The Basement (3 page)

he is turned on by her voice and her personality, but not by her appearance. Meanwhile, he must protect her from the killer who has found out her home address.

It's a cracker of a story, but I'm not sure where to take it, whether the killer gets to Betty,

whether Frank is really the killer, who lives or who dies. Being a writer is a bit like being God. I can do what I want with the characters, I have absolute power over them.

I look up from the grass and find myself staring at the Dakota building, One West 72nd Street.

It's where John Lennon used to live. It's star heaven, practically. Maury Povich and Connie Chung live there, Rudolph Nureyev had an apartment there before he died of Aids, Roberta Flak sleeps there and I even saw Lauren Bacall going in once. That's one of the reasons that I decided to live in New York and not Los Angeles, the people here are so accessible. The showbiz people, I mean.

The movers and shakers. In LA they all hide behind sheer walls and alarm systems and they have armed guards ready to jump on any strangers who get too close. But New York is too crowded for that sort of privacy. Sure, they're safe inside their fortress-like apartment blocks, but they have to come out and they always have to walks across the sidewalk to their cars and that's when you can get to them. Look at what happened to Lennon, right? A guy stands outside the Dakota with a gun in his pocket and before long he's as famous as the man he killed.

New York, huh? It's a lousy place to live, but a great place to kill. The ultimate hunting ground.

I mean, close by the Dakota building is 145 Central Park West. Living there, when they're not under armed guard in LA, are Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, Dustin Hoffman, Barry Manilow and Mary Tyler Moore. All in the one place. A stalker's paradise. You want to get close to Steven Spielberg in LA? Forget it. But when he's in the Big Apple, all you've got to do is stand outside 721 Fifth Avenue. He'll come out eventually. Francis Ford Coppola? Just up the road at 781.

Robert Altman? 502 Park Avenue.

I stand outside the Dakota building, and as always I find myself instinctively looking for bloodstains. They're aren't any, of course. Blood on the sidewalk is even worse for a building's image than a brawling doorman so it was cleaned up even before Lennon was declared dead.

That's one of the few good things about the city. It's so bloody efficient.

* * *

Her name is Sarah, Sarah Hall. According to the driver's licence in her purse she's twenty-

eight years old, but she looks younger. Her skin is smooth, unmarked by lines or blemishes and her hair is soft and silky. Her driver's licence is upstairs on the kitchen table along with the rest of the contents of her purse: a gold Visa card, a Hechts charge card, a pale pink lipstick, a small pack of menthol-scented tissues, a pack of chewing gum and forty dollars in bills. There was some change, too: three quarters, two dimes and four pennies. You wonder about the chewing gum. She looks like the sort of woman who wouldn't want her daughters chewing gum so perhaps she does it because she's trying to give up smoking.

You lean forward and sniff her mouth. Her breath is minty fresh and warm, no trace of tobacco. You run your hand down her arm, your fingers scratching quietly against the blue silky material. She's wearing a gold bracelet on her left wrist and the metal is warm to the touch. Next to it on her wrist is the steel chain which binds her hand to the frame of the bed,

and at the base of her thumb is the padlock, like a charm on a bracelet. You examine her long, elegant fingers, looking for nicotine stains, but you find none. Perhaps she gave up smoking some time ago but still feels the urge from time to time, a distant longing. You know all about longings. And desire.

Her nails are painted a deep, glossy pink, and they are a perfect shape. They're short enough to be functional - she has two children to take care of - but long enough to scratch if necessary. You imagine her nails raking down your back, hard enough to make you gasp,

intensifying your pleasure until it crosses the border and becomes pain. You wonder if she scratches her husband when he makes love to her, whether she bites him with her strong teeth as she grasps him between her soft thighs. John, her husband is called. John Hall. He's in real estate. Hands out business cards with his home telephone number on it to anyone who'll take it. He asks people to call him at home, drop around and shoot the breeze anytime,

because he's so eager to make a deal. He has a wife and two daughters to support, after all.

