HCC 115 - Borderline

by Lawrence Block

  The headwaiter was a slender Mexican with oriental, almond-shaped eyes. He wore a black tuxedo that was a little too large for him. His shoes were black and pointed.

  Marty found a ten dollar bill, folded it lengthwise and slapped it into the headwaiter’s palm, and it disappeared quickly.

  “I want a table up front,” he said. “A good table.”

  “A very good table,” said the Mexican. He was smiling.

  “I want to be able to smell the sex,” Marty said, “A ringside seat for the bouts. You got that?”

  “Si,” the Mexican said. “This way, please.”

  Marty stepped aside so that Meg could follow the Mexican. He walked behind her, letting his eyes give Delia’s Place the once-over. The club was plush by Mexican standards, shabby by American ones. U.S. tourists filled the small tables. There was no floorshow yet, just a three-piece mariachi band, playing poorly, and the tourists talked volubly over the music and did a lot of heavy drinking. They were mostly men, but a few had women with them.

  The table they wound up at was the best in the house, front and center, and just inches from the stage. There was a bed in the center of the stage, a large double bed with flat black sheets. Marty smiled; the black sheets were a good touch. They would make for nice contrast. White flesh and black sheets—a pretty picture.

  “A bottle of your best tequila,” he told the waiter who came to their table. “No food just now. The tequila is all.”

  “Tequila,” the man said. He left to get it.

  “Have you been here before?”

  He looked at Meg. “Never,”’ he said.

  “I’ve heard about these places. I always wanted to go to one.”

  “I never got around to it before,” he said. “It’s a convenient set-up. You watch the show, if any of the performers appeals, you arrange to meet her in a back room for a half hour or so. First you watch and then you play games of your own.”

  “Will we do that?”

  He shrugged. “If you want.”

  “I think I’d like that,” she said. “To watch you make love to one of these whores. I’d like that.”

  “What would you like about it?”

  “I don’t know. It would be exciting, I think. I’ve made love with you, and first I’ll watch somebody make love to one of the whores, and then I can watch you with the whore. Sort of a combination, I suppose.”

  “And then what? You want a man for yourself?”

  “I’ve got you, Marty.”

  He laughed easily. “This is debauchery,” he told her. “You can have all the men you want. I won’t even be jealous.”

  “Not even a little?”

  “Not even a little.”

  “I think maybe I’d rather you were a little jealous.”

  The waiter saved him the trouble of thinking up an answer to her last line. The man set a bottle of tequila on the table, placed a small glass in front of Meg and another in front of Marty. Marty opened the bottle and spilled two ounces of the colorless liquid into each glass. They touched glasses and tossed the stuff off.

  “When does the show start?”

  “Soon,” he told her.

  Almost as he said the word, the mariachi band finished their number, packed their instruments under their arms and found another house to haunt. The house lights went all the way out and the club was blackened like London during the Blitz. Then a spotlight—a golden green—shot out to illuminate the stage. There was a girl in the spot who had taken her place while lights were out.

  Marty looked at her. She was a Mexican, her skin a golden brown, her hair short and dark. She smiled at the audience and her white teeth flashed. She was of medium height, with an hourglass figure. Most of the sand was still in the top half. Her breasts were huge, her waist slender, her hips round and just full enough.

  “I wan’ to welcome you to Delia’s Place,” she said. “I hope you have good time. Now do show start.”

  The girl was wearing a pale green dress which the spotlight set off nicely. Now a muted horn began to play somewhere, and the girl went into a clumsy but effective dance. She sashayed back and forth, letting the audience get a good look at her body. She reached in back with one hand and tugged a small string. The dress, designed for just such an occasion, promptly fell away to the floor of the stage.

  She wore no underwear. Her bare body was the same golden brown hue all over, and her figure was perfect. Marty looked at the firm breasts, the tiny waist. He glanced across the table at Meg, who was watching the Mexican girl with breathless attention.

  “Like her?” he asked.

  “Shhh. This is interesting.”

  Marty chuckled, filled both their glasses with tequila. He downed his in a swallow but Meg didn’t even pick up her glass. He set his down empty, looked again at the Mexican girl. She was holding her breasts in her own hands, bouncing them up and down. She pinched her own nipples and Marty watched them grow stiff in response to the self-administered stimulation. She reached lower and stroked her flat stomach, then reached lower still and began to caress herself, making small moans of simulated desire as she did so.

  Meg’s eyes were gleaming now, Marty saw. Meg was excited. He remembered how she had responded to the pictures. Evidently she liked vicarious kicks, he thought. She was all hot over the Mex girl.

  The Mexican girl moaned once and then the spotlight died and the room was dark again. Marty blinked in the dark. If that was all there was to it, he thought, then Delia’s Place was picking its customers. But evidently it wasn’t. The light went on again—a white spot this time. Now a man had joined the girl. The man was a Mexican, evidently in his middle twenties. He had no clothes to remove, because he was already conveniently naked.

  The girl turned to face the man. She began to dance at him, her breasts swaying, her hips twitching. The man let her come closer. His hands reached out and accepted her breasts. He fondled them and the girl writhed in his hands, moaning louder and louder with desire.

