Malevolent Page 3

  “And where are you planning on coming up with three hundred dollars?”

  That should have been the easy part. Between her frugality and his…well, pretty much her frugality…they’d saved almost thirteen thousand dollars for a down payment on a house. But just try to explain to her what a small percent of thirteen grand that three hundred bucks represented, and she’d fly totally off the handle. “Honey,” he said, sounding somewhere between placating and whiny.

  She slammed her hairbrush onto the glass tabletop. “Not again, Tim. More music to go along with your state-of-the-art equipment and a van to hold it all.” Her glare found him in her mirror. “You love the trappings of business, it’s just the work you don’t find to your liking.”

  “Patty, this is traditional country. Not the urban, big-hat, Alan Jackson, Taylor Swift bullshit. That’s Charlotte’s theme for Wednesday nights. I can achieve my break-even point on the new stuff in a week.”

  He wasn’t sure if that was true. Wasn’t even positive he knew what break even meant, but he hoped he was speaking Patty’s language. She was a loan officer for the city’s third largest bank. If his spur-of-the-moment verbal business plan wouldn’t impress her, nothing would.

  She returned her attention to her preparations with a brief snort of disgust. “Charlotte,” she huffed, making the name sound like a profanity. “More tax-free cash of indeterminate amount. And when we’re filling out income paperwork for buying a house, you can tell the mortgage broker that you really did make more than the six thousand dollars or so that showed up on your last tax forms, and you have the cash-stuffed envelopes to prove it.”

  Patty rose from her bench and squatted before her closet shoe rack. Okay, so Charlotte Taft’s business methods were questionable by the standards of his loan officer girlfriend. After the Beer Belly Saloon closed for the evening, Charlotte would dash off some figures in her head and pick bills out of the cash register that reflected her impression of the night’s profit-loss picture. Tim often grossed less than he might get elsewhere, but since the total went unreported to the government, nothing got deducted. As Charlotte would sometimes put it with a chuckle, “Gross equals net.”

  “Anyway,” Tim said, anxious to leave the current line of conversation behind, “I was telling you how I ended up at that video rental on Broadview.”

  And he did. He enjoyed her wide-eyed reaction. Tales of rape and mayhem had made best-seller lists since caveman days, so it was no wonder. There were no interruptions until the doorbell rang.

  Tim and Patty lived in the upper half of an Old Brooklyn up-and-down. From the outside, the house was a tall, unstylish, chocolate-brown wood frame, with neighboring structures hemming it in on both sides. Their front door was at the top of a steep interior stairway, and it was up to that door that someone had climbed at a rather unlikely hour to ring the bell. The young couple stared each other down with identical quizzical and vaguely frightened expressions before Tim donned a robe and tiptoed to the front of the house, his feet groaning over old wood floorboards.

  In the living room, dancing dust motes got caught in the sunbeam that came from the double French doors onto the second-floor balcony. The whitewashed walls, classic landlord décor, made all of the front rooms seem even brighter. Patty’s influence could be seen in the potted greenery and the framed photos of ballet slippers and art show promotional posters on the walls.

  “Hurry up!” she hissed.

  Tim hid most of his robed body behind the door, unlatched it and pulled it open.

  She wore the same form-fitting blue jeans and charcoal-gray shirt she’d worn earlier, a satchel-style briefcase on a strap slung across one shoulder. Up close and without the armed and uniformed authority of the Cleveland Police Department behind her, she looked even smaller. In the doubtful light of the dark stairwell, her face had a few lines that he hadn’t noticed from a distance—lines that put her in her midthirties, at least. But she wore them well. Her eyes were cool and gray.

  They stared at each other for just a moment before she took out a wallet to show him a badge and an ID photo, just like in the movies. “Detective Dillon,” she called herself and asked if she could come in.

  As Tim stepped out of the way and mumbled an invitation, he wondered what Mrs. Lascic would think of his early-morning visitor. And she’d know. Make no mistake about that—she’d know.

