Play It Again

by Stephen Humphrey Bogart

  Where?

  “There’s other people want the cab, mister,” the cabbie said. “You want to go someplace or what?”

  Someplace he would not expect, but a place that he would eventually have to come up with. Someplace—personal.

  “Where to, buddy?” the cabbie said again.

  R.J. blinked. Of course.

  * * *

  It is going so beautifully. Just as he planned it; everything is perfect. Now, though, he must simply wait. It isn’t so hard, the waiting, not with everything in place. In the theater, one learns patience. He will practice it now. Waiting for his supporting player.

  He will just check his props one last time, as he does before every performance.

  Look at them, the two of them. His two little rabbits. Rabbits set to catch slightly bigger game.

  The sight of them is deeply satisfying. Nodding quietly to himself, he reaches for his camera and takes a few more pictures. First the man, straining against his bonds, eyes blazing, thin muscles knotting with effort. Good. Wonderful. He could not have posed it better.

  Now her. The woman. Oh, what a study she is. So much more interesting—much like the other woman, the mother. All cold fury and patience.

  She is much tougher than he thought she would be. Perhaps there will be time to explore her, later, after the scene. It would make a fine epilogue to the larger drama.

  It might be very fulfilling.

  * * *

  The cabbie did not make it in under ten minutes. It was closer to fifteen by the time they pulled up in front of R.J.’s building.

  R.J. paid him too much anyway. He leaped out of the car and flung the first bill out of his pocket, a twenty, at the front seat and sprinted into the building.

  Just let me be on time, he prayed silently. He hadn’t prayed for twenty years, but this seemed like a good time to start. Please, just let me be on time.

  He went up the stairs without even noticing them. By the time he hit the landing of his floor he had his gun out and cocked.

  He paused in front of his door and took a deep breath, steadied his gun hand.

  One, two—

  Smash!

  He hit the door with everything he had, and it flew inward on its hinges, the lock a tattered thing.

  R.J. flung himself through the doorway and stood at a crouch in the center of the room, gun ready. He looked to his left, to his right; in the kitchen. The bedroom. The closet.

  Nothing.

  Just to be certain, he stalked carefully into each room, letting the gun lead him, every sense quiveringly alert. But he knew it was no good.

  The place was empty.

  The killer was someplace else.

  But where?

  He sank onto the couch. He had been so sure this was the place. The killer was one jump ahead of him again. Had been the whole time. The guy seemed to know everything about him, what he was thinking, what he would do next.

  So what would he do next? Think, damn it. Where else could he take them?

  R.J. closed his eyes, rubbed his temples, tried to think like the killer. Where would he hole up?

  Someplace quiet, someplace that R.J. would guess sooner or later, but not too soon. Someplace personal. But what could be more personal than his own apartment?

  As it hit him, he was up and out the door before the thought really registered.

  The shattered door flapped shut, open, half shut behind him.

  He was already halfway down the stairs when the telephone rang. After three and a half rings the answering machine picked it up.

  “Hello, R.J., it’s Uncle Hank. I’m at your office. I came right over here because I got a complete profile for you, and it’s a doozy.

  “I think I know what the guy will do next, R.J. And it will happen soon. In the next day or two. So if you get this message, get ahold of Miss Wingate and sit tight. I think he will try to hit you through people close to you. I’ve sent your secretary out of town for the rest of the week, so she’ll be okay.

  “R.J., above all else, don’t try to take this guy alone. When he’s in his fugue state he’ll be about five times as strong as you are. Please, son, be careful. Tengas cuidado, hombre.

  “I’ll see you soon.”

  * * *

  It was quicker this time getting across town. The cabbie had at first refused to go through Central Park. He’d changed his mind when R.J. held the gun to his head.

  R.J. threw the guy another twenty, but he didn’t look happy. That didn’t seem too important.

  Tony didn’t open the door of the cab. That was a first, and it made R.J.’s pulse hammer even harder.

  Nobody was there to open the front door of the building, either. R.J. went in fast, gun ready.

