by Ray Garton
Anya Leaned Back and,
with Surprising Strength,
Lifted Davey with Her . . .
one hand between his shoulders and the other behind his head. She pressed his face to her neck.
"Bite me," she hissed. Her lips smacked wetly when she spoke; her mouth was sticky.
He tried to kiss her, but she wouldn't let him; she kept pushing his head back to her neck.
"I said . . . bite me . . . Davey Owen!"
Books by Ray Garton
Invaders from Mars
Live Girls
Published by POCKET BOOKS
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Another Original publication of POCKET BOOKS
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020
Copyright © 1987 by Ray Garton
Cover artwork copyright © 1987 Ron Lesser
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020
ISBN: 0-671-62628-0
First Pocket Books printing January 1987
10 987654321
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks
of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Printed in the U.S.A.
Dedicated to:
Roberta Lannes
My Patty; my Beth;
my proof that truth is, indeed,
stranger than fiction.
Acknowledgments
While mine is the only name on the cover of this book, there are several others greatly responsible for its existence. I'd like to thank them here, in no particular order. Scott Sandin and Derek Sandin for their helpful suggestions and priceless friendship; Michael Bradley for his patience, geographical assistance, and support through four books; Susan Davis, Ellie Gallardo, Ruth James, Debbie Allen, Anita Mistal, and Paul Meredith for keeping me awake.
And an extra special thanks to Sarah Wood, Jessie Horsting, Nancy Lambert, Joan Myers, Francis Feighan, Steve Boyett, and my parents, Ray and Pat Garton, for late nights, lots of laughs, and the kind of understanding that's hard to come by.
AFTER WORK, VERNON MACY HAD THE CABDRIVER DROP him off a few blocks from Times Square, just to be safe. Briefcase in hand, he walked the rest of the way, his gray eyes darting mouselike around him, making sure there was no one around who might recognize him, in which case he would hurry down to the subway, catch a train home, and forget the whole thing.
He wasn't a tall man. He had a big nose and his salt-and-pepper hair, now covered with a gray fedora, had begun to disappear on top nearly fifteen years ago. His skin was pasty and flabby from forty-seven years of avoiding sunshine and exercise. When he wasn't sitting at his desk in the office, he was in his study at home, reading, smoking a cigar, doing anything to avoid being in the same room with Doris, his wife, or Janice, his twenty-two-year-old-daughter, who spent far too much time nervously flitting about her parents’ apartment and not nearly enough in her own, where she seemed to do nothing but snort coke with her unwashed boyfriend and postpone her college education.
To make the coming weekend at home more tolerable, Vernon Macy had decided to do something he'd never done before. Something he'd never thought of doing before.
A week ago, he had overheard two of the younger men in the office talking about the strip joints and peep shows in Times Square, and how some of the girls, if given generous tips, would give blow jobs through holes in the walls. At the time, Vernon Macy had given it little thought. But that night, lying in bed next to Doris, the perfume she applied several times a day filling the dark room with a sickening sweetness, he thought of what that young man had said, and Vernon Macy wondered....
And in the early morning of that Friday, as he ate his breakfast and as Doris complained about the length of his toenails, he decided that he would give it a try.
The lights of Times Square flashed and glittered with lives of their own. The litter on the sidewalk became more unpleasant: a pile of shit that may or may not have been left by some stray animal, a moist yellowish puddle that had caught and held a newspaper blowing in the breeze. Some of it was human: lying beside the trash cans, against walls, at the openings of alleys—old women wearing tattered feather boas and torn paper party hats, carrying all their belongings in shopping bags; old men with three-day beards, their ratty clothes stained and crusty, lifting bottle-shaped paper bags to ragged lips.
Vernon Macy tried not to notice. He pressed on as night gave way to the neon awakening of Times Square. He slowed before each strip joint, each peep show, each movie theater and video shop, trying to keep his head down as much as possible.
Which one?
How could he tell?
And what was he supposed to do once he got inside?
They were all so bright and brazen, with pictures of naked women stretched on their sides, sultry, pouty, seductive, the more intimate parts of their bodies only barely hidden from view. Men stood in the doorways, beckoning.
“Bee-yoo-ful nekkid girls!” one fat man with a plaid shirt said. “Dey's so fine, wish dey was mine! C'mon, gents, check ‘em out. Bee-yoo-ful nekkid girls!"
Vernon Macy passed that one. Too loud, too open. He wanted something quieter, perhaps a bit more hidden from view. They all seemed so brazen, though, so anxious to exhibit their treats to anyone who would slow long enough to watch.
He walked on.
Someone touched his elbow and he nearly dropped his briefcase, expecting to hear Doris's birdlike voice demanding to know why he was not home for the dinner she'd gone to such great lengths to prepare. Friday night was the night of their “special dinner” when she lit candles and brought out the best china for the exquisite gourmet meal she'd put together with the help of a videotape of Julia Child which she'd watched on the little television in the kitchen as she darted back and forth, talking to Julia now and then as she stirred and mixed.
