ANOTHER
DAY IN PARADISE
By Roger Humes
November 7, 2000
By Roger Humes
November 7, 2000
The eye lay open to the world, unmoving in a room of hush and shadows. A glint of light flickered across its slowly drying skin, shimmered in the dance of the images that shuttered one by one along the dilated pupil, glided over the pale blueness of the cornea, shadowed the sallow white, and in long electric fingers traversed the cold pallid skin.
The eye was only a mirror. No more could its vision grasp any meaning to the images that caressed its surface. Still, the images reached out to touch it, almost as if they could not exist unless the eye perceived them. On one side lay life, on the other…no one knows.
In the background there was breathing, but it did not belong to the eye. The rasp of the air was joined by a staccato of steps and a sigh that sat down wearily upon a chair. The body blocked the light from the eye.
He slowly ran his fingers through his hair and gazed emotionlessly back at the eye. He watched for a minute as if he were trying to fathom if it recognized the images. Then he turned back to gaze blankly at the source of the light.
As his stare fixed on the scrolling words on the screen his mind raced back through the evening. It had been so easy. Her door was locked. She had read and heard the stories of what could happen if one was not careful. However, he doubted if there were enough locks in the world to stop him when he wanted in.
His mentor had taught him that he had a tone to his voice that when combined with a certain charm to his style could get people to do whatever he wished. He had cultivated the talent over the years until it became an art form. He crafted it, molded it, shaped it until he could harm people and they would almost thank him for doing it.
The talent made up for what else that he lacked in life. He stared at the white skin of a thin right arm that disguised the strength he could wield when angry. Outside of his talent the hostility was all he possessed except for the memories of the slayings that flickered in his mind like the words on the screen in front of him.
The anger had long ago consumed all other emotion. Its fire had turned to ice. All that remained besides the ice was his talent, his gift. The talent was clever. It did its job and made sure he was never caught. It was all he had, all he really needed until now.
For now he felt something different. He stared back into the lifeless eye and realized the truth. Yes, it had been easy, once again too pitifully easy.
He was bored.
He was ready to leave when from behind him he heard the faint sound of a buzzer. He turned to stare at the flickering screen. Its message read "You Have Mail". Then he noticed the scrolling words. This time he started to casually read them. Soon he was closely following the conversation.
He tapped his hands on the edge of the keyboard as he was slowly drawn into the conversation. Fascinated he started to form a plan.
This could prove interesting he thought as he typed Hi!
How's everyone doing?
It was a hot lazy day, the kind of afternoon where you wanted to strip down to your skivvies and lay in the wading pool while playing with the rubber duckies. It was hot enough to fry a tamale on a banker’s forehead.
I sat in my office, feet kicked up the desk, shoes off, a fan blowing in my face. My eyes were closed and through the open window I could hear the hustle and bustle of daily life in the street and the sounds of children playing Ratchet the Monkey and stickball. It was just another day in paradise.
The door opened behind me, but I didn’t move. I recognized the footsteps and the tell tale resonance of leather-clad thighs swishing against each other. Lauren was home.
Suddenly, I felt an open palm slap the back of my head as the chair was kicked out from under me. I since I always landed like a dog on all fours, my chin I stiffened as my face prepared to play air hockey with the desk.
A slender hand reached out and grasped my tie. The cravat became uncomfortably tight as I was pulled to my feet and found myself staring into a set of eyes that looked about as pleased as a dame stuck in the salad bar line during the white sale.
Maybe I should backtrack a little and fill you in on the skinny before you get as confused as my Uncle Elmo at the tote board on Lottery Day.
This old world is changing faster than a drag queen at the fifty percent off rack. One of the developments is the ever-emerging computer technologies, that are usually obsolete before they hit the market. Maybe I should have invested a little instead of blowing all of my spare change on the ponies.
Anyway, during this revolution the Internet has exploded like the face of a fourteen-year-old after a trip to the ice cream shop. You can surf the Web, shop the Cyber Malls, and get a lube job over at a porn site. If you can't find it online then you probably don't need it.
Another thing that was taken off on the Internet is the chat rooms. They seem to have proliferated faster than a case of the mange on my dog Arfles. These rooms are where every anti-social Nethanderal with an I.Q. that matches the angle of the slope of his forehead and who can log in and type with at least two fingers goes looking for a good time, a little conversation, and an occasional hormone straightening.
Chat is a rather unique place where one can be or attempt to be whatever he/she/it wants to be in any type of environment possible. However, the emphasis is on attempt. Despite the fact that the chatters are a rather anonymous lot, and what the rooms are is only limited the by imagination, there are couple of hard fast rules. Who you are when you come in is who you are when you leave, and what you pick up in chat leaves with you.
That may seem as obvious as the moles on my Aunt Millie's face, but you'd be surprised how many try to dodge those facts like I do the collection agency on payday.
So that brings us to here. The place is Chat_World, a scum hole of a sewer where the dames are all gorgeous, the joes are all dangerous, and the kids will hack your I.D. faster than a pound of cold slaw running through a sieve. Let's just say that among the chat rooms this one qualifies as the low rent district.
When the joint was created there was one unforeseen consequence. The thoughts and emotions started peeling off the chatters faster than the clothes off a dime store hooker and started to adhere into cognizant beings that became known as flakes. I am one of those flakes.
The name’s Moonlight, Al_B._Moonlight. I play a little piano around the rooms and run a small time detective agency with the rather angry dame who had me garroted at the moment. I referred to the business as Moonlight & Bloodcall. For some reason she called it Bloodcall & Moonlight. No counting on dames for taste.
Her name was Lauren_Bloodcall. I wasn’t sure which side of the modem she hailed from. In fact I didn’t know a whole lot about the dame. She had shown up to help me on a couple of cases that decided the very fate of Chat_World. For some reason she decided to stick around.
My eyes dropped from her gaze and slowly worked their way up her body. She was clad in her black leather emma-peel-wanna-be body suit and had one of those architectures that made a joe want to go out and study bay windows.
My gaze read her like the Sunday funny papers. She had a face like an angel, walked like a tramp, and had a mouth that would make a sailor blush. In my book she was fine looking dame.
I returned to her eyes that were as hostile as my first date when I kissed her goodbye and stiffed her with the tab for dinner.
She pulled my tie tighter and hissed with a voice that you’d like to see undoing the zipper to your fly with her teeth, “I would assume, Mr. Moonlight, that you may have the battery grounded but you seem to have attached the negative wire to the positive terminal.”
“So what’s got your boxers crawling up the sidewalk, sweetheart?” I asked as I fished in my pocket for a coffin nail.
She let go of my tie, dropped a stack of papers that would choke an accountant on my desk, took the coffin nail from my hand, lit it, and inhaled deeply. She then she gave me a glare that would have knocked the rust out of the engine of a ’53 Buick.
She sighed and said, “Mr. Moonlight, I would explain the debts you have encumbered for this agency, but I am afraid that I left my visual aids at my apartment. I fear that if you tried to read my lips you would fall down.”
“Hey, doll, most of those are legitimate expenses from cases.”
She picked up the top sheet and grimly hissed, “Since when does a bet on filly in the fifth race at Chathill Downs qualify as a business expense?”
“So take it out of my salary.”
“I have, but, tell me, Mr. Moonlight, what comes to mind when you hear the term indentured servitude?”
“You know, it’s dames like you that makes a joe want to join a monastery or play with a hand grenade.”
“Mr. Moonlight, of the seven deadly sins the only one you lack is pride, but you compensate by turning sloth into an art form.”
Before I could barb my next retort she laid a kiss on me that would have sucked the yolk out of an egg. Then she slapped me.
She calmly straightened my tie and said quietly, “Al, I believe it is time for me to go on a vacation.”
“You sure about that, Lauren?”
“Yes, I need to do some shopping or climb a mountain or find a cure for cancer before I kill you.”
“How long will you gone?”
“As long as it takes.”
“How will I know you’re back?”
“Mr. Moonlight, have you ever had any problem being aware of my presence?”
“You got me on the long side of the short ones there, doll.”
She gave me a kiss that turned my lung sacs inside out and walked to the door with a sway that made you need a neck brace just to watch. She paused at the door and looked back.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you, Mr. Moonlight,” she said, “Officer_Bob said you should call him.”
I lit a coffin nail and replied, “Sure thing, doll.”
“One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“If I return to find you have padded the expense account further, not only will I have your rancheros on a spike, you will discover what ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman’ truly means.”
She slammed the door and was gone.
I ran my fingers through my hair, sighed, and reached for the phone to call Bob.
Just another day in paradise…
It was late. The bar was quiet, almost deserted. He sat at the table lost in his musings, barely aware of the voice across from him that droned on and on. He wrapped himself in the darkness of the room and retreated further into his thoughts.
Through the ether of the lazily drifting chat he reflected on his conquests in the rooms. At first it had been exhilarating, the new adventure that for so long he had craved. The rules were different in chat and changed from room to room, but he was patient. Patience was one of the true strengths of his gift.
Slowly, he became accustomed to the game and the language that was used in here. Once comfortable with them he began to search out his victims. They weren’t hard to find. The types that fell prey to his gift seemed to flock in desperation to chat: the lonely, the misunderstood, the forgotten, the dispossessed.
He picked up the crystal glass from the table and slowly sipped the red wine. Through the cut prism of its reflective surface he viewed the face of the one who talked to him, a pallid little man that he could easily be the next victim. He fit the criteria of those he stalked.
But easy had become part of the problem. Again he was bored. It was almost as if they begged him for release. He sighed inwardly and sat down the glass. Their suffering was not his concern. He was not a god or one of their messengers.
He knew at the end of life there was merely oblivion. Only the weak or deluded believed that anything continued after death. That was where part of his strength lay. He could face that black when his time came so he had power over those that couldn't. He used this power to calmly stalk them. When they realized what he was after, it was too late.
After he learned the rules of the game his victims proved as easy as those had been on the other side. Occasionally, one would provide a challenge. A few even escaped. However, those were too few and too far between.
Then there was the dilemma that the nature of the chatters posed. The flakes he could kill. They died as easily as any victim he had ever pursued on the outside, but as for the chatters he could only kill their chat identity. They quickly fled the rooms, and if they returned, it was as someone else. He found such victory to be hollow.
His right index finger rimmed the edge of the glass. The red liquid flowed and eddied to his touch like the blood that throbbed in his temples. He watched it dance in the glimmer of the light as he mindlessly followed the voice across the table.
He only ever ordered one glass of wine for the evening. Whether he stayed ten minutes or five hours when he left he finished the last sip. On one hand, it made him appear part of the crowd and less likely to cause suspicion if he always had a drink in front of him; on the other, it helped him practice his control and gave him still another advantage over his victims who usually drank too much.
Suddenly, he was brought back to the conversation by one word. He sat up and took interest. Yes, his mind had wandered, but he always listened. One had to be ready for any opening that was offered.
"…yeah, and they just started dropping like flies," the man said. "Spooked the company something awful. I tell you it's the future but those bozos couldn't see it. It was so unfair."
"I am sorry," he said after a sip of his wine, "what was the name of your company?"
He already knew the answer, but it sometimes helped to play ignorant with some of those that he stalked. It gave them a false sense of security that often led to the opening he needed to attack.
The man gave him a smile that one might give to a simple younger brother and replied, "Bio-Cybernautics, Inc. Suppose to be the cutting edge of technology, but you couldn't tell from their reaction to what I made."
"This is all so fascinating," he said as he finished his wine and motioned the waiter for the tab, "but I am afraid the wine is making me light headed. I am having trouble following you in this noise. Perhaps, we can chat again some other time."
"Yeah, it is getting late. You have to work in the morning?"
"I have my own business."
"What is it that you do?"
"I am afraid it would seem terribly trite and boring compared to your project. I would like to hear more about it sometime. I have some friends with money that might be interested, too."
"Well…I really don't have to get up either. Would you like to get a private room and chat some more?"
He smiled slightly. There a certain irony when they thought it was their idea. When the waiter arrived with his change he asked for a bottle of Merlot to go.
When I left the office, I noticed that mailman had made his delivery. I sorted through it quickly, dropping the advertisements and collection duns in the wastebasket. I started to throw one piece away when the return address caught my eyes. It was from my old secretary, Twinkletoes5.
I ripped it open, glanced at the letter, and put it in my suit coat pocket. I would read it later when I had time. There was a picture of her with her fiancée. She had left me a few months ago to arrange their wedding.
He was a large brawny joe, the kind that you expected to see lifting a bail or getting a good stance behind a cow. His arm was around her slender waist, and he had that look of a man who's every desire was fulfilled but the ball-and-chain hadn't started to chafe yet.
I traced my finger over her long blonde hair and blue eyes. We had almost got married once but came to our senses before it was too late. That was all in the past, but I would always have a tender spot for the dame.
She believed in me when everyone else around this crummy little cyburg was ready to run me out of town on a rail I would have had to build myself. I never could figure out what she saw in a joe like me.
My finger stopped tracing on the rock big enough to choke a nun in the confessional that she wore on her finger. He must have blown his wad on that one. Good for her, I thought, Twink deserved the best. I knew it sure wasn't me.
I caught the trolley and got out in front of the GenChat Central District Precinct. When I walked through the door I could smell despair, desperation, and a few sack lunches left a little too long in the bottom of some lockers.
It was a busy night for GenChat's finest. The reception area was full of the usual collection of hookers, felons, pickpockets, and Evangelical Universalists you expected to find in such a place. The desk sergeant spotted me and waved me on through to Bob's office.
Officer_Bob and I went back a long ways. At least I thought we did. One of the problems with being a flake is that at your core is a collection of other people's memories laying there like a couple of rotten eggs in the bushel basket of apples. You were never sure if what you recalled was theirs or yours.
As far as I could piece it together, Bob and I had been partners at one time. Then something happened. I wasn't sure what, and he wasn't telling. We had somewhat ironed things out over time, but I knew that if something happened to me he would be out front leading the rather long ticker tape parade.
I opened the door and was assaulted by the aroma of sweat, cigars, whiskey, and cheap after-shave. Personal hygiene was never at the top of his to do list. Across the dimly lit room stood what looked like a bowling ball standing on a couple of Idaho spuds. It was Bob.
"Park yer kiester, Moonlight," he growled like a bad digestive condition. "We gotta a few things to talk about."
"Sure, Bob," I replied as I sat down and lit a coffin nail. "How's tricks?"
"It's as rough as two day's growth running over a baby's behind, Al."
He reached into his desk and pulled out a bottle of Old Scuzzie whiskey and two glasses. Then he remembered it was me and flipped me a bottle of mineral water. I uncapped it and took a slug. The cool liquid hit the back of my throat like an old dog on a new leg.
Bob filled a filthy glass with the rotgut and rumbled like a bowling ball on a warped lane, "So how's it goin' for ya, Al?"
"You know me, Bob. I never complain."
"Yeah, the people around ya do it enough for ya. Ya still in business with that dame?"
"Yes, we've set up office, Bob."
"Good, I like her. She's quicker than ya and smarter and a lot meaner. Ya need a dame like that to keep yer carcass in line."
"Uh, sure, Bob. Well, enough of getting in touch with our inner children, why did you call me down here? I assume it isn't a social call."
"Ya got that right, Al. I'd rather go the opera than spend time with the likes of ya.”
"I thought you detested opera."
"I do. No, Al, all hell's breakin' loose around here. We've got bodies stackin' up like firewood on a charnel wagon."
"And that relates to me…"
"Look, wise guy, the mayor is leanin’ on the commissioner, who's puttin’ the squeeze on the captain, who's ridin’ me like a faggot on a rodeo clown. I got more murders than ya got red ink in yer books and not a clue in sight, so I thought I'd see if ya had any skinny on the lowdown."
"No, sorry, Bob. My cases have been in leaning in the wind going the other direction down the country lane. Sorry about that."
"Don't go throwin' me a hankie just yet, tough guy. Yer gonna help on this case."
"Who's covering my retainer?" I asked as I lit another coffin.
He grabbed me by the tie, lifted me off my feet, and spewed into my face with breath that smelled like cheap booze and three-day-old tuna, "Yer retainer? Here's yer retainer, Moonlight. I'm two years and a chunk of change away from my pension. There's nothin’ the city'd like better than to stiff me on that one.
