by B. L. Morgan
The note on the table was written to me.
Mr. Dark,
I know where you have been.
I know where you are.
I know where you will be.
You cannot hide from me.
I will be coming for you.
The letter was unsigned and it made a chill run down my back.
Just what the hell was going on here?
I folded the note up and put it in my pocket. I didn't want my name left in this room.
Just out of the circle of lamps light on the desk was a wig. A blond wig. A long blond wig made of golden curly ringlets.
I looked at the wig, then I looked at Robert Perry bloody and dead on the bed.
No way in hell that could be, I thought.
I walked to the closet and looked at the clothes that were hung up. There were two men's shirts, two pair of men's slacks and there were two women's dresses. One of the dresses was a short sparkling silvery dress.
That's just great, I thought. The woman I've been lusting after for the last day isn't even a woman. Robert Perry is Robin.
The vision of how I must have looked kissing Robin flashed through my mind. My stomach felt strangely queasy.
I knew I had to leave that room and fast.
CHAPTER 40
GOING BACK
Back in my hotel room I took the silencer off the Forty-Five and cut it up into pieces with my pocket knife. That went into the trash can. Then I opened the window and tossed the Forty-Five into the alley behind the hotel.
After calling a taxi to take me to the airport I sat down and thought about the confusing events of that night. I tried to puzzle out what it all could mean and gave up when the knock came on the door. There didn't seem to be any sense to what had happened. But life never did seem to make sense anyway.
My cab driver was a short fat guy with a Brooklyn accent. I talked to him on the way to the airport and he was friendly enough to answer back when he wasn't dodging the other cars.
I made up a story about wandering into a cross dresser's stage show downtown and asked him what he thought about them.
"Those guys scare the hell out of me," he blurted out. "I was visiting some of my wife's relatives in Nashville and her brothers talked me into seein' a show with them called Maybe Dames. One of em was dressed up like Marilyn Monroe. One of em was dressed like Diana Ross and you know all of em was lookin like these famous chics. Well, that was OK. I was havin a good time sayin things like, you know, these chicks really got balls. That was until the one that looked like Gina Lollobrigida walked out."
"I've had the hots for her since I was like five years old. She's the one that gave me my first hard-on back when I thought all my dick was for was waterin' weeds. Right then I got a stiffy I could have broken the table in half with. And ya know what, no matter how many times I told myself that that chick had the same equipment that Arnold Schwarzenegger has, I couldn't get rid of that hard on."
"I was glad the place was dark. If one of my brother-in-laws had a said somethin' I'd of kicked his ass right then and there. That was a very confusing night. So I don't go nowhere near those kinda shows no more."
My night had been confusing too. The more I thought about it the more confused I got.
* * *
On the plane back to St. Louis I finished up reading, Hard Road Ahead and tried to take a nap. I couldn't even come close to sleep.
The image of Robin kept popping into my head. The image kept being superimposed with how Robert Perry had looked on the bed with blood all over his head from having his face sliced open like it had been. Then I'd see the picture that Graham had given me and I'd wonder how in hell I couldn't see Robert Perry even through the makeup, dress, and wig.
My mind wandered around in the darkness behind my eyes.
I found myself driving down a desolate two lane highway. I was driving a red Fifty-Seven Chevy Convertible. A brunette was in the seat beside me. She was smiling and laughing wildly. I looked at her directly in the eyes.
Her eyes were dark, wicked looking eyes.
"Well Max," she said in a mocking tone of voice. "You just can't tell about women can you?"
She reached over and undid my fly with her hand and took my dick out. She stroked me and made me hard and was giggling in an evil way the whole time.
I realized I was the guy from the novel I'd just finished reading and this woman was June, the wayward conniving wife.
"Hey Max," June said pumping my dick furiously. "Do you really want to know about women?"
"Oh yeah," I told her and she jammed her head down on my dick and sucked me viciously. It felt incredibly good.
Then she stopped and lifted her head from my crotch with a final sound like a plunger being pulled from a toilet.
The face that came up and stared at me dripping blood all over my crotch was Robert Perry's sliced up face.
"There's nothing to know," Perry said and ripped the wig off and threw it out of the speeding car. "You never can tell about women," he screamed at me. "You never can tell!"
I woke up so violently, I kicked and punched the seat in front of me.
The stewardess announced we would begin the approach to Lambert Airport shortly.
I was really happy we were going to be on the ground.
* * *
By the time I got my car from the long term parking lot it was starting to get light outside. The eastern sky was turning to rusty red and traffic was starting to pick up. I took I-270 back to the bridge over to East St. Louis. Then it was back to my apartment where I left a message for Graham Nash to call me when he got in.
I was hungry and tired. More tired than hungry so I laid down to take a nap for a few hours. On the way to my bed I grabbed a bottle of Wild Turkey whiskey and took a deep pull from it. It made me gag and took my breath away.
That was some horrible tasting shit, I thought. I was going to have to think about giving this stuff up.
