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A Southern Psycho

By: Willailla



-The faint soul demurs-

~1~

Late autumn leaves that had drifted in from the surrounding hills would occasionally come to life, stir crablike and scrape across the concrete surface of the prison yard.

Attorney Bud Schultz entered the main gate along with a small number of visitors. He had come early at 8:30 A.M., just after prisoners' roll call, so that he wouldn't have to wait long to see his client, Ben None.

The fat attorney had slack lips and drooping eyelids that hinted at relaxed morals, a paunch over his belt where his grey suit jacket hung open. His narrow-brimmed hat was slanted back from his forehead. 

After passing through several gates with the rest, he was given the once over with a metal detector after he placed his keys, pen, watch, lighter, loose change and a pack of cigarettes in a lock box. He was allowed to keep his belt. He presented his attorney registration card and photo ID, then was waved on through to the visitors' unit for prisoners held in segregation. This was a grey room. On one side was a bank of cubicles enclosing bullet proof glass that separated the prisoners from the visitors. Black phones clung like leeches from the wall in each one.

Overhead, long fluorescent tubes created a harsh clinical tone. The green linoleum floor had a worn path toward the center and was scuffed to a grayish-white in each cubicle.

Shultz took a seat in #3. The prisoners had not come in yet. He placed his soft hands on the desk-like shelf at the base of the window and waited. He had never met Ben None before, and he wonder what such a man would look like. He had been told that None had spent almost ten years in segregation, locked in an eight by six foot windowless cell furnished with only a steel sink-toilet combo and a steel bunk bolted to the wall with a thin foam mattress. Shultz shuddered to think how filthy segregation cells were since they were never cleaned. Unheated in the winter, boiling hot in the summer. A grimace tightened the loose fat of his face as he recalled hearing how rats and mice ran freely over concrete floors that were often awash with feces that ran off from plugged toilets. No man could stay completely sane in such an environment. Suicide was a frequent avenue of escape. 

Troublemakers--those who flaunted their hatred of authority and those who fomented rebellion--wound up in isolation or segregation. Others, however, who represented no real threat to the prison system wound up in segregation merely as a demonstration by prison authorities that they held the power of life and death in their hands without any restraints. Since segregation was not considered punishment, a prisoner's petition for a 602, a redress of grievances, would always go unanswered.

Shultz smiled. Prison was a microcosm of the world. The good, the bad, and the ugly were all subject to the vagaries of existence. The only ones who survived in segregation were the ubermen. Those rare beings who somehow drew strength from adversity. 

Schultz knew little of Ben None, but he knew None had survived ten years, there bouts, in conditions guaranteed to destroy the strongest of men. Whether he was still sane or not was the question. That was Schultz's mission: to find out. A mission that would have been more proper for a psychiatrist or a psychologists. But then, they were not as easy to come by as a sleazy lawyer with a short memory who would do anything for a buck and not ask questions.

Schultz glanced at his wrist, then remembered he wasn't wearing his watch. He was hungry. He'd skipped breakfast in order to be early. His stomach was growling for bacon and eggs, a stack of hot, buttery pancakes and a steaming cup of coffee followed with a smoke.

It shouldn't take long with None, he thought. Then he could scoot his butt down the hill to that nice little family restaurant in the valley that he'd noticed coming up. 

A door opened on the prisoners' side of the glass. Orange coveralls were escorted in by muscular guards. All were wearing a 4 piece. The third prisoner, a man of medium height and build with tired cobalt blue eyes in a refined chiseled face, took a seat across from Shultz. 

It was a once handsome face that was now drained and haggard; the jaw covered in a light stubble; the blond hair on his head long and unruly. Shultz stared at the hands resting on the shelf across from him. They were long and slender, the hands of an artist. 

In his thirty some years of lawyering, Shultz had known all the various criminal low lifes. You couldn't always tell what a man was from his looks. Monstrous looking men could be choirboys, and fair-haired choirboys could be monsters. The greenish-blue eyes of Ben None held something of the latter. It was subtle, but Shultz had seen it before. Something dark behind the light. An indefinable quality that proclaimed this is a man you don't fuck with. It would be missed by most people, but Shultz had seen it before. It belonged to those who had not joined the human race. Those who would never follow any will but their own.

Shultz rubbed his nose, then picked up the phone. It is easy to decide who is insane in the loony sense. They don't matter. But those who are different from us, those who do not believe as we do, they are the really dangerous ones. Dangerous because they are not insane.

"Ben None?"

The weary head nodded. His expression unexpectant.

"I'm Bud Schultz, an attorney. I've been appointed to tell you that you will be coming up for a parole hearing in two weeks."

None's eyes lowered for a moment, then he looked up, the face coldly somber, immutable. "How's that? I haven't served even a third of my sentence."

"Doesn't matter. Somebody with a lot of pull wants you out. It's all being arranged . . . anonymously. I don't even know who." Shultz took an envelope from the inside pocket of his coat and waved it at the guard stationed nearby. Then looked back at None. "He'll make you a photo copy of the papers inside. I'm told people sometimes lace paper with acid." He sighed. "Any how, the answers to the questions they'll ask you at the hearing are in here. Memorize them. Any questions?"

"Should I tell them I've found Jesus?"

Shultz stood up and buttoned his coat. "Oh, do. They love that."

~2~

There was a widescreen TV on the wall with a camera on top. On either side were some kind of four foot tall plastic jungle-like plants with large drooping leaves. Facing the screen was a metal folding chair. None hobbled into the hearing room hindered by a 4-piece: handcuffs, waist chains and leg irons followed by two hefty guards and the Case Commissioner.

He sat down in the chair.

The screen was on showing the state seal. Fifteen minutes late the screen fluttered revealing a man and a woman, roughly in their thirties, sitting behind a polished wood table. The man had a meaty, milk-fed face and wore gold framed glasses. Bald on top, hair combed over. The woman also wore gold-framed glasses fitted to a long schnoz. The mouth was small, the lips thin, the chin pointed. The faces of both had the prim constipated expression of the highly moral.

The man placed his hands together on top of the table next to a manila file and smiled perfunctorily. "Hello, Ben. I'm Jim Biglow and my associate is Mary Davenport. We are your Hearing Examiners on the staff of the Parole Commission. What we decide based on your testimony will determine whether or not you will be granted parole." 

He paused to withdraw some papers from the file. 

"Ben, according to our records you claimed justifiable homicide at your trial in the deaths of three men in a bar room altercation. Is that still your contention?"

"No, sir, Mr. Biglow, sir. It certainly isn't. I was a young hot head who couldn't control his temper. I have had many sobering years to reflect on my misdeed and can only express my greatest heartfelt sorrow for what I did. I can only stress that I am no longer that young foolish hot head. I have matured and in my maturity acquired wisdom and patience. As the good book says, 'A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control."

"Well, spoken, Ben. That is what we like to hear."

"Yes, indeed," Davenport chimed in, smiling with approval. "Now, Ben, do you harbor any resentment toward the justice system or for any representatives of law enforcement for your confinement these past ten years?"

"Most assuredly not, Ms. Davenport, ma'am. I have received more than the utmost kindness and consideration a person in my circumstance could expect to receive. I have nothing but the greatest admiration and respect for the dedicated staff of this fine institution."

Biglow beamed. "Indeed these are the words we love to hear. To know we have succeeded in reaching a lost soul who has faltered from the righteous path is always gratifying."

"It is gratifying, indeed," Davenport agreed.

"I see nothing in your record about drug abuse," Biglow said.

"Yes, sir, sir, and you never will, sir. The only high I need is God's glorious creation. As the good book says, 'Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise."

The hearing went on over an hour, then Biglow said, "Ben, I am well pleased with what I've been hearing--"

"Yes, and I second that," Davenport interjected.

"--and I've only two more questions I'd like to ask. First, do you have a home to go to if you are granted parole? And what will you do for employment?"

"Well, sir, the answer to that is, yes. I have a cabin near Kullhorn. And as to work I'll find it even if it's only washing dishes, for I am determined to make something of myself--no matter what."

"Excellent."

Biglow and Davenport put their heads together to confer. After a moment they broke from their huddle all full of smiles.

"Ms. Davenport and I are in complete agreement, Ben. We see no reason why your parole shouldn't go through."

Ben rubbed a tear from his eye. Smiling he looked at the screen. "I don't have the words to tell you what I really feel. God bless both of you."

"Think nothing of it, Ben. Now go out there and make us proud."

They were both smiling as the screen blanked out.

Ben stood up. One of the guards opened the door. 

"What a load of shit," the Case Commissioner muttered.

~3~

Two A.M. footsteps came down the catwalk. The steel outer door opened. A flashlight shown in on him through the bars of the inner door.

"Drop you cock and grab your socks, Ben. Time to go."

Ben stuck his hands through the bean chute and let the badge cuff him, then the badge unlocked the cage door and chained the cuffs to a waist chain, then put leg chains on. Two other badges stood back in the shadows.

"How is it, Ben, that a psycho like you can make paper?" the badge asked when he finished. Behind him another badge shut the steel door. "Now we're all nice and private, aren't we?"

The two badges came around and grabbed Ben's arms.

"I guess you know what's comin', doncha, Ben?"

"Yeah, I know." The face somber, the eyes cold.

"You're due for a tune up." The badge punched a fist into his palm several times. "Hold'm tight, boys." He placed the flashlight in the bean chute, then threw a quick right and left to the chest and stomach. Ben doubled over gagging up a thin stream of vomit. "What a pussy. Yuh cain't take it, can yuh, Ben?"

"Kick the motherfucker in the nuts," one of the badges said. 

"Hold'm tight. I'm goin' for a field goal." The badge swung his foot up. Ben turned slightly receiving the kick on his thigh. A numbing pain shot down his leg paralyzing it.

"Hah, he won't be getting' any pussy for a long time," the badge said.

The badge grabbed a clump of Ben's hair and jerked his head up. "That was your going away present, Benny. And when you come back--and yuh'll be coming back, yuh all do--we'll be here to give yuh a homecoming present.

The badge took his knuckles and scraped them viciously back and forth against Ben's head.

"Boy's I'll jest bet ol' Ben would love to kill us'in, wouldn't yuh, Ben?" He grabbed Ben's ears, shaking his head side to side, and in a mocking, piggy voice said, punctuating each word, "but-yuh-jest-won't-get-tuh-do-it-will-yuh-Benny? 

Ben was silent. They straightened him up and half carried him onto the catwalk as he struggled on his good leg, the other leg dragging behind on the grating.

They hustled him through a series of walks to a holding room where a badge with a clipboard told them to uncuff him. The badge ushered him into the release office where he was given some forms to sign; in another room he was fingerprinted and photographed to verify his identity and to show he was legally released. Then he was led into a clothing room where he was given a pair of worn jeans, shirt, underwear and a faded blue prison jacket. In another room a clerk gave him what few personal items he had had when he arrived at the prison: a leather tri-fold wallet and a couple of keys. There was a check for the money he had in his Inmate Trust Fund, five bucks in cash and a bus ticket.

