The Kill Riff

by David J. Schow

  The musical segment of the program was called Rock Wrap. Stannard had seen himself on it numerous times in the past. It had previewed the new video of "Maneater." Perhaps someone at the studio had done some elementary addition after seeing it, and that was why Mardi Grassley's crew was all over his front lawn now. Stannard found himself constitutionally incapable of hiding from their cameras.

  He had seen Mardi Grassley's legs before and could see them now. They were wondrous fine. A strategic advantage. It was easy to imagine her in a leather teddy, assuming positions you'd never hear discussed on Donahue.

  The most ironic aspect of the entire interview was that Mardi Grassley wanted to ride Stannard's boybone in the worst way. Maybe it was real lust, maybe just the latent physical promise she used to get a hook into interviewees, but either way Stannard felt the air grow dense with palpable sex vibes. Even this TV clone wanted him.

  They let the tape grind, so he rattled on for a while about rock music and social responsibility. Blaming rock for sending misfits into berserk sprees, he said, was a criticism that people outside the entertainment industry had been leveling for years. He compared it to the buck passing that went on in education. Kids were stupid. Parents blamed schools. Schools blamed parents. So much finger pointing went on that the kids never got any help… but they sure as hell thought they knew who was responsible for fucking them up. Round and round. It all avoided the issue. Placing blame was no solution. And if there was a single person responsible for the Whip Hand Murders, what kind of upbringing did he have that permitted music to trigger him into homicide? Was the fact that Jessica Savitch was once held hostage by a crazed fan of her news show her fault-or her producer's, for the way in which she was presented?

  Stannard put forth these points with effortless eloquence. He was doing what he was good at-controlling audiences.

  None of it was used, and Grassley and company finally settled for splicing in a lot of reaction shots of Stannard. She theorized, he nodded. Closeups of Stannard meant a guaranteed viewership for Rock Wrap. It was not necessary for him to actually say anything.

  What he told them became passionate, inflamed, potent, and utterly unusable. What they invented to fill the gaps was vapid, promotional, and by rote, like weather dialogue enhanced by steroids. Mind Cheetos, thought Stannard. They looked like food, but when you crunched them you got nothing but orange scum on your teeth.

  Mardi Grassley had played him. In person, she had been dripping for him; on tape, she had spun and bitten, with a challenge uncomfortably like the one Stannard had tossed down at the close of the "Maneater" video. Now Stannard had to shit or git… because everybody was looking at him now, and as usual, the watchers hungered.

  Sertha saw it replay as she came out of the bathroom, realizing Stannard had lit off, taking his.44 Magnum with him. Steam uncoiled from her bare skin in the cooler air.

  If Mardi Grassley's expression had been any more portentous, her face would have ruptured. She wound up in her most unctuous Rona Barrett mode. "So, the question remains: Is Gabriel Stannard, the macho bad boy of heavy metal, for real? Can he just stand idly by while his old comrades drop like targets in a shooting gallery, or is there enough fiber beneath the tough, strutting, and oh-so-safe stage persona to compel him into direct action? We expect no less from Gabriel Stannard than for him to burst forth with six-guns blazing. This reporter isn't so sure anymore. Tell us, Gabriel: Are there any bullets left in your gun?

  "This is Mardi Grassley, for Rock Wrap."

  Her piranha smile dissolved into a freeze frame of Stannard's face above the caption WHIP HAND KILLER'S NEXT VICTIM?

  Fade out. Commercial. Next segment. Hollywood Weekend Wrap-Up was incisive, penetrating, pushing the limits of hard-line investigative journalism.

  "This cannot be healthy," Sertha said to the empty room.

  The videotape ran varicolored static.

  Sertha was not used to being unseen, unnoticed, or worse, ignored. The concern surprised her with its mundanity: Why could things not continue as they had before? This phase of her life had been amputated midway. Her mind naturally recoiled from the thought, the way the eyes recoil from a sudden bright light.

  She might have to leave this place. Already she felt the tug; now she had to choose whether to acknowledge it.

  She could not be more uninvolved. Stannard had locked her out.

  She wondered how many of her things were here and how long they might take to pack, were she ever to think seriously of leaving.

  ***

  "You guys look like a coupla dicks wearing shirts," Stannard smirked as he strode into the poolhouse.

