Free The Violet Hour by Richard Montanari Page A

back.’
    Later, while Nicky was at a Fellini double feature at the Cinematheque, hoping to avoid Frank Corso at the door to his apartment – Satyricon and Roma , as if his life wasn’t bizarre enough – Willie T left a message. Willie T said that there was only one man to see about the red-tiger heroin.
    The good news? The good news was that Willie T told him where he could find the guy, and how to get on the drug dealer’s good side.
    The bad news?
    The man’s name was Rat Boy Choi.

13
     
    Dr Benjamin Matthew Crane, one of the most highly respected plastic surgeons in all of western Pennsylvania, graduate of Case Western Reserve University and Harvard Medical School, sat on a lounge chair, in the shadows behind his house. He was twenty feet from the sliding glass doors that led to his dining room, and the expensive track lighting that looked, from Dr Crane’s somewhat inebriated and aroused perspective, like black cocks dangling over his wife’s head, spewing thin streams of sperm-light.
    Elizabeth Crane walked out of the room, down the hallway, toward their bedroom. Benjamin Crane hoped she was off slipping into a new outfit. He was ready for a new outfit.
    Behind him, the trees shimmered in a late October breeze. Above him the clouds lashed a thin veil of purple over a bone-colored moon. Midnight. Next to him, on a wrought-iron end table, sat a large pitcher of vodka martinis, now half-empty. Next to that, a compact Sony video camera, top of the line.
    Dr Crane – forty-three and balding, tanned year-round, always in Milano high fashion – wore a powder blue scrub set from the hospital, no shoes. He had had so much lightning-quick sex in hospital settings over the years that he almost needed the feel of the soft cotton against his skin to get a hard-on these days. The Grey Goose helped sometimes. It helped soften the edges of his fantasy, helped to putty in the imperfections that had begun to erode his wife.
    But Elizabeth always knew what to do, knew all the moves. And in the proper light, in the proper mood, she still looked very good. The teak-colored hair, long and thick and luminescent. The eggshell skin.
    He poured himself another martini as Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted to Love’ came thundering forth from the house. The sliding glass door was closed, but the music was loud. This fed his fantasy, of course, and Elizabeth knew it. It meant she trusted him completely tonight. He wondered what she would be wearing when she came around the corner, into the dining room, and was instantly gratified when she stepped into sight wearing a very short red cocktail dress, red elbow-length gloves.
    The phone game.
    She answered the phone that wasn’t ringing, spoke animatedly into it, a game they often played: she the fiery film actress; he, the debauched producer, watching her talk dirty to an ex-lover.
    Dr Crane observed her from his cove of darkness, his eyes running slowly up her legs, over her hips. In this light, at this distance, she was Rita Hayworth at her fuck-me prime. He was a very lucky man at the moment.
    He was just about to untie the top of his scrubs and begin to deal with his now furious erection when a shadow crossed the patio stones in front of him.
    Someone was there.
    Someone was right there.
    ‘Jesus Christ!’ Benjamin Crane jumped from his chair, his hand clutched to his chest.
    A broad-shouldered man about his size stepped from the shadows, stopped. There was something in each of the man’s hands. ‘Hi, Doc,’ the man said, softly.
    Inside, Elizabeth Crane sat on a dining room chair, drew the hem of her dress up to her thigh, continued to talk into the phone. She reached into her bag, produced a cigarette, lit it, drew deeply.
    Outside, her husband looked around for a weapon. There was nothing. He froze.
    ‘I’ve always liked her in that dress,’ the man said. ‘Very sexy.’
    Benjamin Crane tried to gather his senses. He looked carefully at the man and recognition soon dawned.