Deathgrip Read online

  Poor deluded man, expecting to find something out here on the road. Not even once considering that something might find him, instead.

  The driver’s attention was fully on the rain-slick road, but Gabe didn’t care if the man saw him. After all, suspicions had to have been aroused by tonight’s special request. So. He hooked one finger in the neck of his shirt, tugged it aside to expose the ridge of his collarbone. Took the gold blade in his other hand, and pressed one keen edge perpendicular to the bone. Notched it hard, rocking it back and forth as he shut his eyes and felt the warm trickle down his upper chest.

  Sweet bliss, dark rapture of pain, please take me higher please make me purer, mere prelude to a night of miracles.

  The taxi took him to an address which meant nothing, only that what he wanted, needed, was on the inside of that house. Discreet seclusion, as he had fully expected, English Tudor set far back from the winding treelined road. More trees, dripping with an afternoon and evening of rain, shielded it from streetside eyes seeking to pry beyond the iron fencing. The taxi idled between two brick pillars while the driver chatted to an intercom, and a moment later a gate parted, divine access.

  “Can you make it back here in three hours?” Gabe teased the driver with a brief flash of another fifty-dollar bill.

  “Your chariot shall await, my man.” Grinning as Gabe nodded and exited the taxi, watching for a moment as the cab turned around and rolled back to the street.

  And the driver flicked a head-shaking glance into his rearview. “Ya fucking freak,” he said.

  The mistress of the house was named Belinda, which was all she said he needed to know, mistress being the operative word. Mistress Belinda, specialist in bondage, pain, humiliation, and punishment, any and all available upon request. Rates of three hundred dollars per hour. A bit steep, on his salary, but when dealing in rough trade, quality and discretion cost money.

  Belinda cut a tall figure of feminine muscularity. Skin as smooth and pale as marble, in vivid contrast to the network of black leather crisscrossing her torso and playing peekaboo with her breasts and pubic mound. Fingerless gloves crawled up to her elbows, and four-inch spike heel pumps set her towering. A studded collar circled her throat, and her hair was cropped close, slicked back from her forehead. Scarlet lips, ebony fingernails, and unfathomably deep eyes, gray as smoke.

  She would do nicely. She meant business.

  “So what are we up for tonight?” Her voice, hard as cinders.

  Gabe grew aware of the erection raging behind his zipper, no use fighting it. Just take a little off the tip, a perfect reply to this barbershop kind of question, but he held it back.

  “You’ve been a naughty, naughty boy today,” half statement, half inquiry.

  “An absolute shit,” Gabe said. “So why don’t you just lay off with the questions and assume the worst, and we should get along fine.”

  The ruby lips pursed a moment as she appraised him in a glance, then blew a light kiss. “I do so admire forthrightness.”

  Once the financial transactions and designated safeword were out of the way, she led him through the house. Tasteful and arty, contemporary, giving no hints as to the occupational leanings of its owner. She probably played the role of neighbor well, and he admired that immensely, he could identify, and just how hard was it for her to maintain that pretense of normality?

  Especially given the contrast of her — what? Office? Rec room? Workshop?

  Dungeon.

  Cellar level, walls of brick and black mortar. An iron chandelier descended from center ceiling, throwing both light and shadow over all the toys scattered throughout the room. The rack of assorted whips. A display case of enormous dildos that bristled like porcupines. An iron chair with leather restraints and an anal spike. A bed with similar restraints. The room’s centerpiece, an enormous X of rough-hewn wood. Daggers and chains and metallic orifices and a potpourri of full-head leather and vinyl masks with zippers, and so much more.

  A De Sade Disneyland with nothing but E-ticket rides, it took the breath away, and here he would peel away the taints of the world, of life and career and the confusion of deception. He would be himself, the true Gabriel on the quest for purity and purging, and Belinda was suddenly beside him, grasping his jaw with one hand, leaning close enough to rip his ear off with her teeth.

  “You will strip for me,” and she smeared a vicious kiss onto his mouth, a harsh thrust of her tongue. Degradation, the kiss of a whore, no telling where that mouth had been, and he drank it in, he deserved it, and if she demanded, he would drink of the musky nectar between her thighs.

