by Kirk Alex
“I would, darlin’. Only there ain’t hardly enough light right now for that sort of thing.”
“Don’t you want to get out? Don’t you miss the outside? The sun? Fresh air? I miss my baby girl. . . .”
“I explain to you before: I miss Rumania. . . . I miss my country. Since my dear wife kick the can, or maybe she kick the bucket—not sure how to say—maybe yes: kick the bucket; since she die . . . I feel I cannot make it in America. . . . I don’t have Dream no more. America only good if you have Dream; if you don’t have Dream, America not so good. It is very good for people who have Dream. . . . The Big Dream die when my kind wife die. . . .”
His tone took a sudden, drastic turn. Man was at the end of his rope, and this whining blond prostitute up there by the door was the cause of it.
He had a light-colored scarf, or rag, something, was not easy for Dione to make out, tied around his neck the way one would a scarf. He wiped his brow with it. Dabbed at his eyes. Blew his nose into it.
“What you want me to do with your bullshit life? You think I worry about your idiot eye? I cannot see your idiot eye. Even if there was more light and I could see it very well, I still don’t care about your idiot eye. You lose one eye, big deal. I lose Mrs.! First they take pancreas, they take spleen, they take gallbladder and intestine; they take so much intestine my dear wife she shit three time’ every day. Every day; in the toilet, shitting, three time for two years—the cancer it come back, and finally they take the life. I lose my wife. Radiation and chemo. Day after day, week after week. She cry all the time because the pain is too much. She weep; how she weep. Can’t eat; no appetite. Everything taste like metal when she eat little bit. Like paper. No flavor. Chemo do this. I can do nothing for her. We was married eighteen years. She is everything for me, do everything, taking care of me; she clean my shirt and she clean my shorts; press my pants and give me haircut. Trim the hair in my nose and hair in my ear. I ask her to take hair off my private part; I don’t like gray hair on my private part. She say to me: No, Julian. Leave it like that. It is natural. Okay. Fine. Whatever make my dear wife happy I do. In Rumania we was happy. I was engineer. In America, in New York, and when we move to Los Angeles, I am force to be taxi driver and it is very difficult to be happy.” He spit on the floor, hard. “All of the people in Beverly Hills do like that, if you are taxi driver. If you taxi driver in Beverly Hills you are kaka, shit. They tell me I am shit, because I drive taxicab and they are millionaire movie producer and eat steak at Dan Tana. Drink slivovitz. I know. I see all the time. You think I care what you cry about? You full of kaka, nothing prostitute! Miss Betty and daughter Mildred say it all! Say it right! What I do to you? I tell you: I gonna break your arm! This will make me feel good, very good—when I break your arm. I don’t need your pussy, like Big Texas need it. What I need, what make me happy is when I hear snap; when your bone break like pretzel, like celery, and then you will shit. You will be in so much pain you will shit—three times every day. Like my dear wife.”
He was spitting some more, unable, as well as unwilling, to contain his rage, and charged up the steps in order to get at her and do what he felt needed to be done. And in that brief moment was all it took for it to register in Dione Aragon’s eye: the rag tied round his neck was part of a blanket, a pink blanket. He’d had a torn portion of it wrapped around his massive neck. Who knew where the rest of her baby’s blanket was?
Proof? She had no proof. Only suspected. Had no choice but to add it up . . . about her darling girl.
She did the only thing she could do in defense: cowered at the impending assault, not that she needed to, as the foreigner was blocked by the cowboy, who cold-cocked him and sent the Red Menace right back down to land on his rear end at the bottom.
“I break your arm for this, kurva from Texas.” Julian Ionesco promised, glaring up at them and waving a finger. “You watch it. I give you one big guarantee. Ja ja.”
“Ja ja, yourself. What happened to all that comrade crap, then, amigo? Why you always sayin’ comrade this and comrade that, Pinko Commie sumbitch? Always knowed you was fulla horse manure.”