  “Um…if you’d like…” All he could do was point out Patty’s couch. He’d never had a cop in his place before. Thank God he’d given up his brief experiment in marijuana cultivation.

  “Nice,” she said, eying the plush, overstuffed couch with its broad geometric swipes of wine and gray.

  “Thank you,” said Patty, jumping in to take credit for it.

  She deserved it. Patty had bought it months ago, her buying decision alone. In Tim’s view, you don’t spend the kind of money on a single piece of furniture that could get you a sound system to die for.

  “You don’t mind, do you? My sitting in?” asked Patty. “Tim told me about what happened last night and I suppose that’s why you’re here. For, like, a witness statement?”

  “I think that would be fine,” said the detective.

  Both women now turned their attention to Tim, who became awkwardly aware of being the only one in night clothes. He took a seat and self-consciously drew his naked feet under an easy chair of complementary pattern to the sofa.

  “Actually, last night’s occurrence is exactly why I’m here, Mr. Brentwood,” the detective chick said when all were seated. “If I can ask you a few questions, I’ll be out of your way in a couple minutes. Then you can dress.”

  Tim nodded, annoyed. He wondered how she’d found him in the first place. He’d been just one face in a fairly considerable crowd. How’d she come up with a name and address?

  Her first question—a statement, really—only confused him further. “Mr. Brentwood, you were with your friend Griffin Solloway last night.”

  She waited for his confirmation of the fact, her chin resting on her knuckles like The Thinker, elbows propped on her brown leather pouch. When he shook his head in puzzlement, the sudden intensity of her gray eyes told him that her initial question had been a freebie. She hadn’t expected any problems with it. Now she didn’t know where things stood.

  Neither did he.

  “Are you saying,” she began, speaking with the clarity with which you’d address a child, “that you don’t have a friend named Griffin Solloway.”

  “That’s what I’m—wait a minute. Is that the dude with the video store?”

  “AfterHours.”

  “Yeah, right. But we’re…friends?” Tim chuckled. At least it explained how the cop had tracked him down. He had the dude’s big mouth to thank. “Guess he makes friends easy. I just met him at the…whatever. We talked a little on the street while we watched what was going on and then I stopped in to see his place because he asked me to.”

  “After the police showed up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What exactly did happen last night,” Patty breathlessly asked the cop. “Was somebody attacked?”

  “There was an incident and we’re trying to get to the bottom of it,” she said, her eyes never leaving Tim’s as she expertly said nothing. “What exactly did the two of you see? You and Griffin?”

  He told her how he’d found the crowd and the emergency vehicles by bike and that he hadn’t actually seen anything. The cops were already on the scene when he arrived. Detective Dillon didn’t seem too interested in this. Her questions mainly concerned the video store dude—where he’d been standing, his mood, what he was wearing, his topics of conversation.

  Finally, she stood and thanked him in that politely serious way of hers.

  They all stood. Even barefoot, Tim towered over the petite policewoman, though he gave up almost all of his height advantage to high-heeled Patty.

  With her foot at the top of the long, narrow staircase to the ground, Detective Dillon stopped and turned
in the entry hall so fast that she must have seen the way he was appraising her tight little ass.

  “Can you tell me,” she asked, “why Griffin Solloway would think of you as a friend?”

  Tim shrugged. “I’m guessing friends are something he has in short supply.”

  Chapter Six

  She nailed him before he made it down the drive, before his bike tires could whisper down the immaculate black asphalt past her front porch.

  “So, a visitor,” Mrs. Lascic said in that awkward phrase construction of hers. “A woman I recall looking much like the woman policeman at the big commotion last night.”

  Tim leaned his Huffy on his hip. So she’d been in the crowd too. Or had found news on the gossip grapevine.

  “That’s right, Mrs. Lascic. She noticed me in the crowd and just wanted to see if I’d witnessed anything.”

  “Hmm.”

