Lustmord 1

by Kirk Alex

  Patience McDaniel turned away. Resumed staring at whatever she had been staring at: empty space. Said nothing else.

  “Great,” said Stella to herself. Held the purse out. Said to Olivia: “Cecil said to ask if this is familiar to you.”

  “You know the purse belongs to me,” said Olivia, taking it. “Where was it?”

  “Good question. Must have slipped between the futon cushions.”

  “In his living room?”

  Stella nodded. “If that’s where the futon is.”

  “Not possible. I didn’t have it with me when I stepped out of the cab.” Olivia looked inside the wallet. “I had eighty dollars in here. My money’s missing.”

  “Is this the thanks I get for being a Good Samaritan?”

  “Thief.”

  “Watch it.”

  “You got your grubby hands on my purse while we were in the backseat of that cab and stuck it in your handbag.”

  “You better watch it. I don’t appreciate being accused of stealing.”

  “One of you did it. And took my money.”

  “Prove it.” There was silence. Stella Martel pointed at Patience McDaniel. “What’s wrong with this one?”

  “It’s quite cold in here,” said Patience McDaniel without looking at anyone.

  “No, it’s not,” said Stella.

  “Hey, Stella,” said Olivia. “Why don’t you leave her alone?”

  “Why don’t you butt out?” Stella Martel countered. “Make me sick. Trying to act so pure all the time. You make me want to puke. What do you think we come here for? Use your head.”

  “I just want to get out of this place and I want to go home. My family must be worried about me.”

  “I don’t give a shit about any of that. Nobody made you come with us. You’re here now and you’ve got to wait until we’re done with our business.”

  “Yeah? What business would that be?”

  “What do you think?” Stella glared at her. Was annoyed that Olivia had the nerve to glare back; neither of them aware that Cecil Biggs was ensconced in a closet in the Bible Room in back of them, observing through a two-way mirror what was going on, as well as monitoring what was being said with aid of audio gear via a perforation in the wall.

  CHAPTER 159

  Downstairs in the pit in the basement, Dione had decided to give floating on her back a try in order to give her legs a rest. She had been able to cling to either edge with her fingers and float this way with her mouth and chin above the murky, crud-infested water.

  She could hear the deviates growling, making strange yelps and other sounds. One of them was even trying to unfasten the door above her. Could hear that easily enough, although the lack of light made it nearly impossible to visually make out much of anything through the holes in the door.

  Maybe it was the thin one in the cowboy hat and jockstrap who looked like an underfed undertaker, the one they called “Big Tex,” in those worn snakeskin boots with the big toe sticking out of one of them. She wasn’t certain. Her head throbbed too much from the concussion and she knew for a fact that she was blind in one eye. But even that could have been acceptable to her just as long as she had a chance to live.

  If only she could last long enough, survive long enough to get some medical attention. Someone, somewhere was sure to help her; someone was bound to catch these maniacs and stop them. Someone is going to stop them, she kept assuring herself. Someone will. I know it. There’s families, people out there in this neighborhood. Someone is going to get suspicious about Biggs and that psycho Marvin he runs with and they will call the police and everything will be fine, everything will get taken care of.

  She thought of her husband Danny and their little girl Clarissa and tears began to flow; she couldn’t help it, tears formed in her good eye and flowed down into the water.

  Danny is probably worried sick and has no idea what’s happened with me. All he knows is that I stepped outside. I don’t even think he saw me get in the evil clown’s Cadillac. I’m not sure Danny saw anything. And then she regained enough of her senses and she wept because she realized that they had killed Danny right in front of her. They had taken him out of the backseat, had that hole dug in the ground and made Danny lie in it and Cecil had shot her husband in the face.

  She couldn’t help sobbing.

  “Danny, Danny . . . Somebody has got to help me. . . .” Through the hole in the center of the door, and several other holes, she caught glimpses of the cowboy hat that indicated she had been right: “Big Tex” was the one trying to undo the hasp that would release her, at least get her out of the pit.

