Vic looked hurt. “I read The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal every day.”
“Sure you do, but how much do you retain? Anyway, you know the chick I mean?”
“Yeah, I think I do. Hooker that got whacked at that mall on the other side o’ town, right?”
“You knew her?” Lupo spoke for the first time. His tone was less than friendly.
Vic hesitated. “I don’t—”
“Don’t fuck with us, okay, ’cause our mutual friend Dillie D’Amato already told me you told him you wanted to dick her bad, so don’t waltz us around.”
Lupo glanced at Ben but kept silent.
Vic crossed his eyes for a second. Then he glanced toward his crew, who were sitting on the bed whispering and laughing with the blonde. “Look, I knew her. Corey Diamond. Least, that was her name with us, if you know what I mean. Did three, no four, pro-am features in the last couple months. She was too good for us, you know, really knew acting. We do fuck films, but she coulda done real legit adult stuff.”
“Did she work for you recently? Here?”
Vic looked down and sideways. “Yeah, the night before she got— Before she was—”
Lupo felt his rage building. Not so much at this worthless little man, whose only knowledge of Corinne had come from the sleazy end of his camera, but at the system that made people buy into this lifestyle.
“How well did you know her?” Lupo interrupted, his voice almost too calm and friendly. Scary.
Vic shivered visibly. “Look, there’s a strict policy here. We—we stay away from the talent. Me and the crew, I mean, none of us ever gets involved in a picture. Other guys in the business like to film their own blow jobs, okay, but we don’t do that here.”
Maybe the vibes Lupo gave off were going right to the jerk’s head—Vic was sweating under Lupo’s intense gaze.
“How about the others? Who else was in on this shoot?”
“We shoot simple, okay? Me, a cameraman, a sound guy who does second camera for close-ups, a makeup girl, and usually two or three chicks. Maybe four if it’s a budget-buster.”
“How about the guys?”
“Yeah, two or three. Sometimes five or six. They come cheap, you know, ’cause most of ’em would do it for free. At first, anyway.”
Ben spoke, gesturing. “Who worked with the Diamond girl on this video? Any of these people?”
“I don’t remember. I mean, no, none of these people. There was a few different people for each shoot. I can’t memorize—”
“But you could find out, right, Vic? You have records somewhere?” Lupo leaned in closer.
Vic backed away. “Sure. I mean, I got files. Releases. I could give you names.” He wiped his forehead, which was shining under the umbrella lights.
“That would be good,” Ben said. “Very good.” He gave Vic a card, which Vic took with a shaky hand. “You’ll call us this afternoon with names, right? Anyone who worked on this recent video. You got any copies of this immortal work?”
“Yeah, I could get you copies.”
“Good. Send them over to us at the station. Today.”
“And names, Vic,” Lupo said. “Don’t forget to call with names.”
“Now you can continue with your little blue movie.”
Vic nodded. His ponytail bobbed. It didn’t look as if he could continue with anything. But then Sal walked back in, still holding his member, this time dragging a thinly beautiful woman whose hair was shower-wet and whose breasts glistened with water droplets.
Vic spotted her and forgot about his police troubles. “Tara, where the hell have you been?”
“None of your business, you slimy little faggot. Now one last time, I don’t do anal, and that’s that. I’m not gonna have this gorilla stick that telephone pole up my ass, got it?”
“But, baby, your contract—”
“Stuff my contract up your ass, Victor. God knows you can take it.” She grabbed a purse from beside the bed and started to walk toward the door, still naked.
“Aw, Tara,” Sal said, going after her all the way into the hall. “You’ll ruin my first big movie!”
Just then Ashlyn burst into the room. “I can do the scene, Vic. Let me.”
Vic stopped. Then he spread his arms. “Ashlyn, babe, come here.”
She cooed and he swept her into an embrace, his hands roving over her buttocks as she squealed with delight.
“Let’s get outa here,” Ben said. “I feel a strange urge to take a long, hot shower.”
