Cat People (5 page)

But she did not sleep. The creaks and groans and sighs of the old house were foreign to her ears, and had to be identified one by one. Outside her window the branch of an elm tree rustled against the iron bars of the balcony railing.

Finally she dozed off, but almost immediately sat up, wide awake. She had an overpowering sensation of being watched. The room was totally black, with the window a faint gray rectangle over the foot of the bed. Squinting, it seemed she could see a shadow there that was darker than the surrounding night.

"Who's there?" she called.

There was no answer.

Did the shadow move?

Irena fumbled for the lamp that stood on the bedside table. She found it and switched it on, flooding the room with light. Nothing lurked outside the window except the gently waving branch of the elm tree.

Irena put out the light and lay back down. Nerves, she told herself. It had been a long, eventful day. Nothing was out there watching her. Still, it was a long time before she fell into a fitful sleep.

It was late, and Ruthie Warren was tired.

Too much time on my feet today, she thought with grim humor, and not enough on my back.

She paused on her way down Bourbon Street to look into the window of an X-rated bookstore. There was a heavy crimson drapery behind the glass to give the customers inside a measure of privacy while they browsed among the fleshy magazines. It also provided a good reflection for people passing on the street.

Ruthie frowned at the image that looked back at her. Christ, she was showing all of her twenty-nine years tonight. All right, then, her thirty-three years. Hooking was a young girl's profession. What she dreamed of was latching on to some well-fixed john who would put her up in a little pad of her own and give her spending money. Not a whole lot, just enough to buy little things now and then.

The whore's dream, she thought bitterly. Fat chance of it ever coming true. Definitely not taking calls from the crummy massage parlors on Bourbon Street. When Eddie Mays had called her tonight she felt like telling him where he could stick his business. But face it, she could use the extra bread.

Ruthie patted her Farrah Fawcett wig, turned away from the window, and click-clacked on up the street on her spike heels. The tourist crowd was way off tonight. There was no convention in town, nothing going on in the Superdome. Just a lot of kids looking to score some dope, and the usual well-dressed Japanese who took pictures of everything in sight but didn't buy much.

At the corner of Conti Street she passed the New Original Dixie Bar. Inside the open door four ancient black men honked out a brand of jazz that was even older than they were. Their faces were empty of expression, their thoughts somewhere far away. The tourists inside didn't care. They drank their hurricanes and their pernod and stomped their feet in time with the creaky Dixieland music as though it were being invented on the spot.

Ruthie hurried on past two more bars, a pawn shop, and a hole-in-the-wall theater playing
Deep Throat.
She stopped at a six-foot street-level sign that read:
Pleasure Dome Massage Parlor 1 Flight Up—Satisfaction Guaranteed—Special French & Oriental Body Massage.
Then, in case anyone still did not get the message:
Private Rooms Available—Young Attractive Girls!!!

Two motorcycle types wearing denim jackets with the sleeves cut off to show their tattoos lounged in the doorway. They passed a marijuana cigarette back and forth and stared hard at Ruthie. One of them broke into a moronic giggle. Ruthie squeezed by without looking at them and climbed the gritty flight of stairs that led to the Pleasure Dome.

At the top of the stairs was a small lobby lit with red bulbs and smelling of strawberry incense. Eddie Mays sat on a stool behind a high counter with a glass front. Behind the glass was a selection of dildoes, handcuffs, rubber mouths, vibrators, French ticklers, and other items advertised as "marital aids" to satisfy the municipal code. Eddie was a sour, thirtyish man with a complexion problem.

"You're late," he said. "It's lucky this john is patient. He's been in there forty-five minutes."

"I got here as quick as I could," Ruthie said. "I wasn't planning to work any more tonight."

"If you don't want these calls, there's plenty of other girls hot to trot."

"I want the calls, Eddie," she said. "I do the best I can."

"Well get on in there and service the guy. It's room twelve."

Ruthie walked down the dimly lit hallway. She stopped at the linen closet to take out a couple of clean towels. Soft rock music was playing over the tinny speakers Eddie had installed. She walked on to a pink-painted door marked
12.
The
2
was missing, but the number was clearly outlined in brighter paint where it had hung. She touched her wig to make sure it hadn't slipped, licked her lips, put on a sexy smile, and walked in.

