I reached out and grabbed her wrist.
“Charlie Gitt was here? Tonight?”
“When you were out. As I drove up, I saw his Jeep in the drive. Then I saw him out toward the back, climbing the stairs.”
“Jesus Christ.”
I leaped over the back of the sofa and was out the kitchen door, across the patio, and up the stairs in a matter of seconds. The screen to the apartment was unlatched, and the door wide open. I reached in and switched on the light.
Peter was gone. There had been a struggle.
When I arrived at the Reptile Den, only two or three cars were parked on the street out front, and the black Jeep Cherokee wasn’t one of them.
It was a weeknight, relatively early, and the big Hispanic guard hadn’t yet taken his post at the front steps. That left the wiry white guy with the warrior tattoos and the nose ring to deal with. He was inside the office booth, behind the counter, organizing porn tapes while he absentmindedly stroked his shaved chest and belly. I approached with a pliant smile and the big knife hidden at my side, and asked if Charlie Gitt had come in.
Nose Ring must have recognized me as he glanced up, because he looked perplexed.
“No. Not yet.”
“You seem surprised to see me.”
“We didn’t figure you to make an encore.”
“Maybe I liked Charlie’s action.”
He laughed a little, but warily.
“A lot of guys do.”
“So where is Charlie anyway?”
“Weekdays, he usually does his own thing. You know, a private party up at his place, if he’s in the mood. We don’t see him much except on weekends.”
“I imagine you’ve been up to his place yourself.”
“Once or twice, sure.”
“I really need to see him again.” I winked. “In the worst way, if you know what I mean.”
He set the tapes aside and leaned forward on the counter, getting friendlier.
“So you really liked your first visit with us?”
“Oh, baby, did I ever.”
“From what I hear, Charlie didn’t exactly go easy on you.”
“That’s why I came back—for more.” I looked him up and down. “That is, if I can find a guy who’s man enough to give it to me.”
He studied me closely, first my hairy face, then my thick chest and shoulders. His eyes started to sparkle, like a drug had just hit him.
“We’re not too busy at the moment. I wouldn’t mind spending a few minutes with you, if you could dig that.”
“You wouldn’t have a pair of cuffs, would you? Cuffs really get me off.”
He grinned, reached behind him into a drawer, and brought out a pair of gleaming steel handcuffs. His mouth seemed to be getting dry; when he swallowed, he had to work at it, and his tongue stayed busy keeping his lips moist.
He tossed the cuffs onto the counter with a clatter.
“Will these do the job?”
“I’m getting hard already.”
I glanced around, then leaned in, whispering conspiratorially.
“You know what I really want, hot man?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he forced saliva down his parched throat.
“Name it, buddy.”
With my left hand, I grabbed his nose ring, which pierced the cartilage between his nostrils and was just large enough to accommodate my finger. With my right hand, I showed him the lethal-looking knife.
“I want you to climb into those handcuffs, PDQ.”
He grinned, like it was a joke.
“That wasn’t what I had in mind. I’m strictly a top, the guy in charge.”
I dragged him by his nose ring halfway over the counter, while he hollered and moaned. When our eyes were an inch apart, I placed the serrated blade between them so he could focus on the peaks and valleys of the cold steel.
“I’m giving the orders now, Topper. If you want to remain in one piece, you’ll do exactly as I say. I don’t have a lot of time.”
“What are you, some kind of freak?”
“Keep talking, and I start cutting.”
“You’re making a big mistake. When Charlie finds out about this—”
“Charlie’s going to find out real soon, because you’re taking me to him.”
“No way, man.”
I inserted the tip of the blade into his left nostril and sliced it open, just the way Roman Polanski did to Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, only this time, the pain and the blood were real. Nose Ring started trembling, and doing a better job of listening.
“Put on the cuffs, pronto.”
He slipped a wrist into one of the rings, and I helped him into the other one before clamping the bracelets shut. Then I dragged him the rest of the way over the counter and down to the floor. I pressed the prickly blade against the big, pumping vein in his neck.
“I’ve killed before. You didn’t know that, did you?”
His voice was tiny, faint.
“No.”
“It was a long time ago. I was very angry. I’m very angry now.”
“Look, I just work here, that’s all.”
“You didn’t know what Charlie had planned for me that night. That I was going to get ambushed by some muscle boys and have my ass reamed bareback style by the big man himself.”
“No, I swear. I never knew.”
“It wasn’t a question, asshole.”
“OK, maybe I knew. But, but, Jesus, please don’t cut me up.”
