‘Take them,’ he insisted. ‘Two tablets, twice a day remember. I’m coming back in a few days to check on Betsy. I’ll be checking on you, too.’
Mason bade the doctor goodbye and knocked lightly on Betsy’s bedroom door. She’d taken to sleeping in a separate room now. That pained him greatly, but she needed the space, he thought. He entered. The drapes were drawn, the place washed in something like twilight.
‘Hi, honey. How are you?’ he said.
Betsy was in bed, propped up on a mound of pillows. There was a bottle of pills on a bedside cabinet at one side, the wheelchair at the other. Mason swallowed hard, his chest feeling heavy, his head beginning to hurt again. The pain rarely seemed to go away these days.
‘Have you checked on Davey?’ she asked. Her voice sounded distant, lost in the gloom.
‘Yeah. He refuses to leave that damn shack of his. But he says he’s OK and not to worry about him. I’ve made sure he’s got plenty to eat, fresh clothes. What a pair you are!’ he said lightly, but it didn’t draw a change of expression from her. ‘Babe, I’ve got something to tell you…’
‘If anything happens to Davey I’ll die.’
‘He’s fine, Betsy. Nothing bad is going to happen to him. How are your legs?’
‘They won’t work,’ she said flatly.
‘Are you sure? Doctor Lombard says he can’t find anything wrong with them.’
‘Are you saying I’m making this up?’ Anger lit her voice.
‘No, of course I’m not saying that. Calm down. He said maybe it was some kind of trauma that caused it.’
‘What does he know?’ she said, turning her head so she didn’t have to look at him.
‘If you can’t walk, they’re pulling you from the picture, Betsy,’ he said, sitting on the edge of the bed, needing to reach out and stroke her hair but feeling as if his hand had turned to lead.
‘They can’t do that!’ she screeched. ‘I’m Dorottya! That’s my part!’
‘I told them that, but they haven’t got a choice…’
‘Did you fight for me, Rick? Really put up a fight for me?’
‘Sure I did.’
‘Like hell! I know your game – you want to keep me locked up here, in this horrible mansion, in this gloomy old room, like he did with Dorottya.’
‘You’re rambling,’ he said shortly, his heart heavy. ‘You’re not well.’
‘Not well, like Dorottya, eh? She pleaded with Franz Horvat, didn’t she? Asked for his help. Told him she was being kept a prisoner, being drugged, and all so Dragutin could make sick plans for having a son. A son of the devil!’
‘You’re talking crazy, Betsy.’
‘Am I? Am I really? Are you drugging me, too, Rick, is that why I can’t walk? You want to keep me locked away here, make everyone think I’m going crazy.’
He rose from the bed. ‘Betsy, listen to you. You’re not talking sense. Something’s happened to you and I don’t know what. You can’t even look at your baby – our son! What’s gotten into you?’
Her pretty face contorted into something grim, almost monstrous. ‘It’s you, can’t you see that? It’s Dragutin, he’s got a hold on you. You were the one to let him in, wouldn’t let him go. You let him take control of you.’
‘That’s sheer drivel!’ he burst. ‘Stop talking like this, Betsy; you’re frightening me.’
She reached out across the bed, grabbed a newspaper and threw it at him. ‘Look at that, Rick! You broke a woman’s jaw! My Rick would never do something like that!’
He scanned the article. The woman had gone to the press after all. He put a hand to his head. ‘I don’t know how to explain…’ he stammered.
‘So who’s next? Me? Is that your plan?’
He threw the newspaper aside. ‘I need you to be a mother to our child, that’s all!’ he shouted. ‘The kid needs a mother! Christ knows, we both never really had one of our own. Do you want the kid growing up shackled to our troubles?’
‘It’s too late for Eddie. The kid’s already cursed…’
‘I’m not listening to this, Betsy,’ he said.
‘Where are you going?’ she said shrilly.
‘Out.’
‘To see Bunny Foster?’
‘What?’
‘You’ve been seeing Bunny, admit it. She’s getting my part in the movie, right?’
‘I haven’t been seeing anyone.’
‘First she becomes Dorottya, then what? She becomes your wife?’
