Dead Nightingale
by Richard Ong
Bill took a deep breath and looked up at the tall glass building nearly sixty stories high. He whistled. How could an escort dating service own so much real estate? he wondered. He took out a blue handkerchief and wiped the sweat off his brow, then folded the cloth, took off his glasses and wiped the lenses. He replaced his glasses and shoved them up the bridge of his nose. He adjusted his tie and walked stiffly towards the revolving entrance.
Bill managed a tight smile at the front desk. “Good evening.”
The young woman with the headset smiled back and said, “Good evening, sir and welcome to The Black Nightingales. How may I help you?”
“Well, actually I have an appointment... Just a sec.” Bill fished out the card from the side pocket of his ten-year old rayon jacket. It was the calling card Frank, his boss, gave him. “I... I have an appointment to see a Miss Hannah Moraine at seven this evening.”
“Thank you.” The young woman typed a few keys and paused. “And your name, sir?”
“Bill Foley. That’s F-O-L-“
“Got it.” The young woman looked up and smiled. “You’re expected, Mr. Foley. Take the elevator on my right towards the thirty-third floor. Walk towards the double oak doors with the brass handles and just ring the buzzer. An attendant will take you in. Here.” She handed a plastic badge with a long, blue nylon strap.
“Put this around your neck, Mr. Foley. This will give you free admittance to the thirty-third floor, where The Black Nightingale’s Social Lounge and VIP rooms are located, for the next five nights between seven and two in the morning. Now is there anything else I can help you with, Mr. Foley?”
“V-VIP rooms, you say?” Bill felt a trickle of sweat form on his brow. He resisted the urge to wipe it.
The young woman checked her computer screen then nodded. “It says right here that you, Mr. Foley, have been signed up for the full treatment tonight as authorized by a Mr. Frank DiMaggio.”
“Dear God,” Bill groaned.
Bill stepped out of the elevator and turned to his right. A set of heavy oak doors barred him from the room inside. A gilded plaque on the wall had a black nightingale etched on the surface and was labeled simply as “The Lounge.” He walked towards the doors and pressed the buzzer below the plaque.
One door opened and a heavyset fellow with a quarterback’s arms and shoulders squinted down at Bill’s badge then back at Bill. Without a word, he half-nodded and opened the door wide, gesturing Bill to come in.
The Lounge was a dark place where people seemed to be paired up on each table. Some were laughing. Some were engaged in pleasant conversation. Some were hugging and kissing.
It was a dark place where the music played was soft and rhythmic. It had a continuous hypnotic beat that seemed to echo the pumping of the blood in Bill’s heart.
Bill sat on the velvet couch and bent over the low glass table to pick up his fourth shot of brandy for the night. As he raised the glass to his lips, his eyes locked on a woman’s face staring at him from the table opposite him.
Funny, he thought, that table was empty a moment ago.
He lowered his glass and waited. The alcohol had started to numb his brain. He had almost given up hope on ever seeing his date tonight. But then this woman... There was something about her that kept Bill’s interest. He knew that it wasn’t polite to stare, but he couldn’t help it. She drew him in like a magnet. Bill stood up and walked towards her.
“Ahh... h-hi. My name’s Bill. Bill Foley. That’s F-O-L-“
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“Ahh... i-it’s okay. It’s okay, really. I’m just hanging around, like uh, you know.”
“I’m so glad.”
“Y-you are?”
“I’m so glad that you haven’t left.”
“Oh, that! Well, uh, I- I wasn’t sure that you would come. But, but well, now that you’re here. Well, hi!” Bill grinned. His breath stank of alcohol. He felt tipsy.
“Have a seat, Bill.” Hannah patted the space on the couch next to her. Bill gulped and nodded. He barely missed knocking the table down and plunked onto the soft velvet padding next to her.
“Oops. Sorry about that. Guess I drank a little bit more than I can handle.”
“It’s okay. Relax. You’re here and I’m here. All is well. We can begin.” She gave him a toothy smile and her tongue gave a subtle lick of her upper lips. Her lips were red and full. He wasn’t sure whether she dyed her hair or she wore a wig. It was cut straight, shoulder-length and dark as night. Her complexion was surprisingly pale almost to the point of being anemic. And her teeth...
“W-we can begin, you say? B-begin what?”
Hannah laughed. It was a pleasant laugh, like the sound of crystal.
“Bill.” She gripped his wrist and he jumped. Her hand was icy cold. “Relax,” she whispered in a sibilant tone. She stared into his eyes and he felt himself drawn into those pools of darkness.
“Relax and just let yourself go.”
Bill felt his pulse begin to slow down. The rhythmic music of The Lounge was now a dull throbbing beat that persisted inside his head.
