I walked out into the lot and threaded my way between car corpses and flashed the light around. I hiked to the creek, and looked along the bank. I found some skid marks where someone had slid down the side of the bank and into the water.
I flashed the light on the other side of the bank. I could see where someone had scuffled to gain a footing. A little to the side of that scuffle, I could see huge footprints imbedded in a sure footed manner in the mud. The footprints and scuffle marks, like the blood on the rod, had obviously been put there after the rain. Again I realized how close I had been to strolling up on a debacle.
I crossed the creek and went along carefully and didn’t find any other sign in the dark. I didn’t go as far as the pond. I cruised back the way I had come and crossed over the creek, wondering if Arnold was lying dead back there in the weeds somewhere, or maybe at the bottom of the pond?
I walked out to the barn and looked in there. The wrecker had flat tires. They had thought of everything. Gone about it all as methodically as a tree surgeon. From the dog and the transportation to the torture hanging of Bill.
As I considered that torture, the reasons behind it, other than the fun Fat Boy and Cobra Man andp hemight have had, an impression as cold as the tip of a frozen ice pick jabbed into the fore of my brain.
“Sweet Judas,” I said aloud, and tore out of there, running for my truck.
20
I drove fast along the wet-slick blacktop, on out to the highway, then I drove faster, right on through town. No cops flashed their cherries at me.
After what seemed like an ice age, I came to the road that led to our subdivision, and as I did, a million images rushed into my head, all of them bad.
I assumed that Bill’s killers had asked him a few questions. Things like who he’d told about seeing Fat Boy and Cobra Man at the Doc’s house, and where did those people live?
And Bill would have talked.
When I came to our drive I killed the lights and made the turn. I drove slow. It was dark up the drive and the trees were thick and looped with shadows.
I drove halfway up the drive without going off of it or running into a tree. I pulled into one of the concrete outlets we had constructed for extra parking, and scrutinized the house.
The windows were dark. Not a trace of light. That made some sense. It was the kid’s bedtime, but still early for Bev. Then again, Bev was expecting me home, and there might be nothing more going on than her lying in our warm bed waiting for me, everything all right, nothing but pleasure to look forward to.
But I didn’t really believe that.
I tried not to think too hard about my kids or Beverly. I had to be focused. I reminded myself that whoever came into the house would have to visit with Wylie, and when Wylie didn’t know you, he wasn’t very neighborly.
I decided I wouldn’t take the shotgun. If nothing was wrong and I came into the house brandishing it, I’d scare Bev. The handgun I could carry in my pocket, and I was also aware of the kids and what stray buckshot might do.
I put the flashlight in my coat pocket and took a deep breath and got out of the truck and pulled the .38 from my pocket. I moved swiftly, staying with the shadows as much as possible. I went around to the side of the house, my ears big as pie plates, my nerves sanded down raw and red and responsive.
No noise.
No impressions.
To go into our house through the back way, you can go up a covered ramp from the garage, or you can take the stone steps that meet the ramp from the side. Then you go through a screen door and onto a screened back porch. The back door to the house is there.
I went up the long ramp and through the screen door, and hadn’t gone but a few steps when I saw the smear. It was dark and wet looking.
I followed it with my eyes and saw something lying on the far side of the screened in porch, and I knew what it was without really looking, but I got the flashlight out of my pocket and snapped it on anyway.
Wylie shhe piookowed in its beam. His mouth was covered with blood and his gut was ripped open and his stomach swelled out of him like a helium balloon. I could smell the hot gaseous odor of his in-sides. He made a whining sound and thumped his tail once and lay still.
I went over and bent down and touched his head.
“Good boy,” I said. I could see up close that his belly had been sliced open as neatly as you might slice the length of a watermelon with a carving knife.
Wylie moved his mouth slightly as if he wanted to stick his tongue out and lick me. I rubbed his head and stood up and went away from him. There was nothing else I could do. I felt the rage grow inside me like a tumor. I tried the back door.
