Michael Walsh - Early Warning

As Principessa realized as soon as she saw the look on his face. What she had hoped would be taken as a joke had obviously fallen flat. This hour of the morning was no time for an argument so she immediately decided to backfill. She gave him her best coquettish laugh. “Sorry, just a little joke there. Of course it is. I didn’t realize you were from out of town.” For a tourist or a bridge-and-tunnel guy, he wasn’t that bad, and she felt a stab of compassion for him. All her life she’d been accused of being a bitch on wheels, and now here was her chance to change that image, even if it was only with a guy she’d just met.

Raymond Crankheit, however, heard the backtrack quite differently. “From out of town.” What the hell did she mean by that? Had she made him? The Brothers had warned him about women like her, the temptresses who would use you and then mock you, the way the women in the United States Army had done to the fedayeen in Iraq. The tanks and the Humvees that had entered Baghdad had played recordings over loudspeakers, taunting the Brothers over the size of their members, insulting them in a woman’s voice that Believers had little dicks. This of course had enraged the Holy Warriors and out they charged, screaming and thirsting for vengeance and prepared to put the lie to the libel with a glorious martyr’s death. Unfortunately, that was exactly what they had received, as the diabolical followers of Satan had expected just such a manly reaction and shot them down as they poked their heads from windows and doorways.

Women were never to be trusted. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before, Miss?” he asked as politely as he could, trying to conceal his anger and his contempt. “You’re that Princess girl, right?”

Principessa smiled. Getting recognized was one of the hazards of the profession, but it irked her when a young male of a certain age did not recognize her, and she took the implied insult personally. What, she wasn’t famous enough? She wasn’t pretty enough? She wasn’t successful enough? She would show this twerp.

“Sorry,” she said, not sorry at all, “but I don’t have time for an autograph right now. But I was wondering whether a homeless guy like yourself might be able to tell me something about what’s going on around here. Were you here yesterday? Did you see anything? Hear anything?”

So he was right after all: she was on to him. She was asking questions like a cop. That tore it. For the first time in his life, he was being nice to a girl and she was being nice back at him, but something had gone wrong-something always went wrong-and now here she was, grilling him the way some of the others did, asking him questions designed to make him look stupid.

In the old days, he would have run away. He would have endured the humiliation of being bested by a twist and being unable to do anything about it. But now he didn’t have to, not any longer. As he discovered yesterday, he could do something about it. In fact, here, on this hallowed spot, he could do a couple of things, and then come back for more.

Raymond turned away from Principessa for a moment. At once, she regretted her words and her actions. The poor boy had no idea who she was. He was some lost soul, an out-of-towner, probably simple, who’d gotten caught up in yesterday’s events and didn’t know where to go or what to do. In fact, he most likely wasn’t homeless at all. He probably had a room in one of those cheap Times Square hotels, but had been unable to get to it due to the emergency. She felt like a real heel…

“Sorry,” she said, “that was rude. I am Principessa Stanley. What’s your name?”

This was a shy boy she was dealing with, she could tell that. A lot of men went all weak in the knees when they actually met her in the flesh; she was used to that. Time for a little of the old noblesse oblige.

“Raymond,” he said. “Raymond Crankheit. From Wahoo, Nebraska. You ever been to Wahoo?”

“No,” she replied, because after all why in the hell would she ever have been to some nowhere dump like Wahoo, or even Nebraska, when there were still places in South America and China and India she hadn’t visited yet?

However, as it turned out, “no” was the last thing she said, for Raymond suddenly wheeled and struck her with the stock of his rifle as if he was swinging a baseball bat-another thing he had never been particularly good at, but at which at this moment he was more than proficient. The woman fell hard, soundlessly, face-first into the ground, her head bleeding. But she was still moving, trying to say something but producing only muffled noises, little bleats and whimpers, just the way the Japanese schoolgirls in those porn videos he watched for free on the Internet did.

Perfect.

He trussed her up with some of the rope in his kit, just the way the Brothers had taught him, bound her tightly. He wanted her alive, for later.

He pushed her deep into the bushes and into the hole where he had buried his weapons. It wasn’t deep enough to fully cover her, but he could get a lot of her into it, including her arms, and by tamping down the dirt he could effectively immobilize her. He covered the rest of her with some camouflage they had given him, and turned her face up and looked at her. She was bloody and dirty, but that didn’t really matter at this point. She was still a woman, she was alive, and this was likely as close as he was going to get to a creature like this.

Raymond Crankheit kissed Principessa Stanley as hard as he could. It was inexpert and clumsy, but he got what he wanted out of it. For the first time in his life, he knew what a woman tasted like. He took one of his spare T-shirts, ripped it apart and bound her eyes with it. The remainder he stuffed into her mouth. He pulled a plastic garbage bag over her head, and left her there, waiting for him.

He picked up his rifle and made ready to go, then stopped. Something wasn’t right. He’d heard that guys who were dating always liked to have a little something of their girlfriend’s to remember them, a souvenir, to wear or keep in a pocket or billfold. He went back to Principessa and slowly lifted the Baggie so that he could get a good look at her.

Her ears were shapely and well-formed, and he thought about cutting one of them off but decided against it because he didn’t want her all bloody when he got back. He wanted her alive and beautiful, just the way she was now. That ruled out her nose as well, and as for her fingers, they were buried and thus out of the question.

He put the rifle down and started at the back of her head, working his way around. He did his best not to draw blood, although some of that was unfortunately necessary. Just a prick here or two. Had he been a wild Red Indian, like the kind who used to roam the plains of Nebraska? Not near Wahoo, because as anybody knew, Wahoo was near Omaha, which was on the river, but farther to the west, the Wild West of cowboy movies, which is mostly where he’d seen it, except for a drive across the state one time to visit some relative out there by Scottsbluff someplace-he couldn’t remember.

It took a while, but by the time was finished he had most of her hair. Carefully, he replaced the Baggie and patted her on the head, to let her know everything was all right and that he’d be back to claim the rest of his trophies later. But it was time to go.

He picked up his rifle again. There were, he’d heard, millions of people in Manhattan, which meant that he would run out of ammo long before he ran out of targets. It would not be until later that he realized his cell phone had fallen out of his pocket and was probably buried along with the woman.

Century City -morning

If he had had time, Jake Sinclair would have enjoyed being in his new offices. All the right folks were moving to the old Fox back lot these days, including two of the major talent agencies and some entertainment law firms, to go along with the usual mixture of financial-services companies and shopping malls. Everything from the marble floors to the strategically placed Persian carpets to the art on the walls and the sculptures in the halls was the result of his taste and his choice. It was amazing how much art you could buy when half of Hollywood was feeling poor.