  Both men in the room, chocolate and vanilla, speared him with acid glances. To retort would be to rise to unwanted bait.

  Cannibal Rex's serpent eyes flickered up to spray Stannard with caustic blood, then declined. You're spared, they said, this time. He finished working his gums with the lees of coke dusting his pinky finger-the pinky on his left hand, the hand on which he could still count to five. His bone earring jittered to and fro as he polished off the dope. His punctured Special Forces beret was discarded atop the long folding table next to all the hardware. Even though it was nearly night, he slid his radiation-proof wraparound shades back on. The only light inside the poolhouse, a dim forty-watter in a billiard shade, hung right over the table and the goodies arranged on it by Horus.

  There was one other light source in the room. From the comer the "Maneater" video spun out on one of Stannard's army of 24-inch color TVs. Over and over again, Stannard and Cannibal Rex laid waste to the schoolroom set on the Chaplin stage. Each play of the video faded out on Stannard's face, filling the maw of the camera, repeating, C'mon, bad man-take me down if you can. The image on screen was replicated in the lenses of Cannibal Rex's shades; two hot points of cool fire in the dark.

  Horus was draped loosely in his workout silks, a cacao-colored man in funeral black. He did look rather like an enormous black phallus wearing a shirt. All he would give Stannard by way of retort was, "You just wish you had a cock this perfect. But then, I know that you were circumcised as a tadpole, so it's difficult for me to believe you know anything about real dicks."

  Cannibal snorted. Whether it was from the blow in his snoot or the gibe, no one could tell. His eyes were masked.

  Stannard cracked a huge smile the moment he saw l he gear on the table. Eagerly, he said, "What we got?" Horus worked his way from one end of the table to the other, lifting and demonstrating.

  "Okay. Exhibit A. We got your American 180-also lulled the Buck Rogers gun. Laser-sighted.22 caliber; empties a 177-round clip in five seconds. Lightweight. Kccoilless. Police departments and government agencies use 'em. It's got a hit rate fifty percent higher than any other rifle ever tested. The laser concentrates the bullets onto the target. It's a battery-powered helium-neon job.'' He activated it, and a dot of red light the size of a pencil eraser skittered across Cannibal Rex's forehead. "At fifty l feet the sighting dot is no bigger than a quarter; at six hundred feet it's three inches wide. The slugs can penetrate wood, concrete, car doors. Depending on how fast you reload, this thing can fire over 2000 rounds per minute.''

  Stannard nodded, a well-fed look in his eyes. Cannibal Rex belched and reached over to crack a fresh bottle of Jack Daniel's.

  "This is a standard Auto Mag," said Horus as he picked up a large pistol. "I've had it blued to cut the reflection of the matte finish. Kicks just like Dirty Harry's revolver, except this is an auto pistol. They couldn't manufacture these until recently; the fire rate of an automatic caused parts of the gun to melt."

  Stannard held a clip to the light. It was loaded with eight big 240-grain lead slugs. "Man, firing six of these mothers numbs my hand and nearly breaks my wrist. I think I'd rather stick to my revolver."

  Horus shrugged. "The handgrip is too fat for you. The reload rate's too slow, even using speed loaders-great fun for the target range; not such fun when the target is you. Even urban police departments are
beginning to admit that the revolver is a dinosaur. The bad guys watch Miami Vice and tote submachine guns. FBI stats say the average shootout consists of twenty-three rounds fired from seven feet in poor light. The six shots and awkward reload of your Magnum under firefight conditions aren't optimum. You told me you wanted the maximum advantage."

  "Yeah, right." He dropped the clip back onto the stack. "What about the shotgun?"

  Horus tapped it. "Italian SPAS autoloading riot gun." It was an awesome weapon, with a fat slide, rectangular vents, a pistol grip, and a fixed stock. "Twelve-gauge rounds'll blow down a cinder block wall. Push this button and it converts to a pump-lets you clear a jam that would stop a normal auto shotgun cold." When Stannard hefted it by the pistol grip, Horus laid in with his qualifiers: "Another pain in the ass to reload. The reputation of a shotgun as an alley sweeper ain't all it's cracked up to be, either."

  He moved on. "These are flash-pops, also known as stun grenades. Used well, they can immobilize an enemy you may not be able to see, with a very loud bang and a burst of bright light. Used badly… well, you get what those idiot sheriffs got at the Van Cleef and Arpel's shootout got, which was dead and scorched hostages."

