by Kirk Alex
Biggs produced a second, larger lock, and ran it through the metal collar on her neck and the end of the bicycle chain, thus the victim had plenty of room to move about freely, although her wrists were cuffed and she was connected to the chain from the ceiling via the iron collar.
There was a jug of drinking water, ten-gallon paint can to go in, a roll of toilet paper. There were mattresses, soiled, to be sure: grime and blood and urine-stained. A rickety coffee table, a half-eaten loaf of white bread, a half-empty jar of peanut butter. Couple of dog biscuits. There was a bare bulb up above, but could only be turned on by a flip of the switch outside the door.
“Be back in a minute. Don’t go anywhere.”
When he returned he had latex gloves on his hands and he was holding a generic greeting card, stamped envelope, piece of paper with what seemed like writing on it, a pen.
He placed the items on the coffee table. Had her pick up the pen and write in the card what was on the piece of paper. Knowing that her parents were divorced and that she and her mother were close, Biggs had her write:
Dear Mom,
We are in rehab. The plan is to save up enough
for a down payment on a house before we go
back. We are well. Don’t worry.
Love,
Dione
He had her seal the envelope using her own saliva, then picked it up, the pen, his handwritten version of the greeting.
“Don’t damage my furniture. Paid good money for it. It’s used and old and not in the best of condition; it still cost plenty.”
“Yo. You buys that cheap shit at a garage sale in Van Nuy’.”
The bishop gestured that the fool leave. A befuddled Muck stepped out, bugged about something. Cecil Omar did likewise, and locked the door on his way out. Muck followed him to the walk-in cooler-cum-Abattoir.
“Thought you said I could have me some, Cecil.”
“Did I? Not right now.”
CHAPTER 76
Biggs unlocked the lock on the chain, unraveled the chain, opened the door, and went in.
“We’ve got work to do.”
Bishop looked down at the two metal chests containing viscera and limbs. The stench could not be denied, even to these two—who were around it 24/7.
Muck had his sleeve over his mouth. Biggs was having a bit of a hard time with it himself. Ordinarily he thrived on the miasma, ordinarily—only there were a host of other, undesirable odors that added to the stench: lime, disinfectant, rodent poison, cat excrement, human waste, that crept in from the basement john, the Geek Cell—as well as other places.
What could you do?
Biggs handed Marvin a spade and had him scoop up what was on the floor: all that mess, the loose stuff Norbert had spilled the other day, and dump as much of it as possible into one of the chests. The rest, considerable chunks and limbs, were left in the other.
“There are times I genuinely wonder if Mr. Fimple is worth keeping.”
“He the one done it.”
“Can’t reason with the stubborn bastard. Does no good to try, either.”
They got the unsavory mess off the floor. Closed the lid on the metal chest and snapped it shut.
“Dump it in the furnace, Cecil? That the plan?”
“No. We can’t. Too soon to use that furnace again. Asshole neighbors, like old Lloyd Dicker across the street, are complaining about the odor. That’s what Finger Lickin’ was doing in the backyard the other day: sniffing around; on orders from the old man.”
“Lloyd Dicker? Fuck Lloyd Dicker. Dump all this shit in the furnace anyway. What do we care? They can’t prove nothin’.”
“How often do I have to go into it? We can’t keep using the incinerator, not every time. It’s a little more work this other way, but it’s still a whole lot better than having North Hollywood PD snooping around—and I’m getting a little tired of Marty Roscoe’s mutts trying to dig their way into the basement every time we toss something in the fire. I’m not even exactly sure how they can tell where the smell is coming from, but they can.”
“Your show, Trusty. I be deacon. You the Bishop, my man. Yo.”
“Grab that mop over there. Get that crap off the floor. Mop it up. Get the blood out of the corners.”
Marvin did that. Worked on the corner to the left of the door. Cecil had him push the bucket and mop out and rinse them in the john bathtub.
“Pour some water in the bucket and then dump it in the crapper. Flush it away. Rinse the mop out thoroughly. We’ll leave it and the bucket in the Fun Room.”
