Shade of Pale (8 page)

“So?” Dolly chewed her gum vigorously. “You lookin' for a date or somethin'?”

Dolly Devane was a pro. In New York City that was a high-risk proposition. Life was never dull, or life was always dull, depending on how she looked at it. But Dolly knew what men wanted and what they would pay for it. She did OK.

Thin, with decent looks and a few shreds of her dignity still intact, when Dolly looked in the mirror she didn't see a whore; she saw a survivor. She was nineteen years old.

“Turn around,” he said. “I want to see your ass.”

She did. The streets had no shame; besides, Red didn't seem so bad, considering. She'd done worse. In thirty minutes she'd be out on the corner again, so what's the difference?

Way past having to justify her work, all Dolly knew how to do was take care of business. Fast. She was good at it. Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am.

There are a lot worse things than flatbackin'
, she told herself daily.
At least I ain't a junkie, like most of the other girls on the street
.

“Hey, I like that.” Red nodded. “So give me a number, ho. I ain't got all day.”

Dolly popped her gum again, which she could tell was beginning to annoy Red. It annoyed most people. “Seventy-five for a gummer, a hundred and a half to stick it in,” she said with a voice as hard as uncracked pavement.

“That's a little pricey, ain't it? How do I know it's gonna be worth it?”

“Oh, you'll know, honey,” she rasped, flicking her tongue for punctuation. “I'm the absolute best. Ask around.”

“I did. You're Dolly, right?”

Dolly stopped chewing. “Uh, yeah.… Who told you about me?”

“A buddy of mine from uptown. He said you were quite a ride.”

“You sure you're not a cop?”

“I'm definitely not a cop.”

Dolly was looking harder now, at him, up and down the street, at the cars, at everything.

Then she said, “You got money?”

“Yeah, I got money, but I think a buck fifty's kinda high. I just want to rent your ass, not buy it.”

Dolly turned away. “Then skip it, OK? I got regulars. I don't need this shit.”

“Hold on a second. Let's just say I paid the tab. Where would we go?” Red asked, sounding suddenly upbeat.

Dolly turned to face him again, her face petulant. She stored the gum in her cheek and rummaged around in her purse for a cigarette. “I got a place up the street.”

She fished out a Marlboro and lit it with a neon pink disposable lighter.

The man with the red hair smiled. “You gonna chew that gum and smoke at the same time?”

Dolly exhaled. “I've got a very talented mouth. What did you say your name was?”

“Red.”

“OK, Red. Let's see the cash.”

He pulled a wad of fifties out of his pocket and flashed it in her face.

“Good enough?”

“Good enough.”

“I just got one question. My buddy says you shave your pussy. That true?”

“Yeah, nice and smooth.”

“Well, then. Let's go.”

Red slipped an arm around Dolly and pulled her toward him, his fingers casually kneading her buttocks, like a man checking a melon for ripeness. It was something he'd been wanting to do since he'd begun to stalk her, about a week ago. Dolly didn't know it, but Red knew a lot about her: her streets and corners, where she turned tricks, where she ate, where she lived, who her friends were, everything you could possibly glean about a whore by watching her for a period of time. Dolly, on the other hand, knew absolutely nothing about him.

When Red spoke, his voice hissed like a broken steam pipe an octave below the words. “I'm lookin' for some strange,” he said again.

Dolly twisted away and took a step back. “What do you mean, strange?”

“Strange pussy.”

Dolly laughed. “Is that what they call it now? Well, if you like it strange, I got some high-class strange.”

Red nodded, his eyes shining mischievously. Dolly felt the uncomfortable heat of his gaze penetrate her flimsy blouse.

He liked hookers. You paid them, they treated you nice. As long as the meter was running they loved you; when the time was up they didn't know you anymore. Red thought that was a real good arrangement. He could look in his wallet and see how much love he could buy. There was no commitment or guilt, just accounting.

