A Ticket to the Boneyard Read Online Free PDF Page B

didn’t show up until this morning.”
    “It’ll probably be worse tomorrow.”
    “Great. It’s sore now, but it’s not terrible. While he was doing it, though, the pain was incredibly intense. I went weak in the knees and I swear I couldn’t see. I thought I was going to black out.”
    “He did that pressing with two fingers.”
    “Yes. Then he let go of me and I was holding on to the wall for support and he fucking grinned at me. ‘We’ll see a lot of each other,’ he said, ‘and you’ll do whatever I tell you to do.’ And then he left.”
    “Did you call Connie?”
    “I haven’t been able to reach her.”
    “If this clown calls again—”
    “I’ll tell him to shit in his hat. Don’t worry, Matt, he’s never getting in the door again.”
    “You remember his name?”
    “Motley. James Leo Motley.”
    “He gave you his middle name?”
    She nodded. “And he didn’t ask me to call him Jimmy, either. James Leo Motley. What are you doing?”
    “Writing it down. Maybe I can find out where he lives.”
    “In Central Park, under a flat rock.”
    “And I might as well see if we’ve got a sheet on him. From your description, it wouldn’t surprise me.”
    “James Leo Motley,” she said. “If you lose your memo book, just call me. It’s a name I’m not likely to forget.”
     
     
    I couldn’t find an address for him, but I did pull his yellow sheet. He had a string of six or seven arrests, most of them for assaults upon women. In each case the victim withdrew the complaint and charges were dropped. Once he’d been in a traffic accident, a fender-bender on the Van Wyck Expressway, and he’d given the driver of the other vehicle a serious beating. That case got to court, with Motley charged with first-degree assault, but eyewitness testimony suggested that the other driver may have started the fight, and that he’d been armed with a tire iron while Motley had defended himself with his bare hands. If so, he’d been good enough with those hands to put the other man in the hospital.
    Six or seven arrests, no convictions. All of the charges involving violence. I didn’t like it, and I was going to call Elaine and let her know what I’d found out, but I didn’t get around to it.
    A week or so later she called me. I was in the squad room when she called, so she didn’t have to identify herself as Cousin Frances.
    “He was just here,” she said. “He hurt me.”
    “I’ll be right over.”
     
     
    She had reached Connie. Connie had been reluctant to talk at first, finally admitting that she’d been seeing James Leo Motley for the past several weeks. He’d gotten her number from someone, she wasn’t sure who, and his first visit had been not unlike the first visit he paid to Elaine. He told her he wasn’t going to pay her, and that she’d be seeing a lot of him. And he hurt her—not badly, but enough to get her attention.
    Since then he’d been turning up a couple of times a week. He’d started asking her for money, and he’d continued to brutalize her, hurting her both during and after the sex act. He told her repeatedly that he knew what she liked, that she was a cheap whore and she needed to be treated like what she was. “I’m your man now,” he told her. “You belong to me. I own you, body and soul.”
    The conversation upset Elaine, understandably enough, and she’d been meaning to tell me about it, just as I’d intended to let her know about Motley’s record. She’d let it go, waiting until she saw me, knowing that she wasn’t in any danger because she wasn’t going to see the son of a bitch again. When he did call, the day after her conversation with Connie, she told him that she was busy.
    “Make time for me,” he said.
    “No,” she said. “I don’t want to see you again, Mr. Motley.”
    “What makes you think you have any choice?”
    “You asshole,” she said. “Look, do us both a favor, will you? Lose my number.”
    Two days later he called again. “I