Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense: The Rosary Girls, the Skin Gods, Merciless, Badlands

by Richard Montanari

  When Matisse settled down, docile and spent, his eyes blinking rapidly, the reek of fear and defeat coming off him in waves, Byrne knelt next to him, removed the weapon from his limp hand, got very close to his ear, and said:

  “Yes, Julian. We meet again.”

  MATISSE SAT IN the chair in the center of the basement. There had been no response to the sound of the gunshot, no one banging on the door. This was, after all, North Philly. Matisse’s hands were duct-taped behind him; his feet, to the legs of the wooden chair. When he came around, he didn’t struggle against the tape, didn’t flail about. Perhaps he did not have the strength. He calmly assessed Byrne with his predator’s eyes.

  Byrne looked at the man. In the two years since he had seen him last, Julian Matisse had put on some prison bulk, but there was something about him that seemed diminished. His hair was a little longer. His skin was pitted and greasy, his cheeks sunken. Byrne wondered if he had the first stages of the virus.

  Byrne had stuffed the second Taser unit down the front of Matisse’s jeans.

  When Matisse regained some of his strength, he said: “Looks like your partner—or should I say, your dead ex-partner—was dirty, Detective. Imagine that. A dirty Philly cop.”

  “Where is she?” Byrne asked.

  Matisse twisted his face into a parody of innocence. “Where is who?”

  “Where is she?”

  Matisse just glared at him. Byrne placed the nylon gym bag on the floor. The bulk and shape and heft of the bag was not lost on Matisse. Byrne then removed his belt, slowly wrapped it around his knuckles.

  “Where is she?” he repeated.

  Nothing.

  Byrne stepped forward and punched Matisse in the face. Hard. After a moment, Matisse laughed, then spit the blood out of his mouth, along with a pair of teeth.

  “Where is she?” Byrne asked.

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  Byrne feinted another punch. Matisse flinched.

  Tough guy.

  Byrne crossed the room, unwrapped his hand, unzipped the gym bag, then began to lay the contents on the floor, in the wedge of streetlight drawn by the window. Matisse’s eyes widened for a second, then narrowed. He was going to play hard. Byrne wasn’t surprised.

  “You think you can hurt me?” Matisse asked. He spit some more blood. “I’ve been through things that would make you cry like a fucking baby.”

  “I’m not here to hurt you, Julian. I just want some information. The power is in your hands.”

  Matisse snorted at this. But deep down he knew what Byrne meant. This is the nature of the sadist. Put the onus of the pain on the subject.

  “Now,” Byrne said. “Where is she?”

  Silence.

  Byrne planted his feet again, threw a hard hook. This time to the body. The blow caught Matisse right behind his left kidney. Byrne stepped away. Matisse vomited.

  When Matisse caught his breath, he managed: “Thin line between justice and hatred, isn’t there?” He spit on the floor again. A putrescent stench filled the room.

  “I want you to think about your life, Julian,” Byrne said, ignoring him. He stepped around the puddle, got close. “I want you to think about all the things you’ve done, the decisions you’ve made, the steps you’ve taken to lead you to this moment. Your lawyer isn’t here to protect you. There’s no judge to make me stop.” Byrne got to within a few inches of Matisse’s face. The smell was stomach churning. He took the switch of the Taser in hand. “I’m going to ask you again. If you don’t answer me, we ratchet all this up a notch, and we never return to the good old days of right now. Understand?”

  Matisse did not say a word.

  “Where is she?”

  Nothing.

  Byrne pressed the button, sending sixty thousand volts into Julian Matisse’s testicles. Matisse screamed, loud and long. He upended the chair, falling backward, cracking his head on the floor. But that pain paled in comparison with the fire raging through his lower body. Byrne knelt down next to him, covered the man’s mouth, and in that instant the images smashed together behind his eyes—

  —Victoria crying … pleading for her life … struggling against nylon ropes … the knife slicing her skin … the glossy blood in the moonlight … her screams a long shrill siren in the blackness … screams that join a dark chorus of pain …

  —as he grabbed Matisse’s hair. He yanked the chair upright and brought his face close once more. Matisse’s face was now spiderwebbed with blood and bile and vomit. “Listen to me. You are going to tell me where she is. If she’s dead, if she’s suffering in any way whatsoever, I’ll be back. You think you understand pain but you do not. I will teach you.”

