Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (84 page)

Jessica watched the crew adjust the lighting between takes. She didn’t know much about film production, but this entire operation looked like a high-budget undertaking.

It was the subject matter that she found troubling. The story appeared to be about a pair of teenaged girls being dominated by a sadistic grandfather type. At first, Jessica had thought the two young actresses were about fifteen years old, but as she milled around the set, drawing closer, she saw that they were probably twenty.

Jessica imagined the girl in the
Philadelphia Skin
video. That had been set in a room not unlike this one.

What had happened to that girl?

Why did she look familiar?

Watching the filming of a three-minute scene turned Jessica’s stomach. In the scene, the man in the master mask verbally humiliated the two girls. They wore filmy, soiled negligees. He tied them back-to-back on the bed, circling them like a giant vulture.

He struck them repeatedly as he interrogated them, always with an open hand. It took everything in Jessica’s being to stop herself from stepping in. It was clear that the man was making contact. The girls were reacting with what sounded like real screams and looked like real tears, but when Jessica saw the girls laughing between takes, she realized that the blows were not hard enough to cause injury. Maybe they even enjoyed it. In any event, for Detective Jessica Balzano, it was hard to believe that crimes were not being committed here.

The toughest part to watch came at the scene’s end. The man in the mask left one of the girls tied, spread-eagle, on the bed, while the other was on her knees before him. Looking down at her, he took out his switchblade, flicked it open. He cut her negligee off in shreds. He spat on her. He made her lick his boots. Then he put the knife to the girl’s throat. Jessica and Nicci looked at each other, both ready to rush in. It was here, mercifully, that Dante Diamond had yelled: “Cut.”

Fortunately, the man in the mask did not take this directive literally.

Ten minutes later, Nicci and Jessica stood by the small, makeshift buffet table. Dante Diamond may have been a lot of things, but he wasn’t cheap. The table held a number of pricey tidbits: crudités, shrimp toast, scallops in bacon, mini quiche Lorraine.

Nicci grabbed some food and took a walk up to the set just as one of the older actresses approached the buffet table. She was in her forties, in great shape. Henna-red hair, elaborate eye makeup, painfully high stilettos. She was dressed like a strict schoolmaster. The woman had not been in the earlier scene.

“Hi,” she said to Jessica. “My name’s Bebe.”

“Gina.”

“Are you in the production?”

“No,” Jessica said. “I’m here as Mr. Diamond’s guest.”

She nodded, popped a pair of shrimp into her mouth.

“Ever work with Bruno Steele?” Jessica asked.

Bebe picked a few items from the buffet table, put them onto a Styrofoam plate. “Bruno? Oh, yeah. Bruno’s a doll.”

“My director really would like to hire him for a film we’re putting together. Hard S and M. We just can’t seem to find him.”

“I know where Bruno is. We were just partying with him.”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah,” she said. She grabbed a bottle of Aquafina. “Like, a couple of hours ago.”

“No shit.”

“He told us to stop back around midnight. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you coming with.”

“Cool,” Jessica said.

“I’ve got one more scene, then we’ll get out of here.” She adjusted her outfit, grimaced. “This corset is fucking killing me.”

“Is there a ladies’ room?” Jessica asked.

“I’ll show you.”

Jessica followed Bebe across part of the warehouse floor. They went down a service hallway to a pair of doors. The ladies’ room was huge, built to accommodate a full shift of women when the building had been a manufacturing plant. A dozen stalls and sinks.

Jessica stood at the mirrors with Bebe.

“How long have you been in the business?” Bebe asked.

“About five years,” Jessica said.

“Just a baby,” she said. “Don’t stay too long,” she added, echoing Jessica’s father’s words about the department. Bebe put her lipstick back into her clutch. “Give me half an hour.”

“Sure thing.”

Bebe left the bathroom. Jessica waited a full minute, poked her head out into the hallway, walked back into the bathroom. She checked all the stalls, stepped into the last cubicle. She spoke directly into her body microphone, hoping she wasn’t so deep into the brick building that the surveillance team didn’t pick up a signal. She was not equipped with an earpiece or receiver of any sort. Her communication, if any, was one-way.

