to my collection, whatever she happens to be carrying.
Sometimes it's not much, only a few dollars. This is really a help.
It really is. This much should last me as long as it takes for me to
get back to where I belong. Do you know where I belong, Mr. Redlow?"
The detective did not answer. The kid had dropped down below the
windows, out of sight. Redlow was squinting into the gloom, trying to
detect movement and figure where he had gone.
"You know where I belong, Mr. Redlow?" the kid repeated.
Redlow heard a piece of furniture being shoved aside. Maybe an end
table beside the sofa.
"I belong in Hell," the kid said. "I was there for a while. I want to
go back. What kind of life have you led, Mr. Redlow? Do you think,
when I go back to Hell, that maybe I'll see you over there?"
"What're you doing?" Redlow asked.
"Looking for an electrical outlet," the kid said as he shoved aside
another piece of furniture. "Ah, here we go."
"Electrical outlet?" Redlow asked agitatedly. "Why?"
A frightening noise cut through the darkness: zzzzrrrrrrrrrr.
"What was that?" Redlow demanded.
"Just testing, sir."
"Testing what?"
"You've got all sorts of pots and pans and gourmet utensils out there in
the kitchen, sir. I guess you're really into cooking, are you?"
The kid rose up again, appearing against the backdrop of the dim
ash-gray glow in the window glass. "The cooking was that an interest
before the second divorce, or more recent?"
"What were you testing?" Redlow asked again.
The kid approached the chair.
"There's more money," Redlow said frantically. He was soaked in sweat
now. It was running down him in rivulets. "In the master bedroom."
The kid loomed over him again, a mysterious and inhuman form. He seemed
to be darker than anything around him, a black hole in the shape of a
man, blacker than black. "In the c-closet. There's a w-w-wooden
floor." The detective's bladder was suddenly full. It had blown up like
a balloon all in an instant. Bursting. "Take out the shoes and crap.
Lift up the back f-f-floorboards." He was going to piss himself.
"There's a cash box. Thirty thousand dollars. Take it.
Please. Take it and go."
"Thank you, sir, but I really don't need it. I've got enough, more than
enough."
"Oh, Jesus, help me," Redlow said, and he was despairingly aware that
this was the first time he had spoken to God-or even thought of Him in
decades.
"Let's talk about who you're really working for, sir."
"I told you-"
"But I lied when I said I believed you."
Zzzzrrrrrrrrrrrr.
"What is that?" Redlow asked.
"Testing."
"Testing what, damn it?"
"It works real nice."
"What, what is it, what 've you got?"
"An electric carving knife," the kid said.
6
Hatch and Lindsey drove home from dinner without getting on a freeway,
taking their time, using the coast road from Newport Beach south,
listening to K-Earth 101.1 FM, and singing along with golden oldies like
"New Orleans,"
"Whispering Bells," and "California Dreamin'." She couldn't remember
when they had last harmonized with the radio, though in the old days
they had done it all the time. When he'd been three, Jimmy had known
all the words to "Pretty Woman." When he was four he could sing "Fifty
Ways to Leave Your Lover" without missing a line.
For the first time in five years, she could think of Jimmy and still
feel like singing.
They lived in Laguna Niguel, south of Laguna Beach, on the eastern side
of the coastal hills, without an ocean view but with the benefit of sea
breezes that moderated summer heat and winter chill. Their
neighborhood, like most south-county developments, was so meticulously
laid out that at times it seemed as if the planners had come to
community design with a military background. But the gracefully curving
streets, iron streetlamps with an artificial green patina, just-so
arrangements of palms and jacarandas and ficus benjaminas, and
well-maintained greenbelts with beds of colorful flowers were so
soothing to the eye and soul that the subliminal sense of regimentation
was not stIfling.
As an artist, Lindsey believed that the hands of men and women were as
capable of creating great beauty as nature was, and that discipline was
fundamental to the creation of real art because art was meant to reveal
meaning in the chaos of life. Therefore, she understood the impulse of
the planners who had labored countless hours to coordinate the design of
the community all the way down to the configuration of the steel grilles
in the street drains that were set in the gutters.
Their two-story house, where they had lived only since Jimmy's death,
was an Italian-Mediterranean model-he whole community was Italian
Mediterranean with four bedrooms and den, in cream-colored stucco with a
Mexican tile roof. Two large ficus trees flanked the front walk.
