No Human Contact

By Donald Ladew

Vincent Vankelis has no family, none. He visits families but is never seen doing so. It is a solution to loneliness. It all changes when his "visit" is ruined by a meeting of criminals nearby.

And again it happens when he is seen by a Sgt. Teresa Keely of the Burbank police "visiting" another of his families.

Vincent and Teresa, diametrically opposite, become entangled, both by their interest in each other and an evil man who impinges on both their lives.

Violence leads to violence as Teresa discovers that Vincent is more than a wounded man trying to live with his personal demons.

It takes all of their efforts to resolve issues that are far outside their day-to-day lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456603021

Book preview

PROLOGUE

SAN FRANCISCO WATERFRONT - 1949

The Sisters of Mercy, Agnes and Catherine, scurried along the Embarcadero, their shoulders swaying like Emperor Penguins on a long journey to the sea. It was 3:00 AM in a bone-chilling fog and light rain; typically San Francisco in the Fall.

It wasn’t a mission of mercy. Fifteen years at the Mary Magdalene Catholic Mission annihilated mercy. Working the mean hours of the night, witness to every kind of human misery, only habit and ritual remained.

Go to the Rubicon Boarding House; attend the dying woman, the message said. Another variation on a theme of tragedy; the irony was lost on the Sisters. Their Rubicon had come and gone many years before.

A single light above the entrance revealed the faded letters, R U B ...N’. They were met in the foyer by a grossly fat man in a greasy shirt and suspenders, four inches of hairy belly exposed where his sweat-stained shirt fell short. He jerked a thumb up and mumbled a room number.

The stairs were littered with trash. The Sisters stepped around a rheumy-eyed drunk sprawled on the fourth floor landing. They showed neither distaste nor interest.

The message said room 512. A single bare bulb, a broken dresser, a narrow bed in which a young woman lay dying. She lay with the utter stillness of the terminally ill. Her curly hair, matted by perspiration, made a stark contrast against unnaturally pale skin. The smells in the room were indescribable.

The Sisters moved to the woman’s bed side and stared, showing no emotion, only impatience. A glance at each other, a shrug— indecipherable communication.

Sister Agnes’s hand appeared, white, unadorned except for a simple gold band signifying that she was a bride of Christ; blue veins stark against pale flesh. She reached out to the woman on the bed and squeezed the sick woman’s shoulder.

The woman on the bed opened her eyes immediately. They were large and dark blue. The Sisters did not see despair, pain and resignation. Who sees the ordinary?

What is your name, my child? Sister Catherine asked.

The ultimate irony from an arid eunuch only five years older than the woman on the bed. The religious equivalent of calling a middle-aged black man, boy; vast, thoughtless arrogance.

Mary... a whisper.

Your full name, please?

Mary’s head turned feebly toward the other side of the bed..

...in the box...my baby.

Sister Catherine walked to the other side of the bed. On the floor next to the bed, a card board box stuffed with dirty blankets. Barely visible among the folds, a baby’s face: serious, silent, startlingly clean. The mother’s last act? The baby frowned. Did the tiny creature know what lay ahead?

The child in the box finally produced a reaction from the sisters.

It’s a baby, Sister Agnes.

Alive? Sister Agnes asked.

Yes.

Sister Agnes knelt close to the woman in the bed. Are you a Catholic, my child?

Yes, Sister.

Shall I send for a priest?

No...no time. She reached out, clutched Sister Agnes’s arm with unnatural strength.

Take my baby. She panted with the effort. His name is Vincent Andreas Vankelis. She spelled the names slowly. His father...

Her voice faded entirely. She shuddered and sank back on the bed, eyes closed.

Sister Catherine hesitated, reached out and pulled the blanket away from the woman’s body. The Sisters stood mute, rigid, trying to comprehend.

She wore nothing except cheap cotton briefs. Every inch of her pale, pale body had been beaten: narrow shoulders, flaccid breasts, scrawny ribs, slack belly, thighs, all covered with terrible yellow and black bruises. Some of the blows had broken the skin and still bled.

While the Sisters stared in stunned silence, Mary, who would give no last name, loosed a faint sigh and stopped breathing. The nuns made no effort to intervene.

Sister Catherine reached out and pulled the blanket over Mary’s body and face.

Better this way, she murmured.

The Sisters crossed themselves and muttered meaningless Latin phrases, rhythmic, and hypnotic. The creators of those phrases knew power and control the way Mesmer knew the flesh.

