Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee (25 page)

He'd have to research more thoroughly, and ask around
some more. Maybe Vivica knew, or Karen. Why would Hildreth give a car to this woman? More importantly, why was that
car abandoned in the woods? Later, he'd call one of his
friends at the paper and ask for a full-scale Nexus-Lexus
search.

The house below seemed very silent. Westmore spent the
rest of the day watching DVD's by T&T Enterprises. It was
stupefying. He groaned through one porn DVD after the
other, making active use of the fast forward. The logo
graphic on each DVD's main menu was a Gothic mansion;
Westmore rolled his eyes. Each scene left him numb, the
eroticism of beautiful women gone after the first "wetshot," which was followed by even more, hundreds more,
over the course of the day. It was all the same, just different
sets and different women, all of whom he'd seen previously
in their autopsy photos. Many of the men in these films
were fly-by-nights, with ludicrous stage names like Myles
Long and Dick Standing, and finally Westmore met the
cream of T&T's male crop: Jaz and Three-Balls. The latter's
nickname was no joke, and both men's qualifications for the
sex industry couldn't be contested.

The hours stretched by. The scenes were so depressing.
But in none of the DVD's did he find anything of interest.
Eventually, he plugged in the Halloween disc, which was refreshingly free of sexual activity. Plenty of imagery, though,
most of the same girls from the hardcore movies prancing
around in the skimpiest costumes. Lacy red-devil outfits,
vampires complete with fangs, a nearly nude bride of
Frankenstein, etc. Mack dressed as Sinatra (probably a reflection of his self-image) only in this case, Old Blue Eyes
sported horns, and Three-Balls was a caveman (not much of
a stretch) with his three namesakes gratefully hidden behind
a loincloth. Jaz, on the other hand, partied as the Mummy,
his occupational attribute similarly wrapped. Karen barged
drunk into the frame, an exotic belly dancer. The camera
zoomed in and out as she staged a dance. Thus far, though,
there was no sign of Hildreth at the party.

"Hi," Karen said, wandering in.

Westmore did a double-take. She wore nothing but a
carmine string bikini. "Hi."

"Do I look hungover?"

"Actually, no. That bikini's a very effective distraction."

She leaned against the doorway, arms crossed under her
breasts, which propped them up even more than the implants. "Is that your way of saying I look good in a bikini?"

"Karen, you look so good in a bikini that I can't even
concentrate on what I'm doing." He leaned back in the
chair and lit a cigarette. "And, no, that's not a come-on."

..132= „

"Did you forget your clothes?"

"I've got nothing better to do so I thought I'd work on
my tan in the inner courtyard. Care to join me?"

"No. I'm a journalist. Journalists are supposed to be pale;
it's an image-thing."

"Well, at least if I'm by myself, I can sunbathe nude."

Westmore raised a brow. "So. Exactly which windows face
the inner courtyard?"

"Funny. What have you been doing up here all day?"

"Watching the highly literate and always intellectual productions of T&T Enterprises."

Karen laughed. "Poor guy. Don't worry, I'll turn my head
if you stand up."

"You got that wrong. To me, porn's not erotic or stimulating. It's depressing. I'm about brain-dead from it by now
And you're on the screen as we speak."

Karen came around the desk with something like a fret on
her face. "The Halloween party, thank God. I thought you
meant you found one of my old pornos from the early '90s."

As attractive as Karen was, Westmore squarely didn't want
to see images of Karen doing the same things he'd just
watched the T&T girls do. "Great belly but-no offenseyou're not much of a dancer."

"I am when I'm sober, which I definitely wasn't during
that party." She looked amusedly at the screen.

"I don't see Hildreth anywhere. Wasn't he at the party?"

"Actually, no. He took Halloween very seriously."

Westmore smiled at the inference. He could imagine the
laughable image, which was probably true nonetheless: Hildreth and cronies chanting in the chapel, wearing ridiculous
black capes and hoods. "Of course."

Still, watching the party footage, Karen shot a quick
frown."Oh, shit. You can see my c-section."

Westmore hadn't noticed the scar, and he was further surprised. "I didn't know you had any kids."

