Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51

by Humans (v1. 1)

  Pami moved toward the door, keeping an eye on the blond man’s hands as he pushed the knife aside and rooted through the wads of money. She’d known women who were killed by johns, sometimes tortured first, sometimes cut up afterward. It wasn’t going to happen to her. If she had to run, she wouldn’t worry about the dress or the boots or the bag. Ail of that could be replaced.

  But what he finally brought out of the case, holding it up by the edges in both his hands, studying it as though he’d never seen one of these before, was a twenty-shilling note. Mostly blue, the twenty shilling has a picture of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta on the front, looking responsible and noble and caring, and a serene family of lions on the back, with playing cubs. Turning to Pami, holding up this note, he said, “Do you know what this is worth?”

  What kind of question was that? “Twenty shillin,” she said.

  “Ah, yes,” he said. “But in pounds, English pounds, oh let us say seventy P. And in U.S. dollars, one. One dollar.” Showing that wet smile again, he said, “This is a very significant amount of money, twenty shillings. I hope you will give first-rate service for it.”

  “Come and see,” she said, holding out her hand for the money. He gave it to her and she half turned her back, stooping to put the bill into her left boot, knowing he wouldn’t be able to resist grabbing her. I’ll do him in no time, she thought, as his hands groped her, I’ll be on the street in a minute and a half.

  But it didn’t work out that way. Naked, he was a pink wet whale, wheezing and sweating with every exertion, but what endurance he had! He turned her this way, he turned her that way, he studied and pried, he even drew a real response from her two or three times, and still he went on, still he wouldn’t stop, and she was becoming furious. To a whore, time is money.

  I’m gonna infect him, she thought, moving from her usual indifference as to whether or not a john caught her disease to an aggressive desire to make him catch it. She managed to get her saliva into his mouth, and later into his anus, and then she stopped fretting over the lost time. What the hell. She gave herself up to the acceptance of the moment.

  At the finish, he was on his back, puffing and heaving, she riding him like the boy on the dolphin, fast and hard, grinding down, clenching tight. His head and neck got redder and redder, his pale eyes bulged, and when he came he cried out like a woman, the high wail ending in a bubbling cough. He sagged onto the mattress, muscles slack, jaw hanging open, dull eyes gazing toward the ceiling.

  She frowned down at him, sweat-slick herself, rubbing her palms over her wet belly and drying them on her thighs. “Mister?” she said.

  There was no reaction. Moving gingerly, she climbed backward off him, crawling on hands and knees back down over his legs and over the foot of the bed, to stand there and stare at him, lying like a big rag doll with the stuffing coming out. I killed him, she thought, and grinned in glee at the idea. She’d never killed anybody before. I killed him wid my box.

  She looked around, and her eye lit on the open attache case on the dresser. Steal it! She took one step.

  “Nnnnnuunnn-nanghhann! ”

  She spun back, terror-struck, and he wasn’t dead at all, his head and left arm were raised, eyes staring in pain and fear as his left hand wobbled, trying to point. “Med-cine,” he gasped. “Drawer. Med-cine!”

  Not dead, but dying. She watched him, and didn’t move.

  He cried out again, and once more, and then his head and arm fell back, and he lay with his head twisted at an angle, staring at her. “I’ll,” he panted, and wheezed. “Get,” he whispered, harsh and sibilant. “P’lice,” he gasped, and his flailing arm lunged out and caught the phone beside the bed.

  No! Terrible trouble! And the money was hers She stared from him to the money in the case, and her eye lit on the hunting knife.

  He knew what she was going to do before she even reached the case: “I won’t call! I won’t call!” But the wooden handle was in her hand, the sheath was flung away into a corner, and she leaped on him like a cheetah, punching down, punching down, unable to stop, hitting him over and over, cutting him open in a hundred places, gritting her bloodstained teeth, snarling in her throat, using every ounce of her strength to drive the blade into him, again and again and again, until at last the knife caught on something inside him and her hand was so slippery with blood it slid right off the handle when she pulled back.

