by phuc
Spence noted the severed stitches encircling the lips, bandaged ankles and knees, and eyes so bloodshot they shone full red.
"Help us find her," Spence pleaded. "We need to know where she is, where she took you, anything any detail."
The man died.
Jesus...
On the dashboard a typed note had been taped. It read:
SORRY I MISSED YOU, MR. SPENCE.
BUT MY MOTHER AND I WILL DEFINITELY KEEP IN TOUCH.
CREAMY
Jesus, Spence thought again.
A frantic voice squawked from inside the car. Spence looked past the blood filled passenger seat and saw the car phone dangling from the wheel.
"Are you there? Are you still there?" Kathleen Shade was saying on the other end. "Don't hang up. Are you there?"
Spence hung up the phone.
| |
Chapter 26
(I)
No, they never understood. None of them did.
Like Sammy's one and only brother, Jack. Big developer now. Invested half his inheritance into commercial real estate and some construction projects, and kept the shares Sammy sold him on the side. A successful, respected business man. Sammy remembered Big Brother's parting locutions quite well: "If I ever see you again, Sam, I'll kill you " (cool voice, calm, very in control) " and if you ever go near my daughter again, on our father's grave I swear I'll kill you.
You're a degenerate, a disgrace." These amicable words had been spoken to Sammy at the D.C.
Courthouse, the day he'd been sentenced. And what had Kathleen said? "I hope you hang yourself in prison."? Something like that.
Piss on all of them, he thought. Why should I care what they think about me? At least he was honest. At least he didn't deny the things he'd done in his life, nor the desires that motivated him.
A degenerate? A disgrace? He smiled, taking the Caddie ragtop down Patrick Henry Boulevard.
Who could define those terms? And by what criteria? It was bullshit. There was no good and evil. There was only the world and the people in it and the things they thought and they things they did. That was all. Sammy didn't give a shit about people who didn't give a shit about him.
Why should he? It was supply and demand hey, if he didn't make the flicks and mule the masters, then somebody else would. Evil had nothing to do with it, nor criminal intent, nor degeneracy. If people wanted something, then someone would provide it, whether it conformed to the law or not. If people got off watching snuff or wet S&M or rape loops, then they would have it. And if some people like to watch viddies of adults having sex with kids, Sammy reasoned, then what's wrong with that? At least to Sammy, demand legitimized supply. To hell with society's definition of evil, of criminality, etc. None of it made any sense.
It wasn't Sammy's fault, was it? It wasn't his fault that there were plenty of people out there who liked to watch underground flicks. Some people got off on that, fine. Sammy himself did too, and he freely admitted this. It turned him on seeing the heavy shit. And if it turned him on and if it turned hundreds of thousands of other people on then there must be a reason. The reason was instinct, he felt sure. Not some forced desire to be evil, not some conscious willingness to like things that the majority of society says you're not supposed to like. Christ, in Jersey they had women begging to be in Vinchetti's productions; nobody was forcing the chicks to do that shit they volunteered. And why? Because the price was right. Quid pro quo. Vinchetti needed fresh inventory, and the women needed their crack. And the fucking clients wanted the tapes, so what was the problem? It didn't matter what it was. It didn't matter if it was a Disney flick or a snuff flick. People wanted it. Christ, the month before he got busted, Sammy helped Vinchetti's crew make one flick called Barnyard Babes that got a 2,000 copy order the instant it hit the points: a couple of biker chicks burned out on PCP, doing the works with horses, pigs, sheep. There was even one flick they duped, a bootleg from Amsterdam where some coke addict put a live eel in herself. This wasn't bullshit, it was true. And it was still supply and demand. If clients didn't buy the shit, then Vinchetti'd have no reason to make it. There were 40 million alcoholics in the country but you don't blame the fucking guy behind the counter at the liquor store. Cigarettes killed 400,000 people per year but you don't send the tobacco farmers up on murder charges.
And, all right, maybe it was a little different with the kp and the prepube stuff Sammy knew that.
Most of the time the kids were abducted, or traded along in the regional circuits but that was Vinchetti, not Sammy. It wasn't Sammy who was snatching the kids from malls and playgrounds.
All Sammy did was help make the flicks and transport the masters to the dupe labs in his point, and, yeah, every now and then they'd be short a camera cock, so Vinchetti's production men would let Sammy step in and do a little of the rodwork. By then most of the kids were deprogrammed anyway, and he'd never been rough with any of them. Hurting the kids would be unthinkable. Nobody understood anything these days. There were societies out there now, organizations where members actually paid dues. The North American Man Boy Love Association, The West Coast Adult Child Care Chapter, and even one called Christian Parents For Positive Sexual Enlightenment. It wasn't just Sammy, it was a lot of people, whole communities of them.
Sooner or later, Sammy reasoned, the world's gonna come around and see the light.
Back when Sammy'd been making flicks, he'd covered his back. He'd duplicated all of his keys to everything and kept them in a safe place in case he ever went down. Also, copies of point lists, mail drops, various addresses. Private mail boxes and safe deposit boxes were hard to trace. You could rent a safe deposit box or you could buy one outright. When you bought one a couple of grand there were no questions asked. Sammy headed out to Glen Burnie that morning if the place had gone under, then his shit would be gone and that would be that, but: Jesus saves! he thought.