A little before eight he limped out of the main entrance where a white prison van waited to take him down Blue Jay Lane to the small town in the valley.

Ben None was free at last.

~4~

The van dropped him off at the town square. There was a small rotund park in the center, and he sat down on a bench near a fountain. He rubbed his thigh feeling a tingling sensation build as the numbness and pain slowly dissipated. The air was chilled. Grey clouds clung to the sky like dirty plaster.

A few cars circled the square. Some angled in front of a farmers bank to wait until it opened. There was a hardware store, a clothing store, an office supply store, another bank-- newer, bigger--and a jewelry store. The city hall was behind him and a barber shop. Farther down the town's main street was the bus station. He watched the awakening scene with the disconnectedness of the outsider.

The prison jacket he'd been given did little to protect him from the morning chill. He shivered. His breath left the warmth of his mouth and fogged the air. He had only twelve dollars in the check the prison clerk had given him and five dollars cash. Not nearly enough for a warm coat.

A black SUV came into the square and parked in front of the clothing store. A portly man, with black hair thinning on top, got out carrying a purse size leather pouch in one hand. The car beeped as he pressed a key fob, then stepped to the front door of the store and opened it. 

Ben smiled thinly. Before rolling codes were introduced in the nineties he could have quickly broken into a car using a code grabber from anyone using a remote. And it was still possible but required more ingenuity and time. It seems every time an obstacle is placed before a criminal the criminal always finds away around it. Stopping crime becomes a never ending battle between the haves and have nots.

Ben took his wallet out and pinched open a seam where the sewing had frayed away. Inside the space between the inner and outer leather was a flat sheath of metal which he drew out. Within the sheath was a slide that could be pushed from one end exposing a single-edged razor blade at the other end.

He put the box cutter in his jacket pocket and waited. After about twenty minutes the man in the clothing store flipped the CLOSED sign on the door to OPEN.

Ben got up and crossed the street. The opening of the door rang a bell. The portly man was behind a counter at a cash register. He frowned when he recognized the paltry prison dress. "You need to go to Goodwill if you want anything."

Ben waved his prison check. "I've got five hundred dollars."

The man jerked his head. "Let me see it," he said, suspiciously.

Ben approached, smiling, and as he reached out to hand the check to the man he dropped it. He made a show of trying to bend over with effort, then shook his head. "My back's give out on me. I can't bend over."

"I'll get it," the man said, grudgingly.

As he bent down Ben pulled the box cutter from his pocket and cut his throat as he straightened back up. He shoved him to one side behind the counter to avoid the blood that hosed from his neck, then walked to the front door and turned the CLOSED sign out and locked the door.

He came back and opened the cash register and pocketed the paper money. He ignored the .38 revolver on a shelf beneath the register and strolled around display tables loaded with seasonal wear. He picked up a cognac colored leather duffle bag and stuffed it with sweaters, T-shirts, jeans, socks and underwear.

He found a bathroom and washed himself at its sink, dried off with a fluffy towel, then walked naked back into the clothing area, put on jeans, T-shirt and a pair of white jogging shoes with blue stripes over thick wool socks. He finished drying his hair with another sweater he picked up, then tossed it on the floor.

He moved to a rack full of coats and selected a sports jacket and a roomy tweed overcoat which he slipped on, then picked up a watch cap. Moving back to the counter he stared down at the portly man whose eyelids were fluttering. The glassy eyes lacked comprehension. The mouth opened and shut rhythmically like that of a fish out of water. A leg shot out spastically. The body jerked. The fat belly quivered beneath the shirt, then grew still; the eyes became glued on the ceiling.

Ben nudged a pack of cigarettes out of the man's shirt pocket. A flap of matches was stuck under the cellophane. Ben shook out a cigarette, put it in his mouth and lit it. He inhaled deeply. It didn't taste too good after ten years without. He inhaled a couple of more times, then stuck it inside the match book and slipped the flap under the striker. He walked to a table of wool sweaters and propped the match book between two of them with the cigarette sticking out horizontally over the table edge. He put the pack of cigarettes in his coat pocket, along with the money from the cash register, picked up the duffle bag and left the store, locking the door behind him.

~5~

"Where you headed?"

Beads of rain formed on the windshield of the eighteen wheeler only to be squeegeed away by the wipers as soon as they appeared.

"Kullhorn."

"Hate tuh see uh feller limpin' along in the rain." The driver was a big man with thinning brown hair. He rested a leathery hand on the bulbous gearshift which he was constantly shifting. The road was narrow and curvy, up and down. It was too narrow for the truck and a car to pass safely, so he kept his eyes glued on it. A stream ran on one side and trees on the other. Foot bridges crossed the stream to tenement shacks where tires hung from the limbs of sad trees for children to swing on. Bony hounds watched from porches or dog houses no doubt hopeful for an extra scrap of food that would never come. "Not safe to walk these back roads. Mean-assed dogs been known to attack people. Bunch of ass-wipe cyclists wearin' their fancy tights and brain buckets got their asses chewed a few years back on this road. You don't happen to have any smokes, do you?"

Ben fished out the pack in his coat pocket and shook one out for him, then lay the pack on the dash next to the CB.

"Just got out of stir. Wanted to walk."

"Know watch yuh mean. I did a stretch for boosting my radio. Can you fucking believe it? Going to jail just for boostin' my fuckin' radio. Some rich son-of-a-bitch kills yuh and gets off scot-free. The world's fucked up. Fuckin' law gets you comin' and goin', don't it? Fuckers tell yuh not to travel with a fat load knowin' yuh cain't break even less'n yuh do. And who in the hell do they fine?--not the goddamn coal companies, who overload us, but the trucker. Got a job lined up?"

"No."

"I've got a cus who can get you on as a lumper. But you're lookin' kinda peaked. I'll give you my address. Get hold of me when you feel up to it."


A Southern Psycho



"Yeah, thanks."

"You get in shape, I'll get you that job. Yuh don't wanna be no trucker though. Mexican truckers flooding the fuckin' country, taking all the business from us Americans. Don't make enough money tuh begin with but purde soon won't be no money at all. They're unrestricted--no regulations. Cain't compete with 'em. No way. Cain't even buy my kids decent presents for Christmas. Shouldn't be smoking'. Money I waste on 'em could buy 'em presents, but I cain't break the habit. A man's gotta have something' tuh enjoy--or else what's the use of livin'?"

He glanced at Ben who had leaned back, his head drooped over, asleep.

Later, after he'd dropped Ben off at the junction to Kullhorn, the trucker picked up the pack of cigarettes left on the dash. There was a hundred dollar bill shoved inside.

~6~

The DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS was a two story brick on Main Street. Wooden outside steps led up to the second floor. Inside, entered through a glass-paned door, a young volunteer, with short, brown hair, in red sweats, was seated at a metal desk tapping out something on a computer. She stopped and smiled.

"Can I help you?"

"I'm supposed to check in with my parole officer, Susan Page."

"Okey dokey, and your name is. . .?"

"Ben None."

She punched some keys, mused over the screen for a moment.

"Ah, okay. Just grab a seat. You had three days to come in, Mr. None, but we're running light today, so I think Suzy will be able to see you right away."

She got up and disappeared down a hallway.

§

Suzy was a hot looking babe in tight-fitting western shirt and jeans, an off-white Stetson on her head. She was leaned back in a swivel chair, her pristine booted feet propped up on her cluttered desk, a .357 magnum holstered on her hip.

"Still raining I see." She nodded indifferently at the chair in front of her desk.

Ben dropped his duffel bag and sat down.

"Nice duds, Ben, for someone just out of stir." She turned blue eyes on him studiously. "Just heard on the news there was a big fire down at Sandstone. Clothing store. Owner's a crispy critter now."

She slid her feet lazily off the desk and leaned into it with a scoot of the chair. She pulled a manila file toward her from a loose stack and tapped it with a long pink fingernail.

"Haven't had time to get very far into this yet, but from what I have read it seems like you've been a pretty bad boy, Ben." 

"No one's perfect."

"Well, that's what the good book says, isn't it?" She flipped idly through several pages musing out loud. "Killed three men in a bar fight over a game of pool with a shiv, h'm." She closed the file with a nonchalant flip then leaned back, propping her feet back on the desk, hands behind her head, breasts straining against the fabric of her yellow shirt.

On the wall behind her was a target from a firing range with bullet holes dead center; next to it a poster with the picture of a hand holding a revolver with words underneath that said, "Do gun crime. Do hard time. In federal prison."

"Well, Ben, there's not much to say. I don't make a lot of money, so I don't like a lot of complications in my life--and I'm sure you don't either. So, I'm gonna lay it out for you nice and sweet. You come in once a week so we can see how we're doing. After a couple of months--if everything's hunky-dory-- you'll only have to come in every two weeks. I, also, will be popping in on you unannounced, from time to time, so keep you nose clean, and if I catch you dancing with known types I'll have your ass back in the slammer before you can say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." She eyed him critically. "You don't look like you're up to much heavy labor, so I'll get you a night watchman's job. I get twenty percent of your take." 

"How much does the Man get?"

The employer? Don't worry. We always work out a deal that leaves the squirrels a few nuts. Got any questions?" 

~7~ 

"Nice, huh? She'll do zero to sixty in four, tops out at two-twenty." Ben was pressed back against the suede-leather bucket seat as Page floored the sleek, black Viper down a lonely stretch of highway. She punched it, delicate hand working the leather covered gearshift expertly, coaxing out the maximum torque before each shift. The rear wheels suddenly side slipped, then fishtailed on the wet pavement. She cut the shift, cigarette dangling from her lips, as the Viper went into a slide, brought the steering wheel around toward the slide and leveled off--a hundred still showing on the speedometer. The windshield wipers slapped back and forth on full, the road a melted blur.

Ben punched the lighter and lit a cigarette, his hand steady. 

"That didn't scare you, did it?"she said, tongue-in-cheek. 

"Was it supposed to?"

"Hell yes, unless you're crazy," she grinned.

She slowed and turned onto a muddy road that wound through a wooded area. "It's been ten years, hasn't it?"

"Yeah." Ben scolled the window down enough to toss out the cigarette she'd given him. "Seventy-six acres. Belonged to my maternal grandfather. There's a small cabin on a hillside overlooking a lake."

"Anybody taking care of it?"

"Not that I know of."

"Gonna look like shit after ten years."

"It'll do." He looked at her gun. "Aren't you afraid I'll grab your gun and kill you?"

"No, you're like me, a realist. Only thing killing me would net you would be a return trip to the slammer. If you were like the lowlifes I deal with, though, I wouldn't be wearing it on that side."

"How do you know I'm not a lowlife?"

"I read your psych evaluation. IQ practically off the chart. No drugs, no priors. You don't fit the lowlife profile. You're a strange'n. Killing three lowlifes over a pool game doesn't jell."