“You keep kurva away from door before she cause everybody big trouble. If she don’t stop what she do Bishop gonna say ‘You got discipline coming!’ And then ‘Siberia!’ to everybody. Everybody will pay. If I pay I gonna make you pay more, American kaka! You are kaka; for sure you are kaka.” Ionesco turned, and staggered off, rubbing his jaw.
Dione was sitting on the floor of the landing, her back against the wall. She had her face buried in her trembling hands and she was sobbing. Big Tex sat beside her.
“It’s all gonna be just fine, little darlin’. Yes, ma’am. You ain’t got to pay no attention to him. You ain’t no ‘kurva.’ My wife was, I suspect—not you. I doubt, strongly doubt you’re one of them.”
And he proceeded to gently pull back the part of her robe that covered her feet. Ran his left hand over her ankles. As soon as she realized what was taking place, what it was he was after, Dione yanked the robe back, withdrawing into the corner.
“What are you doing?” She covered her feet back up. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Everything is gonna be just fine, little darlin’.”
Big Tex clamped his right hand across the back of her neck and pushed her face against the door, while his left hand lifted the robe all the way off.
Dione struggled, but it did nothing. She did not have enough strength and doubted she could fight him off. She screamed and fought to get him away from her, throw him off, but Big Tex was too big and strong. He held her face pressed against the door, while running his left hand up and down her grime-covered, wet legs; up her thighs, and then slid it under her buttocks. He parted her legs, freed his erection from his jockstrap, and rubbed his penis up against her. Gently rubbed it this way.
“We gonna get you out of here, little darlin’. You’re right about that. We all want to get out, and one fine day we will. We surely will, not that I care for what’s out there, not that I’m sure I’m ready to face it. Don’t suppose any of us is, actually. We had our taste, plenty of it. Ain’t nothin’ better out there. All it is is different. But I understand: You want out. Don’t care to be cooped up like a hen in a tight cage; like them chickens Bishop keeps in the kitchen in them canary cages that are just too damned tight for ’em. Now me, tight is something I ain’t got nothin’ against. No, ma’am. Tight is good. Beaver or back door. Don’t matter. Now, my wife, she never give up that back door for me. Oh, she done give it up to my best friend, my best amigo. Silver-tongued devil was slick enough to get her to make that back door available. . . . Open Sesame, he said, and she damned well did. . . .”
Dione twisted her head away, and would not stop screaming.
“You want out of here? Why, we can do that; we can get you out—and we will. Only we got to do one thing at a time, that’s all. One thing at a time. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I had me some of what you got there? Hate to tell you, that’s all.”
He had his right hand back over her mouth to stop all the noise she was making and prevent her from spoiling, what he was convinced, was and should be a romantic episode. If not that, at least a mindless, soulless screw—and there was nothing the matter with one of those from time to time. As he pointed out a moment ago: it had been a very long time for him, too.
“You just take it nice and easy. . . . We might as well enjoy this, little darlin’. That’s the way Big Tex sees it. Enjoy while you can. ’Cause you know, they say life is short.”
CHAPTER 175
“What denomination is your church?”
“What denomination would you like it to be?”
“I only wondered . . .”
“I apologize. We are non-denominational.”
The words seemed to be on instant replay inside her head. He was interested in porn tapes Peaches appeared in and had cocaine to entice her and her friends with. What kind of church allows this kind of behavior?
Non-denominational? More like non-religious and godless. She felt nervous and scared and had this fear of being locked up in the “Prayer Room,” as Biggs called it, and not being permitted to leave. Olivia also knew that she needed to calm down, take it easy.
Look, everyone knows the guy to be an oddball, weird. Nothing new there. He was still a preacher, a man of God. And his church: United Christian Church of Re-Newed Hope is not the sort of parish she and her family would ever want to be a part of . . . that did not mean that it was necessarily evil and totally without merit. . . . They’re different from the norm, that’s all.
Take a deep breath. Let it out. There you go. . . . You’re doing fine. . . .
