“Come on, honey buns,” one of the old guys shouted. “The tease does nothing for me, not at my age. You gotta heat it up a little. Do the hoochie-coochie.”
Loretta glared at him over her shoulder. Hoochie-coochie this, she thought.
“This is great,” the tall geek said. “It’s all in the anticipation, the build-up. She’s the best one I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah,” his drooling buddy agreed. “I mean, she could clean out her ears with a Q-tip, and I’d wet my pants.”
Sick, Loretta thought. Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick.
But not all of them liked the waiting game, and the majority raised the volume in protest, getting rowdier and raunchier. Loretta crossed her arms and shifted her position, trying to get them out of her peripheral vision. She wondered if Marvelli was trapped in a similar fish tank somewhere else in this place, having to put up with a bunch of horny women. She sighed forlornly. If that were the worst he had to put up with, that wouldn’t be so bad. But she knew that if she started imagining worst-case scenarios, she’d lose it, and she didn’t want to cry in front of these animals. They’d probably get off on it.
All of a sudden she heard the door being unlocked. She whipped her head up. The doorknob turned, and the door swung open. When she saw the black leather pants, she immediately assumed that it was the masked man, but then she saw the face and noticed the size of the body. It was Sunny. She was holding a cat-o’-nine-tails down by her side.
“Whoa!” one of the pigs wailed. “This is gonna be good!”
They all squealed in agreement. They were so loud the speaker on the wall started to distort. Sunny stepped inside and raised a warning finger at the glass. Instantly the hogs quieted down. Sunny slammed the door shut.
She tapped the side of her leg with the cat-o’-nine-tails as she moved closer to Loretta. It made an odd rattling sound. Loretta stared up at her, not moving from the bed but ready to rip Sunny’s lungs out with her bare hands if the witch tried anything.
“Where’s Marvelli?” she demanded.
Sunny said nothing, but her gaze didn’t waver. She stepped closer to Loretta until she was just out of arm’s reach, perfect whipping distance. But Loretta didn’t care. If Sunny got cute with that thing, Loretta would ram it down her throat and pull it out the other end.
Sunny planted her feet, standing tall and mean in her jackboots.
“I can’t take it! I can’t take it!” one of the pigs gasped.
“So,” Sunny said to Loretta in a malevolent purr, “what makes you so special?”
Loretta’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I want to know,” Sunny said. “What makes you so special?” Loretta didn’t answer.
“I’m talking about Marvelli,” Sunny said. “He thinks you’re a goddess. All he does is talk about you.”
“Is he all right?” Loretta asked, still glaring at her. “Where is he?”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” Sunny snapped. “I want to know about you. I want to know what you have that makes him so dedicated to you. I’m jealous.”
“Well, I’m not a freaking weirdo,” Loretta said. “That’s one thing.”
“Oh, is that it? I’m a freaking weirdo? That’s why I don’t deserve someone like him? Is that what you think?” Sunny kept smacking her leg with the cat-o’-nine-tails, harder and harder. She seemed genuinely upset.
Loretta was baffled. Was Sunny really envious of her relationship with Marvelli? Loretta didn’t get it.
“That man is absolutely crazy about you,” Sunny said. Her teeth were gritted, and her statement sounded like an accusation. “Do you realize that? Do you appreciate that?”
“Of course, I appreciate it. But what’s it to you?”
Sunny started to say something when Dragon suddenly popped his head out from under the ruffle around the bottom of the bed.
“Dragon!” Sunny said, dropping the dom voice. Her hard-ass witch face softened. “Come here, boy. I was worried about you. Come on. Come to Sunny.”
Sunny squatted down and spread her arms, but the dog wouldn’t go to her. He seemed wary of her. He stayed under the dust ruffle and crawled on his belly until he was behind Loretta’s leg. Loretta reached down and scratched his head.
“It’s okay, boy,” Loretta said. “It’s all right.”
“He’s my goddamn dog!” Sunny shrieked.
The silent pigs rustled, and Sunny glared at them through the glass.
“What did you do to him?” Sunny screamed at Loretta. “What is it with you? Why does everyone love you?”
