re still married, so far as I know. We don’t live together. No one can live with me.”
“Kids?”
“Not mine,” Abel said. “She’s got three from previous liaisons, none of them married her. I took pity—seventeen-year-old girl and three kids. Nice chicklet, cute, but stupid as shit. Just can’t say no. So I got her fixed up with an IUD. I send her a little cash, see her when I go back home for Christmas. She’s happy, I’m happy.”
“It’s great to be happy.” Decker raised his eyebrows. “Let’s get back to the rape.”
“Where was I?”
“You paid to sleep over at her house.”
Abel nodded. “That was the last thing I remember. Next thing I knew, I woke up—handcuffed. My skull is cracked open, and the bitch is screaming bloody murder …”
“She said you held a shiv across her throat while you raped her. Then you went nuts. She knocked you out by cracking a lamp over your head, then called the police.”
“I don’t even own a shiv.”
“You still get those blackouts?”
“Yeah. But not this time. I was sleeping, Doc. I heard someone screaming, woke up and saw blood.” He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. “I thought I was having another routine nightmare. Man, I never stopped getting nightmares, you know. But this one seemed ordinary enough. So I said to myself, ‘Abe, go back to sleep. It’s just another nightmare.’ Only it was real. God, was it real.”
His eyes became pensive and moist. “I don’t know what happened, Pete. All I know is, when I went to sleep, the girl was whole.”
“Is it possible that you had a blackout, did something to her, and woke up without any memory of it?”
Abel swallowed hard.
“I swear to God I didn’t rape or beat her.”
“Okay,” Decker said. “I believe you.” He finished his sandwich and orange juice. “You didn’t beat her up. But someone did. The report said there was no break-in or forced entry, but Myra often slept with the windows open. She could have known the assailant—a john who got rough or her pimp—tried to cover for him, and you were a convenient scapegoat.”
“I don’t know how they can pinpoint my semen in her,” Abel said. “The broad was a hooker. She must have been swimming in a sea of cum.”
“She claims you were the only john who sodomized her last night. That’s how the lab made the positive ID.”
Abel looked down.
“I didn’t rape her,” he said tensely. “I paid for everything I took. And I didn’t get rough with the lady, Pete. Goddammit, you know me! I don’t do things like that. And it was never for lack of opportunity.”
Decker knew that was true. They’d both seen their share of grunts on the rampage. An M-16 strapped to your back, you never had to pay for it—just went into the hooches and took whatever you wanted. Women, girls, even boys, it didn’t matter. Screw them in front of Papa-san, it’s only a gook. Came back to the squad a double vet—fucked ’em and wasted ’em. Abel had never signed up for that club.
Decker, more than anyone, had known him as a gentle and compassionate human being. Always the one sneaking orphans onto the base, only to have them kicked out by some shitfaced captain who said it was against the rules. Honest Abe Atwater, putting on puppet shows with empty IV bottles wearing grease-pencil smiles. Stealing rations to feed the homeless left in the gutted villages ripped apart by cross fire. Always trying to make nice. His downfall: He lost his leg because of his heart. Everything they’d been warned against. A friendly that had been VC. A fluke Decker had found him. Even flukier that Abel had lived.
“You’ll get me out of this mess, won’t you, Doc?”
“I’ll do what I can. But it may take a while. You need a good lawyer who can buy you time.”
“I don’t have a hell of a lot of loot.” Abel shrugged. “Matter of fact, I’m busted.”
Decker frowned.
“Don’t worry about it, Pete. I’ll figure out something. And I intend to pay you back the bail money. Just as soon as I get my disability check.”
“Forget it,” Decker said. He glanced at the wall clock. “I’ve got to get home. But first I have to say grace after meals, so be quiet for about five minutes.”
Decker prayed, then rose and slipped Abel a twenty. “This should get you back home by taxi. I’ll call as soon as I have something to tell you.”
Abel looked at him, a hound-dog expression on his face. “I’m really sorry about this, Pete. Seems I only call you when I’m fucked.”
Decker said, “What else are friends for?”
5
Marge picked up the printout and frowned. Sally’s description and footprints hadn’t matched anything stored in the mainframe’s data banks. Though it wasn’t unusual for the computer to turn up a blank, because the kid was so young, she’d hoped for a break.
She looked up Barry Delferno’s number. The first time she’d met the bounty hunter, she’d expected someone fat and swarthy with a bucket’s worth of grease plastered on his hair. Instead, she found a tall, sandy-haired muscle man with dancing eyes. He’d asked her out and she’d accepted, only to find out a week later that he was married.
Bounty hunters. No matter what they looked like, they were all sleazeballs.
She punched Delferno’s number into the phone, and a moment later a deep voice resonated inside the earpiece.
“It’s Marge Dunn, Barry,” she said.
“Detective Dunn,” Delferno crooned. “How’s the LAPD’s finest?”
“Not bad.”
“You know, I was gonna call you.”
“Were you now?”
“No shit. I’m divorced, Margie. For real this time. Free and clear. You can check it out, if you don’t believe me.”
“I called for professional reasons, Barry. Got your current caseload in front of you?”
“Margie, Margie, Margie. What is the rush?”
“I don’t chat when I’m on duty.”
“So how ’bout if we chat over drinks?”
Marge ignored him. “We picked up a little girl—around two, curly blond hair, brown eyes, height thirty-two inches, weight twenty-six pounds. I’ve got Polaroids and footprints I’d like to fax over to you. See if we come up with a match.”
“As long as the match is a love match between you and me, my Greek goddess.”
“Knock it off.”
Delferno said, “I love a woman who talks tough. It turns me on. Gets my blood boiling and my—”
“You’re wasting your breath.”
“All right. Be surly. I’ll get you anyway. In the meantime, send me the pics and the prints.”
Marge placed the information into the machine. She said, “Call me back when you’ve got them.”
“How about dinner? Tonight, even. Wait, tonight’s not good. How about tomor—”
“I’m hanging up now, Barry.”
“It’s not nice to alienate the hired help.”
Marge laughed and placed the receiver in its cradle. She poured herself a cup of coffee and waited for Delferno to call back. A few minutes later, her phone rang.
