He was taken home and given a sedative and slept for ten hours. Then the cops were back, requesting that he guide them to the house where the party had taken place. He was driven around in a squad car for hours, but he couldn’t remember where it was.
“Are you sure there was a party?” questioned a suspicious detective. “Are you certain there was a house?”
After three fruitless hours they drove him back to the police station, where he was given book after book of mug shots to look through. He didn’t recognize one face. Finally the detective decided he should see the body. Together they went to a cold tiled room that smelled of formaldehyde and death. The ghastly smell made Buddy’s nostrils twitch and his stomach churn.
The detective was casually matter-of-fact as he instructed a white-coated pathology assistant to show them the body. A steel locker in the wall was pulled out, and there lay Tony, naked and dead, his lifeless body covered with purple bruises and weals.
Buddy stared, unable to believe that he was being made to look. Then he started to cry, great racking sobs. “I’m gonna throw up,” he mumbled. “Get me out of here, please! Get me away.”
The detective made no move. “Take a good long look. That could’ve been you, boy. And don’t you forget it.”
Buddy threw up all over the floor.
The detective gripped him by the arm. “Let’s go find that house. Maybe seeing your friend has jogged your memory.”
He was never able to locate the house or identify any of the men at the party. Tony was buried, and after a flurry of outraged publicity the case faded from the headlines. Just one more unsolved murder.
Only this particular unsolved murder changed Buddy’s life. Where before, life with his mother had been smothering, now it was impossible. She did not leave him alone for a second, forever smoothing his hair back, stroking his face, clinging to his hand.
He slept uneasily in her bed, keeping as far away as he could from her fussing petting hands.
She questioned him constantly. “Did those men try to put their things near you?” “Did they undress you?” “You know it’s not normal—two men together.”
How dumb did she think he was? He knew it wasn’t normal. In fact, he knew what was normal. He was beginning to eye the girls in class, and getting a hard-on just thinking about what he would like to do to them.
No chance; there was no escape from his mother, he couldn’t even jerk off at home. He had to content himself with furtive sessions locked in the can at school with a faded Playboy centerfold for company.
By the time he reached fifteen he had his eye on a girl named Tina. He wanted to ask her for a date, but it was impossible. His mother allowed him no freedom, and when he complained, she just fixed him with a hurt expression and mournfully said, “Remember Tony?”
So it was down to grabbing what opportunities he could. Tina was not averse to his attentions, for Buddy was certainly the best-looking boy in school. They indulged in heavy petting sessions during lunch recess in the science lab, which was never used at that time of day. Tina had pert breasts that he loved to feel, and in return she massaged him to orgasm on a pile of Kleenex.
“I think I love you, Buddy,” Tina sighed, after several months of this activity.
“I think I love you, too,” he dutifully replied, hoping that this meant she was finally going to let him “do it.” He had her blouse and bra off, and now he fiddled with the catch on her skirt while she gazed passionately into his eyes.
Her skirt dropped to the floor and quickly she said, “I’ve never done this before. Have you?”
“No,” he replied truthfully, rapidly pulling down her panties before she changed her mind.
“Oh!” She shivered. “Take your clothes off too.”
She didn’t have to ask him twice. He was so excited he felt he might ejaculate there and then before he even got it in. He pulled down his pants and ripped off his shirt.
Neither of them heard the principal enter with two sets of parents he was showing around the school.
Many recriminations later, his mother arrived to collect him, her mouth set in a thin, furious line. She had words with the principal, then drove Buddy home in silence.
Once at home he escaped to his room. At least his mother would not want him in her bed tonight. He had never seen her so angry.
He undressed and climbed into the narrow bed he was so rarely allowed to use. His stomach ached and he thought about Tina, allowing his hands to travel beneath the covers and play with his erection.
The light was switched on so suddenly his hands froze, as did his hard-on.
His mother stood in the doorway, clad in a long robe, her cheeks flushed, her dark eyes glowing. “So,” she murmured huskily, “you wanted to see what a woman’s body looks like, did you? Well, see then.” With one gesture she shucked off her robe and stood before him naked.
His own mother! He was shocked and horrified, and even worse—aroused.
She walked toward the bed and ripped the covers down. His new erection could hardly be hidden. Lightly she began to caress it.
He was so confused. He wanted to cry or run. But instead he stayed perfectly still while she touched him. It was as if he had drifted out of his own body and was merely an onlooker.
She climbed on top of him and guided his penis into a warm wetness. So warm, so wet, so good. And he knew he was going to come any second, and it was going to be better than it had ever been before with any of the paper Playboy girls, or with Tina and a wad of Kleenex. And ohhh, ahhh. . . .
“You’ll never need anyone else but Mommy now, will you, Buddy? Will you?” she crooned softly, her voice full of gloating satisfaction.
He left in the early hours of the morning while she still slept. Only this time he was smart. He cleared her purse of two hundred dollars and took several pieces of expensive jewelry.
This time he was really going. And no way was he ever coming back.
• • •
Outside Frances’s office he extracted a stick of gum from his pocket and checked out a tall redhead walking into the building. An out-of-work actress, he could tell. They all had that same half-desperate look in their eyes as if they would do anything for a role. And most of them would.
