Stories (2011) (45 page)

Last time he was here, circumstances were different, and
better. He was with Julie. He met her for the first time at the club where he
worked out, and they had spoken, and ended up playing racquetball together.
Eventually she brought him here and they made love on an old mattress in the
corner; lay there afterward in the June heat of a Mexican summer, holding each
other in a warm, sweaty embrace.

After that, there had been many other times. In the great
house; in cars; hotels. Always careful to arrange a tryst when Morley was out
of town. Or so they thought. But somehow he had found out.

"This is where you first had her," Morley said
suddenly. "And don't look so wide-eyed. I'm not a mind reader. She told me
all the other times and places too. She spat at me when I told her I knew, but
I made her tell me every little detail, even when I knew them. I wanted it to
come from her lips. She got so she couldn't wait to tell me. She was begging to
tell me. She asked me to forgive her and take her back. She no longer wanted to
leave Mexico and go back to the States with you. She just wanted to live."

"You bastard. If you've hurt her --"

"You'll what? Shit your pants? That's the best you can
do, Dennis. You see, it's me that has you tied to the chair. Not the other way
around."

Morley leaned back into the shadows again, and his hands
came to rest on the table, the perfectly manicured fingertips steepling
together, twitching ever so gently.

"I think it would have been inconsiderate of her to
have gone back to the States with you, Dennis. Very inconsiderate. She knows
I'm a wanted man there, that I can't go back. She thought she'd be rid of me.
Start a new life with her ex-basketball player. That hurt my feelings, Dennis.
Right to the bone." Morley smiled. "But she wouldn't have been rid of
me, lover boy. Not by a long shot. I've got connections in my business. I could
have followed her anywhere . . . in fact, the idea that she thought I couldn't
offended my sense of pride."

"Where is she? What have you done with her, you
bald-headed bastard?"

After a moment of silence, during which Morley examined
Dennis's face, he said, "Let me put it this way. Do you remember her
dogs?"

Of course he remembered the dogs. Seven Dobermans. Attack
dogs. They always frightened him. They were big mothers, too. Except for her
favorite, a reddish, undersized Doberman named Chum. He was about sixty pounds,
and vicious. "Light, but quick," Julie used to say. "Light, but
quick."

Oh yeah, he remembered those goddamn dogs. Sometimes when
they made love in an estate bedroom, the dogs would wander in, sit down around
the bed and watch. Dennis felt they were considering the soft, rolling meat of
his testicles, savoring the possibility. It made him feel like a mean kid
teasing them with a treat he never intended to give. The idea of them taking
that treat by force made his erection soften, and he finally convinced Julie,
who found his nervousness hysterically funny, that the dogs should be banned
from the bedroom, the door closed.

Except for Julie, those dogs hated everyone. Morley
included. They obeyed him, but they did not like him. Julie felt that under the
right circumstances, they might go nuts and tear him apart. Something she hoped
for, but never happened.

"Sure," Morley continued. "You remember her
little pets. Especially Chum, her favorite. He'd growl at me when I tried to
touch her. Can you imagine that? All I had to do was touch her, and that damn
beast would growl. He was crazy about his mistress, just crazy about her."

Dennis couldn't figure what Morley was leading up to, but he
knew in some way he was being baited. And it was working. He was starting to
sweat.

"Been what," Morley asked, "a week since
you've seen your precious sweetheart? Am I right?"

Dennis did not answer, but Morley was right. A week. He had
gone back to the States for a while to settle some matters, get part of his
inheritance out of legal bondage so he could come back, get Julie, and take her
to the States for good. He was tired of the Mexican heat and tired of Morley
owning the woman he loved.

It was Julie who had arranged for him to meet Morley in the
first place, and probably even then the old bastard had suspected. She told
Morley a partial truth. That she had met Dennis at the club, that they had
played racquetball together, and that since he was an American, and supposedly
a mean hand at chess, she thought Morley might enjoy the company. This way
Julie had a chance to be with her lover, and let Dennis see exactly what kind
of man Morley was.

And from the first moment Dennis met him, he knew he had to
get Julie away from him. Even if he hadn't loved her and wanted her, he would
have helped her leave Morley.

