Jack groaned and the old woman giggled as Wacky did his Frankenstein imitation, walking toward her slowly, arms extended, groaning deeply.
“Fuck you, Walker,” Jack said. To me he said, “Ah, sooo, Officer Freddy,” then handed me an open can of litchi nuts. Jack spoke a few words to the woman in Chinese. She left, giggling and waving at Wacky.
“They all love me, Jack. What is it about me?” Wacky said. “But this isn’t a social call.”
“Good,” Jack said.
Wacky laughed and went on, “Jack, we got some bad hombres operating on this side of the range, carrying hardware. They like little markets like yours, and being greasers they probably don’t know that Chinamen are tough giver-uppers. They’re in their mid twen–”
Wacky didn’t get to finish. A young woman ran into the market. She was opening her mouth to scream, but no sound was coming out. She grabbed at Wacky’s arm.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow,” she choked.
Wacky held both her hands to her sides. He spoke calmly. “Yes, dear. ‘Officer.’ Now what’s wrong?”
“Off… ic . . . er,” she got out, “ma, ma–my neighbor . dead!”
“Where?” I said.
The woman pointed to Twenty-eighth Street. She started to run in that direction. I ran after her. Wacky followed me. She led us halfway down the block and up to an old, white wood-framed fourflat. She pointed up the stairs leading to the second story. The door was wide open.
“Uh, uh, uh,” she stammered, then pointed again and backed up against a row of mailboxes, biting at her knuckles.
Wacky and I looked at each other. We both nodded and Wacky gave me the beginning of a smile. We drew our guns and raced up the stairs. I entered first, into what had once been a modest living room. Now it was in a shambles: chairs, bookshelves, and cabinets were overturned and the floor was covered with broken glass. I held my breath, and advanced slowly, my gun held in front of me. Behind me, I could hear Wacky breathing hoarsely.
There was a small kitchen straight ahead. I tiptoed up to it. The white linoleum was broadly spattered with congealed blood. Wacky saw it and immediately tore back into the rear rooms of the apartment, completely forgetting caution. I ran after him, almost knocking him over in the bedroom doorway just as I heard his first exclamations of horror: “Oh, God, Freddy!”
I pushed him aside, and looked into the bedroom. Lying on the floor on her back was a nude woman. Her neck was black and purple and twisted to the side. Her tongue was hugely swollen and stuck out obscenely. Her eyes bulged in their sockets. There were puncture wounds on her breasts and abdomen and deep gashes on the insides of her thighs. She was covered with dried blood.
I checked my watch–9:06 A.M. Wacky stared at the dead woman and then at me as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His eyes moved back and forth frantically while he remained motionless.
I ran downstairs. The woman who had summoned us was still next to her open apartment door, still gnawing at her knuckles. “The phone!” I yelled at her. I found it in her crowded front room and called the station, requested a team of detectives and a meat wagon, then ran back upstairs.
Wacky was still staring at the dead woman. He seemed to be committing to memory the details of her desecration. I walked through the apartment, writing down descriptions: the overturned furniture, the broken glass, and the configuration of the dried blood in the kitchen. I knelt down to check the carpet: it was a darkorange phony Persian, but light enough so that the trail of blood was still visible. I followed it into the bedroom where the dead woman lay. Wacky suddenly spoke out behind me, causing me to almost leap through the ceiling: “Jesus fucking Christ, Freddy. What a mess.”
“Yeah. The dicks and the coroner are on their way. I’m gonna keep looking around here. You go downstairs and get a statement from the woman.”
“Right.”
Wacky took off and I returned to my note-taking. It was just a homey middle-class apartment, clean and comfortable looking, not the kind of place that even a desperate hophead would burglarize, but that was what this looked like. Further investigation revealed a blood-soaked terry cloth bathrobe on the floor in the little dining room that separated the living room and kitchen. At the end of the kitchen was a door that led downstairs to what looked like a laundry room; there were bloody footprints on the rickety wooden steps.