He walked very quietly, carefully, moving through the big rooms. He was suddenly aware of all the mirrors and glass, and he used this and was methodical as he let his hunter's eyes scan across all the glittering expanse of back bar, chandelier, breakfront, bookcase, mirror, picture tube, window, cabinet, picture-frame glass, anything that reflected, as he moved through the large rooms soundlessly, looking for a hint of shadow or movement as his mind quickly sorted out the random possibilities. Who would be a most likely candidate to want him hurt? The relative of a victim? A cop, coming in the back while the two of them talked up in the front of the house? Somebody high up in the family who would now view him as a threat in some way? Buddy Blackburn? He choked back a laugh as he realized what he was doing, looking up at the tired image in the reflection of the empty dining room.
He knew how the mind works under stress. He was very tired. He would take a couple of aspirin, drink a cup of coffee — caffeine perversely made him sleepy — and take the phone off the hook. And he knew he would sleep. And in that sleep. Yes. Dreams would come.
That was the nice thing about being back home, Eichord thought. You didn't have to produce any results. Just sit here in the grungy squad room smelling used smoke and listening to Lee and Tuny, the two-man uncomedy team who had been his friends since before the dawn of recorded time. These long-time partners who were so close they could piss in the same beer can.
He realized he'd been staring at the same page in the homicide report for about ten minutes. Reading it over and over again and still not seeing the words. Nothing registering. Out to lunch.
"I'm out to lunch," he told the room.
"What else is new?" his friend James Lee muttered.
"Hey, Jimmie," he said, tilting his head in the direction of fat Dana, "your girlfriend's startin' to look pretty good to me, man."
"Yeah? Well, she's allllllll mine."
"That's right, I'm already spoken for, so eatcher heart out, ya fuckin' wino."
Eichord was an alcoholic, and his friends handled it — as they did all things — with taste and diplomacy, and by calling Eichord a fucking wino. If you couldn't take a joke you didn't hang around.
So good to be back home, Eichord thought with a sigh. Back here where I belong with the rest of the rocket scientists.
Back in his safe and smelly cubbyhole in the bowels of Buckhead Station, Eichord felt far removed from a world where a mob assassin shoots his/her victims' eyes out. Had each unrelated decedent seen something they should not? Is this what the killer was saying with those two awful pulls of the trigger, You've seen too much? One thing was clear: when you take aim and shoot someone's eyes out, you are not just committing murder. You are making one helluva statement.
She was unconscious and she stayed out for a long time, awakening to a sense of being drugged but with a pain of such throbbing intensity the dope couldn't cancel it out. Imagine an impacted wisdom tooth, broken off in the extrication process by an inept oral surgeon, and raw nerve ends screaming for whatever solace waits beyond codeine, Demerol, Dilaudid. What high is next? The righteous heroin stone? Free-basing? A leaded baseball bat? You don't care. You just want the lights out.
The next time she came to, she could identify some of the sounds. Roger Nunnaly's voice, an older woman. The voices took shapes in the discrete colors within the variegated darkness and she saw through a camera lens layered thick with Vaseline. Then she went away again to sleep.
Greg had found her and debated whether to take her to the emergency ward of the nearest hospital but he knew the police would become involved.
What a bother this girl had become. Such a hassle. One of Nunnaly's street friends knew a woman nurse who didn't ask questions, and the problem was temporarily solved. Private care. Of sorts.
Tiff was young and strong and healthy. She was a fast healer. But without proper medical treatment the bones did not set properly. She would have problems. The spine is also a funny thing. A blow to the back had impaired the motor nerves controlling lateral movement of the right foot. She would not walk as well as she had. The facial scars would recede to some extent. All in all, not so bad. Better a crippled dog than a dead lioness.
The RN the boys had hired cost money. The dope she was hitting Tiff with also wasn't free. And there was the problem of the impending score. Greg and Roger did what they had to do. There was a couple who needed a young girl for "a live-in domestic," as they put it, and Greg sold them Tiffany for sixteen hundred dollars cash. It was touch and go for a while. The Freunds almost backed out on the deal when they saw the extent of damage to their merch, but they gave her a thorough examination, slept on it, and finally reached a decision. What the hell. They had plenty of disposable income and it might be worth a shot.
Tiff was not consulted in the matter, needless to say. She had not only lost the $2,800 gold mine, she'd cost them a bundle to boot, and jeopardized an important score. There was nothing to talk about. If she could generate some income it was her place to do so. She'd be expected to do whatever the Freunds told her to do. Light maid work, probably, and sex anyway they wanted it. Anytime. With whoever they said. In return, the Freunds were picking up her "medical expenses." Fair is fair.
Charlie Freund had been into stags there in Hollywood, Florida, way back when it was dirty little loops of cellulite queens and skinny dudes in black socks. Broads corralled off street corners. Bimbos scouted at poolside. "Dirty Feet flicks," named after the hallmark of the old-time porn quickie.
But the burgeoning market exploded and stag loops went the way of the sex shops and mail catalogs as production values accelerated, the new video technology bringing with it the mainstream money. And the cheapie porno film was obsolete almost overnight in a world where the next-door neighbors were taping their own action. Consumer need was reassessed.
The video boom signified megabucks, and soon the adult-movie market was the biggest enterprise going in America. When stag films dried up, he and his partner went their own ways, his partner going the massage-parlor route, Charlie concentrating on direct-mail specialties. He knew there'd always be a living just on the two hundred names he had. Pedophiles, people wanting circus shit, fans of heavy duty S&M. They had nowhere else to go for it but the small, kitchen-table porn merchants.
Charlie had cultivated a small stable of ladies who were into tit torture, spankings, humiliation, and the lighter forms of bondage and discipline. The rest of it was faked, and sometimes rather inexpertly. But the market was there just as he said. And since he was into it himself, he could see that the potential was astounding for quality stuff.
Porno entrepreneurs go under for the same reasons any other small business fails: undercapitalization, lack of management knowledge, unwillingness to change with the marketplace, failing to maintain a fair share of the active business, refusing to work hard enough. Charlie went to some people who had money and management knowledge, and offered his willingness to shoot at a new bull's-eye, work hard, and carve out a virgin mini-market for them. He convinced them he knew his specialty, which was pain, and Charlie Freund was on his way.
Charlie was married — well, not married exactly — but he lived with a mean, vicious malcontent of a diesel dyke named Bobbie. They made a good team. They liked hurting women, but not exclusively. They had Catholic tastes in these areas. They had a surprisingly capacious repertoire and an insatiable appetite for punishing and hurting and dominating.
It began on the level of the barbed invective and the punishing insult, which they both cultivated as an art form. They had poisonous and deadly verbal skills. Caustic, biting, unforgiving tongues — both of them — capable of the most acrimonious linguistic surgery. Nonanesthetized probes homing in on the soft spots. Critiques of dripping, acidulous harshness. Scorn of the most withering and unforgettable acerbity. The problem is, they needed recipients for the abuse. Someone, preferably, who wouldn't fight back.