by Kirk Alex
“Called it, didn’t I? Can never trust a nigger.”
CHAPTER 449
Ace jerked his chin at Felix to go after Muck and bring him back. Felix left the kitchen. Only when he returned a moment later, he was by himself.
“Punk went down the basement stairs.”
“That your best?”
“I ain’t the one with the piece.”
Ortiz reached under his flannel shirt for a .32 pistol. Handed it to his partner. Kept the Saturday night special aimed at Sassounian, who forever stared that blank stare.
More blood appeared in and around the lacerated eye. Rudy and Felix both reminded Glassy that they shouldn’t be squandering bullets.
“Should waste this pendejo. Two in the head, leave him dead. He ain’t good for nothin’; none of them is. Psycho fucks with mental problems.”
Rudy handed him a dishtowel to wrap around his hand. It didn’t work, and Ortiz threw it back at him. Eyed the do-rag on Felix’s head.
“Oh, man.”
“Hand it over, bitch.”
“Ain’t no bitch.”
“Hand it over. I’m cut. You can’t see I’m cut?”
Felix took the do-rag off. Wrapped it around Ace’s hand and tied the ends.
“Show me where the carajo went, Felix.” Ortiz glanced back at Perez. “Don’t let none of them leave the kitchen.”
Felix Monk stepped into the hallway, pointed out the open basement door. Ortiz brushed past him, pausing at the landing. Found the light switch on the wall. Flicked it a few times, for what good it did. He withdrew a penlight. Had second thoughts. Stuck it back in his pocket.
CHAPTER 450
He took his time, making it down the flight of stairs. You had to be cautious in a situation like this. Then there was the other thing. No denying it. Fear. Fear was a bitch. His throat was dry. Another brewskie or two would’ve hit the spot. Maybe that’s what it was: he was thirsty, and not fear at all. It was nerves. More like it. Yeah. Saw already what these retards was about. Place was like a psycho ward. Mental cripples. Ghouls and locos. More gone and fucked up than any junkie he ever knew.
People liked to bad mouth junkies, hypes, all the problems they cause society. Shit. Users was saints, compared to these motherfuckers here. He knew what he was talking about.
Watch your step, Ace. There was some light, weak, bluish and flickering, that came from deep within down there. Some kind of lame red light, too. That one didn’t have no flicker to it. Had to be enough to keep him from tripping and breaking his neck.
He took it one step at a time, descending into the void, determined to get his hands on the stash and cash. More of that dental gold, too, he was positive had to be in this house of freaks somewhere.
Felix remained at the top of the staircase, whispering his bullshit. Some pachuko. Without that do-rag on his forehead and his dark shades to hide his eyes he looked like the scared little bitch that he was about to piss his panties. Wannabe gangbanger. Like that nigga Marvin who was wantin’ to be Iceberg. What a laugh. Everybody wantin’ to be somebody, tryin’ real hard to be somethin’ they ain’t and could never be. Read Iceberg’s shit in the slam. Dude could write, for a nee-gro. Marvin, on the other hand, was a joke. Loser.
“Want to be like Iceberg, Base? You ain’t nothin’ but a garden variety, run-of-the-mill type nigga. Hear? Got the brains of a bedbug.”
“I still say we do a ghost. We got no business being here.”
“You was the one wantin’ to help Rudy. Whinin’ and moanin’, actin’ all moral like. Now ain’t the time to bone out. ’Sides, I got business here; I got lots of business here.”
Stench was effecting them both. Made it difficult to breathe.
“I been in funeral homes that didn’t smell this bad.” Felix was on the verge of gagging.
“Yeah? I been in hardcore shooting gallery crappers from East LA to TJ that wasn’t this nasty.”
CHAPTER 451
Ortiz had his penlight out. No choice. Clicked it on briefly. Shone it down, in front of him. What the fuck? There was a pit in the cement floor with a door over it with a lock.
