Part 23 (1/2)

Klein. Harold Klein. Met him in LA. A bar on La Cienaga. Tiny's Place. We tipped a few, and he saw my piece and we started jabbing and he figures I'm up for some action. Says he needs a driver and he'll pay me a thousand. That sounded good, only he didn't level. Told me he was. .h.i.tting a Wells Fargo. I park in front of the bank, only he goes in next door to this TV station and blows the face off this anchor gal, Theresa Chung. Remember her?

Okay. We get the f.u.c.k out of there and he has me drive up in this canyon and stop. Only instead of pulling out the bucks he owes me, he pulls a Colt automatic. Dead men don't yap, right? Only he didn't figure on Sammy Hoffman, and guess who winds up in the ditch?

Next thing I know, I wake up in the middle of the night with a muzzle up my mouth. Friends of Harold, right? Wrong. Co workers. They figure, if I'm good enough to put the dark on Harry, I'm good enough for them. Smart fellas.

Too bad I wasn't that smart. I'd of kissed them off.

But I went along, and pretty soon I'm a hotshot a.s.sa.s.sin for The Group. They don't want people snooping into their business, you know? Blowing the whistle on them? s.n.a.t.c.hing off some of their converts for deprogramming? That sort of s.h.i.+t. They set up the hits real good and paid me through the nose and took good care of me. I was living like a f.u.c.kin' tyc.o.o.n.

Who'd I hit? Senator Cramer, for one. Guy was calling for an official investigation. Seems his son got mixed up in the SDF. That's The Group, you know. The Spiritual Development Foundation. Anyway, that's what got me into this p.i.s.s soup, that b.a.s.t.a.r.d from People catching a shot of me in the crowd.

Before Cramer was that n.i.g.g.e.r mayor in Detroit. Jackson? The LA city council explosion, that was me. The New York police commissioner, Barnes. This ain't necessarily in order, you understand. I can give you guys all the details later, when you get me out of this rat trap and take me someplace safe. Give you something to shoot for. If I tell you everything now, you might just let those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds have me, right? I'm no fool. I'll just whet your appet.i.tes a bit, okay?

Remember d.i.c.kinson? Heart attack in his office while he was d.i.c.kin' his secretary? That was me. Tricked up his rubbers. Chavez, the investigative reporter? He put his nose into the SDF. The o.d. that put him away, it wasn't selfinflicted: it was Sammyinflicted.

That's just scratching the surface. There's plenty more. s.h.i.+t, I worked six years for The Group.

Anyhow, it was that People shot that put me away. They figure I can't show my face around, so I'm the perfect sucker for their experiment. They're gonna make me invisible, they say. Sure. Invisible. And s.h.i.+t smells like Chanel, right?

Only they do.

Lacey knocked on the door.

”Come on in,” Dukane said.

Lacey opened it, and stepped into the bathroom. The air was pungent with the smell of turpentine. Scott and Dukane, kneeling over Hoffman, were scouring him with washcloths. The small ca.s.sette recorder from Scott's attache case rested on the toilet seat.

Scott smiled up at her. His face was sweaty, damp hair clinging to his forehead. ”How's it going?” he asked.

”One of the men changed positions. He went over to the body. He's still near it.”

”They had to correct their field of fire,” Dukane said. Tipping the turpentine can, he dampened his washcloth and started working on Hoffman's shoulder. Most of the back was clear, now. The arms, still painted, remained cuffed behind him. One leg was gone, as if it had been amputated below the rump. Scott was busy cleaning the other.

”How about joining the party?” Hoffman asked. ”I been entertaining these guys with my exploits. Great stuff, I hate you to miss it.”

She ignored him. ”There's plenty of food,” she said. ”Shall I make some breakfast?”

”I'm starving,” Scott said.

”Bacon and eggs all right?”

”Can't eat that s.h.i.+t,” said Hoffman. ”Get me some beef, and don't cook it.”

”What about you, Matt?”

”Bacon and eggs sound fine. I could use some coffee, too.”

”Gonna get me that meat?”

”It's frozen,” she said.

”So unfreeze it.”

She left the bathroom, never mentioning why she had come in. She couldn't ask them to move out, and she certainly had no intention of using the toilet in front of them. In a kitchen cupboard, she found a plastic pitcher. She lowered her pants and squatted over it. When she finished, she flung its contents out the front door. Then she washed her hands, and set about preparing breakfast.

Guess she didn't want to hear, huh? I get the feeling she don't like me.

Anyway, The Group's got this lab. It's out in Iowa, looks just like a farm. Even grow stuff there. The lab's underground, all kinds of security. Make up all their s.h.i.+t there: potions, amulets, stuff like that. Witchin' s.h.i.+t.

