Body Rides (51 page)

Back in Marta’s living room, had he muttered ‘Forget it’ in his chair?

Maybe. Tuesday night at the Apache Inn, when Sue had been inside him, her body had squirmed, moaned, gasped, groaned and sighed. She hadn’t spoken, though.

Maybe words can’t make it through.

Or maybe they can.

Hope I didn’t wake her up
.

Seeing his own apartment building below him, Neal wondered what to do. Visit one of his neighbors?

How about Miss Universe?

That’s just what I’d need, he thought. I’ve got problems enough without jumping inside some gorgeous bimbo. She’s probably asleep, anyway.

Everyone’s
probably asleep.

Not everyone
.

From high above the building, Neal could see a lot of activity: a helicopter in the sky near Century City; some airliners heading
into L.A.X., probably ten miles away, their landing lights pushing beams into the darkness ahead of them; cars and delivery trucks here and there, gliding silently along pale, uncrowded streets; a black-and-white police car stopped on Pico, swirling the area with blue-and-red flashes as two officers climbed out and walked toward a pale van. He saw a few people, widely scattered, walking dogs. He saw a cat scurry across a road and vanish beneath a parked car. In various directions, he saw lighted windows, some with moving shapes behind them: possibly janitors cleaning offices in high-rise buildings; people in upper stories of homes, condos and apartment houses who were still up and around for whatever reasons, and hadn’t bothered to shut their curtains. From some windows came the glow of televisions.

No shortage of people to choose from, Neal thought.

Go on a hunt for someone interesting?

You’d better make it good, he warned himself. You only get one shot per trip. Don’t want to end up in a dud.

Why not? Why not experiment? I’ve got all night – at least what’s left of it. I could hop back and forth, try out half a dozen people
. . .

Below him, the courtyard and swimming pool of his own building looked deserted.

He wondered if he should make a quick pass through his rooms.

And realized that he
had
to, now that he’d thought about it. Otherwise, the failure to check would gnaw at him.

So he swooped down, passed through the balcony railing and through the stucco wall into his bedroom. He whipped like a gust of wind beneath his bed, rushed into the closet and through its wall to the bathroom. Nobody in the tub, nothing in the toilet bowl.

On he went, curling around corners, seeping through walls and furniture, searching the darkness everywhere for signs of an intruder.

Nothing.

Coast is clear
.

He flew out through the front door and softly crashed into a man and screamed.

Rasputin!

He stood just outside the door to Neal’s apartment, hunched over and working with a couple of slender steel tools buried deep in the keyhole of the lock.

Neal had no chance to see him.

Simply collided with a dark mass on the other side of his door and shrieked with fright.

Inside him, Neal knew him at once.

He felt the hot aches of bullet wounds.

And he felt a trembling tightness in the man – part fear, mostly excitement.

An icy tremor in the bowels.

A stiffness in the penis that made it push against the front of his trousers.

A wild, raging strangeness in his mind.

‘
Come on, come on. Baby. Come. Open up for Papa
.’

The fucker better be here this time. Ooo, it’s gonna be sweet. Better be here this time
.

‘
Come on baby
.’

As the silent monologue went on, his mind played a memory-scene of a stranger, a dark and undefined shape standing yards away in the darkness of the trees, aiming at him and shooting. Even as fire spat from the muzzle and the booms crashed through the stillness, his mind flipped to a new scene – a naked man nailed to a floor, screaming and writhing. Rasputin pictured himself kneeling between the man’s spread legs, reaching forward with pliers . . .

Is that supposed to be me? Neal wondered.

The guy in the dark with the gun was
definitely
Neal shooting at Rasputin on Sunday night. The guy on the floor about to get worked on with pliers, well lighted in Rasputin’s fantasy, was Neal’s size but the hair and face were wrong.

It’s me. They’re both me. He just doesn’t really know what I look like
.

That’s what he wants to do to me
.

Neal didn’t want to watch what was about to happen with the pliers.

Get the hell out of here!

No! Bug out and I might lose him. Who’s to say he’ll still be here by the time I can get back
. . .

Back with my body and my gun
. . .

I might never get another chance like this. Find out who he is, where he lives
.

Find out enough, and he’s MINE
.

So is the reward
.

When Neal’s attention returned to Rasputin’s mind-movie, the guy nailed to the floor was bucking and screaming . . .

Neal saw what the pliers were doing.

He felt himself shrivel.

Rasputin was so wrapped up in his fantasy that his mind had gone voiceless and he seemed unaware of his own hands. But through his fingers, Neal suddenly felt something give inside the lock.

And so did Rasputin.

Yah! ‘Here I come, ready or not, you cocksucking piece of shit! You better be here this time!
’

He slipped the lockpicking tools into a soft leather case, folded the case and stuffed it into a pocket of his trousers. Then he pulled out a pair of thin rubber gloves. He snapped them onto his hands.

The fingertips of the gloves felt strange to Neal – stiff, not flimsy. Had they been painted with something – maybe fingernail polish or glue – as an extra precaution against leaving latent fingerprints?

This guy’s careful, Neal thought.

As Rasputin shoved the door open, he pictured Neal standing in the darkness, waiting with the gun, blasting him point blank in the face. A cold wind of fear swept through him.

