The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

by Otto Penzler

  “Pants,” he said.

  Roy-Boy shucked off his sweatpants and turned around to show Blackburn that he was unarmed. His legs were pale and hairless. They looked shaved.

  “That’s enough,” Blackburn said, suppressing revulsion.

  Roy-Boy pulled his sweatpants back on, then held out his hand again. “Ratify our treaty,” he said, “and I won’t ask you to take off your pants too. I’ll believe that your moral code won’t allow you to hide a second weapon from me. That ruler in your back pocket I’ll let go, since it’s a tool of the trade too.”

  They shook hands. Roy-Boy’s was dry and cold. He held on too long. Blackburn pulled free.

  Roy-Boy looked across the street at the apartment building. “Top floor, second unit,” he said. It was one of the apartments that had stayed dark. “Two bedrooms. Its collegiate occupants have gone home to Daddy for Jesus’s birthday and left all their shit behind.”

  “Jewelry first,” Blackburn said. “Then I’ll help you carry one big thing, and that’s all. Once I’m out, I’m not going back in. And my car’s not for hire to haul freight. You have a vehicle?”

  “Yeah. That black Toyota in the lot. Yesterday its former owner rode away in a car with snow skis on top. So it’s mine now.”

  Blackburn couldn’t object. He had stolen cars himself, and didn’t think he was in any position to cast a stone.

  —

  Blackburn and Roy-Boy crossed the street and climbed the stairs that zigzagged up the face of the building. It was almost midnight, but TVs and stereos were turned up loud in some of the lighted apartments. Blackburn was glad. Two burglars would make more noise than one, but the ambient sound might cover it. And every apartment’s drapes were closed, so none of the residents would see them.

  They reached the top balcony and apartment 302. “You’re the front-door specialist,” Roy-Boy whispered.

  Blackburn tried the knob. The door had a half inch of play. As at his last burglary, the deadbolt hadn’t been set. People who didn’t set their deadbolts were asking to be robbed. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the metal ruler. In a few seconds the door popped open, and Blackburn and Roy-Boy went inside.

  Blackburn took the penlight from his shirt pocket and turned it on. The pale circle of light revealed that the apartment was well furnished. A thick carpet muffled the men’s footsteps.

  “Ooh, lookee here,” Roy-Boy said. “A Sony Trinitron. Tell you what—I have great night vision, so I don’t need the light. I’ll unhook the TV cable and look around in here, and you see what you can find in the other rooms.”

  Blackburn couldn’t think of a reason against the plan, so he went into the blue-tiled kitchen and took a black plastic trash bag from a roll under the sink. Then he stepped into the hall. Here the penlight revealed four doors, two on each side. The first door on the right was open, and he saw more blue tile. The bathroom. He opened the door across from it and found a linen closet stacked with towels. It smelled like a department store, so he leaned inside and breathed deep. It wasn’t a smell he was crazy about, but it cleared his head of Roy-Boy’s deodorant-soap stink.

  He continued down the hall and opened the next door on the right. This was a small bedroom, as clean as a church. There was a brass cross on the wall and stuffed animals on the dresser. The window was open, and Blackburn’s neck tingled from the cold. White curtains puffed out over the narrow bed. The bed had a white coverlet with a design of pink and blue flowers.

  A jewelry box on the dresser contained only a small silver cross on a chain. It was worth maybe thirty dollars at a pawn shop, but Blackburn left it. He himself had given up on Jesus while still a child, having seen more evidence of sin than of salvation, but he didn’t want to mess with someone else’s devotion. He found nothing else of value in the room, so he started back into the hall. Then he paused in the doorway.

  The window was open. Even the screen was open. But no one was home.

  He looked at the closed door across the hall and turned off his penlight. Then he stepped across, dropping the trash bag, and turned the doorknob. He moved to one side as the door swung inward, and caught a whiff of rust and vanilla. He stood against the wall and listened for a few seconds, but heard only Roy-Boy rummaging in the living room and the dull thumping of a stereo in another apartment.