"Jury thought so."

"Juries suck."

She lit another cigarette, drew deep and exhaled smoke through mouth and nose. "Must've been hard going without pussy for ten years."

"I survived."

"Yeah, you do, don't you?"

The rain-soaked dirt road had grass growing between ruts, trees close on either side. 

"This is it," Ben said, as they came to a mailbox.

A small cabin, with a covered porch, set back among oak, pine and sycamore. A patch of a lawn had been neatly kept.

"Well, somebody's taking care of the place," Page said, pulling into a unpaved driveway up to a garage. As he got out, hoisting up his duffle bag, she said, "Be seeing you, Killer." She flipped the side of her nose with an index finger. "Keep it clean."

Ben stepped up on the low porch and watched her back the Viper onto the narrow road, then rumble off, wheels splashing through puddles. He stood, without moving, for ten minutes or so listening to the wet autumn leaves catch the swoosh of the rain and the wet drip and gurgle of crystalline drops off the porch roof. Above grey, woolly clouds, tinged with violet, rolled across the sky above the gently swaying tree tops.

Finally, he reached above the lintel and drew down a key. Inside was a living room-kitchen combo. To the right open steps led up to a loft overlooking it. A brown leather sofa faced a stone fireplace, diagonal to a matching recliner. At the back of the cabin to the right of the kitchen was a patio door opening on a elevated deck. Beneath the loft there was a short hall with a bath facing a bedroom.

He sat the duffel bag down on the bottom step and walked to the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. He unbuttoned his overcoat, glancing about. Everything was orderly, neat and clean. An open pack of cigarettes lay on the bar. He lit one and opened the frig, took out a can of beer and went to the fireplace. Wood had been stacked on top of newspaper in the grate. He lit the paper and sat down in the worn recliner. The rain tapped against the windows. Soon the fire was crackling, warming the cabin.

~8~

Page parked near the entrance to Barney's Bar & Grill. Inside, Sheriff Roy Knox was sitting in a side booth eating a ham sandwich, a frosty bottle of beer next to his plate.

"Well, hello, darling," he said, as Page slid into the seat across from him. He was a man in his forties. Too much booze had given him a florid face and a belly that strained against his striped western shirt. His wide-brimmed hat was slanted back revealing black, oily strands of thinning hair.

Page ordered a double with a beer chaser.

"Been getting' a lot of rain," he said. He washed down a bite of ham sandwich with the beer, belching. "Damn climate change."

"Whatever," she said, toying with the double. "Guess who my latest parolee is, Roy."

"I got no ideal, darlin'." Roy, swallowed the last of his sandwich, rubbed his hands on a napkin while sucking noisily on his teeth, then lit a smoke. 

"Ben None."

Roy looked perplexed. "That Ben None? How the hell did he get out?"

"That's what I'd like to know. He was in for life. Somebody with a lot of push, pull and shove must've wanted him out."

"The governor?"

"Yeah, logically, but why would the governor want him out? It's not like a politically smart move, you know--releasing a mass murderer. And why not pardon him instead of paroling him?"

"What'd None say?"

"I didn't ask him."

"Maybe yuh ought'a. But yud ought'a be careful around'm, darlin'. None's a dangerous son of a bitch. I was the arresting officer when he kilt those three assholes in Jake's Bar. When I got thar None was shoot'n balls by himself as calm as yuh please. No fuckin' remorse. Dead bodies right next to'm. All bloody. He'd kilt'm with a switchblade. One of 'm he'd rammed a splintered cue stick through the eye."

~9~

Ben woke up listening to the sound of an '87 Vette pulling into the driveway. There was a scuffle of footsteps on the porch, then the door opened.

"Uncle Ben?" a tall, broad-shouldered youth said. Next to him was a pretty girl in jeans with a blue baseball cap and short black hair.

"Yeah, it's me, Merle. You've grown some."

"Uncle Ben. How the hell did you get out?"

"Don't know, but I have a strong suspicion I'll find out in a little while."

Merle looked confused. "We didn't hear anything about a breakout on the radio."

Ben got up and limped to the bar, fished a cigarette out of the pack and lit it. "And you won't. Who's your little buddy?"

"This is Janet. She's my girlfriend. We've been living here."

She smiled shyly.

"Mm." Ben stared at her for a moment. "I need to go to mama's grave."

"What, now, in the rain?"

"Mm, yeah. The ground'll be soft."

§

"I took good care of it," Merle said, as Ben backed the Vette out. Kept it in the garage. Rode out from town on my bike when I was little, started it up once a week. I knew it was your pride and joy." He hesitated. "After I dropped out of school, Janet and me came out here to live. Her old man raped her. I told her she could stay with me. He makes me give him five hundred dollars a month not to accuse me of statutory rape. He's the only son of a bitch who ever raped her."

"Where do you get the money?"

"Work for a diary farmer up a ways, mow grass at Ashley Cemetery--and flip burgers at Bob's."

"Doesn't leave much, does it?"

"Sure don't. I tried to send you a little every month but couldn't always, but it wasn't much."

Ben nodded. "Never got it. Who's her old man?"

"Marvin Rencher. A worthless asshole who stays drunk all the time. The mother's not any better. She would hold Janet down while he fucked her."

They went down the highway for a dozen miles, then turned up a narrow county road and pulled into a gravel parking lot next to a white frame Zion Baptist Church surrounded by trees. The rain was heavy and pounded the earth. They unlatched a chain link gate and made their way to a grey granite stone off in a corner.

Ben took the shovel Merle had fetched and started digging. A foot down there was a clunk. A little digging around and Ben pulled out a PVC tube. He leaned it against the stone.

"Let the rain wash it off."

§

When they got back to the cabin Ben stayed in the Vette and told Merle to saw the tube open.

"Is grandpa's cane still around?"

"In the closet."

"Bring it out."

"Leg bothering yuh?"

"Naw, it's just that stupid people think cripples are harmless."

When Merle brought out the cane, Ben backed the Vette out and roared off.

§

Marvin Rencher--thin-haired, bearded, skinny--was sitting in a fan-backed willow chair on the porch of a square white frame house. A fat sow was in a ladder-backed rocker next to him. A pint of Heaven Hill sat on the floor between them. Marvin was scrunched down as if his back bone had been defeated in a battle with gravity; a fresh cigarette drooped from between his gnarled, tobacco-stained fingers resting on a thigh. Sow sat like a queen on her throne, back rigid, imperiously surveying her domain, fists gripping the rounded ends of the armrests.

Ben got out of the Vette, limping with the cane, and opened the front gate, a rickety thing hanging from a single rusted hinge. Two hounds yelped, straining out from dog houses on rusty chains.

"Yuh might'n as well turn yurn ass around mister; we ain't buying anything," Marvin said.

"Why I ain't sellin' nuthin'." Ben said, stepping up.

"Don't recall anyone invitin' yuh up tuh the porch."

"Well, surely yuh don't mind a feller gettin' outta the rain now, do yuh? I sure don't wanna catch pneumonia."

"I don't give a damn what yuh get, asshole, as long as yuh get."

"Well, that's surely what I intend on doin', but I have sumpin' fer a Marvin Rencher, if that's you?"

"Yeah? What?" A wary look crossed his coarse, inbred face.

"Five hundred dollars."

The two mutants exchanged sly looks.

"Yeah, and why would that be?"

"I'm Merle's uncle."

"I didn't know Merle had an uncle."

"Well, I'm not really a close uncle; more like a distant uncle. He told me the deal between you and him; he's pretty hard pressed for money, so I offered to take up the slack; I surely don't want the boy goin' tuh prison."

"Well, since yuh got so much money maybe I ought'a raise the price some."

"Well, yuh got us over a barrel, surely; there's not much I can do."

The sow gave Marvin a smirky grin.

"That's right," Marvin went on. "You ain't got much choice, asshole. What say a thousand from now on and Janet comes back for a loving visit with her loving parents from time to time." Marvin grinned salaciously.

"Well, I don't have a thousand with me, but..." Ben reached in his overcoat pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. "but I've got five hundred and change. I can get the rest for yuh in a couple of days." He held the money out, took a step and stumbled dropping it.

Marvin bent over hurriedly scraping the bills up.

Ben brought the cane down with a loud crack on his head. He turned quickly and hooked the sow's neck, jerking her forward onto the floor. She squealed like a pig, as he hammered her knees when she rolled over. Marvin was scrambling to his feet. Ben hooked the cane behind a knee and jerked him onto his back with a crashing thud on the floor. He brought the cane down on his kneecaps, splintering them. Leisurely, he gathered up the crinkled bills and stuffed them back into his coat pocket.

He jerked Marvin's head up by the beard. "Now, we don't ask my distant nephew for money anymore, do we, asshole? Of course, you gotta understand this little altercation is nothing personal; it's just that I don't like competition; but if you do keep fucking around, I'll come back and hurt your ass, next time."

§

As Ben drove back lightning flashed across the sky. A few remaining leaves swirled down from the trees as heavy gusts of wind bore into them.

The electricity was off when he got to the cabin. Half a dozen scented candles illuminated the living room and the kitchen.

The PVC tube had been sawed apart just below the end cap, but none of the contents taken out.

"I wanted to see what was inside, but Midge told me it was none of my business, so I didn't."

"Right," Ben said, looking at Janet.

"Your overcoat is wet," Janet said. "Give it to me, and I'll hang it over the tub to dry out."

When she came back, she said, "How about I make some baloney and cheese sandwiches with chips. There's bacon left over from breakfast I can put on them, too. And I'll put a pot of coffee in the fireplace to heat up."

Ben nodded and sat down on the sofa, separating the sawed portions of the tube that were lying of the coffee table. There were several items wrapped in plastic storage bags over Bore-Store bags made of synthetic fleece. Ben took out his box cutter and cut open the heat-sealed plastic, then opened the fleece bags and began sliding out the contents. Merle whistled softly, and Janet paused in the kitchen to watch as Ben laid out a variety of weapons: a .38 revolver; a .357 magnum revolver; a custom made twelve inch double barrel shotgun with a pistol grip; a .25 automatic with silencer; a 9mm Micro Uzi SMG and a Desert Eagle .50AE semi-automatic.

"Damn, Ben, you planning on goin' tuh war?" Merle said.

"Guns are like money; you can never have enough." He withdrew two final packets along with boxes of bullets. The first packet contained three switchblade knives; the second a thick stack of banded hundred dollar bills.

This elicited another subdued whistle. "Where'n hell did yuh get that?"

Janet set down two plates with sandwiches and chips on the coffee table where it was clear of Ben's arsenal. "That's none of our business," she said, wryly.

"Ah, Ben knows I'm just askin'." Merle grinned. "Yuh wouldn't think a little runt like her would be so bossy, would yuh?"

"I'm not bossy." She gazed at the crisp stack of bills. "It would be nice to be rich."