"I don't get that pension I got nothin’. So it's like this, either ya help me crack this case or ya'll find me livin’ in yer place and washin’ my underwear and socks out in yer sink."
I recalled that Bob liked to walk around his place in the buff. The idea of that naked bulbous body bent over my sink hand washing his clothes…I didn't want to go there. I agreed to help.
Bob let me go, looked at his watch, and asked, "What time ya got, Moonlight? My watch's stopped."
I lit another coffin nail and answered, "I hocked my watch last week to keep my bookie away from my kneecaps, but it's 8:30. You know it's always 8:30 in here."
"Yeah, yer right. I hate it when yer're right, but I'm lucky. It doesn’t happen that often. Ya want to go over to Rick's Café and catch the blue plate special?"
"I could use a cup of java."
We slipped out the side door and started down the alley toward GenChat's favorite greasy spoon. Bob was puffing after a few steps. With any luck he'd have a coronary, and I could slip out of this case.
Suddenly, we heard a scream. I took off like a glass of buttermilk shot through a hound with gas. Up ahead of us I could see two figures. One lay on the ground, the other loomed over the prone one. In the hand of the standing shape I caught the glint of a knife.
I put the pedal to the floor. With any luck I could make it there in time before my lungs gave out.
The two figures quickly came into the view. The joe lying on the ground was the non-descript type you expected to see as a victim in some second rate detective novel. He was a sallow little man with enough zits on his face that if you played connect the dots you could have come up with a decent rendition of the Great Sphinx.
His attacker was another matter. There was something about him that didn’t feel right, and I didn’t mean Brie on white toast. If you stripped off the impassive outer layer underneath you would find a soul as ugly as the Unitarian Book Club at the bookstore bargain bin.
However, my Uncle Elmo and Aunt Millie never raised any wallflowers for the school bake sale. I wrapped my right hand around the roll of quarters I kept in my pocket for playing the slots and lit into him like the IRS all over my last audit.
The joe was about my height and built a little thinner. My best Sunday punch made him turn from his victim, but he didn’t even blink. I barely got out of the way before his knife played tic tack toe on my vitals.
I grabbed a garbage can lid that lay conveniently next to me to block the downward thrust of his blade. My left foot snaked out and tripped him like a trick question on a pop quiz. As he went down I jumped him like a new set of battery cables.
I’m a pretty good alley fighter, but this joe was a lot stronger than he looked and much faster. He blocked my punch and my attempted knee to the rancheros. I found myself pinned to the ground with his hands squeezing around my neck.
That was when I got a good look at his eyes. What I saw made my blood run colder than the open trap door on a set of long johns in December. The orbs were dark blue, almost black, and were totally impassive.
I had looked in the eyes of a lot of killers around the rooms. Some of them had seemed reluctant, some remorseful and some even got a perverted pleasure out of it, but this joe was different. There was no emotion. It was like it was merely what he did.
I struggled against his tightening grip but to no avail. His knee in my chest had me pinned down. I clawed at his face. It only seemed to make his grip grow tighter. I could hear Bob puffing and shuffling up the alley, but at the rate that walking cholesterol time bomb was moving it would be too late.
He whispered so softly that I could barely make out the words, “You make me feel…you make me feel…”
Everything started to go black.
*****
He listened closely to what his prey told him while he poured his victim another glass of wine. The story seemed almost too good to be true. However, he had been patient, and to those who wait sometimes what they desire bears fruit.
The little man was nearly finished with the details. Yes, this would work. This was what he required. If he were capable of feeling joy, at this moment he would have been filled with elation. Instead, he merely felt completeness.
Hindsight later told him that was the point where he had the mistake. He made so few that he was painfully aware when they happened. In the celebration of the moment he poured himself a second glass a wine. It wasn’t enough to cause harm, but it did slow his reactions.
The man was leaning toward him, his glass out for another fill. He watched the nostrils as they flared in anticipation. The hands trembled slightly from the effects of the drink. He doubted at this stage if his victim was aware of the intoxication. Soon it would not matter.
“So you see, it’s a major scientific breath through,” the man slurred slightly.
He sighed and replied, “Yes, but seldom is true genius noticed by those who are in its presence.”
“Yes! Precisely! It amazes me how well you understand.”
“You would be surprised at how well I can intuit. I have a favor to ask.”
“Sure, go ahead. I can’t deny someone who listens to me.”
“I assumed you couldn’t. Would it be possible for me to see a copy of the formula?”
“That? Well, I don’t know…I kinda keep it close to my chest…and you may not understand it…”
“I can be trusted, my friend, to do what needs to be done. You would be surprised at what I can understand.”
“So you want to show it to your friends? See if they will invest?”
He smiled and answered, “Your wisdom truly does astound me. I could not have put it better myself. Do you need your glass freshened?”
He refilled the man's glass as his victim hastily scribbled down the formula. A slight smile was set on his lips. He felt no joy or elation, but he had learned that the act caused them to relax. It was almost time.
"Here you go, bud," the man said as he held out the paper is in his trembling hand. "I'm not sure why I'm doing this. Guess I trust you."
He calmly took the paper, stared for a minute at the sheet, folded it, and placed it in his pocket. Then he exhaled a long slow breath while the man looked at him quizzically. He allowed every muscle in his body to relax before he coiled them one by one.
He suddenly sprang, knife in hand, grabbing the man by the shirt as he said in a flat tone, "Trust me? I suppose we do all make mistakes…"
It must have been the wine. How else could one explain why his grasp momentarily loosened enough for his victim to tear free. He lunged for him only to feel the wine bottle crash against the side of his head. As he fell to the floor he heard the steps of his prey run out of the room.
Darkness started to enfold him, but he struggled back to consciousness. Usually, on the rare occasion that one escaped he let them go. However, the stakes were too high this time. He arose and felt the side of his throbbing head. His hand came away covered with blood. He looked at it and smiled.
He hunted his quarry on a long chase deep into the night. Several times his victim thought he had eluded his pursuer, but each time the man turned to find him still there. Only then did he realize how well his stalker had studied him. Slowly, he started to tire.
He caught his victim in an alley. His prey's harsh breath echoed in terror off the walls as he turned him and prepared to end it.
"Why?" gasped the man.
"Because I can," he calmly replied as he drove the knife into the man's stomach.
"God save me!" the man rasped as the blood, breath, and life poured from him.
He said not another word to his victim. He merely stopped and allowed the dying man to gaze deep into his cold eyes. He wanted him to be sure as the last gasp railed from his lips that his prey knew, truly knew, there was no god to save him.
He dropped the body to watch its final spasms before it was over. If rapture existed then it was now. Such moments were the closest to joy that he had ever known.
Suddenly, he heard footsteps rush toward him. A crescendo of pain ran through his head, but he held firm. He lashed out with his knife toward his adversary. He had to attack. He couldn't let his enemy know that the blow hurt him.
A garbage can lid blocked his blow, and he felt his legs go out from under him as they tumbled together in a desperate wrestling heap on the ground. He was stronger, but his attacker knew how to fight. It was only a matter of luck that he wound up on top with the advantage.
He looked deep into his enemy's eyes as he tightened his grip. Partly what he saw was the strength of one who could have been a worthy adversary. Pity, that it must end so soon. He also saw his own reflection. There was a thrill glinting from his gaze.
He whispered so softly that the man could barely make out the words, “You make me feel…you make me feel…”
His attacker started to go limp.
A shot rang out over his head and a voice growled, "Just get yer hands off of him before I make ya a candidate for the Swiss cheese brigade! If ya want to kill Moonlight, ya gotta get in line!"
He sighed and jumped to his feet barely taking a glance at the corpulent armed man. Too much was at stake. Before the man could shoot again he was over a nearby fence and gone.
*****
I sat up slowly rubbing the back of my head. My throat was sorer than a yodeler bending over for a bar of soap in the prison shower.
"Ya okay, Al?" Bob growled like a ptomaine sundae.
"I'll live," I replied as I lit a coffin nail. "Thanks for pulling my kiester out of the hay bailer."
"No problem. Ya still owe me a cyber-jackson from the smoker the other night. Gotta keep ya alive until ya pay up."
"Thanks, I think," I said as I knelt over the killer's victim.
I lit a coffin nail and slipped it into the dying man's mouth. He collapsed in a fit of unmitigated nicotine narcolepsy. Even if you're ready to kick the bucket a good smoke can help.
"I-I-I d-d-don't smoke," he gasped with what little breath he had left.
"Sorry about that."
He grabbed my suit coat with his bloody hands and wheezed, "I-i-i-t d-d-doesn't matter for me n-now. H-h-he's got it. He m-m-m-must be stopped before it is too l-l-l-late…"
With that he was gone. I checked my lapels. Hopefully the bloodstains wouldn't show through too bad.
"We gotta call this one in, Al," Bob said as he stared at the gore-drenched corpse beside me. "Kind of ruins my appetite for the scrambled eggs and haggis plate at Rick's."
"Yeah, know what you mean, doc," I said as I stood and lit another coffin nail.
"Well, after I file my report, let's head over to the Tahiti Lounge. You look like I could use a drink. This is over anyway."
"No, Bob, I got a sinking feeling it's just beginning."
There are places in Chat_World where the abandoned and dispossessed gather. Sometimes, they come to hide from a life on the outside where they do not fit or belong. Occasionally, some believe that they deserve no better. Then there are those who come to hide from prying eyes that might question the condition they are in.
He was among the latter. So close he was now to his goal that the last thing he needed was to have the police and others question his wounds. He looked at the cuts in the mirror. He had treated them the best he could, but he assumed that the nasty one on his forehead would scar. No matter, he had plenty of other such badges from past hunts.
He walked over and lay down on the bed, scarcely noticing the gloom of the seedy hotel room. Physical environment mattered little to him. The place may have been filthy and smelled of despair, but it suited his needs.
As he lit a cigarette he reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a wadded piece of paper and a wrinkled business card. The paper had came from his victim. The card he took from the man who attacked him before he fled from the scene.
Normally, he would have discarded the card or looked at it later. What was contained on the paper was what he desired. There would no longer be a way for the chatters to escape him.
However, the man who attacked him had intrigued him. It was not because he had come to the aid of his victim. He had encountered that before. Such ones either joined as another victim, or, if too strong he had fled from them. No, this man was different.
He mouthed the words “you make me feel” as he turned the card over and over in his hand. Deep within him lay a rage that he had long suppressed beneath the ice. This man had awakened that anger.
He enjoyed the feeling. For so long he had enjoyed nothing. Now that the dam on that well had been released he reveled in the sensations that rode over him in wave after wave. He laughed quietly to himself as he realized now why he stalked them.
It was because he could. Truly, that was the reason and now he fully comprehended it.
He wanted to feel more, but he realized that he couldn’t push too fast. There were other things that needed to be done first.
He let the card fall to the bed and picked up the piece of paper. He slowly unwadded it lest it tear in his grip. Here lay the secret to true terror. They thought they could escape, but now there would be no way. Soon enough the black would engulf them all.
He sat down the paper and picked up the card. On it was engraved Bloodcall & Moonlight. Those words had been crossed out. Underneath them written in a rather ragged handwriting were the words Moonlight & Bloodcall.
Al_B._Moonlight…what was it about this man? Why could this detective make him feel when no other had for so long? It did not truly matter. What counted was that he found the encounter to be seductive and intoxicating.
He wanted more.
He lay back to rest. Though every nerve in his body tingled and leapt he forced himself to relax. Patience, he reminded himself, was one of his strongest allies. First, he must plan.
He had to visit a certain chemist he knew on the outside.
He had to learn more about this Al_B._Moonlight.
Then the hunt would begin.
Bob and I walked through the front door of the Tahiti. The chat washed over us like warm water over your hands under the tap in the men’s room:
·
Single_diety
says, "What happened anyway?
I was afk and the whole thing had locked up."
·
Dawn_tinted says, "hello al"
·
My_ciao_ciao revs up her bumper car and waves at al
as he enters
·
DoneInTheSnow says, "(Tahiti_theme)is
appropriate"
·
Roseisaroseisarose says, "hello al!"
·
Al_B._Moonlight lights a coffin nail
·
My_ciao_ciao weaves between the tables
·
Dawn_tinted winks at al & says “long time
hon”
·
Al_B._Moonlight says, "been elsewhere sweetheart"
·
DraculaAnn says, "brb.. potty time"
·
My_ciao_ciao slams her bumper car into the airlock
·
Dawn_tinted giggles & winks
·
Single_diety has to leave pretty soon anyway. Places to go. People to see.
Things to do and all that crap.
·
Al_B._Moonlight says, "too many cases, too many
dames, you know how it goes"
·
My_ciao_ciao side swipes the bar
·
Ms_Sitcom walks over to the bar and orders a shot of
Old Scuzzie
·
Al_B._Moonlight says, "one foot in the crapper
and the other ahead of the collection agency"
·
Ms_SitCom says, "lol @ al"
· Dawn_tinted says, "hey al how come i’m not one of your dames ???????"
Yeah, just another collection of Rhodes Scholars though that Dawn_tinted was one fine looking dame. I kept one hand on my wallet as I wound through the crowd to the bar.
The Tahiti Lounge is one of those chat water back dives where you can belly up to bar and plunge nose first into a bowl of suds and a mug of peanuts. However, the board of health had condemned the pickled pork fritters.
I used to hang my hat there. I was the piano player. The pay wasn’t great but where else could a joe spend the day tinkling the ivories and staring at a room full of great legs. I also got a lot of hostility worked out by throwing ashtrays at the clowns who requested Louie Louie.
The place was fairly crowded but Bob plowed an inspired path to the bar. I just followed in his wake and was soon sipping on a nice cold mineral water. I lit a coffin nail and turned toward the stage to take in the show.
When I quit working at the Tahiti, they hired a young piano player named Kid_Shelley to take my place. He was kind of young, at that all elbows and wet behind the ears stage of life, but the kid could blister the ivories like a magnifying glass on an anthill.
The problem was he preferred to play Stravinsky and Phillip Glass numbers, which didn't set well with the rock an' roll crowd. I had told him time and again you have got to give the people what they want, but he was too hard headed to listen. He was pretty nimble, though, to dodge that much fruit and vegetables while launching into Rite of Spring.
I heard a familiar set of thighs swish up behind me and a voice sneer, "Well, well, Al_B._Moonlight…there goes the property values around here."
I turned around to find my mouth covered by a kiss that ripped out my tongue and patted me on the head with it. Then she stepped back and slapped me.
As the circulation returned to my face, I eyed the dame in front of me. She was a little shorter than me and had more curves than a senator's filibuster. Her dark hair was long, cascading down over her shoulders. She wore a tight red satin dress that was slit up the left leg to near indecency.
Her handle was Daybreak12. She was the owner of this joint and my former boss. We had a history that read like Tamerlane's ride across Central Asia. The dame was cruel, self-possessed, and greedy, but she had a heart of gold. She was always looking for a good time. I wouldn’t say that she was easy, but if she ever wanted to be the catcher for the Tahiti's softball team she already owned the kneepads.
As I lit a coffin nail and collapsed against the bar in a rheumy pile of nico-bliss, I said, "Hi, Daybreak, how's tricks?"
She smiled slightly, leaned a set in a my direction that lent a new meaning to the term all hands on deck, and replied, "Downhill now that you are here, Al."
"I figured as much, sweetheart. So why did you kiss me?"
"Because I like it."
"Then why did you slap me?"
"Same reason."
"You got moxie, Day…"
"…and you love a dame with moxie."
"Usually, but in your case I'd rather be dipped in honey and licked by an aardvark."
"You don’t want to go in my office, Al? You still owe the bar a bundle. Maybe we could take it out in trade."
"Sorry, doll, I'd rather not trade for what you got to offer under the hood. I’ve already kicked that set of tires.”
"You've been there before, Al. You know what's it's like."
"I used to do carpentry with my Uncle Elmo, sweetheart, and hit my hand a few times with the hammer. So I know what that's like, too, but you don’t see me running to join a trade union."
“You know, Al, I’ve always found you attractive, like that last drink before you go home at night with someone you wouldn't normally let in to clean your cat's litter box.”
“Sweetheart, if I ever fell off the wagon and got drunker than a pig in a poker game there are some things about you that I might find bearable if I woke up next to you in an alley.”