Sister Agnes moved around the bed without a glance at the woman beneath the sheets. They stood together and looked down at the makeshift bassinet. Where was the humanity, the affection, the love women give so naturally to small babies?

Sister Catherine and Sister Agnes hesitated. Who could know why? Who would want to know where their thoughts traveled, what internal arguments were brought to bear.

Sister Agnes reached down and took the box in her arms. We will take it to the orphanage. See if the woman has any papers, anything we should keep.

Their bloodless response made nothing of tragedy. Where were the dead woman’s people? A family, a father, someone? She was utterly alone. A terrible violence had been committed. Had she known love? Did she have a life? It didn’t matter. No one asked.

Chapter 1

LOS ANGELES 1997 THE SUBURB OF SUN VALLEY

Sunland Boulevard rises out of a Hispanic ghetto east of Burbank into ochre, sand and olive-colored foot hills. A left over suburb from an earlier Los Angeles, a place for horse owners needing larger lots.

Among the slopes and folded hills shabby developments with meaningless names like Ocean View and Sienna Village spill over the sere hillsides as they do everywhere in Los Angeles. Real estate people ran out of interesting names in the 20’s.

Jesus said, In my father’s house are many mansions. It is doubtful that Jesus had Los Angeles in mind.

Halfway up Sunland, between the hills, an open area of fields covered by buffalo grass and fruit trees surprise the driver heading up the canyon to Tujunga. Los Angeles is a city that seldom leaves open ground undeveloped. A ten foot brick fence with a plain metal gate separated the fields from the road front. There was a mail box with a number but no name next to the gate,

The house wasn’t visible from Sunland. It perched a top a second hill behind a smaller hill closer to the street. The house didn’t fit any of the cute real estate jargon. It was part Moorish, part medieval, and part Mediterranean.

A large, six-sided tower in the center rose three stories above the rest of the structure. The roof of the tower and the rest of the house was covered with Mexican tile the color of creamery butter. The stucco walls were painfully white in the spring sun.

Three low arms fanned outward from the center and dropped in pleasing steps away from the top of the hill. A large flagstone patio around the sides and rear of the house reached across half an acre of ground to a four car garage with attached work shop.

The hills and area around the house were covered with flowers and trees. Red velvet Don Juan roses surrounded lush banana plants. Patches of apricot-colored California Poppies were spread among more roses on trellises amid the fruit trees. It wouldn’t make Home & Garden; it was far too eclectic, too whimsical.

The house looked deserted. The only sounds were bees, birds and the wind in the buffalo grass. Around the back, a heavily-furred, gray cat scratched at the door. The door opened a few inches and the cat went inside.

Five miles away in Pacoima on San Fernando Boulevard, a seriously mean street, a black & white pulled into a Taco Bell fast food stand. Sergeant Teresa Keely, the youngest sergeant on the Burbank police force, stepped out. Even in shapeless blue serge her physical beauty captivated men and women alike.

The men on the force called her, ‘Viking’. She stood five ten, had masses of pale blonde hair in tightly coiled braids, a classic face matched to a voluptuous body. She destroyed utterly and forever every dumb-ass male notion that female officers are all repressed lesbians with more facial hair than a Greek sailor. She would have stood out in whatever world she chose to live.

She slipped her nightstick into a belt loop and strode over to the take out window ignoring half a dozen slack-jawed stares. She’d been seeing those looks since puberty.

She ordered two burritos, two tacos and cokes. In the black & white, officer Jaime Sosa slumped in the passengers seat and read the sports page. He muttered with disgust.

Goddamn Dodgers! Manager? Right, couldn’t find his ass with both hands in broad daylight. Another disappointed die-hard Dodger fan.

Where Sergeant Keely was tall and extraordinarily beautiful, Sosa was short and homely. Sosa’s people emigrated north from the Yucatan at the turn of the century. His Mayan heritage showed in his square, high cheek-boned face and liquid brown eyes, but his soul was pure Angeleno.

Keely brought the food back to the black & white. Sosa suffered with the trials of the on-again, off-again Dodgers.

Hey, Jimmy, wake up in there.

He reached over without looking and opened the door.

Here take these damn things. She handed him the Burritos and coke. You eat this shit, you’ll really have something to complain about, she said with disgust.

Look at this, Sosa shook a burrito filled fist, drooling green chili salsa on the newspaper. Goddamned idiots, look at this! Dipshit trades away every good player on the team!

Sure, Jimmy.