  Strip. It was not an option, and Gabe readily complied.

  For several moments, Belinda stood before him for an altogether new appraisal, the wicked arch of her eyebrows suggesting that even she was impressed. Not by biological endowments, but by the alterations on his torso as a whole.

  Gabe’s flesh was a topographic shrine to masochism, a mosaic landscape of scar tissue. Thin and wide, horizontal and diagonal and vertical, etching him from pubis to shoulders, with scarcely any area greater than two square inches left untouched.

  Belinda regained composure, nodded approvingly. “Yes. Oh yes. I know exactly where to begin with you.”

  She seized a fistful of ridged and rippled skin on his shoulder, pulled him over to the wooden X. Pressed face-first against it, Gabe extended his arms and legs along the crosspieces and let her strap him on by wrists and ankles. She stood behind him with a whip fresh from the rack, and from the swish of the air as she tested it, he knew the lashes were multiple. So much the better. So much more efficient, and he wanted it all.

  Another second passed, and the lighting mutated from clean white to glowing red, and when the first lash of the whip came striping across his back, Gabe cackled and grinned and dug his fingers into the well-gouged wood with a bite of splinters.

  He looked back, saw not her face but a face from half his life ago, and it was right and proper. He was prepared.

  “Oh yes, you’ve been an absolute hellion,” a groan from scarlet mists behind him, punctuated by the crack of the second of what would be many strokes from the whip. Leather lashes biting with rawhide teeth, bringing exquisite agony, tearing away the worldly Gabe and stripping him to the raw, the elemental.

  For to truly live, and see, one had to suffer.

  Belinda was breathing hoarsely now, salt droplets of her sweat stinging the tenderized flesh of his back, and she began to scream the most vile, most humiliating curses she could think of, music to his ears. His hips ground against wood, and he gasped and left behind a sticky smear, so glad to get that out of the way, and the most uplifting thing he could think of was that this night of gleeful torment had barely begun.

  Chapter 14

  Who was it with that old proverb, the Chinese? Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. Whoever it was, they’d known what they were talking about. It was one of those philosophical questions to which Tappers Pub lent itself well.

  “I still can’t believe he’s dead.” Paul’s hands were doing duty around a frosted mug of Bass ale. “Four days now, and it has not sunk in.”

  Peter nodded, his sole partner on this sultry afternoon of spirits and shelter. “We all thought Popeye was an asshole, and that was justified, but man — I never would’ve wished going out like that on anyone.”

  The autopsy revealed that Vince Atkins had been stricken with a sudden severe electrolyte imbalance that had led him to consume staggering quantities of water to satisfy a thirst he perceived as unsatisfiable. In effect, the opposite of dehydration had occurred. The man had overhydrated himself, and the only thing that had prevented him from drowning within his own tissues was his heart’s inability to handle the strain. An extremely rare phenomenon, though not unheard of.

  Popeye, cast adrift on an eternal sea of his own gluttony. Somehow this reeked of a terrible poetic justice.

  He was little more than a bad memory by now. As he’d been
divorced for several years, with no family in St. Louis, his mother had his body shipped west for burial in his hometown of Columbia. Certainly within driving distance, but not one of the KGRM staff really wanted to make a trip for today’s funeral. Lousy timing for a funeral anyway, Labor Day.

  “I didn’t really want him to die, when it came down to it,” and Peter tugged thoughtfully at his beard. “I just wished he’d disappear for good, vanish.”

  “Retroactive abortion,” Paul said.

  “Exactly.”

  They had a booth this time, kicked back and lazy and none too talkative. Let the noise from the other revelers take the place of their own conversation. Being Labor Day, most of the city was at rest, nobody working but us retail clerks and bartenders and deejays. Tappers was far more crowded than usual at four in the afternoon, everyone with just enough elbow room to keep from getting irritable, and who were these transient strangers, anyway? Didn’t they have their own bars? Their voices competed with KGRM coming over the sound system, and the TV behind the bar played a silent rerun of The Munsters. Do-it-yourself dialogue, if you were so inclined. Few were. Others checked out new paintings on the walls. Paul’s favorite was an ancient Roman king with a southern black man singing to animals, titled Romulus and Uncle Remus.

