In the car the three cops got trading horror stories. Eichord told them about the crime photos they'd showed him in Vegas. A homosexual murdered his lover. Took a week disposing of the body each time he left the house. Used chain saws, hacksaws, an ax, knives, everything but a damn blender. There wasn't a piece of the victim bigger than a breadbox.
Tucker spoke up, “You shoulda tole me you was goin to Vegas, man. I coulda got yo white ass STRAIGHT."
“I didn't know I was goin myself, Monroe."
“Shit. I RULED that town, bro. Vegas is my kinda town."
“Yeah?"
“I got so much white pussy las’ time I was in Vegas—and this ain't no jive—I hadda finally put a whatdya call them things in the store windows?"
“Vibrators?” Dana said, but they ignored him.
“MANNEQUINS,” Tucker said after a beat. “Yeah. What I finally did was I got this fuckin MANNEQUIN and put it in the car with me. You know, with a wig and shit on it, to keep them little horny white broads from hasslin’ me every time I pulled up to a stop sign.” He shook his fierce head. “I never saw anything like it."
“Hmm,” Eichord said, smiling as he watched Dana struggle. It was more than he could stand. He looked at his partner and said, “If you hadda mannequin in the car with you, that'd make TWO dummies in there."
North Buckhead
As he knelt at the altar in his sacred sanctuary, the soreness and bitter hate and towering fears have drained from his body. Revenge, so hot and sweet as to coat his tongue at the thought, will cleanse his physical being from the aching, hideous years of immobility. Punishment—swift and violent—the stiffening joy of instant retribution, will purge his soul of the evil thing, and once purged, bankrupt of emotion, he will allow himself to be renewed.
He breathes in the purity of this room where he so loves to sequester himself. His strength builds here and soon he will move out into the gathering dusk, hard and unstoppable. Burning with desire and the intoxicating knowledge of invulnerability.
He stares at the object in the golden glow of the portrait light, focused in the center of the wall, nestled in its special alcove, his favorite deco icon. Exhaling, he allows himself another deep, shuddering breath of anticipation, and then, with the grace of purity, he stands and moves from this room. Moving with the odd, sliding steps that are just another part of his uniqueness. Totally the master of anything that may cross his deadly path, exuding confidence and the sort of bonhomie you apply like cologne to your persona. Superficial but overpowering.
In his dark heart he is ten feet tall and fearless, and now he knows that he possesses the magic of the ancients. He has conjured up the force of darkness and it is so remarkably easy: no incantations or amulets or forbidden books are required. The only requisite is that you must immerse yourself in his mandate ... only then, as you carry out the punishment of human scum, will the evil be purged from your soul.
In a car he uses only for these moments he headed without conscious direction toward a run-down suburb of Buckhead, listening to the obsolete voicing of an antique dance band playing from his tape deck. Strange music that he thinks of as reflecting the deco sensibilities; orchestral horn voicings at once hypnotic and soothing, the reed section of long-dead musicians standing behind a tuxedoed maestro as the saxes take him back to another half-century with their ligatures and embouchures and the syncopation of the aggregation tick-tocking back into time. Nicki liked to tease him about his music.
He could feel her imprint next to him, sense her fragrances in the vehicle, imagine her so slight and womanly, curled up into him as he drove, pressing against him everywhere she could fit her slim body, the beautiful, hot, anorexic bitch, caressing him with thin fingers, whispering heatedly into his ear in her woman's voice.
He'd told one person about her, long ago. Once. Once, in Nevada, he'd talked to a man about her. Some idiot. Tried to tell this obtuse imbecile how good such a woman could be, how inflaming she was, how beautiful.
The man had said to him, “That's bullshit! Have you ever SEEN a fucking transvestite? Even these female impersonators in the shows out here—you look at ‘em in the daylight and they look like what they are, men in drag. They don't have a woman's face, for one thing, too much chin ... No, bullshit, there's no such thing as a perfect woman in a transvestite.” But he'd never seen Nicki. She was flawless. Gorgeous. He was reminded of a brunette version of that one in the Warhol movies, and women just don't GET any more beautiful than that. He knew that Nicki took shots, but so what? He loved her exciting looks.
Nicki would have come with him tonight, but this wasn't her thing. She liked it when they could isolate one like the dumb bitch with the squeezed toes, he'd already forgotten her stupid name, Princess fucking Di, she was in little pieces of worm food now. Long gone. They'd NEVER find that slime.
She didn't like it when he whacked ‘em and left ‘em, but he'd be goddamned if he'd be bothered with all that nonsense every time he took one down. He was going to slaughter a ton of these cunts, slay a BUNCH of these vile bitches, and leave ‘em lay where they fell. Jeezus, it made him hot to think about sticking them. He flexed his black-gloved fingers on the wheel, feeling the awesome power of his grip.
How easy it would be for him to fuck a bitch in the mouth and slowly, just as he came, close those steel fingers around her scrawny neck, shut off her air, close down her lifeline, watch her change before his eyes, redden, whiten, blue in patriotic death colors in his mighty, crushing vise, and one of his hands left the wheel as he touched himself.
The signs he sees now, with what survives of his normality, they remind him of the Dead World. tippet's trading post—1/2 mile, the sign says. Then he sees that tippet's trading post and flea market has gone to seed like the crabgrass that chokes it. The porch is covered with broken air-conditioners, discarded refrigerator parts, empty paint cans. Tricky Nicki would look at a scene like this and tell him to create the covering scenario first—and she'd be right, of course. Some complex, intricate deal that she'd create like she had for Princess Di and that other long-forgotten slime. A thing with letters and postcards handwritten in the slut's goofy, curling scrawl. To be sent to them long after bye-bye time. Little details that could make the difference later in the heat of too close scrutiny. Dolores Detail, he called her. She even packed the cunt's BAG—what a sweet touch that was.
It was Nicki, he thought, who'd nixed his sending a fake-out letter to the papers, trying to make that slut Gina or Tina or whatever her name was look like a political murder. She'd been wrong on that one, but he'd taken care of it. Fuck with their minds, he would.
He breathes in the sweet feel of his Dead World. The contents of a long-abandoned apothecary litter the front of the building with pieces of marble facing and remnants of showcases, and even the rusting old-timey malted-milk machines are strewn about. Pieces of disreputable Americana. Bedsprings and headboards. Tabletops. Chair legs. Artifacts of the low-rent dream. Filth-covered impedimenta of his world long gone. The Dead World.
Part of an amusement park ride says ride sandy for 10 cents, but Sandy is dead and gone. Sandy wore out aeons ago. The gelding had gone for one ride too many. All of this mess is fenced in, inexplicably, and covered in hubcaps.
His killer's eyes see a carousel horse on the other side of the porch. It has faded paint and a frozen expression of “let me out of here.” Whoa, Trigger, he whispers. He checks out all the neighbors. Barbara's Putt-Putt is closed for repairs. Del-Ray's Ceramics. His kind of place.