The Violet Hour

by Richard Montanari

  Amelia’s head dropped slowly, her mind afloat on a warm, stagnant pool. She forced open her eyes one more time and saw that the man had changed her clothes the last time she had passed out. She was wearing a black miniskirt, fishnet hose, red suede high heels that were way too tight.

  As the white swan bucked beneath her and took her on the ride of her life, she realized what she looked like.

  She looked like a whore.

  54

  A WHORE. JULIA looked like a whore.

  The effect on him was so startling that he could hardly believe it was Julia. She sat on the edge of Roger’s bed, wearing a short skirt, her knees so primly together, nineteen years old, every man’s dream. Geoffrey had noticed. Johnny, too. They couldn’t take their eyes off her.

  But this was not his Julia. His Julia had always been partial to peasant dresses, jeans, sandals. She had gone away for a weekend once with some of the girls from her dorm, and he noticed that she fit everything into a knapsack. Julia was a simple, bright girl. But not lately, not tonight, not now.

  Now she sat in a black miniskirt and fishnet hose, her legs looking long and slender and perfect. Her tiny feet were stuffed into red high heels. On her head was a black beret.

  She was wearing far more lipstick than he’d ever seen, far more eye makeup, too. He felt himself getting hard looking at her, but feeling nothing else. Nothing except a dark rage, tempered by this sick attraction, this all-consuming fear. The drugs Roger had given him were in full and complete control.

  And so he watched . . .

  A doctor was tying a rubber tourniquet around Julia’s arm. Benny Crane, of course. Had to be Benny. Benny was always in charge of things medical, things pharmaceutical.

  Julia looked frightened, apprehensive. She glanced up at the pirate standing next to her, who placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. A combat soldier sat behind her. Couldn’t be sure who that was. A rather chunky flapper sat at the desk, rolling joints. Jennifer. Had to be.

  His head felt as if it were in a vise, his hands a thousand pounds each.

  Everyone had changed costumes, it seemed. And everyone, except Julia, wore a mask. It was as if they knew they were going to cross the line that night. People were passed out in every corner of the room; some sat in chairs, staring blankly into space.

  ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ was playing. Jagger wanted him to guess his name.

  But he didn’t have to guess.

  He knew.

  A single candle now. Whorehouse light, pastel orange. Julia on the bed, kneeling, the pirate holding her from behind. Flesh, skin, muscles, hands. Julia’s blouse was off.

  Tunnel vision.

  Yet through it, he saw so many things.

  He saw the pirate look in his direction every so often, the eyes behind the mask mocking him, daring him to act, react. The pirate took Julia from behind.

  He saw the cowboy kneel in front of Julia, kissing her deeply, running his hands over her breasts.

  He saw Dr Keller standing in the shadow by the door, his eyes two black marbles in the candlelight. Dr Keller was masturbating. He was watching the fivesome on the bed – the pirate, the soldier, the cowboy, the flapper, Julia. Under the cover of the darkness, under the cover of the loud music, he stepped forward, his erect penis in one hand, and placed his other hand into the maelstrom of flesh, running it over Julia’s stomach, her breasts. And then he retreated.

  He saw the pirate lift Julia and place her on the windowsill. He saw the pirate push Julia’s skirt up around her waist, and as the music roared, he watched the pirate fuck the woman he loved, fuck her until she came, her fingernails digging deep in his back.

  And later, after more degradation, after more drugs, when the windowpane snapped, when the sound wrenched him from his coma and he saw her fall, the heel of her shoe catching on the final shard, coming off, twisting, turning, landing at his feet . . .

  He saw.

  To the police they were, of course, proper young collegiates, scrubbed and well lawyered, kids who’d simply had a Halloween party that went too far. The investigation was short, the inquiry shorter.

  Poor Julia, they all said. She jumped.

  Small-town girl. The drugs and all.

  Poor, poor Julia.

  55

  SHE CAME DRIFTING back to consciousness, on the bed, on her knees, her arms straight up over her head, her hands roped together and linked to a cable that rose high into the blackness of the warehouse ceiling. She was still fully dressed, her feet were untied.

