“You think she’s going back to the Ballas place?”
“Bingo. Who in their right mind could resist that kind of loot?”
He couldn’t really fault Rosen’s logic. The man had the instincts of a keyed up bloodhound. And besides that, he was right. That no one could resist the Ballas fortune was half the reason they were all in this mess to begin with. “Where do I come into this?”
“Why, the chance to become a hero. And a rich one, at that. Don’t you see it? You get up there first. Slay the dragon, save the girl. My driver tells me the freak was keeping a prisoner. Probably the last girl you dropped off up there. That seemed to be what Contessa was so driven about. Of course, she could also be dead right now for all I know, Victor being the victor and all. But that’s irrelevant.”
“I thought you said stolen money was cursed money.”
Benny shrugged. “In this case, I think this money is more than earned.”
“And how much of the cut do you want?”
“Sixty percent of whatever you find. And a lock of the lovely Madam’s hair for me to remember her by.”
Ramón looked at him. “What do you want me to do with the rest of her?”
Rosen grinned, and Ramón finally saw the hint of the dancing lunatic Jonny Spank was talking about. Rosen was every bit as dangerous as Victor Cassini, if not more. “I’m sure you’ll think of something. You did a fine job incapacitating her the first time, but I recommend you use the gun you brought in with you and make things more final.”
***
Ramón raced north on the Garden State Parkway, his mind reeling over how smoothly Benny Rosen turned the tables on him. Victor Cassini, in the prime of his life, never had so much charisma or power to persuade.
Was he really going to do this?
It’s another errand, old man. Only this time, you’re taking orders from a boy young enough to be your son. How’s that feel?
He pressed the accelerator harder. What did it matter? Rosen’s plan was sound. He should have thought of it himself weeks ago, but he knew he never would have. The Ballas house had been the furthest thing from his mind. He didn’t think he ever could convey to Rosen just how bad the place was. Even after seeing only a glimpse of what lived there, his mind couldn’t really conceive of it. It was a place of madness and misery. But he continued on, pushing the needle on the old Buick’s speedometer past eighty.
He’d stayed for lunch at Rosen’s insistence and finally got out of there around a quarter to three. If he didn’t hit too much traffic, he would be up there by dusk. He flipped on the radio and tried not to think too hard about where he was headed.
***
His headlights illuminated the fallen manor’s rusted gate just after seven. There would be no need to push an intercom button this time. It was standing wide open, just as he’d left it. As he guided the car around the same dips and holes he had dozens of times before, he half expected to look in his rearview mirror and see a pretty girl all dolled up for her last night of sanity. But those days were gone. Now he was here to finish the business a better man would have finished a long time ago. He gathered up his courage as he crested the final hill and then slammed on the brakes when he saw what was waiting for him at the end of the driveway.
There were two cars here. One he didn’t recognize—an old Ford Taurus that looked to be on its last legs—but the other one he did. It was Victor Cassini’s prized Maserati Quattroporte. The driver’s side door was standing open, and right beside it was the now frail figure of the woman who once owned him. She didn’t turn when his headlights illuminated her. Ramón parked the car and grabbed the pistol from his waistband, making sure the safety was off before getting out. He aimed the sights at the back of her head as he approached.
“My property is in there,” she said, still not turning around. She’d been expecting him, it seemed.
“You don’t have any property left.” He’d heard the news on the radio about the fire at the “Weeping Willow Women’s Shelter” on the way up here. If the wind had been up, the whole block could have burned.
Finally, she looked at him. Her face was streaked with something dark. Bad makeup, or maybe dried blood, but her one remaining eye gleamed in the moonlight like a polished marble. “Good to see you, Ramón. I wondered if I might meet you here. I can smell fate in the air. This place has power in it. Can you feel it?”
He wanted to believe she’d lost her mind—this place did that to people—but he could feel it tugging at him, too. “I came here to do what I should have done years ago,” he said.