Loretta wasn’t about to be cowed by a screeching pervert. “Dragon trusts me,” she said. “Why shouldn’t he? I took care of him after he ate all that spiked ice cream. You just left him. He could have died.”
Dragon scooted around until he was completely behind Loretta’s legs. He rubbed his head against Loretta’s hand, begging to be scratched some more.
Sunny tipped her head back and suddenly let out a hideous scream that shook the glass panels. “I hate you!” she raged. Tears sprung from her eyes like little bombs. “First, you get the kind of person every woman wants and almost none of us ever gets, then you mesmerize my dog. You are the witch of all witches. You are evil!” Sunny was whipping herself with the cat-o’-nine-tails, first on the leg, then across the back. She didn’t seem to be fully aware of what she was doing. It was as if she were in a rhythmic trance.
Loretta didn’t know how to respond to all this. Dragon was freaked out, too. He ducked farther behind the ruffle until only his eyes and his muzzle stuck out.
“I’m wasting my entire life,” Sunny screamed as she beat herself. “Thaddeus is only interested in his own orifices, and Agnes is emotionally unavailable, unleasable, and unrentable, and the two of them hate each other anyway, so why do I even try? It was stupid to think that the three of us could ever live together. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” She whipped herself across the back in rhythm to the stupids.
“I should be in my crone phase,” she continued, “living alone in the woods. I should be growing freaking herbs. I should be taking Dragon on long walks through the redwoods, touching very old trees, empowering my inner goddess.”
“What is this, Oprah?” one of the pigs said with obvious disapproval.
“You know, this self-confessional stuff does nothing for me,” another pig said. “It’s just not sexy.”
Sunny turned on the crowd like a tiger. “Shut up! All of you! Shut up!” she screamed, whipping the glass furiously, the metal beads strung through the leather strips of the cat-o’-nine-tails clacking dangerously, threatening to shatter the glass. “Shut up! Shut up!”
“This may be real,” the old pig said matter-of-factly, “but it’s boring.”
Sunny exploded. “Screw you, you old fart!”
“I wish you would,” he yelled back. “Though frankly I’d rather have your friend.” He winked at Loretta.
Loretta gave him a dirty look. “You wouldn’t make it past foreplay,” she grumbled.
“That’s good enough for me,” he said.
Sunny kept whipping the glass, harder and harder, and Loretta feared for everyone’s safety if that thing shattered. Dragon was whining under the bed. Loretta had to do something.
She stood up and got behind Sunny, careful not to get in the way of the cat-o’-nine-tails. “Easy, Sunny,” she said, trying to sound soothing. “Easy. It’s gonna be all right. Just take it easy.”
But the dominatrix wasn’t listening, and Loretta felt like an idiot trying to console a nut job like Sunny. She wasn’t good at consoling normal people—why would it work on Sunny? Better to take a direct approach, Loretta thought.
She watched Sunny whipping the glass a few more times to get her rhythm down, then as Sunny swung her arm back to deliver another blow, Loretta grabbed the shaft of the cat-o’-nine-tails and snatched it out of the woman’s hand.
“Hey!” Sunny shouted in fury, turning on
Loretta.
But Loretta got in her face and threw her arms around Sunny, pinning Sunny’s arms to her sides. Loretta held on tight, keeping her knees together and her lips clamped shut, expecting Sunny to put up one hell of a fight. But Sunny’s struggle was brief, and halfhearted at that. After a few attempts at breaking loose, she collapsed against Loretta, sobbing into her shoulder.
“It’s okay,” Loretta said. “Go ahead and cry it out.” But she felt awkward and phony saying this. She wished Marvelli were here. He was better with this kind of thing.
She led Sunny over to the bed and made her sit down. Sunny was clinging to her desperately and wouldn’t let go. Loretta didn’t know what to do.
“You know, this show pretty much sucks,” one of the pigs said. “You think it’ll get any better?”
“It might,” another said. “A lot of these girls are into performance art. They have to be really boring first before they get down and dirty.”
“I really hope they do something with that dog,” a third one said. “It would be a shame to waste him.”
“Yeah, he’s my favorite,” a chubby-cheeked pig said.
