Waltz of Shadows

4

Bill paused his story, took a deep breath. He looked clammy, like a man coming down with the flu. He glanced at the tattered carpet and dropped the butt of his cigarette there and put his heel to it. He had been doing that all through his story. The odor of smoke and burned carpet floated up, touched my nostrils, and went away.

He shook his cigarette pack. It was empty. He wadded it up and tossed it on the floor. He looked at me. “I’m gonna talk some more, I’m going to need some wine. My throat’s getting dry.”

I got the wine bottle and gave it to him. He took a drink from it, made a face like it was vinegar, set the bottle on the carpet next to the pile of cigarette butts.

“I tell you, Uncle Hank, whole thing was over, and I got to thinking on it, I began to feel good about it. Not mad anymore. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t want to do it again. But I wasn’t mad. We went over to Dave’s place and watched it on video. I’ve never been so turned on in all my life, seeing me and the others on film. Shots of the train coming, throwing out its light. The sounds of mine and Sharon’s breathing and that train whistle, it was some kind of aphrodisiac.”

“I’ll stick to oysters,” I said.

Bill picked up the wine bottle and took a long gulp. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said,” Don’t worry, Uncle Hank. I’m coming to the photo book. What I know, anyway.”

“Time you get there, I’ll be too old and blind to look at the pictures-provided I really want to.”

“I tell myself I don’t want to look at them either, but I keep looking. Last night I got up and went to the bathroom, got to thinking about that damn book lying in here, and I came back and turned on the lamp and sat there and looked at it for a half hour before I went to bed. Had bad dreams. Told myself never again. But this morning, before I called you, I got it out again.”

Bill shook the wine bottle and turned it around and around in his hand. “I should have told that Dave sonofabitch, all of them, goodbye. But I didn’t. I felt initiated into something. How many guys you know have got off with a N to bthat Da beautiful woman to the thunder and lights of a speeding train?”

“Want the short list?”

“Exactly.” He finished off the wine, and continued his story.

· · ·

So I’m hanging out with them, and one day we’re over at Dave’s apartment, and he says out of nowhere, “Now’s the time.”

Just like that. “Now’s the time.” And everyone goes quiet. Dave could do that to you. He was a psycho, but there was something about him. Just his voice could pull you up straight.

He starts laying out what he’s got in mind, and if ever I was born for a superior stupid moment, I was agreeing with what he wanted. His idea was we kidnap someone. Not kidnapping the way you’re thinking. Not for money. Least it wasn’t for money at first. And the plan wasn’t to keep them for any real length of time. Sort of a thrill kidnapping. That’s why I agreed to it. I thought of it as being pretty harmless.

Dave said he wanted us to pick some guy who looked kinda stiff. Someone this kind of thing would really jack around. Not that anyone I can think of, except maybe the crowd I was running with, would get a kick out of being kidnapped. But he thought we’d grab a real straight and give him a serious thrill. Make him think we’re gonna do something drastic. Scare him good. Then we’d paint his balls blue, and let him go. I mean, literally, paint his balls blue. Or something stupid like that.

I know, it’s ridiculous. But you got to understand the frame of mind I was in. My whole life, since my Dad’s death, has been kind’a screwed. Mom did her best. I know that. I’m not putting the Indian sign on anyone. I’m just saying, I feel kind of… out there. Like the airlock blew on the space ship and sucked me into space without my suit and I’m gasping for air.

Suddenly I’m getting balled by this gal looks like a movie star, and I’m around people who know how to make me feel alive.

We spent a few days figuring on how to choose our victim. We didn’t want to pick a kid. That was too mean. And what’s it take to scare a kid? No challenge in that. We figured on some guy fat and happy, cruising along with life paying him all the dividends.

Me and Dave were like the scouts for the victim. We decided to go over to the public library every day, hang out there in the morning reading the newspapers, pretending to study our books, and from the windows by the street, we could see Imperial Bank across the way. Figured if we wanted a fat cat, that’d be where we’d find him. Going in and out of the bank.

Me and Dave got our eyes on this guy we’d seen a couple days in a row. Or rather Dave did. He said right away, “That’s our guy.” I guess it was Dave’s show all along. I never got the impression he meant for me to pick anybody. It was always him. He was just letting me and the others go through the paces.