“You really want to stay in one piece?”
He nodded furiously.
“Then take me to Charlie Gitt. Now.”
I led him by his nose ring across the street, strapped him into the Mustang with a seat belt so he couldn’t jump out, and handed him a rag to hold to his face and stop the bleeding. I also told him that if he didn’t get me to Gitt’s place in ten minutes, I’d cut off each of his appendages, starting with the one between his legs. His directions after that were very precise.
We raced up to Sunset Boulevard, headed east for a few blocks, then cut over to Griffith Park Boulevard, which we followed north until Nose Ring pointed me onto a winding side road that took us into the hills. Five minutes later we were at the crest, looking down on the tree-ringed Silver Lake Reservoir with the hot lights of Dodger Stadium two or three miles to the south and the downtown skyscrapers a mile beyond that, rectangular columns of light twinkling against the black sky.
We didn’t pause long to enjoy the view. Nose Ring kept giving directions, and I kept driving, until we were winding up a narrow street without curbs or lights, where the trees were tall and thick, deepening the shadows already dense in the moonless night. There seemed to be no houses here, only steep slopes and heavy foliage on either side of the road, until it ended abruptly at a cast-iron gate erected between two concrete pillars. Beyond the gate, a driveway of crooked, cracked bricks ascended for about a hundred feet, leveling out as it reached a house that was little more than a ghostly outline through the darkness and the untended growth. Parked at the top of the drive was a black Jeep Cherokee.
Nose Ring was staring at the knife in my hand.
“This is where Charlie lives. Those are his wheels.”
I reached across, unstrapped him, pushed open the door.
“Get out.”
He swung his booted feet to the ground, and stood staring at me, his wrists cuffed in front of him. I climbed out, came around to where he stood, and placed the tip of the blade against his flat belly, pressing the taut skin, pricking the hard layer of muscle beneath. He winced, and started trembling again.
“I did what you asked. I showed you where Charlie lives.”
“What do I need to know about the house?”
“There’s a dog. Big and mean, trained to kill.”
“Alarm system?”
“Not that I know of.”
“What else?”
“Charlie has a dungeon. Fully equipped. You know, for orgies and stuff. In the basement.”
“How do I find it?”
“There’s a door under the stairs, if you go through the house. Or you can use the steps from the outside, around to the right. You won’t tell him I brought you here, will you? God, if he ever found out—”
I pushed the tip of the knife deeper, just enough to tap blood.
“If I ever see you again, I’ll gut you like a fish. Got it?”
He nodded, short little jerks of his head, like the affirmation of a terrified child. The same way I’d tried to appease my father when I was a little kid and he was drunk and stood over me with a doubled-up belt in his hand, slapping it across his big palm.
“Start running, and don’t stop until you’re in Orange County.”
I took the pressure off his belly and he ran, galloping down the hill. I watched as the shadows swallowed him up, and listened to his boots thudding on the asphalt until they faded away, and I knew I was alone.
I turned back toward the big gate. It was in the range of seven feet, and spiked on top like the matching wrought iron fence that extended to the right and left. On one of the pillars was a street number, on the other a posted warning:
Private Property
No Trespassing
Beware of Dog
I found a section of the fence where a knee-high boulder provided a boost, and I was over the spikes a minute later, winded but unscratched. As I hit the ground, I heard the dog, great angry barks cracking the darkness up around the house and coming fast in my direction. I stripped off my sweatshirt, wrapped it around my left hand and arm, planted my feet, and waited.
The dog came tearing down an overgrown path to my right. It was a Rottweiler, dark in color, massive in the chest, with heavy jowls already drooling thick strings of mucus as it bared its teeth. The dog never slowed, just came straight at me, snarling as it sprang. I raised my wrapped arm, feeding it into the huge jaws. When the animal’s teeth were set, I brought the knife up with one sharp, clean stroke, under the dog’s chin, across the meatiest part of its throat. It went down quickly, got up, wobbled for a moment, then collapsed. It thrashed for half a minute, then lay still, while its blood seeped into the loamy earth.
I used my sweatshirt to clean the blood off the knife, discarded the sweatshirt, and followed the same path the Rottweiler had used coming down. As I climbed, more of the house came into view. It was constructed of square-cut stones and consumed by wisteria that masked most of the façade, which rose to a sharply peaked roof. Two dark windows stared down from either side of the heavy wooden front door. The path flattened out, and I found myself in an area that had apparently once been a garden, with a stone bench and a birdbath at the center that were now lost in the wild foliage. Past the house and through the trees, I could see other houses on the hills across the canyon, which told me the man-made lake I’d seen earlier was just below, down by the main road. The wind had died, no longer molesting the leaves, and the world around me had grown deathly still.
