Without Mercy (17 page)

It’d take a few days for a beard to grow, so he’d have to stop killing whores for a while. When he started again he’d have to do it so no one would see him. He should go on a diet and try to lose some weight, because the newspaper said the Slasher was
heavyset.
Maybe he should start running around Tompkins Square Park with all the crazy assholes.

The old Ukrainian people in the building would think it strange if he grew a beard, because they hated the bearded hippies who’d invaded the neighborhood. It probably would be best if he left his apartment that very day. He wouldn’t take any luggage, because people would notice that. He’d just walk out the door and let the city swallow him up. They’d never be able to find him. He’d keep moving like an Indian. He’d be free as a bird.

Leaning back in his chair, he looked around the kitchen. Food stains were on the refrigerator, dirty dishes were in the sink. He hadn’t taken the garbage out for a few days and the joint smelled a little rank. The toilet bowl kept getting clogged. Roaches were crawling everywhere. I might as well get out of here right now, he thought.

He decided to take down the garbage so the place wouldn’t stink and attract the attention of neighbors while he was gone. He also wanted to get rid of his red and black jacket because it had been described to the police. Picking up the jacket from the corner of the living room where it had been lying, he stuffed it into the bottom of an A&P bag, and covered it with some garbage from another bag. Then he carried all the garbage bags downstairs, making two trips to get rid of it all. Back in his apartment, he put on his blue bomber jacket and gray cap. He had about a hundred and fifty dollars in one of his drawers, and stashed it in his pants pocket. His chauffeur’s license was in his wallet, and he tucked his hack license into his shirt.

He descended the old slate steps of his building, feeling lightheaded and loose. It was as though he wasn’t in the world anymore. Downstairs on the street he walked to Third Avenue, then headed for the Bowery.

Chapter Seven

The Metropolitan Garage was on Sixty-first Street, a half-block from the West Side Highway. It was the largest taxi garage in Manhattan, with a fleet of three hundred cabs.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon. Kowalchuk approached the garage, wearing his blue bomber jacket and gray peaked cap. He had a five-day growth of beard which effectively obscured his features. He’d been spending his nights at the Osborne Hotel in the Bowery area, and his days at various movie theaters. Now he was running low on cash and had to return to work.

The garage was two stories high and made of red bricks. Adjacent was a parking lot half full of yellow cabs. It was in a neighborhood of factories and loft buildings.

The front proscenium door of the garage was open now that it was spring, and Kowalchuk looked to make sure a cab wasn’t coming out, then slipped inside the greasy dimness of the huge downstairs room. In its center were gas pumps manned by inside workers in their filthy one-piece suits. A line of cabs returning from the day shift entered the rear of the garage and came to a stop beside the pumps. The day drivers got out and were replaced by night drivers, while inside workers filled gas tanks and checked oil. The inside workers banged on the trunks when they finished and the drivers sped their cabs out the proscenium door into the city.

Kowalchuk passed a line of cabs mangled and battered in traffic accidents, and headed for a door marked with a sign that said Ride Yellow Ride Safe, a slogan the taxi industry had employed several years back to counter the growing threat of gypsy cabs. He pushed open the door and entered the shape-up room, filled with tobacco smoke and cabbies standing elbow to elbow arguing with each other while waiting to be assigned cabs.

Hogan, the dispatcher, sat behind the metal grating of a window, a burly, bald man who seldom smiled. Kowalchuk took out his hack license and passed it under the grating.

Hogan looked at him. “Where the fuck have you been?”

“Sick.”

“You haven’t been here for almost a month.”

“It’s less than three weeks.”

“We’ve been firing guys like you who don’t come in regular. If you wanna work here, you gotta come in more regular.”

“C’mon, most of the guys here don’t come in regular.”

“That’s gonna end. We’re runnin’ a fuckin’ taxi garage here, not a funny farm.”

Kowalchuk decided to keep his mouth shut. He looked at his dirty fingernails while waiting for Hogan to cut out the bullshit.

