Never underestimate the power of the Mouse.
Of course, by the time all this happened, I’d left Florida, relocating to sunny Texas. It was sort of my Murder in the Bush States Tour. I’d just finished thumbing my nose at Jeb, so now it was George’s turn.
I spent two days rounding up affluent white folks, amassing thirty of them and storing them away. I kept them locked up in an abandoned warehouse I’d found in a small border town. It wasn’t easy keeping them cowed. Some of them were pretty damn feisty at first, but after I executed ten of the biggest troublemakers in front of the others, they all settled down and started doing what I told them.
Once I had the thirty living people that I needed, I loaded everybody into a large truck like the ones they use for smuggling in illegal immigrants. I drove the truck across the border and left it in a remote area of Mexico, around twenty-five miles from U.S. soil. By the time someone discovered the truck—and busted the lock off the back door—all thirty of my guests lay dead, some from heatstroke, others from suffocation.
That made the news, too, but Leno didn’t find it funny.
I really started to enjoy applying my twisted sense of humor to my murders—it made them better, more complete. After Texas, I visited five other states, killing fifteen more people. I drowned a frat boy in a tank full of beer in North Carolina. In California, I took an up-and-coming rapper and stuffed sheets of his lyrics down his throat until he choked to death on his own bullshit.
While still in California, I toyed with the idea of killing Dean Kane (you know, to fulfill the Superman curse) but decided against it. Every other Superman got it eventually, so will he.
I fed a pair of marine biologists to a shark in Oregon. Then I hopped over to Minnesota. I killed five homeless people and five people with homes, dressing them up in each other’s clothes and leaving them where I’d picked up their opposites. Last of all, I stopped off in Louisville, Kentucky and beat a man to death with a baseball bat.
That Friday, March 24th, I returned to my home in Illinois. It felt good to be back, and I settled in immediately. For a while, I tossed around the idea of going out hunting, but I finally decided against it. Instead, I went to my library—the one in my house, that is—and selected an interesting-looking book to read.
The book that caught my eye was Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb. I fetched the remaining weed and rolled up enough joints to last me through a good, long read (I hate to put a book down once I’ve gotten into it). Less than a chapter in it had me hooked. I realized just how much I’d missed reading regularly over the last few months. I’d spent a lot of time killing, which is ok because it’s better than anything else there is—a good novel included. But most of my days had been spent waiting around, filling time with TV or other banalities. From then on, I’d take a book along with me wherever I went.
I plunged into Hobb’s world.
When I stopped reading, it was six in the morning. I’d read Apprentice all the way through and gotten four chapters into its sequel, Royal Assassin. I needed to take a break and get some sleep.
That afternoon, I finished the sequel, pleasantly surprised to find an ending so totally unlike anything I expected that—as far as I’m concerned—it stands alone in the world of fantasy literature.
Two days later, I boarded a plane for Arkansas. I took a book called The Deepest Sea and a suitcase full of clothes. The flight lasted a couple of hours, and I read for most of it.
The guy in the seat next to mine tried three different times to strike up a conversation. If nothing else, I’m polite, so I humored him the first two times and even let him have a couple of sentences of reply before I returned to my book. The last time, however, I told him sharply to let me read my book in peace and made a mental note to kill him when we arrived in Arkansas.
The plane made an uneventful landing, and I told my balding, overweight neighbor that I was sorry to have snapped at him.
“That’s all right,” he beamed, glad to finally have some conversation. “Must be a pretty good book.”
“Yes,” I wanted to say, “it’s a good book, all right, but the real reason I didn’t want to talk to you is that you’re a pathetic waste of life. Look at yourself: fat, sweaty, crammed into a cheap suit, on some minor errand for a minor company where you’re nothing more than a minor player, groveling for any attention you can muster before having to drag your bloated ass home to your fuck flicks and Internet chat rooms.”
Instead, I said, “Let me buy you a drink to make up for it.”