  Marty watched them, watched Meg as well. The horn—a baritone sax, he decided—was still moaning along with the girl, spinning out a gutbucket blues. Meg was entranced. He could tell how hot she was. Plenty hot, he decided. Hot enough to burn.

  The man was holding the girl by her breasts now. She was dancing backward, moving toward the bed. The man held onto her breasts and moved with her. The backs of her thighs pressed up against the bed. The man closed in. He let go of her breasts and let his arms slip around her body. One hand held her by her buttocks while the other was planted in the center of her back: He kissed her, their mouths glued together, and her breasts flattened against his sleek, hairless chest.

  Marty could see the beads of sweat on their bodies. He could almost feel the heat emanating from them.

  Gently, the man pushed the girl backward. She lay on the bed facing the audience with her head down on a pillow and her feet still planted upon the floor of the stage. Her breasts pointed up at the ceiling. The man stood in front of her with his back to the audience. His hands reached again for her breasts. He held a nipple in each hand and began to rotate her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. The girl moaned louder and louder and the sax wailed in the background.

  Marty looked at Meg again. It wasn’t hard to see how excited she was. She was handling herself now. With one hand she stimulated her own breasts. Her other hand was out of sight beneath the table. Marty grinned. He could guess what she was doing with it.

  The Mex girl’s thighs were parted now. The man stepped aside for a moment so that the audience could examine the girl. Then he resumed his place and stepped in closer. His hands gripped the girl’s thighs, pressing them still further apart.

  Then he began.

  The girl on the black sheet writhed like a snake. Meg, too, was moaning. The girl’s breasts heaved. Her feet left the floor and her long legs wound around the man’s thighs, gripping him. Her hips churned, meeting his lust with her lust. The girl moaned, and the baritone sax moaned with he
r.

  * * *

  “Jesus,” Lily said. “You’d think somebody was killing that broad. What’s the matter with her?”

  Cassie laughed. “That’s Chita,” she said, “Chita’s the best groaner in the business. She can carry on like that when she don’t feel a thing. With a trick, for example. She can make some stupid jerk think he’s sending her like to the moon.”

  Lily didn’t say anything. When Chita was finished it was going to be her turn. Not right away, of course; first the mariachi band would make some bad music for ten or fifteen minutes while waiters brought fresh drinks around and while men who were ready for action left to meet Chita or some of the other girls. Then, after the intermission was over, she and Cassie would be next on the program. She could tell that Cassie was hot just thinking about it. She herself was not. It was something of a kick to make it with Cassie, but making it privately was different than making it for an audience. Lily was fairly certain that the act was going to be an act all the way as far as she herself was concerned. She would do what she was supposed to do, and she would lie there while Cassie did her part, but she didn’t expect to get much of a bang out of the whole thing. It would be boring as hell.

  “You got to give Ringo credit,” Cassie was saying now. “The way he has that horn grooving in the background, picking up Chita’s moans and cooking along with her. That’s the whole bit about this type of scene, Lily. What they do on the stage is nothing. It’s the extra little kicks you can supply so the guy watching thinks he’s seeing something different.”

  “Solid.”

  “You got to make like a production out of it, Lily. The little extra kicks make it special. I mean, a guy may wig just seeing another guy slipping it to a chick. But it’s a bigger kick when they do something far out, or when they do it with bells ringing.”

  “I’m hip,” Lily said. She was getting into her costume now, a frilly little-girl dress, pink and white and ruffled.

  “Take that dress,” Cassie said. “Another good idea of Ringo’s. It makes you look about twelve years old, and you’ve got a baby face to go with it. The figure is no baby shape, but that’s okay as it is. It’s hot enough for a cat to watch two chicks grooving together, but it gets even hotter when one of them looks like a kid. Get it?”

  “Got it.”

  “I could tell you something,” Cassie went on. “Something that would have old Ringo squirming in his pants if he knew about it. You know that cat up there with Chita? The cat she’s doing all the moaning about?”

  “I don’t know his name.”

  “His name’s Pancho. And this’ll bust you up, Lily. He’s Chita’s brother.”

  “What?”

  Cassie’s eyes sparkled. “Her brother, Lily. I swear to God. One night Chita got smashed on tequila and put me hip. She told me he was the first guy who ever made it with her, when she was twelve and he was fourteen. He caught her while she was taking a bath and he copped her cherry before she knew what it was all about. They’ve been making it ever since. She takes all the tricks she can handle, but Pancho’s the only cat who ever gets her for free.”

  “I suppose they want to keep it in the family.”

  “I don’t know what it is, but that’s how it swings. And if Ringo knew about it, you can bet he’d put the audience wise. Can you imagine watching a chick making it with her brother?”

  “If that’s her kick,” Lily said, “then more power to her. But why in hell did she stop moaning? Are they done?”

  “They’re not done.”

  “So why no moans and groans?”

  “Because they’re doing it another way,” Cassie said, a silly smile on her thin face. “And she can’t moan now, Lily. It’s impossible.”