He left the room, slamming the door behind him, his chest heaving. Once downstairs he poured a glass of water, took the tablets the doctor had given him, his head pounding like someone was laying into a corrugated-iron roof with a pickaxe.
He drove his car aimlessly for a couple of hours, then as the Sun sank down he headed into downtown Los Angeles, cruising the speakeasies and gin-joints till he found a place he could lose himself in a game of high-stakes back-room poker and drink himself senseless on illicit hooch.
Game over, a few hundred bucks lighter, he was invited to stay a while by an attractive brunette that reminded him of Betsy. She took him by the hand upstairs to a dingy little room that stank of cheap perfume and female sweat, sat him on the bed and made him watch as she undressed before him. He stared dolefully, his head swaying, feeling as if razors were slashing through the soft, pink flesh of his brain.
The woman’s bare breasts were two inches from his face.
‘You’re that Dragutin guy, aren’t you?’ she said huskily, her blood-red lips glossy, wide and enticing. He nodded. ‘You want to tie me up? You want to get rough with me? I don’t mind if you get rough.’ She kissed his neck, bit into it with her white teeth. It left a red welt. She began to unbutton his shirt, ran a soft hand over his chest. She pressed her breast against his lips. ‘Bite me,’ she insisted. ‘Put me in your mouth and chew me. Eat me up, Baron Dragutin.’
He kissed the soft, resisting mound of her breast, took her nipple between his teeth and clamped down hard. She moaned gently, like the final breath of the dying, he thought, and then she tossed her head back, arching her slender throat.
The next instant he had his hands fastened around her neck, pushed her back onto the bed. Her eyes were closed in pleasure, her lips a perfect scarlet circle of wet velvet, her mouth a deep fleshy tunnel that beckoned him inside.
Then her eyes were opened wide in horror, her pink tongue sticking out from between her lips. She croaked out a strangled cry of alarm, her arms and legs beginning to thrash wildly on the bed covers, as if she were swimming in a sea of soft cotton. He pressed harder, ever harder, feeling her flimsy neck beneath his clawed fingers that dug deep and cratered her white skin.
He felt elation. He felt his blood coursing hot through him, down into his fingertips that glowed with the heat. He wanted her to die. He wanted to feel her body crush and crumple and her frail life extinguish beneath him. He wanted to kill her.
Then he released her, looking at his hands, shocked, as if they didn’t belong to him.
‘Oh Christ, what am I doing?’ he said pathetically. He looked down at the woman who was gasping for breath, grasping her throat, trying to talk. She regarded his with abject terror, scrabbling over the bed, away from him.
He grabbed his coat, ran out of the bedroom, down the stairs, out the door and into the street. He paused to suck in the fume-filled air, began to sob uncontrollably. He rubbed his eyes, his sweat-drenched temples. His head was ablaze. He regained his breath before buttoning up his shirt, wiping his nose on his sleeve and staggering over to where his car was parked.
But before he could reach it the vehicle exploded in a giant fireball that threw him backwards so that he crashed against a storefront wall. The windows beside him shattered and he was showered with shards of broken glass. Burning fuel fell like tiny, writhing demons all around him. Then, with his eyes filled with a sickening vision of flaming hell, he blacked out.
* * * *
28
Monster-Guy
<
br /> Two officers from the LAPD took a statement from him as he lay in the hospital bed. He was still feeling groggy from something the doctors had slipped him. They’d had to stitch up a deep cut above the eye, caused by flying metal from the exploding car and which they said had come close to taking out his eye. He was bruised all over from the fall, but he was grateful just to be alive. They insisted he stay there a while longer, just to be on the safe side, but he was already desperate to get his clothes on and get out of there.
‘It was a bomb,’ said one of the officers.
‘Someone deliberately set out to kill me?’ Rick Mason said incredulously.
‘We received a message that it was members of the Church of Holy Reckoning who planted it. We contacted one of their spokespeople who strongly denied all connection to it. He maintained they are non-violent. A wad of their protest leaflets was found at the scene, which seems to corroborate the call. Could be a rogue protestor taking it a little too far. The bomb was too big, though, too sophisticated for it to be one guy, we think. Whatever, you were lucky you weren’t sitting in the car at the time otherwise we’d still be picking up tiny pieces of Baron Dragutin off the sidewalk.’ He chuckled, realised Mason wasn’t amused. ‘Did you see anyone loitering near your car?’
