Fiends

up better to hold in the aroma, she might’ve gone another week. Know what I’d like to do, I’d like to put the next one..

    ‘What next one?’ Charlie demanded.

    ‘We’ve had these gals two Saturday mornings in a row. Number three’s gonna pop up tomorrow, you can bet on it.’

    ‘Lou!’

    ‘Huh?’

    ‘Let’s lay for the strangler. If he comes along tonight with another corpse, we’ll nab him!’

    ‘What then?’

    ‘We’ll make him take it away.’

    Lou watched his smoke float toward the ceiling. Then he said, ‘Good idea. Excellent idea. I’d like to meet the guy.’

    Charlie, sitting on a stool near the backyard fence at midnight, heard a car in the alley. It stopped just on the other side of the fence. He heard the engine die, then the quiet bump of a closing door.

    So this is how he does it, Charlie thought. Just drives up the alley and brings her in. But the rear gate? It’s always locked. How…?

    Behind Charlie, something thudded against the redwood fence. He turned and looked up. A blonde woman grinned at him over the top. He heard a grunt. The woman seemed to leap. She towered over him for a moment, then folded at the waist. Charlie jumped out of the way. He gaped at her. She hung there, swaying slighdy, like the body of a gunslinger draped over a saddle. Another grunt came from behind the fence. Her legs flipped high, slender and pale in the moonlight. Then she dived to the grass. She performed a somersault, and lay still.

    Charlie glanced toward the garage. Its side door stood open. In the darkness of its gap was the red glow of Lou’s cigar.

    He motioned frantically for Lou to join him.

    Quickly, he crouched at the corner of the fence. The wood jolted against his back, and he saw an arm hook over the top rail. After a gasp and a scuffling sound, a leg appeared. Then, in one quick motion, the man swung over and dropped to the grass. He landed silently on his feet, less than a yard from Charlie.

    Crouching, he lifted the body. He flung it over his shoulder.

    ‘Now,’ said Charlie, ‘you may kindly toss her back over the fence and take her away. Clutter someone else’s yard.’

    Still holding the body, the strangler turned to Charlie and said, ‘Huh?’

    ‘I said take her away!’

    ‘How come?’ he asked. He was younger than Charlie had imagined. His shaved head was shiny in the moonlight. In his tight T-shirt and jeans, his stocky body looked dangerous.

    ‘Because,’ Charlie answered in a subdued voice, ‘you’ve been putting them in my lawn chair.’

    ‘I thought you liked it.’

    ‘Liked it?’

    ‘Sure.’

    Charlie was relieved to see Lou ambling toward them, puffing vigorously on his cigar.

    ‘You took good care of ’em,’ the younger man continued. ‘You know?’

    ‘Why’d you bring them here?’ Lou asked.

    The man spun around. Charlie dodged the woman’s left heel. ‘Did you know about me?’ Lou asked. ‘Is that it?’

    ‘Know what?’

    ‘I’mThumbs O’Brien. The Riverside Strangler.’

    ‘No fooling?’

    ‘Did you read my book, kid?’ Lou’s voice was eager.

    ‘What book?’

    ‘Never mind.’ Lou sounded disappointed. ‘So how come you’re leaving stiffs in our backyard?’

    ‘Like I was telling this guy, you took good care of ’em. I mean, the first, I was bringing her up through the alley here. It’s dark, you know. So I just heaved her over the fence.’

    ‘How did she get in my chair,’ Charlie asked.

    ‘I got to thinking, you know? How comfortable can it be on the grass? So I hustled her over to the chair.’

    ‘Decent of you,’ Lou said.

    ‘You guys took care of her real good.’

    ‘Thank you,’ Lou said.

    ‘That’s why I came back. I figured I’ll let you take care of the others, too.’

    ‘Tell me this,’ Lou said. ‘Why’d you do it?’

    ‘I just told you, you took real good…’

    ‘He means,’ Charlie explained, ‘why did you kill them?’

    ‘Oh.’ He grinned. ‘She told me to.’

    ‘Who did?’

    ‘Isadora.’

    ‘Who?’ asked Lou.

    ‘Isadora Duncan. You know, Isadora! She wants ’em for her dance troupe.’

    Lou tapped a column of ash from the tip of his cigar. ‘They won’t do her much good dead.’

    Charlie groaned at Lou’s display of ignorance. ‘She’s dead,’ he explained. ‘Isadora is. Her scarf caught in the wheel of her car. A long time ago. In the twenties, I believe.’

    ‘No kidding?’ Lou nodded at the young strangler. ‘So you’re fixing her up with a bunch of dancers. I get it.’

    ‘May I ask,’ Charlie inquired, ‘how large a group she requires?’

    ‘Oh, big. Real big.’

    ‘How big?’

    ‘Fifty-two.’

    Charlie imagined fifty-two more bodies in the backyard on his lawn chair. ‘I won’t have it!’ he blurted. ‘Lou!’

    ' 'Fraid that’s too much, kid.’

    ‘Too much?’

    ‘Yeah. Sorry.’

    Charlie watched the woman fall. He watched the brief struggle. It was no contest, really. The kid didn’t have a scarf handy, but Lou had his thumbs.

    On a sunny, cool morning toward the end of the week, Charlie carried his coffee mug outside and stopped in surprise.

    ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

    Lou, in sunglasses and a Dodger ballcap, was sitting on his own lawn chair. A cigar tilted upward from his mouth. Propped against his upraised right knee, he held a spiral notebook. ‘How’s this sound?’ he asked. ‘Save Your Last Dance for Me: the True Story of the Swan Lake Strangler in his Own Words'

    ‘It sounds like a lie,’ Charlie said.

    ‘You gotta take liberties,’ said Lou, ‘when you’re a ghost-writer.’

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