“Kamala, one more thing — did Merci give you the number here?”
“In case she wasn’t available. Oh well, let her kill me. I want to do the right thing.”
“You have.”
“They say on the TV that the guy’s been castrated. Then these doctors come on and say rape is a crime of anger.”
“That’s the current thinking.”
And if you’d ever seen what a bottle or a club or a gun barrel did to a woman who’d been raped with one, you’d probably agree. But he didn’t say that.
“They didn’t show very much of him,” Kamala said. “Mostly, the good video is from when they first surprised him a couple of days ago. The last time they showed him live, he was looking out from behind the door. It’s his eyes that give him away, Mr. Hess. Wet. Sad. Like Omar Sharif in Dr. Zhivago or Lon Chaney’s in Wolfman. Before he turns into the wolf. On TV he looks scared, like an animal.”
“He’s behaved like an animal.”
“To those women.”
“And those are the ones we know about.”
“It makes me want to never trust a man again.”
“Be careful who you trust.”
“I will. Well, thanks.”
He hung up and called Merci.
Twenty-Eight
The next morning Colesceau watched the cops come to his door on TV because it was easier than getting up to look through the blinds.
The Purse Snatcher duo, he thought, recognizing them from the papers. Not that you’d have any trouble telling what these kind of people were. Hess, the fascist general, and Rayborn, his Doberman bitch helper. He imagined their offspring with black feathers, four legs and grotesque genitalia.
Colesceau’s heartbeat upped its rate. He felt a cold prickling sensation on the skin of his face. Then he saw himself sitting there, waiting for whatever they had in mind. What could they possibly want with him?
He was physically and emotionally exhausted by the crowd and by what Grant Major had pulled on him. It made him want to give up and blow his brains out.
Just remember who you are, he reminded himself: Colesceau the innocent, Colesceau the wronged, Colesceau the castrated and contrite.
MAKE our NElGHborhood
SAFE for the CHlLdren!
He thought about murdering some local kids just to add some relevance to this irritating chant. Stake their heads on the push-arms of some FOR SALE signs. The trouble was he kind of liked most of the kids he noticed these days — so happy and spoiled and obsessed with their own selfish little schemes. It would probably just be a waste of time.
Then he saw the old cop ring his doorbell on TV and heard his actual doorbell ring at exactly the same time. There were so many reasons to be awed by America.
He decided not to answer for a minute so he could watch them react. Surely Trudy Powers would vouch for his whereabouts. The whole mob would. That, in fact, was the very proof of his innocence — these fine neighbors always knowing where he was. His witnesses. He’d never expected such convenience to develop from such humiliation.
The Doberman bitch turned to look at the crowd. She wore sunglasses like a fighter pilot and her hair was wavy and dark. A big one, he saw: a strong-legged, proud-assed, heavy-breasted dog. He pictured her in something revealing, sitting beside him in Pratt’s yellow Cobra doing ninety. Maybe. He preferred a more delicate, feminine woman, though he could see her features were strong and far from unattractive. She probably had yellow teeth. He could easily imagine doing her out of pure meanness, as a way of repaying her for what she was.
She reached out and the doorbell rang again.
“I am coming!” he shouted.
Funny, how on the TV screen he could see them fix their attention on the door like it had just spoken to them. Really quite amusing.
He went to the front door, opened it two inches and peered out. “Yes?”
Out came two badges — Sheriff’s Department somethings. Behind the badges were two sets of sunglasses and two frowns.
“Mr. Colesceau, I’m Sergeant Rayborn and this is Lieutenant Hess of the Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Department. We’d like to come in and have a word with you.”
He opened the door. The chant got louder.
“Welcome to my home.”
The bitch pushed in first, then the fascist. Colesceau looked out at Trudy. She was at the forefront per usual, her picket sign in hand, her face lovely. She looked directly back at him. He saw that the higher calling was still in her, that she was still tasked by her God to deal with the human excrement Colesceau. He saw mercy and understanding and dignity on that face.
He shut the door and locked it. They stood there looking at him, hands on their hips. Both sets of sunglasses were gone.
“You can come in and have a seat if you want.”
“Thanks,” said the male.
The bitch stood her ground and watched him pass by her, as he followed the old one into his living room.
“Would you like something to drink?”
“No,” said the bitch.
“No, thank you,” said the other.
Neither of them sat.
“I have no rights that I am aware of,” he said. “I will answer any questions you ask. You may search this apartment all you like. I ask that you don’t break anything more than necessary. I’ll be happy to show you where things are located, if this will make your job easier.”
“You give me a pay raise, too?”
The bitch, of course.
“I would give myself a job first,” Colesceau answered. “My old boss, Mr. Pratt, has given me two weeks of pay, but the work is gone. There was a mob outside there, too.”
“My eyes are misting over,” she said.
“I worked there for two years, at five-fifty an hour. No benefits. No vacation. I only missed one day. That was when an accidental overdose of female hormone made me vomit for six hours without relief.”
“What are these things?” she asked, ignoring his woes. She was standing in front of one of his display cabinets, facing his mother’s artistry.
“Eggs.”
“You paint them up like this? Put on the lace and glitter?”
“My mother does this. Egg painting is a respected Romanian folk art. She is considered accomplished.”
“Isn’t that where the vampires and werewolves live, Romania?”
“They only live in the imagination, I believe.”
“What kind of name is Matamoros? I mean, it’s a city in Mexico but you’re Romanian.”
Colesceau was slightly surprised to hear her say this. She was correct, but it was rare when an American knew anything about Mexico, their closest neighbors to the south, let alone the city of Matamoros. In fact, there were two cities of Matamoros in Mexico. Colesceau decided long ago that he was named after the larger and more important of them.
He realized he had an odd feeling inside.
“My mother fell in love with a picture of Mexico when she was a young woman. For her it represented a paradise far away from the frigid Carpathians. She never went there until we came to live in America. She chose the name out of a book. And she gave it to me.”
Doberman: “Hmf. I like this giant blue one with the yellow feather boa around it. It looks like a pregnant stripper.”
“Cassowary. I think it’s garish and obscene.”
“You’re sensitive for a three-time granny raper.”
She turned and looked at him. The odd feeling was still inside him, slightly stronger.
No, he thought.
“But that was a long time ago,” he continued, “and I am a different man. Please, sit down. You can watch the crowd outside on the TV, or you can open the blinds and watch them in reality. You can do both. I usually just watch on the TV because I can turn it off. Of course I can’t turn off the crowd outside. But it’s a comfort.”