. . . t'were best done quickly . . .
—Shakespeare, Macbeth
We listened to more tapes. To all the tapes of Raffalli during his interludes as The Flash—or as he signed himself on Ellen, The Phantom. I won't reproduce any of it. We learned a few more things about Raffalli, but nothing relevant and more than you probably need to know about the infinite possibilities of the human spirit.
I lost the last of my hesitation about killing him, if that's any help. I don't think I'm as merciful a man as Mike Callahan.
I managed to keep my cool during the replay of Arethusa's rape. She held my hands tightly throughout that segment, and for as long after as it took me to relax my grip.
Then we listened to a total of about half an hour of Raffalli in the Parlor, in normal conversation with other clients and artists, and watched him approach the front door five times. Enough to give a sketchy picture of him as a human being. His heavy Brooklynese accent bespoke lower-class origins, but he dressed and spoke and carried himself with urbane grace and a high degree of apparent self-confidence. If you had to describe him in a single word, you might pick "dapper." He bounced a little when he walked. He had a tendency to start arguments and win them, to issue small challenges and then back them up, so smoothly that he never provoked any open confrontation or lasting animosity. The one time I'd seen him, I recalled, he'd been arm-wrestling a biker—and winning.
I had Mary play the Parlor tape for that time, cuing from the song "Huggin' and A-Chalkin'." The playback indicated strongly that he'd won by cheating. He used his watch to stop time, got up, and pitted his whole weight against his opponent until he had him past the point of recovery. Then he resumed the match with it already won. In other words, during that one flash glimpse I had of him, I probably actually saw—or rather, failed to see—him work his trick, in plain sight and in good light. The two hardest parts must have been getting his wrestling hand untangled from the biker's frozen grip, and resuming his original position near-perfectly afterward. What a cocky bastard! With pun intended.
Lady Sally informed us that during his interview with her at the time he'd joined the House, Raffalli had given his occupation as "mathematical physicist." That sounds redundant to me, but what do I know? He had stated that he taught part-time at Long Island University. He had politely declined her standard suggestion that he could choose a House name to give to artists and other clients, saying he had nothing to hide—doubtless chuckling inside as he said it. She confessed to us that she had rather liked him. "I have an unfortunate attraction to cocky men," she added, carefully not looking at her husband.
"Really, darlin'?" he said. "You've never introduced any of them to me."
"I try not to introduce them to anyone," she said. "They last longer that way. My point is that I find it odd a man so personable should need to rape."
"Ted Bundy," Priscilla said briefly.
"Touché. Shall we consider the details of Mr. Raffalli's murder? I suggest that the key to the whole matter is to instantly immobilize his free hand. The right one, assuming he continues to wear that damnable watch on his left wrist . . ."
Nothing else of significance happened before the balloon went up. Unless you want to count me and Arethusa—both of her—celebrating the new plateau our relationship had reached, as soon as we could be alone. I certainly do. And the event had aspects so interesting I could go on at length. But it has no real bearing on the story. Except to indicate that Arethusa and I all went into combat exercised, rested, sexually satisfied and freshly bathed. For all I know, so did all our teammates. That's the way I'd bet, anyway.
I do recall some of the conversation afterward. I had just had very convincing empirical proof that Arethusa was a single person with two bodies at her control. So I finally got around to asking her, had she been telepathic as far back as the womb, or what? "No," she told me. "I have a few—very few—vague memories of life as two separate children. My parents were . . . well, pretty eccentric. Wonderful parents, but strange. They belonged to a religious sect you've never heard of. You've heard of sects that don't believe in medicine? Well, my folks didn't believe in twins."
I couldn't help it; I giggled. But it was all right: she smiled with me. "I know, it sounds funny. But religion often makes people refuse to believe in things that are right in front of their face. My folks refused to believe that God could allow a soul to be bisected or copied, and they just couldn't see any other way a single act of procreation could produce two people. So it hadn't happened. They insisted on giving me a single name, and treating me as a single person. The observable fact that there were two of me they just . . . ignored. Pretty soon I did too. I think I was six or seven before I really got it through my head that other people could only do one thing at a time, and that other kids all went to school every day."
