SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (63 page)

The man pulled the cork by placing the bottle between his knees and struggling with it. The unplugging sound was a soft, delicate pop. “Much obliged,” the man said, saluting Son with the bottle before putting it to his lips and throwing back his head to drink deeply.

Suddenly the bottle came down, wine spilling out over the bum's hands and shirt front. Son watched the other man's rheumy drunken eyes. Good thing he'd chugged a good bit or the poison might not have worked.

“You call this shit wine? Kee-rist, it tastes worse than Thunderbird. I thought it was gonna be good wine.”

“It cost enough. What's wrong with it, I thought it was fine.”

“Then you didn't get a good goddamn taste of it. Tastes worse than licking old whore cunt. Goddamn!” He spit to the side.

“Well, if you don't want it . . .” Son sighed dramatically and reached for the bottle again.

“Wait! I ain't giving it back to ya. Maybe I can get used to what it tastes like or something. You wouldn't wanna go round the corner and pick me up another bottle of something else, though, would you?”

“I'm fresh out of cash. Sorry.”

The bum grunted and lifted the bottle to his lips again. This time Son knew he was holding his breath. How did the killer get anyone to drink poison? If this didn't work, he'd have to figure out something else. Or maybe the bum was so drunk and so stupid and so thirsty, he'd drink enough anyway.

Again the man swore and spit after swallowing. This time he did hand the bottle back to Son. “Hey man, I'd go get my money back on that, I wuz you. It's some rotten-ass shit, I'm here to testify.”

Son checked the content level much the same way the bum had. In two swigs a quarter of the bottle was emptied. Son corked it and slipped it next to him.

The dying started within seconds of the last swallow. The bum grabbed his throat, but he was having trouble talking now. He leaned over away from Son and tried to heave it up. Nothing came.

Then he curled into a ball, hugging his stomach. Crying. Like a damn baby. “That stuff . . .” he mumbled, “. . . it's hurting me . . .”

Bet it is, Son thought. Just bet it is.

Son watched closely as the man died. There were convulsions, legs kicking out; there was some vomiting, some bleeding from the nose. And then the eyes. But by that time the man was dead, staring into eternity while first capillaries burst, then veins, and blood seeped down the bottom lids of his dry cooling eyes.

Son had not experienced such a thrill in a long time. Two years, to be exact. He had never used poison before. It wasn't a favorite method of serial killers. In fact it might be the first, unless that crazy old bitch out in California used it when she killed her elderly boarders for their Social Security checks. He couldn't keep up with all the killers, there were so many now.

The excitement that had risen as he worked the old guy into drinking the wine now rose another notch, just this side of crescendo. He didn't think of this excitement as sexual, he couldn't think that clinically about it. It was a feeling of fluttering butterflies in his stomach. Then it changed to a piercing wing-flap thundering on an Armageddon plain. If he had touched himself, he would have felt his engorged penis, and it would have shocked him. He had never touched himself, never masturbated, even as a boy. And though his erection grew while a victim died, he was never conscious of it at all, and would have denied it ever happened.

He turned the bum on his back. Ugh. Messy as hell. Heavy fucker too. And stinking. Of wine, vomit, blood, old sweat-soaked clothes, rank body odor.

Son had to hold his breath and suck in snatches of air as he pulled the body up by the arms and dragged it to the trunk of the car. He unlocked the lid, stowed the man inside.

He went back for the wine bottle. He saw there was vomit and bloodstains on the tarmac of the alley.

He drew the flat cardboard box over to cover the place where the body had lain. Who would look? Who would care? Bums threw up back here all the time. And the blood could have come from anywhere, even a cut finger, or an animal or rodent, or from some wino with perforated ulcers. There wasn't enough of it to worry about.

The trip to Seabrook was uneventful. Son drove back to the spit of land next to the channel. He sat in the car a while, waiting to see if there was any life over at the closed bayside restaurants or any boats coming through for night trolling.

After a few minutes without movement, he went to the trunk. He got the man's clothes off him—after much cursing and sweating labor—and threw them back in the trunk for disposal later. He'd stuff them in with the trash for the weekly pickup.