Guy we picked showed up at the bank every day about ten-forty-five. Real straight laced. Looked thirtyish. Well built. Grey suit one day, blue the next. Always a white shirt and a dark tie. Hair cut and combed and sprayed just right. Looked like the kind of guy if he wasn’t doing suit ads in the Sears catalogu Sear and a dae, he’d be reading you the news on TV. I remember thinking he probably had a blond wife with a nice ass and two kids and lived over on the good side of town. Made all the right parties. Most likely had his picture in the paper now and then.

· · ·

We watched till he came out of the bank, then we got in Dave’s car and followed him. Sure enough. The good side of town. You know where that great big house is on the hill overlooking the University on University Drive? One where the property trails off down that deep wooded slope, toward the creek, then rises up high on the other side?

That was the house. We watched our guy go inside, and it didn’t take much for us to figure who he was. It was on his mail box. Guy named Doctor Benjamin J. Parker.

Dave knew who he was, and when he told me, it rang a bell. The cosmetic surgeon. I’d seen the Doc’s ads all over. In the newspapers. On television.

Guy like that, all the titties he’s stuffed, we figured he had money enough to put on toilet rollers for wiping his ass.

Next day, third day in a row, we went back to our post to watch him. When he showed up, we knew we had somebody with a pattern. Ten-forty-five, every work day, this dude was at the bank.

Next time, we were waiting outside the library. Dave had his video camera, and was taping the historical marker by the library. One tells about the Texans turning back the Mexicans during the war for Texas Independence by firing a cannon full of gravel and nails, or beatin’ a hundred of them to death with turkey legs, or some such shit. When Doc showed up, Dave turned and pretended to be taking shots of the street and the old bank front. As he was doing that, he got Doc and this fat guy in the video too.

Fat guy was in his fifties. Gray haired. About five-nine. Must have weighed over two-hundred-and-thirty pounds. Wheezy looking fuck. Walked like he had tacks in his shoes. Wore a red and green suit coat looked like it belonged on a carnival barker. It was oversized in the shoulders so it would button around his fat belly. He had on these lime green pants, and scuffed brown shoes, and these stupid, thin, white socks you could see through. Wore a wide, red and green striped tie like they used to wear in the seventies. Big enough to dry off on after a shower. All that motherfucker needed to make him just right was some Christmas lights.

Anyway, our Doc is going up the steps of the bank, and the fat guy comes out of the bank then, and they nod at each other. Casual like. Nothing overly friendly. Just two guys being polite. Doc reaches into his coat and brings out an envelope, which he drops. The fat guy picks it up, brings it in close to himself, and smiles. Then he reaches out and hands Doc back the envelope. Good Samaritan stuff. Right?

We got home and looked at the video, to show the others that we’d found our perfect victim, and we noticed something funny. We ran it back a few times for a looksee. The envelope the fat guy hands the Doc, it’s not the one the Doc dropped. Doc’s envelope was slightly oversized. The fat guy handed him back a regular size envelope and pushed the other one inside his coat.

It was smooth. Magician smooth. But us running that tape backwards three or four times to get a good look at the Doc, Dave picked up on it, and af Son smoter it was pointed out, we all saw it.

A planned swap if ever there was one.

Next day we went to the Square with the video, took a position down by the old hardware store they’re remodeling, and used that as our focus. You know, like we’re filming some historical bit, which considering all the renovation going on down on Main Street and the Square these days, fits in for a good cover.

Doc shows up like usual, goes in the bank. No fat guy this day. So we don’t take any video. We wanted to know if there was something to really see before we got down to business, this stuff with the envelope being so intriguing and all.

Next day we hung out in my car. Parked across the street from the bank in front of the library. Got the video ready. Doc comes on time, and the fat man’s there again. They go through the same envelope routine. Doc dropping. Fat man picking it up and trading with him.

Comes to us then that possibly the fat guy’s got some pictures of the Doc doing something he shouldn’t do. Maybe when the fat guy switches envelopes, he’s giving the Doc negatives or something.

Whatever reason, this fat guy, he’s got Doc by the short hairs, and he’s giving them a tug, you know. And Doc, he’s got it arranged where he can pay off in a public place so he doesn’t have to be alone with the fat guy. Scared of him, maybe. Something like that.