Vernon Macy spun around and looked down on a wiry little woman wearing a pair of heart-shaped dimestore sunglasses with red frames and dark blue lenses. An old blue knit cap was stretched down over her greasy hair and only a few teeth remained in her wide, crooked smile.
“You got bus fare?” she rasped. “I gotta get outta here ‘cause there's some Russians chasin’ me. They know I know about how they been workin’ with the space aliens, so they tryin’ to make me—"
Macy turned from her, irritated but immensely relieved, and walked away as she rambled on and on behind him.
He almost missed the next one, almost passed right by without noticing.
There was no one out front. And only one sign. He stopped in front of the place and looked up at the blinking words:
LIVE
GIRLS
The letters flashed in red and the I in GIRLS flickered and buzzed softly. The sign was small compared to the others—no more than five feet wide, maybe six feet tall. The front of the place was black. No other signs, no lights, just a doorway with a black curtain hanging in place of a door.
Vernon Macy stepped forward.
The sounds of traffic and voices and music, the pulse of the whole city seemed to diminish behind him as he neared the curtained doorway. His muscles tensed and he almost paused, almost turned and caught a cab to go home to that Goddamned dinner.
But he didn't. He stepped through the midnight-black curtain of Live Girls.
1
____________________________
Monday
BY THE TIME DAVEY OWEN CLIMBED TH
E STEPS OUT OF the subway station at Broadway and Fifty-second, the rain that half an hour ago had been pounding against the panes of his apartment window had given way to a thin but chilling drizzle. The sky was dark with clouds that seemed to hover just above the towering buildings of the noisy city. As he started down the sidewalk, Davey opened his umbrella and lifted it over his head, hitching his shoulders forward. The hem of his overcoat flapped around his knees as he walked.
Weariness seemed to stick to the soles of his shoes, making each step an effort. He wanted to turn around, get back on the subway, go home and get drunk, maybe sit in front of the TV and wait for Beth to come back. He knew that would be a mistake, though; if she did not return, it would only make him feel worse.
IF she comes back? he thought. How long will I kid myself?
Then, after a few more steps:
As long as I need to.
He hurried through the doors of the building, collapsing the umbrella and tucking it under his arm as he stepped into the elevator.
“Good morning, Penn Publishing, may I help you?” Tammy answered the phone as Davey came out of the elevator. She sat behind a rectangular window across from the elevator, plump and rosy-cheeked. She smiled at Davey as he turned right and passed the window, walked to the big door at the end of the corridor. The lock buzzed and clicked loudly as Tammy pressed the release button at her desk.
Beyond the door, Davey took a left and began winding his way around the desks and cubicles, smiling dutifully at the others who were typing, talking on the phone, hunched over manuscripts. He went to his own cubicle in the far corner.
His stride was smooth and his smile looked genuine despite his dark mood. He was lean, of average height, with thick wavy brown hair, a few curls of which fell down on his forehead. At twenty-six, there were already wrinkles around his eyes. His features were not particularly strong—no sharp angles to his jaw, no pronounced cheekbones. It was a gentle face, the face of someone any father would be happy to see his daughter date.
Davey stared for a moment at the clutter on his desk, then removed his overcoat and hung it on the wall hook. He straightened the lapel of his suitcoat and adjusted his tie, glancing down at himself and looking forward, once again, to being able to afford a few new suits someday.
His cubicle was just that—a cubicle. It had three walls, one of which held two shelves with books and manuscripts and copies of the magazines cranked out weekly and monthly by Penn Publishing. There was just enough room for his desk, his chair, himself, and a visitor—if the visitor stood nice and straight. In the cubicle, Davey did work for just about every department in the office: Subscriptions, Research, Copyediting for fiction and nonfiction. Well before he was finished with one job, there was always another on his desk.
As he wearily seated himself, he found a note on his typewriter. Red ink, delicate feminine handwriting:
Davey—
Three more mss. for Brute Force.
Need a gun check ASAP.
Sheri
He lifted one of the manuscripts. The title: “I Blew Away the Punks Who Tried to Rape My Sister.” He scanned the first two pages and spotted several references to guns; he would have to verify their accuracy. He would call Morris at Target Guns in Jersey; Morris was an expert on guns and quite a fan of Brute Force magazine; he considered it an honor to contribute whatever he could.
Davey sighed, propped an elbow on the desktop, and put his chin in his palm, fighting the urge to put on his coat and go back home where he could read a good book, or the Times, maybe even this week's People, for Christ's sake. Anything would be better than the stuff Penn put out: vigilante rags, “true” crime and romance magazines, the kind of magazines that crowded grocery store racks with covers dulled by greasy fingerprints. But this was his job.
It was a job Beth had always held against him.
