Bad to the Bone (31 page)

“Now, let’s talk about your problems,” Craddock said mildly.

“Fuck you.”

“Shi-i-i-it,” Wendell interrupted. “Lemme teach this white bitch some lessons about disrespectin’ her superiors. Bitch got herself a attitude that don’t fit her position. I fix it so’s when you say ‘hop,’ she say, ‘on yo dick or on yo face.’ ”

“I don’t think so, Wendell. Remember, Betty’s an insurance policy, not an experiment. Eventually, she’ll come to us, but we don’t want her so shaken that she panics the fat detective when we put her on the phone. Now, Betty, let’s talk about your problems. Your biggest problem, as I see it, is that I could kill you without thinking twice. I could shoot you. Or stab you. Or crush your fucking skull with a brick, then wash my hands and go to dinner. I
enjoy
killing, but, let me hasten to assure you, I
don’t
kill without a reason. I’ve been thinking about the fat detective.
Why
does he persist? The police investigated my activities, then gave up. The IRS gave up, too. Even the Attorney General gave up. Why, I keep asking myself, does the fat detective persist? The fat detective persists because he’s paid to persist. Connie Alamare’s money motivates him and he’ll keep coming as long as she keeps paying. Unless, of course, I supply him with a reason to stop.
You
are the reason. Any questions?”

“If you hold me forever, he’ll haunt you into the grave.”

“Good point. It shows that you’re thinking and that’s all to my benefit. I need three weeks to complete my project. A month at the outside. Then I’ll let you go. As I told you, I don’t kill without a reason. I’m a businessman.”

“And your business is dope.”

Craddock laughed out loud. “Very good, but not entirely accurate. My business is PURE, not ordinary dope. PURE is to dope as Botticelli is to Norman Rockwell. But why should I convince you with words, when I can demonstrate the genuine article? In fact, I’ve already prepared a sample just for you.” He removed a small syringe from his shirt pocket and held it up for her inspection. “You can fight, of course, but what good would it do you? What’s the old saying about rape? ‘When rape is inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.’ ”

Betty expected to die. PURE had killed two junkies and reduced Flo Alamare to an existence far closer to death than to life. What better way for Craddock to eliminate her? She would die silently, without a scream or the sound of a gunshot.

Fear overwhelmed her. She had never experienced terror like this before, not even in her worst nightmares. The room jumped into focus. She felt herself to be aware of every single atom, of whirling electrons, of worlds that stretched to infinity. Yet she couldn’t move, couldn’t even beg.

Tears began to flow from her eyes, but she didn’t sob. She didn’t seem to be breathing at all. She could sense the molecules of blood rushing through her veins, the molecules that would carry the toxins to her pounding heart. Craddock lifted her arm and nonchalantly strapped a rubber tourniquet to her bicep.

“Good veins,” he said to Wendell.

“Won’t stay that way long.”

Craddock waved the syringe in the air. “Not so, Wendell. The use of sterile needles and a little alcohol can keep the veins alive for years. You know, when I first decided to create a new drug, I toyed with the idea of packaging it in a syringe. But, of course, needles are illegal in New York and PURE is not.” He broke into a laugh. “Wendell, look at Blossom.” The girl was staring at the syringe in Craddock’s hand. “Don’t worry, little one, your turn will come.”

The tip of the needle slipped easily into the large vein just in front of Betty’s elbow. A single drop of blood pushed back into the clear liquid, then Craddock snapped the tourniquet off and slowly depressed the plunger.

Within seconds, Betty’s fear vanished. Despite the danger, despite the manifest insanity of Davis Craddock, she felt perfectly at ease. The sensation was almost entirely physical, but she didn’t feel slow or sleepy. In fact, her consciousness was dominated by a single, simple realization, a truth she could have gotten from any junkie on the street. The lure of dope stems directly from the quality of the high. It feels good. At least in the beginning. That’s why people do it.

She recalled an anti-drug ad she’d seen on TV. Fat hissed and crackled in a hot frying pan while an off-screen voice intoned, “This is drugs.” Then an egg dropped into the pan and the same voice announced, “This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?”