  She sat on his legs a minute longer, panting, muscles trembling with strain. Then once again she climbed backward off him, and stood shaking in the middle of the room. Blood had spouted from him, and more blood had sprayed around every time she’d lifted the knife, and now there was blood everywhere. There were dark droplets on the ceiling. Blood ran into the mattress where twice she’d missed him in her frenzy and slashed down through spread and sheet into the cloudy stuffing. Great splotches and splashes marred the walls and the drapes over the window. The mirrored closet door was smeared. The maroon carpet was sticky beneath her bare feet. And her own body felt as though she’d been dipped into a giant jar of rancid raspberry jam. Blood was caked around her nostrils; she breathed the foul air through her mouth, and tried to think.

  Boots, dress, bag. The boots were dark, so nothing showed. The dress was stippled with drying blood, and so was the bag. Snuffling in her throat as she tried to breathe, she moved in a dazed and wandering manner into the bathroom, turned on the water in the sink, then turned on the shower as well and climbed in under the flow. A few times before, johns had let her shower in the wonderful hotel bathrooms, so she knew how to make this one work. She peeled the paper wrapping from the soap cake and rubbed the soap in her hair, over and over, rinsing under the rush of water and then rubbing the soap into her hair again, repeating and repeating until at last the white soap did not come back rosy from her head. Then she scrubbed her arms and body and legs. Her pubic hair was like a sponge, full of blood, to be soaked again and again; finally she sat down in the tub, the shower water falling on her like rain, and simply washed and washed and washed. Would the water never run clean?

  Yes. She stood again, clumsy, exhausted now, almost slipping on the smooth tub, and stepped out onto the tile floor. There were large soft beige towels. She dried herself, then used the towels to make a path along the floor of the main room, to keep from getting more blood on her feet. She went out there, picked up her dress and bag, and carried them into the bathroom, where the water still ran in the sink. She cleaned the dress as best she could without getting the whole thing wet, then rubbed the bag with a wet washcloth. She pulled the dress over her head, the wet parts sticking to her body, put the shoulder bag over her head as well, then went out along the towels to her boots. She wiped them on a towel, put them on, straightened up, and then looked over at the burst bladder of blood reeking on the bed. There was nothing in her eyes when she looked at him; she could barely remember him now.

  What she remembered was the money. Spreading another towel in front of herself, she moved to the dresser and was about to close the lid on the attache case when she saw that, in addition to the money, it also contained a passport. She took it out, opened it, saw a picture of the john looking grumpy.

  Don’t want this passport. Don’t want to carry anything that hooks me up with that Danish man. She put the passport on the dresser, closed the case, picked it up by the handle in her left hand, and looked around the room. Nothing else.

  It was so hard to think, to keep moving. It was as though great lethargy and great horror were both just outside her range of vision, range of understanding. I’m not working any more today, she told herself. I’m going home, I’m gonna sleep, I don’t know what happened in here. This is too crazy. I’ll feel better tomorrow.

  Ananayel

  Two new experiences there: sex and death.

  Both were intensely absorbing and interesting, and neither was exacdy what I’d expected. The one wasn’t all pleasure, and the other wasn’t all grief. Emotions seem to blend into one another when you’re a human, even the gre
atest happiness being tinged with sorrow, the most horrible agony illuminated by some kind of satisfaction.

  How intensely these creatures live! My kind burns for a long time with a very low flame; humans burn bright and hot, and don’t last. I have always thought our way was better, but would they? Given the choice, would they select our long serenity, or are they happier with their consuming passions?

  Well, they don’t have the choice. And soon, according to His plan, there will be no choices left at all. I have my people now, my representatives. I’ve touched them all, I’ve put them in motion. Grigor Basmyonov is on his way to New York to consult a cancer specialist; Li Kwan is washing dishes in the loudly grumbling belly of the Norse American Line Star Voyager; Maria Elena Rodriguez is buying a wedding dress in Brasilia and fighting off feelings of guilt for her so-easy manipulation of

  Jack Auston; Hodding Cabell Carson’s campaign to rid himself of the explosive Dr. Marlon Philpott is about to bear fruit; and Frank Hillfen is in a county jail in Indiana, held for parole violation, but will soon be loose once more.

