The Basement (7 page)

“The girls are fans of all things American, especially Elvis songs. Picture them walking down the town's main street in short skirts and skimpy tops to the tune of Return To Sender, the townsfolk glaring at them and gossiping.”

Marcinko nods. She gets it.

“Okay, so the girls seem ignorant of the effect they have on the town, they smile and giggle even when faced with hostility and bad manners. The rednecks' regular Thursday night poker games continue, and Thursday also becomes the girls night for getting together. They talk about the problems they're having with their husbands, while the men play poker and boast about the sex they're getting. Gradually the girls win around the townsfolk. They're keen churchgoers - sitting in the front row, a major distraction for the minister and the old organist - and spend their spare time cleaning the church, tidying up the graveyard and supplying fresh flowers. The girls also begin to gradually change their men - they smarten up their appearance, improve their diet and manners, and help them with their businesses. The girls are smart cookies, and before they realize it, the rednecks are on their way to being transformed - for the better. Their businesses thrive. The girls even get together and put an end to Rosa's freelance activities.”

Turner gives up the search for the video camera and walks back into the main room. He stands looking down at the sheets of paper on the coffee table. He's obviously isn't interested in the story.

But Marcinko is. I seem to have her undivided attention.

“The church is short of money and the girls plan a town dance to raise funds,” I continue, pacing as I talk because that's the way I think. “The girls decide to teach their men to jive, and meet much resistance. In their own way, each of the girls persuades her man to learn the steps: one by withholding beer, one by withholding food, another by refusing to let her man smoke, another by hiding his bowling ball, and Rosa gets her man to learn by withholding sex. On the night of the town dance, the minister thanks the girls, the townsfolk applaud and the girls take to the dancefloor with their men.”

I stop pacing and hold my hands out to her, like an actor expecting applause. “So, what do you think? Is that a feel-good movie, or what?”

“It's great,” she says.

“It stinks,” growls Turner.

“You really think so?” asks Marcinko.

“Yeah, you should write it.”

“Yeah, maybe I will. Once I get Checking Out done.”

“Checking Out?”

“The casino story. But you really think it's a winner? You're not just saying that?”

She smiles, and it seems genuine. “You should write it, Marvin.”

We stand looking at each other. For a moment I forget that she's a cop. “Yeah. Maybe I will.”

Turner snorts softly like a racehorse ready to run. I wonder what they want. Actually, I know what they want. Me. Or my head on a plate. “So. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Just a few questions, Marvin. For the record.”

“Yeah? We're making a record are we?”

She smiles but doesn't rise to the bait. She's a cool one is Officer Marcinko. “This is quite a small place, isn't it?” she asks, looking around the apartment.

“It's big enough for me,” I reply.

“But you'd prefer more space, surely?”

I shrug like I don't care either way. “It's just a place to write.”

She pounces, like a cat on a bird. “So you have another place, somewhere more comfortable?”

I narrow my eyes. “What makes you think that?”

“It's a bit small, that's all I meant. Why don't you move into somewhere bigger?”

“Writers write best when they're struggling,” I say. “That's a fact.”

“But you're not struggling, are you?” I feel her questions tightening around me like a steel snare.

“I haven't sold a script yet, if that's what you're getting at.”

She smiles sweetly. “I think you know what I'm getting at, Marvin.”

“Yeah,” Turner snarls. “He knows exactly what we're fucking getting at.”

“You're playing a role, aren't you, Marvin? This is all a game to you, isn't it?”

“I don't follow you.”

She waves a hand around the apartment. "This. All this. This isn't real, is it? This is an image,

it's your idea of what a struggling writer should live like, isn't it?"

“What do you want?” I say, trying to keep my voice steady.

“Your father was Sam Waller, wasn't he?” Her voice is almost a whisper, as if she's telling me a secret.

“Why do you ask?” I say. “If you know, you know.”

“Okay. I'm telling you. Sam Waller was your father. And when he died, he left you more than half a million dollars.”

“Maybe he's spent it already,” says Turner. I ignore him.

“So, a man with half a million dollars doesn't have to live in a rabbit hutch, does he, Marvin?”