Okay, they take me to the lab. I figure I'm in for it. I mean, how they gonna make a guy invisible, you know? I figure I'm in for shots, at least. G.o.d only knows. You don't make a guy invisible with food coloring.

But they don't put me in a cell or a dissection room or nothing, they put me up in a nice room aboveground. I've even got my own little enclosed garden right outside my door. This isn't so bad after all, I figure.

And it gets even better. These two gals come in, and they're both fantastic knock outs. One of them, the gal in charge of the project, she's...you'd have to see her. Give you wet dreams. But man, I know right off I'd be in deep s.h.i.+t if I crossed her. It's her eyes. She has this look like she wouldn't mind eating your heart. Well, that wasn't what I wanted eaten so I figured I'd keep off her.

The other, her a.s.sistant, wasn't any slouch but she didn't have that wicked look so I was hoping to get a piece of her.

Okay, they're in charge. They're witches, and the gorgeous one turns out to be the leader of the whole ball of wax. Laveda herself. I'd worked six years for her, never seen her. Keeps herself a low profile.

They come in one morning before dawn, it's a Wednesday, with a sack. Laveda tells me to open it. I do, and inside is this guy's head. Nothing else, just his head. A fresh one.

”What am I supposed to do?” I say. ”Eat it?” They don't even crack smiles. Instead, Laveda hands me these black beans and tells me what to do.

I'm not a squeamish guy, you know? I was okay, sticking the beans in his mouth and ears and nose. Then it came to the eyes. You oughta try it sometime. I've gouged a few eyes in my time, but I never stuck around to inspect the damage. Anyway, okay, I popped this guy's eyes and stuck the beans in and shut the lids. Made my skin crawl.

Then they give me a shovel and we go out in my little garden and I have to dig a hole. It only has to be a foot deep. When I'm done, we all get naked. I figure, this is getting better and better. Maybe next is an orgy, who knows? I'd heard plenty about Laveda and her orgies.

Okay, the three of us are standing there bare-a.s.s in the dark, with Coral hanging onto the head. Laveda's wearing this gold chain belt with a dagger at one side and a gold flask on the other. She takes out the dagger. Coral gets on her knees and holds out the head.

What Laveda does then, she starts carving a design on the guy's forehead. Looks like a figure-eight with x's in the middle.

Okay. After she's done with the cutting, she takes the flask off her belt and opens it and holds it up at the sky. ”The river flows,” she says. ”Its water is the water of life. All powerful is he who drinks at its sh.o.r.e.” She takes two drinks out of the flask, and some of it runs off her chin and I see it ain't Scotch, it's blood. Then she takes a mouthful of the stuff and gets the guy's head from Coral and spits it right into his mouth.

Coral does the same thing. Two gulps for her, one for the G.o.dd.a.m.n head. Then it's my turn. I've done a lot of s.h.i.+t, but I'm no f.u.c.kin' vampire. You oughta try a swig of blood, sometime. Put you off your appet.i.te for a week. But that wasn't the worst, the worst was putting my mouth up to this guy's mouth. I didn't want to shut my eyes, you know, and have the gals think I couldn't take it. So I stare the poor dead b.a.s.t.a.r.d right in the face and hold his mouth open and try to spit in the blood without touching his lips. But I touched them, all right. And his mouth couldn't hold all this blood, you know, so it came slopping back like he was puking.

s.h.i.+t. Enough of that. So much for my G.o.dd.a.m.n orgy. We plant the head face-up, and that's it. The gals slip into their clothes again. Adios, see you tomorrow.

I brushed my teeth so hard my gums bled and I figured it was more of his blood, and the harder I brushed the more blood came out. I figured the only way to get all the blood out was to upchuck. Didn't do that. It might break the spell, or whatever, and we'd have to go through the whole thing again. So I finally quit brus.h.i.+ng, and gargled a lot with Irish, and spent the rest of the day killing the bottle.

The next morning, Coral comes in alone. She's got a bottle under one arm, and I'm hoping it isn't blood. It's Remy Martin. Not for me, though. It's for our pal in the garden. She has me water the f.u.c.kin' head with it. A whole fifth of cognac. I suggest we save some for ourselves-I mean, is he gonna miss a couple of shots? But she doesn't go for it. Doesn't go for me, either, when I try out a few moves on her.

Okay, we keep this up for a week. Every morning, she wakes me up and we go out with a fresh bottle to dump on the ground.

I keep putting moves on her, and she's getting more b.i.t.c.hy all the time. But I figure I'll get her, sooner or later. One way or the other.