HCC 115 - Borderline (13 page)

They were doing it now. And Marty was too.

* * *

Slowly, Ringo turned from the doorway and walked into the rear of the club. He plucked
the cigar from between his teeth and glanced at it. He had chewed it almost to ribbons.
He dropped it onto the floor now and ground it out beneath his heel.

A club like this, he thought, and you see plenty. A club like this is more than tossing
out drunks from a 52nd Street strip joint or pimping for a stable of cows on the West
Side. A club like this is all the way out and no holds barred.

But it still got to you, he thought. You saw everything in the world, night after
goddamn night, and still, once in a while, it got to you. This happened rarely. But
when it happened, the force of it was undeniable. Then you had to ease the tension
or flip entirely.

Tonight it had gotten to him. Tonight, watching the new act, his loins had begun to
burn and his heart had begun to race in his chest. The new girl, Lily. The redhead,
Cassie. The two of them, going at it hotter than the Chicago fire and more turbulently
than the Frisco quake. It got to him, all right. It knocked him on his ear.

Ringo was the perfect choice to head a club like Delia’s. A lecher would have been
bad business. A man who played around with the whores would, to coin a phrase, be
eating up all the profits. And, to coin another phrase, he would be screwing up the
normal routine. Fortunately Ringo was not that type of manager. He let the girls alone.
He never propositioned them, never made sex a prerequisite to keeping their jobs.
They put out for the customers and that was it. They didn’t have to put out for Ringo,
too.

Now he walked to a door, knocked on it. “It’s Ringo,” he said. “Open the goddamn door.”

The door opened. Ringo stepped inside, closed it behind him. There was a hook-and-eye
lock and Ringo dropped the hook into the eye. He did not intend to be interrupted.

“You did fine, kid,” he said. “You were great. They loved you.”

Pancho said nothing.

“Come on, Pancho,” Ringo said. “It’s time to be a good boy now. Get your clothes off.”

Ringo watched, pleased, while the young Mexican removed his clothes. Ringo’s eyes
traveled over Pancho’s body. Ringo smiled. He unbelted his own pants and let them
drop to the floor.

He said, “You don’t like this, do you, Pancho?”

“I don’t min’.”

“The hell you don’t mind. You hate it, you stupid little Mex. You can’t stand it.”

“I don’t min’.”

“Sure,” Ringo said. “Turn around, Pancho.”

Pancho turned around, turned his back to the manager of Delia’s Place. Ringo looked
at him, studied the smooth contours of his young masculine body. Ringo’s smile spread.
He stepped closer, his eyes bright.

“Now bend over,” he said.

* * *

First, Audrey groaned. Then, while Weaver moved closer to the edge of the bed, her
eyes opened. She saw Weaver, saw the razor in his hand. The razor was open now and
Weaver’s thumb moved back and forth across the face of the blade. Audrey tried to
scream but no sound came through the gag. She tried to lurch free but the bonds held
her securely in place, spread-eagled across the sagging bed.

Weaver said, “I’m going to kill you, Audrey. I’m going to cut you and hurt you and
kill you.”

Her eyes bugged in terror. He looked at her, delighted with her expression of fear.
This was good, he thought. This was as it should be. Pure terror, naked fear, horrible
horror. This was what they wanted in the movies, what they were getting at in the
comic books. This was life.

But where to begin? Where to start?

He stood next to her, holding the razor tightly. Her chest heaved and he watched her
breasts bob. That was a starting place, he thought. Those great big sagging breasts.
A perfect place to start.

The razor was very sharp. It slipped neatly into the underside of one breast, slicing
easily through Audrey’s flesh. A thin trickle of blood flowed from the wound. Audrey
screamed in silence against the gag and her whole body twisted with pain.

It was the blood that did it. Weaver stared at the blood and something happened. He
was an animal now, a beast. The cool emotionless part of him vanished. He threw himself
upon the woman, whipping at the sides of her body with the razor while he drove himself
deep into her. He lay on top of her, drove savagely into her, then raised himself
on one arm so that he could flail at her breasts with the razor.