“Not unless he wants to,” I say.

She nods slowly. “That's what we thought. In fact, we thought that maybe you had another home somewhere. Somewhere bigger.”

“Somewhere where I might be able to keep a woman prisoner?”

“You see, Marvin. I knew you'd understand.”

“No.”

“No? No you don't understand?”

“I mean no, this is my only home.”

“Yes, but you see our problem, Marvin. You'd have to say that, wouldn't you? If you did have another home, and if you were holding Sarah Hall there, you wouldn't tell us, would you?”

“I suppose not. Can I get you guys anything to drink?”

“No thank you.”

I turn to look at Turner. “What about you, Ed?”

“We know you're the one, Waller,” he says.

"The one? What, the special person in your life, Ed? Is that what you mean? I hardly think so.

We've only just met." He glares at me and I can see that I've got to him. I look back at Marcinko.

“Look, this is crazy. You start off by telling me I mustn't bother people at their homes, now you're accusing me of being a serial killer.”

“No one's accusing you of anything,” she says.

“Yet,” says Turner. The yet hangs there like a bad smell.

“If we were accusing you, we'd tell you your rights,” she says.

“I know my rights,” I say.

“I know you do.” She takes a deep breath and her breasts seem to push up against her shirt.

“Marvin, we have a problem.”

“We?”

“We've been doing some digging, and what we've found is a little worrying.”

“Worrying?” I don't like the way the conversation is going, but I've lost the initiative. The ball is in her court.

“It's starting to look as if you fit the profile of the person we're looking for. You know what a profile is?”

“Yeah. I know.”

“So you can see how that concerns us. We have to check. Follow it through. Satisfy ourselves that you're not the killer.”

“This is crazy.”

“No, it's not crazy. It's police work. It's our job. How much do you know about serial killers?”

I shake my head, confused. “I don't know. Only what I've read. For research.”

“Okay.” She waits for me to continue, leaving a silence and hoping that I'll fill it.

“They're usually white. Very few are black. They're usually male, and they're usually in their early to mid twenties. That's it, is it? That's your profile? There must be hundreds of thousands of people who fit that description in New York alone.”

“Our profile is a bit more detailed than that, Marvin.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We had some help from the FBI profilers at Quantico. Our profile runs to almost a dozen pages. And the more we look into your background, the more it seems to describe you.”

“I don't believe you. You're just trying to scare me.”

She smiles like she wants to be my friend, like I can trust her. “Marvin, why would we want to scare you?”

“So tell me how I fit this profile.”

“Okay. You're a good looking young man. According to the profile, the perpetrator is handsome. Attractive to women.”

I laugh out loud. “Come on, Officer Marcinko. I told you not to flatter me.”

“This isn't flattery. I'm telling you the truth.”

“So why does your FBI profiler think the killer is good looking?”

"Because there have never been any signs of a struggle when the victims have disappeared. He must be able to get close to the women without frightening them. We believe he drugs them before taking them away, so he must be fairly strong. But if he's strong, he'd be threatening - unless he's a good-looking guy and the women are attracted to him. You're a member of a gym on 45th Street,

aren't you?"

“Yeah, I work out sometimes.”

“You could probably lift me, couldn't you?”

“Sure. What else?”

“We think the man we're looking for is well above average intelligence. Possibly a genius.”

“On what basis?”

"On the basis that we're no closer to catching him now than we were two years ago. Because he's never left any evidence that could identify him. And because we've never found the bodies.

Oh, he's clever, all right."

“What else?”

“An interest in movies.”

“Because he videos his victims?”

"It's more than that. The technical quality is good, the videos are edited before they're sent to the TV stations, there's a professional feel to them. And you were at the New York Film School,

right?"

“You know I was.”

Turner puts his hands on his hips like a prizefighter between rounds. “Where's your video camera, Waller? The one you told us about.”

I shrug like it's the last thing on my mind. “I lent it to a friend.”

“Care to give us his name?”

“Not really.” I turn back to Marcinko. “Nothing you've said so far is specific to me, Lisa,” I say, using her first name, making it personal.