It wasn't that Morley was openly abusive -- in fact, he was
the perfect host all the while Dennis was there -- but there was an obvious
undercurrent of connubial dominance and menace that revealed itself like a
shark fin everytime he looked at Julie.

Still, in a strange way, Dennis found Morley interesting, if
not likeable. He was a bright and intriguing talker, and a wizard at chess. But
when they played and Morley took a piece, he smirked over it in such a way as
to make you feel he had actually vanquished an opponent.

The second and last time Dennis visited the house was the
night before he left for the States. Morley had wiped him out in chess, and
when finally Julie walked him to the door and called the dogs in from the yard
so he could leave without being eaten, she whispered, "I can't take him
much longer."

"I know," he whispered back. "See you in
about a week. And it'll be all over."

Dennis looked over his shoulder, back into the house, and
there was Morley leaning against the fireplace mantle drinking a martini. He
lifted the glass to Dennis as if in salute and smiled. Dennis smiled back, called
goodbye to Morley and went out to his car feeling uneasy. The smile Morley had
given him was exactly the same one he used when he took a chess piece from the
board.

"Tonight. Valentine's Day," Morley said,
"that's when you two planned to meet again, wasn't it? In the parking lot
of your hotel. That's sweet. Really. Lovers planning to elope on Valentine's
Day. It has a sort of poetry, don't you think?"

Morley held up a huge fist. "But what you met instead
of your sweetheart was this . . . I beat a man to death with this once, lover
boy. Enjoyed every second of it."

Morley moved swiftly around the table, came to stand behind
Dennis. He put his hands on the sides of Dennis's face. "I could twist
your head until your neck broke, lover boy. You believe that, don't you? Don't
you? . . . Goddamnit, answer me."

"Yes," Dennis said, and the word was soft because
his mouth was so dry.

"Good. That's good. Let me show you something,
Dennis."

Morley picked up the chair from behind, carried Dennis
effortlessly to the center of the room, then went back for the lantern and the
other chair. He sat down across from Dennis and turned the wick of the lantern
up. And even before Dennis saw the dog, he heard the growl.

The dog was straining at a large leather strap attached to
the wall. He was muzzled and ragged looking. At his feet lay something red and
white. "Chum," Morley said. "The light bothers him. You remember
ole Chum, don't you? Julie's favorite pet . . . ah, but I see you're wondering
what that is at his feet. That sort of surprises me, Dennis. Really. As
intimate as you and Julie were, I'd think you'd know her. Even without her
makeup."

Now that Dennis knew what he was looking at he could make
out the white bone of her skull, a dark patch of matted hair still clinging to
it. He also recognized what was left of the dress she had been wearing. It was
a red and white tennis dress, the one she wore when they played racquetball. It
was mostly red now. Her entire body had been gnawed savagely.

"Murderer!" Dennis rocked savagely in the chair,
tried to pull free of his bonds. After a moment of useless struggle and useless
epithets, he leaned forward and let the lava-hot gorge in his stomach pour out.

"Oh, Dennis," Morley said. "That's going to
be stinky. Just awful. Will you look at your shoes? And calling me a murderer.
Now, I ask you, Dennis, is that nice? I didn't murder anyone. Chum did the
dirty work. After four days without food and water he was ravenous and thirsty.
Wouldn't you be? And he was a little crazy too. I burned his feet some. Not as
bad as I burned Julie's, but enough to really piss him off. And I sprayed her
with this."

Morley reached into his coat pocket, produced an aerosol
canister and waved it at Dennis.

"This was invented by some business associate of mine.
It came out of some chemical warfare research I'm conducting. I'm in, shall we
say . . . espionage? I work for the highest bidder. I have plants here for arms
and chemical warfare . . . if it's profitable and ugly, I'm involved. I'm a
real stinker sometimes. I certainly am."

Morley was still waving the canister, as if trying to
hypnotize Dennis with it. "We came up with this to train attack dogs. We
found we could spray a padded-up man with this and the dogs would go bonkers.
Rip the pads right off of him. Sometimes the only way to stop the beggers was
to shoot them. It was a failure, actually. It activated the dogs, but it drove
them out of their minds and they couldn't be controlled at all. And after a
short time the odor faded and the spray became quite the reverse. It made it so
the dogs couldn't smell the spray at all. It made whoever was wearing it
odorless. Still. I found a use for it. A very personal use.