Loretta was sick of hearing from them. “Will you guys just shut the hell up?” she snapped. “Jeez! All you do is talk, talk, talk. No wonder you have to go to peep shows.”
The pigpen was suddenly dead silent. She’d hit them where it hurt.
“I’m outta here,” the old pig said. “This is for the birds.” He walked out, and all the other pigs followed after him. In ten seconds no one was left on the other side of the glass.
“I thought they’d never leave,” Loretta grumbled.
Sunny was still blubbering into Loretta’s shoulder. Now that the commotion had died down, Loretta could hear Dragon clearly. He was under the bed, whimpering pathetically.
“Sunny,” she said, prying herself loose from the woman’s sticky grasp. “Hang on. I just want to check on Dragon. I’ll be right with you.”
When Loretta finally extricated herself from Sunny, she got down on her hands and knees and peered under the bed. At first glance Loretta didn’t know what she was looking at. Dragon’s eyes were shining in the dark. He was cowering next to a big lumpy shape, and at first Loretta thought it was an under-the-bed storage bag—the clear plastic ones that were sort of like body bags for stuff you had no other place for. But when she lifted the dust ruffle to get more light under there, she saw that it wasn’t a storage bag at all. It was a body.
“Oh, my God, now what?” she breathed. She reached underneath the bed, grabbed a handful of clothing, and pulled. She found an arm with her other hand and pulled harder. It was dead weight, but she finally managed to get the top half of the torso out from under the bed. But when she saw who it was, her stomach flipped over. It was Vissa.
Vissa’s face was bone white. She wasn’t moving, and there was an angry red mark around her neck. Loretta recognized it immediately as a ligature mark. Vissa had been strangled.
“Vissa!” she shouted, fearing the worst. “Vissa!”
But Loretta felt that she had to do something. She pressed her fingers to the side of Vissa’s neck and felt around for a pulse, and to her astonishment she found one. It was faint, but it was there. She put her ear to Vissa’s chest, wedging her head in between the woman’s breasts. Loretta wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard a heartbeat. Vissa was alive, but just barely.
“Vissa!” she shouted. “Wake up! Vissa!”
Vissa’s head rolled to the side, but it was impossible to tell whether this was a voluntary motion or just gravity. “Vissa!”
Her head rolled to the other side.
That wasn’t gravity, Loretta thought. She started slapping Vissa’s cheeks. “Vissa?” she said loudly. “Can you hear me? Vissa?”
Vissa moaned softly, but she didn’t open her eyes, and she didn’t seem to feel the slaps.
“Look out.” Sunny slid off the bed and onto the floor, shouldering Loretta out of the way. Her face was puffy and tear-streaked, but she was in control now. “I know CPR,” she said to Loretta. “All good dominatrices do.”
“Really?”
“How else do you think we get repeat business?”
Vissa’s eyelids fluttered. Her eyes opened halfway, but they were bleary and unfocused. Sunny put her hand behind Vissa’s neck and tilted the head back, then stuck her fingers into Vissa’s mouth to check for foreign objects. “I’m going to give her mouth-to-mouth,” Sunny said. But when she opened Vissa’s mouth and leaned forward to start, Vissa’s eyes suddenly shot open.
“I’m fine!” she gasped. “I’m fine!” She pushed Sunny away. “I’m okay. Really. Just give me some room to breathe.”
Vissa coughed as she tried to get more air into her lungs, keeping a wary eye on Sunny.
Sunny sat back on her heels and made a sour face. “I wasn’t going to enjoy it,” she said.
In the meantime Loretta had gone to the door and tried the knob, but it was locked tight. “Sunny,” she called out. “Do you have the key?”
“No.”
“It must’ve locked behind you when you came in,” Loretta said.
“Don’t worry,” Sunny said. “Ira will come for us when he’s through with your boyfriend.” The horrified look on Loretta’s face changed Sunny’s smarmy tune. “Ira doesn’t want any witnesses left behind.… ” she added in a quieter voice.
