She ran into the street, dodging one car and then a delivery truck. A man delivering pizzas swerved into another lane, not wanting to get involved. She screamed belligerently at him, then saw a dorky guy wearing a baseball cap drive by in a Celica, and banged on his windshield.
“Please help me. That guy is trying to hurt me.”
His window came down. “Get in.”
Tawny jumped in. Bobbie grabbed her door before she could close it, and tried to pull her out. Leaning across the seat, the driver punched him in the face. Bobbie fell hard on the pavement with blood pouring from his mouth. The Celica pulled away, and Tawny clapped her hands together and let out an elated squeal.
“That was the best,” Tawny said.
“Thanks.” Her rescuer sheepishly averted his eyes and drove away. He wore a Dodger baseball cap and thick black glasses.
“What’s your name?”
“Tom.”
Textbooks lay on the back seat. Calculus. A book on the fall of the Roman empire. Henry James. Tawny wondered what it would be like to go to bed with a nerd, and blow his socks off.
“Thanks a lot, Tom.”
He smiled nervously. “Was that guy... your husband?”
“Ha-ha. You moonlight telling jokes?”
“Sorry. Guess that was a pretty dumb question.”
“Know where the Las Palmas hotel is?”
“Sure. It’s on my way.”
“What are you studying?”
“I’m taking a few classes in education. This might be another dumb question, but that guy back there, do you even know him?”
“Not his name. But I sure know his kind.”
“You a hooker,” he asked, watching the street.
“You a Boy Scout?”
“Yeah, I guess I am. Tommy the Boy Scout. My good deed today was helping a hooker get home safely.” He took a sharp right off the Strip, and a mile later parked beneath the blinking neon sign of the seedy Las Palmas. “Well, nice meeting you.”
“You too,” she said, opening her door.
“Wait a minute,” he said in alarm.
She followed his gaze. On the sidewalk in front of the hotel lay a smoldering cigarette butt. Someone had been there moments before, yet had managed to become invisible. Tawny shut her door, not moving. “He followed us,” she said under her breath.
“Sit tight.”
He got out and had a look around, then got back in. “Must of been my imagination. It’s okay; you’re safe with me.”
He wasn’t much to look at, but he cared, and Tawny liked that. Their eyes met, and behind the glasses she saw the wanting look that was always there in her line of work. She placed her hand on his left thigh. “Like that, Tom?”
“Yes. I think... you’re very pretty.”
She ran her forefinger up the pant seam to the growing bulge in his crotch and put her mouth up to his ear. “Want a BJ?”
“Sure.”
She pulled down his zipper. “I’m going to tell you a little secret. I’m not really a hooker. I’m an actress.”
“Really?”
“I was in Straight and Narrow. Do you remember the scene in the disco, and the girl who serves Brad Pitt a martini? That was me. I had a line.”
“That’s tremendous. Are you going to be in any more films?”
“Someday.”
“Wow. I always wanted to kill someone famous.”
“What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
Their eyes met, and Tawny knew right then she’d jumped into a car with a madman. She tried to scream, and he grabbed her by the throat. Reaching beneath the dashboard, he drew a knife, and in one swift, practiced motion, plunged it deep into her chest.
Tawny felt the life seep from her body as the Celica drove around the hotel, and her passenger door was opened. Felt a pair of hands drag her out of the passenger seat, and dump her body into an open garbage can, then heard the car pull away.
She grew weak, and started to pass out. She did not want to die like this. She thought of her poor mother, and how she’d react. She’d never cared how her mother felt, yet she did now.
She heard a man’s deep voice. Thinking she’d died and gone to heaven, she opened her eyes, and saw a homeless person standing over her, his hands rifling her pockets. She grabbed his arm.
“Please help me,” she whispered.
Chapter 11
Wondero
On their twentieth wedding anniversary, Wondero’s wife had given him a propane grill from Sears, and on the same day they had nearly gotten a divorce trying to assemble it. It had more parts than an automobile engine, and too many that did not fit the way the instructions said they would. In the end they had kissed and made up, and Wondero had slid the grill into a corner of the garage, hoping to never see it again.
But on a sunny Saturday afternoon a month later he pulled the grill out and fired it up, just to see if the home breaker actually worked. In a few minutes he was a convert: the flames were evenly distributed over the layer of lava rocks, the grid hissing like a cat. Going inside, he found a platter of raw hamburgers on the kitchen table, his wife fixing cole slaw, smiling at him. His kids raced past in their bathing suits, the dog on their heels, and before he could yell about dog hair in the pool, he heard the splash.
He groaned and Corey tossed him a cold beer.
“That’s what Saturdays are for,” she reminded him.
She was right; he needed to loosen up. Taking the portable radio outside, he turned the volume up so it competed with his kid’s screams. A few minutes later Corey brought out a plate of buns to be toasted. “You’ve got a phone call from downtown.”
Over the radio he heard the sweet sound of a baseball hitting a bat. The tone in her voice suggested it was nothing important. Irritated, he went inside to his study, and picked up the phone. “Hello?”
The line was dead. He hung up feeling a lump in his throat. The house had grown quiet and he went into the kitchen and looked outside. Everyone was gone. Corey, the kids, all the food, everything but the grill. In the pool he saw something floating, and sticking his face against the sliding glass door, realized it was the dog.
He shuddered, feeling all of his internal alarms go off. In the stillness he could feel a deadly entity lurking somewhere within his home. For a long moment he felt paralyzed; his worst nightmare had come true.
He stumbled through the downstairs, unable to find his gun in any of its usual hiding places, his stomach feeling like it was about to explode. Dread, he had learned long ago, was like nausea with horns.
He climbed the stairs knowing he was too late.
He found Corey upstairs in their bedroom. Death had ripped her clothes off, used nylon stockings to tie her wrists to the headboard of their bed, and slit her throat from ear to ear.
He found my son’s dismembered body in his room down the hall, the stereo turned up to a deafening roar. On the wall of his son’s room was a huge map of the United States. In blood Death had scrawled Everyone Dies!
He found his daughter in the bathroom, drowned in the toilet, the bottom of her bikini pulled down to her knees.
“Looking for me, Harry?” he heard a voice ask.
Wondero gently laid his daughter’s body on the bathroom floor and moved into the hall. Death stood at the other end, a 12 gauge shotgun cradled in his arms, rocking it like a baby. Wondero charged him as if fired out of a cannon, no longer caring about his own welfare, and saw the tiny ball of flame leave the gun’s barrel even before he heard the gun’s violent retort.
“What happened then?”
“Corey woke me up.”
“Have some water.”
Wondero took a sip of Evian. “Thanks.”
“What did Death look like?”
“Same as before,” Wondero said. “No hair, no eyebrows, pale white skin, really strange eyes.”