Jack in the Box Read online

  She smiled brightly and tilted her head on one side. “Sure. I can do that for you.”

  Dehan shook her head at the menu. “She didn’t have to shake it instead of stirring it?”

  “That’s a Bradford and follows the Savoy recipe book from the 1930s. Whole different ball game. Tell me about how Lenny dos Santos is different from the killer in the lock up case.”

  “In that case, our guy deliberately manipulated the situation, actually stage managed it. In this case I think it was almost accidental. Obviously we’ll know more tomorrow after we talk to him, but the way I read it right now, he was a thug with delusions of grandeur. He heard there was a big shot novelist teaching creative writing in the neighborhood and decided he could do that. Maybe he had some notion about writing about his life of crime and cleaning up.”

  “Making a killing on a killing.”

  “Nice. Something like that.”

  I read from the menu: “Lightly breaded calamari, fried and served with a marinara sauce. That’s me, or fried mozzarella, topped with mushrooms and roasted red peppers. That’s you.”

  “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “Then there are seven different kinds of steak. You can have it with cheese or shrimps or… you know.” I made an ‘on and on’ gesture with my hand. “Or you can have your twelve ounce Angus ribeye with a choice of potatoes or French fries, the way it was meant to be.”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  “And draft beer.”

  “You done?”

  I nodded and signaled the waitress. She came over with our drinks and I gave her our order. When she’d gone, Dehan sipped her beer and wiped her lip on the back of her hand.

  “I think perhaps what we’ve been missing all along is something that you observed at the beginning, and then we got sidelined: that Helena was a fascinating woman.” I nodded. She went on. “Fascinating enough, in fact, to hook a guy like Jack Connors and keep him from a woman like Penelope who must have been almost half her age. Dogs like Jack Connors need to sleep around or their ego pops and they die of emptiness when they realize how small and sad they really are.”

  “Wow.”

  “Way it is, dude. But he knew that Helena was something special and he hung on to her. Now, in spite of her naïve, simplistic view of bad guys, it took real balls to start that creative writing course in the heart of the Bronx. That in itself shows that she was something special, and she was a looker too, and five years younger.”

  “All true.”

  She took another pull on her beer and sat staring at it in her hand a moment, with a white foam moustache on her lip.

  “I’m willing to bet,” she said, “that every guy in that class had a crush on her, and maybe the girls did too. She was something special, something you don’t see often. Now…”

  “Along comes Lenny.”

  “Along comes Lenny. I’m going to do a Stone now.”

  I laughed. “Do a Stone?”

  She wagged her finger at me, then wiped away her moustache. “I am going to extrapolate from known facts and reach a totally unjustified conclusion which happens to be right.”

  I laughed some more.

  “From what we saw on Lenny’s rap sheet, I am going to go out on a limb and say that this is one supremely arrogant son of a bitch who believes that he is entitled to everything. He’s like Grant Shaw’s extra-evil twin. Take what you want, and if they won’t give it, shoot them and take it. He has decided that he is the dude and he can do anything, so now he is going to be a famous writer. He joins the class and within minutes becomes the class mascot. Everybody loves the dude, especially our naïve, idealistic liberal do-gooder Helena. And the more she praises him as her special pupil, the more she feeds his ego and encourages him to believe that he really is the business.

  “He’s just a thug. I grew up with a hundred of them when I was a kid. He could be Irish, Puerto Rican, Mexican or Nigerian. It makes no difference. He was an ignorant thug with an inflated ego. And she, in order to assuage her own liberal conscience, nurtured in him his totally unrealistic belief—A, in his own abilities and B, in the relationship that was developing between Helena and himself. How am I doing?”

  “That is a lot of extrapolating going on there, Little Grasshopper, but it is also a pretty compelling story. Keep going.”

