I felt empty with the realization that Liz was a porn star, with a tacky name to boot. I didn't know what my feelings for her were, but I was already feeling jealous of the men I'd soon be seeing. She was masturbating now, vibrating her way around the bed.
“Mind if I speed this up?” Maggie asked.
“Please,” I responded, hoping she couldn't see the bulge in my pants.
Maggie set the vid to 4 X, and we watched Ian's girlfriend get off at quadruple speed. Un-fucking-believable. I hit my flask hard, wanting to soothe the knot in my stomach that was now screaming at me, telling me how bad I'd screwed everything up. I was back to living in Tenttown. I was being hunted by Ian and his gang of dirty cops. I was watching porn with a woman I thought of as a daughter. I was spending money I didn't have in an effort to keep my suicidal wife alive. And now I had the hots for Ian's girlfriend, a porn star for chrissakes. I felt miserable as I watched Liz Lagarto in what was now a quad-speed four-way, my pants getting more and more uncomfortable with every passing second.
I passed the flask to Maggie, who took a deep swig then said, “This is the most action I've gotten in months.”
I chuckled, and she chuckled back. The nervous chuckles quickly escalated into outright laughter for no apparent reason other than we needed it to. Then when the coffee shop owner walked in on a high-speed cum shot and ran out covering her eyes, our laughter turned into bent-over, tear-rolling hysteria.
We were well into the third movie when I asked Maggie to slow the speed down to normal. Liz Lagarto was in a bamboo hut that looked like the huts you'd find in the fringe towns except you could tell it was just a cheap set piece. She was playing the role of some Tarzan-like jungle girl who needed taming.
“Now, freeze it,” I said. I got up and walked past Liz, who was wearing a tiger-skin outfit that was so skimpy it could have been made from a cub. “I know this guy,” I said as I stepped up to the stuffed tiger that was being used as a background prop. I was sure it was the same one, standing upright with one claw raised. “Horst has this tiger standing outside his office on the Square.”
“You know what these movies are?” Maggie asked rhetorically. “Have you noticed how Lagartan they are? Liz Lagarto in the jungle. Liz Lagarto on a riverboat. Liz Lagarto in a brandy cellar. How much you wanna bet they're promotionals for his tour company? I bet he distributes them for a tidy profit, but his main purpose is to feed his sex tour business.”
I realized she was right, and I said so. I went back to my seat thinking Horst had found quite the market penetration strategy.
Maggie started the vid running again. “You've got to be shitting me,” she said upon recognizing the loincloth-wearing jungle boy who entered the hut-Raj Gupta.
I was speechless. Jaw-drop dumbfounded. That little shit, he didn't tell us he'd starred in a porno. He said he hardly knew Ian, but here he was getting his loincloth lifted by Ian's girlfriend. And what was it with this kid and loincloths? We interviewed him twice, twice, and we still hadn't gotten the full story. Right then, as I watched him get a lubing a la Liz Lagarto, I was seriously wishing I'd taken the opportunity to do some facial carving when I had the chance. “Are there any women on this planet that he isn't banging?”
Maggie said, “I might be the only.”
My flask was empty by the time we started number five. I just wanted to get it over with. I was OD'ed on porn. What had started off erotic had quickly turned laughable, and now it had become just plain tedious. It was true that we'd learned a little more about Raj and Horst. And it was also true that we'd learned a hell of a lot more than we ever wanted about Liz, but our main goal in ransacking Yuri Kiper's office was to get us closer to the barge murders, and on that score we'd come up empty.
Maggie had the system cranked up to 8 X now. The plot was easy to follow, even at eight speed, and without hearing any dialog. Liz Lagarto, married to a less than adventuresome husband, seeks out an affair with a charismatic neighbor played by a dark-skinned, middle-aged local who had starred in two of her other movies. He introduces her to the rough trade, starting with a little pinching during sex and quickly moving up to spanking and nipple clamps. Each time they have sex, she encourages him to push a little further.
Maggie slowed it down to regular speed as the degradation began to hit disturbing levels. They'd moved far beyond kinky and were now into the realm of the truly perverted. He was keeping her locked in his basement now, chained to a post with a dog collar on. When she cried, he'd tell her she was a sinner. “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
This was the first thing we'd watched that smacked of the S amp;M culture that all our suspects seemed to be a part of. I paid rapt attention despite the mounting revulsion.
Liz groveled as he came in and told her that today was her day of reckoning. He had a bed in the basement, and he cuffed her to it. He started in with electric shocks to her privates. How could she submit to this? Liz was panicked, straining so hard at her cuffs that her wrists bled. I squirmed in my seat when he razored her thighs and then her breasts. Make it end. Bile rose up in my throat as he snuffed out an entire pack of cigarettes on her back, making a connect-the-dots cross. This can't be real.
I looked over at Maggie, who was looking as pale as I felt. “This can't be real, Maggie.”
“God, I hope you're right.”
I didn't know what was worse, the fact that a human being would make a movie like this or the fact that there were people who got off on it.
He turned her over so she was face up. “Cheating on your husband is a sin,” he said. “Now you die.”
Liz struggled against her restraints. She yanked so hard that she dislocated her shoulder and cried out in pain. It's all a fake. It has to be. But there were no cut shots like you saw in regular movies, the kind of thing where you see the attacker stab down, then you see the victim bleeding, but you never see the knife go in. He grabbed her by the hair and held a knife to her throat. I kept telling myself it couldn't be real, but when I looked at her eyes, I saw pure terror. She was hyperventilating. It looked so real. I wanted to believe she was acting, but I'd seen her movies, and she wasn't that good an actress.
But it had to be fake. She was wearing an open-backed dress the first time I saw her. I would've seen the cig-burn cross on her back. He dragged the blade across her throat. Blood went spurting. She jerked against her restraints, once, twice, spraying blood all over her attacker. One more spasm and she went still, her eyes staring off in death. It's not real. It can't be. Liz is alive. But it was all so believable, all one long shot, no cuts.
I stared at her corpse as I told myself she was fine-she was alive. But she wasn't at Roby's last night… No, I told myself, I copied this vid almost two days ago. I'd seen her since then.
The vid was still running. Her murderous boyfriend circled the bed, studying his handiwork, his face speckled with blood. She looked like a real corpse. Her chest didn't move, and she didn't blink. Her skin turned ashen. How did they do this? Flies were buzzing around the scene. Scavenging geckos were coming out of the walls, their noses tuned to the scent of decay.
The murderer kneeled on the bed. No, don't tell me! He unzipped his pants.
I covered my eyes. “Turn it off already!”
The scene blinked out, and the room returned to normal.
We were left staring at the cafe owner's Virgin Mary shrine. I focused on it, trying to purge the images from my mind. I studied the brightly painted Mary standing in front of a mosaic background of sparkly glued beads. I never was the religious type, yet I felt the urge to ask for forgiveness, just for having watched.
My phone rang. My new anonymous phone.
EIGHTEEN
Maggie and I sped down the hospital corridor. I didn't see Vlad posted by her door. I sped up, Maggie staying on my wing, our shoes echoing off the linoleum. We thundered through Niki's door. Niki was there, right where she was supposed to be. Her startled eyes said that if she could have jumped she would have. Maggie was already rushing over to her when Vlad came bursting out of the bathroom, his piece raised. He stopped half a second before frying a hole through my chest.
“Shit, Juno,” he said, “I almost killed you. You should've announced yourself before barging in like that.”
I grabbed Vlad's arm and yanked him out into the hall. “Why weren't you guarding the door? I thought you'd