What was going on? Was somebody in there? Peeked briefly through one of the holes in the door. Pit had water in it. Heard something moving around. Was Rudy’s girl down there? Couldn’t tell, and didn’t care right now. Had other things on his mind. Where was Iceberg Junior? Where was Biggs? Where was the main freak hiding out? Where were they?
Looked around. Rose and stepped across the door that covered the pit. Entered the john in the corner. Looked about. Looked inside the cabinet under the sink. Couldn’t stand it for long. Got out of there and entered the room next to it. Had a bunch of bunks in it. There was a black-and-white tv high up on a shelf on the far wall. A bald-headed dude was lying in one of the lower bunks on his right and he had a diaper on. A grown man in a diaper, with his right hand down inside that Depend, fondling himself. There was a cartoon playing up on the screen—and it was on real loud. The cartoon was Bullwinkle the Moose. The guy was jerking his Jones to a Bullwinkle cartoon.
CHAPTER 452
Felix Monk decided he had enough balls to come down. Reached the bottom of the stairs. Stood there. Looked around. Gave his eyes a chance to do some adjusting. He was squinting. It was close to impossible to make out anything. The stench made him want to vomit. He took a step. Was bent over and waited to start throwing up. It didn’t happen.
CHAPTER 453
Upstairs, in the kitchen, Rudy Perez made next-to-zero progress. Greta Otto spoke without looking at him.
“I have to go.”
“Go where?”
She responded by stepping into the far corner of the kitchen, to the right of the barber’s chair and the freezer, lifted her negligee to about her mid-section, and squatted.
“No. Don’t do that here. Please. That’s the last thing we need.”
She rose. Dropped her negligee.
“Me, too.” Mildred Elizabeth raised her hand like a kid in kindergarten requesting the teacher’s permission.
“You, too?”
“Me, too. And mother makes three. Mother’s downstairs. She can’t go by herself. When she goes I need to be there to help. I always help. Mother will be needing me.”
“You’re not being held prisoner here, and I’m not your warden. Neither is Ace Ortiz.”
“Might as well be.” Leo Nix, from Texas, had his opinion and stated as much. “Preacher said you’d all be comin’. Warned us about all of y’all: IRS, FBI, CIA, Valley PD. All of y’all.”
CHAPTER 454
Greta and Mildred left the kitchen. Walked down the hallway to the basement door. Greta “The Jumper” Otto was the first to step through. Paused at the landing. Down there, at the bottom of the stairwell, Felix Monk was retching.
He turned his head back to look at the two women standing at the top of the stairs. Couldn’t quite make them out, not enough light, although what he was able to make out was more than enough to make him feel worse.
“You were told to stay in the kitchen. Get back in the kitchen.”
He turned his head away, not wanting to look at them. When he did not hear movement above him, he turned his head back again to see Greta, the one in the Cupid mask, lift up her dirty negligee, so did the other, the older one, revealing cellulite wrinkles and sagging flesh and varicose veins.
In Greta’s case, the thighs were thick, powerful, no doubt about it, as the woman also packed large buttocks, but there were burn scars and scars left there by skin grafts attempted by doctors. Just not a pretty sight in either case. And, of course, the Jumper’s face was disfigured; it was evident enough from the way she had turned her head and the way she had sucked that soup through the straw a moment earlier up there in the kitchen.
The other woman, the one with skin like old leather, had enough gray hair on her chin to make it appear like a goatee. Some dudes he knew couldn’t grow as much on their face. Then there were the crazy bristles growing out of her wart.<
br />
He couldn’t see every single detail from where he was at and due to lack of light here, but he remembered it well enough from the time spent on the first floor—and it had been too much. And now they were showing their disgusting pee-holes. Smelly. Hairy. Beavers.
“Bitches got enough bush to start a hair transplant business.”
“What you’re really here for, isn’t it?” Sounded like the one with the Cupid mask on. “To rape and pillage. We have no intention of resisting.”
Felix did a double take.
“Oh, no. . . .”
Things only kept getting worse. The sight of them managed to do but one thing: compound his ever-present state of nausea.
