The Black Stiletto (31 page)

“Oh, my Lord! I should call the police.”

“Later. Show me the house first.”

“But somebody could be in there.”

“I doubt it. Come on.” I went inside and Kathy Reynolds hesitantly followed me. I closed the door as best I could behind her. “Roomy,” I said.

“Yes. Well, if someone did break in, there was nothing whatsoever to steal. I hope they didn’t vandalize anything.”

She went into the kitchen and I trailed right behind her. “Who’s the owner?” I asked. “I like to know who I’m buyin’ from.”

“Oh, I’m not allowed to give out that kind of information unless there’s a sale. Hmm, the kitchen looks all right. My tools are still here. This is a real mystery!”

“I’ll say. This house is old, right?”

“Built in the nineteen thirties. That’s pretty typical for this area.”

“So the owner was some old person, right? A lady, right? Is she—or he—still alive?”

This time the realtor nodded. “Yes, but it’s a sad case. The poor old woman is in a nursing home. Stricken with Alzheimer’s. Terrible thing.”

“A nursin’ home? Which one?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to say. Would you like to see the bedrooms?”

“So who’s handlin’ the sale? She have relatives?”

“Her son. Follow me, let me show you the wonderful master bedroom.”

Son, huh. That explained the Talbot name. Judy Cooper musta got married at some point. Interestin’.

I followed the ugly dame into the bedroom. I noticed she was carryin’ a notebook-style briefcase. Probably had all the information about the house’s owner. If it didn’t have the nursin’ home address, it would surely tell me how to find her
son
.

My hand slipped into my jacket pocket and felt the cold, hard handle of the snubby. When the lady stepped into the bedroom, I pulled the gun out of my pocket. Held it by the barrel. Raised my arm.

“You get a lot of light in the morning,” she said, indicating the windows. “I like sunshine in the mornings, don’t you, Mister John—?”

She didn’t know what hit her.

I used her jacket to wipe her blood off the butt. She was dead. I probably broke her skull. Oh well. She got on my nerves some-thin’ awful.

I took her notebook, went back to the kitchen, and opened it on the counter. Sure enough, there was all the info I wanted. The son’s name was Martin Talbot. Lived in some place called Buffalo Grove. But I didn’t need him after all. There’s a note from him to the realtor written on Woodlands North stationery. The address and phone number printed right on it. Looked like a nursin’ home to me.

I called the place and asked to make sure. Asked to speak to a Judy Talbot and they said they’d transfer me to her unit. I hung
up before it rang. So she was indeed a resident. Looked at my watch and saw it was a little after five o’clock. Perfect. I got in my car and headed that way.

36
Judy’s Diary
1958

D
ECEMBER
19, 1958

Yes, dear diary, it’s over a week since my last entry. I’m back in New York now. I’ll try to write down what happened in Texas, although a lot of the past week is a blur.

It was about nine thirty on the night of the 13th when Luis dropped me off at the entrance to Douglas’s trailer park. I told him to drive by again in an hour—if I was ready, I’d signal him somehow. If not, he was to come around again every half hour after that.

Trailer parks are kind of spooky at night and this one was no different. There was a light that illuminated the entrance and a few here and there on the property—but mostly the place was dark. That was actually beneficial for me.

I darted through the shadows, moving from trailer to trailer, until I stopped to linger in the cold blackness behind a mobile home directly across the path from Douglas’s unit. He wasn’t there. No vehicle was parked beside it and the lights weren’t on. If he was out of town on a job or something, I was going to be mighty disappointed. Nevertheless, I skirted across one last beam of light and made it to his front door. It was locked, of course, but my lockpicks opened it easily enough.

Trailer homes are narrow and claustrophobic. Not much room to move around in. I dared to turn on a light; I wanted to see
how Douglas lived. The thing was divided into three distinct sections. A tiny kitchen was at one end. Had a fridge, sink, stove, a small round café table with one chair, and a phone on the wall. A carpeted living room area was in the middle, furnished with a television and rabbit ears antennae, a comfy chair, a tiny coffee table, a magazine rack, and a love seat that needed reupholstering. Barely three or four feet between furniture to walk through. On the other end was the bedroom and bathroom.