His eyes shone with excitement until self-doubt assured him I was only being polite and secretly hoping he wouldn’t accept.
“Oh, that’s all right, no harm done.”
“Fuck that,” I said as we stood to exit, “I insist. If I don’t, I’ll feel like an asshole for the next week. Besides, I don’t know the town and I’ve got nothing to do.”
“Are you sure?” he whined.
“What do I gotta do, buy you flowers?” I smiled. “Where’s a good place?”
“Well…there’s a strip joint about twenty minutes from here,” he ventured. “I mean, that is, if you like that sort of thing.”
“What sort of thing? Women?” I laughed. “What, do I look like some kind of faggot or something?”
“No!” he blurted. “No, no, I…I didn’t mean—”
“I know.” I laughed again and clapped him on the back. We walked down the long ramp to the terminal. “I’m just fuckin’ with you. What’d you say your name was?”
“Pete, Pete Somprin. What’s yours?”
“Robert. Let’s take my car.”
‘My car’, a Cadillac STS that I’d rented ahead of time from an airport company, impressed Pete. He asked, more than once, what I did for a living. The first time he asked me, I said that I killed people. He laughed uproariously in a far too-loud manner, more to cover up his own nervousness than anything. I didn’t laugh with him. Finally, to stop him from pestering me, I said I owned a car dealership in Illinois. That seemed to jibe for him, and he told me that’s what he had figured.
The rest of the way to the strip joint, he told me all about Mama Somprin’s baby boy. I won’t bore you with the details, God knows they bored me, but suffice to say, I’d pegged him right back on the plane.
I had eight thousand in large bills on me when we arrived at the club—a dirty little dive called T&As. My master plan was to spread it around the place and give Pete a night he’d never forget, right before I killed him.
We got drinks at the bar, a Budweiser for Pete and the obligatory Jack and Coke for me, and took seats at the front of the stage. A passably decent brunette, her top off but still wearing her G-string, humped the floor for a five spot as we sat down. A big goofy grin spread on Pete’s face, and he fished around in his pockets for some bills. I put my hand on his arm to stop him.
“Night’s on me, Petey, but let’s wait til the next chick.”
Dejected, he shrugged and pulled his sausage-fingered sweaty palm back out of his pants. The music ended, and the half-naked brunette gathered up her clothes and scampered off the stage, a round of applause and a few whistles from some rowdy rednecks to the side of the stage following her.
New music kicked on, and the next girl up sauntered out onto the stage. She wasn’t much better than the last girl, but at least her tits were fake.
Expectant, Pete looked at me, and I nodded my permission, much to his lame delight. Still, I made him wait until just the right moment.
Cindy, the name given to our stripper by the announcer, stood a little over five feet tall and looked a natural blonde. She had a decent shape to her—hell, she’d probably been somebody’s prom queen at some point—but she seemed intent on concentrating all of her attention on the group of rednecks to the side of the stage, all of whom had already tipped her at least a dollar or two apiece.
I shook my head in disgust; she hadn’t even taken her top off yet. I had things I wanted to do, and wasting time wait
ing for her to grace us with her presence didn’t fit well with the rest of the list. I held up a hand with a hundred in it.
“Jeezus.” Pete gasped. “You’re not supposed to tip like that.”
“Shut up and watch, Petey.”
Cindy still didn’t pay me too much attention at first—a hundred might as well be a dollar at a distance—finishing teasing a couple of rednecks out of their change before heading our way with obvious reluctance. When she got to me, though, her attitude changed in an instant.
The rest of her routine might as well have been a private show. She never left us for a minute, and I rewarded her faithfulness with two more Franklins. Her music ended, she leaned down to me and kissed me hard and suggestively before scurrying off the stage with nary a glance to the rednecks. Not that they would have noticed—they were too busy staring at Pete and me (mostly me) and talking loudly to each other between pulls of Busch, about rich faggots and so forth.