They both stepped out and Biggs locked the door to the Abattoir.
“Ain’t we gonna get rid of the shit that be in the suitcase?”
“Later. My back can’t take anymore of this activity. Besides, staff and board members deserve some breakfast, don’t you think?”
“They be eatin’ all the time.”
“I should be hitting the sack pretty soon, too.”
Muck pushed the bucket in the direction of the john, while Biggs headed to the Fun Room, and waited for him there.
Muck made it. Shoved the bucket with the mop in it into the Fun Room, and Cecil locked it back up.
“You sure you want them geek’ up on the first floor? That mean’ somebody got to carry granny wiff the anal wart’ up the stair’ in her wheelchair.”
“Get Greta to help you with her, or else Big T. Round them up. Let’s go. It’s inhuman to keep them cooped up down here all the time without exposing them to some light and showing them how life should be lived.”
Muck did a double take.
“Go get them.”
CHAPTER 77
They had the lot of them gathered in the kitchen on the first floor and seated at the table: Goodfellow, Big T., Ionesco, Sassounian, Betty Lou Rutterschmidt and her adopted daughter Mildred Elizabeth, Patience McDaniel, Greta “The Leaper” Otto, some others—with one obvious exception: Mr. Norbert Fimple, who Biggs felt deserved a few more days in Siberia and would be fed later.
He had Greta pass Pop-Tarts around and fill tumblers with Kool-Aid.
Biggs had cleaned up, washed the clown face off and changed into cleaner clothes. He sat at the head of the table, at the wall-of-pennies side. Like Doc Holiday, liked having his back to the wall. Wild Bill Hickok usually did, too. The one time he didn’t, “Broken Nose Jack” McCall walked up from behind with his gun drawn and put one in Mr. Hickok’s head.
Cecil sipped his cherry soda and ate a Ding Dong. Had the Wall Street Journal open and would from time to time glance up at his “schutzstaffel.” What a bunch, what a wondrous cadre of hopeless cases.
“May I ask something, Bishop Biggs?”
Biggs lifted his eyes.
“Ask.”
“Nothing.”
“What is it? Speak up, Cabbie. You’re among friends here—Commie infiltrator.”
“Red sumbitch,” sighed Big T. under his breath.
“Why we have Kool-Aid for breakfast and Pop-Tart all the time? I don’t understand. Why not regular breakfast with eggs and sausage, bacon? Orange juice and coffee? Cereal and milk? Like all human in the world?”
“You had that in Russia?” said Big T. “Lyin’ sack of sheep dung.”
“Want Fruit Loops?” said Biggs. “That it? Like that hillbilly next door?”
“I don’t understand. What is Fruit Loop? I don’t know.”
“You going to pay for this fancy breakfast that you’re suggesting?”
“I ask only. And, no, I do not drive taxi no more. That was shit job I do for short time. Fuck the taxi; I fuck the taxi.”
“Calm down and eat your Pop-Tart and drink your Kool-Aid. It’s either that, or dog biscuit treats.”
“I do what you say, Tovarich. You are the boss.”
“Never trust no Commie Pinko sumbitch, is what I always tell folk.”
Muck was eyeing the box of Pop-tarts that Greta held in her hand. “Still be hungry.”
Biggs nodded in Greta’s dire
ction, giving the okay. She refilled Muck’s tumbler from a pitcher. Stuck her hand inside the Pop-Tart box and looked at Biggs and waited for him to tell her how many exactly to give him.
“Two. Give him two.”
She did that. Sat back down to eat her own and sip her Kool-Aid. Muck requested hooch instead of the lame-ass Kool-Aid.
“Kool-Aid be for kids.”
Biggs ignored him. Read the Wall Street Journal. His stock was up. Across the board. He’d made some astute decisions over the years. There was money to be made, so long as you knew what you were doing. It took brains and it took know-how—and Biggs felt he had both to spare.
“When you gonna read the Bible to us again, Bishop Biggs?” Mildred Elizabeth wanted to know. “Mother likes to hear you read scripture. It relaxes her.”