“All you can eat.” Sounded like the witch that time.
“Enough here for you and your friend both.”
“On the house.” It was the old hag with the whiskers again.
Felix called out to Ace in desperation. Ortiz stuck his head out the door to the Geek Room.
“These nutty broads are saying because they believe they’re about to get raped they’re willing to give it up on their own.”
“You think you got problems? I got a bald-headed maniaco over here who ain’t got nothing on but a diaper jerking off to a Bullwinkle cartoon.”
“Bullwinkle the Moose?”
“You heard what I said.” And Ace was back inside the Geek Room to deal with this guy named “Goodfellow.”
“Who are you, anyway?”
“Antonio Banderas. Having one fucked-up day.”
“I could use a clean diaper. This one’s had it.”
“I don’t know nothin’ about it, amigo. What I do know there ain’t much light in this creepy place and them niggers ain’t easy to see in the dark. What I’m sayin’ is: Did you happen to spot a chickenshit pimp tryin’ to hide his black ass in here someplace? Help me out.”
“I was treated better at Atascadero. Gave you clean diapers when you needed them, color tv, three squares a day, plus dessert.”
“What about the spook?”
“Marvin?”
“That’s the one.”
“He’s hung like Bullwinkle.”
“I ain’t into that shit, fat boy.”
“What could possibly be better?”
“Dental gold. Would like to get my hands on some more of that dental gold Biggs got hid someplace—and whatever else me and my homie can get our hands on.”
“Drugs?”
“You said it: drugs.”
“What kind?”
“Any kind.”
“Couldn’t tell you.”
“Marvin could.” Ace’s nose was running. As before: it was a mixture of snot and blood. He wiped it away with the back of his sleeve. Found a small wad of cotton in his pants pocket. Created two smaller balls and stuffed them up his nostrils.
“Him and the grave robber. Bust out loser. Ghoul he hangs with. They know where all that good shit is.”
“Marvin? He’s like a moose, like Bullwinkle.”
“How about if we get off this Bullwinkle kick you’re on, cocksucker, and you help me out? And quit playin’ with yourself, man. Ain’t pleasant to see. I’m about to upchuck the Chuckles.”
“Chuckles? You got candy? I’ll suck your chubby for a candy bar.”
“What’s inside that steel door over there?”
“What steel door?”
“There’s a steel door with a cycle chain tied around the handle. What’s on the other side of it?”
“You don’t want to know.”
CHAPTER 455
Shoulda never stepped foot in the place, thought Felix. What a mistake.
“I want kids. Lots of kids.”
Some crazy old broad was shrieking in back of him somewhere. It didn’t sound like it came from the top of the stairs, so it wasn’t the one standing beside the one in the mask and German World War II black leather boots. It came from somewhere in back of him.
He turned his head, trying to make out where the horrible voice was coming from. It was dark back there. Couldn’t see anything. Maybe the outline of a wheelchair, somebody sitting in a wheelchair back there. A woman, old woman. Could only make out the silhouette. Lots of hair. Wild and white.
“My biological clock is running out. And you saw to that, didn’t you, infidels? It was you, wasn’t it? You conspired and you schemed. Out to destroy my life. All I wanted was a few kids. Twelve; an even dozen. Maybe a baker’s dozen. Why not? Thirteen. Where is the harm in it? But you conspired against me until, until . . .”
Felix held his stomach, fighting dizziness. The stench was like an open sewer, unbelievable. Never been around anything like it. Then turning again in the direction the voice came from and partially seeing the woman’s face, the corpse-like features, the wrinkled skin that doubled his nausea.
CHAPTER 456
He dropped back. Sat on the bottom step. Unaware, or maybe didn’t care, that one of the women at the top, the one who wore the mask, gradually descended the stairs.
“Ain’t you heard a word I said?”
Sounded like the same white-haired witch in the wheelchair. Felix had clamped both hands over his ears to tune the old bag out, while above him, at about the halfway mark, Greta Otto paused. The Jumper remained silent, crouching and silent. Focused to the point it nearly caused her skull to ache. She held the position this way, held it. Saw the male drip at the bottom turn his head, then turn away.