  “We’re here for you, little darlin’. You just show a bit more patience.”

  “Please help me.”

  “Doin’ my best, little darlin’; doin’ my doggone best.”

  CHAPTER 160

  Stella doubted she could talk the square bitch into doing anything. Had to keep trying. If only Biggs hadn’t found her out in the hallway she might have been able to get into a room or two.

  Then it dawned on her: What if the stash was hidden away in the living room? Right there, in front of their noses. Hidden in plain sight.

  Goddamn him. What was all the work for? Guzzling Marvin’s sperm. Not to mention time wasted. And this Duarte cunt refuses to get it. Effort invested by having to put up with two dickheads and their tired bullshit. Took way too much energy to con these jerks and stroke their fragile male egos—to get what in return? Bowl of disgusting mulligan stew in your face? A slop bath. What it had felt like. All because they were after some dope to get high for a while and not have to put up with any of the other crap men liked to have done to them. Wanted to have their balls and asshole licked; wanted you to swallow. Loads of it. Had almost been talked into pissing in Marvin’s mouth. Come to think of it: she might have enjoyed that. What the assholes deserved. Tinkle on them. Golden showers. What they deserved and all were good for. More than one Hollywood asshole had asked her to shit on him, studio heads mostly. Executives. Liked being pissed and shit on. The shitting was where she drew the line. She didn’t shit on tricks. Maybe she should have, though. About all most of them rated.

  She cursed again, because there was nowhere else left for her to go. Cecil was downstairs, and she couldn’t risk getting busted by him again. Couldn’t be seen roaming the hallway. If she had to, could claim a need to use the bathroom again. If she was forced to. As a last resort. How often would that excuse work anyway? Marvin and Cecil were dumb, but not that dumb. Should have left her hairbrush in the john. Use it as an excuse to return to it later. It was lame, to be sure—but if all else failed . . .

  Place was an asylum. Fuck calling it a “church.” It was full of loons. Why Cecil kept most of them out of sight. Probably more screwed up than the chick with the constant chills and the gorilla she ran into in the kitchen.

  Seems Roscoe had a point. Hick had a point. Why let him know it? Best way, the only way to deal with men was to always keep them guessing, off balance. Make them feel insecure.

  She didn’t want to, but kept looking at the way the black woman continued to shake and shiver. Was staring at the floor now. Lost for good.

  “Look, Olivia. You’re right. It was rude of me. The lady is clearly troubled. Ran into another one, a man, down there in Cecil’s kitchen. Did one of those raspberry numbers right in my face. He had a mouth full of stew when he did it. Sprayed me full on with stew. You can understand why I’m not a happy camper right now.”

  “Why don’t you kindly go downstairs and tell your friends to hurry up whatever it is they have to do so we can clear out?”

  “Why don’t you stop acting like a nun and come down with me. Leave this nutty chick up here by herself. She doesn’t need you to hold her hand. She’s just another one of his batty lemmings. The man is really interested in you. You have no idea how valuable that is: to have a man of means like that crazy about you. You can get anything out of him that you want, anything. That’s better than all the rest
of those pathetic losers at Slim’s trying to get into your panties. At least Stinky’s loaded. He’ll give us all the blow we want if you’ll just be nice to him. You don’t have to fuck him. You can be kind to the man; take some of your clothes off—”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I ain’t the one out of my mind. You don’t have to fuck the annoying asshole. Just put on a show like Pearl is doing. It won’t kill you. You never made out with that loser Rudy Perez by now? What are you acting so precious for? You never let Rudy feel you up? He never touched you? Who are you kidding? He’s just another horndog. At least this motherfucker here is loaded. You don’t have to put out. Lana took care of that already. Got him off. Looks like the imbecile had to kill a chicken to get it up, but he got it up. Tub’s full of chicken feathers down there. Should see it. Chicken feathers and blood. What a nut.” Stella dropped her tone a couple of notches. Added conspiratorially, desperate for it to do the trick: “Why don’t you do it as a favor for your friends? Don’t your friends mean anything to you?”

