The Polka Dot Girl Read online

  “Untie me. Right now.”

  Jesus. That didn’t sound like my own voice at all. Or rather, it sounded like a tape recording of my voice, exposed to humidity and sunshine, scratched, dragged along the floor, then played back at the wrong speed in a different room.

  “I said fucking untie me. Now.”

  I squinted up and saw Erika standing at a table about 20 feet away, smiling at me over her muscular shoulder. I noticed now that it was bandaged, courtesy of that gunshot wound I’d given her in the Zig-Zag. She was fiddling with something but I couldn’t say what for sure—my eyes were getting accustomed to the light, the headache receding in the slow pulse of a wave, but my vision was still blurring in and out like a camera being focused.

  She said, “Oh, I’ll untie you, buttercup. When we’re done. Or should I say, when you’re done. And you will be, eventually.” She gave a curt laugh. “Probably wondering why I didn’t just do ya back in the apartment, right? Once you were out cold, just drive my best friend right through your fucking eyeball. Like I woulda done in the Zig-Zag if that Chink bitch hadn’t come along and distracted me. Well, I could have. Easy. But the women who’re paying me don’t want you dead until I get some information. And I’m gonna get that information, you can be sure. I always deliver what I’ve been paid for.”

  I looked down and to the side: my arms were pinioned by old-fashioned leather straps. I would have expected something a little more sophisticated from this professional assassin, this unfeeling killer, but these sufficed well enough, pulled tight, the leather stretching slightly, grooving into my flesh. And besides, I was half-paralyzed, physically drained and psychologically neutralized. And more besides, this didn’t seem a particularly well-stocked torture chamber—more like someone’s basement, or a utilities room deep in the bowels of a warehouse.

  “Where the hell is this, anyway?”

  Shit. Had I said that aloud or just thought it? My brain did another sideways parachute jump and I felt like I was going to vomit. Erika was looking back at me again, giving that same unhinged dead-soul smile.

  “The old truth serum is kicking in. Excellent. Keep talking, buttercup. Just babble your pretty little head off. It’ll be easier that way.”

  “Fuck you, you fucking animal.” I heard it as “fuggyooofug- ginanneemal”, and wondered how it sounded to her, and wondered why I cared how it sounded to her, and then I wondered, what was with all the swearing? Must be the fucking drug, giving me a goddamn dirty motherfucking mouth.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Sodium pentathol? Scopolamine? Or some other shit?”

  “Mainly the first, but my own blend. My little twist on a classic. I have it prepared for me by a very talented pharmacol- ogist. A bit too fond of her own product, which is a shame, but makes it easier for me to keep her in line. And now, I think, we’re ready.”

  Erika turned and faced me, legs planted wide apart, holding her trademark baton in both hands. They were encased in thin gloves, leather or PVC. The baton looked different in some way.

  I said, “Wass with the gloves? You going for a drive in the country?”

  “My hands hurt, if you really gotta know. But you don’t need to worry about that. Okay, see this black shit smeared on the top of my best friend here? It’s lead, melted down and ground into a paste with oil and two kinds of poison and some other stuff I found lying around. Now, I’m gonna tell you why I went to the bother of covering my best friend with this. I did it because I want you to know exactly how fucked you are. To the nearest decimal point. You’re gonna tell me everything you’ve learned about Madeleine Greenhill, and everyone else who knows the same shit, and you’re gonna be quick about it. Otherwise my best friend will be shoved into your mouth and as far down your throat as it will fucking go and only then will I press the release button. And you know what that means, buttercup. Wham! 18 inches of tempered steel taking a joyride down your oesophagus. And if by some miracle that doesn’t rip you in two, the lead will assuredly poison your ass. And if that doesn’t kill you, the actual poison will. And if you’re still breathing at the end of all that, well, hell. I might just untie you and let you go hump my sister with a two-foot dildo.” She stopped smiling. “But I’m fond of my sister, so that isn’t gonna happen.”

  I was too messed up from the chemical compound to feel scared, but I still felt scared. Erika was a bad-in-the-blood socio- pathic asshole, period. She would kill me whatever I did or said.

  I was dead, I realized. But how could I be dead? I was a police officer.