I made my way past the garden, halfway to the house, and stopped again. Ahead of me, I saw a light, indistinct through a low, narrow doorway at the bottom of a flight of cellar steps. I moved toward the muted light, quietly. As I reached the steps, I heard what sounded like moaning. A human voice, male, someone in pain.
I was about to step down, to follow the voice, when I was seized from behind. A hand as powerful as any I had ever encountered gripped my right wrist, immobilizing the knife. In the same instant, my neck was secured in the crook of an arm, and a huge bicep expanded against the main artery, pressing down to stop the flow of blood to my brain. I clawed at the arm, tried to kick the legs behind me, felt my head grow light, my reactions slow and unconnected to the orders I was trying to send to my body.
Facts flashed in my shocked brain, a reporter’s fractured memories: I was being subdued with the police choke hold that had been outlawed by the Los Angeles Police Commission back in the 1980s. Daryl Gates had fought to keep the lethal hold in use while he was chief. Charlie Gitt was surely one of those cops who had cursed the commission for taking away one of his most effective combat tools. But there was no police commission here to censure or reprimand him. I was in Charlie Gitt’s world now.
Charlie Gitt’s world.
That was my last thought as my vision became a blur of bright stars and a feeling of weightlessness swept over me, just before everything went black.
The first pinprick of consciousness I felt was the sensation of pain in my arms and shoulders.
Even before I opened my eyes, the pain had spread like a slowly moving fire down and across the knotted muscles of my back. I became aware that I was suspended, hanging by my bound wrists in a cold place that smelled dank.
I opened my eyes, and saw Peter.
There was a steady ripple of movement in his chest and belly, so I knew he was at least alive, and breathing. He wasn’t far away—six or eight feet, perhaps, across the rough cobbled stones of Charlie Gitt’s cellar floor—but there was nothing I could do for him. I was strung from an overhead beam like a butcher’s side of beef; my ankles were also tightly bound, with the same kind of nylon rope that secured my wrists, all of it wrapped and knotted in neat double strands that allowed sufficient circulation, but no movement. Clearly, I had been bound and strung up by an expert.
Peter’s constraints were more elaborate: He hung facing me from a steel bar that was secured to a wooden beam by a chain link and wire pulley system, which presumably allowed the bar to be lowered or rotated. His upper body was stretched out crucifixion style, his wrists locked into leather cuffs attached to the ends of the steel bar, while his ankles were lashed together by the same type of rope that bound my own. A black spandex hood with a single opening for the mouth and nose covered his head so snugly it accentuated the sharp contours of his forehead and chin. Around his neck was a leather collar with a brass ring in the front, for leashing. Steel spring clamps pinched his nipples. Otherwise, like me, he was naked.
“Peter? Peter, can you hear me?”
I was whispering for no good reason, so I raised my voice.
“Peter! Can you talk?”
His hooded head hung to one side, unmoving. I knew it was Peter because I recognized his unclothed body, although Gitt had performed some cosmetic alteration in the manner of knife or razor cuts. There were forty or fifty, concentrated on the torso; each slice in Peter’s flesh was straight and precise, roughly two inches in length and drawn at the same downward angle, right to left, which meant the incisions must have been made slowly. The cuts had recently been washed clean, but had started to bleed again, and the blond hairs of Peter’s chest, crotch, and legs were matted with his sticky blood. I dreaded what his face might look like beneath the hood.
I did this to you, Peter.
It was the first thought that came to me as I saw him strung up and bleeding like a modern Christ in the dark heart of medieval Los Angeles, where he had come to explore everything life had to offer, and had chosen me as his guide.
My recklessness did this to you. I couldn’t leave you alone, when I knew I should. I had to have you, so I did. I all but led you to this place.
“Peter?”
Flaming torches on the stone walls cast their flickering light across Gitt’s private dungeon, revealing how dedicated he was to the religion of pain and pleasure. Arches had been constructed throughout, opening to dark passages and alcoves barely visible at the edges of the jumpy light. Each alcove was furnished with sadomasochism in mind: a cage, a pillory, a bondage chair, a horizontal rack, an arched wooden block with leather restraints for spanking, a sling equipped with wrist and ankle cuffs like the one I’d seen at the Reptile Den. Here and there, stone gargoyles looked down from the walls between collections of leashes, whips, and flogging canes, and a shelf lined with collars, cuffs, nipple clamps, and cock rings.