“Indeed. But I guess you’re going to kill me first.”
“That’s part of the deal.”
“What deal? If it’s with Benny Rosen, you’re even dumber than I thought.”
“It’s a better deal than you ever gave me.”
“Perhaps so, but it’s still a deal. That’s the problem with deals. There are always strings attached. Hidden clauses. One side making sure it can profit from the other, regardless of the outcome. Once you do what Benny wants, he won’t have any use for you. He’ll kill you.”
“Bullshit.”
She looked away from him and back to the house, unruffled by the pistol pointed at her head. “Maybe you’re right. I’m sure he’ll have plenty of use for a washed up old spic. He already has a driver, but maybe you can be his gardener.”
“Fuck you.”
“I know you, Ramón, probably better than anyone. Certainly better than your own blood. Your killer instinct isn’t what it used to be. You don’t want to kill me. Or maybe you do, but you don’t have the nerve.”
Cocking the Magnum, he stepped into point blank range. “You deserve to die.”
“We all deserve to die. And we will, eventually. But not tonight.”
“Says the bitch with a gun pointed at her head.”
She turned to him, and Ramón could see in the yellowish wash of his car’s headlights how used up she really looked. The fire that used to burn in her had been snuffed out. He was responsible for some of that, but not all. Something else had happened to her.
“Victor is dead. The Weeping Willow, and probably half the block around it, is nothing more than a pile of ash by now. I came here to get what belongs to me, and then I’m going to go somewhere far away. You would be good to do the same. If you want to do another crook’s dirty work, so be it. But you’d better make it snappy. I have a snub nose .38 pointed right at your dick, and I’m not a bad shot from the hip, even with one eye.”
He couldn’t see her hands in the shadows. She could have been bluffing, but it was impossible to tell with the Madam. It always was. Gun or no gun, she was right. A deal with Rosen was just another deal, and he was getting too old for those games. He slowly lowered his weapon. “So how do we do this?”
“We go in there and say trick-or-treat.”
“Nina’s still in there, isn’t she?”
“There’s an empty shell wearing her skin. Or what’s left of it.”
“Let’s finish this, then.” Ramón started toward the house, his blood growing colder with every step.
Chapter 19
Madam and the Good Girls
A veil of calm fell over her mind on the way up here that even her former driver waving his gun around couldn’t disturb, but the closer they got to the house, the more she could feel invisible fingers poking at it, trying to find a weak spot. When they climbed the porch steps, the Madam thought she heard screams, but the wind had picked up and it was whining around the eaves of the place.
Going into a real-life haunted house on Halloween night. Good times.
“Have my gun ready,” she said. “It lives up on the ceiling. Like a spider.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. His voice was low and trembling the slightest bit. She found comfort in his fear. It let her express a little of her own.
He turned the knob and the door opened with a loud creak. They exchanged a quick glance and then stepped over the threshold of the g
houl’s manor like a couple of kids on a Halloween dare. Except this was no yuck it up juvenile fantasy. There was something here that had sucked the minds out of at least a dozen women, and it was all because of her. The weight on her heart wasn’t just fear. It was guilt, as much as she could feel such a thing, anyway.
The orange flambeaux were still glowing, and just ahead sat the same silhouette of a man she’d encountered the other day, still in the same place. She was almost certain of it. Definitely a mannequin or some kind of statue. She peered closer at it, getting near enough to give it a timid poke. No, it wasn’t a mannequin. Mannequins didn’t have bones. It was a skeleton or maybe a mummified corpse, and there was something weird with its eyes. They were bright white orbs with black diamonds for pupils. Its teeth were filed to sharp points. She looked at Ramón, who was focused intently on the web overhead, and nudged his arm. He jumped and pointed the gun wildly around. Thankfully, the idiot’s finger wasn’t on the trigger. She wasn’t interested in being shot in the face a second time.
“What is this? Is it real?” she asked.
