Part 12 (1/2)
”You sure I can't take these off, they're hurting my wrists.” He put his hands on the table. ”It's getting all red; it's hard to think with them on.”
”Not my decision,” she repeated, in no mood for a repeat of Charlie Rohr. Not to mention that those hands had strangled a woman and left her for dead less than three months ago. That had been Green's undoing; one of his victims had survived.
”No harm in asking.”
”I guess not, so tell me about Valerie Blake?”
”Which one was she? I'm not good with names.”
”How many have there been?” she asked.
”Just the three.”
”So no more women will come forward and make accusations?”
”I don't know. It's like someone else is inside of me when I do these things.”
”You can't remember?”
”That's right, I get amnesia.”
Barrett suppressed a groan, as this guy added a second twist to try and distance himself from guilt-not only pretending to be crazy, but now he wanted to throw amnesia into the mix. ”What attracts you to these women?”
He smiled. ”Something in the way they look at me. You know, like they're better than me. Like the way you're looking at me now.”
Gooseflesh raised beneath her freshly starched-and-pressed blouse. ”Did Valerie Blake look at you that way?”
”Yeah, like she was superior or something, wouldn't even talk to me. I bought her drinks and she wouldn't even talk to me. Rude like,” his breathing deepened and his voice drifted. ”Some women need to be taken down a peg or two.”
”How do you do that?”
”I've got ways.”
”So you met her in a bar?”
”Yeah, it was one of those snooty places on the Upper East Side, everyone in their f.u.c.king expensive clothes drinking fifteen-dollar martinis.”
”So you bought her a drink?”
”Right, I had the bartender bring it over to her. Told him to tell her who it was from.”
”What happened?”
”She looked at me and made this face like she'd tasted something bad. But she took the drink.”
”Did you go over to her?”
”What's the point?”
”Then what happened?”
”I bought her another, maybe four or five, and she just kept sucking them down while all these bozos tried to hit on her. I mean for seventy-five bucks you can get a decent wh.o.r.e on Third Avenue.”
”Why didn't you?”
”You crazy? You know what kind of diseases are out there, stuff that'll make your d.i.c.k fall off. No, I like them clean. I like them in suits and I like what they've got on underneath, not that cheap s.h.i.+t, but like the stuff from the good stores. They keep it all hidden away, like they're these ice princesses on the surface, but underneath they're all looking for the same thing.”
”What's that?”
”A good f.u.c.k.”
”So you bought her a few drinks, and then ...”
”I could see that she was feeling pretty good, so I went over to her. Figured I'd introduce myself.”
”And?”
He shook his head. ”She told me she wasn't interested.”
Barrett watched as the tips of his fingers curled into fists. ”How did that feel?”
”How do you think? That's when the voice started.”
”What did it say?”
”Take her.”
”How did you do that?”
”It's not hard. I told her that I understood and just to show there were no hard feelings I bought her another drink-one of those stupid things that looks like a martini but has orange slices and weird s.h.i.+t in it. She was pretty loose by then and the voice told me to put something in her drink. There was so much c.r.a.p floating around in there I nearly spilled it. She called me clumsy. Here I'm buying her drinks and all she does is insult me like I'm some f.u.c.king lowlife.”
”What did you put in the drink?”
”I don't know, the voice bought it.”
”Right, what was it?”
”It was blue. Like I said, I didn't know what was going on, like there was someone else controlling my body.”
”And then?”
”Then she got real tired, and the rest as they say is history.”
”Nice try,” Barrett said. ”What happened?”
”You want the details?”
”It's my job.”
”h.e.l.l of a job.”