by Rex Miller
"Tiffany is a nice name, very very pretty. Pretty puss," he purred in his there-there-now tones. She had a scream all ready but before he even pulled the gag out he let one go across her head and suddenly all she felt was blinding pain and shock and she was seeing a black velvet sky full of blue and red and yellow exploding stars, but she stayed conscious and as she opened her eyes again she felt the gag come out and he took her mouth in his again and this time it was as if she'd bent over a workbench vise and cranked the vise shut on her lips and tongue and had somebody jump up and down on the vise handle to crank it down as far as it would go and in the fierce and screaming unendurable agony she blacked out before he started to work on her with his hands.
An experienced soldier would have taken a look at the battleground and he would have should have could have recognized the thing curled up in the blood-soaked sheets. An experienced soldier would have recognized Spain's daughter perhaps, but from some sixth sense, some intuition, not from the physical appearance because there was no similarity between the swollen, blood-encrusted, battered thing there in the streaked and splattered bed sheets and the lively, lithe young girl who'd walked into this motel room only a few hours earlier, all full of her own nervous energy and undamaged youth.
She awoke in the darkened, strange surroundings, wrapped in a stinking sheet that seemed to be stuck to her, and there was a roaring so loud that she couldn't hear the noise of the traffic right outside the ground-floor motel room barely a stone's throw from the highway. And she was filled with terror as she tried to open her eyes and she couldn't get them open, and in her dis-orientation and panic she opened her mouth to scream and heard nothing and the child who was the daughter of the one who called himself Spain lay in a bloody sheet soaking herself in her own urine and fear sweat and sobbing soundlessly — tears welling up inside bruised lids so puffy they could not should not would not open.
He has gone two days without sleep and he is very tired when he looks up and sees a police car pull into the cul-de-sac that leads to his driveway, and as always he prays, this man who never prays, he prays to God it will not be bad news. And there is also that little catch in the gut and in the chest that he instinctively feels when he sees the law. And for the moment his prayers are answered and it is not bad news, only an officer coming with more of the endless questions and paperwork.
They sit in the spotless, unused living room that Pat kept covered in transparent plastic for some reason he could never fathom, a beautifully designed, interior decorator's "concept" room, kept pristine and untouched by the inhabitants of 10 Ruffstone Terrace in Ladue. Now they sit there and he answers more routine questions, keeping his concentration because although his work was always compartmentalized, his private life sanitized, these are the police.
The cop sits on plastic, writing with a plastic pen, asking about plastic. They write numbers and more numbers. Expiration dates. Request copies of things. Examine old records. Every question is asked twelve different ways like a movie where the same take is shot in reverse angle, then from above, below, up through the ashtray, in the reflection of somebody's glasses, in the hubcaps of a car. Enough already. The cops hope to unearth a plastic trail. Spain suffers through it and the officer finally leaves, temporarily content with his newly acquired wealth of credit-card numbers. Some other cop is getting the same identical data from the credit-card companies. Why did they bother coming out, then? Because they are cops. Why didn't they just phone? Because they are cops. Why is the sky blue?
"When did you first think your daughter had run away, Mr. Spain?" the officer asked, writing. He had one of those flat, redneck voices that show boredom easily. Spain told him. He wondered when it was she had run away. She had run away from him a long, long time ago, he suspected.
"And you didn't report it until ..." Another question in a list of by-the-numbers rhetoricals that would be asked from a clipboard full of numbers. Everything came down to numbers. That's what he called the shots he'd taken for Ciprioni and the family, his OTHER family. Numbers. Funny how they liked to call things by other names, these Sicilians and Italianos he worked for. You didn't plan a robbery, you "made a move." You didn't hit some guy or whack him out, you "did a number." You "clipped" him. They didn't want their hands dirtied by it. Didn't want to connect themselves to the "numbers." Somebody else could watch those people bleed. Someone else could get that last breath blown into their face as the number became a cipher.
"Mr. Spain, who did you speak with at the Bank Card Center?"