He looked at her with disgust and pulled the paper away. You’re un-American, Viking. Baseball is serious.

Don’t call me, Viking, you bald-headed dwarf.

Nice talk, Teresa. Okay, how about, Freya, he grinned slyly, happy to get a rise.

Keely shook her fist in his face. I told you about that shit. She took a bite from a taco. My mother told me to watch out for Nicaraguan’s who read books. I am not a Norwegian goddess, I am an American goddess.

He raised one thick eyebrow. Don’t call me no steenking Nicaraguan, Chica. I am Mayan, the descendant of kings.

Mmmph, I told you a thousand times to call me, Teresa.

Si, sargento, you did, and I deeply regret my mistake. Everyone knows I have the greatest respect for authority.

How can you eat that dog manure, Jaime? Don’t you have any respect for your body?

If I had your body I might give a shit. I don’t...have your body, mores’ the pity.

The radio crackled and hummed. Any car in the vicinity of San Fernando and Osborne, see the man with the ax. Chango’s cafe.

Keely took the mike. 382 responding.

382, roger.

Shit, Keely, do we have to take every call? I haven’t finished my burrito.

Keely put her food on the seat between them and slammed the car into gear.

Good. I’ll save your life, be a heroeen. C’mon, let’s meet the man with the ax.

Jesus! The acceleration drove him back into the seat as Keely burned rubber away from the Taco Bell onto the black top of San Fernando Road, lights flashing, siren screaming.

Goddamn John Wayne in skirts. Sosa gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. Hail Mary, full of Grace...

Wrong woman, Jimmy. You want to live, try hail Teresa, full of skill.

Full of shi... Jaime muttered.

Nice talk, Jimmy... she grunted as the car hit a pothole.

Chango’s Cafe, a sleazy dive; dirt parking lot overgrown with weeds and trash. A half dozen low-riders and battered pickups were parked in front of a small building that hadn’t seen paint since the second world war.

Keely slid the black & white across the dirt right up to the door. Before she could get out, a heavy set Hispanic flew backward through the door and slammed into the hood of the police car.

Keely and Sosa leaped out. The man rolled on the ground trying to pull a knife from his shoulder.

Keely headed for the door. Call for backup, Jimmy, she shouted over her shoulder.

Screw that shit, Viking, you ain’t goin’ in there alone.

Keely disappeared through the door. Jaime followed on the run.

The inside like the outside wasn’t going to set any trends on the LA après dark scene: One man down, not moving. Standing in the middle of the room an incredible hulk swung a fireman’s ax around his head like a child’s baseball bat. Two Hispanics with knives crouched in front of him.

The hulk charged and swung the ax at the closest. He missed by an inch and cut a three foot section from the bar.

Keely moved in behind him. The adrenaline soared. The hulk ripped the ax out of the bar and raised it over his head for another try. At the top of the swing Keely stepped behind him, grabbed the ax, wrenched it out of his hands and threw it behind her.

He whipped around, growling like a rabid dog.

Bitch. He moved toward her, hands outstretched.

Instead of backing away Keely stepped forward, grabbed the outstretched fingers, bent them back viciously and pulled down and in to her body at the same time driving her head into his face. There was satisfying crunch as she pulped his nose.

The hulk sank to his knees as if someone had dropped a five hundred pound weight on his shoulders. He cursed horribly in Spanish.

She drew back her right fist and hit him on the jaw full force and drove him to the floor. It was her signature. If you had asked her fellow officers what was the most outstanding thing about officer Keely, besides her spectacular figure, they would all have said, a sweet straight right.

Before the hulk could get up she whipped his hand behind his back, slammed her knee into his spine, grabbed the other hand and cuffed him. She clutched his hair and lifted his face to look in his eyes.

Do not use bad language around me, shit for brains!

Officer Sosa had the other men against the bar. He turned toward Keely.

Always with the macho shit. I don’t know why I ride with you, Chica. I don’t do nothing except watch you beat the piss out of these pitiful savages.

He turned back to the hood against the bar. C’mon, rat breath. You’re lucky you didn’t grab. Even her boy friend don’t get to do that without he says, por, por, por favor.

Keely gave Jaime a dirty look.

Two more squad cars, an ambulance and the wagon arrived and took the three men in custody. Sergeant Keely stood by the black & white looking at the hills above Sun Valley. Sosa finished the procedural detail and walked over.

What’s the matter, Sargento, you did okay.

