Lustmord 1

by Kirk Alex

  Owner of the house cleared his throat.

  “Got some of my people down there. Staff and board members. I had the basement turned into a large play den and living quarters for them. It’s quite comfortable, actually. You saw me let one of them in earlier, the poker player named Norbert Fimple.”

  “The one who likes dead cats?” said Stella. “That was Dione I heard,” she insisted.

  “Come off it, Stella,” Lana said. “Get us that cab, Cecil. Where’s the goddamn phone? I’ll call the taxi myself.”

  Biggs stood his ground. Pearleen looked at Stella, and then her head turned slowly in Biggs’s direction. Thank God she had her purse with her.

  Let him try something. I’ll shoot if I have to, she thought. I don’t want to shoot nobody, but I will do it to defend myself. Let him try something. He’s always been weird, hasn’t he? But you never paid much attention to that; none of us did. Didn’t want to heed our instincts. Get that toot; that’s all that mattered. You were always pissed at the way that greasy slob McCoy came on to you, and look at you now.

  “Open this door if she’s not down there,” Stella demanded. “Open the fucking door!”

  “If you insist.” Biggs tossed the keys to Muck. “Unlock the door, Marvin. Show her she’s imagining things.”

  The sidekick fumbled with the keys, searching for the one that would fit. Found it. Unlocked the door to the basement and left it wide open.

  “Take a look for yo’self, you don’t believe us.”

  Biggs held his hand up. “Toss the keys over here, Deacon.”

  Marvin did that. Biggs caught the keys. Reached for the light switch in the foyer and suddenly the hallway light went out, as did the light in the living room.

  CHAPTER 178

  Pearleen had her Sterling .25 automatic out of her purse. It was too dark to see anything, let alone start firing.

  Well, she had seven rounds to work with: six in the magazine, one in the chamber. No, it was never a smart thing to do, have a round in the chamber, she knew it, but this was the way she liked it whenever being around low dogs like “Brotha Trusty” and “Brotha Muck.”

  Lana had her purse with the cardboard cutters. Liked to keep a few on hand just to be on the safe side. People were always laughing and giving her a hard time about it. Lookit the situation they was in now. Cutters might come in handy, and she was glad she had them. They wasn’t anything special: aluminum, with single edge blades. With the palm of your hand, you shoved to open, shoved to close. Easy to use and effective enough when used right. It took guts, too. She could cut them up if she had to. She hoped she didn’t have to.

  Lana nudged Stella. Handed her one.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Slice peckers if you have to.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “Fuck you, then. I don’t give a shit what you do with it.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  Lana was irritated to the point she just wanted to tell the other to close her trap, and was stopped by Dione, who could clearly be heard through the open basement door saying their names over and over again. Sounded like she was near the bottom of the staircase somewhere. Couldn’t see her. Not enough light at all.

  “It’s all right, honey.” Stella had ventured onto the landing. Forced her eyes to adjust to the weak bluish and red-toned light below. “We’re gonna get you out of here.”

  “Where’s my baby? How’s my baby? Is my baby all right?”

  Stella felt she had little choice at this point, other than to offer up a blatant lie. “She’s fine.” Adhering to caution, she began her descent. Braved a few steps, and paused. “Clarissa is just fine. Come up the stairs. Meet me halfway, Dione. Can you do it?”

  “Son of a bitch turned out the light.”

  “No shit, Lana,” chuckled Marvin. “‘Bout time you noticed.”

  “We want to get out of here, Biggs.”

  Pearleen gripped the .25 auto and would have walked in one or the other direction, only lack of light prevented anything of the sort. Besides, there was but one direction she was interested in heading: toward the front door.

  “We know you got that piece on you, Peach.” Marvin Muck stood inside his room and had the door open enough to be able to run his mouth. “Only you just gonna be wastin’ all them caps, ’cause Dawg be wearin’ the bulletproof, hot mama.”

  Biggs, having slipped into his own bedroom, cracked his door periodically to respond when he felt a need to. His advice to Muck at the moment was to shut up.

  “Let us out, Cecil. Let us out right now. People know we’re here.”