During all this her voice kept switching from one side of me to the other, apparently at random. I found myself tending to look at whichever one of her was not speaking at the moment. How often in life do you get to watch someone actually listen to themself? Once in a while they would look at each other, and I would get slightly dizzy thinking about that. "God, it's a good thing you weren't quints," I said. "You'd starve on one paycheck. What a fascinating life you must have had. Be having. To be in two places at once . . ."
"It has its ups and downs," she said.
"Is it hard to run two bodies at once?"
"Is it hard running only one?"
"Well, I've nothing to compare . . . oh. I see what you mean. Silly question. I'm beginning to understand something, I think."
"What's that?" she asked.
"Well, from the moment I met you, you came across as . . . what's the word? Assured? Confident? The first thing I knew about you—" I paused. "No: the first thing I knew about you was that you look very good naked. But the next thing was . . . what's that stupid phrase they keep using on talk shows? You feel good about yourself. That's rare in anybody, and especially in women. But it makes sense. Most of us keep constantly doing reality checks. We study how other people react to us, to reassure us that our senses aren't lying to us. We send out little sonar pulses all the time, and study the echoes that come back to see if we're all right. If enough people tell us we're drunk, we lie down. You don't do that. You've got your sensory reality check, all the time. It makes you just a little healthier, a little saner, than most people."
"And a little more prone to folie à deux, maybe," she said seriously. "That's part of why I decided to let myself fall in love with you, I think."
"How do you mean?"
"I am very self-confident. And sometimes both of me are dead wrong. I believe you are smart enough to know when, tough enough to make me believe it, and sweet enough to make me like it."
I blinked. "That's a tall order."
She smiled. "You're a tall man. And I'm worth the trouble."
I did not argue either point.
"And besides," she said, "you didn't flinch when you found out I have two bodies. Most of the people I've told did. One client got depressed at the thought that he was only getting half my attention."
"The man's a fool," I said. "The evidence is clear: you've got twice as much attention to give as a solo. It only makes sense. You've got two brains to use."
"See what I mean? If I let myself love anyone less perceptive than you, I'd be in terrible danger of developing a split personality."
I made a pun which on reflection I will not repeat, and one thing led to another, and then we took a nap. I don't care what the Raging Bull thought: this is the way to prepare for a fight.
We conspirators all got together again at six p.m. to have half an hour of final choreography and dress rehearsal while traffic through Reception was at its lightest. Then there was a long period during which Time insisted on tailgating instead of passing, no matter how far I pulled over to let it by. Backstage jitters. Arethusa tried to get me to eat at least a little, but I prefer to go into combat on an empty stomach. It makes you mean and quick, and improves your chances in case of a belly wound. We seven held one last brief meeting at eight p.m., exchanged last-minute thoughts and good wishes, and took our positions.
Then there was nothing but waiting and worrying. After a while I realized I'd discovered a way to make time run slow myself, without a magic watch.
Despite my war talk, I had never killed a man in cold blood before. I had killed an indeterminate number in combat, in Viet Nam, somewhere between six and a hundred thousand or so. You let off a whole lot of rounds in a hopeful spirit, and seldom get to reel the target in and inspect it afterward. But I'd seen many men in pajamas fall at the same time I fired, and had confirmed six kills, one of them by knife. I could live with them, and any others I might have caused there. (Whether we "belonged in" Nam being quite irrelevant.) In peacetime I had killed twice, both times in self-defense, taking a couple of slugs myself on the latter occasion. I could live with both of them, too. But with more difficulty. I'd killed one of them with my hands. It takes a hundred years longer than it does on TV, and lends itself well to nightmares.
But this would be my first planned and paid assassination. From private eye to hooker to hit-man, in under twenty-four hours.
Well, at least I'd found love . . .
