Paul Levine - Night vision

Look at those legs.

Look at those goddamn floor-to-ceiling million-dollar legs, Marsha thought, then unconsciously sneaked a peek at her own. Short. Stubby little shapeless legs. God, how she hated them.

Shit, now they're on a two-shot. Look at the monitor. Next to her I look like a double amputee.

Then there was her hair. Thick, auburn hair brushed straight back. And her skin, that patrician paleness so out of place in Miami. Just a subdued line of gloss on full lips She probably gets dressed and made up in ten minutes.

If Marsha didn't spend half an hour covering her freckles with pancake, Max Factor Number Two, they'd ship her back to Scranton to handle neighborhood weather from Nanticoke. The legs, nothing you could do about those. But thank God for plastic surgeons and periodontists. A rhinoplasty-the Sandy Duncan model, pert but not prominent-and capped teeth called "Hollywoods." Thanks to lawyers, too. Two hundred bucks to change Mabel Dombrowsky to Marsha Diamond.

"So, Dr. Maxson, your book suggests that serial murderers share certain characteristics," Marsha said.

"Well, we can place them into distinct categories," Pamela Maxson replied. "There are the organized murderers, who are above average in intelligence and are socially and sexually competent. They are usually the eldest sons in the family. Ordinarily they know their victims and plan the crime. The crime scene is neat and orderly-"

"Well, neatness counts," Marsha Diamond chirped. Inside the control booth, the director groaned.

"The disorganized murderer is quite the opposite," Dr. Maxson explained, ignoring the interviewer and smiling politely at the camera. "Below average in intelligence, socially inadequate, sexually incompetent. Usually the last or next to last born. His crimes are more spontaneous. The victims are usually strangers, and rather than using conversation, he subdues with sudden outbursts of violence. Often he will perform sexual acts after the death of the victim"

Oh shit, how do you follow that one up?

"In either case," Dr. Maxson said, "the killers have highly active fantasy lives. The fantasies often are of rape, torture, and murder. When they can no longer differentiate fantasy from reality, the two become one."

And that upper-crust voice. Like Masterpiece Theatre.

Marsha cleared her throat, and the sound man cursed, his earpiece clacking like an enraged rattlesnake. "We seem to have more mass murderers in our country-"

"Serial murderers," Pamela Maxson corrected her. "Mass murderers kill many persons at the same time. Serial murderers kill many over time, usually at random."

Marsha felt her face heat up. "Yes, of course. Is there something uniquely American about these serial killers? Something about our violent society?"

"Goodness no. In Britain we had Jack the Ripper, Germany its Peter Kurten. During the time of Joan of Arc, France had the infamous Gilles de Rais, who killed hundreds. There have been serial killers throughout history."

Damn. Like being lectured by Jane Seymour with a medical degree. Marsha racked her brain for news stories. "Yes, but here we've had Ted Bundy, the Hillside Strangler, the Night Stalker"- Marsha strained to keep up the patter- "the Son of Stan"

"Son of Sam," Dr. Maxson helped out. "No doubt America has had its share. My primary interest is in understanding the reasons for these motiveless murders. We know that serial killers frequently cannot separate sex from aggression. We don't know whether this psychological deficit is caused by genetic, chemical, or hormonal reasons."

Thank God the director cut to a close-up of the British bitch.

Marsha caught a cue from the floor manager. "We'll be back with Dr. Pamela Maxson, author of The Murderer Within Us, right after this"

The news director's door was open, so Marsha walked in. Jerry Abrams was devouring a bacon cheeseburger. Late thirties, bushy mustache, disheveled, overweight. He chewed noisily, occasionally burping as he kept his eyes on one of three TV screens in his glass-enclosed cubicle.

"Hey, Marsha, get a load-"

On the screen a crew-cut blond man with a string tie was reciting baseball scores. The sound was turned low. Jerry Abrams always reviewed audition tapes this way. Watch the way they look, nobody listens anyway, he explained.

"Wanna play?" Jerry Abrams asked.

"I dunno, Jerry."

"C'mon, guess."

"El Paso?"

He shook his head.

"Albuquerque?"

Jerry fished a french fry out of a paper sack. The office smelled of grease and charred meat. "The Wyatt Earp tie's throwing you off. Smaller market, farther north."

"North Platte, Nebraska," she said.

"Good guess. Quad Cities, Iowa. Hayseed wants to come to Gomorrah-by-the-Sea."

He punched a button on the remote control and grabbed another cassette. More than a hundred were stacked around his desk.

"Jerry, I'd like you to relieve me on the five o'clock. Just for a couple weeks."

"What? During sweeps? Jesus, no!"

"But I'm working on an investigative piece"

He stopped in mid-bite. A glob of ketchup clung to his mustache. "What investigative piece? Who assigned you?"

"No one. I've been working on my own. A blockbuster I can't tell you about, yet. I've got a confidential source."

Jerry loosened his tie, which was already at half-mast. He plugged another cassette into the VCR. After the color bars and the countdown, a petite Oriental woman appeared in front of a burning building. She held a microphone and showed a dazzling smile likely used for stories of quintuplet births and plane crashes alike. Marsha noticed that her orange helmet clashed with her green flak jacket. She wondered if the teeth were real.

"Marsha baby," Jerry said, "you're not Bob Friggin' Woodward. You're a face, a very good face, and your numbers are catching up with Gilligan's Island reruns on Channel Four."

She tried to give him a tough look she learned from numerous Jane Fonda films. It had the effect of crinkling her collagen-injected lips.

"Now, don't pout at me," Jerry said. "Hey, that was a great interview today. What's a looker like that doing with mass murderers?"

"Serial murderers."

"Whatever," Jerry Abrams said.

The bedroom's jalousie windows were cranked open, and Marsha could hear nighttime traffic on Ocean Drive. The trendy club and barhopping crowd. Marsha smiled, relieved to be free of the feigned happiness of the South Beach full-time floating-disco-party team, junior varsity, second string. What with Chlamydia, herpes, and gonorrhea creeping around, not to mention AIDS. Hadn't they just done a show on the misery of venereal warts, images of rashes and itches giving her the willies right on the set.

Having one man-even a part-time married man-was better than a bunch of sweaty one-night stands. Even though her man was, more often than not, a thirty-minute slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am stand. Which is why she didn't consider it cheating to spend an occasional night with a carefully chosen lover in a more leisurely mode.

Marsha stretched a hand across the sheets and touched a warm thigh. She heard the regular, measured breaths of peaceful sleep and smiled again. It had been wonderful for them both, better than she had dared hope for something so new, a warmth that had grown slowly, gently caressing her, building into a flame that had nearly consumed her. Better than with

There was a stirring next to her and she watched her lover turn to one side. Great body, too. Silently, Marsha climbed out of bed. She had tossed her blue silk dress, specially chosen by her fashion consultant, across a chair. Her matching spike-heeled shoes, her panty hose, and discarded uplift bra formed a trail from living room to bedroom. Naked, Marsha entered the bathroom and closed the door. She removed the tinted contact lenses and scrubbed three layers of makeup from her face. There hadn't been time before, it had happened so fast. She slipped into a black silk camisole, headed for the tiny kitchen, and grabbed a low-fat vanilla yogurt from the refrigerator. Then she sat down at a desk in a corner of the living room and turned on her computer.