“Al, sometimes I start to think you are a somewhat decent guy, but then I talk to you and remember why you aren’t.”
“You know there a lot of dames in these parts that are good at repulsing men. You’ve just happened to have turned it into a career.”
We were interrupted by Bob's voice growling like a basset hound thrown down a well, "Hi, Day. How are ya tonight?"
Bob had a thing for Daybreak. I wasn't sure why. Frankly, his wallet wasn't nearly deep enough to be in her league.
"Hi, Bob," she sighed as she rolled her eyes. "Two jerks for the price of one. How can a girl get…"
A jostling and parting of the crowd interrupted her. A portly joe with about two day's growth, a rather unclean shirt, and enough grease in his hair to keep to the local lube shop in business for a month ambled through.
Everyone stopped and yelled, "Cubbie!"
Cubbie replied, "If I was married my wife would have tried to entice me to go bed to her rather than come here. Now that would make a man want to drink."
I wondered if these people watched too many sitcom reruns.
The joe's name was Cub_Reporter. He was my main source for dirt around the rooms. He was also a lounge regular. I wouldn't say he spent a lot of time here but if you typed Tahiti Lounge in an Internet search engine the first three URLs would be his.
"Hi, Cubbie, how's tricks?" I asked as he leaned against a worn spot on the bar that matched his girth.
"Pretty good, Al" he replied with breath that would have frozen a hyena in its tracks. "You hear I'm working again?"
"No, I didn't. Congrats, Cubbie. The Tattler take you back?"
"Nah, better than that. I'm writing Cliff Notes for those condensed novels that you read in the magazines."
"Okay…so you still got your nose to the rumor mill grindstone these days?"
"Yeah, I can always use a few extra bucks. What do you want to know?"
I placed a cyber-jackson I had lifted from Bob's wallet in Cubbie's shirt pocket and said, "Been a lot of chatters and flakes turn up dead of late. You heard anything about it?"
"Like who's doing it? No idea, Al. Sorry, but you know…it did intrigue me. I did a little reading and found some stories of similar unsolved slayings on the outside."
"So you think it might be a crossover stalker or something?"
"Highly likely, Al. You know whatever gets passed out there eventually flushes down here. I also drew out a map of the slayings. You want to see it?"
"Sure."
"Okay, I'll send over a copy of the map and my notes."
"Thanks, Cubbie. I owe you."
"Any time, Al. Say, are you coming to the party?"
"Party? Uh, sure Cubbie. You know me and parties."
"Good, I know she'd really like to…"
I didn't hear the rest of what he said because I suddenly caught sight of a pair of cold eyes boring into my skull like a rabid dentist with a rusty drill. Then they were gone.
I didn't like it. I didn't like it one bit.
He quickly left the Tahiti before his adversary could track him down. It was not yet time for a confrontation. He merely wanted Moonlight to know that he was there. At this stage it would become riveted in his mind. The distraction would cause him to weaken.
Besides, he had more important things to do. What was needed would require a trip to the other side of the modem. The one he sought would help or regret it if he refused. Either way he would kill him when the mission was complete. He could not afford anyone discovering his plans.
There was a small line in front of him when he arrived at the gate. He had chosen the time carefully. A little earlier, and he would have encountered the after dinner rush. During that congestion the authorities would on occasion randomly choose chatters to check their profiles. A little later, there would have been no one going in or out. It would have been more likely a guard would remember him.
Either way, he could not afford discovery. At this time the guards were tired from the rush and didn’t want to deal with anyone. They mindlessly allowed people to enter or leave.
He waited his turn while reading the newspaper. A man busy lost in the news was less likely to be noticed by the authorities or bothered by another chatter. Soon he go through the gate. As always, he was patient.
When his turn came he stepped on the platform. He pressed the log out button. Slowly, he felt the familiar tingle start in the soles of his feet. It snaked up his legs until it reached his spine and flooded out to the rest of his body. He started to feel numb. Everything began to fade to black around him.
Perhaps this was how his victims felt when the last gasp expired from them. However, there was a major difference. He knew that he would return on the other side. Life would continue for him, but when he choked the last breath of life from them their existence would end.
If he did have a name, that name would be terror.
*****
I left Bob at the Tahiti mooning over Daybreak like a streaker running through a meat locker. I never could figure out what he saw in her, but then I didn’t know what I saw in her either. She repelled me in ways yet I always kept coming back. Frankly, it was hard for me to respect anyone that would sleep with me.
The only exception was Lauren. If I didn’t respect her she would have killed me.
My mind started going over what I knew about the case. The threat was real for the flakes, very real. But for the chatters I never quite figured out what to think. Who had any idea what chat did to them?
The emotions were real, no matter how expressed. The toll this crummy little cyburg took on their lives, health, and money was as real as anything else in their lives. You meet someone and things happened. You are scared by it, but you can’t stop. I guess what they say about the place is true. Who you are when you come in is who you are in here, and what you pick up in here goes back out when you leave. Life is about the same on either side of the modem.
I lit a coffin nail and changed the subject with myself. The committee was getting little too deep on the hip waders and giving me a headache. I needed to kick back with a cup of java and the sports page and get back to the case.
The office was as deserted as my junior college Ethics class after test day. I turned on the java pot and lit another coffin nail. The acrid smoke seared through what little undamaged tissue remained in my lungs. Coughing and heaving my eyes watered like a buffalo in a rice paddy. You just had to love a good smoke.
As my breath and vision returned I noticed there was a message on the answering machine. I fiddled around with the contraption until I accidentally erased the it. Someday Lauren would have to show me how to run the thing.
There was a knock the door. I answered and found a courier from ChatEx with a package. Cubbie had come through like a shortstop making the long throw out the hole to first. The deliveryman expected a tip so I told him to bet on Tofu Ptomaine in the fourth. He gave me a dark look. Some joes just don’t get it.
I turned on the radio. Humming along to Louis Prima crooning In A Little Gypsy Tea Room, I pushed the papers, food, and trash off of my desk. Then I laid out Cubbie’s package and started to study it.
It was time for Al_B._Moonlight to go work.
The night was cool and long and dark. He moved slowly through the ether with a package nestled in his coat pocket. Inside the wrapper lay the fate of those he would encounter. No longer could they escape him with a mere log out. Leaving Chat_World, in fact, would seal their fate.
Call him pestilence, name him war, entitle him death, or baptize him famine, he would accept any designation from those that needed to know why he did it. All that mattered to him was that now he carried a gift as dear as his own talent. Together they would be invincible. It was too powerful and he was too clever to be stopped.
Beyond that he could think of only two reasons that he pursued his mission. One was a statement made by his mentor long ago. Before he ended his teacher's life, the man had quoted an even wiser man: "From time to time it is necessary that pestilence, famine, and war prune the luxuriant growth of the human race." Perhaps he was the agent of natural selection.
The other reason, of course, was because he could.
He raised the collar of his jacket against the breeze. He walked slowly but with great determination. Aware, always aware of those around him, he sought his first victim. It would not take long. They seemed to gravitate to him, as if they searched for the release he offered.
Little else moved him except that he was curious to see how his prize would work. The initial results on the man whom he visited on the outside had been most encouraging.
Then, of course, there was the matter of Moonlight. After he tested what he carried he would have to see what his adversary was up to.
*****
Restlessly, she waited for the taxi. Her green eyes that usually sparkled beneath the long curly red hair looked very tired. The day had been long and chat boring as usual. It seemed the more time she spent in here the less she got out of it. Perhaps it was time to take a few days off.
From behind her sounded steps. She clutched the can of pepper spray in purse as she turned around. Then she relaxed. It was a lone man, but he looked smaller than she did. From his body language it appeared that he was more wary of her than she was of him.
He smiled slightly, nodded, and stood a few feet from her. She smiled back and turned towards him. Usually, she was very careful with strangers in here but there was something about his eyes. She wanted to know what was behind them.
"Cold night," she said tentatively.
"Yes, it is," he replied quietly moving two steps closer then one back. "I have had enough of this place. I'll be glad to get home."
"Me, too. You come here often?"
"Off and on. I liked it at first, but now, I'm not sure. It doesn’t seem to offer what I was looking for in the first place."
"I know what you mean. I'm tired of the games in here."
"Yes, it is too much like the outside," he said as he took another step in her direction, "and I'm afraid I can't justify paying the modem charge for the similar grief."
She smiled and didn't move away as she said, "You seem to have discovered what I have. I think I'll log out and stay offline awhile."
"Perhaps longer than you think…"
"I'm sorry? What did you say?"
"Oh nothing. I tend to ramble. Perhaps that 's part of the reason I have trouble keeping friends."
She hesitantly took a step toward him and said, "Oh I'm sure that's not a problem. Poor baby, you look so sad."
He sighed and answered, "Yes, I am. It seems like when I get to close to someone they are gone."
"Yes, life can seem so fleeting in chat."
"More than you could imagine, my dear."
Then followed the awkward silence where she assumed that he was afraid his next line would be the wrong one, and she would be gone. She felt sorry for him. He seemed nice, like there was something inside that begged to be rescued. She took another step toward him and slowly held out her hand.
He lightly took hold of it and pulled her closer. She could now feel the heat of his body next to hers. She had broken eye contact when she moved toward him. She smiled shyly and looked up.
The eyes had changed. The slight lost warmth she had seen in them was replaced by cold hard steel. She realized that the warmth had never been there. What she had seen was only a reflection of her own desires.
She tried to step back but his grip was like iron. She tried to scream, but his free hand grasped her throat stifling her voice. Her purse fell to the ground in the struggle and was kicked into the gutter. It opened and the can of pepper spray rolled lazily into the gleam of the streetlight.
His eyes now mocked her as his grip tightened on her neck. His other hand let go of her and reached inside his jacket. She continued to fight but realized he was much stronger than he looked. She clawed at his face, but the raking nails only seemed to make him stronger.
Fear seized her as his iron grip pulled her closer. Their eyes locked in one gaze. She could not break from his stare that reflected back her horrible realization that this was death. She was too frightened to even force quit from chat.
She felt a sting like a pinprick on her neck. His grip slowly relaxed pulling the necklace that she wore from her body. She wrenched free just as the taxi arrived. Eyes wild she jumped in and the cab took off. She slumped back in the seat and felt her burning skin. As soon as she got back outside she would have to have it looked at. God knows what he did to her.
He watched the taxi as it disappeared around the corner. Perhaps she looked back at him once, perhaps not. He wasn't sure, and it didn't matter. He had accomplished his goal.
He placed the syringe back in his coat and walked slowly down the street. If he were fortunate there would be more tonight, but if he didn't strike again until another night, it didn’t matter for the hunt had begun. There would be plenty more victims.
The new way was much less messy than his former methods. He liked it. It attracted less attention.
Whichever method he used, they would be just as dead.
I sat back from the desk, rubbed my eyes, and lit a coffin nail. The acrid smoke thundered through my lungs like a run away jackhammer on a partitioned C Drive. I collapsed like a bad bluff in a high stakes poker game and wheezed like an octogenarian on top of a prom queen.
After my breathing returned to what passed for normal, I stared blindly at the papers in front of me. I was sure now that my new friend was the same killer that had never been caught on the outside. I wasn't too surprised. It always seemed that if something happened out there it was only a matter time before it punched the time clock on our side of the modem.
What I couldn't figure out was a pattern to what he was doing or why he did it. Cubbie thought he had seen one, but his cat was barking up the wrong tree as far I could see. If there was a pattern you'd have to be a hop hound to see it.
I yawned and checked my watch. It said 8:30. I wondered where the night had gone. My java cup was empty so I went to pour myself another cup of mud. I figured by now what passed in my body as a bloodstream had to be about ninety per cent caffeine and nicotine.
I was about ready to lay down and catch a ride on the Slumber Land Express when it hit me like a bowling ball going down the wrong lane in the skating rink. It was just a hunch and a crazy one at that, but I might just be right.
My laptop was already running so I zoomed over to the Chat_World Archives to check it out. I loved my machine. It cut down the wear and tear on the shoe leather. I wouldn't trade my Macintosh for a truckload of PCs, only the best for Al_B._Moonlight.
Impatiently I drummed my fingers as a grainy picture slowly loaded. I sat back and studied it for awhile. I had been right. It probably wouldn't help me track the joe down, but when we had our encounter it could be a good ace up the sleeve. I was going to need all the aces I could find and hope they didn't come with an accompanying set of eights.
It was time to head down to the precinct and see if Bob and GenChat's finest had come up with anything. As I turned toward the door I heard a sound. I felt a cold rush up my spine like someone had shoved a snow cone in my boxers.
He stood there smiling slightly at me. His eyes were cold, impassive like they had my fate written on them. In his hand he held a necklace. I stood frozen as he dropped it on the floor.
I lunged toward him but felt the room start to spin. It was like I was riding on a roller coaster full of taffy. The more I struggled the harder it became to move. Everything started to turn as fuzzy as a French art flick. I fell like a bear market.
He stood over me and said quietly, "You should really lock your door when you work. You could become so absorbed in what you do that I am afraid someone could sneak in and drug your coffee.”
"Don't worry," he said as he knelt and gripped my neck in his strong hands, "I will take care of you, Moonlight.
"Yes, I am afraid that I have the advantage. I see that you, too, are studying me, but those articles will tell you little. You are to be commended, though. Few have done that, and when they have it has always been too late."
His fingers tightened as he continued, "But I want you to know, Moonlight. I want you to look death in its face and understand that it carries your name. I want you to fear and run and hide and hope and pray and experience all of those emotions that I find so delicious in you.
"I even you want to have hope, though you know that there is only one outcome possible. I want you to have hope, no matter how little, no matter small, to keep you carrying on so that when the time truly comes there will be surprise.
"Why you, Moonlight? I have no idea. All I know is that you make me feel. For so long I have done this only because it is what I do well and because I can do it. I needed no other reason.
"Perhaps within you I see that my talent lies buried deep in all men.
“I am leaving you this necklace. It came from my latest victim. You can keep it so you will remember that your fate is sown, too."
He let go of my neck and lifted me by my tie. The effect was about the same as when he was choking me.
He kissed his finger, traced the outline of my dry lips with it, and said, "But it is not the time for it to end. This is too sweet. I must enjoy you more.
"For now it is suffice for you to know that any time I so desire that I can be here. There is no way you can stop me. Run if you wish. I hope that you will. I hope to prolong the joy of you as long as possible.
"But make no mistake, Moonlight, you are mine."
The door closed softly behind him. The paralysis was starting to wear off. I sat up slowly. I picked up the necklace and stared at the door for a long time. Nausea forced me to lay back down.
I doubted if I would ever come in this office again and not lock the door behind me.
I managed to crawl over to the desk and reach up for my pack of coffin nails. I lay back down, lit one, and inhaled slowly. The numbness was leaving my muscles and being replaced by searing pain. My head felt like the Marines took a shortcut through my body on their way to the Halls of Montezuma.
I took a long slow drag. My nerves were as shot as a shady valve job on a '55 Studebaker. This joe had me cased out big time. He was stronger than me, and it looked like a lot smarter. He was streaking for the end zone, and I hadn't even got the pony out of the gate.
Eventually, I knew that I had to move, but the cool floor tile felt good on my aching head. I closed my eyes and discovered a new meaning to the term vertigo. I wasn’t sure what he used to drug me, though I did know a few places over in XChat where you could make a bundle off of it.
After I stubbed out the coffin nail I lit another and reached over to the desk to pull myself up. A sheet of paper fell on me. It was the map of the slayings that Cubbie had drawn. As my eyes slowly focused I noticed that it was different.
There was a neatly drawn x with a small circle around it. Next to the circle was an arrow. At the end of the arrow were some words in a neat compact script:
A noble attempt, Moonlight. Yes, there is a pattern, but I doubt if your friend or you will be able to discern it. Perhaps this will help you. Until next time, Moonlight, and yes, there will be a next time…
I reached for the phone and pulled it down to me. I quickly dialed the precinct and asked for Bob. I told him where to meet me.
Slowly, I stumbled to the door. Once out in the hall I leaned against the wall and noticed an envelope in the mailbox. It was some kind of party invitation. I stuck it in my pocket. I would look at it later when I had time.
Using the wall as a support I made my way to the elevator. Hopefully, the night air would clear my head.