“I don’t know if you heard all that, but we’ve got a lead. A woman said she was partying with our suspect and she’s going to take us there in about thirty minutes. That’s three-oh minutes. We may not be going out the front entrance. Heads up.”

She thought about repeating what she said, but if the surveillance team didn’t hear her the first time, they wouldn’t hear her the second. She didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances. She adjusted her clothes, stepped out of the stall, and was just about to turn and leave when she heard the click of the hammer. Then she felt the steel of the barrel against the back of her head. The shadow on the wall was huge. It was the gorilla from the front door. Cedric.

He had heard every word.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said.

52

T
HERE IS A
moment in every film where the main character finds himself unable to return to his former life, that part of his continuum that existed before the opening of the narrative. Generally, this point of no return occurs at the midway point of the story, but not always.

I have passed that point.

Tonight it is 1980. Miami Beach. I close my eyes, find my center, hear the salsa music, smell the salt air.

My costar is handcuffed over a steel rod.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

I could tell him but—as all the books on screenwriting say—it is much more effective to show than tell. I check the camera. It is on a mini tripod, poised on a milk crate.

Perfect.

I put on the yellow rain slicker, hook it closed.

“Do you know who I am?” he asks, his voice beginning to ascend with fear.

“Let me guess,” I say. “You’re the guy who usually plays the second heavy, am I right?”

His face looks appropriately mystified. I don’t expect him to get it. “What?”

“You’re the guy who stands behind the villain of the piece and tries to look menacing. The guy who never gets the girl. Well, sometimes, but it’s never the beautiful girl, is it? If at all, you get that hard-looking blonde, the one who drinks her bottom-shelf whiskey neat, the one who’s going a bit thick around the middle. Kind of the Dorothy Malone type. And only after the villain gets his.”

“You’re crazy.”

“You have no idea.”

I step in front of him, examine his face. He tries to struggle away but I take his face in my hands.

“You really ought to take better care of your skin.”

He stares at me, speechless. That won’t last long.

I cross the room, take the chain saw from the case. It is heavy in my hands. All the best weaponry is. I smell the scent of oil. It is a well-maintained piece of equipment. It is going to be a shame to lose it.

I pull the cord. It starts immediately. The roar is loud, impressive. The chain saw blade rumbles and belches and smokes.

“Jesus Christ, no!” he screams.

I face him, feeling the terrible power of the moment.

“Mira!”
I yell.

When I touch the blade to the left side of his head, his eyes seem to register the truth of the scene. There is no look quite like the look people get at this moment.

The blade descends. Great chunks of bone and brain tissue fly. The blade is very sharp and in no time at all I have cut all the way down to his neck. My raincoat and face mask are covered in blood and skull fragments and hair.

“Now the leg, eh?” I scream.

But he can no longer hear me.

The chain saw rumbles in my hands. I shake the flesh and gristle from the blade.

And go back to work.

53

B
YRNE PARKED ON
Montgomery Drive and began to make his way across the plateau. The city skyline winked and sparkled in the distance. Ordinarily, he would have stopped and marveled at the view from Belmont Plateau. Even as a lifelong Philadelphian, he never tired of it. But tonight his heart was laden with sadness and fear.

Byrne trained his Maglite on the ground, looking for a blood trail, footprints. He found neither.

He approached the softball field, checking for any sign of a struggle. He searched the area behind the backstop. No blood, no Victoria.

He circled the field. Twice. Victoria was not there.

Had she been found?

No. There would still be a police presence if this was a crime scene. It would be taped off, and there would be a sector car protecting the site. CSU would not process this scene in darkness. They would wait until morning.

He retraced his steps, finding nothing. He crossed the plateau again, passing through a copse of trees. He looked beneath the benches. Nothing. He was just about to call in a search team—knowing that what he had done to Matisse would mean the end of his career, his freedom, his life—when he saw her. Victoria was on the ground, behind a small clump of bushes, covered in filthy rags and newspaper. And there was a lot of blood. Byrne’s heart shattered into a thousand pieces.

