Mangled Meat (8 page)

They moved down the hall. “Your story didn’t exactly wash like the cleanest laundry,” Rollin said ahead of him, “but neither did hers. Sometimes people just aren’t what they seem.”

Heyton felt an inner groan from the choice of words.

“The dead fetus in the garbage? You’re gonna have to write up a full statement on that, and we’ll have to run it by the district attorney’s office.”

“I understand,” Heyton stammered.

“But they’ll blow it off. You got no priors, you got no record, plus you’re a respected business man. And they won’t bother prosecuting you for solicitation because there’s no evidence the girl’s a hooker. Only thing the D.A.’ll make you do is fly back to St. Petersburg in a month or so for an inquest and hearing.”

Fate kept throwing him gifts now. The fear had been enough, and the guilt.
I’m not bullshitting you, God,
he prayed.
I really have learned my lesson...

“Just let this be a lesson to you.” It was Rollin again. “Don’t pick up hookers—ever. It might seem like a victimless crime to most people but, trust me, it’s not. Guys like you get their throats cut by junkies, pimps, and whores every day of the week. It’s not your world, Mr. Heyton, so stay out of it.”

“Yes, sir.”

The main conference hall was packed now, milling with dozens of police chiefs and technical advisors. Heyton noticed with some satisfaction that all of his product brochures had been taken while his competitors still had plenty.

“We’ll be out of your hair in a minute, Mr. Heyton,” Rollin said.

But Heyton was confused.
Why’d they even come back in here?
he wondered. Rollin approached his place at the table.

“What’s, uh, what’s going on?”

Franco answered. “The lieutenant’s just gotta check one thing, then we’ll be out of here.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Just a precaution. The girl was right about the roofies in your wallet—”

“No, no, look, I told you, she planted it while I was knocked out—”

Franco smiled. “Relax, Mr. Heyton. We know that. But we just have to be sure.”

More unease spilled into Heyton’s gut. “About what?”

“She also said you took something.”

Heyton blinked. “Huh?”

Rollin was unzipping Heyton’s briefcase, opening it on the table. It was the wider type, one section filled by his laptop, another section for papers, and a side compartment for computer accessories.

“Just my laptop and work folders,” Heyton said, mystified. Franco’s comment pecked at him.
What are they looking for? More drugs?

Rollin un-velcro’d the side compartment. That’s where Heyton kept his power cord and trackball.

He squinted.

The cord and trackball were gone, a crumpled plastic bag in their place. Heyton had no idea what it was, and was certain he hadn’t put it there...

Rollin opened the bag—

“What the HELL is that?” someone hollered.

Rollin’s face melded into a rictus. Several other chiefs leaned over and looked in, then turned away pale.

“God in Heaven!” someone else shouted.

Then someone else actually screamed.

After the first flash of shock, Franco had his gun to Heyton’s head. “You sick piece of shit...”

Pandemonium broke out, the room going deafening. Rollin’s jaw seemed unhinged when he turned to re-face Heyton.

“You’re going to pay for this, Mr. Heyton...”

One peek in the bag was all Heyton got—and all he needed—before he was slammed face-first to the wall, man-handled, and cuffed.

Heyton could not comprehend this, even though he’d seen it with his own eyes. Elbow jabs and discreet kidney-punches jolted him, and the cuffs were tightened like jaws. “Get that monster out of here,” he heard Rollin groan over the rising din, and as he was dragged out, his own thoughts finally registered:
Oh my God the crazy psycho bitch had twins...

Room 415

When Flood saw the naked woman in the window, he froze. He stood poised as a mannequin in the dark, lit cigarette in hand. Excitement flashed, first in his heart, then his groin. It was the spontaneity, he knew, the total surprise. From this angle (Flood was on the fifth floor, the woman down on the fourth) he couldn’t see her face. Just a blur of shiny, ink-black hair, a flash of white breasts as she turned. Now she stood back to window; his eyes locked on the lines of her shoulders, waist, hips. A perfect snow-white rump. At first he thought she must be wearing a white bikini, until a maintained stare revealed stark tanlines.
Another sun bunny,
Flood thought. After that first second of reaction, he shrugged, uninterested.
Why bother even looking?
he told himself.
What’s the point?

But he kept looking anyway. Was it boredom? Or hope?

A sheer, salmon-pink curtain billowed out the window. Flood’s eyes remained on the buttocks and its perfect cleft, yet peripheral detail indicated that she was talking to someone. To her right, an unmade bed. Flood rubbed his crotch through boxer shorts—who could see?
It would at least be nice to get a look at the rest of her,
he complained. God, nature, or the universe could be mockingly cruel. The only reason he’d risen from bed and come to the window at all was to smoke. His secretary had booked him a non-smoking room, so he puffed before his own open window. He’d turned the a/c off; as a Seattlite, warm breezes coming off the water were a luxurious novelty, and so were all the inordinately attractive women he’d seen thus far walking down the streets, sitting in bars, and even shopping in grocery stores in string bikinis. Bikinis here seemed as commonplace as frumpish denim ankle-skirts and flannel blouses were on women in the Northwest. Flood didn’t expect such a personal reaction. He’d traveled to cities all over the country whose women clearly outshone Seattle stock as far as looks were concerned. His boss, in fact, always bewailed sending him on these marketing trips, with comments like, “Sometimes it really sucks being the president of a big company, Jake.” “Why?” “Because I gotta stay here and run the show, and send you guys to all these fancy hotels full of gorgeous babes.”

Babes,
Flood thought now. It didn’t matter to him anymore.

He stood a moment further, smelling the fresh salt air. He looked straight out and could see only a vast darkness that seemed incalculable, even monstrous. An interesting acknowledgment: he couldn’t see it but he knew it was there, the thousand-mile-long Gulf of Mexico.