  His landlord, calling out to him from her front stoop, was well into her middle years. She was built close to the ground with broad shoulders, thick ankles, manly wrists. She wore a loose house dress and a red bandanna that kept hay-colored hair from her eyes and gave her a family resemblance to rocker Axl Rose.

  “It seems to me,” said Mrs. Lascic, arms crossed over her expansive chest, “that I too being a bystander in the crowd, should too have been questioned by the policeman woman.”

  The long-widowed Mrs. Lascic should have been one of those irascible neighborhood characters as famous for their innate goodness as they were for their rough honesty. But Tim rarely had much patience for such acquired-taste personalities. He felt that those graceless, blundering fools got away with far too much by using what the world accepted as blunt honesty, but which he’d describe as stupid, intrusive ignorance. Their brash mannerisms and sly probes covered up—but none too well—their mean-spiritedness.

  And yes, there was something curiously deeper in Tim’s disdain for his landlady. She held the power of comfort or homelessness over him. And, as much as he hated to admit it, her thick accent and thicker body, her cigarette dangling from those coarse, reddened lips like an anatomical extension, her babushka and road hog beater automobile, well, it quite honestly irritated the piss out of him, and he wasn’t sure why.

  “Because if you’re now telling me that you saw no more of that terrible happening than I did, I should maybe be talking to the pretty policeman woman myself, don’t you think?”

  Mrs. Lascic stuffed her ever-present cigarette back into her face and stoked it till it grew as red as her lips.

  Tim sighed. “Well, Mrs. Lascic, if you’re so anxious to be questioned by the law, maybe I should have dropped your name.”

  She barked a laugh that turned into a phlegmy cough. Inhaling once more the source of that cough, she took it out and tapped its long ash. “Who knows, maybe there’s a reward, huh? I go to jail, but we split the reward even-up and then maybe you have some money, eh?”

  She actually said it: eh. Like some Hollywood villain. Tim forced a dry chuckle, but knew where this conversation was headed.

  “Speaking of money,” she said, “you have such a good job you don’t even have to work like other people during the day. If my Leonid was alive, he would wish for such a job.”

  But he’s not. And I’ll bet he’s grateful for that, Tim thought.

  He said, “I was returning from a work-related activity late last night, so you see that even though my hours aren’t so traditional, I work as hard as anyone.” Right now what he was hard at work doing was keeping a carefree lilt to his voice, blocking any hint of defensiveness which she’d pick up on like a dog smelling fear.

  “Uh huh,” she said, her smudgy eyes twinkling as much as they’d ever twinkled. “And how is your young woman? Is she still working hard every day at the bank? I remember the old days when a pretty young woman like Patty gets herself a good man with a good job and don’t have to work all day at the bank.”

  Why, you old bitch, he thought in near admiration. “Patty’s doing fine, Mrs. Lascic. Thanks for asking. And speaking of business, I might have a tenant for your bungalow on Mayview. Is it still available? You asked me to ask my friends—”

  “Yes, yes! When could he move in, this friend?”

  “Pretty much right away.”

  “Of course he must have job, this friend. He does have a job, doesn’t he? Maybe day job, with paycheck?”

  Tim nodded vigorously, sucking her in as effectively as she inhaled her tobacco smoke. “Works for the city, as a matter of fact. Can’t get more stable than that. He investigates cases of fair housing laws being broken by landlords. He’s black—did I mention?—but I’m sure that won’t be a problem. Gotta go, but let’s touch base later and I’ll set up a time when you two can meet. Bye, Mrs. Lascic.”

  He would have loved to have seen her reaction to his fictional friend, but it would spoil the effect. At least he wouldn’t be running into her so frequently now.

  Chapter Seven

  Tim coasted leisurely down the drive and hit the street. He felt better than he had all day. It was still midmorning, seventy degrees and nary a cloud. A rare weather report for Cleveland, so enjoy it.

  He dodged pavement holes and cracks, and watched for doors suddenly opening on curbed cars. In a few minutes, the streets widened and the houses fell back from the road. The South Hills section of the Old Brooklyn neighborhood was one of the city’s best residential pockets. Eight or ten wide streets with colonial and Tudor homes on shady, manicured lawns.