She stared at the ground. I don’t know, tired, tired of beating up hoods, and quit making smartass remarks about my boyfriend. You know I don’t have one.

Yeah, I know. C’mon, Teresa, get in the car, I’ll drive, Sosa said.

Dusk settled in the hills as they left.

You know what your trouble is, Viking? You’ve got it all. You’re smart, ambitious, a college grad, and as Lieutenant Epstein in burglary says, a body to die for.

She gave him the, you’re thin ice, look.

Sosa ignored it. That’s what I mean, Chica. You spend so much time making sure everyone knows you’re a bad ass, you’re no fun. Be nice, Teresa, lighten up.

I’m not that bad. She got mad again. Hey, I know how to lighten up, for Christ’s sake. She banged the window with her fist angrily and pouted like a school girl.

I didn’t say you were bad, Chica. I ride with you because I want to, not because I have to.

Sosa drove so slow a line of cars stacked up behind him. Drivers cursed bitterly behind closed windows. A few gave him the finger which he ignored.

Jesus, Jaime, pick it up. We aren’t dragging Van Nuys Boulevard in your pink pimpmobile low-rider.

Sosa ignored her. Don’t have a low-rider. I drive a piece of shit Chevy Caprice just like every right-thinking middle class gringo. When’s the last time someone rolled you around in the sheets? A year, more? Get out, fool around a little. The world don’t begin and end with that uniform.

Teresa smiled wistfully, looked at large competent hands. I’d like to, I really would.

The sun went west in a rush leaving a soft afterglow in the hills above Burbank. It had been one of the wettest springs in California history. The perennial smog hadn’t begun to fill the LA basin like a dirty blanket.

In the orange trees below the house on Sunland the gray cat sought targets of opportunity: birds, mice, grasshoppers. A metallic tapping sounded in the distance. The cat stopped in mid stalk, turned and raced up the hill toward the house.

Wedges of light came from narrow windows in the second story of the tower. The cat shot through the open back door into the kitchen.

The man removed a tin of food from the refrigerator while the cat purred and stropped his legs.

Patience, Bernie.

After he fed the cat he left the kitchen and walked to the central tower where a narrow atrium went all the way to the roof. In the middle of the atrium was a small, deep pool. Around the outside of the three storey room a staircase spiraled upward.

He went up the stairs easily, two at a time. His movements were fluid and athletic, but not exuberant.

The entire second floor of the tower was a library. Painted panels divided the space into sections. The furnishings were an eclectic mixture of styles, colorful, yet too neat to be personal. The paintings were both modern and traditional, all devoid of people. Nowhere was the human form paid tribute. Of photographs, there were none. Not one.

Neatness replaced personality. The outgoing, the social would have felt uncomfortable, unwanted.

Vincent Vankelis stood in semi-shadow and looked out toward the city. He wore light weight cotton slacks, a polo shirt and canvas topped deck shoes without socks.

Standing, back to the light, square as a chunk of stone, broad across the shoulders and waist, yet without excess weight.

He turned away and walked back into the light toward a small free-standing bar. He removed a bottle of Meurseult les Gouttes d'Or from a small refrigerator and carried it across the room to the stereo. The melancholy voice of Brazilian singer, Caetano Veloso, filled the room.

Vincent’s face in the light had a slight olive cast. It was a Mediterranean face, full-lipped, strong narrow nose and a lightly cleft chin; thick black hair and a beard that required shaving twice a day.

In his early forties, one might have expected lines to mark the passage of time. There were none, no laugh lines at the corners of the eyes or mouth. Even alone in his hilltop redoubt his expression gave nothing away. It was a somber face, too melancholy to expose cruelty.

He opened the wine and poured a glass. Bernie, the cat, appeared from the shadows and jumped into a large, well-lit Morris chair, padded around in a circle before settling himself.

Vincent took the wine to the chair, reached down and lifted the cat with one hand, sat down, placed the cat in his lap and the wine on the table next to the chair. Spread out on the table were a half dozen books inter-leafed with slips of paper to mark points of interest.

He took the nearest, opened it and began to read. No sound disturbed the silence except the music and the soft rustle of pages for the next hour.

Vincent looked at his watch from time to time and went on reading. After a while the cat felt the tension, got up, jumped to the floor, stretched and wandered off into the dark. Another hour passed before Vincent marked his place and put the book down.

He walked slowly toward the center of the tower, through a door that opened onto a balcony overlooking the atrium twenty feet below. Forty feet up the segmented roof accepted pale light through thick glass skylights.