  “There it is: Tone of sheer desperation, just before total fear and panic set in and take over. I do enjoy it. Always have.”

  Pearleen aimed her gun in the direction of the front door, the last place she had seen Biggs standing. Squeezed off a shot. Hoped she hit the asshole. Didn’t hear a grunt or anyone fall. Too bad.

  “Let us the fuck out of here, Mr. Biggs. We all had some fun and now the party is over. Turn the lights back on and open the door. You don’t want to go to jail over this. Let us out right now.”

  “You’re wasting your breath, Ms. Bell. I like you and would like you to stay. You do things to me. But you know all this.”

  Lana Sepulveda was at the end of her rope. Could not stand this civilized back-and-forth bullshit any longer.

  “CUT US LOOSE, YOU CRAZY MOTHERFUCKER! YOU HEAR, MOTHERFUCKER? I SWEAR I WILL CUT THAT UGLY MOLE RIGHT OFF! THEN THE REST OF IT! I WANT THE FUCK OUT!” She had found her way to the front door and began pounding on it, to no avail. “My mother knows I’m here, Cecil. I don’t ever go no place without her knowing about it.”

  “Can’t stand yo mama, ho. So don’t you be layin’ all that boo-shit on us. Them’s fairy tale’, ho; nothin’ but fairy tale’.”

  Lana stood there momentarily, not certain which way to turn or where to go or what to do, while holding the cutter out in front of her. She decided it made more sense to stay with Peach and let her know she was walking back and not to aim that damned gun in her direction.

  Dione was still crying for her baby girl down in the basement; and Miss Betty and her sixty-seven-year-old adopted daughter Mildred Elizabeth and Julian “Pinko Punisher” Ionesco, and some others down there with him, could not stop giggling.

  CHAPTER 179

  Biggs had his bedroom door open wide enough to stick his nose out. Listened intently long enough to hear that Lana and LaBelle of the Ball were at the landing to the basement stairs and were scheming in voices too low for him to pick up. Couldn’t quite make it out over the music. No matter; it wouldn’t get them anywhere. Let them whisper, let them plan and connive. He still wanted the “strumpets” caught alive and stated thus from where he stood loud enough for the “cellar dwellers” to hear. He especially did not want to see any harm come to the high yellow whose stage moniker happened to be Peaches LaBelle. He closed his door. Wanted to go over the silencers. Thought the occasion was appropriate for one. Only a certain addle-brained wannabe procurer was tapping on the door and wasn’t about to let up. Muck whispered his name. Insisted he see him.

  “You hit?” Biggs was not inclined to open up even if he were. Fool had no business being in the hallway.

  “Don’t be that lucky, me.”

  “What is it?”

  “Open the damn door, man. Heard Lana and Peach go down the basement stair’. Peach don’t be here. Open the goddamn door and lemme say what I got to say.”

  Cecil flipped the switch on the wall, cutting out the light. Took his time opening the door. Cracked it just enough to point the barrel end of the Magnum in Marvin’s shaken mug. Muck had evidently crawled over on hands and knees and was still down there on the floor, looking around nervously. Peach could be comin’ back anytime.

  Biggs looked up and down the hallway himself, making certain he was not being set up. By the time Marvin stopped twisting his head in every which direction, he
realized he was staring at a piece.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Don’t be doin’ me like that, Dawg.”

  “What’s your fucking problem? You hurt?”

  “I don’t be hurt.”

  “The fuck you on your knees for, then? Never, ever, for any reason, let a bitch bring you down to your knees.”

  Marvin rose. Stood flat against the wall—in case Peach snuck back in the hallway and let go with another cap.

  “Spit it out.”

  “We ain’t doin’ nothin’ but throwin’ away some fine pussy here. Why we always gotta ice the ho? Some of these ho be too hot to ice, Dawg.”

  Biggs lowered the gun at last. Flicked on a weak penlight. Was cautious with it.

  “Did you not hear me order the geeks not to harm the cunts? Are you deaf?”

  “You know you gonna cut ’em up.” Marvin was using a lower tone here. “Sooner or later; they gonna be. That be yo MO all the time: take ’em out.”

