She was sobbing uncontrollably by the time the beep sounded.
“Jason. Please come home,” she sobbed into the receiver. “This man—He’s cra—crazy. Please. He took my clothes. He has a gun, and he said he’d shoot me. Oh, please, help me.”
The thunder sounded again. She couldn’t stop crying. “My head hurts. I can’t think. I’m in a house. I don’t know where it is. Low houses, somewhere in Brooklyn, or the Bronx. I see a—lights and a ramp. I think it’s a bridge. Oh, God, Jason, he tied me up,” she cried hysterically. “He’s going to kill me.”
“Oh, God.”
She clutched the receiver in her hand, staring at it dumbly. The tape machine clicked. She was cut off. She was alone. She started sobbing again.
Then a shape moved in the window opposite.
Someone was standing there looking at her. Emma’s eyes widened.
“Help!” she cried. She banged on the window. “Help me.”
The person stood there stolidly, all in black, studying her grimly. Maybe it was a ghost.
“Oh, God,” Emma cried.
A nun, or a Russian patriarch.
Without knowing what she was doing, she dialed 911.
“Police Emergency.”
In the window across the way, the mouth began to move.
“Help,” Emma cried. “Help!”
“All right, miss, calm down. Are you injured or is there an injured person with you?”
“Uh,” Emma gulped.
“Try to calm down, miss. Where are you located?”
The mouth was moving across the way. The narrow black figure was making hand motions. It was too confusing. Emma started to cry.
“Help …”
“Okay, take it easy. Let’s take it one step at a time. Can you tell me your name?”
Nausea swept over Emma. She gagged over the sink. She couldn’t talk. She needed something to drink.
“Miss, are you there? I need some information to help you. Give me something—a location, a phone number.”
The words dribbled out of the receiver that Emma had dropped on the counter. “Call back later,” she muttered, hanging up the phone. Moments later her head hit the edge of the counter as her legs gave way under her, and she sank to the floor.
53
The girl came out of a bathroom so small and filthy Troland would not have used it under any circumstance.
“That’s better. What’s your name?” She tossed her blond hair and started to unbutton her shirt.
“Willy.” He said it flatly, looking around the room.
It had a table with only one chair, a hot plate with a pot on it that clearly wasn’t used for food. No sink or refrigerator. A sofa with very old fabric on it. There was nothing female in the place, no clothes or lacey pillows or soft objects of any kind. No makeup or hair ornaments. It occurred to Troland he better be careful. This place didn’t seem to be hers.
“Willy? Like Willy Smith?” She giggled. “You a Kennedy?”
Troland turned to her and snorted. “Yeah.” He snorted again. She was high already, didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You live here?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Nope. It’s a friend’s.” She had her shirt off now and was peeling her tights down, like she was in a locker room getting ready for a game.
Troland watched her with little interest. The pressure he felt before had eased with the trip into the city, and the cruising up and down in a car. He didn’t like driving a car unless he had to. He didn’t feel that great now. He wanted to get back to the real girl and get started.
He sat down at the table, suddenly disgusted. Although it seemed right at first, inside the place had a lot of things wrong with it. It was dirty. Troland didn’t like dirty. His lip curled at the smell of glue and old leather that leaked up from the shoe repair downstairs. The guy from there was probably the one whose place this was. Troland didn’t like that, either. He might come back in the middle and give him some trouble.
He switched his attention to the body that was now fully naked in front of him. He was turned off by a number of blemishes on its neck and arms. There were a few black-and-blue marks on the thighs, too. In fact, except for the thin, pale, young-girl hair, this body wasn’t as good as the one he already had. That made him feel a little better. He had a real prize waiting for him. Something that was well kept and smelled good, didn’t have any diseases like this probably did. He had a real movie star, all his own. He snorted, and instinctively reached for the items in the pocket of his leather jacket.
“There’s a bed in there.” The girl pointed to a closed door.
“You have somebody coming back?” Troland asked.
There were four lengths of the thin nylon rope he had specially cut to size, his knife, his Zippo lighter, and several marking pens with medium points. The feel of the familiar items comforted him. He fondled the lighter, pumping himself up.
“Not for a while. What do you have in mind?”
She came over and sat on his lap. He pushed her off. “Do it my way,” he snapped.
“Hey, just being nice.” She retreated through the half-closed door into the other room.
It occurred to Troland the guy might be in there, and the whole thing was a scam. That made him mad. He jumped up and kicked the door open with a bang, the switchblade in his hand.
“What’s going on?” he snarled. He didn’t like scams.
The girl was dancing on the bed. “Nothing,” she protested. “Hey, you’re really wired.”
“I’m not wired. I don’t get wired. Look at you, you’re the one that’s bouncing off the wall.”
He kicked around for a minute, looking for a hiding place, or a mirror someone could be looking through from the other side.
“Why don’t you chill out and have a good time,” she said.
“Get out of there,” he commanded.
“What’s the matter?” Now the baby voice with the New York accent was offended and a little scared. That was good.
“I don’t like it in here,” he said.
“Okay. That’s fine.”
She got off the bed. The sheets were grimy. He didn’t like the setup. When she got close to him he grabbed her arm. “Okay. I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. You lie down over there. I tie you up. You try to get out.”
“Okay. I can get out.”
She walked the short distance to the sofa and sat down.
Troland clicked his tongue against his teeth with annoyance. “You don’t get out,” he said. “That’s the whole point.”
She made a little half-shrug with her shoulders. “You won’t hurt me, will you?”
“I don’t hurt people.”
She lay back on the sofa. “Okay, so you tie me up, and I don’t get out. Then what?”
“Then I draw some pretty pictures on you and I fuck you.” Troland took one of her wrists and started to tie it to the sofa leg.
The girl popped up, wrenching her arm away. “No kidding,” she said with interest. “What kind of pictures?”