  The first thing she did was kick off the shoes.

  Roger sat across from her now, his head straight down. He looked unconscious. A thin ribbon of drool ran from his mouth to his lap.

  The man in the white jumpsuit was not in the room.

  The record player had finished whatever it was playing and the needle was stuck at the end. The brip, brip, brip coming through the cheap speakers was a water torture – methodical, a metronome urging her to act. But she couldn’t act. Her head swam, her body was numb.

  The mannequins were now arranged on the bed around her. She was able to spin a little and she saw that a mannequin dressed as a pirate was kneeling behind her, as was the flapper she had seen sitting at the desk earlier. In front of her was a soldier, on his knees, on the floor. The doctor was sitting at the desk. Standing next to Roger, propped against the wall, was the cowboy. This close, Amelia could see what it was that was causing the stench. The eyes on the cowboy. The lips on the doctor. The rotting breasts on the flapper.

  Her stomach lurched.

  Amelia looked straight up, away from the carnage. But soon the effort became too taxing. She lowered her eyes and tried to find a place to rest them, a place that didn’t steal pieces of her mind, her sanity.

  The burlap bag. It sat on the ground near the cowboy’s boots, just to the left to Roger’s wheelchair, just beneath the windows. Amelia ran her eyes over the shape, the size, the soft angles.

  It was the burlap bag that had been in the Camerons’ backyard.

  The one that had sat at this monster’s feet.

  Maddie.

  No.

  When the man returned this time, he seemed manic, clearly in the grip of a drug rush of some sort, soaring. Amelia knew that he was no longer going to play with them. This was the end of her family, right here and now, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  ‘Now, before I fuck your wife, I have a question for you,’ the man said, conversationally, lifting Roger’s head. ‘I want you to tell me what happened that night, Roger. Tell me in your own words.’

  Amelia looked at the burlap bag. Please, God, just an inch, she thought, staring at the middle of the bag. Please let me see the material move up one inch, then back down. Let me see her breathe once. One. Solitary. Breath. God, if you’ve ever heard a mother’s prayer, hear this one.

  One breath.

  She would not, could not, take her eyes from the bag.

  Nothing.

  ‘Whose room is this, Roger?’ the man asked.

  Roger lifted his eyes. ‘My room.’

  The words were slurred, thick with his tongue.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. He gestured to the mannequin next to him. ‘You remember Johnny Angel, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Course you do,’ the man said. ‘I always thought Johnny had the nicest eyes. Caring and honest, you know?’

  Roger remained silent. The man looked at Amelia.

  Amelia looked back at the burlap bag.

  Breathe, Maddie.

  Breathe.

  Amelia had never felt as powerless in her life.

  ‘What do you want?’ she heard Roger ask, weakly.

  ‘I want you to tell me what happened that night. I want you to be a man and confess to your part.’

  Then a light next to the television lit up, a red light on a small, sophisticated-looking panel. The man walked over to the TV, punched a few buttons.

  And, without
a word, walked out of the room.

  56

  AFTER SEEING WILLIE T’s car in the alley, Nicky found some scraps of wood, wedged a few pieces under the door, propping it open, and descended the steps. He made it back across the warehouse and over to where he had entered, still not braving the center of the maze, but rather hugging the wall he had followed the first time.

  He waited by the ramp that led to the door, listening for footsteps outside, listening for Willie T. An occasional car, an occasional reverberation of gangsta rap bass, but no footsteps, no one pushing on the door.

  Come on, Willie, he thought. What the fuck are you doing?

  He took the time to inventory his pockets. He had a pack of matches that he had taken from the seat of Sandy’s car. He opened the pack, felt inside. One match. Great. A single match and a can of pepper spray. A regular one man SWAT team. After a few moments of brain-numbing silence, he decided to head back up to the second floor, see if Willie’s car had moved.