Hogan put Kowalchuk’s hack license at the bottom of the pile and went back to his
Playboy.
Kowalchuk sidestepped through the crowds of yakking cabbies to a spot in the corner near the toilet, took out a cigarette, and lit it. Puffing the cigarette, he looked over the other cabdrivers. He wondered what they’d think if they knew he was the New York Slasher.

Chapter Eight

Kowalchuk was cruising in his cab at Kennedy Airport although cabdrivers were supposed to wait in special lots and approach the platforms in orderly lines. He didn’t like to do that, preferring to cruise the fronts of terminals illegally. He’d never been caught yet. You had to know which terminals were safe.

He was approaching one of the safe ones now, the terminal for Air Canada, Delta, and United. It was a big, white modern building and beside it was a lot filled with yellow cabs that trailed to the side of the building, where a special dispatcher from the taxi union kept everything moving in orderly fashion. It was six o’clock in the afternoon.

Kowalchuk steered to the lower road where the buses came. He drove slowly and saw the anxious faces of people standing beside their luggage waiting for the buses. Most of them were out-of-towners bewildered about being in the city. They were the easiest kinds to rip off.

Sure enough, two women raised their hands. Kowalchuk veered toward them and braked. They were business women in their forties and one knocked on his side window, which he rolled down.

“How much to go to the Hilton?’’ she asked.

“For just the two of you?”

“Yes.”

“Fifteen bucks apiece.”

She looked at her companion. “Why don’t we take it?”

“The bus is so much cheaper.”

“I’m tired of waiting for the damn bus. We can charge it to the company.”

The other woman shrugged. “ If you say so.”

The first one looked at Kowalchuk. “Would you wait a minute while we get our luggage?”

“Sure.”

They scurried back to the sidewalk, and he drove closer to the curb, noticing that the people waiting for buses were looking at him. He checked his rearview window and could see no cops. The women and a man, all with suitcases, came toward him. He got out of the cab and unlocked the trunk.

“Can he come too?” one of the women asked.

“Fifteen more bucks,” Kowalchuk replied.

“Okay,” said the guy, a sissy in a suit.

The three of them got into the back seat. Kowalchuk slammed shut the trunk and slid behind the wheel. He shifted into gear and stepped on the gas. The cab accelerated away from the curb. He turned on the meter so he wouldn’t get a ticket on the Kennedy road complex, intending to turn it off when he hit the Van Wyck Expressway.

His passengers said nothing about the meter. If he used it like he was supposed to, the trip would cost a total of sixteen dollars, and he’d have to give half to the Metropolitan Garage. This way he’d take in forty-five dollars and only give eight to the garage.

He smiled as he sped over the cloverleaf road. At this rate he’d have a few hundred dollars by Saturday, and then he could become the Slasher again.

Chapter Nine

It was ten o’clock on Saturday night. Kowalchuk was back on Times Square for the first time since he’d killed the whore in the Polka Dot Lounge. His beard covered his features, he wore his visored cap low over his eyes, and had on the blue bomber jacket. Walking past the peep shows and porno movies on Forty-second Street, he could smell lewdness in the air. His hands were in his pockets and his right hand fingered his switchblade.

He drifted into one of the shiny new peep show establishments, gave two dollars to the guy behind the counter, and got some quarters. Clinking the coins around in his big paw, he walked past the peep show booths, looking at the pictures in front for something interesting.

He stopped cold before one that had a photo of Barbra Streisand outside. The caption underneath said the famous star had made a fuck film when she was starting out in show business, and it could be seen for only a quarter. Kowalchuk turned up a corner of his mouth. He didn’t think it could really be Barbra Streisand in the movie, but for a quarter he could find out for sure. It would be okay if he could just see someone who looked like Barbra Streisand getting a stiff cock shoved up her ass.

He went into the booth, closed the door behind him, dropped a quarter in the slot, and pressed the button for the Barbra Streisand film. He noticed there was a little puddle of something on the floor. Somebody must have shot a load down there. The screen lit up and showed a close-up of a man with a mustache going down on a woman. The woman scissored her legs and swayed her fanny while the guy slurped away, his eyes closed in ecstasy. The guy looked like a real degenerate, and was that supposed to be Barbra Streisand? Maybe they’d show her face after a while. Kowalchuk watched impatiently, and the screen went black. He dropped in another quarter. The guy still was going down on the woman and Kowalchuk thought the guy’s tongue must be made of steel. The camera pulled back. The guy rolled over and the girl got on her knees over him. She definitely wasn’t Barbra Streisand although she resembled her a little. Kowalchuk had been ripped off again.

