Richard Marsten - Vanishing Ladies

I came out of the woods behind the motel, and I staggered down to the gravel court, and I shouted, ‘Help!’

I wasn’t thinking of detective work at the moment. I was thinking I’d been bitten by a poisonous snake, and I needed a doctor. The office door opened. Barter and Hezekiah stepped into the light.

‘Help!’ I said again, and I limped toward them. Hezekiah came out of the doorway. Something big and ugly was in his hands.

‘I’ve been bitten by a snake,’ I said, and Hezekiah, son of a bitch that he was, hit me on the head.

I felt like a private eye.

Only private eyes get hit on the head. They feel ‘blackness closing in’, or ‘consciousness going down the drain’. Or they feel ‘the lights going out’. Private eyes are always getting hit on the head. It’s a wonder their skulls don’t look like sieves.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been hit on the head with a wrench. Hezekiah hit me with a wrench. In books, in the movies, you get hit on the head with a wrench and you go unconscious and when you wake up you feel a little dizzy. Otherwise, you’re fine. You just missed a little bit of the action, but everybody is in a big hurry to fill you in.

I would like to correct this false impression.

The skull, even if it is a hard one like mine, is a pretty vulnerable thing. If you get hit with a wrench, or a bottle, or a hammer, or a chair, or a club, or a shoe, or whatever, you don’t just drift off into a peaceful sleep. Bang your head sometime by accident and see how quickly the bump rises. Then add the force of a man’s arm and shoulder to the blow, add the terrible impact of a piece of forged steel.

Your head cracks.

The hair cushions the blow only slightly, and then the steel splits the skin and opens your skull, and if you’re lucky you don’t suffer a brain concussion. If you’re lucky, you bleed. Your head aches, and you bleed. You bleed down the side of your face, and down the side of your neck, and under your shirt collar. There is a hole in your head, and your blood runs out of it, and when you finally come to, the blood is caked and dried on your temple and your cheek and your neck.

You squint up at the light, and you feel only a terrible pain somewhere at the top of your head. You can’t even localize the pain, because your whole head seems to be in a vice, your whole head is pounding and throbbing. This is the hangover supreme. This is the prince of all hangovers, and you don’t laugh it off and drink a glass of tomato juice. There’s nothing to laugh about. You’ve been hit on the head, and the chair didn’t shatter the way it does in the movies — but your head did.

The light was a naked bulb suspended from a long thin wire. It hung motionless in the center of the room, a feeble sun that assailed my eyes when I opened them. I blinked. My head ached, and my leg throbbed, and I remembered the snake bite, and I could feel crusted dried blood on my face and on my trouser leg. I was sitting in a chair. I tried to get out of the chair, but my hands were tied behind it, and my legs were tied to the chair legs.

A girl was sitting opposite me.

The girl was a pretty brunette. Her eyes were wide with concern.

‘Thank God,’ she whispered.

I blinked at her.

‘I thought you were dead,’ she said.

I blinked again. The girl was tied, too. She wore a white cotton dress and straw pumps with lucite heels. She was very pretty, a big girl, a big girl tied in a small chair, the light hanging motionless over her head.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

I tried to talk but nothing came to my mouth. I cleared my throat. ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I said.

‘I’m Ann,’ the girl said.

It sounded like a vaudeville routine. ‘Are you all right?’ ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ ‘How do you do; I’m Katz.’

‘How do you do; I’m Katz,’ I said.

The girl looked puzzled. ‘Aren’t... aren’t you Tony Mitchell?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I got bit by a snake.’

‘It wasn’t poisonous,’ the girl said. ‘They were talking about it. One of them said it was better this way, and then another said there weren’t any poisonous snakes in the area.’

‘My head hurts,’ I said.

‘You look awful.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Is Phil all right?’

‘Phil?’

‘Yes. Don’t you...?’

‘Phil,’ I said. ‘Jesus, are you Ann?’

‘Yes, I told you...’

‘Forgive me.’

‘It’s all right. I was afraid you were dead. You were bleeding so badly when they carried you in.’

Who carried me in?’

‘A short fat man, and a tall—’

‘Barter and Hezekiah,’ I grinned. ‘It sounds like a law firm.’

‘ Is Phil all right?’

‘He’s fine. I’m Katz. Forgive me, I’m dizzy. My head hurts. I’m supposed to call him. He’s worried about you.’

‘I’m fine,’ Ann said.

‘Not again, please.’

‘Not what again?’

‘Nothing. Where are we?’

‘In Davistown.’

‘Where in Davistown?’

‘Somebody’s apartment. A man they call Joe.’

‘Joe Carlisle?’

‘I don’t know. They didn’t say his last name.’

‘How’d you get here?’

‘By train. And by taxi.’

‘When?’

‘This morning.’

‘What time is it now, anyway?’

‘It’s almost midnight.’

‘I’m supposed to call Phil.’ I paused. ‘They brought you here this morning, huh?’

‘Yes. When my dress dried.’

‘When your what?’

‘My dress.’

‘That’s what I thought you said.’ I blinked. ‘Maybe you better start with when they took you out of the cabin.’

‘I was fast asleep,’ Ann said. ‘They came in, two of them, the short one and... Barter, is that his name?’

‘Yes.’

‘Barter and the blonde. Stephanie.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘They took me out of bed, and then a truck came out of the woods. The tall one, Hezekiah, was driving it. They put me into the back of the truck. That’s how I got the blood on my dress. Somewhere in the truck.’

‘Where’d they take you?’

‘To Hezekiah’s place. He lives on a road somewhere near the motel. It wasn’t a very long trip.’

‘Then what?’

‘They made a phone call. Stephanie made it. To this man, Joe. They told him to get over to Hez’s place right away. When she got off the phone, Barter said “Good. When he gets here, you go back to the motel, get some clothes and some luggage, and get into that cabin.”I guess he meant the cabin they’d taken me from.’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Joe arrived about a half-hour later, and he and Stephanie drove off in the Cadillac. They had me tied in the bedroom. Barter and Hezekiah left, too, but Hez had trouble starting his car. It’s a very old car.’

‘They left the truck at Hez’s place?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you see anything else in the truck?’

‘No. Was there anything else?’

‘I don’t know. Go ahead, what happened next?’

‘They came for me early the next morning. Stephanie saw the blood on my dress, and she washed it out. We waited until it dried before we left.’

‘Where’d you go?’

‘To Sullivan’s Corners. Stephanie drove us in the Cadillac’

‘Us?’

‘The redhead and me. Blanche. She looked like a slut.’

‘She was.’

‘She had on the most horrible purple dress. Stephanie was dressed garishly, too. A bright red dress. We made quite an interesting trio.’

‘I’ll bet you did. What happened then?’

‘We stopped for coffee in town. Blanche had a gun. She was carrying a white stole over her arm, covering the gun. They said they’d shoot me if I spoke to anyone.’