Martin
This mall was another perfectly sterile place, and Martin smiled at the thought of someone finally bringing color to its drab walls and dirty tile floors. He smiled at the thought of being the one to do it, and he smiled at the thought of making his friend Lupo wallow in that smelly, sticky color until the son of a bitch acknowledged what he had done. Acknowledged his guilt.
“Come on, it’ll be fun.”
She hesitated. “I don’t know. It’s a little too—”
“Dangerous?” Martin supplied. “Look, I’m paying, right?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“This is just part of the thrill, you see. You’ll earn your money and have a little fun just a few feet away from all this wholesome family stuff. It can’t be any worse than some flophouse somewhere.”
“Well, yeah,” she said, licking her lips.
Martin liked that—had liked that about her from the moment he’d spotted her at the bar and interpreted the signs. He was getting better at it.
“Yeah,” she continued after making her lips glossy again, “it could be worse, ’cause they arrest people who do stuff like this here. They don’t bother with the flophouses.”
He took her arm. “I’ll double your going price.”
“Well…”
He led her to the escalator, and she let him. Martin had won, as he had known he would. He was God. He could manipulate anyone into anything. His voice was silk. His personality was strong and forceful, but likable enough to smooth over people’s doubts. And what doubts could this hooker have, anyway? What thoughts crossed such a mind, a mind and psyche suited only to giving pleasure and receiving payment? What doubts could someone like her exhibit, once having chosen such a career path? Martin smiled. He liked analyzing things, and this girl on his arm was both an enigma and an open book to him—he knew what drove her, and what would make her happy. He knew what he could tell her, and what she would say. He knew that nothing he requested would be out of bounds, now that he had forced his will on her once. The giving in had unempowered her—the payment, a double payment, was all she thought of, all she needed. She was putty in his hands, as the old cliché said, and he could feel a tingle where his skin touched hers.
He looked at her face as they rode upward, toward the mall’s upper level, where the fast-food eateries lined up like carnival booths. She was also an enigma, for he did not quite understand how she had come to be this way.
She was pretty, in a blank sort of way. Her hair was blonde, but dark roots gave her away. Her eyes were a clear blue, but vacant—distant and lost, maybe drugged. Her nose might have been perfect with the exception of one small ridge that a plastic surgeon could remove in mere minutes. As it was, her nose was her weakest feature. A strong chin and high cheekbones perfectly set off her best feature, and the one on which Martin had first focused—her lips, ablaze in a shiny pink cream and covered in a clear gloss that shimmered under the mall’s natural and fluorescent lighting mix. Martin was aware that men on the down escalator beside them watched her with open lust. He smiled at them. See what I have that you don’t? It was part of the game. And he knew that they were watching her so intently that not one would remember his features. In fact, had he really been with her? Dredging their weakened memories would bring up the fact that he was standing one or two steps below her on the moving staircase, not exactly with her. They would be confused; cut him out of the picture completely.
Martin knew he was right. He was alw
ays right.
They reached the top floor and she looked to him for guidance. But he knew where he was going, and he led her there after a nod in the right direction.
The photo booth was tucked in a corner, near two rows of tables. Interspersed among the tables were several large potted figs and swing-topped refuse pails. A half-dozen people sat alone at tables, eating fast food quickly—so much shopping to do. One small table was overwhelmed by a family, whose various children ran to and fro amid a tangle of parental hands and feet, packages and bags piled high enough on the table to make Martin wonder where they would set their food once the various orders were taken and a parent had set off to fulfill every wish.
As he stepped past these people with the blonde woman not quite on his arm, he noticed several heads turn and glance at them—two men with open lust, one woman in apparent disgust (his companion’s cleavage was rather indelicately displayed, after all), and several of the children with open, though fleeting, curiosity. Then they were past the tangle of tables and entering the tiny booth, and Martin was drawing the black plastic curtain on both sides.