I needed a clear for head for what I was walking into.
*****
When I arrived at the crime scene there were already six squad cars there. I saw Bob. He was looking at a body that lay in the alley.
"Christ sakes, Al," he rumbled like an active volcano, "ya look like the dog the cat drug out back to vomit on yer sister's orthopedic shoes. What happened to ya?"
"I'll tell you later, Bob," I replied as I lit a coffin nail. "I gather we were too late."
"Only if yer not an undertaker. Look at this body, Al. This is weird."
I borrowed a flatfoot's flashlight and bent down to look. It was a good thing I didn't eat lunch. I lost track of the stab wounds after eight. I lifted the shirt and noticed a pattern on the victim's chest. It looked like the moon.
"What ya think it means, Al?" Bob asked as he took one of my coffin nails.
"I think our slayer has a very sick sense of humor," I replied as I wiped the blood from my hands on Bob's handkerchief. "Say, doc, I thought you quit smoking."
"Don't you think this is a good time to start?"
"Can't disagree with that."
"Al, as we left the station a ChatEx delivery man left this for you. He said that the instructions were for you to open it here. He also said he'd stop by your office for his tip. The last one paid off three to one."
Moonlight,
I apologize for the mess, but there truly seems to be no clean way to kill your kind. Do not worry, I am working on it. Perhaps we can test it on you. ;o)
There is one thing you should know about the victim with the necklace. She thought that she escaped by returning to the other side. I am sorry to inform you that such actions no longer work. You can trace her to this i.p. I assume the body will still be at the keyboard.
This is such glory! I am so glad that we get to enjoy it together. In the end you know it will come down to you and me. I am afraid we both know what the result of that encounter will be, don't we?
Well, as you say, see you around the rooms…
I handed the note to Bob. As he read it his face turned whiter than a piece of chalk on a Malibu beach on a bright sunny day. He handed it to one of the officers to take back to the lab for analysis.
"I doubt if they'll find anything," I said quietly, "unless he wants us to find it."
"What did he mean, Al?" Bob gnarled like a thunderstorm in a gully.
"It means he's on the loose, and I don't know if we can do anything to stop him."
When we got back to the GenChat Precinct the switchboard was jammed like a left-hand hitter pulling an inside curve ball. We hightailed our way back to the Bob's office before the press could nab us. He locked the door behind us.
Bob flipped me a bottle of mineral water and read a memo that lay on his desk. He shook his head, ran his fingers through his hair, and poured himself a glass of Old Scuzzie. He stood looking out the window. The room was so quiet you could hear the sweat drip off the hands of the clock.
"We got the report, Al," he growled like a grizzly bear with the trots. "It don't look good. They found a dame in Lubbock dead as a doorknob at her keyboard. She'd just logged out."
I lit a coffin nail and said, "Then, it's begun."
"Yeah, like a garden hose up the kiester. It gets worse, too. They've found three others. God knows how more there are we ain't aware of yet."
"Any luck on tracking him?"
"The techs are on it, but it's like lookin' fer a needle in an enigma. Christ, Al, ya know how many people come in and out of here in a day.
"The mayor's locked down the gates, but I got a sinkin' feelin' in my kidney stones it won't do no good."
"Yeah, he's in here, and he's having way too much fun to leave."
"Yeah, sort of leaves us…"
"Like a cat in heat with anvil tied to its tail while it runs through the dog pound?"
"Well…I wouldn't put it like that, but I suppose you could look at it that way."
Bob finished his glass and poured another. He slumped down in his chair. Who knows how long it had been since he had slept? He looked every bit like a joe on the edge of retirement.
"One thing I don't get, Al," he snarled like a lion sitting on a cactus, "is what he sees in ya."
"He seems to think there is pleasure in slowly killing me," I replied as I stubbed out my coffin nail and lit another one.
"Well, he at least has taste in that. Ya learn anythin' that might help us?"
"Only one, but it wouldn't do any good until I can meet him on equal footing."
"Care to fill me in?"
"I'll leave you the URL before I go."
"Yer not duckin' out on me are ya?"
"No, Bob, but we have to admit that he is dealing off the bottom of the deck while we hold a pair of deuces and that card that gives you instructions how to play gin rummy."
"Okay…ya ain't been siftin' tea bags again have ya?"
"Bob, he's out there on a rampage. We have no idea who he is, where he’s going next, or even how he’s doing it. We've only got one ante in the kettle of potatoes as I see it.
"He wants me. I have to draw him off, keep him busy until we figure out how to stop him."
"Mighty brave of ya, Al," Bob said quietly. "He's almost cleaned yer clock like a head linesman with a broom. How ya gonna do it?"
I took a sip off my mineral water and walked over to the window. I had always wondered what Bob looked at when he stopped there. Lost in thought my fingers mindlessly played with the lip of the bottle.
I was no hero. I knew that, but I also knew that if we had any chance to stop this joe it lay with me. Some guys have all the luck.
It was then that I noticed a thin figure on the sidewalk looking up at me. Even from that far away I could feel his slight smile. He waved and then quickly disappeared into the night. The joe was good, very good.
I lit another coffin nail and said over my shoulder like a tenor with false bravado, "There's a lot of hell holes out there, Bob, and I've been kicked out of most of them. Maybe I can stay ahead of him for awhile."
"Think so, Al?" Bob asked as he fished a coffin nail out of my pocket.
"Actually, I have no idea."
Bob placed his hand lightly on my shoulder. I lit a coffin nail, and we stood smoking in the silence. There was nothing left to say.
After Moonlight left the window, he returned to his motorcycle to retrieve his helmet. He polished the glistening white plastic with the sleeve of his black leather jacket and made sure that all of his equipment was properly in place.
He calmly walked into the lion's den. In the turmoil and commotion of the busy station no one would notice one more officer. He would blend in so well that by the time they discovered what he had done it would be too late.
He wandered through the main lobby until he spotted his victim. It was always so apparent when he saw them. He often wondered if they were aware of him. Whether they did or not held little importance to him and was merely a point of curiosity.
As always the act would prove to be easy, but for now that did not bore him. The challenge was new, first to ascertain if they were flake or chatter and then to slay them. The flakes, of course, were easier. The chatters proved more of a challenge. He had to strike before they broke the connection.
Normally, a chatter would log out through the gate, but they could perform a force quit. The trick was to inject them before they could complete the function.
The man sat down his camera and said, "BRB - gotta see a man about a database."
He followed his quarry down the hall. The man heard his footsteps and turned wearily to look at him, but when he saw the uniform, he relaxed and walked on to the men's room. He followed his victim inside.
They stood side by side and together they performed one of the few functions that he had in common with them. The man looked at him as he finished and nodded.
As he walked to the sink the man said over his shoulder, "Quite the night ain't it?"
"Yes, one could say that," he replied as he calmly finished.
"Been doing this beat for ages and never saw them worked up like this. Must be big though they ain't telling us much."
"Perhaps, if you truly knew you wouldn't believe it."
"Don't know about that, bub. I seen about everything around this one horse chat town. Doubt if ya could surprise with much."
"What if you were in the very room with the killer, and he was disguised as a policeman, awaiting his chance to make you the next victim?"
The man looked up at him in the mirror and studied him worriedly for a minute. Then he shook his head and broke into a grin as he reached for a towel.
"Ya had me going there for a minute, bub," he chuckled as he dried his hands. "Maybe ya should sign up for a set for at the Chat Comedy Store. Yer quite a comedian."
He answered, "Maybe, but I always thought me talents lay more with the dramatic arts."
"Yeah, if ya say so. Well, I gotta get back to work. Talk to ya later."
"I doubt if, my friend. Excuseme, but your shoe seems to be untied."
"Hey, guess it is. Thanks pal. You’re realer 'trooper'. Ha! Ha!"
"Again you are wrong," he said softly as he yanked the garrote tightly around his bent over victim's neck. "I don't know which I detest more, ignorance or stupidity. I am afraid you possess too much of both to be allowed to live."
He had to act quickly before anyone else entered the room. His prey struggled in vain against the tightening rope. He pushed him slowly to the floor, his knee pressing hard into the back to match the pressure on the neck.
Normally he preferred to use a knife and to have them face him. Then he was sure that they truly understood that they had been stalked and that when life ceased that would truly be the end.
However, in here he had to act quickly and could not afford any sound. Therefore, he used the rope. He did derive a pleasure by closing his eyes and pretending it was Moonlight. He found himself doing that quite often now.
When his victim's struggles ceased he pulled him back into a stall and closed the door. He calmly washed his hands and combed his hair before he left. Personal hygiene had been ground into him at a young age.
As he walked through the hall he put on his helmet. No one noticed him, no one stopped him. As he walked by the reporters he heard one of them wonder what was taking Ernie so long. He assumed once they found out it would be front-page news.
Once outside he mounted his motorcycle and disappeared into the night.
He usually didn’t sleep much or for long when he did, but tonight he could feel the long cool fingers of restful slumber trace over his slowly drifting consciousness. The day had gone well, and tomorrow looked even better. For a change he could allow himself to relax.
The past usually did not concern him. He thought seldom of it. Perhaps it was the unexpected drowsiness or the sense of satisfaction, for tonight he found his mind tumbling deep down the hole within himself to confront the thoughts that rarely surfaced.
Fire turned to ice, lingered, burnt deep in his mind, and turned back to fire. He rode the waves of this unsurfaced rage. Like a lone surfer under the moonlight he watched the black waves of his anger as it lapped over the white sands of the beach of his past.
The torment was old yet as new as his latest wave of slayings. He embraced it and rode it deep, the foam of the memories spraying cool on his glistening skin. He ignored the cold and headed toward its warmth. With it he was one. It was all that he had.
There were those who would call his life hell. That was their business. To accept such an idea would mean he would have to believe that there was an afterlife. He knew that such concepts were only for the feeble-minded and the deluded. Neither would he acknowledge fate. Existence merely was and then it was gone, a candle he would gladly snuff for any that he could.
Her face appeared behind his closed eyelids. The long brown hair streamed down over her slender shoulders and around the neck that was so fragile one could almost snap it with the imagination. The lips were set grim as he always remembered them.
Then there were the green eyes. They were hollow, empty, consumed, with a fear and acceptance of her fate. She knew from the beginning that she would be the first, but her duty had kept her near.
She had told him that from his birth that she knew that he was evil. He laughed at the idea now. There was no evil, there was merely this squalid existence where he had to display his power while he still lived. A talent such as his could not go to waste.
Some would say her efforts were heroic to reclaim him from the seed that was born in him. Others would claim that she made him what he was. Was it discipline or abuse? Was it fear or neglect? He wouldn’t agree with either interpretation. She was only a woman coping best as she could with a talent that she could not understand.
So she watched him closely and deserted all possibility of any companionship in her life except for him. Such sacrifice mattered little to her. She never cared for men. The man who had fathered him had merely taken from her what he wanted. Her son was the same way.
She raised him so that he was fully aware of this. All men are evil. They can be no other way. God made them so. However, he never seemed to accept it. He always looked at her with those empty cold eyes and slight smile that seemed to say You will be first, and there is no way to escape your fate.
He lost track of the beatings and other punishments. Who knows how many months he spent locked in dark closets while she sat outside and quietly read the Bible to him. He could still recite the entire book by heart.
Finally came the day when he was bigger and stronger than she was. Another may have been cowered by her years of abuse, but such an individual would not have had his talent. He could still taste the horror and expectance in her eyes as the sharp butcher knife separated her jugular vein.
Her blood had tasted sweet when he licked it from his fingers. The abhorrence and expectation that was locked in her lifeless eyes had stayed with him until this day. He had never seen such dread from another victim, and he had never felt so satisfied from a death.
Even the slaying of his mentor had been a mere numb step on the endless path of his talent. He didn’t believe that things were ordained. Again, that would mean there was a god, and his life had taught him there was none. However, some things were inevitable.
Moonlight was inevitable.
Moonlight made him feel like no one else had since her. He had awakened desires that he never knew he had. Now he could act upon them.
He felt a jerk and stirring next to him. In his musings he had forgotten that she was there. He reached over and gently stroked the long blonde hair and lazily gazed into her eyes.
If one look could define fear then it was the look that was returned to him by those deep blue eyes that also held such hopelessness. She arms, so thin and pale, struggled helplessly against the ropes. Her mouth screamed in terror uselessly against the duct tape that covered the soft lips that begged unknowingly for the passion of release.
He smiled slightly and picked up his knife allowing the reflection of her horror to mirror in the bright blade. He laid the cool flat of the blade on her soft white cheek and let it stay there until her body had warmed it.
Then he kissed the warmth of the steel that was as real as was the neck that begged him for freedom.
But that would happened soon enough. For now he wished to sleep.
It would be nice to wake up in the morning and not be alone.
I got off the trolley over in ReligiousChat. If the chase was going to begin I figured this was as good as any place to start. If I had to die I’d rather be somewhere they were playing Nearer My God to Thee.
I knew a little chat dive that served a mean cream soda. I would rest my dogs and wait for him there. It wasn’t a matter of if he would show but when. The joe could track like a coonhound in a meat locker. Hopefully, my friend would show up first.
The door to Bob’s Place was slightly ajar. I slid into a back pew, ordered a drink, and listened to some of the afternoon discourse:
· Yanamamo says, "Zeus: If Zeus is your god, he is a very SMALL god."
· Zeusisgod says, "Zeus is soooo real. It is like denying the very air which you breathe."
· Yanamamo says, "Heaven: Thank you and praise Jesus."
· Pressin-on says, "I hav jus come ta Praise HIS name!!!!!!! Forevermore n Evermore!!!!!!!!!"
· Zeusisgod says, "He makes the lightning and the very electricity we use. It is by his power that we do anything"
· Morian says, "Let us not sound like the Ephesians who were screaming for two hours "Great is Diana of the Ephesians""
· Christianburner says, "Rule #2: self referencing the bible to prove itself correct will be discredited (ex: bible says god cannot lie, so god is real. etc.)"
· Zeusisgod says, "Why does the Christian concept God kill so many humans to the delight of his followers?"
·
Madona2001 says, "All Glory ta
HIM!!!!!! Jude 1: 24,25 Amen!!!!!!!!"
I struck a match on the No Smoking sign to light my coffin nail, took a sip off my cream soda, and watched the intellectual train wreck in progress. It was a hot time in the old coliseum. It reminded me of the time I was in Boulder when the vegetarian crowd rationalized that they could eat red meat if it was organically grown. The scene was uglier than my blind date for the junior prom.
The pagan had a grin like a Cheshire cat with a mug full of buttermilk. He knew the trouble with Christians. They have no sense of humor.
I checked the clock on the wall. It said 8:30. My friend would be here soon. I had called him from a phone booth before I left. I figured laughing boy would find me soon enough without me leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for him.
About three cream sodas and a pack and a half of coffin nails later he walked into the room. He was a rather non-descript looking joe in his button-downed collar white shirt, black pleated trousers, and a blue cardigan. His hair had enough oil to keep the infant care unit in supply for months, and he had the biggest pair of black horned rim glasses in captivity.
His handle was Bob. He owned the joint.
A few years ago some people got together and decided that one of the problems with the god thing was that the deities were always too powerful for us to relate to. So they chose Bob, just a regular meat and potatoes joe, to be their deity.
It was supposed to be a joke, but like most things once they hit the chat it turns real, well as real as you can get in here. After the introduction of Bob-ism a religious revival swept through the rooms. You couldn’t find a decent poker game for weeks.
Then as quickly as it erupted like a bad pimple on your chin before a date, the whole thing crashed like a rummy on secanol, and Chat_World went back to being the slimy little hole of Babylon we had all come to expect out of it.
Bob made out okay. He had the foresight to set up this joint. It paid the rent and left him with enough to play the ponies on the weekend. What else did a joe need out of life anyway?
He shook my hand with a grip that would have made a school marm wince and said, “Good to see you, Al. How are things over in GenChat?”
“Still not much for reading more than the funny papers, huh, Bob?” I said as I lit another coffin nail.
“Well, you know what it takes to run a business properly.”
“Actually, I don’t. So how’s Alice and the kids?”
“Oh, fine, though it’s the strangest thing. Whenever I mention your name Alice always gets this wistful angry look and goes off to eat some chocolate.”
