The Girls Club (29 page)

“I told them as much as I could, and that you only shot her because you had no choice, she’d already tried to kill all of us.”

What kind of fucked up state would this leave the Chain in?  How many secrets like previously buried bodies would be unearthed while the police tried to understand just how it came to be that a bunch of bitches packing heat had shot it out in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn.

Heidi found she didn’t care. 

“Oy,” came a the dusty croak.

“Another fucking country heard from”

“You got a right…potty mouth on you”

“KAREN!” Sky went over and grabbed her hand.

Karen couldn’t open her eyes.

“Tell me”

She was on the floor covered in blood.  The car had hit her dead on.  Interesting use of the word dead eh?

“She’s alive!” she whispered directly into her ear.

Karen’s face lifted in a smile.

“D’ya hear that you crazy limey bitch, ALIVE!” Heidi shouted.

The cop stuck his head in the door and looked at the girls.

“Everything in here alright?”

“Fuckin ‘A’ ossifer, how ‘bout you get us a beer?”

He promptly shut the door again wishing he hadn’t asked.

Karen started to get up and Sky put her hands on her shoulders. 

“You can’t get up yet! Sleep Karen, sleep and get better, in the morning we’ll go see her”

“All of us”

“You guys speak for yourselves, I haven’t had sex in over 24 hours. I need to get laid” Heidi muttered.

Karen tried to laugh but it just felt like her whole body was tired.

As Heidi and Sky feel asleep Karen made another attempt at getting up.  There were tubes in her arms but the tripod they were suspended from had wheels and was good to go.  She had to see.  Had to know.  Her stomach wouldn’t settle until she knew.  Until she knew that her promise, tattered and torn, had been kept.  That Rochelle was still alive.  One arm jutted out in a cast the getting out of bed part was a very slow affair.

Her head felt too big for her shoulders and her eyes dry and dusty.  Once she was off the bed she gripped the tripod and started her shuffling gait over to the door.

She was halfway across the room when she heard an ‘ah-hem’.

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re pig headed?” Heidi whispered.

“I wanna see her…I need to see her” her hand slipped down the tripod.

“Alright” Heidi hissed and hopped out of her bed.  At first she had more trouble standing upright than Karen had.  Karen almost wet herself as Heidi cursed, trying her best not to look hurt or disabled in anyway.

“Limey fuck” she muttered as she opened the door for them.

The cop jumped up from his chair.

“Where do you think you’re going ladies”

“Disneyland”

“Heidi!”

“ICU, our friends up there”

“What about her” he pointed to Sky who was sleeping peacefully with her head still on Heidi’s bed.

“Let her sleep. She’s earned it”

“Its not that I’m bothered about ma’am, I’m one cop to protect three lucky ladies, if you split up whaddya expect me to do?”

“Please” Karen pleaded as she swayed like a drunk.

Heidi touched his arm, “Give us ten minutes, then we’ll be good little injuns”

“Sure thing, but if you’re not back in ten you’ll go under room arrest”

And off they went to the end of the hall.

“Which floor?” Karen stared at the elevator console like she could really see any of the buttons there.

“Em, the map says three” and she hit three.

Karen was leaning against the wall and Heidi had her pinned up.

When the door opened they were greeted by a nurse at a desk, “Visiting hours are clearly stated, you’ll have to come back tomorrow”

Heidi propped Karen against the wall and leaned over the desk, “Listen,” she read the badge, “Velda, the cop said it was OK, so I’m not gonna take any shit from you”

The nurse blushed, “But you…”

“Come on” Heidi lifted Karen from against the wall and they wandered along the glass walled corridor looking for signs of Rochelle.  When they turned the bottom corner together they saw another cop.  When he looked up and saw them he put his hand on the butt of his gun.

“It’s cool, buzz your buddy, he said we could come see our friend”

He pulled his mike, “Say, your ladies headed my way, out?”

“That’s a roger, I told them ten minutes but you know women, probably be half an hour, out”

“Tell him we heard that” and Heidi opened the door.

Karen shuffled in, looking behind her she saw Heidi had stayed there.

“I don’t need to see this. I’ll wait here and re-educate this fucking cop on sexual equality”

The door whispered shut.  They were alone.

Little Rochelle.  Poor sweet little Rochelle.  It looked like she had been attacked by a monster made of plastic and tubes and was still fighting for her life.

There was a bump hiss of air.  A steady
beep, der, beep, der
of a heart monitor.  Her head was swaddled in bandages and her arms were in casts right up to her shoulders.

Karen shuffled closer to the bed.  Rochelle’s colour was good.  It looked as if all the major damage was under the bandages. 

Oh Rosh, my Rosh, poor angel.

She got closer to the bed and touched one of the fingers hanging out of the end of the cast.  It felt cold.

“I made it. Eventually.”

Thump, sssssssssss, thump, sssssssssss, thump sssssssssssssssss.

“ Sarah’s dead. I’m sorry about that, I know she was your sister for whatever she did”

Thump, sssssssssss, thump, sssssssssss, thump sssssssssssssssss.

“I think Charlottes on this floor somewhere, Heidi thinks she saw her coming in. Strange how bad things got before the end”

Thump, sssssssssss, thump, sssssssssss, thump sssssssssssssssss.

She touched the fingers again, willing them to move, willing them to feel
warm.

“You know what else? I think Sky’s fallen in love with Miss Heidi, who by the way saved my life. I’d have never imagined that of her on first sight”

Thump, sssssssssss, thump, sssssssssss, thump sssssssssssssssss.

She could feel herself wanting to cry now, her throat filling with the salty taste.  What had she achieved if Rochelle never woke up?