It was unlocked, smeared with blood. I used the light and saw that the door had been jimmied, most likely with a crowbar. Same way Arnold had snapped his way into those apartments that night.
I figured when my invaders broke their way into my house, Wylie barked. But not for long. He’d have gone straight for the throat of whoever was at that door, and whoever was there had taken Wylie out, the way they had taken Arnold’s dog out. Swift and easy. Pulled him onto the back porch and gutted him, left him to die slowly.
But if there was a bark, perhaps it had given Beverly an edge. There was an automatic .32 on a shelf upstairs, the clip in a drawer in a box under lock and key. It had been put that way for the sake of the children, so they couldn’t get to it. It was a complicated process designed for their safety, but perhaps, had she heard the bark, realized what was happening, she could have gotten to it.
I cut the light and put it in my pocket and switched the .38 to my left hand and wiped the sweat off my right palm onto my pants, switched the gun back and wiped my left hand the same way. The revolver felt as heavy and clumsy as a Christmas ham.
I slipped through the washroom and stepped on Wylie’s porcupine. It squeaked.
I froze. Listened.
No movement.
God, had they come and gone?
And if they had, what had they done?
Oh, Jesus Christ. Don’t think about that. Concentrate. Keep your mind on what you’re doing. Nose forward, ears back.
I went on through the kitchen and around the counter and into the living room, then the smell hit me. It was the smell that had underlined the stench of Bill’s shit back at the double-wide, and suddenly I knew it was the stench Bill had described as coming from Cobra Man.
The smell was strong. Very strong. Stronger than at Arnold’s place. A primal fear went through me. The same as when you’re in the woods, along the riverbank, and the whiff of a water moccasin comes to you. Oh, they’ll tell you snakes have no odor, and perhaps they’re right, but the stuff they crawl in, that river bottom mess, the leaves, the dankness of the forest, it certainly has a smell, and on a snake it has a distinctive smell, no matter what the experts say, and many is the time I’ve smelled it and felt the fear go through me like an electric shock, and nearby, a big fat moccasin full of poisn fey craon would ooze out from beneath a log and cross my path.
I had the same sensation now and I turned quickly toward the hallway and brought the gun around and a shadow came loose from the darkness and hit my arm and slammed it against a book case and the gun went from my hand and a row of books came flying out and hit me in the face, and then the shadow came closer and the moonlight through the huge glass windows showed me a different moon, the moon of a tattooed face.
In that moment I saw the face was almost perfectly round and hairless and there was a great blue and gold cobra tattooed along the side of the neck and face and it rose up on the bald head as if to strike. It looked very real, and the man’s eyes were not too unlike the eyes of the tattooed snake. Dark and flat and emotionless. And then I saw more than the face. I saw all of him and he was very big and he was on me.
I came around with a left and hit the face and it went back into the shadows and bobbed back and I hit it again, but this time he slipped my punch and a hand like a robot claw grabbed me by the throat and picke
d me up and slammed me against the wall and he used his leg to sweep my feet from beneath me and drop me on my ass. Then he was crouching in front of me and I felt the sharp point of a knife poking at the hollow of my throat, opening a spring of blood that flowed down my neck and inside my shirt.
“You got to take it easy now,” said the Cobra Man. “You got to maintain some cool. You wake the little ones up… two of them ain’t there? You wake the little ones up, I got to do them like the dog. You seen the dog?”
He waited.
He actually wanted an answer.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Then you know I can cut, baby. I can cut. That dog, though, he bit me some. Look here.”
He showed me his knifeless hand. It was wrapped in a bloodstained white cloth. No. Not a cloth. It was a pair of Beverly’s panties.
“You just got lucky with the dog,” I said.
“Naw. I can’t always be lucky. I get lucky with you too? I don’t think so. I think I’m good, that’s what I think. That was a good punch though.”
He touched under his right eye with the bandaged hand. “I used to box and I been hit some. I can take a punch. But that was a good punch.”
