Come Out Tonight Read online

  “You know,” she said.

  “I don’t.”

  “Third,” she said.

  “Is there an elevator?” I asked.

  “That’s what you said last time,” she answered.

  There wasn’t. We staggered up one floor, then another. Heather pointed at the door, and we made our way down the hall. I tried two keys, before the third one fit.

  We were barely inside before Heather started loosening my belt. “You don’t know how long I’ve been dreaming about you,” she said, undoing the buckle.

  Her tongue was in my ear, and suddenly, I didn’t care what the hell she called me. I was busy trying to unbutton her blouse, but the buttons were too big for the holes. By now she’d dragged my pants off.

  For a half minute she watched me wrestle with a button. “Jesus fucking Christ!” she shouted finally. “Just rip it off like you did last time!”

  I really didn’t want to rip her blouse, whatever she said. I kept working on the third button down, but by now Heather was crazed. She wanted it now and she wanted it rough. Shove her to the floor, like last time. Bang it in. No, not wimpy like that. Bang her. No, like this! Doggy style. Good. More! Yes!

  I protested, withdrawing. I didn’t want to hurt her. I only wanted to please her.

  Suddenly, she was red in the face, crying. “Why are you...why are you doing this?”

  “What? What am I doing? I only want...”

  “Is it because of that old girlfriend of yours - this Sherry?”

  The truth is, I don’t know what it was. Here was this hot babe with her tongue in my ear, pleading with me to bang her doggy style, and what the hell was going on, anyway? “I just can’t,” I said.

  “You what?” She shrieked, throwing my shoes at me.

  “I can’t.”

  “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this?” she shrieked.

  “You’ve been waiting?” I said.

  For a second, Heather stared at me, her head cocked to one side. “Last time was the most amazing...,” she said. Then she came to. “Fuck off, Asshole!” she yelled. I managed to gather up my clothes in my arms, but before I could put them on, she had opened the door, pushed me out naked, and closed the door in my face.

  * * *

  I had this vague memory of walking in Central Park in the dark, but somehow I managed to stumble home. The fact is, I woke up in my bed in my pajamas, alone, but with one hell of a hangover. And, believe it or not, I was still obsessing over the guy who knocked off the babe on the West Side. I figured after work, I’d go over to the 24th Precinct on 100th between Amsterdam and Columbus, and see if I could find out any new info on whether they had caught anyone. Meanwhile, I made myself a cup of coffee. I found half a bagel way in the back of the refrigerator, but I had to throw out the cream cheese because it had turned green. I drank the coffee and forced myself to eat the bagel, and got as ready for work as a guy could, who had a twenty pound bowling ball on his head.

  By the time I got to work, Carl was already there. I couldn’t wait to ask him if he knew about the strangling in the 90's.

  “Nah,” he said. “I try not to read that stuff.”

  “It should have been in the Daily News day before yesterday.”

  “Only read the Times.”

  “Was it in there?” I asked.

  “I only read the first section,” Carl answered. “Might have been in Metro.”

  “The window over the fire escape was open,” I said.

  “Okay, so what?”

  “He must have gotten in that way.”

  Carl shrugged, not looking up. “Yeah, could be.”

  “That’s the way he must have got into my apartment, too. The window was open over the fire escape.”

  “Someone broke into your apartment?” he asked, looking at me.

  “Yeah! When he hit Sherry over the head.”

  “Oh, that time,” Carl said. “You think it’s the same guy?”

  “Could be,” I said, all excited. “I’m going over to the precinct tonight to see what they got.”

  “You think they’re going to tell you anything? No way Jose.”

  “I’m going anyway.”

  Carl looked up from what he was doing and said, “Did I ever tell you about the time my apartment was broken into, when I lived on Riverside Drive? They just smashed the window, came in one night I was working late. They must have been pretty pissed off when they couldn’t find anything worth stealing. So, they wrote a note and stuck it with a magnet to the refrigerator, saying, “Buy yourself something.” Carl laughed.

  “Very funny,” I said.