  Which leaves Pami Njoroge. Her murder of Kjeld Ulrichslund and the sudden appearance of the attache case full of money should get her moving. Shouldn’t it? But it seems to have paralyzed her in some way. She has the cash well hidden, she has her memories well buried, but she isn’t in motion. These people must be in motion.

  We must poke little Pami.

  9

  Pami lunged upright out of sleep, staring at the window, terror in her heart, the taste of vomit in her throat. Dim amber illumination from a distant streedight defined the open glassless rectangle of window, indicated the shape of the canvas cot and metal bureau crammed into this narrow closet of a room, but those weren’t what Pami saw. What Pami saw, though now she was awake and her eyes were open, was the nightmare.

  Her right arm ached with the tension of slashing at the dream shark; her belly was cramped from the horror of those shark teeth grinding through her middle. The drowning water, heavy and dark as blood, still lay on her face, bearing her down. Her heart pounded, bile moved in her throat, her nerves all jumped and trembled as though she’d just been electrocuted.

  The shark dream wasn’t the only violent phantasm to destroy her nights since the murder of the Danish man, it was merely the one most often repeated. But there was also the dream in which she chopped off her mother’s breasts and ate them, her nose filling with blood and milk. And the one where biting ants covered her body, crawling into her nose and ears and all her

  body openings, red ants, biting, stinging, drawing blood, a blanket of swarming red ants eating her as she ran...

  There was no movement of air in the hot night. The room smelled like blood, like the Danish man’s hotel room. Trembling, her movements exaggerated and uncoordinated, Pami pushed away her single sheet and clambered from the cot to lean out the window in search of air. But there was no air. The hot night of Nairobi lay against her face like the blood/water of the dream, a palpable presence. She looked up at the starless black sky, clouded over and oppressive, then down at the narrow dirty lane two flights below. The streedight was at the corner with the main road, four buildings away, and not much of its light made it through the trees down there. Nothing seemed to move in the lane.

  Pami backed from the window and sat on the cot, trying to force herself to be calm. No matter how many times the dreams came at her, no matter how often the same ones repeated, they still terrified her, the effects still lasted for hours, they still destroyed sleep. This can’t go on like this, she thought. I have to sleep.

  She looked at the wood strips of the wall beneath the window. Behind them was the attache case, with all the money still in it, every bill. She’d never even counted it, had merely brought it home that day and pulled out the wood strips, shoved the attache case in, put the wood strips back in place, and gone on with her life exactly as before, hooking for the European johns, making just enough to exist, living in this “residential hotel” that was filled with other whores, with their pimps, and with a few strong-arm robbers as well. Nothing had changed, except for the dreams.

  It has to stop, she thought, and she hated it that every time she took in breath the air still smelled like that hotel room, dark and repulsive with spilled blood. She had to sleep, but she couldn’t sleep. I can’t stay in this room any more, she thought.

  Her few clothes were in the top drawer of the dresser. She chose a dress—she’d long since thrown out the pale green one from that day—and stepped into her boots, and then got the hammer from under the bed. To protect herself against unwanted invaders at night, she did what many of the residents of this “residence” did: every night, before going to bed, she nailed a block of wood to the floor against the door, so it couldn’t be pushed open from outside. Now she used the hammer to pry that block up, put block and hammer together under the cot, and went out to the dark hall, which smelled more familiarly of urine and bad food. Pulling the door closed behind herself—it would neither latch nor lock—she made her way down the hall toward the stairwell, where faint light came up from the entranceway. She’d meant to go down the stairs and outside, but at the last second changed her mind and went up the stairs instead, the four steep creaking flights to the top floor and then the metal ladder bolted to the wall the final flight up to the roof.