The next performer wasted no time at all. She walked a beeline straight to us and ripped off her top. Pete laughed like a little kid and patted me on the back. I tipped the girl, Heather, two hundred right off rip, and she showed us everything in reward. Pete gasped.
Before her set was over, Heather netted five-hundred dollars in gratuities. Pete was practically giggling by this point.
The third stripper followed Heather’s lead and brought the show right to us. By that time, the rednecks grew really pissed, and a couple of them made loud, lewd comments. We ignored them.
The new girl, Chastity (if you can believe that), didn’t come alone, and Pete and I found ourselves surrounded by five or six of the strippers, all joining us at the stage. A couple of them asked if we’d like table dances, and I urged Pete to pick his favorite. He did giggle at that, choosing a little girl with big breasts and even bigger hair. I paid her five hundred to give him a private dance in the back and to “take good care of him”. She assured me that she would, and I turned back to my command performance as the two of them walked off.
I liked Chastity, so I tipped her a full grand before she was done. She left the stage, and I sent one of my new entourage to get me a fresh drink. When she returned with it, I tipped everybody a hundred dollars. By that time, four of the girls were topless, all of them flirting. Shameless. I coughed up another hundred apiece to get them to dance for me and sat in the center of a really great show. Chastity joined the party, slithering up in only her G-string. She straddled my lap and kissed me full on the mouth.
The stage stood empty now, all the girls occupied, and the rednecks could take no more. Four of them stalked up to my harem and boorishly tried to dance with my girls. I didn’t notice at first, I was too busy, but the angry sounds of the girls alerted me.
I stood up, set Chastity down in my seat, and turned to face my detractors. A couple of bouncers descended on the area, but I waved them back with a gesture that hinted at reward.
“Is there a problem?” I asked the largest of the four rednecks.
He danced a few seconds longer, pretending to ignore me. When he realized I wasn’t going to ask again, though, he stopped and turned to me.
“You say somethin’?”
“You heard me.”
“Well, now.” He laughed drunkenly. “I did at that. No problem here, just tryin’ to have some fun’s all. That bother you, faggot?”
His three cronies snickered and moved to stand beside him.
I didn’t answer him verbally; instead, I punched him hard in the throat. That dropped him, breathless and already beaten, to the floor, trying desperately to fill his lungs.
His friends hesitated a second, staring at their fallen leader in disbelief before they rushed me.
The closest of the three swung hard at me, a heavy, off-balance swing. I stepped under it and came up on his side. I raised my hands on either side of his arm and joined them together on the back of his head, trapping the arm. With a jerk, I pulled his head down to meet my right knee, which rushed up to introduce itself. His nose burst open, and he collapsed, unconscious.
A heavy fist slammed into my head as I let him go, painfully reminding me there were two more to go. I squatted with the impact of the punch, pivoted, and brought my right hand, palm up, hard into the underside of the jaw of the guy who’d just hit me. His teeth slammed together with a shattering sound, and another fist struck me on the back of my head, pitching me forward just as the guy I’d hit staggered away.
The fourth guy took full advantage of my stagger and jumped on me while I hunched from the force of his punch. He got a good grip around my neck and wrenched me forward into a powerful headlock.
I reached my left hand around his face and hooked his eyes from above with two of my fingers. Shoving them in hard and using his head as a lever, I forced him to stand with me and loosen the pressure on my neck. My right hand flew up and smashed into his windpipe. I released my grip on his face and grabbed hold of his right wrist. I spun counter clock-wise, under his arm and out of his hold, and smashed my right forearm down hard on the elbow of his twisted and extended right arm. It shattered musically, and I jerked it to my left, using it to pull him close to me. With my right hand, I gripped his shirt back and, still holding his right arm, broken and extended, across my stomach, kicked my leg up to waist level, bringing it down so that my boot heel cut into the back of his ankle, snapping his Achilles tendon. My attacker had no choice but to crumple, broken and shattered, to join his friends on the floor.
The entire move took me something like six seconds to perform.
