by Jeff Povey
I smile to myself—not at the image, but because even though she’ll never know it, Tallulah is planning to kill federal agent Kennet Wade.
And if I’m honest here, I wonder if I shouldn’t let her do it.
There’s a lot to think about, and later, after pretending to go to the men’s room and sidestepping to the phone booth, I make a call to Agent Wade.
“Tallulah wants to meet you.”
“Great. Hey, what a plan, huh? Worked first time.”
“I had to tell her you like going to strip joints.”
Agent Wade pauses. “How did you know that?”
I pause, a little surprised. “I, uh . . . I just, uh . . . I just thought you looked like the type of guy who likes a good time.” I say this knowing it sounds weak.
“Yeah, well, there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“I didn’t say there was.”
“It’s just hard establishing a solid relationship in my line of work.”
“Absolutely.”
“A lot of the guys go. . . .”
I’m not really listening to Agent Wade because I’m more engaged with the thought that Tallulah might just take it upon herself to tattoo him to death. I can even picture the slogan she’ll jab across his tanned and healthy-looking skin.
“Agent Wade Is Dead.”
And maybe I could add something to that.
Like “Long Live the Club,” for instance.
It is sorely tempting.
NEEDLE GUN
I SWEAR ON WEDNESDAY nights it rains harder than ever. One thing you don’t do in Chicago is walk your dog on a Wednesday evening. You just sit in and let the dog whine itself into a frenzy rather than see little Rover get washed away by a flash flood.
Agent Wade is standing on the corner of a deserted street, the rain is coming down in sheets, and I’m sitting beside Tallulah as she drives her vile and tacky car through the flood. Agent Wade suddenly flashes a bright grin through the rain and starts waving us down. He looks excited, and I’m a little disturbed by his apparent lack of cool. He wears a baseball cap and is dressed just like any guy you’d see in a strip joint—lumberjack shirt and sawdust-stained jeans. Tallulah glances across at me as she slows.
“That the jerk?”
I don’t answer as I open the door to her car, and as Agent Wade scurries toward us I note that this is about the ninetieth day running that I haven’t felt so much as a breeze. Nothing is ever going to blow these rainclouds away.
Agent Wade climbs in beside me, gives me a big friendly nod. “Hell of an evening.”
“Yeah. Sure is.”
I turn to Tallulah. “This is my friend, uh . . .”
“Barclay. Barclay Moone. You can call me Bark.” I’m impressed—an alias. This guy’s good. The name is so much better than anything William Holden could’ve dreamed up.
I spend the rest of the journey listening to Agent Wade combating Tallulah’s dry, hateful tones as they spear across me. It’s almost like I’m not even there.
“I’ve wanted a tattoo since I was so high.” Agent Wade—or Bark to his new friend—grins across me, staring bug-eyed at Tallulah while she drives. He is really on a high, and I can only presume it’s because he’s never met a skiller before. Not a live one, anyway. “Mom wouldn’t let me have one. Refused point-blank. I must’ve asked her a hundred times.”
“She still alive?” Tallulah is like her needle gun—straight to the point.
Agent Wade pauses. A lump swells in his throat. His voice seems less solid. “Domestic accident.”
These two anguished words are enough to convey everything that Tallulah need know. The matter should be closed.
“You see it happen?” Tallulah and tact have never met.
It takes a while, but Agent Wade gives a small but positive nod. He’s playing his part well. The FBI have obviously given him the best training possible.
“Gunshot?” Tallulah doesn’t take her eyes off the road as she jabs out her words.
“Arrows.”
“How’d it happen?”
“Me and a few pals, we were playing in the yard. Could only have been eight or so. I was always real keen on taking the suckers off my arrows, you know, and then, uh . . . sharpening them. We couldn’t get real bullets, but we could get close to a real arrow.” Agent Wade sucks in his bottom lip, his chin quivers, and I can’t help but think this is a really terrific act he is putting on here. “Mom took three arrows in the chest. Full on.”