Malibu lights revealed beds of impatiens and petunias in front of
red-flowering azalea bushes. As they pulled into the garage, they
finished the last bars of "You Send Me."
Between taking turns in the bathroom, Hatch started a gas-log fire in
the family-room fireplace, and Lindsey poured Baileys Irish Cream on the
rocks for both of them. They sat on the sofa in front of the fire,
their feet on a large, matching ottoman.
All the upholstered furniture in the house was modern with soft lines
and in light natural tones. It made a pleasing contrast with-and good
backdrop for the many antique pieces and Lindsey's paintings.
The sofa was also hugely comfortable, good for conversation and, as she
discovered for the first time, a great spot to snuggle. To her
surprise, snuggling turned into necking, and their necking escalated
into petting, as if they were a couple of teenagers, for God's sake.
Passion overwhelmed her as it had not done in years.
Their clothes came off slowly, as in a series of dissolves in a motion
picture, until they were naked without quite knowing how they had gotten
that way. Then they were just as mysteriously coupled, moving together
in a silken rhythm, bathed in flickering firelight. The joyful
naturalness of it, escalating from a dreamy motion to breathless
urgency, was a radical departure from the stilted and dutiful lovemaking
they had known during the past five years, and Lindsey could almost
believe it really was a dream patterned on some remembered scrap of
Hollywood eroticism. But as she slid her hands over the muscles of his
arms and shoulders and back, as she rose to meet each of his thrusts, as
she climaxed, then again, and as she felt him loose himself within her
and dissolve from iron to molten flow, she was wonderfully, acutely
aware that it was not a dream. In fact, she had opened her eyes at last
from a long twilight sleep and was, with this release, only now fully
awake for the first time in years. The true dream was real life during
the past half-decade, a nightmare that had finally drawn to an end.
Leaving their clothes scattered on the floor and hearth behind them,
they went upstairs to make love again, this time in the huge Chinese
sleigh bed, with less urgency than before, more tenderness, to the
accompaniment of murmured endearments that seemed almost to comprise the
lyrics and melody of a quiet song. The less insistent rhythm allowed a
keener awareness of the exquisite textures of skin, the marvelous
flexibility of muscle, the firmness of bone, the pliancy of lips, and
the syncopated beating of their hearts. When the tide of ecstasy
crested and ebbed, in the stillness that followed, the words "I love
you" were superfluous but nonetheless musical to the ear, and cherished.
That April day, from first awareness of the morning light until
surrender to sleep, had been one of the best of their lives.
Ironically, the night that followed was one of Hatch's worst, so
frightening and so strange.
By eleven o'clock Vassago had finished with Redlow and disposed of the
body in a most satisfying fashion. He returned to the Blue Skies Motel
in the detective's Pontiac, took the long hot shower that he had
intended to take earlier in the night, changed into clean clothes, and
left with the intention of never going there again. If Redlow had made
the place, it was not safe any longer.
He drove the Camaro a few blocks and abandoned it on a street of
decrepit industrial buildings where it might sit undisturbed for weeks
before it was either stolen or hauled off by the police. He had been
using it for a month, after taking it from one of the women whom he had
added to his collection. He had changed license plates on it a few
times, always stealing the replacements from parked cars in the early
hours before dawn.
After walking back to the motel, he drove away in Redlow's Pontiac. It
was not as sexy as the silver Camaro, but he figured it would serve him
well enough for a couple of weeks.
He went to a neo-punk nightclub named Rip It, in Huntington Beach, where
he parked at the darkest end of the lot. He found a pouch of tools in
the trunk and used a screwdriver and pliers to remove the plates, which
he swapped with those on a battered gray Ford parked beside him. Then
he drove to the other end of the lot and reparked.
Fog, with the clammy feel of something dead, moved in from the sea.
Palm trees and telephone poles disappeared as if dissolved by the
acidity of the mist, and the streetlamps became ghost lights adrift in
the murk.
Inside, the club was everything he liked. Loud, dirty, and dark.
Reeking of smoke, spilled liquor, and sweat. The band hit the chords
harder than any musicians he'd ever heard, rammed pure rage into each
tune, twisting the melody into a squealing mutant voice, banging the
numbingly repetitious rhythms home with savage fury, playing each number
so loud that, with the help of huge amplifiers, they rattled the filthy
windows and almost made his eyes bleed.
