The redhead—the one who was doing everything to the blonde. Meg looked at the redhead and her mouth watered. She watched the redhead’s hands, the redhead’s lips.
Not a very well-constructed girl, that redhead. Almost hipless, and even more than almost breastless, with scrawny shanks and hollow eyes. And yet there was something compelling about the redhead, and something very very compelling about what the redhead was doing to the blonde.
The blonde, now—the blonde was beautiful, simply beautiful, and on that point there was no question at all in Meg Rector’s mind. The blonde had a baby face and big-girl breasts and huggable hips. The blonde was lovely, and Meg watched what the redhead was doing to her and began to quiver more fiercely than ever.
She was high now, high up in the air, high with tequila and marijuana and sexual excitement. And Marty was next to her as high as she was, his hands hot flames searing her body. She grabbed him, held him, touched him. She put a hand to his face and stared into his eyes.
“Marty.”
“What?”
“What she’s doing,” she said. “What that girl is doing to that other girl. What she’s doing, up there.”
“What about it?”
“Do it to me.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“Later,” he said, dreamily. “Not now.”
“Now! Now, so I can watch it and feel it all at once. Now, damn it. Now, Marty!”
She said this last batch of sentences without looking at him. She was watching the redhead and the blonde now. The blonde had reversed her position on the bed, and her face was now at the foot of the bed near where Meg was seated. The redhead had moved, too, and was lying further up on the bed. The redhead’s legs extended past the top of the blonde’s head.
Meg knew what was going to happen next.
“Now, Marty. Please!”
He did not argue with her. He left his chair and slipped under the table, kneeling like a slave in front of her. She felt his hands slip under her skirt, finding her panties and pulling them downward over her legs and off, leaving them bunched on the floor. She felt him come to her, close to her, and all the while she watched the blonde and the redhead.
They were doing it now. And Marty was too.
* * *
Slowly, Ringo turned from the doorway and walked into the rear of the club. He plucked the cigar from between his teeth and glanced at it. He had chewed it almost to ribbons. He dropped it onto the floor now and ground it out beneath his heel.
A club like this, he thought, and you see plenty. A club like this is more than tossing out drunks from a 52nd Street strip joint or pimping for a stable of cows on the West Side. A club like this is all the way out and no holds barred.
But it still got to you, he thought. You saw everything in the world, night after goddamn night, and still, once in a while, it got to you. This happened rarely. But when it happened, the force of it was undeniable. Then you had to ease the tension or flip entirely.
Tonight it had gotten to him. Tonight, watching the new act, his loins had begun to burn and his heart had begun to race in his chest. The new girl, Lily. The redhead, Cassie. The two of them, going at it hotter than the Chicago fire and more turbulently than the Frisco quake. It got to him, all right. It knocked him on his ear.
Ringo was the perfect choice to head a club like Delia’s. A lecher would have been bad business. A man who played around with the whores would, to coin a phrase, be eating up all the profits. And, to coin another phrase, he would be screwing up the normal routine. Fortunately Ringo was not that type of manager. He let the girls alone. He never propositioned them, never made sex a prerequisite to keeping their jobs. They put out for the customers and that was it. They didn’t have to put out for Ringo, too.
Now he walked to a door, knocked on it. “It’s Ringo,” he said. “Open the goddamn door.”
The door opened. Ringo stepped inside, closed it behind him. There was a hook-and-eye lock and Ringo dropped the hook into the eye. He did not intend to be interrupted.
“You did fine, kid,” he said. “You were great. They loved you.”
Pancho said nothing.
“Come on, Pancho,” Ringo said. “It’s time to be a good boy now. Get your clothes off.”
Ringo watched, pleased, while the young Mexican removed his clothes. Ringo’s eyes traveled over Pancho’s body. Ringo smiled. He unbelted his own pants and let them drop to the floor.
He said, “You don’t like this, do you, Pancho?”
“I don’t min’.”
“The hell you don’t mind. You hate it, you stupid little Mex. You can’t stand it.”
“I don’t min’.”
“Sure,” Ringo said. “Turn around, Pancho.”
Pancho turned around, turned his back to the manager of Delia’s Place. Ringo looked at him, studied the smooth contours of his young masculine body. Ringo’s smile spread. He stepped closer, his eyes bright.
“Now bend over,” he said.
* * *
First, Audrey groaned. Then, while Weaver moved closer to the edge of the bed, her eyes opened. She saw Weaver, saw the razor in his hand. The razor was open now and Weaver’s thumb moved back and forth across the face of the blade. Audrey tried to scream but no sound came through the gag. She tried to lurch free but the bonds held her securely in place, spread-eagled across the sagging bed.
Weaver said, “I’m going to kill you, Audrey. I’m going to cut you and hurt you and kill you.”
Her eyes bugged in terror. He looked at her, delighted with her expression of fear. This was good, he thought. This was as it should be. Pure terror, naked fear, horrible horror. This was what they wanted in the movies, what they were getting at in the comic books. This was life.
But where to begin? Where to start?
He stood next to her, holding the razor tightly. Her chest heaved and he watched her breasts bob. That was a starting place, he thought. Those great big sagging breasts. A perfect place to start.