The bastard’s scared of me, Neal realized.

Good!

But the fear was a lone gust that blew through him and left him behind – gone as soon as Rasputin stared into the darkness of the room and didn’t find Neal facing him.

Looking in the wrong place, asshole. I’ m not in front of you, I’m inside you
.

Rasputin stepped over the threshold and silently shut the door. Then he stood motionless, listening.

‘
Oh, you better be here
.’

I’m here all right, Neal thought.

Rasputin seemed to sense that the rooms were deserted. But he didn’t want to admit it to himself. Not yet. He didn’t want to face the disappointment, the frustration . . .

He suddenly detected an aroma.

So did Neal.

A vague, sweet scent . . .

What’s that?
Rasputin wondered. His mind switched to a memory of his previous visit. He remembered himself standing in much the same place, trying to detect . . .

This odor was new.

Beer!

Neal felt himself shrivel again.
He knows!

Excitement swelled in Rasputin.

He doesn’t know about Sue, Neal realized. He thinks it was just me drinking the beer . . . He thinks I’m still here.

Now I gotcha! Now I gotcha! Ohhhh
.

Rasputin surged inside with a brew of rage and glee and lust that made Neal want to scream and bolt.

STAY!
he commanded himself.
This bastard can’t hurt me, can’t touch me, doesn’t even know I’m here. I’m perfectly safe
.

But he sure didn’t feel safe.

Rasputin started creeping across the living room.

‘
Here I come, ready or not. Ooo hoo hoo. Oh, how I’m going to make you scream!
’

Back he went to his fantasy of Neal naked, hands and feet nailed to a floor.

Neal turned his attention to Rasputin’s body. The man was tall and extremely thin, but had muscles like strips of iron. He wore heavy, snug boots. Leather trousers that were tight and very hot inside – so hot that Rasputin was dripping sweat all the way down from his waist and the leather felt slimy against his buttocks and cock and legs. No underwear. Several objects in his trouser pockets – something in the right front pocket that might be pliers. A belt cinched around his waist. At his left hip, a weight that Neal suspected might be a sheathed knife.

Above his waist, a snug shirt with long sleeves. Under the shirt, bandages and wounds.

These bandages didn’t seem to be made from the odds and ends Rasputin took from Neal’s medicine cabinet. They wrapped his torso, shoulder, and the top of his head as if someone had tried to make a mummy of him.

Rasputin had apparently found medical care.

They’re supposed to report bullet wounds
.

He’d probably gone to a crooked doctor – plenty of those in L.A.

How do you find a crooked doctor? Easy. Just ask your crooked lawyer
.

All patched up and rarin’ to go
.

He doesn’t have a hammer, Neal suddenly realized. Rasputin’s only weapons seemed to be the pliers and the knife.

How does he expect to nail me to the floor if he didn’t bring his hammer and nails?

Borrow mine? He’d have to find them first
.

Maybe that’s what he’s looking for
,

Because Rasputin hadn’t gone directly to the bedroom, where he was sure he would find Neal sleeping.

Pay attention, Neal told himself. What’s the bastard up to?

Relishing the anticipation.

And wanting to make sure nobody would pop in from another room and take him by surprise.

‘
Are we all by ourselves tonight, Neal? No guests? Lonely boy? I’ll give you some company. Yoo-hoo! Leslie Glitt, at your service. Less is more. And all that glitters isn’t gold
.’

He pulled the knife from its sheath and stepped into the kitchen.

Leslie Glitt, Neal thought. That’s his name?
Leslie?

Walking through the kitchen, Rasputin considered taking his boots off. He couldn’t walk quietly in them, not on the linoleum floor. But he decided against it. The struggle to take them off would fire up the pain in his wounds. Besides, he would need to put them on again in the bedroom.

Needed to be wearing them when he took Neal.

He imagined himself sneaking to the side of the bed, bending over and pressing the knife to Neal’s throat. ‘
Wake up, sleepy-head – Leslie’s come over to play
.’ He imagined Neal waking up, startled and terrified, gasping. ‘
Remember me? You shot me, you fucking cocksucker
.’ He pictured himself jabbing Neal a few times
with the knife. ‘
Didn’t kill me, though. Too bad, so sad. Didn’t save the slut, either. Did you? Thought you’d saved her ass, big hero. No no no. Wrong. So sad. You should’ve seen what I did to her. You should’ve heard her scream
.’ All the time, poking Neal with the knife. Not really shoving it in, just poking him with it, making him flinch and bleed. ‘
But she died easy. Wait’ll you see what I do to you. Now get up
.’ Neal hesitates, so Leslie gives him a slice across an eyeball. ‘
Get up, now. We’re going on a trip. I’m taking you to a very special place
.’

A place with a wooden floor, Neal supposed.

Rasputin, shivering and hard, stepped through the bedroom door and halted and stared at Neal’s bed. Neal stared at it with him – saw it as he did.

In the gray glow filtering in through the curtains, the bed looked like a flat, unwrinkled plain. Nobody was sprawled out on it. The blankets covered no telltale landscape of humps.

No! Impossible! He’s here! He has to be here!

Rasputin flung out an arm and flicked the light switch. The sudden light hurt his eyes. He squinted.