The Fifth Script: The Lacey Lockington Series - Book One (3 page)

“Are we talking about the same thing?”

“Probably not, but we can get it straightened out at my place.”

The first fat woman had heaved a martyr’s sigh. Fat women are very good at heaving martyr’s sighs. The second fat woman had shuffled impatiently. She’d said, “What are they doing up there, rewriting the goddam theory of goddam relativity?”

The first fat woman had said, “She mentioned a
cannon
—they could be
terrorists
!”

Sitting in his car in front of Evasheski’s Liquor Emporium, waiting for Edna Garson, Lockington had watched the fat women come out. The first fat woman had said, “I
do
believe he was carrying a
gun
!”

The second fat woman had said, “I know goddam well he was, I
saw
the goddam thing!” She’d heaved a martyr’s sigh. “Where are the goddam cops when we need them?”

Hitting the feathers with Edna Garson wouldn’t have earned Lacey Lockington a great deal of space in the
Guinness Book of Records
—Edna Garson knew what mattresses were for. She was an upbeat woman possessed by an unflagging zest for life and all its trimmings. She wasn’t beautiful, far from it—her ski-jump nose was slightly askew, her cheek bones were too high and too prominent, her mouth was too wide, her jaw too resolute, but she had those wonderful, fetching, smoky-blue eyes, she was damned attractive, and she knew it.

Edna’s willowy contours belied her thirty-seven years, her dazzling shock of honey-blonde hair was identifiable from a quarter-mile’s distance, her skin was whipped cream smooth and sun-stained to gold, her tailored slacks clung to the more important creases of her exquisite body with magnetic tenacity, and her free-striding saunter had been responsible for more traffic accidents than any six-inch snowfall in Chicago’s history.

She had round heels, she made no secret of the fact, and on a scale of ten, the bedroom Edna Garson had been awarded a multitude of fifteens. Edna was a thoroughly-educated, highly-skilled sexual technician—she savored men, she devoured them, and she discarded them with gleeful gusto. But she hadn’t dropped Lockington, not yet. Since that March afternoon at Evasheski’s Liquor Emporium, they’d spent considerable time together, not all of it in bed, their brief relationship blossoming into more than could have been stuffed between a set of Edna’s discount-store sheets.

That she’d developed something for Lacey Lockington was readily apparent to the most casual of observers, if Edna Garson had any casual observers. When they’d sit talking in a Shamrock Pub back booth, she’d touch him constantly, her fingertips brushing the backs of his hands, her alert smoky-blue eyes growing dreamy, her knowing smile dissolving into a wispy thing bordering on the naïve, her saucy, Chicago-style banter fading to be replaced by the gentle tones of a sister of the church.

They’d discuss a variety of subjects, most of them inconsequential, their conversations amounting to irrelevancy stacked upon irrelevancy. They’d take turns at defending indefensible positions, arriving at no firm conclusions whatsoever, but enjoying the trip nonetheless. They’d tease as lovers sometimes do once firmly established as residents of that blindly blissful state—Lockington would remark that Edna’s lipstick was smeared, demanding an immediate explanation, and she’d fake a yawn, responding that she’d taken the entire Pepper Valley baseball team to bed, and Lockington would ask if it’d been a rewarding experience and she’d say, Oh, yes, downright mindboggling despite the fact that Nick Noonan had been a lousy lay.

It’d continue along such lines until around midnight when, with the late workers pouring in and the juke box being turned up to ear-splitting volume, they’d walk the half-dozen doors east to Edna’s second-story Grand Avenue apartment where Lockington would sit on Edna’s sagging blue corduroy-covered living room couch, smoking, nursing a glass of Martell’s, watching Edna peel to the skin, save for her open-toed spike-heeled pumps, because a naked woman in spike-heeled pumps has a helluva lot more appeal than a barefooted naked woman, and Edna was aware of this.

It was a leisurely business, Edna draping her clothing over the back of the couch, studying him as she stripped, measuring her effect with experienced smoky-blue eyes before sitting beside him to share his glass of Martell’s.