He stood quietly, taking a mental inventory of things known. He didn’t like surprise. Yet he had unpredictability, a quality prized by some and detested by others.

Vincent removed his clothes and folded them neatly over a railing. He stepped to the edge of the balcony and without looking, jumped away into the semi-darkness. There followed a long moment of silence. One might have imagined anything, then from below a quiet splash.

Twenty feet down in the dark faint sparkles of white glistened on the surface of a small pool that extended into the house under the nearest wall.

He swam under water out beneath the wall and rose slowly to the surface of a large outdoor pool, slowly back to life. It was like dying. He did it often.

Later in his room he bathed and shaved carefully, dressed in dark slacks and a dark blue turtle neck. He put on dark socks and black soft-soled shoes.

On top of a dresser a wooden display case contained an assortment of military medals. A green beret rested in front of the case.

He took a hard-bound journal held shut with an elastic band, a pencil and a navy wool watch cap from the top drawer and left the room. Down stairs in the kitchen the cat ran to him and put his feet up on Vincent’s legs.

Vincent reached down and scratched the cat’s chin.

Not tonight, Bernie. I’m visiting family.

Chapter 2

The gray pickup moved east on the 210 freeway never faster than 65 mph, never straying from the right hand lane except to pass the occasional slower car. The truck itself was unremarkable in a city that prided itself on never letting any vehicle well enough alone.

It left the freeway at the Lincoln Avenue off-ramp in Altadena and moved into an area of upscale condominiums and apartment houses, moving with the certainty of a destination known.

The truck turned into an alley between two blocks of apartment houses, continued on twenty yards then quickly left into a row of parking spaces built under the side of the building.

Vincent looked at a clock on the dash; a little after eight in the evening. The alley was poorly lit. He sat in the truck for a half hour before he got out. He did not think about what he was doing. The truly obsessed never do until the activity of their obsession is ended, and then whatever regrets or misgivings exist weigh lightly against inexpressible need.

He stood in the shadows and looked up the alley toward a second story apartment on the other side of the alley. His searching eyes missed nothing. He moved up the alley almost too fast to follow, grasped a drain pipe, and went up without hesitation until he reached a small balcony on the second floor where he grabbed the rail, pulled himself onto the balcony and disappeared. His movements were all one piece, effortless and graceful.

The balconies were a California thing, designed for show, essentially useless; a very California thing.

He watched the area for weeks before he decided which apartment. It became apparent that either the apartment was empty or they were on an extended vacation. A dying ficus tree sagged tiredly in one corner of the balcony. He wanted to give it water but there was no way without entering the apartment and he wasn’t a criminal or a burglar, nothing like that.

Vincent tucked himself in beside the ficus and looked across the alley into the apartment of the Wister’s: Clarke, Jenna, and their precocious seven year old daughter, Jeannie.

‘Vincent’s Family’ sat at the kitchen table, their window open. Clarke and Jenna argued about politics as usual. Clarke, quiet, conservative, funny. Jenna, the opposite; explosive, opinionated, liberated, brilliant. They played a cutthroat game of scrabble with much bluffing and ridiculous words. They were very good.

They were his first family. Before them there had been no others, real or imagined. He had seen them together at a Ralph’s Market, down the hill in La Canada. Before he knew what he was doing he followed them on their rounds, from dry goods, to dairy, to meat and finally vegetables. He was very good at not being there.

They were so absorbed in themselves, the pleasure of being together, of jokes and touching, holding hands, a cantaloupe tossed back and forth, they didn’t notice the dark haired man just beyond the periphery of their created universe.

Vincent wore half glasses he didn’t need and pretended to examine the fine print on everything he bought. He might have said hello, smiled, made some cheerful comment and they would have included him in their small circle, if only for a moment, and they would have done it easily, for they had much to share and affection to spare.

Somehow he was behind them in the check-out line and when they went to their car he got in his truck and followed.

Across the alley, Vincent settled himself and removed a journal from his pocket. He smiled at Jeannie’s antics and whispered with affection.

Hello, Clarke, Jenna. Hi, Jeannie. You look great!

He watched ‘his family’ with total attention, reacting to their every emotion. He worried when the arguments became too strong, laughed silently at their jokes. The visit went well.

Jeannie made a killer triple-word score with oxymoron. Her mother and father looked at their daughter with affection, amazement and consternation, wondering how they made a child so far beyond their expectations.

That first evening he discovered where they lived then drove back to Sunland, through the metal gate and tall