“Dames are a strange breed, Bob.”
“I guess. Anyway, what did you want to see me about, Al?”
I quickly filled Bob in on the skinny.
After he picked his jaw up off the floor and turned a little less than a whiter shade of pale, he gulped and said, “Gosh.”
So much for the profound deity act.
I lit another coffin nail and between gasps, coughs, and sputters said, “Yeah, kind of takes the starch out of your boxers.”
“So what are you going to do about it, Al?” he asked.
“Run.”
“Run?”
“Run like a cheap pair of hose. What else can I do?”
“Stand and fight like a man?”
“Bob, it’s me we’re talking about.”
“Sorry, forgot for a moment.”
“That’s okay, doc. I wouldn’t mind a fracas if I thought I had a Jamaican's chance in the pokey, but against this joe the odds are stacked against me like a pig in a polo match.
“He’s got Chat_World on its heels like a hooker leaning up against a block of ice. The only chance we have is for me to keep him on the run until the flatfeet can figure out what to do.”
“So what can I do to help, Al?”
“Just give me a place to hole up. He’ll find me soon enough, but if I’m off the streets it will take a little longer.”
“Sure, Al. Say do you like bingo?”
“Can you bet on it?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, then let’s go.”
We headed toward the back room. Hopefully, this would buy some time and refill my pockets.
At least I hoped that he wouldn’t go after my friends with me out of the way.
The old dame that sat across from me reminded me of my Uncle Elmo’s mother, Grannie Blanche. She was one of those sweet faced blue haired little butterballs who probably only ever heard of two styles of cooking, fry it and fry it hard.
Unfortunately, she also had Grannie Blanche’s pit bull mentality when it came to playing for money. The old biddy was on a roll and had me down a few hundred. If I were lucky Lauren wouldn’t notice when I slipped it into the expense account.
I needed to stretch my legs so I borrowed her cell phone and headed out to the hall for a coffin nail. I had found out the hard way that you weren’t allowed to smoke during the game unless you were over sixty. Home court advantage I guess.
As the coffin nail palpitated my lungs like a claw hammer slicing through warm butter, I dialed Bob’s number at the precinct. My ears cringed and wanted to crawl off in the corner and whimper with the lost puppy when I was put on hold and forced to listen to a Muzak version of Louie Louie.
Bob finally came online growling like a blizzard in heat, “Whoever this is, it better be good, or ya’ll be gumming yer oatmeal!”
“Take a powder and listen to some Brahms, Bob,” I replied. “It’s Al.”
“Sorry, Al, but I’m as tense as an unconjugated verb.”
“Know what you mean, bud. How’s tricks?”
“We got the gates closed and most of the back doors and open windows nailed shut. Hardly anyone is going in or out now. Can’t do much about the force quits though.”
“True. Any word on Mary’s little sunshine?”
“Keep finding new ones, Al. Flakes in here and chatters at their keyboards.”
“Any idea yet what’s knocking them off?”
“They say it’s some kind of cyber-toxin that only activates after a chatter crosses back to the outside.”
“Where did he get it?”
“Word has it that Bio-Cybernautics, Inc, was working on somethin’, but they’re as tight lipped as a hooker until you ante up the cyber-abe. Probably worried about lawsuits.
“We got the techs on both sides workin’ on it, but who knows how long it will take.”
“Okay. No sign of laughing boy here yet.”
“Ya think he’ll show?”
“I’d bet my life on it.”
“Thought you were.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“So how ya passin’ the time?”
“Bingo.”
“Losin’ bad?”
“Of course.”
“Figured as much. I gotta go, Al. The captain and commissioner are here and want to ream me a new one where the sun doesn’t shine.”
“See you around the rooms, Bob.”
I went back to the game and paid Grannie the cyber-abe for the use of her phone. I was still losing so I gave up and let her have my card. She smiled, tore it up, and demanded I settle my losses. I wrote her a check and then left the hall.
The streets were as deserted as the morals of a British peer on Boxing Day. The only people moving about were those that had to, a few felons, and several Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Things didn’t look too good for the home team. He had cleaned the clock on our ace and top relievers and we still didn’t have an out chalked up on the scoreboard. Unfortunately, there was no seven run rule in this ball game.
There was a light mist falling like dandruff off a Mexican Hairless. I leaned against a lamppost and lit a coffin nail. I pulled my fedora down to protect my smoke from the rain and raised the collar of my trench coat.
Mickey Spillane was right. It doesn’t get any better than this.
All I could was wait for the killer to show up. That was okay, waiting is my middle name.
Actually, I don’t have a middle name, only an initial, but I assume that you have figured that out by now.
The evening was quite chilly. He raised his collar against the cold as he ran to the car. He knew that he shouldn’t go. It was in the papers and on the news, but kids wanted ice cream and it was his daughter’s birthday. He just couldn’t say no to them. Besides, he would only have to make it back to the house from the car.
The store was nearly deserted. Obviously no one was going out unless they had to. Everyone passed each other warily. You could practically see the thought in their eyes wonder if this person who passed them was the one.
In the checkout line he picked up a copy of the Tattler. They were having a field day with the killings. There was an interview with a noted psychic who had offered her services to the police, and a headline that splashed I Had The Stalker’s Love Child. He smiled as he picked it up. They were shameless, but he loved to read the stuff.
He ran into his neighbor in the parking lot and said, “Hey, Bill, I didn’t expect to see you out here.”
His neighbor nervously fidgeted with his keys and replied, “I could say the same to you.”
“Well, the kids wanted ice cream. You know how it is.”
“Yeah, Wanda couldn’t live without her diet soda and cheese puffs. So how’s work?”
“Kind of slow. Hard to get anyone to open the door for a salesman now.”
“I can imagine.”
“And the checkpoints are murder. I swear the cops do about everything but strip search you, even if you’ve been through there three or four times.”
“Well, can’t blame them. Have they found out anything yet?”
“Not that I’ve heard, but who knows? They may have something and aren’t talking.”
“I suppose so. Say did you watch the game last night?”
“Of course I did. Good game, but the crowd sure was sparse.”
“Yeah, everyone’s afraid to go out. I tell you those players are real heroes to show up and do that the way things are.”
“Yeah, I gotta agree with that. Sure wish the weather would warm up.”
“Yep, pretty cold.”
They stood in silence, neither wanting to move or stay. Prisoners of fear they reveled in the few minutes of freedom before they had to return. Each shuffled their body weight from foot to foot. Both checked their watches. They avoided eye contact as men often will, but were glad for the company none the less.
“Well, Bill, I better get home before this melts,” he said.
“Yeah, me, too,” Bill agreed. “She don’t get her snack, I don’t get my lovin’.”
They both laughed as he said, “You wish. Later, Bill.”
In the car he turned on the radio and listened to the bantering of the Voice of Infernal Chat. He laughed quietly at the rantings of Rosetta_Stone and her crew. It was good to get out and take his mind off things.
He had nearly forgotten about the killer by the time he got home, but it all came back when he pulled into the carport. After he shut off the engine he sat quietly listening for any sound. He peered out into the black that was only illuminated by the porch light.
When he got out of the car he could hear the television blaring from where he stood. Darn kids, he thought, deaf as mules. They’ve got every light on in the place, too.
He unlocked the door, walked in, grinned, and said, “Honey, I’m home!”
There was no answer. He walked into the living room. The television was deafening, but no one was there. He turned it off and headed for the kitchen to get some bowls and spoons.
Who can say how any of us will react when confronted with unspeakable horror? Some may shriek out, others run. He was struck frozen, dumb, and nearly unable to comprehend what he saw.
He loved her. Though life had thrown him many curves and surprises and changes over the years, there was one thing that was unshakable in him, his love for his wife. They had arrived at that point in their marriage where if they didn’t finish each other’s sentences they did think a lot alike.
He dropped to his knees by her lifeless body. The telephone receiver lay next her. His trembling hand reached out to stroke her hair, to somehow attempt to find a way to say good-bye.
Then he bolted to his feet…the kids…He raced through the house in frantic search. Finally, he ran up the stairs. He found their bodies in his daughter’s room. It looked like they were trying to hide. He knelt by them, too stunned to believe it.
His son held his baseball glove like he was ready to sneak out the window and go play some catch. He pried the teddy bear from the girl’s cold fingers. For the longest time he knelt holding it. If he stared at it long enough perhaps he would understand what had happened and why.
He stood and wiped his eyes. He hadn’t noticed that he had been crying.
From behind he heard a step. Before he could turn he felt the knife in his back. He struggled against the wash of fear and shock racing up his spine alongside the pain. The blade withdrew and plunged into him again. He soon lost count of the blows.
Finally, he was released and fell to the floor. His dimming vision saw a shoe by his face. He could see the individual cracks in the leather and the wear to the soles. The laces were knotted in some odd fashion he couldn't quite describe. The cuffs of the trousers were frayed. His fingers traced the knots on the floor even as he lost the thread of his thoughts.
His vision faded. The last thing he heard was a cough and the sound of steps leaving the room.
A slight smile creased his face as he walked slowly down the sidewalk with a bag of groceries in his right arm. He was so non-assuming that he doubted if anyone would believe that he was terror from which they all ran.
The evening had been profitable. Though the numbers had noticeably thinned in chat, there were still more victims when he wanted them. He had proved again that there was no door where he would be denied entrance if he so desired.
Life was good for him now. Not only was he plying his talent when he returned to his room there would be someone waiting for him. He had never realized how desperately lonely that his life had been, but along with other emotions that were welling up in him, he felt completeness when he was with her.
Moonlight still moved him. However, with her it was different. There were stirrings in him that he had long puzzled over when he observed them in others. Yes, Moonlight had awakened desire in him. She was the object of that desire.
Originally, she was to be another victim, but something had stayed his hand. He wasn’t sure if it was the look in her eye or the stance of her body when it tensed to receive the blow of his knife. All he knew at that time was that she piqued his curiosity. He needed to find out more.
So he took her to his room. He didn’t know then how long he would let her live. Once Moonlight was dead and boredom set in or his questions were answered he assumed that she would join the rest of his victims. Until then it would be nice to have some company.
But when he awoke in the morning to find her there beside him, he suddenly realized that she fulfilled a need in him. His thin fingers stroked the long blonde hair, ignoring the fact that her bound body tensed and tried to move away.
He gently kissed the soft skin of her neck. The taste was slightly salty, the scent pleasantly sweet. He laid the knife beside them on the bed and pulled her into his arms, stroking her, becoming familiar with the soft curves of her body. His smile grew into one of delight as he watched the light glint their reflection along the knife’s edge. Then he rolled her underneath him and forgot for a few minutes that the world and his pain existed.
His step quickened as he neared the room. He could hardly wait to see her, to hold her, and to feel that pleasure that felt almost as good as using his talent.
He stopped for a minute. Almost as good, yes, but not quite. Sadly, he looked down at his worn shoes. He would need to replace them soon, as sometime she would have to die. Both were mere facts of life.
When he opened the door he was surprised to see that she had managed to crawl from the bed. Somehow, despite the tight ropes, she had made it over to the window and was desperately attempting to break it. Who knows what she would have done then? The duct tape on her mouth would prevent any scream.
He sighed as he sat down the sack. He should have known better than to leave her alone that long. Removing the duct tape the previous evening should have proven that to him. Her screams were loud enough to wake the dead. He smiled at the irony of the thought.
The problem was that she was not properly trained. Luckily, he possessed both the knowledge and the patience to do it. He walked over to the window and pushed her down. She struggled, but he firmly held her down as her stroked her cheek. Finally, she gave up resisting.
He took her by the ropes around her wrists and pulled her to the closet. He made sure the light was off before he closed the door. She struggled at first kicking hard against the walls. He waited for her to tire and quit.
He opened the book that he had taken from the drawer and started to read aloud, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth…”
I was cooling my heels in an all night beanery called God’s Hip Pocket. The joint was about as greasy as spoon could get, but they served a cup of java that was thicker than the five o’clock shadow on the back of my Aunt Millie’s knees.
One of the things you learn in my line of work is how to wait. I had been on enough stakeouts snapping pictures of middle aged soccer moms stuffed like sausages in leather licking the morning dew off their cyber beau hunks to know that these things took time.
I lit a coffin nail and descended into a fit of pure nicotine purgatory. It felt like someone was pouring scalding water into my lungs. Luckily, my eyes watered enough that I couldn’t see the disapproving stares from the clientele that sat near me. God, I loved a good smoke.
I kept myself entertained by drawing pictures on the greasy table with the ashes that dropped from my coffin nails. Jackson Pollock I wasn’t, but a joe has to do something to keep busy.
Then I realized that someone was watching me. I looked up and saw him setting at the counter sipping on a cup of java. I had no idea when he came in. The joe was as slippery as an eel in a bowl of creamed wheat sliding down a ski slope.
I stubbed out my coffin nail and went over to sit next to him. He smiled slightly and fixed his cold gaze on me. I noticed that he was fingering an empty coffin nail pack so I offered him one of mine. The last thing I needed was for that joe to go into a fit of nico-dts.
“Thank you. You are a gentleman and a scholar,” he said as he lit one.
“Well, I do have a degree in pinball maintenance from Millard Filmore Junior College,” I replied as I lit one for me. “How’s tricks?”
“Oh, I have been keeping busy. You know how it is.”
“Frankly, I don’t and don’t wish to.”
“That’s a shame, Moonlight. I have wondered if you would have it in you.”
“I don’t think so, bubba.”
“You never can tell. I have seen many strange things in my line of work.”
“Don’t fill me in, doc. If ignorance is bliss I’d rather keep a smile for my umbrella.”
“As you wish. So what brings you here? Isn’t this outside of your usual haunts.”
“I get around the rooms. Maybe I needed to pick up a new set of indulgences for a birthday party.”
“Ah, yes, a birthday party,” he said as he smiled to himself like he was getting a personal joke.
I took a sip off of my java and continued, “Took you a little longer than I expected, doc. Getting slow in your old age?”
“No, I have been busy. There is a lot going on in my life right now. However, do remember that when I want to I can find you any time.”
“I’ll keep that in mind when I pencil in my social calendar. What makes you so sure that the cops aren’t on their way here right now?”
“Oh, I know you well, Moonlight. I have studied you. You don’t really care much for authority and frankly don’t trust them to pull this off. However, you do have this sense of honor and fair play. You believe that I should be stopped and that you are the one to do it.”
“You must be reading my biography.”
“Besides, you know I would be gone before they could get here.”
“True. So you ready to step outside and let me get ugly all over your face?”
He laughed and said, “Oh, no, my friend. It is not time yet.”
“Why am I not surprised?” I sighed as I stubbed out my coffin nail.
He laid some money on the counter for his tab and said, “I am afraid it is time for me to go. I am needed at home.”
“Okay, see you around the rooms, doc.”
“Just remember I will be close, Moonlight. I delight in the idea of where you will lead me next. Oh, and one more thing, my friend. I know how you like to have an ace up your sleeve. Be aware that I have my own. If you follow me or attempt to tip my hand before I am ready…let’s just say you will not be the only one to regret it. Farewell until next time.”
I watched him walk out the door like he didn’t have care in the world.
When the waitress walked by I ordered another cup of java. Maybe its warmth would do something about the sensation creeping up my spine like a spider with cold feet walking on a monkey.
Officer_Bob stood by the window, a glass of Old Scuzzie in hand. If he had to pick a favorite place it was probably standing by that window. He was going to miss it when he retired.
The streets were quiet. Hardly anyone was out there unless they had to be. Of course there were always a few jokers in the deck who thought the rules didn’t apply to them. So much the better, his job would be easier if they were gone. This line of work had made him a believer in natural selection.
He returned to his desk and slumped down in the chair. In front of him sat a growing stack of papers. The slayings were slowing down, but the reports still kept coming in. There were flakes found in rooms, houses, and alleys. There were chatters found slumped over their keyboards. He wondered if they would ever know the true body count.
He picked up a sheet and stared at the picture attached to it. The girl was about sixteen, the age of his daughter when he got divorced. His line of work took its toll on marriages and relationships.
According to the report the girl and some friends were having a sleepover. When her parents went to bed they slipped into chat to meet some boys. During the evening she met a man and went off to a private room with him. The rough description her friends gave fit the slayer.
