The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen (11 page)

. . . but no one seemed to know what was going on, and everyone seemed to think he’d put his own eye out. God, who could do something like that to himself? And his hand and his feet—the doc had said they were going to start rotting off if blood didn’t get flowing back into them. What on earth was happening to him?

And what about that weird robbery last week? Only personal articles had been stolen. All the high-ticket stereo and video stuff had been left untouched.

God, it couldn’t be voodoo, could it? Who’d even—

Shit! Bill Franklin! He was an expert on it after all those years of research for
The Hut
. But he wouldn’t . . . he couldn’t. . . .

Franklin’s faintly heard words echoed in Milo’s brain:
No, you’re not.

Agony suddenly lanced through Milo’s groin, doubling him over on the gurney. Gasping with the pain, he tore at the clumsy stupid nightshirt they’d dressed him in and pulled it up to his waist. He held back the scream that rose in his throat when he saw the thin red line running around the base of his penis. Instead, he called out a name.

“Andy! Andy!”

Milo coughed and peered through the dim little room. It smelled of dust and sweat and charcoal smoke and something else—something rancid. He wondered what the hell he was doing here. He knew if he had any sense he’d get out now, but he didn’t know where to go from here. He wasn’t even sure he could find his way home from here.

The setting sun had been a bloody blob in Milo’s rearview mirror as he’d hunched over the steering wheel of his Mercedes and followed Andy’s rusty red pick-up into one of L.A.’s seamier districts. Andy had been true to his word: He’d spirited Milo out of the hospital, back to the house for some cash and some real clothes, then down to the garage near the Polo where his car was parked. After that it was on to Andy’s
Houngon
and maybe end this agony.

It
had
to end soon. Milo’s feet were so swollen he was wearing old slippers. He had barely been able to turn the ignition key with his right hand. And his dick—God, his dick felt like it was going to explode!

After what seemed like a ten-mile succession of left and right turns during which he saw not a single white face, they had pulled to a stop before a dilapidated storefront office. On the cracked glass was painted:

M. TRIESTE

HOUNGON

Andy had stayed outside with the car while Milo went in.

“Mr. Gherl?”

Milo started at the sound and turned toward the voice. A balding, wizened old black, six-two at least, stood next to him. His face was a mass of wrinkles. He was dressed in a black suit, white shirt, and thin black tie.

Milo heard his own voice quaver: “Yes. That’s me.”

“You are the victim of the
Bocor
?” His voice was cultured, and accented in some strange way.

Milo pushed back the sleeve of his shirt to expose his right wrist. “I don’t know what I’m the victim of, but Andy says you can help me. You’ve
got
to help me!”

He stared at the patch over Milo’s eye. “May I see?”

Milo leaned away from him. “Don’t touch that!” It had finally stopped hurting. He held his arm higher.

M.
Trieste examined Milo’s hand, tracing a cool dry finger around the clotted circumferential cut at the wrist. “This is all?”

Milo showed him his legs, then reluctantly opened his fly.

“You have a powerful enemy in this
Bocor
,” M. Trieste said, finally. “But I can reverse the effects of his doll. It will cost you five hundred dollars. Do you have it with you?”

Milo hesitated. “Let’s not be too hasty here. I want to see some results before I fork over any money.” He was hurting, but he wasn’t going to be a sucker for this clown.

M.
Trieste smiled. He had all his teeth. “I have no wish to steal from you, Mr. Gherl. I shall accept no money from you unless I can effect a cure. However, I do not wish to be cheated either. Do you have the money with you?”

Milo nodded. “Yes.”

“Very well.” M. Trieste struck a match and lit a candle on a table Milo hadn’t realized was there. “Please be seated,” he said and disappeared into the darkness.

Milo complied and looked around. The wan candlelight picked up an odd assortment of objects around the room: African ceremonial masks hung side by side with crucifixes on the wall; a long conga drum sat in a corner to the right, while a statue of the Virgin Mary, her small plaster foot trodding a writhing snake, occupied the one on his left. He wondered when the drums would start and the dancers appear. When would they begin chanting and daubing him with paint and splattering him with chicken blood? God, he must have been crazy to come here. Maybe the pain was affecting his mind. If he had any smarts he’d—

“Hold out your wrist,” M. Trieste said, suddenly appearing in the candlelight opposite him. He held what looked like a plaster coffee mug in his hand. He was stirring its contents with a wooden stick.

Milo held back. “What are you going to do?”

“Help you, Mr. Gherl. You are the victim of a very traditional and particularly nasty form of voodoo. You have greatly angered a
Bocor
and he is using a powerful
loa
, via a doll, to lop off your hands and your feet and your manhood.”

“My left hand’s okay,” Milo said, gratefully working the fingers in the air. “So I have noticed,” M. Trieste said with a frown. “It is odd for one extremity to be spared, but perhaps there is a certain symbolism at work here that we do not understand. No matter. The remedy is the same. Hold your arm out on the table.”

Milo did as he was told. His swollen hand looked black in the candlelight. “Is . . . is this going to hurt?”

“When the pressure is released, there will be considerable pain as the fresh blood rushes into the starved tissues.”

That kind of pain Milo could handle. “Do it.”

M.
Trieste stirred the contents of the cup and lifted the wooden handle. Instead of the spoon he had expected, Milo saw that the man was holding a brush. It gleamed redly.

Here comes the blood, he thought. But he didn’t care what was in the cup as long as it worked.

“Andre told me about your problem before he brought you here. I made this up in advance. I will paint it on the constrictions and it will nullify the influence of the
loa
of the doll. After that, it will be up to you to make peace with this
Bocor
before he visits other afflictions on you.”

“Sure, sure,” Milo said, thrusting his wrist toward M. Trieste. “Let’s just get on with it!”