‘No, can’t say I did.’
‘What were you doing in that neighbourhood anyhow, Mr Mason?’
‘I needed to take a stroll,’ he said abruptly.
‘Maybe in future you should stroll someplace safer.’ He rose from the chair at Mason’s bedside, put his cap back on. He handed Mason a piece of paper and a pencil. ‘Would you mind, sir?’
‘Mind what, officer?’
‘It would be real swell if you could give me your autograph. My wife, she’s crazy about you. Don’t know what she sees in that ugly son-of-a-bitch Dragutin, but all the same…’
Mason obliged and handed the officer his pencil and paper. ‘Do you think you’ll catch whoever planted that bomb? They might want to try again.’
‘We’ll do our best, sir,’ he said with scant assurance. ‘Like I say, better if you stay away from districts like that, eh?’ He winked knowingly.
I’ve got to get the hell out of here, Mason thought, but the sedative they’d given him kicked in and he fell asleep in spite of his best efforts to fight it and stay awake.
When he arrived back home the following day there were many relieved faces there to greet him. Betsy was there too; she’d been brought downstairs and was sitting in her wheelchair. Her face was pale and anxious.
‘I thought you were dead,’ she said. ‘The police told me you’d been blown up by a madman.’ She began to cry, sending away the two servants who stood by her side. She held out her hand and Mason grasped her delicate fingers. ‘What’s happening, Rick?’
‘Just some religious nuts, that’s all. The police say they’ll get them soon.’
Her head nodded towards the large plate-glass window that looked onto the swimming pool beyond. A tall well-built man stood with his hands behind his back. ‘I don’t trust the police,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard so many stories about them being corrupt. They could be in on this.’
‘I don’t think so, Betsy…’
‘So I hired someone…’ She waved and the man opened the door and stepped inside. He was pushing thirty, maybe, all muscle, meaty paws for hands. He wore a no-nonsense, narrow-eyed expression. ‘This is Warren Sykes,’ said Betsy. ‘He’s going to be our bodyguard.’
‘We don’t need a bodyguard,’ he protested.
‘Yes we do. You were nearly killed yesterday, and until whoever planted that bomb is found and arrested we’ll need someone to watch over us. To watch over you. Please, Rick, for my sake. For Eddie’s sake.’
‘He eyed the man. ‘Are you any good?’
‘Ex-military, sir. Years in the field. Your wife has my references if you wish to see them, sir.’
He sighed, shook his head. ‘That’s OK, Sykes,’ he said wearily. ‘Welcome to the war zone; the devil on one side, God on the other.’
‘That’s not funny,’ said Betsy.
‘You should be caught in the middle,’ he returned. ‘It’s hilarious!’ He waved the man away. ‘Go away and do whatever it is bodyguards do,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said and went outside again.
‘Keep him close by you,’ Betsy insisted, her eyes imploring.
‘You’ve changed your tune haven’t you? One minute I’m not to be trusted, the next you’re looking after my skin. I don’t get you.’
‘I still love the man I married,’ she said, spinning the wheelchair around and rolling away from him. ‘He’s not altogether lost,’ she added. ‘Not yet…’
Had Metropolitan’s press agent got hair he’d have been tearing it out, Mason thought.
‘This is getting out of hand,’ he opined. He had a number of newspapers laid out in front of him on the desk. Other people looking similarly harassed shared the large desk in the centre of Metropolitan’s conference room, sharp-suited men that Mason had never seen before. They all looked like they’d been up all night, their tired eyes all focussed on the press agent. ‘First the broken jaw, then the increase in protests, and now a goddamn bomb. I’m not a miracle worker; there’s only so much I can do to make a positive out of a negative.’
He looked close to having a breakdown, Mason mused. Welcome to the club.
‘OK, so I admit it was wrong to go socking that woman, but I didn’t cause the protest, and it was my life that had been on the line when that bomb went off. Why aren’t the papers concentrating on that instead of hounding me?’