“You really need to ask that? Keep your eyes on the ceiling.”
“I am, don’t you worry.”
There was a bluish light coming from one end of the house, where she’d heard the screaming the other day. Nina could be in there. So could the freak.
“This way,” she said, and they walked down the cavernous hallway, huddled together. Her eye had trouble adjusting to the dimness and judging distances, one of the great annoyances of monocular vision. But the ceiling was mostly buried in shadow, how the master of the house probably liked it. She wished she’d thought to bring a flashlight. The blue flicker grew stronger as they edged down the hallway toward the large set of doors at the end. She could read the words DADDY FUCK MEAT scrawled on the wood with white spray paint.
She gave a grimace. Lovely sentiments. Ramón looked at her again, the shadows pulling his face down into something sad and very afraid. He looked like an old man right now, and she probably didn’t look much better. They stepped into a large bedroom, where the only light seemed to be coming from two of those blue bug zappers, one hanging on the fireplace mantel and the other around the bedpost. A tight network of ropes and cables were strung everywhere, anchored to the walls with thick steel eyebolts. She tweaked one of the ropes with a finger, and it gave a low hum like a guitar string. There was a hammock mounted up in one corner, where he probably liked to sleep or observe his prisoner. It was empty at the moment, though.
The whole party had moved to another part of the house, it seemed. But she couldn’t leave just yet. She had to see where it all happened. The bed itself sagged deeply in the middle, and thick straps hung from the sides, like the kind used to hold unruly patients to their hospital beds before the Thorazine kicked in. The linens were ripped and filthy. A tray with molded bread and fruit sat off to one side. This is where he’d been keeping her, no doubt. How could the girl have survived so long? It seemed like the most vicious sort of karma.
Maybe she didn’t survive. Maybe he killed her after you got away. He sounded pretty angry.
An enormous fireplace dominated one wall, and there was a wingchair in front of it, its back turned to her. There was someone sitting in it. She could see the stiff shoulder of a suit jacket. She didn’t need to see more, but she kept walking, the ever-curious cat with only one life left under its belt. The bug light was weak, but she picked it up and aimed it toward the darkness.
“What are you doing?” Ramón whispered. Squeaked like a frightened mouse was more like it. Ignoring him, she shined the light on the person sitting in the chair.
“Oh my God,” she murmured. “Oh my dear God.” The first thing she saw was the spiked phallus jutting from its lap like some mutant cactus. It was coated in a crust of blood and dried flecks of flesh. She’d only seen the end result, but could never figure out the instrument. Now she knew what had made all those women into unwomen, unable to piss or walk right again. And she’d reaped the rewards without a single thought. Ramón leaned over her shoulder, gazing down at the thing in the blue light. He let out a shaky exhale of breath and sniffed. She didn’t need to see his face to know he was weeping. The Madam didn’t have it in her. Hadn’t she known it would be something like this all along?
“He has ropes tied to his arms,” he said. “Why the hell would he do that?”
Her imagination answered that deftly enough, even though her rational mind couldn’t quite grasp it. “Let’s keep looking.” She turned around and started back toward the door.
“Wait.”
Impatient, she whirled around. “Enough. I’d like to get this done sometime tonight.”
Ramón raised a trembling finger. “Look. That light.”
She looked where he was pointing and didn’t see anything at first. Then she turned her head, and the line of yellow light became visible. There was a thin seam in the wall. Ropes from the ceiling disappeared into it up top. Ramón was already feeling along the wall for a hidden switch of some kind, she supposed. Old houses and their hidden passages. The Willow had a few. She couldn’t imagine what must be hidden back there, but perhaps it was what they’d come for.
“Ah,” he said, and there was a click. The hidden door swung open, revealing a narrow catacomb-like hall bathed in an incandescent glow from caged lights overhead. She and Ramón looked at each other, silently searching for mutual consent. She gave it with a single nod, and her former driver led the way. It was hot, narrow, and smelled faintly of chemicals. Formaldehyde. They rounded the corner into a smallish room, a six-by-eight square, and the Madam saw what was there. Her guts turned to water and she fell against Ramón, who crossed his chest and uttered some Catholic superstition.