Behind the little strip mall, just off Route 2, the same red lettered, white sign loomed. E Z MAIL, POST BOXES, SAFE DEPOSIT, REASONABLE RATES.
It was all still there in the little combo lock metal box.
The keys a big clump of them on a silver ring were what he wanted. Keys to the warehouses, the processing labs, some storage joints; no doubt, all of these places had been closed down years ago. There were also some keys to a few drop points and hideouts. They'd all probably bitten the dust too, after all this time. But Sammy didn't give a shit about any of that... The ring also contained the keys to his brother's house.
And no doubt, somewhere in his brother's house would be an address book. And somewhere in that address book would be the one address and number Sammy needed to have: Kathleen's.
First, he called the house number "This is Jack Shade. I'm not available now, so please leave a message after the beep." Sammy hadn't left a message. Then he'd called his brother's office number, identifying himself as Richard Hertz of F.O. Day Construction, Inc. "I'm sorry, Mr.
Hertz," the secretary had informed him, "but Mr. Shade is in Los Angeles right now, attending a realty convention. He won't he back in town 'til the weekend."
"Thanks very much," Sammy said. "I'll get in touch with him next week."
It was a leisurely, sedate drive to Northern Virginia. He grabbed a quick bite at a restaurant he remembered called R.T.'s, had Pan Fired Louisiana Shrimpcakes and a side of Southern Fried Squid. Yeah, I ate like this every day in the joint, sure, he joked to himself. On the wall was a signed picture of the President, along with the plate he'd eaten off of, for God's sake. It was funny, though, how when you were in the joint, the outside world became something completely alien. You didn't give a shit who was President. You didn't give shit about wars. The Gulf?
Bosnia? Fuck it, kill ‘em all. North Korea building nukes? Let 'er rip. Drop one on the Capitol.
The deficit? Gimme a break! In stir was like being on another planet.
Back on the road, Sammy let his thoughts sail with the wind over the Caddie's open top. Good things come in
threes, he remembered the wives' tale. One, my keys still in the box, two, Jack out of town... Somehow, Sammy knew that fate would grant him a third kernel of good luck: that his brother had not changed the locks on the house...
He turned quickly off of Duke, and headed down toward the Old Towne waterfront. North of the main drag came the ritzy communities. The subtly pretentious architecture seemed New Englandish somehow, old Colonial styles, fastidiously renovated. He spotted the house and parked around the corner. Manicured lawns and lush trees teemed in the summer sun. Between the houses the water glimmered. Jack Shade's house looked exactly the same, though it seemed larger. Everything seemed a little larger to Sammy now; six years in stir, in a 10x8 box of bricks, had a way of distorting one's sense of proportion. Just walk up like you own the place, he thought. He whistled up the driveway, then up the fieldstone walk. He noted no neighbors milling about, no traffic. The same Arrowhead alarm plate blinked red twice a second when Sammy stepped onto the porch. The system's on, and that means no one's inside. Sammy raised the tubular alarm key, took a hopeful breath, and turned off the system. Yeah, good things come in threes, he thought. He unlocked the front door and walked in.
Fine. Good, you're in. So don't fuck around. No address book in the kitchen. He remembered a basket beneath the phone, containing spare car keys and an old address book. Fuck, Sammy calmly thought. The big butcher block wood country kitchen remained, but the basket was gone.
Den, he directed. Big Brother's office. The quiet opulence seemed to shout in his face. High, dark genuine paneling. Huge teak desk. Crystal and pure gold carriage clock on the mantel, ticking slowly. The ticking reminded Sammy of another clock, from his past the clock he'd bought for Kathleen when she was what? Nine? Ten? The moment flashed a warm vertigo, and an image: The plastic eyes and tail switching to and fro, tick, tick, tick, as Sammy's hypnotic, gentle whispers lulled her into the trusting trance... He moaned audibly, right there in his brother's den, thinking of his brother's daughter. All I ever did was love her, Jack. I didn't hurt her.
What about YOU, Jack? Huh? What did you ever love in your life, I mean besides yourself, and your fucking land deals and condos? Three days after your own fucking wife's funeral you were flying to California to buy up some new waterfront. At least I was with her, Jack. At least I was here when you were too busy to be a father.
And I never hurt her...
Sammy ground the memory away with his teeth.
DIGIDAK ADDRESS LOG read the letters on the bizarre device. It sat on the desk, no bigger than a wallet. Some newfangled computer thing, Sammy equated. The world had changed while he'd fermented in prison. What the fuck happened to the good old fashioned Rodolex? He blew 10 minutes figuring out how the thing worked. INDEX one button read. Sammy pressed S, for Shade, then SCROLL. No Shades. Then he pressed K, for Kathleen.
And there it was.
He jotted the address and number down on the back of his parole officer's card. Then he made to split.
It was just something he had to do before leaving, an intercession perhaps. He would not ask for forgiveness love wasn't something he felt the need to apologize for. It was something else, deeper. Just to see her again, to talk to her one last time before he disappeared...