Those of you who are Marines know that he’s lucky I didn’t finish the move.
Don’t ever let someone tell you that Marine Corps Line Training doesn’t work. It’s all in the practice.
I turned to search out the guy whose teeth I’d adjusted, but he’d evidently already left. Tense seconds ticked by as every eye in the bar watched me far too closely. Then, without warning, a sea of almost-naked bodies washed over me. The girls eased me down into a chair, fetched me a drink, and fawned on me while the bouncers rounded up the trash on the floor.
Once the rednecks had been thrown out, the head bouncer walked back to where I sat—Chastity once again in my lap—and held out his hand for me to shake.
“Not bad.” He smirked. “Aikido?”
“Close,” I said, shaking his hand. “Marine Corps.”
“Yeah? Well, good shit, man.”
He turned to leave, but I called him back and handed him a couple of hundreds. “Thanks for the fun.”
“No thing to me, bud.” He shrugged and walked away.
Pete chose that moment to reappear—sweaty, red-faced, and grinning like a naughty schoolboy. His little raven-haired beauty stood right beside him, topless and holding his hand. I could tell what was coming before he even spoke.
“Hey, Robert,” he said, excited. “Guess what, man? Precious wants to know if we want to go out later.”
I ran my hand over Chastity’s ass.
“Let’s go now,” I suggested.
No one disagreed, and I tipped the other dancers another hundred apiece while Chastity and Precious hurried to get some clothes on. When they reappeared in jeans and tees, we left the club.
We hit up a local bar called O’Malley’s Pub—a medium-sized place, big enough to attract the ladies, small enough to be affordable. We took a table in a secluded spot and ordered drinks.
Our waitress, Danielle, was a cute college girl so, of course, the strippers treated her like dirt. She left in anger to take far too long getting our drinks. When she returned, I gave her a fifty to pay for the drinks and told her to keep the change. She brightened and apologized for the drinks taking so long. The strippers glared.
“It’s cool,” I told her. “I used to be a server.”
Everyone but Danielle and me found that funny and had a good laugh. I locked eyes with Danielle and let my gaze linger while we waited out my table’s stupidity. She got the point.
Pete, the girls,
and I stayed at the bar for three hours, closing the place down at around two-thirty. I’d tossed back about eight Jack and Cokes along the way—a lot less than my freeloading companions—and was pleasantly drunk. I shambled up to the bar and paid off our tab.
Danielle came over as the bartender handed me my change, and I tipped her two hundred dollars.
“Thanks for the service,” I slurred, “and for putting up with them.”
“No problem,” she said. She hesitated a second, then pushed on. “You seem like you should be with a better class of woman.”
“Oh, really?” I asked. “Like who?”
She blushed slightly and handed me a slip of paper. “You give me a call, and I’ll explain it to you.”
I looked down at her number. “I’ll do that.”
From O’Malley’s, we headed to my hotel, the girls more than willing to put on a little Private Show. Pretty soon, Pete and I found ourselves in a drunken orgy.
Chastity fucked like a professional—which she was—and, as always, the thought of imminent murder heightened the pleasure of the sex. Pete passed out sometime after four a.m., and Precious joined Chastity and me on the bed. A couple of hours later, we all fell asleep.
Chapter Nineteen
Next morning, I ran everybody home. Chastity and Precious gave us their numbers, and we told them we’d call—I’m sure Pete meant to.
I took him to his house.
“Want some coffee?” he asked as we pulled up in front of his home.
“Sure.”
His place looked pretty much the way I’d imagined it would: piles of videos near the TV, clutter everywhere, and a state-of-the-art computer taking up a huge chunk of area with all of its accoutrements.
Pete headed to the kitchen to fix a pot of coffee, so I nosed around the computer desk. Stacks of loose printouts and disks were strewn all over the place, and the keyboard wasn’t even visible. I sifted through it all and found a page that caught my eye.
Sex and Murder Page 15