The place reeked of cigarette smoke and booze. As I took it all in, my intuition went haywire—my nerves started tingling the way they do when there’s danger. Looking back, I think it was because of Douglas’s mere presence in the home. Just the fact that he lived and slept there set off my “alarms.” I sensed him, all around me. It was an unnerving sensation.

The second thing that struck me was there were no family photographs. No pictures of my mom—his
deceased wife
—or any of us kids with whom he lived for several years. Of course, he left Mom on her deathbed, but still you’d think the guy would have a memento or two.

In the bedroom I found a few empty booze bottles, ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts and ashes, and a few magazines that had pictures of naked women in them. That was shocking. I’d seen Fiorello’s copies of
Playboy
, of course, but that was a classy publication. These were simply filthy, not something you’d buy at the drugstore or newsstand. It figured that Douglas would look at trash like that.

Once I was done snooping, I turned off the lights and sat in the comfy chair in the living room.

And I waited.

He got home around ten fifteen. I saw his car’s headlights through the trailer windows as it pulled into the small drive on the side of his home. I went into the bedroom and stood in the doorway.
Heard the car door open and slam shut. Footsteps on the gravel outside, then on the two wooden steps at the front door. Key in the lock. I held my breath.

Douglas Bates came in and turned on the light. He’d aged considerably in the last six years. He had a beer gut drooping over his belt and his hair had turned gray. He was still a big man, though. I was a tall girl at age thirteen and he seemed huge then. I hadn’t realized until now how large he really was.

He threw his keys on the little coffee table, went into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and removed a long-neck bottle of beer. I ducked into the bedroom so he wouldn’t see me when he turned around. I heard him switch on the TV, and then he plopped into the comfy chair. The set warmed up and came on after a few seconds—it was tuned to the news.

As soon as I knew he was settled, I made my appearance.

“Hello, Douglas.”

He jumped and dropped the beer bottle. Said a curse word. Started to get up, but I drew the stiletto and pointed it at him. “Don’t get up!” His eyes darted around the room as if he was looking for a weapon or an escape route. I moved between him and the front door.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m the Black Stiletto.”

“What’s that?”

“You haven’t heard of me?”

“No.”

“You don’t read the papers, much? Follow the national news?”

“No.”

“You’re watchin’ the news on TV.”

“I was waitin’ for the sports.”

At first I thought of turning off the set, but then I decided to leave it on. In fact, I went over and turned up the volume.
Wouldn’t want his neighbors to hear him scream. I sheathed my knife.

“What do you want?” he asked. “Why are you here? How did you get in?”

“You ask a lotta questions.”

“If it’s money you want, I don’t have much. I’ll give you my damn wallet. I think there’s six dollars in there.”

“I don’t want your money,” I said. “Say, how come there ain’t a picture of Betty Cooper in here? You know, your
wife
? Didn’t you love her? Oh, I forgot, you left her to die in the hospital.”

That raised his ire. “
Who are you
?
What do you want
?”

“Let’s see—what do I want? I’ll tell you, Douglas. I want to hear you apologize for killin’ Betty Cooper and rapin’ her daughter, Judy.”

His eyes flared. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“I didn’t kill Betty! She died of cancer!”

“But you left her on her own to deal with it, didn’t you?”

“I—well, I—no—what business is it of yours?”

“That’s irrelevant. Is that too big a word for you? It means it doesn’t matter why I’m interested in all this. What’s important is how much you’re willin’ to atone for your many sins.”

“Fuck you, lady. Get out of my house. Right now. I’ll call the cops.”

“You will?” I nodded at the phone in the kitchen. “Go for it. Go ahead. See how far you get.”

Suddenly my protective instincts went crazy. I sensed terrible peril from this man, but I couldn’t understand why. I had him under control, I knew I could best him physically, and he was sitting in a chair. I was missing something, but I didn’t know what it was.

