by Hal Bodner
“You live around here?” Charlie asked, with studied casualness.
“Nearby. In a manner of speaking.” They walked under a street lamp with a burned-out bulb and rounded the corner into the parking lot. Charlie spotted his car in a pool of darkness near the back fence parked next to a dark blue Jag.
“Fucking City Hall,” Charlie said, just to make conversation.
“Beg pardon?”
“Smashed street lights all over the place. Fucking homeless guy broke into my car and stole the stereo last month. They caught the bastard, though. He’s gonna be livin’ down at County Jail for a while.”
“Ah,” breathed the stranger, knowingly. “You believe in revenge, then?”
“Fuckin’ right, I do!” Charlie nodded emphatically. “I spent two weeks pay on that thing!” Charlie pointed. “My car’s over there.”
“How nice for you,” replied the other.
Something’s wrong, Charlie thought. The guy sounded strange; his voice was almost a hiss. Charlie would have called it sibilant if he’d known the word.
Charlie turned to look at him thinking, Oh shit. Another weirdo, and his glance caught the other man’s eyes. They were dark, black in fact, and strangely fascinating, flecked with sparkles of silver. Charlie looked deeper and deeper into those dark pools of shimmering light. He heard a deep, droning sound that seemed to be coming from inside his own head. His jaw dropped as he relaxed further into the hypnotic gaze. He didn’t realize it, but his shirt was plastering to his upper body as he broke out into a cold sweat; his forehead gleamed with perspiration.
As a hand brushed his chest, the droning sound grew louder and Charlie realized that somehow, the guy had moved behind him. Charlie began to suddenly feel very horny. The hand moved slowly across Charlie’s stomach and he felt his abdominal muscles start to quiver. He had a tremendous hard-on but no matter how much he wanted to, he just didn’t have the energy to reach down to his zipper to free it.
Charlie dimly realized he should turn around but didn’t seem to be able to move. Way too much tequila, he thought as he felt a hand tangle in his hair, bending his head backward, the other hand groping Charlie’s crotch as the droning sound grew even louder.
Sweating with discomfort as his hard-on became almost unendurable, Charlie wondered whether the guy was going to try and jerk him off right there in the parking lot. But a freezing pain stuck him suddenly in the side of his throat and, as Charlie Copperman leaned back into the strange man’s embrace and closed his eyes, he imagined he was still looking into those disturbing eyes, watching the silver specks of light flicker and go dim, one after the other, until the last one died out.
Unaware of Charlie Copperman’s rapidly cooling corpse, Becky waited until almost ten o’clock California time before calling Chris in Philly. He was rarely available during the day, and she wanted to avoid talking to Troy, if possible. She’d never quite understood the attraction between them, although any fool could see they were devoted to each other. Troy’s flamboyant mannerisms had always made her slightly uncomfortable; in her opinion he was exactly the type of effeminate twink who gave gay men a bad name. Furthermore, Chris had an annoying habit of following Troy with his eyes whenever they were together with a look of mindless adoration plastered across his face; she’d always found it difficult to carry on an intelligent conversation with him while Troy was in the room.
Becky was self-aware enough to realize that, in large part, her dislike of Troy was due to residual jealousy. Although she’d long accepted that any kind of romance between her and Chris was impossible, she was still envious of the relationship between the two young men.
“Please God,” she had often prayed silently, “Just once let me be loved like that.”
Steeling herself to be polite in case Troy answered, she picked up the phone and dialed.
Chris was quite literally up to his ass in hot water when the telephone rang. The original estimate on the reconstruction of the townhouse was eleven months. It was now rapidly approaching its third anniversary, largely due to Chris’s perfectionism. Troy had pleaded with Chris for several years beforehand to be allowed to redecorate. Chris had finally succumbed but, a burst of whimsical inspiration striking him at the time, he had done so with the provision that their home be totally restored to its original condition as authentically as possible. In addition, though not particularly gifted when working with tools, or—as he had recently demonstrated to himself—with paint, Chris had gotten the idea into his head that he was perfectly capable of doing much of the work without hiring professionals.