The girls were having fun. Then to their horror their friend screamed and slumped over the keyboard. Her breathing was shallow and her skin was ashen. By the time they got her parents into the room she was dead. It was then they noticed the dime size red welt on her neck.
Bob laid down the sheet and sat back in his chair to rub his tired eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept. He wondered just how much more of this he could take. The reports were numbing him, and he was no closer to tracking down the killer than when he started.
He took a sip of his drink and reached in his pocket for a coffin nail. The doctors had made him quit smoking after the heart attack five years ago. They said it would kill him. Fine, he thought, the way this case is going I don’t want to live anyway. If it didn’t kill him, the captain would.
He turned his chair around, looked at the window, and wondered how Al was doing. There was a lot of water under the bridge between them. He couldn’t totally trust the joe but had come to terms with that a long time ago. Al was the best that they had.
Al had been a good cop. He was honest, conscientious, and cared about the people he was sworn to protect. Whether the joe wanted to admit it or not he was the same as a detective. His methods may have been a little unorthodox, but he got results. In this business results were what mattered.
Everything was pie in the sky back in those days. He still wondered how Al made the force with his drinking problem and past. They usually weeded those cases out, but Moonlight had kept it under wraps until the incident.
If it weren’t for that incident and if Al had stayed on the force he would have made captain by now. It would have been a waste of a good cop though sticking him behind a desk like a lollipop.
A long drag off the coffin nail soothed his jagged nerves. He checked his watch. It said 8:30. The night was flying by like a locomotive on greased tracks. He would soon have to make a statement to the press for the morning additions.
The phone ran and he answered it, “Bob here. Yeah, captain half up to my kiester in paperwork on it. No, still no break.
“I know the commissioner and mayor want results, but I can’t pull a horse out of a hat. Look, we’ve got everybody and their granny’s babysitter working on it…
“Don’t threaten me, bud! Ya think ya can do any better come and get my badge. Course if ya do ya’ll have trouble reachin’ back there to pull it out!”
He slammed down the phone and sat back in his chair. He knew better than to talk to the captain like that. Even if he made it through this case he knew the joe was after his job. GenChat just hated the idea of paying out anyone’s pension.
Bob stubbed out his coffin nail. He closed his eyes intending to rest for a few minutes.
He was soon fast asleep.
She dreamt of when she was a child. Her siblings and she were playing a game of hide and seek. Usually, she was the first to be found, but this time she knew where to hide.
While her brother counted she ran to the culvert. Ignoring the water and the mud she slowly slid into it until she was out of sight. Then she waited for him to try to find her.
She stifled a giggle as her fingers played with the dirt. It was cool and damp but solid enough that she could draw a picture in it. Mindlessly her fingers worked as she listened to him hunt for her. She noticed the picture was of a man wearing a hat.
Finally, she heard him call Ollie ollie all in free!, and she started to get out of the culvert. That was when she discovered her foot was caught in a drainpipe. No matter which way she moved it, she couldn’t pry her foot lose.
She called out to them, but the noise of the wind and traffic swallowed her pleas for help. Frantically, she tugged at her foot. It only seemed to get lodged tighter. Eventually, they wandered off, figuring she had gone home or to play elsewhere.
The sun started to set. It was cold in the culvert. Her thin dress offered little protection against the chill. She looked at the picture of the man she had drawn and thought if only he was there he would save her. However, she knew that she was alone, totally alone.
That was when she awoke to find herself bound and gagged in the dark closet.
*****
The door to the room opened, and a set of footsteps entered and moved slowly across the floor. She heard the refrigerator open and close. The steps now advanced in her direction.
The ropes had dug into her wrists and ankles for so long that they were numb with pain. She had no idea of how long she had been in there. She would drift in and out of consciousness, awakened by the sound of the calm voice on the other side of the door reading to her.
Occasionally, he would look in at her, maybe stroke her hair or touch her cheek. When she recoiled at his touch he would nod, close the door, and read again. Once he had entered the closet and closed the door behind them. She didn’t want to remember what happened then.
She was dying and knew it. The thirst and hunger were becoming unbearable and the stifling confinement was tearing at her sanity. No one knew that he held her prisoner. If she had any chance of survival it would be up to her.
He opened the door and reached down to stroke her hair. She forced herself not to finch and attempted to smile at him with her eyes. He squatted and studied her for a long time. She could feel her nerves scream at the anticipation of his touch, but she moved her leg out to brush it against his dangling hand.
Satisfied with what he found he carried her to the bed and sat her on the edge. Though weak with hunger and thirst she forced herself to sit up. She had to be strong, stronger than she had ever been.
He touched her neck and said quietly, “I am sorry about that mark on your neck, but as I explained to you, I had to be sure you didn’t force quit and leave. You know the toxin is in your bloodstream. If you attempt to leave chat you will die.
“I’m glad you are finally coming around. I don’t want to starve you to death. I will feed you if you promise to not scream when I remove the duct tape.”
She nodded eagerly. He slowly removed the tape, careful to not rip her tender skin. Then he picked up a plate and began to feed her. Despite her best efforts to control herself she hungrily wolfed down the food. She did have the presence of mind, however, to occasionally suck at one of his fingers.
When she finished he said, “Very good. Now I will remove the ropes if you promise to not to try to escape.”
She nodded and whispered, “I don’t want to escape. I want to be with you.”
“Good.”
When the ropes were removed she leaned forward and kissed him. His touched was cold, alien, and made her soul want to run screaming from the room and her mind, but she made her mouth be as seductive as possible. She molded into him like his body was the only place she had ever wanted to be.
He smiled slightly and said, “Better, much better. I knew you weren’t like the others.”
“Yes, you’ve helped me see that,” she whispered, “but I do have a favor to ask.”
“What is that?”
“Could I take a shower? I’d like to be clean for you.”
“Of course. How thoughtful of you. I knew that you could be thoughtful.”
The bathroom had no window so there was no chance of escape or to call for help. However, it was good to wash the stench of him off of her. She allowed the beads of hot water to soak deep into her skin as she contemplated what to do next.
When finished she combed out her long blonde hair. Then she posed in front of the mirror attempting to find the most seductive way to drape the wet towel over her body. Finally, she took a deep breath, forced a smile on her face, and reached her trembling hand to the doorknob.
It was time to get on with surviving.
As the trolley pulled into the station, I laid the newspaper on the bench and looked out the window at the Welcum to JockChat sign. I gathered that the intellectual standards of the place hadn’t improved since my last visit.
JockChat is that sleazy little corner of Chat_World where the dames wear their pom poms out front and the joes all smell like real men. Frankly, they could use a trip a little more often to the shower room for my tastes. The joint wasn’t my usual cup of java but I figured it would take my new friend a little while to track me down there.
Something was sitting in the back of my mind and troubling me like a large rock in your shoe when you go on a ten-mile jaunt with a backpack full of bricks. I figured that laughing boy would be all over me like ugly on Miss Congeniality. Instead he was as standoffish as my bookie when I tried to settle up with a check. Something smelled and it wasn’t Denmark.
I needed to sort things out so I slipped into a little juke joint called The Sportsman’s Cup. As I struck a match on the No Smoking sign to light a coffin nail, I ignored the waitress’s dirty look, and perused the menu. It looked like these people had never realized that vegetables are only meant to be a garnish for a good steak. I ordered the java and listened to a little of idle bantering that passed for intelligent conversation is this room:
· Seven-11 leaves, heading for Champs.
· SuzieShortstopa says, "Coolness- girl thing"
· Cool_guy says, "lol"
· ReggieM says, “Great game!”
· SuzieShortstopa bats her eyelashes at Cool_guy.
· Cool_guy says, "i`m a male!!!!!!!! 23/m!!!!!!"
· Chipshot says, "im a girl and i dont growl"
· ReggieM says, “Great game!”
· Bro1 says, "Where from BrodShoulder?"
· Bro1 says, "Hey Brew"
· Bro1 says, "Hey Chipper"
· Chipperjones10 says, "hey...what's up!"
· MillerLight says, "hi"
· Crushed_ice enters.
· Bro1 says “Hey Ice”
· SuzieShortstopa says, "Red- Wings fan!?"
· SleepsWithCheerleaders says, "i'm typing everything i'm saying to the beautiful girl on the other line, i'm talkin on the phone"
·
ReggieM says, “Great game!”
The I.Q.s of most of these joes matched the cup sizes of their girlfriends. When it came to brains the glass was neither half empty nor half full, it had a hole in it big enough to drive a Mack truck through.
The coffin nail was smoldering close to my fingers. There was no ashtray so I put it out in a glass of water and lit another. The waitress gave me another dirty look as she thumped the cup down on the table.
The java barely qualified as brown water and was about as warm as the smile of a restaurant hostess to a busload of Cub Scouts. I could see this was going to be one pleasant stay in Happy Valley.
I turned my mind back to the killer. The last report I had from Bob said that things had slowed down now that most people were off the streets. However, he was still getting to his victims. He had even talked his way into a house and killed an entire family. I wasn’t surprised. The joe could probably coax butter out of a rock.
My mind drifted back to my chat with him. I knew the joe wanted to kill me, but for some reason I couldn’t help being drawn to him. He was like a car wreck that you just had to be a part of. I shuddered and pulled my suit coat closer. This guy had me totally spooked.
Something else was bothering me, too. I could have sworn there was more to his smugness than just his feeling of superiority. It was like that when the chips came down and the buffalo was tipped that he would be holding something besides the cat in the bag. I just hoped it wasn’t my rancheros.
Then it struck me like a blind curve ball in the gut. It was his smile when I said birthday party. It was like he knew something that I didn’t. Whatever it was, he was confident that when push came to shove it would be my tug ‘o war team lying in the mud.
Something had to change. I had to keep him off guard and make him just a tiny bit unsure of his control of the situation. I had dealt with a lot of control freaks in my time. If you made them question what they were doing they tended to come unglued like old chewing gum falling off a bedpost.
Suddenly, I had a plan. It was a crazy plan, but it might just work.
I found a pay phone and called the Tahiti Lounge, making sure that the charges were reversed. I asked to speak to Cubbie.
“Hello, Cubbie, how’s tricks?” I asked as I lit another coffin nail.
“I’m okay, Cubbie…
“Yes, you told me about your new job…
“Yes, I imagine writing those notes is very exciting for someone like you…
“Uh, Cubbie…Cubbie…will you put a sock in it and read my lips…Yes, I know you can’t read lips over the phone…It was just an expression…Yes, you can use it in your story…
“Okay, Cubbie, you still got any contacts at the Tattler? Good. They owe you any favors? Good.
“Well, I’m calling in a couple that you owe me.
I need a story planted….”
Chap. 23
I checked my watch. It said 8:30. It would be a few hours until the Tattler hit the streets so I decided to do a little nosing around, Al_B._Moonlight style. I had a source stashed away in this sorry section of Chat_World. He was one sharp cookie. Probably the only one in these parts that wouldn’t stare at you blankly when you asked, “Where did you go Joe Dimaggio?”
My pockets were getting a little thread bare for change. I’d have to forego the taxi and slap some shoe leather since Lauren never trusted me with our ATM number. When it came to money that dame was tighter than an old biddy with a hot melt glue gun.
The joe ran a small memorabilia shop near the Sportsman’s Cup. I had met him one Saturday at the track. I usually didn’t hold much truck for the strong and sweaty type but he was okay in my book. I also found out that he had his nose to the grindstone on every bit of dirt in these parts.
The room I entered was small and as musty as the inside of a Scotsman’s wallet. He stood behind the counter, a joe about my height with long dark hair and a beard. He wore a tee shirt with Twinkies written across the front.
“Hi, Wall_E, how’s tricks?” I asked as I stood under the No Smoking sign and lit a coffin nail.
“Al_B._Moonlight,” he rasped with a voice that sounded like gravel running down sandpaper. “Didn’t expect to see you in here.”
“Yeah, life is full of surprises, doc.”
“You come to pay off your poker bet?”
“The check’s in the mail unless the stamp fell off.”
“I figured as much. What do you need, Al? I’ve never know you to go any where without needing something.”
“It’s a gift. Looking for some skinny, Wall, on the serial killer.”
“You on that case, Al? I thought the cops were handling it.”
“They drafted me 1-A.”
“I always took you for 4-F.”
“Me too. So anything odd in these parts of late?”
“Al, this is Chat_World.”
“Fair enough. Anything out of the ordinary?”
He opened a diet soda, rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and said, “Well….Memory can be a little cloudy…”
I slipped a cyber-jackson in his pocket and asked, “Does that improve the local forecast?”
“Brings it up to party cloudy…”
“We’ll have to stay there, doc. I’m about tapped out and only have enough left for trolley fare and another pack of coffin nails.”
“Okay, I’ll just tack it on to your poker tab. Anyway, you know hardly anyone’s moving around now. Business has been terrible.”
“Sorry, Wall, I forgot my violin with the hearts and roses.”
“But I had a dude come in looking for memorabilia on the Donner Party.”
“That doesn’t sound too odd for here.”
“Al, he wanted their dinner menu.”
“Now that does. Can you describe him?”
“About your height, thin, pale skin, light brown hair, and eyes that made your rancheros want to crawl into the ice box and whimper.”
“Sounds like the lead off hitter to me. Did he leave a name?”
“No.”
“Why am I not surprised? Any idea where to find him?”
“He said that if I found anything he could be located at the Scuzzie Jumper over in the Flats.”
“Thanks, Wall. You’re a pal.”
“I’d rather be a pal who’s friends keep their gambling debts paid up.”
I shrugged and said, “My chit and fifty cents will get you a cup of java at Rick’s Café.”
He sighed and said, “I have learned that. Later, Al.”
“See you around the rooms, doc.”
I headed out the door toward the trolley stop. Part of me thought that maybe finally I had the break that I was looking for. The rest of me felt like the quarterback on third and fifteen when he hears a thundering linebacker on his blind side.
I had a sinking feeling in my loafers that it could be trap, and it had my name written all over it, but with the story I planted in the Tattler, it did give me a couple of options. Given who my enemy was I needed all of the options I could get.
My Uncle Elmo always said to not count all your eggs before you put them in the basket with the mongoose to hatch.
The morning was cold. His gloves barely kept the numbness from his fingers as he wheeled his truck through the deathly quiet streets. Usually, he would encounter the jogger who was desperately attempting to deny mortality, or the college girl stumbling half drunk like the whore of Babylon from some private room.
However, since the stalker the sidewalks were empty. He wouldn't be out either if his job didn't require it. No matter what happened the news had to go through, and he would play his small role in the process.
When he was younger the bundles didn't bother him nearly as bad as they did now. Perhaps his parents had been right. Maybe he should have gone to college instead of taking the job, but at the time the money had seemed so good. Now it was too late to wonder. He had a wife and kids. He had responsibilities.
He stopped. As he opened the back of the truck he glanced around. Satisfied that he was alone he reached in for the bundles. Ignoring the dull pain in his lower back and the twine digging into his gloved hands he hefted the papers and placed them by the newsstand.
He quickly closed the back, got in the truck, gunned the motor, and revved off down the street. Only then did he let a long sigh and relax slightly. He had made it this far. Any luck he would make it through the morning in one piece.
What he had failed to notice was a thin figure standing calmly near an alley. When the truck had turned the corner the man walked over to the newsstand and carefully removed a paper from the bundle, lest he tear it.
As he glanced at the front page he laid a quarter on the bundle. The headline and accompanying picture made him start slightly. His reaction was so slight that anyone who didn't know him would have missed it, and since no one knew him, only he was aware of his response.
Placing the paper under his right arm he walked slowly toward his room. First he had to make sure that she was still secure. Then he had to find Moonlight and take care of this before it got out of hand.
*****
The trolley didn't stop at the station. It just slowed down enough for you to jump off. There had been enough chat jackings that the company deemed it the only way to service the area. After I landed, I picked up my fedora, dusted off my trousers, straightened my tie, and looked around.
The area was called the Flats. It was an unincorporated nether region between the main sections of Chat_World. The citizens consisted of the dregs that couldn't make it anywhere else on either side of the modem.
On my way to the Scuzzie Jumper I stopped and picked up a Tattler. As expected my story had made page one. Those joes would print anything if boosted the circulation. They were as shameless as weight lifter doing squats in a nudie bar.
