Leather Maiden

  He came over and looked at what I had been looking at. “Now there’s something you don’t see every day,” he said. “You hear me calling, man?”

  “Of course.”

  Booger wasn’t paying attention anymore. He was looking at the squatting shape.

  “I know her,” I said. “Tabitha.”

  “Read about her in your notes. Saw her in the photo. She was the one supposed to be kidnapped.”

  “Guess she was at that,” I said.

  “What’s that?” Booger said, pointing to the envelope on the ground.

  “It was inside her skull,” I said, picking it up.

  Booger nodded. “There was someone out here with us, you know that? He got me confused in there. Cut back on his trail and I lost him. Got me going in the wrong direction for a while. I didn’t think anyone could do that to me, trick me that easy. Hey, what’s wrong with your side?”

  “You know that someone out here with us? Me and him met.”

  “Shit, man. I’m sorry.”

  “Saw him cross the trail, went in after him a little ways, decided it wasn’t such a smart idea after he punched and kicked me. If you hadn’t yelled, he might have finished me. But what I really think is he doesn’t want me dead. Not just yet. That would take the fun out of whatever it is he thinks he’s doing. He wanted me to find what I’ve found. I bet he’s got other plans for me. And now you.”

  “I see him again, me and him, we’ll have a meeting of blood and bone…I guess the game is afoot, huh, bro?”

  “Sherlock Holmes,” I said.

  “Damn skippy. Read him when I was in the orphanage.”

  That was the first I’d heard of the orphanage. Booger was slow to deal out facts about his life.

  “We have another address to check,” I said.

  When we got in the car I opened the envelope. Inside were some religious tracts. About how Darwin wants the world to believe we came from monkeys and isn’t that a crime. There were others that looked to have been printed about 1950, and they showed caricatures of blacks as monkey-like; one black man had his arm around a character that I assumed was Darwin. There were pamphlets of a more recent vintage that railed against the mixing of the races. There were also flyers about the speech that Reverend Judence would be making at the university. Outside of it all being hateful and stupid, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

  I handed it all to Booger, then studied the map from the glove box while he looked over the material I had given him. I put the map away and drove us to the next address quickly.

  As I drove, I felt more and more uncomfortable. The location was near where Belinda lived, but when I finally turned on the street I needed and away from her place, I began to feel a little better.

  We drove down into the black part of town, a very poor section about three blocks from where Belinda lived. There were no streetlights, and the homes nearby were dark. Right at the lip of that section there was a church, a big old white church that was charred on one side from fire and had a sign out front that said FIRST BAPTIST. It had a high tower that stood above it all and there was a window in the center of the tower that looked out at the night, and a big white cross at the peak. The fire appeared to have happened some time ago, and though it had smoked the building up good and burned it badly on one side, the other side seemed intact.

  I parked at the curb and we walked across the moonlit, windblown grass on the front lawn. The grass had grown up high and was wet from the rain and sprouting some tall sticker burrs that we avoided.

  “Man, we’re just right out here in the open,” Booger said.

  “I know, but I’m not feeling all that sneaky.”

  We went to the front door of the church and pushed against it, but it was locked. We went around back and tried the door there, but it was locked too. I knew we could get in on the burned side without a lot of effort, as there were gaps in the wall there, but I wanted to stay out of the soot, which was damp from the recent rain and which would stick to us like ink to blotters. It seemed a funny thing to be concerned about right then, but it was in my thoughts nonetheless.

  We found a window we could force up, and crawled inside.

  There was a pile of pews. Half the place was charcoal. Across the way, it looked as if the fire had cut the wood in the shape of teeth rising up from the floor. You could see through those gaps and what you could see were a bunch of dark homes and a dark street that looked to have last been paved about the time pigs flew. A good wind and all of it on the burned side could topple like a smoldering fireplace log, and what made me nervous was we were having just such a wind. On the side that wasn’t burned, the windows rattled in their frames like maracas, and the air still smelled of charcoal and soot.

  “When did this place catch fire?” Booger said.

  “I don’t know exactly. Dad said it could have been arson.”

  I found a little narrow stairway that went up. I hesitated for a moment, but there was nothing else to see anywhere. I took out the .38 and looked back at Booger.

  “I’m going up,” I said.

  “I’m not stopping you.”

  I went up. On the stairs, about halfway to the top, I could see where the skein of a spiderweb had been snapped and someone had gone through. I climbed into the room above. The smell of smoke was strong there. It had gathered into the lumber thick as the paint, even though there was only a slight bit of burn damage on the far right wall. The stench made my nose itch and my eyes water. Underneath it was an even more unpleasant odor.

  I was still standing at the top of the landing, blinking through smoke-watered eyes, staring at something by the window, when Booger got there.

  Booger looked too, said, “I feel like I’m in a Hardy Boys book.”

  I guess they had those in the orphanage as well.

  We eased over to the chair that was in front of the window. The underlying stench became less underlying. In the chair was a human shape, but there was little human left of it. A telescope was mounted on a tripod in front of it, pointing out the tower window.

