Face Value

by Lia Matera

  “The sad thing is, Dad’s relationship with the other woman didn’t last. He should have known it wouldn’t. It was all for nothing.”

  Not “My mother should have known; my mother should have waited.”

  She was experiencing both traumas, past and present. I knew she wouldn’t put herself into a cab.

  “I’m coming right now. Stay in your car. Lock your doors. I’ll find you. Just hold off on walking—stay put.”

  I hung up. I almost lifted the receiver again to call Sandy. But I was no ingénue. I didn’t need an escort.

  If I didn’t find Margaret after a short drive through the neighborhood, I’d consider calling him. I hated to think of her wandering that part of town. And two of us could cover more ground. In the meantime, he could get a little sleep.

  I remembered how he looked, splayed across a bed with his lips parted and his hair down over his forehead. He looked like a rangy kid. He looked sweet.

  I wished he were here now.

  13

  It was almost two-thirty by the time I reached The Back Door. I cruised slowly past the front, hoping I’d find Margaret parked there. There were a few people on the street: a young women, cross-armed with cold in a minidress that revealed a multitude of figure flaws; young men with tight jeans and oiled curls throwing mock punches like kids in a playground; a homeless person clutching a bundle of freight; a man in a pea coat smoking a cigarette.

  I thought of my only night scuba dive. I’d been down with Ted McGuin several times in the day. I’d grown used to thinking of the ocean as a place of fish and seals and otters. But at night, with the sea mammals up on rocks and fish motionlessly asleep in the kelp, the world belonged to unfurling octopi, darting eels, gliding skates.

  I circled the block, carefully checking the parked cars. None were occupied. There were several more in the parking lot across the street from the building’s back exit. Most were old and inelegant. One of them, a dark, sleek Saab, might have been Margaret’s. But like the cars around it, it was vacant.

  I circled the block again.

  When I reached the front entrance, I noticed a man thumping one of the doors under the marquee. I couldn’t think what else to do, so I pulled up and called to him: “Is there a problem?”

  Perhaps Margaret had gone inside.

  He turned toward me. He was a big man, square-jawed and weathered. “Fuck you,” he said.

  “I’m supposed to pick someone up here. Is anyone still inside? Do you know?”

  He ambled toward my car. Damn Margaret. He looked as if he could rip my convertible top right off.

  “Fucking doors are locked. Round back, too. And my lady ain’t come out. Who you here for?” He squatted beside my window.

  “A friend of one of the dancers. She called me for a ride. Have you seen anyone come out?”

  “Not while I was in back. Maybe since I been in front.” He looked chiseled from friable stone. As if he’d eased a hard life with alcohol and fistfights.

  “You haven’t seen a thin woman with a nineteen-forties hairstyle? Anywhere in the neighborhood?”

  He shook his head. “Usually, everyone’s out by now. What the hell’s going on? Who’s this friend?”

  “Is there a pay phone around here?”

  “Fuck you,” he said, standing.

  I watched him trot around the corner, waving away a woman in a vinyl miniskirt. She returned to slouching against a building.

  I followed him in my car, parking in the side street near the back entrance. I climbed out, making sure the door was locked. The air smelled of beer and bay fog and cheap perfume.

  If Margaret was inside, I wanted to know. I didn’t want to waste time cruising the neighborhood. I wanted to go home and go to sleep.

  I hurried around the corner. Light from a street lamp caught the building’s silver moons and gold stars. I found the impatient boyfriend kicking what I took to be the wall. As I drew nearer, I saw the glint of a doorknob on black paint. The street was littered and still, facing the parking lot dotted with cars.

  The man turned to me. “This is too fucking much.” Then he bellowed, “Open the fuck up. Hey, in there!”

  “Are you sure there are people inside? They might have left while you were in front.”

  He pressed his ear to the door. “You hear that? You hear someone crying?”