He rolled the gum over his tongue and walked slowly to the parking lot in back. Buddy had the perfect Hollywood stud walk, part Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, part Gere in American Gigolo. He knew he looked great. He should—he had worked hard to capture that lazy horny hip-swaying thrust. He could have played the hell out of the guy in Gigolo. He had lived the part, for chrissake. In the eleven years he had been on his own he had lived most parts.
“Hey, Buddy. How ya doin’, man?” Quince, a black actor friend of his, slapped palms as they passed. “Frances in a good mood today?”
He shrugged. “She’s gettin’ there, but I wouldn’t do handstands.”
“When did you get back, man?”
“A day or two ago.”
“So stay around, we’ll share a cappucino. I got a wild new fox nibblin’ at my breakfast crunchies, one you have to meet, a real peach. And she has a sister.”
“Some other time. I gotta see a guy about a series.”
“Sure, so like later. Give me a buzz and we’ll get it together. Drop by Maverick’s one night.”
“I’d like that.”
They slapped palms once again and went their separate ways.
Buddy pulled up the collar on his leather jacket and headed for his car. Why hadn’t he told Quince he was married? Why did he wish he hadn’t told Frances? He wasn’t regretting it, was he?
Hell, no. But a guy had to promote a certain image, and his image was that of a sexy macho stud ready to do anything and go anywhere at a moment’s notice. Somehow a wife just didn’t fit the picture.
He started the old car and tuned to a rock station. Angel was hardly a wife to be ashamed of. She was young, beautiful, and pure. Kind of a funny word, but how else could you describe a gir
l like Angel? Most of the stuff running around Hollywood was into everything and everyone by the time they hit twenty. Angel was different. But how to keep her that way in a town crawling with creeps?
Right now that wasn’t the problem. The immediate problem was scoring some bucks. Angel thought he was a winner, and no way was he going to let her think otherwise, even if it meant falling back into bad habits—only on a temporary basis, of course.
He put his foot hard down on the accelerator and headed toward Beverly Hills.
6
Millie Rosemont mumbled in her sleep and threw her left arm restlessly across her husband.
Leon lay on his back and stared unseeingly at the ceiling. Carefully he moved his wife’s arm and turned to look at her, willing her to wake up so that they could talk. She did not budge. Silently he slid from the bed, padded into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and stared mournfully at the contents. Six eggs, a bowl of apples, some skim milk, and a dish of cottage cheese. Some feast. But then he was supposed to be on a diet, and Millie was only helping him keep to it. Over a three-month period he had put on twenty-four pounds. A steady two pounds a week. He felt big and ungainly, not.to mention the fact that the waist on his pants had had to be let out three times, and his jackets and shirts were bursting at the seams.
It was Millie’s fault. She was a sensational cook.
It was his fault. He ate like a pig, especially when he had something on his mind.
He took out the cottage cheese, got a spoon from the drawer, and sat down at the kitchen table. There was no denying it, he did have something on his mind. The Friendship Street murders—three people hacked to death for no apparent reason. And one of those people was pathetic little Joey Kravetz.
The newspapers had described her as a “beautiful teenage model.” If a victim was under thirty and female she was automatically described as beautiful, it made better headlines.
Model, my ass, he thought. And he should know. He felt anger and frustration every time he thought of Joey and her bloody mutilated body. Joey. She was only a kid.
He remembered their first encounter.
• • •
“Lookin’ for games, mister?”
Leon could not believe he was being propositioned. He glanced around, convinced the baby-faced hooker in the black fake-leather mini-dress and ridiculously high wedges was talking to someone else.
The street was deserted.
“How old are you?” he asked incredulously.
“Old enough!” She winked cheekily, and he noticed a distinct cast to her left eye. She couldn’t be more than fifteen, sixteen at the most.
“So—waddya say, cowboy?” She placed her hands on her hips and grinned at him. “I can show ya paradise!”
“And I can show you my ID. I’m a detective.”
The grin faded. “A cop? Aw sheet.” She cocked her head to one side. “You’re not gonna pull me in, are ya? I mean, we was just talkin’. I didn’t offer you nothin’ ”
“Where do you live?”
She wasn’t sure if he was accepting her original offer or planning to book her. “I gotta go,” she whined.
“You live with your parents?”
“I ain’t got no parents, man. I’m eighteen. I can do what I want.”
“And I can take you to the station and book you for soliciting if I want.”
She stared down the street and contemplated making a run for it. But he was a big guy and would probably catch her, so she stuck her thumb in her mouth and chewed on it. “Tell ya what. I’ll give ya a freebie,” she said after a moment or two.
He wondered if he should take her in. Not that rounding up underage hookers was his job. But Jesus! He was a cop. You had to have some sense of responsibility, and she was only a child.
“I think you’d better come with me,” he said wearily, and gripped her by the skinny arm.
“Motherfucker!” She kicked him hard on the shin, wrested her arm free, and ran.
He rubbed his ankle, watched her clatter wildly down the street, then limped to his car and sat thoughtfully behind the wheel. He would give the information to Juvenile; they’d pick her up in no time.
