Authors: Richard Montanari
The Violet Hour (32 page)
Her husband remained silent.
‘You know I’m pretty well hung, Roger. Funny how that happens, no? The goofy guys always getting the big dicks. She might just like it and want to stay with me. Wouldn’t that be justice? After all these years?’
All Amelia could hear now was Roger’s steady inhale and exhale of breath.
‘Of course, we all know how you like it,’ the man said. He reached over to the desk, picked up the remote for the slide projector, clicked ahead a few slides. The canvas wall now showed a series of telephoto shots, outdoor shots of a car. Closer, closer. A man and a woman inside the car, a naked woman, the woman sitting on the man’s lap, facing him. A familiar car.
It was Roger and Shelley Roth.
The man in the white jumpsuit sat on the edge of the bed, his elbows on the desk, cooking heroin in a spoon held over a candle. Amelia had not heard a noise out of Roger since his injection.
‘I’ve just been giving you little tastes, Amelia,’ the man said. ‘Just enough to keep the edges ragged. You know what I mean? Enough to keep you manageable. Now it’s time to rock.’ The liquid in the spoon began to bubble. ‘Those other shots were in your arm. This one is going in a vein. This one’s a mainline. Whole different story.’ He reached over to a powder compact on the desk, patted his cheeks, his chin, his forehead above the mask. ‘Do you know what a full spike of heroin does to you? Especially some really good junk like this? Especially to a clean system like yours? I’ll bet you don’t. I’ll bet that Roger never shared that savory part of his past with you.’
He put the spoon down on the desk, leaned forward, tied a rubber tourniquet around her arm. She tried to see his eyes through the holes in the mask, failed. For some reason Amelia felt that if she could just make eye contact, she could reason with this man. But the holes in the mask offered nothing but darkness.
‘Well, let me see if I can describe it,’ he continued. ‘Someone once said it was like taking a ride on a giant white swan. You might want to hold on to that image.’ He found a vein, tapped it, then took a disposable hypodermic needle out of its plastic. He dropped in a small piece of cotton, put the tip of the needle carefully into the bowl of the spoon, and drew the liquid inside. Amelia cringed, but couldn’t move.
He knelt in front of her. ‘And God save you if you like it, Amelia. God save you indeed. Because I’ve seen it, you know. Working at the inner-city missions.’ He drew himself closer, rested his arms on her thighs, began to run his hands up and down her legs. ‘I knew this junkie once – white girl, maybe twenty years old. Hadn’t fixed in two, three days. Well, when she was done sucking me off this one time I tossed her a dime bag, put my coat on. But she was so shaky she couldn’t get the GemPac open, kept fumbling with the spoon, the matches. The last thing I remember about her, as I walked out the door, was her sitting on the edge of the bed, vibrating. And that’s when she took a single-edge razor blade, slit her arm, and dumped the junk right into a vein. Can you imagine? Something having that much control over you? She couldn’t even wait.’
Amelia began to sob.
‘If you understand her, you understand me,’ he said.
And then the liquid was inside her.
He untied the tourniquet as the top of her head seemed to peel itself away. He drew his face very close to hers and kissed her, running the tip of his tongue over her lips. ‘I love this part,’ he said, softly. ‘There is nothing, nothing in the world, quite as sexy as a pretty woman on heroin.’
Amelia’s head dropped slowly, her mind afloat on a warm, stagnant pool. She forced open her eyes one more time and saw that the man had changed her clothes the last time she had passed out. She was wearing a black miniskirt, fishnet hose, red suede high heels that were way too tight.
As the white swan bucked beneath her and took her on the ride of her life, she realized what she looked like.
She looked like a whore.
54
A whore. Julia looked like a whore.
The effect on him was so startling that he could hardly believe it was Julia. She sat on the edge of Roger’s bed, wearing a short skirt, her knees so primly together, nineteen years old, every man’s dream. Geoffrey had noticed. Johnny, too. They couldn’t take their eyes off her.
But this was not his Julia. His Julia had always been partial to peasant dresses, jeans, sandals. She had gone away for a weekend once with some of the girls from her dorm, and he noticed that she fit everything into a knapsack. Julia was a simple, bright girl. But not lately, not tonight, not now.
Now she sat in a black miniskirt and fishnet hose, her legs looking long and slender and perfect. Her tiny feet were stuffed into red high heels. On her head was a black beret.
She was wearing far more lipstick than he’d ever seen, far more eye makeup, too. He felt himself getting hard looking at her, but feeling nothing else. Nothing except a dark rage, tempered by this sick attraction, this all-consuming fear. The drugs Roger had given him were in full and complete control.
And so he watched . . .
A doctor was tying a rubber tourniquet around Julia’s arm. Benny Crane, of course. Had to be Benny. Benny was always in charge of things medical, things pharmaceutical.
Julia looked frightened, apprehensive. She glanced up at the pirate standing next to her, who placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. A combat soldier sat behind her. Couldn’t be sure who that was. A rather chunky flapper sat at the desk, rolling joints. Jennifer. Had to be.
His head felt as if it were in a vise, his hands a thousand pounds each.
Everyone had changed costumes, it seemed. And everyone, except Julia, wore a mask. It was as if they knew they were going to cross the line that night. People were passed out in every corner of the room; some sat in chairs, staring blankly into space.
‘Sympathy for the Devil’ was playing. Jagger wanted him to guess his name.
But he didn’t have to guess.
He knew.
A single candle now. Whorehouse light, pastel orange. Julia on the bed, kneeling, the pirate holding her from behind. Flesh, skin, muscles, hands. Julia’s blouse was off.
Tunnel vision.
Yet through it, he saw so many things.
He saw the pirate look in his direction every so often, the eyes behind the mask mocking him, daring him to act, react. The pirate took Julia from behind.