The razor was very sharp. It slipped neatly into the underside of one breast, slicing easily through Audrey’s flesh. A thin trickle of blood flowed from the wound. Audrey screamed in silence against the gag and her whole body twisted with pain.
It was the blood that did it. Weaver stared at the blood and something happened. He was an animal now, a beast. The cool emotionless part of him vanished. He threw himself upon the woman, whipping at the sides of her body with the razor while he drove himself deep into her. He lay on top of her, drove savagely into her, then raised himself on one arm so that he could flail at her breasts with the razor.
Soon both breasts were criss-crossed with cruel cuts that bled freely. He put down the razor and gripped the bleeding breasts with his hands, flexing them while he rode her with the full force of his passion. It did not take him long to reach fulfillment. His passion came quickly and was soon spent. He lay for a moment, still holding tightly to her slashed breasts. Then, shakily, he got to his feet.
She was still alive, still conscious. And Weaver was by no means through. The sexual part was over and done with. He had taken the woman, had had his pleasure with her, and he would not need to make love to her again. But he had not finished hurting her. He had a marvelous opportunity here. She was helpless, unable to cry out and unable to fight back. They were alone and they would not be disturbed.
He could take his time.
He found a pack of matches in her dresser drawer, along with the two five dollar bills he had given her and three or four singles of her own. He lit a match, let it burn for a moment, and then dropped it onto her bare belly. It lay there for several seconds, flaming, until it burned itself out. He did this again, with another match.
There had been a movie that he remembered now. A movie about the Great Fire of London. There had been a scene in which a woman ran through the streets of the city, her hair flaming. The woman had screamed nicely.
He looked at Audrey’s hair. He wanted to set it on
fire, but he was afraid that the fire would rage out of control and start the whole building aflame. Then another idea came to him. He lit another match and dropped it between her plump thighs. It burned for a long time there.
Audrey passed out this time. He waited patiently until her eyes opened once more, and then he went on.
* * *
When he left, finally, all of her body was scarred from matches. All her fingers and toes had been hacked off—he was pleased that the razor was made of such well-tempered steel. Her whole mattress was a pool of blood, and there were deep gashes in every part of her body.
Before he went out of the room he did several things. He washed at her washbowl, getting all the blood from his body. He dressed. And then, finally, he dipped the fingers of both hands into her blood and pressed all ten fingers to the wall, over her bed.
He wanted them to know he killed Audrey. He wanted the credit. He wanted El Paso to know that there was a fiend in its midst, and that the fiend bore the name of Michael Patrick Weaver.
Outside, the night was cool and clear. It was around four in the morning and the streets were deserted. Weaver walked around aimlessly for ten or fifteen minutes taking the fresh night air into his lungs, walking far from the three-story frame building where Audrey’s corpse lay attracting flies. He felt no guilt, no remorse.
On the contrary, he was flushed with pride. This had been no accident, like the time in Tulsa. This had been carefully planned and carefully executed. This had been perfect, from beginning to end.
* * *
He started back to his hotel, and was halfway there before he realized what a stupid thing such a course of action would be. The police were going to find those fingerprints instantly. In a matter of hours they would know that Weaver was the killer. And his picture was in the files, so it would be in the El Paso evening paper. If he was still asleep at his hotel, they would have him under arrest before he opened his eyes.
And they would take him to headquarters, and they would beat him. It was only reasonable to assume that the El Paso police beat you the way the Tulsa police had done once. They would beat him, and try him for murder, and put him in the electric chair to smell his own flesh burning. He had smelled burning flesh already that night. Audrey’s flesh. He did not want to smell his own flesh when the electrical current seared through it.
His mind worked quickly. A day or two ago, he had been unwillingly to try sneaking across the border. Then it seemed easier to stay in El Paso, to wait for capture, to stay holed up and wait until they smoked him out. But now it was different. Now, for one thing, he was an active panther rather than a passive rabbit. Besides, if he was going to stay alive, he just plain had to get across the border. He was a sitting duck in El Paso. In Juarez he might have a chance.
In a day, when Audrey’s broken body had been discovered and when his own bloody prints had been identified, all the border guards would be on the lookout for him. Now he was still an unknown in El Paso, a Tulsa fugitive who could be anywhere. If he was going to make it to Juarez, now was the time to get going.
He pictured himself going across the border.
The guard stepping out of the guard house.
First glancing at him.
Then staring.
Then recognizing him.
It’s Weaver!
It’s Michael Patrick Weaver!
He saw himself running, running across the border.
Pushing aside people—screaming people.
The people lined up and let him pass.
They all chanted his name.
Michael Patrick Weaver.
Michael Patrick Weaver.
Michael Patrick Weaver.
They all knew him.
They all recognized turn.
He felt proud as he ran across the border.
Then he heard shots ring out from behind him.
Zing!—the bullets flew past him.
Then one hit him—and another.
But he kept on running and running.
They couldn’t stop him.
He was Michael Patrick Weaver.
And he ran and he ran. The ground flew fast beneath him, so fast that suddenly he was no longer on the ground but was in the air.
