Shadow Games (6 page)

He looked to the street below. Quiet. Residential. Lone street light on the corner showing the edges of two or three well-kept brick apartment houses. Rain shone like black glass on the sidewalk and street. Wind covered his body with goose bumps again. Then, abruptly, the curtain covering him once more, he was lost inside silken whiteness, ghost inside a ghost. Safe.

The dehydration was starting to get very bad. He needed a Pepsi or something. And soon.

Where was the kitchen in this place, anyway?

He walked through the bedroom door and out into a living room that was even darker except for the window on the west wall. Muzzy street light played on the glass like dying fireflies in sweet summer gloom.

There was a small brick fireplace, two long, narrow, built-in bookcases on either side, a stylish white couch and a TV set with a twenty-one inch screen. No wind reached this room and so the air was stuffy and smelled of—

At first he didn't recognize it, but then—

Marijuana
. The harsh, weedy stench of marijuana smoke. He looked at the shadowy room, studied it, but it was completely unfamiliar.

Where was he?

Who
was he?

Please, God, you gotta help me. It's in the contract. Honest
.

A terrible panic replaced his sarcasm. He had to fight hard against the impulse to start shrieking and then start smashing things.

And then a notion so horrible he thought he would lose control entirely: I'm in a little box, like the little boxes rats are
kept in for lab experiments, and somebody is watching all this, all my misery, all my fear, and taking notes on everything I do, and sometimes He just nods when I do the expected, and sometimes He smiles when I do the unexpected.

He had to get rid of this thought
—

He forced himself, despite the huge pain pounding inside his skull, to shake his head, ridding himself of the thought...

He studied the room some more, tried to get a sense of it. The books said culture; the white couch, more like a divan, really, said style; and the brick fireplace, apparently a working fireplace, said reasonably expensive. In many apartment buildings, fireplaces were strictly ornamental. Cost too much to keep them working. He decided to take a look at the titles in the bookcases. Maybe that way he could learn something about where he was right now...

He walked across the edge of a rug that was either Persian or trying hard to be Persian, and stepped over to the bookcase to the right of the fireplace.

He grabbed several books at once and then walked with them back toward the window, so he could read them in the street light.

God, he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

You're A Real Person, Too
, by Dr. Stanley M.
Derkum
;
Why You Should Love Yourself
, by Phyllis
Glanze
, PhD;
Pushed Around No Longer
, by George Fenton O'Malley;
Tell Them The Lord Says To Shove It
, by Evangelist and former NFL tackle M. "Butch" Harding (with Ken Arnold).

The person who read these books had to be a past master at low self-esteem.

He shook his head again. The books had told him nothing, really.

Kitchen.

Diet Pepsi.

Maybe he could get real lucky and find some aspirin, too.

He tried licking his lips. Didn't work. Mouth too dry.

He found the kitchen through the living room and down a short hallway that sent panic through him again. The hallway was utterly dark and too narrow. All he could think of was the grave, of being buried alive and suffocated within the confines of a casket. Clawing to get free, his ripped fingernails running with blood...

He hurried down the hallway, to the vague gray light awaiting him there.

The kitchen was L-shaped, vinyl on the floor, fashionable black and white tiles covering much of the walls. Above a white gas range, several pots and pans were suspended from the ceiling.

He was just walking into the kitchen when the bottom of his left foot stepped into something sticky.

He looked down and saw that something had been spilled on the floor, an oozing puddle lying in the center of the vinyl.

But he kept walking. He had to drink something fast, even though he knew he would probably throw it up.

He had reached the gas range when he noticed two things. One, that the kitchen didn't seem to have a refrigerator and two, that the kitchen smelled badly. Very badly.

He stood still a moment, fighting another wave of disorientation, and then realized he was being silly.

The kitchen was L-shaped. Around the corner he'd find a refrigerator. He was sure of it.

He took a step forward and once again his foot stepped into a sticky puddle.

He had to be careful not to slip.

All he needed now was to land on his ass and break an arm or something.

At the end of the kitchen was a door with a small, lacy curtain covering the glass. Holding on to the stove for purchase, he walked to the door and looked out at an alley two floors down.

Small rows of dumpsters against the brick backside of the building on the other side. Light pole swaying in the breeze,
scattering faint light everywhere like gold dust. Lonely tabby cat trundling into darkness.

He turned back from the window and for the first time stared down the small end of the L.

A large, white, square refrigerator sat there, one of those new jobs with a little plastic window and a juice dispenser built right into the door. He could hear the motor thrumming in the silence. The big machine sat in the
cove
of darkness like a Madonna in a grotto, expecting adoration.

He took a step forward.

This time he nearly slipped.

So sticky...

He had to grab on to the wall fast and even then he could feel his groin pull as he scrambled to stay upright.

All he needed was a hernia.

He felt as if he were walking through taffy, the stuff was that sticky and warm.