  This third trip through the darkness he walked, slowly, down the center of the hallway, his hands out in front, probing the blackness like antennae. Somehow his eyes seemed to have adjusted to this total darkness. It wasn’t as if he could see in front of him, but he seemed to be able to sense in front of him.

  But where the hell was Willie?

  Maybe there was another way in, he thought. Maybe Willie had found another way inside. Or maybe he had waited a couple of minutes and taken off, only to call in an all-points bulletin on the crazy Nick Stella fucker who thinks he can manipulate the where, when, and how of his arrest.

  He began to walk a little faster, still keeping his ears attuned to anyone banging on a door or rattling a window.

  And that was when the man knocked him down.

  Nicky screamed, a short, guttural burst of surprise, scrambled to his feet, lashed out with a much-practiced combination of punches. Air. His heart began to race. Another left, right, left. Still nothing.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he screamed.

  No answer.

  And then the man ran into him again. Except this time, something felt wrong. It felt as if the man’s shoes had hit him in the chest. Nicky punched, a straight right hand, and connected with hard bone. Hard vertical bone. He backed up a few feet, waiting in an attack stance, his fear catching the breath in his chest.

  A leg, Nicky thought. A shinbone. He had punched a shinbone. It didn’t make any sense, but still his hand flared with pain, red needles that shot up his arm and across his back.

  He backed up another ten feet or so, crouched down, listened. Nothing shifted or moved in front of him. Although, he thought, it would have been hard to hear over the thrumming of his heart.

  When he felt confident that no one was going to lunge at him, he searched his pockets, found the pack of matches. He plucked the last match, carefully felt along the edge until he found the flint surface. He took a breath, held it, struck the match.

  The flare was small and insignificant in the expanse of the maze, but it threw enough of its pale light onto the blood-splattered shoes of the man hanging in front of him. There was enough light for Nicky to see the deep red stains that had soaked through the formerly blue denim, the crimson intaglio that was the man’s T-shirt.

  And the wraparound shades. For that brief instant, the wraparound shades stared down at him like the eyes of a giant spider.

  Willie T, Nicky thought, through the horror.

  Willie T.

  He skirted the body and ran toward the steps.

  The cavalry was dead.

  57

  ‘THEY ALL CRIED. And talked. In the end. Geoffrey especially. Confessed to everything he had ever done in his life. Even told me about kicking his old dog. Then he cried like a little girl. It was pathetic.’

  Amelia was still tied to the cable that led to the ceiling. Her arms were numb, no longer part of her body. She was still gagged.

  ‘Speaking of little girls,’ he said. He picked up the burlap sack. He handled it with ease, in spite of its weight, its bulk, brought it next to the desk, dropped it roughly. ‘I always wanted a little girl. Julia and I were going to have two children, you know. A boy and a girl.’

  He grabbed a hypodermic needle from the desk, squirted a drop or two into the air, and fixed Roger in a defiant stare. ‘Tell me why you fucked all that up for me, Roger. Tell me why you should have a wife and a family and I don’t.’

  Roger lifted his head slowly. ‘I didn’t . . .’

  In an instant the man brought the needle down, violently, and stabbed the burlap bag, finding purchase in flesh. He depressed the plunger, removed it, tossed it casually on the desk. He looked back at Roger, as if he had just clipped a toenail, or brushed a bit of lint from his trousers. ‘Of course, you might have a drug addict on your hands in the future. Plenty of product here. Plenty of time.’ He began to pace. ‘Can you imagine that, Roger? Your little Maddie a junkie. Picture it. She’s eleven, twelve years old, she’s sneaking out of her bedroom window, riding into town with some guy named Rasheed, scoring some smack. Imagine that. Little Maddie sucking cock in the back of some fur-lined van, a slave to her daddy’s habits.’

  Amelia looked at the burlap sack, the last pieces of her heart breaking. Then, miraculously, as if she had willed it, Amelia saw the center of the bag move up and down. Once. Then twice.

  Breathing . . .

  The man started to rant, his voice getting louder now, clearly more agitated.