“Almost nine months I've been living in this dump with you,” she'd said to him angrily that morning, emptying her dresser drawers into her suitcase. “Nine months and you're still working for that cheap-shit publishing company, waiting for a break so you can maybe have a little extra money to play around with. But nothing ever happens. What,” she'd snapped, spinning around to face him, a strip of perspiration glowing on her upper lip, “you think somebody's just gonna walk in one day and hand you a Goddamned promotion? ‘cause you smile nice, maybe? Uh-uh, my friend. It doesn't work that way."
A sigh dragged heavily from deep inside Davey's chest and he shook his head to empty it of the echoes of her voice.
He'd tried to tell her about the promotion he'd be getting any day now. Fritz, one of the assistant editors, had left and his position was open. Davey was certain he'd get it because he'd been there the longest. It was time for him to move up, dammit. It seemed he'd been sitting in that little cubicle reading trash forever. He'd tried to tell Beth all of that, but it didn't do any good.
“I don't want to hear it, Davey,” she'd said. “Really. I mean, how long have you been working there? They know they can shit on you, so they're going to. They'll give the job to someone they can't push around.” She'd paused to slam the suitcase shut and flick the latches. “I know you, Davey. You'll stay there in your shitty little cubicle getting shitty little wages forever. And if I stay with you, what then? What about me?” She faced him. “I mean, I'm a very social person, y'know? I like to go out once in a while, right? You sure as hell can't afford to take me, and with the pennies I make selling tickets at the Union, I can't either. So I find some guys who can. Like I did last night. And last month. And a couple weeks before that. And I would just keep doing it. And, of course, you would put up with it.” She shook her head slowly. “No, Davey, I just don't want to hear it."
He belched hungrily. He'd missed breakfast that morning; Beth's departure had destroyed his appetite. He'd spent the morning, after his shower, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and his sketchpad, drawing. Some people smoked, some people cracked their knuckles. Davey Owen drew. He never knew exactly what he was drawing, even as his pencil swirled over the paper. He just pulled out whatever was inside of him and let it spill onto the page. That morning, he'd become more and more uncomfortable with the images appearing on the page. At first, hair. Then a forehead, an eye, another eye. He began to recognize the face he'd looked into so many times.
Beth.
He'd flipped the page and begun drawing again. The lines and curves began to take shape. A mouth. Her mouth, with that odd little slant on the left side that gave her a permanent smirk.
He'd torn out both pages and tossed them into the trash, leaving early for work.
At his desk, he considered going to the lounge for a cup of coffee, but decided not to, knowing that Chad Wilkes was probably there. Chad Wilkes was always there. And the coffee in the lounge was simply not worth an encounter with Chad Wilkes so early in the day.
“Son of a bitch.” He sighed, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. He ached with frustration.
Adjusting his chair, he leaned over “I Blew Away the Punks Who Tried to Rape My Sister” and turned to the first page, hoping he would see Casey sometime today. Seeing Casey always seemed to help.
Walter Benedek collapsed his umbrella and went into the lobby of his sister's apartment building.
“Hello, Norman,” he said to the doorman with a friendly nod.
“Good morning, Mr. Benedek,” the short round man replied with a smile, touching two fingers to the shiny black bill of his cap.
Benedek punched the UP button with his gloved thumb, then stood with hands folded in front, facing the silver mirrorlike doors of the elevator. He was a very tall man, with broad shoulders and a deep chest; he was hefty but not fat. His face was long and rubbery and had been compared, on occasion, by a few abhorrently honest people, to the face of a basset hound. His black hair was sprouting ever-growing patches of gray, and there were some wiry silver hairs mixed in with the bushy blackness of his eyebrows. He was forty-seven years old and l
ooked no younger, no older.
“Want me to call ahead, Mr. Benedek?” Norman asked.
“No, thanks. She's expecting me for breakfast."
The elevator arrived with a quiet ding and the doors rolled open silently. Benedek stepped inside, hit seventeen, and waited. The doors closed and he heard the music he'd come to hate so much playing from the speaker overhead, barely distinguishable. This morning it was a choir singing an old Beatles tune. Lots of strings. A soprano solo. Benedek took his gloves off and stuffed them into the pockets of his overcoat.
Walter Benedek's sister Doris Macy lived on the seventeenth floor. Vernon would be gone by now, presumably at work, but, Benedek thought, probably not. Janice, who didn't actually live there but certainly seemed to, would probably be watching game shows with her mother. And Doris. Well, Doris would probably be curled up on the sofa staring at the TV, but not really seeing whoever was giving away the money this half hour. She would be sitting there chewing a thumbnail, nervously twitching her slippered foot, worrying about Vernon.
She had come to Benedek a little over two weeks ago. He'd opened his apartment door to find her standing in the corridor, eyes narrow with worry. She was concerned about Vernon. He was acting ... different. He wasn't himself. He came home late from work, sometimes not until dawn, and then only to take a shower and go back to work. He didn't eat, lost his temper easily, and he was so very pale. At first, she told him, she'd thought he was having an affair. Then she'd become afraid for his health.