Making sure I didn't turn my back too long on anyone or have to bend over to pick up anything, I glanced at the rag as I walked along. The headline read:
DETECTIVE REVEALS IDENTITY OF STALKER!
I doubted if the article would have flushed laughing boy out of the outhouse. He could smell a rat walking up the street. The kicker was the picture with the article. It was my ace in hole. I hated to play it this early in the hand, but sometimes a joe has got to ante up before he calls his bluff.
It was a long shot, a gut hunch, one of those feeling that crawls up the elevator of your spine, knocks on the door of your id and asks if anyone's home. Yes, a crazy plan but it might just work.
The idea had hit me like a mackerel in the kisser
when I was going over Cubbie's notes. When the stalker first started striking
on the outside he would scrawl a phrase on a wall near his victim: Look
into my eye, tell me what you see…
The words had struck a bell when I ran them up the flagpole. So I did a little research and my hunch paid off like a tipped bet on a pinto in the fifth race. I smiled when I thought of how my new friend would react to me getting this close to his identity.
A few years ago there had been an obscure heavy metal band called Satan's Sister. Their leader singer was as spooky as the balance of my bank statement. He was as brilliant as a two hundred-watt bulb in sixty-watt socket and had a magnetic personality that bordered on charismatic.
His songs were about human sacrifice but not to any god or evil force. He claimed that one killed merely because one could. He caused a minor stir, but it died down quickly when he disappeared without a trace. It had been assumed that he had become disenchanted with the notoriety and had just left the scene.
I knew better, and laughing boy knew that I knew. It was time to call in the chits and see which way they fell.
· Lenni_da_louse says “fer sure, but my dad thinsk yer mom does too”
· axleGrease slams Porky4 against the pool table with an anvil
· Big_Stinkie slips in a pile of dog vomit
· BykerChick sticks a tongue in Lenni’s ear and a knife in his ribs
· John_L_Sulivane says “I can lick any man in the house”
· TwystedPair nudges Rejectedisk and points to the newcomer
· Louie_T_Bartender shouts “who wanted the kamikaze”
· White_Aryan breaks a chair over Sulivane’s head and yells “faggot!”
· chuck_mansen grins evilly
· The Partitions scream in on their bikes
·
Lenni_da_louse is hot for BykerChick but bleeds on
the floor
Quaint was not the word that came to mind when you thought of the Scuzzie Jumper. As bad as the rest of the Flats were this ditch water dive was even worse. The Board of Health usually inspected people after they left. If he wanted to go unnoticed this was the place to do it.
I wiped off whatever had died in the booth and sat down. I ordered a mineral water from a waitress who would have been kind of cute if it weren't for the gold ring she wore in her one front tooth and the braids in her armpits. I made sure she knew that I wanted the bottle capped.
There was no need to light a coffin nail in this joint. The air was thicker than the hair in my Uncle Elmo’s ears. I sipped my mineral water, blended into the woodwork, and waited for his arrival.
It was easy to spot him when he came in. The people in this place were meaner than a junkyard dog with foot fungus, but even they gave him plenty of room. It obvious he spooked them more than my credit report did my accountant.
He slid in the booth and gave me his usual slight smile. However, I noticed a slight anger flash behind his cold eyes. As he drummed his fingers on the greasy table, I thought that I had actually got to him.
"Hi, doc, how's tricks?" I asked as I lit a coffin nail out of mere habit.
"You are to commended, Moonlight," he said quietly as he fished one from my pack. "No one else ever made that connection."
"My Uncle Elmo never raised any dead batteries, bud."
"So how did you figure it out?"
"In my line of work, two plus two usually adds up to six or seventeen or whatever. I was never very good at math, but I'm also a musician and have listened to a little of everything. I recognized the phrase you used to scrawl by your victims."
"Ah, yes, the phrase. I had nearly forgotten about it, as obviously had the rest of the world save for you. I had given up using it when the authorities were too dense to discover its meaning. So how did you connect me to him?"
"Listened to his music for awhile, doc. His songs have the same affect as your stare. Pardon the pun, it was a leap of faith, but I figured that as good as you are someone had to train you."
"Yes, he was my mentor."
"I see that he taught you well, doc."
He smiled slightly and said, "Yes, I always was a quick study. Have you figured out who I am?"
"No," I replied as I stubbed out my coffin nail and lit another.
"Good, I like the idea of some mystery as we enter the final round."
"So you about ready to end this?"
"Oh, not yet. Actually, I came to set the stage. One must prepare these things properly."
As he stood to leave he handed me an envelope and said, "This should explain it all to you. I guess that you could call it my ace in the hole.
"Please do not follow or you will not be the only one to regret your actions."
After he left I tore it open. A ring fell on the table. It had a rock big enough to choke a nun in a confessional. I sat stunned looking at it, unable to believe what I saw.
My trembling hand quickly reached into the inside pocket of my suit coat. I smoothed out the crumpled letter and read it. It said that she was coming to chat for one last visit before the wedding. She hoped that I wanted to see her.
As the letter fell to the table I tore open the envelope on the invitation. It was for her birthday party at the Tahiti. My mind echoed and reeled with the sound of his voice at God's Hip Pocket. He had her then and was playing with me.
I watched my hand fall to the table. As if in slow motion the vibration of its thud caused the mineral water bottle to teeter on the edge and then slowly fall to the floor. Stunned, I watched it shatter into a myriad of pieces, the drops of water rising to only fall into a quiet puddle. Light reflected in a prism across its surface from the shards of glass.
I slumped back in the booth and ran my fingers through my hair. I felt very tired and alone. Then I noticed the breath captured in my throat exhaled slowly on its own accord. I realized that whatever had happened I had to go on. For her, for Chat_World, for the other side of the modem, and for me I had to pick up one foot and place it front of the other and do that again and again until either he was dead or I was.
The joe had made one big mistake. He assumed that her abduction would break me and that I would a ripe plum for him to pick like a cherry. However, I knew how to roll with a punch, get up, wipe the blood off my lip, and go for it again. If I had to I would track him to hell, drag him out by his rancheros, and kill him to send him back there again.
He may have had Twink, but Al_B._Moonlight was on the way.
If I could just figure out where that was.
He sat on the couch reading the paper while a slow rage smoldered toward the surface. How long did it take her to get clean? He swore that she spent more and more time in the shower. He sighed and laid the paper down.
Pulling a cigarette from his pocket, he arose, lit it, and began to pace slowly across the room. He stopped several times to check his watch. The agitation grew steadily. He stopped by the coffee table and fingered the pages of the Bible while he stared at the bathroom door.
A tingling ran from his fingers through his spine and rested in the growing lump in his throat. He forced himself to breathe slowly. He was not used to this. Only once before in his life had he felt such anxiety, right before he killed his mentor.
It happened on a cold night like this one. His mentor had found him a few months before at a Satan’s Sister concert. He didn’t care much for the music, but there were so many possible victims at the venue. The problem was he had not yet cultivated his talent sufficiently to attract them.
When the show ended he wandered outside to see if he could waylay someone in the alley. That was where he met him. Their eyes locked and immediately an understanding appeared between them.
Both possessed the same hard cold stare, only with one difference. Whereas his was devoid of all emotion except traces of anger, his mentor’s eyes gleamed with cruelty. After a few minutes his teacher smiled slightly and beckoned him to follow.
His training ensued under the careful tutelage of a master showman. He learned how to not listen to what his victims said but what they wanted to say and how to be a perfect reflection of what they wanted to see, usually themselves.
He was a fast learner. Soon he surpassed all expectations of his mentor, who started to become jealous. His teacher had two problems. First, he could not stand anyone to be better him at anything. Second, though incredibly evil he did not possess the courage to do what his student seemed able to do without even thinking, kill.
Finally, came the night of their confrontation. His mentor found a minor excuse to start a quarrel. Though he hid it well, the man’s ravings began to agitate him. However, his lack of reaction incensed his teacher even further. His mentor picked up a knife and lunged at him.
He quickly sidestepped, grabbed the man by the throat, took the knife from him, and drove it into his attacker’s heart. His teacher’s eyes glazed over with a look that combined fear, relief, and inevitability. The man slumped dead in his arms.
Then he did something that he never did with another victim. He proceeded to hide his work. Usually, he did not care or left the body as a sign to strike terror. However, his mentor deserved respect. He had created him in his own image.
It took hours to carve up the body with the knife. He placed the pieces in a bag and carried it to a remote location. Once there he doused with it gasoline and cremated the remains. For a long time he watched the fire. The feeling of anxiety he felt wafted to the sky with the smoke and was gone.
Now the feeling had return. He didn’t know why. Perhaps, it was Moonlight. His opponent was uncomfortably close and already knew too much. Moonlight also produced emotion in him. He didn’t understand how, but suspected that it was because that they were more alike than his enemy would care to admit.
He returned to the couch and ran his fingers through his hair. He was not used to emotion. It had him somewhat off guard, especially his desire to feel more.
He heard the shower turn off, and his pulse quickened, not with impatience but with the desire to see her. She also moved him. However, with her it was different. It was more physical than emotional. Control of her gave him pleasure.
When he grew tired of what she offered she would die and be forgotten. Moonlight, too, would die, but he knew that he would never forget the thrill that he felt the first time he looked in the detective’s eyes. It was almost like going home. He had seen what he wanted to see.
The bathroom door opened and she walked out draped in the towel. He smiled slightly as she sat next to him on the couch and kissed him.
She made him forget about the world outside their door.
Soon they would have dinner.
Soon he would kill her.
Either way, it was all the same.
She knelt in the shower, the nearly scalding water beating hard on her shoulders. Eyes closed she tried to forget for a minute where she was and what had happened to her life. As she watched the water form in pools by her knees she thought of how she would not have survived even this long if a friend hadn’t taught her how to take adversity one step at a time.
Her life was outside her control. She no longer even knew what day it was. Her captor kept the window sealed and had the panes painted. The lone clock in the room of course always said 8:30. He set the rhythm of her life, coming and going as he pleased.
When he left he tied her to the bed and gagged her, but she no longer noticed the ropes. They had become a mere fact of life. When he returned he set her loose. Such was the pattern to which she had become accustomed. All she could do was to stay alive.
The water began to turn tepid. She reached up and adjusted the tap so that the water stayed hot. The shower was the only freedom that she possessed at the moment. Only there was she away from his domination. It offered her the one link that she still had to sanity. Without it he would have cracked her by now. She also needed to wash off the stench of him any chance that she got.
But there always came the time when the hot water was gone. She slowly reached up to turn off the shower and then wrapped her body in a towel. Stepping out of the shower she wiped the steam from the mirror and peered at her face. Sometimes she no longer recognized the one who stared back at her.
The hair was quickly losing its luster. The eyes were hollow and sunken with black circles underneath them. The shoulders were slumped with an exhaustion that made her wonder that if she did survive if she would ever be free. How much longer could she go on being attractive for him? She shook her head and arranged the towel in a seductive manner on her body.
He sat on the sofa, one leg tucked under his body as he held the newspaper. She was curious about what was happening outside the room. However, she remembered the bruise that she nursed on the left side of her face the one time she attempted to peek at a headline.
She steeled her nerves and sat down next to him, molding her body into the crook of his right arm. He reached down and kissed her. She closed her eyes and pretended that he was someone else. She tried to not notice his hands grope along the curves of her body while at the same time responding favorably to his caresses.
Only when he was satisfied did she sit back and let out a long sigh. She opened her eyes and smiled. That was the hardest part, to gaze into those cold alien eyes and smile like she truly cared. She had lost track of how many times she had almost lost it at that point.
She rearranged the towel and headed to kitchenette. Dinner was almost ready. She asked little of him but had grown so tired of the box lunches that he brought in for them that she offered to fix them dinner. He seemed pleased. He even bought a bottle of Merlot for the occasion.
When the meal was ready she placed the food on the table. He smiled slightly and joined her. While they ate in silence she studied him as she often did. The face was so non-assuming. It was hard to believe that behind those eyes sat the most evil mind she had ever met. The longer she studied him the less she seemed to know about him.
He asked her at to pass him a napkin. As she handed it to him it fell from his fingers to the floor. She steeled herself for a blow. He had beaten her for less, but he merely smiled and bent over to pick it up.
It was the opening for which she had long waited. She didn’t even think. If she had paused for thought the opportunity would have been lost. As he reached for the napkin she picked up the wine bottle and hit him over the head.
She ran quickly for the door. Even in a half conscious state he reached out and grabbed her ankle as she passed him. She tumbled to the floor, and he started to pull her toward him. Her foot struck out catching him on the jaw. His hold was broken. She got to her feet and raced to the door.
There was a chain and three locks. She started with the locks figuring that if it got down to the chain she could at least pull open the door the and scream for help. By the time she finished with the first lock she could hear him getting to his feet.
Furiously, her fingers clawed at the second lock. She could hear him move groggily toward her. Her trembling hands desperately tore at the final lock. She was so close to freedom now. She knew that this was her only chance. If she failed to escape she was dead.
Just as the final lock clicked she felt her head jerk back. She struggled against his iron grip on her hair, but he was too strong. A searing pain ran through her body as she was thrown to the floor. His foot met her stomach , and the breath was torn her body. Another kick took what fight was left out of her.
She looked up through tear filled eyes. His face was calm, the eyes cold as usual. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her back across the room. She struggled even though she knew he was too strong for her to combat. On the way past the end table he picked up the Bible.
Terror filled her eyes. Not the closet, she thought, I can’t go back in there again. She managed to break free from his grasp. She grabbed a lamp and threw it at him. It glanced off his head momentarily stunning him. Again she ran to the door.
A stinging slap to the right side of her face dropped her to her knees. It was over. She knew it now. She had given it her best shot but had failed. She again felt the iron grip on her hair. Her head was pulled back, and she was forced to look into those cold eyes. She noticed that the right hand held a knife.
He shook his head and said quietly, “You had such possibilities, but now I am afraid that this charade must end.”
Suddenly the door burst open. Silhouetted against the light stood a familiar shape. He about the height of the killer and wore a fedora. The form suddenly leapt for her captor. She was pushed out of the way as the two figures desperately grappled for the knife.
In horror she watched the fate of her life unfold.
The bottle glistened on the table in front of me. The liquid looked so cool and inviting as I stared at it and wondered if it was about time for me to throw in the towel and go for a walk with ducks down by the pond.
My initial resolve had evaporated like an overheated radiator, and I had about as much bravado as a contralto with laryngitis. I still wanted to tear laughing boy a new kiester from here to next Tuesday and rescue Twink, but there was one big problem. I had no idea where they were.
I rimmed my finger around the lip of the bottle. I could smell the enticing liquid as its aroma wafted out to me. The scent tasted of oblivion and escape. God knows I wanted to escape. Even if I could figure out where they were I had no idea if I could go toe to toe with the joe.
I had forgotten just how attractive a glass of suds looked. Usually, when people drank around me I didn’t even notice. It was just another one of those things in life that I couldn’t do if I wanted to live. Right now I wasn’t sure if I did want to live, and this would be the quickest ticket for me to punch out of town.
The foam lapped gently as I picked up the glass and swirled it slightly. The light that gleamed off its surface transfixed my eyes. White and soothing I longed for the escape from the turmoil of life that it would offer me. I picked up the drink and held it to my lips.
The aroma alone was over powering. I could already anticipate the effect as it would course through my veins and wipe away the anxiety and defeat that I felt. I wanted to leave and stay to watch at the same time. My hand held the elixir that offered that route.
My hand held poised, trembled at the release that was a mere sip away. It had been too long, far too long. This was all I wanted. This was all that I had to give to the world. It was expected of me, so how could I disappoint the universe?
Suddenly, I threw the glass across the room. Luckily, I was in the Scuzzie Jumper where such things were expected of the clientele. I sat back, lit a coffin nail, and exhaled slowly. I couldn’t do it. Something had staid my hand.
Maybe it was the training from all of the years of staying dry. Maybe it was a little self-respect that had crept into my life when I wasn’t looking. Or maybe it was because in my heart I knew that it wasn’t an option and would only make things worse. I really didn’t know.
All that mattered was that when push came to the turkey tipping the cow I couldn’t do it. I stared my own hell in the face, turned my back, and walked away. If I was going to fail it would be on my terms, stone cold sober.
