HCC 115 - Borderline (11 page)

“Got it.”

“I could tell you something,” Cassie went on. “Something that would have old Ringo
squirming in his pants if he knew about it. You know that cat up there with Chita?
The cat she’s doing all the moaning about?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“His name’s Pancho. And this’ll bust you up, Lily. He’s Chita’s brother.”

“What?”

Cassie’s eyes sparkled. “Her brother, Lily. I swear to God. One night Chita got smashed
on tequila and put me hip. She told me he was the first guy who ever made it with
her, when she was twelve and he was fourteen. He caught her while she was taking a
bath and he copped her cherry before she knew what it was all about. They’ve been
making it ever since. She takes all the tricks she can handle, but Pancho’s the only
cat who ever gets her for free.”

“I suppose they want to keep it in the family.”

“I don’t know what it is, but that’s how it swings. And if Ringo knew about it, you
can bet he’d put the audience wise. Can you imagine watching a chick making it with
her brother?”

“If that’s her kick,” Lily said, “then more power to her. But why in hell did she
stop moaning? Are they done?”

“They’re not done.”

“So why no moans and groans?”

“Because they’re doing it another way,” Cassie said, a silly smile on her thin face.
“And she can’t moan now, Lily. It’s impossible.”

* * *

Meg was still shaking. Her body ached dully with desire and throbbed with need. The
house lights were on now, and the waiter was bringing them a fresh bottle of tequila,
and the same intrepid trio was playing mariachi music. But Meg’s mind still whirled
with the memory of the Mexican guy and the Mexican gal, loving like savages in the
spotlight just a few yards away.

There had been a moment when she had almost left her chair, had very nearly torn off
her own clothing and leaped onto the stage to join in the fun. She had wanted to throw
herself upon the contorted bodies on the bed, had wanted to add her own sweat to the
pool of perspiration upon the black sheet. But she had controlled herself until the
impulse passed.

She looked at Marty. It was strange—she was very highly sexed-up now, so much so that
she felt ready to explode, but still she had no immediate desire to make love to Marty.
He was a perfect lover and the whole night long had never failed to excite her. But
now she was more concerned with a different sort of excitement. The show was driving
her mad, not because she needed a man’s embrace but because it was so exotic, so forbidden.
There was a genuinely evil aspect to it, and this sense of evil was driving her wild.

Now Marty was sniffing the air, a bemused expression on his face. “That smell,” he
said. “Do you recognize it?”

“No.”

“Ever smoke marijuana?”

“Never.”

“That’s what it is,” he told her. “And somebody’s smoking one whole hell of a lot
of it.”

“Isn’t it illegal in Mexico?”

“Sure, but so’s prostitution. Like to try some?”

“I don’t know. What will it do to me?”

“Probably knock you on your ear. Not like alcohol. You won’t pass out. You’ll just
get higher and higher.”

She was already wonderfully high, but she wanted more, more of everything. She told
him to get some and he called the waiter over to the table.

“Marijuana,” he said. “Four or five cigarettes.”

When the waiter came back, leaving five slender brown cigarettes with twisted ends
on the table, Marty handed one to her and put another between his own lips. He lit
them both and she took a drag of hers. It tasted a little like a Turkish cigarette
she had smoked once. She did not particularly like or dislike the taste.

“Hold the smoke in your lungs longer,” Marty suggested.

“Why?”

“So you absorb it into your bloodstream. That’s what gets you high. The more you get
into your blood, the higher you get and the faster you get there. Just hold it as
long as you can.”

Meg closed her eyes and smoked. On the first try, she coughed almost immediately upon
inhaling and lost the bulk of the smoke. After that she began to get the hang of it.

It was working before she realized it. She finished the first cigarette and used Marty’s
lighter to start a second. Midway through the second, she realized that her head was
light, that colors were brighter than before, that the mariachi music sounded good
for the first time. Marty said something to her, something very trivial, and it seemed
hysterically funny. She started to laugh and could not stop. She simply went on laughing
until she was gasping for breath.