So, we had a joker in the deck. That made it better. We decided to play the Doc like a fiddle. Kidnap him, make like we’re in with the fat guy. Tell the Doc whatever’s been paid isn’t enough. More’s got to come. Or else. He could make up his mind what “or else” meant.

I was thinking, guy like this, kind of money he’s got, we could put a serious bite on him. Maybe ten-thousand apiece. More. We get our kicks any way we go, and get a little money out of the deal, which personally I could use, and nobody gets hurt.

We set shifts following him. Me and Sharon doing one. Dave and Carrie one. Bob odd man out. Then we’d mix it up. We took turns parking nights down in the University lot so a couple of us could cross the highway, go into the patch of woods and work our way over the creek and up the hill. From there, we could watch the house.

We got damn good at shadowing. Got Doc’s pattern down perfect. Saw he did have a blond wife with a good ass, if no kids, and he and the blonde seemed to run in pretty different paths. When he came home in the afternoon, she went out and didn’t come back until late. Hour or so after she left, he’d come out dressed in tee-shirt, shorts and tennis shoes, and drive over to the Court Club.

Hour or so later he’d come out of there red and sweaty, drive back home. Stay until seven-thirty. Then he’d come out dressed the way he dressed during the day. Suit and tie. Most nights he’d go down to the Chinese restaurant on University.

I ended up following him there and watching him a couple of nights. He took a table at the back, semiprivate, halfway behind one of those screens with the butterflies and birds painted on it. But if you sat up front, looking in the big wall mirror there, you could see a lot of what was going on in the back, behind the partial screen.

Not that he was doing anything unusual. But there was this waitress always waited on him. College girl. Dark haired. Pretty. Tits like zeppelins. She talked to him extra friendly-like, showed a lot of teeth. They got pretty handsy now and then.

Didn’t take a genius to see something more than polite conversation was going on. Whenever he got ready to leave, he scooted a fifty dollar bill under his plate. I know, ’cause on my way to the restroom I took a look.

Saw too he wasn’t any thirty years old. He was quite a bit older, but those workouts kept him pretty well preserved, that and the fact I figure he’d had some of his colleagues pull his face up and tie it behind his ears.

After the restaurant he’d run a few errands, then go home. About midnight, the wife’d come home. Early in the morning, two or three, Doc’d go out the back door and down the hill into his private park in the woods by the creek. There was a wooden bridge over the water and stone seats and figures that look Oriental in design. There was a roofed, three walled pavilion.

Me and Sharon were the ones found the park, since we were the first ones to get the duty of hiding out back of Doc’s house. Finding the park was a neat surprise. The night was comfortable and the moonlight coming through the trees was kinda sexy. There were spots you could see through the woods and down the hill, watch car lights moving along University Drive, and beyond that, you could see the lights of the University itself.

It was like a little Never Never Land in the middle of the city. Protected from all the jokers down there that had to work and struggle to buy shoes for their kids and pay their electric bill. It was sweet and comfortable.

Me and Sharon were supposed to be watching the house, but I got to tell you, that time of morning, the whole idea seemed pretty stupid. We figured it was just Dave’s way of playing Secret Squirrel. So we sat on one of the benches there and got to necking. Few minutes later we heard brush breaking. Someone was coming from the direction of the highway, heading up the hill toward us.

We got behind some brush and laid still and peeked out. We heard someone cross the bridge. Pretty soon we could see her. It was the waitress from the Chinese restaurant. Big Tits.

She moved up the hill toward Doc’s house, and that’s when we heard someone coming down the hill toward her. Doc, of course. He had a bundle of blankets with him. They hugged and kissed and went down to the pavilion. He rolled out the blankets on the floor and they got naked and fifteen minutes later you could hear that pussy poppin’.

Me and Sharon laid there a long time, quiet as the dead, and watched them. Finally, they finished up and got dressed. Doc gathered up his blankets. They kissed, said something we couldn’t hear, and Doc went up the hill and Big Tits went across the creek and out of sight.

We crawled to the top of the hill and watched Doc go into his house, through the back door which he’d left unlocked. Then we went back down the hill, giving Big Tits plenty of time to get away. We went to my place and did some momentous fucking ourselves. Next morning we reported to Dave what we’d seen.