  “What’s with you today?”

  “I got this humongous hangover.”

  “You go out clubbing after all?” Carl asked, looking at me sideways.

  “Yeah.”

  “You get laid at least?”

  I shrugged.

  “You did!”

  “Carl, don’t talk, okay? My head is pounding.”

  “Go get some ibuprofen from the shelf. The generic. I won’t charge you.”

  “Thanks, but I could just use some quiet.”

  “Fine with me. But you might just want to look in the pile of Daily News on the rack by the door. There might be some old ones that didn’t sell.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and ran over to the rack. I turned the copies over, one after another, till I got to the bottom. There it was: July 7. I flipped through the pages till I found it buried on page 10. “Woman strangled in West Side apartment.” I read it out loud: “Jessica Finklemeyer, 24, was found dead, apparently strangled, at 10:00 a.m. Tuesday morning in her second floor apartment at 119 W. 96th. The police found her lying on the bedroom floor under an open window leading to the fire escape. “‘Must have come through the window,’ Officer Vincent McNally said.”

  The coroner deduced she had been lying there for anywhere between ten and fourteen hours, placing the crime around 12:00 midnight the night before. No further information was available. “Miss Finklemeyer,” I continued, “worked as sales associate in Children’s Shoes at Macy’s on 34th Street.”

  “New York, New York, it’s a hell of a town,” Carl sang.

  For the rest of the morning, we worked in silence, interrupted only by the phone, half a dozen noisy kids, and a long line of customers. Every time the counter bell rang, I looked up, half expecting to see Heather in her tight Capris and belly button ring, banging on the bell, but she never showed her face. I wondered whether she’d even start taking her prescriptions to the CVS across the street. No great loss, I decided.

  This headache was killing me. I finally went over to the shelf and picked out the smallest bottle of ibuprofen we had. The bottle said “take one tablet every 4 to 6 hours while symptoms persist. If pain or fever do not respond to 1 tablet, 2 tablets may be used, but do not exceed 6 tablets in 24 hours.” I took two, then when I continued to feel like shit an hour later, I took another one. I didn’t tell Carl. I knew he’d take away the bottle and give me a lecture on dosage.

  By the end of the day, though, only the slightest echo of the headache remained. I waved to Nadia, and took off for the 24th Precinct. After the air conditioned cool of the pharmacy, the July heat hit me like a bag of cement. I just stood there for a minute in the middle of the sidewalk, regaining my equilibrium, while traffic coursed around me. You might take that to mean that nobody cares in New York City. I was just another traffic obstacle to go around, like a lamp post or a guy selling books on the sidewalk. But, hey, that’s all part of New York City in summer: clueless tourists snapping photos; guys in shorts with their stomachs sticking out; fire hydrants cascading water. Executives with their jackets off; huge, stifling clouds of bus exhaust, girls in halter tops chattering non-stop into cell phones. Hot blasts of air spewing out of subway grates; horses, bikes and roller blades in Central Park, all of this rolled up in the smell of sweaty excitement. Ya gotta love it.

  I bought a hot dog and a Snapple off a street cart
and headed down Broadway, past the drugstores blowing bubbles, past the bodegas selling exotic vegetables, past the funky little restaurants with tiny plaid curbside tables, the air rippling with fast trills of Spanish. I remembered a time like this last summer with Sherry, as we walked downtown on a summer night. We were passing a little place with all these little deep-fried corn-crusted pastry things in the window.

  “Let’s try one,” I said.

  “They’re empanadas,” Sherry said.

  “Okay by me,” I said, already walking in.

  I could hear Sherry’s incredulous laugh in back of me. “But you hate empanadas.”

  I turned around. “How do you know?”

  “We walked by here three weeks ago, and you bought one. You threw it in the garbage.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  “I am not,” she insisted. “In fact, you didn’t just throw it in the garbage, you spit it out in the garbage, and yelled something I’m not going to repeat.”

  “I’d never do that.”

  “Have it your own way.”

  “I’m going in to buy a...whattchamacallit?”