"Just some woman. I didn't write her name down." This cop was calling him mister, a cold, bored tone in his redneck voice. Just a little suspicious, automatically, as they all are. The last one had called him Frank and been fake-hearty-hail-fellow with a phony, automatic rictus of a smile that would wink on and off as he spoke. Fucking cops.
"Had your daughter ever threatened to run away from home before?"
"No," he said quietly, his heavy-lidded eyes drooping. Christ almighty, he thought, get it done and get the hell out of here.
The questions continued. He was going over every fucking credit card. Plastic Man. Hey, cop, why don't you get a job with Visa? He sat there yess-ing and noing with the surface of his mind, stifling a yawn, and let himself think about what had put him here. Ciprioni had used him. These people who assured him he was like a son to them, they took his life and twisted it out of shape so that he could have nothing. He could not keep his own wife. Worse, he couldn't even keep his child. His own goddamn kid. They had done this to him with their fucking NUMBERS. He thought of all the chances he'd taken for them, all the bullshit he'd had to swallow — and here was the bottom line. Here is what he had to show for his years of dedication. A black hole of nothing.
The cop finally left and Spain got up and went to the door with him. He told Spain, "[something] find her soon," and Spain nodded and they shook hands, Spain looking down as they touched, and the car pulled away. The cop had middle-aged hands like his own, but they were worn from manual labor and the backs of the hands had freckles that looked like liver spots. Spain looked at his large, hairy hands, at the pattern of pores and wrinkles and scars on the backs of the hands. They were large, powerful hands but they didn't look as if they ever tilled soil or barked knuckles trying to work with a wrench in tight places or sweated pipe together or used a welder or ran a metal lathe.
He thought of the things he'd done with those hands. It made his eyes sting, as if from smoke.
He had not smoked since the 70s. One pack he'd puffed on. It was on a job. He'd taken this weird contract the details of which were no longer fresh, but he'd found himself in a situation where he had to make some sort of crude, homemade time bomb. It was something he had to throw together quickly, jury-rigged from available materials at hand. He was nothing if not field-expedient. The fuse had been a cigarette from a pack of Winstons he'd found. He'd pocketed the pack automatically and later, driving through the night, he'd allowed himself the indulgence of smoking the rest of the pack. He had not found a single moment of pleasure from inhaling the hot, throat-parching smoke. He'd faced some kind of a mini-demon and prevailed. One always assumed time would bring a remission, even for the four-pack-a-day gang. Not a minor victory.
He tried to imagine a cigarette in his fingers and couldn't, so he picked up a fountain pen like a cigarette and just as he did a pang of terrible fear stabbed at him. Something was wrong. It was that kind of awful and consuming paranoia that cannot be denied or ignored. He could feel his heart thumping and perspiration trickling down his sides and back and covering his forehead like a fever.
It was not read as a foreshadowing omen, but as a presence. Something was there. Pinpricks dotted his back. It was a strong aura, not foreboding so much as it was just . . . there. He clenched his teeth. Something or someone in back of him ... A presence. Somebody there in the empty house with him.
He walked very quietly, carefully, moving through the big rooms. He was suddenly aware of all the mirrors
and glass, and he used this and was methodical as he let his hunter's eyes scan across all the glittering expanse of back bar, chandelier, breakfront, bookcase, mirror, picture tube, window, cabinet, picture-frame glass, anything that reflected, as he moved through the large rooms soundlessly, looking for a hint of shadow or movement as his mind quickly sorted out the random possibilities. Who would be a most likely candidate to want him hurt? The relative of a victim? A cop, coming in the back while the two of them talked up in the front of the house? Somebody high up in the family who would now view him as a threat in some way? Buddy Blackburn? He choked back a laugh as he realized what he was doing, looking up at the tired image in the reflection of the empty dining room.
He knew how the mind works under stress. He was very tired. He would take a couple of aspirin, drink a cup of coffee — caffeine perversely made him sleepy — and take the phone off the hook. And he knew he would sleep. And in that sleep. Yes. Dreams would come.