  Tony was sound asleep in a chair over in the corner of the lobby. R.J. swore and ran for the elevator. Except—

  Except that Tony was an ex-cop. The good kind. Tony would never sleep on the job. No matter what.

  R.J. backtracked quickly and knelt beside the seated doorman, putting a finger to his throat.

  He had a strong pulse. R.J. slapped his face.

  Nothing. Then he noticed a very slight trickle of blood behind Tony’s left ear.

  R.J. took off the doorman’s cap. Hidden by the hat, there was a welt above the ear the size of a Thanksgiving turkey. R.J. stood up.

  The killer was here, upstairs, in his mother’s apartment.

  There could be no possible doubt.

  * * *

  She is teasing him, he is sure.

  The way she just lies there. She refuses to squirm or plead with him. Difficult to plead, of course, with her mouth filled and taped shut. Still, she must feel helpless, naked and trussed like that.

  The eyes are magnificent. She has not taken her eyes off him, not for a moment. She’s hardly blinked.

  And it is not fear with which she looks at him. It is simply a steady gaze. What strength; it gives him shivers. The possibilities of this woman!. He must find time to get to know her. Absolutely must!

  After. When he is done with the main event, her time will come.

  Meanwhile…

  He takes another picture.

  * * *

  R.J. did not take the elevator. He did not want the sound to alert the killer. And as hyped as he was now, he ran up the stairs as easily as if he was running downhill.

  At the landing on his mother’s floor he paused. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done, but he forced himself to wait just a few seconds, to let his breath steady, to gain complete control.

  He had to be like ice, to go in cold with every nerve steady and primed. If he let this guy get him rattled before the party even started, it was as good as over already.

  A deep breath; let it out slowly. R.J. checked his gun one more time. The feel of it in his hand was a comfort, more than it had ever been before. Another deep breath; he drew back the hammer.

  Moving as quickly and silently as he could, he went to the door.

  R.J. listened at the door as hard as he could. He heard nothing. He hadn’t really expected to. And he didn’t need to. He was sure they were in there.

  He braced himself across from the door.

  One, two—

  Smash!

  He was into the small foyer, crouched, ready for anything—

  And there was nothing. R.J. stood for a moment, his nostrils quivering, as if he could pick up the smell of the killer.

  Which way?

  Right down the hall—to the kitchen, the office?

  No: R.J. knew how this guy was thinking. He would make it as personal as he could. And the most personal, insulting, maddening room would be—

  His mother’s bedroom.

  Again following his gun barrel, R.J. slid down the hall. Past the closet, to the door of the bedroom. It was standing half open. R.J. let out a careful breath and eased up to it. He looked inside slowly.

  Like some medieval painting of Hell, the scene in the bedroom assaulted him.
<
br />   His mother had been proud of that massive headboard. It had been carved three hundred years ago. She’d brought it back from Italy and taken meticulous care of it. It had a beautifully made scene of Madonna and child carved into it.

  And right now it had Hookshot tied to the top like a gargoyle.

  He was wearing only his boxer shorts. His wrists and feet were tied behind his back and then looped over the point at the top center of the headboard, so he hung out over the top of the bed.

  His eyes bulged out and all the veins in his face and neck were knotted and standing out like the ropes that bound him. And as he saw R.J. peer cautiously into the room, he frantically swung his eyes around, trying to draw R.J.’s attention to something. But R.J. was not looking at Hookshot any longer.

  Beneath Hookshot lay Casey.

  She was completely naked, tied up like a Christmas goose. Her hands were tied to the headboard and her ankles bound together. A piece of duct tape covered her mouth, but her eyes were clear. Frightened, yes, but not panicked, not shattered. She looked back at him with cool intelligence.

  Around her head, spread out like a hand of cards, were half a dozen Polaroid pictures.

  For a moment R.J. forgot everything: forgot where he was and what he was doing and why he was there with the gun in his hand.

  All he could see was Casey.

  His woman.

  The fight was forgotten now. Someone had done this to his woman.

