Pursed lips, the mouth of a cosmic vacuum cleaner, drew in the hairy bowling bag of his scrotum. First one bowling ball, and then the other vanished between them, to reappear even more swollen and red. The snake-tongue struck again, laving the area between.
His hands, huge slabs of meat, grabbed her by the ears and forced her mouth to the jumping tip of the flagpole. It vanished to the base, half reappeared, then vanished again. Choking, she tried to spit it out for a minute, placating him by licking the huge crest with her tongue. But he quickly forced it back in full length.
The hooker’s whole head moved in circles now -- an immense spinner on an immense rod. It was all he could do to hang on to her ears. He was bouncing up and down like a giant on a Pogo stick.
“Now, baby! Now!” He lunged forward.
The blond went over backward. He stayed with her. He landed on his knees, thighs locked around her bobbing jaw, rear end going like a Con Ed generator. She gulped mightily, as if trying to swallow a geyser to keep from drowning.
It crossed my mind that he must have been saving it up for a long time. The thought was shattered by a sudden, loud scream. It was the kind of scream that means business.
I swung around and checked the mirrors behind me. The scream sounded again-—desperation, horror, fear! Then I spotted her. It was the black girl screaming.
Two disembodied hands reached out, the strangler’s cord between them. The cord looped around her neck and snapped tight. Her hands clawed at her throat. Her eyes bulged. The scream abruptly stopped. It was very quiet. . . .
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The crash of mirror glass shattering broke the silence. Seven years’ bad luck. I didn’t stop to worry about it. The silken cord was tightening around the neck of the unconscious black girl. I followed up my first karate kick with a second one, smashing another trick reflector to smithereens. I kicked again and again, breaking more mirrors, defying superstition. And then I reached the spot where the disembodied hands were pulling at the knotted ends of the garrote.
The hands dropped the noose and turned into fists defending against my interruption. The black girl slid to the ramp and lay still. A fist came at me. I ducked under it and threw a punch at a space just above and between the two flailing arms. I hit empty air. I caught one in the ribs, was thrown further off balance, and went sprawling against a mirror. A kick from an invisible foot glanced off my shoulder.
No good. It was like trying to fight a whirlwind. I couldn’t hit what I couldn’t see. But invisible eyes were directing blows at me, and the blows were landing. They hurt.
I scrambled away from the blur of fists. I kicked the nearest mirror and shattered it. A turtleneck and a face appeared, floating above the hairy arms. I landed a punch on the nose, aimed a kick at where the groin should have been, missed, and took a chop to the collarbone that numbed my left arm.
Spinning away, I retreated and broke another mirror. A chest and stomach appeared under the turtle-neck. I bounced a fast one-two off the tummy as low as I could reach. I followed it up with a finger jab to his right eye.
Now it was he who back-pedaled. The job I’d done on his eye hadn’t just affected his vision; it also disoriented him. He came up from the floor with a right hand that landed smack on my jaw. Only the jaw it hit was the one on my mirrored face. The last glass broke, his fist came away with splintered, bloody knuckles, and all of him—my actual adversary— came into solid view.
I stamped on the strangler’s instep, tied him up with a hug, and delivered a tattoo of blows to his kidneys. He broke away with a solid punch to the solar plexus that left my lungs inquiring as to who shut off the air. Gasping, I doubled over.
It felt like I’d been stomped by an elephant, but he didn’t follow up his advantage. Instead, he instituted a new tactic. He bypassed me, seized the limp black girl from the floor, and started running.
By now, quite a hubbub was building. People had been attracted to the Hall of Mirrors by the melee. The proprietors of the place, not content to meekly watch it being demolished, had summoned the amusement-park cops.
“Hey, Rube!” An old-time carny shill sounded the cry from one of the gambling booths. In response to it, Playtime personnel converged on the Hall of Mirrors with clubs, axes, crowbars—all sorts of makeshift weapons. Between them and the cops, and a few high-spirited lumberjacks eager to join the fray, the scene was quickly turning into a full-scale rumble.
Getting my breath back, I took off after the figure carrying the girl. He’d managed to get a good start on me, but he was blocked by the mob stampeding past the Fun House toward the Hall of Mirrors. He was literally swept up by them and carried back to me.
I met him with a solid right to the jaw. I threw everything I had into it. He went down like a felled tree. The black girl rolled out of his arms.
It was all I could do to rescue her from being trampled underfoot. The strangler wasn’t so fortunate. Unseeing feet pounded him into the pavement of the midway.
I slung the girl over my shoulder and let myself be carried along by the crowd. I worked my way to the fringes of the stampede. Then, spotting an opening, I ducked into a side alley between two ginmills.
Keeping to the alleys, I carried the girl to the outer edges of the amusement park. I found an exit and started up a trail leading through the tall trees of the Oregon woods. She was a big girl, and her clothing was still wet from her Tunnel of Love swim, which made her heavier. So as soon as I thought I’d put some reasonable distance between us and the people back at Playtime who were trying to kill her, I set her down on the ground.
The spot I chose was a small clearing concealed from the trail by a thick, semicircular copse of trees. It was half-lit by a northern moon. The light didn’t tell me much about her condition. She lay deadly still, and it was hard to say if she was a corpse or merely unconscious.
I picked up her wrist and felt for a pulse. No luck. I felt nothing. I bent to her face. She didn’t seem to be breathing. There was an angry welt around her neck, a deep gully from gullet to nape, a testimonial left by the garrote. I slipped my hand under the bottom of her sweater and groped for a heartbeat. Her flesh was like ice.
Then I felt it, a faint throbbing about an inch below the bra she was wearing. My hand stayed there as I counted, trying to judge the rate of the heartbeat. I was still counting when she stirred and groaned.
Her eyes fluttered open. They were blank for a second and then focused on me. Her hand came up with surprising strength—weak as she was, the strength could only have been born of fear—-and her nails raked my cheek.
“Whoa!” I grabbed her wrist and forced her back down. I had to sprawl on top of her to keep her there. My hand was still under her soggy sweater, providing part of the leverage I needed to hold her by pinning her right breast. “I’m on your side. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be a corpse by now,” I told her.
She stopped struggling and looked at me suspiciously. “Would you mind not squeezing my breast like that?” she suggested. “I’m not exactly in the mood.” Her voice was very hoarse.
“Sorry.” I removed my hand from under her sweater. “How do you feel?” I inquired.
“I’ve got a sore throat.”
“Cause and effect,” I told her. “Comes from sticking your neck in a noose.”
“Get off me, will you? You’re heavy.”