by David Martin
A film of sweat covered his face. Take care of your own first … when did I forget that fucking lesson?
Stopping the Mustang a hundred yards from Cul-De-Sac, Camel killed the engine and sat there wishing for a cigarette. After checking the .45 for maybe the sixth time he got out of Mary’s Mustang and walked the rest of the way. A late-model Cadillac and a beat-up Chevy Nova were parked in front of the building, Camel didn’t remember seeing them before but of course he’d left in a hurry, Elizabeth Rockwell smoking in the backseat.
Gray’s car was still parked to the side, its trunk still open. Camel entered the building through that window in the back, keeping the .45 cocked and locked in his right hand as he opened the storage room door with his left. The corridor still smelled of gas, Parker Gray’s body was still there on the floor, so was Murray’s head … but Donald Growler was gone.
The possibilities made Camel feel hollowed out inside as he hurried around through mazelike corridors, turning on lights as he went, reaching the huge atrium at the center of Cul-De-Sac. One of the five-gallon cans of gasoline had been carried from the back corridor and placed here at the bottom of the stairway. And next to that can of gas was Jake Kempis, his throat gashed. “Jake,” Camel said softly. But he didn’t have time for regrets or sympathy, Camel was ruthlessly focused now … one thing and one thing only, Annie. Starting up those steps, he shouted her name.
When he reached the second floor he stopped. Heard something, a door being opened and closed. He waited. There, Camel immediately crouching and pointing Eddie’s .45.
“Whoa hoss,” the man said, holding both arms out to his sides. “I ain’t armed.” Still wearing his stupid golfing clothes, pink shirt and green slacks, tonight McCleany even had on a pair of cleated golfing shoes.
“What’re you doing here?” Camel demanded. “Where’s Annie?”
“I got called here by Elizabeth Rockwell … I arrive but Elizabeth’s not around, instead I find my old partner shot dead in the gut, some guy’s head on the floor I don’t even know who he is.”
“Murray.”
“Who?”
“Where’s Annie?”
“And a spade at the bottom of the steps, throat cut, I don’t know who he is either.”
“Goddamn it McCleany, where’s Annie?”
When McCleany started to lift a cigar to his mouth, Camel warned him, “Keep your hands out to the sides.”
“I told you I wasn’t armed. What happened to your nose?”
“Where is she?”
McCleany went ahead and put the cigar between his teeth, grinning.
“You think I won’t shoot you?” Camel asked.
“Yeah yeah, you’ll shoot me, you’ll kill me, you’ll rip my head off and shit down my throat, you’ll make me wish I was never born, you’ll, you’ll … everybody so goddamn tough these days, wouldn’t make a pimple on the ass of the guys I used to know.” He lit the cigar. “You know I ain’t armed ’cause you’re the one took that little thirty-eight away from me, damn near broke my arm doing it … and second thing is, mad as you might be at me for punching you in the stomach and whatever else you think I’ve done, what you got against me ain’t nothing compared to what you got against Donny Growler.”
Camel waited to hear it.
“That ain’t my gun, what’d you do with that little revolver you took off me?”
“Jake had it.”
“Who?”
“The guy at the bottom of the steps, come on McCleany you’re lying to me.”
“Am I? Growler is up here in a room with your lady friend, am I lying about that pal?”
He wasn’t. “But Growler was half dead, no way he could’ve overpowered Jake and crawled—”
“Never want to underestimate your basic psychopath.”
For one of the few times in his life Camel wasn’t sure if he was being lied to … too much riding on it.
“When you go in that room you’ll see for yourself.”
“What room, where?”
McCleany drew heavily on the cigar, talking while exhaling blue smoke. “Donny Boy never liked firearms, I’m wondering if it wasn’t you who shot Parker.” McCleany smiled, took another drag. “ ’Course you could always blame it on Growler anyway, poor boy comes in handy for blaming things on.”
Camel thumbed off the safety.
“Easy there cowboy.”
And aimed at McCleany’s head.
“You pointing that big forty-five at my brainpan don’t change what Growler did to your lady friend.”
“Where is she?” Give him another five seconds to tell me, Camel decided, then I’ll shoot him and go look for Annie myself.
Sensing that a potentially fatal decision had been reached, McCleany took the cigar from his mouth and spoke seriously. “I was trying to prepare you for what you’re going to find. Donald Growler’s been a bad boy since he got out of prison, decapitated an old married couple, also his former best friend—”
“I know all that.”
“But what you don’t know Teddy, what I’m trying to ease in and tell you … he also killed your Annie.”
“No.”
“I’m afraid so, I tried—”
“Where … not another word, just tell me where.”
“Down there, corner room.”
“Let’s go.”
McCleany led the way, keeping his hands out to his sides, the cigar clenched between his teeth. “You’re not going to want to see this, Growler cut her head off.”
Camel didn’t believe him, refused to believe him.
They got to the door and McCleany turned. “You okay son?”
“Open it.” The door had been fitted with a heavy hasp and padlock but the padlock was left open.
“I messed Growler up real bad for you,” McCleany said. “At least you’ll have the satisfaction of—”
Camel motioned with the .45.