M.
Trieste daubed the bloody solution onto the incision line. It beaded up like water on a freshly waxed car and slid off onto the table. Milo glanced up and saw a look of consternation flit across the wrinkled black face towering above him. He watched as the red stuff was applied again, only to run off as before.

“Most unusual,” M. Trieste muttered as he tried a third time with no better luck. “I’ve never. . . .” He put the cup down and began painting his own right hand with the solution. “This will do it. Hold up your hand.”

As Milo raised his arm, M. Trieste encircled the wrist with his long dripping fingers and squeezed. There was an instant of heat, and then M.
Trieste cried out. He released Milo’s wrist and dropped to his knees, cradling his right hand against his breast.

“The poisons!” he cried. “Oh, the poisons!”

Milo trembled as he looked at his dusky hand. The bloody solution had run off as before. “What poisons?”

“Between you and this
Bocor
! Get out of here!” “But the doll! You said you could—!”

“There is no doll!” M. Trieste said. He turned away and retched. “There
is
no doll!”

With his heart clattering against his chest wall, Milo pushed himself away from the table and staggered to the door. Andy was leaning on his truck at the curb.

“Wassamatter?” he said, straightening off the fender as he saw Milo. “Didn’t he—?”

“He’s a phony, just like you!” Milo screamed, letting his rage and fear focus on the old black. “Just another goddam phony!”

As Andy hurried into the store, Milo started up his Mercedes and roared down the street. He’d drive until he found a sign for one of the freeways. From there he could get home.

And from home, he knew where he wanted to go . . . where he
had
to go.

“Franklin! Where are you, Franklin?”

Milo had finally found Bill Franklin’s home in the Hollywood Hills. Even though he knew the neighborhood fairly well, Milo had never been on this particular street, and so it had taken him a while to track it down. The lights had been on inside, and the door had been unlocked. No one had answered his knocking, so he’d let himself in.

“Franklin, goddammit!” he called, standing in the middle of the cathedral-ceilinged living room. His voice echoed off the stucco walls and hardwood floor. “Where are you?”

In the ensuing silence, he heard a faint voice say, “Milo? Is that you?”

Milo tensed. Where had that come from? “Yeah, it’s me! Where are you?”

Again, ever so faintly: “Down here . . . in the basement!”

Milo searched for the cellar door, found it, saw the lights ablaze from below, and began his descent. His slippered feet were completely numb now and he had to watch where he put them. It was as if his feet had been removed and replaced with giant sponges.

“That you, Milo?” said a voice from somewhere around the corner from the stairwell. It was Franklin’s voice, but it sounded slurred, strained.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

As he neared the last step, he pulled the .38 from his pocket. He had picked it up at the house along with a pair of wire cutters on his way here. He had never fired it, and he didn’t expect to have to tonight. But it was good to know it was loaded and ready if he needed it. He tried to transfer it to his right hand, but his numb, swollen fingers couldn’t keep hold of the grip. He kept it in his left and stepped onto the cellar floor—

—and felt his foot start to roll away from him. Only by throwing himself against the wall and hugging it did he save himself from falling. He looked around the unfinished cellar. Bright, reflective objects were scattered all along the naked concrete floor. He sucked in a breath as he saw the hundreds of sharp curved angles of green glass poking up at the exposed ceiling beams. They looked like shattered wine bottles—big, green, four-liter wine bottles smashed all over the place. And in among the shards were scattered thousands of marbles.

“Be careful,” said Franklin’s voice. “The basement’s mined.” The voice was there, but Franklin was nowhere in sight.

“Where the hell are you, Franklin?”

“Back here in the bathroom. I thought you’d never get here.”

Milo began to move toward the rear of the cellar, where brighter light poured from an open door. He slid his slippered feet slowly along the floor, pushing the green glass spears ahead of him, rolling the marbles out of the way.

“I’ve come for the doll, Franklin.”

Milo heard a hollow laugh. “Doll? What doll, Milo? There’s just me and you, ol’ buddy.”

Milo shuffled around the corner into view of the bathroom. And froze. The gun dropped from his fingers and further shattered some of the glass at his feet. “Oh, my God, Franklin! Oh, my God!”

William Franklin sat on the toilet wearing Milo’s rings, his old slippers, his stolen pajamas, and his other hairpiece. His left eye was patched, and his feet and his right hand were as black and swollen as Milo’s. There was a maniacal look in his remaining eye as he grinned drunkenly and sipped from a four-liter green-glass bottle of white wine. The cuts in his flesh were identical to Milo’s except that a short length of twisted copper wire protruded from each. A screwdriver and a pair of pliers lay in his lap.

M. Trieste’s parting words screamed through his brain:
There is no doll!

“See?” Franklin said in a slurred voice. “You said I had to suffer.”

Milo wanted to be sick. “Christ! What have you done?”

“I decided to suffer. But I didn’t think I should suffer alone. So I brought you along for company. Sure took you long enough to figure it out.”

Milo bent and picked up the pistol. His left hand wavered and trembled as he pointed it at Franklin. “You . . . you. . . .” He couldn’t think of anything to say.

Franklin casually tossed the wine bottle out onto the floor where it shattered and added to the spikes of glass. Then he pulled open the pajama top. “Right here, Milo, old buddy!” he said, pointing to his heart. “Do you really think you want to put a slug into me?”

Milo thought about that. It might be like putting a bullet into his own heart. He felt his arm drop. “Why . . . how . . . I don’t deserve. . . .”

Franklin closed his eye and grimaced. He looked as if he were about to cry. “I know,” he said. “It’s gone too far. Maybe you really don’t deserve all this. I’ve always known I was a little bit crazy, but maybe I’m a lot crazier than I ever thought I was.”