She sat on the stool facing the camera eye and the mirror, and Martin stood beside her. He knew their feet were visible beneath the edge of the curtain, but he didn’t mind—the knowledge made the game all the more fun. Couples took lovey-dovey photographs in these booths all the time.
He slid the paper bills into the slot, waited for the light to signal the camera was set, then turned to his companion. His throat was dry, and he had to clear it, dredge up some saliva. This was always the most exciting part (well, almost the most exciting part), and he wanted to enjoy it.
“Would you please refresh your lipstick?” he whispered, hoarse with desire.
The blonde knew what he wanted. It wasn’t a typical fetish, but not altogether unknown. Anyway, there was a reason she played up her lips—they were perfect, full, wide, and as sensuous as any famous model’s. She applied her lipstick, neglecting the unneeded mirror to instead watch Martin’s obvious pleasure as she smiled and pouted for him.
When he unzipped his fly and slipped out his erection, she was ready. Her velvety lips stretched over its length and she went to work, visions of double pay perhaps dancing in her head. Martin flicked the button and heard the camera start to whirr. Vaguely he could hear the chatter of children, the steps of an adult considering a choice of tables, the sound of plastic tableware hitting the inside of a refuse pail, someone coughing uncontrollably. Ice clinking in a plastic cup. But then his father was speaking to him, urging him to play the game right with his daddy, groaning as Martin tried—
as Martin tried to please his daddy, whose desires became more and more difficult, and whose groans seemed to fade in and out, and blend in with Martin’s gasps as
—she tried to please him while the camera took one, two, three shots and then he was spurting into her mouth and onto her lips and chin and the camera was clicking one last time, a perfectly timed encounter, and she was licking him clean and he was zipping up just as a mall cop stuck his head inside the booth.
“Everything all right in here?”
Martin faced him and hid the woman’s face from the cop with his body. He could sense her hand busily wiping the evidence from around her mouth.
“Couldn’t be better, Officer,” Martin smiled. “Just taking some pictures for the folks back home.”
Thirties and bull-necked, the cop was flabby in the middle but not much, like a weight lifter who’s been laying off the weights and eating double breakfasts for a year. But his eyes were hardened and knowing, and he tried to look around Martin. “You all right, miss?”
“Yes, Officer,” she said from behind Martin. She pushed him aside gently and looked at the cop, batting her eyelashes. Martin glanced down at her. She looked like the girl next door now, with barely a smudge left on her cheek and no lipstick on her mouth. He could see a paper hanky balled up in her fist. “Everything’s fine.”
“Wanna see the pictures?” Martin asked, smiling more widely now, pushing his envelope of margin, basking in the knowledge that he could do no wrong, pushing fate beyond where most would dare. He heard the woman gasp slightly and hold it in, unbelieving of his courage. His gall in cheating capture so cavalierly.
“Nah,” said the cop. “Just wanted to make sure you’re okay in here.” His head retreated, and Martin followed to retrieve the strip of pictures from the little tray on the outside of the booth where it had curled up, offering a hint of pink and white to anyone who bothered to look closely.
Martin watched the cop’s back as he stalked past the diners and the noisy family, some of whom had watched the exchange silently and perhaps with more than a flicker of interest. At least two of those people are aware of what went on here, Martin thought. He smiled at them. He watched the cop disappear around the bend—idiot! How easily fooled was the moron!—and then ducked back into the booth, where she was once again applying lipstick. She looked up at him. The question was plain—When do I get paid?
“Don’t you want to see our pictures?”
She shrugged. It wasn’t like this guy had invented film or video, for Chrissakes. He could hear her thoughts almost as clearly as if she had spoken them. “Okay, whatever.”
He handed her the strip.
She curled her lips, smiling. “Hey, these are great!” A little enthusiasm, after all. “You know just where to stand, don’t you?”