  "Move over, Arnold Schwarzenegger," said Stannard.

  Cannibal Rex cracked into a parody of the body-sculpting star: "Ahh, ahh, ahh, be garful you don't blow abb!"

  "More than this and we'll have too much crap to carry," said Horus. "And I, for one, think the idea of all this firepower is pussy."

  "I like 'em," croaked Cannibal. "Pretty guns."

  "Strictly backup, failsafe material," Stannard noted. "If it was my choice, I'd do the son of a bitch with my crossbow. But we gotta be ready in case we find him arsenaled in somewhere-that's the bottom line. And if you hate guns so much, how come you know so many statistics?"

  Horus turned his mouth down. It should have been obvious that he preferred any endeavor to be executed well. If Stannard did not want expertise, he could have sent some amateur to do the job.

  On the TV screen, Cannibal charged a large white Panavision camera and began to batter it with his Les Paul. Both camera and guitar began to splinter apart hurling fragments. The sound on the TV was turned all the way down.

  "The cops are too stupid to see they grabbed the wrong guy in Arizona," Stannard said. "But they'll catch on. In the meantime, Lucas Ellington is saving me for last. It'll all be old news by the time the cops do anything effective."

  The nasty challenge of Mardi Grassley hovered about him, taunting and echoing.

  "You don't know for a fact he's after you," Horus said.

  "I don't need a bouquet and a card to tell me." He patted his left pectoral. "I know it in here. And if you can't understand that after spending all your spare time sunk to the upper lip in that Eastern mystical bullshit, then I can't explain it to you."

  Cannibal Rex touched the three fingers of his picking hand to his sternum, nearly duplicating Stannard's motion. "When someone wants your blood," he said in that odd voice of his, "you know it. There ain't nothing else except to play it out." The cocaine had dried him out, and his voice sounded remarkably like a gas bubble in a tar pit.

  "Whatever you say, bwana. We live but to serve. But I say again I think this is all hot fart wind." Horus folded his massive arms.

  "If it is, then we've got nothing to worry about. That's what I mean by fail-safe. Josh is checking out the guy's shrink, the one from Olive Grove. I bet he'll check in with her sooner or later. Personally, I hope it's sooner-before the cops whiff the fact that their killer is still at large. That way it'll get done before they can muss things up-and I don't want a bunch of amateurs in my way."

  "Amateurs, wow," snickered Cannibal Rex. He grabbed his beret from the table and mopped his shaven, scarred head with it.

  "Seriously. The LAPD is one thing-those dudes are professional cops, rated the best metro police force in the country. But the hypos and sheriffs… shit, man, those morons got their jobs by 'calling the number on your screen.' They got their training by spending two years beating up prisoners in the county lockup. They're walking around out there with more hardware than anybody. They're the worst fucking gang in the whole city. And I don't want them in my way."

  Horus released a huge breath. He had not determined whether there was karma to be balanced here or not. "I've spoken my words. You call it. We'll do it." Cannibal Rex hoisted up the American 180 by the long, padded SIONICS silencer screwed onto the snubbed barrel. A stretch clip protruded from the grip. He worked the bolt and perched the gun against one forearm. "Yesss. Anyplace around here we can acid test this honey?"

  "Basement." Horus nodded. "It's soundproofed."

  "He's gotta see the video," Stannard said, noticing the TV set. "Once he sees the video, he'll know I'm after him. If he was planning to leave me alive, make me sweat, then maybe this'll force his hand. He'll have to try to take me out before I can do the same to him. Showdown time." He held the auto Mag end up into the light, popped the clip, and thumbed up one of the cartridges. He turned it between his fingers like a jewel.

  "Target practice," said Cannibal Rex, up for it now. "Firepower! Crush, kill, destroy!" He laughed, and Stannard joined him.

  "You gentlemen start without me," Horus said. "Right now I've got to go put my hands all over your girlfriend."

  Stannard's eyes did not waver from the gun. "Do whatever she needs," he said, as though Sertha was the furthest thing from his concern.

  21

  CASS UNBOLTED THE DOOR IN a clumsy rush, yanked Lucas into the cabin, and threw her arms tightly around him.

