The Secret of Washer Number Six

“I always did what I was supposed to do,’ Ravina Varnish explained to the police officer with the presidential name, “and no good came of it. My sister Babette was always bad, and she had the best time.”

Even though the suspect appeared rumpled and disheveled, a sensual radiance oozed from her, as if her mess of an appearance was the result of mad, raucous monkey love. Officer Calvin Coolidge couldn’t help falling under her spell. Strangely intoxicated by her blood red lips, blood red nails, and the dried blood on her forearm that was salmon pink, he found himself perspiring profusely and hoping the sweat would be absorbed by his T-shirt. “When did you stop doing what you were supposed to do?” he asked, loosening his royal blue necktie.

“The minute I turned eighteen. The door to my cage opened wide and I flew the hell out.” Ravina studied Calvin’s face. “I’ll bet you’re a real heartbreaker.”

“Why do you say that?” he asked, leaning against his dark wooden desk on which sat a computer, a notebook, and a large metal stapler.

“Because of your broad shoulders and blond hair, your muscular thighs and jumbo stapler. You’re the boy next door all grown up and eager to taste life, aren’t you.”

“If I am,” Calvin replied, “you’re the girl next door all beaten up and tired of the life you’ve tasted.”

“Well, I’ve tasted just about everything,” she said in tone that was part salacious, part sick and tired.

“I’ll bet you have.” Calvin unbuttoned the top two buttons of his sky blue, buttondown Oxford shirt.

“So what happens when you discover the straight dope, huh?” Ravina asked. “You get a medal and I’m thrown in the slammer?”

“Not necessarily. But a man is dead, and it sure looks like you killed him.”

“Appearances can be deceiving, Detective. Don’t you know that?”

“Sure I do. But you were standing over Moose Churchill’s lifeless body with a smoking nine-millimeter handgun. That’s a hard one to misinterpret.”

“It just might turn out that you need to hire an interpreter.”

“What I need to do is learn more about you, Ravina Varnish.”

“Like what?” she asked, annoyed.

‘Everything,” he said. “Why don’t you start with your leisure activities?”

Discussing her leisure activities wasn’t something Ravina was eager to do at the moment, but she realized she had little choice. “I like to speed date, meditate, and read biographies of Marilyn Monroe. I play the lute, the flute and the French horn. I can whip up a mean fricassee. Every day I open jars of juice for the elderly Jews in my building. I also do the shopping for a paraplegic paralegal. She has no trouble getting to work, but you try getting to the front of a crowded deli counter on crutches.”

Calvin examined Ravina’s face as if searching for some clue to her strange, disturbing psyche. She held still, allowing him to look. “You like being admired, don’t you,” he said.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Ravina said as she crossed one leg over the other, causing her plum stiletto to fall off her foot. “You’re thinking I resemble Academy Award nominee Naomi Watts.”

“How did you get involved with the Laundromat?” Calvin asked, ignoring the comment and fetching the stiletto. Ravina held her foot firmly in the air while the officer gently placed the shoe where it belonged. The sweat soaking his T-shirt began to show on his buttondown Oxford.

“Real estate mogul Gregory Gitt offered me the manager gig and I grabbed it,” she said. “I decided to take that rotting dump and turn it into a showplace. Twenty shining washing machines, sixteen spotless dryers. Every hundredth load in washer number ten got a prize. The proceeds from every sheet of fabric softener went to the March of Dimes. I even changed the name of the place from Coin Laundry to Ravina’s Rinse Cycle. I got such a kick strolling up and down the aisles, making sure my machines were working, checking out the different kinds of underwear in people’s loads. I also threw the hottest parties.”

“Sounds like an ideal situation.”

“It was,” Ravina said with a touch of sadness. “While it lasted. I knew it was too good to last a long time.”

“Where’s the body of Babs DuBarry?” Calvin asked.

Ravina froze. “I didn’t strangle Babs DuBarry. Moose Churchill did.”

“Ah, so she was strangled,” Calvin said with intense interest. “Where’s the body?”

“I told you enough for one night, don’t you think?” she asked.

The disappearance of Babs DuBarry had created a major uproar. Despite the fact that this notorious woman’s past was peppered with pandering, perjury, bribery, battery, burglary and embezzlement, the tempestuous Babs was turning her life around. After
a lengthy interview process, she had landed a job as a Montessori school teacher in
St. Cloud. But Babs couldn’t resist performing one final felony, an act that proved to be her undoing.