In the face of Chris’ restrictions, Troy had tried to back-pedal, insisting that he really, truly liked living in surroundings which could be classified only as “Neo-Gingerbread.” There was no reason at all for Chris to embark on one of his little “projects” or, if there were, wouldn’t Chris be happier taking up needlepoint or watercolor paints or clay or something? But Chris had stubbornly made up his mind and was not to be dissuaded.
Troy, predictably, refused to live without electricity; the thought of being unable to use a blow dryer left him in complete panic. Though Chris tried to explain that throughout most of human history people had gotten along fine with candles and oil lamps, he finally gave in to Troy’s tears. Tearing into the walls revealed a baffling array of frayed cloth-covered wires which Chris had innocently started to rip out. After all, he reasoned, re-wiring must be quite simple—all one had to do was pull out the old wires and install new ones in their place. Several nasty shocks and a small electrical fire later, Chris decided that he should probably call in an electrician.
He’d had similar difficulties with the bathroom. Though he was uncomfortable that the effect he’d been looking to achieve would be spoiled, Chris enjoyed the luxury of modern bathrooms—outhouses having never been his style. He’d compromised by updating the master bath and disguising it to look as it would have in Colonial times. Over the tub he’d installed a large wooden cistern covering a steel tank containing hot water for showers. One pull on a hanging chain allowed the water to flow from the tank into the false cistern bottom so that the illusion was maintained. The plumbers who did the actual installation were paid very well and just shrugged at Chris’ eccentricity and followed his designs without comment.
Maybe I carry things too far sometimes, he thought as he stood in the tub, the water from the overhead pipe cascading down around him. He’d been trying to fix a leaky joint with disastrous results.
Shit, he thought, I hope the wood doesn’t warp. I’ll have to buy another barn after all. He was thinking of a purchase he had made at the outset of the project, a dilapidated farmhouse circa 1793, to provide authentic wood of the proper age for the living room and dining room floors. As Troy had said several times during the past year, “If we ever want to sell this place, it’ll be worth a fortune. No one will want to live in it, but it will be worth a fortune.”
He climbed dripping from the tub, kicked off his waterlogged sneakers, and stripped. Drying himself with a towel, he darted into the living room and picked up the telephone on the sixth ring.
“Hello?” He tried, only somewhat successfully, to keep the grouchiness at being interrupted from tingeing his voice.
“Chris? It’s Becky. I was just gonna hang up.”
“Troy probably forgot to turn on the machine again.” He deftly caught a drop of water with the edge of the towel before it could splash onto the hardwood floor. “What’s up?”
“Sorry about the cryptic message yesterday. I’ve got a problem out here.”
“Yeah, well, while we were listening to it we had a problem out here too.” He glanced ruefully at the last few, faint traces of blue on the floor that had resisted his most strenuous attacks with paint thinner. “What’s wrong?”
“We’ve had three murders in three days.”
“So? You live in Los Angeles. I’m surprised you haven’t had three dozen.”
“I’m in West Hollywood,” Becky corre
cted testily. “We don’t have murders here. At least not where the killer practically cuts the victims’ heads off and drains out all the blood.”
Chris started to feel a little uncomfortable. “Oh, come on Becky,” he said, and forced a laugh, “All the blood? Even I know you can’t just drain all the blood from a corpse without some kind of pump. Just check the hospitals and medical labs. Your killer’s probably some guy who flunked out of med school and went crazy. For Pete’s sake, Becky, it’s Los Angeles. It could even be some kind of wacked-out artist who’s decided that only human blood provides the proper shade of red for painting sunsets.” For a moment, his mind drifted but, as he’d gone through a painting obsession only scant months before, he immediately abandoned the notion.
“Chris,” she said quietly, “I don’t think this guy drains the corpses.”