It’d become a ritual, prefacing those moments when they’d chat about where they’d been and how they’d gotten to where they were, a treadmill colloquy that whiled away their cognac period. Lockington would glance at Edna’s lithe, tawny body, biding his time, anticipating that which he knew would come, making no move until she’d pop to her feet, taking his hand to lead him into her bedroom, and shortly after the lights had gone out she’d observe that their doing this—“oh, God, Locky,
Locky!
—seemed such a
—there, that’s
it!, that’s it!—perfectly natural thing—do it, Locky, for Christ’s sake,
do
it to me!—didn’t he—now, Locky, now,
now,
NOW
!—agree?”

And Lockington, who’d never dwelled on the subject at great length, would struggle to regain his breath because Edna Garson was eleven years his junior and she possessed a sexual master’s degree plus the stamina of a race horse, and he’d mumble Yes, certainly he agreed, having only the foggiest conception of what he was agreeing to, doubting Edna’s veracity and his own because, after all, they were big city people and big city people rarely mean what they say, just their saying it tends to suffice. He’d put these fuzzy exchanges down as attempts to justify what they’d just done and, later, with his face buried in her sweet-smelling shaggy mop of yellow hair and her breath hot on his chest, he’d drift in the general direction of sleep, rationalizing that what they’d just done wasn’t in dire need of justification—if it hadn’t been completely moral it certainly hadn’t been illegal, they hadn’t hurt anybody. It’d happened before and it’d happen again, with each other and with God knew whom, and he’d wonder if these efforts to defend their lust didn’t indicate something beyond the ordinary, since ordinary lust requires no flowery epilogues nor does it seek them.

It was an excellent affair, as affairs go, typical of its time and location, a thing of understanding that defied understanding, a substantive thing devoid of substance, a demanding thing that made no demands, and it would cross Lockington’s mind that at sometime during the progress of their arrangement he
must
have lied to her, and he’d hope to Almighty God that he had, because if he
hadn’t
it was twenty, ten and even that he’d fallen in love with Edna Garson, and that was a position Lockington wasn’t anxious to occupy. He’d been in love, and he’d experienced the agonies of withdrawal.

During the dawn of Friday, August 17, Lockington sat on the edge of Edna Garson’s bed, listening to her contented breathing, smoking his wake-up cigarette, considering his recent case of snakebite. It appeared to be healing, but there is no trusting appearances, as Richard Brinsley Sheridan said.

Unfortunately, Lacey Lockington had never heard of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

There are thoughts that come unwanted and unannounced, they come like locusts, blackening the green fields of a man’s mind, ripping, devouring. There is no putting them off, and no dealing with them. So it was with Detective Sergeant Lacey Lockington and his thoughts in a booth of a little Italian restaurant on Barry Avenue during a rainy Sunday evening in Chicago.

She’d slipped into his life some eight months earlier, a slender shaft of sunlight piercing the gloom of a darkened room. It’d been December, a week prior to Christmas, and Lockington had been coming home from the Shamrock Pub’s Christmas party at twelve-fifteen in the morning in the middle of a driving snow storm, halflit-up, singing “Beautiful Dreamer” at the top of his lungs, “Beautiful Dreamer” having had nothing whatsoever to do with the Christmas season, but Lockington had felt like singing something at the top of his lungs, and “Beautiful Dreamer” had been the first thing to cross his mind, meshing with his sentimental mood.

The storm had been sweeping the city like a great white broom, visibility had been twenty feet at best, and Lockington had taken a side street, cutting north from Grand Avenue to Barry, an inadvisable move that he wouldn’t have made had he been sober because any Chicagoan knows that you should stay the hell off the side streets when it’s snowing. In Chicago the main thoroughfares get plowed when they get around to it, the side streets never, ever, ever.

And there she’d been, smack-dab in the middle of the street, trying to start a 1979 Mercury that wouldn’t start, her lights growing dimmer with every unsuccessful attempt. There’d been no way to get around the Mercury, cars had lined both sides of the street, there’d been a parking place or two but nothing large enough to let him slip past, he’d have had to back up three-quarters of a block to avail himself of another street route, so he’d taken his flashlight and walked to the stricken Mercury to find her hunched over the steering wheel, her parka hood over her head, and above the weakening grind of the starter he could hear her cussing a long bright-blue streak, employing words that Lockington would have hesitated to use at a longshoremen’s convention. He’d knocked on the Mercury’s window, she’d spun to stare out at him and snarl, “Get the hell away from this automobile or I’ll call the police!
”

Lockington had said, “But, ma’am, I am the police!”