  The trapdoor up at the top was often left open, and that’s the way it was tonight. Pami climbed out, resting her palm on the tarpaper roof as she emerged, feeling how the sun’s heat was still husbanded there. She walked slowly to the front of the building, sat on the knee-high brick wall at the edge, and looked far down at the lane, through the trees. The packed dirt of the lane looked almost soft in the darkness way down there, almost like a pillow.

  I wonder why I killed the Danish man, she thought. I wonder what I wanted. All I really want is to sleep, not go through this shit any more. Not any of this shit. Not all these johns that look like the Danish man, not this shitty building where you got to nail yourself in, not this sickness I got in my blood. What happens when the sores start to show? Nobody gonna give me twenty shillings then. Nobody fuck me for free then. What did I want that time? What do I want?

  Pami looked up, wishing there were stars. Moisture was on her eyes, and she looked at the sky, wishing there were stars tonight. She let herself relax, looking upward, just relax, not pay any attention at all...

  “You gonna jump?”

  Startled, Pami stared around the roof, blinking tears out of her eyes. “Where you? Who you?” It had been a woman’s voice, but from where?

  “Sittin over here,” said the woman, and when she waved her arm over her head Pami could see that she was a person sitting in the front corner of the roof, her back against the L of the low wall. “But if you gonna jump,” the woman went on, “lemme go downstairs first.”

  “I’m not gonna jump,” Pami said. She got up from the wall, tottering a litde, losing her balance and then catching it again before she fell over the wall. “Never meant to jump,” she said, feeling sullen and spied on.

  “You wouldn’t be the first, if you did. From this roof.”

  “Well, I didn’t. Just came up for some air is all.”

  “Me, too.”

  Pami approached the woman, and now she could see it was just another whore like herself, another skinny young dark woman with nowhere to go. Pami sat on the wall again, nearer the woman, but this time on the side wall, where there was no more than a seven- or eight-foot drop to the roof of the next building.

  “I come up here at night when I can’t sleep,” the woman said, “and dream.”

  “I don’t like to dream,” Pami said.

  “I like to dream when I’m awake,” the woman told her. “I come up here and I dream what I’d do if I had a lot of money.”

  Pami suddenly felt alert. A lot of money? Was this some sort of sign, some sort of omen? She said, “What would you do? If you had a lot of money, what would you do?”

  “Well, I�
�d get away from here, to start,” the woman said, and laughed.

  Pami laughed with her, thinking about the money in the wall. She hadn’t gone away from here, to start. She hadn’t done anything at all to start. She said, “Where would you go?”

  “America,” the woman said.

  Pami looked at her in surprise. “America? Why?”

  “Why not? That’s where the rich people are, isn’t it? If I had a lot of money, I’d want to be with the rich people.”

  What could I do in America? Pami asked herself, and the question made her feel strange.

  The woman was going on, soothing herself with her voice, like a lullaby: “Oh, I’d go to America, and I’d go where the black people are in America, and then everybody think I’m American, too. I got English, just like them. I’d have water all the time, wash in, drink, wash my clothes. Well, Pd have lots of clothes.”

  “Sure you would,” Pami said, making fun of her.

  “No, but I mean for the police,” the woman said.

  Pami frowned, leaning toward the woman, saying, “Clothes for the police? What are you talking about?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want them to send me back,” the woman said. “See, let’s say I’ve got all this money.”

  “Okay.”

  “Just like I am,” the woman went on, “I go by the ticket office, I put down thirty thousand shillins, say, ‘Gimme a ticket to New York.’ You know what they think?”

  “They think you’re rich,” Pami said.

  “Not me, they don’t,” the woman said, with bitter selfknowledge. “Me, they think, drugs. Here’s this litde girl, she got no suitcases, she payin cash for her airplane ticket, she’s just a litde up-country girl never been anywhere before, just got a brand-new passport last week, they call the police in New York, they say, cKeep an eye on this girl, she gets off the airplane. Take a look in her twat, you likely find some balloons fiilla cocaine.’ ”