“All right. You want strange?” she said. “I'll show you strange, but …”

She turned to face him, stopped walking for a moment, and placed a hand on his sleeve. “Just one thing. No rough stuff. I'll get as strange as you want, but no hurting, got that?”

“Oh, there's no pain involved.… No pain at all, baby. I'm not into that,” Red answered. There was something in the tone of his voice that made the brown roots of her bright red hair prickle.

The shadow of a second thought flickered across Dolly's face, and as if he could read her mind, Red held the wad of money up and fingered it in her direction. It looked like more than it was.

Dolly's attention flashed to the cash. “I got protection, you know.” Her voice tried to muster all the street conviction it could. “Some real bad dudes.”

“I don't doubt it.”

Earlier in the day, watching Dolly from his unseen vantage point, he had shot a few pictures of her. Satisfied that she was suitably photogenic, he hungered.

They walked past the street people and garbage cans toward the Star Hotel, a run-down establishment that rented rooms by the hour or by the lifetime, whichever came first.

As they passed an alley, Red happened to glance down into the shadows, past a row of overflowing garbage cans, and saw an extraordinary woman.

Her flaming red hair caught his eye. When he focused on her, her beautiful, wan face seemed to glow like winter moonlight.

She stared at him, her big eyes wet and accusing. His heart fluttered, and he shivered slightly.

Who is this bitch? Why is she staring at me? Does she know who I am?

He felt a peculiar moment, as if a tendril of energy had darted out from her and stung him. She pulled his attention away from Dolly and held it, locked onto the other woman's ghostly face.

He almost stopped walking, almost took a step toward her.

Then he noticed pink tears unevenly bisecting her pale visage.
She's crying, and her makeup's running
. But the moment he thought that, his mind rejected it.
There's more to it than that. Why are her tears pink? What kind of makeup does that?

He got the uncomfortable feeling that she could look inside him, that his dark desires were, to her, laid bare. A flicker of fear fired through him, resonating harmonically between the recesses of his troubled soul.

What the fuck?

This ain't right
.

Why is she standing in that alley?

And why is she staring at me?

She was doing something with her hands. Red squinted into the shadows to see. The rest of the world seemed suddenly to melt away, the city and its noise, and Red was suspended in a dream.

He walked now in slow motion, time stretched like just before an accident. The rest of the universe slowed, too. Then he realized what she was doing with her hands.

She's combing her hair
.

The mystery woman's eyes followed him as he crossed the mouth of the alley.

Red didn't like the way she made him feel.

He got the notion that she could read his mind, and it made him extremely uneasy. His heartbeat accelerated, in weird juxtaposition to the leaden slowness of the moment.

The intensity of her stare seemed to create a tunnel vision that pulled his eyes.

Red looked back at Dolly; she hadn't noticed a thing. She walked along, oblivious, a few paces in front of him, chewing a fresh stick of gum and acting like the queen of the block.

As soon as he'd passed the alley, out of sight of those haunted, accusing eyes, he felt better.

Whoever she is, she's got nothing on me
.

He tried to concentrate on Dolly, but the ghostly face of the woman in the alley stayed with him, her likeness burned onto the retina of his mind's eye like a flashbulb afterimage. He thought how unnatural she looked, how disturbing … how white her skin and how red her hair. Pallid as a corpse, yet beautiful. Supernaturally so.

The gothic rock song by Procol Harum, “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” floated through his head, its Hammond B-3 organ throbbing grandly. It was Red's all-time favorite classic rock tune, and now, triggered by the woman in the alley, it flooded his consciousness.

Gary Brooker's tortured vocals bit into Keith Reid's surrealistic lyrics.

“Her face at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale,” Red mumbled.

Red shivered though the night was not cold.

Then it passed.

He shifted his gaze back to Dolly's tight little butt as she wiggled up the street. He blotted out the memory of the beautiful ashen-faced specter and concentrated on other thoughts.

They entered Dolly's hotel and went directly to her room, a squalid little cubicle on the third floor.