The crowd was energetic, high on drugs of every variety, some of them
drunk, many of them dangerous. In clothing, the preferred color was
black, so Vassago fit right in. And he was not the only one wearing
sunglasses. Some of them, both men and women, were skinheads, and some
wore their hair in short spikes, but none of them favored the frivolous
flamboyancy of huge spikes and cock's combs and colorful dye jobs that
had been a part of early punk. On the jammed dance floor, people seemed
to be shoving each other and roughing each other up, maybe feeling each
other up in some cases, but no one there had ever taken lessons at an
Arthur Murray studio or watched "Soul Train."
At the scarred, stained, greasy bar, Vassago pointed to the Corona, one
of six brands of beer lined up on a shelf. He paid and took the bottle
from the bartender without the need to exchange a word. He stood there,
drinking and scanning the crowd.
Only a few of the customers at the bar and tables, or those standing
along the walls, were talking to one another. Most were sullen and
silent, not because the pounding music made conversation difficult but
because they were the new wave of alienated youth, estranged not only
from society but from one another. They were convinced that nothing
mattered except self-gratification, that nothing was worth talking
about, that they were the last generation on a world headed for
destruction, with no future.
He knew of other neo-punk bars, but this was one of only two in Orange
liked to call the Southland-that were the real thing. Many of the
others catered to people who wanted to play at the lifestyle the same
way some dentists and accountants liked to put on hand-tooled boots,
faded jeans, checkered shirts, and ten-gallon hats to go to a
country-and-western bar and pretend they were cowboys. At Rip It, there
was no pretense in anyone's eyes, and everyone you encountered met you
with a challenging stare, trying to decide whether they wanted sex or
violence from you and whether you were likely to give them either. If
it was an either-or situation, many of them would have chosen violence
over sex.
A few were looking for something that transcended violence and sex,
without a clear idea of what it might be. Vassago could have shown them
precisely that for which they were searching.
The problem was, he did not at first see anyone who appealed to him
sufficiently to consider an addition to his collection. He was not a
crude killer, piling up bodies for the sake of piling them up.
Quantity had no appeal to him; he was more interested in quality. A
connoisseur of death.
If he could earn his way back into Hell, he would have to do so with an
exceptional offering, a collection that was superior in both its overall
composition and in the character of each of its components.
He had made a previous acquisition at Rip It three months ago, a girl
who insisted her name was Neon. In his car, when he tried to knock her
unconscious, one blow didn't do the job, and she fought back with a
ferocity that was exhilarating. Even later, in the bottom floor of the
funhouse, when she regained consciousness, she resisted fiercely, though
bound at wrists and ankles. She squirmed and thrashed, biting him until
he repeatedly bashed her skull against the concrete floor.
Now, just as he finished his beer, he saw another woman who reminded him
of Neon. Physically they were far different, but spiritually they were
the same: hard cases, angry for reasons they didn't always understand
themselves, worldly beyond their years, with all the potential violence
of tigresses. Neon had been five-four, brunette, with a dusky
complexion.
This one was a blonde in her early twenties, about five-seven. Lean and
rangy. Riveting eyes the same shade of blue as a pure gas flame, yet
icy.
She was wearing a ragged black denim jacket over a tight black sweater,
a short black skirt, and boots.
In an age when attitude was admired more than intelligence, she knew how
to carry herself for the maximum impact. She moved with her shoulders
back and her head lifted almost haughtily. Her self-possession was as
intimidating as spiked armor. Although every man in the room looked at
her in a way that said he wanted her, none of them dared to come on to
her, for she appeared to be able to emasculate with a single word or
look.
Her powerful sexuality, however, was what made her of interest to
Vassago. Men would always be drawn to her-he noticed that those
flanking him at the bar were watching her even now-and some would not be
intimidated. She possessed a savage vitality that made even Neon seem
timid. When her defenses were penetrated, she would be lubricious and
disgustingly fertile, soon fat with new life, a wild but fruitful brood
mare.
He decided that she had two great weaknesses. The first was her clear
conviction that she was superior to everyone she met and was, therefore,
untouchable and safe, the same conviction that had made it possible for
royalty, in more innocent times, to walk among commoners in complete
confidence that everyone they passed would draw back respectfully or
drop to their knees in awe. The second weakness was her extreme anger,
which she stored in such quantity that Vassago seemed to be able to see