There was silence. Chris prayed that Troy would magically return from wherever he was in the next three seconds and give him an excuse to hang up. He didn’t.
Chris took a deep breath and then asked, trying to put polite disbelief into his voice, “You mean he drains them while they’re alive?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure. That’s why I called you. You wrote that Kurten book. I just read it again. It’s very good.”
“And I wrote one on Peter Stubbs–the guy who thought he was a werewolf—and another on the Salem witch trial mass hysteria. So?”
“Stop being obtuse,” Becky snapped. “I need information on this guy. A psychological profile if you can. Anything to help us figure out what kind of a crazy we’re looking for. I want you to come out here and help.”
“Becky,” he said patiently, “I’m not a psychologist. Los Angeles is fruit and nut city. There are plenty of people out there who specialize in...”
“But what about Kurten?” she protested.
“What about him? Kurten was an extremely complicated case. Just because your guy has one small similarity doesn’t mean I’m going to be able to contribute anything helpful. Besides, Kurten didn’t drain all the blood. He merely...”
She cut him off. “OK! OK! No lectures. It’s an excuse. I confess!” she cried dramatically. Then her voice softened. “I...I want to see you again.” She became uncertain. “It’s been ten years.”
I know, Chris thought. That’s the problem.
“Fill me in on the details,” he said aloud. “Let’s see how much like my old friend Peter Kurten this guy really is. Then,” He paused for an instant. “Perhaps I’ll think about it.”
With ghoulish relish, Becky began to speak. As her story unfolded, Chris felt knots of tension form in his stomach and he grew more and more concerned. Although he was convinced Becky was wrong about West Hollywood’s being visited by a modern version of the Dusseldorf Vampire, he was beginning to suspect she had been right in trying to enlist his help.
“Flaps of skin, you say? Always from the throat? Spine severed?” He took a pencil from the telephone table and, hunting through the mess of papers where Troy liked to leave him little notes, he began to write on a clean pad that he finally found hidden under the phone.
As he wrote, Becky continued speaking.
“What I can’t figure out is how he does it. You just don’t walk up to someone, stick a tube in their arm and say, ‘Excuse me but, if you don’t mind, I’m taking out all of your blood.’ I mean, it’d hurt for one thing. And the second boy must’ve been in real pain. You should see what this lunatic did to him! But, get this, there was no evidence that he’d been restrained. Nothing! No rope burns, no imbedded fibers, no chafing on the wrists or ankles—zip!”
By this time, Chris was really worried. “How are the newspapers handling it?” he asked, feigning calm.
“Oh, that!” Becky said with a huff of exasperation. “The porn star’s boyfriend had a little problem when he went in to file a missing persons report. It hit the evening papers. What a mess!”
The front door of the townhouse opened, and Troy walked in—along with a stunning young man wearing tight slacks and a white cotton shirt open halfway to the navel to reveal a chest covered with thick hair and a profusion of dangling gold chains.
“Uh, Becky,” Chris said, “Troy just came in. Let me think about this for a while and I’ll get back to you. Call me tomorrow night if anything else happens.” Over her shocked protests, he hung up and turned to face Troy, one eyebrow raised inquisitively.
Troy fussed over the young man as he led him into the guest bedroom. Closing the door, he turned to face Chris.
“He was so cute I couldn’t resist.”
“He is adorable,” Chris conceded. “But couldn’t you find something, I don’t know, maybe a little less South Philly?”
“He’s from Jersey,” Troy said proudly.
“I see,” Chris replied with a smile. The smile faded. “I’ll deal with him in a minute. First, tell me something. How would you feel about going to California?”
Troy immediately began to beam. “You don’t mean it!” he cried happily.
“I might,” Chris said cautiously.
“Lana Turner,” Troy breathed with ecstasy, “At Schwabs. Elizabeth Taylor! Julia Roberts! Oh, my god!”
“What?” Chris was alarmed at Troy’s shriek.