"Hi, sorry I'm la—"

She stopped just inside the door and looked around. There was the bed, cheap bureau with a mirror, single chair, and nobody. What a hell of a note, she thought, if she came all the way down here for nothing.

Then she saw a man's dark suit neatly folded on the chair. The door to the tiny bathroom was closed, and a seam of light showed along the bottom. Okay, so the john was modest.

She walked over and tapped on the bathroom door. "Ruthie's here, honey. You can come out any time you're ready."

No answer.

Ruthie sighed. She hoped this john was not going to be one of those who had to be coaxed. They knew what they came in here for. Why didn't they just get to it?

She skinned the dress off over her head and held it in one hand while she reached down and took off her shoes with the other. It felt good to get out of the tight pumps.

"Did they fill you in on the prices?" she said to the bathroom door. "The straight massage is twenty-five dollars. I mean, for twenty-five dollars you get a massage and that's it. Tipping is allowed if you want any extras or personal services, if you know what I mean."

The guy had damn well
better
want some extra personal services, Ruthie thought. It would really be a bummer if she had left a comfortable chair and a good movie on TV, squeezed her swollen feet back into shoes, and traipsed all the way down here to Bourbon Street for some yoyo who only wanted a
massage.
She had heard of that happening to other girls.

As she laid her dress across the back of the chair Ruthie saw the bulge of a wallet in the back pocket of the man's folded pants. With a glance at the still-closed bathroom door, she slipped it out deftly and opened it up as she continued to talk.

"For the straight massage you get ten minutes. The extras depend on how complicated you want to get."

The wallet contained a thick, unorganized sheaf of bills. Oddly, there was no identification. What the hell, it was fine with her if the guy wanted to travel incognito. She slipped out a twenty-dollar bill and tucked it into her purse, then replaced the wallet.

"We honor all the major credit cards—Visa, Master Card, American Express, but they're good for the massage only."

She heard a soft scraping sound and quickly smoothed out the man's pants where they lay.

"Tips are strictly on a cash basis."

She unhooked her bra and draped it over the top of her dress. Watching herself in the mirror, Ruthie moved her shoulders to make her breasts swing. Recently she had been thinking about getting silicon implants. They said the process was perfectly safe now. It could be done in the doctor's office. Ruthie studied herself critically and decided the boobs were still plenty good. Time enough to think about implants later.

She sat down on the bed and ran her hands down along her legs. They were her best feature. Her thighs felt warm and resilient under the black nylon stockings. She would leave the stockings and the garter belt on for now. A lot of men found that a turn-on.

She stood up and patted her stomach. A little rounder than she would have liked, but firm.

"Come on out, honey," she called. "We've already used up five minutes of your time."

She started to peel the blanket back off the bed, but stopped when her fingers touched something cold and moist. She straightened a fold in the blanket to look more closely and uncovered a lump of pinkish membrane, something like a piece of uncooked chicken flesh.

Yuck, was this guy going to turn out to be a weirdo? She prodded the lump with a stiff forefinger and shuddered at the slimy feel of it. What the fuck did the guy have in mind? She moved the thing, and beneath it was a pool of bloody mucus. A trail of the stuff, like some obscene snail track, led-across the blanket and dripped down into a shiny clot on the floor.

Disgusted yet fascinated, Ruthie leaned down to look at the mess. Something else was down there. Thick and dark, looking like a length of wet black rope, it stuck out from under the bed.

Right then Ruthie decided that whatever this guy wanted, he wasn't going to get it from her. She nudged the black rope with her foot.

It moved.

Ruthie sprang off the bed as though it were electrified. She stared at the wet black thing that now flicked slowly back and forth.

Something in the room growled.

"Jesus and Mary!"

Ruthie began snatching up her clothes as the growl came again, deep and menacing.

The narrow bed shuddered and began to tilt as though something under it were trying to stand up. Something huge and powerful.