“Peter, please talk to me.”
I heard footsteps, and turned my head to see Charlie Gitt descending his cellar steps.
“I’ll bring him around for you, Justice, if you’d like. He’s been asking for you, as a matter of fact.”
“You’re in danger of giving S&M a bad name, Charlie. The leather community won’t be pleased.”
Gitt smiled briefly as he crossed through the shadows and into the dancing light. He was dressed in black leather this time, rather than brown, but otherwise the outfit was much like the one he’d worn the night we’d last met: vest unfastened to show off his furry, muscled torso, pants open at the crotch to display his impressive cock and balls, boots heavy enough to crush a head against the cold stone floor, if he so desired. In one hand, he carried a latched metal box about the size of a child’s lunchbox; in the other, a small glass vial. He placed the box on a rough-hewn wooden table next to Peter, then unscrewed the cap on the vial and inhaled from it. Within seconds, the smell of amyl nitrate permeated the air. He inhaled the poppers again, more deeply, then caressed Peter’s genitals gently, with admiration, as if he’d forgotten I was there.
“Has he seen you, Gitt? Or did you manage to take him from behind, the way you did me?”
When Gitt turned, his pendulous penis had started to rise, the purple head peeking out of the foreskin like the head of a snake looking for prey.
“Has he seen your face, Gitt? Does he know it’s you?”
Slowly, he began to smile. He hadn’t shaved in a day or two, and his heavy beard cast the square lower portions of his face in black.
“I’m afraid he has, Justice.”
Inside, it felt as if everything had suddenly gone dead. Still, foolishly, I hoped.
“You could still let him go. I’ll convince him not to talk. Both of us, we’ll keep quiet.”
Gitt looked hard at me, and the smile disappeared. He stepped to the wall where he kept his collections of whips, and looked them over. He quickly passed by those that were braided and multithonged, stopped to consider a fearsome-looking bullwhip, then selected a signal whip, the kind with a single lash used for training dogs.
He took a position several feet in front of me and slightly at an angle, with his legs spread. He drew his arm back and cracked the four-foot whip. I turned my head and felt the tip of the leather cut my chest. Four more lashes followed, each taking a tiny bite and drawing blood. When Gitt was finished, he coiled the whip and replaced it on the wall, the way a doctor or dentist might replace an instrument in its proper place.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid, Justice.” The grin came back, more twisted this time, more malevolent. “I’m crazy, maybe. A crazy motherfucker on the fast road to hell. But I can tell you, it’s a fantastic ride, a roller coaster flameout, and I’m the holy devil in the front car.”
“Which is a fancy way of saying you know exactly what you’re doing.”
He grabbed my mouth in one of his big hands, squeezing it like a soft peach.
“That’s right, motherfucker. None of this is happening by chance, or on a whim. So don’t treat me like I’m a stupid nigger, because this is one nigger who is definitely not Stepin Fetchit. Maybe once, when Gates was the boss man, but never again. Capice?”
He took his hand away, but his eyes stayed on me, burning like a dark fire.
“Capice?”
“Capice.”
He turned away, went to the table, opened the metal box. He found another vial, unscrewed it, and tapped what appeared to be crystal meth into a tiny spoon, though it might have been cocaine. With a wet finger, he dipped into the white powder, then rubbed it over his gums, before snorting the rest. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, savoring the rush. Then he stood in front of Peter, looking him up and down, running his hands over Peter’s body, smearing the blood, licking it from his fingers.
He removed the clamps from Peter’s chest, one at a time, inspecting the swollen nipples.
“I think your friend’s ready for piercing. What do you think, Justice?”
“Why don’t you forget about Peter for a minute, Charlie? Tell me about what happened to Winston Tsao-Ping. Fifteen years ago, over in Hollywood. That must have been a memorable night for you, beating him half to death with Taylor Fairchild. Why don’t you tell me all about it?”
He removed a needle from the box, then two gold nipple rings.
“You seem to know plenty already, Justice. So why don’t you tell me?”
He pinched Peter’s left nipple, rolling it in his fingers, making it more pliable. Peter’s head still rested to the side, on his shoulder; he hadn’t yet made a sound.
“Please don’t hurt him, Gitt. Hurt me, if you have to. Do anything you want to me. Just leave him alone, please.”
He drove the needle in, yanking Peter back to consciousness, causing him to raise his hooded head and cry out.
“I’m waiting, Justice. Tell me your story.”
“Benjamin? Are you there?”