“Won’t be long now. We’re having flyers printed up and they’ll be passed out throughout the neighborhood. We’ll have a fair amount of worshippers, I imagine, like we used to do—before I got swamped with chores and various obligations. I’ll give a sermon. We’ll have gospel music—like before—that is, if Mademoiselle Rutterschmidt would honor us with her exquisite ability on the organ.”
Betty Lou Rutterschmidt looked up from that huge Bible on her lap. “It would be my pleasure, Bishop Biggs.”
“How’s that, Mildred?”
Mildred hadn’t heard, or maybe she had. Her way of responding was to run that inordinately long tongue of hers over the gray whiskers across her upper lip and then shift it down toward that dark and large wart between her lower lip and chin.
She had a habit of doing something else that Biggs did not quite care for: she rubbed the thumb on her right hand against the little finger on the same hand. A nervous, compulsive condition that she had little or no control over.
He knew it. Still, it did not make it any easier to tolerate.
“You drive me nuts with the fingers, Mildred. And quit playing with the wart. Stop licking it. Leave it alone. Leave-the-wart-a-lone. Eat up. Hurry it up.”
CHAPTER 78
Less than a quarter mile east of Biggs’s compound, eight-year-old Monica Duarte was screaming in her sleep. Even after her older sister Olivia came running into the youngster’s room and did what she could to console her, the nightmare in the little girl’s mind’s eye did not immediately leave her.
Monica’s body shook as she clung to the older sister.
“Take it easy, baby. . . . Everything is all right, Monica. I’m here for you. I’m right here.”
“I dreamed that something awful happened to you, Livia. The boogeyman was after you.”
“It’s all right now. . . .”
“You kept trying to run away from the boogeyman, Livia . . . but you couldn’t get away. You couldn’t get away. You kept trying to get away. You were running down this dark alley and he kept coming after you. I heard you screaming for help, Livia. You were scared. I wanted to help you. I could see you were so scared but I couldn’t help you. I just cried when he came after you, Livia. I wanted to help you. I was crying and screaming as loud as I could so maybe someone could get us help. Nobody came to help, Livia. Nobody wanted to help us; there was nobody there to help . . . in the dark. . . .”
“Everything is fine now, Monica. . . . You just had a bad dream, that’s all. Just a bad dream.”
“But it was real; it was just like being there. I could see everything.”
Olivia reached down for the younger girl’s doll that had fallen to the floor and held it out to her. Monica did not waste time wrapping her arms around it. A tall, attractive woman in her early forties walked in. Sarah Duarte had the same large almond eyes as her girls, same wavy, lengthy, auburn locks.
Olivia stood up.
“Another nightmare.”
“It’s those horror movies you kids keep renting. I said it would come to this. She’s too young to be exposed to that junk.”
“I’m not the one who lets her watch those movies, Mom.”
Sarah Duarte sat on the edge of the girl’s bed. Held her youngest in her arms. Monica had settled down quite a bit by now. “You rent them.”
“Your son Carlos rents them. Your sixteen-year-old son rents all the horror movies, the worst he can find, the really violent ones. Why can’t you and Dad talk to him about it if you’re both so concerned?”
“That’s enough.”
Mrs. Duarte gently rubbed the tears away from the eight-year-old’s eyes. She brushed the hair from her face and massaged her temples.
“Are you all right, honey?”
The youngster had closed her eyes and she was nodding her head.
Olivia left the room to take a shower and dress for work.
CHAPTER 79
It was still dark out as Rudy Perez and his brother Monroe, four years his senior, zigzagged down the quiet street in their pickup truck loaded down with rolled up LA Times. Monroe did the driving, while Rudy did the expert flinging from the back, able to aim and throw with both hands simultaneously.
Sighted in on a couple of doors on his right. Pitched the papers and knew they would land where they were supposed to without having to look.
His brother shifted gears. Zipped to the other side of the street. Rudy repeated the process: flinging two more papers, and they continued on this way without a hitch.