Soon both breasts were criss-crossed with cruel cuts that bled freely. He put down
the razor and gripped the bleeding breasts with his hands, flexing them while he rode
her with the full force of his passion. It did not take him long to reach fulfillment.
His passion came quickly and was soon spent. He lay for a moment, still holding tightly
to her slashed breasts. Then, shakily, he got to his feet.

She was still alive, still conscious. And Weaver was by no means through. The sexual
part was over and done with. He had taken the woman, had had his pleasure with her,
and he would not need to make love to her again. But he had not finished hurting her.
He had a marvelous opportunity here. She was helpless, unable to cry out and unable
to fight back. They were alone and they would not be disturbed.

He could take his time.

He found a pack of matches in her dresser drawer, along with the two five dollar bills
he had given her and three or four singles of her own. He lit a match, let it burn
for a moment, and then dropped it onto her bare belly. It lay there for several seconds,
flaming, until it burned itself out. He did this again, with another match.

There had been a movie that he remembered now. A movie about the Great Fire of London.
There had been a scene in which a woman ran through the streets of the city, her hair
flaming. The woman had screamed nicely.

He looked at Audrey’s hair. He wanted to set it on fire, but he was afraid that the
fire would rage out of control and start the whole building aflame. Then another idea
came to him. He lit another match and dropped it between her plump thighs. It burned
for a long time there.

Audrey passed out this time. He waited patiently until her eyes opened once more,
and then he went on.

* * *

When he left, finally, all of her body was scarred from matches. All her fingers and
toes had been hacked off—he was pleased that the razor was made of such well-tempered
steel. Her whole mattress was a pool of blood, and there were deep gashes in every
part of her body.

Before he went out of the room he did several things. He washed at her washbowl, getting
all the blood from his body. He dressed. And then, finally, he dipped the fingers
of both hands into her blood and pressed all ten fingers to the wall, over her bed.

He wanted them to know he killed Audrey. He wanted the credit. He wanted El Paso to
know that there was a fiend in its midst, and that the fiend bore the name of Michael
Patrick Weaver.

Outside, the night was cool and clear. It was around four in the morning and the streets
were deserted. Weaver walked around aimlessly for ten or fifteen minutes taking the
fresh night air into his lungs, walking far from the three-story frame building where
Audrey’s corpse lay attracting flies. He felt no guilt, no remorse.

On the contrary, he was flushed with pride. This had been no accident, like the time
in Tulsa. This had been carefully planned and carefully executed. This had been perfect,
from beginning to end.

* * *

He started back to his hotel, and was halfway there before he realized what a stupid
thing such a course of action would be. The police were going to find those fingerprints
instantly. In a matter of hours they would know that Weaver was the killer. And his
picture was in the files, so it would be in the El Paso evening paper. If he was still
asleep at his hotel, they would have him under arrest before he opened his eyes.

And they would take him to headquarters, and they would beat him. It was only reasonable
to assume that the El Paso police beat you the way the Tulsa police had done once.
They would beat him, and try him for murder, and put him in the electric chair to
smell his own flesh burning. He had smelled burning flesh already that night. Audrey’s
flesh. He did not want to smell his own flesh when the electrical current seared through
it.

His mind worked quickly. A day or two ago, he had been unwillingly to try sneaking
across the border. Then it seemed easier to stay in El Paso, to wait for capture,
to stay holed up and wait until they smoked him out. But now it was different. Now,
for one thing, he was an active panther rather than a passive rabbit. Besides, if
he was going to stay alive, he just plain had to get across the border. He was a sitting
duck in El Paso. In Juarez he might have a chance.

In a day, when Audrey’s broken body had been discovered and when his own bloody prints
had been identified, all the border guards would be on the lookout for him. Now he
was still an unknown in El Paso, a Tulsa fugitive who could be anywhere. If he was
going to make it to Juarez, now was the time to get going.

He pictured himself going across the border.

The guard stepping out of the guard house.

First glancing at him.

Then staring.

Then recognizing him.