“I’m here, Peter.”
“What’s happening? Why is he doing this?”
“Because he’s a pathetic, self-loathing sonofabitch. Because he’s so cold inside, so full of self-hatred, that inflicting pain is the only thing he knows how to do. Because he’s a coward who can’t face anyone who isn’t submissive, under his control.”
“I warned you not to insult my intelligence, Justice.” Gitt’s voice was calm as he glanced at me over his shoulder. “Tell me your story. Show me how smart you are. Or I won’t be so gentle with your pretty blond friend.”
He pinched Peter’s other nipple to make it protrude, and drove the needle through. Peter’s cry cracked against the close walls, and then again as Gitt pulled the needle out. Peter’s head sagged forward onto his chest, his quickening breaths escaping through the hole at his nose and mouth. Gitt inserted the first ring, working it through the bloody nipple, while Peter hung motionless, accepting it.
“Entertain me, Justice, while I do my work.”
“I think Taylor Fairchild started hanging out with you because he admired you. You were tough, physically strong, athletic, for all appearances a man’s man. Everything Fairchild wasn’t but longed to be. You got off on a meek and mild-mannered white guy higher in rank wishing he could be more like you, wanting to be your buddy. At the same time, you were a man in secret torment, a gay closet case, having to hide your sexuality in a department whose chief publicly ridiculed homosexuals. Your sense of personal power and self-esteem was further eroded by having to do the Uncle Tom routine in a department that was notoriously white and racist, from the top down. It twisted you all up inside, filled you with a slow-boiling rage.”
Gitt worked the second ring through Peter’s other nipple. I heard Peter draw in a sharp breath, but that was all.
“Keep going, Justice. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
“I don’t know exactly how you and Fairchild happened to be in your undercover car that night. Maybe the two of you got together for drinks after work, had more than you could handle, then decided to go cruising for a faggot or cross-dresser to kick around. My guess is you talked Fairchild into it, to prove to him, maybe to yourself, that you couldn’t possibly be queer. You wanted to forget who you really were for a while, take out your self-hatred on the most vulnerable person you could find, one who mirrored what you were, what you hated so badly.”
“Not too original, Justice.”
“But true nonetheless. Right, Gitt?”
He said nothing, so I went on.
“Fairchild went along reluctantly, not wanting to look weak. I don’t know, maybe he was secretly queer himself. Maybe he was sucking your dick in the back of your unmarked car. Or maybe you were sucking his, hoping he’d help you win a promotion.”
Gitt turned on me, tightening his right fist into a ball, drawing it back. Before he whacked me, though, he stopped himself, and smiled. I saw his fist relax.
“Clever, Justice. Trying to rile me up like that, get me to lose my cool. Draw my attention away from your beautiful boyfriend for a while.”
“That’s what happened that night, isn’t it, Gitt? Things got out of hand. You got a taste of Winston Tsao-Ping’s blood, and you went crazy. You might have killed him, except that Felix Montego showed up in his patrol unit and pulled you off.”
Gitt licked his finger and drew an invisible stroke in the air.
“Very good, Justice. You get a gold star for deduction.”
“Montego orchestrated the cover-up, saved Fairchild’s ass and yours. He even made sure Jacob Kosterman pulled the videotape Byron Mittelman had shot and stashed it away where it would never be seen. Since Montego worked in the Hollywood division, like you, the two of you conveniently became the investigating officers. Fairchild added his name and rank to the report, and saw that it was buried. Winston Tsao-Ping gratefully disappeared, and Fairchild continued his stellar career. Meanwhile, you just got meaner, beating up suspects, piling up citizens’ complaints until the department had to get rid of you.”
“Two gold stars, Justice.”
He stepped back to Peter, and turned the steel bar a hundred and eighty degrees.
“Finish your story, Justice. You’re almost there.”
“What’s the point, Gitt? We’re not getting out of here alive, are we?”
“The point is, I want to hear the end of the motherfucking story. That’s what you writers are supposed to do, isn’t it? Put all the facts in nice, neat order so you feel better about things when you’re done.”
“Let him go, Gitt. Do that for me and I’ll tell you everything I know, everything I’ve figured out. You’ve done enough to him already.”
“I’m in charge now, Justice. I decide what’s enough.”
“That’s not the way S&M is supposed to work, Gitt. The way I understand it, the slave has a right to state his limits. He has to trust the master to respect those limits, to respect him as a person, to see him as something more than just an object of sexual gratification. That’s the basic tenet in your world, isn’t it?”