"See?" She pulled the rim of the already-minuscule
bikini down a hitch, revealing the thin scar. "I had Darlene when I was twenty-one, if you can believe that. It's starting
to make me feel old now; she's in her first year of college.
I'm really proud of her. She got accepted at Princeton."

"That's great," Westmore said. "But you practically gotta
be a millionaire to cover the tuition."

"Vivica picks up what the scholarship doesn't cover."

"There's some good fortune. What happens if she lets
you go?"

Karen paused. "Why would she do that?"

"Well, I don't know. You used to work for her husband's
company, and now her husband's dead and the company's
shut down."

"I guess if she cuts me loose, I'm more fucked than all of
the chicks in those videos combined."

Westmore would have to find a polite way to tell her that
profanity didn't make her more attractive. But he almost
groaned when Karen waltzed around to the coffee machine
and bent over the cabinet to get some filters. "Oh, while
I'm thinking of it. You ever hear of a woman named Deborah Anne Rodenbaugh?" he asked.

"No, I don't think so."

"She's listed as the driver of the car that's abandoned.
Maybe one of Hildreth's porn girls."

"Maybe."

On the screen, a rather dumpy, overweight woman could
be seen sitting in the background. Lank hair hung in her
eyes; she looked out of it. "Who's that?" Westmore asked.

Karen looked without much interest. "Oh, that's Faye.
Talk about a basket case; I always felt so sorry for her. She
was the company janitor, and did some groundskeeping."

"She's not even in a costume."

"Not a party-type. More dejected wallflower. She was just waiting for the party to end, so she could clean up. A lot
of Hildreth's porn people would poke fun at her. It was really cruel. She was a closet junkie, is what I heard."

Looks like she was on something. Westmore was about to say
something else, when his heart lurched.

On the screen.

He quickly hit pause. Someone else had stepped into
view on the party DVD.

It's her. It was the girl from the desk snapshot, and the
subject of the oil painting that hung in front of the safe. But
she wasn't in costume at the party, just a nice dark business
dress and high heels.

Could that be Deborah Rodenbaugh?

"I wish I knew who that was," he muttered to himself.

Karen glanced at the screen. "Never saw her before."

Westmore looked at her with some suspicion. "Yes you
have."

"Nope. I don't think so."

He pointed behind him to the floor. "It's the girl in that
painting. You said you never saw her before, either. And it's
obviously the same girl." Westmore didn't even know what
he was suspicious of, yet he gave Karen a long look.

"Why are you being a dick all of a sudden!" Karen
sniped at him.

"I'm not, I just-"

"I was drunk when I saw that picture, and you're looking
at me like I'm lying to you or something!"

"I only meant that it seemed strange when you said you'd
never seen her before but you had, in the picture, and here
she is at this party that you're also at but don't know who
she is-"

"Jesus Christ, what is it you think I'm lying about? People would come and go in this house the whole time I worked here. There might as well have been a fucking revolving door out front. I can't possibly remember every single woman that had the hots for Hildreth!"

Karen was obviously pissed off now; Westmore felt foolish.

"Let me look Jesus Christ. Let me see if I can remember every single chick to set foot in this fucking house-"
Frowning, Karen leaned over, her bikini'd rump a few
inches from Westmore's sight. She studied the screen. "Oh,
wait a minute, I do remember her."

"Was she one of the porn girls?"

"No, she was one of Hildreth's gofers. He'd take one under his wing every now and then, called her his assistant. Almost never saw her, though, and she definitely wasn't a
party girl. Never even saw her with a drink. And come to
think of it- What was the name you just ran by me?"

"Deborah Anne Rodenbaugh."

"Okay, then that's probably her 'cos I think her name was
Debbie. She drove a little black convertible."

Yes! Westmore celebrated. "Then that's her. I finally
know who the hell it is." Westmore had made a big deal
about nothing, but at least he got the info he needed.

"Why is she so important anyway?"

Westmore scratched his head. "I don't know, but it's her
car stashed in the woods. Knowing who she is is a start."

"A mystery. Is that what Vivica really hired you for? To
find out about this girl? Vivica's not the jealous type, believe me."

Westmore did his best to skirt the question. "I'm
just ... checking things out"

"Yeah? Checking things out?" Karen put her hands on
her hips, deliberately displaying her body to him.