Betty smiled. She had a question. Why did the creators of the ad feel it necessary to lie to kids who already knew the truth? Maybe the ad wasn’t meant for people at risk. Maybe it was meant for middle-aged women, like herself, who rarely had more than a glass of wine at dinner. Anyone seriously interested in helping kids would tell them the truth. That it feels so good, you want to do it again and again. You want to do it until it owns you.

“A week, Wendell. Four injections a day for one week and I’ll own her. She’ll beg for it. Beg. She’ll willingly perform any art I demand. She’ll set up the fat detective for a single dose of PURE.” He walked back to the bed and took a syringe out of the nightstand drawer. “Here you go, Blossom.”

Blossom needed no help. Within a minute, she was pushing the plunger home, her eyes half closed in anticipation of the rush.

“Get dressed, Blossom. We’re going for a ride.”

With all the nonchalance of a veteran prostitute, Blossom shed her robe and walked naked to a chest of drawers. She slid into panties and a bra, blue jeans and a red Donald Duck sweatshirt.

“I’m gon’ miss that little yellow bitch,” Wendell said. “Gon’ miss this whole scene.”

Craddock raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Marcy was much better. She was inventive. But if you want Blossom, you can take her with you. It doesn’t matter to me and it won’t matter to her. As long as you keep her supplied with PURE.”

“You temptin’ me, Davis, but ain’t no way I can bring the bitch back to my crew. Raise too many jealousies.”

“Then say good-bye, Wendell. You won’t be seeing her again until we’re ready to deal.”

Craddock showed Betty a small revolver and made the predictable threats before hustling Betty down a back stairway and into an alley that ran out to Orchard Street where the van was parked. He needn’t have bothered. Still overwhelmed by the effects of the drug, Betty followed obediently. Even when he ordered her to sit on the floor of the van, even when he blindfolded her with a strip of soft cotton, she made no protest. But as they moved through Manhattan, the first effects of the drug began to recede.

It wasn’t much, just a slow lessening of the physical sensations, but it enabled Betty, locked in darkness, to come to grips with her situation. Craddock was insane. His surface control had to mask an underlying desperation. How could he get away with this? Where could he go? Her fate didn’t really matter. Moodrow would never stop looking for Craddock, even if Craddock released her unharmed. And Stanley Moodrow had less than no interest in the niceties of the law. Betty’s value to Craddock was decidedly short term. If he held her too long, Moodrow’s patience, assuming he decided to be patient, would dissolve and he would act. If Moodrow thought Betty was dead, he would call in the FBI and a hundred agents would scour the country. Kidnapping is a federal crime and carries a life sentence.

The truth was obvious enough to Betty, though she experienced it without a trace of emotion. There was no ‘joy of enlightenment,’ just a quick, calm understanding. Davis Craddock wasn’t stupid, despite his theatrics. He needed a month to complete his ‘project,’ a project that could only involve the manufacture and the initial distribution of the drug called PURE. After that, he would be
forced
to disappear which meant that he had no intention of remaining active in the drug world. A quick hit. Over and out.

She recalled her only prior experience with narcotics. Following an emergency appendectomy fifteen years ago, she’d been given a prescription for thirty tablets of a painkiller called Demerol. The pain had disappeared after a few days and she’d flushed the mostly unused prescription down the toilet, despite (or, rather, because of) its narcotic effect. The painkillers had cost her fifteen dollars and seemed, to her, to be very powerful. Curious, she’d asked one of her junkie clients what Demerol sold for on the street and been told that, depending on how much heroin was available, black market Demerol sold for eight, ten or twelve dollars per tablet. Her prescription had a street value of three hundred dollars. If the cost of manufacturing PURE was in any way similar to the cost of Demerol, Craddock stood to make an enormous profit from a very small amount of the drug.

A month to complete his project? He would have to keep her alive and able to communicate until he was ready to run. The physical danger was not immediate. She would have time to think, to prepare. On the other hand, the psychological danger was much more imminent. She was already anticipating the next injection. And the one after that and the one after that. Craddock was determined to humiliate her, to enslave her until she no longer wanted to be released. It would be so easy for her to acquiesce, to slide into acceptance. She was in the back of a locked van, headed for an unknown destination, imprisoned by a madman, yet she felt no anxiety whatsoever. If PURE was powerful enough to overcome fear, it would certainly overcome shame or pride. Her survival—physical, emotional and psychological—depended on her ability to resist the drug. The simple fact that the clarity of her understanding was also an effect of PURE was an irony that escaped her altogether.