• • •
Angrily Leon spooned bland cottage cheese into his mouth. Joey. What a terrible waste.
In his mind he reviewed the case on the vanished Deke Andrews. So many people interviewed. So many different opinions. Deke Andrews was remembered as smart, dumb, rude, polite, aggressive, a troublemaker, a loner.
The list went on and on, and no two people agreed.
Fact: He was a car nut.
Fact: He had shoulder-length hair. Big deal—he probably had cut that off the moment he ran.
Fact: He was sallow complexioned, six feet two inches tall, thin but strong.
Fact: He was not successful with women. Of the four girls tracked down whom he had dated, not one would admit to sleeping with him. Indeed, not one had even ventured on a second outing.
“Why?” Leon had questioned.
“Dunno.” Girlish shrugs. “He was just sort of . . . weird.”
They all had variations on the same theme. So add weird to his list of outstanding qualities. A young, apparently healthy male, and they could not find one girl he had screwed. Logical conclusion—he slept with hookers or was gay. So that must be where Joey came in. But why had he taken her home with him? And why had he indulged in such a passionate orgy of killing?
As the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, Leon tried to get a picture in his mind of Deke. But there were so many contradictions it was impossible. Only the facts were clear. The Andrews family had moved into the house on Friendship Street over twenty years before. Their background was a mystery, they seemed to have sprung from nowhere.
Deke went to junior high, graduated from high school, took a job in a garage, and stayed there until the murders. Then he vanished, taking nothing but a carryall and the secret of what had precipitated his acts of violence.
Inevitably new cases came along and the Friendship Street murders became less important. The press stopped mentioning them, because all at once they were old news.
At police headquarters the file was still open, but it was no longer hot. Other cases came and went. But Leon was not prepared to let this one fade away and become just another dusty file. Most of all he was not prepared to forget about Joey.
Millie walked into the kitchen, her face swollen with sleep. She swooped on the dish of cottage cheese as though it were contraband. “And what do you think you’re doin’, Leon Rosemont?” she demanded sternly.
Millie slept naked. For her trip to the kitchen she had not bothered to put clothes on her lovely black body. Leon felt his first arousal in weeks. He grinned and rose from the table.
Her eyes were immediately drawn to his erection. “My, oh, my!” she drawled. “So that’s what I gotta do to get you sexy. Just take me some cottage cheese to bed!”
He laughed with her, followed her into the bedroom, and was not embarrassed by the roll of fat around his middle as they began to make love. With Millie everything was natural. She was the warmest human being he had ever encountered.
He remembered the first time he had set eyes on her. She had been a schoolteacher then, and she had brought a group of youngsters to the precinct for an outing. Some outing. Hookers screaming obscenities. A pickpocket or two getting booked. A few gang members with their heads busted open. And pimps and pushers and undercover cops and muggers and car thieves and junkies and rape victims.
Just a normal day on the job.
She was dark of skin and soft of voice. Her eyes were brown and kindly, her lips wide and sensual. He was fifty years old and he had been divorced from his first wife, Helen, for years, so there was no reason why he shouldn’t find out her number and call her. A month later they were married. And for three years they had been very happy indeed.
Millie sighed and rolled over. “That was real gooood!”
“It was real
fast too,” he apologized.
“Not my fault!”
True. What had happened to his control? Millie didn’t seem disappointed; in no time at all her breathing was deep and even and she was asleep.
Leon lay there wide awake, his mind back on Deke Andrews. He was out there somewhere. Somewhere in the black night. Somewhere . . .
And he, Leon Rosemont, would have to find him. For Joey’s sake.
7
“Str . . . eee . . . tch. That’s it, ladies. Put something into it. One more time. Come on now—str . . . eee . . . tch.”
Elaine thought she might have done herself permanent damage. She lay on her stomach in a large workout studio with thirty other women, most of them in impeccable shape. Her right arm was behind her clutching desperately to the ankle of her left leg. Every muscle in her body was on full alert. It felt terrible.
“Okay, everyone. Let it go. Relax,” the instructor said. As Elaine slumped flat on her face she wondered if he was gay. He certainly enjoyed inflicting pain. She stared up at him from her prone position. He wore a yellow leotard, black leg warmers, and a striped scarf. His crotch bulged disconcertingly. “Is he gay?” she whispered to Karen Lancaster, who lay beside her.
“I expect so,” Karen answered. “All the pretty ones are nowadays.”
“Okay,” said the instructor. “I want you to join me in a little something called the Snake.”
“The one-eyed variety, I hope,” murmured Karen wistfully.
Disco music blared as thirty almost perfect bodies writhed across the floor on their stomachs.
Elaine joined in and inexplicably began to feel incredibly horny. All that pressure on the clit. And no action from Ross in God knew how long, although he was due back from location that very afternoon, and maybe, if she was very very lucky . . .
I want to come, she thought, right here and now. She gazed at impossible crotch and shuddered and wriggled to a quite satisfactory climax while the music blared and the slight smell of sweat filtered in among the heavy scent of Joy and Estée and Opium.
“Oh God!” she exclaimed.