I took a long drag off the coffin nail and handed the bottle to a biker that crawled by on the floor. I figured he had a better use for it than I did. However, there was still the dilemma of how to track down the killer.
Then it hit me like an armored truck running over a golf cart full of business executives. It was another crazy idea, but, hey, I was on a roll. Besides, I figured the author owed me a break or two about now.
In my suit coat pocket was another piece of paper. I had been too busy to study it like I had wanted to. I pulled it out, flattened out the creases of its rumpled edge, and started to scrutinize it.
It was Cubbie’s map of the slayings. Laughing boy said we would never figure out the pattern, but he never realized that Uncle Elmo and Aunt Millie didn’t raise any boys whose straws collapsed in their chocolate malteds. I had a gut feeling that I knew what I was looking for.
Again it went back to his mentor. Satan’s Sister like any band had a logo. Theirs was three pentangles joined in a circle. I traced out the image over the slayings. I was right. It fit like a glove on a pud puller’s good hand.
I took a hit off the coffin nail, ignored the rasping wheezes that vapor locked me like a safe thrown into a sea of mud, and studied the map. My trembling finger etched desperately along the line until I was sure that my hunch was right. I paused with my finger in the middle of the pentangles. This was the place or my name wasn’t Al_B._Moonlight.
I raced out the door to catch a Gypsy cab back to GenChat. If my hunch played out then I was rounding third and getting ready for the big slide at home. The question was if I would score or be tagged out at the plate. I just hoped that my lungs would hold out.
The cab pulled up in front of the Tahiti Lounge. I threw what change I had left in the direction of the driver and raced for the building, but instead of going in the front door I headed for the side entrance to the upstairs apartments.
As I bounded up the stairs I head a scream from the third floor. When I reached the landing it was quiet. Then I heard noises from the apartment at the end of hall and another scream. I raced toward the door like a centipede in new sneakers.
When I reached the door I kicked it as hard as I could. It flew open. He stood in the middle of the room with a knife in his hand. Twink lay on the floor in front of him. I felt the anger rise in me as I leapt for him.
It was time to get this over with.
As they would say in the fantasy novels the battle was joined. I hit him like a dun on a bad debt. We fell to the floor, and his knife went flying behind the sofa. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about him carving a new manicure on my face.
His right hand reached for my throat, but I blocked it with my left as I my right snaked out a quick punch to his chin. He wavered, and I managed to roll out from under him. I knew that my best bet against this joe was to stick and run. Inside I had about as much chance as a bear with its nose caught in the honey pot.
He lashed out a wild left that I easily ducked. I was now behind him so I kicked at the back of his left knee. As he went down I grasped my hands together and slammed them into his right kidney. My right foot tried to play field goal kicker with his temple, but he rolled to avoid the blow.
He came up faster than I expected and landed a solid right to my chin. It was my turn to waver as he slammed another punch into my gut. I managed to block a third blow and back away out of range. I noticed that his smile was growing. The joe seemed to enjoy it.
I glanced quickly at Twink. She seemed to be recovering and was desperately searching the floor for something in the pile of junk that had fallen when the coffee table overturned. I wheeled back to laughing boy in time catch another hard right to the jaw.
The punch staggered me like a club footed elk. I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. I had given him my best shot, but he just seemed to get stronger the more you hit him. Then I noticed something. It was his eyes. They still had that cold emotionless glint; however, there was something else. It smelled like doubt from where I stood.
I dropped my guard and suckered him in. I dodged his savage left, blocked his right jab, and counter-punched with a mean right hook. I followed up with a straight left shot with enough mustard to butter the buns until payday. He stood stunned.
I wrapped my hand around the roll of quarters in my pocket. His eyes were glassy and his knees buckled like a cheap Chinese belt. I reached back and put all of the postage I had left in one last punch. He went down like a feather pillow.
I wiped the blood from my lip and knelt to check on Twink. Her eyes looked frantic, but she started to relax when she realized that it was me. I brushed the hair back from her face and tried to hold the cookies along with the lunch in my stomach. Her eyes grew wild again.
I felt a lamp chord slip around my neck as I was thrown to the floor. He was on top of me with his knee in my chest. The chord grew tighter as my vision darkened. I could barely make out the outline of his face. The last time I had this much trouble breathing was when I borrowed one of Aunt Mille’s non-filters.
“It is a shame, Moonlight,” he said quietly, “but I am afraid this must end here for both of you. I will be sorry to see you go.
“You have proven a greater challenge than any other I have known and you did make me feel. Yes, you awoke emotions in me that I didn’t know that I possessed. You have unleashed something that both sides of the modem will long regret.
“And you made it possible for me to enjoy her company so well. It is a shame that she must die, too. However, I find solace in that I know what she means to you and that you know what she has been to me. And as your life fades you will die knowing that I have won and she is mine to…”
Some joes never learn that when you’ve got the upper hand you better go ahead and finish it instead of yammering like a banshee. While he was busy being the self-appreciation society I reached deep inside myself and came up with one last burst of strength. My hands shot out and chopped him like a pork loin underneath both ears.
As he grabbed the sides of his head I slammed my right hand like my last blind date closed the door in my face into his throat. I quickly pushed him off of me, grabbed the lamp, and belted him in the kisser. Then I hit him with it a couple of more times to get my point across.
While he lay stunned on the floor I retrieved his knife from behind the couch. I grabbed him by the front of the shirt and pulled him up, holding the sharp blade to his throat. He smiled at me through glazed eyes.
“Now it is time for your choice, Moonlight,” he said quietly. “Are you strong like me or merely weak like them? Do you have what it takes, Moonlight?”
My hand trembled as I held the knife to his jugular. A mere cough on my part, and he was yesterday’s toast. I thought of what he had done to Twink, the terror he caused on both sides on the modem, his stalking of me, the innocent lives he had destroyed. It would have been so easy.
But it wouldn’t have been right. There are rules and laws that we have to live by. Without them life would be short, cruel, and brutish. It was my belief in such rules that separated me from scum like him.
I threw him back to the floor and growled, “You’re not worth it.”
He smiled slightly and said, “Then I win, Moonlight.”
“How do you figure that, doc? I just cleaned your java pot like a new set of golf clubs.”
I watched him start to fade as he said, “You forget, Moonlight, that I am a chatter. I can force quit any time I so desire. You may have won this round, but I will continue elsewhere. Perhaps some day I even return to…”
He never finished. As if a bee had stung his neck, he placed his hand to the skin as he turned in horror to see Twink standing behind him with a syringe in her hand.
“You lose, bastard,” she said as he faded from sight.
As I walked over the Twink the needle fell from her limp hand and rolled across the floor. I watched it for a second contemplating the irony. He had wielded death with that thing, rode it across Chat_World with a reign of terror that I wondered if we would ever recover from. It was appropriate that it brought about his demise.
Twink stood staring blindly at the spot where he disappeared. Then she became aware that I stood in front of her. She wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face in my shoulder while she cried.
“Oh, Al,” she sobbed uncontrollably, “I can’t tell you how awful it was.”
“That’s okay, doll,” I answered as I held her close. “You’re free now.”
I felt her body stiffen against me as she looked wildly around the room. The fear returned to her eyes as her mind raced across the universe of horror that she had just lived through. Then she placed her hand on my chest and stood looking at me for a long quiet minute.
“Al,” she whispered, “I don’t think I will ever be free again.”
I sat in the waiting room of the sawbones’s office while he checked Twink out. Every muscle in my body ached like a hemophiliac on roller skates in a razor blade factory. It was all I could do to hold the pencil to work on my tout sheet.
“’Cuse me,” I heard a voice drawl about as slow as frozen spit on a stick, “ya’ll be Al Moonlight?”
“That’s my handle, don’t wear it out,” I replied as I turned to look up at a joe about the size of a road grader.
“Ah cum to check on Twink.”
“You must be Bubba_Joe. Take a load off your kiester and park it here, doc.”
“Thank ya. Fella gits tired cummin’ in here.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“How’s she a doin’?”
“Don’t know yet, bud. The sawbones is checking her out now.”
“Cin Ah askt yew a question? Is she damaged goods now?”
I struck a match on the Oxygen sign to light a coffin nail as I asked him darkly, “What do you mean by that?”
“Wall, yer’re a man. Ya should know.”
“No, enlighten me on this one, bub.”
“Wall, ya know the stories people cin tell. Ah gotta a reputation to uphold back home.”
“And she doesn’t?”
“It’s diffurent fer a woman.”
“Sorry, doc, I think you’re taking this conversation down the wrong alley.”
“Wall, Ah guess we’ll jist have to see when we git back home.”
“She isn’t going home, Bubba.”
“What ya mean? We gonna get married thar, raise a family on mah ranch.”
“She can’t leave. She’s got the toxin in her bloodstream. Until they find a cure if she crosses the modem she dies.”
“Oh…wonder what Ah can do about that.”
I ran my fingers through my hair, straightened my tie, and stood up to give him my best Dutch uncle, “Looks to me like you’ve got two choices, doc.
“Either you can buck it up, be a man, and give her the support she needs as she pieces her life back together, or you can take your whimpering kiester out of here and go back to punching pigs or whatever you do. Frankly, I think she’d better off without you.”
“Yah gonna threaten me?”
“In case you haven’t got it through your thick skull yet, I just did. Look, in that room is one of the best dames that ever walked on either side of the modem. She’s just been to hell on a handcart and back again.
“She saved us, bud. She saved us all from that evil. She needs support now. She needs someone that will let her work out all of this and be waiting for her when she’s done.”
“So ya’ll think ya cin do that?”
“If she would have me, yes. I’d do anything I could for that dame, if not as a lover or a husband, then as a friend.”
I grabbed him by the front of the shirt and hissed, “You think you could do that, Bubba_Joe?”
“W-w-w-all Ah guess that Ah don’t think Ah know if’d Ah’d want to, if that’s what it takes. Ah just want a quiet life, ya know.”
“Then I suggest that you don’t let the door hit your kiester on the way out. If you decide to grow up and be a man, get a hold of me. I’ll know where she is. Now stick your tail between your legs and get out of my sight.”
As he left I pulled out my tout sheet and tried to calm down. A little later Twink came out of the sawbones’s office.
“How are you doing, doll?” I asked as I lit a coffin nail.
She sat down next to me and replied, “Physically, I’m okay, Al, but it’s going to take me a long time to get over this.”
“I know, doll.”
“Actually, you don’t, Al. I don’t think any man could know what something like this would do to a woman, but if there were anyone who would try, it would be you. Have you seen Bubba?”
“He was just here.”
“And he left, right?”
“I’m afraid so, Twink.”
She sighed, stared out the window, and said, “I figured he would. He never handled pressure very well. I really wonder what I saw in him.”
“You wanted a life, Twink,” I said quietly. “You wanted a marriage, a family, a home. God know you couldn’t get that with me.”
“I suppose you’re right. Oh, Al, what I am going to do? I can’t leave chat now. Bubba’s left me. I’m so torn up I don’t know which way to turn.”
“Come stay with me, sweetheart.”
“Al?”
“You can flop with me. I’ll give you the bedroom, and I’ll sleep on the couch. It won’t be like old times, but, Twink, you need a friend. I’m here for you, doll. Whatever you need, whatever you want, I am here for you.”
“Oh, Al,” she whispered as she loosely held my hand. “You always wondered what anybody decent could ever see in you. I think that you just showed me.”
Without another word we left the sawbones’s office. I walked just a little behind her to get a better view.
I sat in Bob’s office, coffin nail in one hand and bottle of mineral water in the other, while he talked on the phone. The weather had warmed up again. His window was open and a fresh warm breeze blew lightly in my face.
“Look, captain, I don’t give a flying rat’s hinny what ya think. Moonlight pulled our kiesters out of the fire on this one,” he rumbled like a small avalanche. “If ya can’t find the money fer his retainer I’ll just have to go the Tattler on this one.
“Threatening ya? Yeah, I’m threatening ya. I know the budget is stretched thin but maybe ya just take it out of that expense account ya use with yer secretary on Tuesday afternoons at the No-Tell Motel. Of course I know about that. I’ve got pictures, too.
“So ya see it my way? Good. Oh yeah, remember those pictures when my pension comes up for review.”
He slammed down the receiver, smiled, and said, “Some days it’s just good to be alive.”
“Can’t disagree with that, Bob,” I said as I lit another coffin nail. “You about got the paperwork mopped up from the case?”
“Getting close, Al.”
“Did they ever find his body?”
“Not sure, Al. We never did know what he looked like on the outside, and he did hack in with someone else’s account. We’ve got it narrowed down to about six.”
“I suppose we should be satisfied with that.”
“I’m just glad it’s over, Al.”
“You think so, Bob?”
“What ya mean, Al? Ya think he lived?”
“If anyone had the will to survive it would be him, but, no, that’s not what I was thinking about.”
“Then what?”
“Well, you know how people like to copycat in here. I know the techs tightened the protocols, but there’s only so much you can do with that. The genie’s been let out the bottle. I have this sinking feeling that we’ll see something like this again.”
He poured himself a glass of Old Scuzzie and said quietly, “I was thinkin’ the same thing, Al, the exact same thing.”
“Well, I guess there’s not much we can do about it until it happens.”
“True, remember the old days? Chat_World was a pretty decent place. People felt safe in here.”
“Yeah, you could bring the family and go out for an ice cream cone or walk the midway at the carnival.”
“Now we’re just like them out there.”
“Guess we are at that. Well, it’s 8:30, Bob. I’ve got to go check on Twink.”
“How’s she doin’?”
“As well as can be expected. She’s staying with me until she can get back on her feet.”
“Oh? What’s Lauren think of that?”
“What could she say? No, the women’s been abused by a serial killer, kick her out?”
He laughed and said, “Maybe between the two of them they can keep you in line.”
“They’re giving it the old junior college try, Bob.”
“So’s she workin’ for ya too?”
“Part time. She’s also helping out at an abused flake’s shelter. I’ve got to run, Bob. Catch you around the rooms.”
“Later, Al.”
As I slipped out the side door and headed off toward the Tahiti, my mind wandered through our conversation. Yes, Chat_World had changed and probably not for the best, but there wasn’t much we could do about that.
What we could do was to go on living our lives the best we could. Maybe we didn’t get dealt from the top of the deck all of the time but there could be worse places to live. After all, I had seen New Jersey. We had to take what we were handed and build it into the best place we possibly could. Otherwise they might as well wipe the disk and start over.
All that I was sure of was which side of the modem I preferred to be on and that there was going to be one unhappy Twink if I was late again.
As I opened the door to the Tahiti the chat assaulted me like a bad slap of cheap after-shave:
· Elmoe says, "elmoe lights are lowering"
· AcesBandade pounces on all the guys to wake them up
· FlasherDasher dangles his feet in the pool.
· Daybreak12 throws a rowdy boy out on his ear
· Kration says, "catching some zzzzzzzzs now and then"
· OneBIGLimey says, "Any other Brits in here ?"
· Contented1 sits at the bar and has a drink
· FlasherDasher looks for a sexy women to talk to
· Contented1 says, "Just got back"
· Single_diety says, "My don't we all make a big deal of saying hello"
· Jettebabe looks for prey
· Warffles gives all of the sexy women a rose @}---}----------------
· Chattiepattie not feelin' too sexy today, but thanks anyway :O)
· Single_diety says, “plays jumpin’ jive on juke box"
·
Jettebabe
treats men like spam
At the bar I spied a lovely blonde woman smiling at me with a somewhat impatient look. We were going to go catch a show and some dinner and then go for a walk down by the levee.
Life could be a lot worse than that.
For a joe like me, it was just another day in paradise.
*****
·
skimmers says, "yeah
i know him"
·
wreck_tch says, "he
is from VA"
·
my_termgal says, " hey
all, anyone want to talk to 19/f/ca/size 8? call the public chat line on 1-555-410-3290,
and join room #830 after intro. talk to ya soon!"
·
my_termgal says, “skimmers…."
·
cheekybabe says, "anybody
besides me catching attitude here"
· fade_away_into_that_good_night says, "So a duck walks in to drug store and says " I want a tube of chap stick" and the guy at the counter says will that be cash or check, and the duck says just put it on my bill"
· he says, “Hi! How's everyone doing?”