F
OR THE FIRST TEN
or fifteen miles, Betty tried to keep track of the van’s progress. It bumped over New York’s potholed streets for a few minutes, then took a left and accelerated onto FDR Drive, the only highway within miles. That much was easy. The left turn meant they were running north, toward upper Manhattan and the Bronx. A short time later they stopped to pay a toll and Betty assumed that Craddock had taken the exit for the Triborough Bridge, which connects Manhattan to the Bronx and Queens. She tried to concentrate. Which way had they gone? North to Upstate New York and New England or east to Long Island? Then she realized that Craddock could easily have passed the exit to the Triborough Bridge and taken the George Washington Bridge which ran west through New Jersey. But, no, that was impossible, because there was no outbound toll on the George Washington Bridge. The Port Authority, which controls the bridges and tunnels leading to New Jersey, had doubled the inbound toll and fired the toll takers who worked the outbound booths. They were driving north or east.

Craddock didn’t help matters. He not only chattered continually, but he expected her to respond and, Betty, sitting in darkness, realized there was nothing to be gained by provoking him. Craddock was unpredictable at best. The better she understood him, the better her chance of survival.

“You know something?” he asked. “This is really a treat for me. It’s been years since I’ve had an opportunity to chat with someone of your intelligence and independence. That’s the problem with being the chief deity to a congregation of assholes. You can never let them see who you really are. You, on the other hand, already know who I am, right?”

“Yes, I know,” Betty replied. She wasn’t surprised to find her voice steady and strong. PURE had erased her fear altogether. For a brief moment, she entertained the idea that she could manipulate Craddock into actually liking her. If she could forge that link, perhaps he’d be reluctant to hurt her. Or to kill her. But in the course of a long career, she’d defended too many psychopaths to grasp at that straw. The emotional ties that bind human beings—friendship, loyalty, love—are no more than abstractions to a psychopath like Davis Craddock. In the end, his decision, to kill her or release her, would be based on utterly selfish considerations.

“I wouldn’t admit it to his face, but the fat detective is pretty good at his job. He found out about Billy in the Bronx, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“And I’ll bet he figured out what happened to Flo Alamare?”

“Something with the drug. Some problem.”

“Yes, the problem. The problem is that sooner or later the fat detective’s going to get his hands on a sample of PURE and run it down to a lab. Then his speculations will become what you lawyers call evidence. Of course, it doesn’t matter, now that I have you.” He sighed deeply. “The serpent in paradise. The worm in the apple. PURE is everything I hoped it would be. I’m sure you can attest to that. It dissolves instantly. Why would anyone heat it? But they did. A few of them cooked it up the way you cook up ordinary heroin. It’s an easy death, really. Quick and unexpected, which is about the best you can hope for in this life. But I still don’t understand what happened to Flo. I suppose she must have heated it accidentally.”

“Then Flo’s poisoning wasn’t deliberate.”

“Oh no, I liked Flo. I really did. She was smart and energetic. I liked her even before I began my project, before she began to use PURE. I haven’t liked too many people in my life. That’s because very few people have managed to like
me
. I can play the cold, distant therapist and win the trust of fools, but I’m terrible at personal relationships. Even my mother didn’t like me. She tried, though. I was her only child and she tried very hard to like me, especially after my father took off. I can remember the day she gave up clearly. Are you interested in all this, Betty? Am I boring you?”

“Go ahead. I don’t have all that much to do, back here.”

“Very good. A little humor. You’re spunky, Betty, and I appreciate that. Not like old Blossom over here. I want you to know that I don’t have anything against you. I hate your boyfriend, though.
Stanley
. What kind of faggoty name is that for a detective? It’s not interesting like Hercule Poirot. Or tough like Mike Hammer.
Stanley
? take out the garbage. Did you walk the dog yet,
Stanley
? Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to see it that way, but you can understand my position. I can accept adversity, but I don’t care for humiliation. He shouldn’t have sent me those letters.”