"Yeah," said Slackjaws, "I saw. I guess you're right; I just like to be ready, that's all."
"Well if you want to be ready," said Paul, "put the gun away and concentrate on Ambush. He's the one who's going to be doing all the work."
"Not all the work," said Slackjaws. Both men laughed.
"Right," said Paul. "Not all of it. This is going to be quite amusing." Already he was thinking ahead, savoring the thought of Judy spread-eagled on the bed with the dog between her legs, lapping at her cunt with his long tongue. Yes, this would be quite a scene.
"Yeah," said Slackjaws. "First we'll warm her up real good, get her ready for the dog, and then Ambush'll take over. Boy, this oughta be something!"
"Take over," agreed Paul, "and how!" He could hardly wait to see Judy writhe with pain as the dog's huge prick tore into her, split her apart. Other people's pain, particularly womens' pain, was Steve Paul's laughter. "Then when Ambush is through," he said, delighted, "we'll go over and take care of that other bastard, that cop, Kramer."
"Right," said Slackjaws, his small cruel brain racing with anticipation. "What a day, huh?"
"What a day indeed," said Paul. "Two major problems taken care of, and both so simply." He chuckled. "OK," he said, lowering his voice, "let's shut up. She'll be back any minute, and we want to be sure to surprise her."
Tim stood at the door, paralyzed with fear and rage. He wanted to smash down the door and charge those two hoods, throw them both out the tenth story window, but he knew he could never pull it off. He would just have to warn Judy, then get someone to help them. It was the only way.
He would have to hurry; she should have been back already. He ran to the elevator, saw that it was waiting on the ground floor, decided that it would take too long to get there. He ran to the exit, took ten flights of stairs three steps at a time, burst through the front door and out onto the sidewalk. Desperately he strained his vision in both directions, looking up and down the street, but Judy was nowhere to be seen. He thought of leaving a note in her mailbox, realized he had no pencil and no paper. Then he saw a small boy sitting on the front steps of the next building, playing with a yo-yo. "Hey kid!" he yelled. "Want to earn a dollar?"
"Sure," said the boy, getting up and coming over to where Tim stood. "What do I have to do?"
Tim gave the kid a dollar, described Judy and told him the message. "Whatever you do," he said, "don't leave until she gets the message. Make sure she gets it, OK?"
Good, thought Tim, that's taken care of; now to get some help. That cop, he thought, Kramer, that's the guy I need. I can warn him about Steve and Slackjaws, then I can get him to help me get us out of this. Kramer, he thought, Kramer: he's the man.
"Johnny," came a voice from across the street, "Johnny! Get over here this minute!"
The boy stopped his yo-yoing, looked up and spotted his mother. "I can't, Ma!" he yelled. "I'm working!"
"I'll work you," screamed his mother. "Get over here, now!"
Johnny reached into his pocket, felt the crinkly dollar bill. Well, he thought, I've already got the dollar. I guess I can watch from the window, catch the girl before she gets into the building. He got up, looked down the street. No girl.
"Johnny!" yelled his mother.
"OK, Ma, OK," he replied. "I'm coming."
A few minutes later Judy came down the street, carrying a carton of eggs and some cigarettes for Tim. She stopped to look up at the sky, at the two puffy white clouds that were drifting past the tops of the buildings. It was so beautiful, she thought. Everything had been beautiful since last night, since she had met Tim; now she could hardly remember a time when she hadn't been happy. Maybe it was true, maybe they could get away from Jay and go off somewhere, to Italy, or even just to San Francisco; anywhere but L.A. or Bisbee, Arizona. And even if they couldn't get away just now, still working for Jay wouldn't be so bad as long as she had Tim. Yes, she thought, everything was different now.
She went into the building, pressed the elevator button, rode to the tenth floor. There was a mirror in the elevator; Judy carefully brushed the hair from her eyes, tucked her blouse in. She wanted to look nice for Tim, always.
The elevator stopped. Judy got out, walked down the hall to her apartment, her heart starting to beat faster as she thought of Tim waiting for her inside. They would have some breakfast then make love again, maybe all day long. Oh, it was going to be good!
She unlocked the door, walked into the living room, saw that Tim was not there. Oh well, she thought, he's probably in the bathroom. "Tim?" she called, but there was no answer. Maybe he's gone back to bed. They hadn't had much sleep last night, it was true, she thought, smiling to herself; he's probably tired.
"Tim?" she called again, but there was still no answer.
She walked into the bedroom and froze with terror as she saw the grinning faces of Steve Paul and Slackjaws. They were sitting on the edge of her bed, between them the biggest dog Judy had ever seen, heaving and panting, spit dripping from his tongue. What were they doing there? Judy had heard stories about how Jay "punished" any girl who disobeyed him, and she could think of no other reason for their being in her apartment. But her fears for herself quickly subsided as she realized that Tim was nowhere to be seen. What had they done to him? Was he even now lying on the bathroom floor, beaten unconscious, or worse?
"What do you want? Where's Tim?"
"Now Miss Burton," said Steve Paul, his mouth contorted in a vicious grin, "is that any way to welcome your friends and associates? You haven't even said hello to us."
"Never mind that crap," said Judy. "You guys aren't here to pay a social call, I know that. What have you done with Tim? If you've hurt him, I'll…"
"You'll what?" snapped Steve Paul. "What will you do, Miss Burton, slap us? Pull our hair?" Slackjaws snickered. "No, Miss Burton," continued Paul, his voice becoming milder, "I don't think you'll do anything to us. We're your friends, after all. We've only come to share a little pleasure with you."
"Yeah," said Slackjaws, grinning, "a little pleasure."
"As for your young friend," Paul went on, "he's perfectly fine. As a matter of fact, he's on his way to see Jay right now, to receive a little fatherly advice. Jay just loves to give fatherly advice, doesn't he, Mr. Nelson?"
"Yeah," said Slackjaws, without the slightest idea of what Paul was talking about.
Judy didn't know whether to believe them or not. What did they mean, fatherly advice? Was Tim going to be fired, or as they said, only warned? It might not be so bad if he was fired, she thought. Then I could quit too and we could get out of here, go someplace else to live. We'll find some kind of work, she thought; we'll make it somehow. It might be rough, particularly at first, but we'll make it.
Slackjaws coughed, jerking her thoughts back to the present, to the two thugs sitting in her bedroom. She was going to be punished, she knew that, and probably punished brutally – Steve Paul's imagination was something of a legend, as was Slackjaws' strength – but she felt she could take anything they could give her so long as Tim was all right. Then, when they were through…
"All right," she said. "Get on with it." She had no idea of what they had in mind, but she wasn't going to make it any worse by putting up a struggle. They would have no help from her.
Steve Paul was disappointed. She was too passive, too tractable – he much preferred his hobby when the objects of his cruelty put up some sort of fight. Besides, they usually fucked better when they were scared, he thought. Shocks of sex began to move through his body as he recalled the many girls he had tortured, how they had screamed and begged for mercy, and how finally they all succumbed, excited much more by the violence being done to their bodies than they ever could have been by normal foreplay. Steve looked hungrily at Judy, taking her whole body in with one avaricious stare. This was a lovely girl, he thought, one of the loveliest he had ever seen, second perhaps only to Cindy, and even then… His passion began to rise as he imagined her tied on the bed, whimpering with pain and fear and lust, begging them to fuck her, to fuck her some more. Yes, he thought, this was going to be quite a party, quite a party indeed.