  “You risked getting capped just to tell me this?”

  “They be some mighty fine piece of trim, Brotha Trusty. “

  “Things die/things live. It doesn’t mean much either way. No matter how you look at it, no matter how you live or what you do—we all end up in the ground sooner or later, so what’s the difference if we help some of these Dollies get there a little sooner than they figured?”

  “We ain’t right to be doin’ it. Suckin’ my dick gimme cramp’ in my neck and back.”

  “Vacate the hallway, Rapo. You’ll be of no use to me or to the church if you get hit.”

  “You don’t be gettin’ my point: Bitches be too good to chill, blood.”

  “No, you don’t get the point, ‘blood’: They have to be hacked-and-sacked. They know too much.”

  “They don’t even be CTD. They ain’t circlin’ no drain.”

  “Who’s going to provide the Pop-Tarts and the Kool-Aid? Dog biscuit treats? You? Who’s going to clothe them? You?”

  “Do for them the way you done for them tard’.”

  “Why don’t you stop straining before you short-circuit your brain?”

  “Sex slave, Cecil. Rent-A-Bush.”

  Biggs eyed him without expression.

  “We could have us a bunch of sex slave’, build us a harem, like the A-Rab be doin’; an’ then we ain’t got to get no more bitches for a while. Be smart that way, don’t it? The more bitches be missin’, the more po-leece be lookin’ for ’em—the more relative’ be goin’ crazy lookin’ ’round for these bitches be missin’. So we grab less of them—but we can’t do that if we slice and dice ’em every time.”

  “Like I told you before, ‘Dawg,’ if I want any shit out of you, I’ll squeeze your scrawny neck.”

  Biggs slammed the door in the punk’s face. He’d heard enough. Punk had pussy on the brain. Didn’t matter to him that he risked losing his burgeoning empire if the bitches were allowed to live indefinitely.

  What was it he had wanted to do before the bleeding-heart rapist interrupted him?

  CHAPTER 180

  Cecil O. gripped the suppressor-fitted Walther P38. He’d fashioned the silencer himself from steel wool, Tornado Tube, plastic water bottle. He regretted not having tested it for safety and decided he did not want to risk having it blow up in his face.

  He unscrewed the suppressor, and tossed it back in the drawer in the safe. He held on to the P38. His backup. With or without suppressor.

  There were other sound moderators there that he’d fooled around with in his spare time: one he’d crafted out of PVC bushing, coupling and lawnmower muffler; he’d made another one with a section of twelve-inch aluminum tubing and CPVC bushing; and yet a third type he’d toyed with, twelve-by-one-and-a-quarter-inch chrome-plated plumbing tube, four-inch section of one-inch aluminum tubing and ballcock nut. All were either too cumbersome and/or unproven, and he wasn’t going to risk anything going wrong.

  He left them in the safe. Closed the door and spun the combination dial, making certain it was locked. The .357 and the Walther backing it should do it. Gospel music blasted his home sweet home and he felt good enough about it to camouflage gun shots. Besides, he figured most of it would take place in the basement.

  Biggs gripped the revolver. Stood in place. Motionless. Felt his heart pounding. Could hear it easily enough. He was sweating, too, but that was all right. He reached down with his free hand to squeeze the erection-in-progress inside his trousers.

  Seldom failed. This sort of situation usually did that to him. Christ; it was great. Thrill of the hunt. What it came down to.

  Couldn’t figure it, and he didn’t care how or why or any of it. Screw trying to reason it out. Made no difference how many times he’d tapped his nutsack here-to-fore, either.

  Look, all you know is this: trapping something living, cornering it, tying it up and then cutting away at it bit-by-bit, be it a four-legged animal or the two-legged human kind (preferably the latter), did it for him. He fed off the victim’s fear. Their fear and desperation made him stronger, gave him this immense, god-like power. At least left him feeling this way. Their panic-stricken screams and pleas gave him wood, made his cock pulsate with blood, and the blue and purple veins get bigger as his cock grew rigid and the blood surged through it.

