Previously on Vice Cop, Hudson got himself a Chinese mail-order bride named Cherry. Mason and Lexa retreated to The Poconos for a weekend. For Hudson, married life was sweet until a dangerous underground Chinese Mafia cast a large shadow over Chinatown. Girls were abducted by ninja soldiers who worked for a powerful Asian Mob lord, and were forced into sexual slavery. When Cherry was abducted, Hudson came to her rescue but discovered that she had been killed during an altercation with the Mob boss' wife.
This chapter deals with the pursuit of a serial killer and a separate murder incident. Lexa and Mason are working for Homicide and investigate. Like with other chapters, this is full of plot and action. But you can find a brief sex scene on SCENE EIGHT between a young rookie cop named Vince McClintock and a ballerina. Hudson is not featured in this episode but will return for Chapter 12.
The time is the 1980s...
*
ONE
Upper East Side, Manhattan, 6:30pm
It was a grey twilight, with very little light, and the sun had set so quickly it seemed as if it had been consumed in a sudden celestial firestorm.
The spectacular sunset had tinged the skies with hues ofvivid, fiery reds, orange, gold and yellows. After the sun went down, chilliness settled into Manhattan. From afar, cargo ships and other vessels were blaring their horns in the harbor, and seagulls were crying out and swarming through the air in large numbers. The city traffic was heavy and tiredness filled the air; the urbanites of Manhattan island ready to come home and finish their day.
Professor Dorian Messing who had just come home from teaching classes at New Amsterdam University approached his home. He looked around him, as if ensuring that no one could see him. He was carrying a large bag, but this was not unusual. He carried shoulder bags, backpacks and book bags, being a Professor, and he was always traveling abroad, bringing luggage, valises and bags containing objects and artifacts with him. He was considered an eccentric, even within academic circle and his own upper class society friends and connnections, but some felt he was charming. He liked his privacy and he didn't like to socialize, except at social functions and parties that involved him as a guest of honor.
He sighed in relief as he noticed that the few people up and about didn't seem to take an interest in him. He took out the key to his home, a walk-up with two stories and fabulous Gothic tainted windows, and closed the door shut. Safe inside his home, he quickly removed the heavy clothes he had on -- a trench coat, a blazer, and his dress shirt and slacks. He had on a scarf around his neck which he quickly tossed away.
He preened in the mirror that hung over the fireplace and smiled. God, did he look great. He was sixty two years old and he looked like a very young man. He wondered why of late he hadn't had any success in finding a mate. No, there was no woman to greet him when he came home.
At the age of sixty two, he had never been married. Except, for that one occasion, which he himself publicized as a huge joke and a unique way to promote his book written about his experiences in South America's Amazon jungle when he was there in the 1970's. He had the natives stand around in ceremonial garments while he "married" a rather huge lizard he took his pet. He called her Cecile-Cecile. It was only this large, long-living lizard that awaited him in his apartment.
"Hello, darling," he said in his British accent, "good to see you. How's about a kiss?"
Cecile-Cecile, who slept all the time and only got up to eat, got up to acknowledge his presence. The Professor leaned against her and kissed her on the lips. Then the lazy lizard went back to sleep. The Professor had a very calm and eerie look in his face. His tall, thin figure and his swift moments, which could also appear leisurely, especially when leaning against a wall, made him look reptilian himself.
His large living room had the appearance of a nineteenth century Victorian parlor, with large palm trees and showy plants over a carpet of showy design. There was artwork on the walls, and photographs of himself in various parts of the world, but always in an island, jungle or rainforest. He had been to Indonesia, he had been to Africa, he had been to South America and New Zealand. He was fascinated by the civilizations that had developed in jungle terrains, indigenous people who lived in tune with nature. He had studied the Maori people in New Zealand, He spent years away from modern luxuries such as cars, telephones and newspapers, existing only to satisfy his anthropologist's curiosity. He had taught classes in New York City for years at but also toured the US and Europe lecturing and promoting his books.
On the walls were masks given to him by natives, African painted masks, and headdresses. He collected little idols and fertility statues, displaying them all around the living room as if it was a museum. He removed the object he had been carrying in the bag. He had a malicious look in his eye as he gazed upon it.
It was a human head.
He knew that he couldn't dare display this on the wall. No. It would have to go into the backroom where he kept all his heads. Company would be shocked and appalled to see severed heads and it would most definitely ruin tea time and the chance of making even newer friends with money.................
A chilliness spread in Manhatttan.
It was just as chilly in Madeline Cavanaugh's apartment. Her apartment had recently been cleaned by professionals. She had paid men to remove the carpeting and only the bare wood floor was left while the carpets were cleaned. She had never wanted to hire housekeeping, though everyone she knew in this part of Manhattan did it. She wouldn't think of it, not so much because she disliked minorities, but because she did not want anyone else in her home. She lived alone. She had always lived alone since moving into New York City from Scarborough Beach, Maine. She had left behind her widowed mother, and embraced the city as a young girl, as a ballerina ready to conquer New York City.
But that had been some years ago. She was approaching thirty now and she knew that her time would be up soon. That's what her ballerina friends down at the American Ballet Theater called it when dancers reached a certain age and could no longer hope to achieve the critical acclaim of youthful performances. She didn't care. Whatever work she could find in the ballet, she got it.
On the floor were the glowing reviews she received for her La Sylphide. She had recently torn up the bad reviews for her Sleeping Beauty, which was an experimental production in which the dancers danced on ice like figure skaters in an indoor hockey stadium. Damn critics. They were all probably picky, fussy fags anyways she thought. She had recently run into a nasty critic at a restaurant downtown and she spat in his face.
"You didn't show any dramatic integrity," he had told her, "you were so wooden and mechanical. Why don't you just hang up those ballet shoes and call it quits."