She pulls against the restraining chains and they jangle against the brass bed frame. She groans and her eyelids flicker. Her eyes open but she has trouble focussing and they close again and she shakes her head from side to side slowly, like a child having a nightmare. She licks her lips and they glisten. As her mouth opens a thin thread of spittle is drawn between her lips. It pulls thinner and thinner and then snaps silently, the saliva disappearing back into the darkness of her soft mouth. She murmurs something which could be the name of her husband. She frowns, still with her eyes closed, and you know that her head is probably hurting. They always complain of headaches, and they always ask for a drink of water. Once they've stopped screaming.

Her right arm moves again, pulling harder this time, and then she tries to bring both arms down from above her head. She pulls down hard and as the chains rattle and bite into her wrists she opens her eyes fully and sees you. She screams then, not words, just a yell of surprise and fear like she'd just turned a corner and seen you standing there with a gun in your hand. She screams so hard that you can see right down her mouth to the small fleshy bit at the back, contracting like it's trying to get away from you. She looks older when she screams, deep lines appearing either side of her mouth and wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Her wide open mouth makes the flesh bunch up under her chin and makes her nose look bigger. As she gives voice to her terror you sit quietly on the edge of the bed and wait for her to finish. They never scream for more than two minutes, and usually they grow quiet after just sixty seconds or so. They can't scream and breathe and it doesn't take long for them to realise that they're in no immediate danger. You smile as you watch her, knowing that the room you are in is totally soundproofed. The walls, ceiling and floor are tiled and beneath the tiles are layers of glass fibre and beneath the fibre is a double layer of concrete blocks. Soon after you'd soundproofed the basement you put in a 100 Watt stereo system and played rock music at full volume while you walked around the outside of the house, listening carefully. Nothing, just the territorial chirping of sparrows and the occasional drone of an airliner high overhead. The stereo is back upstairs now, and you know that no matter how hard or how long the woman screams no one is going to hear her. Except you.

* * *

I wake up like a jolt of electricity has been passed through my body and for a few minutes I lie still,

staring up at the ceiling, my mind racing. I've got a complete plot in my head, my subconscious has been working overtime and all I have to do is remember it, to run the scenes through my head so that they're imprinted on my subconscious. It's good, it's really good, and when I get up I rush to the typewriter and bash out a synopsis. When I've finished I pace around the room, reading it aloud. It's better than good. It's great.

I even had the title. The Bestseller. My blood starts to race as I read it through for the second time. This is going to be the one. This is the one that's going to net me a million dollars and a first class ticket to the west coast. It starts with a frustrated writer enrolling on a university creative writing course, determined to write a best-selling book which will make him rich and famous. It's not autobiographical, this guy is a psychopath. No, more of a sociopath. Most of the people on the course are writer wannabees, low on talent but high on enthusiasm, and he is contemptuous of them. The writer is asked by the lecturer to read from his work in progress. His opening sentence is “I'd kill to write a bestseller....” and it rapidly becomes clear that his book is a first person account of a murderer looking for a victim. The lecturer and students realise with horror that he is writing about them. The would-be murderer is planning to kill somebody, dismember the body and bury it in several locations. The book will provide clues to the identity of the victim and the location of the body parts. It will be the ultimate treasure hunt, and the prize will be the writer going to the gas chamber. Or the electric chair. Whatever.

Over the following weeks the writer follows several of the students home, and writes about their possibilities as victims. The lecturer calls in the police, they read the work-in-progress but say there is nothing they can do unless the writer commits an offense. During the next reading of the work-in-progress, the writer considers the possibility of the lecturer as the victim. The writer discovers that the lecturer is having an affair with a young girl on the course. That too goes into the book. The writer becomes increasingly isolated, the rest of the class either fear or ridicule him.

The girl who is having an affair with the lecturer vanishes, though her apartment is covered with her blood.

The police question the writer, and go through his manuscript, but they can't believe that anyone would actually write what is in effect a detailed confession before committing a murder. Then they discover his fingerprints at the crime scene and arrest him. The writer is a warped genius, and the cops are unable to get a confession from him. He has an explanation for his prints being at the crime scene - he says that he was having an affair with the girl. The cops don't believe him, but eventually they have to release him and he goes back to the creative writing course. His book is almost finished.