  “So, and here I am just guessing, but we’re out for dinner shootin’ the breeze, right? So I can guess. I am guessing that he began to send her messages. I don’t mean folded bits of paper in his homework saying, ‘I love you Mrs. Magnusson, I want to marry you.’ I mean messages in the stories he was writing, and in his banter. ‘Helena and me, we understand each other. Am I right, Helena? You an’ me, we got an understandin’, right?’ And she felt just like Everyman, or in her case Everywoman or even better, Everyperson, gathering up the lost to follow her to salvation. She thought she was transcending race, culture and gender to help a poor, lost black kid; and that is irony right there, because what she was really doing was bringing her own middle class white values and prejudices to a situation where they were woefully inadequate and inappropriate.”

  “Shall I ask the waitress for a soapbox?”

  “Sorry. Anyhow, the point is there was a total lack of communication. He was telling her, ‘You gonna be my bitch.’ She understood, ‘We have a deep, transcendent understanding and you are my guiding light.’ She told him, ‘I can lead you out of this hell you live in, to a better life,’ and he understood, ‘Yes, I am your bitch and you are my man.’”

  “I am troubled by the assumptions you are making, and also the stereotypes you are employing, but do go on.”

  “So, this miscommunication of intent…”

  “Wait. Miscommunication of intent?”

  “Yeah. He is telling her she is going to be his bitch. That is his intent. She is telling him she is going to save him. That’s her intent.”

  “OK…”

  “This miscommunication reaches a climax of some sort. I don’t know what, but clearly there comes a time when he wants to claim what is his. And she tells him he has got it wrong and she is in love with her husband. One way or another, that is conveyed to him. He is incensed and in his rage he goes out, finds his rival, cuts off his head and sends it to her.”

  I sipped my Martini, smacked my lips and sighed. Then I nodded. “I know what you’re saying and in many ways I agree. But there are things that don’t work for me. Like, for example, the guy you’re describing. In my experience and in yours, he rapes her. He doesn’t waste time on the husband. If he wants to make her, as you put it, his bitch, then that is what he goes right ahead and does. We’re talking about a guy who decapitated a hooker because she was skimming off the top of his stash.”

  She pursed her lips like she was kissing the air and watched the waitress bring the calamari and the fried cheese. We put both plates in the middle of the table and shared.

  With her mouth full of cheese, she wagged her fork at me.

  “OK, so let’s not stereotype him. Maybe there were some self-fulfilling prophecies going on. Maybe he did idolize her. Maybe she was like no woman he had ever known. And his rage was directed against Jack. And after he killed him, before he could move on Helena, the classes were cancelled and he was arrested.”

  “Maybe. We’ll see what he tells us tomorrow. One thing stands out, though. Whatever he was doing or saying, she was completely oblivious to it.”

  “Dumb broad.”

  I nodded and forked some calamari. “Naïve, certainly. So, Dehan, you figure Shaw and Penelope are out of the running now, and Helena herself.”

  She shook her head. “Nobody’s out of the running, but I would say that Lenny is my prime suspect.” Then she frowned. “He’s not yours?”

  I took some of her cheese and put it on a piece of bread. I chewed it, watching her across the table. “I’m going to wait till we’ve spoken to him. It’s all speculation right now, Dehan. I’m having trouble with his choice of victim. I’m also having tr
ouble with Shaw and Penelope. I can see them both as potentially capable of it, and yet…”

  I watched her spear a calamari and stick it in her mouth, and added, “I am also very aware, Dehan, that we have not explored Helena as a potential suspect. That is a possibility we need to look at, and we also need to talk to…” I frowned, trying to remember his name.

  She nodded. “Alornerk. It means clear sky or blue sky or something. The mathematician from Boston.” She was quiet for a bit, putting cheese on her bread. “You seriously think she might have decapitated her husband? You think that’s more likely than Lenny dos Santos?”

  “We don’t know, do we?”

  “OK, Sensei.”

  After that, we moved on from murder and decapitation to the increasingly familiar subjects of children and retirement. While we discussed these comfortable subjects, we worked our way through a couple of ribeye steaks, a couple more beers and then a couple of whiskeys and, by the time we stepped out into the strangely desolate Main Street, with its pallid yellow light and eerie, coiled streetlamps, and began our lonely walk back toward Kilburn Manor, the temperature had dropped to close to freezing, so that we could see our breath billowing before us and I had to tuck Dehan under my arm and my jacket to keep her warm.