I watched him carefully as he slowly started to stand, as if he was actually going to accept my challenge. Then he looked at the
dropped beer bottle and the spreading stain on his carpet. “Now see what you made me do,” he said, “and I just had the carpet cleaned last week.” He reached for the bottle—and again I felt the tingling of jeopardy.

“Leave it!” I snapped, but it was too late. Instead of grabbing the beer bottle, he reached under the comfy chair and pulled out a handgun. It was there the entire time and in a place where he could quick draw it. And he was fast. The only thing I could do was leap sideways toward the kitchen just as he pulled the trigger. The discharge was terribly loud and I felt a horrendous, burning
thump
in my left shoulder as I sailed in midair. The pain messed up my trajectory and I crashed into the café table. I fell hard on the kitchen floor and cried out in anguish.

I’d been shot.

In hindsight, I should’ve remembered Douglas and his guns. The constant target practice out in the field. His obsession with cowboys and gunslingers. I was dumb and I paid for it.

Before I had a chance to take stock of the damage, Douglas was standing over me, the gun barrel pointed at me.

“Take off that mask,” he ordered.

It was difficult to catch my breath. All I wanted to do was nurse my shoulder, which was bleeding profusely. My left arm was useless.

“Ain’t your neighbors gonna call the cops, hearin’ a gunshot like that?” I asked.

He laughed. “My neighbors don’t give a shit about what other people do. Folks fire guns all the time around here. There’s a practice range out back of the trailer park. Now take off that mask. I want to see who was stupid enough to try and fuck with me.”

“I don’t think so.”

He aimed the gun lower. “The next shot goes in the leg. I’ll do it, too. Who the hell are you?”

Then I noticed how Douglas was standing. Legs apart. Directly
over me. An image of Soichiro flashed in my mind and I heard his voice say, “
You do know where the most vulnerable spot on a man is located?
”

My leg catapulted toward his groin,
but Douglas deflected the kick
by swatting the gun against my leg so that I missed the vital area and ineffectually struck his left thigh. The pistol went off again, but the bullet missed me and penetrated the floor mere inches from my right hip.

Acting quickly, I used my other leg to kick him. I managed to strike him hard on the inside of his right knee, which caused him to buckle. Ignoring the excruciating pain in my shoulder, I performed a “kip-up,” in which you go from a supine position to a standing one by thrusting the legs upward and outward while pushing off the floor with the shoulders. With adequate back arching, you land on your feet. It requires a powerful hip extension, contracting the glutes and the back in one swift motion.

Once I was standing, I immediately disarmed Douglas by grabbing his gun arm, twisting around so my back was to him, and then chopping the forearm sharply with a
shuto-uchi
—knife-edge strike. He yelped and dropped the weapon. It bounced on the carpet and landed somewhere out of sight. I then elbowed him in the stomach, completing the succession of attacks that finally toppled him. Goliath fell hard, shaking the trailer home as if an earthquake had struck.

I spun around to continue the onslaught, but the man was devilishly fast. He rolled onto his side and managed to pick up the small coffee table by one leg, and then he flung it at me with great strength. The best I could do was to use my bad left arm as a shield against the impact, and it hurt like the dickens. I remember screaming in torment. The table dropped to the floor between us. By then, the monster was on his feet, ready for more. He lunged at me over the table, attempting a tackle at the waist. As soon as his heavy arms were around me, I focused on a
karate
vital
point and used a knife-edge strike on the back of his neck right at the base of his skull. He jerked from the shock to his nerves and plummeted to the floor, but he still had some fight left. Douglas succeeded in grabbing my legs and felling me yet again! The interior space was just too constricting for me to maneuver properly; otherwise I could’ve easily avoided him. I crashed into the floor hard, effectively stunning me. Then the creep managed to take advantage of my condition and slug me in the stomach! He started to get to his feet so he could kick me, but I used his own weapon against him. I took hold of the coffee table and swung it at his legs with such force that the furniture shattered into three pieces. He dropped to his knees and actually landed on top of me before I could get up. His weight on my bad shoulder was agonizing. Then he got his hands around my throat and started to squeeze. His fingers were powerful and strong; they dug into my neck as if it was made of cotton. I couldn’t breathe! He was choking the life out of me!