He saw the cowboy kneel in front of Julia, kissing her deeply, running his hands over her breasts.
He saw Dr Keller standing in the shadow by the door, his eyes two black marbles in the candlelight. Dr Keller was masturbating. He was watching the fivesome on the bed – the pirate, the soldier, the cowboy, the flapper, Julia. Under the cover of the darkness, under the cover of the loud music, he stepped forward, his erect penis in one hand, and placed his other hand into the maelstrom of flesh, running it over Julia’s stomach, her breasts. And then he retreated.
He saw the pirate lift Julia and place her on the windowsill. He saw the pirate push Julia’s skirt up around her waist, and as the music roared, he watched the pirate fuck the woman he loved, fuck her until she came, her fingernails digging deep in his back.
And later, after more degradation, after more drugs, when the windowpane snapped, when the sound wrenched him from his coma and he saw her fall, the heel of her shoe catching on the final shard, coming off, twisting, turning, landing at his feet . . .
He saw.
To the police they were, of course, proper young collegiates, scrubbed and well lawyered, kids who’d simply had a Halloween party that went too far. The investigation was short, the inquiry shorter.
Poor Julia, they all said. She jumped.
Small-town girl. The drugs and all.
Poor, poor Julia.
55
She came drifting back to consciousness, on the bed, on her knees, her arms straight up over her head, her hands roped together and linked to a cable that rose high into the blackness of the warehouse ceiling. She was still fully dressed, her feet were untied.
The first thing she did was kick off the shoes.
Roger sat across from her now, his head straight down. He looked unconscious. A thin ribbon of drool ran from his mouth to his lap.
The man in the white jumpsuit was not in the room.
The record player had finished whatever it was playing and the needle was stuck at the end. The
brip, brip, brip
coming through the cheap speakers was a water torture – methodical, a metronome urging her to act. But she couldn’t act. Her head swam, her body was numb.
brip, brip, brip
coming through the cheap speakers was a water torture – methodical, a metronome urging her to act. But she couldn’t act. Her head swam, her body was numb.
The mannequins were now arranged on the bed around her. She was able to spin a little and she saw that a mannequin dressed as a pirate was kneeling behind her, as was the flapper she had seen sitting at the desk earlier. In front of her was a soldier, on his knees, on the floor. The doctor was sitting at the desk. Standing next to Roger, propped against the wall, was the cowboy. This close, Amelia could see what it was that was causing the stench. The eyes on the cowboy. The lips on the doctor. The rotting breasts on the flapper.
Her stomach lurched.
Amelia looked straight up, away from the carnage. But soon the effort became too taxing. She lowered her eyes and tried to find a place to rest them, a place that didn’t steal pieces of her mind, her sanity.
The burlap bag. It sat on the ground near the cowboy’s boots, just to the left to Roger’s wheelchair, just beneath the windows. Amelia ran her eyes over the shape, the size, the soft angles.
It was the burlap bag that had been in the Camerons’ backyard.
The one that had sat at this monster’s feet.
Maddie.
No
.
.
When the man returned this time, he seemed manic, clearly in the grip of a drug rush of some sort, soaring. Amelia knew that he was no longer going to play with them. This was the end of her family, right here and now, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
‘Now, before I fuck your wife, I have a question for you,’ the man said, conversationally, lifting Roger’s head. ‘I want you to tell me what happened that night, Roger. Tell me in your own words.’
Amelia looked at the burlap bag. Please, God, just an inch, she thought, staring at the middle of the bag. Please let me see the material move up one inch, then back down. Let me see her breathe once. One. Solitary. Breath. God, if you’ve ever heard a mother’s prayer, hear this one.
One breath.
She would not, could not, take her eyes from the bag.
Nothing.
‘Whose room is this, Roger?’ the man asked.
Roger lifted his eyes. ‘My room.’
The words were slurred, thick with his tongue.
‘That’s right,’ he said. He gestured to the mannequin next to him. ‘You remember Johnny Angel, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Course you do,’ the man said. ‘I always thought Johnny had the nicest eyes. Caring and honest, you know?’
Roger remained silent. The man looked at Amelia.
Amelia looked back at the burlap bag.
Breathe, Maddie.
Breathe
.
.
Amelia had never felt as powerless in her life.
‘What do you want?’ she heard Roger ask, weakly.
‘I want you to tell me what happened that night. I want you to be a man and confess to your part.’
Then a light next to the television lit up, a red light on a small, sophisticated-looking panel. The man walked over to the TV, punched a few buttons.
And, without a word, walked out of the room.
56
After seeing Willie T’s car in the alley, Nicky found some scraps of wood, wedged a few pieces under the door, propping it open, and descended the steps. He made it back across the warehouse and over to where he had entered, still not braving the center of the maze, but rather hugging the wall he had followed the first time.
He waited by the ramp that led to the door, listening for footsteps outside, listening for Willie T. An occasional car, an occasional reverberation of gangsta rap bass, but no footsteps, no one pushing on the door.
Come on, Willie
, he thought.
What the fuck are you doing
?
, he thought.
What the fuck are you doing
?
He took the time to inventory his pockets. He had a pack of matches that he had taken from the seat of Sandy’s car. He opened the pack, felt inside. One match. Great. A single match and a can of pepper spray. A regular one man SWAT team. After a few moments of brain-numbing silence, he decided to head back up to the second floor, see if Willie’s car had moved.
This third trip through the darkness he walked, slowly, down the center of the hallway, his hands out in front, probing the blackness like antennae. Somehow his eyes seemed to have adjusted to this total darkness. It wasn’t as if he could see in front of him, but he seemed to be able to
sense
in front of him.
sense
in front of him.
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