  “Fuck … you,” Matisse whispered. His head lolled to the side. He faded in and out of consciousness. Byrne took an ammonia cap out of his pocket, cracked it under the man’s nose. He came to. Byrne gave him a moment to reorient himself.

  “Where is she?” Byrne asked.

  Matisse looked up, tried to focus. He smiled through the blood in his mouth. His top two front teeth were missing. The rest were slicked pink. “I did her. Just like Snow White. You’ll never find her.”

  Byrne cracked another ammonia cap. He needed Matisse lucid. He put it beneath the man’s nose. Matisse jerked his head backward. From a cup he had brought with him, Byrne took a handful of ice, held it against Matisse’s eyes.

  Byrne then took out his cell phone, opened it. He navigated through the menu until he got to the pictures folder. He opened the most recent picture he had taken, one he had snapped that morning. He turned the LCD screen toward Matisse.

  Matisse’s eyes widened in horror. He began to shake.

  “No …”

  Of all the things Matisse had expected to see, a photograph of Edwina Matisse standing in front of the Aldi supermarket on Market Street, where she always shopped, was not one of them. Seeing a picture of his mother, in this context, clearly chilled him to the bottom of his being.

  “You can’t … ,” Matisse said.

  “If Victoria is dead, I’m going to stop by and pick up your mother on the way back, Julian.”

  “No …”

  “Oh yes. And I will bring her to you in a fucking jar. So help me God.”

  Byrne closed his phone. Matisse’s eyes began to fill with tears. Soon his body was racked with sobs. Byrne had seen it all before. He thought of Gracie Devlin’s sweet smile. He felt no sympathy for this man.

  “Still think you know me?” Byrne asked.

  Byrne dropped a piece of paper into Matisse’s lap. It was the grocery list he had taken from the floor of the backseat of Edwina Matisse’s car. Seeing his mother’s delicate handwriting broke Matisse’s will.

  “Where is Victoria?”

  Matisse struggled against the duct tape. When he’d exhausted himself he fell limp and spent. “No more.”

  “Answer me,” Byrne said.

  “She’s … she’s in Fairmount Park.”

  “Where?” Byrne asked. Fairmount Park was the largest urban park in the country. It covered four thousand acres. “Where?”

  “Belmont Plateau. By the softball field.”

  “Is she dead?”

  Matisse didn’t answer. Byrne cracked another ammonia cap, then picked up the small butane blowtorch. He positioned it an inch from Matisse’s right eye. He poised his lighter.

  “Is she dead?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Byrne backed off, wrapped Matisse’s mouth tightly in duct tape. He checked the man’s hands and legs. Secure.

  Byrne gathered his tools, put them in the bag. He exited the house. Heat shimmered the asphalt, ringing the sodium streetlamps with a carbon-blue aura. North Philly raged with a manic energy this night, and Kevin Byrne was its soul.

  He slipped into his car and headed to Fairmount Park.

  51

  NICCI MALONE WAS one hell of an actress. Of the few times Jessica had gone undercover, she had always been a l
ittle concerned about getting made as a cop. Now, seeing Nicci work the room, Jessica was almost envious. The woman had a certain confidence, an air that said she knew who she was and what she was doing. She got inside the skin of the role she was playing in a way that Jessica never could.

  Jessica watched the crew adjust the lighting between takes. She didn’t know much about film production, but this entire operation looked like a high-budget undertaking.

  It was the subject matter that she found troubling. The story appeared to be about a pair of teenaged girls being dominated by a sadistic grandfather type. At first, Jessica had thought the two young actresses were about fifteen years old, but as she milled around the set, drawing closer, she saw that they were probably twenty.