Then I took another drink and it went down smoother the second time. Even though it did still burn like hell. The liquor hit my brain and that wonderful dizziness overtook me. Well, maybe I would rethink this quitting business.
* * *
The ringing of the phone was driving nails into my brain. I woke from a dreamless sleep and was grateful for the lack of dreams.
The gravelly voice on the line was Graham Nash. "We have to talk," he said immediately.
"You're right about that," I said. "I need to get paid."
His laugh came loud through the phone. "Right," he said laughing. "Meet me at Roxie's as soon as you can get there." He hung up.
I was getting dressed and still wondering what Graham's laughing was about when a knock came at the door.
I put on my holster and Thirty-Eight and I answered the door. Rosa Delgado walked into the room. That was when I remembered that it was her day to come and do the weekly cleaning that I paid her for.
She wrinkled up her nose and glanced around the apartment, "Whooo," she said. "Something stinks here."
I couldn't smell anything. I told her, "You always tell me something stinks here."
"And something always does, but today it is worse." She walked around the apartment looking behind things until she went in the bathroom.
She yelled, "Iiieeechee, Mi Madre!" She came out of the bathroom holding her nose and fanning the air in front of her face.
"What?" I asked.
"I'm not cleaning that up," she said.
I went in the bathroom and remembered the mess I'd left in the toilet a couple days earlier. The odor was incredible.
I came out of the bathroom holding my nose too. My eyes were burning and I was gagging.
I was met just outside the door by Rosa.
She was holding out a plunger to me that she got from my closet. She had a stern look on her face. She pushed the plunger into by hands.
"You get back in there and clean that up," she commanded me.
I waved her away and said, "Hey
I gotta get some air."
She followed me to the window. I opened the window and stuck my head out of it. I sucked in what clean air I could get. There isn't too much of that in East St. Louis. Then I pulled my head back into the room.
Rose was straightening up around the place. She saw me back inside the room and breathing well.
She pointed at the bathroom. "Get to work!" She demanded.
"You're a cruel woman," I told her and headed back to the bathroom.
Rosa shook her finger at me and said, "I have to be to keep you in line."
So I went into the bathroom with my plunger and did battle with the beast I'd created.
CHAPTER 41
JUNKIES AND PHOTOS
I picked up a Whopper at the Burger King drive through and ate it on the way to Roxie's.
Sometimes a fast food burger shop is like a gift from God. Before I had that, I was so hungry I would've eaten anything that wasn't running fast.
Anybody that doesn't think America is a great country should spend a year and a half in the jungle of Viet Nam. That will make you appreciate a Whopper in a new way.
It was around 1:00 PM when I got to Roxie's. Their parking lot was almost empty. They didn't have their big neon sign lit today. From the outside of Roxie's the only light on was a small open sign. The windows were blacked out. They didn't want anyone to get a free show.
I walked in and was not charged a cover charge. There was no show going on. There was only a barely clothed barmaid and a barely clothed waitress working in the dimly lit club. The club's bouncer was snoring in a chair in a corner.
Graham Nash was sitting at the bar drinking a mixed drink. Graham downed his drink in one gulp and met me in the middle of the floor. He motioned me to follow him outside and we walked to his car together.
Old newspaper and trash blew across the parking lot. The wind was cold and heavy gray snow clouds hung low in the sky. This cold day in East St. Louis was definitely a change from Atlanta.
Graham looked like any ordinary middle aged businessman in his gray leisure suit as he walked across the parking lot. As he approached his car, a Lincoln Continental, a scraggly looking, skinny black crack addict stepped into his path.
The junky made a crazy looking face, bearing his teeth and bulging his eyes out. The guy was breathing heavy and he stunk like a roast left out in the sun too long.
"Motherfucker," he wheezed, looking in Graham's eyes like he belonged in The State Mental Hospital. "White boy, gimme all you got." He held a rusty looking pocket knife in his hand.
Graham glanced at me with the bored look that some people would use when inconvenienced by a rude child.
"Sure thing," he said calmly and reached inside his inside coat pocket.
The junky was making little gimme gestures with his left hand in front of Graham's face.
Graham jerked a small chrome derringer from under his coat and stuck it to the addict's forehead.
The junky flung his hands out to the sides of his head and dropped the knife. "Don't kill me man," he wailed. "Oh man, please don't fuckin kill me."
Graham said, "You mean you don't want this?"
The junky sank down to his knees in front of Graham. He was whining like a spanked puppy. "Oh, don't, don't shoot me, don't!"
Quietly Graham whispered, "Get the fuck out of here."
The junky scuttled away from us on all fours.
We got in Graham's car. He made a circle around the parking lot to where the junky was walking along the edge of the pavement.
Graham swerved at him and made him jump into a ditch that was full of stagnant water. The junkie landed with a splash and sank up to his waist.
Graham laughed then glanced at me and said, "I love this neighborhood. It's so classy."
While he was driving east on Madison Avenue, Graham reached into his left shirt jacket pocket.
"I know it wasn't you that killed Robert Perry," he said and dropped two folded up sheets of paper on the seat next to me. "These are the two guys that did."