Which, I admitted to myself in those last nervous minutes, was the real reason I had voted for Christian Raffalli's death. The world was better off without him or his magic watch, sure. But if he had not raped my newfound love, in my helpless presence, I might have settled for, say, breaking his elbows and muting him. Or even simply taking his watch from him and arranging for him to be committed as a dangerous psychotic to someplace very secure. I was sure Lady Sally could arrange something like that with a phone call. Collect.
Instead, I wanted him dead.
I decided I would whack him on the head with my blackjack after I killed him. That way it would be just as gratuitous, as pointless, as sapping me had been—
Which started me thinking about that for the first time. How perfectly unnecessary it had been to sap me. A private eye isn't surprised much to be hit on the head; it kind of goes with the territory. But Raffalli had never hit any of his other victims before, male or female, as far as the tapes showed. The emotional logic suddenly seemed skewed to me. If he was going to hit a guy, I thought, you'd think he'd do it at the start of his run of fun and games, to prove to himself that he was invulnerable. Not after he'd established that . . .
I reran the sequence in my mind, and a horrid suspicion dawned on me. I'd had a momentary sense impression of ghostly fingers touching my wallet and then the sap beside it in my back pocket. What if he had taken out the wallet and examined its contents? My fucking PI license was in there. If he found that, his logical move was to pat me down for weapons, find the sap—
—and give me a good clip, to keep me from thinking about the wallet!
I was in the darkened stairwell of one of the two "priest's holes." I broke a thumbnail lighting up my watch. It said 8:45. Raffalli didn't usually show up until at least nine. There should be time to go out into Reception, establish through Mary that the coast outside was clear, and slide outside to warn Arethusa, waiting together in Mike's van. Despite my sudden sense of terrifying urgency, I loosened my .45 in its holster, made sure the safety was off, checked my other weapons, took a quick glance through the peephole in the door at the top of the stairs, and started to ease the door open—
As I did, the front door opened and Arethusa Number One came in, looking bright-eyed but confident and plausible.
Show time . . .
Mike Callahan was sitting behind the Reception desk, his cigar in his teeth and his big hands out of sight. He saw me crack my door, but pretended he hadn't. He and Arethusa began improvising conversation, as per plan. Time slowed, as if by Raffalli's watch, while I hesitated, balancing the risk of warning him against the need to warn them that he might be on to us. As I decided to chance it, I heard the front doorknob start to turn again, and time went from zero to sixty in no time at all. I eased my door shut, fitted my eye to the peephole, and addressed a long and complicated prayer to a God I hadn't believed in since the day I found Uncle Louie. In essence, I asked Him to retroactively order the Universe so that Raffalli had been too cocky to bother checking my wallet, and had simply disturbed it in removing and replacing the blackjack. I added a detailed memo reminding Him of the kind of luck I'd been having for the last twenty years, and broadly hinting that consistency was the something-or-other of small Minds. And I believe I concluded with a promise that if He just let me have this one small murder, I'd never ask for a favor again. It seemed a reasonable request at the time.
All this in the interval it took Raffalli to get the front door open and step inside. Mike and Arethusa One were still chattering. To save my life I couldn't tell you what about. My darling turned and looked at Raffalli as she talked, giving him a good clear look at her face, smiling at him with just enough english on it to be sure she had his attention. Then Arethusa Two came in the door behind him, her timing perfect. She made enough of a noisy production out of it to make Raffalli turn and glance at her. As he saw her face, he froze in momentary surprise, just as I'd planned. Then he turned around again to confirm that the same woman was on two sides of him, just as I'd planned.
As he did, I came through that secret door fast and silently behind him. To my right, I caught a flicker in my peripheral vision of Priscilla doing the same on his other flank, as planned. Arethusa One had by now ducked silently behind the desk, according to plan. Mike was holding down on Raffalli with the sawed-off shotgun, just as planned. Raffalli was doing what almost anyone will do if you draw down on them with a twelve gauge: flinging up both hands in a futile but uncontrollable attempt to ward off buckshot.