“Tell me about Moose Churchill,” Calvin said.

Ravina took a deep, mordant breath. “Moose Churchill, the reason I’m in this stinking quagmire, was a cadre of contradictions: cranky but cool, cantankerous but calm. And boy was he conniving! He could coax a kid out of a candy bar.” Suddenly Ravina’s eyes were glazed with fatigue. “Do you happen to have an amphetamine?” she asked.

“Uh no, I don’t. You need to talk, Ravina,” Calvin said. “Your life depends on it. You need to tell me how you got mixed up with Moose Churchill.”

Ravina heaved a heavy sigh, then recalled a day three months earlier.

Three Months Earlier

It was a dry, gray autumn evening. The air outside Ravina’s Rinse Cycle smelled of ash due to the blaze that burned the greenhouse to the ground six blocks east, on the corner of Jaundice and Krantz. Ravina’s friend Dolores Churchill Ben David owned the place, and whispers spread with the wind: Had Dolores been growing more than daffodils and bougainvillea?

Ravina, in a buttercup-yellow pantsuit, the kind of outfit Gwyneth Paltrow might wear to a Pap smear, stood next to washer number one to greet her guests as they arrived.

Every heavyweight in town showed up to the shindig. The mayor’s orange-haired mistress Camille Crookshank arrived with her hungry half-brother Harvey. Sex surrogate Anouk Stein arrived with her bulimic half-sister Lana. Entertainer Beneatha Sink arrived in full drag, carrying a load of laundry. “Throw it in number nine,” Ravina told the glamorous goddess.

Notorious pimp Teddy Pallbearer escorted his squeeze Chevrolet Schildkraut, a nubile new hooker in the ‘hood. Airline heiress Vanessa United flew through the door with a swarthy pilot on her arm. “I adore the new ‘do,’ Ravina chirped. “Makes you look like renowned American soprano Renee Fleming.”

Ravina was dazzled to see post office manager Amy Esther Marashinsky enter the Laundromat wearing her silk organza wedding dress. “Why the outfit?” Ravina inquired.

“Who says you can only wear a wedding dress once?”

“Good thinking. Where’s the cute hubby?”

“I threw him the hell out,” she said. “Caught him cheating with some Moroccan tramp.”

Recovering from successful hip replacement surgery, bus company owner Manny Archibald arrived with his chestnut-haired trophy wife. Podiatrist Benjamin Lolly entered with a platinum blonde he had recently cured of severe bunions on her big toe. Professional witness Bingo Frost made a solo entrance in an elegant silk camisole dress that hid her hefty thighs. “My God,” Ravina said, “you’re a doppelganger for Queen Silvia of Sweden!”

“A gang banger for who?” Bingo asked.

A copious flow of guests arrived as rhythm and blues blended softly with the clamor. Pink elephants and Cancun rum runners were the popular cocktails. A platter of cheese puffs and another of chicken satay sat atop washers number four and five with a bowl of sesame kale a few inches away. There were veal shanks and roasted nuts to nibble on too, not to mention sponge cakes soaked in Grand Marnier.

“As a professional witness, what exactly do you do?” Chevrolet asked Bingo.

“I take the stand and swear I saw this, swear I saw that, whatever they want me to say.”

“Does it pay well?” she asked.

Bingo held up a glistening five karat bauble on her left ring finger. “A bonus from my last boss. But that’s only if I get them off,” she said, her eyes scanning the room.

“I get my clients off all the time and no one gives me presents like that,” Chevrolet said.

Close to nine o’clock, Moose Churchill exploded through the entrance like a massive mudslide. With a face that seemed mauled by a Mack truck, he resembled a creature from the Neanderthal era yet he oddly managed to exude a boyish charm. “Do you have an invitation?” Ravina asked. “Because I don’t know who the hell you are.”

“I’m a guest of Dolores Churchill Ben David,” he responded defiantly. “I’m her brother Moose.”

“Dolores hasn’t arrived yet,” Ravina said.

“That’s because her greenhouse burned down. You gonna make me wait for her outside and catch emphysema?”

“I guess you can stay,” Ravina said. “I like your mustard-colored shirt.”