“Marvelli … ” Loretta whispered, staring at the locked door. Fear filled her chest like rising floodwaters. The blood drained out of her face. She looked out through the glass, but there wasn’t a single pig left to ask for help. She tried the door again, but it didn’t budge. She looked at Vissa. Her expression was as hopeless and panicky as Loretta felt.
Loretta hammered the door with her fist. “Help!” she yelled. “Help us in here. Let us out!”
But she only heard her own voice reverberating off the glass panels.
Out of frustration she slapped the door with the flat of her hand and dragged it along the painted metal surface, her moist skin squeaking as it went. “Marvelli!” she screamed. “Marvelli!” But her screams disintegrated into sobs.
32
Back in the dungeon Krupnick moseyed over to the hibachi and found the heavy canvas gloves on top of the propane tank. He put them on, then grabbed one of the pokers. A thin trail of smoke rose from the red-hot end, which was blunt and rounded, sort of like a big fat bullet. He brought it closer to his face and examined it carefully.
“What’re you gonna do with that thing?” Marvelli called from his cage. “Pick your teeth?”
“I was thinking of killing you with it,” Krupnick said evenly. “What do you think?”
“You want me to be honest?”
“Of course.”
“Then I think you should get off your big fat ass and do something, you lazy sob.” He wanted Krupnick to do something, anything, because this waiting was driving him nuts. Locked in this cage, Marvelli was useless. But if Krupnick stopped messing around and actually did something, like come into the cage and attack him, then Marvelli might stand a chance of escaping. But unfortunately Krupnick wasn’t doing anything. He was just strutting around the dungeon, playing with the S&M toys.
I know how women feel, Marvelli thought in frustration. Goddamn men never commit.
“Come on, Krupnick,” he yelled. “Shit or get off the pot.”
Krupnick shook his head and grinned. “Do you really think you can bait me?”
Dorie was sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, her face in a tight grimace. She was trying to contain her sobs, but they leaked out anyway in pathetic high-pitched squeaks.
“Why the tears, Dorie?” Krupnick asked. “You’re not having a good time?” Her face crumpled, and her emotions finally spilled out. Krupnick laughed. “Don’t be so serious, Dorie. We’re gonna have some fun here.”
“When?” Marvelli demanded. “I don’t have all day.”
Krupnick nodded. “You’re absolutely right ab
out that.” The poker wasn’t glowing anymore, so he put it back into the hibachi and picked out another one. He examined the end carefully. It was a glowing orange X.
Marvelli was about ready to jump out of his skin. He had to get Krupnick focused. The man wasn’t sufficiently motivated.
“I think I know what your problem is,” Marvelli said.
“What’s that?” Krupnick kept his eye on the hot X.
“You’ve never done a murder before. It’s one of those things you’ve always wanted to do, but you’re not so sure.”
Krupnick turned around and faced him. “Excuse me?”
“Most of the people who do murders are young guys. Hotheads in their teens and twenties. You never did it when you were young, but you sort of wish you had. For the experience.”
Krupnick walked toward the cage, waving the smoldering poker in the air like a conductor waving a baton. “Keep talking,” he said. “I want to hear what you have to say.”
Marvelli flashed a knowing half-grin. “You know what I’m talking about, Krupnick. You’ve committed just about every felony a bad guy can—except murder. In the back of your mind, it’s the one thing you’ve always wanted to do.”
Krupnick was chuckling softly. “Why?”
“I told you why. Because you’ve never done it. You feel cheated. It’s like guys who never went to war. Some of them feel left out. They feel inadequate, like they’re lesser men.”
“So you’re a shrink now?”
“It’s just like guys who worry that they haven’t had enough women. No matter how many they’ve had, they think they should have more before they die.”
Krupnick stepped closer to the cage.
“There’re always a few who got away,” Marvelli continued. “You know what I’m talking about? Cute girls in high school you wish you had done. Beautiful unattainable women, the ones who look like models. Then there are the hip ones who wouldn’t look twice at you. All guys have a few Moby Dicks in their pasts, but some guys get obsessed by it. They don’t want to be short-changed. They don’t want to die until they’ve racked up a nice long list of scores. Good ones.”
Hot Fudge (A Loretta Kovacs thriller) Page 23