  “You’re insane,” I slurred. “I’m a cop.” She shrugged indifferently.

  “You can’t just…torture and murder a cop, you crazy bitch. You’ll have every goddamn…” My thoughts trailed away and my voice followed suit.

  “I think what you’re trying to say, buttercup, is that I can’t kill you because you’re a police detective and I’d have the entire HCPD after me in two seconds flat and they won’t stop until they’ve hunted me down, correct?”

  I gave her a thumbs-up and started to giggle drunkenly. “Yeah. Thassit. Thanks, Erika.”

  “You stupid fucking cow. I thought you had more smarts than that. I actually gave you some credit.” She swooped down to me and grabbed my face, jerking it up to meet hers, squeezing my mouth until it flopped open like a sozzled goldfish and my teeth started to hurt. “You’re just as shit-stupid as the rest of them, aren’t you? Sweet little Genie. Everyone’s so fucking fond of you. With your big brown eyes and your pretty little face. It won’t look so pretty after I cleave the fucking thing in two.”

  Then Erika Baton did something wholly unexpected: she leaned in and kissed me on the lips. A hard kiss but not rough, her lips squashed against mine for four or five seconds. I could hear her breathing in through her nose, one extended breath; I could smell her surprisingly saccharine perfume.

  She broke off the kiss and stood again. I was too stunned to speak. Erika said, “I can and will kill you if I want, because nobody knows you’re here, nobody knows who abducted you, nobody will know the real identity of your killer, and nobody gives a shit anyway. I’ve already got a patsy in mind to take the fall. She’s so fucked up she probably will think she committed the crime. I’ll kill you, dismember your body and burn the remains. Not much for Genie’s fat friend Farrington to work with then.”

  My head slumped forward, my body swayed. I think I would have fallen out of the chair if I hadn’t been strapped in. I said quietly, “Well, if you’re gonna…do it anyway, why should I…talk to you…?”

  I was slipping in and out of consciousness now; more precisely, I was floating back and forth between altered levels of consciousness. Erika’s voice boomed at me one moment, grazed my ear like an intimate whisper the next: “Because that truth serum is coursing through your veins like wildfire by now. Nobody can resist the drugs, buttercup. And nobody can resist the painful things I can do to a body, long before the point of death. Lemme just tell you now, the anesthetic won’t last forever. When it wears off you’ll be begging me for another shot.”

  Then I heard someone say in a trembling, angry voice, “Have a shot yourself, goddamn you”, and Erika’s forehead exploded outwards, spraying me with hot blood and bone smithereens and indistinguishable wet matter. She hit the floor before I had time to taste her life-force on my tongue. I spat sluggishly, more like dribbling really, mixed blood and saliva running down my chin.

  I heard her speak again before I saw her but I knew who it was before I heard her speak.

  “Cella!” I shrieked, laughing half-hysterically. “Cella, you big fucking lump! I am so happy to see you.”

  “Genie, hold on, sweetheart.”

  Cella padded forward, tensed and cautious, her gun held at hip-height, wanting to be sure. Her eyes darted from me to Erika’s corpse in its black-red pool to the rest of the room, and back to me. She said, “Are you okay?” I nodded like a toy dog in the backseat of a car.

  She completed her recon of the room and then crouc
hed down in front of me, putting both hands on the sides of my head. “You’re okay? You’re sure you’re okay?”

  I giggled again. “Cella. I’ve missed you, Cella. I feel all…woozy. I think you killed her.”

  Cella nodded and pulled down my bottom eyelashes, examining the eyeball for signs of intoxication. She nodded again and briskly untied the leather straps binding my arms. I slumped into her embrace like a marionette with cut strings.

  “Thanks, Cella. You’re one hell of a lady.”

  I dissolved into drowsy laughter as adrenaline and sodium pentathol danced a chemical tango around my bloodstream and Cella patted my back softly, rocking me like a mother soothing her child to sleep.

  “Oh, Genie,” she said. “You poor thing. Shhhh. I’ve got you now, Genie. You’re safe now.”