“My God. Tori.
No.
”

He knelt next to her. He pulled the rags away. Tears obscured his vision. He wiped them away with the back of his hand. “Ah,
Christ.
What did I do to you?”

She had been cut across the stomach. The wound was deep and gaping. She had lost a lot of blood. Byrne dry-heaved. He had seen oceans of blood in his time on the job. But this.
This …

He felt for a pulse. It was faint, but it was
there.

She was alive.

“Hang on, Tori. Please. God. Hang on.”

His hands shaking, he took out his cell phone and called 911.

B
YRNE STAYED WITH
her until the very last second. When EMS rescue pulled up, he hid among the trees. There was nothing more he could do for her.

Except pray.

B
YRNE DID HIS
best to maintain calm. It was difficult. The wrath inside him, at this moment, was bright and brass and savage.

He had to calm down. Had to think.

Now was the moment when all crimes went bad, when the science went on the record, the moment when the smartest of the criminals screwed up, the moment that investigators live for.

Investigators like himself.

He thought of the items in the bag in the trunk of his car, the artifacts of dark purpose he had purchased from Sammy DuPuis. He would take all night with Julian Matisse. There were many things, Byrne knew, that were worse than death. He intended to explore each and every one of them before the night was out. For Victoria. For Gracie Devlin. For everyone Julian Matisse had ever hurt.

There was no way back from this. For the rest of his life, no matter where he lived, no matter what he did, he would wait for the knock on the door; he would suspect the man in the dark suit who approached him with grim determination, the car that slowly pulled to the curb as he walked up Broad Street.

Surprisingly, his hands were steady, his pulse even. For now. But he knew that there was a world of distance and difference in that hairbreadth between pulling the trigger and staying your finger.

Could he pull the trigger?

Would
he?

As he watched the taillights of the EMS rescue disappear up Montgomery Drive, he felt the weight of the SIG-Sauer in his hand, and had his answer.

54

“T
HIS HAS NOTHING
to do with Mr. Diamond or his business. I’m a homicide detective.”

Cedric had hesitated after finding the wire. He had patted her down roughly, torn it off. It was clear what was coming next. He had put the gun to her forehead, and made her get down on her knees.

“You’re pretty fucking hot for a cop, you know that?”

Jessica just stared. Watched his eyes. His hands. “You’re going to kill a gold-badge detective where you work?” she asked, hoping her voice didn’t betray her fear.

Cedric smiled. Incredibly, he wore a retainer. “Who says we’d leave your body here, bitch?”

Jessica considered her options. If she could get to her feet, she could land one shot. It would have to be well placed—the throat or the nose—and even then might only give her a few seconds to get out of the room. She did not take her eyes off the gun.

Cedric stepped forward. He unbuttoned his pants. “You know, I never fucked a cop before.”

As he did this, the barrel of the gun pointed away from her momentarily. If he took his pants off, it would be the last opportunity to make her move. “You might want to think this through, Cedric.”

“Oh, I’m thinking about it, baby.” He began to unzip his zipper. “I been thinking about it since you walked in.”

Before he got his zipper all the way down, a shadow crossed the floor.

“Drop the gun, Sasquatch.”

It was Nicci Malone.

From the look on Cedric’s face, Nicci had a gun to the back of his head. His face drained of all color, his attitude of all menace. He slowly put the weapon on the floor. Jessica picked it up. She trained it on him. It was a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver.

“Very good,” Nicci said. “Now put your hands on top of your head, and interlace your fingers.”

The man shook his head slowly, side-to-side. But he didn’t comply. “You ain’t gonna make it out of here.”

“No? And why is that?” Nicci asked.

“They’re gonna miss me any minute now.”

“Why, because you’re so lovable? Shut the fuck up. And put your hands on top of your head. Last time I’m going to tell you.”

Slowly, reluctantly, he put his hands on his head.