  “Empanada,” Sherry said again. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  I walked into this little shop with hams or salamis or something hanging from the ceiling. I bought a steaming little package of chicken and pastry, and carried it out, my teeth sinking into its soft center. I chewed, my eyes closed. “It’s good! Must have been someone else you were thinking of.”

  “‘Fuckin’ awful,’ you said, spitting it out.”

  “Must have been your friend Ryan.”

  “Let’s not start that again,” Sherry said.

  * * *

  By the time I reached the brick front entrance of the 24th Precinct, I was sweating through my shirt. I stepped inside. The lobby was quieter and cooler than I thought it would be. I walked up to the front desk and, asked for Detective Donna Sirken, the only name I knew.

  “What’s this in connection to?” the clerk asked.

  “That’s it. A connection. A connection between the Sherry Pollack case and the Jessica Finklemeyer case.”

  “Name?”

  “I just gave you two names.”

  “Your name, sir.”

  “Oh, Henry Jackman.”

  “Wait a minute.” She pointed to a wooden bench against the wall, while she called upstairs. “Lucky you, Detective Sirken’s in,” the woman called over to me. “She’s coming down.”

  I waited on the wooden bench alongside some well-dressed black dude who wouldn’t look at me. Ten minutes later, I heard my name: Detective Sirken was walking toward me. “Let’s go back to my office,” she said.

  I followed her on back to her cubicle, and sat down on a metal chair near the door. She asked me to get up again so she could move the chair a foot while she closed the door. Then I sat down again, and she sidled around the old metal desk.

  “You say there’s a connection between the two cases?” she said. “What evidence do you have?”

  I started backtracking. “I mean there must be. The window off the fire escape was open in both cases.”

  She said nothing, just looking at me.

  “I mean,” I said, “the perpetrator must have come in that way. It was night. Upper West Side. Both cases they were young women.” I sat back in my chair, waiting.

  “That’s it?” the detective said. “Where’s your evidence?”

  I decided this wasn’t going well. I’d have to go on the offensive. “What have you done to solve the case with my girlfriend?” I demanded.

  “How’s she doing?” Sirken asked.

  “Lousy. She’s in a persistent vegetative state. She’s not improving. The hospital kicked her out. She’s in a crummy nursing home in the Bronx.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Sure you are. Well, what leads do you have?”

  “I can’t give you any information on the Finklemeyer case.”

  “Then what about the Pollack case?”

  She opened a file folder in front of her, flipped a few pages, then closed it. “We don’t have much,” she said. “There was no salvageable DNA under Miss Pollack’s fingernails. No finger prints on the bloody weapon. The blood was Miss Pollack’s.” She looked up, smiled as much as she was able. “No leads,” she said.

  “But couldn’t there be a connection? Some kind of serial killer?”

  “Do you know how many crimes are reported on any one night in this precinct alone?” the detective asked.

  “No.”

  “Four,” she said. “Do you think that all the crimes committed in this jurisdiction over a three month period are committed by the same individual?”

  “Well, no, of course not. I just thought the modus vivendi was the same, so...”

  She smiled, this time real. “Modus operandi. Anyway, your girl friend wasn’t strangled.”

  “No, she was hit in the head.”

  “And she wasn’t killed.”

  “No, but she was left for dead.”

  “So, how can you even begin to say that this is the same modus operandi? Please, Mr. Jackman. We are working on both crimes. If there is a connection, you can be sure we will find it.”

  “But it’s been almost four months!”

  She stood up, put out her hand. “Don’t call us. We’ll call you.”

  I shook the hand. Not that I wanted to shake it. I felt like I could kill her, I was so angry. But that’s just a figure of speech. I’m not the sort to kill people. I’m just a regular guy; one of a million guys in New York City, part of the silent majority. I’m not a hot macho dude like Kimberly thought I was. I’m not macho. I’m not even brave. If I were, I wouldn’t have shaken her hand, but I’m not, so I did.

