Point Doom (19 page)

Now she was kicking and spitting curses and trying to bite me. I needed answers.

On her coffee table was a copy of the
L.A. Times
. I tore a page away, wadded it up, then stuffed it in Vikki’s mouth.

Pulling her off the couch, I began dragging her to the rear of the apartment—to her bedroom.

I pushed the door open, flipped the light switch, and saw a four-poster bed.

With my Beretta in one hand I hauled Vikki across to the bed and dumped her onto it.

“It’s time for us to talk,” I said evenly, tightening the belt around her hands. Then I slammed my knee into her stomach again.

While she lay there gasping I got up and went to the closet door and slid it open. There I found a rack of belts and yanked the entire apparatus out of the wall mount and onto the carpeted floor.

It took a few minutes to bind her up with several of her own belts. I strapped her down, spread-eagled, faceup, on the bed.

Near us on the floor was a pink T-shirt. I stuffed it in her mouth, replacing the wad of newspaper.

Now that she was secure I decided to do a quick toss of the room. Next to the bed was her two-drawer nightstand. I started there, opening the top drawer and checking for more weapons.

What was inside gave me everything I needed to know about my girlfriend Vikki. There was a box of bullets for a Colt .25 automatic. Beneath it was a stack of magazines, all with the same title:
Cuffed
. The same magazine that was in Woody’s apartment near his murdered body. Bingo!

Reaching across the bed I pulled the T-shirt from her mouth, then whispered in Vikki’s ear: “I see that you’re a
Cuffed
fan.”

She rolled her eyes, then cleared her throat. “You have no idea who you’re messing with.”

I had to smile. “Actually, I now know exactly who you are.”

Vikki looked at me and sneered.

When I yanked her robe open she yelled, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing!”

After stuffing the T-shirt back into her mouth I began cutting away her robe, using the sharp, six-inch folding knife that I’d bought at the pawn shop. After each piece was cut away I tossed it on the floor.

For the first time I saw fear register in her eyes. I now had her attention.

Climbing on top of Vikki, I straddled her upper body with my legs. “Now, lady,” I said in an even voice, “it’s question and answer time. The game we’ll play is called truth or torture. Here’s how it goes: I ask you a question, and if you lie to me, then I begin hurting you. Are you ready?”

I pulled the gag from her mouth.

She coughed, then shook her head. “You can’t do this,” she hissed. “You’d better let me go. You don’t scare me.”

“Remember something, Vikki,” I said. “What happens here is your pal Sydnye’s MO. If they find a body in this bedroom—your bedroom—they won’t be looking at me. They’ll be looking somewhere else. So, here we go. Question one: How were you involved with Sydnye in the killing of my friend Woody?”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”

I restuffed the gag in her mouth. “Wrong answer!”

I put all my weight on her stomach again.

Her face contorted in pain. It took her half a minute to catch her breath.

“Okay,” I said, “you get one more chance. Here’s question number two. If you answer incorrectly I’m going to start hurting you. Really hurting you. So let’s start again from the here and now. It’s easier that way. The orange pills I found in Woody’s car were your pills—correct?”

I removed the gag.

“What if they were? So what.”

“Good. Very good. And were you at Woody’s apartment?”

“Fuck you! I just told you all I know!”

“Jesus, dumb answer!”

She was leering up at me now. “You’d better understand something,” she hissed. “All it takes is one call from me. I’m warning you.”

I stuffed the T-shirt back into her mouth. “Okay,” I said, “you were warned. Now we play the game your way.”

I jammed my knee into her stomach again—harder this time.

As she lay gasping and squirming on the bed, I leaned down and put my mouth to her ear. “I’ll be right back,” I said.

In the master bathroom’s cabinet’s drawers I found everything I needed: a lady’s safety razor, scissors, and a bar of soap. I then located a washcloth, soaked it, and returned to the bedroom with my supplies.

When she saw what I had in my hands Vikki began thrashing on the bed. Another knee to her solar plexus and she stopped resisting.

A couple of minutes later, now back on top of her, straddling her chest again, I began clipping away chunks of her hair, near the roots. When that was done I wet her head with the damp wash rag and coated it with soap, then began shaving.