The movie stopped. He got out of the booth and sauntered along, looking at the pictures in front of other booths. Some of them showed black guys screwing white girls, and he moved quickly past them, because he didn’t like that stuff. He stopped at a photo of an Irish Setter doing it to a girl, and that provoked his curiosity. He’d never seen a woman doing it to an animal before. Entering the booth, he latched the door behind him and placed a quarter in the slot. The screen lit up and showed a pretty girl rubbing dog food between her legs. Then the Irish Setter came out of nowhere, sniffed, and licked her. Kowalchuk shook his head. Women were so depraved it was disgusting. Was there anything they wouldn’t do? Next the girl made the dog sit on the rug, and she sucked his skinny red thing. Kowalchuk wanted to throw up. Females were perverted deep in their souls and they’d do anything for money. The screen went black. He took another quarter from his pocket and put it in the slot. The girl got onto her hands and knees, and another girl came and put the dog on top of her, inserting its pecker inside. The dog lay back his ears and screwed the girl spasmodically, and she shook her ass and smiled happily at the camera. Kowalchuk couldn’t believe his eyes. Women really must be crazy, he thought. Maybe after enough of them are killed, they’ll wake up and try to lead decent lives.

The screen went black and Kowalchuk decided he’d seen enough of that. It had made him feel queasy in his stomach. He left the booth and looked around, wondering what to do next. He decided to go to the booths where you could see live naked girls doing piggy dances, and had moved a few steps in that direction when he remembered seeing a theater marquee on Forty-second Street that advertised a live on-stage sex show. It occurred to him that it might be more fun to watch a live sex show than just live dancing girls.

He walked out of the peep show to the sidewalk and made his way through the hawkers and bums toward the marquee he’d seen. Passing a saloon with a big open door, he looked inside and saw black guys standing around the bar. They were a bunch of dirty rats and yet the whores and dancing girls gave all their money to them. The world was going nuts and somebody had to try and set it right.

He approached the marquee. It advertised a movie and a live sex show for only two dollars and a half. The front of the theater was plastered with photographs of attractive young white girls and guys having sex. Their private parts were inked out but Kowalchuk still wondered how they could show such things on a public street. America was turning into Sodom and Gomorrah, and the women were to blame. They’d do anything for money. You couldn’t really blame the guys. Why should a guy turn down free pussy?

A small bulb of pain began to glow above his left eye, the manifestation of two contradictory ideas colliding in his mind. Sexual displays were evil, but he liked them anyway. He rationalized the contradiction by telling himself that if women were crazy enough to show their cunts, why shouldn’t he look?

A young Puerto Rican guy was in the ticket booth. Kowalchuk slipped his money under the window, then walked through the turnstile and entered the lobby, which was about the size of his kitchen on East Ninth Street. He pushed through the door and found himself in a narrow theater with an aisle down the middle and chairs on both sides. On the big movie screen a woman was chained to a post, and a guy in a black leather jockstrap was clamping clothes pins on her nipples. She whinnied in pain and the guy called her a stupid dirty cunt.

Kowalchuk walked down the aisle, looking to the left and right for seats. He wanted to sit as close as possible to the stage, but all the other guys had the same idea. There happened to be only a few isolated empty seats up front, but Kowalchuk didn’t want to sit next to anybody if he could help it. He didn’t like to touch other people, and never knew what to say when strangers talked to him.

He sat in an aisle seat about fifteen rows back, left his hat on, and crossed his thick legs. No one else was sitting in the row. He looked at his watch and wondered what time the stage show would begin. He hoped it was soon.

On the movie screen, the man in the black leather jockstrap stood with his arms crossed before the cowering girl. She was young and a little on the chubby side, still tied to the post. If you saw her walking down the street in regular clothes you might take her for a secretary or a bookkeeper, but there she was bare-ass in a fuck film.