He felt her breath on his cheek and a kiss, dry and cold. Her tongue touched his neck as he felt her fingers undo the buttons on his shirt.
Tribal music was the last thing on Bill’s mind before he finally gave in and was swallowed up by the tides of passion.
Bill opened his eyes and blinked. He squinted at the bright round orb of light above him and winced. The sun was up already.
He propped himself up to a sitting position and waited till his eyes cleared. The bedroom had the familiar scent of stale laundry strewn about the room. Last Saturday’s socks hung over a swivel chair. A blue hockey shirt pulled inside out draped over the dusty twenty-inch television.
He looked down and saw an arcing trail of underclothing from the foot of the night table to his right and across the foot of his bed towards the bathroom. He rubbed at the throbbing pain on his temples and looked up at the small skylight above. The sun blazed fiercely down at him. He turned around and looked at the clock radio on his night table. It was almost noon.
What time did he get home?
Bill jumped when the phone rang. He quickly picked it up. It was Frank.
“Bill! Jesus. I’ve been trying to call you all morning. Where have you been?”
“Oh, hey, Frank. Top of the morning to you too.”
“It’s lunch time, Bill.”
“Yeah, whatever. I just got up. Must’ve been really out of it this morning to have not heard the phone ring. I suppose you’re dying to ask me how good Hannah was, are you?”
“No, Bill. I wish I was. I swear I didn’t know what happened till I got a call from The Black Nightingales this morning.”
“The Black Nightingales called you? What, to report on me? Is this what it’s all about, Frank? You’ve been keeping tabs on me, have you?”
“No, Bill. It’s worse.” Frank’s voice caught on the other end of the line. After a few seconds of silence, he spoke. “I don’t know how else to say this so I’ll just say it straight. Hannah’s dead, Bill.”
There was silence. No one uttered a word for almost a minute until Frank spoke.
“Bill? Talk to me buddy. Are you still there? Bill!”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m still here. Just in shock. What happened? How did she die?”
“Well, that’s the part I didn’t understand. The manager on site at The Black Nightingales told me that Hannah was supposed to check in at six-thirty last night. She didn’t, so they thought that she was running late. By seven, they tried calling her apartment but got no answer, so they tried several times after that.
“At around eight, they paged Felix — that’s the doorman you saw at The Lounge, by the way — but Felix couldn’t locate you anywhere on the premises. They even had every attendant on the lookout for you but no one remembered, not even Felix whose memory for faces is impeccable, ever seeing someone of your description walk in or out of The Lounge that night.”
“But that’s crazy, Frank! Felix surely would’ve remembered me walking in. I even vividly remembered those quarterback shoulders of his as he inspected my badge. And what about that bright-eyed, freckled-faced girl working on the front desk lobby. Surely she can verify my coming in last night!”
“Calm down, Bill. No one’s disputing your presence at the club. They asked Michelle and she confirmed checking you in. The strange thing is, she even saw you walk into the elevator and their computer records indicate that you did reach the thirty-third floor. But...”
“But?”
“You never buzzed in. Felix swore he never opened the door to anyone between seven and eight. For those who arrived before or after that hour, none of them matched your description.”
“He’s lying, Frank. He’s got to be! Why is this happening to me Frank? Why is Hannah dead? What DID she die of?”
“Bill. I need you to calm down and take a deep breath, you hear? Go get a glass of water. I’ll wait on you.”
“I’m fine, Frank.” Bill grasped the bedpost to control his shakes. “I’m... just... fine. Tell me, how did she die?”
“Why don’t we talk about this tonight, Bill. Get some rest. I’ll—”
“TELL ME HOW SHE DIED!”
“Massive loss of blood. She was pale and completely drained of it when they found her. We’re still waiting for the coroner’s report to find the exact cause. But the strange thing is, according to my sources at the police, based on the body’s decomposition, she’s been dead for at least a few days.”
The light at the coroner’s lab blinded him as he walked in. It was cold; he wished he’d brought a jacket with him. Bill rubbed his hairy arms with both hands and looked around. It was remarkable how pristine this place could be. For a butcher shop.
Stop that, he chided himself. He was anxious and more than a little afraid at what he had to see. But it had to be done. He needed to know who was under that sheet before him. He needed to know that he hadn’t lost his mind.
Dr. Tanaka, a pathologist for over fifteen years at Greenwood General, carefully pulled the white sheet of cloth from the corpse. Bill didn’t blink. For a several seconds, his eyes were transfixed on the bloodless face with a look of morbid fascination. Then his mouth began to quiver and he turned and ran to the nearest sink.
