No Human Contact. Donald Ladew
breath.
“Bastards.”
Across the alley the Wister’s put away the scrabble board. Vincent’s visit was ruined. His life revolved around the cycle of visits. Now he would never feel comfortable with the Wisters again.
That he had been listening to two criminals meant nothing. A half hour later Vincent slipped over the balcony, down the wall; agile, silent, strange.
Chapter 3
Teresa moved through her messages, tapped the play button with one hand, took her equipment belt off with the other. She tossed it on the couch where it joined a jogging suit, a wrinkled uniform shirt, an old Sunday Times and assorted female paraphernalia.
Her father bought the condo for her when she passed her bar exam on the first try. It was her second degree. Her first had been in police science. When he found out she didn’t intend to practice but would stay with the police he threatened to take it back.
She tried to make a joke. “Sorry, Daddy, I don’t want to be no steenking lawyer, I want to be Chief of Police.” It fell flatter than an orange on the freeway.
She skipped over three messages from her mother, two from her brothers and one from her father. Since she moved out, and became a police officer, they were more concerned about her free time than when she lived at home.
They invited her to endless lunches, dinners, shopping trips, and weekends at the beach in Ventura. When she decided to become a police officer they sensed, rightly, she would be different, separate, lost to them.
She looked around the apartment, frowned and decided it was too early in the week to do anything about the mess. Friday, maybe. Neatness wasn’t her strong suit.
The walls were covered with an assortment of prints and original oils. Every shelf and flat surface had pictures of family, trophies from high school and college, mementos of an active social, academic, and athletic life.
As she continued the messages she quickly peeled off her clothing until she was down to a surprisingly feminine pair of panties and lacy bra. She drew the line at jockey shorts, and bras designed to make her look like a man.
It made her laugh to think how surprised the guys in the squad room would be if they saw her without her uniform.
Only once did she describe the violent world she lived in to her family. It was at a weekly sit down dinner. She cheerfully described an arrest where she’d thrown a two hundred pound drug-crazed pimp through the window of a Pacoima pool room. Seeing their looks of fear, disgust and bewildered disbelief defined once and for all the extent of the gap between her life and theirs.
Alone in her apartment, she talked to herself, and worried about becoming eccentric. Jaime’s comment after the bust at Chango’s Cafe ran around in her head like an unwanted jingle. She made a rule early on in the police force never to get involved with another officer, and stuck to it.
“When was the last time I rolled around in the sheets,” she muttered, “sure, like hundreds of men are pounding on my door. Christ, who needs them: Wimps, freaks, and groupies.”
She rummaged in the fridge, took out a Stauffer’s frozen dinner and put it in the microwave. One of the calls had been from an Assistant District Attorney. She thought of him as the ‘horny barrister’. She decided she wasn’t that desperate, even if he did take her to nice places and tell her all the local law enforcement gossip.
After taking a shower she studied an hour for the detective exam, drank two glasses of Sutter Home Cabernet and went to bed. She banged the pillow, hard. “I am in a rut. I’ve got do something about it.”
Chapter 4
Vincent woke up angry. Not shouting, kick the dog angry; cold, somebody will hurt down in their bones, angry. He made breakfast, his thoughts tangled in the strange events four days earlier. He felt no specific direction to his anger. He didn’t focus on Cotton or the bad cop. For him they weren’t people. They had no character against which moral judgment could be made. Badness, goodness, were not part of the equation. Danger, safety, and survival drove his life.
They ruined his visit with his family! That was all he needed to know to make an utter and final judgment. Sometime, somewhere, he would deal with them permanently.
He changed into a light running suit and soft, flexible sneakers. On a small knoll overlooking the garden and fruit trees below, he quieted unwelcome thoughts.
Tall eucalyptus trees and California Cypress enclosed his land such that no house closer than a mile could look onto his property.
Vincent stood straight, still. Faint muscular contractions rippled beneath the thin sweat suit. Combined with a regular flare of nostrils and expert would have recognized an elaborate breathing exercise.
The tension disappeared from his face. He moved in slow motion at first. The tension was back, but with control and purpose. The speed of his movements increased until, like a humming bird’s wings, the movements were more sensed than seen. It was a martial arts exercise; violence contained.
Without a signal of intent he ran straight downhill into the orchard at full speed. One moment he stood atop the knoll, the next he’d disappeared.
He didn’t think of exercise as a matter of health, or longevity, or survival. Pride, superiority, had no part in it. It must be a pure thing, separate, without thought: Activity without significance.
Over the years Vincent had evolved almost entirely without human contact. He read voraciously. This was permitted. The pages of a book did not contain pain. Pain came with contact.
After two hours of non-stop running and strenuous exercise, he ran up the hill around the side of the house to the pool. He stripped and swam naked for a half hour.
He never varied the routine. Heavy exercise every other day, light in between. Afterward he showered, dressed, ate sparingly of fruits and vegetables. He ate meat but never before five in the evening. Routine was important. The tenuousness of existence demanded a framework that could be physically experienced, that could be known with certainty.
Vincent began the workday. He was a computer programmer whose specialty allowed him to work exclusively from his home. The selection of an occupation had been driven partly by that fact. He occasionally talked to his customers on the phone, but the majority of the time he contacted them via computer e-mail.
His work rooms occupied one of the wings that spoked out from the tower. They were separated from the rest of the rooms by special anti-interference walls. That wing had its own air-conditioning unit, special back-up power source and four of the finest small system computers and peripherals money could buy. Two satellite dishes mounted on the garage connected him to the world through impersonal digital data streams.
For the first time in years he couldn’t get into it. Vincent, the specialist’s specialist, was swamped by anger and disappointment. In his life there had been little prediction. He needed prediction.
He made a decision. He would visit ‘family’.
In the early evening Vincent stood in the shadows across an alley from a seven foot block wall surrounding a nice house in the hills behind Glendale. A five story apartment building loomed behind him.
He stared up the alley toward the street. It seemed empty. Suddenly a jogger appeared at the mouth of the alley with a dog on a leash. An older woman in a pink jogging suit and matching sweat band, none of which had ever encountered sweat.
She bent down and retied her shoes. The dog ran down the alley only to be pulled up short by the leash, choking. The dog growled but did not bark.
The woman looked down the alley fearfully, saw nothing, shrugged, got to her feet and trotted out of sight dragging the dog, her arms and elbows held high like the wings of a plucked, psychedelic chicken.
Vincent didn’t move. He wasn’t afraid. He understood the dog better than its owner. He remained