His hands began to shake a little as soon as he got past the deserted lobby. By the time they reached the second floor, he was sweating and breathing rapidly. He could smell her perfume, and it intoxicated him like a cheap, pungent narcotic. His hands fumbled in and out of his pockets nervously, unable to settle in one position.

Something dislodged from his pocket and fluttered to the floor. He stopped to pick it up. His hands were numb and unresponsive, and he couldn't get the tiny scrap of paper off the rug. He tried twice, grunting the second time, unable to see exactly what it was he had dropped.

“What are you doing?” Dolly asked. “Come on. Let's keep it movin', OK?”

Dolly turned but continued to watch him out of the corner of her eye.

Red stopped fumbling for the scrap of paper, gave up, and followed her.
Fuck the scrap; it's nothing
.

Dolly led him down a hall and produced a key from her handbag. She stopped in front of a metal door and busied herself with a series of locks. Working from top to bottom, she expertly unlocked each one, swung the door open, and pulled him inside.

He kept close.

As soon as she closed the door behind him, he turned on her.

Dolly's muffled cry was short and terrible.

Red had large, strong, fast hands. They found her windpipe and crushed it easily. Red danced a macabre two-step with her as she twitched and spasmed in death's throes, jerking her back and forth as a shark would shake its prey.

He pulled up a chair, wiped some spittle off his forearm, and sat facing her. She hadn't been easy to kill, and his hands sweated inside the gloves—a problem he'd had before. But as his leather fingertips dug into her tender windpipe and the last frantic gasps came home, he got the killer's rush.

He held her long after she stopped struggling, savoring the passion of the moment. Then he walked her into a chair and stood back, studying the scene.

It was a nice composition—Dolly's arms splayed out and legs akimbo. He liked the attitude. The room was also very good, as if it had been created from carefully collected props just for this shot.

Red sat on the floor and studied it.

His heart beat at an animal's pace. He shuddered violently, locked his knees, hugged himself, then shuddered again. He began to shiver as if naked in the snow.

The killer's rush part two: the shakes.

And as he shook, from far away, he heard it.

A sound rose above the police sirens in the dense urban night, held its pitch for a few seconds, then, unlike the sirens, modulated higher. It was a ghostly wail, standing out against the ambient backdrop of the Gotham night like a neon turd.

Not a machine, not human, not animal, not anything identifiable. It kept building in intensity, invading his head, making him anxious.

He sat upright, ears piqued, and listened until it faded back into the sound of traffic.

When the terrible frost passed and his breathing returned to normal, he removed a pocket-size digital camera and began to photograph Dolly. As he meticulously lined up her close-ups he began to whisper intimately, to tell her things. His voice was low and nearly inaudible, but he kept on talking to her as if she were still alive and really listening to his encouragements.

“That's it. Beautiful. Once more. Oh, yes. Keep it up. Very nice.” The camera clicked discreetly.

He enjoyed the challenge of working with the existing light. The room was wonderfully seedy, in careless disarray, scattered with a whore's collection of junk.

“Oh, that's good … no smile please … a little pout perhaps.” He stepped forward and pinched her lips fuller.

“Good. Now let's try it with the rope.”

He took a length of smooth black rope from his coat pocket and looped it around her neck. He twisted it and pulled until it cut into her skin. When it was partially embedded, he stopped and admired his work.

“Looks downright nasty,” he said. “I love it.”

He posed Dolly in various positions for another ten minutes, taking dozens of exposures. She looked great in the viewfinder, with the vacant eyes and slack expression only death can achieve.

Satisfied now, he prepared to leave.

Scanning the room for anything he may have inadvertently left behind, he remembered the tiny piece of paper that had fluttered from his pocket back in the hall.

Convinced that he'd left no trace here, he slipped from the room and tiptoed down the hallway.

He bent over and searched the carpet. There was no sign of whatever it was that had fallen. In the dim light, it was impossible to distinguish one bit of paper from the other filth on the floor.

He was about to drop to his hands and knees when he heard someone coming. He walked briskly down the stairs, away from the noise, and kept going.