  The same somebody had killed his mother. Hurt his friend. Flattened his childhood bicycle, haunted his dreams, tried to kill him, given him this scar on his chin.

  “And here I am,” said a voice as soft and cold as a snowflake.

  Before R.J. could whirl and fire, a very sharp steel point appeared at his throat and pushed lightly, just hard enough to break the skin and get the message across.

  “Wonderful entrance,” the voice said. “Just perfect. But I’ll take that now.”

  And the man plucked the gun away as if R.J. was as weak as a child.

  CHAPTER 31

  R.J. turned slowly, his hands up at shoulder level. A hundred thoughts fought for control of his mind, but they all vanished down the drain when he finished his turn and saw who was holding the point to his neck.

  It was him.

  The Scary Guy.

  That same bland face, with the deep, twisted eyes. Those eyes that had stared out at him from his dreams all those long years ago. Except for the eyes, a completely uninteresting face.

  The right hand was more interesting than the face. It held a sword. A fencing foil with the tip sharpened to what R.J. could feel was a very keen point. A point that had zeroed in on his throat and not wavered since it drew first blood.

  R.J. looked up along the blade and into those cold, inhuman eyes. They seemed to draw him onward, almost as if some private part of him were falling into them, falling down, down…

  “Yes,” said the killer. “You feel it too, don’t you? We are already connected.”

  “We’re connected by your pigsticker, anyway,” R.J. said. “You mind moving it off my Adam’s apple?”

  “Connected by a great deal more and you know it. Don’t be shy about this,” the monster said, but he moved the point back a half inch.

  “Thanks,” R.J. said.

  “I have waited an awfully long time for this. Permit me to introduce myself.” He said it with his hard-edged, practiced diction, like someone on a stage trying to reach the back rows. He thinks he’s acting, R.J. thought.

  “My name is John Dexter.” The killer made a bow and gave a flourish with the sword, ending with a small stab at R.J.’s chest that left a scratch and then withdrew.

  “I think you can ease up on the connection bit there, John,” R.J. said, flinching back from the sword’s point.

  “Ah, but our connection is the whole point—of our meeting,” Dexter said, stabbing again to underline his pun.

  Jesus, I have to get a homicidal maniac who thinks he’s funny, R.J. thought.

  “To begin with, we have this unfinished piece of theater between us.” Dexter moved the sword’s tip forward and poked at R.J.’s arm. R.J. could feel it puncture his bicep.

  “Sorry if I don’t share your enthusiasm for murder as an art form,” R.J. said.

  “And of course, we have both lost our mothers. That’s quite a bond, isn’t it?” He stabbed lightly again, at R.J.’s other arm this time.

  What with the sight of Casey and Hookshot bound to his mother’s bed, and the sure knowledge that this was the man that had killed his mother, and the series of small wounds with the sword tip, it was all R.J. could do to stop himself from jumping at the guy and the hell with the consequences.

  But he made himself stay calm. If he could draw out the killer, keep him from doing anything for a while, that was all to the good. The longer this went on, the better chance he would have to find an opening.

  And he would find an opening. Maybe not a perfect one, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was closing his fingers around Dexter’s throat and squeezing. And that would happen. It had to happen. Even if it happened with the sword point in his gut. That didn’t matter either.

  So he played the game. “I wouldn’t think you had a mother, sport,” R.J. said.

  “Oh, yes,” Dexter said, with a small stab at R.J.’s thigh. “Not a movie star, of course. But a mother for all that. And a good one, while she lasted.” He smiled, a pale and alien smile.

  “You kill her too?”

  The eyes grew impossibly dark and deep. It seemed to R.J. that the pupils were actually whirling, sucking him in like a vortex.

  “Of course I did,” Dexter said softly. R.J. seemed to hear him from a great distance. “I learned very early about my special talent. Talent will out, you know.

  “Mine ‘outed’ on a series of neighborhood pets. Pets always seem more important to people in trailer parks, have you noticed?” And he whipped the tip across R.J.’s forehead. “We weren’t all born into mansions, you know.”