Everything was going splendidly. By this point nearly all of the potential disasters I'd envisioned had conclusively failed to occur. All that remained was the purely nominal chance that Priscilla and/or I would fuck up what we both did best, and had rehearsed perfectly fifteen times that afternoon. I'm a fairly cocky guy myself, when it comes to physical violence, and Priscilla was as good a partner as I've ever had. In my mind I was dealing with the problem of dissecting him before I ever reached him.
Priscilla reached him a toasted pubic hair before I did. I'm better at quick than I am at fast. She took him perfectly, at right wrist and elbow simultaneously, and locked down. I was expecting him to turn involuntarily in her direction, allowing for that. Even so I took him higher up on the arm than she had, bracketing his left elbow with my hands. I didn't want there to be the slightest chance that I'd brush a sleeve past that watchstem and cause it to twist. I had no sure way to know which direction would be fatal. I felt my grip firm up, knew that come hell or high water I could hold him for the second it would take Arethusa Two to put her .38 into his short ribs, and began to exult.
Nonetheless I kept my eyes firmly fixed to that infernal watch. Time was again passing in great long slow microseconds; I had time to study the thing. I observed for the first time that it had the usual three hands, and a three-place digital readout in the center that I had taken for a manufacturer's logo. I deduced that he needed to keep track of elapsed time while in time-stop mode, for some reason. I noted the subtle geometric pattern of the chasing on the casing. I saw that the stanchions for the wristband were an integral part of the casing, not welded-on afterthoughts. It was not a real antique pocket watch, but a modern product made to look a little like one—probably because it needed to be larger than any conventional watch without drawing attention to itself. By the time I realized, looking down his arm at it, seeing it from an angle, that the stem was a single solid integral piece, incapable of twisting, he had already gotten his palm folded and his ring finger more than halfway to the stem. It had to be there for something. If it wasn't a twistable dial, then it was a pushbutton . . .
I threw everything I had into shaking his arm, trying to snap it like a whip. But you cannot move something the size and mass of an arm faster than a nerve impulse can travel down it. With sick certainty I knew I would fail. I was sorry I'd never found the time to ask how Lady Sally managed to light her House without visible bulbs. It was a good trick, and now I'd never know the answer. I thought of that, rather than think about the fact that I had probably killed my beloved, killed us all. I was still in hyperdrive. I even had time to realize for the first time that when he had cheated in his arm-wrestling match, he could not possibly have used his right hand to twist a watchstem. The crucial detail I've overlooked always turns out to have been right under my nose, big as life. Jinx my ass—I was a jerk!
And then his fingertip reached the stem and the room changed.
Everything changed. Everything but me. Instantly. The room, the lighting, the smell, the ambient sound, the temperature—even my body itself, with no perceptible transition, was at a different height from the floor, in a different position.
It was not a good position. I could not comprehend it fully right away, but it was uncomfortable to the point of pain, and that told me all I really needed to know for now. I stopped thinking about it, and the surroundings, and concentrated on Raffalli for the moment.
As a general rule, I like my opponents confident. It inclines them toward carelessness. But he had the kind of confidence that is earned. That shook me more than I like to admit. I might have been in more danger, more immediate danger, if he'd been hysterical with fear. But I also might have managed to turn that instability to my advantage. This man was not afraid of me at all . . . and the one thing I knew was that he was smarter than I was. I'd proved that.
And that was my own knife he had in his hand. A very good knife. Very sharp. I'd honed it myself less than an hour ago . . .
So what sustained me? Nothing but the awareness that my whole life had been a preparation for a confrontation like this.
"I've always liked this scene, Raffalli," I told him cheerfully.
He was amused. "'This scene'?"
"I've read it or seen it a million times. Everybody has. It means, don't go to the bathroom, the climax is coming. The villain gets the hero in his clutches. Then he lectures. He explains how he committed the crime, so he gets to brag and the audience doesn't get cheated of the solution. He tells the story of his life, justifies himself just enough so the viewer gets the point that this is his own dark side we're talking about here. He slaps the hero around just enough to lose audience sympathy for good. And then the hero kills him."