She continued on down, giving up on the idea of leaping from this distance. She was no more than a couple of steps from the invader when Ace yelled out from the Bunk Room: “Shut the old bitch up, Felix. Punch her in the mouth.”
“That’s more your style, Ace. You do it.”
Greta moved down another step, quietly. Heard Felix say, without turning his head: “Step aside. I’m getting the fuck out of here. Rudy knows the score. He can handle it from here on out. Do whatever he wants: call SWAT, Green Beret, Man from U.N.C.L.E, Girl Scouts; whatever.”
That candy bar he ate a moment ago was still trying to come up. The stench contributed, and these people lived like this. They were mental, what else? Don’t know better. Can’t help it.
Between bouts of retching, leaning over and heaving, not turning to look back, Felix felt a need to let them know where he stood and that he couldn’t take another minute of it.
“Hey, I know you’re not right in the head. I know all that. And I ain’t even comin’ down on you for it; I ain’t fuckin’ with you—that’s the God’s truth—but you better get out of my way. I’m leaving; I’m getting out.”
CHAPTER 457
Just as he rose and turned, Greta kicked out with her right hobnailed jackboot with the horseshoe-shaped heel iron, and it was like lightning hammering into Felix Monk’s face that sent him flying and landing on his back, not knocking him out entirely, but probably breaking his nose, or at the least dislocating his jaw.
Greta Otto resumed her heretofore semi-squat, legs bent at the knee, gave out a shriek that was far greater than any Miss Betty was capable of, and with all the force that her powerful thighs and muscular buttocks allowed, propelled herself through the air. When she came down she came down hard, with the souls of her black leather Wehrmacht boots against Felix’s bloody and dazed face. Then she leapt in the air once more from where she stood, and came down and came down, wishing to crush his skull into a million pieces. Not able to accomplish this, she settled for the damage she was able to inflict. Paused to admire her handy work. Spat at the sprawled Felix Jose Monk, spat at him, hard.
“The pleasure was all mine that time.” And Greta Otto, The Leaper, casually walked off in the direction of the john.
CHAPTER 458
Mildred Elizabeth had begun to make the descent herself, clapping her hands and grinning a big grin. So many fun and exciting things happened around here.
Felix shook his head to dump the cobwebs. Did his desperate best to raise himself to his knees . . . and was far from successful. Would have
to ready himself to fight back, if they attacked again. The crazies were unpredictable.
You gotta fight. Get your dukes up. Kick ass, Felix. He kept telling himself. No, no. Where’s the piece? Where’d the gun go? He’d taken it out just as he had been about to go up the stairs, just before he got jumped by the freak in the dirty nightgown and jumbo ass.
Ortiz was saying something, but Felix was too groggy to make it out. Moaned his name. Gun was over by the wall. Could he reach it? Might as well be ten miles away. Might as well be fifty miles.
“Ace. . . . Help me. . . . Ace. . . .”
He couldn’t speak. His jaw was broken. Nothing worked. Skull ached. Broke nose and jaw. Tasted blood; he was bleeding. Maybe a broken neck. Not sure. That big woman jumped him before he saw her coming. Nearly killed him.
It took every bit of strength that remained, but he made the effort to crawl over to the wall. Seemed to take like forever. Got his hands on the .32. Door to the john was open. Big bitch was walking to it. Didn’t give a shit what he did.
Okay. Steady your aim. Steady, man. You can do this. Was never a good shot, hitting anything with a gun, especially in the dark and from this distance wasn’t going to be easy. . . . Gotta do it. Aim it. . . . Had both hands around the butt. . . . Squeezed the trigger. All he got was a click. Hollow click. Couldn’t believe it. Did it again. Same result. Empty. Gun was empty. Did it a third time, knowing his luck wasn’t about to change—for the better. Why would Ace give him a gun that didn’t have bullets in it? Why?
