Leather Maiden

41

When Booger slapped Gregore awake, the bastard began to chatter like a squirrel. There was no information he wanted to hold back; he was ready to tell us everything, including potty-training problems he’d had as a kid. I didn’t blame him for being so informative. Besides the slapping, Booger had done some things with his pocketknife that had to hurt and had given Gregore’s ears that look hunting hounds get after a number of vicious encounters with coons in the wild.

Even though he was open with his answers, Booger didn’t think he was quick enough or giving us enough of the answers we needed, so he took about ten minutes to beat him savagely with the phone book.

I had to go stand behind the car again. When the beating was over, I went back and Booger put Gregore in the chair again and I asked the questions I needed answers to the most.

I got them: Stitch and Caroline were well into their game, and the end of it was the assassination of Judence by Stitch. Dinkins was paying for the assassination to take place.

Way they had it fixed was they blackmailed all of the history teachers to not be in their offices that day. It was not an unknown custom for the professors to watch events in the plaza from their offices above. They were to be out. That was the request. It was a simple request. Vacate your offices on that day and don’t come back and we don’t show the DVDs of you humping Caroline. In fact, you stay out of your offices and meet at the old sawmill grounds with a thousand each, the DVDs will be returned and it’ll all be over.

It had a kind of poetry about it. Of course, I had the DVDs. Or at least some copies of them. There may have been more. I wanted to ask that, but Gregore, he was on a roll and I didn’t want to interrupt him. In the meantime, while the history teachers were out, thinking they were going to be paying off and getting the DVDs back, Stitch would show up in the history department dressed as a janitor, pushing a trash cart. He knew what to wear, and how to look and act like a janitor.

In Stitch’s trash cart would be a high-powered rifle. He would pick an office lock and go to the window and crank the old-fashioned thing open. He would point the gun and pick Judence out when he stood up to make his speech, and kill him. One shot, one kill.

Across the way was part two. I was going to be punished for meddling. Not by killing me, but by killing Belinda. The gears on the clock tower would do it. The minute the tower struck ten, Stitch would shoot, and Belinda would die. If there was some delay on the part of Judence, the plan would mutate.

“How will she die?” I said.

Gregore shook his head. When he did, blood and sweat flew off. His voice had turned raw. “I don’t know. I don’t have those details and don’t want them. I just know she’s supposed to die at ten. That way, when Judence is shot with a silenced gun, they’ll be trying to figure what happened, and in the meantime Stitch will go down the stairs and out the back way, and the girl will be dead in the tower. And after all the Judence stuff calms down, someone will go inside the clock tower, for maintenance maybe, and there will be the girl. Something extra, Caroline called it.”

“How do they get in the clock tower?” I said. “Won’t there be guards around for Judence’s speech?”

It was starting to be work for our boy. His voice sounded as if someone had used sandpaper on his vocal cords. “Some, but they won’t be concentrating on the clock tower; this isn’t a town with a real SWAT team or any kind of cops that matter. If there are guards there, Caroline, she’s not afraid to do what she thinks needs to be done. If they have to, she and Stitch will change plans. They’re versatile. They’re proud of it.”

“Shit, you’re one of them,” Booger said. “How proud are you?”

Gregore looked at Booger, fearing this was a trick question. “I’m not that proud,” he said.

“That’s good,” Booger said, giving him a gentle pat. “Otherwise I’d have to knock some pride out of you.”

“I’m just getting paid,” Gregore said.

Booger grinned at him. That alone made Gregore wince.

“So what about the clock tower?” I asked.

It was obvious that he was starting to wear down, but the way Booger looked at him gave him strength. He said, “Caroline will be wearing what looks like a janitor’s uniform. She will be pushing a trash cart, same as Stitch. But in her cart will be Belinda, drugged. She’ll work the lock. She knows how. She’ll go inside the tower with the cart. That’s when she’ll do whatever it is she plans to do to Belinda. Skin her most likely. They drugged the others and started in on them alive. Had rubber balls in their mouths, scarves tied over those for gags. I saw them do the Ronnie girl. It was really horrible. They eviscerated them so they wouldn’t smell so bad and put them in the freezer and poured salt over them. They were alive when they went to work. Man. Ronnie, such a pretty girl. And even as the skin came off her skull, her eyes—they looked so big without the skin—there was still hope in them. And then Caroline pulled her eyes out with pliers, said she didn’t want them looking at her.”

“You sonofabitches,” I said. “Don’t tell me any more about it. Don’t tell me one little thing more.”

“I’m interested,” Booger said.

“For Christ sakes, Booger,” I said.

“All right, all right,” Booger said. “Want me to hit him some more? Just for fun this time?”

“No. It’s time to tell the cops, stop this whole thing.”

“Well, you can do that, but that means we got some explaining to do,” Booger said. “I’m not much wanting to get in the middle of this thing that way. I’ll go to the wall for you, brother, but I don’t want to go to jail. Torture, it’s frowned on. It upsets some people’s stomachs.”

“Mine among them,” I said.

“Hell,” Gregore said. “You ought to be on this side of it.”

“You get us in the middle of it,” Booger said to me, “then your brother Jimmy has some explaining to do. I don’t think it’s the way to go. I believe a man ought to take care of his own problems. Do his own work.”

“This isn’t my work.”

“Sure it is,” Booger said. “You signed on a long time ago for this one. You’re riding for the brand till this range war is over.”

I looked Gregore over. He was pathetic. I almost felt sorry for him. I said, “Anything else we should know?”

“I can’t think of anything,” Gregore said.

Booger raised the phone book. “Oh, come on, Gregore, give us a little more. Anything as long as it isn’t a lie.”

Gregore gave a nod; his voice was hardly audible. “They’re gonna pick up the money from Dinkins and leave town, but before they do, they’re gonna fuck Dinkins up too.”

“Kill him?” I asked.

“No,” Gregore said. “When it’s over, they’re going to send a note with a DVD Caroline has been holding back. One of her and Dinkins doing the crawdad shuffle. That’ll ruin him.”

“Who’s going to see it?” I asked.

“Whoever they want. Cops maybe. Dinkins gets picked up, he can tell them all the conspiracy theories he wants, but he’ll have to implicate himself in the assassination plot. He’ll have to prove Caroline’s alive, and that she’s some kind of co-mastermind with some guy who looks like something out of a horror movie. It’s so complex and weird, it’ll be better he just takes a fucking for doing the fucking.”

“Why screw Dinkins?”

“You still don’t get it,” Gregore said. “The game, man. The game.”

“Cops, they got to wonder where the DVD came from, don’t they?” I said.

Gregore studied me. I could tell he was reluctant.

I said, “Tell the truth, and I won’t have him hit you any more.”

Booger raised the phone book. “Give me a reason not to believe you,” he said.

“It’ll be mailed from your brother,” Gregore said, keeping an eye on Booger. “The note to the cops will be typed. She got your brother’s signature off an old test paper, and she can copy it. She’s a damn good forger. That way, he doesn’t get off scot-free. Way Caroline sees it, your brother has got to get his too. She’s mad about those two geeks stealing the DVDs, and she’s mad you and Jimmy got them away from them. She likes throwing curveballs, but she don’t like catching them. God, man. If I could just have a little water.”

“You know,” Booger said, “I’m a little thirsty myself. Working this phone book has dried me out. But, you know, I still got my swing.”