Five minutes later, now done with her head, I moved down to her crotch and shaved that too. I hadn’t done a very good job in either place but I had made my point: I had followed Sydnye’s MO.

I pulled the gag from her mouth. “Now, do you think I’m serious?” I whispered into her ear. “Did that haircut remind you of anything?”

Vikki glared up at me. “Do you know what a pig you are?”

“Were you at Woody’s apartment? Were you with Sydnye?”

“You’re a pig. Fuck you, pig!”

I stuffed the gag back into her mouth, then moved off of her and down to the end of the bed.

“This may not be exactly the way my friend was tortured,” I said, “but it’ll be close.”

Grabbing her right ankle with both hands, I twisted it hard until I heard the joint snap.

Vikki screamed into the gag for several minutes.

Back on top of her again, I could see her eyes bulging in pain. “Okay, here we go again. I’ll rephrase my last question: “Did you help Sydnye kill my friend?”

I pulled the rag out again. Her face was set in a grimace and she had trouble getting the words out. “Okay, God damn you! Don’t hurt me again! Yes. Okay, yes! I was there! But I didn’t know what was going on. That’s the fucking truth.”

“You were in the apartment and you didn’t know Woody was going to be killed?”

“No.”

“I don’t believe you. I’m calling that another wrong answer.”

“Stop! Please! I never saw her hurt anyone before. I thought it was a sick game—a bluff. I didn’t know she was going to do him. I was just there. She ordered me to come along.”

“Why don’t I believe that?” I said.

Then I began sliding back down her body toward her other foot. Her right ankle was already swollen and turning purple.

“Okay!” she screamed. “I was there to watch! I was ordered to be there. I saw her break his arms and legs. I saw her kill him!”

“You watched my friend being murdered?”

“It was my job! She paid me to be there.”

“Okay, next question. We’re doing better. We’re working together now.”

“Look, she gets crazy. She just gets weird and crazy!”

“And who cut up his clothes in the closet and then poured whiskey down his throat as he was having his bones broken? Who did that?”

“Sydnye!”

“You’re a liar! The two of you were there for hours. Maybe six or seven hours. All night. Sydnye was working—busy torturing Woody. She needed help. There was a lot to do.”

“She wanted it to look freaky in the closet, so I cut the clothes up. She told me to smear his puke in the closet, so I did that too. That’s it. That’s all I did!”

“As she was breaking his bones, who gave him the whiskey?”

“She told me to do it.”

“That was you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you watch as she cut his cock off? Did you help?”

“No! I watched. Okay? I watched her do it. But he was dead by then.”

“You stood by after he was dead and watched my friend get his penis cut off? And you stood there and watched him be tortured—all his bones broken. And you did nothing?”

“Look, she made me. You don’t know her. She’s scary.”

I had to take several deep breaths. This piece of shit of a human being had assisted in my friend’s death. She’d looked on as a decent man was being killed—and did nothing.

I had to change the subject or kill Vikki now with my bare hands.

“So, how did you come to meet Sydnye?” I finally asked.

“A year ago,” she gasped. “We met a year ago. We both had the same shrink. We met in her office.”

“Good answer.”

“Then I went to work for her at the dating service in Hollywood. After that she started paying me to do side jobs.”

“Side jobs? What kinds of side jobs?”

“She took me to clubs—places like that. She wanted to meet people but she didn’t want to do it herself. She’s weird and quiet around people. I would meet them for her and then introduce them to her.”

“Men or women?”

“Both. But she’s into women. She just uses men for sex sometimes.”

“And she paid you to do that?”

“Yes. She paid me.”

“Did she take you to an AA meeting to meet my friend Woody?”

“I introduced her to him at a meeting in Brentwood. It was a big meeting at a synagogue with a few hundred people. On a Wednesday night.”

“And Sydnye was the one who told you to go to work for Sherman Toyota? Sydnye was the one who gave the orders for you to come on to me and to have sex with me?”

“Yes!”
she screamed, “it was her idea, okay! All of it.”

“Sydnye paid you to help her kill Woody?”

“Sydnye’s rich. She’s very rich. She’s crazy too. I couldn’t say no.”

“How much did she pay you for your work with me, Vikki?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

I leaned close to her. “That’s a lot of money,” I whispered. “Your services don’t come cheap.”