  Chapter 26

  Cella

  I DIDN’T wake up until it was almost noon. But I woke up. Strike three for Erika Baton, and Genie Auf der Maur was still standing. Three times she’d tried to kill me; three times she’d had me in her sights. Each time I’d escaped. I didn’t know if I believed in God but somebody was looking out for me. My mom, maybe. Yeah, I could imagine her up in heaven—sitting on a small cloud even though there was a bigger one available across the way but this was her cloud, she was used to it and why would she move now?—and looking down on me, following my progress through this vale of tears, gently nudging fate here and cajoling chance there, doing her best to make the journey less painful, less tearful. Still worrying about me. Still being a mother.

  Cella had been watching over me all night—I say all night, though the dark hours were almost done by the time she got there, got to Erika’s lair, just in time. By my calculation it must have been about six in the morning when she burst through that door and plugged the assassin in the head, but I couldn’t know for sure. Then she held me in those big beefy arms and soothed me and stroked my hair and rocked me to sleep. I slept like a dead woman but I was not yet dead. So fuck you and take that to the bank, Erika goddamn Baton.

  When I woke the first thing I noticed was the fact that I felt pretty good physically. Somehow, subconsciously I’d sort of expected to feel like hammered shit; I think my mind had been giving my body a forewarning as I stumbled slowly towards waking. Ever pessimistic, my mind; always expecting the worst. It needn’t have worried: I was fine, or close enough to it. The worst of Erika’s drugs cocktail seemed to have been worked through my system; six hours’ solid sleep and the sheer zesty thrill of remembering how beautiful it is to be alive took care of the rest. I felt good, tingling slightly, revitalized, resurrected.

  I was lying on a flea-ridden old couch near the door: lumpy and scuzzy but surprisingly comfortable. The place was brightly lit but still no sunlight—we were obviously in a basement somewhere. Cella sat about ten feet away on a hard-backed chair. I squinted at her and smiled, saying sleepily, “Hey. The woman who saved my life.”

  She looked awful: dog-tired, an emotional wreck, her skin wan and sickly. She said, “I let you sleep. You had to sleep. Let all that crap wash outta you.”

  “Time izzit?” “Ten past 12.” “What day?”

  She smiled. “The next day. You’ve been out for five or six hours.”

  “And you’ve been here the whole time.”

  “Yeah, well… Somebody had to. She couldn’t do it.”

  She pointed at the far side of the room, towards Erika’s body, and laughed nervously. From where I was lying I could only see her shoes, the bottom foot-and-a-half of her legs, a hand trailing away from the body, the grease-smeared baton still clutched tightly. I didn’t want to see the rest of it: that ugly, hateful face blown out into space.

  Cella lit a cigarette and coughed wheezily. I would have told her to quit smoking only I wanted to bum one myself. I waggled my fingers at her and said, “Can I’ve one of those?”

  She lit one for me and stuck it in my mouth. I gagged on the first pull and coughed painfully, then got the measure of it and enjoyed the next three or four.

  “Nothing else I could do, Genie,” she said. “Nothing but let you sleep it off. I haven’t called anyone yet. I mean, uh, like your colleagues or anybody. I’ve just—sat here. I wanted to wait until you woke. I mean, shit. I’m not a cop anymore, you know? I don’t know that I’m even supposed to be here. And then this…”

  She gestured vaguely in the direction of the body once more. Cella really looked shook-up. I wondered if she’d ever killed somebody before. I was afraid to ask. She looked like she might burst into tears, or have some kind of nervous breakdown. I think the prospect of tears freaked me out more.

  I said quietly, “Okay, Cella. Thanks. You did the right thing. You didn’t call it in?”

  She shook her head. I continued, “I think maybe that’s better. Yeah. I’ll tell Etienne myself. On the hush-hush. Listen, I don’t want anyone else knowing about any of this, okay? Can you do that for me, Cella?”

  This time she nodded. She seemed relieved that someone else was taking the responsibility now; the forces of official authority were on the scene, tan-ta-ta-raah, bugles blowing, horses thundering, it’s all okay now Ma’am, we’ll handle it from here.

  I sat up and the blood plummeted from my head like an elevator with two broken cables. I moaned and put a hand to my temple, then realized it was the hand holding my cigarette and I didn’t want to sizzle my hair off to the root.

