Brett Halliday - Last Seen Hitchhiking

“Ready,” Rourke said.

“A good place to start would be Professor Holloway’s expedition to Yucatan last winter.”

Bright light was beating strongly against her eyes. Was she in a hospital bed? Her arms and legs were weighted, as though inside multiple casts. Music was playing. It was cerebral jazz, one of the quintets that flourished in the 1950s.

Cold air played across her body. She was naked. She tried to sit up, and found that she was strapped to a doctor’s examining table.

A voice said cordially, “Frieda Field, detective. Tell me, have you ever actually used that gun I found in your bag? You see a black thief running out of a delicatessen. What do you do, shoot him dead?”

A man came into view. He, too, was naked, except for a surgeon’s cap into which he had stuffed his abundant hair. In a part of the world where a year-round tan is a mark of normality, his skin was soft, pale, covered with light fuzz. His genitals were all but hidden in folds of fat.

She was beginning to remember. She had taken the ride with him because in spite of his studious appearance, he had seemed a little rushed. The upper and lower halves of his face said different things. He had the look of someone who slept poorly. While he was freeing the seat-belt, the pads of his fingers slid along her neck, and she had known with absolute certainty that this was the one she wanted. Her hand went to her revolver. Then a flare, and after that darkness and heaviness, and nothing else until now.

“What did you ask me?”

He smiled down at her. One of his front teeth had been damaged and never fixed.

“Something about a gun, wasn’t it? Just making conversation. Try raising your gun-hand.”

“I’ve already tried. Do you know a girl named Meri Gillespie?”

“With the funny spelling. Yes, that was me. That was I.”

“I’ve been hoping we’d meet. I didn’t expect it to happen quite like this. Will you tell me your name?”

“Oh, it’s Bruno, damn it. Quickly, without thinking: react to the word rape.”

“It’s all right for some people,” she said immediately. “I’m against it.”

Her quick answer startled him into a laugh, ending in a moist chuckle. She studied him. To come through this experience alive, she knew she had to diagnose him correctly and find a way to make contact.

She turned her head, to investigate her surroundings. He had some expensive monitoring equipment. She recognized the drum and recording stylus of an electroencephalograph. Before she had time to wonder about it, she noticed a small bright object on top of a bookcase filled with medical texts. It was the missing piece from Holloway’s mask.

Bruno caught the change in focus. “Do you know what it is?”

“Didn’t you give her a chance to tell you?”

“We were too busy to discuss it.”

“It’s the left eye of a Toltec funerary mask. Probably representing some god, but who knows? The whole piece is considered so spectacular that museums have been bidding for it.”

He was silent for a moment. “Now I understand why they’re sending private detectives after me. A missing girl or two — who cares? But missing property.”

“As a matter of fact, there’s quite a bit of feeling about the girls.”

“Hysteria. The great American middle class always has to have something to be afraid of. Communists. Martians. Shortages.”

“Rapists.”

“Rapists, absolutely. But that eye — I knew there was something about it. I burned everything else. But that I couldn’t throw away. It kept giving me looks, as though it knew everything there was to know about me. Doesn’t it give you that feeling?”

“Very much so. Will you move it or cover it with something? I like privacy when I’m raped.”

Again he gave his sudden laugh. “You’re cool, you know? I’m beginning to think you’ve been raped before.”

“I’ve imagined it,” Frieda said.

“It’s part of the collective unconscious. Tell me about it.”

“I’m told it’s quite common among women who had satisfactory sex and then all of a sudden had to do without. I was married five years. All of a sudden, for some reason, my husband went up from four drinks a day to about a quart, and that interferes with sexual performance as well as so much else. I didn’t know why it happened, I still don’t. Some of it was probably my fault. And then he died.”

“Yes?”

“Months went by. After a while I stopped missing him so much. I have a few friends who take me to dinner, but they all liked Harry, and so a glancing goodnight kiss is a major event in my life. Sometimes they make a move, but the instant I hesitate they stop cold, as though they’ve been caught committing some social mistake.”

“Gee, too bad.”

“I’ve been talking to a doctor about it. He tells me not to worry about the rape fantasies. I want sex to happen, but I don’t want to play any part in bringing it about. So are they really rapes? To be properly raped, to get the full benefit, I think you have to be scared, don’t you? Both consciously and subconsciously, all over. You have to be rigid, fighting.”

She was talking fast, trying not to look at him too closely. At least he was listening.

“The truth is,” he said dogmatically, “that nobody knows a goddamn thing about the subject. And yet it’s punishable by long-term confinement in a maximum-security institution. Pretty severe, for an act that may take only half a minute. Define rape for me.”

“Forcible entry, without the woman’s consent.”

“You’re beginning to sound fairly intelligent. Did that late husband of yours, who knocked back a bottle a day, ever come home from the neighborhood gin-mill, whip out his thing, and push it inside you without getting you ready first or asking what you thought of the idea? Rape. What did you do, put him in prison for life? You forgot all about it by breakfast the next morning.”

“We were married.”

“Rape. Murder. Marriage doesn’t entitle a husband to murder his wife. It’s an anomaly. All right, when he forced his way in without your consent, did your heart race and your nipples erect? What about those supposedly involuntary muscle spasms?”

“I think I had an occasional spasm. I don’t remember.”

“Listen,” he said, “I’m going to break a pattern here. I usually don’t give my subjects anything to drink. It fuzzes the reactions. I’m going to handle you a different way. We have time. Four days and four nights. You still don’t really believe it. After you’ve been tied up for four days, you may lose some of that cool. Nobody’s coming to get you. Was that yellow scarf a signal? Nobody saw it.”

“If you’re pouring drinks, make mine a Scotch.”

He laughed again. “Sweet baby, I love you. I’m going to feed it to you in little sips, because I can’t run the risk of unbuckling you. I see you’re a dangerous woman. But I’m dangerous too!”

“You don’t look it.”

“Because of my non-erection? Some people get big only when the woman’s helpless and screaming. I don’t mean you have to scream, Frieda. Scream if you feel like it.”

He leaned down. She gave herself orders to lie still, but she flinched — unfortunately less than an inch. His mouth closed on her breast. From the bookcase the eye of the Toltec mask stared down impassively. After a time Bruno withdrew, leaving her nipple wet and standing.

“See? And that’s in spite of the fact that you’re scared of me, and I must be one of the most revolting specimens you’ve ever seen.”

“As a matter of fact, I think brains are more important. My husband was overweight. He was like you — he didn’t believe in wasting time out on the beach.”

Bruno looked at her threateningly. “Don’t try to be too clever! I can see the wheels going around. If you don’t mind it, it isn’t rape. Right? So if you can persuade me you don’t mind it, maybe I won’t do it. But I’m Bruno! Bruno has put three people to sleep.”