He was smiling broadly. "Too bad life ain't a bad movie."
"No, it's not. But they have that scene in good movies, too."
"Tonight we do the punk version. Where the hero dies. The modern audience likes a cruel twist. It's called realism."
"Tell it to Darth Vader, asshole."
"I must admit that a few of the plot twists have been reminiscent of a bad movie," he said, still smiling. "I couldn't believe it when I checked you out today. Sure enough, you were that Joe Quigley. The Favila case. I knew you'd be waiting for me tonight. That one of the few minds on earth capable of both deducing and believing what I've accomplished should chance to be a customer here is . . . well, if this were a movie I'd be demanding my money back. Instead, I'm going to play Editor." The smile became a grin. "You're an implausible character, Quigley. I'm going to cut you. Pun intentional."
"You're history," I said. "By dawn you'll be marine biology. I'm going to flush you down a toilet. For hours."
While I talked tough to try and cheer myself up, my surroundings were soaking in. As I spoke, I was inventorying the environment for liabilities and potential assets. Well before I invoked Darth Vader, I'd finished the job. The results were not encouraging.
He and I were alone. In a room I recognized. Master Henry's Dungeon. No, I was mistaken, the swing set and the Stairway to Hell were nowhere to be seen: it must be Cynthia's Dungeon. I was secured firmly by wrists and ankles to some kind of bondage cross, in an X shape. I strained against the bonds, first covertly and then overtly, and satisfied myself that I could not break them. It wouldn't have helped a lot if I had. I was completely unarmed. Even my best-hidden weapons will not stand up to a skin search, and he had made one. Leaving me in my skin.
Can you think of a worse nightmare than being naked and helpless in a fully equipped S&M dungeon with a guy who's raped your lover, wants you dead and has your own knife in his hand? Even a beleaguered movie hero usually has at least a nailfile or something. I didn't have a place to keep one.
As far as I could see, I had a single item on the asset side of the ledger. We were running in realtime. Somewhere outside this room, my friends were even now observing that Raffalli and I were gone, and taking steps to find us.
Slim comfort. Their first guess would probably be that he had taken me somewhere outside the House. We all knew he was cocky, but this was almost unreasonably audacious. Brilliantly so—
Wait—he didn't know about Mary!
Did he? Electronic surveillance was surely not something a sane madam would advertise to her customers, however necessary it was for their own protection. Surely he had searched the House at least once, during Stop-Time—but would he have had any plausible reason to search the fourth floor, once he saw it was not used for business? The Snoop Room was several boring doors from the stairs.
We'd already killed a good sixty seconds in conversation since he'd restarted time. Priscilla was quick as a fly and fast as a cheetah. It was possible that she was just outside that door right now—
—getting ready to do what?
Was there any chance that even she could get that door open in utter silence, and sneak up on him so carefully that he never got even a split second's warning?
In the movies, maybe.
I couldn't even cue her accurately. The Dungeon was soundproof.
"Well, I hope you won't be too disappointed," he went on while my mind raced, "but I have no intention of playing out the scene in the conventional manner. I decline to die. I won't explain my watch even to a dead man breathing—especially not one who looks so much like a reporter. And I haven't met anybody since my mother died to whom I felt any impulse to justify myself."
That I could believe. His vocabulary and diction were excellent, only the single word "ain't" earlier hinting at lower-class origins—but he had never troubled to scrub off the heavy Brooklyn accent that was a much broader hint. He'd learned good speech simply to make himself understood better. He didn't give a damn what anybody thought of him.
"No," I agreed. "You're good at difficult things, but I don't see you as a man to attempt the impossible."
If there had been the slightest chance it'd work, I would have tried bargaining, or even begging, for my life. But he was simply not that stupid. My only hope was to go in the other direction. If I could lead him into a quarrel, we might make enough noise together to cover an approach, for long enough to let Mary pass the word. I was uncomfortably aware that it's hard to piss off a man who knows he holds all the cards. But what choice did I have?