She looks me right in the eye. “Marvin,” she says, “do you know where Sarah Hall is?”

I keep my eyes on hers, fighting the urge to look away, fighting the urge to scratch my nose or shift my feet or give off any of the dozens of signals that would suggest that I was lying, the signals that she's trained to spot. “No,” I say. “No, I don't.” I smile. “You don't need a search warrant to see that she's not here.”

“Which is why we were wondering if you had another home somewhere.”

Turner coughs like he smokes too much. “Yeah. Somewhere bigger,” he says.

I shake my head. “What you see is what you get.”

Marcinko nods as if considering what I've said. "You've been following the case, haven't you,

Marvin?"

“Sure? I watch TV.”

She carries on nodding, watching me with her pretty blue eyes. The silence crystalises around us like water turning into ice. “So you said,” she says eventually. "But you don't have a TV,

Marvin."

I stare at her for several seconds. Several long seconds. “It's in for repair.”

“Really?” It's clear that she doesn't believe me.

“Really.”

“What about the video recorder?”

“What do you mean?”

“You say you have a video camera, but you haven't got a video recorder. Or is that being repaired, too?”

“I lent it to the friend who wanted the camera.”

She gives me the friendly smile. “You're not stupid, Marvin. You can see where this is heading.”

“Yeah. But you still don't have probable cause. You have a profile, that's all.”

"So we were wondering if you'd come down to the station with us, help us to clear this thing up,

one way or the other."

“I don't think so.”

She holds my look for a while. “Please,” she says.

“Not this time, Lisa,” I say. “This isn't a joke any more.”

Turner stands close behind me. I can smell garlic on his breath. Garlic and stale cigarette smoke. “This was never a joke, Waller,” he says. “You killed those women and you're going to kill Sarah Hall if you haven't already. We know you did it, Waller.”

“So arrest me, Ed.”

He grins. “We will, Waller. Sooner or later, we will.”

“Marvin,” interrupts Marcinko. “We'd like you to take a lie detector test.”

“It won't be admissible.”

“No, but it would put our minds at rest.”

I think about it for a while. I decide it might be fun. I nod. “But not today,” I say.

“Whenever you want.”

“Tomorrow afternoon. Three o'clock.”

She nods. “Okay. She smiles. ”Thanks, Marvin."

* * *

You stand at the door, your eye pressed against the peephole, one hand flat against the painted wood. The door is warm to the touch but it's deceptive because underneath the wooden veneer is a two inch thick slab of cold steel suspended from the concrete walls by reinforced hinges. She's sitting on the edge of the bed, her long legs crossed at her ankles.

You get a tight feeling in the pit of your stomach as you see that she's wearing her high heels.

She's looking at the padlock which keeps the chain locked around her waist and you know that she's trying to find a way out. She's still clinging to the hope that she'll be able to find a way out. It's a good feeling, watching her and knowing that you have absolute power over her. She reaches up and rubs her nose as if it was itching, a small, child-like gesture. She looks directly at the door, almost as if she sees you, though you know that's not possible.

She's wondering whether or not she'll be able to get the door open if she does manage to get free from the chain.

You punch the combination into the panel and the bolts click back. You check the peephole again and see that she's standing up, her hands linked at her waist, her head down.

You open the door and step into the room. “Good,” you say, “you look much better.”

You close the door behind you and stand with your back against it, savouring the anticipation. It's not the sex, you know that, it's something much stronger, much more stimulating. It's the power, the ability to make another human being conform to your wishes,

no matter what they are. The power to make them do whatever you want, and to gradually take away everything they hold dear: their freedom, their dignity, and, eventually, their life.

You feel a shiver of anticipation which is so intense that you gasp and close your eyes. The tremor passes after a few seconds and you run your hands against the sides of your trousers.

Your palms are sweating, but, perversely, your mouth is dry. You walk to the bathroom and pick up a paper cup from the shelf under the metal mirror which is bolted to the wall. You fill the cup with cold water and drink half of it slowly, and then carry it back into the main room. You stand at the end of the bed, looking at her, side on. She has a good figure, no indication that she's a mother of young children. A word comes to mind suddenly: ripe. The woman is ripe for picking, like a fruit that is ready to drop from the tree. You lick your lips.