  ‘Well, I guess Roger isn’t in a talkative mood tonight. Odd, isn’t it? If I remember correctly, you could never seem to shut him the fuck up back in college. And the smooth talk. Jesus. The man could charm the panties off a corpse. Right, Mrs Roger?’ He moved the chair out of the way and stood next to the window that overlooked the back alley. ‘Second last chance, Roger. Tell me now.’ He picked up the burlap bag, one hand holding each end. He suspended it a foot or so off the ground.

  ‘I don’t . . .’ Roger managed.

  The man in the white jumpsuit began to swing the bag back and forth, side to side, slowly, knee-high. Back and forth. ‘I’m going to ask you only two more times.’

  Amelia struggled against the ropes. She couldn’t turn her head far enough to see Roger fully, but she could see the window. Oh yes. She could see the man in white, the sparkling of his sequined mask, she could see the bag that held her daughter, her very life, being swung in an ever-increasing arc, ever nearing the windowpane. She tried to scream, but the gag caught it. Her terror tasted like wet foil.

  ‘Tell me,’ the man said. ‘You were the pirate that night, weren’t you?’

  Roger’s head lolled on his shoulders. He didn’t speak. The drugs had taken his voice, his mind, his memory. Roger, please, Amelia thought. Please come back. Fight it. Please tell him. Amelia closed her eyes, imagined the crack of the glass, the thunderclap of the pane breaking outward, the bag sailing through. She forced herself to look.

  ‘Tell me you were the god . . . damn . . . PIRATE!’ he screamed, the effort to swing the bag faster and faster drawing a bead of sweat on his brow. Amelia saw the droplet run down his forehead, leaving a thin white streak. The man in the white suit was wearing Pan-Cake makeup.

  Roger. My God. What have you done?

  ‘Wasn’t . . . me,’ Roger offered.

  The man grimaced, baring his teeth. ‘Liar,’ he said. ‘Fucking liar.’

  And then it happened.

  In one smooth motion, the man let go of the bag, and the weight of the sack carried it into the glass – shattering it into a thousand sparkling pieces – and out into the black night. For a moment, as the glass rained down, Amelia saw Maddie’s short life unspool in her mind. Her little girl’s first Christmas, her first Easter bonnet. The time she took all the hot dogs out of the fridge and left a trail of them heading upstairs to her room. Her first day of school. How she cried that day. How they both cried . . .

  Then the horror blossomed within her, and her grief became a living thing, so power
ful a force that she suddenly felt light, almost weightless, as if her insides were being bled through the pores of her skin. Every fear she had ever had, every dark scenario she had ever considered for her daughter, had just happened in a single second.

  Maddie.

  Maddie-bear.

  Amelia St John opened her mouth.

  And for a long time, her screams devoured her.

  58

  NICKY HEARD THE music. And something that sounded like breaking glass. He was one floor below. He had learned on the second floor that the doors were locking behind him, but he wasn’t surprised. Ever since his phone call to his cousin Joseph, ever since learning of Johnny Angel’s death, he felt as if he were being drawn deeper and deeper into this core of darkness.

  Willie T.

  Had Willie been so far into this that the only way out for him was to end up hanging in a warehouse with his throat sliced open? And if that was what this maniac would do to a cop, what chance did he have? It was Willie T who had told him about Rat Boy to begin with.

  Was that what sealed his fate?

  Nicky continued up the stairwell, the music now growing in volume. Was it the Stones? He opened the door an inch or so and found, as expected, that he had reached the top floor. But of all the things he expected to see when he edged open the door and glanced into the room, what he actually saw nearly took his breath away.

  The huge room was laid out like a Sesame Street version of Main Street.

  Six-foot boxes that looked like buildings were placed diagonally across the center of the room, connecting the hundred or so feet between the two canvas rooms that Taffy had told him about. He had to look twice. Yes, there really were replicas of streetlights, and cars along the path between the rooms. Some of the boxes were crudely painted to look like buildings with which he was familiar. The Allen Medical Library. Severance Hall. The Boarding House. Euclid Tavern.