"Oh, everything I've done can be justified," he said confidently. "I simply don't like you well enough to try. Or anyone else I know but myself."
"I'm fascinated," I said. "Indulge me, just for the sake of argument. Justify rape for me."
As I hoped, the word "argument" pushed his button. "It would be entertaining," he said, "especially since the longer we chat, the worse it will be for you when I finally get to business. But the question doesn't arise. I've never raped anyone. Well, not in years."
"I know of at least three, and two possibles," I said hotly, trying to raise the volume.
He didn't rise to the bait. "Ask any one of them whether I've ever touched them," he said smugly.
Interesting philosophical point. If the victim herself honestly denies the crime ever took place . . . did it? If a tree falls in the forest, and bounces back upright before it has a chance to realize it . . .
"Well, one of them apparently knows, whichever one of those twins I bagged. But only because you told her. Up until then she'd have passed a lie detector test swearing I'd never been within five feet of her. Looked at a certain way, you raped her, Hump."
That name made my adrenal glands, already on overtime, go crazy. It is not the name on my license, or anywhere else in my wallet, nor on file in any place in the greater New York area. He had to have checked me out very thoroughly today: he knew much more about me than I knew about him. Not good. And the name itself has always made me crazy. It's not my fault my old man named me Humphrey Bogart Quigley. Now there were three people in New York who knew. More than ever it was necessary that Christian Raffalli die tonight. Now if I could only live to see it.
Wait, now: could Priscilla—or Mike or Lady Sally or whoever—manage to find some way to pump sleepy-gas or some other immobilizing agent under the crack of the door? Assuming I could keep him talking long enough for them to fetch it?
I had to reject that one too. Even assuming Sally had a reason to keep such things handy, and even if there was a crack under the door of a soundproof room big enough to pass a nozzle, I knew of no gas that would drop a man in his tracks instantly. If Raffalli felt himself getting dizzy, he could tap his watch, take as long as he wanted to recover from the effects, and then discipline whoever had tried to annoy him. I could think of no way to render a man in a locked room instantly unconscious without warning him.
It was up to me to get some noise going here—fast!
"Even if I stipulated that the crimes took place," he continued, "and even if all of them eventually learned what had happened, what's the difference? They were all whores."
"You think prostitutes don't mind being raped, you scumbag?" I barked.
"They certainly have no right to claim serious trauma," he said reasonably. "It's analogous to throwing a stuntman off a high place. To you or me it would be terrifying; to him it's another day."
"Let me get this straight: you believe that if a man sells his paintings, it's all right for jerkoffs like you to steal a few?" I was raising my volume with each sentence, trying to lead him into escalation.
But he was simply too smug. "I never stole a thing," he said calmly. "I pay good money to come here, I paid for the right to use those women."
"With their consent! Lady Sally's artists have the right to choose their clients, you must know that, you freak son of a bitch."
"Not one of them said no," he said, smiling. "Not even with body language. Or cried afterward. At the very worst, what I did to them was no worse than a pelvic exam that was over before they knew it. A little residual soreness, perhaps."
"You smirking jackass!"
"It's pointless to shout," he said with his best smirk. "This room is quite soundproof."
Dammit, he was right. Even if I could make him yell back at me once, no one in the hall would know. The word could be relayed through Mary—but that meant I needed a sustained diversion. He just wasn't irritable enough . . .
"Try looking at it from my point of view," he continued. "I could just as easily have violated virgins in church, brides on their honeymoon bed, nuns in broad daylight. Yet I chose to come here, where even a little chafing wouldn't be that unusual a problem. Would you have been so thoughtful if you had discovered what I have?"
The arrogance of him astonished me even more than it infuriated me. He actually wanted to be admired for his discretion. So it was true: no man thought of himself as a villain. Not even this rotten, smarmy little—
The specific epithet that happened to come to mind suggested one last angle of attack that might get him angry enough to raise his voice. If you can't attack a man's morals, try his sexual preference . . .