That’s the way it went all work week. Same schedule. Doc wrapping up each day doing the belly rub with Big Tits. Sth ng oWeekends, the Doc and his wife went around town together, shopping, the movies, eating out, that sort of thing. But it was all business, no smacky mouth, no holding hands. Two blocks of ice couldn’t have had less fun than those two.

This Doc, I had to admire him. Hours he kept, action he was getting, way he kept on keeping on. He had some kind of constitution.

After we got the Doc’s schedule down, Dave told us plans had changed again. We were going to jump the doctor in his house. We weren’t going to kidnap him and we weren’t going to do anything childish like paint his balls blue. We were going to point a gun at him and get some kind of payment plan going. Really scare him by making him feel vulnerable in his own home.

I didn’t like the idea much. Especially the gun part. Even if Dave said it would be unloaded. And I thought everyone else was taking this change of plans a little too smoothly.

Following Doc around, playing private detective was all right. The rest of it, I didn’t want to go through with. But I kept telling myself it would be okay. And there was the money, and I couldn’t stop liking that part.

Way we planned to do it was like this: We’d wait until the Doc left the house early morning to go down to the park to saddle up Big Tits, and since he always left the back door unlocked, we’d slip inside and wait for him. Jump him and talk our trash. Try to keep it quiet like, so as to keep the Mrs. out of it. But Dave said, she heard us, then too bad. We’d bring her into the business too. We figured she wasn’t going to go all to pieces we threatened to show her some photos we didn’t have of Doc dropping his goober in Big Tits. Pretty obvious she and the Doc weren’t cozy, but it was also pretty obvious she wasn’t squawking all that much about the arrangement, long as he was discreet. But word got out he was doing what he was doing, the local Baptists who hadn’t been caught in someone’s bed could cause repercussions, could affect her meal ticket.

Night before it all went down, we quit following the Doc. We felt we knew his agenda. We went over to Dave’s place and got drunk and toasted one another. About midnight, me and Sharon went back to her place, tried to make love, but she was too drunk, and finally passed out.

I did too. For a while. But it didn’t last. Normally I get drunk like that, I sleep like the dead, wake up with a head the size of the panhandle, only with a crack in it. But this time I woke up about three a.m. and couldn’t go back to sleep and my head didn’t hurt. I didn’t feel drunk and I didn’t feel hung over. I felt frightened.

I didn’t go to bed that night or the next day. I felt like I’d never sleep again, and wouldn’t need to. I was running on high octane.

The night came to do it, we put on gloves and dark clothes, but nothing cute like black wool hats and blackened faces. We drove over to Dave’s in my car. We bagged up some rope and tape. Dave got his automatic and pushed a clip into it.

Things had changed again. I didn’t like that. I told him if he were going to take it, he ought to take it unloaded, use it as a bluff. But he wouldn’t do it. Said if he talked to this guy like he was going to shoot him, he had to believe he had something to shoot him with. The method acting approach.

We waited unt SWe had il the Doc normally went down to the park, then we drove over to the University lot and parked, got our bag of rope and tape and a flashlight, crossed the highway, walked along the border of the woods, up to the Doc’s property. It was bright enough we didn’t have to turn the flashlight on at all.

We weren’t too worried about anyone seeing us. All the houses up there are large and on big tracts of land, so we didn’t have to go across anyone’s yard to get to the Doc’s place, and the angle of attack we were taking didn’t make us highly visible.

We eased along the ridge where the hill dropped down into the Doc’s private park. We stopped and listened. We didn’t hear him and Big Tits down there, but we didn’t worry about it. We knew his schedule. They were probably just getting started, groping each other under a blanket. We went on ahead to Doc’s back door and Dave tried it. It was locked.

We didn’t know what to do. We’d planned everything down to the last detail, and now this. The Doc had changed his plans this night after being consistent for so many, and we didn’t have a backup plan. We stood there like idiots, trying to figure what to do next.

There was a scream from inside. It was short and ended almost before it started, but there was no doubt that a scream was what it was. Dave pulled his automatic out from under his sweater and looked at us and we looked at him.

I guess we stood there a full minute, looking at each other’s hangdog faces in the moonlight, not knowing what to do.