  Again he kicked, a mulish, flat-footed blow beside the knob. The wood shuddered. He continued battering. The sound rang through the empty street. Finally, the door gave with a snap like a hewn tree.

  When he hit it again, it yawned off its top hinge. He had to work at pushing it open.

  I went in behind him.

  We found ourselves in a corridor that, because it turned left, seemed to end ten feet in front of us. He disappeared around the corner. I was only five feet behind him, but I managed to stop before the turn.

  I stopped because I heard a crack as loud as a cherry bomb. It echoed in the empty hall.

  It shocked me to a sudden stop, shocked me because I’d heard that kind of sound before. I’d heard it boom through a ravine four years ago. I’d heard it, and I’d found Sandy slumped against a tree, two bullets in his chest.

  Now I heard a guttural, almost animal, grunt. I heard a thud. The man dropping? A finger of sulfurous smoke stung my nose and eyes.

  I remained still, breath held, not wanting to understand what the sound and smell meant. In the black-with-stars corridor, I listened.

  But I heard nothing else. Whoever had felled the man was either alone or didn’t deem the action worthy of comment.

  I began backing out. Where were the women who worked here? Had they attacked the man? Or had they been attacked? Rounded up in some room?

  If so, there had to be more than one person involved. One to keep the women somewhere I couldn’t hear them, and another to respond to the visitor in the corridor.

  Or maybe the women were gone. Or gagged. Or dead.

  Maybe including Margaret.

  I was flat against the outside wall when I heard footsteps. The door, partly unhinged, was noisily scraped along the floor. I couldn’t tell if it was being opened wider or pushed shut.

  I waited there a while, deciding what I’d do if the person came out. My menu was limited by inexperience.

  But the person didn’t emerge. I took a few cautious steps. The door was closed.

  I began a panting trot back to my car, then stopped. I should stay where I could keep an eye on the door. At its odd angle, showing signs of having been kicked, it would attract attention. The first passing cop or curious passerby might investigate. Whoever was inside would realize that, would come out soon, would run away. There must be a phone nearby. I’d call 911 and return to watch—from a safe distance.

  I surveyed the street: beyond the parking lot were closed Asian restaurants, sex-toy shops. I didn’t see a pay phone, but if memory served, there was one a block up and half a block over, in front of a Chinese-language movie house.

  I walked swiftly, relieved to be walking away, alarmed to be in this neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning. I lifted the strap of my handbag over my head so it traversed my torso.

  I was hot, too pumped with adrenaline to feel the stipples of fog glazing my face and hands.

  When I spotted the phone booth, I stopped. There were three men lingering near it, waving brown-bagged bottles and talking with much animation. If I approached, they’d think I was a hooker, treat me that way.

  I felt a disconcerting sympathy for the prostitutes here. On-the-job harassment was probably more usual than not.

  When the men finally walked on, I dashed to the booth. I hated touching the receiver, with its raised grime. I fished in my bag for change, too flustered to recall I didn’t need any for this particular number.

  This would make the third time this year
I’d dialed it.

  I told the 911 dispatcher that someone might have been shot at The Back Door with a possibility of hostages held inside. She took the required information, her voice crisp and workaday. Though she asked repeatedly, a reflex of caution made me withhold my name.

  With my adrenaline ratcheting down, I could feel the frost of dew on my face. I walked quickly toward The Back Door, goosefleshed under my clothes.

  Crossing the small parking lot, I glanced again into the Saab. On the passenger seat, spotlighted by a street lamp, were a stack of magazines and a paper bag. No court transcripts, no yellow legal pad, no briefcase. Nothing to tell me it was Margaret’s car.

  I looked across the parking lot at the rear exit to The Back Door. Even from across the street and halfway down the parking lot, I could see the door gaping.

  I moved closer. The person who’d opened it had very likely left. Why else allow it to remain that way, an invitation for some vagrant to enter?