"So," I said, glancing down at my nudity just long enough to make my point, "now you've finally decided to stop protesting and come out of the closet, huh? Tired of living in denial, faggot?"
In all honesty I was somewhat worried that the charge was not libelous. Now that I thought about it, several of his japes so far had involved nude male clients as well as females. Audiotape does not tell the gender of the person being raped, if there are no victim's cries or even exhalations to be heard. And most men would not report an inexplicable discharge to anyone . . . or, probably, recognize the taste. But even self-assured gays or bisexuals frequently flare up at being called faggot by a straight, so I had high hopes for this line of attack.
I might as well have accused him of having green hair. It did more than roll off his back: it seemed to actually please him. "Not at all," he said. "I can see why you might think so—but in fact I'm quite old-fashioned in that regard. I'm very fond of women as a species. Not to the point of fanaticism, no . . . but they'll always be my preferred receptacles. That's why I chose women consistently for the last four days' experiments in what you call 'rape,' and I call 'painless gratification.' The men were just bystanders."
"I see," I said. "You checked me out, and heard all the stories, so you took off all my clothes just to see if it could be true. Pure intellectual curiosity, huh? Nice try, fairy." What the hell else did you call a gay guy to insult him? I'd never gone in for it. "You premature ejaculators usually turn out to be closet cases."
I think I finally winged his ego with that last wild shot. But not enough. "Now, Humphrey," he said, "even a stud like you would be in a hurry too, if you were as excited as I was, and absolutely had to be done in ten minutes' time."
So the watch would only work for ten minutes' subjective time per use. We'd never thought to time Mary's tapes. That might be useful information. Suppose Lady Sally and my other friends could build him a trap that took more than ten minutes to get out of? Or did he have as many ten-minuteses as he needed? Did the damned watch need time to recharge, or whatever? If so, how much?
But his next words drove the subject from my mind. "And surely you can think of a reason other than sex why a man might want to take off another man's clothes. Can't you?"
I wished I couldn't. But I could. For the first time there was a gleam of genuine madness in his eyes.
"I'm done with women for a while now," he went on, enjoying himself. "I'm ready to move into Phase Two. It's time to experiment at the opposite end of the spectrum. For the next few days, I intend to explore another old interest of mine: what you would call 'torture,' and I would call 'painful gratification.' For that I prefer men."
I looked around me. At whips, chains, clamps, paddles, flails, cat-o'nine-tails, electrodes, a cattle prod, for Christ's sake. All perfectly safe, in the hands of any competent professional. Who was interested in repeat business . . .
In the back of every man's mind, until the day he learns the answer, is the question, could I successfully imitate a tough guy under real pressure? Until now I'd thought I knew the answer, thought I'd learned it in Nam. But being shot at in a strange land by someone you can't see—with a gun of your own, and the use of your limbs, and your clothes on—that's not real pressure.
So maybe a lifetime of pretending to be cool and unflappable came to my rescue. Or maybe I didn't want to add to the grief of Arethusa and my new friends, who almost had to be waiting helplessly out in the hall by now, hearing all this second-hand and praying for him to make a mistake. I don't know, maybe the ghost of my namesake helped sustain me in my time of trial. Whatever, my voice came out without a quaver, let alone the shuddering I was doing inside my brain. "And you were too cheap to buy your own goddam tools. You pile of pus."
"These toys?" he said happily, waving a hand at the arrayed utensils. "Tourist garbage. For fetishists only. No serious student needs anything that can't be found in any home in the land. A sewing needle or two. Pliers. A candle. String and rubber bands. Perhaps some iodine or Merthiolate. Or simple soap—ever get soap in a cut? Or your eyes? Any kind of stove is good. And I'm particularly fond of those hangers meant for trousers. The ones with the two little sliding jaw-clamps? Once you've found somewhere to affix those, the hook seems almost designed to attach weights to, don't you think? And if there's a garage, radiator clamps and vises and sanding-wheels are all fun. Old enough cars frequently have the old-fashioned kind of jack in the trunk. As Cleve says, anyone who needs whips and other incriminating specialty items in his possession suffers from lack of imagination. The meanest home affords unlimited possibilities. Consider the average silverware drawer."