He had a thought about what the stuff might be but rejected it immediately. Too foolish. Too paranoid.

He went over to the refrigerator and pushed back the sliding plastic door on the juice dispenser. Somebody had been thoughtful enough to leave a clean paper cup in there.

He dispensed juice, the grinding sound of the machinery irritating in the stillness.

The beverage turned out to be grape juice, probably the same Welch's grape juice he'd always liked as a kid. The coldness was wonderful, and so was the sugary taste. All the time he drank, he leaned against the refrigerator door. He didn't want to slip.

Unfortunately, after he finished the grape juice, he was still in need of a Diet Pepsi. Hard, dry need.

He stood back from the refrigerator, wrapped his fingers around the handle, and opened the door.

The odd thing was, he didn't scream or run around smashing things. He didn't lose it at all.

He just stared into the stark white refrigerator, the interior light painting his face with a color that was almost silver. He just stared.

He'd never seen anything like it, of course.

Somebody had cut a young woman's head from her shoulders and then taken out the top three shelves of the refrigerator so the head would fit comfortably inside.

She had very blue eyes and she stared right back at him. She'd probably learned to do this, to stare right back at people, from one of those books he'd just seen, probably the
Tell Them The Lord Says To Shove It
book, which certainly seemed to advocate aggressiveness.

Just stared at him.

She'd been beautiful in a high-fashion way, all sharp cheekbones and erotic mouth and cunning little chin. She'd had long, blonde hair that was really nice somehow, even with blood splattered all over it...

The refrigerator was a mess.

Blood and slop from the ragged line of her neck dripped and dropped through the tines of the shelving to splatter and splash on the white bottom. A piece of bloody brain meat covered one letter on the Fruit drawer so that it read:
F UIT
.

And then it hit him, all of it, not knowing his name, the strange apartment, the girl's head in the refrigerator.

He turned from the refrigerator, already running even before he was all the way around, and then he went right down to the floor, skidding through the blood on his backside.

But he did not slow down.

If he couldn't run from this room, he would crawl, which was just what he did.

He got on his hands and knees and walked, dog-style, out of the kitchen.

Every few moments he'd make this sick, mewling, animal noise in his throat when he realized that he was crawling through human blood and entrails, but he kept going nonetheless, out of the kitchen and down the narrow,
coffin
like
hallway and into the living room where he pitched himself on to the dry floor and let himself rest momentarily. He was shivering from frozen sweat and his lungs were threatening to catch fire. His headache was so severe, he wondered if it might not become a permanent condition.

He had to remember his name. Had to...

T
hen, somehow, sometime, Lilly was there, in the dreamlike darkness. How he clutched his little cock, as if somebody were about to cut it off. Where had Lilly come from, anyway?

She got him clothed and on his feet sand led him to the kitchen door. He was crying all the time but she told him to stop; please,
Cobey
, stop.
But did you look inside the fucking refrigerator?
Yes, I did,
Cobey
—but everything will be fine. I promise you,
Cobey
, everything will be fine.

He followed her out to the fire escape.

The night was very cold. It seemed vast and filled with menace.

She went back and checked the door, making sure it was locked. She wore gloves.

Then she preceded him down the fire escape.

Even though she walked on tiptoes, she moved quickly, holding tight to the thin metal railing.

They had to be very, very quiet.

On the ground, she took his hand and they began walking quickly down the alley.

God, she was so strong.

He could barely keep up. He wanted to puke/piss/ scream/bleed/die. Had he killed that girl or what?

They went down to the end of the alley and over half a block. The rental car she drove sat there, waiting.

Once they were inside and pulling away from the curb, she said, "You're going to feel better now. I know you will. Well go to my hotel and I'll get you some food."

But all he could think was how alien everything looked to him. He was on the wrong planet, desperately in search of his real home.

When they had gone six quick, dark blocks, he started sobbing so hard she had to stop the car and take him in her arms and cuddle him like an infant.

Three Days Later

1

T
here were a lot of misconceptions about surveillance. For one thing, you didn't usually just pull up in front of a guy's house and park there. The guy might not be aware of you, but his neighbors likely were, and the first thing they'd do after seeing you was call the cops and report some strange man sitting out at the curb. A cop car would soon pull up—and, even if the cops went along with your story, your cover was blown. By that time, the guy you were staking out would have had plenty of time to get out the back door.

So, the first thing a smart, contemporary, respectable private investigator did was call the cops, tell them that he was about to conduct a surveillance (without giving any exact reasons why), and then off he went to do his work unhindered by neighbors or police cruisers.

This was just one of the many things that real-life private eyes did that fictional private eyes didn't do. Puckett often spoke about the differences between real and fictional on a variety of radio talk shows in the LA area—never TV because
he didn't want his face shown—and he'd developed a real following because of his gentle humor.

His listeners especially liked it when Puckett talked about operatives for a big, international agency, such as he was, who relied on mainframe computers instead of guns and shoe leather to do much of their work.