I threw the butcher knife away from me and bolted for the fence and grabbed the top of it and pulled myself over. The dog the cat startled wasn’t there. I guess he was still chasing the cat. I ran across my neighbor’s yard, through another, and on out to the highway.
I went across the highway and walked down to a convenience store and called a taxi. Can you believe that? A fucking taxi? I wasn’t exactly thinking right then.
While I waited for the taxi, I pulled up my pants legs and tried to pick window glass out of my knees.
The taxi came and I got in, hoped in t Sn, div›he dark the driver wouldn’t see how bloody I was. I figured, with my dark clothes, and the blood dried on me, it wouldn’t be too noticeable. I had the driver take me here. I had seen this place before and thought it was the kind of place you might come to if you didn’t want anyone to ask questions.
I had enough money to pay the taxi and two nights rooming. After I paid the taxi, I took off my jacket and wiped as much blood off of me as I could with that, left it by the corner of the motel and went inside and gave the name Jack Frame, paid up, and didn’t get asked any questions. I got the room key and came back for the jacket.
I came in here and tried to go to bed, but couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned and went out to the vending machines and got an orange drink, and later a Coke. Then I got some cigarettes and newspapers, like I really wanted to catch up on the fucking sports. I thought about calling the police. But the more I thought about it, less I liked it. Fat Boy and Cobra Man had me by the balls, and I didn’t even know who they were or how to explain what me and the Disaster Club were doing at the Doc’s house.
While I sat and smoked and thought, another truth came to me. Something I always knew deep down and wouldn’t accept.
Dave had planned to kill the Doc, his wife too. I’m convinced everyone knew the certainty of it, but me. It was like the night they took me out to the tracks and pulled the trick with the train. I was the patsy then, and they had plans for me again. This time, I was to have been the patsy to murder. They would have killed Doc and his wife and did me in and made it look like I came in to rob the place and got caught. Made it appear me and Doc killed one another. Me nailing him with the automatic Dave would leave in my hand, and Doc nailing me with… I don’t know, a fire poker maybe, supposedly right before he keeled over dead of a gunshot wound.
I began to feel that was the score all along, and the only reason I’d been brought into any of this in the first place. They’d laid out their plan for murder and a patsy before they ever met me. They may not have known who they were going to rob or kill, or who the patsy would be, but the plan got laid out and I got the patsy role and Doc drew the victim card. It was all so neat and well designed, just the way Dave would work it. Disaster Club business.
But it all backfired. They got killed and I got away, and then I got framed for their deaths. Something ironic in all that, I’m just not sure what.
Anyway, that’s about it, Uncle Hank. I haven’t been anywhere since then but here, and I haven’t slept or had anything on my stomach but that orange soda and that Coke, and I didn’t keep either of them down.
I think about what the Disaster Club planned for me, and I feel sick. Then I think about them in my house, all messed up like that, and I feel sicker. And finally, I think about how it looks like I did it all, and I feel sicker yet.
Christ, Uncle Hank. Help me out here. Tell me. What am I gonna do?
5
I sat there stunned for a moment, then picked up the photo album and opened it. I took a real hard look at the photos on the last page. They meant more to me than before. These were the people Bill had been telling me about. He had avoided revealing that bit of i Vn, dist pagenformation until he finished his story, to give added impact, and it worked.
I concentrated on the photos and picked out who was who from Bill’s descriptions.
The Doctor’s wife, on the left hand side of the page, wore a bikini that showed a lot of nice sun-browned skin. She was standing on the deck of a sail boat. Behind her, the sea glistened bright and blue. In the photo she might have been forty, but she wore it well, maybe a little too well. I guessed the Doc had helped her out some around the mouth and eyes, and had probably put some missiles in her titties.
It was a nice photograph and it hadn’t been taken with any snapshot camera. It was likely stolen from her own collection. The photo next to it was a Polaroid. It wasn’t as flattering. She was naked on a bed with her legs spread wider than was comfortable and her panties were around her right ankle. There were ropes fastened to her ankles and wrists, and the ropes ran out of sight of the camera. They were doubtlessly tied to the rails beneath the mattress. There was something bright stuffed in her mouth, and there was a tidy little bullet hole, looking as if it had been painted there, in the center of her forehead, and beneath her head was a blood stained pillow.
Beneath her photo, on the left, was a shot of a good looking young man-Dave, I presumed from Bill’s story- and beneath that, a photo of another nice looking young fella. Bob, of course. Neither looked happy.
On the right hand side were pictures that I surmised had been taken shortly thereafter of the same two. One was a down shot of Dave with has face against the floor, turned slightly to the side so that I could see his tongue hanging out and his teeth biting through it. His eyes bulged. His ass was pasty white, except for where blood was splashed on it from the knife in his rectum. He had a leg lifted, the sole of his bare foot pointing up. The other foot still wore a shoe.
The right hand side photo of Bob showed him with his genitals in his mouth, blood splashed beneath his nose like a red mustache.
The last four photographs, also taken with the Polaroid were: Left-a pale, dark-haired looker of a girl. Right-a dark-haired mess of a girl. Those two would be Carrie.
Beneath those: Left-an astonishing blond beauty alive and not happy. Right-same beauty, only dead, with an expression that indicated she knew it would end up this way, and so what?
I closed the book and sat and thought.
“Look,” I said, “first thing is you need to relax some. Take a shower.”
“A shower? That’s your advice? Take a fucking shower? We’re talking about murders here. Murders I’m pinned for, and you want me to take a shower. I don’t want a shower.”
“You stink.”
“I don’t care if I stink. A shower isn’t going to solve my problems, Uncle Hank.”
“No, but you got to perk up a little. Make it a hot one so it’ll relax your muscles. Run it hard against the back of your neck and your lower spine.”
“A shower. That’s great. Take a shower. Want me to wash my hair?”‹ [myt a h/p›
“Why not? Doing it with bar soap won’t hurt you. While you’re doing that, I’ll get you a hamburger. You’re bound to be hungrier than you think. I get back we’ll talk some more.”
· · ·
I drove over to a Quickie-Mart and bought a large two-liter bottle of Coke, a razor and blades, a toothbrush and toothpaste.
By the time I came out of the store, the sky had lost its blueness and turned grey and cold as a tin roof. The air was nippier, and I could smell a hint of rain.
I drove through the drive-thru of a hamburger joint and ordered a large hamburger and fries. That just about depleted the money Beverly had allowed in my wallet.
I raced back to the motel and hammered on the door and Bill let me in. He was wearing a towel and had his wet hair pushed straight back. He looked a smidgen less tense.
I put the supplies on the table, and gave him the food. He sat on the bed and ate the hamburger while I went down to the ice machine and scraped what ice there was into the room bucket. I thought the ice looked suspicious in color, but not so much I didn’t figure on letting Bill use it. I went back with the bucket and filled a questionable looking glass with ice and poured him some Coke. By the time I did that, he was finished with the burger. He drank the Coke rapidly, and I filled his glass again.
“Listen now,” I said. “I’m going back to the house. I’ll come back later with some clothes, a little money, a