I had finally found a conversational subject he was interested in. Lucky me. I had terribly underrated this man. Christian Raffalli had been a true monster long before he stumbled across absolute power. I made myself keep looking him in those mad eyes, but it cost me a lot.
"But even if one dabbles in homeless derelicts, one finds that they generally can be relied on to possess a knife of some kind," he went on jovially, and brandished my knife theatrically. The area in which he brandished it was intended to make me soil myself, and damned near succeeded. "And now that I've field-tested the watch, there's a little refinement I've invented that I'm dying to try." He simpered. "I'm afraid you won't like it at all, Humphrey. But it will be an honor to be its first victim, if that's any consolation." He glanced past me. "Hmm. One of these silly items might prove useful after all."
He had to reach past me to get it. He was not self-conscious about letting his body touch a naked man. Trying to get my teeth on his throat as it came near was worse than futile: not only did I miss by a mile, I ended up with my mouth open for another try that I wasn't going to get. I have since learned that the thing is called a ball-gag. A ball much like a tennis ball, with a strap through it that buckles behind the head. It tasted like rubber and hurt my jaws.
My very last weapon, my mouth, was gone. I'd blown my chance for a wisecracking exit line. I really hated that.
"Ordinarily," he said, as he finished buckling the thing, "I enjoy vocalization. But hypersonics are so much like chalk on a blackboard, don't you agree? What's the matter—cat got your tongue? Don't worry, you'll have a ball. Not for long, of course . . ."
Mary was right. For his sense of humor alone, this man deserved to die.
"We'll have all the time in the world," he crooned in my ear. "I checked before I brought you here. The dominatrix is off shift tonight, sound asleep. And no one else would dare come in here. We've got all night, Hump baby."
He stood back and looked me over proprietarily. Fixing the "Before" in his mind, no doubt. One day soon it would occur to him that now that he had the watch, he could finally afford to keep a photo scrapbook. Or a video library. He enjoyed the sight of me fighting the gag so much I stopped. And then he did something that genuinely astonished me.
He unbuckled his watch, and took it off . . .
And I couldn't tell anybody! I didn't care why he was doing it; it didn't matter in the least why he was doing it; all I wanted in the world was to tell Mary that he had. I tried to bite through that damned gag so hard my vision clouded and my ears roared. Doubtless a thousand others had tried the same thing, under extreme stimulus, and there wasn't a mark on the ball. I probably made enough noise to tell Mary I was gagged, but I don't think a computer could have guessed what I was trying to say, even if she'd had one programmed for the purpose on standby. Absurdly, I wished I had asked for the traditional final cigarette while I still could.
Within seconds, I knew that I was wrong. It did matter why he was taking the watch off. It mattered terribly.
Because he reached up, humming softly and cheerfully, and strapped it on my left arm.
He buckled it at the first notch, so that it rode too low on my forearm for me to reach the stud with my fingers, and could be quickly removed if anyone should disturb us. I felt a sharp prick at my arm as he settled the watch in place. I had plenty of time to deduce that the watch must for some reason need to be physically connected to its wearer's bloodstream to function. I had time to guess exactly and specifically what he planned to do next—and believe me, the possibilities were endless! I had lots of time. Time was passing as slowly for me now as it ever had.
But nowhere near as slow as it was about to . . .
Gloat about it, motherfucker. Out loud, please . . .
"It's a variation on Poe, really," he said. "'The Pit and the Pendulum.' You'll catch on quickly, I'm sure. I've already told you the duration." He put his left hand on the watch, and drew my knife back all the way with his right. My knife is so impressive even that Australian guy in the movie would approve of it, because I hate to use a knife if I can help it, and displaying a large one often ends the argument right there. It was obvious where the thrust would end. The medical term is double orchidectomy. The primal fear.
And I would have ten minutes to watch it coming . . .