  Olivia said nothing. Didn’t even want to look at her. She finally understood: all the talk she’d heard over the years about Stella and the others was probably true. She didn’t want any part of it.

  “There is no hope for you. I’m so sorry I got in the cab with you. If anyone’s a loser, it’s you—and the rest of that amoral pack you run with.”

  “You stupid bitch.” Stella slapped her, hard. “It’s free toot. All you got to do is take your clothes off. Show him your tits. What’s the big deal? You show them to Rudy, don’t you? Dog walker got to see them.”

  It took Olivia a second or two to recover from the blow, and when she did she struck back equally as hard, if not harder, and Stella Martel found herself knocked out of the chair by a punch that sent her to the floor with a bloody lip.

  “Don’t you ever put your hands on me.”

  CHAPTER 161

  In a part of the basement, at either times known as the Bunk Room or the Geek Cell, the “confused ones” were in a world of their own, preoccupied with various foibles and/or notions. Dione Aragon’s dilemma mattered little, if at all. The harlot was in the pit because it was her fate, a harlot’s fate. And that unreliable, back-stabbing, no-account from Texas was out there attempting to pry that door loose, for who knew what for, and would only end up paying the price himself. The way it always happened, thought Betty Lou Rutterschmidt, who sat in her wheelchair and had that huge Bible of hers open and resting on her lap as she strained to read passages with the aid of the flashlight Bishop had been kind enough to let her have.

  She was just inside the door, over in the right-hand corner, in a small area of the Geek Cell that was devoid of bunks. Her lips moved while she read, at times saying the words in a low, bordering on reverential whisper, so as not to wake her adopted daughter, sixty-seven-year-old Mildred Elizabeth, who slept on a thin mattress at her feet. Mildred, Mildred. Could have slept in her bunk, instead chose to stay close to dear old mom, as usual.

  Miss Betty, as she was at times addressed, concentrated with all that she had, in order to glean the most out of what she read, even though she must have read the Bible, all the way through, more than a dozen times over the years, each reading having rendered new insights and reinvigorated her devotion to the Lord. The other reason for her fierce concentration and focus was in order to keep from losing her temper and doing something she might regret later, at what was taking place with the fools in the other bunks, especially the one they called “Swine Vomit,” Olin Goodfellow, who, no doubt, was doing something disgusting underneath that blanket of his. Bag of waste gave hogs a bad name. Surely did.

  The old woman’s suspicions were far from inaccurate. Goodfellow was indeed lying in his bunk, lower berth, right side, in the middle there, and he had his hands down inside his diaper, fondling himself, while a nature film featuring bison unfolded up on the black-and-white television screen on a shelf near the ceiling.

  He didn’t seem to give a damn what his bunkmates were up to, didn’t matter to him that Lawrence “Sassy” Sassounian was making a fuss by banging his forehead against the steel frame of his bunk, trying to draw attention to himself, as usual.

  Sassy’s problems and frustrations, figured Sassy, were far greater than anyone else’s—and he was intent on reminding those around him at all times.

  Sassounian still had that gamey scalp on with the long hair and barrette that Cecil had given him and he was lying on his belly and banging and rubbing the upper part of his face against the hard edge of the frame just above his pillow, agitating an earlier laceration until blood began to appear and oozed down. Some of the blood crawled close enough past his mouth that made it possible for him to get at with his tongue, what Sassy seemed to have been looking forward to. His fingers and toes had been heavily bandaged by the bishop and would not have been worth the effort to bother with. This, however, was different. Blood. Readily available.

  The Rumanian, Julian “Red Menace” Ionesco, did what he could to carry out his part of the agreement he’d made with Sassy, which was: If he hurt him bad enough, caused him enough harm (and possibly made him bleed to the best of his ability), that Sassy would give him the pink blanket.