  I stood there, wondering if I could let myself feel some relief. The miscreant was gone (I hoped). I’d already done my bit by calling 911.

  Except that the man inside might need immediate help. I was totally unpracticed, but Ted McGuin, an emergency medical technician, had taught me basic first aid. I walked slowly closer. Maybe the police would arrive before I reached the building.

  Maybe I’d think of a reason to remain outside. I might be wrong about the meaning of the open door. Perhaps the man hadn’t been hurt. Perhaps he’d stumbled. Perhaps I’d heard and smelled a fire cracker. Perhaps he’d picked up his girlfriend and gone home. I had no actual knowledge anyone was in need of assistance.

  In the few seconds it took me to reach the door, I changed my mind several times. I strained for the sound of an approaching siren.

  I took a reluctant step inside. The malefactor was surely gone, surely that’s what the open door meant.

  My stomach knotted as I walked down the hall. When I reached the turn, I flattened against the wall and peeked around the corner.

  On the floor was the man. Beyond him, more corridor, leading to places that were brightly lighted, but not in my line of sight.

  I dropped to my knees beside him. His eyes were open wide, his lips parted, his skin pale. He looked like a wax figure. Stripped of surliness, he was handsome, younger than I’d imagined. The floor around him—but not, I noticed with relief, where I knelt—was pooled with blood. I didn’t search for his wound. His bleeding had stopped, so had his breathing. He was dead, I was sure.

  And my reason for being there had vanished.

  I stood, more than ready to leave, listening for sirens.

  The man had entered because his girlfriend hadn’t come out yet. He’d said no one had come out. That might include Margaret. She might have come in here after speaking to me.

  There might be people inside who needed the help I couldn’t give this man.

  But they weren’t my responsibility. It might not be safe for me.

  I backed toward the door. Where the hell were the police?

  What was the average response time? Hadn’t I read it somewhere? Surely they’d respond quickly to a call that someone had been shot.

  I remembered stories I’d heard, people waiting forty-five minutes or longer for help. People dying before anyone arrived.

  I couldn’t hear a sound. Maybe the theater was empty.

  I took a few steps forward, being careful not to step in blood. I listened, heard nothing. I took a few more steps.

  I made slow progress down the short length of hall. My own noises—shoes on linoleum, fast breathing, heart in my ears—were the only ones audible.

  The corridor led to a locker room. It was littered with street clothes and duffel bags. I walked through it to a room resembling a walk-in closet. It was hung with gauzy feather-trimmed capes and spangled minidresses. High-heeled shoes, mostly black patent, formed untidy rows.

  Beyond these changing rooms was an area of pulleys and ropes and black-painted floor strewn with lipsticked paper cups and open Coke cans. Chairs were draped with costumes. In front of me was an open black curtain. Five or six feet beyond it was a closed curtain.

  I made myself walk toward it. I could stand here endlessly debating. Action would be quicker, maybe even less nerve-racking.

  When I reached the second curtain, I took a steadying breath. I didn’t want it shaking when I parted it.

  I slipped my hand in at eye level. I moved it just enough to look through.

  It was a slice of the Main Room, with its four rows of seats in front of the strippers’ stage. The seat directly in my line of vision was occupied. I could make out a sliver of stretch lace: one of the dancers. Wearing some kind of mask?

  I wanted to believe, at that moment, that things were normal. That the dancers were sitting there unwinding; that’s why they hadn’t come out. That the locked doors had been a silly misunderstanding.

  But I parted the curtain farther and learned better.

  There was more than one dancer in the audience. The ones in my view were taped to their chairs with silver cloth tape, rows and rows of it wound around the seat backs. But that part was okay, that could be viewed with only moderate horror.

  Their faces were wrapped with duct tape, too. They were completely covered over. Where features should have been, there was only silver, gleaming dully. Silver like opaque veils or metal gauze, like tin masks: my brain tried to make it into something I could comprehend.