  Jessica imagined the girl in the Philadelphia Skin video. That had been set in a room not unlike this one.

  What had happened to that girl?

  Why did she look familiar?

  Watching the filming of a three-minute scene turned Jessica’s stomach. In the scene, the man in the master mask verbally humiliated the two girls. They wore filmy, soiled negligees. He tied them back-to-back on the bed, circling them like a giant vulture.

  He struck them repeatedly as he interrogated them, always with an open hand. It took everything in Jessica’s being to stop herself from stepping in. It was clear that the man was making contact. The girls were reacting with what sounded like real screams and looked like real tears, but when Jessica saw the girls laughing between takes, she realized that the blows were not hard enough to cause injury. Maybe they even enjoyed it. In any event, for Detective Jessica Balzano, it was hard to believe that crimes were not being committed here.

  The toughest part to watch came at the scene’s end. The man in the mask left one of the girls tied, spread-eagle, on the bed, while the other was on her knees before him. Looking down at her, he took out his switchblade, flicked it open. He cut her negligee off in shreds. He spat on her. He made her lick his boots. Then he put the knife to the girl’s throat. Jessica and Nicci looked at each other, both ready to rush in. It was here, mercifully, that Dante Diamond had yelled: “Cut.”

  Fortunately, the man in the mask did not take this directive literally.

  Ten minutes later, Nicci and Jessica stood by the small, makeshift buffet table. Dante Diamond may have been a lot of things, but he wasn’t cheap. The table held a number of pricey tidbits: crudités, shrimp toast, scallops in bacon, mini quiche Lorraine.

  Nicci grabbed some food and took a walk up to the set just as one of the older actresses approached the buffet table. She was in her forties, in great shape. Henna-red hair, elaborate eye makeup, painfully high stilettos. She was dressed like a strict schoolmaster. The woman had not been in the earlier scene.

  “Hi,” she said to Jessica. “My name’s Bebe.”

  “Gina.”

  “Are you in the production?”

  “No,” Jessica said. “I’m here as Mr. Diamond’s guest.”

  She nodded, popped a pair of shrimp into her mouth.

  “Ever work with Bruno Steele?” Jessica asked.

  Bebe picked a few items from the buffet table, put them onto a Styrofoam plate. “Bruno? Oh, yeah. Bruno’s a doll.”

  “My director really would like to hire him for a film we’re putting together. Hard S and M. We just can’t seem to find him.”

  “I know where Bruno is. We were just partying with him.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah,” she said. She grabbed a bottle of Aquafina. “Like, a couple of hours ago.”

  “No shit.”

  “He told us to stop back around midnight. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you coming with.”

  “Cool,” Jessica said.

  “I’ve got one more scene, then we’ll get out of here.” She adjusted her outfit, grimaced. “This corset is fucking killing me.”

  “Is there a ladies’ room?” Jessica asked.

  “I’ll show you.”

  Jessica followed Bebe across part of the warehouse floor. They went down a service hallway to a pair of doors. The ladies’ room was huge, built to accommodate a full shift of women when the building had been a manufacturing plant. A dozen stalls and sinks.

  Jessica stood at the mirrors with Bebe.

  “How long have you been in the business?” Bebe asked.

  “About five years,” Jessica said.

  “Just a baby,” she said. “Don’t stay too long,” she added, echoing Jessica’s father’s words about the department. Bebe put her lipstick back into her clutch. “Give me half an hour.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Bebe left the bathroom. Jessica waited a full minute, poked her head out into the hallway, walked back into the bathroom. She checked all the stalls, stepped into the last cubicle. She spoke directly into her body microphone, hoping she wasn’t so deep into the brick building that the surveillance team didn’t pick up a signal. She was not equipped with an earpiece or receiver of any sort. Her communication, if any, was one-way.

  “I don’t know if you heard all that, but we’ve got a lead. A woman said she was partying with our suspect and she’s going to take us there in about thirty minutes. That’s three-oh minutes. We may not be going out the front entrance. Heads up.”