“My mother was murdered.”
Agent Wade looks up, takes time, as if to let this awful, hideous truth sink in. “That must have been terrible for you.”
“Trussed up like a chicken and pretty near plucked like one, too. If you can pluck skin, that is.”
“Truly awful.”
“I kept telling her to use moisturizer.”
I listen to this, and although I’ve heard Tallulah mention this before, I still don’t get it. Moisturizer?
Agent Wade nods as if he understands implicitly what Tallulah means. “I hate wrinkles.”
I make a mental note to ask Bark to explain this to me.
We near our destination, a small motel on the edge of town, where Agent Wade, no doubt using his false name, has rented a room. He already has the keys, and we hurry from Tallulah’s vehicle through the heavy rain and over to the run-down motel room. Agent Wade opens the door, and we all step inside. I’m last in, and as I step forward I suddenly feel Tallulah’s tattooed arm block any further progress into the room. Agent Wade has walked over to the bed and is trying to switch on the lamp.
“Bark’s mine,” she growls.
I’m immediately plunged back into that deep and cavernous quandary. I would love to be famous and adored—who wouldn’t?—but equally I can’t deny there’s something scratching deep within me that says I should put an end to Agent Wade.
I study Tallulah, wishing she weren’t so full of hate and had a soft spot somewhere. Something I could make contact with. Agent Wade finally gets the lamp on, and he is a little surprised to find that there is a red bulb in the lamp. The room is suddenly glowing in this scarlet hue, and I can make a good guess that a prostitute or her client will be the first to find the murdered body.
But whose body?
Maybe it’s knowing that Tallulah tattoos her victims, then strips off the newly patterned skin and mails framed examples of her work to art galleries, but I come down on Agent Wade’s side.
If I think hard enough, I know it gets down to the fact that he said “please” when we first met. There was a certain humanity in that. Agent Wade didn’t have to be polite, but as Tony Curtis is fond of saying as he belches, “Good manners is everything.”
I close the door behind me and pull on a pair of calfskin driving gloves, and as I feel that familiar surge of adrenaline mixed with fear, I leap on Tallulah from behind.
“Die!” I think it has something to do with having an audience, but for some reason I feel the pressing need to make this as dramatic and compelling as I can. “Die, die, die!!”
Tallulah is fast, though—much stronger than I realized—and she easily tosses me off her before I can get my fingers clamped around her throat. I am aware of Agent Wade standing back and watching things unfold, and I half feel like yelling to him for some help when Tallulah whips out her needle gun and comes at me with it.
“Little fucking freak!” I get ink dots embedded, probably forever, in my wrists and forearms as she drives me back, stabbing and slicing relentlessly, until I find myself in a corner watching as thick white saliva builds around the corners of Tallulah’s mouth. “Little fucking scum bucket you turned out to be.”
As she goes for me, I grab up the lamp, and with my eyes closed in sheer terror, I swing the lamp back and forth wildly, lashing out at Tallulah, not connecting with anything, just flailing desperately at her. I swipe at her like I’m trying to hit a fast-moving wasp and manage to get out of the corner she had me trapped in. I look around, and Age
nt Wade is there one moment and then gone the next as the red bulb explodes and plunges the room into darkness. For a moment I can’t see a thing; my eyes can’t adjust to the sudden light loss, and I peer out, not knowing where Tallulah has gone. I can see a shape move first one way, then it seems to be moving in the other direction.
“Bark? Is that you? . . . Bark!”
I look around, knowing an attack is going to come but not knowing from where—Tallulah could be anywhere.
“Time to get inky!”
Tallulah suddenly comes at me again, like a giant savage rat, and I feel myself crumple under the weight of her attack. I take her down with me and get the wind knocked from me as her knee lands hard in my gut.
“Jesus! Help me, can’t you?!” I gasp as I feel Tallulah’s fetid breath burning my face.