  Peter looked back from the TV. “I hope we get somebody halfway decent to replace him.”

  “Hopefully the barrel they scraped him from the bottom of has been pitched.” Speaking ill of the dead, yes, it was, but regardless of life or death, it was how they’d all felt. Paul saw no need to sugarcoat now.

  KGRM was one of thirteen stations across the country owned by a minor air mogul headquartered in New Jersey who made it to St. Louis for a day every four to six weeks. They would have a new manager within a couple weeks, he had promised, already having sent out feelers for a new GM by the time the medical examiner’s scalpel sliced an enormous Y-incision into Popeye’s torso and received a gusher of water in reward. Until then, David Blane and sales manager Nikki Crandall could share figurehead responsibilities.

  Bass ale, percolating straight to Paul’s brain — he’d eaten nothing since breakfast. But keep those pitchers coming, for he had nothing to do and no place to be until airtime late the next morning. Strange, to have a Monday afternoon free.

  This was the first day since beginning volunteer work at St. Francis that he had called in to say he couldn’t make it. On Friday, twenty-four hours after Popeye’s aquatic demise, he’d felt surreal, moving through hospital corridors and rooms as if they were mined. One stray thought nagging with the persistence of a piranha at an open wound: What happens if I meet somebody here I really can’t stand?

  Popeye’s autopsy had revealed that his condition had to have snowballed over three or four days, and this was verified by the KGRM staff. From late Monday on, the same day he and Paul had locked horns, Vince Atkins just had not been seen without a mug or pitcher of water. Paul knew, in retrospect, that he hadn’t so much as lifted a finger to help the poor slob. He’d gone about his business, feeling smug about getting Popeye to back down, letting him stew in his own juices. Until they had killed him.

  So what happens if I meet somebody I can’t stand? Would I even be able to heal them?

  Surprisingly enough, in six weeks of hospital work, the issue had never arisen. Yes, there had been many patients about whom he had felt ambivalent, though none he’d actively disliked. But somebody would show up, surely. Every doctor, nurse, and tech had favorite horror stories about a rogue’s gallery of insufferably wretched patients, and it was only a matter of time before he had his own.

  And so the question remained, would he be able to do the job if his heart wasn’t really in it? And how many shared burdens could that same heart withstand before deciding enough was enough, and sealing itself off? Not that he was ready to give it up this soon, but the need for rest and relaxation had come up far sooner than anticipated.

  And that was scary.

  He’d heard it said before, that if you can heal people, you’ve suddenly found yourself with a new full-time job, and this was stark truth. You couldn’t turn it on and off like a light, or hang it up like a lab smock at the end of your shift. You carried it with you everywhere, a part of you forever watching for someplace else it might be needed. And as distressing as the constant awareness of how many hurting people lived out there, even worse was having to bypass so many he truly longed to help, and knew he could not. Because stopping a stranger to rework a malformed limb or absorb brain damage would have blown his cloak of anonymity. Thrust him into a public spotlight that would drain him as surely as a slit jugular.

  So. Vacation time. Rest, relaxation, perhaps reevaluation.

  He and Peter played darts, sometimes against each other, sometimes against challengers. They ordered food, one-third-pound burgers with the works. They scrutinized Lorraine’s on-air performance, rating her ad-libs with scores scrawled onto napkins with felt markers. Near seven-thirty, Peter hung up his mug for the night and went home.

  Paul sat scanning the bar for familiar faces, found no one he wanted to talk to, not tonight. Instead, found himself increasingly disconcerted by the amount of smoke this boom crowd had brought with it. He paid a final visit to Tequila Mike and got a quart of ale for the walk home.

  When he hit the sidewalk, he squinted against the last of the day’s sunlight. Not even dark yet, and here he was with a full-tilt buzz on. Quite the hedonist, and it was only Monday. He toasted, here’s to the American work ethic, and set off for home.