“Thanks.”

“Matches your teeth.”

“Where’s the vodka?” Moose asked.

“Washer number six,” Ravina told him. “The ice is in seven. Glasses are on the counter under the detergent dispenser.” The hostess kept her eyes on the firm round buttocks of her unexpected arrival as he disappeared into the crowd.

An hour later, when a cluster of guests had gathered around washer number fifteen to snort carefully drawn lines of cocaine, the front door opened and Dolores Churchill Ben David, in a state of quasi-hysteria, rushed up to Ravina. “My greenhouse is gone,” she sobbed. “Every shrub I nurtured is nothing but ashes.”

“Oh sweetie,” Ravina said, “I’m so sorry. Do you think it was an accident?”

“Accident my ass,” Dolores snapped. “Babs DuBarry did it. Is she in the house?”

“No, but she did RSVP so I expect to see her.” Ravina couldn’t help noticing Dolores’s long painted fingernails, each with a colorful design resembling a stained glass window.

“You like them?” Dolores asked, holding her hand in the air. “Instead of going to church on Sunday, I look at my nails and it’s like I’m there.”

Moose ran up and grabbed his sister’s attention. “Are you doing all right?” he asked.

“My baby brother,” she said. “Yeah I’m jubilant. Rollicking in my Prada espadrilles.”

“I’ll get the one who did this,” he said.

“You’re all talk,” Dolores told him. “Did you meet Ravina?”

“Sure,” he said. “She greeted me when I walked through the door. I keep undressing her with my eyes.”

“Just don’t do it with your hands,” Dolores bellowed. She whispered in Ravina’s ear, “Watch out for this one. He’s trouble.”

Surrounded by a circle of four strapping thugs in black Versace suits, Babs DuBarry slipped into the party. With her Goth eyes, mocha-colored lips, and frizzy blonde hair, she was a beautiful but odd-looking creature. A legend in her incestuous community, Babs had just added arson to her long and lurid resume. In order to maintain a low profile, she and her posse planted themselves in the rear, next to dryer number nineteen. Only when enticing tango music pulsated through the speakers did she leave her circle and dazzle the crowd with her exotic, erotic, hypnotic moves. This killer had charisma. (She’d also taken tango lessons as a teenager.)

The party seemed to be a success. Ravina saw to it that everyone in attendance was having as good a time as possible. She even managed to play matchmaker, hooking up Camille Crookshank’s half-brother with Anouk Stein’s half-sister. She did the same for Amy Esther Marashinsky and Montserrat Garcia Crescendo, a smoldering import king who had recently lost his wife Jill. (He literally lost her at Disney World on a crowded Sunday, and she never turned up.) As guests began to say their goodbyes, Moose and Ravina gravitated toward one another. “Why did Babs burn the greenhouse down?” she asked.

“She was growing the same stuff as my sister and the bitch didn’t like the competition. Don’t worry, she’ll pay for it.”

The moment the last guest left the premises, Moose pinned Ravina to the wall next to the bulletin board on which tacked index cards announced rooms for rent, stoves for sale, and various perversions performed. He kissed her. She tasted tobacco and vodka and a little veal in his mouth, but she didn’t care. The kiss became so passionate that the couple spent the next six minutes making mad, wild love on top of washing machines number seven, eight and nine.

This was the start of a tumultuous affair. For two euphoric weeks, Moose spent every evening at the Laundromat, washing his greasy garments and gazing at his love-hungry lady. Ravina was mystified by her attraction to this lug, but she didn’t resist it. Moose seemed genuinely interested in hearing about Ravina’s lonely childhood, her beloved turtles and her abandoned pipe dreams. She felt comfortable confessing her goal to become respected.

The storybook romance came to an unexpected, abrupt halt when Moose marched into the Laundromat late one night, wheeling a jumbo, hard-sided suitcase. “What’s in that thing?” Ravina asked him.

He gently sat on the large piece of luggage. “The cops always find the corpse,” he explained. “You could dump it in the river or bury it in a ditch, they’ll discover it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked.

“One place they’d never look is inside a washing machine if it was in the middle of a rinse cycle. That’s why I brought DuBarry’s body.”

“You’re sitting on the body of Babs DuBarry?” Ravina asked, horrified.