"I let Chum go a few days without food and water while
I worked on Julie . . . and she wasn't tough at all, Dennis. Not even a little
bit. Spilled her guts. Now that isn't entirely correct. She didn't spill her
guts until later, when Chum got hold of her . . . anyway, she told me what I
wanted to know about you two, then I sprayed that delicate thirty-six,
twenty-four, thirty-six figure of hers with this. And with Chum so hungry, and
me having burned his feet and done some mean things to him, he was not in the
best of humor when I gave him Julie.

"It was disgusting, Dennis. Really. I had to come back
when it was over and shoot Chum with a tranquilizer dart, get him tied and
muzzled for your arrival."

Morley leaned forward, sprayed Dennis from head to foot with
the canister. Dennis turned his head and closed his eyes, tried not to breathe
the foul-smelling mist.

"He's probably not all that hungry now," Morley
said, "but this will still drive him wild."

Already Chum had gotten a whiff and was leaping at his
leash. Foam burst from between his lips and frothed on the leather bands of the
muzzle.

"I suppose it isn't polite to lecture a captive
audience, Dennis, but I thought you might like to know a few things about dogs.
No need to take notes. You won't be around for a quiz later.

"But here's some things to tuck in the back of your
mind while you and Chum are alone. Dogs are very strong, Dennis. Very. They
look small compared to a man, even a big dog like a Doberman, but they can
exert a lot of pressure with their bite. I've seen dogs like Chum here,
especially when they're exposed to my little spray, bite through the thicker
end of a baseball bat. And they're quick. You'd have a better chance against a
black belt in karate than an attack dog."

"Morley," Dennis said softly, "you can't do
this."

"I can't?" Morley seemed to consider. "No,
Dennis, I believe I can. I give myself permission. But hey, Dennis, I'm going
to give you a chance. This is the good part now, so listen up. You're a
sporting man. Basketball. Racquetball. Chess. Another man's woman. So you'll
like this. This will appeal to your sense of competition.

"Julie didn't give Chum a fight at all. She just
couldn't believe her Chummy-whummy wanted to eat her. Just wouldn't. She held
out her hand, trying to soothe the old boy, and he just bit it right off. Right
off. Got half the palm and the fingers in one bite. That's when I left them
alone. I had a feeling her Chummy-whummy might start on me next, and I wouldn't
have wanted that. Oooohhh, those sharp teeth. Like nails being driven into
you."

"Morley, listen --"

"Shut up! You, Mr. Cock Dog and Basketball Star, just
might have a chance. Not much of one, but I know you'll fight. You're not a
quitter. I can tell by the way you play chess. You still lose, but you're not a
quitter. You hang in there to the bitter end."

Morley took a deep breath, stood in the chair and hung the
lantern on a low rafter. There was something else up there too. A coiled chain.
Morley pulled it down and it clattered to the floor. At the sound of it Chum
leaped against his leash and flecks of saliva flew from his mouth and Dennis
felt them fall lightly on his hands and face.

Morley lifted one end of the chain toward Dennis. There was
a thin, open collar attached to it.

"Once this closes it locks and can only be opened with
this." Morley reached into his coat pocket and produced a key, held it up
briefly and returned it. "There's a collar for Chum on the other end. Both
are made out of good leather over strong, steel chain. See what I'm getting at
here, Dennis?"

Morley leaned forward and snapped the collar around Dennis's
neck.

"Oh, Dennis," Morley said, standing back to
observe his handiwork. "It's you. Really. Great fit. And considering the
day, just call this my valentine to you."

"You bastard."

"The biggest."

Morley walked over to Chum. Chum lunged at him, but with the
muzzle on he was relatively harmless. Still, his weight hit Morley's legs,
almost knocked him down.

Turning to smile at Dennis, Morley said, "See how
strong he is? Add teeth to this little engine, some maneuverability . . . it's
going to be awesome, lover boy. Awesome."