  Not so unbearably warm now, he could almost believe in the coming of autumn again.

  A pleasant trip home, strangely light on his feet, and his gently buoyed spirits ducked underwater only when he set foot through the back door of his building and wobbled a moment. And realized he was face to face with the scourge of fun-loving neighbors one and all, Janet DeWitt, wicked witch of the second floor.

  She was heading for the dumpster to appease it with a plastic bag, maybe a sacrificial offering after prayers for a date, and the thought brought a wet snort of laughter. It was out before he could stop it, and she glared. This was unseemly.

  “It’s behavior like yours that gives young people a bad name,” spoken with cryogenic charm. Her nose was stuck in the air, all the better down which to regard people, and her lips were pressed together lockjaw tight. Lint-brown hair topped a severe figure, all bones and angles.

  “Good evening to you too.” Ale sloshed in Paul’s bottle and belly alike.

  “If people could only see themselves when they drink, they might think twice about doing it, that’s my guess.” Probably a closet tippler on the sly. Her type seemed to breed hypocrisy like the plague.

  “The only thing that would make me think twice is right now I’m seeing two of you. Do you know how scary that is?” Those sputtering, half-drowned spirits had bobbed up again with gleeful resurgence. It was everything he’d wanted to say to her but, for the sake of peace, had not. Erosion of restraint, courtesy of Bass ale, and he blurted ahead. “Tell me something. I’ve wondered about this ever since I’ve lived here. Do you lie awake at nights, just thinking up things to bitch about the next day?”

  Her face registering affront upon affront, “Why you little bastard, if you weren’t so drunk—”

  “Winston Churchill said it best, ‘Yes, I’m drunk, I’m very drunk. And you, madam, are ugly. But I shall be sober in the morning.’”

  He pushed past her for the stairway. Game, set, and match.

  She screeched, she crowed, she called him names, she threatened to kick his sorry ass. Only proving herself all the more pathetic. It seemed so very clear now, just some lonely, self-repressed witch. He was at the stairs with his sorry ass still intact and apt to stay that way, and over his shoulder she would not give up, but he could afford to laugh it off.

  “Well you just better keep quiet up there tonight, or I’ll have the landlord and the police on you, they’ll kick you out and I’ll be the one
laughing.” She paused only long enough to reload on breath. “With any luck you’ll just pass right on out tonight, that’s what I’m hoping for. Not like that night a few weeks ago when you brought home that drunken slut with you.”

  Boom. There it went, all the joy of besting her, rising above her, gone in an instant. For while drink could deaden memories recent and distant, sometimes it corroded the defenses and let the pain come seeping through like acid.

  The very last thing he could tolerate was hearing Lorraine dismissed as a drunken slut. Anything but that. No fair.

  When he turned at the foot of the stairs, slowly, he was faced with the awful sight of Mrs. DeWitt realizing she’d sunk the verbal knife into a vital artery. Her face was that of a cat stripping the feathers, then the flesh, from a crippled bird while its wings still feebly beat. He was dying here, and it became her fount of renewal. The advantage hers.

  “You didn’t think I could hear you that night, upstairs? You and that tramp kept me awake for hours.”

  Oh you cruel, cruel bitch, the only thing Paul could think, coming up from someplace fathoms deep in his soul, and with it came the hate, black and surprisingly pure.

  Mrs. DeWitt made a grand show of sudden surprise, oh here’s an interesting thought: “Come to think of it, that was the only time I’ve heard those noises. What happened, I wonder? Did she leave you for someone else?”

  Much more of this and the drunken tears would spill, but he couldn’t bring himself to retreat. Unthinkable. Defeat here would only bring more salvos of abuse in the near future.

  Of course she had further points to make, a fistful of daggers to sink, and she stepped up into his face. Shaking a finger, here’s what I think of this, and Paul knew hate was the most potent emotion on earth. Nothing could distract it, and you couldn’t say that about love, could you? He wanted only to buy time, mount a counteroffensive. He met her halfway, lashed out to grab that shaking hand, holding tight and squeezing harder than necessary, let this bitch know he was pissed now.