  Cella said, “You okay? Gimme that, Genie. You shouldn’t be smoking in your condition.”

  I said, mock-contritely, “Yes, Mommy” and handed her the cancer stick. Then I said, “Listen: we have a leak. I can’t remember if I told you this already but anyway I’m telling you now. We have a leak, inside the HCPD. Someone’s giving out information, about this case, my investigation, the whole thing. I’m trusting you with this knowledge, Cella. Nobody is to know about what happened here. I’ll tell Etienne right now, I’ll go straight to her office. But nobody else knows, got it? Just the Chief and you and me. And nobody’s to find out about the leak, either. I don’t want the bastards to know I’m onto them.”

  She looked even more relieved—I figured the threat of breakdown or a tsunami of tears had passed. She said, “Cool. That’s cool, Genie. Whatever you say.”

  I smiled wryly. “Besides…I don’t want Erika’s paymistress to know she’s dead. I want her to get nice and comfy, figuring her attack dog there is on the job.”

  “Well, you’re safe now, that’s for sure. That animal isn’t going to hurt anyone again. Here.” She handed me my gun, my Beretta, saying, “Found it on the desk there. I knew it was yours, straight away. Recognized the scratch along the barrel. Would you believe I actually remember where that happened? You’ve had that old thing as long as I’ve known you.”

  “That’s me, sweetheart: sentimental to the last. Just can’t give the old girl up.”

  Cella threw me the holster as well, and I fixed the weapon into that and that onto me. “I’ll tell Etienne I did it. The kill, I mean. I’ll take the responsibility. She doesn’t even have to know you were here.”

  “Nah, don’t do that. ’Cause it could come back on you down the road, I mean, other people know where I was headed last night… No. No, forget it, don’t. It’s fine, Genie. I fired in self- defense or, like, to protect you. It’s fine, I’ll stand over it.”

  I looked around. There was something eerily normal about the place. Feverish flights of fancy would have prompted me to visualize Erika Baton’s torture lair as, well, a torture lair: dark, dank, cobwebbed, like a medieval prison, with slime and blood on the walls, hand manacles hanging from the stone, a rack in one corner and an Iron Maiden in the other, the howls of the doomed reverberating through its corridors like the sound of ghosts before their time. But this was so…bland. So unthreat- ening, if you were to just walk in here and check it out. It was a basement. Tools, furniture, bare light fittings, various bits and pieces of rubbish and junk lying around. No more menacing than the average suburban gara
ge. The truth of this awful place wasn’t obvious unless you already knew it.

  I turned to Cella and said, “Where were you headed last night, anyway? Where is this?”

  “We’re in a disused basement in an empty warehouse. About five blocks from the docks. Do you remember anything?”

  “No, I… The last thing I remember is being in her apartment. Someone slugged me on the back of the head. It was some dump off Fairywren. Yeah, I had my gun drawn on her and then whack, someone hit me from behind and Erika finished the job. Jesus. I think she might have loosened a tooth. That woman knew how to hit.”

  “She must have—they must have brought you here.” “How did you find me?”

  “I got a tip-off last night, about two-ish. One of my regular snitches, this fucking idiot called Lalou. Wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw her but she’s not the worst. Anyway she put me onto another broad who’d heard about ‘that crazy bitch’, meaning the assassin there, gunning for ‘the titchy detective.’ That means you. Seems like Erika was hated and feared by most of the other crims. She was fucking crazy, she was out of control. They were only too happy to turn her in.”

  “Well, hell… I’m glad they did.”

  “I’d been looking for you for ages, all night. I tried your home, your office, loads of places… I even went to Odette Crawford’s house. I don’t know if you two still…”

  She left that hanging. I said wearily, “Yeah, well. I don’t think you have to worry about that anymore. Odette and me, we, uh…we’re not so close these days.”

  Cella said, “Finally I went back and, uh, I beat the location out of the snitch. The other chick, not Lalou. Where does Erika Baton—bring people? That’s what I wanted to know. Took a while, but…” She winced and stared at her knuckles, curling and uncurling her fingers. “Fuck it. It had to be done. I’m not a violent woman but I had to do it, right, Genie? I had to know or you’d be dead now.”