  The swaddling was convex at the nose, slightly concave where their mouths should be. It flattened their hair, pushing it into disheveled eruptions on top.

  Blank masks. As if their faces had been glazed away. Lusterless silver, like unfinished robots.

  I couldn’t seem to avert my eyes.

  I stepped through the curtain. Later, it was this action, more than any other, with which I reproached myself. To step into a room of bound, possibly dead people when not all the room was within view—the stupidity of it stunned me, later. The stupidity of it crawled into my nightmares with me.

  It was a thoughtless surge of action, an oh-my-god of forward movement.

  As soon as I was onstage, I became vexed by regret and dread. I was no neophyte, to rush into dire situations. In that apex of reproachful terror, I forced myself to walk to the edge of the stage and look down.

  All six seats in the front row were occupied. Six nearly naked women were trussed there. The middle two slumped against each other. The others’ heads lolled forward or backward. Only one sat more or less upright. She’d managed to squirm low in her chair despite the bindings. Her head was braced against the seat back, silver mask tilted toward me. A clotted red trickle traced her throat and cleavage. Adhesive binding pulled away the scant cup of her bikini.

  Immobilized in provocative lingerie and gleaming facelessness, the dancers might have been performance art: The Interchangeable Women.

  Immobilized. I felt myself yank invisible bindings from my arms. My father had left me with my “Aunt” Diana one winter while he traveled to Italy to sell his ancestral home. She’d caught me trying to sneak out a window, and she’d bound me to a chair and railed at me half the night while I bruised and bloodied myself straining to lunge at her.

  I couldn’t bear to feel trapped, to feel helpless; had to stifle screaming rage at the mere thought. I didn’t dare imagine how these women had felt.

  I don’t know how long I stared at them. Long enough for the stench to reach me. Mingled with the smell of sex and sweat and cigarettes were the contents of relaxed bladders and bowels.

  Only then did I rouse myself to help them. To make the gesture, though I believed it was too late. Though I presumed they were dead, suffocated under airless layers of duct tape.

  When I started toward the stage stair, I finally heard the sounds I’d been listening for: loud footsteps, male voices
. And then a cessation of noise that told me the body in the corridor had been discovered.

  The police. I’d asked 911 to send help to the rear entrance of The Back Door. The police had arrived.

  Hadn’t they? I stared at the shackled, featureless women and thought, What if it isn’t the police? What if it’s the people who did this? What if they’ve come back?

  My flesh went painfully cold. What if the people who did this found me here? What if they taped me, too?

  I stumbled down the stage stairs, shaking, panicking, trying to be silent. I couldn’t let that happen, couldn’t take the chance.

  I tripped toward the bound women. But I didn’t stop to help them, I didn’t try to pull the tape from their faces.

  Whoever had arrived would be in here soon, maybe momentarily. If it was the police, they’d undo the bindings. If it wasn’t, then, oh god, I had to get out of here. I had to get out of here now.

  I heard a sound behind me. I wheeled, cursing the hesitation that had cost me my choice. I expected to see someone—maybe the police, maybe the killers— pushing through the curtain.

  But the noise came from some distance behind it, perhaps from the changing room. Whoever had entered appeared to be moving cautiously. Surely that was a good sign? Surely it meant the police had found the dead man in the hall and were proceeding cautiously until reinforcements came. I should stay here. I should wait.

  But if I was wrong, I could end up like the dancers, squirming in agonized suffocation.

  I knew the way out.

  I tried not to look at the mostly naked, very still flesh in the front row. I sprinted out of the Main Room and into the front corridor.

  It was eerily bright, utterly empty.

  In the lobby, I sank to my hands and knees, letting the ticket counter shield me from view.

  Was I being stupid? If it was the police in there, they’d question my flight. It could play havoc with my career, maybe get me arrested.

  I heard commotion in the Main Room. The bodies had been discovered. Or, having found the back empty, the murderers were no longer attempting to be quiet.