"And she will be," Merle said. "if she has her way. She's as stubborn as a mule when she wants something. She's pestering me all the time to get my GED, work hard and make lots of money."

"People who work for a living work for a living," Ben said.

Janet looked struck. "What do you mean?"

"If you work for a living that's all you'll ever do; and, in the end, if you're lucky, you'll have just enough to bury yourself."

"But how can you get rich if you don't work?"

"Oh, you have to work, but some work is easier than other work and pays more. Listen, in any random group of people fifty percent will be stupid. They're the ones who clean the toilets. The other fifty percent own the toilets."

"How do you know what to do?" Merle said.

"You do whatever the government makes illegal, cause that'll be where the money is, and once you've got money you're above the law."

Ben handed Janet the stack. "Hide this somewhere." Then he put all the weapons back into the tube--except for the .357, the .25 and an ivory-handled switchblade. He glanced around the room, then picked up the tube and walked to the newel post at the base of the stairs. It had a pyramidal shaped cap with a slight rise from an overhanging base. Ben told Merle to get him a crowbar from the garage. When he came back, Ben pried the cap off. Inside, the post was hollow having been made by fitting four planks together forming about an eight inch square. Ben lowered the tube into it, then tapped the cap back on.

"Not as safe as a grave, but handier."

"I put your money in the cookie jar with cookies on top," Janet said, as they returned to the living room. She set a coffee pot among the glowing coals in the fireplace. "That'll be ready in a few minutes."

To the sandwiches, she had added juicy tomatoes, crunchy lettuce, mustard and mayonaise on top of the baloney, cheese and crisp bacon strips. The wind burst against the thick walls of the cabin, shaking and rattling the windows. Rain washed down from the darkening thunder-rumbling sky. 

~10~

Sometime during the night the electricity came back on. The glare of the living room lights woke Ben who got up and walked to the railing of the loft intending to go down the stairs and turn them off but stopped when he heard the pad of bare feet. Janet appeared from beneath the loft going to the kitchen where she turned off the light in there. She was naked. Coming from the kitchen she stopped and looked up at Ben. She waited motionlessly, like a sculpture, allowing him time to look, to observe, her eyes fixed on his. She waited. Ben turned back. The light went off.




A Southern Psycho



§

Ben had just finished breakfast and was smoking a cigarette when Janet, who was standing at the patio door looking out, said, "Ben, there's a woman fishing from the dock."

He took an umbrella and made his way down the steep slope of the hill to where it leveled off before getting to the dock.

She was wearing a raincoat and casting a spinner bait out toward the deeper part of the lake. Rain dripped from her Stetson. 

"I hear fishing is better on a rainy day," she said.

"They say rain puts more oxygen in the water making the fish more active. But with overcast skies, like this, they move in toward shore. You're more likely to catch something there than out in deeper water."

"Smart ass, aren't you. What kind of fish you got in here, Killer?" She angled her Graphite rod toward the shore.

"Bass, mostly."

She puttered around in silence for a while, then spoke. 

"Somebody beat up the Rencher's yesterday. You know the Renchers, don't you?"

Ben shrugged.

"It's their daughter living with you."

"Really? I don't think she mentioned that."

"Yep." She reeled in and made a leisurely cast. "Funny thing is, they don't wanna say who assaulted them. You'd think that would be the first thing they'd want to say . . . You know, on the one hand, I'm thinkin' that they're too afraid of who ever did it to say anything, but, then again, if it were I, I'd want the son of a bitch in jail who did it, right?"

"Yeah, maybe. Maybe he told them he'd come back and do worse to them, if they did."

"Well, that could be. But, on the other hand, I'm thinking, cynic that I am, that maybe the reason they're quiet is because they're guilty of something far worse than the beating they got, you think?"

"Well now, that's a good possibility."

"At any rate, I came here to tell Janet that her folks are in the hospital; cause I quess she'll be want'n to go see them, you know. Then I saw this lake and couldn't resist, but since you're here you can tell her." She reeled in her line and held her rod vertically next to her like a staff. She glanced out over the lake. "You know, this is nice and secluded. Maybe when the weather gets warmer I could come here and go swimming. I wouldn't need a bathing suit, would I? I don't wear a gun when I'm naked..."

"Neither do I."

"Apropos, Roy, the sheriff, told me you're a dangerous fellow--not that I needed that tidbit. He's the one who arrested you. But, you know, I like danger. It's the spice of life. Life wouldn't be worth living without it. Any man who isn't dangerous wouldn't be worth knowing and wouldn't be worth a damn in bed."

~11~

A light snow mixed with sleet was falling. Merle had driven Janet to school and they wouldn't be back till four. Ben piled another log on the fire and poured himself a second cup of coffee, lit a cigarette and settled back in the recliner. He dozed for a while and was awaken by the sound of a car pulling into the drive.

When he opened the door, Bud Shultz was standing there in a green, hooded, Gore-tex coat.

"Looks like we're gonna get some more bad weather," he said.

"Climate change."

"Bull shit."

Ben poured him a cup of coffee, and they seated themselves around the coffee table.

"Nice place you've got here; I just came by to give you this." He reached in his coat and withdrew a plain envelope. "I was instructed to give you this in a cover letter."

Ben took the envelope and looked at it. There wasn't any printing or writing on it.

"Don't open it until I leave. I don't want to know what's going on."

"Not a little curious?" Ben teased.

"Curiosity killed the cat." He finished his coffee and stood up. "I imagine whatever is in there will tell you what this is all about. I don't imagine I'll be seeing you again. So good luck and . . . better if you don't try to contact me in the future."

§

The snow was beginning to stick to the highway. It built up on the windshield where the wipers didn't reach. It was gonna be bad, Shultz was thinking. He didn't like driving in such weather. He wasn't good at it. He slowed down marveling at drivers who passed him, seemingly unconcerned, at a high rate of speed. He'd already felt his wheels slip twice even as slow as he was going. He grew tense, both hands tightly gripping the steering wheel. Damn, damn, damn. Visions of sliding off the road and being stranded haunted him. He fumbled for a cigarette and almost lost control as he over corrected when he hit a patch of ice and felt the tires lose traction.

The back window was covered over. The defroster wasn't working right back there. In his side mirror he saw a black car coming up behind him. He cursed silently. He didn't want a stream of traffic building up behind him. But there was no way he could pull over without taking a chance on getting stuck in the slush. The car was hugging his bumper now. Why didn't the son of a bitch pass him if he was in such a goddamn hurry? Suddenly he felt a thump. The son of a bitch was ramming him! What the hell? The car locked onto him, shoving. Was the son of a bitch crazy? There was another ramming, jarring jolt. Shultz screamed an obscenity. Oh, if only he could get his hands on that son of a bitch for just one godamn minute. 

There was a down hill stretch coming up with a rock wall on one side and a deep ravine on the other. The car rammed him again forcing him into the guardrail. As Shultz fought frantically to gain control, the black car swerved hard into his driver's side causing his head to shatter the side glass. His hands dropped from the steering wheel. He caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror as blood flowed into his eyes. The car careened wildly, caught on something, jerked. There was a grinding screech of metal and the car slipped over the guardrail disappearing into the ravine and bursting into flames.

~12~

"Schools are closing early because of the weather, so I brought Midge back," Merle said to Ben. Bob's Burgers ain't gonna be open tonight either, so I'm gonna head on to the dairy before the roads are impassable. I'll spend the night there. Old man Brown cain't get around much anymore, and cows have to be milked no matter what the weather does."

"You want me to make you some sandwiches?" Janet said.

"Naw, Mrs. Brown'll have sump'n to eat, babe."

§

"Isn't the snow beautiful, Ben?" Janet stood by the patio door looking at the huge fakes of snow swirling down. "Like millions of moths falling to their deaths," she added dryly. She looked back over her shoulder. Ben was in the recliner. "We could go for a walk."

Ben got his overcoat out of the closet and put on a pair of rubber boots.

"Wait a sec." She fished a brown, wool scarf off a hanger and, tiptoeing, placed it around his neck. 

He put his watch cap on.

She put a hand on his shoulder for balance and slipped on a pair of white boots, then a red, wool jacket and a black beret.

"Isn't it like a wonderland?" she said, as they walked down the road. Snow came down so thickly that it was impossible to see farther than a few hundred feet. Already it was three inches deep and building quickly.

Ben nodded, limping slightly.

"Does it bother you much?" 

"No, I'm alright."

"Did you fall down or something?"

"It was a going away present."

She looked at him but said nothing. Then, "Merle always talked about you. He thinks the world of you. You're his only real family. His step-father and mother are nothing but drunks. That's why we're so close. My parents are even worse. They--" 

"I know," Ben said. Merle told me."

Her voice quavered bitterly. "They were going to make me have sex with men for money. Merle dropped out of school, took on three jobs--that don't pay diddlysquat--and we moved in your place so I wouldn't have to be with them anymore. He wouldn't let me drop out of school to help out. Dumb bastard thinks I'm smart and should go on to college, but that's just a dream. We'll never have enough money for that, or anything, the way things are now." 

The snow built up on their wool coats. The earth was cold and white. 

They walked on in silence. After awhile they turned and started back to the cabin. The snow showed no signs of letting up. "I don't want to be poor, Ben. There's no point to living if you're poor."

The sky was dark by the time they got back. The snow flakes had hardened into stinging beads against their faces as the temperature dropped and gusts of wind blew into them.

The electricity was off. Janet lit some candles while Ben started a fire in the fireplace and lit two kerosene heaters.

"Would you light the one in the bathroom?" she said. "Take a bath before the hot water's cold?" She went into the bedroom and came back out after awhile wearing a blue, terry cloth robe. The tie belt was pulled tight around her narrow waist, accentuating the fullness of her breasts and hips. The cell phone on the bar was ringing. She picked it up. "It's Merle." When she was through she curled up on the sofa. "The electricity's off at the dairy, too. Merle said he would've had to milk the cows by hand if he hadn't had generators." She chuckled, rubbing a bare thigh where the hem of the robe had risen up.

Ben lit a cigarette.

"Do you want a beer?"

"Sure. Why not?"

He stared at the velvet sway of her hips as she went bare foot to the kitchen. Returning she curled back upon the sofa. "Merle put out half a dozen plants this summer for seed," she said. "And we got a truckload, along with six ounces of shake mixed with what bud was left after we picked all the seeds out. Merle wants to put out a bunch next spring. We were told a guy named Boone would buy all he had for three thousand a pound."

"Yeah, Boone's been around a long time. You'll undercut everyone at three K." Ben popped the can and took a sip.

"We need to sex them. Do you know how? Means only having to put out female plants?"

"Yeah."

"Can we really make a lot of money that way?"

"Yeah."

"Merle said you would know all about it."

Janet slid off the sofa, arching her back in a stretch. "I'm gonna take a bath. I'll leave some hot water for you."

Ben got up, after she was gone, and threw a couple of logs on the fire. As he started for the stairs, Janet called out. "There isn't any hot water left, but there's enough room for two."