Ah, yes, even the most vacant of brain could sometimes make connections unwanted and unwarranted. Still, the local police had not released all the details of the previous death to the news media, so this particular indulgence of his was still unknown by the general public, though he wondered if area mall cops wouldn’t have been alerted. Perhaps it was time to move on to phase two, and be done with it.
He tucked the colorful strip into his shirt pocket and led his companion to the other side of the mall, where he knew the least-used washrooms were likely to be empty at this time of day. “I’ll pay you in the washroom. I have to dig into my money belt for the cash. Plus, I have a little blow we can do.”
She accepted the explanation. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
The tiles in the washroom were dirty white with a fleshy pink trim, and when he turned and keyed the door locked behind them, her eyes widened.
“Friend of mine’s a security guard here,” Martin lied, thinking of the janitor he’d tied up earlier. He smiled and took a glass vial out of his pocket. He watched her pour some out onto her little mirror, which she’d taken from her purse. He backed her into a stall and pushed her down onto the toilet, where she sat with her legs spread and maneuvered a thin white straw into the powder on her mirror. She inhaled noisily, then fixed him with an angry stare.
“This isn’t—”
By then Martin was taking the knife from the sheath that pressed into the small of his back. Her eyes widened as the blade danced before her.
“Hey, come on now, mister, you got what you wanted and it was on the house, okay, no charge.”
Martin shook his head and clucked his tongue. His fingers shook around the knife’s hilt—it was a flexible cutting knife, almost a straight razor, and he handled it carefully. A thin voice made its way from between his lips. It didn’t sound like Martin at all.
“Why, mommy, why didn’t you do something? Why were you almost always gone, huh, mommy? Why did I have to play mommy for daddy? Why did I have to do those things for daddy that you should have done?”
“W-what? Mister, I don’t know w-what—”
“Shut up, mommy!” He motioned with the blade. “You should have been there. You should have done all those things for daddy. Not me.”
He slashed out with the blade.
Heard her skin zip open like a piece of cheap clothing.
Scream cut off as he clapped a hand over her mouth and held it there as she spasmed.
Tiles, turning red.
He let her head go.
“No
t me!” he screamed into her wide-open mouth, staring into the dead eyes.
He still had work to do, and he set about it with the usual efficiency.
All the while, he muttered.
“Not me. Not me. Not me.”
From the Journals of Caroline Stewart
October 12, 1971
It’s hard to pick up a pen again after so long, but now that I seem to have found a new life I can’t bear to avoid the old one. I wanted to continue writing in my beautiful set of matching diaries, the set my mother gave me while I was still in grade school and which managed to last me all through high school (those hellish years!), but they have long since disappeared. My brother took them, probably, as he took so much from me over the whole of our lives together. Or maybe it was my father. It occurs to me that I still have a bunch of unpacked boxes in storage here at the Whitman dormitory, so maybe I’ll get lucky and find the diaries there. I just don’t want to wait—I want to start writing of my new life as it happens, not as I remember it!
Maybe it took two and a half semesters, but I seem to have found my calling. After taking the Intro to Psychology and Intro to Sociology survey courses, I found that everything I read seemed to make sense to me. That was a first! God, I’ve hated the math and heavy science courses (except the geology survey—I found myself relishing the quiet dignity of ancient rocks and minerals!). I’ve never been any good at math and sciences, and any interest I may have shown when I was little was eaten away by my family life (see early diaries, if ever located!). So finally finding myself nodding and smiling as I read about human behavior surprised and delighted me.
Unless something even better comes along, I can see myself as a psychiatrist or psychologist like my uncle, drawing people out of their shells and fixing whatever’s wrong in their lives. I wish someone could have done that for me, and I hope to God I would have the compassion to help others cope with the kind of things I faced. Maybe I’ll teach, or maybe both practice and teach! Wow, I can’t believe I’m being so decisive. Now if only I could go and study for that German midterm! It’s going to be a bear, and I don’t want to repeat the class.
Wolf's Trap (The Nick Lupo Series Book 1) Page 12