She looked at Patience. Still sitting there in the front row staring up at the holy cross, the crucifix. Patience was shivering. It was warm in the large room and Olivia could not understand why Patience would be cold. Well, Patience is a bit unusual—different, like Biggs—but that is none of your business, Liv. Get to the door and get on home.
Olivia tried the door nearest her, the one she had entered through. Found it locked. She walked to the other door in back, on that same side of the room. This door, too, was locked.
You’re telling me I don’t have the right to be nervous? I am nervous. You know it. More than nervous.
“I just want to get out of here. I have to leave.”
Biggs would make a good cult leader probably. He’s always carrying that Bible around with him. Wears that hat that has God’s #1 on it. Puts on a good pious front, doesn’t he?—when he’s away from here, doesn’t he? I know better now. Having seen what I’ve seen. Who buys an ordinary-looking, creepy house like this and turns it into a so-called church, and then only allows certain people, mostly undesirables, to see the inside of his “church”? Who does that? A weird-ass would do that. Make that a couple of weird-asses named Biggs and Muck.
She pounded on the door. Hurried back to where the black woman sat.
“Look, I want to get out of here. Both doors are locked. What is going on?”
The black woman remained lost in her own world, her mind indeed somewhere else.
“Where would you go? It’s cold out there.”
“I want to get out of here. I have to get home.”
It was evident to Olivia that she was not getting anywhere with this approach, and she hurried back to the door she had walked through originally, turned the knob. It opened this time.
Olivia scrambled down the flight of stairs. Reached the front entrance and hoped that it was not locked, so that she could keep right on going and scram out of the place.
Only the front door wouldn’t open. Music blared from the living room intermixed with what sounded like screams or laughter coming from another part of the house, maybe the basement. She could not tell and didn’t care, all she wanted to do was get outside, and panic set in.
Out of nowhere, it seemed, Cecil Biggs’s left arm whisked past her face at lightning speed (as he planted his palm) against the front door just at about Olivia’s eye level.
“I see your purse turned up. That pleases me.”
She was way too spooked to get a word out in response to this, way too intimidated to let him know what she thought: that his druggie, light-fingered loser friends had taken a substantial amount of cash from her and that it angered her enough so that she wouldn’t want to have anything to do with them ever again.
“As someone of note once noted, there is nothing to fear but fear itself.” A pregnant pause followed that felt like eternity: uncomfortable and nerve-wracking. “Burglaries are on the rise. Doors are kept locked as a precaution. We apologize if a staff member or two gave you a scare. They certainly didn’t mean to.”
“I need to get home.”
Did it do any good to keep pointing it out? Olivia did not want to or was even able to look at those eyes of his that represented the opposite of anything positive and life affirming. Creep had always made her skin crawl. Being this close to him only made it far worse. She prayed that her knees wouldn’t buckle. Swallowed hard. Throat was dry.
“For some reason you remind me of my ex-wife. She’s from the Philippines.”
“I’m not Filipino. My ancestors go back to Spain and Mexico, mostly Spain.”
“My mother, rest her soul, had hair like that.”
She’d heard it before. Too often. Hadn’t liked it. What was she expected to respond with? Psycho was always talking a bunch of incoherent nonsense.
Door to the living room opened. Pearleen, Stella and Lana appeared. At about the mid-point down the hallway, another door opened, and Marvin stepped out from a room on the bathroom side.
Biggs’s eyes remained fixed on Olivia. He did his very best to appear relaxed and at ease—only it had the opposite effect on her.
“I called a cab for you.”
He proceeded to unlock the front door. Took his sweet time about it, too. Finally had it open. Desperately needed fresh air—never mind that it was smog-tainted Valley air—wafted in like a gift from the gods.
There was a cab idling at the curb and Olivia ran to it. Jumped in the backseat and screamed at the driver to get going. Cecil Biggs’s reaction was one of manufactured bemusement as he gave his head a mild shake.