“I was lousy at keeping my promise. But don’t stay like this to punish me” she broke down.  Standing there, with her tripod and open gown she felt used up and weak.  Worse than that she felt alone.  Something she’d never known for a minute since their first kiss.

“Rosh, for me” she took her hand off the tripod and placed it under Rochelle’s bruised chin.

“For me”

Tap tap.

“We gotta get back in a sec” Heidi said through the crack in the door

“Yeah, just a minute”

She leaned right over Rochelle now, letting her battered body touch Rochelle, letting Rochelle feel she was wanted, needed.

“I’ll be here when you wake up.” She kissed her gently on the mouth and nuzzled her cheek.

“I’ll be back in the morning” she took her tripod and began her shuffle back to the door.

Chapter 19

After three days of slumber Rochelle finally awoke.

By which time the police had amassed an amazing array of evidence on the seedy underworld activities of the organisation formerly known as ‘The Chain’.

Ladies left LA, ‘in fear for their lives’, there were a lot of bodies and a lot of finger pointing.  When one bit came out, the rest, inevitably followed. 

It was with some relief a certain amount of atrocity could be attributed to the former Chain big shot Sarah Steiger.  Many who had feared her in life felt tremendously liberated after her death, in their liberation they gave up their secrets.

Heidi let Sky take her home after a day of being incarcerated at the hospital.  Smoking in the toilets was something she’d given up at high school she exclaimed.  She further demurred that hospital johnnies failed to meet necessary standards befitting to a young TV starlet.

Rochelle was taken off life support after making the effort to breath on her own. 

Karen was discharged after two days but stayed anyway.  One arm in a cast up to her neck they looked a very sorryful pair.  Only one good arm between them.

Tarkingtons was stripped bare, police, detectives, media, the place became a hive of activity. 

Karen had been sat there, chin on her chest, dozing lightly when she’d first heard her try to speak.

“…idiot”

She had looked up and tried to turn round to see if anyone was behind her giving herself a nice sharp stabbing pain in her neck.

“…ing idiot”

There was no mistaking where the voice had come from that time.

She stood over her angel.  Some of the bruises had faded to browns and the absurdly large bandage discarded in favour of a smaller dressing.

With her good arm she reached over and put her hand on her cheek.  It was about the only place that didn’t have visible damage.

“Hey you”

And as Rochelle fluttered her eyes, trying to make the world come into focus Karen knew it had all been worth it.

“Sarah?” she whispered.

Karen could only shake her head a little.

Rochelle’s face smoothed out, there were emotions there to be unleashed, but relief had triumphed overall.  Karen would help her weather whatever storms came later.  Losing kin, no matter how psychotic, was apt to be painful.  It wouldn’t matter that she’d tried to kill them, because Karen remembered the look Rochelle had given Sarah one day.  Simple love.  Rochelle was true blue.  Loyal.  Karen felt that was a heavy burden for her own heart.

But one that would happily shoulder.

Charlotte Toulouse recovered from her injuries and left LA.  65% burns had left her with very little outlook on life.  But deep down she knew she had also been lucky to escape the Chain.  Some surgery and a new locale, she figured she could be a shyster lawyer anywhere.

Casey, Chain guardian extraordinaire, was in jail.  For a sizeable plea bargain she had given up the location of various ‘articles’ to the police.  When the police took possession of the cold case that housed certain ‘articles’ one detective promptly vomited on his partners shirt. Never before had they witnessed such a collection of human memorabilia.  Demi’s hand.  Denise’s ear.  Sarah’s nipples.  Those were the ones they had been advised off.  You could add to that haul three sets of labia, one excised buttock, three toes of varying sizes, an eye, a tongue and what they could only guess was a clitoris.

None of the parts had the same DNA.  Casey only knew some of what was there, she had herself helped remove some of it. 

Files were copied from computers by the FBI.  The Chain was in tatters.  The papers were in a frenzy, ‘Hollywood Whores’, ‘LA Lesbian Cult Crackdown’, the Weekly World News ran a remarkable article called ‘LA vampire Lesbians’.

When Rochelle had been well enough Karen had taken her back to her apartment.  It was a bit of joke that they had one good arm between them, but Sky spent most of her time helping out, when Heidi wasn’t demanded sex that was.

Karen had asked Sky just what the deal was between them now, Sky had answered with a wry smile, “I love the bitch”.  That was good enough for Karen.

Rochelle made a steady recovery.  At times she got fitful and frustrated.  Head trauma can do the most amazing damage to the bodies ability to function properly.  Long after the casts came off her arms she would find at times she would just fall over.  Her bodies centre of balance shifted irrevocably.

They were passing time.  The plan had been to leave LA and leave LA they would, after their services were no longer needed by the police.

Eventually there had been a funeral for Sarah.  Weeks after her death.  They had taken great pains to make sure they had all the forensic evidence they needed from her to tie her to all the horrible things she was being accused of.  Heidi was like a scalded cat before her trail began, the first case against her dismissed after her lawyer, (a man), had presented the photographic evidence of Sarah Steiger’s involvement.  He made the prudent case that Sarah Steiger wasn’t there to answer for her crimes and had Heidi’s tit in a crack to take the fall.  She’d been found guilty of manslaughter and released on her own recognizance pending further investigations into the Chain and Sarah Steiger.

She did talk shows and pod casts.  Her time come round at last.  An erstwhile Jessie James, gunning down the bad guy and saving her friends. 

None of the people involved were ever going to be the same.  You can’t kill someone or see someone killed and ever hope to be the same.  But the spirit of the club they had once been part of, the spirit of the club before it got tainted, remained with them.

Love your friends.

And they did.