Suddenly, the door opened and a man was standing there looking at us. He was as startled as we were. He was real tall and broad shouldered and pale skinned and his head was shaved and there was a gold and blue tattoo that ran up from under his blue wind-breaker and along his neck and the side of his face and draped over his head. It was the tattoo of a cobra rising up to strike, and its fanned head terminated at the top of the guy’s bald head. We could smell the guy. He had a stink clung to him like glue.

Dave jerked up his automatic and Cobra Man reached out with a gloved mitt and grabbed the automatic and twisted it out of Dave’s hands and slapped him across the forehead with the grip. This took the guy less effort than it takes to wipe your ass.

Dave went to his knees. A trickle of blood streamed from under his hair and down in front of his ear. In the moonlight and the soft light from inside the house, it looked like a stream of lube oil.

Cobra Man lifted his other hand and showed us he had a silenced. 38 automatic in it. He smiled some gold ridged teeth at us and said, “Come on in, cousins. Good to see you.”

His breath went along with his body odor. It came out of his mouth with his oily voice and caressed us. Garlic would have smelled like a breath mint compared to that shit. Bob got Dave by the arm and helped him up. Dave held his head with one hand and looked wobbly. We all stood in our huddle for a moment, not moving. “I invited you in, cousins, and I meant it,” Cobra Man said. He was pointing both guns at us now.

One by one, we went inside and stood in the foyer, which was about the size of a mobile home Mom and I once lived in. It was partially lit by warm ceiling lights, and the floor was blue and white tile made up like a giant chessboard, and it Sboae live wasn’t our move.

End of the foyer was a huge grandfather clock, and you could hear it ticking softly, like the beating of a heart, but not fast enough to match the beating of my heart. The house was full of Cobra Man’s stench.

The fat guy who had swapped envelopes with the Doc came out of a room unscrewing a silencer from an automatic pistol. There was a Polaroid camera on a strap around his neck. He wore soft, thin gloves. He looked at us and started screwing the silencer back on. He looked at Cobra Man, said, “What the fuck’s this?”

“Visitors,” Cobra Man said. “They were at the back door. Tricker-treatin’ early, I reckon.” Cobra Man smiled like he was really funny.

The fat man came down the foyer and stood in front of us. He looked at Carrie and Sharon for quite a while. Sharon especially. “Who the fuck are you people?” he said to no one in particular.

Nobody answered.

“You guys were going to rob the place, weren’t you?” the fat man said, then laughed. “Well, you picked a bad night for it, little partners. A hell of a bad night. All you peckerheads into the room there.”

We went into the nearest room after Cobra Man went ahead of us and turned on the light. It was a big room with a fireplace large enough to cook a steer in and white curtains over windows the size of ping pong tables. The center of the room had one of those long conference style tables. So long, you sat at one end and wanted to talk to someone at the far end, you’d have to have had a megaphone. Maybe give them a telephone call.

Cobra Man motioned for us to sit on the couch, and we did, our knees and elbows close together, like kids waiting for detention. The sweat started rolling out from under my arms like someone had turned on a faucet.

“What you want to do with them, Fat Boy?” Cobra Man asked.

“I’m thinking on it,” Fat Boy said.

“I think we ought to do something with this nice pussy here before we do something else,” Cobra Man said. “The guys I don’t care what you do, though you want to be consistent, I’ll fuck them too, provided their buttholes’ll stretch enough to take the old snake.”

“That kind of thing’s your department,” Fat Boy said. “I don’t want anything like that with any guys. We do something else here, it could screw things up. I think we got to take ’em out of here before you can do what you want, then you and me got to do what we got to do.”

I knew then, I didn’t try something, it was all over. I panicked. I hopped up and ran and palmed myself onto the long table in the center of the room and dove right into one of the big windows with the white curtains. The jump was close. I just barely made the window.

Hitting those thick curtains and getting wound up in them was what saved me from getting cut really bad. I struck the ground rolling and twisted out of the curtains and started up running, tripped, went down, then something went by my ear like a bee, and then I was dipping down toward the woods and the Doc’s park.

As I got into the pines there, Spinowaa piece of bark jumped off a tree next to me and puffed in all directions, then I was down the hill and tripping over a stone seat, tumbling into the creek. I waded on across and started running through the woods.

Behind me, I could hear someone coming, and I knew without looking it was Cobra Man. He had followed me through the busted out window.