§

Later, Ben heard her coming up the steps. She was naked, silhouetted in the faint glow of candle light from below. She lifted the covers and slid into bed with him. She smelled of lavender-scented soap.

"You're persistent, aren't you?

"Yup."

Her skin was smooth, soft and warm, her lips moist and hungry.

~13~

"Where're we going?" Merle said.

"Parker Motel," Ben said. "But, first, I want you to take me to a bootlegger."

"Nearest one in that direction is Danny."

Ben turned off the highway, down an embankment, onto a dirt drive and stopped in front of a trailer. Danny, a blond, slender youth came sauntering out after a moment, bare chested, despite the cold, a gun butt showing above his waistband.

"Hey, Danny," Merle said. "Need a case of Bud."

Danny ignored Merle, his eyes fixed on Ben. "Who the fuck are you?"

"That's my uncle, Danny. He's cool."

"I'm not talking to you, asshole; I'm talking to him. Now who the fuck are you?" he said, steely-eyed.

"I'm the guy driving this fucking car who wants a fucking case of Bud. You got a fucking problem with that, punk-ass mother fucker?"

Danny pulled a .38 from his waistband and aimed it at Ben's forehead, pulling the hammer back.

Ben was unflinching. "You shouldn't have done that." There was an explosion followed quickly by another.

Two bloody holes appeared on Danny's chest. He dropped . . . his breath no longer fogging the air. Ben was holding the .357. A face darted back from the door of the trailer. Ben got out of the Vette holding the gun cocked and went to the trailer. He could smell pot and baby shit as he entered. A soap opera was playing on a wide-screen TV. A baby was bawling farther back. Ben entered the bathroom halfway down the hallway. A naked woman was crouched down in the shower frantically trying to close the curtain. Ben fired twice. She spilled over onto the floor. He went into the bedroom and emptied the gun on the baby. 

"Ain't no world for an orphan," he murmured, reloading.

§

The woman behind the check-in counter pointed him toward the elevator. "There're cookies on the table," she said.

The door to 219 was open. Two men--one black, the other blond--were playing cards at a table by the windows. Smoke filled the room. A big man, built like a wrestler with curly black hair, was stretched out on the nearest twin bed, smoking a cigar and watching a ball game. Half a bottle of one hundred proof Southern Comfort sat on the night stand between the beds.

"You None?" the big man said. He had his hands behind his head, propped up on two pillows.

"I don't have a last name. My mother didn't know who my father was so she named me after her pimp. They put 'none' on my birth certificate where it said father's name. You can call me Ben."

The big man nodded thoughtfully. "Well, you can call me Bull. That's not my real name either, but it'll do." He stood up--not only big but tall as well, perhaps six and a half feet and a good three hundred and fifty pounds, all firm flesh. "Let's take a little walk." 

They did, down a couple of hundred feet of hall, and entered a room at the end with a swimming pool with arm chairs scattered around. There was no one else about. The motel was mostly empty.

"Guess it feels good being out of the can, doesn't it," Bull said after they sat down.

"Yeah, it does, and I'm interested in knowing why anyone would go to the trouble of springing me."

"Well, you know, um, you're in the fortunate position of being able to perform a valuable service."

"Yeah, for whom?"

"Good grammar. I like that." Bull shrugged. "You don't need to know that. It's not important who, only why."

"Alright. Why?"

Bull fixed his gaze on him, pulling on the cigar. "You were partners with a man named Wendell Collins before you went to prison. Since then Collins had made a shit load of money hauling drugs into the country. A shit load. We want you to tell us where he's stashed it."

"How in the hell would I know that? Last time I knew Wendell we were both poor as church mice. If he's made a shit load of money, I don't know nothing about it."

"Bad grammar. Tsk tsk. But you were big buddies, right? You can find out where he keeps it."

"Supposing I could, so what?"

"How 'bout a full pardon from the governor and eighty thousand dollars for every year you served, plus a public acknowledgement that you were not guilty of murder? New evidence will surface that you were acting only in self defense when three men attacked you--evidence the prosecution suppressed."

~14~

Page went in the Subway and got a Turkey Breast foot long and a Coke, then back to the Viper to munch on it, occasionally looking through her binoculars at the yellow Vette parked in the front of the Parker Motel two blocks away. The parking lot was practically empty. Snow had been scooped to the edges.

She waited until Ben came out and drove off, then drove to her apartment located in an upscale complex just outside town. She waited till dark, then called the Parker Motel. When a woman answered, she hung up, smiling, and changed into a grey business-looking outfit with a skirt short enough to arouse interest without being sluttish. She got out a winter coat and handbag from a closet, along with an attache case, and left down a flight of steps to her Viper, her spike heels clicking on the concrete pavement were the snow had been cleared away.

At the Parker she entered the vacant lobby through sliding class doors and walked across the shinny tiled floor to the reception desk where a woman in her forties, with kinky brown hair, was sitting.

"My, oh, my. It's so spooky in here," Page said. "So quiet like a morgue. Aren't you scared being all alone? I would be."

The receptionist smiled. "It's not usually so empty, but with all the bad weather we've been having we're not getting many travellers."

"I can imagine. Is there anybody here but me?"

"Not many. Only three units occupied."

"Ooh. Could you place me next to somebody? I'd feel a lot safer that way."

"Yeah, no problem; they're all on the same floor. We like to keep the occupied rooms together. Makes it easier for the cleaners. I can put you in 218. 219 is ocupied."

"Oh, that sounds fine, but . . . um, are the others nearby?" 

"Yes," the receptionist answered, slightly perturbed. Units 224 and 231."

"Oh, well, thank you so much." She paid in cash and took the elevator to the second floor holding a cookie between her lips. If 219 didn't pan out she'd only have to knock on two other doors. The thought that she might be wasting her time was with her, but intuition told her that she wasn't. Ben None didn't get out of prison based on his good looks. That would have taken high-powered clout. And it had to be clout for some important reason, a reason she might be able to turn to her own advantage. 

She knocked on 219.

He was big, overpowering, blunt-faced--and tall, so tall--a true hulk without the green skin.

Page looked up and smiled apologetically. "Gosh, I'm terribly sorry to bother you, but I can't get my key card to work. I'm such a clutz . . ."

Bull studied her for a moment, his cold, brown eyes taking her in, then smiled slowly, taking the card from her. "Nobody as good-looking as you could be a clutz, honey."

"218," she said, smiling sweetly, stepping back to let him pass. The smell of whiskey and tobacco flowed from the room. She caught a glimpse of a glock lying on a table.

He zipped the card through the slot and pressed the door handle down, opening the door.

"See there, that's all there was to it."

"Well, don't I feel like a complete fool. If this wasn't a dry county I'd buy you a drink."

"Well, honey bun, I'm pretty sure I can scrounge up a sip or two."

"You're the answer to my prayers, uh . . ."

"Bull, just call me, Bull, honey. That's what all my close friends call me, and I think we're gonna be real close."

"And I think you might just be right, Bull. In fact, I'm sure of it. I'm called Suzy by my friends. Just give me a minute to freshen up."

When she was in her room she took off her coat and jacket. She took a pepper-spray, dual function-ink pen from her purse, unbuttoned her blouse and clipped it to her bra. She wrapped four white pills in a piece of tissue and placed it in the bra, too. She examined herself in the bathroom mirror. Knock out, naturally.

He'd left the door open. There were two plastic cups on the table. The glock was gone.

"Come on in, Suzy. Little Kentucky bourbon suit you?"

"Sounds mighty good, Bull." She sat down at the table opposite him.

He poured two fingers in both their cups. She made a grimace after tasting hers.

"I know you're gonna think I'm a pussy, Bull, but would you mind putting a little water in mine?"

"Naw, not at all, Suzy. And I'm hoping you are."

They both chuckled.

When he was in the bathroom, she hurriedly dropped the four pills in his cup and stirred with her finger until they disappeared.

"Ah, that's better," she said, taking a sip when he returned.

"Glad you like it, and there's plenty more." He took a drink and refilled his glass. "Suzy, how did you know there was anyone in this room?"

"Well, when I got here the place was so empty and spooky that I asked the receptionist if there was were any other guests. She mentions that there were a few on this floor, and I asked her to put me next to someone; I guess that seems silly but--"

"Oh, not at all. I mean, a good looking woman like you can't be too careful. The world can be a dangerous place."




A Southern Psycho



"Mm. Say that again. I doubt it's a very dangerous place for a big guy like yourself, though. I doubt anyone in his right mind would try to give you a hard time."

"Those that have never did again."

"Oh, I can believe that, Bull. I'll bet a man like you has some interesting tales to tell."

"Could be, but nothing' I can talk about, though."

"Ooh, sounds very hush hush--nothing you can tell me?" She gave him a teasingly pouty smile.

"Well," he said, self importantly, "I could, but, then, I would have to kill you." He laughed.

She chuckled, crossed her legs seductively.

He took another drink. Yawned.

"Oh, now, am I boring you?" Cute hurt look.

"No way. It's just been a long day." He yawned again. Stood up. "I'll be back." He went to the bathroom. When he didn't come out, she looked in. He was sitting slumped over on the toilet, his pants around his ankles. She went to her room and took a flat metal case, the size of a wallet, from her purse and a washcloth off the towel rack. He was still passed out when she came back. 

She opened the case and pressed his fingers, one at a time, against the ink pad inside, then against a slip of paper in the lid. When finished, she wetted the washcloth and cleaned off all traces of the ink. She took his wallet out and copied out the information on his driver's license with her pen.

~15~

She threw the washcloth out the window of the Viper as she drove to Roy Knox's home.

"What the hell are you up to, Suzy?" Roy said. He'd been watching a football game stretched out in a plush recliner, a long-neck Bud on the nightstand next to him. His wife, Karen, was in the kitchen cleaning dinner ware. The kids could be heard playing in the Rec room.

"I need to know who these prints belong to, Roy. It may have something to do with why Ben None got sprung."

"And I bet there'd be an interesting story to tell on how you got these prints, hm?" 

"Not even R rated."

"And how much shit am I gonna be in if the owner of these prints finds out I'm checking him out without cause?"

"You've got reasonable cause . . . if he's involved with a parolee in something shady."

"Yeah, and what if he's not?"

Page shrugged.

Roy pressed his lips together with wry cynicism. "But more to the point, we may be mixing into something better left unmixed. Somebody very high up on a totem pole wanted this Ben guy out of stir, and they didn't do it just so he could play tiddlywinks."

Page nodded with a quick tilt of her head. "So you run the prints, what's the worst can happen? If this is some secret government operation we'll be informed the prints aren't registered--and that'll be the end of it."

"Uh-uh, they may not like it we're meddling. Could get hairy."

"Wha'dah I have to do, Roy, show tit? You worry too much. It'll be alright."

"Okay, I'll do it, but I have a feeling I'm gonna regret it--and you may have to show more than tit."