He carried the man over his shoulder, head and arms dangling down behind him. Son was careful not to touch the man's bare buttocks. He might have bugs on him, body lice, crabs, something creepy crawly that would leap off onto Son to plague him. He held him by the backs of his grubby knees.

He knew the police could pick up fingerprints from flesh, but his would be gone after the body was in the water a while. Besides, he had never been fingerprinted. They wouldn't have his prints on record to find anyway.

He walked to the bulkhead and stood between two thigh-high creosote-treated posts. He carefully tipped the body's weight toward the water. It fell with a loud splash that sent cold salt water spray up and onto Son's clothes.

This body would be found soon. By morning, maybe. Would they notice how soon after death it was found floating?

It didn't matter. What really mattered was that he had done it. He had carried it off without a hitch. He had been able to watch the dying of the light in the eyes. He had felt the thunder in his brain after so long a time without it. And the other one, the real one, the murderer he copied, would know.

She would know.

And wonder.

Son clapped his hands as if applauding the sea. The white body below him bobbed, floating face down out from the bulkhead. The audience of one watched the curtain call of the flabby human body as it sank without a sound of protest beneath the dark brine.

~*~

The next day a child visiting the land spit across from Kemah's restaurants pointed out to his mother something strange bobbing in the water near the bulkhead.

That night the TV and radio news carried the story, with the television carrying pictures of a body bag being lifted into a waiting ambulance.

“Spooky how many men are being found down near the bay.”

“Yeah. Me, I'm not going swimming in Galveston for a long time. And I am not eating seafood at Kemah restaurants! Can you imagine finding one of those guys all bloated up?”

The dancers were discussing the news as Shadow exchanged her street clothes for a green G-string and matching bra. She heard them and froze. Her eyes unfocused.

Body? Found in the bay? That wasn't possible.

She came back to herself, turned to the other women. “Maybe this one was a drowning off a fishing boat.”

“You didn't see the news? Guy was naked as a jaybird. The police haven't confirmed he was poisoned, but of course he was. No one's reported a man overboard on any of the fishing boats. Not no naked man, anyway.”

Shadow moved toward her locker to finish dressing. She wouldn't talk about this. They were mistaken. It had to be a fisherman, or maybe someone went swimming in the nude and drowned.

Her fingers slipped as she tried fastening the bra's complicated front closure. She kept trying. Could she dance tonight, thinking about this?

She glanced at herself in the long mirror along the counter. No. She wouldn't dance. She would get into one of her hostess dresses and work the tables.

The two girls who had been in conversation left the room. Mom came in. She was big, black, and motherly to the dancers. Hence her name. She had not been working the Blue Boa long. She supplied them with any kind of cosmetics they needed, eye shadows in every color, eye liners, blemish covers, body paint, lipsticks, blushers, mascaras. And costume jewelry. She even did hair if she was tipped well. The club paid her a pittance. She made her living off the girls' tips.

Mom moved to the counter and straightened everything. She kept it neat, all the items in little open Tupperware containers. She tsk-tsked as she worked. “Messy girls, bad messy girls.”

“Hi, Mom.”

The black woman turned. “Didn't know any of you was left in here. You want Mom to fix up your hair for you tonight?”

“No thanks.” Shadow slipped a tight, short black dress over her head and pulled it down over bust and hips. It fit her curves beautifully. It paid to buy good clothes.

“Why's they call you that name, girl? You don't seem like no cold person.”

“Ice Queen? You heard them call me that?” Shadow sat down before the mirror. “I guess they think I'm a prude. I don't sleep with the clientele.” Not for money, she thought, remembering Mitch, and the stolen time they had spent in her bed. She touched a lipstick to her lips. Remembered his lips on hers. Put the lipstick down again and stared at her reflection.

Mom shook her head. She picked up some of the eyeshadow containers and closed their lids, depositing them into the proper Tupperware bowls. “These girls are real slobs, you know that?”

Shadow held her silence, thinking of the man floating in the channel.

“You a different one, all right.”

Shadow brought her attention back to the present. “I am?” She glanced at Mom reflected in the mirror.