  I moved around so I could see the thing in the chair. It was a woman, withered and near mummified like the other; another leather maiden, like the title of the Jerzy Fitzgerald book. The hair was mostly there, and it was long and black as a raven’s wing. The upper teeth showed where the flesh had dried and drawn back, and I could tell that beneath the yellowed skin there was some kind of frame, like before, wire or wood. The breasts were stuffed and knotty and misshapen. The legs had nothing in them. They were just skin, dangling like empty stockings over the edge of the chair. It was Ronnie, pretty much as she had appeared in the photograph that had been sent to me. Her head, like Tabitha’s, had a cut line.

  I took a breath and took hold of her hair and lifted up her skull. There was another envelope inside.

  Booger reached in and took it out and I set the skull cap back in place.

  Booger opened the envelope. He looked inside. He made a grunting noise.

  I took it from him and read it. It said:

  DON’T BUMP THE TELESCOPE. LOOK THROUGH IT AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU SEE.

  I got hold of the chair Ronnie’s remains were in and moved it back so that I could get to the telescope. A corpse without its insides is very light.

  When I finished moving her, Booger took out a handkerchief and wiped down the chair where I had touched it. He studied the corpse, said, “Looks like she’s been frozen and stored in salt. There’s still salt in her hair, and the rest of her looks and smells like freezer burn.”

  “What she smells like is dead,” I said.

  “I had some fish sticks went bad smelled like that.”

  I turned my attention to where the telescope was pointing. There was smoke and dust grimed over the other windows in the church, but this one had been cleaned, and I could even smell a bit of window cleaner in the air.

  I didn’t touch the telescope, just looked through it. It wasn’t an expensive telescope, but it was power
ful enough, and for a moment I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. Then I realized exactly what I was seeing. A slow warm horror settled over me.

  A few blocks over. Belinda’s house. It was lined up dead center in the telescope.

  37

  We parked at the rear of Belinda’s house, at the curb. It was dark behind the windows. When we got to the back door, Booger used his little lock pick and it opened easily. This time I had my flashlight, and I moved the beam around as we walked inside. The house was silent and there was a kind of emptiness about the place, like a funeral home. There was a faint smell of the bread candle in the air. I hesitated a moment, and then I couldn’t help myself; I said, “Belinda?”

  I turned to look for Booger, but he had already gone deep inside and was moving through the dark like, well, like a copper cat.

  I turned on a light. Booger was standing in the open bedroom doorway, blocking it. He said, “All we needed was you banging some fucking cymbals and blowing a kazoo with your asshole. Man, don’t lose your focus, woman or no woman. Come here.”

  I followed him through the doorway, into Belinda’s bedroom. The bread smell was strong in there, and the door to the bathroom was open. Booger went over and leaned against the doorjamb. I peeked in. There was water in the tub, some soap scum on the water. There was a throw-away razor on the edge of the tub along with some kind of shaving gel. There were splashes of water all over the floor.

  “She’s in here getting a bath, shaving her legs, and they came in on her,” Booger said. He went over and sat on the edge of the tub and dropped his hand in the water. “Water’s still warm, she just ran it and had most likely got in. The floor’s wet, so they pulled her out. Gals don’t like to get out wet. They dry.”

  “Damn,” I said, and I felt my knees get weak.

  “No time for that shit,” Booger said. “Let’s check the place good.”

  We went into the kitchen. I saw there was a note propped up on the kitchen table. I had seen it earlier, but it hadn’t really caught my eye, as I was looking for Belinda.

  I eased over and took it and opened it. Unlike the others, it was written in a tight little script by someone who fancied themselves stylish.

  It read:

  WE KNOW A LOT ABOUT YOU AND A LOT ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO KNOW YOU, AND WE HAVE BORROWED ONE OF THEM. WE WANT YOU TO KNOW WHAT YOU’RE UP AGAINST AND TO UNDERSTAND THAT WE ARE ABSOLUTELY RUTHLESS AND PROUD OF IT. SHE MIGHT BE OKAY AND SHE MIGHT NOT. WE ARE THINKING OF REMOVING HER BRACES WITH PLIERS AND EXTREME PREJUDICE. GO HOME. AWAIT INSTRUCTIONS. SHE RESTS IN THE TRUNK OF OUR CAR FOR NOW, BUT THAT IS NOT AS DARK AND AS TIGHT A PLACE AS SHE MAY END UP. SKIN COMES LOOSE EASY WITH THE RIGHT KNIFE AND PLENTY OF EXPERIENCE.

  I sat down in a chair at the table. Booger came over and picked up the note and read it. “Look here,” he said. “She’s dead, she’s dead. If she’s alive, we got a chance to get her back. I don’t know her and it’s not anything to me, but it’s something to you, so that makes it my business. Now get your shit together and let’s go to your place and wait for instructions.”

  I nodded.

  Booger clamped his hand down on my shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Just like when we was over in Sand World, you got to cinch up your drawers and get to cracking before you get a bullet in the head and your pants fill with shit. Got me?”

  I nodded again and got up. Booger drove us back to my place.

  When we opened the door and turned on the light, lying on the floor, near the motorcycle, was yet another note. It had been slipped under the door.

  “These fuckers are quick,” Booger said. “A little too quick.”

