Crooked House
Page 16
Jay was panting now, sweat running down his face. He looked pale, his lips an unhealthy pallid blue.
He started to shake his head. He was crying now.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t. You got it wrong, Doc. It wasn’t me. I didn’t make that movie. I got it through a guy I know.”
“A guy? That’s it. That’s all you got to say?”
“Dude, please don’t. I got it – I got it here. It’s in my pocket. I got it right here.”
“Got what?”
“The 2257 records. It’s how I – It’s how I tracked the movie down. The guy who made it, his info’s here in my pocket.”
Robert was interested now. “Which pocket? Show me.”
Jay turned his hip so Robert could get into his wallet. Robert removed the billfold and started emptying out the contents onto the floor. “I don’t see anything here,” he said.
“A slip of yellow paper. With the money.”
And there it was. A yellow slip of card stock paper torn from the back of a DVD case.
Title 18 U.S.C. 2257 records maintained
by the Custodian of Records,
Thomas Horner, at Tramp Studios,
1424 Masello Road Suite 2200,
New York, NY 10027.
“Thom Horner?” Robert said.
“Yeah,” Jay said. He was breathless, but suddenly hopefully. “Yeah, that’s the guy. Oh please get me down. Please please please...”
He looked at the paper again, and couldn’t believe it. That was Thom Horner’s address back when they were living in New York. Robert had gone there thousands of times. He knew the address by heart.
“Thom Horner,” Robert said again. He looked up at Jay. He was stricken. His whole body felt numb with shock and rage and betrayal. “This isn’t possible.”
“Dude, I swear. I swear.”
“Shut up!” Robert roared, and in his rage kicked the desk away. Jay dropped, the rope going taut with a snap, the rafters creaking under the sudden strain. He began to twitch and gag, his body jerking and twisting in ways he couldn’t control. His eyes bulged and sought wildly for Robert, even as his ruined hands groped at the noose.
Robert sat down in his chair, still within arm’s reach of Jay, and read the yellow slip of paper again. He didn’t want to believe, but it seemed impossible to deny. Thom had always had a lot of money, a big house, new cars. Robert just assumed he came from a moneyed family.
But Thom Horner was a pornographer.
...sometimes fortune throws you a curve ball, doesn’t it? One you just can’t hit.
“Yeah,” Robert muttered. “Yeah, that’s right.”
Robert’s head was spinning, thinking over the years he’d known Thom. He must have found out somehow that Sarah was doing topless dancing while she was working as his secretary. Had he used that as leverage against her? Robert looked around in dismay. The house, the job, the years of friendship...all of it was based on the corruption of his wife. And what of this job, and what of his continued attempts to get Sarah to come back to work for him?
Robert suddenly remembered the Christmas party, how small, how hounded, how wounded she had looked with Thom standing over her, talking to her so quietly.
It chilled him to think he must have been asking her to do another movie.
And she never told him.
Neither of them ever said a word. They just kept that dirty little secret behind his back. Heat spread across his cheeks as he realized what they must have thought of him all that time, while they grew that monstrous thing between them.
He was rubbing Robert’s nose in it.
They both were.
Robert stood up then, his head swimming, and crossed the room to where the bat lay in the entranceway. He could smell smoke, thick and acrid. He brought the bat back to the desk and watched Jay twisting and gagging at the end of the rope. Blood had started to weep from the corners of his eyes.
He put the end of the bat against Jay’s belly and pushed, setting him rocking back and forth like a pendulum.
Robert shoved books and papers off the desk until he located his cell phone.
He dialed Thom’s number.
Thom picked up on the fourth ring. “Robert? Is that you?”
“Hi Thom,” Robert said. His voice was light, breezy.
“Jesus, Robert, I’ve been worried sick about you. Where have you been? Why haven’t you called? Rachel Dodson said you’ve missed three appointments with her this week.”
“Yeah, I was really sick.” He sniffled. “The fever broke though.”
“So, you’re okay?”
“Right as rain.”
“Okay. Robert, are you sure you’re okay? You sound out of breath.”
“Really, I’m good.” He pushed Jay again. He wasn’t struggling anymore. “Listen, can you come over?”
“Uh, right now? It’s kind of late, Robert.”
“No, I have to talk to you tonight. It’s really important, Thom. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.”
“Well...all right, I guess. I’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
Robert picked up the bat and gripped it hard. “That’s great, Thom. I’ll be waiting.”
Then he hung up and took the bat downstairs to wait for his old friend, Thom the pornographer. The two of them were going to have a little heart to heart, a little man to man. Clear the air, as it were.
And then, afterwards, maybe he’d call Sarah. Ask her if she’d come home.
Joe McKinney has been a patrol officer for the San Antonio Police
Department, a disaster mitigation specialist, homicide detective,
administrator, patrol commander and successful novelist. Winner
of the Bram Stoker Award, he is the author of the four-part Dead
World Series, Quarantined, Inheritance, Lost Girl of the Lake, and
Dodging Bullets. His short fiction has been collected in The Red
Empire and Other Stories and Dating in Dead World: The Com-
plete Zombie Stories. For more information visit his website at
http://joemckinney.wordpress.com.
Dark Regions Press
Independent publisher of horror, fantasy and science fiction
in business since 1985.
http://www.darkregions.com
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