Years of doing it made it look easy, years of rising at three or four in the morning for the route, of hustling to make a dollar, hustling to get that early morning gig out of the way. Because for Rudy, afterwards, it was on to Marty and Petunia Roscoe’s to take their two dogs for a walk, and for “Roe” it was off to his job at Big Tony’s auto body shop. After finishing up with the dogs, Rudy would hurry on back home to repair cars in their driveway. He felt guilty about having dropped out of high school in his third year; he and his brother both felt guilt over it, but Rudy was stubborn about it; had felt a need to contribute financially for the time being, and Roe, not wanting to be pushy, and knowing how stubborn his younger brother could be, had gone along with it, under one condition: that at some point Rudy would return to school, not only for his high school diploma, but maybe consider college. If not college, not everyone had to go to college and be part of the white collar work force, blue collar was just fine, so long as he took courses to familiarize himself with today’s heavily computerized car engines. That was the agreement.
For the time being, the answer was to stay busy, earn money in order to keep the bank from foreclosing on the house; the only way they knew to keep their grandparents from ending up in some shabby retirement home, or worse.
So they worked; did their best. Stayed busy. It kept them out of trouble. They had no one to rely on but themselves. It was down to that. Rudy and Roe. But that was okay. They didn’t mind. Nothing was free in this world. Their father had taught them that. Now gone. Both gone. Mother and father. Rest their souls. It was up to the brothers to see to it that their grandparents did not end up on the street.
Rudy’s girlfriend Olivia was on his mind as he continued to hurl papers from the truck bed, wanting to get this morning’s run over with in order to race on over to the Roscoes, pick up the dogs, and make it to his girlfriend’s and walk her to her job at the diner. He couldn’t think of a better way to start a day.
CHAPTER 80
Olivia toweled herself off, combed her hair out. She got into her brown server’s dress and walked to the kitchen. She poured milk into a saucer for the family cat, a white Ragamuffin with blue eyes that they called Angelina.
CHAPTER 81
The Perez brothers neared the end of their route. Rudy pitched the last of the newspapers three doors down from the Roscoe residence and Roe kicked the accelerator and came to a screeching halt in front of Marty’s house.
Rudy hopped out. Smiling ear-to-ear. Kept looking at his watch. The older brother shook his head. Forever amused by it.
“One of these days you’ll break your neck just to spend two minutes with that Duarte chick.”
“Yeah? My neck.”
“Little Sister gonna do like Big Sister done, kid. Gonna tear your heart to pieces.”
Rudy laughed.
“Won’t be so funny when it happens. I worry about you.”
“You keep forgetting Olivia is not Yolanda.”
“They’re sisters. Same family. Them Duartes are all alike. She’s stringing you along, Rudy.”
“That’s okay. I think you’re wrong about her.”
“I hope you’re right.” Monroe drove off. “Later.”
Rudy climbed the stoop to Marty and Petunia Roscoe’s front porch. Knocked. It took a while. Eventually a sleepy-eyed, thirty-nine-year-old burly type with a streaked, Rod Stewart shag cut appeared in his boxers. Pumped up biceps and strong shoulders; trunk-like legs—the result of all that weightlifting that he did. Fit as a fiddle, just about, all around—with the exception of the belly and the wide backside, the result of too much beer and his addiction to Fruit Loops. Roscoe couldn’t get enough of either one. Although this morning his mind was not on beer or cereal, all he wanted was to return to bed. Could barely keep his eyelids open as he stuck the leather leashes in Rudy’s face.
Rudy greeted the man, grabbed the straps. Watched Ziggy and Darcy scamper out, eager for their morning jaunt. They tugged away. Roscoe had ducked back inside and had the door closed before the dogs cleared the porch. Rudy got his hand on the pooper-scooper in time, and they were off.
Dogs didn’t need to be shown in which direction they were headed. Pretty soon Rudy was running ahead of them, leading the way all the same. The need to get to his girl’s house in a hurry was there. The sooner they got to it, the more time he would have to spend with her.
As usual, Ziggy, the Lhasa apso, even though heavier of the two dogs by about ten pounds, and older by several years, was somehow still able to keep up a lot easier than the nine-year-old Boston terrier.
