Frank smirked. “Yeah. She’s a talented one, she is. You here for her ropes and whips routine or the one where she takes two at once?”
Violet pondered that for a second before shrugging her shoulders. “The ropes and whips, I think. But that other one sounds pretty interesting.”
Frank snorted and moved away, stepping out from behind the bar. “I’ll go find Sid. That’s her beau.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Violet cooed with a little wave. She spun around on her stool and watched as a new girl stepped up on stage. This one barely looked legal age. She was already nude and Violet spotted red welts on the girl’s back and ass. The girl knelt on the stage and waited as a man approached. He expertly trussed her up with a gag in her mouth and ropes binding her arms behind her back. He then picked up a cat-o-nine-tails and bent her forward until her ass was pointed skyward.
Violet watched with a mixture of disgust and interest as the girl began to writhe in response to the whipping she was receiving. Most of the men in the club began to slowly move towards the stage, drawn by the act of depravity like moths to a flame.
“What the hell do you want?”
Violet turned to see Sidney Morehouse standing there, looking at her with obvious distrust. As Abby had said, he was big. He towered over Violet and his scarred left lip made him seem very sinister.
Frank the bartender was taking someone else’s order but was obviously keeping an ear out to hear what Violet and Morehouse were saying.
“Sid,” Violet said with forced friendliness. “You have no idea how badly I’ve wanted to talk to you.”
“I bet. If this is about your partner, I didn’t kill him and I don’t know who did.”
Violet set her purse on the bar’s counter and reached inside. She held up just enough of her pistol for Morehouse to see it. “Sit down,” she whispered. After the man did so, she leaned forward, keeping her voice low. “Your girl says you were convinced that Miles wanted to steal your little statue from you so you sent her to us, hoping to lure him into a trap. That true?”
Morehouse shifted, not looking at her. “True enough. You know where Abby is?”
Score another one for Abby’s latest attempt at honesty, Violet thought. “Yes, but she doesn’t want to see you. Now, if you admit you set him up, why should I believe you didn’t kill him?”
“Because the same people who took The Damned Thing from me are the ones who whacked him. They’re the ones who whacked your husband, too.”
A ripple went through the crowd and Violet turned to see that a topless woman with large breasts had taken over the whipping of the younger girl. After every third or fourth strike, the busty woman would stop and lean down to lick the reddening welts on the girl’s back.
“That turns you on? I can get you up there so you can whip the little bitch… or you can get whipped, if that’s what you’d rather.”
Violet stared daggers at Morehouse and he retreated, looking away once again. “Tell me everything.”
Morehouse sighed. For the first time, Violet began to pick up on the fact that he was nervous… and it had nothing to do with her. “I used to help out on a protection racket. Guys would fall behind in their payments and I’d go in and rough ’em up. One day a guy begged me not to break his nose. Said he had something that was so valuable that it would take care of whatever he owed. He took me into a back room and he showed it to me.”
“The Damned Thing?”
“Yeah. And that’s the perfect name for it, too. For such a small little statue, it’s got something really amazing about it. The first time I saw it, I felt nauseous and scared. It was like when I was really little… my dad, he wasn’t around too much, but one time he was and he took my brother and me to the circus. I was only about five or six. When I saw the clowns, I nearly wet myself. There was something about them that was just so damned creepy with their powdered skin, big nose and shoes… and the way they kept trying to make me laugh, even when I tried to get away from them.”
“That’s how the statue made you feel?”
“Yeah.” Morehouse laughed hoarsely. “And then it began telling me things — in my head, where no one else could hear them. It… knew things about me. About what I’d done and what I wanted to do.”
“And what had you done?”
“When I was 12 years old, I raped a 7 year-old girl who lived near me. I choked her to death when I was done and dumped her body in a stream. She was found three weeks later but nobody ever knew I did it. But The Damned Thing knew. It knew every detail, like it had been with me. And it knew… it knew things that I wanted to do to people. Things I didn’t share with anybody.”
Violet saw the strange expression taking hold of Morehouse’s face. He looked scared, true, but it was also a peculiar yearning for something that had been lost. “And so you took this thing home with you?”
“Yes.”
“And you started getting paranoid about people taking it…”
Morehouse laughed but there was no humor in it. “It’s not paranoia if people really are after it. Almost immediately, it started warning me about two different groups who were seeking it: The Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem and The Followers of the Eclipse. The Order wanted to destroy it and The Followers wanted to use it for their own purposes. Both would be more than happy to kill me if that’s what it took to get The Damned Thing.”
“What about Johann Burkard? Who’s he?”
Morehouse started in surprise. “You know about him?”
“I met a guy named Bane who works for him.”
Morehouse nodded slowly. “Burkard is a third party in the whole affair. I don’t know much about him, to be honest. Most of the time The Damned Thing was warning me about The Order or The Eclipse.”
“And these Eclipse guys have a brand on them… of the sun undergoing an eclipse?”
“Yeah. They do.”
“I ran into one of them earlier today. He got up and walked around after I’d killed him. I had to do it a second time to get it to stick. Then his body broke down into a bunch of spiders.”
Morehouse looked at her but there was no disbelief in his eyes. “They came to get The Damned Thing the other night. Tried to off me, too. They took it and left — I only managed to survive by hiding in a closet. I was cowering there like a scared little kid.”
“Like one who was afraid of clowns?”
“Yeah. Like that.” Morehouse summoned Frank and ordered a shot of whiskey. He downed it in one gulp and asked for another. “You believe me that I didn’t kill Knopf?”
“For some reason, I do. You know how he died?”
Morehouse nodded. “He talked to me about The Damned Thing and I told him that those guys had taken it. And I told him that they’d been hanging out not far from my place. He went out looking for them and that’s when they got him.”
“Why’d they take his face?”
“It’s what they do. They cut the faces off their victims… and then they eat them later on. They think it gives them the power of the men they’ve killed.”
“How do you know that?”
“It told me.”
Violet didn’t bother asking who or what “it“ was. She had a feeling she already knew. “You think if I hung around in the area where Miles was killed that I’d find them, too?”
“If you were that stupid, then yeah… But if you’ve run into them already, they’ll know you. They don’t like people who know who they are and what they’re up to… So you’re bound to get a return visit.”
Violet sat there quietly for a moment, ignoring the sounds of simulated passion coming from the stage behind her. From the noises that were aimed in her direction, it seemed that the S&M scene had moved into a lesbian sex display. “Are you still in danger?”