“Her trust fund pays a couple of million a year. Sometimes more. She does what she wants. Anything she wants.”

“The day we had sex in my car—did she tell you to bring me back here to your place to fuck me so she could kill me?”

“I’m afraid of her. None of that was my idea!”

Now Vikki began howling, dripping snot and tears as she spoke. “C’mon, listen, I was afraid for my life! I had no choice.”

“She planned to break my legs and arms and neck and cut my cock off, too, right? And I bet that she had something even more special in mind for me. I bet you know what it was too.”

“She has a drug. It can be injected into someone where they’re conscious all the time while you cut them up. She wanted to use it on you.”

“I believe that, Vikki.”

“I told you she was a freak.”

“Then tell me something else: Do you know her father? Do you know Karl Swan?”

“I only met him once.”

“Only once?”

“In Malibu. At his home. He has a big estate. I drove her there. She likes having me drive her places.”

I shook my head. “Just once? Why don’t I believe that?”

Vikki rolled her eyes. “Hey, she hates him. She doesn’t spend that much time with him. They don’t get along at all.”

“Where is Sydnye now?”

“I don’t know! She calls me. Then we meet.”

“Of course you know, Vikki. Of course you do. I’m calling that another incorrect answer.”

Reaching back down to the end of the bed, I grabbed her by her broken ankle, then shook it violently with my right hand. “I’ve got all night, Vikki.”

More sweat and tears and snot were running down her face. “No! That’s enough, goddamnit! I’m telling you. C’mon, please!”

“Where does Sydnye live?”

“She has an apartment at the Sorrento Towers at the end of Ocean Avenue. Number seven twenty-one. She’ll kill me when she finds out I told you. Now I’m dead for sure.”

“I want the rest of it! All of it! I want details! Sydnye’s a ghost—off the radar. No ID, no traces. What name or names does she use?”

“Her name is Laighne. Laighne Lazarus. That’s the name she uses now.”

“And she’s at the Sorrento Towers. Does she have other addresses?”

“She has the guest house at her father’s place in Malibu. It has a private driveway.”

“Where else?”

“A place in Mexico. Her lover Sandra lives at the Mexico place. Laighne spends some of her time there with Sandra.”

“Did you and Sydnye-Laighne have sex? Are you her lover too? Is that how you got hooked into this sick shit?”

“Okay, I guess that’s it. I don’t know.”

I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks. We were an inch apart, face-to-face. “So you admit setting me up to be killed! And you admit being there when Woody was killed. And helping while he was being killed. What does that make you, Vikki?”

“I didn’t personally kill anyone, man!”

“Bullshit! Do you want to die—right here—right now!”

She could see the rage building in my eyes and I saw the fear in hers. “Tell me the truth,” I yelled.

“Okay,” she gasped, “I helped! Okay! I helped kill him!”

“How?”

“Just enough so she wouldn’t hurt me too. I helped her break his legs.”

“What else?”

“I was the one who cut his cock off. She ordered me to do it. But he was dead by then. That was all, goddamnit!”

I leaned back away from her. “Last thing, Vikki: I need phone numbers. Sydnye’s numbers. I also need the names and numbers of the people who work for Swan at his estate. His numbers too.”

“I have some. I have Swan’s cell. Sandra’s number in Mexico and Sydnye’s numbers too. I have that stuff.”

FIVE MINUTES LATER
we were done. I had everything I needed. Vikki was still strapped down and lying faceup and naked on the bed. Her right ankle was now thickly swollen and contorted.

Holding up her .25 automatic, I leaned toward her. “I’m going to do you a favor, Vikki. I’m giving you a choice. A choice that Woody didn’t have.”

She saw the gun in my hand. “No, for God’s sake. NO! I told you everything. No! Jesus, NO!”

“Here’s the deal. We both know that you and Sydnye were planning to do me right here in this apartment. And we both know that you helped kill my friend. Right?”

“Please! C’mon, Fiorella! Jesus! Please!”

I leaned close to her ear and whispered: “You’re going to die as an accomplice in the murder of my friend. It can go one of two ways: I can break your fingers and arms and legs and keep it going for another three or four hours. Trust me, I’m willing to do that. Or you can hold this gun in your hand and put a bullet in your brain. That’s the deal.”