The moonlight showed that where I hit him was puffy, but above that, over his eyebrow, was a nasty explosion of a wound; all pink and swollen, the lips of it peeled back as if ready to let out a flow of lava.
He knew what I was looking at.
“Ah, this,” he said, and touched it. “You’re not that good. Fish hook. That brother of yours. Or did Nephew Bill say he was a half brother? Real talker that nephew of yours. You stick your thumb under his balls and push up, he talked good. Come on. We got to see your wife. Fat Boy’s giving her a massage.”
I tried to jump him, but he jerked the knife from my throat and jabbed it under my chin and shoved it in slightly. I barked in pain, not only because of the cut, but beca cu hiuse he had driven it right into the nerve there. This guy knew what he was doing.
“Got to be quiet now,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to wake the children up. Though I really don’t mind. It’s Fat Boy minds. He’s got plans. I’ll wake anyone up. I don’t mind a little activity. You got a little girl, huh? What Bill said. I like a little girl. I’d oil her ass and spin her around on my dick. Slap her so hard it’d make her spin. I’d have me some fun, I’m tellin’ you.”
“You piece of shit,” I said.
He grinned at me. “You get up now and come quiet with ole piece of shit. Ole piece of shit whipped your ass, didn’t he?”
I got up carefully, the knife beneath my chin helping guide me to my feet. When I was standing, my back against the wall, he lifted the knife some more and brought me to my toes. I tried to think of something to do, but nothing seemed smart at the moment. I had to hope for a window of chance, and when I saw it, I had to take it.
“We got to go upstairs now, Hanky. See the wife and Fat Boy. He might want me to put some lotion on her. You get around there in front and I’ll take up the rear. You feel a little poking at your ass, don’t worry none. That won’t be the knife. I’ll keep that in your back. Got me, huh?”
He leaned his head toward me and put his lips to my ear. His smell made my stomach roll. The knife probed deeper and more painfully into the hollow beneath my chin. My eyes welled with tears. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of crying out in pain this time. He liked that too much. It turned him on.
He said, “We get up there, see what kind of fun Fat Boy and the wife’s having, you might want to grease up for me. Let me get a little chocolate on my sausage. I ain’t queer, but I like to stick my dick in warm holes. Know what I mean?”
As I took position in front of him, he prodded me in the back with the knife and I went forward. I walked toward the stairs, my knees weak, my throat dry. My mind raced for some kind of plan, some solution, but I didn’t find any.
Cobra Man put a hand on my left shoulder, and with the other he poked the tip of the knife just behind and below my ear. His smell was overwhelming.
“What do you bathe in?” I said. “Piss?”
He pricked me with the knife, said, “I can make Ole Man Knife fit right here. Like a sheath. Believe me on that, Hanky. You don’t talk no more unless you’re talked to. Okay? You see the wife, and then we’ll see how you talk.”
We went upstairs. The bedroom door was open. A light clicked on at our arrival.
“On inside, my sweetie,” Cobra Man said. “We got to move things along.”
21
Inside the room the reading light behind the bed was on. The sheet and blankets had been pulled off the bed onto the floor. Beverly lay naked on the bare mattress. Her arms and legs were spread wide, as if to accept a lover. Her wrists and ankles were bound with white cotton rope and the rope on both sides extended beneath the bed. A red rubber ball was stuck in her mouth. A single sts trip of white adhesive tape went over that and around her cheeks and behind her head. Her eyes were wet with tears and the tears rolled off her face in what looked like slug tracks. Her liquid pools of fear had dampened the mattress on either side of her face. Her breasts, stomach, pubic hair and thighs glistened with baby oil.
Fat Boy had a chair pulled up next to the bed. He was sitting there with his legs crossed. He was dressed in a very old leisure suit. It had once been bright crimson, but was now a kind of mottled pink. It was frayed around the sleeves and ankles. He had on an emerald green shirt and a little black string tie. He wore white, low-top tennis shoes and white socks. He had a small bottle of baby oil in his left hand, which was resting on his crossed leg. His right held a .45 automatic with a silencer. He had the .45 extended so that the tip of it lay between Beverly’s legs, touching her vagina. The curtains on the big glass windows were pulled open behind him and in the distance I could see the bone-white filigree of occasional lighting.