I ducked and weaved under branches and jumped over bushes and briars, hoping if he got off another shot, I’d be a hard target to nail. One thing in my favor was he didn’t seem too good at hitting what he aimed at.

If he fired again, I never knew it. Few moments later I was out of the woods and stumbling onto the highway, not even looking for cars. One went by me and swerved and honked and someone screamed “Motherfucker,” but I was across the highway then, running like hell into the University parking lot.

I didn’t have Dave’s car keys, of course, so I kept running. Across the lot and down into the stretch of woods that grows on either side of Morgan Creek. I went along the creek a while and finally stopped to listen. I didn’t hear anyone following, but I didn’t come out. I laid down in the leaves and tried to be quiet and think.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I hadn’t broken any law, really. I hadn’t busted into the Doc’s house. We had been let inside by a man with a gun.

What was the deal?

What was the fat man, Fat Boy, the other called him, doing there?

Who had screamed?

What in the hell had happened to Doc’s schedule?

And the others, Sharon, the Disaster Club, what was to become of them?

No answers came to me. I lay there and felt the water that had splashed on my legs turn cold. Where I had banged the stone seat with my shin ached like hell. I felt like a coward, running like that, but what else could I do? I figured what Fat Boy had in mind was going to be unpleasant, and had I hesitated one moment longer, I felt certain I would have found out how unpleasant. There wouldn’t have been any getting away.

Finally, couple hours later is my guess, I got my nerve up. I went along the bank where the creek travels through the heart of the University, under the bridge and along these deep concrete channels the city put in for flood control. I came out on the other side of the University and started walking home. I guess I had been down there on the creek bank for a couple of hours, maybe longer, scared, not knowing what to do. I figured now the thing to do was get home and call the cops.

I wasn’t very far from my place by then, and I started walking home. You haven’t seen this place, Uncle Hank, but it’s not the Ritz. It’s over by the University and I moved there when I started school. It’s down in the one area over there hasn’t been upgraded. There’s about six streets with rows of ramshackle, slumlord houses on either side, and one of those dumps is mine. There’s one street light at either end of the street, so unless you’re under one of those lights, or you have a porch light on, way all those oaks and elms along there droop, you won’t see much.

I got to my street and started down it. Dogs ba Sn iyou’re rked at me along the way, and a goddamn bat swooped down on my hair and scared the hell out of me. Time I got to my walk, I was a bundle of raw nerves. Everywhere I looked, I thought I saw Fat Boy or Cobra Man. My empty carport was full of shadows and all of them looked like people with guns.

But there wasn’t anyone. I got my key from under the steps and unlocked the door and slipped inside, still trying to figure what to do next, and it was while I was figuring that the smell hit me. The stink of Cobra Man. I tried to back out of there, but I went back too fast and slipped and fell. I tried to get up and my hand went into something wet. I lifted it to look, saw what I had slipped in.

Blood.

Then, between my bloody fingers, very close to me, I saw a face, eyes poking out of its head like a couple of golf balls with pupils painted on them. A tongue hung way out of its mouth and the teeth were clamped through it. I jerked my hand out of the way for a better look.

It was Dave.

I jumped up and skidded and fell back against the wall and stood there looking at Dave, smelling the blood on me and the sour stink of Cobra Man. I wanted to turn and dart outside, but I didn’t. All the noise I’d made, slipping and falling, it came to me that if Cobra Man or Fat Boy were in the house, they’d have been all over me. And with the front door open, the air had cleared out some of the stink. With that diluted, I felt stronger. I began to believe I was the only living thing in the house.

I slipped into the kitchen for a better look at Dave. He was lying on his stomach and he wasn’t wearing any pants. I could see the tip of an Old Hickory butcher knife hilt sticking out of his ass. He’d been sodomized with it. That’s where all the blood had come from. The knife belonged to me.

There was a coat hanger twisted around his neck so tight most of it wasn’t visible. One of his legs was cocked at the knee, the foot pointing at the ceiling. The other was stretched out on the floor, straight and stiff.

I had a feeling with all his talk about fear and dying, this hadn’t been what Dave had in mind. I think he expected something a little more noble; something not smelling of blood and shit.

Trembling, I went over to the open knife drawer and got another Old Hickory knife, eased around and looked in the living room.