“Brad Pitt!”
“Knock it off. This is serious.” Chris’ brow furrowed in thought.
“I’d rather not see Becky again, but something’s happening out there that we may have to check into.”
“Oh, thank you Missy Scarlet!” cried Troy, in a passably good Hattie McDaniel imitation. He dropped to his knees and clasped Chris around the thighs with both arms. “Thank you for takin’ me back to Tara!”
“Cut it out, monkey,” said Chris, absently stroking the tousled blond curls as Troy obediently got to his feet. “It’s not going to be just Hollywood fun and games.”
He shook his head, making a conscious effort to clear his mind of concern. “Well,” he said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation, “let’s see what you’ve brought me.”
He walked toward the guest room door.
“You know it’s funny,” Troy said, “Gustav wanted to know if you’d changed your mind about visiting them in L.A.”
Chris whirled around, “What?”
Troy was startled by the outburst. “Gustav. He called tonight. Said it was real important.”
“When?” demanded Chris.
“Oh, maybe six or so. You were still asleep. He sounded real worried so I left you a note.” Troy went over to the telephone table and began to paw through the accumulation of papers.
“Here it is,” he said and handed it to Chris.
Chris glanced at it, darted to the telephone, and began dialing.
“What about him?” Troy asked, indicating the guest room.
“I’m sure you can keep him occupied until I get off.”
“Get off?” repeated Troy, wickedly. “I beg your humble pardon!”
“C’mon Troy, get serious,” Chris said. “You go in and play with him for a while. I’ll be there as soon as I finish with Gustav.”
Troy hunched himself over, lifting one shoulder higher than the other. “Thank you, Master,” he rasped in a bad imitation of Peter Lorre. “I’ll wait in the lab-or-atory.” He limped off into the guest room.
Someone picked up the telephone at the other end.
“Ja?”
“Hanna? Is Gustav around? It’s Chris.” An excited babble struck his ears. “I know, I know,” he said soothingly, holding the receiver away from the side of his head to prevent his eardrums from rupturing.
“Slow down,” he commanded. “Tell me everything you know. From the beginning...”
CHAPTER EIGHT
After speaking with Gustav and Hanna, Chris quickly dispensed with Troy’s gold-chained trick. He then immediately telephoned his travel agent and his local banker, waking them both out of a sound sleep, issuing them terse instructions and promising cash bonuses if his wishes could be complied with before dawn.
The two men, well aware of their client’s eccentricity as well as with his generosity, were only too happy to lose a couple of hours’ sleep. Troy had been delighted when, four hours later, Chris handed him the airplane ticket, a cashier’s check for ten thousand dollars and a detailed list of instructions on what he’d need to do before Chris would be able to follow him out to California. Troy kept insisting he was perfectly capable of remembering everything from the last time that they had moved, but Chris, knowing how easily his lover could be distracted by a pretty face or a tight pair of buns, was taking no chances. The next morning, Troy had boarded a 747 bound for Los Angeles, arriving several hours later with the cashier’s check, the telephone number of every attractive male steward on the flight, and uncountable suitcases and bags of clothing, comprising a mere soupçon of what Troy insisted was his “essential wardrobe.”
Originally, Chris hadn’t planned on telling Becky he would be coming to Los Angeles until after he’d arrived, done what he had to do and already gone. The murders, however, suddenly and mysteriously ceased with the sole exception of the Copperman killing, which Becky had calculated had occurred at almost exactly the same time she had been on the telephone with Chris. Nevertheless, she continued to call him every night, certain the killings would resume and begging for his help.
It seemed like each call from his old friend was calculated to catch him at the most inconvenient time. When she’d called on Tuesday, he’d been attempting to strip the varnish from the baseboards in the front hallway and the remainder of the spilled paint from the living room floor. Lost in deep concentration, he’d been startled by the telephone’s loud trill and had pressed down on the paint scraper, digging into the wood and ending up with an extremely painful handful of splinters.