They were all here. She would have known them anywhere. These were the girls she’d sent back. The used up ones, the ones who hadn’t turned a much of a profit to begin with, the disposable ones, all made into grotesque dolls. No, that wasn’t quite right. They were puppets, all outfitted with the same series of ropes as the corpse in the wingchair, each sitting on their own little wooden cart, rank and file. Painted on makeup, white eyes glaring at her accusingly from their withered faces. Some of them had their mouths shaped into large circles, like inflatable fuck dolls. She even recognized a few of them from their hair and clothes. Melinda, Jennifer, Chloe, Angel. No Rosie, though. Rosie had enough sense left to check out early on the Willow’s bathroom floor. If the Madam had known this would happen . . .
Ha! Sure, keep telling yourself that. You knew enough. What exactly did you think he’d do with them? Have a slumber party?
“Look there. Behind them,” Ramón said.
It took her a second to tear her eyes away from the puppets, but she did eventually look at the back of the room. There was a black wall. But it wasn’t painted black, no. It was dozens of suitcases, stacked clear to the ceiling. It was difficult to tell how deep, maybe three. She knew those cases well. “Christ,” she muttered. There it was, the whole kit and caboodle. She couldn’t muster the excitement she used to feel when she saw one of those cases sitting on her desk the morning after she sent one of her girls to this place. Now she just felt sick.
“How are we going to get all of this out of here?” he asked. “We take what we can carry, I guess. Unless you want to make multiple trips through . . .”
She didn’t want any of it, not anymore. She wanted to walk right out of here, get into her car, drive to a spot far away and eat the end of the snub-nose currently riding in her pocket. The thought of capering out of here with even a fraction of this misbegotten fortune and then living off it was grotesque. The thought of climbing through a sea of mummified young women to even get to it was even more so.
Ramón put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll do it if you want me to.”
“Do what you want. I’m done.” She turned to go.
“Hey, wait a minute.” He started to come after her, but she pushed him away.
“We’re si
ck,” she said. “We’re scum. You know that, don’t you?”
His jaw worked, but no words came out. Before he could say anything more, a high-pitched scream came from the other side of the house, and they both ran. Out of the passage and into the bedroom, out of the bedroom and into the hall. Ramón ran faster, his enormous pistol, which used to be hers, outstretched like some kind of cop movie hero. He was screaming Nina’s name. Blood-curdling screeches followed by thumps. Wood on wood. A door slamming shut over and over again. She followed Ramón into the room and found a bank of light switches on the wall. She flipped them all and a bright fluorescent glow filled the space.
When her vision finally adjusted, she saw Nina on the floor, her back against the door, trying to hold it shut against something pushing on the other side. It was the thing she saw the other day, judging by the snarling and infuriated screams as well as the flashes of pale flesh on the other side. The girl wouldn’t be able to hold it much longer by the look of her. She had been starved to within a millimeter of her life. Blood in various stages of drying covered her thighs and filthy gown. Her screams filled the space like cawing, tortured crows. How on God’s green earth could she still be alive?
“Nina, move! Get down!” Ramón shouted.
She looked at them, a mask of pure wonder dawning over the madness on her face. The door pushed open again, and Nina fell to the floor. A translucent ghoul with enormous black eyes and a tumorous growth between them emerged, its mouth a gaping hole filled with pointed teeth. It leapt at them, and the Madam stumbled back screaming, “Shoot it! Shoot the goddamn thing!”
The thunder of gunfire filled the room and the thing’s head dissolved into a mist of blood and poisoned meat. But the screeching didn’t stop. It took the Madam a moment to realize the sound wasn’t coming from the thing. It was coming from Nina.
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