  He felt like nailing a piece of Pearleen Bell, getting a piece of her—not with a hammer and nails exactly just now, but instead with his prick. He didn’t want to see her die just yet. The others didn’t matter; he didn’t care what happened with them.

  Maybe Free Ride had something there, after all, maybe they ought to hold onto the cunts a while longer—but how long? People were sure to start missing them. That slob McCoy was sure to run his mouth because his top-of-the-line peelers had vanished on him, disappeared off the face of the earth. And sooner or later that Duarte cooze was sure to comment to someone about it; she would let it be known that she had last seen Pearleen Bell and her friends here—and then trouble-makers like Lloyd Dicker and others, Lana’s mother, were likely to come sniffing around.

  Not that he really gave a fuck. That was why Marvin’s idea was off-the-wall. They couldn’t keep all these bitches around. That was just out of the question, not that he wouldn’t want to keep the high yellow here for a time.

  Lana was to be used and discarded. Stella was a closet dyke who had given him the nose in the past, the cold shoulder, and he would enjoy dismembering that hot number as much as doing away with Lana “Da Bottom” Sepulveda.

  And then it occurred to him the one way to diffuse the whole issue and prevent further snooping would be to latch onto Olivia Duarte—and he’d been after her for so long now, dreamt about her, had fantasized doing things to her—and all his plans to nab her the way he’d been able to nab all those others out in the open during the day (or at night) had not worked out.

  It grated on him that he’d allowed her to leave. He’d had her in his grasp—and now she was out there again. Free as a bird.

  Biggs made certain his bulletproof vest was secure and covered his chest and back adequately. Jammed an earplug in each ear. The plugs would protect the eardrums to the extent they required protection, while allowing him to hear well enough to function. He grabbed the shooting muffs just the same. Hung them round his neck. Reached for the dark glasses. He turned out the light. Stepped into the hallway.

  Careful, Cecil. Your chest and back may be protected, the rest of you is not.

  He took another step. There was a shot. Bullet thumped into one of the walls, or was it a door? Marvin had it wrong: Bitch was in the hallway firing that pea shooter. Peach may have been down in the basement a moment ago, gone down the stairs some. Was definitely on the first floor presently. He didn’t mind the trapped ho using up her bullets, so long as he wasn’t the one being shot at. He froze in his tracks, then ducked back into his room. Minute later, he opened the door a bit.

  Dione was screaming in the basement. They were harrowing, high-pitched wails that would have made anyone’s
hair stand on end—but all it did was sweeten it for the bishop.

  CHAPTER 181

  Julian “Pinko Punisher” Ionesco fought off the Texan and the others. Grabbed Dione around the waist and literally carried her down by the pit. “Ja ja, kurva. Every American woman kurva.” He threw her to the cement floor. Yanked on her left arm, placed it over the edge of the pit, and shut the door on it. Pressed down, hard, until her arm snapped. The woman twisted, jerked about frantically, for what good it did her. The Rumanian got hold of her other arm and repeated the process: shut the door on it at about the elbow. He moved her arm a notch, slammed the door on the forearm and broke it in half. Dione went out with a deep bellow, losing consciousness.

  Stella Martel had stepped up from behind with her razor and slashed at the back of Ionesco’s neck, cutting him sufficiently, but not enough to render him helpless. The heavy-set geek twisted away, swinging with the club in his hand.

  “Kurva. Ja ja, American kurva.”

  Stella kicked him in the groin and watched and heard the man go down hard, reel back against the wooden stairs crying out in pain.

  “Dear Mother of God! Holy Mary Mother of God! I HURT! I HURT! HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!”

  Lana paused near the bottom of the basement stairs holding her cigarette lighter in her hand. She screamed to let Stella know that the freaky cowboy in the jockstrap was moving up from behind.

  Stella spun in the Texan’s direction and the man jumped back in time; he did not want any part of the cutter. He rolled, reaching Dione. Attempted to drag her away with him, to pull her down into the pit.

  “I see I done made a grave mistake gettin’ you out of there, didn’t I?”

  Stella kicked at the door and watched it slam down over the pit, preventing the cowboy from accomplishing his goal.