I found Lee beside the wardrobe truck talking to a pair of reporters, let him finish, then said, “How’s it going?”
He jumped when I spoke, faked a smile and ran his fingers through his hair. “Good. Fine. At least they got plenty to write about.” His eyes crawled into mine when he made the last statement. I looked at him, knowing he had to ask it. “Dog ... that business last night ...” he let his words dwindle off.
I simply nodded.
“Why the hell did I bother asking you?”
“You kill or be killed, buddy. You should remember that from the old days.”
“These aren’t the old days. Shit.”
“Forget it. They’re checking me out now.”
“Then what the hell are you doing here!
“I’ll come up smelling like roses.”
“Dog...”
“Who’s that bunch over there?” A crowd of about forty were standing in a knot sipping coffee from cardboard cups, watching the action with studied indifference.
“Extras. All locals. They’re going to pick up some exterior shots in about an hour.”
“Any trouble?”
Lee jerked a cigarette from a pack and lit it with a match that shook visibly. “Like from where?”
“Management.”
He blew the smoke into the wind and shook his head. “That McMillan character rode herd on everybody about not interfering with production in the plant. Hell, he just likes to toss his weight around, that guy. Those cousins of yours are doing their little dance for the photographers, but that’s all bullshit too. You know, I wish we’d never come to this damn place.”
“Baloney. You’re enjoying yourself. You’re in solid.”
“I was until you showed up. Now I keep waiting to hear the Klaxon go off and I’ll start heading for the bomb shelter.” He took a deep drag on the butt and flipped it off into the dirt next to the truck. “You see Sharon yet?”
“No.”
“Damn it, Dog, she’s worried sick about you.”
“No reason to be.”
“Quit giving me that crap. She knows more about you than you think she does.”
“Nobody knows anything about me at all, old buddy.” This time his eyes had a funny glint in them. “You’ll wake up one day. She’s over in the production office if you want to see her. Your cousin Dennison turned over a room inside for us to use.”
“Casting couch?”
“These days they do it anywhere.” I turned my head and looked at him a moment. He smiled and this time it wasn’t faked. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”
“Not until I tell her so myself,” I said.
“You will, Dog. Then you’ll run home to your kennel for your bone. I just hope the cupboard’s not bare by that time.”
“Go fuck yourself, fly-boy.”
“Sure, Mother Hubbard. Buy me a dildo.”
I walked away and didn’t go in to see Sharon. I got back in the cab and told him where to go. Nobody followed us and we cruised for twenty minutes before we came to the house. It was almost done. We cruised some more, stopped and had a couple of beers and small talk before I had him drive me to see Lucy Longstreet again. Old Beth had found somebody who was willing to talk for a price and offer a piece of evidence for an even higher price. I gave her the amount plus something extra for her trouble and was about to call the deal off with Rose until I remembered that the bought stuff didn’t always work out and decided to let it go ahead anyway.
I paid the driver off outside the police building because my car was still in the driveway and when I went inside Bennie Sachs gave me a courteous hello and invited me to sit down. The first thing he did was hand me my car keys.
“You sure you’re done?”
“The lab’s still checking dust samples. That drive around the hotel was laid down with a composite from Maine and if there are any traces at all the lab’ll find it. Impossible not to. Microscopic examinations are pretty thorough.”
“All the better, Mr. Sachs. When I’m clear, I’m clear.”
“I figure you will be.”
Poker isn’t my game, but I know how to keep the face. “Why?”
“We checked the rental company. They keep a record of their tire numbers. They weren’t switched and the treads didn’t match up either. Yours had a lot more wear on them. Same brand, though.”
“Satisfied?”
“Almost.”
“How about ballistics?”
“Not your gun, although I recognize the possibilities of a barrel switch. Not everybody carries a .45, and those barrels are easy to replace.”
“Wouldn’t that be going pretty far?”
“Not when somebody’s a clever thinker, Mr. Kelly.”
“Left-handed,” I said, “but I’ll take it for a compliment.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
I got up and tossed the keys in my hand. “Well, good luck.”
“Mr. Kelly ...”
“Yeah?”
“Would you surmise ... that any more trouble would be forthcoming?”
“There’s always trouble, Mr. Sachs.”
“I waved “so long” and went out to the car. I got in and tried to stick the key in the lock. It didn’t work until I turned it upside down.
Chet Linden wasn’t taking any chances. Somehow he had switched the whole car. Now when he had me killed all his tracks were covered. It was a real rabbit drive now. All the hunters were out and armed. It didn’t make a damn bit of difference who got the bunny as long as the bunny was got. The old jack had the rabies and could kill off the whole town if he wasn’t destroyed.
So run, rabbit, run!
SHEILA McMILLAN ... REFLECTIONS
He knows. He knows more than he’s supposed to know and I can’t stop myself from thinking about him. He knew when he touched me what would happen, made sure of it, then let me do to him what I did and I came away feeling nice and good because there wasn’t any fear left or memory of pain with the horrible tightness inside my head that made my entire body tighten up into knots with the desire to scream and kick out in terrible vengeance from having been violated. The word was even distasteful now. Violated. When did I first hear it? I think it was when memory started without being remembered. No, that’s a contradiction. It had to be earlier where it’s dark and frightening with shadows that don’t want to come to life and only appear in the occasional dream or when I feel their hands.