The police, acting on an anonymous tip-off, discover part of the girl's body in the lecturer's apartment, along with the murder weapon. The lecturer is arrested, charged and found guilty,

though the rest of the girl's corpse is never discovered.

The writer finishes his book, and it's an instant bestseller. Rumors abound that he has gotten away with murder and that the clues to the whereabouts of the girl's body parts are hidden in the book. Sales boom. The last scene is of him signing copies of his novel - called The Bestseller - in a book shop. A young wannabee writer asks him how to write a Bestseller. “Easy,” says the writer, “you just have to kill for it....”

It's perfect. I get dressed and rush down to a print shop on 38th Street and get a dozen copies made, then back in the apartment I put them in envelopes addressed to studio execs, agents and producers in LA. I get a sudden brainwave, the movie would be perfect for Brian DePalma, it's just his sort of thing. I love Body Double, it's one of my all-time favourites. I rip one of the envelopes open and take out the synopsis, then hurriedly type out a personal letter - Dear Mr DePalma, you don't know me but... - and sign it with a flourish. I post the LA letters first, then catch a cab down to Fifth Avenue. His apartment is at number 25, I've dropped stuff off there before, even got a personal reply once. He was really nice, explained that he was too busy to take on another project and gave me the names of a couple of studios to try. I followed his advice, but of course I hit the secretarial wall straight away. This time it's going to be different. He's going to love The Bestseller, I know he is.

It's only when I get out of the cab that I realise that I'm not really dressed for visiting a prestigious Fifth Avenue address - I was so excited about the story that I just pulled on the first clothes I found, faded blue jeans, an old sweatshirt and a pea coat, and I didn't bother shaving or showering. The doorman looks at me like I'm a wad of chewing gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe. "Whaddya want? he snarls.

I give him the boyish smile and hold up the envelope. “I'm delivering this for Mr DePalma,” I say.

“Ya don't look like a fucking mailman,” he says.

I nod and widen the smile. “It's personal,” I say.

He holds out his hand. The nails are bitten to the quick and ingrained with dirt. Before he can take the envelope I pull it back. There's a crafty look in his eyes and I don't trust him. “If it's all the same to you, I'd rather put it in his mailbox,” I say.

“You can't. All the mail has to go through me.” He makes another attempt to grab the envelope,

but he's too slow, too clumsy.

“Surely I can put it in his box?”

“No. Only the mailman has the key.”

“Come on, are you telling me that you can't open it?”

He folds his arms across his chest. He looks like a former boxer, a nose thickened by too many punches and a large chin that he juts forward as he speaks. “It's me or nothing,” he growls.

“Okay, so what if I take it up to him?” I say, even though I know he's not going to let me inside his precious lobby.

He shakes his head. “No. No way.” He holds out his hand.

I'm not sure what to do. I just know that he's not going to pass it on to DePalma. As soon as he disappears inside, the envelope is going to go straight into the trash can. I'm fucked. I know it and he knows it, but I don't have any choice. I give it to him. He weighs it in his huge hand like it was a piece of bad meat. “I'll make sure he gets it,” he says with a savage grin.

Yeah, right, I think, but I smile and say thanks. Thanks a lot.

I walk all the way back to my apartment. I'm not angry, I'm cold. Like ice. I'm determined to get my own back on the doorman, but I'll do it calmly, clinically. Revenge is a dish best served cold. It's an old saying, but it's true.

When I get back I sit down at my typewriter and write a letter to Brian DePalma, telling him what happened. I redo it several times, making sure that it's just right, then I put it into an envelope with another copy of the synopsis. I go down to the Post Office and send it by registered mail.

* * *

The questions come thick and fast, but you don't answer any of them. It's true what they say:

knowledge is power. And it's important that she realises that any power she once had has been stripped away. She has to do everything you say, without question. Obedience, that's all you require. She must do as she's told.