  True enough, Ionesco had been eyeing that blanket that Sassy presently had wrapped about his neck ever since Bishop had given it to him. The blanket was pink, “pink,” and should have been given to the Rumanian. Did Big Tex not give him the name “Pinko Punisher?”

  Ionesco’s bunk was in the upper berth, directly across the way. So as not to disturb Greta any more than was called for, so as not to draw her attention and ire, Ionesco quietly slid himself down off his bed and was attempting to reach with his right foot a part of Sassy’s anatomy with it, any part, so long as the Pinko Punisher could inflict pain, break a finger or arm, a toe, anything, something—that would please him and Sassy both—and he kept kicking his foot out there trying to connect, all the while glancing in Greta’s direction and doing his best so that she did not get wind of what was going on. The mean fraulein with those large buttocks and black leather German boots was powerful enough to cripple a man, break a man’s back—or pee pee—and he wasn’t in the mood for that sort of thing at the moment.

  No, sir. He preferred it when he was the one doing the breaking and causing others to feel pain. Like Cecil always said. Besides, he stood to receive that beautiful baby blanket.

  Sassy had stretched his own leg out there toward the one Julian was kicking out with.

  Julian continued to keep an eye on Greta who was up there in the top berth across the way, in a bunk at the television end. He could hear her singing some silly song Cecil played from time to time. Had no idea what it meant, what the words were about, but went something like: Flat foot floogie with the floy floy . . .

  Idiot American song, thought Ionesco. He never heard anyone sing anything this ridiculous in Europe in his whole life. Flat foot floogie with the floy floy . . . How can somebody make such a song? What is this “floy floy”?

  Forget Greta. Let her keep singing. You sing, Sister Kurva, with the big buttocks. Yes. Sing, Kurva. Ja ja.

  At last, the Pinko Punisher was able to connect. Made contact with Lawrence’s left foot and kept kicking at it and kicking, stomping on it with his own heel that he was able to smash the other man’s toes to the point that blood was beginning to show through the gauze—and this had made them both happy: the one relished meting out pain, while the other enjoyed being on the receiving end.

  Greta Otto, The Leaper, still singing up there in her bunk, was adjusting the Cupid mask on her face in order to better see what was taking place down below at the other end. Were the pigs going at it again? Molesting one another? Wouldn’t be surprised.

  When she looked down, in Goodfellow’s direction, she noticed that Swine Vomit still had his hands inside his diaper. It was annoying to her, no matter what he did, or what any of the male drips did, was annoying, but at least he wasn’t anywher
e near the pit and attempting to peer through the holes in the door and bothering the victim for the time being. The cowboy was. She knew it. Would wait to see what Cecil did to him. If he did nothing, she would handle it herself. He’d be tougher to manage than Swine Vomit, for sure. She’d have to ponder on it, before taking action.

  She turned away. Her eyes back on the tee-vee screen that she had no interest in watching. She was singing that song again, the floy floy song, the flat foot floogie with the floy floy song. Had no real idea what it meant, but she sang it, repeated the words over and over again.

  Now that the blanket was to be handed over, per their agreement, Ionesco reached for it only to discover that the other individual was unwilling to follow through on his part of the bargain. Blanket was his. It had been given to him by the bishop and was his to keep—and a tug-of-war ensued; the battling loons tugged at either end, refusing to concede.

  Greta Otto, The Leaper, now humming softly up there in her bunk, had taken the Cupid mask off her face in order to better observe what was taking place below her. Let them claw at each other, she thought. The male was a lower form of life that the world certainly would have been better off without.

  She turned her head; her attention back on the buffoonery with the bison. She hated nature shows. Shows with hyenas and lions, crocks. They were always devouring one another. Just like the dorks below, fighting over a blanket. What did they need with a blanket? Made no sense. She wished they’d kill each other and get it over with.

  Only it went on. They would never kill each other—and that’s what grated on her. Hissing and cursing. Over what?