  She thought about repeating what she said, but if the surveillance team didn’t hear her the first time, they wouldn’t hear her the second. She didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances. She adjusted her clothes, stepped out of the stall, and was just about to turn and leave when she heard the click of the hammer. Then she felt the steel of the barrel against the back of her head. The shadow on the wall was huge. It was the gorilla from the front door. Cedric.

  He had heard every word.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he said.

  52

  THERE IS A moment in every film where the main character finds himself unable to return to his former life, that part of his continuum that existed before the opening of the narrative. Generally, this point of no return occurs at the midway point of the story, but not always.

  I have passed that point.

  Tonight it is 1980. Miami Beach. I close my eyes, find my center, hear the salsa music, smell the salt air.

  My costar is handcuffed over a steel rod.

  “What are you doing?” he asks.

  I could tell him but—as all the books on screenwriting say—it is much more effective to show than tell. I check the camera. It is on a mini tripod, poised on a milk crate.

  Perfect.

  I put on the yellow rain slicker, hook it closed.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asks, his voice beginning to ascend with fear.

  “Let me guess,” I say. “You’re the guy who usually plays the second heavy, am I right?”

  His face looks appropriately mystified. I don’t expect him to get it. “What?”

  “You’re the guy who stands behind the villain of the piece and tries to look menacing. The guy who never gets the girl. Well, sometimes, but it’s never the beautiful girl, is it? If at all, you get that hard-looking blonde, the one who drinks her bottom-shelf whiskey neat, the one who’s going a bit thick around the middle. Kind of the Dorothy Malone type. And only after the villain gets his.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “You have no idea.”

  I step in front of him, examine his face. He tries to struggle away but I take his face in my hands.

  “You really ought to take better care of your skin.”

  He stares at me, speechless. That won’t last long.

  I cross the room, take the chain saw from the case. It is heavy in my hands. All the best weaponry is. I smell the scent of oil. It is a well-maintained piece of equipment. It is going to be a shame to lose it.

  I pull the cord. It starts immediately. The roar is loud, impressive. The chain saw blade rumbles and belches and smokes.

  “Jesus Christ, no!” he screams.

  I face him, feeling the terrible power of the
moment.

  “Mira!” I yell.

  When I touch the blade to the left side of his head, his eyes seem to register the truth of the scene. There is no look quite like the look people get at this moment.

  The blade descends. Great chunks of bone and brain tissue fly. The blade is very sharp and in no time at all I have cut all the way down to his neck. My raincoat and face mask are covered in blood and skull fragments and hair.

  “Now the leg, eh?” I scream.

  But he can no longer hear me.

  The chain saw rumbles in my hands. I shake the flesh and gristle from the blade.

  And go back to work.

  53

  BYRNE PARKED ON Montgomery Drive and began to make his way across the plateau. The city skyline winked and sparkled in the distance. Ordinarily, he would have stopped and marveled at the view from Belmont Plateau. Even as a lifelong Philadelphian, he never tired of it. But tonight his heart was laden with sadness and fear.

  Byrne trained his Maglite on the ground, looking for a blood trail, footprints. He found neither.

  He approached the softball field, checking for any sign of a struggle. He searched the area behind the backstop. No blood, no Victoria.

  He circled the field. Twice. Victoria was not there.

  Had she been found?

  No. There would still be a police presence if this was a crime scene. It would be taped off, and there would be a sector car protecting the site. CSU would not process this scene in darkness. They would wait until morning.

  He retraced his steps, finding nothing. He crossed the plateau again, passing through a copse of trees. He looked beneath the benches. Nothing. He was just about to call in a search team—knowing that what he had done to Matisse would mean the end of his career, his freedom, his life—when he saw her. Victoria was on the ground, behind a small clump of bushes, covered in filthy rags and newspaper. And there was a lot of blood. Byrne’s heart shattered into a thousand pieces.