The revolver was big and heavy in Anna Sukowski's hand and she let drop to the floor. Shoeless she walked out into the rainy night, seeing no one along the stone path between the empty cottages. She needed her car if she were going to get away from this place or find Po, hopefully both. She had no idea where the chapel where her car was supposed to be was. She walked through the dark and rain anyway, across mud and wet stone in her stocking feet, the stocking ragged and torn, bare head battered by the driving rain. As long as Patricia knew, Anna reasoned there was someone beyond the darkness that could reach in and pluck her to safety but until that time, she was on her own.
The rain had slowed for the most part. Dawn hadn't come and the night was black and scarred for miles with red streaks of lightning. I guessed she might have work in the morning. She wasn't going to make it. I'd slept and rested and was restless, pacing back and forth, replaced the missing slug in the Bulldog, checking and reloading the .357's, making sure the Glocks checked. I had my pockets full of hollow points from cops' Garrison belts. I wasn't worried about being outgunned as long as the other guy had guns. What I thought about was my life and how that was effectively over. I wondered what had happened to Margie, if she were happy with a new man but I didn't wonder too hard or too long about it. There was nothing she could do for me now.
The girl stirred and tried struggling weakly against the bonds, but the pantyhose were knotted too tight and her circulation cut off and her whole body went pale and numb. She wasn't going anywhere. My best bet was to take off before daylight but I couldn't leave her tied as she was. Her mom would call again, come over eventually. I'd be on my way to Sinclair to confront Bolton and I wasn't going to ride into town at high Noon. That was a safe way to get my ass clipped right out from under me. I hadn't left many witnesses behind and it would be a piss poor time to start.
Pulling the pillow from beneath her head, her head fell back too heavy and tired for her neck to lift. Her eyes popped open and shuttered, lips squirming over the foamy drool saturated pantyhose but making no sound.
I stood watching her, looking into her frightened face as it reddened with panic and she began to straining her stretched and sore limbs again, squirming her body in the cheap sweat soaked slip as it rode up her thighs and uncovered her pissed up panties.
I didn't remove the gag because I didn't want her to scream and wasn't interested in her opinion on anything. Hell, she was a nuisance and I had only a place to get out of the rain. She knew me from the goddamned news and only knew what the news had told her. I was a killer and the terror in her bright eyes told me that she believed that through and through. Hell, it was true and I didn't want to disappoint her. I didn't bother apologizing for it either.
I pressed the pillow over her face as she tried to shake it off by jerking her head from side to side. Still I managed to fit the muzzle of a Glock 10 snugly between her chattering, gnashing teeth, felt the contour of her sharp features beneath my hand over the pillow, the big nose, Semitic lips and protruding forehead, jaw was working teeth through pillow feathers upon the metal bore. Then she really got jumpy. Her whole body started bucking and shaking, arms and legs trying to rip themselves out of the sockets, too heavy and weak to do anything besides raise livid gooseflesh.
The voice finally coming through, the screaming muffled by the pillow and I took a few seconds to let my eyes luxuriate along the well-developed body as the stomach heaved and rolled. The throat gagging on sour bilge that welled up and sank back down with a tumble into her gut and the breasts rising and falling like twin setting suns.
I'd liked to see her face as the bullet smashed through her skull, but I couldn't afford the noise or the flash of gunfire. Forcing the automatic's muzzle even deeper into the pillow, choking her with the pantyhose, her mouth filled with vomit, spit pouring from beneath the sides of the pillow, working the pistol into her mouth and practically shoving my fist down her throat. Her back arched and heaved lifting her spine in an arc from the mattress, arms stretched at her sides up over her head, streaming with steamy perspiration that mingled with pungency in her fuzzy armpits, legs trembling stretched beyond endurance and I fired. The shell burned through the pillow and feathers and I fired again, pulling the trigger easy and sent another bullet and another and another into her skull, which popped and melted beneath the pillow.
The body rocked, arched heavily and dumped in her skimpy drawers, wetting them wit a bucket of piss and sweat. The blood spread in a huge wave from the pillow down along the bed beneath the immobile shape, spilling onto the floor and splashing as it was leaking through the ventilated mattress and box spring. It was done.
I left through the kitchen door just as I had come, wheeled the Harley back over the rain slicked gravel onto the road, jumped the starter, revved the engine and took off as the red lightning crackled and seared the sky.
That last move didn't make me a hero. In fact, it made me a prick that deserved everything he had coming, but I wasn't quite through dishing it out yet either. Everyone who'd eaten my lead had only been practice for one son of a bitch. I just hope the fat bastard didn't die of a heart before I got the chance to burn his ass to the ground.
Eva Von Schwartz had taken to drinking heavily when she couldn't sleep. She watched the grandfather clock chime the hours as they passed with antique precision. She had the cut crystal decanter setting on her wide lap, too thirsty to set it aside. Her bloated body was nervous and overly fatigued but preserved enough strength to fill the empty glass again and pour another shot of booze down the pasty throat. Victor tossed and turned in the big bed upstairs in the Master Bedroom. He was thinking however of the empty room at the end of the long hall that lay prepared as always for the return of their daughter.
The daughter would have to struggle through pain, fear and confusion to return—the daughter whom might never return. They had been trying to reach her for fifteen years but every effort had failed. It hadn't occurred to either of the Von Schwartz's that to reach someone required more than expensive treatment by doctors and nurses, more than isolation and torture. They had not tried love, the simplest of all remedies.