§

Bull woke up the next morning feeling like shit. He'd fallen off the toilet and spent the night curled up on the floor in a fetal position.

He staggered back into the bedroom area and stood staring at the two plastic cups. He picked up his cup and peed into it. Carefully, he picked up her cup and placed it back into the paper bag it had come from. "You're not as smart as you think you are, bitch."

~16~

She gripped the head of his cock and pressed it into her cunt. It hurt. Slowly, she lower herself, sighing softly. It filled her, the length of it. She groaned as her cunt touched the base of his belly. She moved the palms of her hands up his wiry sides to the taut rib cage. She leaned closer to him, feeling the rigid cock bend reluctantly inside her. Her hands gripped his hard shoulders, kneading with a firm insistence, then, trembling, moved up the sides of his square-jawed face, locking her fingers in the long, unruly hair. She pressed her lips against his, whispering softly. She didn't move. The slightest quiver and she knew she would come. She held back. She hung on the edge of bliss wanting it to last forever.

He filled her with his come, then left for Bob's Burgers. She took some tissue and shoved it up inside to keep his semen from trickling down her thighs. Naked, she wandered aimlessly about the cabin. She hadn't climaxed and was still hot. She touched her clit and shivered. She clenched her teeth, stroking herself. She stopped suddenly, on the verge of coming and went into the kitchen. She needed something to alter reality. To intensify it in a dreamy way.

Tip toeing, she took a box of kitchen matches from a holder on the window frame and withdrew a joint and a match. She sat cross-legged on the sofa inhaling the acrid smoke, holding it deeply in her lungs, then exhaling. Soon the harsh, sharp edges of reality softened and a cocoon of sensual warmth spread through her. She drifted. Time froze, dragged or skipped oddly. She squatted, took out the tissue and let his come drip into the palm of her hand, licked it up with her pink tongue and swallowed it. She lay down; touched her nipples; pinched them; stroked her firm belly with its peach fuzz--lower, to the soft moist center. She closed her eyes, drifting like a leaf on a slow moving stream; tasting the faint ammonia of his come.

Fingers moved in her. Hands caressed her. Too many? 

She opened her eyes slowly, groggily. Ages passed. Eons. She looked up through spider webs of confusion from a deep well. Two faces peered down at her. One black, one white. There was laughter. Black hands circled her delicate ankles. White hands gripped her slender wrists. They lifted her up, carrying her . . . somewhere.

~17~

"Wendell, there's a guy named Ben outside says he knows you," Gus said.

Wendell glanced at Cora Dean who was lying in a lounger, next to him, by the side of the indoor pool. The floor to ceiling windows, beyond her, were steamed over. A faint odor of chlorine permeated the room. Wendell studied her patrician face for a sign of emotion. There wasn't any. Cold, imperturbable beauty. That was Cora Dean.

Wendell's face registered dismay. "Ben None?" he murmured almost to himself.

"He didn't say; said you'd know him."

"Put him in the library, Gus. I'll be there in a minute. And, Gus, pat him down. Make sure he's not packin' or wired. He stood up and slipped out of his trunks and put on a lemon-colored hooded sweatshirt, pants and a pair of flip-flops.

Cora Dean watched him leave. A faint expression of derision formed on her face.

§

Ben was looking at the titles of books that covered one wall. Two other walls held several expensive looking Cubist paintings. The last was all glass that opened upon a view of widely-spaced oak and maple that had shed their damp, colorful leaves on a spacious rolling lawn.

"They're all first editions," Wendell said.

"Do you ever read'm?"

"Good heavens, no. They're too valuable for that." He paused for a moment as Ben turned toward him. "I thought Gus got it wrong when he said you were out here. I can't believe it. How the hell did you get out?"

"Prayer."

"Well, it good to see yuh, Ben." Wendell moved toward his mahogany desk, flipped open a cigar box and took one out. "Want one?"

"Naw, I'll stick to cigarettes."

"Now that you're out, got any plans?"

"Thought, maybe, I could invest some money in your operation."

Wendell chuckled, but his eyes were humorless, speculative. "Like a shareholder, huh? Ah, not a bad idea," he said, but without conviction. "How much you have in mind?" He sighed, faintly dismissive. 

"I've still got about seventy thousand from that bank job we pulled."

"Oh, yeah. The bank job," Wendell said, airily. "That was the start of the whole thing, wasn't it? You were the brains. You orchestrated all of it. I wouldn't be where I am now if you hadn't." He lit the cigar with a silver lighter and took several puffs. "But that's all water over the dam, now. Back then seventy thou seemed like a lot of money, but, hell, Ben, I've got cars, now, that are each worth four times that much." 

"Yeah, I kinda figured that would be the way it is when I drove up and saw the size of your layout. You've come a long way."

Wendell nodded, his eyes cold. "You could have, too, but you had to go blow it by getting drunk and killin' those punks in a senseless bar fight. For a smart guy you're not too smart; you're a loose cannon and you'll never have anything."

"Uhh, I guess I'd better be going before I wear out my welcome, then."

"Ben?" It was a woman's voice.

"Well, this is awkward," Wendell said, sarcastically.

"Cora," Ben said. She had come to the library door wearing a green iridescent robe. He turned to Wendell. "I see you took everything."

"To the victor blah, blah, blah."

Cora stood back as Ben strode past her.

~18~

"Well it's Saturday night and I just wanna get laid." Page sang, raucously and erratically, as she stepped into the shower. "I'm a fool about my money, don't try to save." She took a sip of burbon from a crystal tunbler, wiggling her hips and doing a little fifties dance step as she soaped her breasts and belly. "I'm gonna rock it up . . . whoo, whoo, whoo . . . And ball tonight. Yup, yup yup--yeow!" She sat her glass in the soap niche and raised her fists in front of her face, rolling them over each other while hunching her hips back and forth.

It wasn't Saturday night, though; it was Friday night. But she was feeling fine. She had the whole weekend to herself. And she was gonna get seriously wild. She dried herself off with a towel and put on a black minidress.

As she drove out of Kullhorn she goosed the Viper up to three digits and popped one of her happy pills. It only took her about eleven minutes to make the thirty-six miles to the parking lot of Dante's Inferno.

Black lights, strobe lights, mirror balls, glitter; the music loud, thumping; packed dance floor; nude pole dancers.

Dante's Inferno: 'All hope abandon, ye who enter here.'

"Whiskey Sour," Page said, to the bartender--a cuteness with a black thong-back bikini, pasties and a white collar-black bow tie. She took a cigarette from her clutch. A male hand appeared with a lighter. She leaned toward the flame. "Thanks."

§

When Ben got back to the cabin, it had begun to snow. The front door was unlocked; the rooms dark; silence. He clicked a light switch. The electricity was off. He lit a candle. In the loft he stripped, went to the bathroom and filled the tub.

He heard a thumping sound and went out into the hallway. It came from the bedroom. Janet was lying, spread-eagled, on the double bed, naked. Her wrists and ankles had been tied to the corners of the bed. Duct tape was wrapped around her head and over her mouth. 

On her belly words had been printed in red lipstick: FIND THE MONEY OR NEXT TIME WE WON'T STOP WITH JUST TYING HER UP

Ben went to the kitchen and came back with a carving knife. When he had cut her loose and removed the gag, he carried her into the bathroom and set her in the tub, then climbed in behind her, holding her. She shivered like a whipped puppy and leaned her head back on his shoulder while he scrubbed the words away. When he finished, she gripped his wrists and placed his hands on her breasts.

"What's it all about Uncle Ben?"

"So now I'm your uncle?"

"Yes, if Merle can call you Uncle, then I can, too."

"Doesn't that make me guilty of incest?"

"What difference does that make? I'm jailbait, too, but they can only hang you once."

"Hm."

"What do those men want?"

"They want me to find money someone else has that they want."

"Who are 'they'?"

"I don't know. Black Ops, mercenaries--former Special Forces, Navy Seals--whatever; hired killers working for some government agency, probably the CIA or some corporation like Black Water or KBR."

"Must be a lot of money if the government's behind it."

"Uh-huh."

"But why do they think you can get this money?"

He told her about Wendell. "We were partners, once upon a time. We were gonna smuggle drugs into the country from Columbia for the CIA. They use money from drugs to fund covert operations: suppressing or fomenting insurrections or supporting dictators favorable to the American government. But I got sidetracked for ten years. And from the looks of it, Wendell went on to make quite a bundle. Now the CIA, or whoever, wants the money he's made. Either he's been cheating them or he's no longer useful to them. But they don't know where the money is, and they think, because we used to be partners, that I could know where it might be or that I'll be able to find out." 

"Will you?"

"I have a strong incentive."

~19~

"It's Quantico, Bull," Al said. He was on his cell phone, his feet propped up on the table in Bull's motel room. Eddie was across from him playing solitare, a cigarette dangling from his purple lips. Bull, lying on a twin bed, clicked the remote, muting the ball game he was watching. "The lab says your piss test was positive for cock smack, heh heh. The cunt doped you, alright."

"Yep, figured it. They get any prints off the cup?"

"Yeah, said they only got one fuzzy thumb print, though. But there was enough points of identication to come up with a possible, a parole officer named Susan Swain Page located in this area; it's not a hundred percent, though." Al gave him a desription.

"It's her," Bull said, sighing cynically. "Get an address."

~20~

A grey Mercedes passed them on the dirt road going to the cabin as Ben drove Janet to school. Cora Dean was waiting inside when he got back.

"You should lock your door," she said, leaned back in the recliner.

Ben sloughed off his overcoat and tossed it over the newel post. "Wouldn't do any good," he said, lighting a cigarette. "My parole officer would just break it down."

She was wearing a black mini dress with a mandarin collar. Spiked heeled ankle boots. A leather coat lay neatly folded on the coffee table.

"You hate me, don't you? I don't blame you."

Ben sat down on the sofa, crossed his legs and stretched an arm along the top of the sofa back. "No. You did what you had to."

She nodded, wistfully. "You were supposed to be in for life. What else could I do?"

"Nothing."

"You know I love you."

Ben inhaled on the cigarette and slowly blew out a stream of smoke. "Did Wendell send you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"He wants me to find out what you're going to do. How you managed to get out of prison. Why."

"Uh huh. And what are you willing to do, for him, to find out?"

"I don't give a damn about Wendell, Ben, or what he wants. But for you I've always been willing to do anything--anything, damn you, and you know it. We're two of a kind; there's no other one for me but you."

Ben gave her a long look, then sighed. "They got me out of prison to find out where Wendell hides his assets."

"Who?"

"The government, the CIA, someone high up."

"I know he doesn't keep anything in banks. He's too paranoid to trust them--or anyone."

"In the house somewhere?"

"She shook her head. "No. I happened to walk in on him one day in his bedroom. There was a huge pile of money on the bed--millions of dollars. Later, I saw him drive off in his SUV. The money was gone. Two hours later he was back . . . He has a landing strip, farther back of the mansion, where planes fly in drugs which his men unload, then, in a few days, buyers will arrive in planes or by cars to pick up a shipment for a pile of cash. Everytime this happens he leaves in his SUV, returning a few hours later."