“Hoss I really don’t think you need to see what’s in that room, you want my opinion.”
An unnatural thirst came over Camel, he felt like he didn’t have spit enough to swallow, his throat closing up on him, unable to tell McCleany again to open the door.
“He used a homemade garrote to cut her head off,” McCleany said flatly. “If I’d been just five or ten minutes earlier …”
Camel shoved him aside and pushed open the door, stepped into the room.
On a big black couch sat Donald Growler. Camel assumed it was Growler: left foot bandaged, swollen left arm, gunshot wounds, pants’ leg burned off … you couldn’t tell by the face it was Growler because that face had been beaten featureless. Annie was there too, her head on Growler’s lap.
53
It was McCleany who had let Annie out of the closet and put his arms around her when she was becoming hysterical about the flies … then asked her if she remembered him.
Of course she did, the golfer who’d been snooping around Teddy’s office. He was still wearing golfing attire tonight, including cleated shoes.
He took Annie to the couch and sat next to her as she kept digging at her ear and wiping her mouth, convinced she was still covered with flies.
Under the pretense of helping her brush them off, McCleany pawed Annie’s breasts and ran blunt fingers up her legs … laughing when she slapped at his hands and told him to leave her alone.
“We met in Camel’s office.”
“I remember you.” She also remembered him from the photographs … McCleany was one of the men in those snapshots with that teenage girl, his was the face she recognized but couldn’t place until now. He was seven years younger in that photograph but Annie had no trouble identifying him.
McCleany hustled his balls. “Too bad time’s so short, I’d fuck you.”
Life had become such an obscenity for her, she covered her face with both hands.
“I see you bite your nails, disgusting habit … now where are the fucking pictures?”
Everyone wanting those photographs, they were the reaso
n Parker Gray brought her back here … Annie didn’t know where they were, Growler must’ve taken them.
McCleany moved close to her. “How come you’re wearing this big blue jacket?” He groped under it. “No bra huh, let me see.” He wasn’t smoking but smelled heavily of cigars, Annie figured it must’ve been his cigar in the fireplace. “Come on, red, just a quick peek.”
“Leave me alone, please leave me alone.”
“Take off that jacket and your jeans, we’ll start some serious negotiations.”
She looked him right in the eye. “You pig.”
McCleany’s face clouded briefly before breaking out in a large leering smile. “Give me the pictures baby and I’ll let you walk out of here, otherwise—”
“I don’t know where they are,” she said, pushing away his hands and trying to stand.
He pulled her back down.
“The pictures were here in this room earlier …” Her voice broke, Annie forcing herself to continue. “When Parker Gray brought me back … the pictures were gone … Growler must have them … I don’t know … I don’t know.”
“My old partner Gray is dead downstairs, somebody’s head is there in the hallway and I don’t even know who it is, what the hell went on here tonight?”
“I don’t know, I’ve been locked in this room.”
“Five minutes after I get here I catch a nigger snooping around with my thirty-eight in his hand, so you know what I did, I pulled a fuse and came up on him in the dark where you think the nigger would have the advantage—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Slitting a nigger’s throat.”
She closed her eyes.
“You said you found the pictures here in this room?”
“Yes,” Annie replied without opening her eyes.
“Maybe they’re still here but I’m tired of looking for them. Tell you what sweetheart, I’m going to bring Donny in, see if he can contribute to the conversation.” McCleany hauled himself off the couch and looked around the workshop until he found a roll of duct tape that he used to wrap Annie’s ankles and wrists. “I’ll be right back, red.” When he walked out of the room his cleats clicked on the floor like an animal’s toenails.
Annie sat there too mentally wrecked to plot even an improbable escape, all she could do is wonder where Teddy was.
“Had to haul the poor bastard all the way up here on my back because he’s in no shape to walk,” McCleany announced as he came back into the room with Growler over his shoulder. “Shot twice, leg burned, one foot bandaged, broken arm … who you figure did all that to him?”
I did part of it, she thought … broke his arm and stabbed his foot, though she didn’t tell this to McCleany.
He dropped Growler on the couch next to her. Annie had expected to be terrified upon seeing him again but how can you fear someone who’s been battered the way Growler had, beaten very nearly senseless.
“Found him cuffed to a radiator downstairs, the keys in the nigger’s pocket,” McCleany said, breathing hard. “Thought I’d have a heart attack carrying ol’ Donny boy up here.”
“Is he dead?” Annie asked.
“Let’s see.” McCleany used the cleated golf shoes to stomp repeatedly on Growler’s bandaged left foot, the one Annie had pierced … Growler moaning as he tried pathetically to lift that foot out of harm’s way.
“Still alive,” McCleany said jauntily.
“What’d you do to him?”
“ ’Bout what I’m going to do to you … except I got a few special things in mind for your sweet little red-haired ass.” McCleany pulled out an eighteen-inch length of electrical cable roughly the diameter of a fat hot dog. “Found this downstairs, used it to put the nigger to sleep before I slit his throat … then I used it on our friend Donny but give the devil his due he didn’t lie to me, didn’t claim not to know where the pictures were, he just wouldn’t tell me. Can’t seem to change the bastard’s mind.” Without ceremony, making no threats and asking no questions, McCleany struck Growler across the face.