Everything appeared okay, but it was dark enough in there to make me uncertain. I let my eyes adjust until I felt secure no one was hiding and waiting for me. Not that there were many places anyone could hide, small as the room was, and the only major pieces of furniture were a stuffed chair, a television set, and a couch with its back pushed flush against the wall.

I went in and looked around and didn’t see anybody, which of course is what I was pretty assured of, or I wouldn’t have gone in there.

The back door that led out of the living room and onto the little back porch was wide open and there was only the screen door between the room and the night. That door wasn’t much when it was locked. You leaned into it and picked up some, the latch would pop and you could come in. It was a strange time to worry about it, but I remember thinking to myself, after tonight I was going to get some kind of deadbolt and s Seadsn’ome latches for the windows.

I went over for a look through the screen door. The moonlight was falling over the tiny overgrown lawn and there was a dark-haired tomcat sitting on the wooden fence that bordered my yard and the neighbor’s, sitting there with one leg lifted, licking his balls.

I gingerly opened the screen door and went onto the back porch, jumping a little as the boards squeaked beneath my feet and the cat leapt with a surprised yowl into my neighbor’s yard. A dog barked. The cat hissed, and then the dog barked several times, moving away, pursuing the cat, I presumed. Finally, there was only the sound of crickets in the grass.

I went out and stood in the yard and sucked in some of the night air. It was so cold and clean it almost made me drunk. My wet pants legs felt cold as ice.

I went back in the house and noticed for the first time that there was a thin sliver of light slipping out from under my bedroom door and out of a needle thin crack where the door was pushed slightly open. I had concentrated on that open back door so hard, I hadn’t noticed it.

The hair stood up on the back of my neck and I squeezed the handle of the butcher knife so hard I felt it ridge into the palm of my hand, but I couldn’t let go. I kept squeezing, causing a slight cramp to run up my wrist and forearm.

Guess I felt like I had been such a coward before, I wanted to prove myself. Or to be more truthful, fearful as I felt, I didn’t believe anyone was in the house. It seemed obvious to me they had come in by springing the back door, and had brought Dave inside and killed him in the kitchen, which gave me an idea about what I’d find in the bedroom.

I touched the bedroom door and eased it open, stood in the doorway looking at an image in the corner of my dresser mirror. The image of a naked body standing very still. Or I thought it was standing. Another look showed it was hanging from a chinning bar I kept mounted between the frame of my doorless closet. It was a woman.

Her legs weren’t touching the floor. They seemed to be cut off at the knee.

I took in a breath and caught the fading odor of Cobra Man and another odor I didn’t like. I went in, looking in the direction of the reflection.

It was Carrie. Her legs had been pulled up and tied behind her and there was a coat hanger twisted around her neck and there were great strips of hair missing from her bloody scalp. The hair had been ripped out, and the tool for the ripping, a pair of pliers from my kitchen drawer, lay on the floor beneath her. Coat hangers had been taken out of the closet, straightened and inserted into her mouth at the edges of a cloth gag, and into her ears, nostrils, the corners of her eyes, her ass and vagina. Her face was spattered with blood. Her legs were coated with shit.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something behind the open bedroom door. I looked. Sitting naked, against the wall, hands pulled behind his back, was Bob. He had a wet spot between his legs and his dick and balls hung out of his mouth. He had a startled expression on his face, as if he couldn’t believe how things had turned out.

I turned around slowly, not wanting to, having some idea of what I would find, and what I expected was there.

Sharon was on the bed, spread-eagled, ankles and wrists tied up in strips of sheet and fastened to the bed post. Her eyes were wide open and her pink panties were stuffed in her mouth. She had a bullet hole between her eyes. The pillow her head rested on was dark with blood. Her breasts and belly were covered with blue-black spots. Her pubic thatch was no longer blond. It was rich with blood. There was a car battery on the floor and a pair of jumper cables and a pan of water with a wet towel beside it.

That explained the spots on her body. She had been touched up with water and the bastards had fastened the cables to her and given her the juice. At the foot of the bed, between her legs, was an empty soda pop bottle covered in blood, the Polaroid camera Fat Boy had worn around his neck, and an open book-the photo album I showed you.

I went over to see if Sharon might be alive, not that I thought she might be, but I had to know. I touched her neck. No pulse. She was still warm. She must have been the last, and that meant they hadn’t been gone long. A few minutes, I reckoned.