"You never tried to follow him?"

"No. He would have killed me if he'd ever caught me spying on him. And, why should I? He gave me everything I needed--as far as material things were concerned."

"H'm. I need you to call me the next time a shipment arrives."

She looked crestfallen. "You want me to go back to him?"

"You don't have to, but unless I find the money he's hiding, I'll go back to prison, and a girl named Janet will be killed."

"Was that the cutie I saw you with?"

"Yes."

"I don't care about her . . . but I'll do it for you." She paused, started to say something, hesitated, then spoke, her tone resentful. "Are you fucking her?" Then she shook her head, laughing. "Of course you're fucking her. You'd be a damn fool if you weren't."

She, paused, lit a cigarette, giving him a thoughtful look. "There's something you need to know about Wendell, why he was rude to you. He set you up. He hired those three punks to kill you. You and he had put up a lot of money to buy drugs from Columbia. When he saw how profitable it was going to be, greed got the better of him. He had your connections. He no longer needed you. He was scare when you suddenly showed up after ten years, afraid you knew he'd set you up or would find out. At heart he's a coward."

"How do you know he set me up?"

"He likes to brag about it. He's always hated you for being smarter than he is. His massive ego couldn't take it. Getting the better of you made him feel superior. He doesn't understand concepts like loyalty or friendship. He thinks those things are weaknesses." She stopped for a moment as if considering something. "I know you, Ben, and I know you'll kill him, and he deserves it, but you have to find out where he hides the money first. I don't want the government sending you back to prison. Once you find the money, we can skip out, go anywhere on earth we want to. And to hell with all of them."

~21~

"Call me Al."

"Suzy's what my friends call me."

"What's your poison, Suzy?"

"Whiskey Sour."

"My treat." He turned to the cutie bartender. "Two Whiskey Sours." She gave him come-hither look that wasn't faked, for he was a blond-headed hunk with a movie-star face. He gave her a toothy grin and turned back to Page. "You come here often?" 

"Often, I'm a drunk."

He chuckled. "A mighty pretty drunk, too."

"I haven't ever seen you here, and I'm sure I would . . . remember . . . if I had." She let her eyes rove over his hard body, the narrow hips and broad shoulders--fitted jeans, sports jacket, shirt opened two buttons down, gold chain around the muscular neck. A nice bulge in his crotch made her feel giddy.

He sat down on the stool next to her and lightly traced invisible patterns with his fingers on her exposed thigh beneath the hem of the yellow minidress. Normally she wouldn't have tolerated such a bold gesture, but this was nice, exciting.

"Wanna dance?"

She held her clutch out to the cutie. "Hold this for me." She took a healthy sip of her Sour. Al slipped a hundred to the cutie, then led her onto the packed dance floor of hot, sex-filled yearnings; young hungry flesh bumping and grinding; hips thrusting against hips; hard bodies undulating like a sea swell of lust.

He held her close, hands squeezing her buttocks. Other dancers jostled them, pressing them tightly together. The heat of bodies; the flashing lights; the glitter; the swirling mass--made her woosy. She stumbled. He held her up. She leaned her head against his shoulder. Slip, slip--slipping away; swirling down. She staggered drunkenly. She couldn't remember which foot came next. She was being walked, half carried to an exit. She felt one of her heels drop off.

"Can't handle her liquor," a voice said.

She was in the parking lot. The air cold. Everything dream like. She saw faces passing, unfocused, leering at her. A car door opened. Phase out. 

Someone--Al?--shoved her onto a bed, face up. A hand removed her remaining heel; slowly, pushed her dress up and pulled her panties down. Other hands--?--set her up, pulling her dress over her head, then unhooked her bra leaving her naked.

She found it difficult to focus her eyes. She peered up at the ceiling as if through a film of Vaseline. Her head dropped to the side. A naked man was standing next to her. Farther back, was the silhouette of another naked man standing backlighted in a doorway. She tried to move, but it required too much effort. Her arms and legs flopped about uselessly.




A Southern Psycho



"Wanna call Bull and tell him we've got her?" Eddie said.

"Uh uh--no no, Eddie. We're gonna have some fun first."

Al started to get on the bed.

"Ah, hey, wait a damn minute. No one said you go first."

"You wanna go first?" Al groaned, his cock was straining upward. He wanted it ensconced in the woman. He stared at Eddie's huge black cock with it's bulbous head. The damn thing actually quivered. He slid back off the bed.

"We flip. What's fair's fair." Eddie said. His hand gripped his cock, squeezing it.

"Oh, shit." Al reached for his pants crumpled on an armchair. He took a quarter from the pocket. "Okay, damn it; you call it." 

It landed heads. Al laughed and climbed back on the bed. She flopped about helplessly, her limbs uncoordinated. He stared hungrily at her perfect body. The mound was shaven, the lips tightly together. He bent her legs up until her knees were on her tits, held them there rubbing the head of his cock up and down the slit fighting an animal impulse to ram the head in. He forced her mouth open, smearing her lipstick, and inserted two fingers wetting them with her saliva, then moistened the head of his cock.

He pushed against the tightness of the mound and felt the caress of the lips as the head slowly spread them. 

"Aah aah," she gasped. A grimace formed on her face. She arched her back, raised her arms, attempting to flail him, but he pushed them aside easily and slapped her. "Ow, oh oh. No, stop, stop," she cried, trying to squirm out from beneath him.

He jerked her hips to him. His straining cock sank deeper within her. She squealed softly, her hands pressed against his muscular chest.

"You like it, don'cha bitch? He hunched another inch into her, then another. Her struggles became more frantic as she felt his belly come closer and closer to hers. He would come in her, she knew. She panted, sweating, twisting and staining, but her body wouldn't respond to her will. She was helpless; her frustration was overpowering. She could hear him chuckling, arrogantly taunting her.

She would not let him come in her. Something raged inside her. But shame and humiliation built in her as she realized she was too weak to resist him. She felt his belly against hers. She moaned. He had won. She felt his cock withdraw, then plunge back in, then out, faster and faster in a white heat. Sweat dripped from his body onto hers making them slick as if oiled. 

Suddenly he arched his back, became rigid, groaning, and she felt the warm gushes of semen filling her. She became limp. Resistance was futile.

He sank on her gasping, the hard muscles of his chest pressing down on her breasts cruelly. He withdrew from her after a long moment. She felt warm drops of come sprinkle her belly.

She watched the black man, the one called Eddie, come toward her. He had a huge cock, the foreskin slid back revealing a swollen, purple head. It was a club of thick-veined meat that swung heavily from side to side beneath a belly rippling with taut, bronze muscles.

The thought of taking all of it made her cringe. "No, please, please."

"Get on your knees."

She hesitated. He grabbed a handful of her long blonde hair and jerked her savagely off the bed onto the floor, forcing her to her knees. He held the base of his cock and slapped it against her face, smearing more lipstick across her cheeks. 

"Open your mouth," he said, teasing. "Come on, baby . . . don't . . . play . . . me." He jerked her head up and slapped her back and forth, brutally. "Don't . . . play . . . me . . . bitch!"

The sight of her naked body; the knowledge that he could do anything he wanted, worked on his libido. Images of naked Iraqi women came to mind; how he'd forced them to do every sexual act in the book in front of their towel-headed husbands; then how he gutted them with his dagger or blasted them on full auto--rock'n roll-- the whole family--men, women and children. God, the young naked children; his cock splitting them, bloody orifices. God . . . . The screams; the screams.

He pressed the head of his cock against her trembling lips.

"I want lipstick on my belly."

He grabbed the sides of her head and forced his cock all the way to the back of her throat. There was still four or five inches left. Her lips were stretched to the limit. He hunched, pulling her head closer. She gagged, pressed her hands against his hard thighs, squirming; her ass wiggling, but he continued pulling her forward.

"Lipstick on my belly, bitch."

He felt warm liquid surge around his cock. Vomit oozed out between her lips and his cock.

He pulled harder. Her mouth, her lips, pressed against his pubic hairs. He held her tightly, her nose crunched against his belly so forcefully that it was impossible to breathe. She struggled frantically, in desperation, her naked body writhing, arching, straining to no avail. Her breasts flopping up and down, swaying from side to side.

"God damn it, Eddie, you're gonna kill the bitch, you fucking psycho." Al leaned in the bathroom doorway, watching, his cock semi-rigid.

He came over and got of his knees behind her and placed his hands on her squirming hips. His cock rose up in quick spurts becoming harder and harder. 

He nudged it against her asshole. "Back off, goddamnit, Eddie; let the bitch breathe a little."

"Aw, she'll be alright. Hos are tough."

"You know, I must be crazy. I fuck this bitch, then take a shower to get all nice and clean, and, now, here I am, back again, having unprotected sex and getting her shit all over my dick."

"Yeah, but it feels good, don't it, bro?"

"You think it feels good to her?"

"I don't know; she not complaining."

"That's because you've got your damn dick in her mouth. I don't think she's into it, Eddie." Al looked at his cock. "God, we humans are nasty. 

"Her face is turning purple."

"That's because she can't breathe, damn it. Do you think she squirming around just to show us how much she likes it?" He slapped her butt. "Be still, bitch. It's hard to keep my dick in you when you're jumpin' around like that."

"Feels good to me."

"Aah, God, I'm coming. Damn bitch, keep jumpin' around. Ah, God! Can't hold it. Making me come."

He pumped his dick in and out rapidly. Come trickled from her ass as he withdrew. He fell back on the floor. A spurt of finishing come shot up in the air. "Aw, damn, that was good."

"I think she's dead, Al." He pulled his cock out of her mouth. She sat back on her heels then toppled over onto the floor.

"I told cha to back off, damn it; how the hell did yuh think she was gonna breathe with your damn dingus shoved down her throat?"

"You know CPR?`"

"Yeah, but I'll be damn if I'm gonna give it to her after you've had your dick in her mouth. Why don't you give it to her?"

"Shit, her mouth's all full of come. Nasty bitch."

"Aw, I think she's still breathing. Her tits are moving. Let's put her on the bed and cuff her to the headboard."

~22~

"You knew Wendell Collins?" Merle said. He was kneeling by the fireplace crumbling newspaper up on the grate and placing shavings on top.

Ben nodded. Janet, wearing a blue housecoat and grey bunny rabbit slippers, was making ham and eggs. The smell of toast and coffee permeated the air.

"They were buds," Janet said.

Merle placed some sticks on top of the shavings, then medium sized logs. "Have it going in a minute." He struck a match and held the flame to the paper. "Wendell--he's a rich'n. He's got a mausoleum over at the cemetery where I mow grass."

Janet carried in a tray with a plate full of ham and eggs, toast, hash browns and a steaming cup of coffee. "I'll get yours in a sec, Merle."