  Then he looked around the doorjamb. Except for the gray square of a curtained window, the room was black. He turned the penlight back on and saw the soles of two bare feet suspended between wooden bars. The toes pointed down. He shifted the penlight and saw that the wooden bars were at the foot of a bed.

  A nude woman lay on the bed face-down, spread-eagled, her wrists and ankles tied to the bedposts with electrical cords. She was bleeding from cuts on her back, buttocks, and thighs. Strands of her brunette hair were stuck to her neck and shoulders. Her legs moved a little, pulling at their cords with no strength.

  Blackburn sucked in a breath, then entered the room and closed the door. He dropped his penlight, found the wall switch, and turned on the ceiling light. He began to tremble. What he had smelled was blood and semen, and sugared pastry. There was a white cardboard box on the floor, and half-eaten donuts on the floor and the bed.

  He stepped closer and saw a long shard of glass on the bed between the woman’s knees. One end of the shard was wrapped in white cloth tape. The glass and the tape were smeared with blood.

  On the woman’s back, in thin red lines, were the words HI MUSICIAN.

  Blackburn went to the head of the bed on the left side and knelt on the floor. The woman’s wrists were tied so that her arms angled upward. Her face was in her pillow. Even this close, he couldn’t hear her breathing. But he saw her back moving. There were teeth marks on her shoulders.

  He lifted her head and turned her face toward him. The face was Heather’s. Her eyes opened, and they widened as she recognized him. Her mouth was covered with duct tape. He pulled the tape away and then saw that a donut had been stuffed into her mouth. She tried to cough it out, but couldn’t.

  Blackburn lowered her head to the pillow and dug out the donut with his fingers. The smell was thick and sweet. His trembling became violent. He tried to untie the cord around Heather’s left wrist, but his fingers were clumsy and numb. He was worthless, useless, a sissy, a pussy. Little Jimmy, dropping his pants and grabbing the rim of the wheel well. He could hear the fiberglass rod cutting the air. Its hiss became a scream, and it bit into his flesh. His skin caught fire.

  Then his hands spasmed, and his fingers sank in. It wasn’t the rim of a wheel well. It was the edge of a mattress.

  He wasn’t little Jimmy anymore. He had learned better. He had no father, no mother, no sister, no friends. His only trust was in himself. He could see not only what was, but what should be. He was Blackburn.

  And Blackburn always knew what to do, and how to do it.

  He tried the cord again. Heather’s left wrist came free, and her arm fell to the bed. Her fingernails scratched his face on the way down. The pain was sharp and pure. His trembling stopped.

  “Nasty,” a voice said. “But maybe she didn’t mean it.”

  Blackburn looked up. The bedroom door was open, and Roy-Boy was standing in the doorway. He was holding a small silver pistol. He gave his chuckle, his piglike grunt.

  “Look what somebody left behind the TV,” he said. “A twenty-five-caliber semiautomatic. Who woulda thought?”

  Blackburn stood. “This is what comes of committing a sin of omission,” he said.

  Roy-Boy’s expression became quizzical. “Omission of what?”

  “Your death,” Blackburn said. “I could see its place in the pattern of my world, but I left it out because I didn’t understand why it needed to be there. Now I see that the reason was obvious. Maybe even to you. Do you know why I should have killed you?”

  “Beats me,” Roy-Boy said. “But now you can make up for it with a surrogate. I was grooming her for myself, but when I saw you watching the place, I deci
ded to save her for you. See, you need to become aware of the superiority of my world, and to do that you’ve got to live in it a while. In your world you’ve got your stud attitude, and she’s got her bouncy little ass…but when you try to pull that shit on me, it’s a different story. I’m Thomas Jefferson, and you’re slaves.”

  Blackburn took a step toward him. “So command me.”

  “Stop,” Roy-Boy said. He pointed the pistol at Blackburn’s face. “And pick up my ice scraper.”

  Blackburn stopped. He was at the foot of the bed, four feet from Roy-Boy. He reached down between Heather’s knees and picked up the glass shard.

  “Now cut her,” Roy-Boy said. “Anywhere you like. But cut deep, or I’ll shoot you.”

  “You’ll shoot me anyway.”

  “No, I won’t. I promise. I’m a moral guy too.”