I picked up the book. It was open to the last page. The top two pictures were of Doc’s wife. They were like all the others you’ve seen. One of her alive, one of her dead. I knew then that the scream we’d heard when we were standing outside of Doc’s house had been her.

Below that, same way, pictures of the Disaster Club, ending with Sharon. But why? And why had they left the camera and the book on the bed? And why had they brought the Disaster Club back here to do them in? What was the deal?

I closed the photo album and put it in my jacket pocket. I don’t know why exactly, but I did.

I looked at Sharon again and got sick.

I left out of there and went out on the back porch for some air. I heard something then, turned and looked through the screen, across the living room and down the hall, out the open front door.

A police car, not using its cherries or siren, pulled off the little street and up against my front yard curbing. I saw another come from the opposite direction and park across the street. A door slammed and I saw a cop coming around his car, heading for my walk.

I began to get the picture. Fat Boy and Cobra Man had talked to my compadres, used some persuasive techniques to find out about me, find out where I lived. They’d brought the Disaster Club back here to do their business and they’d left plenty of business around to make it look like this had all been my work. The frame was so good and tight I could feel it fastening around my neck.

I threw the butcher knife away from me and bolted for the fence and grabbed the top of it and pulled myself over. The dog the cat startled wasn’t there. I guess he was still chasing the cat. I ran across my neighbor’s yard, through another, and on out to the highway.

I went across the highway and walked down to a convenience store and called a taxi. Can you believe that? A fucking taxi? I wasn’t exactly thinking right then.

While I waited for the taxi, I pulled up my pants legs and tried to pick window glass out of my knees.

The taxi came and I got in, hoped in t Sn, div›he dark the driver wouldn’t see how bloody I was. I figured, with my dark clothes, and the blood dried on me, it wouldn’t be too noticeable. I had the driver take me here. I had seen this place before and thought it was the kind of place you might come to if you didn’t want anyone to ask questions.

I had enough money to pay the taxi and two nights rooming. After I paid the taxi, I took off my jacket and wiped as much blood off of me as I could with that, left it by the corner of the motel and went inside and gave the name Jack Frame, paid up, and didn’t get asked any questions. I got the room key and came back for the jacket.

I came in here and tried to go to bed, but couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned and went out to the vending machines and got an orange drink, and later a Coke. Then I got some cigarettes and newspapers, like I really wanted to catch up on the fucking sports. I thought about calling the police. But the more I thought about it, less I liked it. Fat Boy and Cobra Man had me by the balls, and I didn’t even know who they were or how to explain what me and the Disaster Club were doing at the Doc’s house.

While I sat and smoked and thought, another truth came to me. Something I always knew deep down and wouldn’t accept.

Dave had planned to kill the Doc, his wife too. I’m convinced everyone knew the certainty of it, but me. It was like the night they took me out to the tracks and pulled the trick with the train. I was the patsy then, and they had plans for me again. This time, I was to have been the patsy to murder. They would have killed Doc and his wife and did me in and made it look like I came in to rob the place and got caught. Made it appear me and Doc killed one another. Me nailing him with the automatic Dave would leave in my hand, and Doc nailing me with… I don’t know, a fire poker maybe, supposedly right before he keeled over dead of a gunshot wound.

I began to feel that was the score all along, and the only reason I’d been brought into any of this in the first place. They’d laid out their plan for murder and a patsy before they ever met me. They may not have known who they were going to rob or kill, or who the patsy would be, but the plan got laid out and I got the patsy role and Doc drew the victim card. It was all so neat and well designed, just the way Dave would work it. Disaster Club business.

But it all backfired. They got killed and I got away, and then I got framed for their deaths. Something ironic in all that, I’m just not sure what.

Anyway, that’s about it, Uncle Hank. I haven’t been anywhere since then but here, and I haven’t slept or had anything on my stomach but that orange soda and that Coke, and I didn’t keep either of them down.

I think about what the Disaster Club planned for me, and I feel sick. Then I think about them in my house, all messed up like that, and I feel sicker. And finally, I think about how it looks like I did it all, and I feel sicker yet.

Christ, Uncle Hank. Help me out here. Tell me. What am I gonna do?