A Good and Useful Hurt (24 page)

Phil woke tied to his bed.

He tested his wrist restraints, but didn’t snap them yet.

The tattooed bitch came in with her electrical-taped nipples and her red corset and matching high-heeled patent leather boots and elbow-length gloves. She paddled herself with her riding crop. That nice, cracking sound.

The tattooed bitch said, “You thought I was fucking around?”

She used the crop on his dick, and he could feel the blood running out of him in more ways than one.

“That was a fucking dream, bitch!”

The walls were gone, and she was surrounded already with the rest.

“Remember what I said,” she said. “This might never stop.”

When she removed his dick and threw it onto his chest, he tried to shake it off, but he was too immobilized, and it stayed where she’d discarded it. Phil dealt as best he could while she cut. Just as in her old work, she was slow and thorough, a perfectionist. It was horrible, but she finished both legs before he passed.

Deb didn’t mind—she’d have another go soon enough.

Mike awakened not to Deb’s face, but to the faces of Doc, Lamar, and Becky, just as she’d said he would.

Doc looked as he felt, weak, beaten, and awful.

Lamar said, “Mike, you look like shit.”

“Thanks. There anything to eat around here?”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. Bad enough you leave me and Becky to run shit for a month—how you think it makes me feel to know you ain’t gonna eat without me there to tell you to?”

“I’m sorry.”

Doc interrupted. “Did you dream?”

“Yes. Have you slept? Fuck, what time is it? Doc—”

“Mike, everything’s fine.”

Mike stood; he’d been lying on the couch in the living room of the little apartment. “What do you mean, fine?” He glanced to Lamar and Becky, then said to Doc, “We still have work to do.”

“We would have, but that work would have needed doing yesterday. In any case, you’ll be happy to know that the man suspected of killing Deb, Annie, and the rest of those poor women has turned himself in.”

“He did? I slept a whole day? Are they sure it’s him?”

Becky said, “They’re sure, Mike. Relax. They caught that fucker. I guess he just couldn’t take the guilt anymore.”

Mike smiled. “Guilt or something like it.”

“Yeah. Anyways, boss man who ignores my phone calls, Doc here says you’ll be available to help Lamar with some interviews tomorrow. And that is as far back as I can push these particular interviews, so you need to lose the junkie look as fast as possible. You really do look terrible.”

“Thanks. Is the store open today?”

Lamar said, “No, Doc told me and Becky he had a feeling that you would want to see us when you woke up. You got some pissed customers waiting on you, my friend.”

“At least they’re waiting. If we’re closed, let’s go get some food. Anybody else want some sushi? I’m buying.”

It turned out that, in fact, everyone else did want sushi.

He’d walked into the police station naked.
They’d left that out on the news, but there was a whole lot they left out besides that, and a whole lot more they’d never even been told.

Under his arm he carried a box full of souvenirs to make sure they’d believe him, because maybe if it were over quick she wouldn’t come back. He’d set the box on the desk, and then they were all over him, because he was naked and in a police station.

What they didn’t understand was that he’d
woken up
naked, his boxers slit up both sides by that little knife, and that she’d said to come right in. They didn’t even want to listen at first, but when he was screaming and fighting with them the little treasure box of souvenirs fell to the floor and spilled, and then they’d had no choice but to listen.

He went to a holding cell. They gave him clothing that was too small, but still better than being naked, and he’d waited. He talked to two detectives that day. He had to sign a written confession first, then say everything he’d done to a camera while they asked him the same things again, and he’d been honest because she’d said to be honest, and he’d been polite because she’d said to be polite. When it was finished they left, and when they came back they were going to the hospital.

The two detectives were at the hospital when he got there, but they weren’t with him on the trip. He’d ridden in the back of a van with two men in padded suits who held shotguns. They chained his wrists and ankles, affixed those chains to his waist, and then those chains were bolted to the floor and the bench behind him. He didn’t talk on the trip because no one asked him anything, but if they had he would have told them. He would have told them anything.

They made him ride a wheelchair into the hospital, which was funny because he wasn’t sick, but the detective told him not to talk when he protested about it. They took a special elevator up, he and the two detectives, as well as the two guys with shotguns. A hospital orderly pushed the chair for him, and he seemed like a pretty nice guy—at least he was smiling. They brought him down a hallway, past a couple of doors they had to be buzzed through, and then finally they were at his room.