Conrad Jefferson had been sitting quiet at the head of the table, watching proceedings and puffing hard on his cigar, the third of the meeting. ‘Well you gotta think of something!’ he boomed suddenly. ‘It’s what we fucking pay you for! Scram and get me some good news for a change!’
The man scooped up his papers and scurried from the room. Jefferson scowled at one of the suits sitting in front of him, a sign for him to speak.
‘It’s a crucial time, Mr Jefferson, for both the new movie and for Metropolitan Studios. The backers of The Devil Rises are getting edgy with all this negative publicity mounting up. We’ve got a couple itching to pull out.’
‘They’re under contract,’ Jefferson observed sourly. ‘Let them try.’
‘Neither can we afford a series of protracted legal battles, sir. Metropolitan’s shares are falling and the shareholders are also getting edgy.’
‘Fuck the shareholders. We should never have floated the goddamn company. OK, so I hear all that.’ He turned to Mason. ‘What have you gotta say?’
‘I hear it, too, but I’m not sure what you want me to do about it.’
Jefferson wiped his tired eyes with a handkerchief. Hal Bremner was there amongst the suits, eyeing Mason. ‘We have to pull the plug on Dragutin,’ Bremner said.
Mason couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘You can’t do that.’
‘Makes sense to cut our losses,’ Bremner continued.
‘Mason’s right,’ Jefferson cut in. ‘We can’t do that. We’ve got too much riding on this movie, including our reputation. We’ve invested too much up front in the production to quit now. It would ruin us for sure. Hell, this damn production has been jinxed from the beginning.’
‘Cursed,’ said Bremner wryly.
‘Funny,’ said Mason. ‘Look, if I have to pump even more cash into this I will.’
‘If this movie goes ahead then I’m quitting,’ Bremner said, the bombshell causing an explosion of complete silence around the room. ‘I’ve got my reputation to think about, too. Mason can flash all the cash he likes, but my career is more important than that of a two-bit actor.’
Mason sprung to his feet. ‘Cut the shit, Bremner!’
‘I wish I could,’ he returned, ‘but that’s proving difficult to do.’ He pushed back his chair, rose calmly from the table and made for the door. ‘We’ll talk later, Conrad, in p
rivate,’ he said.
Jefferson called the meeting off to give everyone time to cool down. A woman – one of Jefferson’s army of secretaries and administrators – came looking for Mason.
‘There you are! I’ve taken a call from your wife. Can you call her back first opportunity you get? She says it’s very urgent. And she sounded more than a little panicky, Mr Mason.’
He thanked her and she found him a private office where he made a call, asked the operator to be put through to his house.
‘Betsy,’ he said wearily, ‘what’s wrong?’
‘I’ve been trying to reach you for ages!’ she said agitatedly. ‘I was told you were in a meeting. Rick, I had a call from Davey. He sounded real bad. I’m scared he’s about to do something crazy again. Please can you run out to his place and check up on him?’
‘It’s been one hell of a day, Betsy,’ he said. ‘Can’t this wait?’ Her sudden, shrill voice at the other end of the line told him it couldn’t. He hung up, went out and told the secretary that if they called the meeting again to tell Jefferson he’d be late.
He popped a couple of the pills the doctor had given him, his head feeling as if it was about to explode and set off for Davey’s shack. Along the way he found he kept watching other cars to see if they were following him, scanning the sidewalks to read the expressions in people’s faces. Someone out there wanted him dead, blown to smithereens in God’s holy name. What a fucked-up world this was, he thought bleakly. This entire thing with the bomb had him spooked real bad.
He saw the black plume of smoke billowing into the sky from some distance back and didn’t think much about it till he realised with horror that it was coming from somewhere down the track that led to Davey’s shack.
Cautiously he turned off the main highway and pointed his car down the narrow track. He saw two police cars first, in the distance, and immediately pulled over to one side. Mason walked a little way down the track, keeping under the cover of trees, till Davey’s shack came into full view about a quarter of a mile away.
SILENT (a psychological thriller, combining mystery, crime and suspense) Page 18