  Then I just left. I opened the door, ran downstairs and out of the building. The heat smacked me in the face again, but I didn’t care. The police weren’t doing anything. They weren’t going to do anything. And there was poor Sherry, just vegetating. I started to walk, not caring where I went, block after block. Suddenly, I looked up and saw where I was: 96th Street. Then I remembered the address from the paper. I made a left and walked some more: past Amsterdam, almost to Columbus. And there it was: 119. It wasn’t much of a building, just an ordinary brownstone that had been broken up into apartments long ago. I walked up the steps and opened the front door. In the vestibule was an intercom with three names: Arlene Fisher:1A; Jessica Finklemeyer: 2A, and Ryan O’Donnell: 3A. I stood there for a couple of minutes, my mind spinning. Then I pressed the bell for 3A.

  It took a few minutes, but a familiar voice came on. “Officer, I already told you everything I know. I don’t know anything else.”

  “Ryan,” I said.

  “What?” the voice asked. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Henry Jackman.”

  “Who?”

  “Henry Jackman. Sherry’s friend.”

  There was a long pause. “Oh, Henry Jackman! Yeah, okay. What do you want?”

  “I’d like to come up if you don’t mind.”

  “Is it about Sherry? Did she finally wake up? Oh, thank God!”

  The buzzer sounded suddenly before I could say no. I pushed the door open, walked into a dingy hallway and up one flight. The door to 2A was draped in yellow tape and warning signs: do not cross. I climbed another flight. Ryan was leaning out of his door, waiting for me.

  “Tell me,” he said. “What happened? Is she all right?”

  What was with all this concern? The guy was the only link to both Sherry and Jessica Finklemeyer. The moment I saw his name on that intercom, I knew Ryan O’ Donnell had to be the one. He couldn’t care less whether Sherry was all right. He was just trying to throw me off his scent with all this “Is she all right? Oh, thank God!” What a performance! Now, what to say. If I told him she was still PVS, he was going to ask why I’m here. But, if I told him she was awake, he’d have to sneak over to the hospital to get rid of her in the night. I’d notify th
e police, and Whammo! Caught in the act!

  “Yeah, I came over to tell you she’s awake.”

  “But is she all right? I mean, compos mentis?

  I never heard of compos mentis, but I guess it meant all right. “Compos mentis, yeah!” I said.

  “Oh, that’s really terrific. I’ll go visit her tomorrow, then.”

  “Not tonight?” I asked craftily.

  Ryan looked at his watch. “It’s too late. She may be sleeping. And I have work tomorrow. No, I’ll go tomorrow. Wow, thanks, Henry, for coming to tell me. What great news.”

  I didn’t believe a word of this. The nurse had said Sherry probably wouldn’t remember anything, but Ryan didn’t know that. As far as he knew, she’d blab Ryan’s name to the doctors the moment she got up. He’d be there. Oh, yes, he was going tonight.

  So, all I had to do was to notify the police, and...I made a big show of yawning. “You’re welcome. I guess I’ll go home. Good night now.” I started down the stairs.

  “By the way, how did you find me?” Ryan asked.

  “Sherry,” I said. “Sherry asked me to go tell you personally that she was okay.”

  DONNA

  I think Anderson had it just right when he labeled Henry Jackman just plain dumb. That guy is something else. A couple of days ago, he came into the precinct asking for me, insisting that he had new information about a link between the Pollack case and the Finklemeyer case. I brought him back to my office, if you can call it that, and asked him what the connection was. What a schmuck!

  “I mean there must be,” Jackman said. “The window off the fire escape was open in both cases. I mean, the perpetrator must have come in that way. It was night. Upper West Side. Both cases they were young women.”

  I sat back in my chair, waiting, still waiting for the big connection. “That’s it?” I said. “Where’s your evidence?” I waited till he saw the light, but he went on the offensive, instead.

  “What have you done to solve the case with my girlfriend?” Jackman yelled at me.

  I asked him how she was doing.

  “Lousy,” he said. “She’s in a persistent vegetative state. She’s not improving. The hospital kicked her out. She’s in a crummy nursing home in the Bronx.”