He was flying through the air. He was Superman. Then he dove into an ocean beneath him and skimmed through the water. He was Submariner.
He got into a car—tired, wanting to ride. And as he roared away deep into Mexico he was the Green Hornet.
He stopped the car and got out.
He was Michael Patrick Weaver again.
He walked toward the border, nervous inside, on the verge of panic. But when he got there it turned out to be much easier than he had imagined. The border was barely guarded at all. A uniformed officer looked him over, but did not recognize him or see anything suspicious. Weaver stepped over a line, and Weaver was in Mexico, and nothing could have been easier.
* * *
He found a hotel in Juarez, a cheap rundown hotel that was half inn and half brothel. He paid a dollar for a room and was shown to a bug-trap similar to his place at Cappy’s, except that there was not even a washbowl here.
He had to go down the hall to comb his flat black hair over his low forehead. He did this, and then he went back to his room, turned on the overhead fan and went to sleep.
CHAPTER SEVEN
In the morning it was raining. The rain was the first thing Marty was aware of. Rain lashed the bedroom windows, spilled in through the screens. The rain was coming down hard and the noise it made was not a gentle one. Rain was a rare commodity in El Paso, especially during the summer. So Marty noticed it before anything else. He lay on his back, on his bed, and he listened to the rain.
After the fact of the rain, other facts came home to him. The fact that his head was being torn into several pieces by a sharp, insistent pain that began somewhere in the back of his skull. The fact that his skin was covered with clammy sweat, that he was dizzy and nauseous. The fact that it was morning, that he was at home in his own bed in his own bedroom. The fact that Meg was with him, also in the bed, and still asleep.
These facts brought with them a rush of memories. Memories of the casino where he had played poker while Meg won twelve or thirteen hundred dollars at the roulette wheel. Memories of dinner, memories of a night club with soft music and too much tequila. Memories of another night club, Delia’s Place. Memories of the floor show, of the marijuana, of more of the floor show, of sex with Meg. Memories of afterward, of himself in a small room making love to a Mexican whore while Meg stood at their side, watching and applauding.
The memories ceased at that point in time. At some indeterminate point afterward he had evidently herded the big brunette into the Olds and had somehow driven the Olds back across the border to his house. God alone knew how this had happened. Marty remembered nothing, and could only guess that the Olds had taken over the driving for him. After the tequila and the marijuana and the sex, it seemed less than likely that he could have handled the driving all by himself.
He managed to get up onto an elbow. He looked at Meg, and his mouth curled in distaste, though whether directed at her or at himself he couldn’t have said. Both, probably. The last time he’d woken up with her he’d loved the sight of her, the fact of her. The idea of sharing a night of debauchery with a girl as eager for it as he was. But this time, in the cold light of a rainy morning, things looked different. It wasn’t just the hangover that was turning his stomach. Had that been him, kneeling on the dirty floor between her legs? And had that been her, urging him on?
She was sleeping on her back now, breathing through her open mouth. The sweat was a visible film on her body, as it was on his. Her body odor—sweat smells and sex smells and alcoholic smells—was strong and unpleasant.
A pig, he thought bitterly. It felt better to lash out than to look within. A pig with money and taste and a nice shape, a pig who played good bedtime games. A pig who could talk, intelligently. But still just as much
of a pig.
He remembered the way she had behaved at Delia’s, the way she had acted in the room afterward. A pig in the rutting season, he thought. And then he remembered the way he himself had acted. Fine, he thought. I’m a pig, too. That doesn’t mean I have to share my sty with her. One pig doesn’t have to like another pig just because they’ve been eating slops together out of the same trough. No law says so.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. His headache was more acute now and his whole head was splitting with the pain. He got to his feet and his stomach started to turn over. He got to the john, closed the door, and threw up into the toilet bowl. He flushed the toilet, found a bottle of aspirin tablets in the medicine cabinet, spilled three into the palm of his left hand, filled the plastic water tumbler with three inches of tap water, and swallowed the aspirin. When the pills and water hit bottom he had to resist the impulse to heave them up again. He took a deep breath, held it, let it out. He breathed again, deeply, and exhaled.
The headache was still there. In the television ads they showed you how the aspirins dissolved into millions of tiny specks the second you swallowed them, and how those specks forced their way into your bloodstream, and how your headache was gone in no time at all. It didn’t work that way. He sat down on the toilet, resting his head in the palm of one hand.
He wasn’t used to headaches. Generally he awoke with a perfectly clear head, with his mind in flawless working order. He didn’t like to wake up with clammy sweat on his skin and pain in his head and nausea in his stomach. He didn’t like it at all.
Meg was a mistake. A bad mistake, the kind of mistake that could take a well-ordered life and flip it out of joint. Take his life, for instance. It had been a neat life, a life that was well-ordered without being confining, a life that gave him as much as possible of what he wanted without putting him in a bind. He had spent years in a border town without going on a spree, had had a few drinks every day without letting the stuff take the edge from his self-control. In one night he had thrown that control to the winds. He’d been drunk on tequila, high on marijuana, had gone orgy-nuts in a trap for oversexed tourists. And for what? For a headache, and a sick stomach, and unsteady legs, and a coating of sweat.
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