  We didn’t talk then, but walked huddled close against the cold, along the long empty road, with its oddly ominous buildings, down Clay Street among the tall trees, to Kilburn Manor. There we found all the lights on, but nobody seemed to be at home. So we climbed the stairs in silence, among the ancient antiques and the loudly ticking clocks, to the Judge’s Suite, where there was a fire burning in the grate.

  EIGHT

  Lenny dos Santos was six foot six in his bare feet. In his shoes he was almost six foot seven. He was big with it. Each leg was like a tree trunk, each foot easily fourteen inches long. His arms were the size of legs and his chest, neck and shoulders were like one massive slab of meat with his head perched on top.

  The face on that head was a surprisingly cheerful, happy one. It was the kind of smiling face you’d expect to find on a garden gnome. As he was led through the steel door into the interrogation room, he regarded us with large, round eyes and smiled with an expressive mouth. The guard led him to the table and cuffed his wrists to a steel ring at the center.

  “If he gives you any trouble, we’re right outside.”

  We thanked him and he left. I said, “Hi, Lenny, I’m Detective John Stone of the NYPD, and this is my partner, Detective Carmen Dehan.”

  Lenny grinned at Dehan and then at me.

  “Hi, it’s nice to have visitors. Not many people come to see me. I ain’t got family. Though my mom told me once I have cousins in Brazil, but I never met them. And my friends, well…” He laughed. “You can imagine my friends ain’t real keen to come and see me in prison.”

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  His face became a little more serious. “But the truth is, I don’t got a lot of friends, or maybe any, really. So it’s nice to have visitors.”

  That thought made him smile again. Dehan sat back in her chair with a small frown on her brow, like she had decided to shelve all her questions and just study him for a bit. I offered him a smile that said I might be his friend and said, “Well, Lenny, you realize we’re here on business.”

  “Oh, sure, I know that. They told me you wanted to ask me some questions. I don’t got a problem with that.”

  “Thank you. You remember Helena?”

  He repressed a smile and his eyes went wide. There was real amusement in his expression. “Man, I don’t want to… I really don’t like those guys who’s always boastin’, ‘Oh, man! I been with so many women, I screwed this bitch and that bitch!’ I hate that.” He leaned forward, a look of delight on his face. “But I have to tell you the truth. A man like me, I was the man, you know? It ain’t no exaggeration, couple of years or more maybe, I was with a different woman every night. Now, you do the math, that’s like maybe a thousand women. I swear to you some of them I never knew and never saw again. Bro’, it’s like a blur. I ain’t proud of that. I don’t think that’s a good thing, like some of these dudes in here. But you come to me now and you ask me, say, ‘Do you remember Helena?’ I gotta be honest with you. Just by the name, like that, I have no idea who Helena is. You gotta be more specific.”

  I studied his face, searching for signs that he was playing some wiseass game. I didn’t find any. My impression was that he was being honest. I nodded.

  “Sure, I understand. Do you remember at one time, about four and a half years ago, shortly before you were arrested, you had literary aspirations? You were doing a creative writing course.”

  “We got a group goin’ here in the prison. I got some positive reviews in the prison magazine. ‘Real, believable and immediate.’ I don’t know what he meant by ‘immediate’, but it was nice to read. You know?”

  “Sure, I can imagine. Do you remember your teacher on that creative writing course? She was a famous novelist…”

  His face lit up. “Oh, man! Helena! Well, sure! If you had just said, your writing teacher! Sure, I remember her. She was…” He smiled, shook his head and gazed at the wall. “She was like…” He raised the fingers of his manacled hand. “Wait, I am going to try to express this. ‘She was a ray of light in the darkness of my life.’”

  He looked at Dehan to see what she thought of that. Then he looked at me.

