Image of the Beast and Blown (14 page)

low and then said, "What's this about Glam and the
other end of the wolf?"

She laughed and said, "That big ugly dumbshit! He
wants me, but I can't stand him, and he'd probably try
to rape me, he's such a moron, but he knows that if I
didn't kill him, Igescu would! You must know about
the wolves, since you mentioned them. I was walking in
the woods one evening when I heard one of the wolves
howling and snarling. It sounded as if it were in pain, or,
at least, in trouble of some kind. I went up a hill and
looked down in a hollow, and there was the female wolf,
her head in four nooses, and the ends of the nooses
tied to trees. She couldn't go back or forward, and there
was Glam, all his clothes off except for his socks and
shoes, holding the wolf by the tail and fucking her. I
think he must have been hurting her, I don't know how
big a female wolf's cunt is, but I don't think they're built
to take an enormous cock like Glam's. I really think
she was hurting. But Glam, that animal Glam, was fuck-
ing her."

Childe was silent for a moment and then he said,
"What about the male wolf? Wasn't Glam afraid of the
male wolf?"

She laughed and said, "Oh, that's another story,"
and she laughed for a long time.

When she stopped, she raised the bottle and poured
liquid on her nipples and then on her pubic hairs.

"Lick it off, baby, and then we'll make love again."

"It won't do any good," Childe said. But he rolled over
and sucked on her nipples for a while and finger-fucked
her until she came again and again and then he kissed
her belly, traveling downward until his mouth was against
the tight hairs of her cunt. He tongued off the liqueur
and then jabbed his tongue as far as he could until
his jaws and tongue hurt. When he stopped, he was rolled
over by her strong hands and she gently nibbled at his
penis until it rose like a trout to a fly. He mounted
her from behind, and she told him to be quiet, he did not
have to wear himself out. She contracted the muscles
of her vagina as if it were a hand and this time he
kept his erection. He seemed to be getting a little dizzy
and a little fuzzy. He knew that he had made a mistake
drinking that liquid; it couldn't be poison, because she

wouldn't have drunk it also. But he wondered if it had
a property of becoming narcotic if it were on epidermis.
Could its interaction with the skin of her nipples and
cunt have produced something dangerous only to him?

Then the thought and the alarm were gone.

He remembered vaguely an orgasm that seemed to
go on forever, like the thousand-year orgasm promised the
faithful of Islam in heaven when they are enfolded
by a houri. There were blanks thereafter. He could
remember, as if he were seeing himself in a fog, getting
his car and driving off while the road wiggled like a snake
and the trees bent over and made passes at him with
their branches. Some of the trees seemed to have big
knotty eyes and mouths like barky cunts. The eyes be-
came nipples; sap oozed out of them. A tree gave
him the finger with the end of a branch.

"Up yours, too," he remembered yelling, and then
he was on a broad road with many lights around him
and horns blaring and then there was the same tree again
and this time it beckoned at him and as he got closer
he could see that its mouth
was
a barky cunt and that it
was promising him something he had never had before.

And so it was. Death.

11

He awoke in the emergency room of the Doctors
Hospital in Beverly Hills. His only complaint was slug-
gishness. He was unconscious when he had been pulled
out of the car by a good Samaritan. The Beverly
Hills officer told him that his car had run into a tree off
the side of the road, but the collision was so light that
the only damage was a slightly bent-in bumper and a
broken headlamp.

The officer evidently suspected first, drunkenness, and
second, drugs. Childe told him that he had been forced
off the road and had been knocked out when the car hit
the tree. That he had no visible injury on his head
meant nothing.

Fortunately, there were no witnesses to the crash.
The man who had pulled him from the car had come
around the curve just in time to see the impact. Another
car was going the opposite direction; it was not driving
eratically, as Childe had reported, but this meant noth-
ing because the car could have straightened out. Childe
gave Bruin and several others as references. Fifteen
minutes later, he was discharged, although the doctors
warned him that he should take it easy even if there
was no evidence of concussion.

His car was still on the roadside. The police had not
had it towed in because the trucks were too busy, but
the officer had removed the key from the ignition. Un-
fortunately, the officer had also forgotten to give it back
to Childe, and Childe then had to walk to the Beverly
Hills Police Department to retrieve it. The officer was
on duty. A radio call resulted in the information that
he was tied up and would not be able to drop by the
department for at least an hour. Childe made sure that
the key would be given to the officer in charge of the
desk, and he walked home through the night. He cursed
himself for having buried the extra key under the bush
outside Igescu's.

He had tried to get a taxi to take him home, but
these were too busy. It seemed that everybody thought

that the smog was over for good and was celebrating.
Or perhaps everybody wanted to have some fun be-
fore the air became too poisoned again.

There were three parties going on in his building. He
put ear plugs in as soon as he had showered, and he
went to bed. The plugs kept most of the noise out
but did not bar his thoughts.

He had been drugged and sent out with the hope that
he would kill himself in a car accident. Why the drug
had affected him and not Magda was an interesting
question but one that did not have to be considered at
this time. She could have taken an antidote or relied on
someone else to take care of her after Childe was gone.
Or it was possible—he remembered what he had thought
during the time—that the liquid contained something
which did not become a drug unless it contacted human
epidermis?

He sat up in bed then. Sergeant Mustanoja! He should
have been worrying about Childe's failure to call in.
What had he done—if anything?

He phoned the LAPD and got Mustanoja. Yeah, he
had the note but Bruin didn't seem to think it was im-
portant and, anyway, what with being so busy—what
a night!—he had forgotten it. That is, until this Beverly
Hills officer called in about him and then Mustanoja
had found out what happened and knew he was not at
Igescu's so what was there to worry about, huh7 How
was Childe?