It’s Weaver!

It’s Michael Patrick Weaver!

He saw himself running, running across the border.

Pushing aside people—screaming people.

The people lined up and let him pass.

They all chanted his name.

Michael Patrick Weaver.

Michael Patrick Weaver.

Michael Patrick Weaver.

They all knew him.

They all recognized turn.

He felt proud as he ran across the border.

Then he heard shots ring out from behind him.

Zing!—the bullets flew past him.

Then one hit him—and another.

But he kept on running and running.

They couldn’t stop him.

He was Michael Patrick Weaver.

And he ran and he ran. The ground flew fast beneath him, so fast that suddenly he
was no longer on the ground but was in the air.

He was flying through the air. He was Superman. Then he dove into an ocean beneath
him and skimmed through the water. He was Submariner.

He got into a car—tired, wanting to ride. And as he roared away deep into Mexico he
was the Green Hornet.

He stopped the car and got out.

He was Michael Patrick Weaver again.

He walked toward the border, nervous inside, on the verge of panic. But when he got
there it turned out to be much easier than he had imagined. The border was barely
guarded at all. A uniformed officer looked him over, but did not recognize him or
see anything suspicious. Weaver stepped over a line, and Weaver was in Mexico, and
nothing could have been easier.

* * *

He found a hotel in Juarez, a cheap rundown hotel that was half inn and half brothel.
He paid a dollar for a room and was shown to a bug-trap similar to his place at Cappy’s,
except that there was not even a washbowl here.

He had to go down the hall to comb his flat black hair over his low forehead. He did
this, and then he went back to his room, turned on the overhead fan and went to sleep.

In the morning it was raining. The rain was the first thing Marty was aware of. Rain
lashed the bedroom windows, spilled in through the screens. The rain was coming down
hard and the noise it made was not a gentle one. Rain was a rare commodity in El Paso,
especially during the summer. So Marty noticed it before anything else. He lay on
his back, on his bed, and he listened to the rain.

After the fact of the rain, other facts came home to him. The fact that his head was
being torn into several pieces by a sharp, insistent pain that began somewhere in
the back of his skull. The fact that his skin was covered with clammy sweat, that
he was dizzy and nauseous. The fact that it was morning, that he was at home in his
own bed in his own bedroom. The fact that Meg was with him, also in the bed, and still
asleep.

These facts brought with them a rush of memories. Memories of the casino where he
had played poker while Meg won twelve or thirteen hundred dollars at the roulette
wheel. Memories of dinner, memories of a night club with soft music and too much tequila.
Memories of another night club, Delia’s Place. Memories of the floor show, of the
marijuana, of more of the floor show, of sex with Meg. Memories of afterward, of himself
in a small room making love to a Mexican whore while Meg stood at their side, watching
and applauding.

The memories ceased at that point in time. At some indeterminate point afterward he
had evidently herded the big brunette into the Olds and had somehow driven the Olds
back across the border to his house. God alone knew how this had happened. Marty remembered
nothing, and could only guess that the Olds had taken over the driving for him. After
the tequila and the marijuana and the sex, it seemed less than likely that he could
have handled the driving all by himself.

He managed to get up onto an elbow. He looked at Meg, and his mouth curled in distaste,
though whether directed at her or at himself he couldn’t have said. Both, probably.
The last time he’d woken up with her he’d loved the sight of her, the fact of her.
The idea of sharing a night of debauchery with a girl as eager for it as he was. But
this time, in the cold light of a rainy morning, things looked different. It wasn’t
just the hangover that was turning his stomach. Had that been him, kneeling on the
dirty floor between her legs? And had that been her, urging him on?

She was sleeping on her back now, breathing through her open mouth. The sweat was
a visible film on her body, as it was on his. Her body odor—sweat smells and sex smells
and alcoholic smells—was strong and unpleasant.

A pig, he thought bitterly. It felt better to lash out than to look within. A pig
with money and taste and a nice shape, a pig who played good bedtime games. A pig
who could talk, intelligently. But still just as much of a pig.