I picked up the sheets of paper and unfolded them. Graham kept speaking as I studied the sheets of paper that had been faxed to him.
The two sheets were photos of people.
Graham said, "The Atlanta DEA's office has been keeping the Hilton under surveillance for quite some time because of drug deals going down there. They were watching the guy that went to Perry's room. These two went in after him and were never seen leaving. Our guys went in with a pass key to bust them but the party was already over. You saw what they saw. They left to bring in the local cops when you were arriving."
I looked at the two faxed photos hard and then looked at Graham.
"You know who they are, don't you?" I said.
"Of course I know who they are," Graham said. He pulled off Madison Avenue into the parking lot of a Target store. He parked in one of the far corners away from any of the other cars.
"These photos were taken by a hidden camera just outside of Perry's room at about seven o'clock last night," Graham said. "We both know for a fact that these two men were dead over three months ago."
He was right. We both did know that these two men were already dead. The photos were of Morris West and Tor Ambrose.
CHAPTER 42
DEAD MEN
What do you make of all this?" I asked Graham and indicated the photos.
"I was hoping you would have some answers," he said. "Since you don't, I'm taking us to the city morgue. I want to know what happened to their bodies."
That was something I wanted to know too.
I took a good closer look at the pictures of Tor Ambrose and Morris West and what I saw didn't make me feel any better.
Both were wearing hats but there was no mistaking who they were.
The photos weren't exceptionally clear, but the one of Tor Ambrose was clear enough to show that his hair was singed and his skin had the slick look of a burn victim. I'd done that by throwing a few lit oil lamps in his face.
The pictures of Morris West were even more disturbing. His forehead was slightly caved in and I could see signs of stitch marks. Well, I thought, the guy who stitched his head back together didn't know what Morris looked like before he arrived on his table at the morgue. When I put my Thirty-Eight to his forehead and pulled the trigger, that's what caved in his forehead. Morris West still showed the signs of that shot.
According to this picture, he was still up and walking around, when he couldn't possibly be doing that.
Both of these guys showed the marks of what I did to them. If they were really out and strolling around, it was a sure bet they would be looking for some pay back.
* * *
When we arrived at the East St. Louis City Morgue, Graham took us down to the basement where they stored the bodies and the records. We went through some heavy swinging wood doors into a white room lit by glaring florescent lamps.
Along one wall was what looked like rows of small lockers with handles on them. On the other wall were filing cabinets and a desk with a man sitting at it doing paperwork and drinking coffee. There was a surgical table in the middle of the room and surgical supplies on smaller tables around it.
From the way the man looked at us by snapping his head around when we walked in, I could tell this guy was definitely the nervous type.
Graham walked right to the guy and I followed. The guy at the desk looked like he got jittery with each step we took toward him.
"We need to know what happened to two bodies you had here," Graham told the guy with the long neck and white uniform. He wore a name tag that read, Charles.
"Why, yes, yes of course," he answered stammering, "If I can help at all, I certainly will."
I took the faxed photos out of my pocket and handed them to Charles. He looked at the photos and if it could have been possible, he seemed to get even paler than he already was.
Charles quickly glanced around the room. He grabbed his coffee and took a big drink of it.
He shoved t
he photos back at us.
"I, I, I, don't know anything about them," he said.
Graham wasn't having any of that. He flipped out his DEA badge at the dead body clerk and told him, "We didn't even give you their names. The way you reacted to those pictures, I know you remember them. Tell me what happened or I'll bring you up on charges."
This wasn't the kind of guy who could take much pressuring so I wasn't surprised when he cracked wide open right then.
"Look," he said. "It wasn't my fault. I can't explain what happened that day. These two guys. I'll never forget them. I haven't slept too much since they were here. They were supposed to go to Barnes Hospital for the medical students to carve up since they had no known next of kin and no one wanted to claim their bodies.
"The day before they're set to be shipped to Barnes, a guy showed up and asks where they are. I pointed out their drawers and showed him their bodies." Charles pointed to two of the lockers. "When I showed him the bodies he touched each of them once on the forehead and I swear I thought I was seeing things, but I thought I saw both of them take in a deep breath when he touched them.
"When he was doing it I felt like I couldn't move. It was like I was froze or something. I was like that until he left. After he left I closed the drawers up. I got to admit, I was kind of shook up by what I'd seen. What really shook me up though was about ten minutes later when the banging started coming from inside those drawers.
"Those two guys were trying to get out.
"I ran out to go get the guard from upstairs. When we got back the drawers were open and the two bodies were gone."
Graham said to Charles, "You're trying to tell me that you had two dead bodies that got up and walked out?"
Charles said, "I'm not trying to tell you anything. I just told you exactly what happened. My boss wasn't too happy either. Hey, if I didn't have a wife and kids to support I'd have quit right then. But I just can't afford it."
For some strange reason I believed every word that Charles was saying. I got the distinct feeling that he was too scared and too freaked out to be able to lie.