“Yeah, but don’t worry, it’s hacked up into small chunks,” he said, avoiding eye contact. “You can program one of your machines to run continuously, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” she said. “But I don’t think this is such a keen idea.” Ravina expressed her revulsion in no uncertain terms. Moose told her some of the heinous acts Babs DuBarry had performed, like smothering her own mother and torturing a ten-year-old girl who knew too much. That made Ravina feel slightly better.

Against her better judgment, Ravina gave Moose access to washing machine number six. She promised to make sure it was always running and always locked. That, Ravina hoped, would be the end of that.

But it wasn’t. Exactly one week later, Moose came strolling into the Laundromat with the same suitcase. This time, the chopped body of Montserrat Garcia Crescendo was
stuffed between its solid metal sides, and Moose requested the unlimited use of washing machine number seven. Ravina asked why he butchered the import king, but the anger bubbled so intensely in her veins that she couldn’t hear his cockamamie explanation.

“The answer is no,” Ravina told him. She refused to turn her respected place of business into a depository for cut-up cadavers. “I want you to clean out washer number six, and never step foot in this Laundromat again.”

“Too late to play Snow White,” he said. “You’re an accessory.” He promised Ravina that if she didn’t cooperate, she’d be stuffed into washer number eight with a cup of Tide and a capful of bleach. In the end, she gave in.

“I knew you’d see the light, baby,” Moose said.

What Ravina really saw was the dark face of evil, a monster who chopped people into tiny bits like ground beef, a killer who casually wheeled around a corpse in a suitcase like it was his clothing for a weekend getaway to Antigua.

The following day, a sloe-eyed police officer wandered into the Laundromat and questioned Ravina about Babs DuBarry. He looked around, nonchalantly opened a few of the washers, not expecting to find anything. Luckily, as Moose predicted, the officer didn’t think to disturb a washing machine during its rinse cycle.

Back To The Present

“So it was a form of self-defense,” Calvin said to Ravina, relieved to learn that the entrancing woman in his office wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.

“A combination of self-defense and trying to keep my business afloat,” she explained. “I decided to blow his brains out on a Sunday, right after brunch.”

“How exactly did that happen?”

“We drove to Mamie’s Organic Cafe on the corner of Sixth and Cartilage. Moose stuffed his face with Canadian bacon, pumpkin pancakes and pork sausages, then we took a hike in the hills and I blasted him in the head. Look at it this way: The scumbag was suffering from irritable bowel syndrome, so I put him out of his misery.”

“What you need is a good lawyer,” he suggested.

“I know that. And I want Dolores Churchill Ben David.”

“You want a botanist to represent you?” Calvin said.

“She has two separate careers, like movie stars who become restaurateurs. The law practice is her priority,” Ravina explained. “The greenhouse was her second business.”

“In any case, I don’t think the sister of the deceased can be your lawyer.”

“This isn’t ‘any case.’ It’s a highly unusual one, and I want Dolores. Is there some nutty law that would prevent me from retaining her?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Calvin admitted.

“Then she’s who I want.”

Exhausted, it was time for Ravina to be taken to county jail. “I’m sure I’ll see you soon, Officer,” she said. With sleepy seductiveness, she approached Calvin and brought her lips as close to his mouth as possible without touching it. Calvin felt disoriented, intoxicated. Lunging in for a kiss was as tempting as scarfing down a rich tiramisu or reading a diary that was left open by accident. But Ravina didn’t let it happen. She abruptly turned and sauntered out.

The very next day, attorney Dolores Churchill Ben David conferred with her new client. “If I’d known what my demented brother was up to, I would’ve ripped his heart out with my bare hands.”

“Do you think we have a shot in hell for acquittal?” Ravina asked.

“You bet your chunky ass we do! I defended Beth Krebs Noonan, president of The Knitting Guild, remember? This nutty dame poked a fellow knitter in her one good eye, and for five minutes she was the most hated woman in America. But I got her off, and I’ll get you off too, even if I have to sleep with the judge and every member of the jury so help me God.”

Ravina felt confident. She was glad her future was in this able woman’s beautifully manicured hands.

The trial turned into a media circus, with crowds of reporters planted outside the courthouse every morning. The general consensus was that Ravina would be found guilty as sin and sentenced to life behind bars. But at the final hour, Dolores Churchill Ben David delivered a spectacular closing statement that mesmerized all who were present.