“Got some age on most these girls. How old'r you, twenty-four, twenty-five?”

“Thirty.”

“Goodness! Thirty. You don't look that old.”

“You're doing a helluva job on my self-esteem, Mom.”

“Aw, honey, I ain't putting you down none. You look good as any these girls here. Bet you make just as much too. I just don't see too many women working this job. They get old, they find another line of work.”

“This is the only line I could find. You really think I don't look thirty?” She shouldn't have asked that. Who the fuck cared what Mom thought? It was what the men thought that counted.

Mom put a big hand on her shoulder. “You a pretty woman. Real pretty. And sweet, too, I can tell.”

The thought of the new body in the bay made her frown. Not so sweet.”

“You coulda fooled me. I think you just fine.”

I did fool you, she thought. I fool everyone. I'm a regular fool when it comes to deception.

Mom moved down the counter to pick through the jewelry, probably to make sure it hadn't been borrowed without her permission. Shadow took up the lipstick again and carefully finished applying it. She fluffed her hair with her fingers, feathering it around her face. Should she line the bottom lids of her eyes with black khol pencil?

“Think I need to underline my eyes?” she asked Mom.

The woman came closer. “Uh uh. Those eyes are dark enough without liner. Real pretty.”

Dark, deadly dark, calculating, lying eyes. Maybe pretty, but definitely not sweet, Shadow thought, eyeing herself in the mirror once more. There was no point in lying to herself.

She left Mom to clean and tinker with the beauty supplies. The smoky club wrapped its ambience around her as she entered it. The music was loud, the girls young, ripe, sexy. Fraudulent, wasn't that the word Mitch had used?

She noticed Frank sitting at a table alone and moved toward him.

Frank. The nice respectable guy with money. She might as well make the night pay.

“Hi, can I join you?”

He had watched her cross the room to him. He stood now and said, “Please do. I was hoping you were working tonight.”

She sat and watched him place bills in the center of the table. She took them and began to fold the money. She told the waitress to bring her a Coke.

“I don't really see you hanging out in places like this,” she said.

Frank looked away from her. “You either.”

She waved that away. “I belong here, I definitely belong, but you, you're not the type I see around.”

They talked about Nolan Ryan pitching for the Rangers and him in his late forties before retiring. They talked about movies. Frank liked comedies. He even liked the old Abbott and Costello films, and the few Laurel and Hardy ones he had seen. His favorite present-day actor was Steve Martin. He had a fondness for the Chevy Chase Vacation films and did a fair imitation of Chevy bobbing his head when his wife in the movie asked him to look at the Grand Canyon.

They talked about Shadow's roommate, Charlene, and about cats, and about dancers, comparing the good with the bad ones.

Shadow realized, only after Frank had left, and she sat alone at the table, that not once during the hour they talked did she think about the naked body found floating in the bay.

Before she could worry about it, another man came over and asked to sit with her. She said, “Have a seat. What are you drinking?”

The night wore on this way until she had the amount of money she required and—sighing that she had not seen Mitch for a few days, had he dumped her?—she left for home. On the drive she turned on the radio to a talk station and waited for the news recap.

It was not good.

Twenty-Eight

Mitchell stood on the catwalk overlooking the swimming pool, his hands on the rail. “Do you ever swim in it?”

Shadow stood next to him, nervous as a schoolgirl on her first real date. She had not been with him in over a week and now it seemed that their one night together was a dream she vaguely recalled. “Once in a while. I like running to keep in shape over swimming, but with this terrible heat . . .”

From the corner of her eye, Shadow saw a movement, and turned her head. She saw Charlene appear and disappear from the hallway in the main body of the house. Watching us, she thought. How do I explain Charlene to him?

“Why doesn't she come out so I can meet her?” Shadow flinched. He had seen her too. “Charlene's . . . she's . . . well, she's been sick.”

“Is she sick now?” He still faced the pool, still studied the big blue bowl of water below them. Yet he never missed anything. He probably even noticed her nervousness around him and wondered about it. He had not asked again about whether she had children or not. She knew he thought about that, too. But there was a difference between sleeping with a man and getting deeply, intimately involved with him. A difference as wide as the world.