He’d pulled his wallet and spotted his badge with the flashlight, and she’d said, “All right, dammit, then do something.
”

Lockington had said, “Pull your hood release.”

She’d said, “But— “

Lockington had said, “Please, ma’am, don’t argue with me—pull your hood release, will you?
”

She’d complied and Lockington had popped the latch and hoisted the hood, leaning under it, exploring the intestines of the Mercury with the aid of his flashlight. The hood had come down with a crash, slamming Lockington in the back of the neck, driving his face into the battery. Lockington had fought his way clear of the entrapment. He’d said, “Jesus H. Christ, guillotined at midnight! Why didn’t you tell—
”

“
I tried to tell you—that damned hood just won’t stay up!”

Lockington had appraised the situation and said, “Look, can you navigate this thing with no power steering?
”

“
But I
have
power steering!
”

“
You won’t have power steering with the engine conked out. Can you handle it?
”

“
I can
try.
Why?
”

“
Then maybe I can nudge you into that parking space just ahead with my car.
”

“
That won’t get me
home
!” She’d been dark-eyed with a fairly prominent nose that was running in the cold, more than could have been said for her automobile. Lockington had said, “Ma’am, first things
first—
we have to start somewhere, don’t we?
”

They’d gotten it done after a fashion—the traction had been poor, the Pontiac’s rear wheels had spun, its tires had screamed and smoked, and she’d had a terrible time maneuvering the Mercury without the aid of power steering. They’d left her car at the curb, more or less, its rear end protruding into the street at a dangerous angle and she’d gotten out, locking the door, saying, “Okay, now what?
”

“
Now we get to a telephone. There’s a tavern just around the corner on Barry.
”

“
I’ll never get help in a storm at this time of night, and you know it!”

Lockington had spread his hands defenselessly. “Well, ma’am, if we don’t give it a shot, we’ll never be sure, will we?
”

When she’d piled into the Pontiac he’d noticed that she had very good legs, and he’d driven her to Barry Avenue and a small neighborhood drinking place. He’d bought her a rum and coke, he’d ordered a Martell’s cognac, they’d called a dozen towing services with no luck, and they’d sat in a booth looking at each other. She’d been pleasant enough to look at, early thirties maybe, he’d liked her chestnut hair, rumpled by the hood of her parka, and he’d approved of the set of her dimpled chin. Above all, he’d appreciated her smile, a frank, open thing, when she’d finally gotten around to smiling, which had been during her second rum and coke. She’d shivered from the chill still in her, and she’d said, “Pardon me, but aren’t you slightly drunk?
”

“
Slightly.
”

“
No problem with that—so am I. I was at a Christmas party.
”

“
So was I. I could probably drive you home. Where do you live?
”

“
Des Plaines.
”

Lockington had whistled, and she’d said, “Long way in a blizzard, isn’t it?
”

“
That’s not all—you’d have to get back to your car in the morning.
”

She’d shrugged a dismal shrug. “So here I am at square one. Any suggestions?
”

“
Just one.
”

Her second smile had been every bit as good as her first, but it’d been of the knowing variety. She’d said, “Your place?
”

Lockington had nodded.

She’d dropped her head, laughing. She’d said, “Oh, Jesus, am I ever easy!
”

Lockington had said, “Well, look, I’ll sleep on the couch.
”

She’d said, “The hell you will.
”

“
Then you’ll sleep on the couch.
”

“
The hell I will.
”

Three hours later, he lurched to his feet, paid his tab, tipped his waitress, and headed back to his apartment. The rain had stopped but the respite would be brief because there was a stiff breeze out of the west. Muted thunder mumbled from that direction, and Chicago’s night sky was a mass of writhing black clouds, reminding Lockington of a vast snake pit, a strange collation, since Lockington had never seen a snake pit, and he was glad for this because, the way his luck had been running, he’d probably have fallen into the damned thing headfirst.

He plodded homeward on the south side of Barry Avenue, picking his way through a maze of sidewalk puddles, staying close to buildings in an effort to avoid the spray from eastbound vehicles, passing a darkened shop doorway from which stepped a pair of Hispanics, sharply dressed young fellows, mid-twenties or thereabouts. Their white-toothed smiles were ingratiating. They could use a few bucks, they told Lockington.