“Take off your blouse, Sarah,” you say quietly. She starts to tremble and at first you think she's going to resist but then her hands flutter up to the top button of her shirt. One by one she undoes the buttons and then her hands fall to her side as if reluctant to do her bidding.

“Take the shirt off,” you say. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, then shrugs the shirt off her shoulders and removes her arms from the sleeves. She half turns and puts the shirt on the bed, careful not to catch your eye. Her hands return to their original position,

linked at her waist. You move to stand in front of her. Her breasts are rising and falling as she breathes, and you can see beads of sweat gathering in her cleavage. Her bra is white and lacy with a small metal clasp at the front. It seems a fraction too small. Perhaps she buys them that way deliberately, knowing that it has the effect of pushing her breasts together,

making them look larger and firmer. Her skin is milky white and unmarked, no scars or discolorations, as if she'd spent a lot of money on expensive oils and soaps and kept out of the sun. You savour the moment, and fight back the urge to rush things. You rushed the first few, but you've learned from your mistakes. For the power to be truly appreciated, it has to be extended. Prolonged.

“Sarah,” you say, “I want you to take off your bra.”

She swallows nervously. You know what she's thinking. She thinks she's smart, she thinks that if she can only talk to you that she'll be able to persuade you to let her go. She's used to dealing with her children, using the force of her intellect to keep them in order, and she's used to getting her own way with a husband who probably worships her. All her life she's been able to get what she wants by smiling cutely and using the right words and she thinks that you'll be just as much of a pushover, if only she could find the right thing to say. But she remembers the stun gun, she knows that as soon as she starts to speak you'll hurt her again,

and she doesn't want the pain. Her hands begin to shake. She wants to risk it, she wants to try and talk you out of it because she can see where things are heading. Taking off her shirt is one thing, it's something she might do in a changing room or in front of her family. The bra is something else. It represents a barrier she doesn't want to cross.

“The bra, Sarah. I won't ask again.”

Her lips part and you think that she's actually going to speak, but then they close tight.

Her hands move slowly up and reach for the clasp but she resists actually opening it. She needs a nudge. “Sarah, you want to see your children again, don't you?”

You hear the metallic click of the clasp parting and the bra opens like a flower sensing the sun. You watch as the lace pulls away from the white flesh of her breasts, almost as if the material had been stuck to the skin. The breasts move outwards and downwards as they are freed from their confinement, but as she slips off the bra you can see that they still do their best to defy gravity, standing proud and full, the nipples small and erect. She throws the bra on the bed and crosses her arms across her chest, trying to hide her nakedness. You chuckle.

“Drop your hands,” you say. She does as she's told. She begins to cry, small, animal snuffling noises, and tears run down her cheeks. Crying is a defensive response, you know.

Either consciously or subconsciously she hopes that by appearing weak and defenceless you'll leave her alone, like a submissive dog lying flat on its back, its tail between its legs and its throat exposed. I'm weak, she's saying, I can't hurt you so leave me alone. She doesn't realise that it's her defenselessness that you find so attractive, so stimulating. You relish her tears. You leave her standing, her head bowed as tear drops plop onto the tiled floor, as you go back into the bathroom, crumple the paper cup and toss it into a waste paper bin.

Her tears are still falling when you go back, but she has kept her hands at her side, like a soldier on parade. You stand in front of her and gently take her breasts in your hands,

sighing at their softness. You caress her nipples with your thumbs, wanting to pinch and hurt but fighting the urge, knowing that pain will come later. First must come control. Total obedience.

“Please,” she whimpers. “Please let me go.”

You take a sudden, sharp breath and she flinches. “I'll pretend I didn't hear that, Sarah,”

you say. “But if you speak to me again I'll chain you to the bed again and beat you to within an inch of your life. Now, kneel down.”