  “There’s more than one,” I said.

  “Yep. And they stay in communication by cell phone. People sneaking around behind my back, it chaps my ass, partner.”

  I read the note. It said: “Call this number.”

  I studied the number, then called it.

  There was an answer right away. A man’s voice, almost singsong-like.

  “Mr. Statler. You have been drawn in, and now that you are in, I should tell you that we have captured your queen.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said, although I did.

  “It’s a game, and your brother brought you in, and then you became a player in the game. But that’s all you are, a player. A pawn. A knight maybe. There are others and you don’t know their will, and you do not know our purpose.”

  “Belinda has nothing to do with this,” I said. “Actually, neither do I.”

  “She is with you, and therefore, by extension, she is in the game because you are, and we have decided you have something to do with it, and that is good enough.”

  “A wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse, huh?”

  “Exactly,” the voice said.

  “Let her go, and I’ll take her place.”

  “Doesn’t work that way. And another thing, you have brought another player into the game. The high yellow you got with you. Intriguing, isn’t it, that we should know so much? We know a lot about you because we have been watching you. Acknowledge to him that we know he is there.”

  “He knows you know, and he doesn’t give a damn,” I said.

  “Acknowledge.”

  I paused and said to Booger, loud as I could: “He says I should acknowledge that they know you are here, and that you are a high yellow.”

  “I think I’m more copper-colored,” Booger said.

  “Okay,” I said back into the phone. “I told him, and I owe you one for the punch in the face and the kick in the ribs.”

  “You hear quite well. Perhaps you have good instincts. Perhaps it’s your time in Iraq that has made you alert, paranoid maybe. But remember, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you. Now, we will trade your brother for the girl. We consider him a more important piece in the game.”

  “Who’s we?”

  The voice on the phone laughed. “Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it? That would ruin the game.”

  “This is no game, buddy,” I said.

  “Sure it is. Sooner you figure that out, the better, because all that matters is how you play the game. There is no purpose to life, Mr. Statler. There is only chaos from which you can create purpose, and a game is as purposeful as you can get. There is no real reason anyone feels for anyone other than the lie we tell ourselves. The lie where we make importance out of the simplicity of emptiness.”

  “You ought to put that last line in a fortune cookie,” I said. “The rest of that shit, it would take a whole box of cookies to say it. And it would still be shit.”

  “Insults,” the voice said. “I’d save them right now. I was saying how you failed to take no for an answer, when in the end a no is as good as a yes. Humans are fools. They try and jump-start the dead; dead people and dead ideas. We convince ourselves there is more to our life than there is, and truth is, we are nothing more than empty shells motivated by some kind of electrical current. To make it through the years, we create games. The success game. The marriage game. The war game. The life game. The race game. The religion game. That’s okay. I play them all, to some extent. Or have played them. But the difference in you and me is that I know I’m playing.”

  “What do you really want?” I said. “Because if you want my brother, you won’t get him. I couldn’t give him to you if I wanted to. He went out of state and didn’t tell me where, and I told him not to tell me.”

  I tried to tell the lie as convincingly as I could.

  The voice on the other end didn’t speak right away. I could hear him breathing, though.

  Finally the voice said, “I’m going to accept that, because we only wanted him so we could have all the game pieces, but you, you have become one of the most important players in our game.”

  “I thought I was an insignificant pawn,” I said.

  “Not anymore. As for your brother, we will, at least for the moment, consider him removed from the board.”

  “Then what’s the new
plan?” I asked.

  “We want you to wait. And this phone. It’s a one-time shot, baby. When I hang up I destroy it. You can’t find me by this phone, and if you want to stay in the game, you got to hang tight. Hang tight and wait for instructions. They will come soon. Don’t call the cops. Keep the high yellow out of it. One false move, and this pretty girl of yours, who, by the way, is without clothes, only a bathrobe, will be a whole lot less pretty. So again, wait for instructions.”

  “I hope the instructions will be briefer than the line of shit I’ve been hearing.”

  “Have you ever seen a woman skinned?” the voice said. “It is quite a process. And the women, they are very noisy during the process.”

  I was about to respond when the connection was dropped.

  “Sonofabitch,” I said, and raised the phone to toss it, then thought better of it. I closed it and shoved it into my pocket.

  “Well,” Booger said, stretching out on the couch, “we got plenty of beer.”

  I was sitting in my one really comfortable chair, having just explained to him in a nutshell all that had been said to me.

  “There’s nothing funny about this, Booger.”

  “Am I smiling?”

  “You are.”

  “You know me. I get curious, I smile. First thing I’d consider is how much this gal means to you. She’s just like a good poke, well, they’re making new pussy every few minutes.”

  “What in hell are you saying, Booger?”

  “I’m saying, she don’t mean that much to you, me and you can pack up your car and go back to my bar, or damn near anyplace you want to go until the money runs out, then we can make some more and go somewhere else.”

  “It’s not like that for me,” I said.

  “I know it isn’t. But I had to say it. Thing is, I understand what the guy told you. He makes sense. It’s true.”

  “Sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about things, stuff he says makes sense,” I said. “Rest of the time, not so much.”