“Marty.”

“What, baby?”

“I’m high, Marty.”

“I know.”

“Are you high?”

“I’m getting an edge on.”

“I’m so high, Marty. And so
hot
!” That, she thought, was certainly the truth. She was so hot she was going to set
the whole night club on fire. Instead of calming her sexual urges, the marijuana had
made her realize just how excited she was. She closed her eyes and felt the blood
flowing in her loins, felt the warmth that flooded her big breasts.

So hot. She spilled tequila into her glass and drank it right down. It settled in
her stomach. She let her eyes close again and felt the warmth of the Mexican firewater
in her belly.

“When does the show start again, Marty?”

“Soon, baby.”

“Good.”

He stood up now, moved his chair so that he was sitting next to her instead of across
from her. He put his arm around her shoulder. She took his hand and positioned it
on her breast. His fingers flexed and she shivered, her blood pounding through her
veins. She took his other hand and wedged it up under her dress.

His hand moved further upward, he caressed her and she sobbed.

“Warm,” he said.

“Play with me, Marty. Oh, God!”

* * *

There was no moon. Clouds masked the stars. It was night, a dark night, and it was
time to begin.

Weaver left the hotel without speaking to the old man behind the desk. He walked through
the streets, detoured through darker alleyways. It was still a little too early, he
thought, because there were still too many people on the streets, too much automobile
traffic. Still, it was time to begin, time to search. His first victim, the girl in
Tulsa, had been an accident of fate. She had blundered across his path. But there
was no reason to assume that he would be that lucky again.

He couldn’t wait for the next one to come to him. He would have to seek her out, whoever
she might be, wherever she was now. He would have to find her and stalk her, and when
the time was right he would strike like a black panther in the night, like a vampire.

On Perry Street, not far from his hotel, he wandered into a bar. It was a skid row
sort of place with a strong beer and urine smell. The television set was on, tuned
in on an old Gary Cooper western. Three wine drinkers held up one end of the bar.
A woman, a little drunk and a little slutty, sat at the far end. She turned when Weaver
came in, and she flashed him a professionally brilliant smile.

He avoided her at first, walking to the middle of the bar and asking for a glass of
draft beer. The bartender drew a beer for him and he took a sip. He had never especially
cared for the taste of beer. He did not especially care for it now.

“Hey,” the woman called. “Come here, Mac.”

He turned and really looked at her for the first time. She was somewhere in her thirties
but it was hard to tell just where. The liquor she had been drinking hid her age neatly
enough; she could have been thirty or forty or anywhere in between. Her hair was dark
brown, her mouth painted with a great deal of lipstick. Her breasts were large and
heavy.

She called to him again. This time he went over to her, carrying his glass of beer
with him. He set the beer down on the top of the bar and seated himself upon the stool
at her side.

“You look like a nice guy,” she said. “Minute you came in, I said to myself, there’s
a nice guy.”

He did not answer her. He was sizing her up now, trying to decide whether or not she
would do. Actually, he thought, she was too old. He would have preferred a young girl,
someone around the age of the honey blonde he had seen at the hotel. But the blonde
was gone. He couldn’t have the blonde tonight, and this woman was presenting herself,
ready for the razor. She would be easy.

“Want to buy me a drink?”

He signaled the bartender. The woman was drinking rye and ginger ale. The bartender
poured a shot of rye, filled a water tumbler halfway with ginger ale, dropped in a
pair of ice cubes, and poured the shot in. He stirred the drink with a plastic swizzle
stick and gave it to the woman. Weaver paid for the drink.

“Here’s to a hell of a nice guy,” the woman said. She raised her glass and nodded
her head slightly at Weaver, then sipped her drink. She put the glass down and put
her hand on Weaver’s thigh. She patted him gently and smiled at him.

“You want to know something,” she said. “You want to know something. I like you. I
honest to God like you. Minute you came through that door, I said to myself, I like
that guy.”

“That’s nice,” Weaver said.

“I’m not kidding, either.”