  When he had called her name from outside, her fear had washed away and she had literally leapt for the door. Lucas caught many impressions in a finger-snap of time.

  The echoes of her ordeal had made her newly healed face haggard, and he saw animal trepidation haunting her eyes as she pulled him in out of the rain. His Llama ACP pistol was in her right hand as she answered the door. The door to the Whip Hand room was battered to junk, the table was collapsed, there was blood dried on the floor. Lucas knew the dark stain was blood-no excuses. The air in the cabin hung thick with recent violence, and he felt the phobic dread that radiated from her as she clung to him, her face buried in the hollow of his neck. He tried numbly to still her shaking without using his crippled hands.

  They stood that way for a while, the storm raging outside, as he spoke her name repeatedly and said other soothing, meaningless things in a succoring voice. The muttered nonsense helped distill some of the anxiety and pain; it solidified the bad feelings so they could be spat out and eliminated. It was a two-way exchange, though Cass was oblivious to this at first. By the time they settled down, Lucas himself was close to tears. They parted, looked into each other's eyes calmly, and Cass' mouth unhinged when she got her first good, rational look at what was left of him.

  "Jesus Christ." She saw his mummified hands, watched him list stiff-leggedly to the nearest unbroken chair.

  "You first. I've got to-ahgh!-sit down." His leg gave up, and he landed heavily in the seat. He cleared his throat of the thick coating that impeded his voice. "God. You know, on top of everything else, I think my foot's asleep."

  The coffee was on, and fresh, and they both needed it. Lucas was rapidly running out of pain pills. They dragged their chairs closer to the hearth, where it had taken Cass an hour to get a good fire going. Orange light illuminated them in flickering, shifting patterns as she wrapped one of his injured hands up in both of hers, carefully not squeezing.

  "This day has been a million years long." She cleared her eyes with the sleeve of the merchant marine sweater, looking like a first-timer on the high-diving board. Then she took the plunge. "Reese came back after me. He found me. He's out back, now, behind the cabin. He's dead; I shot him with your pistol. He was going to kill me. I killed him. He broke into the locked room, looking for stuff to steal, and I found your gun in the kitchen drawer, and it jammed and I tried to shoot him and he ran at me with-"


  "Calm, calm," Lucas said.

  "He's not here now. I am. Calm." A nervous laugh rose and broke surface. "Almost became a runaway, didn't I? Damn it." She swallowed dryly. "I shot your television set. Pretty slapstick, huh? I blew away a TV set. Reese was going to bash my brains out with it." The enormity of her luck made her shake her head in dull awe. "I shot the TV, and then I shot Reese. How am I doing so far?"

  "Just work your way through what happened. Nobody's going to land on your head tonight. Reese is… that is, his body is out back?"

  "I covered it up. I was gonna bury it. I found his Datsun down at the bottom of the hill, hidden in the bushes."

  "Anybody else around? Does anyone know he came up here, do you think?"

  "Reese wouldn't tell anyone. He's a lone wolf. He went back to the city and beat up Jonathan pretty bad. Everything but my cash was still in the truck. Everything except my favorite hairbrush, which the son of a bitch probably threw away."

  Lucas looked speculatively to the kitchen window. The storm hammered on. "No one is going to come snooping in this weather."

  He lifted the.45 from the kitchen counter, slid out the clip, and thumbed up five slugs. Another shell jumped from the chamber when he snapped the action. His eyebrows went up. "Three shots? It should only take one bullet from this gun to put anybody away."

  "Not Reese. And I missed the first time. I've never fired a gun in my life." She shut her eyes, segueing back. "I shot the TV. Then Reese. Twice."

  "He must have been pretty close, if you shot him twice and never fired a gun before."

  "Point-blank, as they say in the cop movies. Another second and he'd've noticed that nasty-looking M-16 you've got stashed in there."

  Lucas' eyes darted to the Whip Hand room, then back. "But he didn't. Look… I'll do something about the body when the rain eases up. Maybe Reese and his truck can disappear into the good old Mar Pacifica. That sort of thing isn't unheard of, not in storms like this." He had no way of knowing that this was exactly the option Cass had considered, but her reaction to the suggestion was acquiescence, almost resignation, and not the queasy discomfort he expected to see. He had, after all, just proposed ditching the corpse of a murder victim.