“Howdy, howdy, howdy,” he said, and grinned at me. “A goddamned big howdy to you.”
Cobra Man brought the hilt of the knife up quick and clipped me behind the ear and knocked me to my knees. “Say howdy,” he said.
“Howdy,” I said. All sorts of things came to me to say. Like: Don’t hurt her. Let her go. Leave us be. But I knew none of them were worth saying. I also sensed that any sign of weakness or pleading would merely put fuel on the fire. I started to get up. Cobra Man put a foot in my back and pushed me back to my kneeling position.
“I like you there,” he said. “You hit a little too hard not to be there.”
“This woman,” Fat Boy said. “This wife. Man, you got some good taste in women.” He moved the silencer along her vagina, into her pubic hair, and back again. “She’s got some kind of cunt on her. Me and Snake here, we’d like to use it a little. We was wondering if you’d give us permission.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What say, Mr. Movie Man?” Cobra Man, or rather Snake, said. “What’s the score? You gonna invite us for a little your wife’s pussy, huh?”
Fat Boy laughed. “That’s some question to lay on a guy, ain’t it? Hey, listen here. It’d be good, I know. Snake there, he’d like it if it wasn’t good. He’s fucked everything but a hot watermelon in the field, and he’d’ve done that had there been one warm enough for him.”
“Warm don’t matter,” Snake said. “I’d fuck ’em cold. I just ain’t had the time is all.”
“Hell,” Fat Boy said. “Ole Snake, he’s fucked chickens to death even. Haven’t you, Snake?”
“I’ve busted a few eggs in my time,” Snake said.
“Hell,” Fat Boy said. “He don’t have to fuck ’em to death. He can stink ’em to death. Ole Snake comes into a room, you don’t have to be facing him to know he’s there. But he can still sneak up on you, can’t he?”
I caught Beverly’s eyes and my soul went small and black. Her eyes told me she wanted me to do something. That’s what John Wayne would haveynelig done. That’s what any movie hero would have done. But I was Hank Small and I was a real man, not a hero. One wrong move
and we were both dead. Then the children.
“I bet you’re puzzled all to shit,” Fat Boy said. “One day you’re living all right. Putting your meat in this.” He laid the automatic on Beverly’s belly and used his hand to rub her mound, eased his finger down and pushed inside her so hard she jerked.
“You sonofabitch,” I said. “Keep your goddamn hands off her.”
I had to let out with the stupid stuff after all, but I couldn’t help myself. I saw Fat Boy’s eyes light up like a pinball machine. He grinned at me.
Snake bent forward and jabbed me a short chopping blow with the knife hilt, right where the neck and the back bone connect. I felt a temporary surge of paralysis, then the feeling broke loose and my head fell forward to the floor. When I tried to lift my head, it was as if I were lifting a bowling ball. I raised up painfully, and looked.
Fat boy moved his hand, picked up the automatic and laid it in his lap. He held the baby oil bottle sideways and squirted a long stream of oil on Beverly’s navel.
“Yessss.” Fat boy said. “Right in there. Two points. I did one better than that earlier. Hit her direct on the left nipple from here ’fore you came up.”
He sat the bottle on the floor, twisted and reached across with his left hand and began rubbing the oil in slow circles on Beverly’s stomach. He looked at me while he did it. Tears streamed faster from Beverly’s eyes. She tried to squirm away from him. My shirt was wringing wet with sweat and my bowels felt loose. I felt as if my soul was almost too small to be measured.
Fat Boy smiled. He liked what he was doing. He turned sideways in his chair so he could do it better. He kept his right hand dry and on the automatic in his lap.
“You had it made,” he said, not looking at me, still rubbing Beverly with his left hand. “The good poke. Job that gave you a lot of time. Good money.”
He glanced around the room, out the window.