  It was here, rather than on their own street of cramped rentals, that Patty’s interest was drawn like a magnet to a refrigerator. Flowerbeds and extra bedrooms and double-car garages were her destiny. Tim, on the other hand, saw only thirty-year mortgages and endless lawn and gutter work.

  No thanks. In fact, this line of thought made him veer off course and head aimlessly back to the border streets with their inventory of junkers and truants. Then came Broadview Road, full of gas stations and bars and whizzing traffic. And finally, AfterHours Video with its unlit neon-pink sign and the Closed placard in the window.

  Maybe that had been his destination all along, though there wasn’t much to see. The plate-glass window was all but wallpapered with movie posters. Most ran the blood-red color of slasher films or featured Asian martial artists or stacked and terror-stricken girls in teeny-tiny tops. Through one space between posters he could see into the dark interior and just make out a slick marker board with the words We just got in…, followed by a scrawled list of current releases. Current being a relative term, most of the titles having been available through Netflix for some time.

  Tim propped his bike against the rough facade and stood back. The building stood low to the ground, its bricks faded to the color of old pennies. He was thinking about the guy who owned the place. Griffin something. Thinking acquaintance, friend…or rapist?

  The lady cop hadn’t actually come out and said that such was a possibility, but he doubted that her interest in the squat, husky dude was because she thought he was hot.

  The business-hours sign on the front door stated that the place was open between 5 p.m. and 2 a.m. during the week and till three in the morning on weekends.

  Which matched his own preferred work time, Tim thought as he climbed back onto his bike. He didn’t get far before pulling into another driveway in front of another low-slung building.

  There were no cars parked on the gravel drive of the Utica Lane Church of Redemption. The structure’s few small windows reflected black emptiness within. Up close, the white aluminum siding looked gray with the industrial grime that had coated the neighborhood for generations from the now-silent steelyard in the nearby Flats. The willow tree in the shallow front yard granted the building a degree of privacy that was only lightly disturbed by the birds and squirrels twittering and flitting and thrashing about in its crown.

  The only human-generated sound was the squeaky wheel of a baby carriage pushed by a morose young woman on the sidewalk behind him. She looked lik
e she hadn’t anticipated this on the night she had neglected to require a rubber. She inspected Tim with belligerent curiosity before chugging out of view.

  He’d seen the place without even noticing it many times before. Always empty, always silent. Looking as deserted as he’d assumed it to be. Faint signs of life had only stirred in the place recently—cut grass, a fresh coat of trim paint, a light left on at night and showing through windows through which light had never shown before. It looked more like a tired house than a church, except for the large brown cross, really just a couple painted two-by-fours nailed to a section of the siding without windows.

  Tucking his T-shirt into his shorts, Tim took note of the beer logo adorning its front and questioned its propriety for a church visit.

  Is that what he was doing? Visiting? The thought hadn’t taken form until just that moment. Until then, he’d simply moseyed from here to there. A late-morning bike ride, that’s all.

  The three concrete steps to the front door weren’t actually attached to the building. He felt them quake slightly as he climbed them. He timidly knocked on a storm door that shook and rattled to wake the saints. But no one came in response. Wait a minute, he thought. You don’t knock on church doors. They either opened for you or they didn’t.

  This one opened.

  “Hello?” he called out. His voice sounded flat in the contained space.

  He stood in a dimly lit foyer or vestibule that was longer than it was wide. The walls were covered in some sort of heavy brocade wallpaper faded with age, its pattern nearly hidden in the gloom. There were four interruptions to the walls—three closed doors and one wide, open doorway to his immediate left.

  Tim moved another hesitant step into the heart of the building, letting the storm and wooden front door click shut behind him. He could feel himself being drawn into the air stream issuing from that much larger open space. His feet crackled on spider-cracked vinyl flooring that retained hints of its original color theme of checkered maroon and green. It felt bubbly underfoot.