Even knowing that he knows is a quiet, comforting feeling. Others knew, but their awareness was always deceptive and instinctive responses were ugly enemies, the little creepy-crawlies that became sheer tortures.
Why couldn’t they talk?
Why couldn’t they be passive?
Why did they have to demand the male prerogative of penetration?
The shadows were far worse than the realities. They LURKED. Awful word because they really did LURK . They beat at you with huge clubs and forced and forced until the unbelievable pain turned a scream into a tiny whimper and why you lived at all was a mystery of life. You writhe, you drown, you run away into the black and hope they never turn the light on you at all, but somehow you know the clubs are there, upraised and ready to beat. Big, soft, sturdy clubs that take away everything you know you’re going to want one day and all that is left is an inborn feeling of having been deprived and never knowing what you have been deprived of.
Sheila McMillan, wife of the greatest cocksman who ever lived. He told me so. Other women have told me so. Other men have confirmed the story. Sheila McMillan in love with a brawny, hairy-bellied cocksman who’s in love with her and she can’t give him any of that lovely stuff he wants unless she takes two of the never-remembers out of Dr. Elliot’s small plastic bottle and it all happens when she’s in never-never land.
You hate and vomit and go through the beautiful act with all the people who don’t know. Except now they suspect. Or they are sure. Men are funny. If they can’t get that they have to do something els
e, if they’re really in love.
Why couldn’t they talk?
Why couldn’t they be passive?
For once I’d like to hurt. Now, that was a strange thought.
Butwhy did he have to know? Dirty Dog.
I wished the bastard would come back.
There was a knock on the door.
I said, “How do you feel?”
“Lonely. I’ve been doing too much thinking.”
“You’re in the right place for it. I was conceived in that bed. They must have done a lot of thinking too before they decided to beget me.”
“Unlikely. You probably were an accessory after the fact.”
“I doubt it. Those days it was a time for thinking first. I prefer to believe I was planned. Bastardly or not, I was planned for.”
She smiled, then suddenly changed the subject. “Was last night real?”
“You were there, Sheila.”
“Somehow, it seems more like a dream.” Her fingers toyed with the top of the sheet. “I have very odd dreams. My whole life is one terrible dream. Even when I’m awake I wonder if I’m really awake, because when I’m dreaming I think I’m awake and pinch my skin to see if I am or not and I believe I am.” She turned and looked toward the open shutters that sagged inward on their hinges. “I wish I could be sure.”
“You’re awake, kid.”
“I was thinking a long time before you got here.”
“What about?”
“Everything. Nothing. Then everything again. Maybe you you can help me.”
“Just ask.”
“No. I won’t do that,” she told me. The covers moved as she took in her breath, held it, then let it out slowly. When she turned her head and looked at me again there was something different in her eyes. “You put me to bed.”
“Somebody had to.” I couldn’t put my finger on what was different about her now. I picked a loose cigarette out of my pocket and lit it. “About last night ...”
“There never was any last night,” she said. “There’s only from now on.”
“I appreciate that, kitten. I covered all the exits except you.”
“Would you have killed me too?”
“Nope. Women are for kissing, not killing.”
“You’re sexy,” she said, changing the subject again.
“Hell, I’m tired and I’m dirty.”
“Do you have a shower?”
“Sure, but all the hot water has run out.”
“I understand cold water has a depressing effect on the male physiology.”
“Somebody told you wrong. It’s only some males and only some times. Right now I’m hard as a rock.”
“Really?”
“No, I’m lying,” I said, “but if I keep talking like this I sure as hell will be.”
“You’re mean.”
“Certainly. I’m dirty too.”
“So take a shower with me,” she said.
The cigarette burned my finger and I squashed it out under my heel. It left a black smudge on the old wide pine planks. “Sorry, doll, I’m just a natural bastard, not the kind that makes himself into one.”
“Don’t fight with me, Dogeron. I told you I have been thinking. I don’t want any more of those dreams.”
“I’m not a doctor, either.”
“They haven’t been any help. Take your clothes off.”
“No.”
But there she was with me in the shower, slickery slick like Earle used to say, all soapy and turning around so I could swab her down a little better and when I was skiing all over her body with foam-filled fingers she laughed through the suds and said, “Could you really kiss me now, Dog?”
I kissed her, all right. A long, lovely, naked, tight-together kiss.
“You haven’t got a hard-on,” she accused me.
“I didn’t think I needed one,” I said.
“Really, you don’t.”
“Oh?”
“I bet you could do it soft.”
“The hell I could. Look, kill that water and let’s get dried off.”
“Coward.”
“Old,” I said, nice and flat. “Men aren’t padded with fat like you broads.”
Her hands fluttered around me and age stopped being years and started being a long time ago. I said, “At ease, young lady.”
