"I get the eyes!" Mabel chimed in.
"Shut up!" Tim barked.
Rick laughed. "I see that you've made Mabel Schneider's acquaintance," Rick said, chuckling. "Very good. She's good at what she does, yes?"
"You won't get any argument from me about that," Tim said. 'This old bitch killed both those guys in less than two minutes."
Rick sounded pleased. "I knew she would work out. Nobody was expecting her."
"Where the fuck did you find this old cunt?'
"It's a long story, and I already told you the short version yesterday," Rick said. He sounded bored. And I don't have the time to go into great detail of how dear, sweet Mabel Schneider came to my acquaintance."
"1 know she flew out from the East Coast, so what's her story? She know the outfit in New York or what?"
"You've just answered your question," Rick said.
"She's tied in to the scene in NewYork, then?"
In a way, yes" Rick murmured. "She was around when the scene in New York was fucking invented." Beat. "Listen, I gotta go. Why don't you let Mabel Schneider illuminate you to her sordid history. Let her watch Animal work, and when he's done she can have an eyeball if Animal hasn't completely fucked any up. Make sure she eats it there, though. We can't risk her boarding a plane with body parts." "
Tim felt his stomach flop in his belly. "So she wasn't shittin' me, then? She really gets off on eatin' people's eyeballs and shit?"
*1 do like shit," Mabel said matter-of-factly. "1 like fresh shit out of a nice tight asshole."
"Shut the luck up!" Tim barked at her.
Rich Shectman laughed. "Oh, you crack me up, Tim. You act as if the grotesque acts you've participated in the past five years are morally repugnant to you now"
"Animal doesn't eat people's shit!" Tim yelled into the phone.
"No, he doesn't," Rich Shectman said. "You telling me that you'd rather watch Animal skull-fuck some bitch to death or side-fuck 'em rather than eat the shit out of her ass?"
Tim didn't know how to answer to that. The question pissed him off. "Forget it. Okay, so I take this wrinkled-up old Miss Hannibal Lector fuck with me. Then what?"
"When she's finished, take her back to her room to get some sleep. Old people need their sleep, you know. Animal has his own transportation. Put Mabel on her flight tomorrow morning at 8:30 A.M. sharp. She leaves on US Air into Philadelphia, flight 135. Your own flight leaves two hours later into LAX. I'll meet you back here at my office for the transfer of the product."
"You'll have my money for me then?" Tim had gotten Rick to advance him twenty-five grand for the next job, which was already lined up. What he didn't know was that Tim already had his bags packed at home and was leaving for parts unknown that afternoon as part of Phase One of his plan to blow the whistle on Rick and the whole scene.
"I'll have your money, you greedy fuck. Just make sure you have the tape. You fuck this one up, your ass is mine." He chuckled. "I might even feed you to Mabel Schneider."
Mabel cocked a look of revulsion at Tim. "I heard that. You don't look like you'd be very good. You'd be too fat and buttery-tasting."
"Fuck you!" Tim barked at her.
Rick Shectman laughed and hung up.
Tim Murray jabbed the oFF button on the cellular, and when he braked for a red light he replaced the phone in his breast pocket. Mabel Schneider was grinning. She looked excited. "It's been a long time since I've seen anybody get done live."
"You've done plenty yourself, right?"
"Oh yes. Of course!
Tim didn't want to talk to this old crone. Not realty. But he was dying of curiosity and he couldn't help himself. "How many people have you done?"
"I don't know," she said, looking out the window as they drove through the city to the outskirts. "Thirty maybe. I stopped keeping count around then, so it's probably been more like sixty."
"You've killed sixty fucking people?" Tim would have found it hard to believe that this old woman killed the two people at the Luxor this morning if he hadn't seen her results, let alone sixty. Still, Rick Shectman wouldn't have sent her if there wasn't some verifiable truth to her claims. "How long you been killing people? Howd you meet Rick?"
"I've known Rick for ten years," Mabel said, not looking at him. Tim stole a quick glance at her. No wonder she fooled a lot of people. She really did remind him of a grandmother-the kind that baked pies and knitted blankets and kept all the pictures of her grandchildren in nice little frames perched on a shelf in her living room.
"You in the New York scene, then? It's true what Rick said?"
Mabel Schneider turned to look at him, and now she bore a different expression. Now she was all business. All trace of the meek little old lady were gone. "I was first introduced to the pleasures of pain from my father, back in the 1920s. He used to whip me and my brothers. I grew to like it. He was a Catholic, and he felt guilty every time he beat us, so he would get us to punish him for his sins. My brothers and sisters, they were too scared to do it. I wasn't, though. I grew to like whipping my father. We had a… relationship." She smiled. Tim got the message and nodded. "By the time I was twenty, I was working a dungeon in Philadelphia. 'chat's where I met my first husband. We went into business together and did very well. He… he misused me too much and I left him in '43. 1 had saved up some money, though, and met my second husband a year later. We married, and that's when he tried to force domestic life on me!
"He forced domestic life on you?" Tim chuckled, shook his head. "What, he knocked you up or something?"
"Yes. I bore that sonofabitch three stinking kids." Mabel's tone of voice had taken on a tinge of disgust at the mention of childbirth."I never did adapt to motherhood."
"You ever whip your kids?"
"No" Her fingers closed over the clasps of her purse. "For a while there, I… I tried to be a good wife to Marlon. Even though he was a whipped dog"
"So what happened?"
"When the kids were in school and Marlon was at work, I started entertaining clients again," Mabel resumed. "It started innocently enough at first. I had a couple of affairs with people in the neighborhood. I got involved with a man who liked to be beaten. He introduced me to the scene in New York. There wasn't much of a scene in the town we were living in at the time." "
"Where was that?"
"Lititz, Pennsylvania"
"Where the fuck is that?"
"Lancaster County TWo hours west of Philly"
Tim nodded for her to continue.
"My husband didn't suspect a thing for three years. I never left Lancaster County; my lover brought people from New York with him, submissives who were into whippings. We played out scenes in my basement, or in his. I started to make some money." She paused. 'Men it happened"
*What happened?"
"I accidentally killed a client" Mabel looked at him, her features calm, serene. "A salesman had paid me to whip him and then mutilate him. He was overweight and… well, he had a heart attack. Jerry, my lover, freaked out. The guy's eyes were bugging out of their sockets and I was still wrapped up in the scene. I plopped one of his eyes out and ate it!
"You fucking ate the guy's eyeball?"
*Yes."
Jesus, luck me! Tim gripped the steering wheel tighter as they reached the outskirts of the city. "So that's how you got the taste for it." "
Mabel nodded."A few months later, I almost got caught. I lured a high school girl to my house for a scene. I'd seduced her a month or so earlier. She was sweet. And her eyes were beautiful. I… I couldn't help myself."
*You ate hers, too?"
"Yes." Mabel's fingers were clasped over her purse protectively She looked out the window, reflective. "I couldn't control myself and I just gave in to my urgings. Jerry had to come over the next day to help me get rid of the body. He was scared. He was afraid I was…"