Chapter 31
Sunset
The Lipstick Killer slipped into Sandy’s hotel room easy, his dummy key melting the lock as the pins- uninformed- fell into alignment, yielding with no audible protest, tumbling to an even pile like dominoes, each with immaculate deniability: no single one of them could be blamed for tonight’s murder if they were all looking the other way.
The knob, turned, opened and allowed him inside, where his nostrils were flooded with the smell of Sandy’s perfume, her desire, lilac and jasmine and something else... something deeper, lethal... something more female: a scent for which there would never be a name.
Dressed all in black he stepped past the nightstand with the unopened Bible inside, forsaking God, giving birth to the darkness, made his way into the room, seeing the bed fresh-made with its pillows and possibilities... tonight was going to be something special. He had been tracking this Sandy Cole for some time, something about her that got into his pores and made his skin white hot... Tonight he would show her his appreciation, how his passion ran like lava through his veins: tonight he would tell her that he loved her. His fingers clutched his chisel.
Across town, on the other side of Sick City, Tom Atari stopped at the Woolworth’s for a ginger ale, hoping his favorite jerk would be working, and she was. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, but she was beautiful, hair like leaking ink and black-rimmed glasses, and they offset her glow in a way he found familiar. She knew just how Tom liked his sodas- the extra pull of ginger syrup on the ice before the seltzer. According to the tag on her apron her name was Leah, and Tom might have heard her one day telling her friend about how she wanted to become a nurse. Her smile, sweeter than the candy aisle, and besides he liked to watch her work while he read the Herald.
Leah poured without a word, her mouth abloom cross her face like a flower in the warm, beaming at Tom both sugar and spice. He was just ready to ask for a cherry when she plucked one from the bin, plunked it in his glass where the bubbles swarmed it in appreciation. She gave Tom a wink. He looked away, stone-faced.
Some nights the sun just won’t go down: not from spite or anger, just a reluctance to leave the stage. Leaving a day this beautiful is as hard for a star in the sky as the men that walk the Earth. The sun took the long way home, meandering zig, ambling zag, bleeding the sky pink and blue, orange and a new kind of purple, the clouds above town soaking up the sweet while the moon found a parking spot. Spring had happened in Sick City.
The Lipstick Killer had stripped, sipped from the toilet bowl and scrawled a line across the bathroom mirror with Sandy’s Russian Red. He smiled while he applied a coat to his lips, puckering at himself in the mirror, his heart starting to buckle, his head hurling in rush. This was going to be everything wonderful.
Two blocks down the boulevard Sandy was at the Red Rose Lounge, on the clock, dancing with Carl Cassidy, a meat-packer in town from elsewhere. Carl- in his travel suit- determined to forget his wife with the company of a female escort, well on his way with Sandy’s charms against his chest, the music of the big city in his head, taking liberties. He had danced with Sandy once before, on another business trip, two years gone and he still couldn’t get her smell out of his mustache. His hands found the curve of her waist, his heart submerged in the raging tide of her eyes, no matter how hard she tried to send him back to shore. Carl was in lust.
“Maybe we should...” He put his face into her neck while the trumpet player took a solo, the other couples on the floor moving in equally-metered foreplay.
Sandy, still alive, smiled. “It’s early.”
Tom never gambled- it was noise, foolishness- but he picked up the racing form just to see if his friend Lorenzo Vargas was still running Blood Sugar at the Speedway.
He smiled, spotting the name, newsprint on his fingers. Son of a bitch. Tom checked his watch: still an hour before he had to drive Sandy to the doctor for her appointment. And afterwards, another late night, all alone. Leah, breasts like peaches in season, watching him reading, acquiring the taste for an older man.
Sandy said little on the walk back to the hotel, letting Carl marinade in his moment. He stopped on the cracked sidewalk- still hot- knelt to tie his shoe and for one golden moment she thought he was proposing, her hair bright violet by the sky’s impossible panorama, bulbs from the strip ballooning, her hand gone to her mouth in a shock automatic. They both laughed, knowing what it wasn’t.
The Lipstick Killer crept into the hotel closet, spilling seed on the carpet floor.
Tom watched Leah eat a plate of French-fried potatoes. With ketchup.
Carl held the hotel door for Sandy, spanking her as she raced inside.
The sun, nostalgic, feeling old, shrugged... finally surrendered.
Sandra, intoxicated, giggle on the bowl, in the dark, making spree while the Lipstick Killer severed Carl’s neck, mashing the eyes out his head like grape-pickers pick grapes off the vine, except entirely different...
Tom, into the Chrysler, engine idle into drive, stationary to mobile, down said street and off across the boulevard...
Sandy, emerging from the bathroom, only to see Carl’s hollow sockets, only to look into the eyes of the man above him, only to see how the Lipstick Killer looked just before the kill.