Holy Jesus. This place is gonna drive me honkers.

"I'm going to go tan. You can finish checking things out." She gave him a last amused glance. "You're a real
goofball, you know that?"

"Bigtime. But that's what you like about me, right?"

"I guess so," she chuckled and left.

Westmore was never going to make a play for her. Willis
was sexually terrified. Mack didn't like her. Nyvysk was
gay. And Adrianne and Cathleen were looney toons. So why
should Karen care what people might think?

Co ahead, somebody. Call me a sleaze.

She preferred to think of herself, instead, as uninhibited. It
seemed natural and honest. If someone wants to peep on me, I
don't care ... She popped off the tiny bikini and stood stark
naked in the middle of the sunny inner court. The sun on her
skin felt luxurious; it reminded her of why she loved Florida.

She stretched back on a stone lounge chair topped with
weatherproof cushions. The fountain had been turned off, a
dry-mouthed gargoyle that seemed to leer at her. Beds of
day-lilies, touch-me-nots, and milkwort bloomed various
shades of orange. Karen could smell the sweet richness in the air. She closed her eyes behind the sunglasses and the
world went from radiant to black.

She tried to blank her mind but her thoughts kept turning to Westmore. He wasn't her type at all; perhaps that explained her attraction. After twenty years of sleeping with
the wrong guys maybe she was starting to see the light.
Somebody decent and smart might be nice for a change.
But it doesn't matter 'cos he's not going for it, she thought. Yeah,
he's smart, all right. Smart enough not to mess around with
me...

She tried but failed to resist the fantasy, imagining Westmore with her right now, right out here, both of them
clothed in nothing but sunlight. His mouth was on hers,
then began to lower. His hands were molding her flesh. The
feel of his body on hers compounded the luxury of the
sunlight enveloping her. Karen felt ecstatic ...

When she drifted to sleep, Westmore came with her. His
mouth was between her legs now, laving her. Karen's nerves
felt like a network of springs about to snap at any moment.

Then, something felt ... wrong.

The tongue delving into her felt impossibly long: tubular
meat extending. Was it forked? Karen's eyes bulged, and
when she snapped them open, she wasn't in the courtyard.
She lay on the bare stone floor of some dungeon-like cell,
with orange firelight wavering in through smoking holes in
the wall.

Where am I? she thought, aghast.

Through one of the broken holes in the wall she saw
something in the distance, a temple of some sort, perched
on a fog-seeping rise. It was flesh-colored. Arteries seemed
to run up and down its front columns and side walls. But as
the sensations deep in her loins began to intensify, her atten tions pulled away from the temple because that's when she
noticed something else.

It wasn't Westmore who tended to her below the waist, it
was Jaz.

Karen screamed. Jaz grinned, a grin full of fangs, as he retracted a veined, foot-long tongue that was black as a lizard's
and very much forked. His forehead rippled, skin ruddy,
with blood-red eyes. A pair of fat knurls protruded from the
forehead, and the hands that gripped her thighs were
clawed.

"Mom! Help!"

The plea was unmistakeable. It was Darlene, her daughter. Karen screamed doubly hard when her eyes found her:
hanging upside-down and naked. Sheer horror flooded her
young eyes.

Three-Balls, horned and mutated as Jaz, stood beside Darlene with a sickle-shaped knife.

"Hang her up beside her daughter," another voice commanded.

It was Hildreth, standing alone in the cell's corner.

The clawed hands that had been pushing Karen's knees
back to her face now yanked her up by a fistful of hair. In
this evil place, wherever it might be, her large breasts were
even larger, her hips wider, her curves more extreme. The
place, yes. It had re-formed her, but for what?

The thing that was now Jar shoved her face toward another hole in the wall.

"Take a good look, my dear," Hildreth's voice ground.
"Take a look at yourself back in your world. Can you see?
Can you see what the acolytes of Belarius are doing to
you?"

Karen saw.

She saw herself back in the inner courtyard. She was being mauled on the lounge chair by what could only be described as gelatinous shadows. The things were gang-raping
her, while a transposition of Hildreth stood aside and
watched. He was here and there at the same time.