“Inkier and inkier!” Tallulah’s eyeballs catch the moonlight streaming in through the window, and for a moment they look like they belong to a cat. Her arm arcs up, and I know she’s going to drive her tattoo needle straight into my brain. A light suddenly comes on—a searing, blinding flashlight—catching Tallulah momentarily off guard. A dark shape looms up behind the light, and although I can’t make out the cause of it, a sickening thud rings out—something heavy hitting something soft. And the next thing I know, Tallulah’s rank spittle sprays all over my face. Only when it trickles into my mouth do I realize it is her blood.
Tallulah pitches forward and lands heavily across me, and as the searing flashlight finds my eyes, Agent Wade squats beside me and gives an almighty and sardonic sigh.
“Ready when you are, Dougie. . . .”
Tallulah’s blood keeps running into my mouth, and my only response to Agent Wade is to gag on it.
Later, it comes as a shock to find Agent Wade snatching the needle gun from me, plunging it into a bottle of ink, and then tattooing Tallulah’s lifeless arm. I have just finished what I consider to be a rather neat version of a black cat, but for some reason he is mortified, telling me in no uncertain terms, “We have to get this right, Dougie, we have to make it look like the work of the Tattoo Terror. . . .” Agent Wade gives Tallulah eight tattoos that night, all of them bearing the inscription “Mom.”
I grab up a bottle of ink as a memento, and after Agent Wade wipes everything down, removing our fingerprints, we sneak out into the rain and walk briskly uptown.
“You learn tattooing at the academy?”
“You learn everything at the academy, Doug. Everything.”
I glance up at Agent Wade’s fine movie-star profile and know for certain that he must be a real asset to the Bureau.
MURDER RAP
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
RICHARD BURTON
CHER
TONY CURTIS
DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS JR.
BETTY GRABLE
WILLIAM HOLDEN
BURT LANCASTER
JAMES MASON
CHUCK NORRIS
I STUDY THE LIST and wonder why the line going through my name has been erased. Agent Wade and I are standing outside the monkey pen at the zoo where I work; a few visitors are laughing and throwing peanuts to the apes, who I note are getting lazy and fat thanks to their high-sodium diet. A sign says DO NOT FEED, and I hear Agent Wade whisper, “I could get all of these perps on a federal rap.”
“I, uh . . . I see I’m back on the list.”
“What?” Agent Wade looks genuinely alarmed. He snatches the list from me. “What was I thinking? Sorry about that, Doug . . . really.”
Agent Wade then picks up some spilled peanuts and hurls them at, rather than for, the monkeys. Under his breath I swear I hear him mutter, “Choke on this. . . .”
Later I take Agent Wade for lunch in the zoo workers’ canteen. I order a giraffe-shaped burger, and he has an elephant pizza, so-called because it comes in the shape of an elephant’s ear. Agent Wade claims he has left his wallet behind, and I am forced to pay for the meal. We share a can of Dr Pepper.
“Tallulah sure put up a hell of a fight.” I pour my half of the Dr Pepper, then hand the can to Agent Wade.
“Some women are like that. They’re wildcats.”
“She gave me the most trouble I’ve ever had. Was lucky you stepped in like you did.”
Agent Wade takes a sip of Dr Pepper. “My guess is she was on steroids. Probably taking enough to beef up an entire Olympic squad.”
“You think so?”
Agent Wade nods with complete conviction. “FBI Directive Eighteen. Chapter twelve, verse four.”
“Verse four?”
“Did I say verse? I meant paragraph four, subsection thirty-four. ‘Steroids induce anger, unreasonable belligerence, and instability. When investigating a case with steroidal intimations, use maximum force.’”
I let out a low, complimentary whistle. “You sure know your stuff.”
My giraffe burger arrives with Agent Wade’s elephant pizza. I smile at the waitress, who I note is new here. She is also devastatingly pretty.
“Just started?” I give her a pleasant grin.
“Actually I’ve been here four months.” She yawns, and I can tell she’s coming to the end of a long shift.