  Blackburn gripped the taped end of the shard with both hands. The sharp end was pointed up.

  “Why should I have killed you?” Blackburn asked again.

  “Maybe because I threaten your masculinity,” Roy-Boy said. “So stick the glass between her butt cheeks. That should make you feel like a stud again.”

  Blackburn placed the point of the shard under his own chin and began to push upward. It hurt, but like Heather’s fingernails on his face, the pain was pure, cleansing. He thought again of Dad’s fiberglass rod. No matter how much he had hated it, it had contributed to his creation. This new pain reminded him of that truth.

  Roy-Boy grimaced. “Not you, Musician,” he said. He took a step toward Blackburn and pointed the silver pistol at Heather. “Her. Just turn around and—”

  Blackburn thrust his fists out and down, cutting his chin, and slashed Roy-Boy’s right wrist.

  Roy-Boy shrieked. He swung his pistol toward Blackburn again.

  But Blackburn was already lunging. He sank his teeth into Roy-Boy’s slashed wrist. With his left hand he grabbed the silver pistol and tried to yank it away. With his right hand he used the shard to rip and stab. Roy-Boy stumbled backward. He was screaming things that might have been words, but Blackburn didn’t listen to them. The only voice he listened to now was his own, the voice that told him what needed to be done.

  They fell to the floor in the hall. Blackburn kept his teeth clamped and his left hand on the pistol, but concentrated on driving the shard into Roy-Boy’s eyes, throat, belly, and groin. The odor of soap was overwhelmed by stronger smells. Before long the pistol came free.

  Blackburn rolled off Roy-Boy and squatted beside him. He threw the shard into the living room. Then he looked down at what remained of Roy-Boy’s face.

  “You’d like to believe you’re evil,” Blackburn said. “But you’re only stupid. Anyone who’s done it seriously knows there’s only one good way to kill: a bullet to the head. Of course, with the smaller calibers, it might take more than one.” He placed the muzzle of the silver pistol against Roy-Boy’s forehead. “Do you know the answer to my question yet?”

  One of Roy-Boy’s hands flopped aimlessly.

  “It’s simple,” Blackburn said.

  He cocked the pistol.

  “Because I felt like it.”

  He squeezed the trigger until the gun was empty.

  —

  Blackburn dropped the pistol on Roy-Boy’s chest and stood. He was dizzy for a moment and steadied himself against the wall, leaving a handprint. He was a mess. There had been a lot of blood some of the other times, but never this much. He wanted to brush his teeth and take a shower. He wanted to scrub and burn incense until Roy-Boy’s stink was gone.

  On the floor, the carcass twitched. Its ponytail had come loose, and the hair was spread out like a fan on the trash bag Blackburn had dropped. The plastic was keeping most of the hair off the wet carpet. Blackburn thought of taking the scalp, then rejected the idea. He didn’t want a trophy. He wasn’t proud of the way things had gone with Roy-Boy.

  He heard a noise in the bedroom and turned to look. Heather was up on her knees. She had managed to free her right wrist and was now trying to loosen the cords around her ankles. She wasn’t having any success. She was unsteady, swaying.

  Blackburn went to her. “I can do that,” he said.

  She looked up at him and tried to say something, or to scream. All that came out was a moan.

  Blackburn wiped his hands on his shirt. It didn’t help. His shirt was wet. “This is mostly his,” he said.

  Heather looked away as Blackburn untied the cords around her ankles. When she was free, he tried to help her up, but she pulled away and got off the bed on the other side. She stumbled into the hall.

  Blackburn pulled the top sheet from the bed. The apartment was cold, and he thought Heather should cover herself. He went into the hall and saw her step over Roy-Boy’s body. She didn’t seem to notice it. He followed her into the kitchen and turned on the light. Then he draped the sheet over her shoulders, and she didn’t even glance at him.

  He saw that she was no longer the Heather who had slept with him, and he knew that he was responsible. For the first time in his life, he was horrified at himself. Not for what he had done, but for what he had failed to do. In that failure, he had become an accessory to torture and rape. Killing was not always murder, and stealing was not always a crime…but torture and rape were absolutes.