  * * *

  Meg was still shaking. Her body ached dully with desire and throbbed with need. The house lights were on now, and the waiter was bringing them a fresh bottle of tequila, and the same intrepid trio was playing mariachi music. But Meg’s mind still whirled with the memory of the Mexican guy and the Mexican gal, loving like savages in the spotlight just a few yards away.

  There had been a moment when she had almost left her chair, had very nearly torn off her own clothing and leaped onto the stage to join in the fun. She had wanted to throw herself upon the contorted bodies on the bed, had wanted to add her own sweat to the pool of perspiration upon the black sheet. But she had controlled herself until the impulse passed.

  She looked at Marty. It was strange—she was very highly sexed-up now, so much so that she felt ready to explode, but still she had no immediate desire to make love to Marty. He was a perfect lover and the whole night long had never failed to excite her. But now she was more concerned with a different sort of excitement. The show was driving her mad, not because she needed a man’s embrace but because it was so exotic, so forbidden. There was a genuinely evil aspect to it, and this sense of evil was driving her wild.

  Now Marty was sniffing the air, a bemused expression on his face. “That smell,” he said. “Do you recognize it?”

  “No.”

  “Ever smoke marijuana?”

  “Never.”

  “That’s what it is,” he told her. “And somebody’s smoking one whole hell of a lot of it.”

  “Isn’t it illegal in Mexico?”

  “Sure, but so’s prostitution. Like to try some?”

  “I don’t know. What will it do to me?”

  “Probably knock you on your ear. Not like alcohol. You won’t pass out. You’ll just get higher and higher.”

  She was already wonderfully high, but she wanted more, more of everything. She told him to get some and he called the waiter over to the table.

  “Marijuana,” he said. “Four or five cigarettes.”

  When the waiter came back, leaving five slender brown cigarettes with twisted ends on the table, Marty handed one to her and put another between his own lips. He lit them both and she took a drag of hers. It tasted a little like a Turkish cigarette she had smoked once. She did not particularly like or dislike the taste.

  “Hold the smoke in your lungs longer,” Marty suggested.

  “Why?”

  “So you absorb it into your bloodstream. That’s what gets you high. The more you get into your blood, the higher you get and the faster you get there. Just hold it as long as you can.”

  Meg closed her eyes and smoked. On the first try, she coughed almost immediately upon inhaling and lost the bulk of the smoke. After that she began to get the hang of it.

  It was working before she realized it. She finished the first cigarette and used Marty’s lighter to start a second. Midway through the second, she realized that her head was light, that colors were brighter than before, that the mariachi music sounded good for the first time. Marty said something to her, something very trivial, and it seemed hysterically funny. She started to laugh and could not stop. She simply went on laughing until she was gasping for breath.

  “Marty.”

  “What, baby?”

  “I’m high, Marty.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you high?”

  “I’m getting an edge on.”

  “I’m so high, Marty. And so hot!” That, she thought, was certainly the truth. She was so hot she was going to set the whole night club on fire. Instead of calming her sexual urges, the marijuana had made her realize just how excited she was. She closed her eyes and felt the blood flowing in her loins, felt the warmth that flooded her big breasts.

  So hot. She spilled tequila into her glass and drank it right down. It settled in her stomach. She let her eyes close again and felt the warmth of the Mexican firewater in her belly.

  “When does the show start again, Marty?”

  “Soon, baby.”

  “Good.”

  He stood up now, moved his chair so that he was sitting next to her instead of across from her. He put his arm around her shoulder. She took his hand and positioned it on her breast. His fingers flexed and she shivered, her blood poundin
g through her veins. She took his other hand and wedged it up under her dress.

  His hand moved further upward, he caressed her and she sobbed.

  “Warm,” he said.

  “Play with me, Marty. Oh, God!”

  * * *

  There was no moon. Clouds masked the stars. It was night, a dark night, and it was time to begin.

  Weaver left the hotel without speaking to the old man behind the desk. He walked through the streets, detoured through darker alleyways. It was still a little too early, he thought, because there were still too many people on the streets, too much automobile traffic. Still, it was time to begin, time to search. His first victim, the girl in Tulsa, had been an accident of fate. She had blundered across his path. But there was no reason to assume that he would be that lucky again.

  He couldn’t wait for the next one to come to him. He would have to seek her out, whoever she might be, wherever she was now. He would have to find her and stalk her, and when the time was right he would strike like a black panther in the night, like a vampire.

  On Perry Street, not far from his hotel, he wandered into a bar. It was a skid row sort of place with a strong beer and urine smell. The television set was on, tuned in on an old Gary Cooper western. Three wine drinkers held up one end of the bar. A woman, a little drunk and a little slutty, sat at the far end. She turned when Weaver came in, and she flashed him a professionally brilliant smile.

  He avoided her at first, walking to the middle of the bar and asking for a glass of draft beer. The bartender drew a beer for him and he took a sip. He had never especially cared for the taste of beer. He did not especially care for it now.

  “Hey,” the woman called. “Come here, Mac.”

  He turned and really looked at her for the first time. She was somewhere in her thirties but it was hard to tell just where. The liquor she had been drinking hid her age neatly enough; she could have been thirty or forty or anywhere in between. Her hair was dark brown, her mouth painted with a great deal of lipstick. Her breasts were large and heavy.