That was the nice thing about being back home, Eichord thought. You didn't have to produce any results. Just sit here in the grungy squad room smelling used smoke and listening to Lee and Tuny, the two-man uncomedy team who had been his friends since before the dawn of recorded time. These long-time partners who were so close they could piss in the same beer can.
He realized he'd been staring at the same page in the homicide report for about ten minutes. Reading it over and over again and still not seeing the words. Nothing registering. Out to lunch.
"I'm out to lunch," he told the room.
"What else is new?" his friend James Lee muttered.
"Hey, Jimmie," he said, tilting his head in the direction of fat Dana, "your girlfriend's startin' to look pretty good to me, man."
"Yeah? Well, she's allllllll mine."
"That's right, I'm already spoken for, so eatcher heart out, ya fuckin' wino."
Eichord was an alcoholic, and his friends handled it — as they did all things — with taste and diplomacy, and by calling Eichord a fucking wino. If you couldn't take a joke you didn't hang around.
So good to be back home, Eichord thought with a sigh. Back here where I belong with the rest of the rocket scientists.
Back in his safe and smelly cubbyhole in the bowels of Buckhead Station, Eichord felt far removed from a world where a mob assassin shoots his/her victims' eyes out. Had each unrelated decedent seen something they should not? Is this what the killer was saying with those two awful pulls of the trigger, You've seen too much? One thing was clear: when you take aim and shoot someone's eyes out, you are not just committing murder. You are making one helluva statement.
She was unconscious and she stayed out for a long time, awakening to a sense of being drugged but with a pain of such throbbing intensity the dope couldn't cancel it out. Imagine an impacted wisdom tooth, broken off in the extrication process by an inept oral surgeon, and raw nerve ends screaming for whatever solace waits beyond codeine, Demerol, Dilaudid. What high is next? The righteous heroin stone? Free-basing? A leaded baseball bat? You don't care. You just want the lights out.
The next time she came to, she could identify some of the sounds. Roger Nunnaly's voice, an older woman. The voices took shapes in the discrete colors within the variegated darkness and she saw through a camera lens layered thick with Vaseline. Then she went away again to sleep.
Greg had found her and debated whether to take her to the emergency ward of the nearest hospital but he knew the police would become involved.
What a bother this girl had become. Such a hassle. One of Nunnaly's street friends knew a woman nurse who didn't ask questions, and the problem was temporarily solved. Private care. Of sorts.
Tiff was young and strong and healthy. She was a fast healer. But without proper medical treatment the bones did not set properly. She would have problems. The spine is also a funny thing. A blow to the back had impaired the motor nerves controlling lateral movement of the right foot. She would not walk as well as she had. The facial scars would recede to some extent. All in all, not so bad. Better a crippled dog than a dead lioness.
The RN the boys had hired cost money. The dope she was hitting Tiff with also wasn't free. And there was the problem of the impending score. Greg and Roger did what they had to do. There was a couple who needed a young girl for "a live-in domestic," as they put it, and Greg sold them Tiffany for sixteen hundred dollars cash. It was touch and go for a while. The Freunds almost backed out on the deal when they saw the extent of damage to their merch, but they gave her a thorough examination, slept on it, and finally reached a decision. What the hell. They had plenty of disposable income and it might be worth a shot.
Tiff was not consulted in the matter, needless to say. She had not only lost the $2,800 gold mine, she'd cost them a bundle to boot, and jeopardized an important score. There was nothing to talk about. If she could generate some income it was her place to do so. She'd be expected to do whatever the Freunds told her to do. Light maid work, probably, and sex anyway they wanted it. Anytime. With whoever they said. In return, the Freunds were picking up her "medical expenses." Fair is fair.
Charlie Freund had been into stags there in Hollywood, Florida, way back when it was dirty little loops of cellulite queens and skinny dudes in black socks. Broads corralled off street corners. Bimbos scouted at poolside. "Dirty Feet flicks," named after the hallmark of the old-time porn quickie.