He stood in the foyer. Get out, a voice told him. You can't be getting caught in here. But...
The memories whispered to him, as gently as he'd whispered to little Kathleen. Immediately, he felt violated, crushed by the vehement misunderstanding of others. They'd stolen from him they'd stolen six years of his life. They'd stolen his entire past...
Then he remembered.
Next, he was mounting the curved, banistered stairs, up and around, to the long hall. Some of his past was still here, wasn't it? A little piece? After all this time, he'd forgotten.
When Sammy'd stayed to look after Kathleen, he'd had the spare room. Last room on the end, on the left. Here he was again now, after years and years. His fingers touched the knob. The hinges actually grated from disuse when he pushed open the door. Figures, he thought. The room had not been touched. That was his brother's style, to write things off as if they'd never existed. Just one glance assured him that the room had not been cleaned it probably hadn't even been entered since his arraignment.
Dust lay an inch thick on everything. The entire room was gray. Cobwebs rounded the corners, and hung like tendrils of rotted fabric from the ceiling. The bed was gray. The dresser, the night table, the walls all gray. Even the once vibrant plum-colored carpet was gray by years of dust.
Sammy had never had much of a personal supply of pornography; being on the road most of the time prevented that. When he'd been busted, he'd been staying in a motel. The feds had grabbed everything, including the several cigar boxes of Polaroids Sammy kept for personal use. They booked all the masters he'd been carrying as evidence, and they'd also booked the cigar boxes.
Sammy could've keeled over when the prosecutor had passed those cigar boxes along to the jury: all those snapshots, all those kids.
Vinchetti's crew didn't mind Sammy snapping a few pix for himself every now and then. There'd been a few mags, too, mostly imports from Amsterdam, and a few vintage domestic jobs. But those cigar boxes his little treasure chests were gone forever. Except one.
He knelt in dust. He reached under the bed. He knew it was still there even before his fingers touched it: the one box they never got. Sammy'd kept it secreted in the box spring, beyond a tacked flap in the cheesecloth lining.
Still here, he thought.
He opened the box. He gazed down into it, as if into a holy light. A foreign mag called Jubilaum!
Dutch kids, or Germans. And one of Vinchetti's mags from the 70's, before he'd graduated to the wonder of video tape. Come Play With Us, read the title. A third mag Santa's Coming! starred Sammy himself, dressed up as Father Christmas. Sweet kids, he reflected, thumbing through the glossy pages. Christ, I had a whole head of hair back then. But in the bottom of the box was a single envelope. And in the envelope was a single Polaroid...
The snapshot shined in his hand. Yes, his past. One little tiny piece of Sammy's past that had not been taken from him.
It was a snapshot of Kathleen.
Eleven, twelve, he guessed. Whenever he was finished, he always talked her gently into sleep.
He'd taken several pictures of her, but this was the only one left.
So beautiful, he thought, staring at it.
It was the only one he needed.
This house, this picture, this room it all took him back to another time. His memory was a sweet whorl. Kathleen, Kathleen, he thought. But there was another room too, wasn't there? Another vault of his past?
Kathleen's bedroom, two doors down, lay in the same state: festooned by cobwebs, bedrabbed in dust. The furniture of her tender years, of course, was gone, replaced Kathleen had lived in this house through college but that wasn't the point. This was still her room, the room...
No, Kathleen hadn't been like the others at all. Sammy really had loved her it was just that people didn't understand how complex real love could be. In the joint, they'd had special names for pedophiles: 'Lester, Kiddie Fucker, Short Eyes. Well, they could all fuck themselves now. ‘Cos I'm out, motherfuckers, and you're not. A month from now Sammy would be partying on the beach, with enough cash to set him for life. Lotta guys would've folded, but Sammy had played it right, the plea bargain, the spin on Vinchetti, the whole deal.
But how right am I playing it now? he wondered.
He couldn't help it.
He just...couldn't.
Sleepytime, he thought.
He lay on his side, on the bed and on his memories. He was looking at the picture of her, nearly in tears. He unbuckled his pants...
He couldn't help it.
The cat clock was long gone, but he could still see it... Softly ticking as he whispered. It's Sleepytime, Kathleen. You know your Uncle Sammy loves you, don't you? This is the special thing that uncles and little girls
do. It's a special secret from God. Sleepytime, Sleepytime. It didn't take long. She was so pretty. He loved her so much. Almost, he thought. Almost. Alm
"Here," he whispered.
(II)
" want to do my story?" asked the voice on the tape.
"Yes."
"You agree, then. It's an important story."
"Yes," Kathleen Shade answered. "I've already begun to work on it."
"Skulls mean death."
Spence pressed the PAUSE button on the tape player. He seemed more rugged today, he hadn't shaved. He twiddled his thumbs behind the big metal desk. "Skulls mean death." he said. "What do you suppose she means by that?"
"I don't know," Kathleen said.
"Is this the first time she's called you?"
Kathleen laughed with little humor. "You've got a lot of nerve asking me that. You've been tapping my phone."
"Well, she could've called you before we put the tap on. Did she?"