It was white and bare, just a toilet, bed, and a TV built into the wall, and then some other hospital stuff that he couldn’t identify. They told him to get out of the chair and get in the bed, and he did. They took the waist restraint off and hooked him to the bed at the ankles and wrists with leather straps before they removed the metal ones. The nice orderly who’d pushed him said he was going to give him something to help him rest, and Phil had said he didn’t want to rest. The orderly looked at the detective and the detective shrugged, and then the orderly was filling a syringe from a little bottle.

Phil fought them, but they won. He was tied to a bed and exhausted, and they gave him the shot in the end. She came in his sleep, and he begged and pleaded, and she mocked his pleas as she cut him. She was at his side and on top of him all night, filleting, poking, and prodding, always wanting more and more, and he gave all she could take, gave more than he had to give, really. It went on like that for a long, long time.

One Year Later

It was a good reception, and the wedding had been pretty darn good, too. Mike had felt a wave of emotions at being Lamar’s best man—mostly fear, but there was a fair amount of pride, both in having been asked, and of course in Lamar and Rani.

The wedding had been a miracle, in Mike’s opinion. Rani had been working on her parents for months to get them to come around, and when they finally did, much to everyone’s surprise, they loved their future son-in-law. A Jew was what they would have preferred, they made that clear enough, but as long as their daughter was happy, so too would they be. Lamar had done his part to endear himself to them, and he’d actually converted to Judaism in the process. Mike had thought his friend looked hilarious with his tightly cropped, frizzy hair and yarmulke, but he was nice enough not to mention it too often.

Mike knew from the second he met Rani that she was perfect for Lamar, and their eventual engagement was no surprise to him. She was smart, beautiful, and painted like a fiend possessed. More than once, Lamar had told stories of coming home from work and seeing a wall ruined with spatter, and Rani herself similarly ruined. She was a good person who, most importantly, was good to, and good for, his friend.

Being best man, on the other hand, that was a bit of a surprise. The speech had been hard to write, but he felt he’d done pretty well by the end of it. He talked about the first time he met Lamar, and how that cocky young man had become one of the best people he’d ever had the pleasure of knowing. He talked briefly about how Lamar had been there through the worst times of his life, and had stood by to help keep both Mike’s business and Mike himself afloat. Mike didn’t mention Sidney or Deb by name, and knew he didn’t have to. Some people there would know what he was talking about and some wouldn’t, and that was just fine with Mike.

He concluded the speech by wishing Rani and Lamar all the best in the world. He told them not to squander a minute, and when he said that, he almost did tear up, but held it together to toast them. When he embraced Lamar, who had teared up by then, he told him that they were no longer going to be employer and employee; they were going to be business partners. It was as good of a gift as Mike thought he had to give, and he could tell Lamar thought so as well.

Becky had brought a date, of course, and one of her good friends had served as Mike’s escort for the evening. She was nice but far too enthusiastic about everything for Mike to deal with her for longer than the reception. That was OK, though, she was easy on the eyes and OK enough to talk to. He just hoped Becky hadn’t set them up as anything more than a wedding date.

Becky was doing well, though she’d taken Deb’s passing harder than Mike had thought she would. She rarely brought Deb up in conversation, but Mike could see it on her lips and in her eyes all the same. He almost told her what had happened once, but he didn’t want to spoil it. Becky had let go and so had he, and that was as it should be.

Mike hadn’t seen Doc in about six months; he’d accepted a teaching position in England. He was still present at the wedding, though, in the form of an enormous unwrapped gift that stood like a fortress on the table with all of the other presents. He e-mailed Becky on a regular basis and sent normal mail to Mike every now and again, but even when he’d still been in town, his visits had grown less and less frequent. Mike knew why, and he knew Doc knew why, but there was still no good way to fix it.

What they’d been through had a polarizing effect on both men. For Mike, that meant that he would never wait to say something tomorrow that could be said today. Mike was pretty sure that for Doc, it had all been just a bit much, and he understood that too. Doc had been the rational one through everything, the one who put together the little pieces and answered the sea of questions that Mike bombarded him with. Mike knew they were still friends, knew he’d probably see him again, and he did not begrudge Doc’s need to leave even if it meant that he had to miss a good friend.

The art had come back. It took a few weeks after the last time he’d spoken to Deb to really get himself all the way good, but it did come back. He’d started just doing small walk-ins, and he let Lamar and the two men they’d hired do the large custom stuff. When the art finally did reappear, though, it came with a vengeance. Mike painted more than he ever had before, and certainly more brilliantly.