Whimpering, Ruthie forgot about her clothes and made a dash for the door. She had her hand on the knob when the bed went over with a crash.

"Oh my God, my God!"

Something grabbed her stockinged foot and pulled her back into the room.

Ruthie screamed in pain and terror. Don't look back at it, she told herself, or it will never let you go. She lunged for the door, with her foot still held fast. She caught hold of the slippery doorknob and fought to make it turn. There was the crunch of bone and a pop as her Achilles tendon gave way under the growling assault of the thing that held her.

At last the doorknob turned in her hand. The door swung open and Ruthie stumbled through it. In the hallway she almost fell into the arms of a frightened Eddie Mays. She slammed the door behind her. Something heavy thumped against it from the other side. There was a growl that rose to a roar of fury.

"What the fuck—" Eddie began.

"Get me out of here!" Ruthie screamed.

With his eyes bulging from the effort, Eddie half-dragged, half-carried Ruthie back along the hallway toward the stairs.

When they came abreast of the counter where Eddie sat, Ruthie looked down at her foot. The front of it was gone—all the toes, the ball of her foot, leaving only a bloody stump of heel. The ankle was ripped open, exposing shattered bone and tendon. Ruthie screamed once more, then she fainted.

In a small house on Burgundy Street, just over two miles from the Pleasure Dome Massage Parlor, Oliver Yates peered intently down into a glass case. His attention was totally absorbed by an evil-looking gila monster that was crawling lethargically across the sand that covered the bottom of the case.

"I think he's going to be all right," Oliver said, without turning to look at the girl sitting on the couch across the room. "He's showing more life tonight than he did yesterday. If he continues to show improvement, I think we'll have old Tyrone back on display by the first of next week."

"Glad to hear it," said Alice Moore. She made no effort to keep the boredom out of her voice. Alice was a redhead with dazzling green eyes, and a generous mouth that looked great when she laughed. Alice was not laughing now.

Oliver turned away from the big lizard at last and looked at her. "Hey, don't let your enthusiasm run away with you."

She got up and came over to where he was standing and planted a kiss on his cheek. "Believe me, Oliver, I'm really glad that Tyrone is feeling better. I just wish that sometimes you'd look at me with the same concern you show for him."

Oliver started to say something, but Alice went on. "I know a lot of men take work home from the office with them, but a briefcase full of papers isn't as visible as ... as one of those."

"It's your work too," he said.

"I know, and it is an honor being chief assistant to one of the youngest zoo curators in the country. I just think it would be nice if the young curator could tear himself away from the four-footed friends long enough to notice that one of his two-footed friends has a new hairdo."

"I noticed, and it's beautiful." Oliver grinned at her.

"Mr. Andrew told me it's almost impossible to mess it up. Why don't we try it out?"

"A heck of an idea," Oliver said. He put his arms around her and drew her in close. They were just getting well into the kiss when the old iron knocker on the front door sounded its clank-clank-clank.

"Damn, who could that be?" Oliver wondered.

"If it's the aardvark with a sore throat, I'm leaving," Alice said.

Oliver gave her an I-can't-do-any-thing-about-it shrug and crossed the living room to open the door.

A broad-shouldered black man in a three-piece suit stood outside under the coach light. Behind him in the street a blue and white New Orleans Police car idled, the lights blinking on its roof bar.

"Dr. Yates?" the man asked.

"I'm Oliver Yates."

"I'm Sergeant George Brant, New Orleans P.D." He held out his wallet to display the shield of the city police and his picture. "May I come in?"

Oliver moved aside and the policeman stepped into the cozy living room. He nodded to Alice, who was still standing by the glass case with the gila monster inside.

"What can I do for you, Sergeant?" Oliver asked.

"I think we might have one of your cats down at the Pleasure Dome Massage Parlor."

Oliver stepped back and looked at him. "This isn't a joke, is it?"

"I'm a policeman on duty, Dr. Yates. I don't make jokes."

"Right." Oliver cleared his throat. "One of my cats, you say."

"We've about narrowed it down to you. All the cats at Audubon are accounted for, there's no circus or wild animal show playing within two hundred miles, and citizens don't keep these babies as pets."