  “I think, if I had not been arrested, I would have left my life of crime anyway, just because of Helena. She made me see myself in a different way. She taught me, not just to be curious about words, but to have different expectations about myself.” He leaned forward, his eyes wide with wonder. “If I use different words in my head, if I speak differently in my own mind, I can be different! That is magic, man!”

  I nodded. “That’s something.”

  He planted a big smile on the right side of his face and there was real humor in his eyes. “That’s why they call it a spell. When you think that a letter is a symbol that makes a noise in your mind, you realize spelling is magic. She taught me that, man. She was somethin’ special, I’ll tell you.”

  Dehan spoke for the first time. “You a good student?”

  “Sure, who wouldn’t be with a teacher like that, right?”

  “She punctual? Always there for class on time?”

  “No, man, she was always there before class. She’d be there half an hour before class started, always.”

  “Yeah? That’s nice, diligent. So, Lenny, how close did you and Helena get?”

  He frowned at her, but without hostility. “I don’t really understand your question, Detective Dehan. Are you asking me if we was lovers?”

  “Would you have liked to be?”

  His face creased up and he started to laugh. It made him look like a fat, laughing Buddha.

  “Oh! She was hot! No doubt! She was more than hot. She was beautiful! Inside and out. Any guy who got between the sheets with her was one lucky man. But she was strictly off limits, know what I’m sayin’? She made that real clear.” He laughed again. “I remember,” he said, “somebody described a woman to me one time as having a sign nailed to her forehead that said, ‘fuck off. I’m married.’ Helena was like that. Her husband must have been one lucky dude.” He shook his head, still smiling. “She was way out of my league, man. Way out of my league.”

  He looked Dehan in the eye. “But, one day, Detective Dehan, if I ever get out of this shit hole, if I ever make a success of writing, I would aspire to a woman like that.”

  She arched an eyebrow at him. “That is very inspiring, Lenny. So, you’ve told me how close you weren’t. Now how about you tell me how close you were.”

  “We saw each other twice a week in class, Thursday and Friday. I was a pretty good student, so I didn’t miss many classes. She was fun, she liked me. It was a nice class, we used to have a laugh. We’d all been around a bit, you know what I mean? We’d all lived some. We all had some stories to tell. First tim
e in my life I didn’t feel like I had to be a criminal. It was like…”

  For a moment he seemed to be lost for words. I realized that was rare for him and on impulse I said, “Coming home?”

  He looked surprised and after a moment nodded. “Yeah, exactly. It was like coming home.” He turned to Dehan. “You don’t know this, but when you have no home, when you don’t belong, you can be driven to do things you would not normally dream of doing.”

  Her face kind of stretched tight and she leaned back in her chair. I suppressed a smile and asked him, “Is that how you were driven to decapitate…” I paused, raising an eyebrow. “Do you remember her name?”

  “Yeah, I remember her name. Cherry.”

  “Mahalia Campbell.”

  “We used to call her Cherry. You don’t know. There are people in this world, walkin’ among us, man, who are livin’ in hell. There’s some poet, I can’t remember his name, he said, the mind is its own place.” He turned to Dehan. “You know what that means? He says, it can make a hell of heaven, and a heaven of hell. That’s fuckin’ deep, man. When you belong, then it’s like you’re not in hell anymore. But when you don’t belong, you can end up real fast in hell. And then you don’t know what you can and can’t do.” He was still addressing Dehan. “I’ll tell you somethin’ else. When you don’t belong, you know what the worst thing anybody can do to you is?”

  She shrugged. “I know you’re going to tell me.”

  “When you don’t belong, the worst thing anybody can do to you is not kill you or cut you nor nothin’ like that. It’s steal from you. You’re lost, you ain’t got no home, nobody wants you and you don’t belong nowhere, and then somebody steals from you. You gonna kill that motherfucker.” He was silent for a moment, looking at his manacled hands. Then suddenly he said, “I’m sorry. I try not to talk like that. Helena taught me that the way we speak makes us who we are.” He looked up at me. “I see a shrink in here, and he told me there is some truth in that.”

  “I’m sure there is. So you cut off Mahalia’s head because she stole from you.”