Ken Douglas - Dead Ringer

“Fucking cunt!” Rage roared through him. “Cunt, cunt, cunt!” He grabbed a fist of her bloody blonde hair, jerked her head up. She was still alive. Not for long. “You know me?” He shrieked. “Do you know me?”

Her eyes flamed as she glared up at him. Then the fire went out.

Horace slapped the woman with an open palm. He raised the hand into a fist. Hit her again, was about to go for her a third time when he got a grip on himself.

The bitch was beyond punishment.

“Horace.” Blood trickled out of Virgil’s mouth as he croaked the name.

“Don’t talk.” Horace slid over, cradled his brother’s head in his lap.

“Hurts plenty.” More blood. He coughed it out.

“Hang on, I’ll get you to a hospital.” Horace knew he was lying as the words left his lips. There would be no hospital for his brother.

Virgil gripped his wrist. One more gurgle. A gasp. His body shook. Eyes dilated. His bowels cut loose, the stink of shit overpowering the smell of gunfire. It was over. He was dead.

A terrible silence ruled the van.

He crawled over the bloody bodies, got into the front, slid behind the wheel. A quick check ahead and in the side mirror told him nobody had stopped. Maybe nobody had heard, the ocean was on the right, closed stores across the street on the left. Horace leaned his head out the window, dragging in good, clean air.

First things first. He was being paid to deal with the bitch, make it look like an accident. Anything else and the DA might look harder into the Fujimori shooting. Striker didn’t want that. Horace didn’t want it either. But a sex murder might be just as good. Especially if she was found behind that faggot place. Cops would think some gay guy raped her, popped her and dumped her.

Horace laughed.

Then he cried.

“God damn, Virge, you shoulda used the handcuffs.”

Horace started the van, pulled away from the shoulder. He made a U-turn at the next light, driving through the Beaches-Huntington, Bolsa Chica, Seal-without seeing them. Virgil was a problem. He couldn’t toss his body out any old place. And he damn sure didn’t want it connected to the bitch. He thought on it, but nothing satisfactory came to mind.

A cop car passed, going the other direction and that jarred him to the task at hand. He followed the policeman in the rearview, till he was sure he wasn’t going to do a U and come up behind.

When Horace got to the Shore, he made a left on Second Street. He slowed to a crawl as he approached the Menopause Lounge. There were people out front. The pickup places in the Shore were doing a brisk business, matchmaking for the evening. Horace thought about Sadie, but quickly pushed her from his mind.

The dashboard clock said 11:00, still early. He made his left down toward the beach. The street was quiet, tall trees brushed by the breeze flitted in the pale moonlight. Dark shadows danced across his sight. He knew they moved only in his imagination, but he tightened his grip on the wheel anyway.

He passed a couple strolling arm in arm as he made his right onto Ocean. Rage lashed at him, a whip across his back. They looked young. They were gonna go somewhere and fuck. He wanted to smash them.

The flashing neon whale on the gay bar brought him back to reality. He made his turn at the corner before it. The alley was dark as he pulled into it. He stopped behind the bar. It was quiet, save for the soft sounds of Simon and Garfunkel drifting through the walls. It didn’t seem right. Faggots were supposed to listen to Barbara Streisand and show tunes. S amp; G were singing about Mrs. Robinson and Horace laughed. It was the soundtrack from The Graduate. That counted.

The sliding door opened with a screech, Bob Dylan’s harmonica on a bad day. He sniffed the night, worried he might draw attention to himself, but after a few seconds he decided it was okay. Either he was gonna get caught or he wasn’t. Fifty-fifty. Time to get on with it.

He climbed in back with the stink. Virgil lay between her and the door. Horace slid it closed in case someone came out to dump the trash. Fifty-fifty maybe, but one couldn’t be too careful.

He scooted toward the front, grabbed Virgil by the foot, pulled him away from the bitch. The stink engulfed him. He thought of himself as a hard man, but he gagged, fought the vomit, held his breath. He took up Virgil’s knife, cut the clothes off the bitch, tossed them aside.

Next, he took off the shoes. Paused. Had to breathe. Sucked in a short one. Retched all over the bullet holes in the bitch’s breasts. On his knees, he fought for oxygen, a drowning man with no choice, he sucked in more of the stench. Heaved again. Stomach clenching. Nothing left but spittle. Dry heaves.

He pressed his back against the door, as far from the dead as he could get. His mind screamed, Get out. Run. But he squashed the urge. He had a job to do. He stood, slipped in blood, landed with his ass on her stomach. A whoosh erupted from her throat, a cattle prod up Horace’s ass.

He yelped, scrambled to the door, yanked it open, bailed out of the van. Clean air. He sucked deep. A quick look around. The alley was empty. In a hurry now. Knife still in hand. Reach back in the van. Wipe the blood off the blade on the bitch’s skirt. Flick it closed. Shove it in the back pocket. Grab the bitch’s feet. Pull her out.

Her head made a popping sound when it thumped on the pavement, a thunder blast to his heart. The world surely heard, but no one came running. Horace shot a look around. All quiet. Hands still wrapped around her ankles, he dragged her toward the dumpster, dropped her in front of it, scurried back to the van.

His eyes lit on Virgil as he closed the back. Poor dumb bastard, dead in a pool of blood and shit. Back in the driver’s seat, he started it up. He took a quick look in the rearview as he turned out of the alley. No lights came on. He was in the clear.

Maybe.

He couldn’t be safe till he logged some miles between the body and himself. The freeway called to him. In minutes he was on it.

Gordon Takoda slid out of the booth. The game had run over three hours. They were a nice couple, James and Paul, but they were poor losers. Every time he took a piece, they wanted to replay the move, discuss how they could have played it. And to their consternation, Gordon let them do it over and he still creamed them.

“Good game,” James said.

“Yeah, we learned a lot,” Paul said.

Gordon gave them a smile before he started for the bar. Those boys didn’t understand, chess was like life. In the real world you don’t get to take it over.

“Coffee coming up.” Jonas started for the pot.

“Black and strong.” Gordon inhaled the aroma as Jonas poured. “Uh oh, trouble.” A uniformed police officer had come in and was making his way to the bar.

“Problem, officer?” Jonas said. As a rule the police were rare in the Whale.

“There’s a body in front of the dumpster out back. Female. She’s nude, full of bullet holes.”

“Maggie,” Gordon said.

“It couldn’t be Maggie,” Jonas said. “She said she was going straight home. You called her there.”

But Gordon wasn’t listening. He was off his stool and out the door before the cop could protest. An icy dagger wormed into his spine. Spasms racked his chest. He was in shape, but a heart attack wasn’t out of the question. He was the right age.

He stopped at the mouth of the alley. Jonas and two cops were already there. They’d come through the kitchen. They were standing over a bloody body. The light from Jonas’ kitchen gave the alley a kind of black and white look, surreal.

“You don’t want to see this.” Jonas came toward him, blocking his view.

“Get out of my way.”