His first full project had been a series of oils of the eight women killed by the man named Phillip Marshall. It had been a hard project, but it was the one that felt right. He drew them from a fading memory, but they looked just as they had when they were alive. He had Becky e-mail the UICA early samples of what he’d been calling “Love and Blood,” and when they asked for more, he was shocked. Deb had been right.

The show had run for six weeks that winter, and it had received a ton of local coverage. Papers in Detroit and Chicago picked up the story, and Mike received feature articles in five tattoo trade magazines.
Juxtapoz
had even sent a team to cover the opening, and Mike was as surprised as anyone at the reception the art had received. None of it meant more to him, though, than talking to an ashen-faced man Mike hadn’t thought he’d see again.

Gabriel bought the painting of his daughter for one dollar, not that Mike couldn’t have gotten a lot more if he’d wanted. The man thanked him enough, though, thanked him with kindness and a knowing look that spoke volumes about how much he remembered Mike and what Mike and Doc had said. It was no surprise when he came by for a tattoo with ashes a few weeks later. All of the rest of the paintings made up the monetary difference. Eventually they all sold, even the one of Deb, and it was hard to let that one go, but he thought it better that it leave than stay. He had memories enough, and it just didn’t seem right to have her stuck to a wall in the apartment—far better that she go with someone else.

Mike had let curiosity eat at him for about a month after it was finished before he called Detective Van Endel to see what had happened to Phillip Marshall. The detective offered to meet him at a bar, and Mike had suggested Founders, where, it turned out, the detective had his own mug as well.

Marshall had died, the detective told him, as bad a death as he’d ever seen. No, worse. In the four days after his confession, he’d been sedated but still screaming constantly; when he was awake, he raved about how sorry he was, and he begged them to make the woman go away.

“That was the funny thing,” said Van Endel. “It seemed impossible, but we were worried that there might be a woman somehow torturing him on the sly, a friend of one of the deceased, maybe.” He’d never gotten around to putting a camera in the room where they were holding Marshall, but he did watch the one in the hallway, and after Marshall died he watched all the tapes since his stay had begun. There was no woman, and no man, doing anything other than reported rounds and checkups. As was hospital policy when dealing with a violent and potentially psychotic individual, no one ever saw him alone.

The news said Marshall died by choking. The detective confirmed this, but he said that what they left out was that it was on his own surgically removed dick.

Mike had said little to Van Endel after that. He knew exactly who had a bone to pick with Marshall; he just hadn’t realized her abilities extended that far. He bought the detective a round, and Van Endel bought him one, and for Mike, that was enough reminiscing about bad old times.

Mike from North Carolina had kept up with him. Not as frequently as Mike would have liked, but the kid actually could draw, and every few weeks Mike would get a sheaf of paper full of drawings and missives, the writing invariably about how much everything sucked. It was good to hear from him, good in a pure way that was a nice reminder of that trip. It was just one more proof that good things can happen to good people, even when it seems impossible that they would.

The tattoos with ashes didn’t stop. Mike would go months without doing one, and then someone hurting very badly would walk into the store. Mike had gotten to the point where he could tell what they were going to say before they asked him if he would do it.

Lamar was spared the requests; in fact, Mike was the only person who worked at the store to be asked about the “special tattoos.” He thought that was fitting. If he owed a penance for Deb and everything else that had happened, then he was going to pay it. Mike had never told anyone the specifics of what would happen to them if they got a tattoo with ashes, until a story on the news about kids going missing and bones turning up gave him pause enough to call Van Endel and mention that there might have been a few details Mike had left out when they’d met at Founders.

They caught the monster committing the crimes two days after Mike had called the detective, and nothing more had come of it. Mike knew eventually the detective would call though, and he just tried to be ready for it. Luckily between tattooing, running the shop, and training Mike from Carolina, there wasn’t much time to ponder what the other end of that conversation would be like.

Mike wondered sometimes at night if she’d ever come back to him. She might not be able to, or might not want to. If she did, he knew exactly what he’d say: “I told you about Sid, and you owe me a story.”

He figured it didn’t matter much either way. He’d known real love once in his life, and he figured that was a damn sight better than most people got. When he dreamed, it was of the Carolina beaches and sailors winding around storefronts, and in those dreams he knew Jack was wrong. Art wasn’t war at all—it was beauty and love and death. Art was everything, and it was eternal.