“Pretty,” she said. She turned the faucet off and stepped back to look at me. “You’re larger than the ones in the British Museum.”
“Thank you, sweetie.” I threw a towel at her and stepped out of the shower. But I couldn’t stop her. She ran her fingernails down my back and pushed me around while I was trying to swab myself off and there was her face looking up at me with delicious, wet lips and wild exuberant titties all poked out with hard round nipples asking to be eaten and something crazy in her eyes. This time when her hand touched me there was a tremor in her whole arm that made me want to explode right there. But I knew I had to play doctor or she’d never get the chance again.
Her fingers squeezed. “I try hard,” I said.
“Try harder.”
The timing had to be just right. “Where will I put it, kid?”
It was like somebody dropped ice water all over her, then that look came back again, some inner determination forcing it on.
You can hate the dentist. You can fear the dentist. Then your tooth aches and you go to the dentist. It isn’t really so bad after all. You don’t fear, you don’t hate the dentist anymore. Or was it really that simple?
I said, “Didn’t you ever take a shower with a guy before.”
“Only Cross. Three times.”
“What happened?” I tossed the towel aside and reached for the economy-sized can of deodorant. I sprayed it under my arms and under the crack of my ass until it got too cold to stand, then recapped it and sprayed myself with something that smelled pretty damned good. At least they never had it in Europe where the girls wore spinach under their arms. And never thought to bleach their pussies.
“You’re nasty,” she said.
Now I knew where I was going. “How long have you been married?”
“Too long.”
“That’s no answer.” I had one pair of shorts left and was about to step into them.
“Don’t put them on,” Sheila asked me.
“Kid ...”
“I know, Dog.”
“What do you know?”
“That you know. About me. I can see it in your face.”
“I’m trying to be professional about this, sugar.”
“Uh-huh.” And the smile was really real.
She let the towel drop and there was that beautiful naked body you read about with big, pushy breasts and a wildly triangular brunette snatch that hid the entrance to the root of evil with the slidy part skidding the way right into destruction’s hollow.
“Am I nice?” she asked me.
“Tantalizing,” I said.
“Get more descriptive.”
I covered up my stupid hard-on with my shorts and pulled on a T-shirt. “Fuck you,” I said.
“Why not?”
I looked at her then, and her entire body was a tingling, vibrating mass of muscular contortions and small undulations along the sides of her belly, but what she was telling me with her eyes was something entirely different and I took hold of her arm, led her into the bleak, dark bedroom where there was a big bed from a long time ago and whipped off my two pieces of clothing so only skin could touch skin and rolled across her so she could feel the initial slithery feel of bodies and held her close until her own mental anaesthesia could take hold and show in her eyes.
She didn’t have to tell me. She was right when she said I knew. I let the hours become minutes and minutes become microseconds, and compacted everything she had taken away a long time ago and lived with so long into a beautiful night of nearly total exhaustion. I listened to the words and the details of her being raped again and again, felt the pain with her and hated the act with her and tasted her desire
for the thing she held repugnant and when she called her husband’s name at the height of orgasm without knowing what she was doing I knew she’d never have the dreams anymore.
Sheila looked at me, the moonlight crossing her face, emphasizing the wide, sleepy eyes. “Thank you, Dog,” she said.
I had to grin at her. “You’re not supposed to thank me, doll.”
“May I offer you money?”
“If you want a kick in the ass.”
“No, I wouldn’t like that, but since all this was for me, I’d really like to give you something too.”
“What’s to give?”
“Make me a three-way woman, Dog.”
“Hey, honey.”
“Please? We’ve done everything else. One more ... injection?”
“You’re a hell of a patient,” I said.
“You’re a hell of a doctor,” she told me. Then she assumed the classic, pornographic position and said, “Deep, Dog. This should be your favorite way if you live up to your name.”
XXI
The sky burbled and burped and spit up a gentle shower of rain. Black clouds roiled overhead, deliberately holding back the sickness until they found the right ones to shower the contents of their entrails on. Waiting.
Waiting.
Everything was waiting. Somewhere.
Arnold bell was waiting. The Guido brothers were waiting. Chet Linden was waiting. The movie company was waiting. Cross McMillan was waiting. Ferris 655 was waiting.
The seed that became a stalk that bore leaves that showed a flower became fruitful and I remembered Ferris. Six fifty-five was the drop number and only once did I meet the courier who had set it all up and that was back in 1948. His name was Weal and we used to refer to him as the Ferris Wheel because he was so damn devious he went around and around to keep from being tagged by anybody at all, taking his cut without asking questions, always delivering on schedule and never tried the shit the others did when they thought they had an advantage. I had to run him down because I didn’t like any loose ends in the organization and besides, his damn anonymity was a challenge to me and they said I couldn’t do it. So I did it anyway and finally saw the guy who terrorized the Nazi bigwigs who occupied Paris during the little time they were there and he saw me and all he did was give me that funny smile and walk away, head down, knowing I realized he really wasn’t eighty years old, but maybe fifty or so and quick and strong enough still to be able to kill with hands or feet and get away across the rooftops while the Gestapo were looking for an aged cripple.
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