“Good.”

Her hand stroked his thigh. “My name is Audrey,” she told him. “You got a name?”

“Mac,” he said. “You got it right before.”

“You mean it? Your name’s Mac?”

“That’s right,” Weaver said. “Mac Johnson.”

“No kidding,” Audrey said. Her hand, working cleverly, stole inside. She touched him
and his own hand went at once to his pocket. He held the razor in his hand, clutching
it for support.

“Mac,” she said, “I got a swell idea. Why should we pay bar prices for liquor? Instead
we can go up to my room. I got a bottle there and we can drink for nothing.”

He didn’t answer for a moment. She touched him, skillfully and excitingly, and his
grip was tighter on the razor.

The razor. The razor.

He pictured it in his mind, bright and shiny.

The blade flashed in his mind.

Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

Suddenly the white flash of the razor blade became the white roundness of her breasts.

A white circle.

Then the white circle of her breasts became the moon.

The moon grew in size and got larger and larger.

Then the color of the moon changed. It became a harvest moon as the white changed
to yellow and the yellow changed to orange.

Then the orange became red.

Red.

Bright red.

Bright blood red, and the red began to drip off of the moon.

Drip.

Drip.

The blood had all run off now and the moon was white again.

He stared at it.

Stared and stared.

Stared so hard the white moon became two white moons.

He blinked and the moons became her white breasts.

A voice.

A voice had spoken to him.

He blinked again and looked up at the face.

It was a moon and he talked to it.

“That’s a good idea,” he said. “Let’s go, Audrey.”

* * *

Ringo took a cigar from his breast pocket, bit off the end, spat, put the cigar between
his lips, and lit it.

A good crowd tonight, he thought. A good hot crowd watching a good hot show. Chita
and Pancho had gone over nicely, especially the finale, which always got a rise out
of the house. And Chita had received a healthy play during the intermission. The suckers
were paying through their noses.

Ringo chewed his cigar. The intermission was just about over now. Time for Cassie
and the new broad to do their stuff. He wondered how it would go over. Probably pretty
well, he decided.

He walked to the dressing room, knocked on the door.

“Girls,” he cooed, “you’re on.”

When the house lights dimmed rapidly to black, Lily hurried to take her place upon
the stage. A Mexican stagehand was busy rearranging props and he patted her playfully
on the behind while he worked. She ignored him and moved to the proper position. The
pale red spot hit her directly and she went into her routine at once.

The stagehand placed a coat-rack by the side of the bed. Lily stood near it, smiled
daintily and innocently at the audience. She made a small-girl curtsy. Then, with
disarming nonchalance, she removed the pink and white dress. She took her time disrobing,
but there was no suggestion of a strip-tease in the performance. She was simply a
young girl undressing for bed.

Under the dress she wore a pale red bra and matching panties. Her underwear was just
right for the particular spotlight focused upon her. She gathered up her dress, hung
it neatly upon the coat-rack. She removed the bra with her back to the audience and
hung it with the dress. She turned slowly, revealing her large firm breasts to the
audience. Her hands stroked her breasts carelessly, then dropped to the elastic waistband
of the red panties. She pushed the panties down and stepped out of them. She put them,
also, on the rack, and once again she caressed herself with the casualness of a child.

Quite a production, she thought. If she had known she had such a load of acting ability,
she would have gone down to L.A. with Jodi Wells to try out for the Playhouse. Hell,
you’d think the cats out front would be happy enough just watching a little sex. But
they had to have drama with it, for Christ’s sake!

Naked now, she knelt at the side of the black-sheeted bed. She folded her hands on
the sheet. She lowered her head and stared with amusement at her breasts, which pointed
prettily at the floor of the stage. In a clear, childish voice she piped

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

If I should die before I wake

Too much, she thought. They even had to drag God into the act. She wondered which
of Ringo or Cassie had written the script for the goddamn show. Maybe, if it went
over big in Juarez, they would take the show next to Broadway. Maybe they’d even sell
film rights.