  “And we didn’t all grow up strangling poodles,” R.J. said. The sharp pain had snapped the sense of falling into Dexter’s eyes, and now he felt the blood starting on his forehead, a slow trickle across his brow.

  Dexter didn’t seem to notice. He went right on with his monologue. “The neighbors began to suspect it was me.” He smiled shyly, like a kid. R.J. thought the sight of that innocent smile was the scariest thing he’d seen yet. “I was just a boy. Still learning caution, you see? Because the wonder of it, the beautiful ache of taking those precious little lives—it was so overwhelming I couldn’t believe no one else felt it. I couldn’t fully believe it was something I had to hide.

  “Some busybody told my parents. And the walls in those trailers are thin. I heard my mother and father discussing what to do about Young John being so different.”

  He laughed. “Well”—he fluttered the sword in a modest wave—“it was really only one small step from Pekingese to parent, wasn’t it? I can’t take much credit for the deed. It was primitive, clumsy. But the scene after—Ah, that showed promise. Poor young lad, orphaned in a tragic fire. So young, so all alone.”

  “Jesus,” said R.J. “You really enjoyed that, huh?”

  The eyes looked at him, through him, beyond him.

  “Enjoy is an inadequate concept,” he said. “I was—fulfilled. Transformed. Transmuted from the base clay of a trailer park into the lofty stuff beyond dreams. I became something other, something different. Better.”

  “Better?” R.J. goaded. “You mean you moved up to strangling Dobermans?”

  The eyes locked on his, and it occurred to R.J. that he hadn’t seen them blink. “Goading me is a rather obvious tactic, and it won’t work,” Dexter said. “You and I have a single, immutable destiny to fulfill, and you cannot change it. Even I could not change it. I know that now. We will have to find a way to make you accept it too,” he said and stabbed, deeper this time, into R.J.’s left arm.

  This ti
me R.J. could not stop himself from hissing with the pain. He looked up to see the eyes still on him.

  “Good.” Dexter nodded. “You see? If I give you just enough pain you will start to believe it too. You will have to.”

  R.J. breathed deeply. The shock of the numerous small stab wounds was starting to make him weak. He knew that if he didn’t do something soon, it would be too late.

  “All right,” he said, “so it wasn’t Dobermans. A guy of your caliber probably went right to Shetland ponies.”

  Dexter smiled. “As a matter of fact, I fought for many years to stop myself altogether. I thought it was wrong. A few times a year I would be flooded by these glorious feelings and tear myself apart with guilt. That is how I found acting. I discovered that the right part was a substitute for what I needed. Oh, a very poor substitute, to be sure, but it worked. And as my career began, I became normal for a while.

  “And then I met your mother.”

  For the first time real emotion showed on that bland face and it became a monster mask, a disguise to frighten children.

  “Your mother. Belle Fontaine. Queen of the screen. Idol of millions. How I worshiped her. Oh, how I believed that being admitted into her mere presence meant I had arrived, had finally climbed the pinnacle of professional recognition! It was to have been my great break—an audition for Belle Fontaine!”

  In spite of himself, R.J. was impressed. Dexter was good: He made the words ring, made it all seem magical.

  “And I was ushered into that glorious presence. And your mother took one glance at me and said, in her beautiful, resonant voice, the velvet voice I loved so much—she said, ‘Get that drab little creep out of here.’”

  He paused. Even his silence was filled with theatrical tension.

  “‘Get that drab little creep out of here,’” he repeated, very softly now. “A death sentence. Delivered in that wonderful voice.”

  Dexter whirled, transformed into a fountain of amazed energy.

  “She meant ME!” he said, in a voice like a pipe organ, and R.J. felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. “She was talking about me, calling me a drab little creep!” And then softer again, pleading, “There had to be some mistake. Perhaps she was having a bad day. Maybe I reminded her of someone else—but I could look different, I would show her, I was not drab. I was neutral—I could be anyone. If she could see—if she would just see…”