But the burgeoning market exploded and stag loops went the way of the sex shops and mail catalogs as production values accelerated, the new video technology bringing with it the mainstream money. And the cheapie porno film was obsolete almost overnight in a world where the next-door neighbors were taping their own action. Consumer need was reassessed.
The video boom signified megabucks, and soon the adult-movie market was the biggest enterprise going in America. When stag films dried up, he and his partner went their own ways, his partner going the massage-parlor route, Charlie concentrating on direct-mail specialties. He knew there'd always be a living just on the two hundred names he had. Pedophiles, people wanting circus shit, fans of heavy duty S&M. They had nowhere else to go for it but the small, kitchen-table porn merchants.
Charlie had cultivated a small stable of ladies who were into tit torture, spankings, humiliation, and the lighter forms of bondage and discipline. The rest of it was faked, and sometimes rather inexpertly. But the market was there just as he said. And since he was into it himself, he could see that the potential was astounding for quality stuff.
Porno entrepreneurs go under for the same reasons any other small business fails: undercapitalization, lack of management knowledge, unwillingness to change with the marketplace, failing to maintain a fair share of the active business, refusing to work hard enough. Charlie went to some people who had money and management knowledge, and offered his willingness to shoot at a new bull's-eye, work hard, and carve out a virgin mini-market for them. He convinced them he knew his specialty, which was pain, and Charlie Freund was on his way.
Charlie was married — well, not married exactly — but he lived with a mean, vicious malcontent of a diesel dyke named Bobbie. They made a good team. They liked hurting women, but not exclusively. They had Catholic tastes in these areas. They had a surprisingly capacious repertoire and an insatiable appetite for punishing and hurting and dominating.
It began on the level of the barbed invective and the punishing insult, which they both cultivated as an art form. They had poisonous and deadly verbal skills. Caustic, biting, unforgiving tongues — both of them — capable of the most acrimonious linguistic surgery. Nonanesthetized probes homing in on the soft spots. Critiques of dripping, acidulous harshness. Scorn of the most withering and unforgettable acerbity. The problem is, they needed recipients for the abuse. Someone, preferably, who wouldn't fight back.
They went for prepubescent targets who could be dressed up as foxy little cheerleaders, virginal 4H girls, rosy-cheeked homecoming-queen fantasies from either sex. But they usually had to make do with tired hoo
kers playacting, divorcees on the third bounce, doltish hash-slingers. They lusted for the animation and thrills of a yet-to-be-vanquished but vulnerable recipient for their gifts.
They were spoilers. It began with words, always. Scathing sarcasm that could puncture and deflate with surgical precision or pummel the target with crude bludgeons; devastating onslaughts of mockery and derision. Mercilessly savage rancor designed to cripple and maim. And Tiff wore the designation VICTIM like a banner.
They used Tiff in some of the lower-budget affairs. Customized specialty orders where the camera might need to see the angry, red welts appear, or even a little blood dotting the skin in a "pincushion" movie. But the mainstream stuff called for pros. They used models for the tormented tit titillation, the fantasies catering to the clothespin-and-rubber-band crowd, the teen stewardess spanking sessions (See Patty paddled by Tara in this steaming bestseller featuring the stars of Teddy Torture). Tiff was okay for the untitled junk. The hardcore work went to a grossly overweight dominatrix in Pennsylvania, who regularly sent them Polaroids of her guilt-ridden hubby, a weight hanging dumbly from his flaccid cock-ringed dong. Custom jobs for the whackaroonies.
One physical act held unique appeal for Charlie and Bobbie. DBC was a subcategory of discipline and punishment that rivaled even the boundless thrills of creating an emotional basket case. It was a bizarre tangential tributary of S & M called Disfigurement by Consent. A young and soft victim would be drawn into this with sufficient drugs and time and the proper increments of humiliation and force. "But the fun was in getting the child to want it herself.