Ben took a cautious sip of the coffee. "Merle, I want you to take some money from the cookie jar and buy yourself a pickup, whatever turns you on."

"Are you serious, Ben?"

Ben nodded, a mouth full of ham.

"I've got to go to the dairy, first," Merle said, his facial expression one of wonderment. "Are you . . . sure, Ben?"

"Yeah, then we've got to dig a deep hole."

~23~

"How much money are we talking about, Bull?" Al said.

Bull was looking at Page lying naked on the twin bed nearest the door. Flecks of scalely grey come covered her thighs, belly, breasts and face. 

"You guys have been fuckin' the shit out of that bitch." He took a cigar out of his shirt pocket, peeled the cellopane off and lit it. He blew a violet cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. "We're talking millions."

"How are we gonna keep the agency from taking it all and leaving us high and dry?"

"Agency's not gonna get jack shit. Once None leads us to the money we kill him, take the money and, with new Ids, disappear to live happily ever after."

"What about Collins? He's not gonna just let us walk off with all his money."

"Collins's not gonna be around. Once None tells us where the money is, we tell him that Collins hired the men who attacked him. None'll kill'm."

"And we kill None."

"And anybody who gets in the way."

~24~

Ben opened the door to Wendell's mansion. It was unlocked. He'd told Cora to unlock the door and keep Gus occupied. To the right, after the foyer, was the library. Wendell was on the phone sitting behind the mahogany desk. Ben motioned with the .357 and Wendell hung up.

"Keep your hands where I can see them, Wendell."

"What do you hope to gain by this, Ben?"

"Satisfaction."

"Satisfaction?"

"Yeah. You set me up. Sent three punks to kill me; but that didn't work out, did it? I got framed for murder and sent to prison for life--but that was alright, wasn't it? Just as good. I'd be out of the way forever. But, you see,Wendell, things don't always work out the way we plan them."

"Cora's been talking, I see. Knew I couldn't trust that cunt." He paused. "Mind if I have a cigarette?" 

Ben tossed him a pack, then a lighter.

"You know," he said, lighting up, "I can sympathize with your desire to get satisfaction; I'm a bastard; I admit it. It's genetic, I guess, but if you let me live I'll see to it that you never have to worry about money for the rest of your life."

"Well, that's decent of you considering half of what you've got would've been mine."

"Yeah, yeah, but if you kill me you've got nothing but satisfaction--and that's like love, you can't live on it. Don't be an asshole. What's done is done. Why screw up the rest of your life for a quickie. You're smarter than that."

"You about finished with that cigarette?"

"Ben . . . ."

The .357 rocked in his hand. Wendell's head exploded, then he toppled over onto the floor. After a moment there was another shot from somewhere else in the mansion. A minute or two passed, then Cora appeared dressed in grey sweats holding a .38.

Ben lit a cigarette as she walked around the desk and stared at Wendell's body. "I shot Gus," she said, matter-of-factly.

"H'm."

"You did find out where the money is, didn't you--before you shot him?"

~25~

It was two a.m. There was a knock on the door of Room 16 of the Sweetwater Motel.

"Here's her purse," Karen said, when Al opened the door. She was the cutie from Dante's Inferno wearing a raincoat. 

"Well, come on in, darlin'; the night's young."

"I don't do group," she said, glancing at Eddie. "--or niggers."

"Oh that's alright, darlin'; and don't mind Eddie; he's not sensitive about his race." Al took the clutch and tossed it to Eddie who was lying on the farthest twin bed from the door. "Take that to Suzy. Tell her to put some makeup on; she looks like shit without it--we've been ridin' her hard," Al said, to Karen. He closed the door.

"Twenty-five for a hand job;BJ's fifty; all nighter a hundred, and you wear a rubber."

"What about girl on girl?"

"I don't do that."

Al slapped her hard. "Wrong answer, bitch." He shoved her on the bed. "Take your fuckin' clothes off; me and nigger wanna watch you and Suzy get it on."

She sat up and wiped a tear from her eye. 

"Come on, peel it, bitch."

Underneath the raincoat she was still wearing her skimpy bartender's uniform. Naked, she had a cute, tight, little bod; black fuzzy hair; blue eyes with a pert nose in between; kissable lips and bold white teeth. Her cunt was shaven clean, the lips tight. There was a barbwire tattoo above the biceps of her left arm.

Eddie stood in the bathroom doorway watching her. "Guess yuh knows dis nigger's gonna be fuckin' your white pussy, muppetfucker." He turned and grabbed Page by the hair and dragged her into the room. "Show time, bitches!"

~26~

The rain came down steadily. Ben turned off the isolated county road and drove the Vette through the main gate of Ashley Cemetery. "Merle said it was toward the back."

He followed a circular lane winding through the various monuments. Grey stones beneath a grey sky. At the back was a line of mausoleums bordering woods. One, of grey granite, had the name COLLINS on the cornice. Three steps led up to a bronze door with fluted columns to either side. Large urns sat on pedestals before them. 

They got out and walked up to the front. Cora pulled the hood of her raincoat over her head and stuffed her hands in the pockets. Ben climbed the steps and peered through the shatterproof glass behind the bronze bars of the door. Rain drew his long blond hair down in wet strands.

"How did you know this is where Wendell hid his cash?" Cora asked, glancing around furtively.

Ben turned toward her. "Merle mows the grass here; he mentioned that Wendell had a large mausoleum. Wendell has no family. No wife, children. His father's dead and he never had anything to do with his cunt mother who ran off with another man. He doesn't have brothers or sisters and no close kin--so why in the hell would he need a mausoleum? 

"Maybe for his ego."

"Yeah, but not one with six crypts," he said, gesturing with a tilt of his head toward the door.

"How long before Merle gets here?"

"Not long. Fifteen, twenty minutes."

She took the .38 from her coat pocket and pulled the trigger twice. He lurched back against the door, then, knees buckling, toppled down the steps collapsing on the ground. She stepped to him and took the .357 from his shoulder holster. "Sorry, babe, but money trumps love. You'd've done the same if the situation were reversed."

She dragged him out of sight behind the mausoleum, then waited for Merle in the Vette; the rain made pitter-pats. She was on her third cigarette when he pulled up behind her. The teenybopper was with him. He hopped out of a new F-150, an anxious look on his young face.

She got out of the Vette. 

"Where's Ben?"

"Behind the maus." She gave him a warm smile, her hand around the .38 in her coat pocket.

He pulled the mini uzi from the pocket of his yellow slicker and loosed a short burst. A shocked look formed on her face; she stumbled backwards awkwardly, then sank to the ground. He reached in her coat pocket, found the .38 and pocketed it. Then hurried to the back of the maus and found Ben lying on the ground, his cell phone gripped tightly in his hand. Janet came up behind him.

"Oh, God, is he still alive?" she said.

Ben opened his eyes, blinking against the rain. "The course of true love never runs smoothly." 

Merle nodded. There was blood just below the rib cage.

"Get me to Doc Morgan, if the old fucker's still alive."

"You need to go to a hospital, Ben."

"No, those black ops will kill me if they find out where I am. Did you take care of Cora?"

Merle nodded.

"Stuff her in your tool box. Janet can drive me to Doc's. You know what to do."

~27~

Doc Morgan had a small farm about ten miles from Kullhorn. He was broadcasting cracked corn to half a dozen chickens from the porch when Janet pulled the Vette into the driveway of the faded white frame house.

She hurried around to the passenger side and helped Ben out.

"I'm not practicing medicine anymore," he said, before they reached the steps. 

"He's been shot," Janet said. Ben had his arm around her shoulder.

"Take'm to the hospital. I don't wanna get involved."

"The Vette's yours," Ben said, grimacing, rain dripping from his long, stringy hair.

The doc fixed his eyes on it, calculating. 

"All right; come on," he sighed, irritated. Inside, he led them through a living room, piled with years of accumulated dust and junk, down a hall with peeling wallpaper. Spider webs clung to a hanging light fixture and from the ceiling where it right-angled with the walls. He showed them into a small room with a dusty, steel medicine cabinet and an examination table with a worn leather pad. "Put'm there."

Janet stared at his grossly, ugly face. It looked like it had been cured in a smokehouse. There was an unwashed smell about him, and his shirt and pants hung dirty, like they'd never been changed. 

He removed the overcoat and seeing the shoulder holster looked dubious. When he'd removed the shirt he examined the wound. "Bullet went all the way through."

"Should be two," Ben said.

The doc rubbed his chin. "Uh huh, well that explains the fresh gouge in your holster. One of the bullets must've ricocheted off of it."

"Will he be all right, Doc?"

"Ach, if he doesn't start pissing blood."

Ben started to get up, then slumped back down.

"You're in no shape to go anywhere," the doc said. He went to the medicine cabinet and loaded a disposable syringe from a vial.

"What are you doing?" Janet said.

"I'm gonna give him an injection to help fight infection. He needs to stay here awhile for observation. Uh, go farther down the hall to my waiting room. I'll be along shortly."

When she was gone, the doc smiled. He stuck the needle in Ben's arm and pressed the plunger with his thumb. Within a few moments Ben passed out.

Janet came to a doorway and looked in. If it had been a waiting room once, why was it at the back the house instead of up front? It obviously wasn't any longer, at any rate. There was only a filthy, unmade twin bed with stained sheets, and an old TV in front of a shabby recliner. On a stained nightstand next to the recliner was half a bottle of Southern Comfort and four empty cans of Budweiser. The scuffed wood floor hadn't been swept for ages. As in the hall, one could see a path that had been formed in the dust from the door, to the bed and to the recliner. Janet grimaced, wondering how anyone could live in such squalor. True crime magazines, with their lurid covers, had been piled loosely against sections of the walls. Naked women, their eyes wild with terror, spilled from their pages, male hands cupped over their mouths holding razor sharp knives to their throats or others gagged and tied or chained in various seductive poses.

Janet started to back out of the room, but the doc appeared, blocking the way.

"My wife used to keep the place immaculate ..." He paused as if he'd lost his train of thought. "...fifteen years without..., but when one gets old...living alone...good housekeeping seems...pointless. But I can tell you're a neat person...freshly scrubbed, tight little body ...clothes clean smelling...flesh, perfumed flesh...lipstick...eye shadow...glossy hair...you have that prettiness, that vitality of youth. Something we who are old no longer have...if only...if only we could drain it from you like vampires drain blood from their victims...infusions of life giving--"

"How long will we have to wait before--"

"--sperm is all I have now. Wouldn't you like to give life, have my life in you?"

"I think I'll get Ben, and we'll go now. You have to . . . and you're right. I...think maybe I...ought to take him to a hospital...after all."

"Oh, I'm afraid that's not possible now. Ben's sleeping. We mustn't disturb him. He needs to rest."

"Well...then, I'll come back later and--"

"You're not going anywhere."

Janet stepped back. 

"All I have to do is pick up the phone and dial the sheriff's department. Do you want me to do that?"