“If the defendant was represented by another attorney,” she began, “that attorney would now call upon yours truly to take the stand. But I can’t cross-examine myself, can I,” she said. A few chuckles rippled through the courtroom. “As you know, I’m the sister of Moose Churchill. And I’d like to tell you about our parents, Norman and Gloria.” With grace and flair, she took a very long, very dramatic sip of Diet 7-Up. “They didn’t want kids, those two. Hell, they partied all night and slept all day. Worked in the drug and prostitution trade. Made us kids cook the meals and clean the toilet. My goal was to escape my nightmare environment and make something of myself. Moose’s was to escape his nightmare environment and seek revenge on the world. My brother became a career criminal, robbing liquor stores, burglarizing nursing homes, beating up transvestites to steal the dough from their designer bags. He would just as soon shake your hand as slice your tongue.”

“I should’ve known something was wrong when Moose’s favorite activity as a teenager was tossing bowling balls out our tenth story window,” Dolores said with regret. She glanced at her client. “Ravina Varnish saw something in him, I don’t know what it was. I warned her about him, but it’s as difficult to douse the flames of passion as it is to re-route drug traffic through a police precinct. In his own demented way, Moose thought he was doing something heroic when he chopped Babs Du Barry into small pieces. He thought he was punishing her for the destruction of my greenhouse. It doesn’t take a shrink to see that he was punishing our parents. Let’s face it: We’ve all had the impulse to kill someone: a swindler, a waitress, an in-law, but common sense prevented us from doing it. My brother would’ve killed again because even though he was absolutely common, he had no common sense. There isn’t the slightest doubt that Ravina Varnish shot Moose Churchill in self-defense, and she deserves nothing more than a verdict of not guilty.”

It took the jury exactly twenty minutes to reach a verdict: Ravina Varnish was found not guilty of first degree murder. Cheers reverberated throughout the city.

Back in his office, Calvin wondered about Ravina’s plans now that she avoided decades of steel bars, stale bread and short-haired cellmates. “Will you go back to the Laundromat?” he asked.

“It’s my home,” she said. “As soon as I get the blood out of the washing machines, I’ll be back in business.”

“I’m glad,” he quietly said as he approached Ravina.

“Why are you glad?” she asked.

“Because when you’re happy, I’m happy.”

The sexual tension that had been building between these two souls finally erupted as Ravina ripped off Calvin’s white Oxford shirt, causing clear little buttons to drizzle all over the office floor. The physical act of lovemaking lasted eleven minutes. Afterward, they sat naked on the desk, close enough for Ravina to feel the warmth of Calvin’s breath on her shoulder, close enough for Calvin to see the dark brown roots on Ravina’s scalp. “The minute I saw you, I knew we’d be together,” he said with tenderness.

“I could go for an egg salad sandwich, can you?” Ravina asked.

Hand in hand, the duo strolled two blocks to the The Paprika Bar & Grill. “This may sound premature,” Calvin said, “but I want to be with you for the rest of my life.”

“Is that a proposal?” she asked.

“If you want it to be,” he said with a smile.

“You won’t be embarrassed to take me home for Thanksgiving with the folks?”

“They can hardly wait to meet you,” he said.

Ravina led Calvin to a deep leather banquette in the northwest corner of the bar & grill. The scent of paprika permeated the place. “Do you want a big wedding?” he asked.

Ravina took a few moments to consider. “I want the biggest wedding this town has ever seen. I want Vera Wang to design my gown. I want Dolores Churchill Ben David to be my maid of honor.”

“Where do you want it to take place?”

“There’s only one option,” Ravina said. “I want to walk down the aisle with a row of twenty washing machines to my left and sixteen dryers to my right. I want the preacher to pronounce us husband and wife next to the bulletin board where people tack up index cards announcing rooms for rent, stoves for sale, and various perversions performed. I want my wedding to be held at Ravina’s Rinse Cycle. Is that OK with you, Detective?” she asked.

“It seems fitting,” he said.

“Seems fitting, huh?” she mocked. “You are so classy. I think you may be a good influence on my friends,” Ravina said.

“And I think your friends may be a good influence on me.”

Ravina laughed out loud. “As long as there are no arrests, Officer,” she said. “As long as there are no arrests.”