“Please don’t,” Annie begged.
“You fucking him?”
She glared at McCleany.
“All he’s got to do is tell me where the pictures are. Hey Donny, they still somewhere here in this room?”
Growler’s glazed eyes managed to focus partially, he was conscious enough to mutter an obscenity.
McCleany once again stomped those cleats hard onto Growler’s injured foot, then swung that makeshift sap back and forth across his face, McCleany seemingly willing if not able (chest pains made him grimace as he worked the sap) to continue until Growler had no face left at all.
Although Annie’s wrists and ankles were bound she kept trying to get up, get away, McCleany pushing her back down, Annie sprayed and speckled with Growler’s blood as she jammed a nail-gnawed thumb over each ear in vain attempt to keep out the thwap-thwap of that cable hitting blood-wet flesh … the sound worse even than the incessant buzzing of those fat black cluster flies, she really was convinced she’d lose her mind before the night was out.
For McCleany, beating Growler was no longer a way to find those pictures, it had become an end in itself, beating him and beating him until Growler became transcendent … injured and in pain even before being carried into this room he existed now in another circle entirely beyond injuries and pain, beyond imagination, his brain unable to measure the exact dimensions of the information sent its way by snapped bones and pierced flesh, gunshot wounds and third-degree burns and this constant slap of a copper cable across the face … Growler’s brain having given up trying to compute pain except to conclude we’ve reached the bottom of the bag, we live now in a world of hurt.
He wanted to die. His mind didn’t argue the point, okay let’s die. But life clung perversely to him.
McCleany finally had to stop, purple-faced as he stumbled back from the couch. Annie took down her hands. Growler was no longer recognizable, his right eye had been dislodged from its socket and that once fine straight nose had been smashed into a flap of bloody torn skin hanging in the middle of his face.
McCleany was astonished with unaccustomed exertion and Annie wondered what the tortured must think when seeing the torturer exhausted.
“He’s not going to tell you anything,” she said to McCleany.
“I already figured that part out.”
“Just let him …” What, she wondered … let him alone, let him die?
“Oh I could’ve done a lot more damage if I wasn’t using my left hand, your old boyfriend nearly broke my right arm.”
“Teddy? Where is he, what’ve you done to him?”
“If I were you little sister I’d be worried about my own sweet ass ’cause you’re next.”
The ancient radiators in this room generated overly abundant heat but Annie shivered as if that big leather couch was solid ice.
Moving backward McCleany staggered again and put a hand out to catch himself, he really was shattered. After checking his wrist-watch he cursed then brought out from his back pocket a length of guitar string fastened on both ends with wooden handles.
“Our hero here,” McCleany told Annie, “used this to decapitate his old friend Kenny, at least that’s what Donny Boy said when I took it out of his pocket downstairs. Had the balls to tell me he was planning to use it on my neck too, ain’t that right sport?”
The only sound from Growler was a pained mewling.
Before she realized what he intended to do, McCleany went around to the back of the couch and slipped the wire over Annie’s head.
“You got about thirty seconds to tell me where those pictures are, then I’m going to squeeze off your head and leave you here as another one of Donny boy’s victims.”
Why didn’t anyone believe her? “I don’t know where they are, I swear to—” “God” got choked off, Annie trying to dig her fingertips between the wire and her neck.
McCleany braced himself for a good grip on the ga
rrote’s handles. “Adios, red.”
54
Seeing her there on the couch very nearly brought Camel to tears. “Annie,” he said. “Annie.”
Having lingered behind, McCleany now quickly pulled the .38 revolver, which he’d had with him all along, and used it to disarm Camel, telling him, “Sucker,” before pushing him into the room, closing the door, snapping the padlock into place.
Camel remained focused on Annie as he hurried to the couch and took her head in his hands. Speaking her name over and over he carefully removed the duct tape from her mouth.
“Thank God,” she said. “Thank God you’re here.”
He helped her sit up, Annie’s dark red hair matted with even darker red blood that had pooled in Growler’s lap. Camel unwrapped the tape from her hands and ankles, examining Annie for wounds, finding none … all the blood must be Growler’s, Camel wondering if he was dead.
He asked her what’d happened and in a gush of words she told him about hiding in the closet, knocking into the piano and disturbing all those fat flies … that man, the golfer she’d seen in Teddy’s office, he was one of the men in those photographs. “You don’t have any idea what I’m talking about do you?”
He assured her he did so Annie continued, explaining how the golfer taped her wrists and ankles before leaving to carry Growler up here, beating him with a cable, demanding to know where the photographs were. “He put that wire around my neck and was going to kill me but then we heard you holler my name.”
When I was coming up the steps, Camel remembered.
“God it was the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard in my life Teddy, you calling my name. He took the wire off my neck, taped my mouth and left the room … who is he?”
“Gerald McCleany, Parker Gray’s ex-partner … McCleany’s the one who killed that girl here seven years ago and he wants those pictures because they’re proof—”