Childe said he was home and OK. He hung up with
some anger at Bruin for making light of his concern.
However, he had to admit that there was no reason for
Bruin to do otherwise. He would change his opinion af-
ter he found out what had happened last night. Perhaps,
Bruin could arrange with the Beverly Hills Police De-
partment … No, that wasn't going to work. The BHPD
had far more immediate duties than investigating what
was, objectively speaking, a very hazy lead. And
there were certain things, important things, about the
events that Childe was not going to tell them. He could
skip the summerhouse activities and just say that he
had been drugged with the brandy in the drawing room,
but the officers were shrewd, they had heard so many
false tales and part-true tales, so many omissions and

hesitations, that they picked up untruths and distortions
as easily as radar distinguished an eagle from an air-
liner.

Besides, he had the feeling that Magda would not
hesitate to claim that Childe had raped her and forced
"perversions" upon her.

He had gotten into bed again but now he climbed out
swiftly once more. He felt ashamed and sick. That drug
had overcome his normal fastidiousness and caution. He
would never have gone down on a woman he just met.
He always reserved this act—even if he were strongly
tempted to do so—for women whom he knew well,
liked or loved, and was reasonably sure were free of
syphilis or gonorrhea.

Although he had brushed his teeth, he went into the
bathroom and brushed again and then gargled deeply
ten times with a burning mouthwash. From the kitchen
cabinet he took a bottle of bourbon, which he kept
for guests, and drank it straight. It was a dumb act, be-
cause he doubted that the alcohol would kill any germs
he had swallowed so many hours ago, but it, like many
purely ritual acts, made him feel better and cleaner.

He started for bed again and then stopped. He had
been so upset that he had forgotten to check in with the
exchange or turn on the recorder. He tried the exchange
and hung up after the phone rang thirty times. Appar-
ently, the exchange was not yet operating again or had
lost its third-shift operator. The recorder yielded one
call. It was from Sybil, at nine o'clock. She asked him
to please call her as soon as he came in, no matter what
time it was.

It was now three-ten in the morning.

Her phone rang uninterruptedly. The ring seemed
to him like the tolling of a faraway bell. He envisioned
her lying on the bed, one hand drooping over the edge
of the bed, her mouth open, the eyes opened and glazed.
On the little table by the bed was an empty bottle of
phenobarbital.

If she had tried to kill herself again, she would be
dead by now. That is, if she had taken the same amount
as the last time.

He had sworn that if she tried again, she would

have to go through with it, at least as far as he was con-
cerned.

Nevertheless, he dressed and was out on the street and
walking within a minute. He arrived at her apartment
panting, his eyes burning, his lungs doubly burned from
exertion and smog. The poison was accumulating swiftly,
so swiftly that by tomorrow evening it would be as
thick as before—unless the winds came.

Her apartment was silent. His heart was beating and
his stomach clenching as he entered her bedroom and
switched on the light. Her bed was not only empty; it
had not been slept in. And her suitcases were gone.

He went over the apartment carefully but could find
nothing to indicate "foul play." Either she had gone on a
trip or someone had taken the suitcases so that that im-
pression would be given.

If she had wanted him to know that she was leav-
ing, why hadn't she left the message?

Perhaps her call and her sudden departure were un-
related.

There was the possibility that they were directly
related but that she had told him only enough to get
him over here so that he would worry about her. She
could be angry enough to want to punish him. She had
been mean enough to do similar things. But she had al-
ways quickly relented and tearfully and shamefully
called him.

He sat down in an easy chair, then got up again
and went into the kitchen and opened the
secret
com-
partment in the wall of the cabinet rear, second shelf'
up. The little round candy cup and its contents of white-
paper-wrapped marijuana sticks—fifteen in all—were
still there.

If she had left willingly, she would have disposed of
this first.

Unless she were very upset.

He had not found her address book in any of the
drawers when he had searched, but he looked again to
make sure. The book was not there, and he doubted that
any of the friends she had when they were married
would know her whereabouts. She had been dropped by
them or she had dropped them after the divorce. There
was one, a life-long friend, whom she still wrote to

now and then, but she had moved from California over
a year ago.

Perhaps her mother was ill, and Sybil had left in a
hurry. But she wouldn't be in such a hurry that she
wouldn't have left the message with the recorder.

He did not remember her mother's number but he
knew her address. He got the information from the oper-
ator and put a call through to the San Francisco ad-
dress. The phone rang for a long time. Finally, he hung
up and then thought of what he should have immedi-
ately checked. He was deeply upset to have overlooked
that.

He went into the basement garage. Her car was still
there.

By then he was considering the fantastic—or was it
fantastic?—possibility that Igescu had taken her.
Why would Igescu do this?

If Igescu was responsible for Colben's death and
Budler's disappearance, then he might have designs on
the detective investigating the case. Childe had pre-
tended to be Wellston, the magazine reporter, but he
had been forced to give his own phone number. And
Igescu may have checked out the so-called Wellston.
Certainly, Igescu had the money to do this.

What if Igescu knew that Wellston was really Childe?
And, having found out that Childe had not gotten into
the serious car accident he had hoped for, he had taken
Sybil away. Perhaps Igescu planned to let Childe know
that he had better drop the investigation … no, it
would be more probable that Igescu wanted to force
him to break into the estate, to trespass. For reasons
of his own, of course.

Childe shook his head. If Igescu were guilty, if he,
say, had been guilty of other crimes, why was he sud-
denly letting the police know that these crimes had been
committed?

This question was not one to be answered immedi-
ately. The only thing as of this moment was whether or
not Sybil had gone voluntarily and, if she had not, with
whom had she gone?

He had not checked the airports. He sat down and
began dialing. The phones of every airline were busy,
but he hung on until he got through to each and then