“Told you that stuck-up bitch thinks she’s too good to share a cab with us,” said a pissed Lana to her stripper pals. Before her companions could react to the comment or attitude, the screams coming from the basement were much stronger and louder now and could be heard through the music. There was pounding on the basement door and Stella Martel found herself being drawn to it.
She walked to the door. Her name was being called. She was certain this time. Biggs saw it, reacted the only way he thought prudent: locked the front door for good measure.
“Like I said before,” Stella Martel reminded her coke-addicted cohorts: “I’m either losing my mind, or that sounds like Dione Aragon crying for help.”
CHAPTER 176
Down in Biggs’s basement Dione had made every effort to stay loud and scream for deliverance, but having been so weak to begin with she had no energy to go on. The Texan had held her down on the landing and sexually assaulted her, and now that he had dragged her back down to the bottom of the staircase and gotten his rest, he was forcing himself in her mouth again, slamming his long, carrot-shaped groin against her wounded face. Why don’t they help me?
“Help me, please. Help me.”
Big Tex laughed out loud. Rubbed his erect penis and tried to find her lips with it. Slid it in. Dione bit down on it as hard as she was able and the tall man pulled back with a groan.
Greta Otto moved up from behind as the cowboy stood leaning against the banister; she whirled that chain in her hands like a baton, moved another step, adding power and spin, and let the chain whip up between the cowboy’s thighs.
The man howled like a wounded, wild beast. Reeled back, staggered, and dropped into the water in the pit. Enough mud and water and blood found its way inside his mouth and he continued to jerk around in there, wailing and cupping his precious, aching genitals in his hands, doing his best not to irritate or inflame further.
A moment later he spat the water back up and a rodent wiggled out with it and swam to safety. Greta, the all-powerful and in command, stood over him with the chain and gave him a good, solid whack across the face that shut him up.
Big Tex should have gone out, but didn’t. At least he was no longer running his gums.
Greta covered Dione back up with the robe. Held her in her arms. Realized she had suffered a few cuts and bruises herself. Hand that she held the chain in was bleeding between thumb and forefinger. Right side of her neck was sore. There was pain there. Blood below the jawline. Must have accidentally whacked herself and not have been aware of it during all the punishment she was gleefully meting out.
“I’ll be back. Big Sis will be back.”
She rose. Retreated to the Bunk Room for balm and Band-Aids.
Someone w
as calling Dione’s name. On the other side of the basement door up there. Dione was certain of it. A pair of hands clamped onto her. Kept her from climbing up. Had to be the “Pinko Punisher.” Ionesco.
It’s Stella. Stella’s calling me.
“Stella! Stella, is that you? Stella? Please, help me! They raped me! I need my baby! Please, help me!”
CHAPTER 177
Stella Martel was on the opposite side of the basement door with her ear pressed against it, listening intently. Biggs had his back to the front entrance as he stood there watching Stella and the other women react.
Lana glared at him.
“You just gonna stand there, or you gonna call us another cab, Cecil?”
Biggs said nothing.
“What are you doing, Stella?” Pearleen had her purse pressed against her waist. She could sense that something was not right with the bishop.
Biggs cleared his throat. “I suggest you move away from there, Stella. For your own safety. You’ve already had one encounter with Norbert, as I understand it. I guarantee you you wouldn’t want another.”
“Like I said, Pearl. Call me crazy, but I heard Dione’s voice just then.”
Stella straightened and was looking directly at Biggs, who remained at the other end of the hallway. “You got Dione Aragon down there, don’t you? That’s what happened to her that night she ‘disappeared’ in McCoy’s parking lot.”
Pearleen did not want to believe what Stella was implying. It wouldn’t have made any sense to begin with. Why would Cecil have to kidnap anyone when all he had to do was flash his dope and money, and most women did what he asked. It was sad, but true. She, Pearleen Bell, was here, wasn’t she? She hoped Stella’s accusation were not true. Because if it were, that could mean trouble for the three of them as well now, big trouble. How would they get out of the place if Biggs did not want them to leave? How would they let the cops know that he had kidnapped Dione and held her prisoner in his basement?