Hadn't tried it because sadly, love was in short supply in the Von Schwartz household, hadn't tried it because love didn't have a price and all the Von Schwartz's had was money—money to buy almost anything that Eva and Victor wanted, but what they wanted most eluded them. What they wanted most was now running scared and naked through the blinding rain and dark woods not far away. Running free.
The decanter slipped and shattered startling Eva out of her inebriated stupor. She glanced through bleary eyes at the sparkling chips of finely cut glass as they glistened on the polished parquet floor. She shifted her feet lazily, sliding the naked soles over the broken pieces, cutting herself but feeling nothing. She tried to stand, supporting her weight against the overstuffed leather sofa and tried to walk, staggering, barely lifting one foot to put in front of the other. She left bloody footprints as she made her way slowly and unsteadily across the floor. With blood literally pouring from the bottoms of her feet, she slipped on it, one leg twisting beneath her as the other leg flew and she went down rolling, insensible and began to crawl, the palms of her hands and her knees pressing into the sharp chips of broken glass. As the flesh gashed open, something blinded her that should have been pain and she fell, sprawling onto her belly and she coughed and choked, reaching a hand in front of her to try to drag her body forward. She only wanted to get to the liquor cabinet and a full decanter and would make it a life or death effort. She pulled her body's weight by clawing at the floor, too drunk to stand or reason. The bar was across the capacious room and the grandfather clock ticked away the seconds and minutes it was taking her to crawl mere few inches bleeding and sobbing.
She would not cry out for Victor. No. This was one time when she would do for herself. He'd proven himself to be just weak and helpless as she. Now she would rely on her own strength. She would help herself if it killed her and in her drunken mind, she thought it just might.
Victor abruptly sat upright no longer able to ignore the thoughts that were haunting him. He'd kept the memories at bay by thinking about his wealth and all that it could acquire, but as he realized that his fortune was unable to help him now, the memories came on like a flood. It was more than twenty years ago when he had spent that night in Chinatown entertaining some business associates he had interested in purchasing some prime real estate which he had acquired the deed to after the owner's unfortunate but timely demise.
He had never told anyone how the owner had died or what the circumstances were when Officer Bolton had responded to the complaints of the man's peculiar and antisocial way. Bolton had driven out to the property in the dead of night. It was Victor who had complained. Victor Von Schwartz was Vicovich Schwartzenberg then, but everyone knew him as Victor. Who could pronounce 'Vicovich' anyway? Vicovich soon legally became Victor; Schwartzenberg shortened to Schwartz and finally Von Schwartz to give the family an air of European aristocracy that it had never had before. Eva had gone along with him every step of the way.
Bolton had come back just before dawn, waking Victor out of a sound sleep by blaring the siren of the patrol car, spinning the sickening red lantern of the car's cherry top with the car parked on the front lawn. Donning robe and slippers hurriedly, Victor had dashed out of the house to find Bolton in the car, drunk, and his sweaty uniform layered thickly with blood. The fat patrolman looked like he had just come from a slaughter, yet Bolton grinned maniacally, tore the tip the off a cheap cigar with his teeth, spit and lit the cheroot with the car's electric lighter. He'd done his job he explained, set old man Parkinson right. There would be no more trouble from the senile old fool.
"My god, man! What—what happened?" Victor had exclaimed as the sun was beginning to turn the sky sheet white.
Bolton explained further: He'd gone to Parkinson's about the weird goings-on that Victor had reported; goings on concerning such bizarre activity as off game shooting, which Victor had characterized as 'unnatural animal sacrifices'. Then there were the reports of Parkinson lurin' yung'uns into the woods around his property, makin' yung'uns do things no yung'uns gotta mind or business doin'. What these things were no one ever got around to discussing. They were jus' too disgustin' for words.
"Well, the som'bitch wouldn't talk reason no how—run from me when I catched him inna woods, get this—buck nekid! An' if that don' beat all—I yelled for'm t'hold it an' he run back in that rundown woodshed o'his an' come out wit' a loaded pump aimin' t'blow my fool head off! Well—" Bolton wrapped up the story with the same sardonic smirk with which he'd began it.
"I hope you're happy, Schwartz. Real damn happy. We'll talk later—You go on up." Bolton started the car's engine, his eyes beady and greedy in the new morning sunlight. "You tell Eva everything's gonna be right peaceful from here on in. Y'hear?"
Bolton had driven off and that's exactly what Victor had told Eva. Everything was going to be peaceful—from here on in.
Schwartz leased the Parkinson property for over thirty mil to a company that need a nice quiet place to dump about a millions gallons of green sludge from its factories and as the years went by, the rent kept going up until the ground practically glowed. Victor, by now he was Von Schwartz, could afford to buy and sell anything he damn well pleased. When the price got too high for even the billionaires that were paying it, he'd arranged a meeting in New York City with some big shot developers from Texas.
They'd been driven from JFK in Von Schwartz's private limo to the heart of the Big Apple, wined and dined until they drunk and stuffed on twenty-pound gourmet Main Lobster. As the night wore on, however, the good ol' boys wanted to have a little big city fun, well, not a little—they wanted to have a whole mess'o fun. Von Schwartz had leaned in over the table full of booze, coke and heroin and whispered that the best tail in town was to be had below Canal. Them little yella gals sure loved them some white boy and would do anything for a dime!
"Angels with dirty minds," Victor had joked and the fat Texans had howled at that like a pack of distempered coyotes and kept right on howling.
He was gonna make a phone call from the limo and have about a dozen or two pieces of live bait round up just for the drooling pencil dick crackers to do with as they damn well pleased. To Bolton, who had connections in Korea town from the war, it sounded like a real party all right—
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