“Really? Four months? So where have you been hiding that I haven’t seen you around before?”
“Oh, I’ve seen you around before.” The waitress walks off, and I admit I don’t quite get the gist of this. She may be pretty, but her conversation is badly lacking.
Agent Wade watches the waitress for a moment, cutting into his pizza as he does. “Cute.”
“Hands off. I saw her first.” I say this with a gentle laugh but find that in truth I really mean it. It may have taken four months, but I did see her first.
Agent Wade shrugs. “She’s not my type, anyway.”
I can only presume this is because she doesn’t work in a strip joint.
Agent Wade finishes off his half of the Dr Pepper, then gives me a thoughtful look. “I guess you want to know what’s gonna happen at the end of the two months?”
“I’ll admit it had crossed my mind.”
Agent Wade smiles, takes his time as he lights a cigarette. “If you finish the job, then I’m gonna let you go.”
I sit very still, knowing I should be thrilled by this, but there’s something in the way he says it that tells me he’s lying.
He blows smoke toward the ceiling. “Bet you never figured that would happen.”
“No, I sure didn’t.”
“You’re gonna be a free man, Doug. After you’re done, I’m outta here. Sayonara, au revoir, vamoose, all those things.”
I hold Agent Wade’s unwavering look, offering him a thin smile, hoping to convey some sense of joy at this news. But inside I don’t believe him.
Not for one second.
Agent Wade keeps smiling at me. “Listen, there’s something else I need you to do for me, Doug.”
Agent Wade takes a moment and then leans forward across the table. I feel compelled to lean toward him, and we talk conspiratorially.
He takes his time. “I want you to get the Club to offer the Kentucky Killer a membership.”
I immediately shake my head. “They won’t do that. We’ve discussed it a hundred times over.”
“Dougie . . .”
“It’s impossible.”
“Dougie, just hear me out.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“He’s just another killer, Doug.”
I shake my head firmly. “No. No way. He’s the king of killers. What’s he up to now? Two hundred and ninety victims.”
“Two nine eight.”
“The Club can’t compete with that—their combined total isn’t even half that. If he started telling stories, we’d still be listening six months later. You’re talking about a lot of egos getting crushed beyond recognition. KK’s had masses of stuff written about him, MTV specials have been broadcast, he’s had TV movies made about him, there’s even talk of a serial killer soap opera. We’re dealing w
ith the equivalent of Elvis here, the members are cruise ship crooners in comparison.”
“Which is why you’ve got to get him to join. You have to take out the top guy. He probably inspires as many people as he kills. It’s not a good thing him being out there. Besides, I want every last serial killer, Dougie.”
“How, though? The cops, the CIA, even your FBI people can’t catch him. How d’you think we’re gonna do it?”
“You know how to communicate with him, to draw him out. Sure, he might be more famous than an astronaut, but no one has any idea who he is. Those movies they made of him, in one he was Caucasian, another Hispanic, another he was African, another he was in a wheelchair. He could be anyone. You. Me. Anyone.”
I shake my head again, knowing this is crazy. “If Tony says no, then Tony means no.”
“Think about the victims a minute, Dougie. You want to be a hero, right? Then save all those people who are going to buy some fast food, walk out into the midday sun, and then be found half an hour later with a KFC family meal carton dumped over their heads. Abject souls with lemon-scented hand wipes stuffed down their throats and the menu for a new secret recipe stapled to their foreheads. What about them, Dougie? Huh? Come on, hero—what about them?”
I look away, don’t know how to answer that.
“Imagine your last moment on earth being an argument with a KFC employee as you try desperately to make them understand your order. Life can get cheap, Dougie, but that’s no way to use up your last few minutes before KK strikes.”
“Tony won’t allow it. . . .” I know this sounds weak, and Agent Wade comes in for the kill.
“Five years he’s been out there killing roughly one a week. And you’re right, we can’t find him because we can’t man every single KFC outlet, it’s impossible. You’re the last chance we have, Dougie.”