His cigarette sizzled down, an orange brand; he glanced again to the window. The initial rush of voyeur’s excitement had exited. Now the woman sat on the edge of the bed calmly fellating an apparent black man who stood before her with his slacks down. Flood noted that the slacks appeared to be high-quality, as did what appeared to be a black-silk shirt and black tie. Flood couldn’t see the man’s face. When Black Guy’s hips began to flinch, he pushed the woman down on the bed and straddled her, silently masturbating the final moment.

The image raved. The woman’s mouth gaped a greedy ecstacy, stark-white breasts atop the luxuriant tan; Flood thought of Hostess Snowballs topped by pink bon-bons. He was surprised by the clarity of detail he was able to see. Black Guy ejaculated viscid loops across the breasts, then shook out the last line across her lips. She sat back up to slowly suck out the endmost drops.

Another mindless rub to the crotch wrought no reaction. A masturbating voyeur’s dream, yet Flood didn’t care. His crotch felt comatose.
What a rip-off,
he thought to the sea.

For lack of anything else, he lit another cigarette. He needn’t be to the conference hall till noon, so he could sleep late. Besides, he really did enjoy this secret existential luxury: being totally alone before the lightless face of nature. Flood was sales director for a company that made wireless computer components; hence, these electronics shows proved a necessity to travel out of Seattle. His firm, in fact, had achieved a cutting-edge rep in the field. He’d always been successful but never more than now. Fifty, and he was living the white-collar success story: close to a mid-six-figure salary, stock options that guaranteed a lavish retirement, waterfront home on Puget Sound. 100k in his savings account, and a Mercedes
and
a Cadillac.

Yet Flood felt poor as a vagabond.

Felicity had wed the man she’d been cheating with immediately after the divorce, so at least there was no alimony. They’d been married for ten years, and he supposed, now, that she’d cheated on him for as long. He even knew she was a gold-digger but he didn’t care (Flood had lots of gold); he simply loved her for all he was worth, her flaws, her flirting drug problems, and her lack of character, and all else. She was more beautiful than any woman he’d known, and she soon became the very seat of his desire.

Oh, God. What a wreck my life is...

He knew he shouldn’t think about her; Dr. Untermann warned him of such pitfalls. What had she called his disorder? “A thematic-erotic inversion, Mr. Flood. It’s a fairly commonplace sexual dysfunction. A stimulating image or situation ignites an instantaneous and very normal sexual response. But then the inversion sets in. Stimulation reminds you of your ex-wife, and your ex-wife nearly destroyed your life. Let me put it this way, Mr. Flood, in more comprehensible terms. Your married life can be likened to a car wreck. You’re a crashed car. You’re going to be in the shop for awhile.”

Analogy notwithstanding, finally he understood, to the chagrin of his sex drive. Any woman who excited him would dig up memories of Felicity, then all bets were off.

Shit!
His cigarette had burned down in his musing, burning his fingers. He pitched it out the window and watched the ember fall five stories in total silence.

That silence, and the darkness, seemed a comfort here. It honed off his edges. Uncaring now, he glanced down at the fourth-floor window again, spotted the ink-haired girl on hands and knees on the bed. A wide, stocky white man with a shaved head was taking her from behind, quite frenetically. He’d dropped his slacks, and as he humped her, shrugged out of his own silk shirt, a deep maroon. The bald head shined. The wide back was astonishingly hairy; it reminded Flood of a professional wrestler. Flood focused down...

What happened next was easily discerned in spite of the distance and angle. The bald man’s head dipped down, whereupon he spat between the girl’s buttocks, then pulled his penis out—

“Hey!” Flood could hear the girl’s sudden disapproval. “I told you you couldn’t—”

Then a sharp yelp.

The bald man had thumbed open her buttocks and slammed his penis into her rectum.

He humped even more frenetically now, grasping her hips close to restrain her objection. In a moment the thrusts slowed, then stopped.

The night air carried stray words upward, which Flood could hear with little trouble:

“Leon! Oscar put it in my—”

“
Damn
it, Oscar! That hurts!”

“—I told him he couldn’t put—”

The bald man was gruffly wiping his penis off on some fabric, presumably the girl’s dress.

“Leon! Tell Oscar not to—”

”Shut up, hosebag—”

She whirled around, sitting upright on the bed. “Don’t you call me a—”

SLAP!

Flood flinched to what he witnessed. The bald man—Oscar, evidently—had one arm back into his silk shirt when his hand blurred. He cracked an open palm hard against her face.

First, silence. Then—

“You can’t hit me!”

“Be quiet, Jinny,” a third voice said.

More silence.

Flood calculated, something he was good at.
The girl’s Jinny, the bald guy Oscar. The third voice must be Leon, the black guy.
Flood continued to watch and listen.

“What do you wanna do with this cum-drain, Leon?” Oscar said.

“Leon, tell him not to talk to me like that!”

SLAP!

Flood flinched again. Leon the Black Guy calmly walked back into view: tall, lean, well-groomed.

“You don’t like it when Oscar talks to you with disrespect?”

Jinny was sobbing now through obvious stinging pain. “Nuh-no!”

“Then why do you treat
me
with disrespect?”

Now the silence gaped.

The girl looked up wanly as Leon and Oscar towered over her.

“Whuh-what do you mean?”

“Don’t insult me, Jinny. I’ve always taken care of you, and now you betray me.”

“I-I never...”

“You’re made, bitch,” Oscar said, his bald head out of frame. “You’re busted.”

“We know, Jinny. So admit it. If you admit it, then everything’ll be cool. If you don’t... Just, please—don’t insult me.”