She swallows and more tears come, but she does as she's told. You look down on the top of her head, her hair blonde right down to the roots. Soft, shiny hair. You reach down and touch it, running the strands through your fingers. You'd like to pull and twist and hear her scream, and you find your breath coming faster so you fight against it. The top of her head is level with your waist and you know without looking that her eyes are closed. You run your hand down her left cheek and under her chin, lifting her head so that her hair falls back over her shoulders. The tears make her look less attractive but they increase her vulnerability and to you that's just as much of a turn-on. Maybe even more so.

“Pull down my zipper,” you tell her, and her face crumples like a little girl who's just been told that her puppy has died. Her hands stay down by her side so you repeat the instruction,

tightening your grip on her chin as you speak to give her a taste of what will happen unless she obeys. Her fumbling hands are unsure where to go and they bang against your trousers and then she finds the metal tab and pulls it down with the sound of material tearing. "Good,

that's good," you say soothingly, and then you explain what it is you want her to do to you,

how she is to use her mouth and her tongue and that she is to keep her eyes open at all times.

* * *

Turner and Marcinko aren't going to go away, of that I'm sure. The lie detector test worries me, but not overmuch. It's only a machine, and machines are fallible. And the results won't be admissible in court. It isn't a problem. But Turner and Marcinko, now they are a problem. I'm going to have to protect myself.

The only information on their IDs was their name, rank and the precinct where they're based, but it's a start. I sit down in the armchair and slide a new sheet of paper into the typewriter. I write four letters, all of them to the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles for the State of New York at Empire State Plaza in Albany. They hold all the driving licence and vehicle registrations records for the state, and for a few dollars they'll run checks on any resident. They prefer to know the name and date of birth of the person you're checking up on, but if all you've got is a name they'll do an alphabetical search so long as you enclose a big enough cheque. I phone first to find out the cost of each search.

I write one letter to the Drivers Licence Department asking for an alpha search for the driving record of Ed Turner, enclosing a cheque for the normal amount plus an additional check in case there are more than one Ed Turner resident in the state. I write a similar letter asking for the driving record of Lisa Marcinko.

The other two letters are addressed to the Motor Vehicles Registration Department at the same address, this time asking for details of any motor vehicles they own and including more cheques.

I seal the envelopes and sit looking at them for a while. They don't know who they're messing with, Turner and Marcinko. But they're going to find out soon enough.

* * *

She scampers off the bed as soon as you open the door and by the time you close it behind you she's standing, head bowed, her hands linked at waist level. The position of obedience, like a subservient shop assistant welcoming a wealthy customer.

You place the white carrier bag on the bed. "There are some new clothes, I want you to wear them later,“ you tell her. ”All of them, the underwear, the stockings, the hair ribbon,

everything." She nods but doesn't speak. Her hair is still damp as if she isn't long out of the shower. On the floor by the bed is a paper plate with the remains of the breakfast you brought in two hours earlier. You walk into the bathroom and check that everything is as it should be. You know there's nothing in there that can be used as a weapon, but it's better to be sure. Everything is as it should be.

When you go back into the room she's rubbing her hands together. “Can I speak?” she says.

You stand in front of her as if considering her request. After a while you reach out and caress her cheek. “You did well yesterday,” you tell her. “As a reward, you can. But only this once.”

She sniffs and shudders as if a cold draught has blown across her back. “Why are you doing this?” she asks.

You smile benignly. “Because I want to,” you say. “Because I can.”

“Please let me go,” she says.

“Eventually I will,” you lie.

“You will?” she says, hesitantly, as if frightened that you'll change your mind.

“Of course,” you lie.

She swallows heavily. “Can I call my family?”

You laugh out loud, the sound echoing around the room like a pistol shot. “No, Sarah, I can't trust you to do that.”

“They'll be worried about me,” she says. “They'll be looking for me.”

The implied threat is laughable. She still hasn't given up hope. She still thinks she can manipulate you with her soft mouth, that she can find the right words to push you into doing her will. You want to laugh in her face and see the pain, but you don't. “I tell you what I'll do,“ you say, speaking softly. ”I'll call them and tell them you're all right. That you'll be back with them soon.”

She looks up quickly, the hope in her eyes burning like a beacon. You keep your face severe, fighting against the urge to grin. “You will?” she asks. “You'll call them?”