  Heather lifted the receiver from a wall telephone and pushed 911. Blackburn heard the dispatcher answer the call, but Heather didn’t put the receiver to her ear. She stared at it as if trying to figure out why it was making noise.

  “Let me,” Blackburn said. He reached for the receiver.

  Heather jerked it away, then hit him in the face with it.

  His eyes filled with tears. The receiver had struck his nose hard. “Let me talk to them,” he said. “You’re hurt. You need to go to the hospital.”

  Heather dropped the receiver and yanked the telephone from its wall jack. The sheet fell away, and Blackburn saw the red lines that her wounds had left on it.

  She swung the telephone and hit his head. Then she hit him again, and again. The telephone clanged, and the receiver bounced on its cord, thunking against the floor.

  Blackburn backed up against the refrigerator and then stood there, letting Heather hit him. He should never have begun stealing for a living. That moral slip had led to the next one, and that in turn had led to this. So he would take his punishment. It was the only punishment he had ever received that made sense.

  “I’m sorry,” he told Heather. She had become a blur. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  The telephone clanged. Heather began to grunt with each clang, and then to shout. There were no words. Only the voice of her rage.

  Blackburn heard it and knew it was just. He slid to the floor. The tiles were like cool water against his cheek.

  —

  And so the State of Texas took him, and healed his face, and charged him with rape and murder. He let the rape charge stand. Murder, however, he could not accept. He had killed, but he had never committed murder. This went double in the case of Roy-Boy.

  His court-appointed attorney said that this was not a suitable defense.

  Homicide investigators from across the nation came to Houston to question Blackburn, but he was only able to help two of them. Most of the others were trying to track down serial killers of women, and Blackburn had nothing to tell them about that sort of thing—except to say that there were a lot of bastards out there, and he should know, having killed a number of them.

  Then the State of Texas charged him with murder again.

  He was told that on the night that he and Roy-Boy had met, there had been a woman in the bedroom from which Roy-Boy had emerged. Blackburn had not known of her existence because she had been sick in bed for a week. She had been the sister of the apartment’s other occupant, the woman who worked the night shift at Whataburger.

  The sick woman had been tortured, raped, and killed.

  And since Blackburn admitted that he had been in her apartment on the ni
ght of her death, he was accused of the crime.

  Blackburn was astonished. “I’ve never killed a woman,” he told his interrogators.

  “Yet you’ve confessed to raping a woman,” one of them said.

  Blackburn shook his head. “No. What I confessed to was responsibility for that rape. And I won’t let you use that as grounds to blame me for something else.” He turned to his attorney. “You have to make them see my point.”

  “What point is that?” an interrogator asked.

  Blackburn looked at him.

  “One sin,” he said, “is more than enough.”

  Villain: Peter Macklin

  The Black Spot

  LOREN D. ESTLEMAN

  BOTH VERSATILE AND PROLIFIC, Loren D. Estleman (1952– ) began his writing career as a journalist but soon turned to fiction and became one of the most significant mystery writers to emerge in the 1970s, while also producing Western novels of such distinction that he was given the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Contributions to Western Literature, the highest honor given by the Western Writers of America. Other awards include the Eye, the lifetime achievement award of the Private Eye Writers of America, from which he has also received four Shamus Awards, an Edgar nomination from the Mystery Writers of America, a nomination for a National Book Award, and nearly twenty additional honors.

  Among his more than seventy published books, it is Estleman’s series about Detroit private eye Amos Walker for which he is best known. Beginning with Motor City Blue (1980), this hard-boiled series has been praised by fans as diverse as Harlan Coben, Steve Forbes, John D. MacDonald, John Lescroart, and the Amazing Kreskin. Fans are equally enthusiastic about the wise-cracking P.I. and Estleman’s depiction of his much-loved but decaying Detroit, where “the American Dream stalled and sat rusting in the rain.” His next most successful series character is Peter Macklin, a professional hit man whose victims are worse than he is. The five Macklin novels are Kill Zone (1984), Roses Are Dead (1985), Any Man’s Death (1986), Something Borrowed, Something Black (2002), and Little Black Dress (2005).