“That’ll be all, thank you, Dr. Tanaka.”
“Hmph. They all throw up at my sink.”
“I’m afraid these things can’t be helped sometimes, Doctor.”
“Couldn’t it, Detective Ross? Or was that guilt that I just saw?”
“Now, just hold on a second here—”
“Take it easy, Mr. DiMaggio. The good doctor here was just being glib. He didn’t mean to insinuate anything by that remark, right, Doctor?”
“Hmph. I’ll say this one thing, Detective Ross. In all my years in this business, I’ve never seen anything like it. Total blood loss and not a single bruise nor cut to indicate its point of exit, except for one peculiar thing that I couldn’t quite understand.”
“Yeah? You found something?”
“I’m not sure what I found, exactly. But here, it’s best that I show you.”
There was a rustle of cloth as Dr. Tanaka pulled the rest of the covering off the naked body of the young woman. Bill wiped his mouth with a handkerchief and took a deep breath before shuffling back towards the table.
Frank gave him a worried look but Bill waved him off indicating that he was fine.
“Good Lord. What are those marks on her body?”
“Those, Detective Ross, are her skin pores magnified a hundred times in size — every single one of them from the top of her breasts to just below the pelvic region. I examined a skin sample under the microscope and realized to my astonishment, under the cross-sectional analysis, that each of these dilated pores on her torso flared out... yes, flared out as if from a violent rush of fluid out her body — which I might add, is simply biologically impossible.”
“And yet here she lies, Doctor, with all those impossible marks on her body. Not a pleasant sight, eh, Mr. Foley?”
Bill felt his bile coming up again and he fought to keep it down. He focused on the pattern of pores on Hannah’s torso and tried hard not to look at her somewhat deflated breasts. Her entire torso was laden with a million holes as if she had been tortured in an iron maiden, except what happened to all her blood? He shivered; then the pattern he had been staring at became clear. “My God, Doctor, did you notice anything strange about these holes?”
“What is it, Bill?” Frank asked.
“The concentration of these patterns...”
“I see that you’ve also noticed most of the flare-ups occurred around the breasts and the pelvic area, Mr. Foley,” nodded Dr. Tanaka. “That is most peculiar, isn’t it? Whatever caused these epidermal eruptions is beyond anything I’ve ever seen.”
“Her blood, perhaps?”
“Hey, I’m only a humble doctor, Detective Ross,” Dr. Tanaka spread his hands.
“Now wait one second,” said Frank, scratching his head. “Are you guys seriously thinking that she lost all of her blood during sex?”
Bill could not contain it any longer and ran back to the sink. He heard laughter behind him, like the sound of crystal.
“Shhh,” she said. “Relax and just let yourself go.”
He recognized her scent without turning around. Rose water and lilac. It was intoxicating and his head spun. He heard her laugh once more before he slid down the floor.
Bill woke to the sound of tribal music and red glow of pulsating light. His head throbbed and he realized that he was slumped over his arms on a glass table. Bill propped his chin up on his elbows and looked up. His vision blurred and he thought he saw a young woman with straight black hair looking at him from another table across from his own. He blinked several times and his vision cleared. The table across was empty. It didn’t look to have ever been occupied at all.
Bill stepped out of the elevator at eleven that night. He walked across the marble-tiled lobby of The Black Nightingales and surrendered his badge to the young lady with the headset at the counter.
“Michelle, isn’t it?” he asked, glancing at the little brass name tag attached to her navy blue lapel.
“Yes, Mr. Foley. Did you have a wonderful night?” She had that same cheerful smile again like she did the first time he walked in. Somehow, he didn’t feel like sharing her cheerful disposition at this time. He felt completely drained of energy and his head hurt like hell.
“Actually, I don’t think I’ll be coming back.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry to hear that, Mr. Foley.” She looked genuinely sincere. “I suppose that you won’t be seeing Miss Moraine anymore?”
“Miss Moraine never showed up. Did you actually see her check in?”
Michelle looked surprised.
“She did check in, tonight, did she?”
Michelle nodded with a bewildered look in her eyes. “I spoke to her myself. She arrived half an hour before you did.”
“I see. Well, thank you Michelle. It’s certainly been... something.”
Bill turned without saying another word and stepped out of the tall glass building into the cool embrace of the night.
He stood on the steps for several minutes and took long deep breaths of the stale city air around him.
Suddenly he felt a sharp sting on his neck and smacked at the offended area with the palm of his hand.
He opened his right hand and saw a small drop of red smeared on his skin. “Damn mosquitoes. These bloodsuckers are everywhere. I’m getting out of here.”
Copyright © 2011 by Richard Ong
